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'Flawed and broken' system: Are for-profit insurers why Americans lack health care?Enterprise sales are undergoing a seismic transformation, with artificial intelligence (AI) leading the charge in redefining how businesses interact with customers and manage their sales processes. From prehistoric bartering to modern customer relationship management (CRM) systems, sales has always been an evolving field, but never has the transformation been as swift or as deep as today. The growing adoption of AI-native systems is changing the very essence of how data is captured, how sales teams engage with clients, and how the entire sales process is structured. The winners in this AI-driven revolution will be those who leverage data and AI to drive decisions, not merely activities. Sales, as a profession, traces its roots to the very beginning of commerce. In its earliest forms, the process was simple and direct—people traded goods, and they remembered who bought what. Fast forward to the 1950s, when sales professionals had tools like the Rolodex, which served as an analog CRM. The digital transformation began in earnest during the 1980s and 1990s when software such as Act and Siebel Systems emerged to bring CRM into the computer age. Salesforce, founded in 1999, became the industry leader by moving CRM to the cloud, making it accessible from anywhere, and setting a new standard for how salespeople manage customer relationships. But while these systems evolved, they all shared one underlying principle: they depended on human input. Whether it was logging a call, updating a lead status, or noting customer feedback, it all boiled down to data entry by a sales rep. As , a partner at (Andreessen Horowitz), puts it, “It was always the same exact act as that prehistoric time—there’s a salesperson, they’re doing some act of selling, and they’re recording that information.” Now, AI promises to radically change that paradigm. Today, we are witnessing a teutonic shift in sales technology as AI-native systems take center stage. Unlike traditional CRM systems, AI tools do not rely solely on human input to gather information. Instead, they are always on, listening, capturing, and analyzing interactions in real-time. “AI can have these conversations and really start to capture information at the source, rather than waiting for the human,” Schmidt explains. This shift from structured, human-entered data to unstructured, AI-captured insights is reshaping the way organizations think about their sales cycles. AI-native systems are not just about capturing customer interactions—they are about understanding them in context. Emails, Slack conversations, Zoom calls, surveys, and social media interactions are all captured, integrated, and analyzed to create a comprehensive system of record. The result is a rich, multimodal understanding of customer behavior that goes far beyond the spreadsheets and status fields of yesteryear. One of the most visible impacts of AI in sales is the gradual elimination of mundane, repetitive tasks like data entry and lead qualification. In traditional sales environments, sales development representatives (SDRs) often spend their days cold-calling potential leads, sending emails, and updating CRM systems. “It’s a miserable existence—you sit on the phone all day, you make however many cold calls, you send however many emails. It’s horrible,” says Schmidt, recalling his own experience as an SDR. AI is automating this early-stage process, which is freeing up human salespeople to focus on more strategic, high-value activities. , also a partner at a16z, describes this trend as “intelligent pipeline management.” AI identifies prospects, contacts them with personalized messages, and even schedules meetings—all without human intervention. By automating these lower-value tasks, companies can reallocate human resources to focus on building relationships, negotiating deals, and solving complex customer problems. AI’s role in sales goes beyond automation; it is also enhancing the capabilities of human salespeople in real-time. AI voice agents can now provide live coaching to sales reps during their calls. Imagine being on a call with a prospect, and as they voice an objection, an AI agent—drawing from a vast repository of past customer interactions and successful sales techniques—provides you with the best possible response in real-time. “You can now be getting live coaching from an AI voice agent that is trained on all of the data that you have seen from prospects and from existing customers,” says Andrusko. This kind of AI-driven guidance can help sales reps navigate complex conversations, making them more effective and boosting their chances of closing deals. The rise of AI in sales also means that personalization—one of the most crucial aspects of effective selling—can now be done at scale. Traditionally, personalization in sales involved tailoring presentations, emails, and proposals to the specific needs and preferences of individual clients, a time-consuming process that limited its application to only the most valuable prospects. Today, AI can perform this kind of deep personalization across an entire sales pipeline. “Think about how easily you can now do that at scale and really tailor to an individual human who’s on your website,” says Smith. AI tools can detect when a prospect visits a company’s website and automatically generate customized collateral that addresses that individual’s specific needs and interests. This level of personalized outreach, executed across thousands of leads, allows sales teams to connect with prospects in ways that were simply not possible before. AI also blurs the lines between different functions within an organization’s go-to-market strategy. Traditionally, marketing, sales, and customer success teams operated in silos, each with its own tools, data, and goals. Marketing would generate leads, sales would close them, and customer success would work on retention. AI, however, is fostering a more holistic approach, one that aligns all these functions around a shared understanding of the customer. “The whole go-to-market organization is just trying to do what’s right by the customer,” Andrusko notes. AI can help bridge the gap between these different functions by providing a unified system of records that all teams can access. This allows marketing, sales, and customer success teams to work together more effectively, ensuring that customers receive a consistent, coordinated experience throughout their journey. Traditional CRM systems largely relied on structured data—fields like contact information, deal status, and lead scores. The new AI-powered systems of record are different. They capture everything, from Slack messages to social media mentions to survey responses, and they provide the context that human beings need to make informed decisions. “Context is what human beings use to make decisions,” says Schmidt. “That’s one of the most compelling parts of the opportunities—you can replicate human judgment a little bit more as you get more and more context.” This enriched system of record doesn’t just benefit the sales team. Product and engineering teams can also gain valuable insights from these data-rich interactions. Imagine a product team being able to analyze customer feedback in real-time across every channel to inform future product roadmaps. “What could possibly be a better tool to feed the input of road map planning than a multimodal system of record that captures all of your customer feedback in one place?” Andrusko asks. AI-powered sales systems are breaking down the barriers between sales, marketing, customer success, and product development, creating a more integrated and responsive organization. The traditional sales process has long focused on tracking activities—calls made, emails sent, meetings scheduled. However, AI is enabling a shift from activity-based metrics to outcome-based metrics. Instead of tracking how many calls an SDR makes, AI systems can track the quality of those interactions and the impact they have on the sales pipeline. As Schmidt points out, “Don’t focus on activities; focus on achievements.” By focusing on outcomes rather than inputs, companies can better understand what really drives success and allocate their resources accordingly. AI is not about replacing salespeople; it’s about empowering them. It’s about automating the mundane so that sales teams can focus on what really matters—building relationships, solving problems, and closing deals. AI is enabling unprecedented levels of personalization, providing real-time insights, and breaking down organizational silos. It is fundamentally changing the way we think about sales, shifting the focus from manual data entry and task tracking to meaningful engagement and measurable outcomes. The companies that thrive in this new landscape will embrace AI not just as a tool but as an integral part of their sales strategy. They will leverage AI to gather insights, guide decision-making, and create seamless experiences for their customers. As the sales landscape continues to evolve, the key question for every sales leader is no longer whether to adopt AI but how quickly they can do so to stay ahead of the competition.
Clashes between Syrian Kurdish forces and Turkish-backed Syrian militias could be one of the biggest potential problems in Syria as the country grapples with life after dictator Bashar Assad. One of the biggest risks for Syria's peaceful transition lies in the country's northeast. While many Syrian Arabs around the country were celebrating the demise of the regime headed by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and the end of a long-running civil war, Syrian Kurds in the northeast were facing an existential crisis. Clashes between Syrian fighters backed by Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces were of great concern United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson said this week. The other immediate areas of concern are Israel's ongoing incursions into Syria and the protection of Syria's minorities. What is happening in the northeast? Fighting in the Syrian civil war had been frozen for years, and the opposition groups controlling their different areas in the north tended not to clash. But over the past few days, fighting erupted again. After the fall of the Assad regime , the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA), a group of fighters backed by Turkey, has tried to advance into areas controlled by Syrian Kurds. The Turkish government opposes the Kurdish presence on their border, seeing them as a threat. This is because of a long-running Kurdish struggle for independence in Turkey that has often turned violent. As the Turkish-backed militias have advanced, the Syrian Kurdish forces there, known as the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), have lost territory. Turkey has also used airstrikes and drones to support the SNA's advance. On Tuesday, the two parties said they negotiated a ceasefire agreement with help from the United States. This will involve the withdrawal of Syrian Kurdish forces from some of the areas they previously controlled. Another rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has taken control of the Arab-majority city of Deir al-Zour . The SDF withdrew from there following local unrest. The US-trained Syrian Free Army (SFA) has also taken some terrain here. The SDF has now said it is open to participating in a new political process in Syria. Why is it happening? The Kurdish people are often described as one of the biggest ethnic groups in the world without a country of their own. If they did have a country, it would lie in the Kurdish-majority areas where Iraq , Iran, Syria and Turkey meet. There is a Kurdish independence movement in each of those countries, whose members have lobbied and even fought for an independent state or Kurdish autonomy, with varying degrees of success. Kurdish independence movements in each of the countries have also been repressed by their respective governments — also with varying degrees of success. In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, turned to violence to try to achieve their aims. In Syria, near the start of the civil war, around 2012, the forces of now-deposed dictator Assad, withdrew from Kurdish-majority areas in northeastern and eastern Syria without much of a fight. The move was not without controversy . Syrian Arab revolutionaries said they didn't want the Kurds to be independent from Syria and that the country should remain united. There was also scurrilous talk about whether the Kurds had betrayed the original objectives of Syria's revolutionaries, to overthrow the regime, and that in a bid to pursue their own goal of Kurdish independence, the Kurds would maintain neutrality in the civil war. The Kurds never really fought against Assad's forces, and this alleged "betrayal" caused antipathy between Syrian Arabs and Syrian Kurds, layered on top of previous ethnic tensions and racism. During the 13-year civil war, the US got involved with Syria's Kurds, allying with them to combat the extremist group known as the "Islamic State" (IS) . The group came from Iraq and, taking advantage of the chaos of the civil war, set up a "Syrian capital" for its planned "caliphate" in Raqqa. US and Kurdish forces were the major players in the fight against the IS group in Syria. And while fighting against the IS group, Syrian Kurds also expanded the terrain under their control, including Arab-majority areas like Raqqa and Deir al-Zour. Locals have protested against the Kurdish leadership there, including this week when they insisted the Kurdish forces allow other rebel groups to enter. All these issues, past and present, remain at the root of the problems the Syrian Kurds are now dealing with. Now that the Assad regime has gone, they are being squeezed between Syrian Arab groups and Turkey, with the US as their only ally. In fact, one of the questions that most worries Syria's Kurds is how long the American alliance will last after President-elect Donald Trump reenters the White House. There are fears the incoming Trump administration will withdraw US soldiers from Syria altogether, abandoning the Kurds. Currently, there are still an estimated 900 US soldiers in the country. Syrian minorities wary of HTS's promises of inclusivity To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Why does it matter? An estimated 4.6 million people were previously living in the Kurdish-controlled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or AANES. The area is also often called Rojava by local Kurds and was also home to Kurds from Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Since fighting began this week, the UN estimates over 100,000 people in the area have fled the fighting, most of them Kurds. Several hundred people have been killed in the fighting. Apart from the humanitarian aspects of the situation, the territory the Kurds held included most of Syria's oil fields and was also a major wheat producer. In particular, control over Syria's oil fields will be important to the new government, as income from them will help the country's devastated economy . Experts also suggest the Turkish-backed SNA's race to grab as much territory as possible goes beyond Turkish aims to get the Kurds off the border. Territorial control is also about leverage and power as the next Syrian government is formed. Additionally, the SDF runs large prison camps in northeastern Syria, which house thousands of former IS extremists. Previously, SDF fighters have said that if they are attacked, they'll be forced to leave the prison camps unguarded. Edited by: Sean M. Sinico
LOS ANGELES (AP) — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is planning to make a $1 million personal donation to President-Elect Donald Trump's inauguration fund, joining a number of tech companies and executives who are working to improve their relationships with the incoming administration. A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed the move on Friday. The announcement comes one day after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it donated $1 million to the same fund. Amazon also said it plans to donate $1 million. “President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead," Altman said in a statement. Altman, who is in a legal dispute with rival Elon Musk, has said he is “not that worried” about the Tesla CEO's influence in the incoming administration. Trump is putting Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy , an entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate, in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is an outside advisory committee that will work with people inside the government to reduce spending and regulations. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging that the maker of ChatGPT betrayed its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. Musk recently escalated the lawsuit by asking a federal judge to stop OpenAI’s plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully. —— The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.Tech companies led a broad rally for U.S. stocks Tuesday, a boost for the market in a holiday-shortened trading session. The S&P 500 rose 0.8% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 273 points, or 0.6%, as of 12:18 p.m. Eastern time. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was up 1%. Chip company Broadcom rose 2.9%, while semiconductor giant Nvidia, whose enormous valuation gives it an outsize influence on indexes, rose 0.8%. Super Micro Computer jumped 5.8%. Tesla climbed 5.1%, one of the biggest gains among S&P 500 stocks. Amazon.com rose 1.6% American Airlines slipped 0.1% after the airline briefly grounded flights nationwide due to a technical issue. U.S. Steel rose 1.1% a day after an influential government panel failed to reach consensus on the possible national security risks of the nearly $15 billion proposed sale to Nippon Steel of Japan. NeueHealth surged 68.9% after the health care company agreed to be taken private in a deal valued at roughly $1.3 billion. Treasury yields rose in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.61% from 4.59% late Monday. European markets were mostly higher. Markets in Asia mostly gained ground. U.S. markets will close at 1 p.m. Eastern and stay closed Wednesday for Christmas. Wall Street has several economic reports to look forward to this week, including a weekly update on unemployment benefits on Thursday. Tuesday’s rally comes as the stock market enters what’s historically been a very cheerful season. The last five trading days of each year, plus the first two in the new year, have brought an average gain of 1.3% since 1950. The so-called “Santa rally” also correlates closely with positive returns in January and the upcoming year. So far this month, the U.S. stock market has lost some of its gains since President-elect Donald Trump’s win on Election Day, which raised hopes for faster economic growth and more lax regulations that would boost corporate profits. Worries have risen that Trump’s preference for tariffs and other policies could lead to higher inflation , a bigger U.S. government debt and difficulties for global trade. Even so, the stock market remains on pace to deliver strong returns for 2024. The benchmark S&P 500 is up about 26% so far this year and remains within roughly 1.3% of the all-time high it set earlier this month — its latest of 57 record highs this year.
Pam Bondi, Donald Trump's pick to be attorney general, is a staunch ally of the former president, defending him against impeachment during his first term and pushing his false claims of election fraud as he sought to cling on to the White House. The 59-year-old former Florida attorney general, if confirmed by the Senate, will now serve as the top law enforcement official in a second Trump administration. "For too long, the partisan Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans -- Not anymore," Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. "Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again." Bondi's nomination means the top ranks of the Justice Department will be filled by Trump loyalists, as the president-elect has named three of the lawyers who defended him in his multiple criminal cases to its other high-ranking roles. Trump tapped Bondi to be attorney general on Thursday after his first pick, firebrand ex-Florida lawmaker Matt Gaetz, dropped out amid sexual misconduct allegations and doubts that he could obtain Senate confirmation. A graduate of the University of Florida with a law degree from Stetson University, Bondi served as a prosecutor for 18 years before being elected attorney general of the "Sunshine State" in 2010, the first woman to hold the post. Bondi, a native of Trump's adopted home state of Florida, was reelected to a second term in 2014. As attorney general, Bondi notably fought opioid addiction and human trafficking while taking a tough stance on crime and supporting the death penalty. She sued BP for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and obtained more than $2 billion in economic relief for Florida, according to her biography page at Ballard Partners, a powerful lobbying firm where she has worked after leaving office. While serving as attorney general, Bondi was drawn into a controversy involving Trump when she declined in 2013 to join a multi-state prosecution accusing Trump University of fraud. It emerged later that Bondi's reelection committee had received a $25,000 donation from the charitable Trump Foundation. Both Trump and Bondi denied any wrongdoing. Bondi joined Trump's legal team during his first impeachment trial, in which he was alleged to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find political dirt on his 2020 election opponent, Democrat Joe Biden. Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives but acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate. After the 2020 election, Bondi made television appearances on behalf of Trump and pushed to de-legitimize vote counting in battleground states as part of the push by the former president to overturn the results of the vote. Bondi has also criticized the criminal cases brought against Trump, appearing in solidarity at his New York trial, where he was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star. At Ballard Partners, Bondi has done work for Amazon, General Motors and Uber and as a registered lobbyist for the oil-rich Gulf nation of Qatar, according to press reports. She is also a member of the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned right-wing think tank. cl/dwRemember the story about the elephant seen from different perspectives? Here’s a twist. A biologist with a telescope peered at the animal and said, I see a hairy grayness horizon to horizon. A toenail fungus specialist examined its feet, and prescribed antibiotics. A climate change specialist didn’t see the elephant because he was fixated on plucking the dry grass. A physicist looked at the elephant and had nothing to say. Elon Musk was there, and he told them not to waste their time standing around an elephant. We need results in quantum mechanics, he explained; we need superconductivity at room temperature, we need research piped straight to technology. We need science to serve technology, which as you know improves man’s condition. This may not be the story as you remember it, but I assure you that a few things about it are true. The people around the elephant are scientists, but even in science, we can only see with the tools we have, and we create those tools in anticipation of what we might see. As a result, we are limited in our capacity to break out of this circle. We are primed to see or not in a certain way. However, breakouts can and do happen — often when two incommensurate ideas meet each other. Consider what happened when homo economicus or “economic man,” theory met psychology: a new field was born, behavioral psychology. Or consider the friction between gravity and God, a meeting of concepts that caused a huge shift in human society’s relationship to astronomy and divinity. Second, it’s not by chance that the examples cross the bridge between what we call humanistic knowledge and what we call science. Their conceptual distance from each other results in the possibility for innovation. The role played by metaphors in biology introduces future paths for research. Schizophrenics have a better prognosis when they are told they’re like shamans. Darwin’s nature acts, despite herself, as a causal force — like the very God that evolution puts into question. Falling in love felt so powerful that the ancients thought seeing the love object caused a wound in your eyes. It worked well with the theory that eyes emitted rays. You cannot, it turns out, take the human out of the science. Third, in separating the humanities and science, we are voting to blind ourselves for the future and to deplete the richness of multiple perspectives on reality. Worse, our now-isolated sciences are in danger of being kidnapped and reared as technology’s handmaiden. It wasn’t always so: the Aristotles, Leonardos and al-Haythams — even the Turings — had an intellectual background that incorporated the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences, and their discoveries came out of that multifaceted approach. Now we have teams of specialists working for market-minded research that is not about truth, or even the search for truth, but for profit. Science is done at scale, and that is making a huge difference to its relationship to other fields of knowledge. There’s a place where we can intervene, but no one seems to be doing it. That place is higher education. We could teach our students that there is no hard boundary between science and humanistic learning. We could teach them how these fields influence each other. We could take down the hard walls around different fields, both bureaucratically and literally. Instead, we reproduce these unhealthy gulfs in our university’s outdated departments and divisions, which generate the kind of specialist knowledge without context that is our growing problem. If we want education to be relevant to the bigger problems we all face, this has to change. Perhaps the public feels this already, or our colleges wouldn’t be in a crisis of irrelevance. We need to put these forms of knowledge back together so that they can work with each other.HTX Kicks Off Festive Season Party With A Series Of Rewarding Events For Participants
Traffic alert: Heavy travel delays reported on northbound I-17Lilium, a company working on flying taxis that can take off and land vertically, has ceased operations. As TechCrunch notes, German media Gründerszene was the first publication to report that it laid off 1,000 workers a few days ago after it failed to secure more financing to continue its technology's development. Patrick Nathen, the company's co-founder, has announced that the company has stopped all operations on LinkedIn . Tagging his co-founders, he said that they can no longer continue working on their "shared belief in greener aviation," at least under Lilium. The German company has been testing its VTOL electric air taxis for a while now. Its vehicle took off for the first time for its maiden flight back in 2017 , and it completed its first phase of flight tests in 2019. Lilium was able to prove that its VTOL air taxis are capable of flying at speeds of over 100 kilometers per hour, though the Lilium Jet prototype it unveiled in 2019 was supposed to be able go as fast as 300 kmh and to have a range of 300 kilometers. Lilium has been struggling financially over the past year, but its CEO reportedly remained optimistic about being able to secure enough funding as recently as last month. Gründerszene said that a small number of people will remain employed to help with liquidation. The company has yet to announce what will happen to its technology and the rest of its assets, but its patent attorney, Fabien Müller, wrote in a post that he's managing the transition of Lilium's intellectual property. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.Reeling from a divisive and turbulent election season, many of us seek spaces of solace, light, unity and worship as we turn toward the winter holidays. The cosmos and its reflection within us harbor such spaces. By viewing and embracing scientific insights through the lens of humanity, you form a connection with your place in the universe. And, when you do so, a window opens into the sacred space of our profoundly united existence. Earlier this year, a celestial event cast its splendor along a belt traversing our nation — the total solar eclipse. During totality, day turned to night. The sun’s corona blazed around its darkened disc. A moment so visceral, unwitting animals could palpably feel it. Transcending age, walks of life, race and politics, the eclipse brought millions together in a communion of cosmic wonder. In my family of three generations, some drove from Illinois to Indiana, while others traveled from India in time for the event. Our shared experience formed immediate bonds with hitherto unknown friends. As a scientist, the eclipse also offered me spectacular links to two modern revolutionary branches of physics that have completely changed our perception of nature: relativity and quantum physics. As my late black hole physicist father would delight in sharing, a solar eclipse was needed to demonstrate the bending of light around the sun, sealing predictions of Albert Einstein’s relativity in 1919. As for the quantum revolution, its technological marvels are part of our daily lives: lasers, semiconducting circuit elements, MRI machines and more. A practicing quantum physicist, I rejoice at the unity of our common quest. Scholars come together from across the world to the United States, collaborating, learning, mentoring. Just as my parents did — my mother, a biophysicist — half a century ago. During the eclipse, I felt a heightened awe for the phenomenon that sparked this revolution. Humans and stars radiate light in the same way. An ever-present miracle on Earth — we are all perfectly glowing beings in our unhindered outpouring! What is this universal light? “Blackbody radiation,” as physicists call it, is the common pattern of light that emanates from stars, heated metal, the universe and you and me. We are all effulgent blackbodies. Our radiation pattern depends only on the body’s intrinsic temperature. For a star, it peaks in the visible range and depending on its temperature, appears anything from red to blue in the rainbow spectrum. For mammals, reflecting a similar body temperature across species, the radiation peaks in the infrared. Through an infrared camera, we can perceive our glowing warmth. Our Earth, too, is nearly a blackbody. Save for the atmosphere — a thin veneer trapping heat and balancing a temperature range that sustains life. A delicate balance that we humans can disrupt by pumping this veneer with emissions. Quantum physics grew from contemplating this universal pattern. Understanding it required re-envisioning light not as a wave but as a bundle of energy, a photon. This seed gave way to mind-boggling notions and theories that explain so much of the world, starting with our current description of the atom. Today, quantum science thrives splendidly across the globe. Looking ahead, the U.S. National Quantum Initiative passed as an act of Congress with bipartisan support, meaning that throughout 2025, the world will celebrate a United Nations International Year, commemorating a century of quantum science and its wonders. The seed that gave birth to all this brings alive a luminous sacred space. The universe, the stars, humans — all mirroring one another in radiance. A sacred space of awe and care as you might find in nature — lying in a pine forest, walking by a mountain range, immersing in the ocean’s infinity. Or in an act of worship — praying together beneath a spire or dome, meditating in a sanctum, dancing in spiritual ecstasy, feeding a child, creating patterns of colored chalk powder to be blown away by the wind. We are here as but one burst in space and time. Contemplating our mortality, do we not hold the sacred all the more precious? In the afterglow of Thanksgiving — a relatively new holiday, in cosmic terms — I invite you into this space. An invocation that can bring joy, universal love and gratitude. A contemplation that comes as a prayer. On the veneer of the Earth, just as the celestial sphere is riddled with a billion blazing stars, we form a human galaxy of glowing beings. Nodes of an interconnected complex web. Connecting in the smiles of strangers passing by, in our exchanges, our altercations included, in a shoulder to rest on in moments of deep pain, in a shared meal, in an embrace. The stretches of darkness grow longer in the winter, and we kindle fires. We illuminate our festivities with clusters of light. In all this, each of us carries within ourselves a burnishing lamp. Each of us is a radiant, glowing being. Smitha Vishveshwara is a professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. She is the co-author of the upcoming popular physics book “Two Revolutions: Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Physics,” written with her late father as a dialogue. She wrote this for the Chicago Tribune.
First, there was BookTube. Then Bookstagram. Now, one of the most prolific — and often drama-filled — online book collectives is on TikTok. In the past four years, BookTok , has gone from a scrappy, grassroots group that makes literature-centered content into a major and uncontrollable marketing driver of the publishing industry. BookTok has been personally responsible for millions of dollars of book sales and made authors household names in the process. The breadth of genres in the book industry also means that almost any kind of reader can find their niche. There are dark romance lovers, fairy porn enthusiasts, literary fiction champions, and horror aficionados. But sometimes, a book becomes simply inescapable. These titles don’t have to be from a popular genre, a well-known author, or even published this year. TikTok’s algorithm, and the push from BookTok creators, means that some books go from simply a fun read on the app to an industry staple. Here — in no particular order — are 21 of the biggest hits BookTok couldn’t escape this year. This book — about a voracious appetite for an elegant, simple life — has divided and captivated readers since its February 2024 release. Planning a wedding is already a grueling ordeal, so of course this soon-to-be housewife wants to make the day even more perfect by baking her own wedding cake. A London cookbook editor, Piglet is only known to people — and the readers — by her hurtful childhood nickname. Her desire to escape to a higher class has followed her her entire adult life, but when her fiance Kit discloses a terrible secret, Piglet’s control and appetite for food and a different life spiral out of control. It’s a personal reflection made urgent by the book’s ticking countdown until her wedding day, making it the perfect read for BookTok lovers desperate for something both captivating and thought provoking. In Holly Gramzio’s debut novel, a young woman’s attic becomes a never-ending supply of potential husbands. Lauren, our protagonist, was pretty sure she lived in a normal apartment. But then men started walking down her attic stairs. Strangers, one at a time, and each of them convinced he was her husband. Like real life dating, each is varied, different. But instead of the journey it takes to get to know someone, she has a new beau in the time it takes him to make it down her attic stairs. He’s instantly a part of her life, complete with her friends, family, and acquaintances convinced he’s been there for ages. Since Lauren doesn’t have to leave her home to meet anyone, choosing a significant other becomes a daily game. While the premise could border on nonsensical, Gramzio’s whimsical take on dating in the modern age has captured readers’ attention online. There are reading days when you have the mental energy to get lost in Anna Karenina , and there are days when you want to give your steamy brain a break . Pucking Sweet, the latest polyamorous hockey romance from Emily Rath, is more breather than heavy lift. But that hasn’t kept BookTok fans from enjoying another addition in the saga of the fictional Jacksonville Rays, the hockey team that’s been at the center of two previous novels from Rath. Poppy St. James is the public relations director for the Rays, and keeping her job and career on track means controlling a rambunctious group of hockey stars, including defensemen Lukas Novikov and Colton Morrow. Novikov is a playboy, Morrow is an angel who keeps following him into brawls, and Poppy is the head of a department without a working office phone — so things are already tense. But when a rough night leaves Poppy facing a big decision, she’s forced to reconcile with her own self worth and reconsider if her idea of a happy ending is keeping her from a real one. Some people listen to true crime podcasts. On TikTok alone, there’s a whole community on the app dedicated to learning, talking, and discussing everything from recent news to decades long cold cases. I Have Some Questions For You takes that innate interest in murder and brings the reader along into every ethical debate about the genre. In the midst of a marriage crisis, film professor Bodie Kane goes back to her remote New Hampshire boarding school to teach a podcasting elective. Her time at school was awful. She wasn’t popular, the landscape was dreary, and her roommate, Thalia Keith, was murdered their senior year. But when the class begins to discuss Thalia’s case — and the man currently in prison for her murder — people’s certainty about the case is thrown into a new light. Bodie is required to contend with a horrible possibility: she might be the only one capable of solving Thalia’s murder. Makkai’s latest novel combines the intrigue of a classic thriller with probing theories about the ethics of true crime content online, and makes it a hit for even the most casual of BookTok readers. Coco Mellors’ recent book is brimming with a childhood tinge of nostalgia, but readers don’t have to have personal experience to have the saga of three isolated sisters still manage to capture an indescribable essence of family and hope for better choices. Lawyer Avery, ex-boxer Bonnie, and high fashion model Lucky don’t really talk. But when their parents announce they’ll be selling the group’s childhood apartment in New York City, the three must come back and face the memory of their dead sister, Nicky. They’ve always been a group of four, and life as separate Blue sisters hasn’t been kind. But cleaning out the apartment pushes them to confront the worst choices of their adult lives, and decide how they want to live the future their sister never got a chance to do. Blue Sisters is a BookTok staple, its literary prose and straightforward family story managing to capture both the esoteric scholar and the feel-good airport reader. There is no way to discuss the online rom-com lit scene without mentioning Yulin Kuang. The author, screenwriter, and director created the short-lived but wildly beloved CW musical comedy series I Ship It, and has written for Hallmark and Hulu’s Dollface . She’s also set to work on two upcoming Emily Henry projects: adapting and directing the Beach Read film and writing the screenplay for People We Meet On Vacation . So it’s no wonder that Kuang’s debut novel, about a tense writers room and the romance between an author and the head writer of her show, had BookTok readers flocking to hear more. Helen Zhang thought she left every memory of Grant Shepard and the shared accident that changed their lives forever behind in high school. But when the dream of turning her hit YA novel into a television series finally comes true, it comes with a catch: Shepard has accepted the job as a writer. In a classic enemies-to-lovers romp with a veritable ocean of emotional depth, Kuang’s debut novel has been a divisive read, especially for those who enjoy less stressful scenarios on the road to love. But for those interested in spice and character growth, life jumps out on every page. Calling Liz Moore’s runaway summer hit a BookTok classic is an understatement. The bestselling author had dominated book lists all year. (There’s a reason why the wait time at most libraries extends into weeks.) But even TikTok’s book community recognized the stirring power of Moore’ most recent offering. The book takes place at the Adirondacks-set Camp Emerson during the summer of 1975. When Barbara Van Laars, daughter of the camp owners, goes missing, everyone, including the police, is thinking about how Barbara’s brother Bear disappeared almost 15 years earlier. Bear was never found, which makes Barbara’s search party even more desperate to find her. Everyone is a suspect: Barbara’s grieving and comatose mother, her camp counselor Louise who snuck out of the cabin that night to meet her boyfriend, even the camp director who grew up with Barbara. Part thriller, part class critique, God of the Woods masterfully turns the story of two missing siblings into an exploration of what constitutes a family and what makes a home. The sprawling novel follows a moderately successful artist in the prime of her career. When she gets a meeting that could change everything, she decides to take the time — and break — to drive across the country and get some space from her husband and child. But it only takes roughly half an hour into the trip for her to pull over in a small town and start a laborious yet non-sexual affair with a young man she spots. The book is an open lens into the mind of a woman overwhelmed by the prospect of rest, and contemplating how aging and gender has changed her libido and concept of labor. All Fours is a weighty, meandering read. Feminist author, artist, and filmmaker Miranda July has a deep body of work about empowerment, female labor, and intimacy. To be frank, she didn’t need BookTok. But the young digital community swarmed around All Fours anyway, giving July’s second novel an online reputation to match its critical one. The narrator of Kaliane Bradley’s debut book is a worker drone, a child of refugees who has spent her adulthood in government job after government job. Her recent gig: becoming a “Bridge,” someone who helps expatriates acclimate to their new surroundings. But after she accepts the job, she finds out that the newcomers aren’t from a different country or social system. They’re from the past — and they should be dead. After the government gains the power to time travel, they experiment with people whose lives should have been cut short. The Bridge’s assignment is Commander Graham Gore, a British officer who was assumed to have starved during a 1847 sea expedition to the Arctic. His friends are dead and now he can’t smoke inside and has to see women’s ankles and learn how to use the washing machine. Also people might be trying to kill him. Even with spies, time travel, and a workplace romance, Bradley’s book is a contentious read online. Some people are obsessed. Others can’t stand it. But everyone’s talking about it — and on BookTok, sometimes that’s all that matters. Alexandra Tanner’s debut novel is a digital representation of overthinking, making it the perfect literary fixation for BookTok creators focused on works that synthesize real life. Worry ’s narrator is 28-year-old Jules. When she’s not writing study guides for her job, Jules is addicted to scrolling the Instagrams of mommy bloggers, submerging herself in a world of anti-vax conspiracy theories, Christian baby names, and branded leggings. She also has to worry about her little sister Poppy, who has moved herself and a three-legged rescue dog (named Amy Klobuchar) into Jules’ small apartment. The two must interact in a 2019 Brooklyn, where MFAs are worthless and rent is high. While the book isn’t heavy on plot, its hyperspecific critiques of internet culture make it a wildly enjoyable and humorous read. One of BookTok’s defining series is by author Sarah J Maas , and it has spawned an entire genre push in the publishing industry called Romantasy. While the hype started with A Court of Thorns and Roses , the first book in her series, the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, has remained the fan favorite. The series follows a young human girl named Feyre falling in love with an immortal Fae lord. But while the first book leans into a dark retelling of the classic tale of Beauty and Beast , the sequel takes an abrupt twist, showing Feyre falling in love with an entirely different Fae Lord. It’s darker, sexier, and the book you’ll probably see people recommend the most on a random for-you-page. What if your school was built to kill you and your joints were already weak as it is? Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing takes a hard school year to the next level, throwing readers headfirst into the sweat-drenched life of Violet Sorrengail. After joining the nation’s war college to become a legendary dragon rider, Violet must keep herself alive and keep away from Xaden Riorson, the brutal wingleader. She has to remind herself that his parents were traitors, his friends are dangerous, and he’d kill her if he got the chance. It doesn’t matter that his eyes are dreamy. Or his abs are rock hard. Or he keeps looking at her. This book has everything: danger, war, dragon bonding, and enough wild sex in castle walls to keep even the neediest BookTok romantasy nerd fed for days — or however long it takes them to get through 500 pages. “And they were roommates” doesn’t begin to describe the wacky housing circumstances that Emily Henry’s Funny Story throws readers into headfirst. Daphne loves her relationship with her fiancé Peter, so much so that after accepting he’s proposal, she agrees to move to his hometown. Sure, they’re in a partnership, but she lives in his house, she hangs out with his friends, and she’s basically taken on his life. So when Peter realizes that he’s actually in love with his best friend Petra, Daphne is shocked to find herself stuck in a town she never wanted to be in in the first place. She needs a place to live. And it just so happens that the only available room in Waning Bay, Michigan happens to belong to Petra’s ex: Miles. Trying to get back at their exes, the two end up fake dating. But in the process, they learn about what they really want out of life, and what it means to choose yourself and still find love in the process. Some people just need an author to match their freak. And in Brynne Weaver’s case, whatever BookTok asks for, she delivers. The author’s most internet-famous work, Butcher and Blackbird gives readers an up close and personal look at Sloane and Rowan’s love story. After meeting at work, the two plan an annual scavenger hunt competition that takes them across the country and eventually into each other’s arms. Oh, and did I mention that they’re both notorious, psychopathic serial killers? So that work isn’t data entry. It’s finding people to string up and murder in increasingly deranged ways. And then they kiss. The first entry in Weaver’s Ruinous Love series, this book is so NSFW that some BookTok creators market it by posting its trigger warnings. But don’t yuck people’s yum. According to Deadline , Weaver has sold over 1 million copies of her books in over 18 countries and the book is already being adapted into a feature film. Before there was a Seattle hockey team asking people to please stop sexualizing their players during games, there was a hockey-themed wave on BookTok. It combined tropes and the romance genre all in one place and made every book that even featured hockey players popular. But at the heart of the trend was this fan favorite — and aggressively sexy — college novel by Hannah Grace. Icebreaker tracks aspiring Team USA figure skater Anastasia Allen as she tries to train for an upcoming championship. But after a snafu on the ice threatens to derail her career, hockey team captain Nate Hawkins steps in, and the two realize that there might be some steamier desires beyond their constant bickering. Don’t let the cartoon cover fool you — this book is full of sex. But Grace hasn’t shied away from the fact that the juxtaposing cover and content might mean younger people are reading. “I know people who are under 18 are reading my books and I can’t do anything about it,” Grace told The New York Times . “They’re going to consume content that is explicit. But I think there’s a better way to write it and portray it than has been given to other generations.” BookTok isn’t all romance and intrigue. Sometimes, the community’s favorite thing is a good old-fashioned cry. And Hanya Yanagihara’s most famous work has remained a staple on the app for its sheer consistency in leaving readers physically and emotionally devastated. The book introduces readers to four friends with aspiring careers. Jude St. Francis, Willem Ragnarsson, Malcolm Irvine, and Jean-Baptiste “JB” Marion. But through flashbacks and shifting perspective, the 700-page tome reveals an agonizing pattern of trauma, abuse, addiction, sexual violence, and suicide for its main characters. Happy endings do not exist in this book, but they’re teased just enough to leave even the toughest reader wrung dry. While BookTok has a habit of allowing the most general, crowd pleasing options to rise to the top, sometimes the community’s popularity lands firmly on a deserving book. Such is the case with The Secret History , the famed 1992 novel from Donna Tartt . A secretive group of New England liberal arts students accept a newcomer into their ranks: transfer student Richard Papen. But as the group dives further into their studies, Richard reveals a terrible secret holding his friends hostage. By coming up with an even darker solution, the group is thrust into dark schemes of chaos and murder — ruining themselves and their lives in the process. Since The Secret History — a bestseller since its publication — rose to popularity once again in 2020, it directly inspired a resurgence of the internet aesthetic “dark academia.” The best way to describe this BookTok darling is a drug-fueled sleep haze. The main character doesn’t even have a name, but readers get an immediate view that she’s rich, bored, and extremely tired. Rather than address any of her problems, the narrator convinces a sketchy psychiatrist to prescribe her a cocktail of pills that renders her increasingly comatose. She begins taking harder pills at an excess, leaving waking hours for walks and adventures that she can’t remember. At the heart of the story is a woman convinced she could be better if only she could sleep through an entire year. Like most of Ottessa Moshfegh ’s books, My Year of Rest and Relaxation has little actual plot. But the book has become a go-to pick for BookTok creators who want to distinguish themselves from the romance crowd. The Secret History walked so this dark, magical murder grad-school novel could run. Previously known for her steadfast work in the Harry Potter fanfiction community, Olivie Blake’s Atlas Six series went from a self-published novel to a New York Times bestseller because of BookTok. The series takes place at the Alexandrian Society, a secret group that admits an annual class of magicians and gives them access to some of the biggest secrets in the known and unknown universe. The catch? They only have a year before their mysterious initiation ritual. No one knows what it is, but someone has to die for the rest of the group to pass. This book leans heavily on the prose and world-building, but its rags-to-riches story has continued to make it a BookTok favorite. This debut fantasy novel by author R.F Kuang isn’t just another example of a strong female protagonist. The Poppy War is a military epic that charts orphan Rin’s journey from poor waif to student at the highly prestigious military academy Sinegard. There, she trains her body andher mind, eventually becoming a student of shamanism and learning how to speak to the gods. But when war breaks out, Rin finds herself not in tight ranks on the front line, but part of an assassin-heavy special forces group — one where all of her fellow soldiers are also shamans. It’s a coming-of-age story set in the midst of bloodshed, trauma, and addiction, but the worldbuilding makes it one of the go-to entry points for readers trying to dive into the fantasy space headfirst. What if Jack Kerouac’s On The Road was about two lesbians from Philadelphia? After graduating college, Bernie moves into a large shared home in Philly, where she tries and fails to fully join her housemates’ world. But when her former mentor and photography professor Daniel Dunn — who had his career ruined by a sexual harassment scandal — dies and bequeaths Bernie his run-down home, she and her roommate Leah decide to turn their road trip to her inheritance into an exploration of midwest. While Emma Copley Eisenberg’s Housemates has the quintessential meandering necessary for a road trip novel, it takes a major turn by allowing its queer, liberal main characters to address their own complicated feelings about art, love, and wealth in the middle of a giant, state-wide art project. Housemates has been a staple on the app since its May 2024 release — and has been dubbed by dozens of creators as the queer book of the summer.
Former Boise State coach Chris Petersen still gets asked about the Fiesta Bowl victory over Oklahoma on the first day of 2007. That game had everything. Underdog Boise State took a 28-10 lead over one of college football's blue bloods that was followed by a 25-point Sooners run capped by what could have been a back-breaking interception return for a touchdown with 1:02 left. Then the Broncos used three trick plays that remain to not only force overtime but win 43-42. And then there was the by Boise State running back Ian Johnson — shortly after scoring the winning two-point play — to cheerleader Chrissy Popadics that was accepted on national TV. That game put Broncos football on the national map for most fans, but looking back 18 years later, Petersen sees it differently. “Everybody wants to talk about that Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl game, which is great how it all worked out and all those things,” Petersen said. “But we go back to play TCU (three years later) again on the big stage. It's not as flashy a game, but to me, that was an even better win.” Going back to the Fiesta Bowl and winning, Petersen reasoned, showed the Broncos weren't a splash soon to fade away, that there was something longer lasting and more substantive happening on the famed blue turf. The winning has continued with few interruptions. No. 8 and third-seeded Boise State is preparing for another trip to the Fiesta Bowl, this time in a playoff quarterfinal against No. 5 and sixth-seeded Penn State on New Year's Eve. That success has continued through a series of coaches, though with a lot more of a common thread than readily apparent. Dirk Koetter was hired from Oregon, where Petersen was the wide receivers coach. Not only did Koetter bring Petersen with him to Oregon, Petersen introduced him to Dan Hawkins, who also was hired for the staff. So the transition from Koetter to Hawkins to Petersen ensured at least some level of consistency. Koetter and Hawkins engineered double-digit victory seasons five times over a six-year span that led to power-conference jobs. Koetter went to Arizona State after three seasons and Hawkins to Colorado after five. Then when Petersen became the coach after the 2005 season, he led Boise State to double-digit wins his first seven seasons and made bowls all eight years. He resisted the temptation to leave for a power-conference program until Washington lured him away toward the end of the 2013 season. Then former Boise State quarterback and offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin took over and posted five double-digit victory seasons over his first six years. After going 5-2 during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, he left for Auburn. “They just needed consistency of leadership,” said Koetter, who is back as Boise State's offensive coordinator. “This program had always won at the junior-college level, the Division II level, the I-AA (now FCS) level.” But Koetter referred to “an unfortunate chain of events” that made Boise State a reclamation project when he took over in 1998. Coach Pokey Allen led Boise State to the Division I-AA national championship game in 1994, but was diagnosed with cancer two days later. He died on Dec. 30, 1996, at 53. Allen coached the final two games that season, Boise State's first in Division I-A (now FBS). Houston Nutt became the coach in 1997, went 4-7 and headed to Arkansas. Then Koetter took over. “One coach dies and the other wasn't the right fit for this program,” Koetter said. “Was a really good coach, did a lot of good things, but just wasn't a good fit for here.” But because of Boise State's success at the lower levels, Koetter said the program was set up for success. “As Boise State has risen up the conference food chain, they’ve pretty much always been at the top from a player talent standpoint,” Koetter said. “So it was fairly clear if we got things headed in the right direction and did a good job recruiting, we would be able to win within our conference for sure.” Success didn't take long. He went 6-5 in 1998 and then won 10 games each of the following two seasons. Hawkins built on that winning and Petersen took it to another level. But there is one season, really one game, no really one half that still bugs Petersen. He thought his best team was in 2010, one that entered that ranked No. 3 and had a legitimate chance to play for the national championship. The Colin Kaepernick-led Wolf Pack won 34-31. “I think the best team that I might've been a part of as the head coach was the team that lost one game to Nevada,” Petersen said. "That team, to me, played one poor half of football on offense the entire season. We were winning by a bunch at half (24-7) and we came out and did nothing on offense in the second half and still had a chance to win. “That team would've done some damage.” There aren't any what-ifs with this season's Boise State team. The Broncos are in the field of the first 12-team playoff, representing the Group of Five as its highest-ranked conference champion. That got Boise State a bye into the quarterfinals. Spencer Danielson has restored the championship-level play after taking over as the interim coach late last season during a rare downturn that led to . Danielson after leading Boise State . Now the Broncos are 12-1 with their only defeat to top-ranked and No. 1 seed . Running back Ashton Jeanty also was the . “Boise State has been built on the backs of years and years of success way before I got here,” Danielson said. "So even this season is not because of me. It’s because the group of young men wanted to leave a legacy, be different. We haven’t been to the Fiesta Bowl in a decade. They said in January, ‘We’re going to get that done.’ They went to work.” As was the case with Danielson, Petersen and Koetter said attracting top talent is the primary reason Boise State has succeeded all these years. Winning, obviously, is the driving force, and with more entry points to the playoffs, the Broncos could make opportunities to keep returning to the postseason a selling point. But there's also something about the blue carpet. Petersen said he didn't get what it was about when he arrived as an assistant coach, and there was some talk about replacing it with more conventional green grass. A poll in the Idaho Statesman was completely against that idea, and Petersen has come to appreciate what that field means to the program. “It's a cumulative period of time where young kids see big-time games when they're in seventh and eighth and ninth and 10th grade and go, ‘Oh, I know that blue turf. I want to go there,’” Petersen said. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up . AP college football: and Mark Anderson, The Associated Press
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