How Jeffrey Epstein's island became a nightmare for influencers

Billionaire Stephen Deckoff purchased a pair of islands from Jeffrey Epstein's estate. Things haven't gone as planned.

SideQuest Drew/Youtube; Reuters; U.S. Department of Justice; Alyssa Powell/BI

When billionaire Stephen Deckoff purchased a pair of Caribbean islands that once belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, he saw it as a potential paradise. In a press release, Deckoff said he planned to open a world-class destination resort befitting the territory's "natural grace and beauty."

Over four years since the purchase, no resort has been built, but the islands are still attracting visitors from around the world — unwelcome ones.

Deckoff, the CEO of asset management firm Black Diamond Capital Management, has sued nine social-media influencers, content creators, and conspiracy theorists, accusing them of trespassing on the property to capitalize on the islands' notoriety.

Epstein used one of the islands, Little St. James, to build a sprawling compound, a site where accusers say he made them feel trapped and raped them. On one end of the island is a temple-like building that has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. Epstein painted it with blue and white stripes and topped it with a golden dome.

Through his lawsuits, filed in US Virgin Islands court through a limited liability company, Deckoff is seeking damages from YouTubers who have undertaken what they describe as quests to unravel the islands' mysteries. Over the past year, influencers have taken videos of themselves renting jet skis, climbing onto shore, and unfurling banners demanding that the Trump administration release the Epstein files.

Deckoff's staff has, at times, responded to the camera-wielding interlopers with violence, law-enforcement agencies have said in court filings.

Ann Rodriquez, whom Epstein employed to manage the property — and who continued to manage it for Deckoff — was arrested on false imprisonment and assault charges in April after law enforcement officials found one content creator "hog-tied and totally naked" on a boat, according to a sworn statement filed to court. Another interloper said in a podcast interview that employees detained him and put him in what he said Rodriquez called the island's "dungeon." Deckoff's employees also destroyed two rental jet skis while they apprehended content creators, a US Virgin Islands-based rental company alleged.

On one end of the island is a temple-like building that has been the subject of conspiracy theories.

REUTERS/Marco Bello

A spokesperson for Deckoff told Business Insider that the presence of "intruders" on Little St. James has been "dangerous for the people who live and work on the island."

"We are concerned when those criminally trespassing on private property and endangering our staff are given a platform for their misconduct," the spokesperson said.

In their videos, the influencers have cast themselves as truth-seeking warriors. Andrew Petersen, one of the YouTubers whom Deckoff accused of trespassing, said it was absurd that he's facing legal consequences while the Justice Department continues to take no law enforcement action against friends of Epstein who may also have abused girls or women.

"Trespassing is illegal, and we definitely trespassed," Petersen told Business Insider. "It's like, what's the bigger story here?"

Petersen and other interlopers haven't responded to the lawsuits in court. Petersen told Business Insider he and the friends and influencers he traveled with never meant to "mess up" Deckoff's property or damage his reputation — only to seek the truth about what was going on at "one of the most horrific islands in human existence, in our opinion."

"For me, that's like buying a concentration camp from the Holocaust and like, 'Yeah, we're going to turn this into a resort.' What are you talking about?" he said.

At the time Epstein purchased Little St. James in 1998, Ghislaine Maxwell was both his girlfriend and estate manager.

Epstein built a sprawling compound on Little St. James.

REUTERS/Marco Bello

Epstein tasked Maxwell with making the island habitable. It was an enormous undertaking, one of her former assistants testified in Maxwell's 2021 Manhattan criminal trial in which she was convicted of trafficking girls to Epstein for sex.

Maxwell arranged to ship not only home furnishings, but also sand and palm trees. ("He wanted more sand on the beach," the assistant testified.) Maxwell, along with Epstein's private jet pilots, took helicopter lessons so they could ferry passengers between Little St. James and nearby St. Thomas, where Epstein's planes landed at the airport.

Over the years, Epstein used the island to draw powerful friends, nicknaming it "Little St. Jeff's." One accuser, Virginia Giuffre, wrote in her memoir that then-Prince Andrew had sex with her there. (He settled a lawsuit with Giuffre without admitting wrongdoing.) Records from the Epstein files show he hosted Google co-founder Sergey Brin, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and now-Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Elon Musk emailed Epstein about visiting the island to "party," though he later said he never went there. Emails show Epstein used his connections with local politicians to cut red tape and make it easier to obtain visas for young women he wanted to fly in.

Brin, Hoffman, Lutnick, and Musk haven't been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein. Brin hasn't publicly commented on visiting the island. Hoffman has said his visit was part of a fundraising trip for MIT. Lutnick told members of Congress he and his family had lunch on Little St. James while sailing by on a vacation.

After Epstein killed himself in 2019, while in jail awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, the executors of his estate hired Randall Bell to evaluate Little St. James and Great St. James, the neighboring island Epstein purchased in 2016. Bell specializes in appraising real estate locations where atrocities have occurred, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Over the years, Epstein used the island to draw powerful friends, nicknaming it "Little St. Jeff's."

THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT / Getty Images

Epstein's estate put the two islands on the market in 2022 for $125 million. Deckoff, a resident of the US Virgin Islands, bought them about a year later for $60 million. The estate used some of the funds to pay creditors, including victims and their attorneys who brought lawsuits against the estate. Deckoff and Epstein never met, and the two had no preexisting relationship, a spokesperson for Deckoff told Business Insider.

Since Deckoff bought the islands in 2023, his plans to build a resort seem to have gone nowhere. The only construction permit Deckoff has requested is for a warehouse, a spokesperson for the US Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources told Business Insider. One visible change is that the temple-like building — where Epstein played music, according to a piano tuner — was repainted and lost its distinctive blue stripes.

On August 17, 2025, Petersen and five other influencers and friends climbed into kayaks and pushed off from St. Thomas, headed to Little St. James.

A Category 5 hurricane was pummeling the US Virgin Islands. The high waves and wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour had foiled their previous plan to use air mattresses as rafts with pool noodles tied around their waists in case they capsized. Petersen and his crew believed the worst of Hurricane Erin was over and decided to make another attempt, this time with kayaks and life vests.

Andrew Petersen, one of the YouTubers whom Deckoff accused of trespassing, kayaked to the island in a hurricane.

Courtesy of SideQuest Drew

Petersen told Business Insider he was dead-set on landing on Little St. James because he wanted to seek the truth about the island once owned by a famous pedophile who kept company with royalty, heads of state, and billionaires. Conspiracy theories about underground tunnels and child sacrifices proliferated online. Deckoff's announcement that he wanted to build a resort didn't make sense to him. The Trump administration, at the time, was refusing to release the Epstein files. The Justice Department has since released millions of Epstein-related records.

"The main thing we were really kind of after is, let's just make noise with this," Petersen said. "Let's put up this 'Release the Files' flag on the island since the government's trying to hold back all the Epstein files and they're still holding it back to this day."

Petersen said that the group anticipated potential legal consequences, including possibly jail time for misdemeanor trespassing. He viewed it as necessary for his work as a self-described independent journalist.

"If we end up going to jail for 30 days, that would be pretty insane," Petersen said. "But we just thought this is something that we don't think anyone else would want to do."

They landed on the island's beach, walked over to Epstein's so-called "temple," then made their way to the main house.

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Petersen and his group then realized they made a "huge miscalculation," he told Business Insider. The storm was getting worse again. They decided to stay the night.

Videos the group posted to YouTube and Patreon show them poking through rooms, staring aghast at a statue of a suffering woman, and lamenting the lack of snacks in the kitchen cabinets.

Petersen said he found no underground tunnel system on Little St. James.

"We checked out all these little structures that people claimed were the entrance, and they definitely were not that," he told Business Insider. "So our conclusion on that end is: I don't think there's any crazy underground tunnels."

When morning came, they took videos of themselves tying a "Release the Files" banner to a palm tree outside the temple. As they paddled away from the island, members of the island's security team yelled at them from the shore.

Other influencers followed. In February, YouTuber Ashton Hall, who goes by "Ash Alk," rented a jet ski and swam ashore with a camera.

"This is exactly how I managed to sneak onto Epstein's island, step by step," Hall said in a video he later posted to YouTube.

Influencers called for the Justice Department to release its Epstein files. The DOJ has since released millions of Epstein-related records.

Courtesy of SideQuest Drew

On Little St. James, Hall staged what he called a "protest" to ask "whoever to unredact the files." Much of the video was spent complaining that he didn't have the proper footwear for the rocky beach. He urged Deckoff not to sue him.

"I'm not anyone special or important," Hall said in the video. "I'm just a YouTuber, bro. Please don't sue me. I'm not that important."

This year, Little St. James's caretakers began taking more aggressive tactics against unwelcome visitors.

On March 1, two YouTuber brothers, Eloi and Marcel Gil Sancho, approached the island on rented jet skis. Marcel Gil Sancho has nearly a million subscribers to his YouTube channel, which has titles like "I spent 24 hours with the MOST DANGEROUS TRIBE in AFRICA" and "2 HEADS and 1 BODY! How do they live? Who's in charge?"

The brothers flew a drone over the island to take footage for a documentary, Eloi Gil Sancho later told law enforcement officials. It landed on the island's beach, and Marcel swam ashore to retrieve it, then returned to his jet ski, Eloi Gil Sancho told US Virgin Islands police, according to a sworn statement filed to court.

According to Eloi Gil Sancho's account, they were then intercepted by a boat piloted by Rodriquez, the island's caretaker. She pulled out what looked like a Glock handgun, pointed it at Marcel, and ordered him to swim to her boat, according to Eloi.

"E. Gil Sancho stated that Ann Rodriquez was operating the boat and repeatedly yelled 'I will kill you' at them," a US Virgin Islands detective wrote in a sworn statement.

A coast guard member who responded to the scene found Eloi "hog-tied and totally naked" in the back of the boat, according to the sworn statement. Marcel was taken back to one of the islands, Eloi told him.

The weapon turned out to be a BB gun "designed to resemble a Glock 19-style handgun," according to another sworn statement. Rodriquez said she threw the Gils' memory cards with the drone footage into the ocean, according to the affidavit.

In May, the US Virgin Islands Attorney General's office brought false imprisonment, assault, and destruction of property charges against Rodriquez. She hasn't entered a plea. Reached by phone, Rodriquez declined to comment.

Deckoff's staff has, at times, responded to interlopers with violence, law-enforcement agencies have said in court filings.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

"Hell no, have a good day," she told Business Insider.

On April 25 — weeks after the Sancho brothers' expedition to the island — a similar scene played out with two other men, Benjamin Owen and Ryan Dalton.

Dalton is the founder of Closed Horizon, a sort of GoFundMe for solving conspiracy theories. Its website says 160 users have contributed $54,112.90 toward a $100,000 goal for an investigation to prove that Epstein is still alive. He told Business Insider he took the trip to bring attention to the campaign.

"It's ground zero for the Epstein Criminal Network, and it's iconic," Dalton said. "And it's a place where we felt that it'd be really powerful to announce the reward program for proof of life."

The two rented a boat, and Owen and Dalton swam ashore. Owen planned to plant a flag bearing the logo of his organization, We Fight Monsters, which assists victims of human trafficking and opioid addiction, he said in a June podcast interview.

When they saw the temple-like building on the island, they "got a little excited" and "kind of forgot that you're not allowed to go beyond the beach," Owen said in the interview.

A group approached on all-terrain vehicles. Owen and Dalton ran back to the water to swim to their boat, Dalton told Business Insider. Dalton made it, but when he turned around in the water to look, Owen was surrounded, Dalton said.

One of the people on the island, Emery Poleon, called her mother, Rodriquez, Owen said on the podcast.

"Mom tells her to duct tape me and put me in the dungeon," Owen said. "And I'm thinking in my head, 'What an awful choice of words for somebody who works for a billionaire trying to rebrand this island from what it used to be. Why would you call it the dungeon? That is a strange thing to say."

Owen said that his wrists were zip-tied together. Law enforcement officials found him "restrained with duct tape," a police detective said in a sworn statement. Poleon later told a law enforcement officer that she had conducted a "citizen's arrest."

US Virgin Islands prosecutors brought a trespassing charge against Owen and an assault charge against Poleon's boyfriend, Paul J. Arnold III, who prosecutors allege struck Owen. Arnold hasn't entered a plea. His attorney, David Cattie, declined to comment. Poleon declined to comment.

Deckoff's holding company, LSJVI, LLC, has filed lawsuits against Owen and Dalton, Eloi and Marcel Gil Sancho, Hall, and Petersen and the passel of influencers he traveled with.

In their videos, the influencers have cast themselves as truth-seeking warriors.

Courtesy of SideQuest Drew

Deckoff's lawsuits seek to disgorge the influencers and content creators of any money they made from their videos. Petersen told Business Insider his group had already donated $30,000 of revenue from the videos to Polaris, an organization that fights human trafficking. Hall and Eloi and Marcel Gil Sancho haven't publicly responded to the lawsuits and didn't respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.

The suit against Owen and Dalton, filed in May, accused them of trespassing and called them delusional fame-seekers.

"Defendants believe that they are entitled to trespass and burglarize property in their search for evidence that a man who died seven (7) years ago is alive and (maybe) living on Little St. James," the lawsuit says.

The LLC is represented by Cattie, the attorney who represents Rodriquez and Arnold in their criminal cases. Cattie referred questions about the lawsuits to a spokesperson for Deckoff.

Deckoff "will continue to pursue every legal remedy, particularly for people who film themselves trespassing and make money off subsequent videos," his spokesperson said.

Deckoff's lawsuits seek to disgorge any money influencers have made from their videos.

THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/ Getty Images

The office of US Virgin Islands Attorney General Gordon Rhea declined to comment on the prosecutions.

Owen told CBS News he found it "scary" that there's "a billionaire coming after me." He declined to comment for this story.

"My attorney got pretty upset with me for talking to media while my criminal case is still pending," Owen told Business Insider.

Owen's attorney declined to comment. Dalton declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Dalton said Little St. James will remain "a lightning rod for truth-seekers."

"Our federal government has abdicated their duty to show the American people what happened there and prosecute the people involved," he said. "And so in absence of that, I think that there are a lot of people who are willing to go there and try to understand it."

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Why your coworkers are suddenly talking about their bodies so much

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI

As a group of Isabel Haneder's colleagues sat down for lunch, the conversation quickly turned to saggy breasts and shrinking butts.

One person was marveling at how celebrities were able to drop large amounts of weight — due, they assumed, to GLP-1 use. Then, the commentator turned to the 52-year-old Haneder and asked: "You lost a lot of weight. What about you? What happened to your body?"

Haneder tells me she was "flabbergasted." She knows her body has noticeably changed since she started on a GLP-1 a year and a half ago. Even so, she didn't think her loose skin would become a water-cooler conversation at her job in TV production in Germany. She ended up stuffing her mouth with as much food as she could, simply so that she wouldn't physically be able to talk further.

"Discussing my boobs over lunchtime?" Haneder says. "Sorry, I don't feel like it."

The prevalence of GLP-1s has opened a Pandora's box of conversations around bodies and what we put in them. Body talk has always popped up at the office. Maybe you've encountered the coworker who remarks that they could never eat a lunch that rich, or subjects unwilling victims to conversations about their new diet. Still, there's been at least some cultural (and, occasionally, legal) understanding that explicit comments about bodies and their sizes are a no-go. In the era of GLP-1s, those boundaries have become murkier: Nobody knows where the red line is, and it's created a no-win situation for everyone involved. The new age of miracle weight loss drugs is creating workplace nightmares.

Emotions and health insurance

On its face, discussing a medication at work shouldn't create too many complications. From a legal standpoint, David Holt, an employment lawyer, tells me, "an individual is always allowed to share whatever they want about themselves — that's the superseding of all employment law." The issue arises in the social and financial contexts of jobs. GLP-1s are inextricably intertwined with two very emotional aspects of our work lives: Health insurance costs and social relations.

One snag is money. Americans are uniquely tied to their coworkers through the cost of health insurance. If someone in your company has a costly ailment, that could push up premiums for everyone. A study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that health insurance premiums could increase by 10.4% when plans expand coverage to include overweight individuals. Even when a $90 copay is added to offset costs, premiums would rise 9%. The competing desires of cost and coverage can create tension between employees. Some want access to the drugs for their own weight loss, while others chafe at having to pay for what they perceive as someone else's lifestyle choices. For employers and the HR specialists tasked with deciding on these benefits, it also means making what's akin to a medical decision for their fellow workers, says Amit Shah, the president of metabolic health and benefits manager Virta Health. Benefits managers are often torn between the two warring groups, Shah says. One of the managers he works with has been making these kinds of calls for two decades, but recently said that the push and pull over GLP-1s made the last two years the most stressful and difficult of their career.

"From the employer side of the house, philosophically, a lot of clients are trying to balance empathy with economics," Caroline Susie, a senior principal at healthcare consultancy MercerWell, tells me. GLP-1s aren't the sole medications driving up costs for workers — new cancer treatments, Susie points out, have made a huge difference in outcomes and pushed up costs, as they've done for obesity treatments. But GLP-1s and their coverage end up eliciting more debate than those other treatments, something that can cause further discomfort in workplaces bound by premiums and plans.

"I do think there's some of that — you make a comment about somebody living overweight, but you don't make a comment about somebody living with cancer," Susie says.

The second workplace issue is how we perceive our colleagues. Weight stigma can have tangible impacts on everything from mental health to getting passed over for a promotion. Research has found that women who have lost weight with GLP-1s are more likely to be hired or to find a partner. It's no secret that the societal pendulum has swung from nominally featuring or acknowledging larger bodies to erasing them in favor of smaller ones. The ubiquity of GLP-1s in everyday life has "put a thinner ideal of appearance back on the agenda," Alka Menon, a sociologist at Yale who's working on a book about the social effects of GLP-1s, says. Those conversations are seeping into the workplace, and while they might have the sheen of a medical discussion, their impact is different from someone saying they started a new prescription drug.

After Melissa, a Gen X attorney, lost weight on a GLP-1, she moved abroad to pursue a new postgraduate degree. In the back of her mind, she wonders whether her changed body is the reason for what feels like a newfound deference in the classroom, as she walks among peers who never knew her as larger. "I certainly feel like I'm being accorded more expertise than I deserve," she says.

The boundaries around how she talks about her body in professional contexts are multi-layered. Questions about her body often fall along the lines of "Are you happy?" With folks she knows, she's more likely to be willing to talk about the underlying emotion, but for those she doesn't know as well, her approach is more akin to "Oh, I know that you would never be asking to monitor my body shape."

Coworkers may try to have conversations about diets and body issues as "a way of relating and connecting to others," says Charlotte Markey, a professor of psychology at Rutgers and the author of several books on body image, even as research shows that doing so productively is nearly impossible.

"It's hard to have them in any kind of a way that's actually going to serve anyone," Markey says. "We think we're connecting, but really it's more that we're perpetuating concerns about eating in really specific ways or the size or shape of our bodies."

What's happening at work

When I speak with people about this topic, one thing is clear: Everyone feels bad.

That's true in workplaces where folks are uniquely equipped to know exactly what GLP-1s do. Dr. Jessie Sims, a surgical resident in Chicago, has an acute understanding of the drugs' benefits. She also grew up figure skating and saw firsthand the impact that an excessive focus on the body can have, especially in leading to eating disorders. She worries about how the prevalence of the drugs might further fuel disordered eating and a return to the thin-is-in culture — and feels uneasy with how accessible the drugs have become.

"I definitely know some people in healthcare who know the clinical indications that are still on the medication, despite not needing it," Sims says. Sims also understands the almost "morbid curiosity" that folks have after noticing someone else's profound weight loss.

"Because it's a popular weight loss drug, people feel like it's a more acceptable conversation point," Sims says, "which I don't think it is."

Shah, the benefits provider, also chafes at the amount of direct-to-consumer marketing for GLP-1s — it's easier for coworkers to discuss the prescription they quickly snagged from a telehealth provider than the in-depth conversations they had with their doctor.

All of these factors have pushed more coworkers to wade into the weight-loss conversation waters. One New York-based millennial told me she only sees her boss in person about once a quarter. The millennial, who works in a creative field, was prescribed a GLP-1 two years ago for various medical issues, and lost about 50-60 pounds. At their last meeting, her boss pointedly said how good she looked. When the millennial replied that she had gotten a haircut — hoping to deflect from body discussions — the boss doubled down and instead asked how she had lost weight. It felt like GLP-1 fishing.

On the flip side, one Gen Z man in media told me radical lifestyle changes — completely modifying his diet and starting an intensive exercise regimen — have helped him lose about 50 pounds over the past three years. His weight loss came right as Ozempic hit the mainstream, and coworkers kept insistently asking if he was on a GLP-1. When he said no, he heard whispers that some thought he was lying. The situation became so frustrating that he went to higher-ups to discuss his discomfort with the continual questioning.

Conversations like those can leave everyone on edge, not just the person whose body is being discussed, according to Maggie Unruh, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has researched the cultural discourse surrounding GLP-1s. "Simply hearing coworkers speculate about another person's body can create anxiety for people," Unruh tells me.

What's unclear is where those conversations cross the line. Holt, the employment lawyer, says it can be hard to tell when the conversation tips into a hostile work environment. If someone speaks persistently about their own drug usage, for instance, and it makes another worker uncomfortable enough to speak to HR, it could become an employer's responsibility.

"You'd certainly want to at least consider, are we creating a hostile work environment by not redirecting that individual's talk?" Holt says. "Just as we would redirect if they were talking about porn or something ... it's not illegal to talk about porn, but it's very weird to talk about that in the workplace."

GLP-1s are already reshaping the workplace. A common set of HR policies or a new social framework could eventually tamp down the talk, but for now, we're in the Wild West, with every worker left to fend for themselves.

Molly, a millennial who works in tech, has long lived in a bigger body. She feels that, subconsciously, her coworkers define hard work through exercise, with the expectation that it will yield body-shrinking results. She worries that her colleagues may view her as lesser because her body has remained larger. Many on her team have disclosed that they're on some form of GLP-1. Molly has attempted to go on some form of the drug three separate times, but she had such extreme side effects — especially nausea — that, after all of that, she was so tired she couldn't work.

"It's incredibly paradoxical to be so exhausted from what you're trying to do to fit in the workplace that you can't fit in in the workplace," she says.

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At an ex-OpenAI researcher's influential lab, $500,000 salaries aren't enough to fix a talent 'bottleneck'

METR's CEO, Beth Barnes, and president, Chris Painter.

METR

• METR, a Berkeley lab started by an ex-OpenAI researcher, has grown into a prominent AI umpire.
• The nonprofit works with OpenAI, Anthropic, and governments to evaluate cutting-edge models.
• METR says that an AI talent shortage hinders growth in safety and security research.

Beth Barnes, one of the AI industry's most influential watchdogs, has a lot to worry about.

The ex-OpenAI researcher has shown that AI's capabilities are escalating by the month. Now, she fears that the industry doesn't have the staff in place to keep up with the technology in its next chapter.

The biggest barrier to that research is talent, said Barnes, who left OpenAI to start the nonprofit METR in 2022. METR, which stands for Model Evaluation and Threat Research, plays a crucial role in the AI industry by working closely with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta to provide independent answers about the tech's quickly changing capabilities.

Yet Barnes sees such fierce competition for AI researchers that even METR's lofty salaries, which reach $503,000 on current job postings, don't address the nonprofit's talent shortage.

"Ideally, we'd like to scale really large, but in practice, we've been able to fundraise as much as we need, and the bottleneck is much more talent," Barnes said.

The security incident announced by OpenAI and Hugging Face sparked a new wave of questions about how to evaluate and control AI. More than 1,300 frontier lab employees signed a letter in July warning that AI development could outpace control. If the industry doesn't have the staff to research precisely what new AI models can do, companies could be forced to slow their releases.

While the behavior of the OpenAI models stunned much of the corporate world, METR's team was far less surprised. Governments, companies, and even religious groups all ask the nonprofit for help understanding and testing the tech's progress.

Still, the feeling inside the 35-person lab is one of concern. When Business Insider visited METR's Berkeley office on the afternoon that OpenAI revealed its hack, Barnes described an AI safety field that is badly constrained by its size.

"There's so much more to do than we have capacity for," Barnes said. A "reasonable civilization," in her view, would be pouring a far larger percentage of AI's investment into steering it and evaluating the tech — especially now that society is reckoning with models this powerful.

'Humanity's preparedness team' struggles to grow

As AI labs release new models, METR measures the likelihood that they can complete tasks of increasing duration. These measurements form the nonprofit's most famous offering, a widely-cited chart that shows how, over the last six years, AI's capabilities have doubled about every seven months.

Chris Painter, METR's president, describes the lab as "humanity's preparedness team," a tongue-in-cheek nod to the preparedness teams at OpenAI and Anthropic that report safety threats to their CEOs.

"We aren't really accountable to anyone other than the public and the public's well-being," Painter said.

METR employees work at their office in Berkeley.

Stephen Council/Business Insider

Barnes emphasized the importance of METR's independence so that it can produce research that isn't tied to a company's goals. When Barnes worked at OpenAI, she felt the need for a research group outside the labs that could comment freely on the development of the tech. While METR doesn't take money from the frontier AI labs or their employees, it accepts compute grants and works with them to analyze unreleased models.

In addition, staff have analyzed labs' safety practices, written about AI's effect on software engineers' speed, and studied the merits of using AI models to monitor other AI models. Barnes said she'd like to expand into predicting the next levels of AI's capabilities and how those changes could accelerate AI's development.

Neev Parikh, a METR researcher, says talent constraints limit the number of questions researchers can tackle about AI models' internal reasoning.

"There's a dearth of people," Parikh said. "I would happily see the field expand 10x."

METR could play a big role in a new AI climate

In July, OpenAI announced that its AI models cheated during testing by hacking into Hugging Face's systems to find the test answers. Later, CEO Sam Altman said it was "the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally."

METR had seen something like that coming. In May, the nonprofit wrote in a report that current AI agents "could plausibly start a rogue deployment," but would not have the skill to hide it. Then, in June, METR tried out OpenAI's then-unreleased GPT-5.6 Sol model and found that it would repeatedly cheat on challenging tests, including by extracting hidden source code to find the answers. It published a report about this and shared it with OpenAI before GPT-5.6 Sol's wider release.

Come July, the GPT-5.6 Sol model was part of OpenAI's security incident with Hugging Face. OpenAI announced on Wednesday that METR and another nonprofit, Redwood Research, would assess the incident and that their results would inform OpenAI's own technical report.

"There are now real, business-affecting incidents of this, and the world has a stake in understanding that," Painter said.

The cyber skills of OpenAI and Anthropic's newest models have sparked a wave of fear and attention and spawned a raft of new bills in Washington. METR's work lines up closely with one potential route for regulation: a current bill proposal would require large AI model developers to get safety audits from outside organizations. METR could fill a role like this; Painter said they'd potentially be interested, though it's something the field is still figuring out.

Something like that proposal, Painter said, could help with METR's hiring issue. He suggested that more people might leave the AI companies themselves — for similar salaries at METR, though without equity compensation — if a regulatory system gave safety research organizations greater authority.

"There's enough precedent here for each kind of testing arrangement," Painter said, "that I think with either clarity from industry, about how this testing should work long-term, or from the government, I think this field could scale very rapidly."

Ajeya Cotra, who led the writing of METR's May report on the risks of AI, said that oversight of AI can feel "chaotic and unpredictable" right now. She's still optimistic.

"The trend is toward people caring about this issue more," Cotra said. "And wanting to regulate it in a more serious way over time."

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AI can help pinpoint a top CEO candidate. The harder part is persuading them to take the job.

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• AI is transforming executive candidate searches, making sourcing faster and more expansive.
• Recruiters are using AI to uncover overlooked talent and be more productive.
• Trust, persuasion, and cultural fit, however, still keep the most critical hiring stages human-led.

AI is accelerating many parts of executive-level hiring, though other parts remain constrained by distinctly human obstacles.

Recruiters say homing in on suitable candidates can account for as much as half the work in high-stakes C-suite job searches. AI can speed up that process by mapping the market, surfacing names, combing through years of internal notes, and suggesting unconventional talent pools.

"The identification of candidates is going to become commoditized," said Marty Parker, CEO of Waterstone Human Capital, an executive search and culture advisory firm.

Meanwhile, other parts of the recruiting process remain slow because they still depend heavily on people, from coordinating and conducting interviews with busy candidates to exercising judgment, building consensus, and persuading an executive to make a move.

"All of those things are irreducibly human," said Umesh Ramakrishnan, chief strategy officer of executive search firm Kingsley Gate. Now, he added, AI "takes care of everything else."

What AI can do

Waterstone saw AI's potential at the start of an ongoing search for an executive to oversee a jewelry company's high-tech manufacturing operation. The firm had initially focused on recruiting from other jewelry businesses when the company's proprietary AI tool suggested looking to the dental tech industry, where similar precision machinery is used to make veneers, crowns, and other tiny, intricate products.

"Who would consider dental manufacturing with jewelers?" Parker said. "You just wouldn't. It's not obvious."

Search firms are also using AI to mine years of interview notes to identify prospective candidates.

Matthew Siegel, a principal at Korn Ferry, said a consultant might recall being impressed by someone at a particular company but forget the person's name or what stood out. AI can retrieve the likely match and the earlier observations behind that impression, he said.

"It's just a terrific example of AI as a force multiplier, just making us more effective," Siegel said.

Beyond candidate research, AI is helping to automate the administrative work surrounding a search.

Nathan Clauss, CEO and managing partner of tech-focused search firm Talent SDK, said recruiters are increasingly building their own AI tools that integrate with internal messaging and applicant-tracking systems, organize information across platforms, and eliminate manual steps. For example, AI can read candidate emails and note why someone is or isn't interested in a role.

By reducing those repetitive tasks, Clauss said AI has allowed his sourcing team to accomplish two to three times as much in a day as they might have several years ago.

"I haven't fired any of my sourcers," he said. "They've just gotten way more productive."

AI is informing later stages of a search, too. Waterstone's AI tool was trained on 23 years of data about organizational culture and executive hiring. Parker said it can suggest interview questions, presentations, and exercises designed to reveal how finalists think and behave. The technology doesn't, however, evaluate candidates' performance.

"It gives us the experience," Parker said of the model. "We then apply our judgment."

What still takes people

For all the time AI can save on research and administrative work, recruiters said it hasn't altered the parts of executive search that require interpretation, trust, and persuasion.

Case in point: As more executives claim AI expertise, recruiters still have to determine for themselves whose experience is genuine. Jeff Markham, a partner at executive search firm Parker Remick, said that may involve contacting a candidate's references and other industry sources to verify that the individual still "gets their hands on the keyboard."

Ramakrishnan said assessing a C-suite candidate can require observing the person outside a formal interview. A recruiter may notice nonverbal behavior that would never surface in a résumé or prepared response.

"Only a human being can sit with the CEO candidate at dinner and watch for the nonverbal things that he or she does," Ramakrishnan said.

AI hasn't transformed the courtship, either. Winning over a candidate still requires understanding the company, the opportunity, and what might motivate them to leave their current post, said Mike Doud, executive vice president, North America, at The Barton Partnership, an executive search firm.

Recruiters need to study candidates' careers as well as the cultures, bureaucracies, and internal politics of the companies where they have worked, he said. Recruiters also need a similarly nuanced understanding of the client to determine whether the client and the candidates they are recommending for top jobs are a match.

Recruiters still have to "sell the opportunity," Doud said, because an executive move is "a life-changing event," not simply another job.

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Shania Twain says she'd rather be alone with her guitar during marital issues. Her husband has a different approach.

Shania Twain said she is "blessed as a woman" to have a partner who is open with his emotions.

Matthew Baker/Getty Images for ABA

• Shania Twain says her husband's commitment to keeping communication open has been key to their marriage.
• "He wants to talk it through, and he wants to fix it," Twain said. "And that's the best advice."
• The couple fell in love after their former spouses had an affair with each other

Shania Twain said one habit that her husband, Fred Thiébaud, insists on has made their marriage stronger.

Speaking to People in an interview published on Thursday, the singer said her husband's approach to conflict resolution has had a positive impact on their relationship.

"He's really good at reminding both of us that we have to keep communication open," Twain said.

The "That Don't Impress Me Much" singer said she is "blessed as a woman" to have a partner who is unafraid to share how he feels.

"He's the greatest talker, and he's not inhibited at all with expressing his feelings, which is really wonderful in a man," she said.

Although she thinks of herself as "a good communicator," Twain said she prefers to "meditate over the issue, take a walk, or be alone with my guitar if I'm having a marital issue."

On the other hand, her husband believes in working through problems together.

"Fred wants to talk about it. He wants to talk it through, and he wants to fix it," Twain said. "And that's the best advice. I mean, he's not wrong."

Twain and Thiébaud have been married since 2011. They fell in love after their former spouses had an affair with each other.

Looking back on their relationship, Twain said she found her "forever true love" in Thiébaud, adding that finding the right person "just takes sometimes years."

"I'm sure we'll always have romance, but there's a depth and a gratitude that I have about having this love," Twain said.

Twain is one of several celebrities who've spoken candidly about what they believe makes a relationship last.

In March, Stephen Curry shared the piece of relationship advice he says has helped him and Ayesha Curry navigate life's toughest moments.

"We don't run away from the tension on the daily," Curry said. "Again, I think I heard somebody say like, neither one of us can quit on the same day, as a philosophy of understanding."

In June, Seth Rogen said his marriage works because he and his wife grew in ways that kept them "very compatible with one another."

"Sometimes your partner changes with you, and you have several relationships with the same person that have new parameters, new boundaries, and new guidelines that are reflective of who you are as you become different people," he said.

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The weather app is putting a damper on America's summer plans

Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

Maya Haddad Miller has long been fixated on weather apps — especially how they hit her bottom line. Haddad Miller and her dad own Brooklyn Beach Shop in Coney Island, New York, which sells souvenirs and beach gear. When a little rain icon pops up on the ubiquitous weather apps on any given day, it can cut business in half, she says, whether any rain falls or not. "When you talk about weather forecasts, that's our life — we eat, breathe, everything the weather," she says.

This became such a hobby horse for Haddad Miller that, for a while, she kept a spreadsheet comparing forecasts with actual weather data to track discrepancies. A decade ago, she took the issue up with then-Lieutenant Gov. Kathy Hochul during the politician's visit to the beachside neighborhood. As they stood on the rooftop of a local restaurant, taking in the ocean view, she asked whether anything could be done about the way apps display the weather.

"You have so many businesses statewide that are affected by these false forecasts," she recalls telling Hochul. "A lot of times, it's beautiful out here, but it's very slow. We're selling less. We're contributing less taxes to the city, the state."

Hochul didn't have much to say back then, but Haddad Miller's crusade continues — and while her complaint may sound niche, she's onto a surprisingly significant predicament.

Every day, millions of people plan their lives around the default weather apps on their smartphones. The thing is, their super-simplified designs flatten what are, in reality, complex, highly localized, probabilistic forecasts. Distilling an entire forecast into basic high-to-low temperature ranges and simple sun or rain icons is a fraught task. And when things go wrong, there are tangible consequences: Empty beaches, canceled tee times, and ruined weekends. The little cloud icon of doom leads to real economic damage for businesses, and a nation of would-be customers sitting on the couch on a perfectly nice Saturday, realizing too late that they could have taken the family to the water park after all.

A sunny day in Coney Island apparently not thwarted by the weather app.

Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images

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The problem with your run-of-the-mill weather apps isn't the meteorology, it's the translation.

Ironically, the science behind forecasting has never been better, says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. Behind every tiny icon sits an enormous amount of data: physics-based computer models, satellite observations, radar, weather stations, and, increasingly, AI systems that process it all. Forecasters often compare and blend multiple models to give the most accurate reads.

That complexity largely disappears once it reaches your phone. A single image represents the dominant conditions for an entire day, even if those conditions are expected to vary widely. And apps often don't do the type of complex analysis that human meteorologists do.

"Rather than leveraging the sum and totality of this incredible wealth of sophisticated meteorological information that's out there, they're just kind of saying, 'Eh, screw it, let's just pick one of these data sources,'" he says. "When you do that, you're kind of wedded to that one data source, which may or may not be the single best option in a given context."

Basic weather apps are OK for getting a "first glance" at what the weather might be, says Jason Furtado, an associate professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, but they fall short on the details. Weather can be hyperlocal — a storm hits one part of town and not another — and a general sketch of the day often brushes over the small events that matter. Many generic weather apps also aren't good at tracking rapidly evolving weather situations. People don't need to know that it might snow at some point during the day in a 100-mile radius — they need to know what time and how severe.

"These apps, if you actually look at it, let's say hour to hour, it'll change," Furtado says. "That's not really helpful, especially if you're trying to make a decision."

Developers can't be blamed for everything — the apps have a user error issue, too. People have a hard time interpreting weather-related probabilities, whether they come from their phone screen or the local forecaster. When a source says there's a 20% chance of rain, it generally means there is a 20% probability that at least 0.01 inch of rain will fall somewhere in a certain coverage area. Some people will interpret 20% as 0% and get mad when they're caught in the rain. Others will decide it's too risky and stay inside, only to get frustrated when nothing happens.

"You already had that foundational misunderstanding of things like percent chance of rain, the difference between watch and warning," says J. Marshall Shepherd, a professor of geography and atmospheric sciences at the University of George and former president of the American Meteorological Society. "Now you throw these uber-convenient apps in the pockets and purses of everybody on the planet."

People regularly ask Shepherd for a weather forecast, and after he responds, counter with, "....but my app says." He says the counter does get to him occasionally: "I wish I had a dollar for every time someone has said that to me, I'd be retired."

The economy is totally dedicated by an icon on the phone.

Some forecasts come with a "wet bias" that can overstate the likelihood of precipitation to manage expectations and avoid an outraged public if they get it wrong. Research shows that weather apps often present excessively detailed, unrealistic forecasts far into the future without making their confidence levels (or lack thereof) clear. In other words, that sun symbol on your phone 10 days from now may be pretty meaningless.

"Rarely do they include any estimate of uncertainty," says Susan Joslyn, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington.

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The lack of nuance embedded in weather apps is a problem for more than your planning peace of mind. Overconfidence can also knock local economies, especially those that are seasonal or depend heavily on the weather's cooperation for their financials to work. One study recently presented at the American Economic Association found that when precipitation is overpredicted, local businesses suffer a measurable, immediate drop in foot traffic and consumer spending, even when the weather conditions on the ground are fine. Retail, food service, and entertainment are particularly hurt. The researchers found that investment in improving forecasts could have "significant downstream benefits for local economies."

The local economies in question, of course, are well aware.

Rob Bryn, a musician in Rockaway Beach, New York, tells me that when he first started bartending by the beach in 2011, families would still show up on a rainy day and make the best of it. Now, Mom wakes up, sees the rain cloud on her phone, and nixes the trip, even if the rain is only predicted for half an hour late at night.

"They don't take the chance anymore," Bryn says. "It'd be a beautiful day, and there'd be nobody there, and I'd be like, 'Damn, these sheep are so easily controlled by this icon on their phone.'"

Bryn follows a local Instagram account for weather updates. In its bio, the account owner says it reports live from the area "because the weather apps are always wrong." He's considered trying to get in touch with someone at Apple to explain the effects of their weather app when it overstates the chance of rain or clouds. "I don't think they even realize the effect they're having on places like Rockaway Beach, they're just trying to tell you to bring an umbrella," he says.

Steven Cohen, the vice president of the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league baseball team, says he wishes fans would use more detailed weather apps that better pinpoint probabilities. "There are days when we get nothing, it's beautiful out, and the rain storm may clip the Bronx and the Yankees get it," he says. He's lucky in that spectators often buy their tickets in advance, meaning they may not be deterred by a chance of rain on the day of the game unless the Cyclones are forced to call off the game for safety reasons. It also means that if people are looking at predictions days out and see a cloud, they'll decide to make other plans. "It's already in people's heads that it's going to be bad weather," he says.

The afternoon I talked to Adam Rinn, the director of Coney Island Inc., a nonprofit that hosts various shows and events, he told me his weather app had forecast rain all afternoon, but thus far, no precipitation had appeared. "Well, it's now 3, and we had a little thunder, but no rain," he says. "If you look at the radar, the rain just skirted us."

Mike Bengston, general manager of Splish Splash Water Park on Long Island, says people worried about app-based forecasts should realize it may actually be a great time to visit. Enough people are spooked by the lack of sun, meaning smaller crowds. "The days where it does look a little bit iffier, you are going to have shorter lines if things work out," he says.

The effects of weather apps on behavior can vary across a range of factors. When there are hotels in an area and therefore overnight tourists, customers tend to show up rain or shine because staying home isn't an option. Cancellation policies and reservations matter, too — if you're dinged $100 for canceling your boat tour, you may think twice before making the call.

Nick Ribeiro, who runs Preserved Links, a private golf club for aficionados, tells me he regularly gets texts days before events from people asking if it's still on, given the forecast on their phones. A lot of the time, he's already paid the golf course, so he has to scramble to find a replacement player or urge the doubter to show up. "There's always a reason not to play, so if the weather gets between you and the tee, it's an easy route to bail on your round of golf," he says.

This all creates operational headaches, too. Business owners have to decide how much staffing they need based not only on what the weather might be, but also on what customers think it might be. Golf courses need to rebook tee times that were reserved weeks in advance. For seasonal businesses, every day counts, and faux rainy days can be devastating.

"The economy is totally dedicated by an icon on the phone," Bryn says.

This isn't just an American problem, either: In March, over 100 British attractions wrote an open letter to the Met Office — the UK's national weather and climate service — warning that misleading rain icons on popular weather apps were costing them thousands of pounds in revenue a day.

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The weather app forecast is a tough dilemma to tackle. People like the convenience of taking a quick look at the weather on their phones instead of waiting for the 8s on the Weather Channel or tuning into the local news. But the area meteorologist may very well have a better idea of what's going on and be able to explain it in more detail.

There's a delicate balance between informing and overwhelming users, says Dan DePowdin, the director of forecast operations at AccuWeather, which has been in the forecasting business for 60 years. People want to spend 30 seconds or less in the morning checking what the day will bring and seeing what to watch out for. The challenge is delivering that to them in a straightforward, helpful way. "Within just one screen, you can get a lot of information, but there's still a lot of blank space to let your eye not be totally consumed," he says.

People like the convenience of taking a quick look at the weather on their phones instead of waiting for the 8s.

Not all weather apps are created equal — some have a real depth of information, others cover the basics. And sifting through their quality is likely to become harder, given the rise of vibe coding and developers' ability to spin up a new product overnight.

There's a wide gulf between a developer using a $9 a month API and an enterprise weather intelligence company, says Eric Floehr, the founder and CEO of ForecastWatch, which monitors and analyzes forecast accuracy. "You often do get what you pay for," he says.

The stakes are high, too. The most benign version of a weather app mishap is when the emoji says it's going to rain when, in reality, there's not a cloud in the sky. The scariest version is when someone doesn't notice a possible lightning strike or tornado because they're just focused on a number or image on display.

Until and unless developers overhaul how they present probability and uncertainty, meteorologists advise treating standard apps as a cursory check, not gospel. They say people should instead look to their local meteorologist or the National Weather Service for guidance, or even call the golf course or amusement park ahead of time to see what's going on. Human expertise still matters. They also note that people shouldn't take their phone app being wrong as evidence that all forecasts are wrong — many meteorologists told me that bad digital forecasts give the whole industry a bad name.

The day I spoke with Haddad Miller from Coney Island, the weather forecast showed a string of glorious, sun-filled days. She was cautiously optimistic about what it would mean for business, but not over the moon.

"Saturday should be spectacular," she says. "Theoretically. Unless they come in and put in a rain emoji the day before and then take it away."

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Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

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The parasite panic didn't stop thousands of nutrition experts from chowing down on salad

The American Society for Nutrition's annual conference is one of the largest for cutting-edge research on all things food science.

EPNAC.com/American Society for Nutrition

• At a conference, I saw doctors and dietitians enjoying salad, despite the cyclosporiasis outbreak.
• They told me the risk doesn't warrant swearing off fresh produce, a key part of a healthy diet.
• It made me feel safer about eating salads at home — with a few extra precautions.

As a health reporter, I've spent weeks in the trenches of the cyclosporiasis outbreak, trying to decipher the gastrointestinal gamble of eating fresh produce right now.

I've talked to doctors, tracked case numbers, and tuned into FDA briefings all in the pursuit of one question: Is a piece of iceberg lettuce an accident waiting to happen right now?

Then I took a train to Washington, DC, for Nutrition 2026, one of the country's biggest nutrition conferences, where 3,000 doctors, dietitians, and food science researchers gathered to discuss healthy — and safe — eating.

The first thing that caught my attention wasn't research-related; it was lunch. Almost everyone was eating chopped salad.

A few people skipped the greens — some drenched their salad dressing on lower-risk veggies like cucumbers instead — but by and large, the nutrition community seemed OK with leafy greens.

I was a little surprised. The cyclosporiasis outbreak is still very much ongoing. To date, more than 11,000 people in 46 states have been sickened with a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea. The FDA, CDC, and local health officials recently expanded their investigation to include more states, and they are still working to trace the outbreak's sources and ultimately contain it.

So why were these health experts eating salad? I spent the weekend badgering dietitians and food safety experts about how they're deciding what's OK to put on their plates. Here's everything I learned about eating healthy food with less anxiety.

What's wrong with lettuce right now?

Cyclospora crops up in our food supply every summer.

How does it get there? Sorry to tell you… it's usually poop. Plants grow in the ground, and animals poop there. We water crops with water that may contain poop. And ultimately, fruits and veggies are picked, handled, and transported by many people before they get to your plate, and not everyone washes their hands for the full length of Happy Birthday like we were all taught in kindergarten.

While health officials still haven't identified the exact source of the current outbreak, iceberg lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms remains under investigation, and questions remain about lettuce, herbs, and berries.

Lettuce and other produce can be prone to contamination because they're harvested from dirt, which can be, well, dirty. Contamination can happen at every step of the supply chain, from water and soil to the many people who handle produce before it ends up on our plates.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Products like bagged salads can be particularly problematic because greens are mixed and then spread across large batches, allowing any hitchhiking contaminants to travel far and wide.

Why dietitians aren't panicking about produce

I talked to over a dozen dietitians, doctors, and researchers over the weekend.

No one was particularly nervous about the greens at the buffet — not because they thought the outbreak was overblown. They simply understood that the absolute risk of getting sick from any given salad remains relatively low, while the health benefits of eating vegetables remain overwhelming.

"The anxiety people feel around this outbreak is understandable," Alyssa Pike, a registered dietitian and a senior manager of food safety at the International Food Information Council, told me. She's still eating salads herself, but paying close attention to recalls and avoiding products that health officials are actively investigating.

"If you aren't comfortable eating lettuce right now," she said, "the good news is there are lots of other types of produce."

Psychologist William Hallman, who researches food risk communication at Rutgers University, said the people attending the conference have a very different relationship with the food system (and food safety) than the average consumer.

They're more familiar with how outbreaks are investigated, how contamination spreads, and how to interpret evolving public health guidance.

"In short, many consumers are avoiding salads not because the statistical risk of Cyclospora infection is high, but because the public messaging around the outbreak has been contradictory and difficult to interpret," Hallman told me. "People want to feel in control of the food choices they make for themselves and their families."

That uncertainty has become one of the defining features of this outbreak. For non-experts, cutting back on greens offers only a limited sense of comfort amid a lot of confusion.

Investigators initially thought they had found cyclospora in a Taylor Farms lettuce sample, only to later determine the result was a false positive, leading to mixed messages about what is or isn't safe to eat.

Still, the overwhelming evidence points to the iceberg lettuce, which originated in Mexico, as the source of the outbreak. Since it's been voluntarily recalled from grocery store shelves and restaurants like Taco Bell, consumers can feel safer about lunch.

There are foodborne outbreaks everywhere for those with eyes to see

Avoiding foodborne illness is tough.

The day I arrived at the conference, cyclospora wasn't the only hazard going around. The CDC announced an outbreak of Salmonella in eggs. As I was writing this, the USDA announced a recall of more than 12,000 pounds of bacon.

While I personally skipped lettuce on my trip, I was definitely loading up on scrambled eggs at the free hotel breakfast (so far, so good), and bacon wasn't on the menu. The alternative of eating ultra-processed convenience foods all weekend, plus the gallons of coffee I need to do journalism, would have led to a different kind of digestive disaster.

Just to be safe, I ended my conference with a big scoop of ice cream for dinner instead of a salad.

Gabby Landsverk

Back home in New York, greens have long been a part of my weekly meal prep. They still are — I've just switched to buying local, since the scale of the outbreak makes it more likely to be tied to a large distributor than to a small farm.

Holding off the iceberg lettuce this week might make sense if you're worried about this outbreak, but it doesn't mean you should swear off salad forever. If your risk tolerance is higher, you can still eat leafy greens, particularly if you know the source or if you're in an area with fewer cases of this particular illness.

If there's one thing I learned from the weekend, it is that there is no perfect way to eat. That's what the whole conference was about: how to advance the latest cutting-edge nutrition science on what's good for our bodies, while also aligning it with how we actually live our lives.

The takeaway: Be cautious, but don't panic. Stress can give you diarrhea, too.

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