What's on Your Mind?

Work is the closest thing most adults have to a full-time identity. Strip away sleep, and roughly half of our waking lives are spent working. If you take a conservative estimate—40 to 50 hours a week, across four to five decades—you end up with well over 80,000 hours on the job. And yet, the most salient feature of work is not how many hours we devote to it, but rather how we experience it, which varies wildly. For some, it resembles what the sociologist Max Weber once described as a “calling,” a source of meaning and even a kind of secular transcendence. For others, it’s closer to what Karl Marx labeled alienation: a draining, joyless routine that disconnects effort …

A tough economy, rising grocery bills, high gas prices, credit card bills, fears of layoffs: A 2025 survey of 2,000 adults from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine revealed that 78% of adults lose sleep to financial stress. That double whammy of financial stress and bad sleep can lead to a slew of health problems—as well as declining performance at work, which in turn could lead to actual (or even worse) money problems. Insufficient or disrupted sleep affects every major physiological system, not just daytime energy levels, says Jennifer L. Martin, professor at Florida International University in Miami who specializes in sleep science. “Individuals facing money…

Raishelle Everett was thrilled when she became pregnant with her first child after undergoing IVF in 2022. The first thing she and her husband did was get on the wait list for Siemens Child Development Center (CDC), the popular and highly regarded on-site childcare center on the sprawling 53-acre Oregon campus of Siemens. The center, which serves as on-site childcare for Siemens employees as well the local community, cares for about 70 children from infant to pre-K and was built in 1992 to serve employees of Mentor Graphics (which was acquired by Siemens in 2017). The high curriculum standards and low student-to-teacher ratio meant that even though Everett’s husband …

We are at an inflection point for AI. The question is no longer whether your organization is adopting it. It’s whether your people are actually capable of using it. Most aren’t. This isn’t a technology failure. The tools work. The problem is simpler, yet harder to fix now. Companies deployed AI before they built the people capable of using it. At Docebo, we help enterprises build workforces that can actually use AI. We surveyed 2,000 people to find out where adoption breaks down, and the bottleneck shows up in an unexpected place. The challenge with AI adoption isn’t one problem. It’s a compounding series of them, each one making the next harder to solve. The …

Yesterday, a jury in Oakland, California threw out Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. Musk had sued the company for over $150 billion in damages, claiming that its leadership had “stolen a charity” when they converted OpenAI from a nonprofit AI lab to a for-profit company. It’s a huge win for OpenAI, to be sure. But although many people will doubtless see this as a vindication of OpenAI’s bizarre corporate structure and breakneck growth, the way the case was resolved actually says almost nothing about the company’s underlying issues. Juicy revelations Throughout the long trial of Musk’s case–which took over three weeks and saw both Musk and OpenAI…

Barnes & Noble has an incredible comeback story. In 2019, the American bookstore chain was facing bankruptcy, but it’s since returned to a position of growth: In 2025, the franchise opened 67 new stores across the United States, and 60 more are slated to open throughout 2026. But recent comments from the brand’s CEO have some social media users convinced Barnes & Noble is wasting all its goodwill. James Daunt, who took over the company in 2019, shared how he plans for Barnes & Noble to adapt to the AI era—and those plans have some book lovers rethinking their relationship to the brand. “We will stock them”: Barnes & Noble opens its arms to AI …

In February, April Watson hit her head while stowing products at an Amazon warehouse outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The injury gave her a concussion, and she was told by a neurologist that she would have to go on restricted duty and work at a slower pace than was typically expected of her. Despite having paperwork from the doctor that clearly stated that she had to work more slowly, however, it took Watson over a month to get the necessary accommodations on the job—all because she couldn’t get the correct medical form from Amazon’s internal AI assistant or easily connect with an HR employee. In the meantime, Watson was flagged for making errors on the job, and had…

Like much of Facebook nowadays, the “California Life” Facebook page is full of AI slop. There are generated images of highway patrol officers holding up a groundhog and lengthy road signs detailing California quirks. And in between those are posts that admonish AI data centers. “It’s not worth giving up an inch of this for a data center,” reads one image, in which the words look carved into a field of crops. “Not a single square inch of California is worth giving up for an AI Data Center,” reads another posted the very next day, the text floating above a generated image of the California coast, the state flag in the foreground. A third post shows that…

Days after Spirit Airlines shut down in the middle of the night, a lawyer for the defunct budget carrier stood before a bankruptcy judge and apologized to the price-conscious customers who might struggle to find affordable flights in its absence. “We apologize most specifically for those Americans who may now be priced entirely out,” Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner said in court, thanking all the passengers who relied on the airline during its 34-year run, many of whom, he said, “could not otherwise have afforded air travel.” Spirit’s May 3 demise is not the only curveball confronting people planning trips a week before the summer travel season has its traditional U.S. l…

In a recent speech at Rome’s La Sapienza University, Pope Leo XIV warned that investments in artificial intelligence and high-tech weapons could push the world into what he called a “spiral of annihilation.” Leo has identified AI as a critical issue for humanity and is expected to soon release a papal encyclical (a kind of open letter on Catholic doctrine) addressing the subject. His concerns reflect a broader debate taking shape across religious communities: Though artificial intelligence in its current form has only been in the marketplace for a few years, religious leaders and scholars from traditions stretching back centuries or more have already weighed in on the…

AI may be attracting billions in venture capital, but money is not flowing to every founder with a chatbot demo and a slick deck. In fact, as AI makes building a great product faster and more accessible, founder behavior, judgment, and credibility become even more important. In a crowded market where every pitch claims “category-defining AI,” red flags can surface fast. Founders must recognize that most investors are not just underwriting your product. They are underwriting you as a person for the next seven to ten years. If they sense weak leadership, poor decision-making, or shaky ethics early on, the meeting or any next steps is often over before diligence even beg…

A father-son duo has vibe-coded a gaming company that’s generated nearly 30 million plays and 20 million visits across four mini-games in just 90 days. Say hello to Dialed. Dialed is a gaming website that tests players’ senses and memory in games about color, sound, time, and shape. Geoff Teehan, chief design officer at the payments services company Lightspark and former vice president of design at Meta, created a color-matching game using Cursor and Claude during a hackathon. The project was inspired by an old college professor’s comment about how bad humans are at recalling color. “They think they’re really good at it, but you show them a color and then they go …

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. Modern CEO has reported on disparate levels of enthusiasm for AI between corporate leaders and the general public. More worrying, there’s an emerging trust gap in the workplace, with only 27% of workers in the U.S. saying they “trust their employers to use AI responsibly,” according to…

When Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in April 2006, they were two Stockholm entrepreneurs with a prototype so skeletal that Per Roman, the cofounder of investors Bullhound Capital, who would later back the company, says his first look at it was “world-changing,” despite there barely being a product to look at. Two decades and 300 million subscribers later, Spotify has become a defining force in the Swedish tech scene: a company whose alumni have gone on to found, fund, or run many of the most ambitious startups Stockholm has produced, in much the same way Silicon Valley’s PayPal Mafia shaped the U.S. tech ecosystem. It’s one of several tentpole companie…

When Bob’s Red Mill began in 1978, it was a flour company operated out of a literal red mill by one dedicated married couple. Since then, it’s grown into a grocery store staple with more than 200 products—and, along the way, its fascinating brand story has gotten lost amidst a sea of colorful, overwhelming packaging. To fix that, the company has spent three years on a full branding overhaul to bring all of its products back under one mill roof. Bob’s Red Mill began as the passion project of the late Bob and Charlee Moore, a husband and wife duo who started their own flour milling business as a way to introduce more whole grains into their family’s diet. And, according…

It starts with Jason Sudeikis in the make-up trailer for what must be the latest season of Ted Lasso, where he’s asked if he’s heading back stateside for the World Cup. He says no, then for some weird reason, taps his script with his Visa card. Poof! The script is now a World Cup match ticket. Thus begins Sudeikis’ surreal trip home, as dramatized in Visa’s new World Cup commercial “Tap in.” The campaign uses a simple play on words—in football, a tap-in goal is the easiest there is—to illustrate the ease with which fans can use Visa in and around the 2026 World Cup. Along the way in the campaign we see football stars Lamine Yamal, Erling Haaland, Jorge Campos, and le…

For the past two years, companies have been asking the wrong question: how do we use AI in our processes? That question made sense at the beginning. When large language models first appeared, the instinct was natural: take what already exists, from workflows to functions, decision chains, etc., and try to accelerate them. Add copilots. Add assistants. Add automation layers. Improve productivity. But as we’ve seen, that approach doesn’t scale. As I’ve argued in previous pieces, enterprise AI hasn’t failed because the technology doesn’t work. It has failed because we tried to place it in the wrong layer. Large language models were never designed to run a company, …

For most of the past decade, individuals have largely defined the creator economy: one creator, one channel, and one voice, building a direct relationship with an audience. That model has produced massive businesses and cultural influence. It’s not the end state. It’s the starting point. Recently, several executives who helped build major cable networks have told me: This moment feels like the early days of cable TV. The more you examine it, the more the comparison holds. Before cable, television was limited, with few networks, constrained distribution, and narrow programming. Cable did not just introduce more content; it fundamentally changed how content was pack…

They’re calling it “discomorphism.” To mark its 20th birthday, Spotify introduced a revamped logo that bedazzled its green, circular mark into a shimmering dark green disco ball. Following backlash online, Spotify assured its users that the old logo is coming back soon. “Alright, we know glitter is not for everyone,” the music streaming service said on social media. “Our temp glow up ends soon. Your regularly scheduled Spotify icon returns next week.” Alright, we know glitter is not for everyone. Our temp glow up ends soon. Your regularly scheduled Spotify icon returns next week. — Spotify (@Spotify) May 17, 2026 Spotify tells Fast Company the disco bal…

If you think memory prices are high now, just wait. A new report from Citrini Research forecasts that Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin AI platform will require more than 6 billion GB of Low-Power Double Data Rate memory (LPDDR) in 2027. LPDDR is the low-power memory used in devices like smartphones, tablets, and ultra-thin laptops. If Citrini is correct, Nvidia could consume more LPDDR memory than Apple and Samsung combined. That could spell bad news for consumers looking to upgrade phones and other personal devices, especially as rising memory costs are already affecting prices across consumer electronics. Rubin, named after astronomer Vera Rubin, is a big bet …

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was looking for connection wherever they could find it. To connect with friends, maybe that meant playing a long-distance round of Among Us. To connect with family, perhaps you hopped on a group FaceTime. And to connect with coworkers, you used Microsoft Teams’ beloved Together mode for meetings. . . . Oh, wait, you didn’t do that? Launched in 2020, Together mode transformed virtual meetings within Teams. Rather than displaying a standard Zoom-style array of each attendee in their own box with their own background, Together used AI to cut out each person’s head and shoulders, then composited them next to each ot…

The day John Lennon was shot, on Dec. 8, 1980, he and Yoko Ono gave an interview to a San Francisco radio crew from their home in New York’s Dakota Apartments. They were promoting their new album “Double Fantasy,” but the two-hour conversation was wide ranging. Though the interviewers had been warned “no Beatles questions,” Lennon and Ono were thrillingly open. That day, Annie Leibovitz also shot the famous portrait of a clothes-less Lennon wrapped around Ono. The interview is similarly naked. The two, particularly Lennon, riff on love, their relationship, creativity, life after the Beatles, raising their toddler son, writing songs in bed and much more. At the age of 40…