It may not be news to the 1.5 million college graduates struggling to find a job or toiling behind café counters, but Northeastern University researchers break it down: 53.6 percent of bachelor’s degree-holders under age of 25 were jobless or underemployed last year, the highest percentage since the dot-com bubble of 2000. In the last year, college graduates were more likely to be employed as servers, bartenders, and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians combined. The class of 2012 is about to get a gigantic wake-up call.
Unsurprisingly, the college majors least likely to yield a job were zoology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and humanities, intimating that practical degrees like accounting and teaching were the way out of grim post-graduate job prospects. This is certainly true, but it’s a short-sighted way of thinking about our problem. We need to stop undervaluing creative fields as a culture and pressure politicians to support education and the arts. Perhaps if the government didn’t keep whittling down allocations to state universities, these humanities grads wouldn’t be so paralyzed by debt and could pursue their creative impulses—or score a tenure-track position with a Ph.D.
And we need to invest in our service sector. According to these new numbers, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of openings by 2020 will require a college degree—teachers, college professors, and accountants. The lion’s share of those openings will be in retail sales, fast food, truck driving, and caregiving, especially as Baby Boomers age. The dilemma of the low-wage service worker is one of the few instances when that famous Millennial sense of entitlement comes in handy. Like it or not, our generation will be in these jobs for a while—so let’s work to make them better. Let’s push our legislators to raise the minimum wage. Let’s start demanding that our government invest in education, but let’s also be real about how many of us can afford to be drowning in debt after a four-year college degree.
Mobilization works: The scrappy, Millennial-led Jimmy John’s union I profiled in March just won the case against their employer. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect—they’re staring down a long road of appeals, and a year’s back pay is cold comfort for someone who’s been unemployed for a year. Still, it’s a glimmer of hope. Sometimes, people listen to the squeaky wheels.
Taking the stage at Coachella, singer Justin Bieber gave fans something unique: singing along to a YouTube video of himself at just 13, he harmonized on songs like “Baby,” “Never Say Never,” “With You,” and others.
Blake Roberts, a licensed therapist and self-proclaimed “dude,” shared his perspective on Bieber’s performance. While reactions to the appearance may be mixed, Roberts found it courageous.
“From the perspective of a therapist and dude, I have to talk about this Justin Bieber-Coachella thing,” Roberts said in an Instagram Reel. “If you’ve ever done any amount of inner child work, you can appreciate what that moment was.”
“That little boy was artistic and creative. Just doing his thing. Probably got made fun of a bunch, and then he gets thrown into this industry. And he loses parts of himself, and people probably take advantage of him,” he added.
Roberts turned the performance into a learning experience, discussing a form of therapy known as inner child work:
“Like we watched this man’s trauma, and yet he still shared a moment with us. Like a peek inside what it looks like to do inner child work. What looks like to look back at the younger versions of ourselves who have been rejected, who have been abused, who we ourselves have left behind. And to look at them with compassion and see them from the purity that they were.”
Bieber’s performance relied heavily on nostalgia and early-career callbacks. A review in Entertainment Weeklydescribed the set as “lacking some swag.” For much of the performance, Bieber sat at a desk onstage, scrolling through viral videos of himself.
Despite negative feedback on his set, some fans appeared to be very appreciative of Bieber. One fan commented on Roberts’ Instagram post, saying, “I loved it so so much, aaaand now I’m crying again.”
Regardless of whether people admire what the artist did, Roberts saw an opportunity to highlight recovery and the value of therapy. Bieber’s duet with his younger self could be seen as a meaningful act of openness and vulnerability. Roberts reflected, saying, “I thought it was pretty crazy. I could feel it.”
Bieber’s challenges scrutinized by the public
For those unfamiliar with Bieber’s personal life, he has faced some rough patches, as rumors have circulated about a struggling marriage and financial difficulties.
The obstacles began to appear in 2017, when Bieber pulled out of a world tour due to mental exhaustion. In 2022, he posted on Instagram about the challenges of dealing with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. The illness occurs when the chickenpox virus reactivates later in life, causing facial weakness. Bieber said he was experiencing facial paralysis on his right side, which led him to cancel his tour again.
There have also been allegations, including claims of drug use and questions about Bieber’s friendship with Sean “Diddy” Combs dating back to his youth. Clips have resurfaced showing Bieber as a teenager spending time with the music mogul. However, Bieber has not made any clear, on-the-record statements about that time.
The urban monkeys in New Delhi are so bold they’ll steal the lunch right off your plate. If you’ve spent time in New York, you’ve probably seen squirrels try to do the same. Sydney’s white ibises got the nickname “bin chickens” for stealing trash and sandwiches.
This brazen behavior isn’t normal for most species in the countryside, yet it shows up in urban wildlife, and not just in these cities.
Studies show that animals living in urban environments around the world exhibit common sets of behaviors. At the same time, these urban animals are losing traits they would need in the wild. This process of urban animals’ behavior becoming more similar is known as “behavioral homogenization,” and it accompanies the loss of species diversity with urbanization.
Squirrels in New York’s Central Park have no qualms about rifling through your belongings and stealing your food. Keystone/Getty Images
Cities, despite their local differences, share many of the same features worldwide: They are warmer than the surrounding countryside, noisy, polluted by light and, most importantly, dominated by people.
Cities drive evolution as well. Humans and the changes we’ve brought to cities have led to the survival of bolder animals, and those bolder animals pass on their traits to future generations. In genetics, scientists refer to this as the environment “selecting” for those traits.
It’s not just sandwich-stealing that is more common among city wildlife; urban birds also sound more alike.
Why? Cities are loud and filled with traffic noise, so those who can effectively communicate in that environment are more likely to survive and pass on those traits.
Animals may behave similarly in cities because they learn from each other how to exploit novel human food sources. For instance, the cockatoos in Sydney have learned to open trash bins. In Toronto, the raccoons are in a race to outwit humans as urban wildlife managers try to design animal-proof trash bins.
The buildings and bridges in cities become home to bats, birds, and other urban dwellers, at the cost of learning to use more natural nesting sites. Roads and culverts modify how and where animals move.
While rural animals may forage at a variety of places and eat a variety of foods, urban animals may concentrate on garbage bins or rubbish dumps where they know they can find food, but they end up eating a potentially unhealthy diet.
Consequences of similar behaviors
The loss of behavioral diversity is happening everywhere that humans increase their footprint on nature. This is worrisome on several levels.
At the population level, behavioral variation may reflect genetic variation. Genetic variation gives species the ability to respond to future environmental change. For example, for animals that have evolved to breed at a specific time of the year, urban heat islands can select for earlier breeding.
Reducing genetic variation leaves populations less able to respond to future changes. In that sense, having genetic variation resembles a diversified investment portfolio: Spreading risk across a variety of stocks and bonds lowers the risk that a single shock will wipe out everything.
Moreover, as animals become tamer, new conflicts between animals and humans may emerge. For instance, there may be more car crashes, animal bites, property damage and zoonotic disease transmission. Such conflicts cost money and may harm both the animals and humans.
Losing behavioral diversity is also troubling for conservation.
When a species loses behavioral diversity, it loses resilience against future environmental change in the wild, making reintroducing urban animals to the wild harder.
Losing behavioral diversity also risks erasing socially learned, population-specific behaviors, such as local migration routes, foraging techniques, tool-use traditions or vocal dialects.
For example, Australia’s regent honeyeater populations have been shrinking and are critically endangered. The isolation of having fewer of their own species around has disrupted normal song-learning behavior, making it harder for male birds to sing attractive songs that help them find mates and breed successfully.
Ultimately, behavioral homogenization is making wildlife in cities such as Los Angeles, Lima, Lagos and Lahore behave in similar ways despite living in different environments and having different evolutionary histories.
Many of these behaviors influence survival and reproduction, so understanding this form of diversity loss is important for successful wildlife conservation, as well as future urban planning.
As health care costs rise, patients aren’t just shouldering higher bills. They’re bearing more and more responsibility for getting information.
Americans are facing a health care affordability crunch on multiple fronts. In 2025, the Republican-controlled Congress approved a sweeping tax law that scaled back premium subsidies for Americans accessing care through the Affordable Care Act starting in 2026. As a result, millions on ACA plans now face much higher premiums, with many dropping out or expecting to drop out and risk going uninsured as premiums surge. By March 2026, about 1 in 10 people on ACA plans had dropped out, and that share is expected to rise.
Nearly half of U.S. adults now report difficulty affording health care. Together, these shifts are accelerating the “consumerization” of health care. Patients now have the ability to comparison shop, evaluate options and manage costs – but often without clear pricing. In this environment, knowing how to ask the right questions may be one of the most important tools patients have.
We are professors who study how perceptions of health care costs shape patients’ decisions about their care. Our research examines how factors such as price-transparency regulations influence patient choices. Across our work, we consistently hear from patients about rising costs and how conversations about price with their providers too often never happen.
Why speaking up about cost matters
When one of us took our child to the doctor for pink eye, the pediatrician quickly sent a prescription for antibiotic drops to the pharmacy. At the pickup, the pharmacist dropped the news that the drops would cost more than US$300. A follow-up phone call to the doctor’s office, however, yielded important information: A generic version of the same medication offered the same treatment and the same results, but at a fraction of the price.
That quick phone call saved her a lot of money. It also raised a broader question: Why don’t more people have these conversations about cost? In fact, one study shows that cost conversations occur in only about 30% of medical visits.
These discussions aren’t just for medications. They can be crucial when a recommended procedure has multiple alternatives; when out-of-pocket costs might affect whether you follow through on care; or when a sudden medical bill could create financial strain. Speaking up about price can help patients stay healthier and avoid the all-too-common trade-off between medical care and household expenses.
The study mentioned above also found that doctors and patients identified ways to reduce out-of-pocket costs – such as switching to a generic drug or adjusting the timing of care – in nearly half of those cases. Importantly, these conversations were typically brief and did not compromise the quality of care, the researchers found.
Patients actually prefer doctors who bring up costs, other research has found. Still, most patients remain hesitant. While a majority say they want to discuss cost, only a minority actually do, often waiting until a bill arrives – often when it’s too late to consider alternatives. That’s why it’s important that consumers feel empowered to ask the right questions. Here are three that can help make care more affordable.
One of the simplest ways to reduce drug costs is to ask whether a less expensive option is available. Brand-name medications can cost significantly more than generics, even when they are equally effective. One industry survey estimated that 90% of all prescriptions filled in 2024 were generic or biosimilar, but these accounted for only 12% of drug spending.
In many cases, physicians can substitute a generic drug or recommend a similar treatment that achieves the same outcome at a lower price. And when no direct generic exists, there may be therapeutic alternatives worth considering. For example, if a brand-name eye drop or inhaler isn’t available in generic form, doctors can often prescribe a different medication in the same class that works just as well but costs far less. Research on physician–patient cost conversations shows that switching to lower-cost, clinically similar alternatives within the same drug class is a common strategy for reducing out-of-pocket spending without compromising care.
Is there any financial assistance available?
Some hospitals and large health systems have specific programs aimed at making care more affordable for lower-income patients. In many states, government programs address this same goal. These programs often offer discounts on care, but they can be complex to navigate and require significant paperwork. Many health care offices have staff who are knowledgeable about these programs and can help patients determine eligibility and sometimes even assist with applications, although the Trump administration has cut funding.
Patients can often find these programs through hospital or health system websites, which typically include financial assistance or “charity care” pages outlining eligibility and how to apply. State Medicaid offices and insurance marketplaces are also key entry points for coverage and subsidy programs. Nonprofit organizations and patient advocacy groups may also offer or list assistance tailored to specific conditions or medications.
It’s also important to remember that for prescription medications, what you’re quoted isn’t always the final price. Many medications come with options to reduce costs, including manufacturer coupons, copay assistance programs and patient assistance programs. Doctors’ offices and pharmacists may also know practical ways to save money, such as using a different pharmacy, switching to mail order or adjusting how a prescription is written. Asking about these options can uncover savings that aren’t immediately obvious.
What will this cost me, and are there other options?
Health care pricing is often opaque, and costs can vary widely depending on where and how care is delivered. Asking up front about your expected out-of-pocket cost can help you avoid surprises later.
This question also opens the door to alternatives. For example, patients may be able to choose a lower-cost imaging center, opt for outpatient rather than hospital-based care, or delay nonurgent services until insurance coverage improves.
Speaking up is part of taking care of your health
Health care decisions shouldn’t feel like a choice between your well-being and your wallet. A brief, honest conversation about cost can lead to more affordable and more sustainable care.
Physicians can’t address financial concerns they don’t hear about, and most want to help their patients access care they can realistically follow through on. As costs continue to shift toward the patient’s burden, asking these questions isn’t just helpful – it’s essential.
The next time you’re handed a prescription or a referral, remember: One simple question about price could make all the difference.
