Marc Jacobs’s very fun fall campaign stars Jemima Kirke and Rowan Blanchard; Kylie Jenner is the new face of Alo (their second celebrity partnership in two weeks, for those keeping track); Jack Lowden — “Mr. Saoirse Ronan” — is rumored to be the next James Bond; and can Netflix's next teen drama Crew Girl do for rowing what Heated Rivalry did for hockey?
FORGET ABOUT FETCHING COFFEE. THIS SUMMER, THE INTERNS ARE RUNNING THE SHOW., wsj
As AI takes over the menial tasks that used to fill interns’ days — I’ll never forget spending an entire workday as an intern transcribing a particularly cuckoo interview with Jenny McCarthy for Cookie Magazine, Condé Nast’s short-lived fancy parenting magazine — this summer’s cohort is working directly with clients and leading high-profile projects. At the marketing company All Terrain, the interns were tasked with designing a campaign for a brand that struggled to connect with Gen Z, and their ideas were so good that the agency had them pitch directly to the client. “We were shocked,” said Hannah Tate-Arena, a marketing major at the University of Alabama. Talia Kusmirek, a 20-year-old intern at AI sales-lead company Nooks, was sent on a last-minute business trip from San Francisco to London to produce social content solo. “We’re not a charity,” said Nooks’ CEO. “We want great people to do good work, then tell their friends and come back.”
A NEW CAREER PATH IS TEMPTING YOUNG BANKERS AWAY FROM WALL STREET, businessinsider
Interns aren’t the only ones choosing splashy AI startups over stuffy finance gigs. Junior bankers are also heading to tech companies that automate the slide decks, research, and modeling once done by analysts like them. Rogo, founded in 2021 by twenty-something former Lazard and JPMorgan bankers, hit a $2 billion valuation in April and has more than 300 clients, including Moelis and Tiger Global. In the last year, it doubled headcount to more than 150 and plans to double again in the next 12 months. Jared Swansen, 27, left Bank of America and a buy-side role at Acacia Research for Rogo in January. These days, he barely remembers his Excel shortcuts. “It felt like probably the bigger risk was doing nothing when the whole world was changing.” Rachel Friedman, 27, said now that “everyone’s comfortable” with financial institutions using AI, “the risk is around betting on the right one.”
GEN Z IS MOVING MONEY FROM STOCKS TO SPORTS BETTING IN WEALTH PLANS, bloomberg
More than a quarter of Gen Z investors — 26% of those born between 1997 and 2007 — say they view sports betting as a strategic part of their long-term financial plans, according to a new survey of 1,000 US retail investors from Betterment, a robo-advisor with an obvious business interest in getting young people to park money in brokerage accounts instead. More than half of young investors have redirected money earmarked for investing into sports betting over the past year, and 14% do so multiple times a month. Robert Kosciuk, 32, applies the “logic of investing” to his wagers. “I think I’m just smarter about it,” he said. “I’m not just doing it as a hobby.” So far, it’s working: He was able to pay for a vacation “thanks to the Carolina Hurricanes this year, which sounds insane to say out loud.”
WE CAN TELL WHERE YOU LIVE BY YOUR SONG OF THE SUMMER, wapo
Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” is 2026’s closest thing to a national song of the summer, hitting No. 1 on Spotify charts everywhere from Portland to Philadelphia and setting the record for the longest-running No. 1 by a woman on the Billboard Hot 100. “It’s appealing to people who have no idea that it was originally a country hit, even though they can hear the twang in it,” said Matt Bailey, who runs analytics firm Hit Momentum. In New York and LA, they’re streaming Olivia Rodrigo’s “Stupid Song,” Miami has had Drake’s “Janice STFU” on repeat for five weeks, and Midwestern cities are inexplicably locked into the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.” Not that you asked, but my song of the summer is “LA Nights” by Trap Dickey; as a millennial, I’m powerless to a good Weezer sample.
TATE MCRAE’S BEAUTY SECRET? NOT NECESSARILY TOUCHING THE PRODUCTS, nytimes
The thing about celebrity endorsements is that even if we don’t actually believe famous people are using the product, we expect them to convincingly act like they are. In a sponsored TikTok viewed at least 18 million times, Tate McRae demonstrated her “post-show routine” using — or pretending to, anyway — Neutrogena products on a private jet to Lollapalooza. But the makeup wipe doesn’t appear to actually come into contact with her still-fully-made-up face. “girl be careful,” read one popular comment. “it almost touched ur skin.” Parody videos now have millions of views; Carly Knowlton, a 25-year-old who filmed one, said, “If you’re going to take a brand deal, be genuine. If you don’t like the product, don’t take the brand deal on.”
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