Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

It’s graduation week, which means the emissaries of the nation’s elite are now descending onto college campuses to deliver the much-discussed and, they hope, indelibly quotable college commencement address. These speeches are their own sort of literary genre. The celebrities, politicians, and titans of industry invited to give these keynotes must seem intelligent enough, but not bore—or worse, antagonize—their audience. Typically, this involves a speaker integrating a clever life story, select nuggets of eternal wisdom, a few trite asides to campus lore, and well-placed references to current affairs into one propulsive and affecting speech. The problem this year, how…

Watch an exclusive 30-minute webinar for Modern CEO subscribers featuring Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies, in conversation with Stephanie Mehta. Learn where AI is driving real business impact, how to separate hype from opportunity, and the key questions CEOs should be asking as AI adoption accelerates. View the full article

Not driving your car directly into a body of water may sound like common sense—but hey, if Elon Musk says it’s safe, who are we to disagree? A Tesla Cybertruck driver learned the hard way that Musk’s words aren’t gospel when he intentionally drove his car into Grapevine Lake in North Texas on Monday evening, employing the vehicle’s “Wade Mode,” which is intended for use in water up to 32 inches deep. Videos shared on social media show the vehicle moving through the shallow section of the lake, only for his Cybertruck to shut down when he got to deeper waters, leaving the vehicle stranded. In the aftermath, social media users are pointing to posts by Elon Musk that…

The sale of a marquee digital media company on Succession, the HBO series that ran from 2018-2023 , was always going to end badly. When Kendall Roy, heir-apparent to a fictional media conglomerate, bursts into the offices of his newly acquired hot media startup Vaulter, dripping with billionaire confidence, it doesn’t take a degree in dramaturgy to guess where this is going. The moment the Roy family finds out Vaulter may not turn a profit quite as quickly as expected, they shut it down and strip it for parts. Considering the Roy family is primarily, almost explicitly based on the Murdoch family of News Corporation infamy, it’s hard not to see the glint of the gri…

More than 30 states across the country have had at least one case of someone sick with Salmonella so far in 2026. Many of those cases are believed to be caused by contact with outdoor poultry, like ducks and chickens. But separately, there’s also been a wave of food recalls for Salmonella contamination, tied to milk powder used in snack seasoning. Salmonella isn’t an uncommon bacteria; each year, the U.S. sees some 1.35 million Salmonella infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most of those stem from food. If it seems like Salmonella is becoming more common, though, there are a few reasons why—related to how we detect…

Zohran Mamdani is entering his streamer era. The NYC mayor launched a series on Twitch, titled “Talk with the People,” on May 21. The series has Mamdani answering questions from New Yorkers live on the stream. He announced the series in an Instagram post this morning, featuring a photo of himself and one of a Franklin D. Roosevelt “Fireside Chat.” Mamdani’s campaign was unique in its engaging deployment of social media, and he has continued to create shortform video content since taking office. So it comes as no real surprise that the 34-year-old mayor is utilizing another popular social platform to increase his direct access to constituents. This is the first…

A large Applebee’s franchisee that filed for Chapter 11 protection in March is seeking to close additional restaurants as it works its way through the bankruptcy process and sale of its assets, a new court filing reveals. NRPF Group Two, which operates roughly 50 Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill + Bar locations in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, has asked a federal court for permission to reject the leases on five additional properties. Most of the Applebee’s restaurants associated with the properties appeared to be still open this week, though a few were marked as temporarily closed on Google as of Wednesday. Atlanta-based NRPF Group Two said in the court filing …

The closest thing to the idealized mall you recall either from personal memory or from cultural lore exists on a block in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, New York Magazine aptly dubbed “Tween Row.” On a recent spring afternoon, tween girls outfitted in cable knit cardigans, pink camis, hoodies, and lowrise jeans, chatted with each other (or their willing parents) as they popped into favorite shops: Brandy Melville, Edikted, Princess Polly. As of May 14, Tween Row will get a new tenant jockeying for their attention: Victoria’s Secret’s Pink. The store, the first designed by creative director Adam Selman, points to the retail experiences Gen Z and Gen Alph…

When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year proposing to launch a million satellite data centers into orbit, the company argued the project would have no meaningful environmental impact. On SpaceX’s website, Elon Musk made the case for space-based AI infrastructure in simpler terms: “It’s always sunny in space,” he wrote, arguing that orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale.” When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year to launch a million satellite data centers into space, the company said that the plan wouldn’t have any environmental impact. But researchers say the climate calculus is far more complicated than that. Yes…

Artificial intelligence isn’t just a headache for human resources. More and more, corporate legal teams are becoming entangled in the technology’s mistakes. Generative AI-related lawsuits in the United States grew 978% from 2021 to 2025, according to a report from the reinsurance broker Gallagher Re. But a growing number of insurance companies are removing AI liability coverage. Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb, and Travelers have all won approval to largely drop the protection in recent months. Technically, the companies have added “AI exclusion clauses” to their standard commercial liability policies. Those clauses cover a wide range of issues, including employees alle…

According to a new report from Realtor.com, buying a new home could save you a ton of money in your first decade of homeownership. But those savings depend on where you live. On average, U.S. buyers who choose a new home end up with $25,335 in savings over the course of 10 years. That chunk of change could offset the higher price tag of a newly built home, even if it doesn’t show up as up-front savings. The hidden savings tied to buying a newer home can mostly be attributed to two major factors: energy costs and new systems that don’t require maintenance or upgrades out of the gate. New homes might lack the aesthetic charm of their classic counterparts, but they …

Ah, the olden days of choosing where to spend your money on dining, travel, and all that connected those experiences. Neighborhood restaurants would drop flyers in your apartment lobby to let you know they were there. Hotels would rent space on billboards and place ads in newspapers and magazines. Some joined industry groups, such as the Leading Hotels of the World, which got its start by promising ship passengers when they arrived at their destinations there would be appropriate accommodation for them. The go-to reference for figuring out where to eat would have been the iconic burgundy Zagat guides, one of the original crowdsourced review guides with quotes from ordinar…

It’s graduation season and my email inbox is flooded with inquiries from students entering the workforce, looking for career advice. How do I land my dream job? What should I do at the company where I’ve been recently hired to get where I really want to be? How do I go from what I have to do to what I want to do? What I’ve gathered from these students is not much different from what we more seasoned professionals struggle with day in and day out. How do we square the incongruence between our duty—the thing we have to do to survive, pay our bills, and keep the lights on—and our conviction—the thing we feel called to do? The job, of course, is our duty. The gift is our…

Everlane—once an icon of ethical fashion—is reportedly being sold for $100 million to Shein, arguably the least ethical fashion brand on the market. Everlane had been on shaky financial ground for years, and majority owner L Catterton began shopping it around in March. But few expected it to sell to a Chinese retailer credibly accused of forced labor and labeled by Yale researchers as “the biggest polluter in fast fashion.” It’s the latest blow to a wave of ethical consumer brands that sprung up in the 2010s to court millennials. Last month, Allbirds—the sustainable sneaker startup—sold off its footwear assets, abandoned its environmental mission, and pivoted to a…