Whether you’ve been in the workforce for a few years or a few decades, odds are you’ve tolerated a toxic boss; 71% of U.S. workers have had at least one such supervisor in their career, a 2023 Harris Poll showed. As with other ruinous relationships, toxic bosses are difficult to escape and any number of reasons, such as being unable to afford quitting your job, may keep you putting up with them. New research, however, offers an underlying reason for some employees’ willingness to work under an abusive leader.

Do you view your toxic boss as successful? This perspective makes you more likely to label their abuse as “tough love,” according to a study published last year in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Researchers at the Ohio State University Fisher College of Business also found that employees tended to think a high-performing boss could boost their own career—reproachful behavior notwithstanding.

“If someone is a good performer, we almost have this halo effect, or you assume that they have all these other positive traits particularly associated with leadership, which goes directly in the face of an abusive leader,” lead study author Robert Lount, PhD, an Ohio State professor of management and human resources, tells Fortune. “We were trying to reconcile these issues and how that might help understand when abusive behavior might not necessarily be encoded as abusive.”

In one part of the study, Lount and his colleagues surveyed nearly 600 full-time U.S. workers spanning an array of industries and positions, who had worked for their current supervisor for an average of five years. They used a pair of established scales—a 15-point measure of abusive supervision and a four-point measure of leader performance—that asked participants to evaluate statements such as “My boss ridicules me” and “My boss is superior to other bosses that I have worked with before.” Two weeks later, respondents further evaluated supervisors’ abusive or tough-love behaviors, reacting to language such as “I think my boss abuses team members” and “I would describe my boss as stern but caring.” Another two weeks after that, participants answered questions about their career expectations and hostility toward superiors.

While the workers polled projected their supervisors’ perceived success onto their own career ambitions, there’s no evidence those things are actually linked, Lount stresses.

“Just because sometimes people look at [abusive bosses] as tough-love bosses doesn’t suggest that being an abuser is going to be good or beneficial,” Lount says. “There are all sorts of other leader behaviors that are far more developmental and far more valuable than working under an abusive boss, which has been found time and time again to have really negative psychological consequences for employees.”

Such impudent workplace behavior spells trouble for employers, according to Donald Sull, DBA, a professor of the practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also directs the MIT Sloan Management Review’s Culture 500, a database created in partnership with Glassdoor that ranks corporations on cultural values including integrity and respect. 

“People often think that high performance is an excuse for abusive behavior—they confuse disrespectful and bullying behavior for maintaining high standards,” Sull tells Fortune via email. “But it’s possible to set the bar for performance high without berating or bullying people. And to the extent these toxic managerial behaviors drive high performers out of the organization, the abusive behavior undermines performance.”

Sull adds, “The sharpest test of whether a corporate culture truly respects employees is how senior leaders deal with managers who hit their numbers but abuse their teams.”

It’s not you, it’s your boss—especially if they’re a psychopath

A leader’s top priority should be understanding and developing the people they manage—that’s what Bill Becker, PhD, a professor of management at the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business, teaches his MBA students. Yet not enough people in charge are equipped with the emotional and psychological skills to be in high-pressure positions and shepherd subordinates, he tells Fortune.

“Most bosses don’t come to work and say, ‘How can I be the biggest jerk today?’” Becker says, noting that when overwhelm is the probable cause of your supervisor’s unpleasant behavior, there’s opportunity for both of you to grow. “If you can be the bigger person and manage it and actually make things better, they’ll recognize that oftentimes [and] you’ll stand out.”

Anyone can succeed under a great boss, Becker says, but if you can find a way to flourish under a challenging one, you’ll be ahead of the curve. Even so, a fine line separates a thorny supervisor from a psychologically dangerous one.

“If you have a difficult boss, it’s more about them and it’s not about you,” Becker says. “Don’t see their behavior as a reflection of you and your worth and your value.”

It’s also well within the realm of possibility that your abusive boss could be a psychopath. No, that doesn’t mean they’re a serial killer; psychopathy is a common spectrum disorder that, in its most severe form, manifests in 1 in 100 people, according to the nonprofit PsychopathyIs. Adult psychopathic behaviors include frequent bragging, skilful lying, superficial charm, and trouble maintaining relationships.

In a 2021 Fortune commentary, Simon Croom, PhD, a professor of supply chain management at the University of San Diego Knauss School of Business, discussed the prevalence of corporate psychopathy: “My colleagues and I found in our research that 12% of corporate senior leadership displays a range of psychopathic traits, which means psychopathy is up to 12 times more common among senior management than among the general population.” 

Unrecognized psychopathy in senior management, Croom wrote, could have disastrous financial and ethical consequences for businesses, employees, and customers—not to mention society at large.

“It’s just their modus operandi to manipulate people and abuse people, and do whatever it takes to gain power over them or get them to do what they think needs to be done,” Becker tells Fortune. If that sounds like your boss, “there’s just no changing a psychopath, there’s no managing a psychopath. All you can do is insulate yourself as best as possible, and that might be the time when you really want to look to at least move out from underneath that leadership.”

How do I recognize workplace abuse?

Abuse takes many forms and can morph across employment environments. It’s also subjective.

“People bandy about terms like ‘toxic’ and ‘abusive’ to cover a lot of behavior that they don’t like,” Sull says. “What one person might view as abusive, another might see as candid.”

Sull’s own research, based on more than a million Glassdoor reviews, suggests egregious behavior such as outright harassment is rare. Nevertheless, a supervisor’s abuse doesn’t have to be overt to evoke negative reactions in employees, he says.

“Managers who are disrespectful, noninclusive, or undermine others qualify as toxic even if they don’t exhibit the extremes of abusive behavior,” Sull says.

The antibullying advocacy group End Workplace Abuse breaks up such mistreatment into verbal abuse, sabotage, and mobbing. The following are just a few of the organization’s examples of each:

• Verbal abuse
  • Blaming or guilt
  • Discounting and minimizing
  • Excessively harsh criticism or reprimands
  • Jumping to conclusions about what you think
  • Unwillingness to engage in a dialogue
• Sabotage
  • Blocking requests for training, leave, or promotion
  • Exclusion from meetings, social events, and conversations you should be involved with
  • Micromanaging
  • Vague unsatisfactory work performance reviews or accusations without factual backup
• Mobbing
  • An escalation of bullying that happens when you report abusive behavior, only to discover higher-ups are prioritizing avoiding liability over your well-being
  • Your employer doesn’t remove the bully or change your work environment

What can I do if I have a toxic boss?

If you have the means to do so, leaving your job is the best way to free yourself from an abusive supervisor, according to Ben Tepper, PhD, coauthor of the study and professor of management and human resources at Ohio State. If you can’t, notify HR as soon as possible so they can begin to ameliorate the situation on their end while you get to work on coping strategies, he tells Fortune. This includes documenting negative interactions with your boss. In addition, behave like a formidable opponent, so to speak.

“People who engage in abusive boss behavior, they pick their targets very strategically. They don’t do it to everybody,” Tepper says. “They go after people who come across as weak and vulnerable, and so it’s in the interest of the individual who has been targeted to present themselves as a bad target. And you do that by being good at your job, by being confident, by activating your social network—surrounding yourself with other individuals who are competent and capable.”

Tepper also recommends reading a pair of books by Robert Sutton, PhD, a professor emeritus of management science and engineering at Stanford University: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t and its successor, The Asshole Survival Guide: How to Deal with People Who Treat You Like Dirt. 

Becker advises journaling about abusive incidents with your boss and returning to your entries with a fresh perspective. Once the heat of the moment has passed, you’ll be able to more objectively assess whether you and your supervisor have butted heads here and there or recognize a clear pattern of toxic behavior.

When in doubt, “I’m a big fan of therapy,” Becker says.

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on July 12, 2024.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

X Corp., the social media platform owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, is challenging the constitutionality of a Minnesota ban on using deepfakes to influence elections and harm candidates, saying it violates First Amendment speech protections.

The company's federal lawsuit filed this week also contends that the 2023 state law is preempted by a 1996 federal statute that shields social media from being held responsible for material posted on their platforms.

“While the law's reference to banning ‘deep fakes’ might sound benign, in reality it would criminalize innocuous, election-related speech, including humor, and make social-media platforms criminally liable for censoring such speech," the company said in a statement. “Instead of defending democracy, this law would erode it.”

Minnesota's law imposes criminal penalties — including jail time — for disseminating a deepfake video, image or audio if a person knows it's fake, or acts with reckless disregard to its authenticity, either within 90 days before a party nominating convention, or after the start of early voting in a primary or general election.

It says the intent must be to injure a candidate or influence an election result. And it defines deepfakes as material so realistic that a reasonable person would believe it's real, and generated by artificial intelligence or other technical means.

“Elon Musk funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2024 presidential election and tried to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat," said the law's author, Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade.

"Of course he is upset that Minnesota law prevents him from spreading deepfakes that meant to harm candidates and influence elections. Minnesota’s law is clear and precise, while this lawsuit is petty, misguided and a waste of the Attorney General Office’s time and resources,” her statement said.

Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's office, which is legally obligated to defend the constitutionality of state laws in court, said in a statement that it's “reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in the appropriate time and manner.”

The Minnesota law was already the subject of a constitutional challenge by Christopher Kohls, a content creator, and GOP state Rep. Mary Franson, who likes to post AI-generated parodies of politicians. That case is on hold while they appeal to overturn a judge's denial of their request to suspend the law.

The attorney general's office argues in that case that deepfakes are a real and growing threat to free elections and democratic institutions, that the law is a legitimate and constitutional response to the problem, and that it contains important limitations on its scope that protect satire and parody.

X, formerly known as Twitter, said it's the only social media platform challenging the Minnesota law, and that it has also challenged other laws it considers infringements of free speech, such as a 2024 California political deepfakes law that a judge has blocked.

X said in its statement that its “Community Notes” feature allows users to flag content they consider problematic, and that it's been adopted by Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. The company's lawsuit said its “Authenticity Policy” and “Grok AI” tool provide additional safeguards.

Alan Rozenshtein, a University of Minnesota law professor and expert on technology law, said in an interview Friday that it's important to separate the free-speech issues from whatever one thinks about the controversial Musk.

“I'm almost positive that this will be struck down,” Rozenshtein said.

There's no exception under the First Amendment for false or misleading political speech, even lies, he said. And the potential for criminal penalties gives social media companies like X and Facebook “an incentive to take down anything that might be a deepfake. ... You're going to censor a massive amount to comply with this law.”

Deepfakes aren't good, but it would be nice to get evidence that they're causing actual problems before imposing such limits on free speech, the professor said. And while it's easy to focus on the supply of misinformation, the large demand for it is the problem.

“People want to be fooled, and it's very bad for our democracy, but it’s not something I think can be solved with a deepfakes ban," he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Stock markets rose for the fourth consecutive day as tech companies saw gains and investors interpreted President Donald Trump's Friday comments on tariff negotiations.

Stock markets rose slightly Friday on the back of gains in tech stocks like Alphabet and Nvidia as well as conflicting messages from President Donald Trump on tariffs. The S&P 500 was up 0.75%, the Dow Jones was flat, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 1.25%.

Alphabet, the parent company of the search giant Google, beat analysts’ predictions for its first quarter and grew its topline year-over-year in Q1 by 12% to $90.2 billion. From market close Thursday to Friday afternoon, its stock rose 1.5%. AI chip manufacturer Nvidia saw an even bigger jump of 4.3% after an executive said Thursday that the tech giant hasn’t seen a pullback in demand for its chips.

Meanwhile, in a wide-ranging interview with Time published on Friday, Trump promised potential relief to investors when he said he’s made “200 deals” on tariffs. He declined to say which countries and promised that initial negotiations would end in three to four weeks.

Conversely, in what could be a bearish signal for global markets, he stated that he would consider it “total victory” if tariffs on foreign imports were anywhere between 20% and 50% in one year.

The small Friday surge in the stock market follows three days of positive jumps as markets look to regain their losses after Trump’s “Liberation Day.” On April 2, the president unveiled a base 10% tax on all countries' exports and targeted China through a crescendo of tariffs, which culminated in a 145% tax on Chinese exports. Trump’s tariff plan prompted markets to tank amid investor fears of an all-out trade war.

Xi Jinping, the president of China, retaliated against the U.S. with reciprocal tariffs, and Trump has since broadcast that taxes against the People’s Republic will “come down substantially.” In his interview with Time, Trump said that he’s been in touch with Jinping. Chinese officials, however, have repeatedly denied that they’ve been in negotiations with the Trump administration and have recently exempted some U.S. imports from its own retaliatory tariffs.

Markets have also closely tracked Trump’s comments on the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank. The president has repeatedly criticized Jerome Powell, the Chair of the Fed, for not cutting interest rates quickly enough. Trump’s criticisms reached a boiling point when he suggested last week that he had considered firing Powell, undercutting the Fed’s longstanding independence from the executive branch. The 47th president has since walked back his rhetoric and said he had “no intention” of firing the Fed chair.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Three teenagers in New York designed a cardboard, called Kiriboard, to replace plastic packaging.
• They got the idea when a box of motors for their robotics hobby arrived damaged.
• Their invention won the $12,500 Earth Prize. Now they plan to buy a machine to make more Kiriboards.

Three teenage boys in New York City have invented a clever packaging material that they hope will replace toxic plastics and make plastic-free shipping a reality.

Zhi Han (Anthony) Yao, Flint Mueller, and James Clare are planning to pursue a patent and eventually pitch their product to Home Depot, as well as traditional shippers like Amazon, FedEx, and the US Postal Service.

They call their geometric, cardboard invention Kiriboard, since it's inspired by Japanese kirigami, which is the art of cutting and folding paper.

"Something like this is the wave of the future," Jerry Citron, the teenagers' environmental-science teacher, told Business Insider.

Yao, Mueller, and Clare won the Earth Prize on April 8, making them one of seven winning environmental projects by teenagers across the globe. The award comes with $12,500, which they plan to use to buy a cutting machine, called a CNC router, and test more prototypes.

Plastic-free shipping could change the world

Just like any plastic, Styrofoam and other plastic packaging can shed microscopic bits of plastic into homes and the environment.

Microplastics have been detected from the oceans to the top of Mount Everest, in animals' and humans' body tissues and blood, and even in rain all over the planet. They're associated with heart attack and stroke risk. Some researchers suspect they could even be contributing to the recent rise in colon cancers in young people.

"I didn't realize it was as big of an issue as it was," Yao told BI. "I mean, companies have made sustainable initiatives and greener initiatives, but they haven't really fully replaced plastic packaging."

Enter the Kiriboard: Kiriboard is cut into lattice-like shapes so that it can bend to fill the space between an item and the wall of its box. The cuts give the cardboard a three-dimensional structure that makes it sturdy and allows it to bend and absorb impact, protecting what's inside, similar to bubble wrap but without the plastic.

Once perfected, the three teens hope their design can help ship packages of sensitive or heavy equipment even more securely, at a competitive price.

Broken motors and crumple zones

Clare, Mueller, and Yao are all on the same robotics team at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Clare is a junior, and Mueller and Yao are seniors.

The idea for Kiriboard started when they opened a shipment of Kraken X60 motors, which are about $200 a pop. They found that the brass pins, which connect the motors to a robot, were damaged and unusable. They assumed the pins had been damaged in transit.

"We're like, well, we should do something about this packaging, because clearly the packaging wasn't good enough," Mueller said.

Clare thought about how cars are engineered with crumple zones, meant to absorb the energy of impacts to protect the people inside.

Similarly, he said, "you can make strategic weak points in your packaging so that the package warps and deforms," sparing the package's contents.

With help from the Earth Prize program and Citron, they built and tested their first Kiriboard prototypes.

The matrix

It was a scrappy effort, with cardboard scavenged from their school.

After some research and consulting various teachers, Yao said they drew up eight or nine different designs, and narrowed down to four to build and test. Then, came the fun part: dropping heavy stuff on their creations.

To test their prototypes' durability, the teens slammed them with a roll of tape, a stapler, a can of soda, and a metal water bottle — "which did the most damage, but not as much as we thought it would," Clare said.

They dropped each item onto the Kiriboard prototypes from various heights, so that they could calculate and study the physical forces of each impact.

"Basically, we want to see what's the most amount of force it can take before it snaps," Yao said.

The results were promising, the trio said. The Kiriboard prototypes sustained very little damage, which they judged by checking the cardboard for dents. They plan to move forward with all four designs, which they hope will be useful for different types of shipping.

In the design pictured above, four triangular "legs" hold the Kiriboard in place inside a box.

"This middle section, we call it the matrix. This is supposed to be flexible," Yao said. Once you place an item for shipping inside the box, the matrix "is supposed to form to the product."

Once they've purchased a CNC router to automate cutting the cardboard, they plan to test prototypes by actually shipping them in boxes.

"Right now, we want to perfect our product," Yao said.

When it's ready, they said they might also pitch it to the electronics company AndyMark, which shipped them the robotic motors that arrived broken.

"No shade to them," Clare said, adding that their robotics team frequently orders from AndyMark with no problems.

"We're on the brink of, like, this could become a reality, and it's just up to us to put in that final effort," Mueller said. Clare chimed in: "All from a broken package."

• Kim Kardashian has been to 11 Met Galas in her career.
• The Skims founder has gotten bolder with her looks for the ball over the years.
• Her 2022 Marilyn Monroe look was her most iconic Met Gala look to date.

The first Monday in May is quickly approaching, which means one thing to fashion fans: it's time for the 2025 Met Gala.

The annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will take place on May 5, and stars will arrive in their interpretations of the event's "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" theme.

One of the most exciting aspects of the gala is seeing how repeat attendees keep improving their looks for the event year after year. Few stars have as interesting a track record with their Met Gala red carpet looks as Kim Kardashian.

From a floral gown at her first ball to her controversial ode to Marilyn Monroe, take a look at Kardashian's Met Gala looks ranked from least to most iconic.

Kardashian's blue evening gown for the 2014 Met Gala was lackluster compared to her other looks.

After being turned into a couch meme at her very first Met Gala the year prior (more on that in a second), Kardashian chose to play it safe for the 2014 theme, "Charles James: Beyond Fashion." 

Alber Elbaz designed her custom Lanvin gown, which featured a black satin belt and a thigh-high slit. 

The gown was undoubtedly pretty and would've looked great for a movie premiere or awards show, but it was nothing special for a night that encourages celebrities to push the envelope.

Kardashian's ensemble was actually supposed to look completely different. She revealed on her now-inactive website that the gown was originally made of "this amazing leather with metallic detailing." Her design team only decided to redo it in blue satin at the last minute.  

Kardashian still planned to pair her new gown with a chunky belt and leather cuffs, but she ditched them before walking the red carpet because, according to E!, they were "a bit too rock 'n' roll."

As a Met Gala novice, it was clear Kardashian didn't want to rock the boat too much on the carpet. Still, we wish we could've seen the far edgier look she envisioned in 2014.

Kardashian's 2016 Met Gala gown was flashier but still didn't push the envelope.

Kardashian wore a metallic silver Balmain gown with a thigh-high slit for the "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" theme in 2016. 

We loved the fabric of the silver dress, and Kardashian took a bit of a risk with her beauty by bleaching her eyebrows. However, the look didn't stand out among a sea of similar metallic looks. 

Kardashian was also overshadowed by her date, then-husband Kanye West. The rapper made headlines that year for daring to wear denim to the Met Gala. 

When looking back on her Met Gala looks in 2019, Kardashian revealed that she felt insecure ahead of the event because she hadn't "lost all of my baby weight" after giving birth to her son Saint in December 2015, which is likely why she stuck to her usual silhouette.

Kardashian wore another metallic gown to the 2018 Met Gala.

The "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination" Met Gala will likely go down as one of the boldest in the event's history. Stars like Rihanna, Ariana Grande, and Blake Lively delivered stunning looks referencing everything from the Pope to the Sistine Chapel. 

Because of all the eye-catching looks, Kardashian didn't make waves with her custom gold Versace dress, although the number did nab her a few spots on best-dressed lists. 

Kardashian personally designed the chain-mail gown with Donatella Versace, and we loved the dark eye makeup and high pony she paired it with.

While the reality TV star hadn't yet mastered how to steal the show at the Met Gala, her style was definitely becoming a little bolder.

The star's simple Vivienne Westwood dress at the 2017 Met Gala shocked fans and critics alike, for all the right reasons.

At first glance, Kardashian's off-the-shoulder white dress for the "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between" theme might seem even simpler than the gowns we've already discussed. 

But the chic and beachy outfit, which Kardashian paired with sandals and minimal makeup, felt like a statement from the reality TV star. On a night when everyone would dial it up and go avant-garde, Kardashian decided to do something completely different — and it worked. One headline praised Kardashian's "seriously toned down" look.

"I figured everyone was going to go really over the top, and I just wanted to be really simple," Kardashian, who attended the event without West for the first time, told Vogue on the red carpet.

The 2017 Met Gala also happened just a few months after Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris, and $11 million in jewels were stolen from her hotel room. The simple Vivienne Westwood dress and her lack of accessories felt like a statement from Kardashian, who later discussed the trauma she experienced from the robbery.

Kardashian brought major drama and glamour to the 2015 Met Gala.

Designed by Peter Dundas, the dress was covered with strategically placed crystals and featured a long train of white feathers. Kardashian revealed on Instagram that her inspiration had been Cher's iconic 1974 Met Gala outfit.

Other naked dresses were popular on the red carpet that year. Stars like Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez won praise for their sheer numbers, and Rihanna had the most standout look of the night by upstaging everyone with her custom Guo Pei gown — now one of the most iconic Met Gala looks of all time. 

But Kardashian's gown was bold, stunning, and told a story. It was the first inkling of her realizing she could become a force on the Met Gala red carpet.

Kardashian's gown for the 2014 Met Gala would have fit the "Garden of Time" dress code perfectly if she hadn't added a shrug to it.

Kardashian wore a custom John Galliano dress to the "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" gala, which had a "Garden of Time" dress code.

Kardashian's look leaned into the garden aspect of the dress code, though it clearly had a through-line to her previous Met Gala looks as well.

Like dresses she wore in previous years, the gown was metallic and featured a dramatic, waist-cinching corset. Floral detailing adorned the strapless bodice, while the floor-length skirt was made of interlocking, floral appliqué that showed peeks of Kardashian's legs. Her blond hair added to the edgy feel of the look.

The gown was well suited to the theme, but the gray shrug Kardashian wore atop looked disjointed with the rest of the look. The outfit would have been stronger if Kardashian had let the dress speak for itself.

Kardashian nodded to the early days of fame at the 2023 Met Gala.

Kardashian arrived at the "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" Met Gala in a Schiaparelli gown made almost entirely of pearl strands.

The strings of pearls created a halter-style bodice and barely-there skirt, which sat atop taupe shapewear.

Lagerfeld often gravitated toward pearls in his designs, making the ensemble an apt choice for the ball. However, the look also referenced Kardashian's 2007 Playboy shoot, for which she posed only wearing pearls, so it made even more of a statement.

Kris Jenner said her now meme-ified comment, "You're doing amazing, sweetie," to Kardashian during the shoot, as captured on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians."

Kardashian also celebrated her Skims empire with the shapewear she wore under the pearls, using the Met Gala as a platform for her own success. The company was worth $3.2 billion as of 2022.

Kardashian made a statement about her fame at the 2021 gala.

Kardashian arrived in the most jaw-dropping look of the night at the 2021 Met Gala with the theme, "In America: A Lexicon of Fashion." Her Balenciaga bodysuit and oversized T-shirt dress covered her from head to toe, including a face-covering mask and gloves.

She was only visible in silhouette, with her ponytail and a train flowing behind her as she walked the Met Gala carpet.

It was an instant meme because of its avant-garde nature. Still, Balenciaga's creative director, Demna Gvasalia, later explained that the outfit was designed to highlight how iconic Kardashian's body had become in pop culture. 

"People would know instantly it was Kim because of her silhouette. They wouldn't even need to see her face, you know?" Gvasalia told Vogue at the time. "And I think that the whole power of her celebrity, that people wouldn't need to see her face to know it's her."

The form-fitting dress Kardashian chose for the 2019 Met Gala looms large because of the controversial efforts she took to wear it.

Kardashian arrived at the "Camp: Notes on Fashion" gala in a Thierry Mugler gown that hugged her figure and was adorned with crystals. The dress appeared sheer, as it matched her skin tone.

After the gala, Kardashian revealed she went to extreme lengths to wear the skin-tight dress, including taking corset lessons to breathe in it.

She also couldn't go to the bathroom in the dress, and in a clip from "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," she said she was willing to urinate on herself in the gown if there was an emergency. 

The dress was pretty, but Kardashian's drastic measures made the dress so memorable.

Kardashian's floral gown for her first Met Gala in 2013 was one of her most memorable outfits, even though it was criticized then.

Kardashian made her Met Gala debut in 2013 when she was expecting her first child, North West. 

The gala's theme was "Punk: Chaos to Couture," and Kardashian wore a long-sleeve, floral Riccardo Tisci dress. It had a high neckline, which contrasted with its daring, thigh-high slit. Matching, open-toe shoes completed the look.

Kardashian told Vogue in 2019 that Tisci wanted the floral pattern to symbolize sending a pregnant woman flowers, which she said was "such a sweet message." Tisci also told Kardashian that Anna Wintour wanted her to wear the floral dress, so she did.

Social media users immediately took to Twitter to criticize the look after Kardashian walked the red carpet. Many compared the dress to a couch, to the star's dismay.

"I was crying, like, the whole way home because I just couldn't believe it," Kardashian said in the same interview with Vogue.

Looking back at the dress, Kim has a different perspective. "Now I love it," she told the magazine. "Now it's, like, sick."

Although it wasn't for the reasons she wanted, Kardashian was the talk of the event from her very first Met Gala, which was even more impressive considering she was attending as Kanye West's date.

Of course, Kardashian's most iconic Met Gala look was her 2022 dress that originally belonged to Marilyn Monroe.

Kardashian made headlines when she arrived at the 2022 "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" Met Gala in the dress Marilyn Monroe wore to sing "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy in 1962.

The sheer Jean Louis dress was embellished from head to toe, and Kardashian dyed her hair platinum blond to fully recreate Monroe's look.

"In a sense, it's the original naked dress. That's why it was so shocking," Kardashian told Vogue of the gown.

She borrowed the dress from Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum in Orlando, which acquired it for $4.81 million in 2016, according to a Ripley's press release. Kardashian wore the gown on the red carpet, but she changed into a replica immediately after because it was so fragile. 

Kardashian once again took extreme measures to fit into Monroe's dress. She said she lost 16 pounds in three weeks so she could wear it. 

The conversation around the dress continued for weeks after the Met Gala, as people accused Kardashian of damaging the gown when she wore it.

In June 2022, Ripley's and Kardashian sent Business Insider a joint statement saying she "did not, in any way, damage the garment in the short amount of time it was worn at the Met Gala." 

Kardashian solidified her status as the Met Gala it-girl with her Marilyn Monroe look, which was truly a once-in-a-lifetime fashion moment.

• Microsoft is trying to simplify AI sales, according to slides from an internal presentation.
• The current approach slowed sales, confused customers, and affected cost and quality, insiders say.
• Microsoft plans to slash the number of "solution areas."

Microsoft is trying to simplify its many AI offerings by streamlining how the products are pitched to customers, according to internal slides from a recent presentation.

The software giant has a bunch of different AI tools called Copilot. There's Copilot for its Teams chat app, Copilot for its PowerPoint presentation tool, Copilot for its Outlook email service — just to name a few.

These products are often split into different "solution areas," as Microsoft calls them. Having Copilot tools in many different buckets can slow down sales, confuse customers, and affect cost and quality of the tools, people in the organization told Business Insider. They asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

Microsoft has sales teams focused on each solution area, which will now be consolidated.

Microsoft Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff this week unveiled plans for addressing these issues in the company's upcoming fiscal year, which begins in July. BI obtained copies of slides from his presentation.

According to one of the slides, three major changes include:

• Consolidate Microsoft's solution areas.
• Accelerate regional skills at scale.
• Align teams working with small, medium, and corporate customers with those working with outside channel partners who market and sell Microsoft products.

The organization currently has six solutions areas: Modern work, Business Applications, Digital & App Innovation, Data & AI, Azure Infrastructure, and Security.

Beginning in July, these areas will be combined into three: AI Business Solutions, Cloud & AI Platforms, and Security.

AI Business Solutions will include tools such as Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot for Teams, Copilot for Outlook, plus a data visualization product called Power BI, according to a person who attended a Thursday all-hands for Althoff's organization. This person asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

"We are evolving the commercial solution areas within our sales organization to better reflect the era of AI and support the growth of our customers and partners," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "This evolution reflects the shift in how customers and partners are buying and will better serve their needs."

The other changes include expanding training for salespeople and a reorganization to Small, Medium Enterprise & Channel (SME&C) team, which was announced internally earlier this year.

The changes come as Microsoft is trying to figured out how to make money from its significant AI investments. It has mulled changes including new software bundles with Copilot. The company earlier this year said it plans to spend $80 billion on expanding its network of AI data centers.

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• Rihanna has been to 10 Met Galas throughout her career.
• She has become one of the most iconic stars at the annual event thanks to her jaw-dropping looks.
• Rihanna last attended the gala in 2023 in a custom Valentino gown with a coat made of flowers.

Met Gala season is upon us.

Fashion's biggest night will take place on May 5 this year. A-list stars will flock to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in eye-catching, themed ensembles, raising money for the museum's Costume Institute.

For 2025, the gala's theme is "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," celebrating dandyism and menswear. It's not confirmed who Anna Wintour invited to the event this year, though arguably, no star's attendance is as hotly anticipated as Rihanna's, as she always splashes on the Met Gala red carpet.

Rihanna skipped the 2024 event, but her fans and fashion enthusiasts hope the Fenty Beauty mogul and singer will return to the Met Gala red carpet this year, especially since her partner A$AP Rocky is a cochair.

Take a look back at the looks Rihanna wore to the 10 Met Galas she has attended so far.

Rihanna debuted at the Met Gala in 2007 wearing a simple but pretty Georges Chakra gown.

The white gown had a halter neckline with silver embellishments on the bodice.

She paired the dress with black mesh gloves and a red rose to fit the "Poiret: King of Fashion" theme.

It was an understated look compared to other outfits Rihanna wore to the Met Gala in the years to come.

In May 2009, she wore a bold suit designed by Dolce & Gabbana.

The suit included a jacket with puffy sleeves, a bow tie, and ankle-length pants. She paired it with black gloves and black pumps.

The jacket's dramatic, oversize shoulder pads fit the event's "The Model as Muse" theme. Rihanna's edgy pixie cut completed the chic look.

For May 2011's "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" theme, Rihanna wore a sparkly, lacy gown.

The semi-sheer dress designed by Stella McCartney had a scalloped, one-shoulder neckline and a slit on the skirt, showing off her criss-cross pumps.

The gown was eye-catching, but Rihanna's long, bright-red side-braid gave the look a pop of color.

Rihanna's Tom Ford gown for the 2012 Met Gala featured scaled detailing.

The form-fitting gown Rihanna wore to the "Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations" gala had long sleeves, a boat neckline, and flowed to the floor.

It hugged Rihanna's figure, and the gown's texturing caught the light as she walked the red carpet.

The singer returned to the 2014 "Charles James: Beyond Fashion" gala in a Stella McCartney set.

Rihanna's two-piece featured a long-sleeve crop top with pointed sleeves and a high-waisted skirt with a side train. She wore a sparkly choker that blended with the neckline of the dress.

The ensemble's backless crop top felt modern and fresh.

For the 2015 gala, Rihanna pulled out all the stops in an extravagant Guo Pei design.

Rihanna solidified her status as a Met Gala legend at the "China: Through the Looking Glass" gala.

Her custom yellow look sat off her shoulders. It featured faux fur sleeves and trim, and intricate detailing adorned the ensemble.

The singer making her way down the red carpet while her long train flowed behind her will always be an iconic Met Gala moment.

In 2017, Rihanna wore her most avant-garde Met Gala look, a dress covered in giant floral embellishments.

The 2018 Met Gala theme was "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between." Rihanna appropriately went with a Comme des Garçons design.

The dress was made entirely of colorful, three-dimensional petals that floated around her. Rihanna paired the look with red heels, lacing her thighs, and pink-toned makeup.

Rihanna didn't disappoint when she co-chaired the Met Gala in 2018, arriving in a Margiela ensemble that seemed to be inspired by the Pope.

Rihanna's jewel-encrusted silver look featured a mini dress, a separate, longer skirt, and a jacket. A large, pointed headpiece and silver jewelry coordinated with the look.

Rihanna made a statement in a couture coatdress as one of the last celebrities to arrive at the 2021 Met Gala.

Demna Gvasalia designed the Fenty founder's custom Balenciaga coatdress. Its collar popped around her shoulders, and the skirt was a subtle mermaid.

Rihanna paired the look with a beanie hat, a diamond necklace, and a stunning crystal headpiece. 

Rihanna arrived at the 2023 Met Gala in a dramatic white gown and coordinating coat.

Rihanna wore a custom Valentino Haute Couture gown to the "Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty" gala.

The gown's form-fitting bodice showed off her baby bump with a rosette in the center, though Rihanna covered it with a hooded, rosette-covered jacket and fingerless gloves when she walked the red carpet. Her dropped-waist skirt flowed into a long train, which trailed behind her on the carpet.

Rihanna completed the look with funky sunglasses that had eyelashes on them.

• Shooting Star in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has been ranked as one of the top golf courses in the US.
• The golf exclusive club requires an invitation and has a long waitlist for membership.
• From the golf course to the clubhouse, here's a look inside the private mountain oasis.

Nestled beneath the Grand Tetons in one of Jackson Hole, Wyoming's most expensive neighborhoods, PGA pros tee up at one of the most celebrated golf courses in the US, ranking no. 1 in Golf Digest's best in Wyoming and earning a spot on the top 100 US courses in 2023 and 2024.

I'm talking about Shooting Star, a members-only club in Teton Village. You have to be invited to join, and a representative of Shooting Star told Business Insider last year that the club had an extensive waitlist.

It's also not cheap. Shooting Star didn't share its current membership price with BI, but when the club opened in 2009, it had 189 members and a $100,000 membership fee.

During a trip to Jackson Hole in September 2024, I got an exclusive club tour, and it felt like a millionaire's playhouse. Take a look inside.

Welcome to the ultra-exclusive Shooting Star of Jackson Hole.

Shooting Star's history dates back to the 1930s when the Resor family created Snake River Ranch, now known as the largest working cattle ranch in Jackson Hole.

Shooting Star owner and operator John Resor transformed a section of the ranch into an exclusive golf course, club, and residential community. It was a $130 million project.

Shooting Star is in Jackson Hole's Teton Village neighborhood.

Roughly 22 miles from Jackson, Shooting Star is sandwiched between Snake River Ranch and Jackson Hole Resort.

The 1,300-acre space has a clubhouse, a golf course and shop, a pool deck, a barn, and residential lodges.

When I toured the property, I thought the clubhouse looked like a luxury ranch. The expansive building overlooked the golf course and a 25-meter lap pool.

The clubhouse opens to a grand foyer with a Western aesthetic.

I spotted nods to the American West when I stepped inside the clubhouse. An animal skull and realistic paintings of cattle at Snake River Ranch decorated the foyer walls.

I also noticed a range of natural textures, from the wood floors and ceiling moldings to the leather seats in front of the large stone fireplace.

Outside, the 18-hole golf course looked like a painting.

I'm no golfer, but it was instantly clear why Golf Digest ranked this a top 100 course in the US.

The 250-acre course looked dynamic, with aspen and evergreen trees dotting hills parted by 50 acres of water hazards, including ponds and streams. It was designed by Tom Fazio, who also designed Donald Trump's golf clubs in Westchester, New York, and Pine Hill, New Jersey.

Fazio also designed multiple courses at the exclusive Vintage Club in Indian Wells, California, where Bill Gates purchased a home for $12.5 million in 1999.

The golf course blended in so seamlessly with its surroundings that I thought it was a naturally occurring landscape, but the land was actually reformed with a design goal of making each hole unique.

According to a Shooting Star brochure, the process included moving 2 million cubic yards of dirt, planting more than 2,500 trees, and carving out 50 acres of lakes.

For a handful of PGA pros, including the golf club's director Ben Polland, Shooting Star is more than a home course — it's a day job.

From the course, I could see the resident cabins and lodges.

According to Jackson Hole Sotheby's International Realty, most homes didn't hit the market. However, the available listings include two-acre plots of land for $15.5 million and three-bedroom, four-bathroom cabins for $11.75 million.

Next to the clubhouse, the Alpine Barn is used in ski season.

In the winter, Shooting Star becomes a skier's haven, and the Alpine Barn is the hub.

Inside, there were nearly 200 lockers. During ski season, the barn shows movies and serves complimentary food. A shuttle takes skiers to the nearby Jackson Hole Mountain Resort to hit the slopes, but there's also a track around the course's perimeter for a short run.

Back inside, the second floor of the clubhouse houses a fitness center.

The 2,400-square-foot facility had smart cardio equipment with large screens overlooking the swimming pool and barn. A handful of workout studios offered classes like yoga and pilates.

Outside, there were also tennis and pickleball courts.

The spa was on the same floor.

I entered one of the six treatment rooms and thought it felt serene.

Limestone and wood moldings texturized the walls. There was a fireplace, cozy seating, and two treatment beds.

Natural light poured in from the window at the back of the room. There was a gigantic stainless steel tub in front of it.

Bathing in there with a view of the course and the surrounding Tetons would be a dream.

The spa bathroom had amenities akin to a luxury hotel.

I spotted glass jars containing toothbrushes, razors, hair ties, eye drops, and over-the-counter pain and allergy medication.

Back downstairs, there was a restaurant with indoor and outdoor dining.

The dining room had a wood-burning fire pit inside. Out on the patio, members could dine right next to the golf course.

Before I headed out, I got to check out a miniature version of the property inside the clubhouse.

The property feels vast, so seeing it all planned out on one table helped me better understand the course and development.

I left with a sense of what it might be like to be a member of such an exclusive club in an epic location.

• Taylor Swift has attended six Met Galas to date, making her debut at the event in 2008.
• Some of her Met Gala looks have fallen flat, while others stood out on the red carpet.
• Her most recent Met Gala look was her most iconic, in part because of its significance in her music.

The fashion world is abuzz as the 2025 Met Gala is swiftly approaching.

A-list celebrities, billionaires, and athletes will gather at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on May 5 for the annual fundraiser. Chaired by Anna Wintour, it raises money for the museum's Costume Institute.

The Met Gala red carpet is always exciting for fashion fans, as celebrities reveal their interpretations of the event's dress code. For 2025, stars will put their spin on the "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" theme.

The guest list is always kept secret before the event, so fans don't know which celebrities will walk the red carpet. Taylor Swift has been absent from the gala since 2019, and it's unclear if she'll break that streak in 2025 — and bring her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, for his Met Gala debut.

Whether she attends in 2025 or not, Swift's legacy at the Met Gala has already been solidified. Take a look back at all the looks she's worn to the event, ranked from least to most iconic.

Swift's white dress for the 2010 Met Gala was simple.

Swift's white Ralph Lauren gown featured a pointed neckline, ruffled, off-the-shoulder sleeves, and a coordinating skirt.

The dress was pretty, but it didn't stand out in a way that fit the "American Woman: Fashioning A National Identity" on the red carpet.

Likewise, instead of elevating her outfit with accessories, Swift wore minimal jewelry and kept her hair in a demure updo.

The singer upped her game slightly for the "Savage Beauty" theme at the 2011 Met Gala.

Swift arrived at the "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" gala in a one-shoulder J. Mendel gown. The dress mixed taupe and frayed, black fabric, and it had a textured, mermaid skirt.

The dress was well-suited to the theme, but Swift's simple updo took away from the effect. A more over-the-top hairstyle could have taken the outfit to another level.

Swift embraced semi-sheer detailing at the 2013 Met Gala.

Swift sported another J. Mendel gown for the 2013 "PUNK: Chaos to Couture" Met Gala.

The bodice of the black, floor-length gown was covered in cutouts of sheer, webbed fabric, and it had a cutout on the bodice.

A jeweled collar and dramatic eye makeup completed the look, which fit the punk theme well.

Swift made her Met Gala debut in a gown that hinted at her sophomore album, "Fearless."

Swift attended her first Met Gala in 2008 wearing a gold ombré gown from Badgley Mischka. 

The dress celebrated the "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy" theme with its head-to-toe embellishments and shape that nodded to a mermaid tail.

The look seemed to be an Easter egg for Swift's "Fearless" album, which was released in October 2008.

The album cover had golden tones, on which Swift was photographed with her hair flowing around her as she spun her head — which Swift modernized for "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" in 2021.

Her Met Gala gown had the same color scheme, and her hair was styled similarly. The look set the tone for the release of Swift's second album just months before its release.

Swift's pink dress for the 2014 Met Gala exuded Old Hollywood glamour.

The 2014 Met Gala's theme was "Charles James: Beyond Fashion." The event's white-tie dress code called for formal looks from celebrities, and Swift rose to the occasion in a soft-pink Oscar de la Renta gown.

The dress had a scooped neckline and was embroidered with delicate flowers. The column dress had a low back and a dramatic train flowing from an oversized bow.

The elegant dress was modern but evoked the glamour of Old Hollywood, and unlike in years past, Swift matched the look of the dress with her hair, which was swept to the side in soft waves. It was a step up from her past looks.

Swift nailed the theme with her 2016 Met Gala look when she was co-chair for the gala, and the ensemble became culturally significant for her fans.

Swift was a Met Gala co-chair in 2016, so it's no surprise she embraced the "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" theme. 

Her custom Louis Vuitton dress was metallic, featuring a scaled pattern and daring cutouts along the stomach. Swift paired the dress with heels that wrapped to her knees. Bleached hair and black lipstick completed the futuristic look, making the look edgy overall.

The departure from Swift's typically softer looks made it a standout on the Met Gala carpet and in Swift's fashion history, but it became truly iconic because the 2016 Met Gala proved significant for Swift personally and musically.

Swift was first romantically linked to Tom Hiddleston at the Gala, as a video of her dancing with him in a Louis Vuitton dress went viral. Fans also speculate that Swift met Joe Alwyn, whom she dated for six years, the same night. Swift and Alywn split in February 2023, and she's been dating Travis Kelce since the summer of 2023.

Fans also suspect her interactions with both Hiddleston and Alwyn at the Gala served as inspiration for two songs on her album "Reputation" — "Dress" and "Getaway Car."

The silver-toned look she wore to the Met Gala also mimicked the coloring of her "Reputation" cover, again connecting the album to the event. 

• DoorDash asked the California Superior Court to dismiss Uber's lawsuit on Friday.
• In February, Uber accused DoorDash of inflating costs and other anti-competitive business practices.
• "Instead of competing through innovation, Uber has resorted to litigation," DoorDash says.

DoorDash wants Uber's anti-competition lawsuit tossed by the California Superior Court, saying the litigation is a "cynical and calculated scare tactic."

DoorDash filed the motion alongside a press release on Friday.

"It's disappointing behavior from a company once known for competing on the merits of its products and innovation," DoorDash, which tops the online food delivery market in the United States, wrote in the release.

Uber filed a complaint against DoorDash in February, accusing the company of anti-competitive business practices that inflated prices for restaurants and customers. The complaint said DoorDash "devised and is engaged in an unlawful scheme to stifle competition with Uber Eats, its closest rival."

Uber accused DoorDash in the complaint of leveraging restaurants' dependence on its app to secure near-exclusive or exclusive use.

"Restaurants simply cannot afford to stand up to DoorDash, and find themselves powerless to choose the service or services that are best for their businesses in the market for first-party delivery," Uber's complaint said.

Earnest Analytics reported in February that DoorDash dominated the food delivery market with a 60.7% share. Uber Eats followed at 26.1% and Grubhub at 6.3%.

DoorDash denied Uber's accusations in the motion on Friday.

Among its arguments, DoorDash said Uber is trying to "shoehorn its competition claims" by using a statute that typically applies to "disputes regarding employee non-compete provisions."

"Uber's lawsuit should be seen for what it is: sour grapes from a competitor that has been told by merchants, time and again, that they prefer working with DoorDash," the company's motion said. That's not the basis for a lawsuit — it's just fair competition. The Court should sustain DoorDash's demurrer."

Uber told Business Insider in a statement that it won't back down.

"It seems like the team at DoorDash is having a hard time understanding the content of our complaint. When restaurants are forced to choose between unfair terms or retaliation, that's not competition — it's coercion. Uber will continue to stand up for merchants and for a level playing field. We look forward to presenting the facts in court," an Uber spokesperson said.

A lawyer for DoorDash told BI, "Uber appears to be upset that they're losing in the marketplace because DoorDash has better and more innovative products, but that isn't a legitimate basis for a lawsuit."

"Uber's legal claims are meritless and should be dismissed," the lawyer said.

DoorDash isn't Uber's only legal battle this year. In April, the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber, saying the company added users to its Uber One subscription program without their consent.

The FTC said in a press release that the company "failed to deliver promised savings" and made it tough for users to cancel the service.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Semafor on Friday that the FTC's lawsuit was a "head-scratcher."

"We make it incredibly easy to sign up for Uber One, the value is enormous, the renewal rates are over 90%. It's a great product," Khosrowshahi said. "We allow you to cancel. We allow you to pause. That one was a head-scratcher for me."

• Steven Soderbergh's movie "Black Bag" underperformed, earning $37 million on a $44 million budget.
• Soderbergh, who's known for mid-budget dramas, is frustrated by the film's lackluster reception.
• He is hesitant to make epic films again, citing the need for genuine inspiration.

Following the lackluster box office performance of his latest mid-budget spy thriller, "Black Bag," Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is contemplating his next move.

The director behind acclaimed films like "Traffic," "Erin Brockovich," "Out of Sight," and the "Ocean's Eleven" franchise has made nearly every type of movie imaginable, but he's always felt most comfortable doing a modestly budgeted drama. But the performance of "Black Bag," which brought in $37 million on a $44 million budget, has the filmmaker reconsidering how he fits into today's moviemaking landscape.

"The people we needed to come out didn't come out," Soderbergh told Business Insider of the "Black Bag" box office numbers. "And unfortunately, it's impossible to really know why."

"My concern is that the rest of the industry looks at that result and just goes, 'This is why we don't make movies in that budget range for that audience, because they don't show up,'" he continued. "And that's unfortunate, because that's the kind of movie I've made my whole career. That middle ground, which we all don't want to admit is disappearing, seems to be really disappearing."

The fact that a sexy spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Pierce Brosnan that's Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes couldn't pull in an audience is particularly confounding to Soderbergh.

"I mean, it's the best-reviewed movie I've ever made in my career, and we've got six beautiful people in it, and they all did every piece of publicity that we asked them to do, and this is the result," he said. "So it's frustrating."

Asked if he would ever return to making epic movies like 2008's "Che," his two-film biopic starring Benicio del Toro as the revolutionary Che Guevara, Soderbergh wasn't against it, but he had one caveat.

"It's really got to be something that deserves that kind of treatment and doesn't feel like Oscar bait," he said.

Soderbergh said he currently has nothing in the works that he would characterize as an epic and explained why.

"It does require an aspect of the grandiosity gene; you've got to think about yourself a certain way to want to go out and do those things. That is not my default mode," he said. "I have to work myself up to that because I don't have that kind of sense of my place."

Still, he enjoys making epic films when it's the right move. It even led to the creation of one of his most beloved television series.

"If I hadn't made 'Che,' I don't think I would have made 'The Knick,'" which I think is the last epic thing that I've done," Soderbergh said of his acclaimed 2014 Cinemax series starring Clive Owen as a surgeon pushing the boundaries of medicine in 1900s New York.

"'Che' was good for me in that sense. But knowing what goes into that, it has got to be something that I feel really electrified by, and those are just hard to come by," he continued. "Then you've got to cast Timothée Chalamet."

"Black Bag" will be available to stream on Peacock starting May 2.

• Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates shares three kids with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
• His eldest daughter is a med school graduate and his youngest a startup cofounder.
• Here's what we know about the children of one of the world's richest men.

Bill Gates' story is a quintessential example of the American entrepreneurial dream: A brilliant math whiz, Gates was 19 when he dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft with his friend, the late Paul Allen, in 1975.

Nearly 50 years later, Gates' net worth of almost $108 billion makes him one of the richest and most famous men on Earth, per Forbes. He stepped down from Microsoft's board in 2020 and has cultivated his brand of philanthropy with the Gates Foundation — a venture he formerly ran with his now ex-wife Melinda French Gates, who resigned in May. 

Even before founding one of the world's most valuable companies, Gates' life was anything but ordinary. He grew up in a well-off and well-connected family, surrounded by his parents' rarefied personal and professional network. Their circle included a Cabinet secretary and a governor of Washington, according to "Hard Drive," the 1992 biography of Gates by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Brock Adams, who went on to become the transportation secretary in the Carter administration, is said to have introduced Gates' parents.)

His father, William Gates Sr., was a prominent corporate lawyer in Seattle and the president of the Washington State Bar Association.

His mother, Mary Gates, came from a line of successful bankers and sat on the boards of important financial and social institutions, including the nonprofit United Way. It was there, according to her New York Times obituary, that she met the former IBM chairman John Opel — a fateful connection thought to have led to IBM enlisting Microsoft to provide an operating system in the 1980s.

"My parents were well off — my dad did well as a lawyer, took us on great trips, we had a really nice house," Gates said in the 2019 Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain."

"And I've had so much luck in terms of all these opportunities."

Despite his very public life, his three children with French Gates — Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe — have largely avoided the spotlight for most of their upbringing. 

Like their father, the three Gates children attended Seattle's elite Lakeside School, a private high school that has been recognized for excellence in STEM subjects — and that received a $40 million donation from Bill Gates in 2005 to build its financial aid fund. (Bill Gates and Paul Allen met at Lakeside and went on to build Microsoft together.)

As they've gotten older, they've stepped more into the public eye, and more details have emerged about their interests, professions, and family life. 

Gates recently said his children will get "less than 1%" of his fortune when he dies. But they may also inherit the family foundation, where most of his money will go.

Here's all we know about Bill Gates' children.

Gates and his children did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Jennifer Gates Nassar

Jennifer Gates Nassar, who goes by Jenn, is the oldest of the Gates children at 28 years old.

A decorated equestrian, Gates Nassar started riding horses when she was six. Her father has shelled out millions of dollars to support her passion, including buying a California horse farm for $18 million and acquiring several parcels of land in Wellington, Florida, to build an equestrian facility.

In 2018, Gates Nassar received her undergraduate degree in human biology from Stanford University, where a computer science building was named for her father after he donated $6 million to the project in 1996.

She then attended the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, from which she graduated in May. She's continuing at Mt. Sinai for her residency in pediatric research. During medical school, she also completed a Master's in Public Health at Columbia University — perhaps a natural interest given her parents' extensive philanthropic activity in the space.

"Can't believe we've reached this moment, a little girl's childhood aspiration come true," she wrote on Instagram. "It's been a whirlwind of learning, exams, late nights, tears, discipline, and many moments of self-doubt, but the highs certainly outweighed the lows these past 5 years."

In October 2021, she married Egyptian equestrian Nayel Nassar. In February 2023, reports surfaced that they bought a $51 million New York City penthouse with six bedrooms and a plunge pool. The next month, they welcomed their first child, Leila, and in October, Gates Nassar gave birth to their second daughter, Mia.

"I'm over the moon for you, @jenngatesnassar and @nayelnassar—and overjoyed for our whole family," Bill Gates commented on the Instagram post announcing Mia's birth.

In a 2020 interview with the equestrian lifestyle publication Sidelines, Gates Nassar discussed growing up wealthy.

"I was born into a huge situation of privilege," she said. "I think it's about using those opportunities and learning from them to find things that I'm passionate about and hopefully make the world a little bit of a better place."

She recently posted about visiting Kenya, where she learned about childhood health and development in the country.

Rory John Gates

Rory John Gates, who is in his mid-20s, is Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates' only son and the most private of their children. He maintains private social media accounts, and his sisters and parents rarely post photos of him.

His mother did, however, write an essay about him in 2017. Titled "How I Raised a Feminist Son," she describes as a "great son and a great brother" who "inherited his parents' obsessive love of puzzles."

In 2022, he graduated from the University of Chicago, where, based on a photo posted on Facebook, he appears to have been active in moot court. At the time of his graduation, Jennifer Gates Nassar wrote that he had achieved a double major and master's degree.

Little is publicly known about what the middle Gates child has been up to since he graduated, but a Puck report from last year gave some clues, saying that he is seen as a "rich target for Democratic social-climbers, influence-peddlers, and all variety of money chasers."

Phoebe Gates

Phoebe Gates, 22, is the youngest of the Gates children.

After graduating from high school in 2021, she followed her sister to Stanford. She graduated in June after three years with a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology. Her mom, Melinda French Gates, delivered the university's commencement address.

In a story that Gates wrote for Nylon about her graduation, she documented the day, including a party she cohosted that featured speeches from her famous parents and a piggyback ride from her boyfriend Arthur Donald — the grandson of Sir Paul McCartney.

She has long shown an interest in fashion, interning at British Vogue and posting on social media from fashion weeks in Copenhagen, New York, and Paris. Sustainability is often a theme of her content, which highlights vintage and secondhand stores and celebrates designers who don't use real leather and fur.

That has culminated in her cofounding Phia, a sustainable fashion tech platform that launched in beta this fall. The site and its browser extension crawl secondhand marketplaces to find specific items in an effort to help shoppers find deals and prevent waste.

Her father told The New York Times he was glad she didn't ask him to back the startup.

"I thought, 'Oh boy, she's going to come and ask,'" Gates said. "I would have kept her on a short leash and be doing business reviews, which I would have found tricky, and I probably would have been overly nice, but wondered if it was the right thing to do. Luckily, it never happened."

In 2025, Phoebe also launched a podcast called "The Burnouts" with her former roommate and current cofounder Sofia Kianni.

Gates shares her parents' passion for public health. She's attended the UN General Assembly with her mother and spent time in Rwanda with Partners in Health, a nonprofit that has received funding from the Gates Foundation.

Like her mother, Gates often publicly discusses issues of gender equality, including in essays for Vogue and Teen Vogue, at philanthropic gatherings, and on social media, where she frequently posts about reproductive rights.

She's given thousands to Democrats and Democratic causes, including to Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Democratic Party of Montana, per data from OpenSecrets. According to Puck, she receives a "giving allowance" that makes it possible for her to cut the checks.

Perhaps the most public of the Gates children — she's got over 450,000 Instagram followers and a partnership with Tiffany & Co. — she's given glimpses into their upbringing, including strict rules around technology. The siblings were not allowed to use their phones before bed, she told Bustle, and to get around the rule, she created a cardboard decoy.

"I thought I could dupe my dad, and it worked, actually, for a couple nights," she told the outlet earlier this year. "And then my mom came home and was like, 'This is literally a piece of cardboard you're plugging in. You're using your phone in your room.' Oh, my gosh, I remember getting in trouble for that."

It hasn't always been easy being Gates's daughter. In the Netflix documentary "What's Next? The Future With Bill Gates," she said she lost friends because of a conspiracy theory suggesting her father used COVID-19 vaccines to implant microchips into recipients.

"I've even had friends cut me off because of these vaccine rumors," she said.

• Prosecutors want to seal Sean Combs' "freak off" videos in sex-trafficking trial.
• Combs is accused of sex trafficking and racketeering, with Cassie Ventura as a key victim.
• The judge is hammering out resolutions for different legal issues before the trial in May.

Prosecutors want to make sure the public doesn't see the "freak off" videos made by Sean "Diddy" Combs, which they say they'll present as exhibits in his upcoming criminal sex-trafficking trial.

Even the audio from those videos shouldn't reach the ears of the public and the press, argued Assistant US Attorney Madison Smyser in a court conference on Friday.

"These are extremely sensitive videos, they are going to involve videos of 'freak offs,'" Smyser said. "They involve other parties, victims, and, in some videos, Mr. Combs."

Smyser said prosecutors and defense lawyers were working out a way so that only jurors would be able to see and hear the videos when they're presented in court.

The indictment, brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, accuses Combs of sex trafficking and racketeering.

The primary victim prosecutors identified is Cassie Ventura, who was in a romantic relationship with Combs for 10 years. According to prosecutors, Combs sexually abused Ventura through "freak offs," which they described as elaborate and lengthy sexual performances that Combs staged, masturbated during, and often recorded.

Prosecutors have identified another four accusers who are expected to testify as victims in the trial. The judge has also allowed one "propensity witness," a yet-identified former romantic partner who is set to testify by name about alleged prior abuse, but who is not considered a victim in the criminal charges. Some of the witnesses are also expected to include sex workers who were recruited for the "freak offs."

Combs was attentive during Friday's court conference, the penultimate one before jury selection begins on May 5.

The hip-hop artist wore khaki jail garb and what appeared to be laceless Vans slip-on shoes.

Before the start of the hearing, Combs hugged his three female attorneys and then shook hands with one of his male lawyers. Throughout the conference, he sipped water from an unusually small plastic cup on the defense table before him.

US District Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing Combs' criminal case, asked prosecutors to provide legal justifications for sealing the "freak off" videos, which would become court records if they were to be entered into evidence.

Prosecutors said they'd file a letter providing examples where similar procedures were followed in other cases. In R. Kelly's trial in Brooklyn, the court had jurors watch videos of sexual abuse on small screens in front of their jury seats while wearing earphones, while journalists and members of the public were kept out of the courtroom.

A victim's 'medical procedure'

During Friday's hearing, prosecutors also said they wanted an accuser to testify about a "medical procedure" that they said was a result of a "freak off."

Combs's defense attorneys argued that the procedure wasn't sufficiently related to the conduct described in the indictment, and that the accuser shouldn't be able to testify about the experience.

Submaranian ultimately concluded that he'd wait and see what else the victim would testify about before deciding if prosecutors could ask questions about the purported medical procedure.

The judge also issued a ruling narrowing the scope of what Dawn Hughes, an expert on interpersonal relationships, would be allowed to testify about. Hughes, who previously testified in the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and is expected to testify in Harvey Weinstein's ongoing trial, is expected to testify on behalf of Combs. Combs's lawyers have said she would partly testify about the "swingers" lifestyle the singer participated in.

Subramanian previously resolved most of the other legal issues ahead of the trial, which is set to take place in the same lower Manhattan courtroom where Combs's jailmate Sam Bankman-Fried had his trial.

The judge allowed Combs's team to obtain drafts of Ventura's memoir for cross-examination, but did not allow them to obtain other notes, emails, or bank records they had requested.

Subramanian also forced Warner Bros. to give Combs' lawyers interview footage with two accusers taken for a Max documentary, "The Fall of Diddy." An attorney for Combs said in Friday's hearing that they expected to receive the footage next week.

The contents of Ventura's memoir have never been made public, and little information about it is known.

Combs's lawyer Marc Agnifilo discussed the memoir in a September court hearing, where he unsuccessfully asked a judge to allow Combs to stay out of jail ahead of the criminal trial.

Agnifilo said Combs and Ventura had a consensual, if complicated, 10-year relationship, and that she essentially tried to extort him with the memoir draft after it ended. In November 2023, Combs settled a civil sexual abuse lawsuit that Ventura brought against him.

"'My client has written a book, and she is going to publish it, but if you want to buy the rights, then you will have the exclusive rights, and she won't be able to publish it.'" Agnifilo said, characterizing an offer from one of Ventura's previous lawyers. "'And you know what, you can buy the rights for $30 million.'"

Later, Ventura retained a different lawyer and sued Combs under New York's Adult Survivors Act, alleging sexual abuse,

"'I am not really here to embarrass you anymore to the tune of $30 million; I am going to bring this civil sex claim against you,'" Agnifilo said, purportedly quoting Ventura's other attorney.

Agnifilo's arguments were not successful. Combs has been detained in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center since September.

• Time celebrated its list of 2025's most influential people with a New York City gala on Thursday.
• Stars including Blake Lively, Snoop Dogg, and Gayle King were in attendance.
• Some of those celebrities looked stunning on the red carpet, while others made fashion mistakes.

The most influential people of 2025 have officially been chosen by Time.

Blake Lively, Serena Williams, and Snoop Dogg are just a handful of the actors, athletes, and musicians the publication chose this year.

They're also among the stars who attended Time's celebratory gala in New York City on Thursday night in stunning fashion.

Unfortunately, a handful of other attendees missed the mark with their outfit choices.

Here's a look at the best and worst ensembles seen on the Time100 red carpet.

Demi Moore stunned in a cream-colored gown and matching blazer.

Zac Posen and Kim Jones made the couture GapStudio ensemble for Moore.

It had a ruched bodice with a halter strap, a cinched waistband, and a flowing skirt that grazed the floor.

Moore wore the dress with a cream blazer draped over her shoulders, a statement diamond bangle, numerous sparkling rings, and long earrings that almost touched her shoulders.

The outfit was simple, elegant, and made perfectly for Moore.

The jumpsuit Kristen Bell wore needed a few tweaks.

Some aspects of the Carolina Herrera look worked for Bell, like its vibrant red color and its long, wide pant legs that made the petite actor look taller.

Other areas, though, were confusing. Its strapless bodice, for example, would have better suited a formal gown than a casual jumpsuit.

Bell could have avoided the fashion mishap by either wearing a dress or choosing a sleeved one-piece.

Serena Williams had fun with accessories and old Hollywood glamour.

Williams walked the red carpet in a black Stella McCartney number. Her off-the-shoulder dress had sliced cutouts from top to bottom and a form-fitting skirt that nearly reached her ankles.

The garment stood out on its own, but Williams made it even better with accessories. She wore semi-sheer gloves, layered diamond necklaces, dangling earrings, and a variation of the Royal Oak watch from Audemars Piguet.

She looked simultaneously edgy and chic, creating a style that is entirely her own.

Scarlett Johansson's all-black outfit was a tad underwhelming.

It's almost impossible for Johansson to look bad. Still, her Tom Ford gown left something to be desired.

The black halter piece was pretty plain with a V-neck top, a form-fitted skirt that reached the floor, and a thin gold clip that created light ruching at the waist.

Her gold choker, mixed-metal rings, and silver square earrings helped enhance the look slightly, but the Roberto Coin accessories weren't enough to make the outfit memorable.

Snoop Dogg looked sharp in a button-embellished suit.

The musician posed on the red carpet in a three-piece set that was effortlessly cool.

His black blazer was studded with gold buttons down its lapels and his trousers were fitted at the ankle to create a unique silhouette. A black tie contrasted his white button-down shirt.

Snoop Dogg completed the outfit with chain-embedded sunglasses, diamond rings, a silver square watch, and green Oxford sneakers.

Ed Sheeran experimented with a pink suit, but its pale color washed him out.

Sheeran is known to attend most events in T-shirts and cargo pants, so it was nice to see the musician dressed up for the Time100 gala.

That said, the pink shade of his blazer and matching trousers was too light for him. It washed out his skin and was too close to his red hair color.

The white T-shirt and Nike sneakers he wore also felt too casual for the gala event.

Activist and author Amanda Nguyen looked cool in white.

Nguyen, who recently went to space with Blue Origin, walked the red carpet in a white gown that glamorously reinvented menswear.

Its blazer top was full on one side and cut in half on the other, revealing a bow waistband and her pleated skirt.

To complete the look, Nguyen wore simple black sandals and styled her hair in thin braids.

Gayle King sported a green dress that appeared to be too long for her.

King arrived at the Time100 event in a mint-green gown. Though the color was a fun choice for the journalist, the garment didn't seem to fit right.

Its long sleeves had excess fabric at the wrists, the ruched neckline sat awkwardly at her chest, and its long skirt covered her shoes.

King, however, nailed her accessories. She wore sparkle-covered pumps, layered necklaces, and long earrings that shone through her hair.

Blake Lively looked like a princess in a red, off-the-shoulder gown.

Zuhair Murad designed an off-the-shoulder dress that perfectly suited the "It Ends With Us" actor.

It had a corseted bodice, a form-fitted waist, and extra fabric attached at the hips to create a fuller skirt. Its red fabric was also a unique shade — not as bright as the carpet, but not light enough to be pink.

Lively made the outfit even more showstopping with an assortment of jade accessories, from green bracelets and rings to statement earrings.