Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

CEOs of Minnesota’s biggest companies signed a public letter calling for “immediate de-escalation of tensions” after weeks of silence following Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) descending upon the state, which has led to civilian deaths, abductions, economic stand-stills and a profound disruption of daily life. On Sunday, chief executives of more than 60 major corporations like Target, Best Buy, 3M and General Mills, called for “immediate de-escalation of tensions” in Minnesota. The letter came following federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse while he was on the ground. Weeks earlier, Renee Good, was also shot and killed by I…

Nike isn’t the only household corporate name to announce significant layoffs this week. Just a day after the sporting goods giant announced layoffs, citing a further embrace of automation, social media giant Pinterest has announced it will cut jobs. The driving factor here? Artificial intelligence. Here’s what you need to know about the Pinterest layoffs. What’s happened? On Tuesday, the image-sharing social media platform Pinterest announced it plans to lay off around 15% of its workforce. The company made the announcement in a Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In that filing, Pinterest said that its board of director…

When viewers tune in to the 2026 Winter Olympics, they will see pristine, white slopes, groomed tracks, and athletes racing over snow-covered landscapes, thanks in part to a storm that blanketed the mountain venues of the Italian Alps with fresh powder just in time. But at lower elevations, where cross-country and other events are held, athletes and organizers have been contending with rain; thin, sometimes slushy snow; and icy, machine-made surfaces. “Most of our races are on machine-made snow,” 2026 U.S. Olympic team cross-country skier Rosie Brennan told us ahead of the Games. “TV production is great at making it look like we are in wintry, snowy places, but th…

My Non-Negotiable Mindset started with exercise, or more accurately, with not wanting to. That moment of resistance became a turning point in how I show up and follow through. I wasn’t lazy or undisciplined. I was human. And that’s when it clicked: if I only exercised when I felt like it, I’d never do it often enough to matter. So I made exercise non-negotiable, like brushing my teeth or showing up to teach a class. This commitment was to myself. No mood checks. No internal bargaining. No excuses. Four times a week, minimum. That was the contract. What changed wasn’t just my behavior; it was my identity. My thinking shifted from I need to exercise to I’m the k…

Mark Zuckerberg’s new house in Miami Beach has sweeping waterfront views. It also sits at ground zero for climate change. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are the latest in a string of billionaires and celebrities to move to Indian Creek, a private island in Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Neighbors include Jeff Bezos, who owns three homes on the island, as well as investor Carl Icahn, Ivanka The President, and Jared Kushner. Like much of Miami, the area faces mounting climate risks. “It’s very subject to flooding and rising seas,” says Stephen Leatherman, an environmental professor at Florida International University who studies the state’s islands. Miami’s sea levels h…

Kathy Ruemmler, the top lawyer at storied investment bank Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, announced her resignation Thursday, after emails between her and Jeffrey Epstein showed a close relationship where she described him as an “older brother” and downplayed his sex crimes. Ruemmler said in a statement that she would “step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026.” Up until her resignation, Ruemmler repeatedly tried to distance herself from the emails and other correspondence and had been defiant that she would not resign from Goldman’s top legal post, which she had held since 2020. Wh…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, we saw red-hot housing demand quickly absorb much of the available slack in the housing market. Back in 2021, active housing inventory for sale, unsold completed new builds, and available lot supply all plunged to historic lows. But ever since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out in mid-2022, housing slack has been building back up in the housing market—especially in certain pockets of the Sun Belt. Look no further than Zonda’s New Home Lot Supply Index, which measures lot supply based on the number of single-fa…

Mark Zuckerberg and opposing lawyers dueled in a Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday, where the Meta CEO answered questions about young people’s use of Instagram, his congressional testimony, and internal advice he’s received about being “authentic” and not “robotic.” Zuckerberg’s testimony is part of an unprecedented social media trial that questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm children. Attorneys representing the plaintiff, a now 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, claim her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the …

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. During Charles Giancarlo’s first all-hands meeting after becoming CEO of Pure Storage in 2017, an employee asked: “How long are we going to keep the name Pure Storage?” The question suggested that having “storage” in the company’s name limited the range of products and services it could offer c…

Time capsules are designed to be resilient by nature. But no time capsule has survived as long as designers hope “America’s Time Capsule” will. The time capsule, designed for the semiquincentennial of the U.S. founding, is being created by America250, the nonpartisan, congressionally mandated group organizing commemorations for this year. The plan is to bury the time capsule underground in Philadelphia at Independence National Historical Park on July 4, and for it to be opened in another 250 years, in 2276. The problem is time capsules, which are typically buried underground, and exposed to the elements, don’t really last that long. “We’ve unburied some time …

Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook. Bill Gates was 21 when he started Microsoft; co-founder Paul Allen was 23. Steve Jobs was 21 when he co-founded Apple; co-founder Steve Wozniak was 26. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang were 30. Yet they’re the exceptions, not the rule. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found the average age of entrepreneurs who start a company and go on to hire at least one employee is 42. A study conducted by the Census Bureau and two MIT professors found the most successful entrepreneurs tend to be middle-aged, even in the technology sector. After compiling a list of 2.7 million company founde…

This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Source NM. The first thing Andy Barrientes noticed when he showed up for his shift at RMS Foods on Valentine’s Day in 2005 was the cloud of black smoke emanating from the building. A fire had started in the factory around 4:20 p.m., not long before Barrientes was scheduled to clock in as maintenance manager at the food manufacturing plant in southeastern New Mexico. The blaze had caught his coworkers coming off the day shift by surprise; they reported smelling the smoke before seeing the flames. When Barrientes arrived, he saw the staff huddled together at the park across the street. “Everyone was holding hands,” h…

Val Blair had climbed mountains to get to the pinnacle of her career. An accomplished marketing executive, she navigated high-pressure environments with a combination of dedication and discipline that set her apart from her peers. But in 2017, she was at the top of a different mountain. A real one. She was suddenly struck with vertigo. Instead of seeking help from those around her, she sat down and decided to wait it out. She’d figure out a way to get down on her own. “I sat there for an hour, thinking, ‘This is just going to be my life, and I’m not going down that mountain,’” she recalls. Finally, two women approached her and offered to help. At first, she declined. T…

The list of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus store locations set to close continues to grow. On March 6, 2026, parent company Saks Global announced it would close 15 additional retail locations. This is part of a broader restructuring plan following the luxury retailer’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in January. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happening? According to a court document filed last Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, Saks Global will close an additional 15 store locations. The Saks Fifth Avenue on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile is included on the list. Most of the locations are …

Entertainment in 2026 is a bit of a double-edged sword. Excellent films and television shows are widely available in ways that would have sounded like science fiction just 20 years ago—but at a steep price. A single movie ticket costs an average of $16, while the average American household spends over $42 per month on streaming services, which adds up to $504 per year. And if you’re anything like me, you may not even be getting your money’s worth on those streaming services. Often when I sit down to watch something, I scroll through the options on Netflix, only to go to bed an hour later without having watched anything. In many cases, that decision paralysis refle…

Earlier this month, photos depicting Zendaya and Tom Holland’s wedding just about broke the internet. Images of the celebrity power couple standing at the altar, popping champagne, and posing with a Spider-Man mask quickly racked up more than 10 million likes on Instagram. The only catch? They weren’t real. The collection of AI-generated images, first shared in a since-deleted Instagram post from AI creator Juan Regueira Rodríguez, went so viral that they reached Zendaya herself, as the Emmy-winning actress revealed in a new interview. On the latest episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Zendaya discussed her upcoming film The Drama, which centers on her character’s…

We’ve all got an inner critic in our heads. You know its voice: it’s the one who berates you when you make a mistake, who peers over your shoulder and critiques your work unfavorably, or who tells you you’re useless and worthless when things don’t go to plan. Inner critics can thrive in work environments—especially fast-paced environments where there is little room for error, or where you’re responsible for people on your team. The question is how you interact and deal with your inner critic. Obeying them without question is neither sustainable nor healthy. But silencing or completely ignoring them isn’t recommended either, as this can easily lead to reckless or e…

Generative AI is seemingly becoming more and more entrenched in daily life, with built-in tools making it near impossible to avoid across platforms, not to mention the AI-generated content flooding apps like X, TikTok, and Instagram. At every turn, the technology’s critics have shouted their concerns from the rooftops, including the environmental havoc wrought by data centers to the damage AI can do to creative industries. Now, that crowd has something to celebrate: the end of OpenAI’s video generation platform Sora. On Tuesday, March 24, OpenAI announced it was shutting down Sora, its AI-first TikTok clone, just months after its launch in September of 2025. “…

I’ll never forget the morning I froze in front of a client. I was a Vice President at Kearney, the global management consulting firm, presenting our proposal to a three-person client subcommittee. Mid-sentence, my mind went completely blank. Not the normal “lost my train of thought” blank. The kind of blank that leaves a scary emptiness where confidence used to live. I’d been putting on a mask each day. I’d tried to be positive and stay on top of everything. But that morning, I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt anxious and exhausted at the same time. My mind was racing, and my body was depleted. The mask had finally cracked in the worst possible place. What I didn’t …

Furniture is one of the biggest hurdles during a move, because good dressers and couches are bulky and expensive. During a stressful time, it makes sense to crave something cheap delivered straight to your door. That’s where fast furniture comes in. These are simple pieces made with a mishmash of plastics, fiberboard and chipboard that aren’t built to last. They can typically be ordered online, are mass-produced and ship unassembled in a flat-packed box. They get the job done, but once thrown out, their ingredients generally can’t be recycled and don’t break down well. “It’s of little emotional value, it’s fleeting, and it is not going to accompany you thr…

School is out for Rec Room: The social gaming platform announced on Monday it is shutting down this June, despite “reaching over 150 million players and creators along the way” since its founding in 2016. “Despite this popularity, we never quite figured out how to make Rec Room a sustainably profitable business,” the company said in a statement. “Our costs always ended up overwhelming the revenue we brought in. “We spent a long time trying to find a way to make the numbers work.” “But with the recent shift in the VR market, along with broader headwinds in gaming, the path to profitability has gotten tough enough that we’ve made the difficult decision to shut thin…

Managers are rushing to deploy AI for efficiency gains. Employees have to figure out how to make it work—and that’s sometimes harder than it seems. Half of organizations piloted general-purpose AI tools last year, according to MIT research. But adoption and readiness aren’t the same thing. According to Rumman Chowdhury, former U.S. Science Envoy for AI and CEO and cofounder of Humane Intelligence, the burden is likely to fall on workers. “There’s a lot of FOMO among C-suites and high-level execs on pressure to build AI, and then they’re also incentivized to pretend like it works really well,” she says. “If and when it doesn’t, the responsibility is on the emp…

My kids have been really into sea shanties lately (my family has eclectic musical tastes.) There are a surprisingly large number of modern shanties on YouTube and TikTok. But one historic song, The Wellermen, really spoke to me. Going down a rabbit hole of the song’s history, I learned that it was written in 1966 by a New Zealander. But the whaling classic was inspired by a much older song from 1820. Eventually, I found the lyrics to the original. But there was a problem–the words were cryptic and the melody was lost to the sands of time, making it impossible to sing. So, I decided to leverage today’s most powerful music-generating AI to bring it back.…

“We’re all on the same page.” You’ve said it. Your team has said it. And somewhere between that meeting and getting the work done, things went wrong. Steve, the CEO of a fast-growth financial startup, thought his leadership team was perfectly aligned. After months of planning, they all agree on one goal: becoming AI-centric. But that illusion of alignment fell apart the moment Steve brought me in. Operations thought “AI-first” meant efficiency—eliminating as many jobs as possible. Marketing saw it as a cool slogan, not a real change in how they worked. Product Management thought AI should inform decisions, but not replace human judgment. The executive…

Macy’s Inc is moving forward with additional store closures in 2026. According the retailer’s website, 14 stores are closing soon nationwide, with shoppers losing their local Macy’s in 12 states. The development is hardly surprising. In February 2024, Macy’s announced it would shutter 150 “underproductive locations” by the end of 2026, although it has since extended that timeline. The company announced the closures as part of “A Bold New Chapter” that will do three things: strengthen the Macy’s name plate, accelerate luxury growth, and simplify and modernize end-to-end operations. Macy’s also owns Bloomingdale’s, a higher-end department store than its n…