What's on Your Mind?

If you blinked this week, you might’ve missed a few major moves. Netflix decided it’s time for a stock split, Amazon trimmed thousands of jobs, and Walmart is already dropping “Black Friday” prices before the Halloween candy wrappers are even off. Meanwhile, housing trends, climate shocks, and AI budgets kept reshaping the conversation about what’s next for growth. Here’s a look at what mattered most this week, and why these stories could shape the months ahead. Mortgage-free America hits a new high A record 40.3% of owner-occupied homes are owned free and clear, up from 39.8% last year. Aging baby boomers and longer lifespans concentrate equity among older…

This weekend, tennis star Novak Djokovic is serving snackers something a little different: a new sorghum-based, corn-free “popcorn” brand called Cob, which will compete in the same aisle as SkinnyPop and Orville Redenbacher’s. The popcorn’s launch coincides with the announcement of a $5 million seed round for the startup that’s led by Djokovic. Popcorn has become a particularly alluring category for celebrities over the past few years. New entrants have included Khloud Protein Popcorn backed by reality TV star Khloé Kardashian; singer Luke Bryan’s Boldly Grown Popcorn; and Rob’s BackStage Popcorn, cofounded by the pop rock band the Jonas Brothers. Why popcorn? …

In the C-suite, relationships can make or break your effectiveness, and too often, we’ve been taught that you must choose to be either a friend or a colleague, but never both. The fear is understandable. Too much closeness, and you risk favoritism. Too much distance erodes trust, but our research and experience as leadership advisers point to a different reality: genuine, trust-based relationships are not a liability; they’re a leadership advantage. The real risk isn’t choosing one or the other; it’s failing to integrate both. Morag’s Ally Mindset Profile data reveals a telling truth: 67% of respondents say their success has been undermined by their peer relationships…

For years, Donald The President’s distinctive, large, and bold signature has captured the public’s attention. Not only did it recently come to light that his signature appeared in a book that Jeffrey Epstein received for his 50th birthday, but it fits neatly alongside The President’s long history of brash self-adulation. “I love my signature, I really do,” he said in a September 30, 2025, speech to military leaders. “Everyone loves my signature.” His signature also happens to be of particular interest to me, given my decades-long fascination with, and occasional academic research on, the connection between signature size and personal attributes. A long-time social…

The latest generation of artificial intelligence models is sharper and smoother, producing polished text with fewer errors and hallucinations. As a philosophy professor, I have a growing fear: When a polished essay no longer shows that a student did the thinking, the grade above it becomes hollow—and so does the diploma. The problem doesn’t stop in the classroom. In fields such as law, medicine, and journalism, trust depends on knowing that human judgment guided the work. A patient, for instance, expects a doctor’s prescription to reflect an expert’s thought and training. AI products can now be used to support people’s decisions. But even when AI’s role in doing t…

Last year, travel group AAA estimated about 80 million Americans traveled over the Thanksgiving holidays. It was the busiest Thanksgiving ever at airports across the country, and some reports are saying those records could be shattered this year. A lot of that traveling will be done by young adults making their way home from school or new cities to see family and reconnect with old friends. That last part is the crux of Facebook’s first brand campaign in four years. In a new ad called “Home For The Holidays,” we see people making their way back home and various get-togethers being organized on Facebook. Created by agency Droga5 and set to Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash…

For decades now, tech companies have been promising us a future straight out of Star Trek. Instead of being confined to phones and computers, our digital lives would extend to a network of screens all around us, from connected TVs and smart fridges to kitchen countertop displays and car dashboards. The tech companies called this “ambient computing” or “ubiquitous computing” and extolled how it would get technology out of the way so we could focus on the real world. Here’s what we’ve got instead: Samsung’s smart refrigerators, which range from $1,899 to $3,499, have started showing advertisements on their screens. Amazon’s Echo Show smart displays now have …

Amazon’s Fire TV lineup has gone from a perfectly simple concept—a stick that streams video—to a corporate naming convention nightmare. There’s the HD, the 4K Select, the 4K Plus, the 4K Max, and the Cube. Clear as mud. Let’s try to make sense of this lineup, shall we? The Budget Basement: Fire TV Stick HD The Fire TV Stick HD is your entry point. It handles 1080p, and that’s pretty much the whole story. It works fine for an older TV—the kind you put in the guest room or the garage. At $25, it’s cheap, it’s simple, and it’s a little slow, both performance-wise and thanks to its aging Wi-Fi 5 chipset. If you have a 4K television, walk past this one a…

Moving into a new leadership role is a big moment. But in today’s rapidly shifting environment—where change moves faster than ever—you don’t have the luxury of slowly assessing your team and making gradual adjustments. The pace of technology and AI, hybrid work, low employee engagement, evolving strategies, and shifting workforce dynamics demand that you assess your team quickly and confidently. Gone are the days of “observe and wait.” You’re expected to deliver results fast, and your team needs to be plug-and-play—and that means quickly understanding who on your team is ready to move with you, who might need support, and where changes might be necessary. Here are…

As more than 19 million U.S. college students prepare to wrap up their fall semester and begin looking ahead to securing internships and jobs next spring, it’s natural for them—and their families—to worry about the fate of the job market in the age of AI. Indeed, Anthropic’s CEO predicted this summer that within the next five years—and maybe even sooner—adoption of AI could reduce entry-level hiring in white-collar professions by 50%. The impact is already being felt: postings for early-career corporate jobs are down 15%, while applications have spiked 30%. A separate Stanford study found that AI displacement, at this point, seems to be disproportionately affecting younge…

Amidst much confusion, polarization, and debate around how AI will impact work, the fact of the matter is that many people are concerned by automation and the prospect of AI job elimination. For example, the simple notion that “AI is going to take my job” is a thought that has crossed the minds of 25% of workers. For some, this may be true, although the magnitude of AI-driven job displacement is still uncertain; depending on assumptions, AI-driven job displacement could potentially range from 3% to 14%. What will the ultimate figure be? It’s hard to know: nobody has data on the future, and any projection is merely extrapolating from past data and past innovation, whic…

It’s 10 a.m. on an October morning, and I’m in the middle of a one-on-one Zoom interview when a sudden trilling sounds from behind me. I try to ignore it, but several other strange noises follow. My eyes glaze over as I commit myself to feigning complete obliviousness to my sonic surroundings. It’s easier than explaining that the noises are coming from my AI-powered pet. This awkward encounter came thanks to Moflin, a $429 AI pet built by the electronics company Casio. According to Casio’s official description, the Moflin is “a smart companion powered by AI, with emotions like a living creature.” This robot friend looks a bit like a Star Trek tribble, in that it’s an …

What’s the best way to respond when customers, former fans, or anyone else criticizes your work? Taylor Swift just provided a perfect script for what to say. It’s a great example for any entrepreneur, business leader, or creator to follow. Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, released 10 days ago, is unquestionably a commercial success. It broke streaming records on Spotify with more than five million pre-saves, as just one example. But that doesn’t mean that everyone loves it. The reaction from music critics has been lukewarm and the reaction from fans is decidedly mixed, with some saying they adore the album and others saying they can’t stand it. One brand st…

In what might be the most up-front leave request of the year, a Gen Z employee emailed his boss asking for 10 days off to recover from a breakup. “I recently had a breakup and haven’t been able to focus on work. I need a short break,” they wrote in an email that was recently screenshotted and posted to X. Entrepreneur and CEO Jasveer Singh shared the unusually candid request on social media, captioning it: “Got the most honest leave application yesterday. Gen Z doesn’t do filters!” (Singh just so happens to be the cofounder and CEO of Knot Dating, a dating app. Coincidence?) Whether the email was genuine or a clever PR stunt, it gained nearly 14 million views…

Below, Gene Ludwig shares five key insights from his new book, The Mismeasurement of America: How Outdated Government Statistics Mask the Economic Struggle of Everyday Americans. Gene is the former Comptroller of the Currency and founder of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a nonprofit dedicated to uncovering the truths that official statistics too often obscure. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Politico, The Financial Times, and TIME. What’s the big idea? Americans keep hearing that the economy is strong. Unemployment is low. Wages are rising. Growth is steady. But for millions of…

With more than 100,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, nearly 900,000 square feet of floor space, a site that spans more than 120 acres, and a total price tag estimated to be more than $1 billion, it’s not hyperbole to call the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt, the most significant museum project in recent decades. It’s the kind of blockbuster building that would have even the starriest of starchitects salivating at the chance to lay claim to what’s likely become one of Egypt’s most visited tourist attractions. So, in hindsight, it’s a bit unexpected that the architecture firm that won the museum’s international design competition way back in 2002 …

Have you ever been to the Gamerhood? Part game show, part reality series, it recently wrapped its fourth season in August. Over five weekly episodes on Twitch and YouTube, the show pitted gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy, against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges. The third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views. In September, the show went mainstream when season four landed on Prime Video. Even before that, just on YouTube and Twitch, season four was getting about 20 million views for each episode. Not too shabby for a show created by a brand. That’s right, Gamerhood is fully owned by St…

On May 19, 2023, a photograph appeared on what was then still called Twitter showing smoke billowing from the Pentagon after an apparent explosion. The image quickly went viral. Within minutes, the S&P 500 dropped sharply, wiping out billions of dollars in market value. Then the truth emerged: the image was a fake, generated by AI. The markets recovered as quickly as they had tumbled, but the event marked an important turning point: this was the first time that the stock market had been directly affected by a deepfake. It is highly unlikely to be the last. Once a fringe curiosity, the deepfake economy has grown to become a $7.5 billion market, with some prediction…

The Customs and Border Protection agency aims to establish a framework for the “strategic use of artificial intelligence” and outline rules for ensuring safe and secure use of the tech, according to an internal document viewed by Fast Company. The directive, obtained through a public records request, spells out CBP’s internal procedures for sensitive deployments of the technology. Agency officials are banned from using AI for unlawful surveillance, according to the document, which also says that AI cannot be used as a “sole basis” for a law enforcement action, or to target or discriminate against individuals. The document includes myriad procedures for introducin…

Why are some jobs better than others? Well, it largely depends on people’s preferences. In other words, one person’s dream job may be another person’s nightmare. And yet, there are also clearly some universal or at least generalizable parameters that make most people accept the idea that some jobs are objectively better than others — or at least seen by most as generally preferable. Pay and purpose For example, jobs that pay well, offer stability, and provide opportunities for growth are almost universally considered better. A tenured professorship, a senior engineering role at a reputable company, or a stable medical position all combine financial security…

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. Glenn Fogel joined dot-com darling Priceline in early 2000, a year after the “name your price” travel site’s blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). “I joined one week before the Nasdaq peaked,” Fogel recalls. Within a year of his arrival, the stock had cratered to $6 a share. By March 2…

When Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, his AI-generated encyclopedia intended to rival Wikipedia, it was not just another experiment in artificial intelligence. It was a case study in everything that can go wrong when technological power, ideological bias, and unaccountable automation converge in the same hands. Grokipedia copies vast sections of Wikipedia almost verbatim, while rewriting and “reinterpreting” others to reflect Musk’s personal worldview. It could genuinely be conceived as the antithesis of everything that makes Wikipedia good, useful, and human. Grokipedia’s edits aggressively editorialize topics ranging from climate change, to immigration, to (of course…

Across the streaming world, companies have been focused on adding features that make their top-tier subscriptions more valuable to the users who consume their content. Anime streamer Crunchyroll recently added access to a library of digital manga for top-paying customers. Spotify—somewhat belatedly—has begun offering high-quality audio for its Premium subscribers. SoundCloud is taking a different approach. It operates a standard streaming platform, with 100 million licensed tracks. But SoundCloud also has an enviable base of creators—musicians, DJs, podcasters, and more—who have uploaded 300 million tracks on the service to reach fans and make money from their stream…

PepsiCo, the food and bev giant behind childhood favorites like 7UP, Mountain Dew, Lay’s, and Doritos, just got new branding, and it looks nothing like its namesake product. The new PepsiCo brand identity, which includes a fresh wordmark, logo, and tagline, is the company’s first rebrand since 2001. The company has had three different corporate identities since its inception in 1965, and all of them have taken their most prominent design cues from Pepsi, the soda brand that started it all—until now. When PepsiCo designed its last identity in 2001, it owned 13 consumer brands. Today, it owns more than 500. And, over the past several months, PepsiCo has signaled…

It looks and feels like any other luxurious cashmere sweater. But a new oversized crew from Reformation is made entirely from recycled fiber, a milestone three years in the making. The brand now makes a cardigan, crew, V-neck, and five other styles from a carefully developed blend of 95% recycled cashmere and 5% recycled wool—the unexpected material that made 100% recycled fiber feasible. Some other pieces in its lineup still use a small amount of virgin cashmere, but Reformation is aiming to eliminate it completely. “It really does have an outsized and shockingly large footprint compared to other fiber,” says Kathleen Talbot, Reformation’s chief sustainability of…