What's on Your Mind?

Below, Muriel Wilkins shares five key insights from her new book, Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential. Muriel is the founder and CEO of the leadership advisory firm Paravis Partners. She is also an executive coach to high-performing C-suite and senior executives, as well as host of the award-winning podcast Coaching Real Leaders. What’s the big idea? When leaders get stuck, their first instinct is to do more and push harder. But those actions don’t create lasting results because they’re focused on what they do and not on what they think. Sustainable leadership growth comes from examining the beliefs that drive our actions. …

These companies aren’t big—but they’re bringing new ideas to some thorny challenges. Kids have been crafting with cardboard for decades, but Chompshop has found a way to make it safer and more fun. Online clothes shopping has long been a bit hit or miss, but Veesual’s found a way to maximize the number of hits. And GoodMaps and Overture Maps have tackled longstanding navigation problems. Chompshop For making kids’ cardboard crafts safer and more fun Cheap, abundant cardboard is great for kids’ art and science projects, but it’s often hard to trim with scissors. Chompshop has developed a kid-safe power tool specifically designed for this versatile material. While it’s…

The Olympics are best known as a moment for the world’s most elite athletes to demonstrate their physical prowess on the world stage. But, for a handful of apparel brands, the Games are also one of the most coveted advertising moments of the year. This year, teams at the Milan Cortina Games will be outfitted in plenty of the usual activewear suspects, including Adidas, Nike, and Asics. Team USA will once again appear in preppy, ultra-Americana-inspired looks designed by Ralph Lauren, which has exclusively partnered with the team since 2008. The terms of this deal are unclear, but it’s likely an intensely expensive (and lucrative) undertaking for Ralph Lauren that…

A new 3D-printed construction technique turns corn into a novel building material. Corncretl is a biocomposite made from corn waste known as nejayote that’s rich in calcium. It’s dried, pulverized, and mixed with minerals, and the resulting material is applied using a 3D printer. This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture.…

When Johnson & Johnson launched the first disposable diaper in 1948, it revolutionized modern parenting. But it also, unwittingly, created an environmental disaster. Diapers are largely made of plastic, which does not biodegrade, but breaks into microplastics that pollute our waterways and end up in our food chain. And yet, more than 300,000 diapers are thrown out every minute, bound for landfills or incinerators, and accelerating climate change. There’s now a movement to design a more eco-friendly diaper, from creating easier-to-use cloth diapering systems to diapers that use less plastic. But Hiro, a newly launched startup, may have the most creative solution yet. …

In late 2025, Interpol coordinated a global operation across 134 nations, seizing roughly 30,000 live animals, confiscating illegal plant and timber products, and identifying about 1,100 suspected wildlife traffickers for national police to investigate. Wildlife trafficking is one of the most lucrative illicit industries worldwide. It nets between US$7 billion and $23 billion per year, according to the Global Environment Facility, a group of nearly 200 nations as well as businesses and nonprofits that fund environmental improvement and protection projects. People buy and sell a wide range of items, including live animals, plant powders and oils, ivory carvings, an…

When you’re booking travel, scoring a ticket to a sporting event, or securing yourself a spot at some other sort of show, you’re frequently faced with the impossible-seeming task of committing to a specific seat—on the spot. It may seem simple. But, well—which is the best seat on the plane? Which areas of the arena will give you an unobscured view of the action? Is that concert seat going to be behind a speaker? And are the more expensive options really worth their cost? Today, I’m sharing some excellent tools I rely on to pick the best seat at any kind of event or activity. In addition to helping me feel confident about the quality of my selection, they often hel…

Construction materials are responsible for nearly one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions. And as global demand for construction continues to rise (it has already tripled over the past 25 years), its emissions are bound to climb even higher.e In fact, some, like environmental engineer and University of Virginia professor Andres Clarens, see materials’ potential negative impact as so existential that he calls them the “last major frontier” in the fight against climate change. If that’s the case, we need to reduce the emissions associated with commonly used building materials like cement and steel—and we need to develop alternative materials that emit fewer greenhouse …

Most F1 cars can reach speeds of well over 200 mph, but the newest automobiles in the F1 stable go much much slow. Built from 400,000 Lego pieces, the life-size Lego cars can drive 12 mph—not bad for a bunch of plastic bricks. To mark the start of a multiyear partnership, the Danish toy maker created 10 drivable, full-scale Formula 1 cars that debuted at the Miami Grand Prix. The racing series’ 20 competitors, including speed demons Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, drove the Lego cars at Sunday’s prerace Drivers’ Parade for millions of fans watching from the grandstands and on television. The “big build” cars took Lego builders a collective 22,000 hours ove…

It’s not every day that microbial genetics leads to a chic influencer party in Los Angeles. Yet there stood Patrick Torbey, the lone scientist in a plant-filled wine bar, addressing a roomful of stylish guests nibbling artisan crackers topped with melted Brie. Torbey was there to introduce the first product from Neoplants, the Paris-based startup he cofounded six years ago with Lionel Mora, a former Google product marketing manager. Their debut offering, called Power Drops, promises a biological air filter—hence the appeal for wellness influencers. For the science-minded, they’re genetically modified soil bacteria that work with plants to absorb and metabolize toxic c…

“I knew when I was a child, like 5 years old, I knew I wanted to make beautiful things,” says Helena Bian, founder and CEO of lighting company Harlowe, though it took some time to find her path. After school, Bian became a mechanical and electrical engineer, cutting her teeth at hardware companies like Dewalt, where she learned that the industry was dominated by men who didn’t necessarily share her vision of creating beautiful things, and who would rather just focus on function. She daydreamed about making both until she founded Harlowe, a company that arguably makes some of the most beautiful gadgets you can find today. Bian had an idea for high-design photogra…

Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, online privacy groups Fight for the Future and the Algorithmic Justice League are reiterating a call for the NFL to put an end to the use of facial recognition in football stadiums, where the groups say the technology is used to authenticate employees, vendors, and authorized media. “That means that anyone who is going into a stadium to work on any football game has to go through a facial recognition system just in order to get to their job, which is a complete invasion of people’s privacy,” says Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns and managing director at Fight for the Future. The group has launched a petition demanding the NFL put an end…

More than two dozen privacy and advocacy organizations are calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to remove a network of covert license plate readers deployed across Southern California that the groups believe feed data into a controversial U.S. Border Patrol predictive domestic intelligence program that scans the country’s roadways for suspicious travel patterns. “We ask that your administration investigate and release the relevant permits, revoke them, and initiate the removal of these devices,” read the letter sent Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Imperial Valley Equity and Justice and other nonprofits. An Associated Press investigation published in No…

On a recent weekday in Aspen, Colorado, Stu Landesberg stood with a group of firefighters on a mountainside and watched a drone take off and fly toward a simulated fire. The drone detected the “hotspot”—a pile of ice, since wildfire risk was too high that day for real flames—and then aimed and blasted it with fire suppressant. The test flight was one of thousands that Landesberg’s startup, Seneca, has run while operating in stealth mode over the last several months. The company officially launched today, announcing that it has raised $60 million. It aims to reshape wildfire response—and help protect wildfire-prone communities in a way that hasn’t been possible until n…

In 2021, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Thomas Haigh began teaching a course on the history of computers. Haigh, the coauthor of a book on the subject published around that same timenoticed that many classic histories of computing from the 1990s assumed that readers would have firsthand knowledge of technology from around that era—desktop PCs and Macs, early game consoles, and the once-ubiquitous floppy disk. But for many of his students, that equipment was obsolete before they were born. While it might make millennials grimace, Windows 95 and Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007 are now firmly in the purview of the history department. “With today’s…

Hiring well is one of a leader’s most important jobs. Having talented employees is a strong competitive advantage and allows your organization to produce results and create a productive and positive culture. It’s hard to do well, especially at senior levels where judgment and character become increasingly important, and there’s a high cost of recruiting or replacing someone. Substantive questions help assess a candidate’s skills and readiness for a job, and behavioral questions provide the opportunity to understand how they think and handle themselves. But ultimately, once you’ve established their competency, it’s time to decide whether a candidate’s character is the …

AI is no longer just a cascade of algorithms trained on massive amounts of data. It has become a physical and infrastructural phenomenon, one whose future will be determined not by breakthroughs in benchmarks, but by the hard realities of power, geography, regulation, and the very nature of intelligence. Businesses that fail to see this will be blindsided. Data centers were once the sterile backrooms of the internet: important, but invisible. Today, they are the beating heart of generative AI, the physical engines that make large language models (LLMs) possible. But what if these engines, and the models they power, are hitting limitations that can’t be solved with mo…

Ben Sweeny, the salesman-turned-comedian behind that online persona Corporate Sween, says that bosses should waterboard their employees. “Some companies drown their employees with boring surveys and useless questionnaires,” he proclaims in a satirical video posted to LinkedIn a few months ago. “I drown my employees with two to three gallons of water, an incline table, and a hand towel.” Though the clip may seem racy for LinkedIn, a social network that’s earned a reputation as a reliable if buttoned-up venue for job networking, it has to date earned over 5,000 views and has reached over 7,000 unique members. And for Sweeny, its success is no surprise: Why shouldn…

Below, Joe Nucci shares five key insights from his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free. Joe Nucci is a licensed psychotherapist. As a content creator, he contextualizes mental health misinformation. His videos at @joenuccitherapy reached over 10 million people in the first six months of posting and his writing can be found in his newsletter, Psychobabble. What’s the big idea? Psychobabble replaces mental health misconceptions with liberating truths that can help readers avoid misinformation, navigate important debates in the mental health field, and better maneuver their own therapy journeys. The problem is not tha…

As the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered flight reductions at 40 major airports, including Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. The move begins with affecting 4% of flights, with plans to ramp up to impact 1 in 10 flights at those airports, disrupting travel plans for thousands of Americans every day. But Patriotic Millionaires, a group of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for more progressive taxes in order to close the wealth gap, is suggesting an alternative that it says would spare commercial airline passengers and still offer relief for air traffic controllers: Just canc…

Walk through almost any manufacturing plant today, whether the frontline professionals crushing oilseeds, processing corn, or producing ingredients, and you’ll notice something subtle but important. The tools that help turn agricultural crops into products that feed and fuel the world are getting smarter, more precise, and more capable. Most conversations about the bioeconomy focus on what farmers grow or what consumers buy. But the real transformation is happening in the middle, in the molecular steps that quietly make modern, low-carbon manufacturing possible. Catalysts and enzymes, the biological and chemical tools that convert agricultural inputs into usable mater…