The Brief

Are you aiming to sleep better, eat healthier, scroll less and/or generally upgrade your life starting on Jan. 1?

Join the club — it's several thousand years old.

New Year's resolutions are a key part of how many people observe the holiday, as much of an annual tradition as the Times Square ball drop or a midnight champagne toast.

The concept of taking stock and vowing to do better in the new year actually dates back centuries, though there wasn't always a pithy name for it.

The word "resolution" entered English from Latin in the late 14th century, originally defined as the STEM-coded "process of reducing things into simpler forms." Over time, it broadened to more figurative meanings, like solving conflicts and remaining steadfast. By the 19th century, it had also come to signify an expression of intent — including for the year ahead.

One of the first appearances of the phrase "new year resolutions" was in a Boston newspaper in 1813, according to Merriam-Webster.

But diary entries show that people had been practicing the concept well before then — like English writer Anne Halkett, who wrote a list of Bible-inspired pledges on Jan. 2, 1671, titled "Resolutions."

Historians trace the phenomenon even farther back: to 2000 B.C., when Babylonians celebrated the new year with a 12-day springtime festival called Akitu. They marked the arrival of the farming season by crowning a new king, thanking deities for a bountiful harvest and, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac, resolving to return neighbors' borrowed agricultural equipment.

Alexis McCrossen, a history professor at Southern Methodist University whose research focuses on New Year's observances, says it was ancient Romans who first associated Jan. 1 with New Year's resolutions.

They celebrated the start of January by giving offerings to the month's namesake, Janus — the two-faced god of beginnings and endings — and auspicious gifts (like twigs from sacred trees) to their loved ones.

"It was a day to make promises and offerings," McCrossen says. "I think that's the origin of our New Year's resolution, because a resolution is a kind of promise."

Fireworks welcome the arrival of 2015 outside of Rome's ancient Colosseum. Ancient Romans celebrated Jan. 1 with religious offerings and gifts to loved ones.

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Other cultures and countries came to view the new year as a time for self-reflection and goal-setting, especially from a religious perspective.

There was the medieval "Vow of the Peacock," an end-of-Christmas-season feast where knights renewed their vows of chivalry by placing their hands on (you guessed it) a peacock. In well-documented diary entries from the early 1800s, John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, detailed spiritual reflections from the past year and wishes for the next one.

But it wasn't until the 20th century that Americans en masse began celebrating New Year's as a holiday, and making secular resolutions a part of it.

This installment of NPR's Word of the Week explores the evolution of New Year's resolutions — and what we can learn from that history as we set our intentions for the future.

New Year's was a "non-event" for much of U.S. history, but a reflective season

As McCrossen explains, Jan. 1 didn't hold special significance to most Americans until relatively recently.

That's partially because England and its colonies didn't start treating that day as the new year until they adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Before that, under the Julian calendar, the year began on March 25.

Even in ensuing decades, McCrossen says Jan. 1 was essentially "like any other day of the week," notable mostly because it was the beginning of the fiscal year. In hindsight, she says that was arguably its own kind of New Year's resolution: paying off debts and resolving to avoid them in the future.

Indeed, Robert Thomas, who founded The Old Farmer's Almanac in 1792, called the new year a time of "leisure to farmers … to settle accounts with your neighbors" after the frenzy of the fall harvest and winter holidays.

Jan. 1 was an increasingly popular day to do so. In the antebellum South, it came to be known as "Hiring Day" or "Heartbreak Day," a busy day for renewing contracts — including those of enslaved people — and tallying debts. Printers began to heavily advertise products like ledgers and account books specifically ahead of the new year.

"It's like buying the running shoes before you make the commitment that you're going to train for a marathon," McCrossen says. "There's an emphasis on preparing for the new year and doing it better than you had been."

By the early 19th century, more Americans were embracing the new year as a moment to take stock and set spiritual goals, which McCrossen attributes in large part to the growth of capitalism and Evangelicalism.

While the new year was largely still a "non-event," McCrossen says, people increasingly treated Jan. 1 as a day of visiting and socializing. New Yorkers held open houses; People in D.C. went to the White House to shake the president's hand.

It was around this time that Americans started becoming "more oriented toward festivities" like Christmas (first recognized as a federal holiday in 1870) and New Year's in general, McCrossen says.

"But I think if it had just remained a holiday for the first of the year … I don't know if we would have gotten resolutions," she adds. "I think the resolutions come with the emphasis on midnight … on the moment of the new year's arrival."

A couple toasts to New Year's as the clock strikes midnight on this German postcard from 1904. German immigrants are credited with helping popularize New Year's Eve celebrations in the U.S.

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She traces that shift to two main contributors.

One is the "Watch Night" services that Baptist, Methodist and other evangelical churches began to hold late on New Year's Eve, which tended to focus on shortcomings from the past year and promises for the next one. The preacher would announce the arrival of midnight, McCrossen says, "and there would be shouts of joy and gladness … and a sense of transformation."

The other is the influx of German immigrants, who brought with them "Silvesterabend" (or "Sylvester's Abend"), the tradition — named for an early pope and the German word for "evening" — of celebrating Dec. 31 with song, dance and midnight toasts. The practice was so unusual at the time that it warranted coverage in mainstream U.S. newspapers, she says — and inspired many non-evangelicals to follow suit.

"By the 20th century, we've got electricity, we've got the ball dropping in Times Square, we've got bells ringing, we've got midnight galore, and we have a lot of commercial forces that are trying to make money out of New Year's Eve," McCrossen says.

How our resolutions have changed

People run on treadmills at a New York Sports Club on Jan. 2, 2003 in Brooklyn, New York — perhaps as part of a New Year's resolution.

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The Times Square ball dropped for the first time in 1907 (though it wasn't accompanied by a countdown until many decades later) . Mentions of New Year's resolutions started appearing in U.S. newspapers around the same time.

In 1900, Georgia's Columbus Daily Enquirer spotlighted the "novel New Year's resolution" of an unnamed Columbus woman who "had resolved to stay at home more, and to go out more." A 1914 piece in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram surveyed several Texans about attempting New Year's resolutions.

"I don't remember keeping any one of a dozen I recall making," said one, Howard Higby.

"Never before until today. This is my last cigarette for a year," said another, Billie Moore. "See me Jan. 1, 1916 and ask me."

A 1918 piece in Michigan's Jackson City Patriot says World War I "has brought New Year resolutions back into fashion," and "not the old-style kinds that were readily made and readily broken." It urged Americans to resolve to help win the war by doing things like buying Liberty bonds and rationing food.

New Year's resolutions have largely lost their religious overtones, a development McCrossen says is in line with broader cultural trends. In recent decades, goals have turned more towards self-improvement.

A 1947 Gallup poll shared with NPR asked if people planned to make New Year's resolutions. For those who did, some of the most common answers will be recognizable to readers today: "improve my character, live [a] better life, be more independent," "be more efficient and prompt," "stop smoking" and "save more money."

But "get thin," "stop eating candy," and "get more sleep, take care of my health, not work so hard" ranked at the bottom of the list, in a sign of how times have changed.

These days, McCrossen believes everyone should try to make at least some New Year's reflections and resolutions, ideally informed by generations past. She especially likes the idea of bringing back Jan. 1 as a day to reconnect with others, whether that's through an in-person get together, a phone call or a handwritten note.

And she notes that — as has been the case throughout history — resolutions don't only have to be made on the eve of a new year.

"Each day, one could do that," she says. "It's just that the 1st provides us with a lot of energy and community, all of us together trying to start out on a new foot."
Copyright 2025 NPR

If you celebrated Christmas this year, there’s a good chance you still have a live tree sitting at home.

It’s OK to drag your feet on taking down the decorations — but there are deadlines coming up if you want to get rid of your Christmas tree the responsible way.

Most cities and counties offer some form of free curbside pickup or drop-off, but it’s only for a limited time. Here’s your rundown of how it works.

L.A. County

There are a couple of things to keep in mind regardless of where you are. Don’t bag or wrap trees prior to recycling. Remove all decorations and stands. If you place it curbside, put it next to your bins (not in front), and if it goes inside a bin, make sure the lid closes completely.

Some rules can vary, though, so you should check with your waste hauler for certain details. You may be required to cut your tree if it’s above 6 feet, or dispose of it differently if it’s a flocked tree (coated with fake snow). For example, the city of Los Angeles says to put that in the black bin, while Long Beach can recycle it (more info on that below).

City of L.A. residents have three options for tree disposal: curbside collection, mulching and drop-off.

Curbside collection works for residents in houses and apartments through Jan 31. To use it, follow these steps:

• Cut your tree into pieces and place them inside your green compost bin.
• If your tree is too big (or you can’t cut it), place it on the curb next to your green bin on trash day. 
• If it’s larger than 6 feet tall, schedule a bulky item pickup through MyLA311.
• If you’re in an apartment or condo, just place your tree on the curb on your neighborhood’s trash day.

Mulching service is also available at the following locations:

• Open through Jan. 15: Harbor Safe Center at 1400 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro
• Open Jan. 2 to Jan. 31: Lopez Canyon Environmental Education Center at 11950 Lopez Canyon Rd., Lake View Terrace (Place trees in the the rolloff bin by the entrance.)

Drop-off sites will also be available for at least the first couple weeks of January, depending on where you go. Long Beach is also encouraging drop-off, so here’s a map of sites for both areas:

If you can’t drop it off in Long Beach, the city will have a special collection for trees on Jan. 10. For deadlines in other cities and unincorporated communities, see this list from CleanLA.

Orange County

Orange County is serviced by multiple waste haulers, which handle Christmas tree recycling. They have different timeframes and requirements based on your city. You can see a list of each provider here. We’ve included some examples below.

For Anaheim residents: Republic Services is picking up trees through Jan. 16 on trash day — just put it next to your bins. You can also recycle it by cutting it into small pieces and putting them in your brown or compost bin. After Jan. 16, you can have it picked up through Republic Services’ bulky item pickup.

For Irvine residents: Waste Management is also picking up trees through Jan. 16 that are left curbside on trash day. After this date, you can cut the tree into pieces and put it in your green bin, or schedule a bulky item pickup.

For Santa Ana residents: Republic Services is picking up trees through Jan. 13. A different truck does this work, so it’s important to put yours on the curb no earlier than noon on the day before your trash collection. After this date, you can cut the tree into pieces and put it in your green bin.

For Huntington Beach residents: Republic Services will pick up trees curbside from Jan. 5 to Jan. 9, as long as it’s outside by 7 a.m. Flocked trees go inside your trash bin or can be picked up with a bulky item request. This trash service also has a few drop-off locations available through Jan. 10.

Tech companies that create large, advanced artificial intelligence models will soon have to share more information about how the models can impact society and give their employees ways to warn the rest of us if things go wrong.

Starting January 1, a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom gives whistleblower protections to employees at companies like Google and OpenAI whose work involves assessing the risk of critical safety incidents. It also requires large AI model developers to publish frameworks on their websites that include how the company responds to critical safety incidents and assesses and manages catastrophic risk. Fines for violating the frameworks can reach $1 million per violation. Under the law, companies must report critical safety incidents to the state within 15 days, or within 24 hours if they believe a risk poses an imminent threat of death or injury.

The law began as Senate Bill 53, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, to address catastrophic risk posed by advanced AI models, which are sometimes called frontier models. The law defines catastrophic risk as an instance where the tech can kill more than 50 people through a cyber attack or hurt people with a chemical, biological, radioactive, or nuclear weapon, or an instance where AI use results in more than $1 billion in theft or damage. It addresses the risks in the context of an operator losing control of an AI system, for example because the AI deceived them or took independent action, situations that are largely considered hypothetical.

The law increases the information that AI makers must share with the public, including in a transparency report that must include the intended uses of a model, restrictions or conditions of using a model, how a company assesses and addresses catastrophic risk, and whether those efforts were reviewed by an independent third party.

The law will bring much-needed disclosure to the AI industry, said Rishi Bommasani, part of a Stanford University group that tracks transparency around AI. Only three of 13 companies his group recently studied regularly carry out incident reports and transparency scores his group issues to such companies fell on average over the last year, according to a newly issued report.

Bommasami is also a lead author of a report ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom that heavily influenced SB 53 and calls transparency a key to public trust in AI. He thinks the effectiveness of SB 53 depends heavily on the government agencies tasked with enforcing it and the resources they are allocated to do so.

“You can write whatever law in theory, but the practical impact of it is heavily shaped by how you implement it, how you enforce it, and how the company is engaged with it.”

The law was influential even before it went into effect. The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, credited it as the basis for the AI transparency and safety law she signed Dec. 19. The similarity will grow, City & State New York reported, as the law will be “substantially rewritten next year largely to align with California’s language.”

Limitations and implementation

The new law falls short no matter how well it is enforced, critics say. It does not include in its definition of catastrophic risk issues like the impact of AI systems on the environment, their ability to spread disinformation, or their potential to perpetuate historical systems of oppression like sexism or racism. The law also does not apply to AI systems used by governments to profile people or assign them scores that can lead to a denial of government services or fraud accusations, and only targets companies that make $500 million in annual revenue.

Its transparency measures also stop short of full public visibility. In addition to providing the transparency reports, AI developers must also send incident reports to the Office of Emergency Services when things go wrong. Members of the public can also contact that office to report catastrophic risk incidents.

But the contents of incident reports submitted to OES by companies or their employees cannot be provided to the public via records requests and will be shared instead with members of the California Legislature and Newsom. Even then, they may be redacted to hide information that companies characterize as trade secrets, a common way companies prevent sharing information about their AI models.

Bommasami hopes additional transparency will be provided by Assembly Bill 2013, a bill that became law in 2024 and also takes effect Jan. 1. It requires companies to disclose additional details about the data they use to train AI models.

Some elements of SB 53 don’t kick in until next year. Starting in 2027, the Office of Emergency Services will produce a report about critical safety incidents the agency receives from the public and large frontier model makers. That report may give more clarity into the extent to which AI can mount attacks on infrastructure or models act without human direction, but the report will be anonymized so which AI models pose this threat won’t be known to the public.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Flu season is off to a rough start this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the virus arrived as expected, cases are rising faster, compared with previous years.

Last week, more than 19,000 patients with influenza were admitted to hospitals, up about 10,000 from the previous week, according to new CDC data. To date, the CDC estimates at least 7.5 million people have been sickened, and over 3,100 people have died from the flu.

The surge seems to be driven primarily by a new strain of the virus — subclade K of influenza A(H3N2) — that emerged in Australia over the summer.

"Anywhere we detect this virus, you can see a large surge of influenza cases coming afterwards," says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In the U.S., "the timing is not that much different from other flu seasons, but the number of cases, and how quickly those cases are increasing is something that is not usually seen this time of year."

New York has been hit especially hard, with state health officials announcing over 71,000 cases last week — the most cases ever recorded in a single week in the state. But other states are seeing high levels of flu activity, particularly in the northeast, midwest and south.

"The map is mostly red," says Pekosz, indicating high levels of disease that will likely increase over the coming weeks.

"When you're in the middle of seeing the curve start to go up, we just don't have any sense of where it's going to stop," he says. "That's the big concern in most of the medical communities right now."

What's driving the upswing?

So far, there's no indication that this new strain is more severe, or even more contagious than previous years, says Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

But there have been changes to the virus that may allow it to get around our immune defenses, he says. "There's less immunity to it, and that's allowing the virus to spread very quickly and extensively."

There are some concerns that this season's flu vaccine may not be a perfect match to the new strain, given it emerged after the formulation was decided last February. "I think we're going to have a mismatch between the strain circulating and the vaccine," says Demetre Daskalakis, who led the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at CDC until he resigned in August. "But the vaccine is still the best protection we have, even if it's imperfect protection."

Preliminary data from the United Kingdom, which saw an early surge of flu this year, suggests the vaccine is about 30 to 40% effective at preventing hospitalization in adults. "Those numbers are in line with what you would typically see," says Krammer, though he stresses those are preliminary estimates.

What about the flu shot?

Flu vaccines only offer protection if people get them and in the U.S., only 42% of adults have gotten a flu shot this year. That leaves many people unprotected in face of a likely bad flu season, says Daskalakis. He'd like to see the CDC do more to encourage vaccination.

"You're not seeing the robust communication that you would expect," he says. "Usually you'd expect to see more alerts coming out of CDC, more recommendations to be vaccinated."

In response to that criticism, a CDC spokesperson said, "the CDC is strongly committed to keeping Americans healthy during flu season. CDC launched a new national outreach campaign designed to raise awareness and empower Americans with the tools they need to stay healthy during the respiratory illness season," adding "the decision to vaccinate is a personal one. People should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine and should be informed about the potential risks and benefits associated with vaccines."

In an interview with NPR, Lisa Grohskopf, a medical officer in the CDC's influenza division emphasized the importance of vaccination. "It's definitely not too late to get a flu vaccine if you haven't done it already," she says.

What else can I do to avoid the flu?

"If you're using public transportation, if you're in the room with a lot of other people, if you're in a healthcare setting, it's really smart to wear a mask," says Krammer, especially higher-quality masks. "I was taking the subway yesterday in New York City. I was wearing an N95 mask."

Social distancing, especially when you or someone in your household is infected, can help minimize the spread too.

If you get infected, there are effective treatment options, especially when started with 48 hours of infection. "If you get an infection with influenza, that's really a reason to see a physician, get diagnosed, and then take next steps," says Krammer. "It's not an infection that you should take lightly."

Copyright 2025 NPR

A federal district court judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration must continue to seek funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, a watchdog agency the administration has been trying to dismantle through staffing and funding cuts.

The administration recently made a legal argument that because the agency gets its funding from the Federal Reserve, and since the Fed is technically operating at a loss, there are no valid funds for the CFPB.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected the argument, writing that this "would be tantamount to closing what is left of the Bureau." This upholds an earlier injunction from Jackson to ensure the agency would continue to exist as congressionally mandated, and to stop efforts to shutter the CFPB, including through layoffs.

Separately, last week a coalition of 21 states and the District of Columbia joined together for a lawsuit to prevent the defunding of the agency. They argue that the administration is too narrowly interpreting which Fed funds can be used to support the agency — that they don't have to be profits.

Representatives from the White House and the CFPB did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The CFPB was created after the 2008 financial crisis to protect consumers against fraud and predatory practices; among its many duties, it collects people's complaints against businesses. It has long been a target of conservatives who say it's too aggressive in enforcing consumer protection laws.

President Donald Trump installed Russell Vought as the acting director of the agency, who has mirrored the president's desire to close the bureau. Vought ordered a stop to all work at the agency within the first few weeks of Trump's second inauguration.

In April, layoff notices were sent to about 1,400 of the bureau's workers. The National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the staff reductions. Judge Jackson issued a preliminary injunction blocking the layoffs, but in August an appeals court panel vacated that ruling, saying that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia lacked jurisdiction in the case. In December, that panel decision was itself vacated, meaning that the layoffs currently remain blocked.

In today's order, Jackson wrote that the administration was "actively and unabashedly trying to shut the agency down again, through different means."

"Notably, though, not one penny of the funding needed to run the agency that has returned over $21 billion to American consumers comes from taxpayer dollars," she wrote. "Today, the agency is hanging by a thread."
Copyright 2025 NPR