• Tech employees share their salary negotiation tips, which helped boost their pay by tens of thousands of dollars.
• Their negotiation strategies include practicing pitches, using data, and leveraging multiple offers.
• Research and transparency are key in negotiating better compensation in tech roles, they said.

Sarra Bounouh has worked at consulting giant Accenture and three Big Tech companies.

But she still deals with imposter syndrome, especially when talking compensation.

"Going into a negotiation is always, at least for me, a very uncomfortable discussion," Bounouh told Business Insider. "I just want to push through and ask for what I deserve."

She and four other tech employees from Meta, Google, and Cisco shared their salary negotiation tips before joining a company or when trying to get promoted. They have used these strategies to add tens of thousands of dollars to their original offers in recent years.

Product manager at Meta

Avoid offering the first number. If you must, back it up with research, said Bounouh, a product manager who joined Meta earlier this year.

She suggested using resources like Levels.fyi or Glassdoor and selecting your role and geography to see recent offers and compensation that makes sense for that job.

"I personally don't like having detailed conversations about level and compensation from that first call with the recruiter because I want to meet the team, I want to meet the hiring manager, I want to get excited about the role," she said.

Bounouh prefers to negotiate her level and compensation once there's an offer on the table.

She said she often gets asked about salary expectations early in the process because recruiters say they want to save time for both sides.

She politely declines to share a number by telling the recruiter: "I don't have a number for your right now. I will need to do some research before getting back to you. At this stage of the process, I'm more focused on meeting the hiring manager and team."

Rehearsal is key for conversations about promotions or raises, she said.

Bounouh said she practiced her pitch for every job after Accenture and increased all three jobs' initial salary offers: Microsoft by 32%, Snap by 19%, and Meta by 37%.

Product manager at Oracle

Internal transfers between teams or offices are also an opportunity to negotiate your compensation package.

Ketaki Vaidya, who moved from Oracle's India to California office in 2022, said she approached her negotiation with an "everything under the sun is negotiable" mindset.

First, Vaidya looked at Glassdoor and talked to people who'd made the move to gather salary data. She wanted to ensure she was getting a fair offer for the US' cost of living.

"I was being given this offer for the credibility that I had built in the organization. I felt like I had an upper hand in negotiating," she said. "I was much more confident in asking for the things that I deserve — so it ended up being a very smooth transition."

After negotiating her base salary up to $80,000, she discussed other compensation components, including the timing of her next review, sign-on bonuses, relocation costs, paid leave, and remote work. She negotiated a sign-on bonus of $15,000 and a relocation allowance of $15,000, which weren't part of the initial offer.

Now, her compensation is about $130,000 annually, including stock units and bonuses.

Product manager at Cisco

When Varun Kulkarni switched from consulting to tech to work on more artificial intelligence projects, he was careful not to come off as aggressive during his pay negotiations.

Once he had offers from Cisco and others in hand in 2022, he was transparent with recruiters and mentioned other offers, without introducing his own counter number.

He asked recruiters how high they could go and what they thought about other offers.

"You want to kind of not be too pushy" he said.

His offer from Cisco already matched the market rate and what several competitors were offering, but he managed to negotiate it by 5%, bringing his total compensation to $180,000.

Product manager at Google

During his 2022 recruitment process at Google, Yung-Yu Lin used his employer at the time, PayPal, to land better offers from both companies.

He interviewed and landed jobs at several places — but their pay did not compare with Google's offer.

Lin decided to negotiate a retention package. PayPal countered with a 10% pay bump. He then renegotiated with Google.

Google offered a 20% raise on his original compensation at PayPal, which brought his offer to the $350,000 to $400,000 range as a senior product manager, including stock-based compensation.

Software engineer at Meta

Hemant Pandey, a senior software engineer at Meta, used other offers and research in his most recent job search.

After two years at Salesforce, in 2021 he applied to Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, and two other companies. He used offers from these companies to negotiate his compensation at Meta.

"Be very transparent that you have other offers. Even if you have interviews going on, mention those, because it's also leverage," he said. It signals to the recruiter that they have to move fast and work with your parameters.

Meta's recruiters matched the base salary and restricted stock units from the highest of all offers.

Aside from being transparent, Pandey said it is important to be proactive and research how compensation works in different companies. For example, candidates should compare how stocks are refreshed, he said. A refresher is when the stock option portion of an employee's compensation is updated.

"I also negotiated my sign-on bonus and said, 'Hey, at Salesforce, I'll be leaving my $30,000 to $40,000 of annual bonus if I join you. Can you help me accommodate that?'"

Pandey was offered $520,000 in annual pay, including stock options, in that 2021 move.

"The most significant thing happened in my career when I made the move from Salesforce to Meta, which was close to almost 80 to 90% hike" in pay, Pandey said.

Do you work in tech, consulting, or finance and have a story to share about your career journey? Please reach out at [email protected].

When Mike Kelly set up his first few Airbnbs in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2023, he figured it would be a successful move. It was meant to be an investment project for him and his daughter to work on together. But as more people moved away from bustling and expensive urban centers and landed in the Midwest, their hopes were quickly shattered.

The Fort Wayne housing market boomed. High demand for homes, coupled with the city's low housing stock, has kept costs relatively high — a Redfin analysis of housing data found home prices were up 9.2% in October compared with last year. The hot housing market has translated into higher property taxes, which is throwing off the short-term-rental business model. "The houses we purchased to turn into Airbnbs have been assessed so much higher than what we put into them that we almost can't afford to keep them," Kelly said. "The return on equity wouldn't be as high."

Owners of short-term rentals across the country have faced a similar reality, sharing stories of declining revenues over the past few years as the market was flooded with new rentals. AirDNA, an analytics firm that tracks the short-term-rental market, found that revenue per rental decreased by nearly 2% in 2022 and by more than 8% in 2023 due to an overabundance of units available for rent. AirDNA forecast that revenues would move back into the green in 2024 as the market corrected. But as short-term-rental owners felt signs of an "Airbnbust," some realized they needed to pivot.

On one end of the market, however, it's a different picture. While overall demand for short-term rentals rose just 1.8% in 2023, according to AirDNA's data, demand for stays priced at $1,000 or more increased by nearly 8%. For stays over $1,500, demand jumped 12.5%. In fact, demand for rentals costing over $1,000 a night has increased by 73% since 2019. While cheaper rentals are slowing down, luxury, niche, and themed stays are filling their place. Wealthy vacationers are increasingly going after luxe properties such as a secluded Malibu beach mansion or a modern cabin beset by pristine woods — like something off Cabin Porn. Meanwhile, Airbnb alternatives are jumping into the market to cater to the growing demand. A lust for luxury is propelling the short-term-rental market to new heights.

Over the past few years, more travelers have pushed back against the Airbnb model, complaining of outrageous cleaning fees, extensive cleanup requirements, and outright scams. As a result, some travelers have opted to stay in good old-fashioned hotels thanks to their consistent service.

These complaints, however, tend to focus on rentals on the low end of the market — the $200-a-night stay you might book to visit a family member or get out of town for a weekend. The luxury end of the rental market fills a different role. These spots boast plenty of hotellike amenities — such as contactless check-in, high-speed internet, bathroom toiletries, and coffee makers. Because of the high price point, luxury rentals also tend to standardize their cleaning services. Unlike a hotel room, though, a house or apartment comes with a lot more room to host guests, plus amenities such as a kitchen or private pool. When split between multiple guests for a night or weekend, some of the eye-popping price tags end up being surprisingly affordable.

Among high-income travelers, who made up an increasingly large share of vacationers this year, hotels are on the way out. Deloitte's 2024 summer-travel report found a 17-point drop in people who earn over $200,000 opting to stay at full-service hotels compared with the summer before. While middle-income travelers moved toward budget accommodations like bed and breakfasts and RV rentals, high earners shifted toward private-home rentals.

One brand capitalizing on the growing demand is Wander. Launched in 2022, Wander owns all of its 200 properties, each beautifully designed with stunning landscaping. Its founder and CEO, John Andrew Entwistle, had the idea of making a vacation rental feel like a luxury hospitality brand after a disastrous ordeal renting a cabin in Colorado. "The whole experience felt broken, the type of thing all of us has had at a vacation rental one time or another: The place didn't look like the photos. The beds were uncomfortable. The list goes on and on," he said.

He wanted a rental home with heart and soul, where the building was designed around the landscape and high-speed internet flowed across the house. Wander rentals are often in remote spots to give guests a sense of privacy and quiet. The cleaning service is standardized so guests don't have to worry about cleaning up after themselves, and customers can check in on their own through their smartphones. Every unit, which costs an average of $900 a night, also features sleek workstations for digital nomads.

Other travel brands have found similar success in the luxury market. There's Mint House, a cross between a hotel and short-term rental that has 12 properties across 10 major US cities. Visitor experiences are personalized — for instance, guests can request that the refrigerator be stocked with their favorite groceries before they arrive — and there's 24/7 customer care. The apartments, which can be studios or have multiple bedrooms, are priced similarly to hotels and feature bespoke furniture and decor, along with all the necessities of modern accommodations. To explain the brand's success, Christian Lee, the CEO of Mint House, pointed to the company's ability to provide consistent experiences. "Unlike other short-term listings that lack security and guest care and often require a guest to perform chores at checkout, all of our properties are professionally managed to ensure the utmost safety, security, and cleanliness," he said.

The luxuriousness only goes up from there. Rental Escapes, a full-service luxury-villa-rental company founded in 2012, offers over 5,000 villas in more than 70 destinations worldwide. They start at $500 a night — though most go for tens of thousands. Amase Stays, a collection of $10 million rental estates founded this year, creates bespoke experiences for its top-of-the-line properties, with dedicated concierges who can arrange everything from private chefs and spa services to customized excursions.

Chris Lema, a business coach and product strategist, is a Wander superfan. "These are places that are architecturally beautiful, and the land that they sit on feels like a national park," he said. He likes that the company provides attainable luxury — he's stayed in 13 different Wander locations and hopes to "collect them all," he said. He has even started planning trips around Wander rentals.

"I thought this is where Airbnb was going to go with its business model," he said. "If you go to Airbnb's website now, they have these different categories like 'amazing views' or 'lakefront.' But none of these rentals push forward on the issue of experience. There's the Luxe category — but it's not the same thing."

In Airbnb's Luxe category, homes might cost anywhere between $200 and hundreds of thousands of dollars a night. When the category launched in 2019, an Airbnb press release said the homes would have to pass a slate of design and experience criteria, including higher standards for cleanliness and amenities like towels and toiletries. Unlike at other Airbnb properties, a company representative has to walk through Luxe properties to verify them. Despite that, Lema hasn't been impressed.

"They seem to rank Luxe based on the niceness of the residence," Lema said, "but that isn't really the point of what that kind of experience should be."

An Airbnb spokesperson said, "We're proud to be the only travel platform that offers stays for nearly any desired travel experience." They added: "We're also proud of the growth of our Luxe category supply and look forward to expanding the offering."

So far, Wander's model is working out. It launched with only three locations, and two years later, it has 200 houses and an average occupancy rate of 80%, Entwistle said. By the beginning of 2025, Entwistle hopes to launch locations in Mexico and Canada.

Back in Fort Wayne, Kelly ended up pivoting his Airbnb business to cater to this demand for luxury. "We focus on four-bedroom-plus homes where groups can gather for weddings or reunions," he said. Houses with pools and hot tubs are especially desirable, he's found. Kelly has also amassed a thriving collection of themed Airbnbs. He designed one house to look like the childhood home of the fictional character Fawn Liebowitz from the cult classic film "Animal House." He's working on another rental themed around Indiana University sports teams.

"At the end of the day, the 'luxury' houses are more affordable than staying in multiple hotel rooms," he said. Plus, offering something unique, like a theme, helps homes stand out from the crowd. With the new focus, Kelly's Airbnbs are rarely empty, he said.

Part of the shifting demand stems from people viewing luxury rentals as a destination unto themselves — if the place you're staying is cool enough, you don't need to get out much. Others are drawn to them as a means to get away from the hubbub. "In today's globalized world, travel destinations have become more and more homogenous and tourist-burdened," Spencer Bailey, the editor of the new book "Design: The Leading Hotels of the World," said. "People are seeking out distinctive experiences away from the crowds and searching for a certain sense of intimacy, craft, and care." It's not just about top-rate service, intricate design, or even a Michelin-starred restaurant. "It's about being in nature, engaging in local culture, and creating discrete, felt experiences that encourage quietness and slowness, not an Instagram moment," Bailey says.

A private rental is often more secluded, meaning travelers can prioritize spending more time alone with their loved ones. "Travelers are increasingly wising up to the fact that time — and where, how, and with whom you spend it — is the greatest luxury," he said. Michelle Steinhardt, the founder of the luxury travel blog The Trav Nav, wrote about her recent stay at a secluded beachfront property rental in Punta Mita, Mexico: "Even though we were only a few minutes from the local town, our party felt like everyone else was miles away."

Increasingly, getting away from home isn't enough. We also want to get away from other people. For those who can afford it — or have enough friends — luxury-travel companies are more than happy to accommodate.

Michelle Mastro covers lifestyle, travel, architecture, and culture.

As a parent, you want to do your best. You focus on your child, ensuring they're emotionally safe, properly socialized, and academically challenged — anything to set them up for success.

It's hard to fathom a dark outcome: that your child would grow up to assassinate someone, or be accused of doing so.

That's what Luigi Mangione's parents experienced last week, as the 26-year-old accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was charged with murder as an act of terrorism. And the parents of 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who killed two and injured six others at a Wisconsin school before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot, according to police.

Working with parents who've watched their kids sink into dangerous behavior, family therapist Rachel Goldberg said it's very hard for them to heal. She said parents must strive to find self-compassion and "separate their identity from their child's actions," no matter how challenging.

Parents of shooters experience remorse and confusion

In her 2016 memoir, "A Mother's Reckoning," Sue Klebold, the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan Klebold, wrote about struggling to call her son a "monster" after he killed 13 people in 1999. "When I hear about terrorists in the news, I think, 'That's somebody's kid,'" she wrote in the book.

Peter Rodger, the father of Isla Vista killer Elliot Rodger, wrestled with similar confusion and guilt. He remembers sitting in horror, watching his son's retribution video, which he posted on YouTube before stabbing, shooting, and using a car to hit bystanders in 2014. "Elliot was far from evil," Rodger told ABC that year. "Something happened to him. He was the most beautiful, kind, sweetheart of a boy."

Such an event "forces us as parents to contend with our worst fears," Annie Wright, another family therapist, told Business Insider. "The lack of control, at some level, over who they become."

Mangione's family is wealthy and well-known in their community as the owners of a golf club and philanthropists. He attended the Gilman School, a prestigious private school in Baltimore, where he graduated as valedictorian and was described by his peers as "very social" and "very into sports."

Goldberg said that a parent's imagined worst-case scenario is usually that their child would become a lonely, unemployed adult living in their basement. If a child does the unthinkable, recovering as a parent can feel impossible.

Limits to a parent's control

Kids don't need to be out of the house to be mysteries to their parents. In the wake of the Wisconsin shooting, authorities are combing through Rupnow's online activity in search of a motive, finding a version of her life seemingly concealed from others, like her fascination with the Columbine shooters.

Once a child is over 18 and financially independent, parents' control over their lives becomes even more tenuous. In the Mangiones' case, their son stopped responding to messages for months before he was arrested.

For parents watching their adult kids slip into alarming behavior, their options are legally limited, Goldberg said. Often, their best defense is talking to their kid, but "it really depends how much their adult child is willing to let them in."

Wright said that involving third parties can help. Parents can try family therapy or find licensed professionals who can help manage their child's physical or emotional pain. Parents can also call their local authorities in extreme cases, such as when their child is in immediate danger or endangering someone else.

Goldberg said the best thing parents can do is know their child as well as possible and act when something feels off. "Don't wait until it gets really bad if you can possibly intervene earlier," she said.

Even then, sometimes, intervention falls short.

Rodgers, the Isla Vista shooter, was in therapy from the age of 9. Peter Lanza, the father of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, said his son had been assessed by mental health professionals multiple times.

Pain a parent can't fix

Loneliness and isolation can often be red flags when analyzing a child's behavior. Still, Mangione, who started a gaming club in college and was part of a fraternity, appeared surrounded by people.

This made it harder for him to disappear fully: In July 2024, when he cut off contact with his family, cousins and friends reached out on social media. In November, his mother filed a missing person's report in San Francisco, where Mangione has some relatives.

Despite his seemingly solid network of friends and family, Mangione had spondylolisthesis, a painful spinal condition. He frequented Reddit communities related to back pain, describing his symptoms as "absolutely brutal" and "life-halting." That can be isolating, Goldberg said.

"It is a very lonely place to be in pain all the time because you can't really be present with people," he added.

In 2022, when Mangione lived in a Hawaiian surf community, he experienced sciatica, debilitating nerve pain, in his leg. R.J. Martin, who owned the co-living space, told The New York Times that Mangione "knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn't possible."

While parents can do a lot to relate to a child's pain, such as listening and doing their best to understand the nuances of what their child is going through, "empathy alone can't bridge every gap," Wright said.

Parents can still protect themselves

Goldberg's clients, particularly parents of kids with substance abuse issues, struggle to move past their guilt. Acceptance can take a lifetime.

"They live in fear of getting a phone call from the police or hospital; they question everything they have done," she said. "They often feel incredibly helpless and stuck."

Wright said the resulting grief from something like this can be "extraordinarily complex" and "often includes sorrow, not only for the victims and their families but for the loss of the child they thought they knew."

She suggested therapy and, for those with religious affiliations, seeking spiritual leaders they trust. Parents can feel so many conflicting emotions, and it's important to "allow these emotions to coexist without rushing to tidy them up," she said.

This is especially hard for the parents who felt they tried their best.

Upon learning of Mangione's arrest, his family released a statement contrary to the manifesto found with their son during his arrest. "We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson, and we ask people to pray for all involved," they said. "We are devastated by this news."

Some parents try to find meaning in the tragedy. Klebold wrote her memoir and participated in press interviews. Chin Rodger, mother of Elliot, started speaking at threat assessment trainings. She hopes that people will get better at identifying the red flags of someone going through a mental crisis.

Still, some just wish it never happened. Adam Lanza's father blames himself for overlooking the warning signs. "You can't get any more evil," Lanza told the New Yorker in 2014. "How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he's my son? A lot."

Business Insider's creative team covered an array of projects this year. We brought our stories to life by incorporating animations, crafting bespoke multimedia experiences for our biggest stories, producing and commissioning hundreds of illustrations, and working with photographers around the globe.

Our visuals captured a wide range of topics, from looking into illegal lockouts in major US cities to Ozempic Scams.

We hired nearly 250 talented freelancers who helped bring our most compelling stories to life, producing over 1,500 pieces of custom art that enhanced our storytelling.

Here are some of our favorite visual creations from 2024.

For God, for country, for rain

Photos by Jett Lara

Why we don't exercise

Illustration by Timo Lenzen

Locked out

Illustration by Andrei Cojocaru, Design and Development by Rebecca Zisser, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Randy Yeip, and Annie Fu, Photos by Bridget Bennett, Callaghan O'Hare, Alyssa Pointer, Abel Uribe

The risky allure of WiFi Money

Illustrations by Brandon Celi

Lunar New Year traditions through the lens of three photographers

Photos by Caroline Xia, Ramona Jingru Wang, and Sam Lee

The plight of big sisters

Illustration by Gracia Lam

Albums are too damn long

Illustration by Tyler Le

Want to make money as a pop star? Dream on.

Illustrations by Chris Burnett

The American dream is shrinking

Illustration by Javier Jaén

America is facing a 'fringe friend' crisis

Illustration by Seba Cestaro

'Civilizations rise and fall'

Illustration by Hokyoung Kim

Gen Z's new status symbol

Illustration by Pablo Declan

Joseph Stiglitz on why America's appetite for Trump endures

Photos by Dina Litovsky

The Big Dumb Economic Lie of 2024

Illustration by Alyssa Powell

Scared your partner is cheating? Strangers on the internet are here to help — for a fee

Illustration by Natalie Ammari

Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath

New York City's new Gilded Age

Illustration by Carl Godfrey

The pot farm massacre

Photos by Mike Simmons

From ALICEs to DINKs

Illustrations by Jimmy Simpson

The best albums of 2024

Illustration by Natalie Ammari

A founding father of Utah's VC industry is stepping back as accusations of sexual harassment surface

Illustration by Deena So'Oteh

The death of the nuclear family

Illustration by Mark Harris

The online minefield of Ozempic knock-offs

Illustration by Jenny Chang-Rodriguez

To the manor shorn

Photos by Astrid Landon

Through the roof

Illustration by Alex Castro

The mismeasure of America

Illustration by Chris Gash

The rise of the job-search bots

Illustrations by Hugo Herrera

The world's meanest app

Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez

It's gearing up to be a hot travel debt summer for Gen Z and millennials

Illustration by Rebecca Zisser

Hot girls love book clubs

Illustration by Natalia Agatte

What an extra $500 to $1,000 a month did for 8 families

Design and Development by Kim Nguyen, Rebecca Zisser, Isabel Fernandez-Pujol, Photos by Jovelle Tamayo, Tim Evans, Helynn Ospina, Andre Chung, Brittany Greeson, Libby March

'No CCP in USA!'

Illustrations by Matt Harrison Clough

Drake Bell knows life is not a Disney movie

Photos by Ana Topoleanu

AI Power List 2024

Illustration by Karan Singh

Soup to nuts

Illustrations by Tyler Le

The professors turned porn stars

Photos by Simone Lueck

Inside the Billionaire Bunker

Illustration by Saratta Chuengsatiansup

The poisoned chalice of restaurant popularity

Illustration by Valentin Tkach

Gen Z's fading dream

Illustration by Abanti Chowdhury

China's massive stimulus misfire

Illustration by Alyssa Powell

Rob McElhenney is betting on himself

Photos by Sheryl Nields

The hidden costs of traveling while gay

Illustration by Derek Abella

The cursed inheritance

Illustrations by Nate Sweitzer

Steam loops vs. doom loops

Illustration by Sam Green

This Ramadan, queer and transgender Muslims made their own community

Photos by Ramie Ahmed

The fitness fad graveyard

Illustration by Jenny Chang-Rodriguez

Inside Microsoft's struggles with Copilot

Illustration by Chelsea Jia Feng

In celebration of Black History Month

Illustration by Loveis Wise

Why so many Americans hate their jobs

Illustration by Ricardo Tomás

The new rule of homebuying

Illustration by Sebastian König

Behind the data center boom

Illustration by Arif Qazi

MDMA therapy could be legal by summer. Why are so many advocates sounding the alarm?

Illustration by Richard A. Chance

Lunden and Olivia Stallings are TikTok's lesbian power couple. Straight people love them; queer people aren't so sure.

Photos by Kendrick Brinson

Young Chinese are looking for dupes and cheaper substitutes for everything from Hermès to travel

Illustration by Chelsea Jia Feng

The plight of the girlboss

Illustrations by Kiersten Essenpreis

America's absurd war on 'organized retail crime'

Illustration by Tara Anand

The war within Gen Z

Illustration by Tommy Parker

Priced out of America

Illustration by Juanjo Gasull

S'more! S'more!

Illustrations by Liam Eisenberg

My brain on Ozempic

Photos by David Vades Joseph

Elon Musk is fighting wars on a lot of fronts right now

Illustration by Rebecca Zisser

A trainer-heiress power couple created the fitness juggernaut Pvolve. Then came a divorce, an arrest, and Jennifer Aniston.

Illustration by Christian Northeast

The United States of Automobiles

Illustrations by Pete Ryan, Design & Development by Kim Nguyen and Randy Yeip

'Trump is going to win'

Photos by Jordan Vonderhaar

For Gen Alpha, learning to read is becoming a privilege

Illustration by Keith Negley, Photos by Momo Takahashi and Alex Welsh

My breakup with ambition

Illustration by Sophi Gullbrants

The gutting of the Eighth Amendment

Illustration by Matt Rota, Design & Development by Randy Yeip, Kim Nguyen, Dan DeLorenzo, Rebecca Zisser, and Isabel Fernandez-Pujol

Guy Pearce is the first to admit that he never wanted to be a movie star.

"I didn't have that sense of ambition," Pearce, 57, tells Business Insider in his crackling Australian accent. "I just wanted to work as an actor. On the outside, you think you want fame and big Hollywood movies; none of that is how I function."

Yet Pearce has dealt with fame for close to 40 years across two continents thanks to his wide array of memorable roles, which date back to his late teens when he was a heartthrob on the 1980s Australian soap opera "Neighbours."

Even then, being famous was disarming.

"'Neighbours' was a great experience, but the fame side of it was hard work," Pearce recalls. "Coming out of 'Neighbours' and not getting the work I wanted to get but still getting chased down the street whenever I went to the shopping center, the two things messed with my mind."

Pearce finally caught a break when turned his soap star image on its head to star as a drag queen in 1994's "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," a role his then-agent tried to talk him out of taking. Three years later, he would make his way to the United States to play the by-the-book detective Edmund Exley in "L.A. Confidential" and break into Hollywood. He's gone on to star in over 50 movies, including Christopher Nolan's mind-scrambling neo-noir "Memento," the Australian Western "The Proposition," and Ridley Scott's "Alien" prequel "Prometheus."

Though Pearce is definitely famous, it's now on his own terms. Unlike the Hollywood stars who bring the same persona to every role, he's never played the same type of role twice.

This time, he's digging into his dark side to play Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy industrialist with a sociopathic edge in Brady Corbet's award-season contender "The Brutalist," in theaters on Friday.

Pearce says he's drawn to fully-formed characters, and in reading Corbet's script about the epic journey of immigrant architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), the Van Buren character "jumped off the page."

"I do my best work when I don't have to go back and create something," Pearce says. "Like an orchestra member who turns up, and there's the score, and you play the score. That's how acting should be."

For BI's latest Role Play interview, I caught up with Pearce — who was dressed in the casual, non-famous attire of a black t-shirt and blue jeans — at the A24 offices in Manhattan to talk about why he wasn't initially interested in acting in America, why he's never worked with Nolan since "Memento," and how "Iron Man 3" made him amenable to doing blockbuster movies again after an awful experience on 2002's "The Time Machine."

On being told playing a drag queen would ruin his career and auditioning for 'L.A. Confidential'

You found fame in Australia with "Neighbours" in the late 1980s, then followed that with a few Aussie movies, and then "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" came along. Was there any hesitation, coming off the fame of "Neighbours," to play a drag queen?

Well, I didn't sit there thinking things were good after "Neighbours." When I finished "Neighbours" at the end of 1989, I couldn't get a job to save myself. Nobody wanted to put the guy from a TV soap in their movie. So I wasn't riding a good wave.

"Priscilla" coming around, [director] Stephan [Elliott] said this at the time, he thought it was a fun joke to stick a guy from the soap in a dress. And that was fine with me. There was no question in me doing it.

I remember one of the agents at this agency in Sydney I joined after "Neighbours" told me, "I suggest you do not do this movie, this could ruin your career." And I was like, "Nope, I'm absolutely doing this, it's a fucking great script." So that was luck that I held my ground. And I'm still with the agency, but that agent left. 

So when "L.A. Confidential" came along, were you finally at ease about your career? Was your goal to get work in the States?

No. No. I never had any desire to get to America. I just thought, if I'm going to be out of work, why am I going to be out of work in America? I'd rather be out of work in Australia. What happened was I went to America to promote "Priscilla" and my agent said you should meet some agents in LA. And I said, "I'm not trying to work in Hollywood. I barely can work in Australia. Why would I try?" She said, "Meet this one agent." I said fine.

We met and I got along great with him, his name is Chris Andrews. He said, "I'll represent you." I said, "Fine, but I'm not coming over here and doing pilot season, I'm not going to do that. I don't have enough money." He said, "Come stay at my house." So I came back in 1995 a couple of different times and auditioned for stuff and would stay at his house, and that's how I got "L.A. Confidential." 

What was the audition like?

When I first went in, it was just a reading on tape. ["L.A. Confidential" director] Curtis [Hanson] wasn't even in the room. In fact, it was the last audition I did in late 1995 while I was in LA, so fight after I flew back to Australia. In January, Chris calls and tells me they want me to come back and do a proper screen test. I was like, "No, I'm not fucking flying back."

So Curtis called me and said, [speaking in an American accent] "Guy, I think you should come back." So basically, he had already decided, but he needed me to do the screen test so he could prove to the studio that I was the right guy. But he couldn't say I had the role. I showed up, and it was almost like shooting a scene; it was on a dressed set, costumes; they cut my hair to look like Ed Exley; it was a crazy thing. 

And during filming people would come up to me and say, "You got this off of 'Priscilla'? How did Curtis see you as Ed Exley in that role?" Turns out Curtis never saw "Priscilla." It call came from that first reading on tape that I did. 

How close were we to an "L.A. Confidential" sequel?

At a certain point, Curtis called me and said, "Just so you know, I'm talking to ["L.A. Confidential" author James] Ellroy about specifically writing a sequel." It would have been ten years later. And he wanted me to be involved. I told him I'm on board, no question. And Russell [Crowe] would return as well. Curtis' whole thing was it needed to be the same team, Warner Bros., me, Ellroy, Russell. It was a no-brainer for me. That got developed to a certain degree and then Curtis got sick and sadly passed in 2016. 

On why he hasn't worked with Christopher Nolan since 'Memento'

If the myth is true, "Memento" is kind of the opposite of what happened on "L.A. Confidential." Instead of the director calling you, you called the director. 

Well, I had always read these stories about directors saying how committed actors were to landing a role: "They slept on my porch, I knew he was the guy." I remember reading these and thinking, "Does that really work?" So I read "Memento" and really loved it, I met with Chris and then I watched "Following." I was really locked in and wanted to do it.

So I go to my agent, Chris, and I tell him, "I think I should ring Chris Nolan just so he knows that I'm really keen to do this." So I did, and I said, "I'm really sorry to do this but by all accounts this seems to work in this town, I'm really keen to do your movie, I would really love to do this." And in typical Chris Nolan fashion, he just said, "Well, okay, thank you for letting me know." I just felt if other actors are in the running he should know I really wanted to do it. 

I believe actors like Charlie Sheen and Alec Baldwin were also in the running.

I have no idea. I remember Jeff Goldblum was in the mix, and Brad Pitt was the first ask. I felt, this script is so good I'm going to lose this to a name actor, I have to put my hand up. Also, I was cheap. 

Are you surprised you haven't worked with Nolan since?

We nearly worked together a couple of times, but there was an executive at Warner Bros. who admitted to my agent that I was not someone he believed in and ever wanted to work with, so he was never going to work with me. And I'm glad we found that out because, for a while, it was weird that I could never get another job at Warner Bros.

But we found out because Chris offered me a role in "Batman Begins." This was at a time when he wanted Bruce Wayne's mentor to be around the same age as him. So I flew to London to see Chris, and by the time I landed, he was told that Warner Bros. was never going to employ me. So I get there and he goes, "Hey... do you wanna see the Batmobile?" And we went out to dinner and I flew home just puzzled.

I have no idea why this executive felt this way, he supposedly told Chris, "I don't get Guy Pearce, I'm never going to get Guy Pearce, I'm never going to employ Guy Pearce." So that never happened. 

Then Chris talked to me about "The Prestige." He was talking to Jude Law and I about it. And next thing you know he went and made it with Batman [Christian Bale] and Wolverine [Hugh Jackman]. [Laughs.] But, again, Warner Bros. was involved. And listen, if I can only work with Chris Nolan once in my life, I'm fine with that.  

(Ed note: WB and Nolan did not respond to BI's requests for comment.)

The job that made him swear off studio movies until 'Iron Man 3'

2002's "The Time Machine" was the first and only time you were the lead in a major Hollywood blockbuster. After that you didn't make a studio film again for years. How did your experience on that movie shape your career going forward?

I definitely realized that I wasn't cut out for the studio world. 

Did that leave a bad taste in your mouth?

Absolutely. I just wanted to get back to what I felt comfortable doing. I just felt like the studio world was too big for me. I remember one of the executives telling me three or four times on that movie, "You know, the time machine itself, that's the star of the movie." And not that I needed anyone to pump up my ego, but I just remember a couple of times going, "Okay, yep. Got it. No worries." It was difficult.

Right after doing that I went and reshot the ending of "The Count of Monte Cristo." So at that time I was fried and I had enough of Hollywood. I was a pretty horrible person to everyone around me because of exhaustion. So I realized I'm a character actor, I'm not that guy. So I took a big step back. 

Who was more fun to play, Peter Weyland in "Prometheus" or Aldrich Killian in "Iron Man 3"?

I think Aldrich Killian was probably more fun. I mean, Peter Weyland was hard work because I was literally wearing an exoskeleton and five hours of prosthetic makeup. 

Did you know what the hell was happening in "Prometheus"?

I think the movie is brilliant, but I'll say, if you don't get what's happening in the first five minutes then you're lost for the rest of the movie. And I had the benefit of listening to Ridley [Scott] talk about it before we started shooting.

I loved it, but it was a tough experience physically. I couldn't sit down because of this metal frame thing. So between shots they would just lean me against the wall. 

But with both of those roles, them being on big Hollywood movies, by then, I had a big rethink about how to function. Aldrich and "Iron Man 3" was an opportunity to kind of dip my foot back into the water of the studio world. The pressure isn't on me. It's a good character. So I got to do what I want to do in that world.  

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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• David Duchovny had a very specific idea for how to make his 'Zoolander' cameo funny

Silicon Valley is the undisputed global tech hub. The small corner of California is the birthplace of Apple, Google, and OpenAI — companies that have, for better or worse, changed modern life.

Far away, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, another tech hub has been finding its footing in the international market. The city of Bengaluru is the startup capital of India and shares similar DNA to California's Silicon Valley.

Bengaluru grew into an IT hub in the wake of the rapid expansion of its electronics manufacturing industry from the 1940s to the 1960s. Back in the US, Silicon Valley was home to the semiconductor industry in the 1950s and owes its name to the silicon transistors produced there in the 1960s.

By the mid-1980s, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft had a presence in the Valley, while in Bengaluru, large companies like Infosys and Texas Instruments moved in.

Bengaluru is widely referred to as the "Silicon Valley of India," producing tech unicorns and housing offices for companies like Amazon, Google, and Dell. After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk shut the company's offices in Delhi and Mumbai but kept the Bengaluru office. Earlier this year, Virgin Atlantic launched daily direct flights from London to Bengaluru.

However, the city's status as a tech metropole is under pressure as rapid growth tests the local infrastructure. Estimates place the current population at roughly 14 million, compared to 8 million in 2010.

Heavy traffic, water shortages, and rising property prices have led to online speculation that Bengaluru may be crumbling and debates about whether another city will emerge as a new tech hub in India. During a water crisis earlier this year, some tech companies in Bengaluru had to tell employees to stay home.

Business Insider spoke to four current and former Bengaluru residents in and outside the tech industry who shared their experiences of how India's "Silicon Valley" is holding up under the pressures of rapid urbanization and whether they believe it can maintain its place as a global tech hub.

Vikram Chandrashekar

Vikram Chandrashekar, 50, was born in Bengaluru and has worked at Oracle for the past 27 years. He told BI he is happy for the job opportunities Bengaluru's status as a tech hub has brought, but is nostalgic for the city of his youth.

A lake he visited when he was younger, across from a guava and mango orchard, has now been replaced by housing.

Chandrashekar said the IT boom drew people to the city, bringing a larger airport, a more diverse culture, and better internet connectivity. He is also grateful to the startup ecosystem because he has access to new services and products faster than the rest of the country.

He said local people have benefited from job opportunities, but they still complain about the issues urbanization has caused. Chandrashekar doesn't plan to leave his hometown and thinks creating other tech hubs in India to redirect the growing population is a solution.

Read Vikram Chandrashekar's full story here.

Dhruv Suyamprakasam

Dhruv Suyamprakasam grew up joining his dad on business trips to Bengaluru and Hyderabad, another large tech hub in India. When Suyamprakasam became a founder himself, he moved to Bengaluru twice.

However, the founder said the city wasn't a golden ticket to success, and Suyamprakasam decided it was better to build his startup in his local city.

Suyamprakasam first moved to Bengaluru in 2010 after launching a medical startup with his relative.

It turned out to be a mistake. Suyamprakasam said Bengaluru's tech ecosystem's "fail-fast" mentality put too much pressure on their medical startup. He also felt excluded for being from a smaller city, not speaking Hindi, or not having studied at India's top engineering school.

Suyamprakasam said access to talent and venture capital are huge advantages of Bengaluru, while smaller cities can offer lower costs and more space.

Still, Bengaluru doesn't compare to Silicon Valley's vast capital and power. The founder said Bengaluru can be great on its own merits, but it needs to start being more inclusive.

Read Dhruv Suyamprakasam's full story here.

Batool Fatima

Batool Fatima, 50, moved to Bengaluru nearly 25 years ago from Hyderabad. Like Chandrashekar, the founder of a local nonprofit organization saw the city known for greenery and lakes change before her eyes.

Fatima said she is concerned that the city may not be able to support further population growth and that residents must work on improving the city's problems.

She said more intellectuals and non-tech workers have moved to Bengaluru which has been beneficial. But there have been reports of tensions between locals and immigrants who don't speak the language.

The influx of people has also caused environmental strains, including a recent water crisis. Fatima said the shortage disproportionality impacted high-rise buildings, a telling example of the lack of planning around urban growth.

The philanthropist said she wanted companies to invest in solutions to protect Bengaluru's natural resources, like funding wetland wildlife reserves. She also said community action, like residents collecting stormwater drainage, is more helpful than complaining about the government.

Fatima said developing nearby suburbs could reduce the strain on the city's center and allow the tech hub to continue to thrive.

Read Batool Fatima's full story here.

Spencer Schneier

Spencer Schneier is from New York, but spends half his year in Bengaluru and the other half in San Francisco running a tech startup.

The pandemic opened Schenier's eyes to the idea of leaving the US. In 2020, Schneier worked with two Indian cofounders and joined them on a trip to Mumbai and Bengaluru. While traveling, he decided to launch a startup from Bengaluru to help businesses expand overseas.

Schneier told BI he chose the city because it gave him access to customers, other founders, and small businesses to learn from. He said the Indian startup ecosystem was more conservative than the US, but the next generation of investors is really promising.

Now Schneier spends half his time in San Francisco and half in Bengaluru. He loves the Indian city's moderate climate and generosity. The tech CEO said he struggles with traffic and bureaucracy in the city, but feels he is part of a larger trend of people moving to India to start businesses.

Schneier told BI he believes the appeal of Bengaluru's talent density and local generosity will gain popularity.

Read Spencer Schneier's full story here.

In the tussle between economic growth and sustainability, can Bengaluru have it all?

Bengaluru has undergone significant changes in its transition from a serene "Garden City" to the Silicon Valley of India. Residents said the rapid urbanization has brought both opportunities and challenges.

The opportunities — a booming tech and startup industry, jobs, and diversity — draw people to the city and keep locals living there. But residents BI spoke to are keenly aware of the tradeoffs, pointing to environmental degradation, rising costs of living, and traffic.

The tension between Bengaluru's growth as a tech hub and the cost for its inhabitants lies at the heart of the city's future.

Harini Nagendra, a professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, said, "There's a city which is growing, and there's obviously the economic prosperity it brings, but there's also the ecological degradation that you see everywhere."

Nagendra echoed Batool Fatima's suggestion of a collaborative solution with companies and residents maintaining their local environments.

Narendar Pani, an economics professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru, said the city's growth also hinges on education – better education in urban planning and the ongoing strength of city's educational institutions.

"When people look at Bangalore's future, they think about roads and water," he said. "Water is important, but I think more than the roads, a much more critical element is education."

He, like other residents who spoke to BI, expressed a cautious hopefulness that Bengaluru would solve its problems and continue to grow.

"I belong here, so I would like to think the ideas will come," he said.

• Wall Street has fallen in love with the mobile adtech and gaming company AppLovin.
• AppLovin's recent push into e-commerce sent its market valuation over the $100 billion milestone.
• Some ad industry insiders question the sustainability of its run, however.

Shares in the mobile ads and gaming company AppLovin have been running wild — and advertising industry insiders have a lot of questions.

AppLovin entered the Nasdaq 100 in November, with its market value surpassing the $100 billion milestone and shares up more than 780% so far this year. It's a remarkable ascent for any company, but especially for one that had flown fairly under the radar until recently, even within the ad industry itself.

At its current valuation, AppLovin dwarfs even The Trade Desk, long considered adtech's star performer, which has a market capitalization of around $65 billion.

AppLovin — which helps app developers make money through advertising and find new users through ads — has grown its share to 42% of the mobile gaming market, per analysts at Piper Sandler.

But there's one key new development that's driving its stunning stock run: e-commerce.

Bullish analysts say AppLovin has room to grow further and do for e-commerce marketers what it has for gaming companies, taking on Meta in the process.

"In all my years, it's the best product I've ever seen released by us, fastest growing, but it's still in pilot," AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi said of the company's new e-commerce product on an earnings call last month.

With its stock riding high, some industry insiders also think AppLovin could make a transformative acquisition that would make it a household name.

Still, others in the ad industry say AppLovin's business model deserves some skepticism amid its meteoric rise.

22V Research analyst John Roque wrote in a recent note that AppLovin was the most overbought stock in the Russell 3000.

AppLovin declined to comment on a list of detailed questions about its business.

Investor enthusiasm goes stratospheric

Wall Street's interest in AppLovin soared this year as the company unveiled a plan to go after a new target customer outside the mobile gaming community: e-commerce advertisers.

The move opened up a total addressable ad revenue opportunity of around $120 billion, two to three times the size of the $40 to $50 billion mobile games user acquisition market, according to Macquarie Equity senior analyst Tim Nollen.

Nollen recently raised the firm's target share price for AppLovin to $450 from $270, citing its e-commerce push.

Cody Pfloker, chief marketing and revenue officer for Jones Road Beauty, which is testing AppLovin, said direct-to-consumer advertisers are excited by the prospect of a new player in the market.

"Meta has been the dominant customer acquisition channel for brands and while other platforms have come up like TikTok a few years ago, none are either as efficient or scalable," Pfloker said. "Nothing has been able to dethrone Meta."

AppLovin says it can reach a potential audience of 1.4 billion daily active users across mobile apps and connected-TV devices — an audience comparable to Meta or Google's apps.

Pfloker said part of the appeal is that e-commerce advertisers can easily repurpose their Meta ads into ads for AppLovin's mobile games and other apps.

AppLovin is only inviting e-commerce advertisers that spend upward of $20,000 a day on Meta ads to try its product, and it's incentivizing some of those buyers with $10,000 ad credits, multiple industry insiders told BI. They, like some others in this story, requested anonymity to preserve business relationships; their identities are known to BI.

Prescient AI, a marketing measurement company, ran an analysis in October that found AppLovin delivered a 1.5 times higher return on ad spend for its customers than Meta and Google Adwords, on average.

"A pretty startling thing is happening," said Will Holtz, VP of strategy and operations at Prescient AI. The top spenders are spending 25% to 30% of their budgets on AppLovin, he said, something Prescient hasn't seen before on a new channel, except for something like TV where people bulk up spending over the holidays.

What's more, Holtz added: "They're spending incremental dollars; they're not just shifting budget away from channels like Meta."

It's worth noting that the ads are full-screen and can't be skipped, which also likely boosts some performance metrics compared to other platforms. The results are also early and could fluctuate as more advertisers come on board.

Out-Googling Google

Despite the enthusiasm from some customers, others in the digital ad community have raised concerns about AppLovin.

Some industry insiders attribute AppLovin's performance to its cornering of every part of the mobile app ad transaction.

AppLovin operates AppDiscovery, the technology that advertisers use to buy the ads; the MAX mediation technology developers use to sell their ads; and the ALX exchange that connects the two. It also has Adjust, its ad measurement platform, and AXON, an AI engine designed to improve the performance of its ads.

This could give AppLovin a unique view of the market and allow it to see what different advertisers and buying platforms are bidding. Theoretically, AppLovin could use this intelligence to refine its own ad bidding strategies.

"It's one company for monetizing your app, growing your userbase, and then grading its own homework," a mobile ad veteran told BI. "They say there's a firewall and 'we don't talk,' but it's hard to prove otherwise."

If that sounds familiar, it's because it's similar to how people often describe the approach that helped Google dominate advertising on the web. A judge in Google's adtech antitrust trial is currently weighing whether that strategy, as well as its use of other auction tactics, amounted to Google operating an illegal monopoly. Google denies this and has said the adtech market is fiercely competitive and that its innovations have brought benefits to consumers, publishers, and advertisers.

Jeromy Sonne, the founder of marketing AI technology company Simbiant, has been monitoring the early AppLovin e-commerce results.

He said he'd seen an "extremely high correlation" between when AppLovin sees a spike in conversions and when Meta sees an increase in ad spend. He said he hadn't seen a similar trend when comparing Meta and Google or AppLovin and Google.

He said that made him wonder if AppLovin was driving real incremental value or whether its campaigns were just reaching the exact same audience as Meta in some way.

He said he'd also seen a "concerning overlap" where Shopify sales purportedly driven by AppLovin have a very high geographic overlap with where Meta ad website traffic was coming from.

Separately, Prescient AI's analysis found that brands spending between 25% to 30% of their digital ad budgets on AppLovin acquired fewer incremental new customers than brands in the 5% to 10% range. While reacquiring some old customers isn't necessarily a bad thing, the finding raises questions about the appropriate level of spending advertisers should devote to AppLovin, Prescient AI's Holtz said.

Other advertisers have questioned why AppLovin doesn't share granular data about exactly where their ads ran.

"It's a little bit of a black box — we have no idea where our ads are appearing," Pfloker said of AppLovin. "There's a lot to be excited about, but there's a lot to be skeptical about."

Could AppLovin become SnapLovin?

AppLovin recently paid more than $150 million to add developer Zynga's portfolio of games to its MAX ad exchange as part of Zynga's divestment of its adtech platform Chartboost, three people familiar with the matter told BI. This boosted AppLovin's already huge audience of gamers.

A spokesperson for Zynga owner Take-Two declined to comment.

Some in the industry think AppLovin could make an even bigger move. The company recently sold $3.5 billion in bonds, which Bloomberg reported were to pay down debt "and for general corporate purposes."

Could that include an acquisition?

Alex Merutka, an early AppLovin employee who now runs his own digital marketing company, Craftsman+, thinks AppLovin should make a bid for a social network — a particularly valuable sector of apps because users tend to be logged in, visit often, and share useful data.

People who use mobile games don't usually hand over data like phone numbers or email addresses, vital pieces of information for marketers to help connect their ads to outcomes, and to retarget users with ads.

AppLovin is already trading at a larger market capitalization than Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit combined.

Years ago, Snap held informal, early-stage talks about potentially acquiring AppLovin, a person familiar with the matter told BI.

Perhaps the roles could be reversed this time around. While Snap posted a revenue growth bounceback in its latest quarter, it's struggled to keep momentum amid fierce competition from the likes of TikTok. AppLovin could theoretically help optimize Snap's ad platform for performance advertisers to better compete with Google and Meta.

"If Adam was in control, Snap could be a $100 billion business — a $200 billion, $300 billion company — and AppLovin would be stronger too," Merutka said, referring to AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi. "There's a lot of opportunity there."

However, AppLovin execs said onstage at the Nasdaq Investor Conference earlier this month that M&A wasn't a near-term priority and that the company was keeping a close eye on its head count and margins.

"It's much harder than people realize, and it's exceptionally hard for a company that's structured like us," Foroughi said of M&A and the difficulty of absorbing different company cultures, according to a transcript provided by the market intelligence platform AlphaSense.

• Dhruv Suyamprakasam launched a telemedicine startup and initially moved to Bengaluru.
• Bengaluru's fast-paced culture clashed with the healthcare industry's needs and the team moved back.
• He says that Bengaluru has its own merits and should not be compared to the Silicon Valley.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Dhruv Suyamprakasam, a founder who launched his startup in Bengaluru but later moved out. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My father was a first-generation entrepreneur and ran a thriving business in the early 1990s in Coimbatore, a small city in Southern India. I would follow him on business trips, and growing up, I spent a lot of time in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, two of India's biggest business hubs in the south.

I studied mechanical engineering. During college, I became fascinated with entrepreneurship and building something of my own.

I first considered entering manufacturing, but I'd have to focus on making one product at a time. I decided building software was the answer, but I still didn't have an idea of exactly what I wanted to use software for.

Around this time, I met my now-co-founder, a medical doctor, who was also my relative, at a wedding. We kept in touch and came up with the idea of our startup — a telemedicine company that would allow people to access doctors virtually and across local and international borders.

I was a recent graduate with a good job offer. My cofounder was worried about how our family would react to me quitting to venture out on my own. But I absconded the job offer and began working on our idea full time.

Moving to Bengaluru

We brought on another cofounder who lived in Bengaluru at the time. I had read about the city being the center of the mainstream startup ecosystem. In 2010, moving to Bengaluru felt like the best decision for me as a founder.

But it wasn't the best place for us. It's a place that expects companies to grow fast and fail fast. I didn't think it was the right pressure to put on a healthcare startup, which has no margin for errors and requires a lot of trust from people. We met investors who had expectations like getting 100 paid consultations in a day.

Around 12 years back, I also felt like there was a lot of bias from investors. I felt excluded because I didn't speak Hindi, which is the most spoken language in India, and I did not go to college at the Indian Institute of Technology, the most coveted engineering school in the country. I also got some judgment for being from a small town many people had not heard of.

A combination of those factors helped us decide to move back to my hometown after around 16 months in Bengaluru.

There were challenges back home, too. We faced issues with our internet connection, which we never had in Bengaluru, and there was no established startup community. But it gave us the space to grow at our own pace.

Since then, we have onboarded about 4,500 doctors to the platform and have patients from all over the world. The company has grown to around 200 employees, and we have expanded to include health content on the platform, too.

Heart of India's startup scene

We even moved back to Bengaluru for a second time in 2016 because we had grown a lot more as a company and thought things might be different this time around.

We thought that maybe the first time around, we hadn't understood how Bengaluru worked and how things were done. We were ready to give it a second chance.

The inclusivity had improved because of the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion, but not much had changed for the healthcare industry like the speed at which we were expected to show results. We ended up coming back to my hometown after a year and a half.

The city has tons of advantages, like proximity to venture capital, a massive pool of tech talent, and more opportunities for networking, which can be helpful in the early days.

But building a business outside the tech hub is also a good option, especially because of lower costs. While employee salaries are usually on par, founders can save a lot on office space and home rent if they build from smaller cities and travel to Bengaluru as needed. I also think we need more tech hubs in India outside Bengaluru.

It's no Silicon Valley

I don't think Bengaluru should be compared to Silicon Valley at all. Since 2018, I have also spent time in the Bay Area growing our business. Now, our company is headquartered in the US, and I spend four to five months of the year in the US.

Bengaluru has an amazing tech crowd, but Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley for a reason — people are far more open-minded and inclusive about giving opportunities to those from different backgrounds, which has allowed it to become a sponge. The city just sucks up anyone with talent from across the globe.

It would have made me incredibly happy if the first large language model came from India, but it didn't. It came from OpenAI and Silicon Valley, where Sam Altman's team was allowed to burn cash for years before ChatGPT came to fruition.

It would be easier for anyone trying to build a software company that aims to have global customers move to the Bay Area for better access to funding and talent.

We call Bengaluru the Silicon Valley of India, but that is just another way Indians are comparing themselves to the West.

I think the way to go is to be great on our own account. One step in that direction is to be more inclusive and start seeing people for their talents rather than their educational or cultural backgrounds.

In 2019, Leoncio Alonso González de Gregorio y Álvarez de Toledo, the 22nd Duke of Medina Sidonia, stormed into his late mother's palace on the Andalusian coast of Spain.

In a video he posted on YouTube marking the occasion, the Duke, tall and silver-haired, strides triumphantly through the Ambassador Room — a grand hall nearly 33 yards long, lined with oil paintings by the likes of Velázquez's master, Francisco Pacheco. In happier times, the room had been used for receiving dignitaries who visited the Duke's mother, Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo. Celebrated as the "Red Duchess," Luisa Isabel was a socialist-minded, fascism-battling aristocrat beloved by ordinary Spaniards. But now, 11 years after she had cut Leonicio and his siblings out of their inheritance, the Duke had arrived at the palace to lay claim to a national treasure he considered his by birthright.

"At last, I'm at home after many decades away," Leoncio proclaims in the video.

The treasure, known as the Archive of Medina-Sidonia, was housed in the palace's attic. A collection of 6 million documents, it spans nearly a millennium of Spanish imperial history. Within its pages lie the secrets of the kings, dukes, and explorers of medieval Spain. Luisa Isabel, who had spent the last two decades of her life cataloging the archive, believed it proved that Arab Andalusians, not Christopher Columbus, had discovered America. Perhaps the most important privately held archive in Europe, it is valued at over $60 million, though historians who have studied it consider it priceless.

Luisa Isabel, who'd been imprisoned under the regime of dictator Francisco Franco, believed the archive should pass to the people. "I have inherited this legacy, which is legally mine," she once declared. "But morally, it belongs to everyone." In her will, Luisa Isabel left only 743,000 euros to Leoncio and his siblings, Pilar and Gabriel. The bulk of the estate — including the archives — would be controlled by Liliane Dahlmann, Luisa Isabel's lover and longtime secretary, whom the Duchess had married on her deathbed.

What ensued was a bitter legal battle that would shatter the family, captivate Spanish society, and throw the fate of the archive into doubt. Leoncio's homecoming video was a declaration of war. Flouting a court ruling that barred him and his siblings from living in the palace, he had decided to move back into his ancestral home — even though it was legally occupied by Liliane, his mother's widow. "There's a lot of tension," says Gabriel, the black sheep of the family. "They barely talk to one another, enter and leave through separate doors, and rarely bump into one another." To drive home his disputed claim, Leoncio made a point of interrupting weekly palace tours. "Welcome to my house!" he would greet groups of startled tourists. "Here, they only manipulate the truth."

Liliane, ensconced upstairs with the archive she had been charged with safeguarding, kept her silence. At times it must have seemed that the family's inheritance, passed down through the generations and now entrusted to her care, was cursed. "Sometimes you don't choose your destiny, it chooses you," she once said. "Personally, these past few years have been exceedingly difficult — the stuff of nightmares."

The family appeared to start off happily enough. In 1955, only 18 years old and already pregnant with Leoncio, Luisa Isabel married José Leoncio González de Gregorio, a nobleman from Soria. Photographs from the time show the new Duchess smiling in a black ankle-length dress, her long hair framing her tiny face and her lips brightened with lipstick. Standing beside her, José Leoncio appears tall, athletic, and handsome.

In reality, Luisa Isabel and José Leoncio couldn't have made a more ill-suited couple. Her ancestors had commanded Spanish armadas, served as prime minister, and owned vast swathes of southern Spain. Her parents had fled the country during the Spanish Civil War. Her new husband, by contrast, was a die-hard conservative who supported Franco's dictatorship. Luisa Isabel loved the night life. José Leoncio, a man of the countryside, disliked high society nearly as much as the radical ideals that would soon claim his wife.

During their brief union, the couple had three children in quick succession: Leoncio in 1956, Pilar in 1957, and Gabriel in 1958. But the Duchess never seemed to take to the role of mother. After giving birth to Gabriel, family lore has it that she handed him to the nurses and declared she had fulfilled her role as a woman. The moment also marked the end of her marriage. Within the year, she had separated from José Leoncio and began to spend long stretches in Paris, where she mingled with Simone de Beauvoir and other leading intellectuals. Her children remained behind in Madrid, where they were left in the care of Luisa Isabel's grandmother. "She rarely came to visit," Gabriel recalls.

One day, when Gabriel was 6 or 7, his mother appeared at the door. Gone were her elegant dresses and long hair. Wafer thin, Luisa Isabel now sported men's trousers and short-cropped hair. There were rumors she was sleeping with women. "Someone in the household said she was our mother," Gabriel recalls. "But for us, she looked like the boy who worked at the local grocery." Leoncio was distraught. "You're not my mother!" he cried.

The change in Luisa Isabel ran deeper than fashion. In 1964, the Duchess led a protest march of fishermen in Sanlúcar. Her noble pedigree gave her a measure of protection to speak out against Franco. "This privileged aristocrat had a rebellious spirit," as one newspaper put it. Her reputation was further cemented in 1967, when she stood up for a group of protesters whose homes had been rendered radioactive after an American nuclear bomber crashed over the small fishing village of Palomares. The protesters, she told soldiers dispatched by the regime, "are here only for justice, and they are here with me." She then led the group to a bar at the village's main square for a round of cold beers.

Arrested and thrown in prison for a year, the Duchess kept up the fight from her miserable, rat-infested cell. She wrote letters and articles denouncing the conditions in Spanish prisons. A novel she authored about suffering farm workers called "The Strike," which she had managed to smuggle into France, prompted the government to threaten her with a 10-year sentence for slander. In April 1970, a few months after her release, the Duchess escaped to France disguised as a man. "I remember putting the hat and the mustache on her," recalls Julia Franco, a longtime family employee.

During her exile, José Leoncio seized on her political dissidence to secure custody of the children. "The role of being a mother slipped away from her," Pilar recalls. According to Gabriel, he and his siblings were at their father's mercy. "He was determined to redirect our lives, banning the staff from passing her calls or letters on to us," he says. The children, by birth, were nobility. But their lives felt anything but noble.

"The Red Duchess Returns" blared a headline in El Pais, a national newspaper, in 1976. Franco had died, paving the way for Spain's first open elections in four decades and the safe return of Spanish dissidents. Luisa Isabel moved into the palace at Sanlúcar, where she held court each evening surrounded by famous actors, foreign journalists, and celebrated academics. No longer closeted about her sexuality, she came across like a Spanish version of Sid Vicious. "She was punky, with short, spiky hair and worn-out clothing," recalls Miguel "El Capi" Arenas, who lived with the Duchess in the early 1980s.

By day, Luisa Isabel devoted herself to organizing the archives. Often rising at 6 in the morning, she would sequester herself in the attic among stacks of dusty documents, chain-smoking cigarettes — two packs a day — and barely eating. She spent years cataloging the papers in jaundiced folders, tying them up with string and developing a knack for deciphering their Gothic cursive handwriting, with all its loops and ligatures. Establishing herself as an amateur historian, she published a dozen books, including "It Wasn't Us," her reappraisal of Columbus published on the 500th anniversary of his arrival in America. Historians came to admire her patience and diligence. "She did a magnificent job with very few resources," says Juan Luis Albentosa, chief archivist of the Franciscan Library in Murcia. "She had no state support back then, nor any formal training."

The Duchess had first encountered the papers in the late 1950s in a storage tunnel at her family home in Madrid and transported them to the palace in Sanlúcar in the back of a lorry. While it wasn't unusual for noble families to maintain private archives, this one encompassed the unwritten history of Spain itself. The archive contained not only the records of various aristocratic families, but also receipts signed by the painter Diego Velázquez, primary sources about the Spanish Armada, and municipal records from Palos de la Frontera, the village from which Columbus set sail in 1492.

The Duchess both embraced and defied her status as an aristocrat. She believed the Archive of Medina-Sidonia belonged to the public — but only after she was no longer alive to claim it. "She was a traditionalist," her nephew, Alfonso Maura, tells me. "How could she spend all those years working on the family archives and not be?" Andres Martinez, a historian and friend of the Duchess, casts her contradictory nature in more poetic terms. "You can't jump out of your own shadow," he says.

As Luisa Isabel devoted her days to the archive and her nights to her soirees, her children saw her only occasionally. To the Duchess, they were reminders of their father — and of the world of entitlement she had devoted her life to rejecting. In 1977, a year after her return to Spain, she wrote to the director general of the Spanish National Heritage Board to request that the palace and its contents, including the archives, be registered as protected public goods, to "prevent losing what belongs to everyone."

"My family's wealth isn't important, and my children don't seem interested in preserving our artistic heritage, although they enjoy it," she wrote. By the following year, the request had been granted. The most important and valuable asset of Medina-Sidonia's ancestral heritage was now under the protection of the state.

In Gabriel's view, "the moment that marked our disunion" occurred in 1982 — the day Leoncio married his first wife, a Catalonian aristocrat named María Montserrat Viñamata y Martorell. It was at the wedding that Liliane Dahlmann, one of the bridesmaids, entered Luisa Isabel's life.

The Duchess noticed Liliane immediately. Tall and blonde and 20 years Luisa Isabel's junior, Liliane had moved from Germany to Barcelona as a girl. "I'll make her mine," the Duchess told her friend Capi Arenas during the reception. Julia Franco, who was also in attendance, recalls that the Duchess and Liliane "couldn't take their eyes off each other."

Before long, Liliane had moved into the palace, where she served as Luisa Isabel's secretary. The relationship mellowed the Duchess. Gone were the wild parties and the bohemian friends crashing at the palace for months on end; Luisa Isabel became quieter and more dedicated to the archives. "They were always together," her friend Andres Martinez recalls. "I couldn't get the Duchess alone, ever." Luisa Isabel's children were also suspicious. "Liliane was always in my mother's ear, trying to make us look bad," Pillar says.

The children also began to fight among themselves. As the eldest, Leoncio had a role in deciding which family titles went to whom. Gabriel claims they had an understanding that he would be named Duke of Montalto and Aragon, and that Leoncio had changed his mind.

"I'm inclined to stop the progressive scattering of our family titles," Leoncio wrote in a letter to his brother, rationalizing the decision. Since the family could no longer claim economic or political power, he said, "moral and historical integrity is all we have left."

Pilar was next. In 1993, King Juan Carlos I had named her Duchess of Fernandina. Now, Leoncio maintained that the title should have gone to his son. He launched a battle in the Spanish courts, stripping his sister of her noble name and privileges.

Leoncio also squabbled with his mother over the estate of her grandmother, who had left the children an inheritance "worth millions of euros," according to Gabriel. But as the estate's administrator, the Duchess had spent much of the money. In a letter to his mother, Leoncio protested this "robbery," complaining that he had received no financial help after his marriage and the birth of his son. He barely mentioned Pilar and Gabriel. The Duchess, in a scathing reply, denounced Leoncio as "weaker" than she had "ever imagined."

Gabriel had considered himself and Leoncio thick as thieves; they had lived together during their university days in Madrid and always looked after each other. Now, he felt that Leoncio was only looking out for himself. Pilar agreed. "My older brother tried to keep everything for himself and push us out," she says.

Gabriel and Pilar took the nuclear option. In 1989, they successfully sued their mother over the misspent money. In retaliation, the Duchess banned them from the palace.

Over the ensuing years, the Duchess sold off various tracts of land and other assets, reinvesting the money in the palace, and took steps to ensure that none of the children would have any power over the archives. In 1990, she transferred ownership of the palace and the archives to a new organization she founded, the Casa Medina Sidonia Foundation. And in 2005, she amended the foundation's statutes to ensure that, upon her death, Liliane would take over as president.

Three years later, on the night the Duchess died — March 7, 2008 — mourners filled the Salon of Columns, a vast room in the palace crafted by American artisans provided to the family by the 16th-century conquistador Hernán Cortés. Gabriel arrived at around 10 o'clock at night. At age 50, he and his mother hadn't spoken in 20 years. Leoncio and Pilar were already there. The greetings between them were civil but not warm.

There were whispers about how the Duchess had carried out one final snub of her children. Just 11 hours before her death, she had married Liliane in a civil ceremony. Details of the wedding were hush-hush, but it granted Liliane legal control of the palace — and the archives.

Gabriel had arrived at the palace with a somewhat macabre mission in mind. He'd brought a camera with him, and he planned to capture an image of his mother's corpse, just as he'd done when his father had died a month earlier. He wasn't sure where this impulse came from. Perhaps, after years of animosity and neglect, he wanted proof his parents were really gone for good.

Stepping away from the mourners, Gabriel entered the room where the Duchess lay in a casket. She was "deteriorated, stiff," he recalls. He felt no despair, no sense of grief. He took the camera from his pocket and held it over her body. As he did, others in the room protested. Gabriel took the picture anyway. "He had the right to take a photo of her," says his friend Íñigo Ramírez de Haro, an author and playwright who accompanied Gabriel that night. "He was her son, after all."

Alerted to what was happening, Leoncio suddenly appeared and began chasing his brother around the room. "He asked me to delete the photo," Gabriel recalls. It was a regression to youth, two middle-aged men sparring like adolescents in their mother's grand house. It was also a sign of the quarrels to come.

At first, the siblings worked in concert to challenge their mother's will. In court, they cited a provision of Spanish law mandating that a person's descendants have a right to two-thirds of an estate, regardless of the deceased's wishes. "I'm not surprised by any of this," Gabriel told a reporter at the time. "My mother made it clear that she was going to fuck us."

The court agreed. By transferring the vast majority of her wealth — the palace and its contents, including the archives — to the foundation, the Duchess had exceeded the portion of her estate she was legally allowed to bequeath to non-heirs. The foundation was ordered to pay 27 million euros to the children as compensation. There was only one problem: The foundation had nowhere near that much money, and, as a national heritage site, none of it could be sold.

To further complicate matters, Leoncio wasn't satisfied with the ruling. He was after something more than money. As duke, he believed he should be responsible for the palace, the archives, and the family legacy. "Leoncio Alonso wasn't happy with this solution because it meant giving up his family's property, and he didn't want to be remembered as the first Duke of Medina Sidonia to allow this," Eduardo Ferreiro, Leoncio's lawyer, said at the time.

Leoncio appealed the ruling and won. But the victory proved pyrrhic. The higher court ruled that he and his siblings would become part owners of the palace and its treasures — though without any power over its administration, any right to distribute its contents, or any privilege to reside there. Liliane, the court added, could continue to live in the palace. The siblings were effectively owners of everything, and of nothing.

Infuriated, Leoncio decided to defy the court's ruling and take matters into his own hands. He moved into the palace, effectively becoming housemates with his mother's widow. "Cohabitation is uncomfortable," he told a reporter. "However, the house is big."

Things got messy, fast. A newspaper reported that Montserrat Viñamata, Leoncio's first wife, had become romantically involved with Liliane, whom she had known since their university days in Barcelona. Viñamata denied the rumor: "Whoever has insinuated this has done me a lot of damage," she told a local newspaper.

In 2023, Leoncio ratcheted up the dispute. He accused Liliane of taking money from his mother's estate. Liliane denied the charge, arguing that Leoncio was smearing her name in an effort to remove her as president of the foundation so he could take over in her place. Both of them declined requests to speak with me.

Earlier this year, a judge found Liliane guilty of misappropriating funds. She was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to repay 280,000 euros. Her appeal is due to be heard by Spain's supreme court.

On a hot morning last summer, I sit down with Gabriel at a busy café terrace in Madrid. Dressed in navy blue shorts and a white polo shirt, collar up, he looks every inch the aristocrat. Slim, with wavy gray hair, he's the kind of well-read man who sprinkles his conversations with quotes from the French economist Thomas Piketty. He also takes after his mother. It's as if his obsession with her betrayal has so boiled within him that it now emanates from his very physicality. He has her rosy cheeks, her birdish eyes, her same stubborn drive.

Gabriel, divorced and childless, seems caught in a perpetual struggle to find his place in the world. He has a habit of talking in circles, though he always returns to the topic of how his family has been torn apart. "I've been at cafés with him," says a close family member, "and suddenly he'll just start talking to someone he barely knows about his quarrels with his mother."

His mother, he tells me, "never wanted to have any relationship with us. Above all, she saw us as a threat to the free disposal of her wealth." He claims he wants to mediate between his siblings and Liliane. "I see the foundation as running like a business," he says. "What interests me is that it's run well, not who runs it." But even those closest to him have trouble discerning his true intentions. "Gabriel's views on all this change — depending on how he wakes up in the morning," says his good friend and lawyer, Javier Timmermans.

Pilar, for her part, sees the family drama as integral to both brothers' emotional makeup. Gabriel "seems to be searching for headlines rather than solutions," she says, while Leoncio is "just interested in defending his claims" as the first-born son.

Pilar, a writer and a socialite, inherited her mother's flair for culture: One paper called her "possibly the most elegant woman in Spanish high society." If her brothers remain bent on getting justice, she's more interested in closure. "All that sensationalism doesn't matter," she says. "That might be fine for making a soap opera if they want, but solving the archives issue doesn't have to depend on that."

Pilar is the first to admit that she has good reason to seek a settlement. She has inherited her father's residence in central Spain, the González de Gregorio Palace, and she has taken to referring to it as her vampire because it sucks up all her money. "I would be lying if I said I didn't want to resolve this situation because I need to," she says.

Unfortunately for Pilar and her brothers, their father's estate is proving every bit as thorny as their mother's. A half-sister whom their father never recognized has come forward to demand a share of his estate, using the same provision of Spanish inheritance law that they themselves deployed against the foundation. In October, a court ordered Pilar and her brothers to pay the half-sister a sum of more than $1 million. Gabriel now fears they might be forced to auction off the rights to the archive to private bidders — a desperate measure to cover their spiraling debts. If that were to happen, the children would finally be separated from the archive, just as the Duchess had wanted.

A few months after meeting with Gabriel, I travel to Sanlúcar de Barrameda to see the Archive of Medina Sidonia for myself.

Walking through a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets in the city center, I pass rows of simple white houses. Some of the facades are crumbling like stale bread; others are as pristine as a Hollywood smile. The whitewashed palace looms above the city, just as the family's thousand-year legacy has loomed over the children for their entire lives.

Past the sprawling Ambassador's Room where the Duke had filmed his triumphant return, I climb a flight of stairs to the attic. The Investigator's Room smells sweet and woody. A faint chill hangs in the air, and bright sunlight casts shadows across the high shelves lined with books. There I find Liliane, quietly tapping away on her laptop.

In an email to me, Liliane had accepted my request to visit the archive, but said she wouldn't comment on any legal matters, citing past experiences when she felt her words had been twisted. Her position on the archive, echoing that of the late Duchess, is that it belongs in public hands. "They are the only ones who, today, can guarantee its maintenance and preservation, as required in a technological world," she wrote, adding that "knowledge of the past is indispensable for moving forward in all aspects of human life."

True to her word, Liliane sits at the table beside me in silence while I study the archive. After several hours, she abruptly leaves without uttering a word.

I'm handed an accountant's ledger, which indexes the documents in the archive, the descriptions scribbled in the margins in the Duchess's spidery handwriting. I ask for a diary of the Almadraba — the famous local fishing season held every May for the past 3,000 years. The diary dates back to 1550, comprising a nearly indecipherable tabulation of the number of fish caught, and the money made in each village.

Sitting with the nearly 500-year-old document in the dim light of the library, I'm reminded that only a tiny part of the collection has been digitized. The history it contains is almost entirely physical. A fire, or a robbery, could cause the documents to disappear forever.

The most viable resolution is for either the state or a major cultural institution to step in and buy the estate from the siblings, turning it into a state-owned asset and ensuring the proper management and preservation of the archives. But that would cost a lot of money — and thanks to the Duchess, the government already has a role in the foundation's administration, providing resources and guidance. And so the feud rages on, with the children clinging to the legacy their mother never wanted them to have. Leoncio and Liliane continue to live in separate wings of the palace, each imprisoned by the limbo to which Spanish law, and their intertwined fate, have condemned them. Gabriel remains consumed by his vendetta against their mother, and Pilar remains locked in battle with the rest of the family. The Duchess, with her relentless dedication to the archive and her disregard for her own children, left them with an acrimonious and bitter future. They had succeeded at gaining part ownership of her estate. But what they'd won seems more like a share in her disdain.

Matthew Bremner is a writer based in Spain.

• Batool Fatima moved to Bengaluru, "India's Silicon Valley," nearly 25 years ago.
• She said the city felt like a dream when she arrived but now it's struggling with urbanization.
• After a water crisis this year, some people are leaving Bengaluru but Fatima plans to stay.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Batool Fatima, 50, about environmental issues facing Bengaluru, the city known as "India's Silicon Valley." The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I was born and raised in Hyderabad. Like Bengaluru, it's one of India's tech hubs.

I moved to Bengaluru in 2000 after I got married because my husband lives there. I also visited frequently as a child because my father used to work there.

It was like a dream city for us then. It was more advanced than Hyderabad, with wider roads and a lot of greenery and lakes.

Over the years, the rapid expansion of certain industries in Bengaluru, such as IT and ITES, fueled significant construction and population growth. The landscape changed in front of our eyes. Development has had a positive impact, creating opportunities for both locals and migrants.

But Bengaluru is dealing with water scarcity issues and some people seem to be leaving the city because of problems with infrastructure. Rather than leaving, I want to work on solutions. The community must come together to prioritize sustainability and the city's natural resources to preserve its future.

People who've moved to Bengaluru help to sustain the city

I've been working in the nonprofit sector since 2011. In June 2024, I started my own nonprofit, Sheya Foundation. We're invested in equitable access to healthcare and education, and I'm also very interested in climate issues.

Bengaluru is seen as an IT city. It's an aspirational city to live in because it's known for its pleasant climate and career opportunities.

With the development of the city's tech sector, a lot of intellectuals have moved in, many who care about the city and climate. However, there have also been environmental and economic strains.

There's an economic strain on people who don't work in IT and don't make high salaries. With wealthier tech workers in the city, the cost of living has risen dramatically, and houses have become more unaffordable. I'm seeing young people dropping out of school to start work because of the impact of higher costs on families.

Other people who aren't IT employees have moved to the city to work in industries serving the tech community, such as hospitality and schools. These people are helping to sustain the city.

There have been some tensions between local people and those who've come from elsewhere because of cultural differences. Recent reports suggest a rise in confrontations between locals and people who don't speak the language.

I'm not from Bengaluru and haven't encountered any negativity myself. But I speak Telegu, which many local people also understand, so I feel at home here.

I'm concerned about water scarcity in the city, but there are solutions

Water scarcity has become a particularly visible issue in Bengaluru.

The number of lakes in the city has decreased significantly in recent decades due to urbanization. Too many high rises are coming up too fast, and I don't think there's enough planning going into water facilities to sustain residents.

Bengaluru dealt with a huge water crisis earlier this year. It particularly affected people in high-rise buildings because the buildings are over-reliant on borewells that dried up during the crisis.

The water crisis didn't affect me too badly. Where I live, there's only one borewell for our group of villas, so we agreed to ration it and only use the water for half an hour per house each day. Since June, we've had good rain, so we no longer need to restrict ourselves.

The water issues seem to have calmed down across the city. But we'll have to see if there'll be a year-on-year impact during the summer months.

We need to be ruthless about not encroaching on our lakes. If we're going to be lax on this aspect, people are going to leave. I've read on the news that some people left during the summer because of a lack of water.

I'd like to see companies investing in solutions for Bengaluru. For example, they should work with the government to develop vegetation wetlands.

Residents also need to assess what we are doing to treat water as a precious commodity instead of complaining about what the government isn't doing. The community has to collaborate with the government by doing things like looking into stormwater drainage for their houses.

We need to work on solutions for the city rather than try to create a new Bengaluru elsewhere

Public infrastructure has struggled to keep pace with Bengaluru's growing population. I feel the city is bursting at the seams and may not be able to support further population growth.

But that doesn't mean I want it to stop developing as a tech hub. Bengaluru contributes significantly to India's GDP and helps generate high-paying jobs. Maintaining it as a tech hub allows players in the tech ecosystem — multinational companies, startups, research institutions, and a skilled workforce — to continue collaborating, driving innovation and job creation.

The state government has been developing nearby suburban regions like Yeshwanthpur and Bidadi, which can reduce congestion in the city's core while enabling Bengaluru to continue excelling in tech. In my opinion, that's a more viable solution than relocating the IT sector to other regions in India.

It's not going to be easy to move a tech hub from Bengaluru to another city. When I visit, Hyderabad, my hometown, which is also known for IT, there are similar issues there in terms of traffic, water, and property prices.

I want to keep using my foundation to build community awareness. I love Bengaluru, and I'd rather stay here and work on solutions than leave.

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• When Vikram Chandrashekar was growing up in Bengaluru, it was quiet and full of natural beauty.
• Chandrashekar said urbanization is a good thing, but it changed the city too quickly.
• He enjoys living in a tech hub, but said locals are struggling with the pressure on infrastructure.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Vikram Chandrashekar, 50, who was born in Bengaluru, India, about how the city has changed over his lifetime. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Bengaluru has become known as the "Silicon Valley of India," but it was once known as a "Garden City."

I was born in Bengaluru and have lived in J.P. Nagar, a neighborhood in the south of the city since I was seven. Back then, it was a remote area with a lot of trees and gardens.

There was a huge lake with a guava and mango orchard across from it. We used to get off the school bus, grab a mango, wash it in the lake, and eat it.

Now, there are houses where the lake used to be, and the majority of the orchard is gone. As the tech sector developed in Bengaluru over the decades, there was a lot of urbanization. As a result, there's less greenery on the streets and more high-rise buildings.

Urbanization is good, but it transformed Bengaluru too quickly and too soon — the city's been catching up ever since. It's left some people feeling frustrated about things like traffic, housing costs, and this year's water crisis.

I've witnessed Bengaluru's transformation into a tech hub

Bengaluru used to be a place where retirees wanted to live. It was a quiet place with a relatively moderate climate.

There's a long history of science and tech development in Bengaluru. The Indian Institute of Science and Raman Research Institute is here. We also have a decadeslong history of aerospace research and electronics manufacturing.

In the 80s and 90s, IT companies like Infosys, Wipro, and Texas Instruments moved into Bengaluru. In the mid-2000s, the startup ecosystem grew as it became more accessible and normalized to start a business.

IT created a lot of job opportunities, just like it did in Silicon Valley. Today, there's a large startup ecosystem and community of venture capitalists. It's probably the best place to launch a startup in India, which means more people have come to the city, creating a need for more space, public transport, and residences.

It also created a lot of urbanization, which gave people more access to resources. We had a larger airport, restaurants with various cuisines coming into the city, and affordable internet access due to more competition between companies.

Because of the startup ecosystem, we get new services and products faster than other Indian cities. I've benefited positively from urban development in these ways.

There are benefits and drawbacks to Bengaluru's transformation

I'm employed in the IT sector. I've been working at Oracle for the past 27 years, and my current role is solutions architect.

People in Bengaluru have undoubtedly benefited from the job opportunities created by the tech boom, but I think local people are split on the effects of urbanization.

It's common to see negative comments about Bengaluru on social media or people complaining to their friends. I think the three biggest issues they raise are the water crisis, housing prices, and traffic.

Traffic is definitely an issue. Public transport isn't sufficient as it stands. Before the pandemic, I'd take the metro to work four days a week because it made me less angry than driving in traffic.

Residential pricing has increased from what it used to be, but so have housing prices in other cities. I'm living in a house that belonged to my parents, so I don't have to pay rent, and this isn't an issue for me.

Bengaluru has had long-standing issues with water. There are too many people and a limited water supply due to a decreasing number of lakes. Earlier this year, there was a very bad water crisis because it got very hot and there was little rain.

People were consciously trying to conserve water, and the government brought in water tankers for people to get water at a price. I've never struggled with water supply in the past: I have access to a well, rainwater harvesting, and facilities to store water from the public supply. But this year, I noticed the public water supply was running out more frequently, so even I had to buy water a few times. It was a bad feeling which made me see how the city was changing.

Things have definitely improved since the summer, and hopefully, people will be more prepared for next summer.

I support carpooling, using public transport, and rainwater harvesting to address infrastructure issues in Bengaluru. We should also plant trees for the next generation. Tree roots can help absorb rainwater when there's flooding, so it's important to conserve every tree.

Creating other prominent tech hubs like Bengaluru is a good solution, but progress has been slow

Despite the concerns people have, I don't think people are leaving Bengaluru.

Jobs are a big reason why. There are opportunities in tech and other industries serving that community, such as schools, public transport, and cooking.

There are problems, but they're probably not as bad as social media portrays them to be. I'm frustrated by the traffic and water crisis, but I'll probably continue to live in Bengaluru.

For many years, people have talked about creating alternate cities to Bengaluru within the state, or cities like Hyderabad or Mumbai replacing it, but I feel progress on this has been small.

The solution probably lies in creating other cities like Bengaluru that can distribute the load across various places, but even in other countries, this doesn't happen. One or two cities always take most of the burden.

There are cities near Bengaluru, like Mysore and Mangalore, that could be developed and house more tech parks, but people have to be willing to move there. I think companies have to move first so that good infrastructure, like schools and jobs, can develop, incentivizing people to move. Why not create more Bengaluru's across the country?

It's going to take a long while for anything to change, so I still think Bengaluru will continue to be "India's Silicon Valley."

It would be like trying to move the capital city.

A whole ecosystem would need to be shifted, and that's not going to be easy.

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• Computer science graduates are struggling to secure jobs and internships amid increased competition from tech layoffs.
• Recent graduates told BI they have sent hundreds of job applications with little response.
• Some are choosing to pursue a "panic master's" degree to delay their job search.

A computer science degree has become an increasingly popular choice for students seeking a six-figure job in Big Tech out of college.

However, as the tech industry took a sharp turn from the hiring sprees during the pandemic to mass layoffs, conversations with over a dozen CS majors revealed many are struggling to find full-time roles and internships despite sending out hundreds of applications — sometimes as many as 700.

Now, some are opting for a "panic master's" instead, delaying their search by getting a graduate degree in the hopes the job market will improve in a year or two.

Samhita Parvatini, who graduated from Penn State University in May, told Business Insider that she entered college during the hiring frenzies of 2021 when computer science degrees were "highly sought out."

"Every industry needed engineers," she said. "Everybody said, 'Oh, it's one of the most valuable degrees you can get. You can earn so much money, you get a lot of success and career growth.'"

After roughly 250 to 300 applications since her graduation and little success, Parvatini said that the Big Tech landscape felt like it was "becoming the opposite" of what it was five years ago.

Software developer employment largely declined between late 2019 and early 2024, according to data from ADP Research Institute, with some spikes in the second half of 2021 and winter 2022 amid the pandemic hiring spree. Data from Indeed indicates job postings in the software development sector have largely dropped back to pre-pandemic levels.

Meanwhile, videos showing swarms of candidates at job fairs have become an increasingly common sight on social media.

Yahya Bashir, a recent CS graduate from Gustavus Adolphus College, said that his job-hunting experience in the last year has become more arduous.

During his last application cycle in the summer of 2023, Bashir said he often heard back quickly from companies and was invited to several interviews. However, the majority of the roles he applied to this year, which he estimates to be around a hundred, didn't reply.

"Most of them, you don't even hear back from them," Bashir said. "You submit your application, and there's just nothing."

Competing against laid-off coders with more experience

Facing low response rates and, in some cases, "ghost job" postings, software engineers fresh out of school are also having to compete with their more experienced peers.

With companies continuing to trim their staff, the tech sector has also faced two years of brutal layoffs. In 2022, over 165,000 employees were cut from a thousand tech companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking tech layoffs. In 2023, the number of layoffs increased to over 264,000. So far in 2024, nearly 150,000 employees have been cut from over 520 tech companies.

With hundreds of thousands of already established tech workers cut loose into the job market, new graduates are facing increased competition for fewer openings.

Emos Ker, a recent graduate from New York University, said that although sub-industries within computer science, like AI and LLMs, are booming as Big Tech invests heavily, these fields often require a higher level of training.

Although more universities like Carnegie Mellon and Columbia are starting to offer AI degrees and programs, Ker said that many institutions are not yet able to provide the specific education needed for more specialized fields like AI.

Looking through a stack of résumés, companies may choose to hire a seasoned Big Tech veteran over a CS graduate who would likely require more guidance.

"With all the tech firings, they're looking for people who are like midlevel, senior engineers," Ker said. "And unfortunately, for people like us who want to come out and work in AI, it's not really easy to get into because you kind of need to train us from the ground up."

Punting the hunt with a 'panic' master's

Instead of risking being hung out to dry in the job market, several recent computer science graduates told BI that they or their peers have opted to return to the classroom to delay the search.

"The funny thing is, when I started my undergrad, I was very stubborn and was like, 'Oh, I don't need a master's,'" Parvatini said. "'It's a CS degree, you know, it's so valuable."

A month out from graduation and without a job lined up, Parvatini said she applied for her master's as a "last-minute decision."

"I knew that I wasn't going to go anywhere after graduation," she said. "So I thought, might as well apply, and we'll take a couple of classes, you know, do something better with my time during this period."

Professor David Garlan, the associate dean for Carnegie Mellon's computer science master's program, said that while the university hasn't seen a notable increase in CS grad enrollment, other schools with less selective and extensive programs may experience otherwise.

"It's definitely true that when the economy has a downturn, people go back to education because they're not able to find jobs so quickly," he said. "So there is definitely that trend, overall."

Enrollment in MIT's EECS Master of Engineering program increased from 241 students for the 2023-2024 academic year to 303 this academic year — a spike compared to previous years when enrollment stayed relatively consistent in the mid-200s.

A report by the Council of Graduate Schools said that computer science was the "only field to increase in first-time enrollment (5.4%) between Fall 2021 and Fall 2022."

Ian Hurrel, who is finishing his last semester at Georgia Institute of Technology, said enrolling in the university's one-year master's program was largely due to the worsening job market.

"A lot of people, including me, wanted to stay in college one more year to get an internship," Hurrel said. "It was very much a 'panic masters' sort of thing."

Although computer and information sciences often have lower numbers of graduate enrollment compared to other fields, a report by Burning Glass Institute indicated that 7% of those who earned graduate degrees in CS remained unemployed.

The extra schooling, while costly, can not only buy students time, it can potentially lead to a more employable résumé and higher salary. According to data from PayScale published last year, employees with a master of science degree make an average base salary of $112,000, compared to $72,000 for those with a bachelor's degree in computer science.

'Perseverance and a little bit of luck'

Despite lower morale among some CS majors, others believe that the tech sector is not as dire as social media portrays it.

Sydney Bishop, a senior at UC Irvine, said despite being unable to land an internship this past summer after over 180 applications, she remains optimistic about the job market.

"I haven't lost faith that I'll get a job somewhere," Bishop said. "It just might not be a cushy tech job that all of us have been raised to think about."

While tech giants like Google and Microsoft may not be handing out as many opportunities as they did during their hiring peaks, Bishop said that the technical skills of programming are still — and will continue to be — needed within companies.

Hurrel, who was able to land an internship with Amazon this past summer, said that he disagrees with the "fear-mongering" from people online saying computer science is a dying degree.

"I don't think it's oversaturated to the point where it will become extremely devalued and not be a worthwhile career anymore," he said. "I think it's just going to be harder than it was at the peak to break into it."

Hurrel added that there are "clearly still jobs" and that several of his peers have also been able to land internships and full-time roles. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of software developers will increase by 18% by 2033.

Samuel Onabolu is one of these newly minted engineers. After what he estimated to be over a thousand applications, he was finally able to land a full time software engineering role four months after graduating from Brock University in May.

"I'm kind of surprised I even got a job so early because there are 2023 grads, 2022 grads that are still looking," he said. "So I would say it's just a lot about perseverance and a little bit of luck."

Onabolu said that while he had been "feeling really depressed" during his unsuccessful job search, he advised other new and incoming grads to prioritize internships and networking events to hopefully get their foot in the door.

"I feel like every CS major is going through the exact process I went through," he said. "I feel like it just takes that one acceptance, that one offer, to kind of break into that career."

• Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said a SCOTUS ruling on federal regulations will help them cut spending through DOGE.
• Some legal experts said it could actually restrict some of DOGE's aims.
• That's because, under the new legal framework, it will be more difficult to change interpretations of an existing rule.

The Supreme Court might not help Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's spending cut goals as much as they might think.

President-elect Donald Trump tapped Musk and Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, aimed at reducing government waste. Since then, both have said a recent Supreme Court decision that restricts the ability of federal agencies to enact regulations would empower their plans to reduce head count at those agencies and cut unauthorized government programs.

This summer, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine, which was established in 1984 and allowed federal agencies to interpret ambiguously worded laws while writing regulations as long as they did not counter Congress' language. Instead, courts themselves are obligated to resolve those ambiguities, rather than executive-branch agency experts.

Ramaswamy, a former GOP presidential candidate, wrote in a December 1 post on X that overturning Chevron "paves the way for not a slight but a drastic reduction in the scope of the federal regulatory state. It's coming." Musk responded to the post, saying: "We are going to use this ruling to gut the federal government."

Some legal experts said that's likely not the case, telling Business Insider that the Supreme Court's overturning of Chevron could actually constrain DOGE because it takes away an agency's power to interpret rules and make decisions independently.

Gillian Metzger, a constitutional law professor at Columbia Law School, told Business Insider that Musk and Ramaswamy's argument is "somewhat puzzling" because the Chevron decision "is about pulling back on executive and agency power."

"Chevron deference gave an agency room to change its interpretation of a statute, provided the statute was ambiguous, and the agency reasonably offered a permissible interpretation," Metzger said. "Without that precedent, it's going to be harder for them to change interpretations of statutes in ways that justify repealing regulations."

Still, Republican control of Congress and the White House could mean that DOGE's goals have a better chance of being implemented with lawmaker support.

Musk, Ramaswamy, and the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Holes in Musk and Ramaswamy's argument

The Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine in June 2024 in a ruling on the case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The case was brought on by a group of fisheries that disagreed with the National Marine Fisheries Service's interpretation of a law.

Nicholas Bagley, an administrative law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in The Atlantic that following the ruling, "an agency that has already adopted the soundest interpretation of a law can't change its mind."

"If the agency were to try to adopt a new reading of the law—perhaps one that DOGE prefers—and to use that to justify rescinding the rule, the courts would stop the agency," Bagley wrote. "Saying that Loper Bright gives DOGE flexibility is about as sensible as saying that handcuffs help when throwing a baseball."

The Administrative Procedure Act, a federal statute that outlines how agencies must enact and revoke regulations, would also complicate matters. Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in The Wall Street Journal that DOGE would offer Trump a list of regulations they recommend rescinding, and Trump could then "immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission." They wrote that doing so would "liberate" Americans and businesses from complying with regulations Congress never passed.

However, to actually rescind a regulation, the APA requires a lengthy rulemaking process that includes seeking public comment and providing justification for the reasoning to rescind a rule. The Biden administration went through that process to craft its second student-loan forgiveness plan after the Supreme Court struck down the first one. Metzger said that rescinding a rule would require agency workers with expertise in the area to help conduct that analysis, something that would be difficult if DOGE fulfills its aim of cutting the federal workforce.

Cary Coglianese, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he could see why Musk and Ramaswamy are depending on Chevron's overruling to help them slash regulations. If DOGE begins the process of rescinding existing federal regulations, there is likely to be litigation, and Coglianese said that the two DOGE leaders might be banking on courts looking at a regulation afresh and deciding that "the rule was too adventurous and acting well beyond their statutory authority."

Still, Coglianese said, that won't be easy to do — an agency has to provide extensive justification for implementing a new rule, and Musk and Ramaswamy would then be tasked with proving why the original justifications should be undone.

"There's a wild card about how much courts will be willing to reopen old precedents that were decided on Chevron grounds," Coglianese said. "They're banking on some ability to kind of be able to revisit some old statutory interpretations. It's not clear that the Supreme Court had that in mind when it overruled Chevron."

How Congress can advance DOGE's goals

Recent Supreme Court rulings might not help DOGE achieve its goals, but a Republican trifecta in Congress would. Since many of the changes Musk and Ramaswamy are seeking to make are unlikely to be accomplished by executive power alone, Congress would need to approve legislation to enact those changes.

Already, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is on board with advancing some of DOGE's spending cut proposals. Rep. Jared Moskowitz recently became the first Democratic lawmaker to officially join the DOGE caucus alongside dozens of Republicans, saying in a December 3 statement, "I believe that streamlining government processes and reducing ineffective government spending should not be a partisan issue."

Moskowitz pointed to the Department of Homeland Security as a specific agency for which he would support investigating spending cuts. Rep. Ro Khanna, another Democratic lawmaker, wrote in a December 5 post on X that he's ready to work with DOGE to "slash waste" in the Department of Defense, and Sen. Bernie Sanders recently told BI that Musk "is absolutely right" to call for defense spending cuts.

Data from the Treasury Department shows that the US spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, with the highest amounts of spending coming from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Treasury Department. National defense spending also ranked high on the list, coming in at $874 billion.

With a glimmer of bipartisan support emerging for some of DOGE's goals, spending cuts could be facilitated through legislation. Musk and Ramaswamy met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on December 5, during which GOP Sen. Joni Ernst presented a proposal to enact existing legislation to cut spending by cracking down on teleworking and getting rid of unused federal office space.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn also posted on X that she will be introducing legislation — the DOGE Act — that "will freeze federal hiring, begin the process to relocate agencies out of the D.C. swamp, and establish a merit-based salary system for the federal workforce."

Both Metzger and Coglianese said DOGE's proposals could happen through legislation, and the assumption that Musk and Ramaswamy can act on spending cuts alone — using Chevron as a backup — will likely face legal hurdles.

"If you just came along and said, 'We've got a new sheriff in town, a new president, and we don't like that rule,' that's not enough," Coglianese said. "You've got to be able to essentially rebut all that prior cases and explain why, in the face of all that you said just a couple of years ago, now, you want to get rid of a rule. That's not easy to do."

• Unmarried women in the US without kids at home have a median wealth surpassing unmarried men.
• The former tend to be baby boomers, who have benefited from stock and real estate booms.
• Some of them told BI about how they are traveling solo and living life to the fullest.

Ruth Schick, 85, considers traveling in retirement her third career.

She began her solo travel in earnest in 2000 after her husband died. She's been to every continent and every state in the US. Her favorite domestic expedition was retracing Lewis and Clark's route. She's been to Antarctica twice.

"Any number of people have said, 'well, why would you want to go there?' But my only piece of advice is, whether it's travel or something else, don't fritter away your life," she said. Before retirement, she worked as a community college counselor and in historical research.

Schick is one member of a group that's doing surprisingly well in the US: women who aren't married and don't have any of their own kids under 18 at home. Those women tend to be older, and any children they may have had are now adults.

Based on a new analysis of 2022 data from the Pew Research Center, this group's median wealth has surpassed that of unmarried men, with or without kids. Their wealth benefited from rising home values, savings, and no husband or young children. As the US approaches a peak in boomer retirements and birth rates decline, their ranks will likely grow.

The chart above shows the median wealth of US households by marital status and the presence or absence of children under 18. In 2022, unmarried women without kids had a median household wealth of $87,200, while unmarried men had a typical net worth of $82,100. Women classified as unmarried were either divorced, widowed, partnered, or have never tied the knot. Pew could not divide unmarried men by parental status because the group with children living with them was so small.

Big nest eggs, empty nests

So why are unmarried women without kids doing better than their unmarried male counterparts? It's all about age, said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew and the author of the analysis.

The former group is 61, on the median, part of the baby boomer generation. Baby boomers, ages 60 to 78, have had the time and good market fortune to accrue valuable assets through big stock and real estate booms in recent decades.

Unmarried men tend to be younger; they're 50-year-old Gen Xers on the median. Plus, men don't live as long as women. As of 2022, women's life expectancy at birth in the US was 80.2 years old; for men, it was 74.8.

"Your wealth is what you've built up, it's what you've accumulated, it's your nest egg," Fry said. "And effectively it takes time for people over their working lives to build a nest egg."

Despite the benefit of time to accrue wealth, Fry said that by some measures, like wages, women are still far behind men.

"But they're not so far behind in terms of building a nest egg. And wealth is important because you don't always want to work; someday, you want to retire." Wealth is an especially important cushion in case of a sudden loss in income or a health emergency. "Wealth is nice to have around because you can maybe tap it to sort of tide you over the bad economic times."

Older single women were more likely to own their homes and have fewer debts than younger single women, Fry said. Both older single men and women had a median of around $200,000 in home equity. Older single women had around $90,000 in their retirement accounts, compared to $125,000 for older single men.

That's not to say that married couples are falling behind or wage gaps don't exist. Men still outearn women and accumulate larger net worths and married Americans are accumulating much more wealth than their single counterparts. But the data does show that these Golden Girls are doing better than one might expect given those facts.

For Patricia Wahlen, 80, a nest egg has meant the ability to travel the world. Wahlen said she didn't have a passport until she was 46 — she was busy working as a professional fundraiser and parenting two kids. After her husband died when she was 61 — she said he'd only want to visit locations with golf courses — she got the travel bug. She's been to 85 countries; she liked visiting Scotland, where her father was from, and she hopes to return to Turkey someday.

"I love the travel. I love reading about the places I'm going to go to and arranging the trips and seeing the world. I just feel so lucky. I've seen most of the world," she said.

Wahlen said she signed up early for a pension fund, inherited some stock when her parents died, and lived frugally throughout her career. When her husband died, she didn't inherit anything from him — instead, she attributed her finances to managing her savings and retirement well.

Beyond her travels, Wahlen is in two book clubs and another social group of seven women.

"I just can't imagine staying home and doing nothing," she said. "My friends are all exactly having lives just like mine."

Women are unhappier than men for most of their lives — until age 85

Many women are still struggling in retirement and living off paltry incomes; women over 65, in particular, are more likely to live in poverty than older men. And many boomers are dealing with their own retirement and savings regrets, such as not saving enough or investing in a nest egg. Business Insider has spoken with several women over the age of 65 who have had to "unretire" or take other measures to make ends meet while surviving off Social Security.

Conversely, research finds people's self-esteem peaks around age 60 and stays high for the next decade, while satisfaction with being single also increases. And other research suggests that while women are unhappier than men for most of their lives, they take the lead on happiness after they hit age 85. On the whole, studies have suggested that single women are happier than their married counterparts.

For some single women over 65, retirement has meant an opportunity to spread their wings. According to internal data provided to BI by Road Scholars, an educational nonprofit travel company that caters to the 50+ crowd, just 29% of women over 65 setting out on adventures through the company in 2014 were solo travelers. By 2024, that rose to 37.4%. In total, over 19,000 women over 65 traveled solo in 2024 through the program.

Schick, who worked as a counselor at a community college for decades, said she and her husband never had a huge amount of income coming in. They were both on education salaries; she had a pension that she contributed to for 22 years. But thanks to those savings and her husband's thoughtful approach to retirement while he was ill, she's been able to fulfill her travel dreams. Her house and car are paid off, and she's prioritizing putting her income toward travel.

"I'm making the most of what I have, and I know that that's the attitude of most people that I know or that I relate to." She said many of the people she knows in a similar position have the same outlook: "Life isn't over just because you're getting older."

Are you an unmarried woman over the age of 65? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

On Wednesday, moments after the news broke that Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, had been fatally shot in Midtown Manhattan, social media unleashed a barrage of caustic commentary about his death. In lieu of condolences, Americans from all walks of life shared barbed jokes, grim memes, and personal anecdotes about their own experiences with giant insurers like UnitedHealthcare.

On Facebook, UnitedHealthcare's statement about the murder of its chief executive elicited 46,000 reactions — 41,000 of which employed the laughing emoji. The company quickly turned off comments on the post, but hundreds of users shared it with arch commentary.

"The amount of laugh reacts on the original post speaks volumes lol," one user wrote.

"My thoughts & prayers were out of network," wrote another.

While the motive behind Thompson's murder remains unknown, the internet treated it as an occasion for ghoulish schadenfreude. America's health insurance system is so broken and cruel, people openly declared, that the death of one of its most powerful executives merited nothing but scorn and derision. "He was CEO when he was shot," read one tweet that received more than 120,000 likes. "Preexisting condition. Claim denied."

"The UnitedHealthcare CEO might be the most celebrated death on this app since Henry Kissinger," wrote another user on X.

Given the nature of social media, where the most provocative and emotion-laden commentary is engineered to rise to the top, it's not surprising that platforms from TikTok to Reddit would be filled with hateful invective. What's striking, however, is how the backlash revealed the depth of the bitterness toward health insurers. In the face of a man being gunned down in the street, people didn't keep their feelings toward insurers in check; rather, they seized on it as a moment to vent their rage. Everyone from right-wing influencers to tenured Ivy League professors responded to Thompson's killing by posting about what they saw as the injustices of America's health insurers. Even on LinkedIn, one of the internet's last bastions of civility and professionalism, hundreds of business executives, HR leaders, and tech managers shared deeply personal stories about how they and their loved ones had suffered at the hands of a healthcare bureaucracy that often delays and denies reasonable claims.

In one exchange, a hospital executive acknowledged that many Americans are fed up with health insurers. "As healthcare security professionals, we know that many see healthcare as a target for their anger," he wrote. "Family members who have lost a loved one may feel as though a physician, healthcare facility, or insurer is responsible for that loss."

Jill Christensen, a former vice president at Western Union, responded to the post by forcefully rejecting its wording. "In many instances, it's not feel, it's ARE responsible for that loss," she wrote. "I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and UHC denied every claim. While today's event is tragic, it does not come as a surprise to the millions of people — like myself — who pay their OOP costs and premiums, only to be turned away at their greatest time of need."

The joking language of the internet has become a standard way for Americans to process tragic events, whether the September 11, 2001, attacks or the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump. But Thompson's murder sparked something different: an unparalleled public reckoning with one of the country's largest and most profitable industries. "When you shoot one man in the street it's murder," wrote one user on X. "When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment you're an entrepreneur."

To some observers, the outpouring of ire also appeared to have an immediate effect on the industry itself. One day after Thompson's murder, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield announced that it was rescinding a controversial plan to limit coverage for anesthesia. "When patients become financially responsible because a health plan cuts how much they pay providers, that's what breeds all this anger," Marianne Udow-Phillips, a former Blue Cross executive, told Axios. An Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield spokesperson told Business Insider, "It never was and never will be the policy of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield to not pay for medically necessary anesthesia services. The proposed update to the policy was only designed to clarify the appropriateness of anesthesia consistent with well-established clinical guidelines."

The storm of invective surrounding Thompson's killing will soon subside, as online malice always does. But it's also possible that the CEO's death will mark an inflection point in the debate over America's privatized system of health insurance. On X, one user drew a direct line between the callousness of the internet's response to Thompon's murder and an industry that makes it hard for many Americans to receive the medical treatment they need.

"All jokes aside," the user tweeted, "it's really fucked up to see so many people on here celebrating murder. No one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That's the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximise profits on your health."

Scott Nover is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC. He is a contributing writer at Slate and was previously a staff writer at Quartz and Adweek covering media and technology.

Adam Scott always knew he wanted to become an actor. He grew up in the '70s and '80s, the era of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, hooked by movies like "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones," and "E.T." As a kid, he gravitated toward watching or reading about movies and TV shows. "As I've become an adult and gotten older, I've developed other interests," he told me in an interview.

A few decades later, Scott, 51, is doing the work his childhood self dreamed of. As a sitcom fanatic myself, I know him best as the state auditor Ben Wyatt in "Parks and Recreation" and the demon Trevor in "The Good Place," but others may know him from his roles in Will Ferrell's comedy "Step Brothers," the cult phenomenon "Party Down," and the dark comedy series "Big Little Lies."

Most recently, Scott starred as Mark Scout in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ drama "Severance," a role for which Scott received an Emmy nomination for outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 2022. The season-two return of "Severance" has been eagerly anticipated by fans and is set to begin January 17.

When he's not shooting scenes, Scott still has a full plate. He's hosted multiple band-themed podcast series with his fellow actor Scott Aukerman; campaigned for Kamala Harris in her 2024 presidential bid, which he shared on Instagram with his 1 million followers; hosted Ryan Reynolds' physical game show, "Don't"; started a production company called Gettin' Rad Productions with his wife, Naomi; and this year became the face of Philips Norelco.

I chatted with Scott about feeling as if he's never had an "I made it" moment, working with his wife on their production company, advice for his younger self, and his hopes for his kids' future.

Business Insider: You've previously mentioned that you spent the first 15 years of your career "hanging on by a piece of floss." Was there an "I made it" moment in your career when you finally realized you were floss-free?

Adam Scott: I don't have an "I made it" moment. I don't know if anyone ever does in show business. There's the constant fear in the back of your mind at the end of every job that you're never going to work again, and I think that's something that stays with you no matter what level you're at.

Getting "Parks and Rec" gave me some stability that I had never really experienced in my 15 years in the industry prior, but that stability still felt temporary, and I was ready for it to be snatched away at any moment.

I've had too many experiences over the years where things don't work out, and I think any actor has that feeling. Entertainment is so high stakes, but it's also low odds. It's a tough business; if you can make a living in entertainment, then you're lucky, but you're always kind of worried about what's around the next corner.

You're a real Renaissance man — hosting your podcast, doing brand partnerships, being politically involved, hosting a game show, and running your production company with your wife, Naomi. Does your decision to expand beyond acting stem from this search for stability or something else?

That's interesting — maybe that's part of it. I'd never really thought of it like that before, but you may be onto something.

I find producing satisfying because it relates directly to my and Naomi's interests. We love watching movies and shows — we have some differing tastes and also share certain tastes. Producing feeds directly into that because you get to shepherd projects along from something that may just be an idea and watch it grow and then be something that's actually out there in the world for people to hopefully enjoy. That's really satisfying.

Also, I find making the thing, and doing everything you can to try to make it better, satisfying and incredibly challenging.

It strikes me how different your "Severance" character Mark's life is from your own. Mark's personal and work lives are so separate, whereas yours are quite intertwined. Do you and Naomi have any rules you follow around mixing personal and work lives, or advice for other couples who work together?

My advice is to try it out before you dive in headfirst. Our first project together was a series of specials for Adult Swim. I directed them with a friend of mine, Lance Bangs, and Naomi and I produced it together. We ended up working really well together.

But you never know. You can have a perfectly healthy, strong marriage and not work together particularly well. We were ready for that, but it just turned out that we do work together really well and enjoy working together and getting to spend that time together.

That would be my advice: Try it out first — give it a maiden voyage and be ready to jump ship for the sake of your relationship.

Can you share the best and worst business decisions you've made in your time in Hollywood?

My partnership with Philips Norelco is something I'm proud of. They're lovely people, and believing in the product is also incredibly important. I was already an enthusiastic customer when this opportunity came together, so it felt like a natural fit.

As far as bad business decisions go, I'm always trying to avoid those. Sometimes you just have to take a flier and invest in something that you believe in, and it doesn't always work out. What people might think of as bad business decisions are sometimes just the cost of doing business.

If you could go back in time to the Adam who was hanging mid-floss, what advice would you give to your younger self?

I would advise young Adam to go out and live life a bit and not worry quite so much about his career, what's coming next, or what happened. I would advise him to get out into the world and experience it.

Looking forward 10 or 20 years from now, is there anything you definitely want to add to your list of accomplishments?

I'm watching my kids get older — they're teenagers now and my son's getting ready to go to college. When I look to the future, I think about them more than anything — what they're going to do and the world they're going to live in.

That's a large reason I get active politically whenever and wherever I do — thinking about what they will be living in. As far as the future goes, I'd like to maintain a living in entertainment, but mostly I'm concerned with my kids and their future.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

• I've lived in Boulder for years and have heard many people recommend The Kitchen to visitors.
• The Kitchen is co-owned by Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, and chef Hugo Matheson.
• When I went for lunch, The Kitchen had delicious food at reasonable prices and great service.

As a longtime resident of Boulder, Colorado, I've found we have a handful of restaurants that are frequently recommended to visitors.

One of those is, without question, The Kitchen.

The American bistro has been a local staple since it opened in 2004. And, almost every time someone suggests it, they'll also mention it's partly owned by Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk's brother.

The Kitchen was cofounded by a chef and Kimbal, who's actually a longtime Boulder resident.

A few years after making millions from a deal with his brother in 1999, Kimbal attended culinary school in New York.

The South African-born businessman later moved to Boulder, where he worked with chef Hugo Matheson at a restaurant on Pearl Street for a few years until the pair co-founded The Kitchen Restaurant Group in 2004.

Although it began in Boulder, the group now has restaurants in Chicago, Denver, and Austin.

Kimbal is also now somewhat of a local celebrity here. Many residents, including myself, have spotted him eating at The Kitchen's flagship location or walking around its surrounding area.

I'd say The Kitchen is in the perfect location on West Pearl Street.

After not visiting The Kitchen for several years, I decided to pop in for a late weekday lunch to see what the seasonal menu looked like and if it continued to live up to its hype.

I went to the original location on West Pearl, a historic district with a pedestrian mall that's perfect for residents and visitors alike.

As a Boulder resident, I consider it the heart of the city. I love walking to the popular area to dine, drink, or shop.

The restaurant felt elegant and it wasn't very crowded.

When I arrived at The Kitchen, just a few other groups were dining.

Although the restaurant has been open since 2004, its interior looked like it had definitely been updated throughout the years.

The bar was well-lit and looked elegant with a mirrored wall and simple stools. The back dining area looked cozy and intimate, with dark woods, exposed brick, minimal decor, and artsy orb-shaped light fixtures.

The atmosphere felt casual but still upscale, which I appreciated.

I started my meal with hand-cut garlic fries.

The lunch menu at The Kitchen includes handhelds, plates, and sweets, with a wide variety of shareable dishes — crab fried rice, burrata, carrots, and lamb arayas, to name a few.

Despite the interesting choices, I stuck with my basic perennial favorite: hand-cut garlic fries. I got a large portion of fries served with a bearnaise aioli for $9.50.

Although I enjoyed the fries, the garlic was a little overpowering for my taste. The creamy, flavorful aioli was the best part of the dish.

My main meal, the crispy cauliflower, was impressive.

During my visit, the lunch menu featured dishes like a fried-chicken sandwich, lobster roll, steak frites, Halloumi naan, quiche, and rigatoni.

Although many sparked my interest, I was most curious about the crispy cauliflower for $24.50. When my server told me it was one of his favorite dishes even though he doesn't like cauliflower, I knew I had to try it.

The breaded and fried cauliflower was paired with carrots, chickpeas, tamarind chutney, coriander chutney, mango, pickled red onion, and an herb salad.

I loved the combination of flavors, but the texture of the cauliflower stood out the most. It was perfectly crispy and almost resembled fried chicken.

The portion felt nearly too large, but I was happy to be able to take leftovers home.

I'm glad I chose the cheesecake for dessert.

To end my meal, I couldn't resist ordering the cheesecake with a brown-sugar pecan crust, poached pears, and fig coulis.

The slice was beautifully plated and I loved the fresh taste of the cheesecake, which didn't feel too heavy. The star, though, was the crisp brown-sugar pecan crust.

It seemed reasonably priced at $12.50 for a slice.

During my visit, the service was friendly and attentive.

As a frequent solo diner, I've found restaurant service can be hit or miss when I'm alone. Sometimes, staff don't spend enough time checking in on me or ask me to sit at the bar instead of a table.

Fortunately, at The Kitchen, I was given the same level of service I'd expect if I'd been there with a group.

The professional, knowledgeable staff I encountered seemed available to answer my questions and bring me what I needed at any point during my visit.

Overall, I thought the price was reasonable for the food — but I'm glad I went for lunch.

Before this, I'd had dinner at The Kitchen several times. I'd always enjoyed my experience but found the space could get crowded, so I'm glad I came here for a quieter lunch.

The prices felt very reasonable for the quality of the dishes, attentive service, and the amount of food I received — I spent $62 for a starter, main, and dessert, including a 22% tip.

Overall, The Kitchen lives up to the hype, with professional and friendly service, a great location, fair prices, and fresh, inventive dishes that left me wanting to return for another lunch.

• Ukrainian units desperate for drones to hold Russia back are crowdfunding many of their weapons.
• Civilians and veterans have been sponsoring deadly strikes for under $1,000.
• Researchers say it's opened a new era of civilians directly sponsoring war en masse.

With $1 million, Oleksandr Chernyavskiy says he can change the war for him and his comrades.

The enlisted soldier is assigned to a drone prototyping unit with Ukraine's 241st Territorial Defense Brigade — a battle-hardened formation of reservists deployed along the eastern and northern fronts. His unit supplies 11 battalions with new drone designs, mostly cobbled together from commercial parts and Soviet arms. It also makes other weapons, too.

For $80,000, he says his team can completely build a 17-inch drone armed with a rifle — essentially a flying AK-47 or M4. Another prototype, a modified Soviet ZU-23-2 antiaircraft gun, needs $70,000 worth of parts to be fully automated to strike down Russian drones.

Chernyavskiy estimates roughly $1 million in funding would allow his unit to develop home-grown AI-controlled drone swarm tech, primarily using the money to pay software engineers and buy parts.

Much of this work, he said, depends on how much his unit can crowdfund. He ran an NGO before the war and is partly responsible for coordinating and advocating for that money.

"For drones, most funding is from volunteer help, by donors," Chernyavskiy told Business Insider. "When we have government or defense ministry funds, we try to buy regular things like mortars, shells, all connected to ammunition."

Crowdfunding has long been a pillar of Ukraine's war effort, with civilians pitching in for years to send aid supplies, clothing, and cash to the front lines. Low-cost drones, proven to be effective on the modern battlefield, have become one of the hottest commodities among units battling Russian assaults.

A commonly crowdfunded drone, a seven-inch commercial unit that carries a small payload, costs less than $1,000 to build and arm. A typical 155mm artillery shell, meanwhile, costs between $2,500 and $4,000 for Western factories to produce.

Chernyavskiy said that drones can't replace artillery, which can suppress enemy forces, serve as fire support, and hammer front-line positions at range. But drones have their place in this war, as the world has repeatedly seen. With these systems, for around an average of $15,000, his men can take out a Russian tank worth significantly more.

Ukrainian fundraisers like him have formed a robust network that pulls in millions of dollars weekly for drones, working with a mix of local manufacturing lines to turn the cash into precision strike munitions. To keep donors abreast of their work, they report daily with first-person videos of exploding drones slamming into enemy positions and vehicles.

Chernyavskiy said that Russian forces typically can't advance when harassed by drones. "If you can have 100 explosions in one day, it means no Ukrainian will be killed this day," he said. Swarming the air with recon drones also gives Moscow little chance to launch surprise attacks.

Civilian war support at an 'astonishing' scale

But due to availability, there are days when his unit can only deploy five, maybe 10 drones, reducing resistance and allowing Russian troops to get close to Ukrainian trenches and overwhelm them.

Chernyavskiy said the flow of cash from civilian supporters is keeping his men alive.

"I think it's certainly unprecedented," Federico Borsari, a resident fellow who studies technology and drone warfare at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank, said of the current crowdfunding movement.

Borsari said that drones, easy to build and deadly, have changed how civilians can support a war effort en masse. With Ukraine, an individual civilian can now remotely yet directly pay for a hit on an enemy soldier or tank, he said.

"Really, the scale of the rapport is astonishing," Borsari said. "We're talking about hundreds of thousands of drones provided to the Ukrainian military."

Oleksandr Skarlat, a volunteer who has been running a fundraising Telegram channel since the war began, said most of his donors paying for drones are regular civilians sending part of their salaries.

Others are small businesses with cash to spare, he said. Skarlat, a professional swimmer, works as a member of a Telegram network of five fundraising volunteers led by Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko. Skarlat told BI he's helped raise $2.5 million for 100,000 drones.

"We started using drones because of the lack of ammunition. It was from a need of striking positions and priority targets in the most effective and cheapest way," he said. Throughout the war, Ukraine has repeatedly struggled with insufficient amounts of ammunition, such as much-need 155mm artillery shells.

In Kyiv, restaurants, cafés, and barber shops often display QR codes for customers to throw in a few dollars for drone production, said Mark J. Lindquist, a former US Air Force analyst now living in Ukraine to crowdfund for local units.

"It has to be in the millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, because it's the most effective way for an average citizen to put together a small amount of money and make a huge difference on the battlefield," Lindquist told BI.

Lindquist, who worked as a motivational speaker before leaving for Ukraine in 2022, now flies back to the US regularly to raise money at public events for front-line units.

He estimates that he and his fundraising partners have brought in about $13 million in aid, and he now asks Americans to donate toward civilian vehicles and commercial drones that can be turned into weapons like loitering munitions.

Yet Lindquist is frustrated with donors in the US, whom he says frequently balk at paying for something that can kill.

"Largely, Americans have shied away from things that would drop these bombs you see on Instagram," he said.

Drones aren't always used for deadly ends, though. Chernyavskiy hopes to raise $50,000 to complete a land evacuation drone that can navigate deep forest terrain and retrieve lone Ukrainians guarding trenches.

With the 241st Territorial Brigade low on manpower and guns, Chernyavskiy said soldiers sometimes find themselves stationed alone on the front lines for abnormally long rotations. He said many fear it is a one-way ticket to the trenches.

"If you are injured, no one will help you; you have no chance," he said. "People usually spend one or two days in the trenches. Now they spend half a month. You can go crazy."

A drone that fetches the wounded, or even corpses, raises morale among troops who know that their bodies can still be returned to be honored, Chernyavskiy said.

US and European veterans fueling the crowdfunding effort

Chernyavskiy's unit also receives cash from Americans, often from military veterans willing to chip in anything from lunch money to $15,000 each. He said he's brought about two dozen veterans to the front lines to see his unit's work.

"After they see what is going on, they help much faster," he said with a laugh.

It's a broad effort. Daniel Viksund, a Norwegian veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan as a combat engineer and tank driver, has been coordinating donations to Ukraine, primarily from Scandinavia, since 2022.

He told BI that many of his donors are current and former military members who, after seeing videos of drones in action, sought to send more of them to Ukraine.

"Our main focus is drones. Everybody was doing cars and medical stuff. Army veterans like us, we like to do things and make it happen," Viksund said.

His 20-man nonprofit, Veteran Aid Ukraine, has sent some 500 drones to Kyiv's forces and paid for about 2,500 more. Viksund said videos sent to him from Ukrainian units show those drones have destroyed at least 60 main battle tanks and over 100 armored vehicles.

He's proud of his organization's work in Chasiv Yar, where they sent 200 drones to units defending the embattled city in late spring as US congressional infighting locked up billions in vital aid.

Viksund said Veteran Aid Ukraine alone can't provide nearly enough drones for Kyiv's remote operators. He estimates that they expend 4,000 drones on average a month.

"But when all the small rivers come together, you make a big river," he said.

Russian organizations have also been donating drones for Moscow's units, but not on such a scale.

"You don't necessarily see the same level of grassroots efforts in Russia because they have the state capacity and state resources to marshal the economy toward the war in a different way," said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities.

Kavanagh said the crowdfunding effort has been meaningful in filling gaps in Western aid, though it's dwarfed by the sheer might of the traditional arsenals sent to Kyiv.

The US and Europe have collectively sent about $90 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including powerful F-16 fighter jets, long-range missile platforms, and millions of ammunition rounds.

Return on investment in war

Some Western donors and volunteers say that lower-tech drones can make a significant difference for just a fraction of that cost.

One such donor is a wealthy software engineer in the US Mountain West who said that he had spent about $105,000 sending 142 drones to Ukraine, including eight Chinese-made Mavics that cost around $1,700 each and are popular for recon missions.

With six kids at home, he told BI that he's cut back on purchases like upgrading their 2011 GMC Savannah and fixing his couch.

"I just think that if I spend a little less, someone will survive. Someone will have a husband and father," said the software engineer, who asked not to be named out of concern that Russian intelligence services would target him. BI knows his identity and has verified his donations to a Ukrainian platform.

One of his favorite items is a 10-inch drone made from DJI parts that can be converted into a bomber with a six-pound payload.

He said each of these $1,600 drones has a typical lifespan of 50 missions and that, with a minimum hit rate of 33%, delivers at least 16 strikes on Russian targets.

"If you give these guys $100 million, they can win the war for you," he said. A common hope among drone warfare enthusiasts is that with more drones and jammers, Ukraine can effectively slow the Russian advance while exhausting its manpower and equipment.

Chernyavskiy holds on to the dream that when those resources run dry, Ukraine will have an opening to strike back and reclaim territory. Yet he cautioned against thinking that only deploying low-cost drones will win the war.

"For example, if you have fog weather, you can't fly these drones because you can see nothing," Chernyavskiy said. "But artillery does not care about the fog. If they have coordinates, they will fire and destroy whatever is alive in this sector, no problem."

Western donors wish they had more to give

Questions loom for Ukraine's future in this fight. The country continues to face shortages of troops and matériel, persistent Russian advances, and the possibility that the incoming US administration will restrict or cut the critical aid it relies on. But private citizens retain the ability to make a difference, fundraisers say.

Lindquist, the former US Air Force analyst turned fundraiser, said Americans haven't realized how far their money can go if they help fund drones in Ukraine.

"The Ukrainians have come up with a solution to be able to strap a bomb to a $500 drone and take out a $2 million tank," he said.

"If people were to understand that power of drones, we could do what our grandparents did in World War II," he added.

The software engineer in the Mountain West said he's been trying to get his friends to donate, too, but to no avail.

"They'll say they don't want to kill people. Then I ask if they want to buy a tourniquet," he said. "They think it's cool that I'm doing it, but they want me to be the one doing it."

In Ukraine, Chernyavskiy is frustrated, too. But as he says, "feelings change nothing."

"Lack of money, lack of resources. This is the nature of war," Chernyavskiy said.

Yet he stressed his brigade is stretched thin, and that if they run out of drones, the fighting turns to rifle combat. Outnumbered in the trenches, it's a battle the Ukrainians almost always lose, he said.

Last week, he said, a commander who ran one of the drone development projects with him was killed by Russian fire.

"If we have a lack of donors' help, our friends are killed, and then we are killed," he said. "If we can't pay for drones, if we don't have ammunition, we pay for it with lives."

Translation by Sofiia Meleshenko.

• Only 82 songs have debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100 since the chart was launched in 1958.
• Kendrick Lamar's "Squabble Up" is the most recent song to achieve this feat.
• Listen to the complete playlist on Business Insider's Spotify.

The Billboard Hot 100 is widely considered the definitive all-genre singles chart in the US.

Although it was officially launched in 1958, Billboard began using modern airplay and sales data in 1991 — allowing for more time-sensitive calculations and accurate rankings.

Well over 1,000 songs have reached the coveted No. 1 spot, but it's far more difficult for a song to debut in the top position; it typically means a much-promoted single has met high expectations, or at least that an artist is supported and beloved by a legion of fans.

Keep reading for a complete list of instant chart-toppers throughout history.

1. "You Are Not Alone" by Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was the first-ever artist to achieve the feat with "You Are Not Alone," which debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 2, 1995.

It was the second single from Jackson's ninth studio album "HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I."

2. "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey

"Fantasy" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 30, 1995. It was the lead single from Carey's fifth studio album "Daydream."

3. "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" by Whitney Houston

"Exhale (Shoop Shoop)" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 25, 1995. It was the lead single from the soundtrack for the film "Waiting to Exhale."

4. "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men

"One Sweet Day" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated December 2, 1995. It was the second single from Carey's fifth studio album "Daydream."

5. "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy & Faith Evans, featuring 112

"I'll Be Missing You" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated June 14, 1997. It was the second single from "No Way Out," the debut album from Diddy, then known as Puff Daddy.

6. "Honey" by Mariah Carey

"Honey" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 13, 1997. It was the lead single from Carey's sixth studio album "Butterfly."

7. "Candle in the Wind 1997/Something About The Way You Look Tonight" by Elton John

"Candle in the Wind 1997/Something About The Way You Look Tonight" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated October 11, 1997. The double A-side single later became the first song ever to be certified diamond.

8. "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion

"My Heart Will Go On" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated February 28, 1998.

The famous ballad was written for the soundtrack of "Titanic" and served as the movie's main romantic theme. It was also released as a single from Dion's fifth English-language album "Let's Talk About Love."

9. "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith

"I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 5, 1998. It was recorded for the film "Armageddon," starring Liv Tyler.

10. "Doo Wop (That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill

"Doo Wop (That Thing)" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 14, 1998. It was the lead single from Hill's debut album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill."

11. "This Is the Night" by Clay Aiken

"This Is the Night" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated June 28, 2003. It was Aiken's debut single after competing on season two of "American Idol."

12. "I Believe" by Fantasia

"I Believe" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 10, 2004. It was Fantasia's debut single after winning season three of "American Idol."

13. "Inside Your Heaven" by Carrie Underwood

"Inside Your Heaven" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 2, 2005. It was Underwood's debut single after winning season four of "American Idol."

Underwood was the first country artist to have a No. 1 debut on the Billboard Hot 100.

14. "Do I Make You Proud" by Taylor Hicks

"Do I Make You Proud" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 1, 2006. Hicks first performed the song on the fifth season finale of "American Idol," and it was released as a single shortly after his victory.

15. "3" by Britney Spears

"3" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated October 24, 2009. It was the lead (and only) single from Spears' second greatest hits album "The Singles Collection."

16. "Not Afraid" by Eminem

"Not Afraid" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 22, 2010. It was the lead single from Eminem's seventh studio album "Recovery."

17. "We R Who We R" by Ke$ha

"We R Who We R" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 13, 2010. It was the lead single from Kesha's debut EP "Cannibal."

18. "Hold It Against Me" by Britney Spears

"Hold It Against Me" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated January 29, 2011. It was the lead single from Spears' seventh studio album "Femme Fatale."

19. "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga

"Born This Way" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated February 26, 2011. It was the lead single from Gaga's second studio album of the same name.

20. "Part Of Me" by Katy Perry

"Part of Me" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated March 3, 2012. It was the lead single from "Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection," a reissue of Perry's third studio album.

21. "Harlem Shake" by Baauer

"Harlem Shake" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated March 2, 2013.

The viral hit benefited from a recent adjustment to the Hot 100's formula, when the chart began incorporating YouTube data. The chart methodology is updated at least once a year, to reflect rapidly evolving listening trends. (YouTube song user-generated content was later removed from chart calculations in 2020.)

22. "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift

"Shake It Off" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 6, 2014. It was the lead single from Swift's fifth studio album "1989."

23. "What Do You Mean?" by Justin Bieber

"What Do You Mean?" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 19, 2015. It was the lead single from Bieber's fourth studio album "Purpose."

24. "Hello" by Adele

"Hello" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 14, 2015. It was the lead single from Adele's third studio album "25."

25. "Pillowtalk" by Zayn

"Pillowtalk" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated February 20, 2016. It was the lead single from Zayn's debut solo album "Mind of Mine."

26. "Can't Stop the Feeling!" by Justin Timberlake

"Can't Stop the Feeling!" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 28, 2016. It was the lead single for the soundtrack of the film "Trolls."

27. "Shape Of You" by Ed Sheeran

"Shape of You" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated January 28, 2017. It was one of the lead singles, along with "Castle on the Hill," from Sheeran's third studio album "Divide."

28. "I'm The One" by DJ Khaled featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne

"I'm the One" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 20, 2017. It was the second single from Khaled's 10th studio album "Grateful."

29. "God's Plan" by Drake

"God's Plan" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated February 3, 2018. It was the lead single from Drake's fifth studio album "Scorpion."

30. "Nice for What" by Drake

"Nice for What" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 21, 2018. It was the second single from "Scorpion."

31. "This Is America" by Childish Gambino

"This Is America" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 19, 2018. It was released as a standalone single.

32. "Thank U, Next" by Ariana Grande

"Thank U, Next" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 17, 2018. It was the lead single from Grande's fifth studio album of the same name.

33. "7 Rings" by Ariana Grande

"7 Rings" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated February 2, 2019. It was the second single from "Thank U, Next."

34. "Sucker" by the Jonas Brothers

"Sucker" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated March 16, 2019. It was the lead single from the Jonas Brothers' fifth studio album "Happiness Begins."

35. "Highest In The Room" by Travis Scott

"Highest in the Room" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated October 19, 2019. It was featured on "JackBoys," a compilation EP by Scott and other members of his label.

36. "Toosie Slide" by Drake

"Toosie Slide" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 18, 2020. It was the lead single from Drake's compilation mixtape "Dark Lane Demo Tapes."

37. "The Scotts" by The Scotts

"The Scotts" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 9, 2020. It was the debut single from newly formed hip-hop duo The Scotts, aka Travis Scott and Kid Cudi.

38. "Stuck With U" by Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber

"Stuck With U" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 23, 2020. It was released as a charity single to raise money for the First Responders Children's Foundation.

39. "Rain On Me" by Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande

"Rain On Me" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated June 6, 2020. It was the second single from Gaga's sixth studio album "Chromatica."

40. "Trollz" by 6ix9ine and Nicki Minaj

"Trollz" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated June 27, 2020. It became the fifth No. 1 debut in 2020 alone, marking a new single-year high.

41. "Cardigan" by Taylor Swift

"Cardigan" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated August 8, 2020 — the same week as its parent album "Folklore" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making Swift the first artist ever to debut at No. 1 on both charts in the same week.

"Folklore" received less than 24 hours' promotion before its release at midnight on July 24. The music video for "Cardigan" arrived at the same time.

42. "WAP" by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion

"WAP" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated August 22, 2020. It was Cardi B's first single since 2019's "Press" and became her fourth career No. 1.

The raunchy song also became the fourth all-female collaboration to hit No. 1 in 2020 — and just the ninth in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 — while setting a new record for first-week streams with 93 million.

43. "Dynamite" by BTS

"Dynamite," the septet's first all-English-language single, debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 5, 2020.

BTS is the first all-South Korean group to top the Hot 100.

44. "Franchise" by Travis Scott featuring Young Thug and M.I.A.

"Franchise" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated October 10, 2020.

It became Scott's third single to debut on top in less than a year — following "Highest in the Room" and "The Scotts" — setting a new record for "the fastest accumulation of three No. 1 entrances by any artist in the Hot 100's history.

It's Scott's fourth No. 1 song overall, Young Thug's second, and M.I.A.'s first.

45. "Positions" by Ariana Grande

"Positions" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 7, 2020. It was the lead single from Grande's sixth studio album of the same name.

Grande made history as the first artist with three No. 1 Hot 100 debuts in a single calendar year.

46. "Life Goes On" by BTS

"Life Goes On" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated December 5, 2020, the same week as its parent album "Be" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — making BTS the second artist in history to debut at No. 1 on both charts simultaneously, mere months after Swift became the first.

47. "Willow" by Taylor Swift

"Willow" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated December 26, 2020 — the same week as its parent album "Evermore" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Swift became the first artist in history to debut on top of both charts simultaneously — twice.

She previously became the first artist to do so with "Folklore," less than five months previously.

"Willow" was also the 12th song in 2020 to arrive on the chart in its top position, handily setting a single-year record.

48. "Drivers License" by Olivia Rodrigo

"Drivers License," Olivia Rodrigo's official debut single, debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated January 23, 2021.

At just 17 years old, the Disney Channel star is the youngest solo artist in history to arrive atop the Hot 100. The record was previously held by Fantasia, who was 20 when "I Believe" debuted at No. 1. 

49. "What's Next" by Drake

"What's Next" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated March 20, 2021.

The rapper became the first artist in history to have three songs arrive in the Hot 100's top three simultaneously. "What's Next" was joined by "Wants and Needs," featuring Lil Baby, at No. 2 and "Lemon Pepper Freestyle," featuring Rick Ross, at No. 3.

50. "Peaches" by Justin Bieber featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon

"Peaches" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 3, 2021. It was the fifth single from Bieber's sixth studio album "Justice," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 the same week, and the singer's fourth instant chart-topper.

51. "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" by Lil Nas X

"Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 10, 2021. It was the lead single from Lil Nas X's debut studio album "Montero."

52. "Rapstar" by Polo G

"Rapstar" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 24, 2021. It was the third single from Polo G's third album "Hall of Fame."

53. "Good 4 U" by Olivia Rodrigo

"Good 4 U" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 29, 2021. It was the third single from Rodrigo's debut studio album "Sour."

54. "Butter" by BTS

"Butter," the second all-English single from BTS, debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated June 5, 2021.

55. "Permission to Dance" by BTS

"Permission to Dance" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 24, 2021, giving BTS their fourth instant chart-topper in less than one year.

56. "Way 2 Sexy" by Drake featuring Future and Young Thug

"Way 2 Sexy" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 18, 2021. It was the lead single from Drake's sixth studio album "Certified Lover Boy," which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 the same week.

57. "My Universe" by Coldplay and BTS

"My Universe" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated October 9, 2021. It was the second single from Coldplay's ninth studio album "Music of the Spheres."

Thanks to their feature, BTS tied Grande for the second-most No. 1 debuts in history (five).

58. "All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" by Taylor Swift

"All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 27, 2021.

It was released alongside Taylor Swift's rerecorded album "Red (Taylor's Version)," which simultaneously debuted atop the Billboard 200.

"All Too Well (Taylor's Version)" was included on the updated "Red" tracklist in two different iterations: its original five-minute length, as well the long-awaited 10-minute version, both of which are combined into one listing on Billboard's charts.

At 10 minutes and 13 seconds long, "All Too Well" is officially the longest No. 1 hit of all time.

The record was previously held by Don McLean's 1972 hit "American Pie (Parts I & II)," which clocked in at 8 minutes and 37 seconds.

59. "As It Was" by Harry Styles

"As It Was" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 16, 2022. It was released as the lead single from Styles' third solo album "Harry's House."

The song dropped out of first place in its second week of tracking, but returned to the No. 1 spot for 15 nonconsecutive weeks, setting a new record for a British performer.

60. "First Class" by Jack Harlow

"First Class" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 23, 2022. It was released as the second single from Harlow's sophomore album "Come Home the Kids Miss You."

61. "Wait For U" by Future featuring Drake and Tems

"Wait For U" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 14, 2022. It was released as the seventh track on Future's album "I Never Liked You."

62. "Jimmy Cooks" by Drake featuring 21 Savage

"Jimmy Cooks" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 2, 2022. It was released alongside Drake's album "Honestly, Nevermind," which also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

63. "Super Freaky Girl" by Nicki Minaj

"Super Freaky Girl" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated August 27, 2022.

64. "Anti-Hero" by Taylor Swift

"Anti-Hero" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 5, 2022.

It was released alongside Taylor Swift's 10th studio album "Midnights," which also arrived atop the Billboard 200 — making Swift the first and only artist in history to debut at No. 1 on both charts simultaneously on four separate occasions.

Swift also became the first artist in history to debut 10 songs in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, as "Anti-Hero" was joined by nine fellow tracks from "Midnights."

65. "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus

"Flowers" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated January 28, 2023. It was released as the lead single from Cyrus' eighth album "Endless Summer Vacation."

66. "Like Crazy" by Jimin

"Like Crazy" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 8, 2023, making Jimin the first South Korean soloist to top the Hot 100. (He previously achieved the feat as a member of BTS.)

67. "Vampire" by Olivia Rodrigo

"Vampire" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 15, 2023. It was released as the lead single from Rodrigo's sophomore album "Guts."

Rodrigo is now the only artist in history to have both lead singles ("Drivers License" and "Vampire") from her first two albums ("Sour" and "Guts," respectively) arrive in the chart's top position.

68. "Seven" by Jung Kook featuring Latto

"Seven" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated July 29, 2023, making Jung Kook the second member of BTS to have a chart-topping solo hit.

69. "Rich Men North of Richmond" by Oliver Anthony Music

"Rich Men North of Richmond," Oliver Anthony Music's breakout single, debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated August 26, 2023.

The controversial country singer is the first artist to achieve the feat without any previous entries on a Billboard chart.

70. "I Remember Everything" by Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves

"I Remember Everything" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 9, 2023. It was released on Bryan's self-titled album, which simultaneously arrived atop the Billboard 200.

71. "Slime You Out" by Drake featuring SZA

"Slime You Out" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated September 30, 2023. It was released as the lead single for Drake's eighth studio album "For All the Dogs."

72. "First Person Shooter" by Drake featuring J. Cole

"First Person Shooter" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated October 21, 2023. It was released alongside "For All the Dogs," which simultaneously debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Drake holds the record for the most No. 1 song debuts in history, with nine to his name.

73. "Is It Over Now?" by Taylor Swift

"Is It Over Now?" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 11, 2023.

The vault track from "1989 (Taylor's Version)" dethroned Swift's own "Cruel Summer," which had reigned for two weeks. (It later returned to the summit for two more weeks.)

Swift is the only woman ever to replace herself atop the Hot 100; she previously achieved the feat in 2014 with the original "1989," when "Blank Space" climbed the chart to replace "Shake It Off."

74. "Yes, And?" by Ariana Grande

"Yes, And?" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated January 27, 2024. It was released as the lead single for Grande's seventh album "Eternal Sunshine."

75. "Hiss" by Megan Thee Stallion

"Hiss" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated February 10, 2024.

76. "We Can't Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)" by Ariana Grande

"We Can't Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated March 23, 2024. It was released as the second single from "Eternal Sunshine," which simultaneously arrived atop the Billboard 200.

The song marked Grande's seventh instant chart-topper, the most among women and second-most in history.

77. "Like That" by Future, Metro Boomin, and Kendrick Lamar

"Like That" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated April 6, 2024.

78. "Fortnight" by Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone

"Fortnight" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 4, 2024. It was released as the lead single from Swift's 11th studio album "The Tortured Poets Department."

The Post Malone duet earned 76.2 million streams in its first week, breaking the record previously set by Rodrigo with "Drivers License" (76.1 million), according to Billboard.

Swift is now tied with Grande for the second-most No. 1 debuts of any artist in history (seven apiece), while Drake holds the all-time record.

79. "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar

"Not Like Us" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 18, 2024.

The diss track was released amid a heated feud with Drake, ignited by Lamar's verse on "Like That."

Another of Lamar's anti-Drake songs, "Euphoria," appeared on the same chart at No. 3, while Drake's response, "Family Matters," debuted at No. 7.

80. "I Had Some Help" by Post Malone and Morgan Wallen

"I Had Some Help" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated May 25, 2024.

The country duet is Malone's second song to arrive in the top spot after "Fortnight" — both within the same month — and his sixth No. 1 song overall.

As for Wallen, "I Had Some Help" marks his second Hot 100 leader after "Last Night" charted at No. 1 for 16 weeks in 2023, setting a record for a solo song.

81. "Love Somebody" by Morgan Wallen

"Love Somebody" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated November 2, 2024, becoming Wallen's second song to arrive in the top spot and third No. 1 hit overall.

82. "Squabble Up" by Kendrick Lamar

"Squabble Up" debuted at No. 1 on the chart dated December 7, 2024, making Kendrick Lamar the first solo male artist in history with three instant chart-toppers in a single year.

The song was released alongside Lamar's "GNX," which also arrived atop the Billboard 200.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders told Business Insider he's reaching across the aisle to find common ground.
• He has no qualms about working with Elon Musk on any good ideas he has about spending.
• Sanders also cited areas of mutual interest with RFK Jr. on health and Trump on credit-card debt.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is extending an olive branch to President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.

In an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, the Vermont senator listed areas of common ground with Elon Musk, a cochair of a new extragovernmental body aiming to cut costs, as well as with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on health and Trump on credit debt.

"If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I'll work with them," Sanders, who at 83 is the longest-serving independent in Congress, told BI.

In Musk, Sanders may find an ally to cut defense spending

Sanders made headlines on Sunday when he posted on X his support for Musk's pitch to curb defense spending.

Musk, whom Sanders has previously criticized as a threat to democracy, responded with a laughing emoji and said, "Maybe we can find some common ground."

Sanders told BI he had no qualms about working with Musk on the Department of Defense's spending, or on any other good ideas he has as cochair of DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency announced by Trump.

"Many of the things he did during the campaign were really ugly. On the other hand, he's a very smart guy," Sanders said, adding that "he is absolutely right" to call for the first independent audit of the Pentagon in over seven years.

"We need a strong military, but we don't need all the waste and the profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now," he said.

While Musk has yet to outline specific plans to curb defense spending, he has criticized the Department of Defense's F-35 program and cited its $841 billion budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about his mission to cut costs. In April, Sanders pushed to cut $88.6 billion, or 10%, from the military budget.

The amendment was outvoted, and Sanders slammed lawmakers, saying they're pouring money into an unaudited department.

In 2021, the Pentagon said that it was trying to learn from each failed audit but that it would take until 2028 to make all the logistical changes necessary to meet standards.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Finding connection through Kennedy's MAHA movement

Sanders, a cochair of the Senate health committee, told BI he also saw common ground with Kennedy, particularly when it comes to ultraprocessed food.

Kennedy, Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, faces a tough confirmation hearing, given his opposition to vaccines and plans to take on food giants and industry lobbyists.

If confirmed, he has pledged to "make America healthy again" by tackling chronic disease. He promises to ban processed foods from school meals and remove food dyes from the US food system, among other measures.

Sanders is game for a shake-up of our nutrition system. This week, he's leading a Senate hearing on ultraprocessed foods, interrogating how processed products are regulated and how they affect health.

"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders told BI.

He cited the millions of people living with obesity and diabetes and the ripple effects across all sectors. Diabetes care now costs the US an estimated $400 billion a year, a GlobalData analysis found. And a recent report said the military was struggling to recruit young people who meet the physical requirements to be enlisted.

"Our kids are not healthy enough. In the long run, you want a healthy society as an end in itself," Sanders said. "We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That's what we want. And if the industry is giving our kids food that's making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that's an issue that we've got to deal with."

Sanders, who has previously criticized Kennedy's views on vaccines, added: "I think a lot of what RFK is saying is kind of crazy and driven by conspiracy theory. Some of what he's saying is not crazy.

"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."

Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sanders wants Trump to stick to his proposed cap on credit-card interest rates

While Trump and Sanders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they may have common ground on credit-card interest rates.

Credit-card debt held by American consumers hit $1.17 trillion in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Donald Trump came out with an idea during this campaign. He said, you know what, credit-card interest rates, which in some cases right now are 20, 25%, should not be higher than 10%. Well, you know what? I agree with that," Sanders said.

While Trump said a cap would be "temporary" to help Americans "catch up" with payments, the suggestion made a splash. Mark Cuban, a longtime critic of Trump, mocked him for going even further than "self-described socialist Bernie Sanders."

It would be tough to drive through Congress, as Sanders knows. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tabled an interest-rate cap of 15% in 2019, which went nowhere.

Now Sanders is challenging Trump to wield his strong mandate to make this a key issue.

"We'll see if Mr. Trump is prepared to keep his word. We're looking forward, and we will work with some Republicans on that issue," Sanders said.

Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Where Trump and Republicans make sense, happy to work with them," Sanders said. "And we will be in vigorous opposition to many of their policies, which to me are extremely distasteful."