Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Nearly four months after wildfires reduced thousands of Los Angeles-area homes to rubble and ash, some residents are starting to rebuild. In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, construction workers recently began placing wooden beams to frame a house on a lot where only a charred fireplace remains standing. In the seaside city of Malibu and foothills neighborhood of Altadena, many land parcels where homes once stood are being cleared of debris. Hundreds of homeowners have sought city or county approval for new home designs and other permits to eventually rebuild or repair damaged homes, though few have gotten the green light to break ground. Some 17,000 homes, business…

When it comes to podcasting, it’s Joe Rogan’s world. The Joe Rogan Experience was the most popular podcast of 2025, according to Apple’s just-released rankings. This is the first year Rogan has topped the Apple charts. Last year, he took the bronze medal, behind The Daily and Crime Junkie (both of which still made the Top 10 this year). Two years ago, he didn’t make the list (thanks to an exclusivity agreement with Spotify, signed in 2020—where he also currently holds the No. 1 spot). Rogan’s podcast certainly had head-turning guests this year, including a much-listened-to interview with Elon Musk. The Daily, from The New York Times, was Apple’s second-most popula…

Burnout is best understood as a work-related psychological syndrome arising from sustained emotional and interpersonal strain. It has three core components: emotional exhaustion, characterized by chronic affective depletion; depersonalization, in which work becomes alienating and psychologically distancing rather than engaging; and reduced professional efficacy, marked by declining confidence, poorer self-appraisals, and a loss of self-worth. Importantly, burnout is not the same as stress. Rather, it is a pattern of responses to work stressors, and can also be distinguished from depression by its work-specific context. Burnout is best assessed via self-report questionna…

A book festival took place over the weekend in Baltimore, but even if you’re local, you likely didn’t hear about it until after the fact. The event, called “A Millions Lives Book Festival,” is now trending on social media, but for all the wrong reasons—it’s being called “The Fyre Festival” of book festivals, if that’s any indication of just how disappointing it seems to have been. A Million Lives, organized by author Grace Willows and Archer Management company, came to Baltimore’s Convention Center on May 2 and 3. While the event was allegedly described to authors as an extravagant fantasy-themed ball where they could promote their books to hundreds to thousands of atten…

After a record-breaking 2024 and exciting offseason, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is primed to keep the ball dribbling in 2025. The season kicks off tonight (Friday, May 16, 2025) with three exciting matchups. Here are some fun facts, history, and everything you need to know to get up to speed about the new season, including how to stream the games live. A brief history of the WNBA The WNBA was not the first professional women’s basketball league. That honor fell to the American Basketball League, which operated from 1996-1998. But it is the only one to have the support of the NBA. The WNBA was founded in 1996 and began balling in 1…

Tech workers have been worried for years now about the AI tidal wave coming for their jobs, but their bosses are starting to worry too. Stocks plunged this week as fears escalated that AI advancements will take a bite out of business for many software and services companies. The market losses are tied to updates to Anthropic’s AI-powered workplace productivity suite, Claude Cowork, which threatens to replace some software tools ubiquitous in the professional world. Companies with business in research and legal software like Thomson Reuters and LegalZoom dropped dramatically on the Anthropic news, with a wide swath of software stocks following suit. Intuit, PayPal…

Do you share your innermost thoughts with ChatGPT? You might want to think twice—or at least change your settings fast. View the full article

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss pill on Monday, giving the Danish drugmaker a leg up in the race to market a potent oral medication for shedding pounds as it looks to regain lost ground from rival Eli Lilly. The pill is 25 milligrams of semaglutide, the same active ingredient in injectable Wegovy and Ozempic, and will be sold under the brand name Wegovy. Novo already sells an oral semaglutide for type 2 diabetes, Rybelsus. The approval could help spur a turnaround for Novo after a rocky year of sliding shares, profit warnings and slowing sales of its injectable Wegovy amid intense competition from Lilly and pressure from c…

In the world of the long-running kids show Cyberchase, Motherboard, a sort of digital queen and literal technocrat, is the beneficent but impaired leader of all of cyberspace. She is—we are to understand—a legitimate ruler, yet faces constant attacks from the odious Hacker, a green-skinned android who dresses like a vampire and whose only goal is to sow chaos and eventually take control of Motherboard’s realm, which we might describe as something akin to a metaverse, or ever-expanding digital world. Luckily, a trio of human kids named Inez, Mattie, and Jackie—a squad—visit cyberspace frequently, where they embark on missions to help protect the ever-embattled Motherboard…

The family of a man killed in a 2021 road rage incident in Arizona used artificial intelligence to portray the victim delivering his own impact statement during his killer’s sentencing hearing, according to local news reports. Christopher Pelkey’s sister, brother-in-law, and their friend used AI technology to recreate his likeness, reportedly drawing from video clips recorded while he was alive. It is believed to be one of the first—if not the very first—instances of an AI-generated victim impact statement being used in court. “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me: it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the artificial 37-ye…

Running a solo business can feel like operating without a map at times. Sometimes you can stumble along the path, figuring things out as you go. Other days, you look around and realize that you’ve wandered pretty far off course. One of the hardest parts is not having anyone to rely on for guidance. That’s why community matters so much for solopreneurs. Rather than operating in a vacuum, you can bounce ideas off other people. Or you may find that community reduces your feelings of loneliness and isolation. The sooner you find (or build!) a community, the easier it becomes to navigate the inevitable ups and downs of being a solopreneur. The connections that …

In 2023, Ken Lux found himself in an FBI briefing on child trafficking. The CEO of Luxe Aviation was there as the past commander of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Air Squadron, a volunteer cadre of 50 general aviation pilots supporting police missions and community service. Lux recalls the FBI agent relaying the story of a since-jailed airline pilot who used his credentials to traffic children to clients in the Philippines with chilling negotiations. “I have a girl that’s 12 years old for your client,’” the pilot said. The client’s response: “No, we think we need an 8-year-old.” The group was horrified. “I have two daughters,” Lux says. “We said, ‘Wa…

Since first appearing on the Masters of Scale podcast at the height of the Ozempic-Wegovy-Zepbound boom, Zach Reitano, CEO of Ro, has helped scale his company into a leading provider of branded GLP-1s—grabbing headlines with a 2026 Super Bowl ad featuring tennis champion Serena Williams and landing a major partnership with Novo Nordisk for the pill version of Wegovy. Now Reitano has new challenges to address: the long-term health unknowns of the medications, the cultural backlash to “Ozempic face,” and what this wave of disruption could mean not just for pharma but for the future of healthcare. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted b…

What should you do if you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep? This is one of the most common—and frustrating—forms of insomnia. It turns out there’s a biological reason for it. And there are things you can do that may help you drop off again quickly. If you’re an entrepreneur or business leader, this may have happened to you more than once. Starting a business and being responsible for a team of employees means you may have a lot to worry about. In the middle of the night, those worries seem to grow more powerful and harder to set aside or ignore. You find yourself stuck going round and round in an endless cycle of negativity. Pretty soon, it’s…

Those AI tools are being trained on our trade secrets. We’ll lose all of our customers if they find out our teams use AI. Our employees will no longer be able to think critically because of the brain rot caused by overreliance on AI. These are not irrational fears. As AI continues to dominate the headlines, questions about data privacy and security, intellectual property, and work quality are legitimate and important. So, what do we do now? The temptation to just say “No” is strong. It feels straightforward and safe. However, this “safe” route is actually the riskiest of all. An outright ban on AI is a losing strategy that creates more problems than it solves. It fost…

A reader asks: Two years ago, I began managing Craig, who had been doing the same tasks day in and day out for a decade. He hadn’t adapted to new technology, best practices, or industry trends. My first order of business was to coach him and challenge him to grow and learn. For more than a year, we built up a great trajectory. People saw how much his work improved and commented on it frequently, and said he seemed revitalized in many ways. His progress gave me a lot of hope that he could become good at the modern demands of his role. Then about six months ago, Craig suddenly reverted to his old patterns. It was as if the prior year of progress got completely wiped out. …

Charlie Javice, the founder of a startup company that promised to revolutionize the way college students apply for financial aid, was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served. Javice, 33, was convicted in March of duping the banking giant when it bought her company, called Frank, in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. Addressing the court before she was sentenced, Javice, who was in her mid-20s when she founded the company, said she was “haunted that my failure has …

“Mad Max mode” may sound like something out of a video game, but it is a real-life setting for cars currently plying America’s streets. And it poses genuine danger. In an homage to the main character from George Miller’s dystopian 1979 film and its sequels, originally portrayed by current The President supporter Mel Gibson, Tesla created Mad Max mode as an option for vehicles equipped with its “Full-Self Driving” (FSD) system. The Mad Max icon is a mustachioed smiley face wearing a cowboy hat, bearing less of a resemblance to the film’s titular vigilante than to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal. (Warner Bros., which released the films, has not filed suit.) De…

In the rolling hills near Reno, Nevada, in a field filled with solar panels, something unexpected is nestled into the landscape: a data center that isn’t blowing up its neighbors’ electric bills. In fact, the modular data center, built by Crusoe, essentially doesn’t rely on the electric grid at all. It runs on solar power and an unlikely source: hundreds of second-life EV batteries. At a time when data centers are driving up electricity demand—and facing intense political pushback over potential impacts on energy bills and the environment—the batteries offer a flexible way to add power without leaning harder on the grid. The astonishing setup is the handiwork of $6 bi…

Palantir is undoubtedly controversial. Many view the data and software company as a beacon of technological progress, with some even sporting a photo the company’s CEO on their t-shirts. Others see it as the pinnacle of all modern evil, primarily due to its involvement with the U.S. military and the The President administration’s anti-immigration initiatives. Now thanks to a viral social media post, the debate is once again in the spotlight. On Sunday, Palantir’s X account posted a lengthy summarization of the key points argued in The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, a book published last year by Palantir CEO Alex K…

AI is no longer just a cascade of algorithms trained on massive amounts of data. It has become a physical and infrastructural phenomenon, one whose future will be determined not by breakthroughs in benchmarks, but by the hard realities of power, geography, regulation, and the very nature of intelligence. Businesses that fail to see this will be blindsided. Data centers were once the sterile backrooms of the internet: important, but invisible. Today, they are the beating heart of generative AI, the physical engines that make large language models (LLMs) possible. But what if these engines, and the models they power, are hitting limitations that can’t be solved with mo…

Meta is rolling out a new Facebook feature that the company says will help users share more photos—but which could also be used to help train its AI. The opt-in feature allows Facebook’s AI to access your phone’s camera roll in order to find photos it finds “shareworthy,” and to suggest edits using its AI tools. Users can then decide if they want to share the images or not. “With your permission and the help of AI, our new feature enables Facebook to automatically surface hidden gems – those memorable moments that get lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps – and edit them to save or share,” Meta said in its announcement explaining the new feature on Friday…

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, new prot…

More children are cashing in their Make-A-Wish requests to meet their favorite content creators, with creator wishes more than doubling in the past decade. Make-A-Wish Foundation has been granting life-changing wishes for children with a critical illness since 1980. Now, alongside A-Listers and sports stars, YouTubers and TikTokers are also flooding requests, Axios reported. Requests to meet content creators make up 32% of the wishes granted within the entertainment industry, per Axios, the second largest source of requests behind the music industry. Several of the creators say they’ve been granting wishes for years and more than 50 creators and influencers …