What's on Your Mind?

Literate in tone, far-reaching in scope, and witty to its bones, The New Yorker brought a new – and much-needed – sophistication to American journalism when it launched 100 years ago this month. As I researched the history of U.S. journalism for my book “Covering America,” I became fascinated by the magazine’s origin story and the story of its founder, Harold Ross. In a business full of characters, Ross fit right in. He never graduated from high school. With a gap-toothed smile and bristle-brush hair, he was frequently divorced and plagued by ulcers. Ross devoted his adult life to one cause: The New Yorker magazine. For the literati, by the literati Bor…

In an interview with Joe Rogan last month, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg made a plea for companies to embrace more “masculine energy.” Zuckerberg went on to say, “A culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits.” Never mind that Meta (then Facebook) became one of the world’s more profitable companies when COO Sheryl Sandberg ran its day-to-day operations. Or that Sandberg urged women to “lean in” by actively pursuing leadership roles and embracing opportunities in the workplace, sparking a global community dedicated to helping foster leadership, advancement and inclusion for women in the workplace. “When a very powerful CEO who has platforms …

In a world where work-life boundaries are increasingly blurred, the well-being of employees has emerged as a pivotal issue. Despite leaders’ good intentions, a stark reality persists: While a staggering 91% of executives believe they prioritize employee well-being, only 56% of employees share that sentiment. This disconnect, revealed in a recent Deloitte study, underscores a critical gap that companies must bridge if they are to thrive in today’s competitive landscape. As businesses grapple with the complexities of modern work, a framework is emerging to guide leaders: The Four Pillars of Worker Well-Being. These pillars offer a comprehensive approach to fostering a h…

The gadgets produced by this year’s most innovative companies in consumer and household goods are, in their small way, revolutionizing every room in the house. From standout kitchen devices and boundary-pushing wellness products to a more humane mousetrap, this year’s list offers something for every moment of the day. Starting at the front door, there’s Level, the leader in smart locks, which finally upgraded its “invisible” system to sync with smart home hubs like Apple Home and Google Home via a low-tech radio connection. For the kitchen, there’s Walmart, which debuted Bettergoods, its first new private label in 20 years with a lineup of 300 quality products, not just c…

This year, 2,500 girls will be able to attend secondary school in Afghanistan. While this shouldn’t be a remarkable feat, it is: The Taliban government forbids girls from receiving an education beyond 6th grade. Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization, is helping to support The Underground School Initiative that educates girls in 38 secret locations throughout Afghanistan. In an unexpected turn, this project will be partially funded by The Citizenry, a U.S.-based home goods brand, which raised money during its Black Friday sale last year to pay for teachers, educational supplies, and facilities for these students. [Photo: The Citizenry] Desperate for an …

From streamlining administrative tasks to enhancing brainstorming sessions, AI is becoming an essential workplace companion. Yet, despite its transformative promise, its integration isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. We recently conducted research at Lucid Software to uncover AI usage in the workplace. We found that more than a third of workers globally are already using AI for fundamental tasks like generating ideas (39%), creating content (37%), communicating summaries (33%), and finding documentation (31%). When thinking about how we’ve adopted the technology into our products, our decade-long investment in intelligence has been key to building an AI-ready platf…

OpenAI is further proving that 2025 is the year of agentic AI. The artificial intelligence giant revealed another new feature from ChatGPT this week, called Deep Research, which it claims can gather research from across the web and summarize it in easy-to-read reports. “Deep research is OpenAI’s next agent that can do work for you independently—you give it a prompt, and ChatGPT will find, analyze, and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst,” the company wrote in a Sunday blog post. Every output shows clear citations and a summary of the agent’s thinking. The tool is powered by its upcoming Ope…

The standing desk is old news. Behold, the standing table. Herman Miller just released a new design that takes the concept of a standing desk to a whole new level. The Spout Sit-to-Stand Table comes in a range of sizes, from 2-by-4 feet to a whopping 4-by-7 feet, supports up to 400 pounds, and can seat a whole team rather than just one worker. That’s because it breaks a key form factor that most other standing desks follow: the number of legs in use. The vast majority of standing desks have only two motorized legs, mostly because they’re easier to stabilize and engineer to move seamlessly. Meanwhile, the Spout table stands on four legs, allowing chairs to be placed comf…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. I like thinking on paper. That’s why I’ve got a box under my desk with 27 old idea notebooks. But when I’m looking for a specific note scrawled early in 2020, digital notes are helpfully searchable. Given that paper and digital have distinct advantages, I’ve been experimenting lately with hybrid approaches. Read on for what I’ve found to be most useful. My current notebook of choice: The reMarkable Paper Pro What it is: A specialized paper tablet originating from Oslo, Norway that feels like a cross between a Ki…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices are rising 2.6% on a year-over-year basis. While some markets in the Gulf and Mountain West regions are seeing mild home price declines, there’s another cohort concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast that are seeing gains well above the national aggregate. Among the 200 largest metro area housing markets, the chart below highlights the 30 markets with the largest home price increases between December 2023 and December 2024, according to ResiClub’s analysis of the latest Zillow Home Value Index data published in Jan…

Dutch Bros Inc. shares surged more than 27% in premarket trading Thursday after the coffee chain posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter results and announced plans to expand mobile ordering and food offerings. Revenue rose 34.9% to $342.8 million, surpassing Wall Street estimates. Same-store sales grew 6.9%, and adjusted earnings per share reached 7 cents, both exceeding expectations. The company forecasts 2024 sales between $1.555 billion and $1.575 billion, exceeding analyst projections. “Our efforts to develop our foundational transaction drivers—innovation, paid media, and our Dutch Rewards loyalty program—are working,” CEO Christine Barone said in a …

In an unpredictable labor market, where job gains in January fell below expectations and the future remains uncertain, one thing is clear: Employers can’t afford to rest on their laurels. While the economy has remained relatively strong, shifts in the job market have been historically inevitable, and companies must constantly evaluate their operations to ensure they’re attracting and retaining the best talent. One area that employers should pay close attention to: employee benefits. Surprisingly, small businesses—often perceived as lacking the resources to offer substantial perks—are quietly leading the charge in providing the kinds of benefits that employees value mo…

The top is a fine suede. The bottom is a stack of foam so tall you’ll instinctively pop an energy ball. You can wear it barefoot. You could run a marathon in it. I just . . . wish . . . it didn’t look like an orthopedic pair of Vans. This is the Ahnu Sequence 1.1. Suede, launching today for $240. While you may not have heard of Ahnu yet (the boutique brand launched quietly in 2024), you do know the company behind it. Deckers owns brands including Teva, Ugg, and Hoka, which has celebrated healthy growth across its acquired brand portfolio over the past few years—sales across Deckers were up 17% over the past year. [Photo: Ahnu] Unlike its sister brands…

Student loan debt has an influence over borrowers’ career choices long after graduation, affecting their job satisfaction, career advancement, and investment strategies. According to a recent study conducted by MissionSquare Research Institute, the debt that’s carried by one in four Americans under 40 affects job-acceptance decisions for 56% of public-sector employees and 62% of those working in the private sector. “When they choose to accept . . . jobs, [the] majority of them have considered how that position or that job can help them with their student loan debt,” says the report’s author and MissionSquare’s head of research, Zhikun Liu. “It not only impacts pe…

My mother was always the last parent to pick me up from gymnastics practice. While other moms arrived in jeans, she’d sweep in wearing a power suit, fresh from her role as a senior marketing executive at a major software company. At the time, it was a bit embarrassing. Looking back, I realize I was witnessing someone who refused to accept artificial limitations on what she could achieve. Years later, as a CMO, I’ve come to appreciate how those early lessons shaped my understanding of professional possibilities. As a CMO in the ‘80s, my mother was a trailblazer—it was not typical for a woman to have a seat at the board table. But I’ve also learned that even with strong…

The New York Stock Exchange announced on Wednesday it will launch an exchange in Texas, increasing competition among listing venues in the state. Several high-profile firms, including Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, have relocated their headquarters to Texas, attracted by the state’s perceived favorable legal and regulatory environment. The Texas Stock Exchange, a new venture backed by financial giants including BlackRock, Citadel Securities and Charles Schwab, is targeting a 2026 launch after submitting paperwork late last month to operate as a national securities exchange. The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq have dominated the lucrative U.S. listings market…

Parents across the U.S. should soon be able to determine how much lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are in the food they feed their babies, thanks to a California law, the first of its kind, that took effect this year. As of January 1, 2025, every company that sells baby food products in California is required to test for these four heavy metals every month. That comes five years after a congressional report warned about the presence of dangerously high levels of lead and other heavy metals in baby food. Every baby food product packaged in jars, pouches, tubs, and boxes sold in California must carry a QR code on its label that consumers can scan to check the mos…

This year, the most innovative companies in the education sector are tackling a dizzying array of challenges facing students and schools alike—not to mention parents. As a teletherapy platform, Parallel Learning enables schools and special education providers to counsel students and track their progress. Promova, whose mission is to make language learning more accessible to people who are neurodivergent, is the first language learning app to build a dedicated setting for those with dyslexia—a specialized typeface and adjustments to font size and brightness help mitigate some of the most common reading challenges that people with dyslexia experience. EdSights uses AI chatb…

An overwhelming number of Americans are in the market for a new job. According to a recent Monster poll, 93% of workers think 2025 might be the time to change employers. With an increased number of applications, you could see tougher competition for roles, which makes the interview process even more critical. The way you approach the job hunt is similar to how a professional gambler approaches the poker table, says Jamie Wall, casino analyst and body language expert at Gamblizard, a website that evaluates online casinos and their offers. “Both are high-stakes situations, considering you really want to land the job or win the game,” he says. “Both follow formal r…

Last Energy, a nuclear upstart backed by an Elon Musk-linked venture capital fund, says it plans to construct 30 microreactors on a site in Texas to supply electricity to data centers across the state. The initiative, which it says could provide about 600 megawatts of electricity, would be the company’s largest project to date and help it develop a commercial pipeline in the U.S. Set on a 200-acre site Last Energy has obtained in Haskell County, in northwest Texas, the project still faces likely years of regulatory and public scrutiny. The Washington, D.C.-based company hasn’t yet disclosed customers or the details of its financing, or announced a timeline for the ef…

Decades of research show the benefits of women in leadership are invaluable. Females embody a more transformational leadership style fostering mission-driven cultures. Female presence also improves team dynamics, with better collaboration and collective intelligence; the greater the ratio of women, the greater equality is seen in conversations, thus capitalizing on the team’s full knowledge and skillsets. All this translates into measurable results: meta-analyses link female leadership with improved sales, and their representation on the board of directors is also directly associated with financial performance. The largest study of women in corporate America marked i…

Loneliness is no longer just an emotion—it’s a growing public health crisis in the U.S. A 2024 Harvard study found that 21% of U.S. adults regularly experience loneliness, while the American Psychological Association reports that nearly half of young workers feel isolated at work. Capitalizing on the recent tech boom, AI-powered digital companions and digital twin avatars are rapidly emerging as alternatives to human relationships. These AI bots offer a constant sense of connection without judgment and can be hyper-personalized to match user preferences. Platforms including Oh, Replika (whose tagline is “the AI companion who cares”), and Eden AI chat by EVA AI lea…

If it weren’t for the white lines on the grass, you would be forgiven to think this building is a perfectly quiet hotel surrounded by a field of grass in the middle of the Norwegian forest. After all, most soccer training grounds are ugly structures whose sole purpose is to provide infrastructure for people to kick a ball around. But this isn’t just a place to kick a ball. These facilities, designed by the internationally renowned architecture firm Snøhetta, aim to redefine the very concept of a training ground, transforming it into a vibrant hub for the entire football community. “Our approach to sustainability is deeply rooted in a holistic perspective that consider…