Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

With little more than a coat of paint, buildings could soon make the air around them cooler and harvest gallons of water directly from the atmosphere. Researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia have created a nanoengineered polymer coating that passively cools building surfaces while enabling them to collect water like dew-coated leaves. It’s a material solution that could help combat rising heat and water insecurity in places all over the world. The white coating, a porous paint-like material, reflects up to 97% of sunlight and radiates heat, making surfaces up to 10 degrees cooler than the surrounding air, even under direct sun. This cooler condition a…

When I launched my first business in my twenties, I thought success meant doing everything alone. I believed that if I worked hard enough, read every business book, and put in the hours, I’d eventually figure it all out. What I quickly realized, however, is that you don’t find the most valuable growth strategy in your balance sheet. You find it in your network. As the founder of Boston Business Women, I’ve watched thousands of women start and scale companies over the last decade. In 2024, women started 49% of all new businesses in the U.S., up from just 29% five years earlier. And while that growth is impressive, the gap between potential and access still looms large.…

European and Asian shares mostly gained on Tuesday after U.S. stocks rallied on hopes the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates soon. The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%. Germany’s DAX edged 0.1% lower to 23,216.76 and the CAC 40 in Paris added 0.1% to 7,965.77. Britain’s FTSE 100 likewise gained 0.1%, to 9,542.55. In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 picked up 0.1% to 48,659.52 as a plunge in technology giant SoftBank’s shares weighed on the market. It fell 10.3% on concerns that returns from its heavy investments in OpenAI may be threatened by the next generation Gemini artificial intelligence model that Google launched…

The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI. Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the web are being generated by artificial intelligence. As a scholar who explores how AI is built, how people are using it in their everyday lives, and how it’s affecting culture, I’ve thought a lot about what this technology can do and where it falls short. If you’re more likely to read something written by AI than by a human on the internet, is it …

The National Park Service said Tuesday it is going to start charging the millions of international tourists who visit U.S. parks each year an extra $100 to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days that will be reserved for American residents. The announcement declaring “America-first entry fee policies” comes as national parks deal with the strain of a major staff reduction and severe budget cuts, along with recovering from damage during the recent government shutdown and significant lost revenue due to fees not being collected during that time. The fee change will impact 11 national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and…

Below, Corinne Low shares five key insights from her new book, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours. Corinne is an economist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy. She also regularly speaks to and advises companies on their practices. What’s the big idea? Women face unequal demands at home and in the workplace, making “having it all” costly. Research shows how hidden factors shape choices and offers a way to reclaim time, ener…

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. Leaders juggle a lot of demands and priorities. However, most CEOs tell me they’re highly attentive to company culture, change management, and workforce transformation in the age of AI—all areas that their chief human resources officers (CHROs) or chief people officers (CPOs) are tackling, …

Deals promoted as some of the best of the holiday season are expected to keep people across the United States glued to their computers and smartphones as the post-Thanksgiving shopping marathon wraps up on Cyber Monday. It’s no secret that buying things online is now a staple of many people’s everyday routines. And year after year, those purchases mount during the gift-giving holiday rush. Experts expect consumers to drive record Cyber Monday spending this year, even amid wider economic uncertainty. Adobe Analytics has estimated that U.S. shoppers will spend $14.2 billion online Monday, or 6.3% more than in 2024. They already spent $11.8 billion online for Black Friday …

“ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” How many times have you seen that message? More importantly, how many times have you actually stopped to consider what it means? No doubt you’ve noticed it—along with millions of others who now rely on AI for everything from planning product launches and rewriting emails to turning their beloved pets into cartoons. The adoption speed has been remarkable. In just a few years, AI has gone from a buzzword to a daily fixture in countless workplaces. And for many, it’s already hard to remember what work looked like without it. Like anything that makes life easier, it’s easy to see why it caught on so quickl…

Increasingly, the media and entertainment brands that thrive are ones that can build on their core business in creative ways. Two of the 2025 Brands That Matter honorees in the media and entertainment world—Ebony and Essence—are legacy Black publications that have grown their audiences and cultural cachet by building events around their flagship editorial product. Overtime is partially a sport brand, but it’s also a company that knows how to engage with younger consumers around sports—that’s how it’s gotten noticed by major brands and other sports leagues. Those three examples of the six outlined below, are just some of the ways companies are rethinking what a me…

Air travelers in the U.S. without a REAL ID will be charged a $45 fee beginning in February, the Transportation Security Administration announced Monday. The updated ID has been required since May, but passengers without it have so far been allowed to clear security with additional screening and a warning. The Department of Homeland Security says 94% of passengers are already compliant and that the new fee is intended to encourage travelers to obtain the ID. REAL ID is a federally compliant state-issued license or identification card that meets enhanced requirements mandated in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Obtaining the ID — indicated by a wh…

More than 1 million workers in America have been laid off so far in 2025, according to the latest tally of announced job cuts from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The jobs span nearly every major industry, but layoffs have hit tech and government jobs the hardest. Here’s what you need to know, and which tech companies have had the largest round of layoffs in 2025. 2025 layoff announcements surpass 1 million Nearly every week this year, there have been headlines about layoffs hitting America’s workers. The latest report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas adds up layoff announcements from U.S. employers through the end o…

In the high-stakes premium travel race of 2025, every major credit card issuer is trying to claim the loyalty of affluent travelers—and airport lounges have become the most visible battleground. American Express is refreshing its Platinum Card and launching a new fast-format Sidecar lounge. Capital One’s Venture X card has become a darling among travelers, thanks to its hyperlocal boutique-style lounges. And Citi has returned to the ultra-premium arena with the $595 Strata Elite card. As for Chase? Fresh off raising its Sapphire Reserve annual fee to $795 and launching its Sapphire Reserve for Business card, the finance giant is now signaling that its lounges are…

A Pennsylvania police officer responding to a tip from the manager of a McDonald’s testified Tuesday about confronting Luigi Mangione during the intense manhunt last year for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killer. As soon as Mangione doffed his medical mask at the restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Officer Joseph Detwiler said, “I knew” he was the suspect whose face had been all over the news since the shooting five days earlier on a Manhattan sidewalk. “It’s him … I’m not kidding. He’s real nervous, and he didn’t talk too much,” Detwiler told a supervisor by phone from the restaurant parking lot moments after meeting Mangione, according to the officer’s …

When it comes to the battle of the prediction markets, which player are you betting on? Fanatics, the global sports platform, is out to prove that sportsbooks will be the emerging industry’s biggest winners. Today, Fanatics is launching a stand-alone predictions market app designed to appeal to the fans who already buy its apparel and collectibles. It’s the first of the major sportsbooks to move into prediction markets—and almost certainly won’t be the last. “Prediction markets are one of the top things that fans want to do these days,” says Matt King, who leads betting and gaming for Fanatics. “People want to be able to express their opinions on not just s…

Unlike millennials who embraced hustle culture and burned out, Gen Zers have a new concept of what ‘making it’ looks like in today’s workplace—and it doesn’t involve a fancy title. View the full article

A few years ago, Tara Feener’s career took an unexpected pivot. She’s spent nearly two decades working on creative tools for companies like Adobe, FiftyThree, WeTransfer, and Vimeo, and was content to keep working in that domain. But then the Browser Company came along, and Feener saw an opportunity to build something even more ambitious. Feener—one of Fast Company’s AI 20 honorees for 2025—is now the company’s head of engineering, overseeing its AI-focused Dia browser and its earlier Arc browser. The browser is suddenly an area of intense interest for AI companies, and Feener understands why: It’s the first stop for looking up information, and it’s already connec…

The bill that brought the government back online last month ended the shutdown with an unexpected catch that could crush an entire industry. A hidden provision slipped into the bill just before it passed has nothing to do with the federal shutdown and everything to do with hemp—the version of cannabis that’s grown as a food, a fiber, and, in recent years, as the active ingredient in an array of sodas, gummies, and snacks crafted to give people an alcohol-free buzz. Hemp is legally defined as a variety of the plant Cannabis sativa L. that contains less than .3 percent of the most common form of THC, the psychoactive compound from marijuana that gets people high. In…

It’s the first week of December. If you don’t already have the Christmas tunes blasting in the office, what are you waiting for? The debate over listening to music while at work, however, often divides offices. Some love to crank up the merry melodies while toiling away, and find silence to be deafening. Others can only listen to mood music or instrumental playlists like “coffeeshop jazz in the background” or “LoFi Girl,” featuring low-fidelity, calming beats. And still others insist on complete silence. As the countdown to the holidays begins, Google searches for “Christmas playlist 2025” have spiked this past week. But could listening to Mariah Carey or Michael…

Tennis is experiencing a resurgence, with almost 26 million people playing in the U.S. alone. That number has been on an upward trajectory five years in a row. While the sport’s renewed cultural relevance can be attributed to multiple factors, brands across fashion, entertainment, and even sports leagues like Major League Baseball are capitalizing on the trend through unconventional opportunities. On December 8, LoanDepot Park, home of baseball’s Miami Marlins, will undergo a temporary redesign to host the Unified Events Miami Invitational, a one-night, first-of-its-kind exhibition featuring top tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz, João Fonseca, Amanda Anisimova, and Jessica …

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built Apple in a garage, the incumbents they were up against were slow-moving hardware companies. When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, Barnes & Noble wasn’t pouring billions into machine learning or cloud infrastructure. This doesn’t mean that it was easy for these entrepreneurs to change the face of whole industries. It was not. But it was at least possible. Back then, giants could be out-innovated because they were bureaucratic, cautious, and often blind to the potential of what the upstart start-ups were building. The situation is very different today. The startup landscape has changed radically. Where once it was populated by boots…

From return-to-office mandates, anxiety about AI taking (or reshaping) jobs, and a highly competitive atmosphere for recent graduates and other job seekers, 2025 has been a year of change. It’s also been a big year of change for women in the workplace, with a record number exiting the workforce. And, according to a new report, women are now also less inclined to seek promotions. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. just released their 2025 Women in the Workplace report based on a survey of 124 organizations employing around 3 million people. The survey research found that while companies overwhelmingly say that diversity (67%) and inclusion (84%) are top priorities, just…

Large language models have started creating their own terms and mixing them into everyday speech. Experts call it ‘lexical seepage.’ View the full article

The Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, may be visible in more than a dozen U.S. states Tuesday, December 9, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA). A full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME) is expected to reach Earth early to midday on Tuesday, potentially causing periods of “strong” G3 geomagnetic storms (on a scale of G1 to G5). The aurora borealis is the result of a geomagnetic storm that occurs when a coronal mass ejection (CME), an eruption of solar material, reaches Earth and causes swaths of purple, blue, and green in the night sky. This year’s increased solar activity (and thus, …