What's on Your Mind?

We’ve spent the better part of the past few years glued to our screens—clicking, swiping, streaming. Endless tabs, endless scrolls. And yet, despite all the infinite access, we’re still craving the one thing the web cannot render: real presence. That collective craving has rewritten the rules of marketing. Five years after COVID, brands are finding the antidote to Zoom fatigue by showing up in person again. Canva, the Australian graphic design platform, is moving quickly to meet this demand with the launch of the Canva World Tour, a global initiative spanning 40 cities across 30 countries and five continents, with the goal of training one million people in jus…

Spending just 36 minutes listening to your own brain waves, over four sessions, can reduce stress and anxiety, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Published in the journal Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health, the study looked at how to reduce stress-related symptoms in 144 healthcare workers with moderate-to-high levels of perceived stress. The healthcare workers were placed in two groups: one that received four sessions of a sound-based relaxation intervention over two weeks, and another that was put on a control group waitlist. The workers spent a little over half an hour relaxing in a …

Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI and three other entities on Wednesday, alleging their involvement in an “industrial-scale, unlawful” economy to “scrape” the comments of millions of Reddit users for commercial gain. Reddit’s lawsuit in a New York federal court takes aim at San Francisco-based Perplexity, maker of an AI chatbot and “answer engine” that competes with Google, ChatGPT, and others in online search. Also named in the lawsuit are Lithuanian data-scraping company Oxylabs UAB, a web domain called AWMProxy that Reddit describes as a “former Russian botnet,” and Texas-based startup SerpApi, which lists Perpl…

Across cultures, people often wrestle with whether having lots of money is a blessing, a burden, or a moral problem. According to our new research, how someone views billionaires isn’t just about economics. Judgment also hinges on certain cultural and moral instincts, which help explain why opinions about wealth are so polarized. The study, which my colleague Mohammad Atari and I published in the research journal PNAS Nexus in June 2025, examined survey data from more than 4,300 people across 20 countries. We found that while most people around the world do not strongly condemn having “too much money,” there are striking cultural differences. In wealthy, more econ…

And the layoffs keep coming. General Motors joins Amazon and Paramount this week, announcing on Wednesday it will be laying off 1,750 workers in Michigan and Ohio, in response to the downturn in U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market. The Detroit News first reported the news. Shares in the automotive maker (NYSE: GM) were down less than 1% in midday trading on Wednesday. The company said those cuts include 1,200 workers in Detroit at the company’s electric vehicle plant and another 550 employees at Ohio’s Ultium Cells battery cell plant. The company is also instituting temporary layoffs for some 850 workers at the Ohio plant and another 700 workers in Tennessee,…

It’s already been an exciting Major League Baseball season. And that excitement is clearly translating into the business and advertising side as well. Earlier this summer, Variety reported that ads for the MLB All-Star Game, which took place in July, sold out over a month in advance. On Monday night during Game 3 of the World Series, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won against the Toronto Blue Jays—which gave L.A. a 2-1 series lead and featured another significant performance from Shohei Ohtani—the game went to 18 innings and lasted six hours and 39 minutes. So what happens to ads when a game has extra innings? When a large tentpole tournament or games lik…

Halloween might be over, but sky-watchers are in for a treat this week. On Wednesday, November 5, the night sky will be illuminated with the biggest, brightest full moon of the year, also called the beaver moon. And it’s a supermoon, meaning it will be full at the same time it’s closest to Earth. Here’s everything to know about this week’s sky-watching event. What’s the best time to see the supermoon? The best time to see a full moon typically is right after sunset, especially for a supermoon, when it appears biggest on the horizon, according to Live Science. According to the Weather Channel, the best time to see the beaver moon is from dusk on Tuesday,…

Shares in language learning platform Duolingo, Inc. (Nasdaq: DUOL) are plummeting this morning. As of this writing, the stock is down a staggering 25% in premarket trading. That cliff edge comes after the company reported strong Q3 numbers yesterday. So what’s the reason for today’s fall? Here’s what you need to know. Duolingo reports a strong Q3 2025 By nearly every metric, Duolingo had a strong third quarter, which ended on September 30, 2025. Here are the key metrics the company reported for its Q3: Daily Active Users: 50.5 million (up 36% year over year) Monthly Active Users: 135.3 million (up 20% YOY) Paid Subscribers: 11.5 million (up 34% YOY)…

United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines said they will refund tickets for customers who will be flying starting on Friday, November 7, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced a 10% reduction in flights at 40 major airports, expected to affect some 3,500 to 4,000 flights daily. The reductions come amid the ongoing federal government shutdown, which has created a shortage of air traffic controllers, some of whom are not being paid. “Any customer traveling during this period is eligible for a refund if they do not wish to fly—even if their flight isn’t impacted,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement. “That includes non…

Yesterday, Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) shareholders overwhelmingly approved the controversial and historic pay package deal for the electric vehicle maker’s CEO, Elon Musk. That package is worth up to nearly $1 trillion in compensation for Musk—provided the company reaches certain milestones. But if those milestones are met, it would make Musk, already the world’s richest man, the world’s first trillionaire. Here’s what you need to know about the historic pay package and how investors and Tesla’s shares are reacting to the news. What’s in Musk’s historic Tesla pay deal? At Tesla’s investor meeting yesterday, over three-quarters of shareholders voted to approve M…

“You really have to stand up for yourself.” That’s the message Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran sent loud and clear in a recent interview she gave LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. The interview is full of powerful lessons from Corcoran’s life, but one story stood head and shoulders above the rest: The time Shark Tank fired her, before she taped a single episode. Corcoran said she received a call from a woman asking her to be on a new show called Shark Tank. Ecstatic, Corcoran agreed. She immediately went on a shopping spree, buying new outfits and autograph-signing materials. “I’m going to Hollywood!” she excitedly told her friends. Then, Corcoran got a dreadf…

Frida Kahlo’s “El sueño (La cama)” — in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — is causing a stir among art historians as its estimated $40 million to $60 million price tag would make it the most expensive work by any female or Latin American artist when it goes to auction later this month. Sotheby’s auction house will put the painting up for sale on Nov. 20 in New York after exhibiting it in London, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Paris. “This is a moment of a lot of speculation,” said Mexican art historian Helena Chávez Mac Gregor, a researcher at UNAM’s Institute of Aesthetic Research and author of “El listón y la bomba. El arte de Frida Kahlo.” (The ribbon and the bomb. The art o…