Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

As the United States was preparing a daring mission to rescue an airman whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, there was money to be made. Users on Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, could place bets on when the airman would be rescued. When Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., shared a screenshot of the activity on social media, an April 3 rescue was trading at 15% compared with 63% who were betting on April 4. After Moulton posted the screenshot and blasted this “dystopian death market,” Polymarket stopped the betting, saying the market “does not meet our integrity standards.” A former Marine who served four tours in Iraq, Moulton said he was “absolutely not…

Spring is in the air! The tulips are blooming, college acceptance letters are zooming into email inboxes, and the majority of parents with college-bound students are panicking about paying for their kid’s schooling. Ain’t this time of year grand? There’s a lot that families can do to tame the cost of higher education, starting with filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) which determines a student’s eligibility for federal aid, applying for scholarships and grants which don’t need to be repaid, and considering the cost of attendance when comparing college acceptance offers. But for some college students, there is a funding gap between their…

Sunday has long been regarded as the day of rest: After a week of early wake-ups and diligently checking off to-do lists, there finally comes the one day where doing nothing is not only socially acceptable—but actively encouraged. Or so you thought. More and more Americans are now optimizing their Sunday as a means of self-improvement. This might look like light cleaning and calendar organization. Or meal-prepping while marinating in an avocado face mask. Rather than rest, Sunday is now a day to reset for the week ahead. While hardly groundbreaking, the idea has taken off online with almost a million videos tagged #sundayreset on TikTok. Searches for “Sunda…

The U.S.military is paving the way for the regular deployment of high-energy laser weapons on American soil for air defense amid the expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones. The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S.Defense Department have reached a “landmark safety agreement” regarding the use of laser weapons to counter unauthorized drones at the U.S.-Mexico border following a safety assessment that concluded such countermeasures “do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft,” the FAA announced on April 10. The assessment and resulting agreement were the direct result of two laser incidents along the southern border of Texas in February, which promp…

Lawyers notoriously struggle with technology. The legal profession is one of wood-paneled courtrooms and leather-bound lawbooks—not apps and chatbots. The infamous Lawyer Cat of the early pandemic Zoom era is an especially hilarious example of what happens when lawyers are forced to embrace tech they wouldn’t otherwise touch. And when lawyers use artificial intelligence, it often goes just as poorly. A Massachusetts lawyer was sanctioned for citing nonexistent cases hallucinated by ChatGPT in an official court filing, and California recently fined an attorney $10,000 for similar AI-hallucinated errors. It’s no surprise, then, that lawyers can be relu…

Carroll Tower, a 194-apartment public housing development in Providence, Rhode Island, was built in 1974. For more than 50 years, residents there relied on electric baseboards for heating and their own window air conditioners, if they had them, in the summers. But now, the entire building has been retrofitted with a modern HVAC system: 277 heat pumps from Gradient, a San Francisco-based climate tech startup, will heat and cool the property. The heat pumps were installed as part of a $1.25 million public-private project between the Providence Housing Authority, Gradient, the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, energy consulting firm Abode Energy Management…

About 20 minutes into the Devil Wears Prada—the 2006 David Frankel film that constitutes one of the most important and perfect films ever produced (please hold all dissent)—Meryl Streep delivers a critical speech to Anne Hathaway that encompasses the plot’s primary tension. The moment, which may come up in the sequel (an Instagram post from a professional dyeing service in New York suggests this may be the case), comes as Streep’s Miranda, the frigid chief editor of a top fashion magazine is pondering items that might be featured for an upcoming issue, while surrounded by her stressed-out underlings. Also in the office is Andie (Hathaway), a comparatively disheveled …

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. These are difficult times for elite universities. Controversies over the handling of pro-Palestine protests on campus cost several school presidents their jobs; under the The President administration, federal research grants have plunged; and just 42% of Americans polled by Gallup in 2…

When people discuss climate innovation, they often picture technology. Better batteries. Smarter grids. Carbon capture at scale. Those breakthroughs matter and are happening every day. But on this World Creativity and Innovation Day, I want to make a case for a different kind of innovation. One that is structural rather than technical, already underway, and quietly accelerating climate progress. It is, in a word, trust. A SYSTEM BUILT FOR FRAGMENTATION The social impact sector is filled with brilliant, committed people working on the climate crisis. It is also organized in a way almost perfectly designed to prevent the scale of impact the crisis demands. Many o…

For years, premium credit cards competed on points, perks, and airport lounge access. Now the lounge itself is becoming the strategy. Chase is the latest to double down. With new Sapphire Lounge locations planned—starting with one at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and another at Los Angeles International Airport—the company is expanding its footprint at a moment when airport lounges have become one of the most competitive battlegrounds in consumer finance. The move follows a wave of recent openings that show how Chase is trying to differentiate not just on access, but on experience. “We’re really excited,” Dana Pouwels, head of airport lounge benefits…

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, has been named the new CEO of Apple, the company announced. In a letter posted on the company’s website, current CEO Tim Cook wrote that he will leave his role in September and become executive chairman. He described Ternus as “a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users love so much, obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, bolder, more beautiful, and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for the job.” Ternus has been at Apple for 24 years, and led the hardware engineering division since 201…

You can now book haircuts, doctors’ appointments, and food deliveries through Yelp. The business search and review platform has rolled out integrations with providers including DoorDash, Zocdoc, and Vagaro, letting users book appointments and order food directly from a Yelp listing or through the AI-powered Yelp Assistant. Users could already request quotes from businesses ranging from home and auto repair professionals to beauty experts. The Yelp Assistant is also getting its own tab in the app, as the company aims to become a destination not just for its hundreds of millions of user-contributed reviews but for answering questions about local businesses and booking their…

The United States’ advanced manufacturing future may have an unexpected limiting factor: a dire shortage of welders. While venture capital has placed big bets on a cutting-edge future of data centers, defense tech, and robotics, actually making the physical devices remains a challenge without finding the right talent to melt, fuse and repair metal. The American Welding Society projects that the country will need more than 320,000 new welding professionals by 2030, which means hiring about 80,000 new welders every year. Path Robotics believes the future of America’s manufacturing workforce will be augmented with torch-wielding robots. The Columbus, Ohio-based company,…

For digital nomads, logging on to work from a cafe, co-working space, hotel lobby or airport lounge is a way of life. Remote working has been made possible by reliable high speed internet and turbocharged by the pandemic. For some remote workers, that includes working from somewhere other than their home, perhaps because their company doesn’t have a physical location in their area, or because they don’t have an ideal home office setup. Working in public, however, doesn’t come without privacy and security risks. Here’s a quick reminder of precautions to take: Read the rulebook Hybrid or fully remote working is the norm for many jobs, so it’s a good idea to check f…

The time-honored tradition of scouring a new cereal box in search of a prize is coming back to the breakfast table. WK Kellogg Co. is partnering with Disney ahead of the release of Toy Story 5 this summer, rolling out cereal boxes with either classic in-box playable toys or collectible items inspired by the animated movie franchise. When and where to find them Beginning April 26, customers nationwide will be able to get their hands on the Toy Story 5-inspired cereals across Kellogg’s many brands including Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Corn Pops, Apple Jacks, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Cocoa Loops. The limited-edition boxes can be id…

While the court battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI may draw more eyes Monday, another case getting underway could carry far broader implications for personal freedom. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a case that will determine the legality of geofencing, a technique law enforcement uses to mine location history data to identify who was near the scene of a crime and may have been involved. Geofencing, in essence, draws a virtual perimeter around a crime scene. The government then obtains a warrant requiring tech companies to search their location data for anyone within that area during the relevant time frame. In this case, Google’s location his…

Ikea design manager Johan Ejdemo is looking years into the future. A towering Swede with a six-inch beard, Ejdemo is a trained cabinetmaker who has nearly 30 years of experience at Ikea. Since 2022 he’s been the company’s design head, leading a team of 20 in-house designers in Sweden and a roster of freelancers from around the world. Together they give shape to the 1,500 to 2,000 new products Ikea releases every year. Most have been brewing in the company’s design department for several years, if not more than a decade. I recently met with Ejdemo at Ikea’s headquarters in Älmhult, Sweden, the city a two-hour train ride from Copenhagen where the company was founded…