What's on Your Mind?

For some evangelical Christians, faith is about having a personal relationship with Jesus. At $1.99 per minute, the tech company Just Like Me is taking that concept to a new level. Users of the platform can join video calls with an avatar of Jesus generated by artificial intelligence. Like other religious AI tools on the market, it offers words of prayer and encouragement in various languages. With the occasional glitch, it remembers previous conversations and speaks through not-quite-synced lips. “You do feel a little accountable to the AI,” CEO Chris Breed said. “They’re your friend. You’ve made an attachment.” The rush to create faith-based generative AI is…

The scariest movie you see this year might be set in a liminal space. While studios like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are gearing up to release big-budget blockbusters this year, some independent distributors like A24 and Neon are embracing low-budget horror films that take place in one setting—specifically liminal spaces, which are empty or abandoned places that have an eerie and surreal feel to them. Undertone, which came out last month, was originally made on a micro-budget of $500,000 and acquired by A24 for an undisclosed mid-seven-figure deal, following its debut at Fantasia Fest last year. It has earned more than $18 million at the box office. S…

According to director Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Three is meant to be watched on a 70-millimeter IMAX screen. “The movie is really meant to be an IMAX experience and to be seen on the biggest screen as possible,” Villeneuve said when the sci-fi epic’s trailer released, also sharing that he and new cinematographer Linus Sandgren shot much of the movie on 65mm film. “That’s the way we dreamed the movie,” he said. But if you live in the United States, that means the intended Dune: Part Three experience is only available in 15 cinemas across the country. 70mm IMAX screenings are few and far between, meaning the demand was sky-high when Warner Bros. surprise dropped …

Below, Majid Fotuhi shares five key insights from his new book, The Invincible Brain: The Clinically Proven Plan to Age-Proof Your Brain and Stay Sharp for Life. Majid is a neurologist, professor, and neuroscientist, with more than three decades of experience—mostly at Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical School. Over the years, he has treated thousands of patients with memory loss, concussion, ADHD, brain fog, and early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. What’s the big idea? Your brain is not fixed. Your intelligence is not limited. And aging does not have to mean decline. By working on improving the five pillars of brain health in your life, anyone—at any age—can ta…

Sam Mintesnot had checked off everything she possibly could have from a long list of to-dos in preparation for the Coachella music festival. She crafted the best outfits, got her hair and nails done, booked a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and flew out on Tuesday with a spreadsheet full of ideas for videos she could post related to the festival. The only problem was that just days before the Coachella kicked off on Friday, she didn’t have a ticket — at least, not yet. Mintesnot is a content creator, and she was seeking an invitation from a brand to join them at the annual festival in Indio, California, that is sometimes called an “influencer Olympics.” She posted a…

It’s a low time for higher education, depending on where you look. In recent years, dozens of colleges and universities have closed their doors, and dozens more have merged in an attempt to survive. There are many factors that are leading to these closures, but it typically comes down to a lethal combination of increasing costs and lower enrollment. Smaller private schools are finding themselves in harm’s way, and it’s become worse over the past five years. Conversely, other schools are thriving, and becoming increasingly selective. Vanderbilt University, for instance, recently announced an acceptance rate of 2.8% out of a pool of nearly 49,000 applicants. That ac…

If you pay to keep ads out of your YouTube experience, keep an eye on your monthly bill. The Google-owned streaming service quietly announced today that it would be raising prices across its plans in an email to U.S. subscribers. Individual YouTube Premium subscribers will soon pay $15.99 a month, a two dollar increase from the previous price of $13.99. For family plan subscribers, pricing will jump all the way from $22.99 to $26.99. YouTube Premium Lite subscribers will pay $8.99 a month, up from $7.99. The change to YouTube Premium plans, which will go into effect at the end of May, is the second time that the price of YouTube Premium has ballooned in the l…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. KB Home announced on Thursday that it will relocate its corporate headquarters from Los Angeles to Tempe, Arizona, beginning in spring 2027. The builder, which has a $3 billion market capitalization, said the new headquarters in the Phoenix metro area will bring executive leadership and key corporate functions into a more centralized, lower-cost operating environment. While the giant homebuilder—ranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000—emphasized that it will maintain a significant presence in California (in particular in San Bernardino County, CA)—a state…

For years, premium credit cards competed on points, perks, and airport lounge access. Now, the battleground is shifting toward something less tangible but arguably more powerful: experiences. Chase Sapphire Reserve is leaning further into that strategy with its latest offering, a one-night-only “Dinner at the Opry with Ella Langley,” which will bring cardmembers directly onto the stage of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry on May 31. Timed to the release of Langley’s sophomore album, Dandelion, the event blends live music, dining, and behind-the-scenes access in a way that reflects how the brand is trying to position itself at the center of culture. The event is part…

Entrepreneurship has always required resilience—nearly half of new businesses don’t make it past five years. But today, the nature of running a business is shifting. It’s no longer just about how hard the work is—it’s about how constant it feels. I see this tension every day from the conversations I have with entrepreneurs from around the world. For many business owners, the mental load of running a business often overwhelms the joy of building it. For the modern small business owner, financial pressure is no longer a seasonal wave. It’s a steady, background hum of rising costs and economic volatility. New research into the “emotional tax” of running a small business …

When you think of an operating system, you probably think of interfaces to open, workflows to follow, screens to move through. Work has always lived inside those boundaries. At Anthropic, that logic is starting to break. The company is reorganizing itself around a simple, destabilizing premise: work no longer needs a fixed system to run through. Anthropic says employees now rely on Claude, its flagship AI model, along with its products Code and Cowork, for most of their day-to-day work. The model is starting to function as an “internal operating system.” What once required navigating multiple systems, stitching together data, and coordinating across teams now begins w…

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. CEOs, do you know what the public is saying about AI? New polling shared exclusively with Modern CEO by Just Capital, the nonprofit that tracks what the American public expects from business, finds that 66% expect AI will be a net positive for society within the next five years. That’s…

Chipotle, like almost every other fast casual restaurant, has been battling an ongoing period of increased inflation and lower consumer spending. Last year, the company saw what its CEO Scott Boatwright described to investors as a “broad-based pullback in frequency” of customer visits, especially among low- to middle-income customers and younger consumers, due to concerns about the economy. But the burrito chain has a master plan to address that, and it’s currently moving into its next phase: making earning rewards feel more like a game. The company’s fourth quarter report showed a revenue increase of 5.4% to $11.9 billion. But those gains were partially offset by a 1…

With layoffs still dominating headlines, many job seekers assume the biggest challenge in today’s market is competition. But new research suggests another obstacle may be quietly draining applicants’ time and emotional energy: job postings that may not actually be hiring. Recent analysis of more than 175,000 job listings across industries found that roughly one in seven postings remain active for more than 30 days, even when companies may no longer be accepting candidates. Some listings remain online for months, continuing to collect applications long after hiring decisions have effectively been made. These roles are often referred to as “ghost jobs.” For job seek…

Roblox is updating its child protection features again, rolling out restricted Kids accounts for users ages 5 through 8 and Roblox Select accounts for users 9 through 15, both with parental controls and other age-based restrictions. Users will be required to go through an age verification process, generally based on live selfies or a government-issued ID—or be effectively restricted to content approved for the youngest users. Since January, age verification has also been required to use the platform’s chat features, with users under 18 generally restricted to chatting people relatively near to them in age. “We’ll be going through a transition period where we’ll…

There is a persistent belief that food, fuel, and industrial uses compete for the same bushel. In practice, the opposite is increasingly true. Crops have always served multiple markets. What is changing is how intentionally we are designing agricultural and manufacturing systems to serve those markets together. In a previous article I wrote, I focused on how familiar crops like corn and soybeans are finding new life through new demand pathways and molecular innovation. What I see today goes a step further. The same acre is increasingly supporting food, industrial materials, energy applications, and emissions-reduction strategies simultaneously. That convergence is…

Mental healthcare has traditionally been based on a single relationship: patient and provider, one hour at a time on a weekly basis. The major flaw with that model is that mental health conditions rarely stay in their lane, something we commonly see at Equip. Depression intersects with chronic illness. OCD co-occurs with eating disorders. One provider, no matter how skilled they are, can only hold so much. This has to change. The evidence increasingly points toward team-based care as the model that actually moves the needle for how we can deliver mental health treatment. Integrated, multidisciplinary teams sharing information, aligning on treatment goals, and …

When I got the email, I was certain I was going to be murdered. Sent through an obscure contact form on my website, the message said that Jason Alexander had read an article I wrote for FastCompany, and wanted to interview me for his podcast. All I had to do was show up at a nondescript building next to Warner Brothers Studios, come around the back, and enter through an unmarked basement door. “Yeah, right” I thought. “George from Seinfeld wants to talk to me about AI? Scammers sure have gotten creative!” Still, I couldn’t entirely write off the message. Jason Alexander does indeed have a podcast. And a quick check with Gemini showed that the person wh…