Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Your paycheck could be a little bigger in 2026, even if you didn’t get a New Year’s raise. That’s because, in order to adjust for inflation, the IRS made some major changes to the tax code last year. In case you missed it, the changes were announced back in October. Notably, the standard deduction for 2026 (to be filed in 2027) — which reduces the amount of your income you will be taxed on — will rise. “For tax year 2026, the standard deduction increases to $32,200 for married couples filing jointly,” the October announcement explains. “For single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately, the standard deduction rises to $16,100 for tax year 2026, and for he…

For Americans, the idea of watching live television without the constant barrage of commercials for prescription medications and junk food might seem foreign. That’s now the norm in the United Kingdom. Starting on Monday, a ban has gone into effect that prohibits advertising foods high in fat, salt, and sugar on TV before 9 p.m. and at any time online. It’s an attempt by the UK government to tackle childhood obesity. In 2022, 15% of children between the ages of 2 and 15 were obese, according to figures from the National Health Service. What constitutes a banned product is a bit complex to decipher, as the rules cover 13 wide-ranging categories of food. Some produc…

How seriously are you taking your 2026 rebrand? Do you have your 365 buttons ready? If this means nothing to you, you likely spent the holiday period at the lord intended – offline. But if spending less time on your phone isn’t one of your 2026 resolutions, let me catch you up. It started with a TikTok posted in December, all about rebranding for 2026. In the comments people shared their own strategies and self-improvement tips for the upcoming year. One comment, however, stood out from the rest. “I’m getting 365 buttons, one for each day because I want to do more stuff and I’m scared of time so I want to be more conscious of it,” a user called Tamara wrote.…

For years, pharmaceutical companies have been racing to develop a market-ready GLP-1 weight-loss pill to join the ranks of popular injectables. Today, Novo Nordisk’s oral version of Wegovy is officially available for purchase. The Wegovy pill—which has been in clinical trials for over two years and was approved by the FDA on December 22—is the first and only oral GLP-1 for weight loss in adults available in the U.S. According to a press release from Novo Nordisk, the pill hit the market on January 5 at more than 70,000 U.S. pharmacies and several popular telehealth providers. Per a KFF health tracking poll released in November, one in eight Americans were already…

As today is the first Monday of 2026, Americans across the country are settling back into their everyday routines after the busy holiday season. But many are also recovering from the flu—or still suffering from it. Flu illnesses are surging across the country. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), positive influenza test results reached the highest levels of the season for the week ending December 27, 2025. The CDC publishes a weekly influenza surveillance report that details positive case counts, illness activity levels by state, and breakdowns of flu types. Due to the winter holidays, the CDC’s la…

When I was Chief of Staff at CoinDesk, I was in charge of the publication’s approach to AI. One of the earliest debates our internal AI committee had was about whether we should allow AI to index our articles or not. Most of the people on the committee thought we should block AI crawlers. While the fury of media copyright lawsuits had yet to begin, the issue had gotten some traction, and it was easy to make the case that we shouldn’t give our content away to AI companies to summarize unless we were compensated in some way. But one person boldly made the case for the other side: He argued that, if AI becomes the new way people find information, shutting ourselves o…

While most EVs tip the scales at several tons, a new “featherweight” electric sports car weighs half as much—or less—than others on the road. Longbow, the U.K.-based startup behind the sleek EV, plans to bring its first vehicle to market later this year with a limited run of 150 cars, starting at £84,995, or roughly $110,000. A high-performance version of the design is on display at CES this week. The company’s aim is to reverse the car industry’s weight problem—something that’s especially an issue for EVs that have large batteries inside. Heavier vehicles have bigger carbon footprints, use more energy, and are more dangerous in a crash for pedestrians. They also …

With the start of the New Year squarely behind us, it’s once again time for the annual CES trade show to shine a spotlight on the latest tech that companies plan to offer in 2026. The multiday event, organized by the Consumer Technology Association, kicks off this week in Las Vegas, where advances across industries like robotics, healthcare, vehicles, wearables, gaming and more are set to be on display. Artificial intelligence will be anchored in nearly everything, again, as the tech industry explores offerings consumers will want to buy. AI industry heavyweight Jensen Huang will be taking the stage to showcase Nvidia’s latest productivity solutions, and AMD CEO Lisa Su…

A massive 243-kilogram (535-pound) bluefin tuna sold for a record 510 million yen ($3.2 million) at the first auction of 2026 at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market. The top bidder for the prized tuna at the predawn auction on Monday was Kiyomura Corp., whose owner Kiyoshi Kimura runs the popular Sushi Zanmai chain. Kimura, who has won the annual action many times in the past, broke the previous record of 334 million yen ($2.1 million) he set in 2019. Kimura later told reporters he was hoping to pay a bit less for it, but “the price shot up before you knew it.” The auction started when the bell rang, and the floor was filled with torpedo-shaped fish with their tails cut off so …

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Twenty twenty-six will be a year of financial corrections, AI-driven biological breakthroughs, and new thinking about cybersecurity and executive protection—at least according to the CEOs I recently asked to provide bold prognostications. Here’s how 12 of them responded. New threats, ne…

Lorrie Faith Cranor’s latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably can’t read it yet. Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh school’s CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 2016–2017 stint as the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords. In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published children’s book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a loc…

2026 will be a crucial inflection point for businesses. The data are striking—the proportion of employees using AI in their role in the U.S. doubled between 2023 and 2025. Across the Atlantic, 30% of EU workers are already using AI in their jobs. And according to Gartner, by 2026 more than 100 million workers will collaborate with “robo-colleagues.” The question for the coming year, then, is no longer whether AI will transform your organization, it’s whether your leadership team will guide that transformation thoughtfully or let it happen haphazardly, tool by tool and team by team. I have spent much of the past year working with my research team and industry partn…

The design of the steel-ribbed umbrella has changed little since it was introduced in the 1850s, but the mechanical engineers and origami experts who made an umbrella that works by folding say they’ve finally improved upon it. The $249 Ori umbrella has a frameless design with a laminate composite canopy, which fits into a 3.5-centimeter cylinder smart handle with an OLED display. That means there are no steel elements that can go haywire and leave you with a misshapen mess when you’re caught in a strong wind. It seems we finally have an umbrella that looks like it was invented in the 21st century. The design team included origami experts who usually work in aerosp…

I am not clairvoyant and have no crystal ball. But I’ve got some predictions for 2026. I learned about predictions from a master of the craft: Byron Wien, a market strategist who rose to Wall Street prominence in the 1990s for his annual “Ten Surprises” list. Back in the day, I spent several weeks shadowing Wien as a reporter, and the lessons have long stuck with me. Wien said that the prediction game wasn’t about being right. It was about identifying trends. He knew many of his “surprises” would never come to pass, at least not in the extreme form that he shared. But they sparked dialogue and got people to confront their assumptions. And every now and then, he’…

In a world where trust in institutions is at an all-time low and the pace of change is relentless, the most effective leaders are not those who hide behind polished press releases or corporate jargon. They are the ones who step forward with authentic stories—stories that reveal not just their vision, but their humility, values, and the messy realities of leading in uncertain times. Welcome to the era of the storytelling CEO, where transparency isn’t just a buzzword, it’s the new leadership currency. Why Stories Matter More Than Ever For millennia, stories have been the glue that binds communities, shapes cultures, and helps us make sense of the world. Today, as org…

When someone takes a shower at a new apartment complex in Washington, D.C., the water is heated in part by a brewery downstairs. The mixed-use development—part of a larger new neighborhood called the Bridge District—is designed to be as sustainable as possible. That includes using waste heat from commercial tenants like the brewery to save energy in the apartments. Atlas Brew Works, a solar-powered brewery that serves craft beers, moved into the building in November. At most breweries, the heat that’s generated from the brewing process would be vented outside. But in the new building, any hot water that the brewery doesn’t reuse is sent into a heat exchanger, …

2026 will be a year of architectural showstoppers. Major projects, from corporate headquarters to sports stadiums and museums, will wrap construction and open to the public in 2026, bringing bold, sometimes audacious buildings to cities around the world. Here are nine buildings opening in 2026 to watch for. Arena Milano—opening in February Milan David Chipperfield Architects Built partly to host ice hockey games during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arena Milano is a 16,000-seat multipurpose arena that’s expected to become a new center for sports and concerts in Milan. Pritzker Prize-winning David Chipperfield Architects’ design, done in conjunction with Arup, is t…

In his reflections on the 2025 Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit held in December, WSJ Leadership Institute president Alan Murray noted that CEOs are not actually preoccupied with AI, tariffs, or geopolitics. Instead, they’re focused on something far more fundamental: people and culture. How do you build an organization that can adapt, collaborate, and innovate amid persistent volatility? That instinct is correct. Yet one of the most effective tools for strengthening culture and developing talent remains surprisingly underused—skills-based volunteering (SBV). In a world shaped by geopolitical conflict, climate disruptions, pandemic aftershocks, and unpredicta…

If you’ve been noticing that cobalt-hued water bottles have started to pop up everywhere you’re not alone. The water has recently made an appearance on shelves at major retailers including Whole Foods and 7-Eleven, starred in viral social media videos created by fitness influencer Ashton Hall, adorned on tables at the Golden Globes, and beginning this week, will star in a fresh new advertising campaign featuring WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins. All of these marketing efforts represent a more expansive pitch by Saratoga Spring Water that the brand’s premium-priced water isn’t just for fine dining– which has been the brand’s core focus for the past several years — it’s …

Is cable television truly dead? The markets are about to test the hypothesis. Shares of Versant Media Group began trading on the Nasdaq Monday under the ticker symbol VSNT, effectively completing Versant’s spinoff from parent company Comcast Corporation. Versant comprises a bundle of cable television networks and similar digital businesses, with notable properties including MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), CNBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, and SYFY. It also includes online platforms such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. Peacock, the popular streaming service owned by NBCUniversal, will remain under the Comcast umbrell…