Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

When we minimize our suffering with statements like “I shouldn’t complain—others have it much harder than me,” it can seem evolved, empathetic, even wise. In professional culture, this phrase often earns admiration. It signals gratitude, resilience, and perspective. However, beneath that polished humility lies a psychological defense mechanism that can quietly block emotional growth. That mindset reflects a subtle form of emotional bypassing, which is the tendency to sidestep uncomfortable emotions by rationalizing them away. This ends up muting, rather than healing. It may seem like a sign of maturity. However, empathy bypassing often prevents us from engaging honest…

The legend of Sisyphus goes like this: As punishment for cheating death and embarrassing the gods, he is banished to the underworld and sentenced to push a boulder up a hill. As Sisyphus nears the peak, the boulder rolls back down, and he must start over. And the episode repeats for eternity. I risk sounding melodramatic by comparing this story to the plight of the employed in 2026. Fair enough. But consider, if you will, the cycles in which a modern worker finds herself. She masters a new skill, and it’s deemed outdated. She learns a new software, and is told to use a different one. She gets a new boss, and the company is reorganized. She applies for a job, and …

Medicare has launched a six-year pilot program that could eventually transform access to healthcare for some of the millions of people across the U.S. who rely on it for their health insurance coverage. Traditional Medicare is a government-administered insurance plan for people over 65 or with disabilities. About half of the 67 million Americans insured through Medicare have this coverage. The rest have Medicare Advantage plans administered by private companies. The pilot program, dubbed the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, is an experimental program that began to affect people enrolled in traditional Medicare from six states in January 2026. …

Ah, brainstorming. The corporate rite of passage where creativity goes to die. It usually involves a room full of well-intentioned people offering ideas that feel familiar but not fresh. Why does this happen? Because most people stick to the “safe zone,” avoiding anything that might make waves, or worse, ruffle feathers. But here’s the problem: safe ideas don’t change the game. If you want ideas that truly shake things up, you’ve got to do something radical. You have to give your team permission not just to think differently but to think outrageously. And to do that, you need to encourage them to come up with ideas so bold, they might just get them fired. How to …

Nikolai Tesla was a revolutionary thinker with bold, transformative ideas. Yet it was George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison who shaped how electricity was brought to the world. The personal computer was invented at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), but it was Apple that brought the Macintosh to market. William Coley pioneered cancer immunotherapy, but James Allison made it a reality. We grow up believing that if an idea is good, it will naturally rise to the top. Yet that’s rarely, if ever, true. To make an impact, you need to understand power and influence. It isn’t about titles, authority, or formal position. It’s about understanding how decisions actually get…

Below, Shadé Zahrai shares five key insights from her new book, Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success. Shadé is a peak performance educator to Fortune 500 companies, leadership strategist, and former lawyer. Over the past decade, she has trained leaders at Microsoft, Deloitte, JPMorgan, and LVMH, educated millions through LinkedIn Learning, and spent five years researching self-doubt and self-image as part of her PhD. What’s the big idea? When you change how you see yourself, you change what’s possible for you. Big Trust doesn’t require becoming someone new; it requires you to finally trust who you already are. By strengthening th…

Working at the office all day was a struggle for Nicola Sura. She’d seen the toll that working a corporate job had taken on her mom’s physical and mental health, and she never wanted the same thing to happen to her. Around six months into Sura’s first full-time role in 2019, she started questioning her life choices, as well as those of everyone around her. “I was, like, how are people doing this? Everyone seems completely fine. Everyone’s just going about their day,” Sura, who works in corporate retail, tells Fast Company. “It was killing me to just be there for eight hours at my desk.” The move to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic was when Sura …

On the heels of its intriguing Super Bowl ad, AI.com is garnering all sorts of interest—so much, in fact, that it actually crashed the company’s website, as Super Bowl viewers scrambled to see what the company that no one has heard of was all about. The new AI platform, founded by Crypto.com CEO and co-founder Kris Marszalek, reportedly spent a whopping $85 million on the Super Bowl spot, only to garner so much traffic that he had to post on X: “Insane traffic levels. We prepared for scale, but not for THIS,” followed by three fire emojis. That 30-second ad, which ran during the coveted fourth-quarter ad space, encouraged fans to go to the site and create an AI-ha…

As backlash over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show rippled through conservative media, a notable group of right-leaning commentators broke with President Donald The President to defend the performance—in some cases walking back their own earlier criticism. Despite Bad Bunny’s message of love and unity, the performance has been placed squarely at the center of the culture war in recent weeks. After initially calling for viewers to turn off the halftime show and labeling Bad Bunny a “fake American citizen” who “publicly hates America,” influencer and boxer Jake Paul, 29, has now claimed amnesia over his viral rant. “Guys i love bad bunny idk what happene…

It’s the day after Super Bowl Sunday, otherwise known as National Hangover Day. Because, let’s face it—even if you have zero interest in football and can’t even remember who won the game, if you’re like many Americans, you probably at least went to a watch party. (If for nothing else than for the joy-bringing halftime show led by the one and only Bad Bunny.) But if you’re feeling a little, er, off today. . .you’re far from alone. According to UKG’s annual Super Bowl Absenteeism Survey, an estimated 26.2 million U.S. employees were anticipated to stay home today. That means, that no matter who wins or loses the Super Bowl, the big loser on Super “Sick Monday” is t…

Kroger named former Walmart executive Greg Foran as its chief executive officer on Monday, 11 months after the abrupt resignation of its previous CEO. Foran has a reputation as a tech-savvy and detail-oriented leader. He led Walmart’s U.S. division from 2014 to 2019, where he focused on cleaning up stores, ensuring items were in stock, and improving the fresh produce selection. He also introduced online ordering and pickup, and accelerated Walmart’s digital capabilities. Walmart has reshaped itself into a tech-powered retail giant that has leaned heavily into automation and artificial intelligence, and it’s one of the biggest competitive threats to Kroger, the lar…

Investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary once declared that to succeed in business you must be willing to grind out 25 hour work days. He has since walked back on that idea, calling it, in his own words, “sheer stupidity.” In fact: “The worst advice I hear young founders talk about all the time is that they want to work 18 hours a day. How stupid is that?” O’Leary said in a video posted on his Instagram page last week. The eat-sleep-work lifestyle—also known as the “996” schedule first imported from China, which stands for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week—has since gained momentum among Silicon Valley tech companies. Despite his previous declarations, O’L…

Even after the final whistle blew on the Seattle Seahawks’ 29-13 win over the New England Patriots, Rocket’s Super Bowl was far from over. Sure, the brand had a Super Bowl ad featuring Lady Gaga singing a Mr. Rogers classic, but that was just the beginning. At 8 p.m. ET, immediately after Rocket and Redfin’s Super Bowl spot aired, the brands released the first of six app-exclusive clues that would roll out over the next 48 hours for users to play a contest in order to win a million-dollar home. This last part of Rocket’s Super Bowl strategy is perhaps its most important because it’s not just focused on entertaining audiences or attracting their attention; it’s a…

A trial focused on the dangers of child sexual exploitation on social media and whether Meta misrepresented the safety of its platforms is set to start in New Mexico with opening statements Monday. It’s the first stand-alone trial from state prosecutors in a stream of lawsuits against major social media companies, including Meta, over harm to children, and one that is likely to highlight explicit online content and its effects. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023. His team built the case by posing as kids through social media accounts, then documenting the arrival of sexual solicitations as well as the response by Meta, the owner of Facebook, Insta…

Valentine’s Day is known as the day to celebrate all things love—and also a day for expensive dates. However, a new offering from one of your favorite fast food chains may have you skipping the white table cloths and snagging something from McDonald’s instead. McDonald’s is serving up caviar this Valentine’s Day. But there’s a catch. In a Feb. 2 announcement, the chain explained what the latest offering entails. “To be known is to be loved, and we know our fans love pairing our crispy Chicken McNuggets with their favorite caviar,” it said. “Inspired by this perfect match, we’re dropping our first-ever McNugget Caviar kits featuring premium Baerii Sturgeon caviar o…

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…

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. I recently celebrated my 56th birthday, and I’m feeling my age. Not because I’m slowing down (which I am), but because I feel increasingly removed from the passions, peeves, and predilections of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. This matters, as young people shape popular and workplace cultures, …

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…

A few leftover donuts may not seem like a major problem, but for a fast-food operation with nearly 100 stores, unnecessary waste can add up to serious costs. To better predict donut demand, a Knoxville, Tennessee–based Dunkin’ franchisee, Bluemont Group, has rolled out an AI system called Do’Cast designed to cut waste while keeping popular flavors in stock. Developed in partnership with restaurant AI company PreciTaste, the system uses in-store cameras to track inventory in real time and forecast demand for each type of donut. Those predictions factor in recent sales, weather, seasonal patterns, holidays, days of the week, and major local events such as college footb…

It has been two weeks since Winter Storm Fern swept through the United States, and many cities are still busy digging themselves out of waist-high snow mountains. A brand-new building in Antarctica—where temperatures average 14 degrees Fahrenheit along the coast—might offer some useful insights for a more efficient approach. Perched on the southern edge of Adelaide, an island on the Antarctica Peninsula, the Discovery Building spans two stories and nearly 50,000 square feet. It is clad in highly insulated metal composite panels and topped with a mono-pitch roof that slopes in just one direction, so snow slides right off instead of piling up. Most notably: it s…

Fashion weeks around the world are dominated by four main shows: New York, Paris, Milan, and London. But in 2020, Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) made a bold move that helped it garner attention. It launched a framework with nearly 20 sustainability standards that fashion brands must meet to participate. The choice came at a time when fashion’s sustainability practices were under increased scrutiny. Every year the industry contributes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, pollutes billions of cubic meters of clean water, and produces metric tons of textile waste. Copenhagen’s fashion week was applauded for its forward-thinking approach. However, over the nex…