Table of contents for June 20-27, 2025 in Newsweek

Q _ What made you want to be a firefighter? A _ I was working for the forest service as a wilderness ranger and all my roommates were female firefighters on various crews. They seemed just sort of like they came to life in this job. So I started to get curious, and when I went on my first tiny, tiny fire, I was like, “Oh, I get it. I want to try this.” Did you come alive like they did? Absolutely. The job was so empowering and so exciting. It was really cool to see this natural occurrence of combustion happening. And to learn how to manipulate and use fire to fight fire. Fire beat me down in many ways, but also brought me to life. What do you…

JOSH CARROTT AND OLLIE KENDAL’S FRIENDSHIP is rooted in their shared love of food. Turns out, that’s also made them YouTube’s favorite food duo. “I would say no one’s more surprised than us, but that would be discounting my parents. They are more surprised than us that this career choice paid off,” Kendal says. Their channel, JOLLY, takes the London-based pair across the world trying various cuisines. “It’s half a food review, but it’s half just two friends having a good time. So, it doesn’t really work if you’re not enjoying yourself,” Kendal says. They’ve turned that popularity into Cheeky Takeout, a new podcast where they chat with a celebrity over, you guessed it, food. “I think there’s this inner interest in seeing these people that we look up to,…

WITH THE UNITED STATES AND IRAN HAVING held five rounds of talks on potentially striking a new nuclear agreement, one key incentive being touted by Tehran is the prospect of opening the Islamic Republic to large-scale investment. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who represents his nation at the negotiating table, has discussed how “tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts are up for grabs” in Iran’s nuclear sector. He described it as a market “big enough to revitalize the struggling nuclear industry in the United States.” This proposal comes at a time when the Trump administration is pursuing a so-called “nuclear renaissance” aimed at reinvigorating U.S. nuclear energy. But given the uncertainty surrounding whether the White House would allow Iran to pursue any level of uranium enrichment, the question…

As fears of mass immigration have lifted the fortunes of right-wing populists around the Western world, one place that’s not happening is Denmark. There, it is Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrat party that has implemented one of the strictest immigration systems in Europe in one of its most socially liberal countries. In so doing, Denmark has become an example for other nations seeking to strengthen immigration laws—not least the United States, where the perceived softness of the Democratic Party in this area was a key factor in the return of President Donald Trump last year. It also contrasts with much of Western Europe. “What I’m trying to convince most of my European colleagues about is that it has to be a democratic decision who will enter Europe,” Frederiksen tells…

BRITISH DIVER TOM DALEY WAS THRUST ONTO THE WORLD STAGE AT HIS first Olympic Games in 2008, age 14. What remained hidden from the public was the strain success at a young age put on him. “It was a very lonely period because no one really understood.” Daley reflects on his diving career and life in the new documentary Tom Daley: 1.6 Seconds (Olympics.com). “Growing up, you think you know everything.... It’s only when you look back, you realize you knew absolutely nothing.” Daley also had to contend with losing his father and coming out as gay. “It was quite scary to finally, actually, come out. Because I knew that it wasn’t just going to be telling my family. There was going to be public opinion.” And he recounts being…

GROWING UP IN INDIA, RAVI Kumar didn’t look like leadership material. “I didn’t do well in school. I was at the bottom of my class,” he says. “Normally, when you’re at the bottom, you’re good at something like sports or art. I wasn’t good at anything.” Yet, the academic underachiever would go on to excel in chemical engineering at Shivaji University, a solid but decidedly not elite state school. “Once I tasted success, the aspirations to punch above my weight grew,” Kumar says. He eventually landed a coveted position at India’s prestigious Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, or BARC. There, working alongside graduates of elite institutions, Kumar discovered his potential. “I didn’t go to an IIT [Indian Institute of Technology], but I felt like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m able to compete…

COMPANIES THAT EMPHASIZE BUILDING A STRONG workplace environment see higher levels of employee engagement. With that comes a range of benefits. According to survey data collected by Gallup, engaged employees who are “highly involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplace” increased profitability by 23 percent, productivity by 14 percent and sales by 18 percent. When workers are satisfied with their roles, the results speak for themselves. That’s why Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group are partnering for the third-annual ranking of America’s Greatest Workplaces, recognizing the companies where employee engagement comes naturally. The companies highlighted here demonstrate how prioritizing workplace satisfaction can prove advantageous both for their employees and themselves. This ranking involved an assessment of publicly accessible data, over 400,000 employee interviews and over 4.9 million comprehensive company reviews.…