What's on Your Mind?

Below, Amy Leneker shares five key insights from her new book, Cheers to Monday: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy. Amy is founder and CEO of the Center for Joyful Work. She has helped more than 100,000 leaders and teams, including those at Fortune 100 companies, lead with less stress and more joy. With more than 25 years of leadership experience, including a decade in the C-suite, she has studied leadership at Yale, neuroscience at the NeuroLeadership Institute, and stress resilience at Harvard Medical School. She leads the annual national workforce study, The State of Stress and Joy at Work, and hosts the Less Stress, More…

The European Union accused Meta on Wednesday of failing to stop underage users from accessing Facebook and Instagram, in violation of the bloc’s tough digital rules that require social media sites to protect minors. The EU’s executive branch said Meta Platforms lacked effective measures to prevent children younger than 13 from signing up, and that it was not doing enough to identify and remove children after they had opened accounts. Meta’s own minimum age to open an account on Facebook or Instagram is 13. The problem is not just that children are getting access. The European Commission said Meta is also inadequately assessing the risk of children younger than 13 being…

Plenty of brands use AI to talk to consumers. In other words, they’re tapping AI to generate customer service responses, automate interactions, and speed up outreach. But what they’re not doing is investing in the listening side of AI or leveraging into its vast capabilities here—i.e., using AI to better understand customer friction, synthesize feedback, spot patterns, or act on what people are saying. And to me, this is a major miss. Whenever leadership looks out onto their world below—rather than from within the trenches—gaps can emerge. And while leaders routinely make business decisions with the aid of spreadsheets, dashboards, and second-hand summaries, you c…

Chipotle has been tweaking its recipe to lure diners back, and in the first quarter of the year it appears to be working. The build-your-own burrito chain posted higher sales in its new quarterly earnings report, showing some signs of life after a record rough year. Chipotle reported that sales across established stores perked up by .5%, besting a predicted 1% decline. In the first three months of the year, the chain reported $302.8 million in net income, down from $386.6 million in the first quarter of 2025 – a period prior to its recent struggles. Cost of living stress tied to high prices – and now the war in Iran – continues to steer price-conscious consumers a…

Raising Cane’s, the Louisiana-based chicken finger chain known for its tangy sauce, crinkle fries, and thick Texas toast, is continuing to expand. This May, Cane’s will open locations in seven states, including its first in one. The company recently told USA Today that the new openings will kick off on May 12 and continue through May 27 with new restaurants coming to California, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, Florida, and Ohio. Additionally, Arkansas will get its first-ever Raising Cane’s in the Jonesboro area. Two other locations — Oklahoma City and Lexington, Kentucky — will reopen, on May 4 and May 18, respectively, after being revamped. “We’re staying co…

Below, Arthur Brooks shares five key insights from his new book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. Brooks is a social scientist and professor at Harvard University, where he teaches the science of happiness. He is also a columnist at The Free Press, host of the Office Hours podcast, and CBS News contributor. What’s the big idea? Life hasn’t become meaningless, but most of us have adopted habits that turn meaning on mute. Reconnecting with a deeper purpose awaits in the right hemisphere of your brain. All it takes is learning how to activate that side of existence. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Brooks h…

Hours before Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos take their places as sponsors and honorary chairs of the Met Gala—fashion’s glittery annual fundraiser in support of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute—a different kind of fashion event was unfolding across town. Ahead of the gala, hundreds of workers, organizers, and advocates gathered in the Meatpacking District in downtown New York for the Ball Without Billionaires, a worker-led fashion show designed to contrast the one at the museum. Organized by a coalition of labor groups including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Strategic Organizing Center, and the Amazon Labor Union, the…

You know, there was a plague before COVID. Lots of people came down with it every morning and evening: the agony of traffic and train delays. Commuting sucked, and everyone agreed on that. Then remote work came along and, all of a sudden, having to go into the office disappeared for millions. But something else disappeared, and no one really talks about that part. If you listen closely to parents now, you’ll hear it. They miss the commute. Sort of. They don’t miss fighting for a seat on the subway. And no one is longing for the good old days of gridlock. But they do miss what that time offered them. I didn’t realize it either until it was gone. Catching our bre…

A tall baobab tree greets people inside the Long Beach, California, headquarters of Vast, an aerospace company that is building the space station of the future. It’s planted beneath a skylight in the center of a white-painted circular lobby furnished with a sleek aluminum reception desk and built-in wood banquette that follows the curve of the walls. The tree and the room are symbolic. The former references trees in The Little Prince, a 1943 novella with a character who travels between planets, and the latter has the same diameter of a Haven-1 module, which the Vast team hopes will become home to researchers, astronauts, and travelers and eventually succeed the Inter…

Another major food brand is voluntarily recalling products after potential salmonella contamination linked to milk powder. Utz Quality Foods LLC, a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Utz Brands Inc, recalled some varieties of its Zapp’s and Dirty potato chips. The impacted chips’ seasoning contained dry milk powder manufactured by food producer California Dairies, which might be contaminated with salmonella. That’s according to a recall notice posted Monday by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “The affected seasoning batches tested negative for Salmonella prior to use; however, out of an abundance of caution, Utz is recalling the limited varieties of Zapp’…

Alysa Liu surveyed the glittery crowd arrayed in front of her, sipping cocktails and chatting. It was her first Met Gala, and she hesitated for a second, searching for a word to describe it. “It’s … BIG,” the Olympic skater finally said with a grin. But what Liu, dressed in a blood-red custom Louis Vuitton gown with a full skirt and huge ruffles, couldn’t quite get was how big SHE had become. Even at a party full of very, very famous people, everyone wanted to greet her. Some Met Gala guests have been famous for many years. Others have achieved fame with dizzying speed. For Liu, all it took was a gold-medal performance that charmed the whole world. “Everybody recogniz…

Finding qualified talent locally is harder than it was a year ago, according to 60% of U.S. leaders who responded to Remote’s 2025 Global Workforce Report. More than 3,600 HR and business leaders around the world responded to the survey. On the surface, it looks like a cooler hiring market because overall hiring in the U.S. has slowed. But that is not the full picture. When some industries are cutting roles, others are still competing for specialized talent. Companies are struggling to find the specific skills they need locally. At the same time, immigration pathways have tightened and AI is reshaping job requirements faster than many workers can reskill, adding to hi…

The Iran war risked reigniting after the U.S. tried to force open the Strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping, though a ceasefire seemed to be holding Tuesday even after the United Arab Emirates said Iran fired missiles and drones at it. Iran’s powerful parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, accused the U.S. of undermining regional security with the effort to end Iran’s stranglehold on the strait and warned that Tehran will respond. The U.S. military said two American-flagged merchant ships successfully transited the strait on Monday, the first day of the effort, and that it fired on Iranian forces, sinking six small boats that were target…

An aging brain’s sad, slow decline may not be as inevitable as everyone thinks. A new scientific study from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has come to the startling conclusion that a single protein is the catalyst for cognitive dysfunction—and the damage it causes can be reversed. Scientists at UCSF’s Bakar Aging Research Institute examined activity in the hippocampus, the brain’s command center for learning and memory. Comparing young and old mice, the researchers discovered that older brains, unlike younger ones, were flooded with the FTL1 protein. To figure out whether the protein was actually the culprit or just another byproduct of the a…