Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

’Tis the season for giving—and that means ’tis the season for shopping. Maybe you’ll splurge on a Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal, thinking, “I’ll just return it if they don’t like it.” But before you click “purchase,” it’s worth knowing that many retailers have quietly tightened their return policies in recent years. As a marketing professor, I study how retailers manage the flood of returns that follow big shopping events like these, and what it reveals about the hidden costs of convenience. Returns might seem like a routine part of doing business, but they’re anything but trivial. According to the National Retail Federation, returns cost U.S. retailers almost $89…

Barack Obama helped Marc Maron lock the gates on his podcast Monday, returning to the show for the final episode after 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes. The former president gave new status to “WTF With Marc Maron” and to podcasts in general when he visited Maron’s Los Angeles garage studio while still in office a decade ago. Obama brought the 62-year-old host, stand-up comic and actor to his Washington office for the last interview. Obama asked the initial questions. “How are you feeling about this whole thing?,” he said, “transition, moving on from this thing that has been one of the defining parts of your career and your life?” “I feel OK,” Maron answered. “I …

It looks like nothing more than a bedside fan. To program it, you hit the “on” button once. But what happens next could improve your memory by 226%. This is Memory Air, a new product born from decades of science charting the relationship between our nose and our brain. Each night, Memory Air cycles through 40 different, undisclosed scents, twice. As you sleep—even though you don’t consciously smell these scents—research suggests that it can measurably improve your memory within weeks. How is that possible? As the company’s founder—UC Davis professor emeritus Michael Leon—explains, “We are functionally odor deprived.” Whereas humans evolved in a scent-…

It’s been an unprecedented and brutal week for the advertising industry. The finalization of Omnicom Group’s $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG) (the biggest takeover in advertising history) is affecting tens of thousands of workers—most immediately the 4,000 expected to be laid off by the end of the year. Both Omnicom and IPG own many different ad agency brands, all of which will be profoundly impacted by the merger. Omnicom is retaining only McCann from the IPG roster of agency networks, while folding FCB into BBDO, and both DDB and MullenLowe into TBWA, in order to achieve Omnicom Chairman and CEO John Wren’s goal of $750 million in synergies. Th…

Leaders are praised for “seeing around corners” and told to “skate to where the puck is going.” But what if you can’t even see your own feet, let alone a puck or a distant corner? Today’s volatility and uncertainty obscure any clear path to the future, and the forecast isn’t improving any time soon. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, 52% of experts expect an unsettled two-year horizon, 31% anticipate turbulence, and 5% foresee storms. Even if the weather were clear, setting a direction of travel is increasingly difficult as leaders face more complex problems with no obvious or easy solution. Close to 60% of business executives admit that they are missing opp…

Flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday, when the agency also reported staffing-related delays in Chicago, Washington and Newark, New Jersey. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed and canceled in the coming days as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown. During an appearance on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Fu…

OpenAI never wanted to build a chatbot. As an early beta tester for OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, I can vouch for the fact that the company was caught totally off guard by ChatGPT’s runaway success. An email that OpenAI sent me on November 28, 2022—just two days before ChatGPT came to market and kicked off a trillion-dollar, multiyear, economy-distending AI scramble—didn’t even mention the new interface. Rather, it bragged about the company’s then-revolutionary “DaVinci” model and how it could “deliver clearer, more engaging, and more compelling content” and allow developers to “take on tasks that would have previously been too difficult to achieve.” From th…

It’s not always fun to look your finances in the eye, but it can unlock a rewarding path forward. These five books make tackling personal finance approachable, clear, and—dare we say it—an enjoyable journey. Rule Breaker Investing: How to Pick the Best Stocks of the Future and Build Lasting Wealth By David Gardner The real secret to building lasting wealth on the stock market is breaking the old investing rules. In Rule Breaker Investing, Motley Fool cofounder David Gardner teaches how to craft a purpose-driven portfolio, manage investments, and even master time management for a smarter, happier, richer investment journey. Listen to our Book Bite summary, r…

The coming years offer an opportunity to transform education. AI can provide precise insights about student needs and deliver lessons in a way that resonates with students’ interests and learning style. However, the technology also raises questions about academic integrity and the future nature of learning and teaching, questions that emerging tools are taking thoughtful approaches to addressing. Amira Learning For accelerating literacy with AI and neuroscience The Amira Reading Suite is designed to capture virtually every aspect of a student’s reading performance, using AI and neuroscience to prioritize instruction needs. Thanks to a partnership with Anthropic, the plat…

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, …

It looks like OpenAI is taking the “new year, new you” approach when it comes to its business strategy. To kick off 2026, the company announced it would soon introduce ads into ChatGPT—which was a bit of a surprise, considering CEO Sam Altman had previously said ads would be a “last resort” as a business model. It’s hard to say how final a resort this is without looking at OpenAI’s balance sheet, but we do know the company is feeling the heat. After Google released Gemini 3 in the fall—which scored well on leaderboards, market share, and plaudits from the AI community—Altman declared a “code red” at OpenAI to ensure that ChatGPT is best in class. And as impressive as …

The top prize in landscape architecture has just been awarded to Mexican designer Mario Schjetnan, a multifaceted landscape architect whose work has transformed parks across Mexico City and vastly expanded social housing projects across his home coountry. Schjetnan and his firm, Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), were announced winners of the 2025 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial award from the Cultural Landscape Foundation recognizing the most influential and impactful practitioners in the field. Schjetnan and GDU have designed some of the most significant parks in Mexico, including Chapultepec Forest and Park, the se…

It’s Sunday night. Before kids, this was the time to nurse a mimosa hangover and zone out to The Sopranos. Now? It’s a very different playbook. Sunday evenings feel less like a gentle exhale from the weekend and more like staging a Broadway play with a cast that hasn’t rehearsed and refuses to put on pants. You are simultaneously the chef, chauffeur, hairdresser, homework coach, and emotional support animal. For parents, the Sunday Scaries don’t whisper “your inbox is waiting.” They shout: Did you wash the soccer uniform? Are there enough snacks for afterschool? Is the social studies project due tomorrow or Wednesday? Ugh! Did I RSVP for that birthday pa…

A little while ago, I’d submitted my article to a well-respected publication that I’d done a lot of research for. I was beyond excited and delighted when, following an encouraging meeting with a senior editor, I’d heard that they accepted it for publication. It had taken months to get the article to this point, many previous failed submission attempts, and over a decade of expertise and experience—but I’d finally done it! And it was going to be career-changing. Unfortunately, what happened next was anything but. After an initial follow-up email from the editor, I was informed that the article was under revision and would be sent for review shortly. Weeks went by, and …

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…

The space and telecom industries can look increasingly intertwined as satellite roaming—today for messages, tomorrow for data—becomes a standard feature. But while wireless services have the luxury of iterating as often as they want once they start signing up customers, space startups have to take things one launch at a time. Eascra Biotech For making the International Space Station a pharmaceutical research lab Eascra has one of the most interesting worksites of any of this year’s honorees: the International Space Station, where astronauts conduct research on developing nanoparticles to treat cancer and other maladies. Growing these materials in microgravity yields more…

The 2025 Brands That Matter United States honorees aren’t just united by their shared geography—they are all identifying their target audience and meeting them exactly where they need to. Whether solving a uniquely American problem, as GoodRx does in addressing the cost of prescription drugs, or pioneering innovation that can help people globally like Owlet, these companies are showing how American brands can step up in authentic and impactful ways. GoodRx GoodRx has built its brand equity by being present where its customers need it—the pharmacy counter. Over the past year, the prescription savings platform introduced a feature that gets users to engage with …

What if, instead of working toward an exit strategy, we built companies for longevity? That’s the question at the heart of employee ownership. It’s not just a perk to lure talent. It’s a fundamentally different way of building a business, and one that might just be the key to long-term resilience. I’ve spent nearly my entire career inside a 100% employee-owned architecture, engineering, planning, and interiors design firm. Today as CEO, I lead its 1,800 employee-owners. I’ve seen firsthand how this model changes everything, from how team members treat clients to how the organization is able to weather change. But this isn’t a story about just one company. It’s abo…

As the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) returns to Las Vegas from Jan. 6 to 9, the tech industry is gearing up for its annual spectacle of prototypes, silicon benchmarks and AI-branded gadgets. But one of the most consequential shifts in enterprise technology over the coming year will unfold far from the keynote stages and demo floors. HP, the 85-year-old Silicon Valley company long defined by PCs, printers, and enterprise hardware, is repositioning itself as a work-intelligence platform—where devices learn continuously, services anticipate needs, and AI dissolves the traditional boundaries between hardware, software, and the cloud. Under Jim Nottingham, senior vice p…

In 2025, Amazon, Dell, Apple, Google, IBM, Meta, Salesforce, and dozens more have doubled down on demands for employees to return to the office (RTO) at least three days a week, if not all five. And they’re getting exactly what they want. Now, when I say “exactly what they want,” you might be expecting me to paint a picture of workers happily returning to their daily commutes, overcrowded highways, cavernous or claustrophobic offices, constant interruptions, and extra expenses, and all of it resulting in massive productivity gains. That’s not happening, the productivity-gains part. And the longer we play this out, the sillier the performances of “productivity thea…