What's on Your Mind?

It’s hard to tell AI news from AI hype at the best of times, but the most recent surge around agents, triggered by many developers embracing Claude Code a couple of months ago, feels like something different. With the viral freakout over Moltbook, the agent social network, and the Super Bowl ad slap fight between OpenAI and Anthropic, AI has escalated to a new level of mainstream attention. Everyone’s forgotten about the AI bubble and is instead dancing around the AI “inflection point,” when AI in general and agents in particular begin to take over huge swaths of knowledge work, with massive consequences for the economy and the workforce. The recent sell-off of SaaS s…

One recent rainy afternoon, I found myself in an unexpected role—philosophy teacher to a machine. I was explaining the story of the Bhagavad Gita to a leading large language model, curious to see if it could grasp the lessons at the heart of one of the world’s most profound philosophical texts. The LLM’s responses were impressively structured and fluent. They even sounded reflective at times, giving a sense that the AI model knew that it was itself part of this millennia-long conversation. Yet there was something fundamental that was missing from all the answers the machine gave me—the lived experience that gives wisdom its true weight. AI can analyze the Gita, but i…

After more than two decades as a psychosexual therapist, I have learned to listen carefully for what people are not saying. When vulnerability is close to the surface, uncertainty shows up quickly. Am I doing this right? Do I belong here? What am I allowed to ask for, and what will it cost me if I do? At its core, psychosexual therapy is not really about sex. It is about how humans relate when the stakes are high, when power is present, and when much of what matters remains unspoken. It is about noticing how meaning is made in moments of vulnerability and choosing how to respond rather than react. What continues to surprise me is how familiar these same dynamics f…

The Cold War lasted 45 agonizing years. Daily life in the Soviet Union was a mixture of dread and horror—children taught to report their parents’ whispered doubts, families queuing for hours for bread, dissidents vanishing in the night. November 8, 1989, was just another day of knowing World War III might pop off at any time. But on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. No tanks. No gun battles. No sabotage. Just a peaceful, surreal collapse. The empire fell both slowly and suddenly. Gen Xers and boomers remember the disorienting feeling of watching the impossible happen on evening news broadcasts. With the benefit of hindsight and declassified records now avai…

The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point Wednesday for the third time since September, bringing its key rate to about 3.6%, the lowest in nearly three years. Before September, it had gone nine months without a cut. The benchmark rate is the rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another, and the Fed has two goals when it sets the rate: one, to manage prices for goods and services, and two, to encourage full employment. The benchmark rate also affects the interest rates consumers pay to borrow money via credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other financial products. Typically, the Fed might increase the rate to try to bring down infla…

At 12, I was walking around a very affluent neighborhood with my father and he said, “Mikey, all these people in these nice houses, not one of them could run a gas station.” That stuck with me. The gas station test isn’t about intelligence or ambition, it’s about aptitude for running a successful business. As a strong student, then an investment banking analyst, then a private equity associate, I was in this jetstream towards a career in investing. But can investors run gas stations? Does it matter? This concept was always in the back of my mind. I dove so deep into business details as an investor that my interest actually inhibited my performance. I was propelled…

Another round of Epstein files—approximately three million documents—was released January 30, and this batch included a lot of prominent names. That list included philanthropist and business magnate Bill Gates, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and author, doctor and longevity influencer Peter Attia. They were all allegedly connected to Epstein in different ways, and as a result, their mentions in the documents are varied. But it’s their responses that offer lessons to others in the business world about how to respond when faced with a crisis. Dealing with one of this magnitude is no easy feat, and it requires absolute trust between a client and a crisis manager, Beverly Hills …

April 2025 was a busy month for space. Pop icon Katy Perry joined five other civilian women on a quick jaunt to the edge of space, making headlines. Meanwhile, another group of people at the United Nations was contemplating a critical issue for the future of space exploration: the discovery, extraction and utilization of natural resources on the Moon. At the end of April, a dedicated Working Group of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space released a draft set of recommended principles for space resource activities. Essentially, these are rules to govern mining on the Moon, asteroids and elsewhere in space for elements that are rare here o…

It’s a story that sounds almost too outrageous to be true. Deel, a $12 billion company in the HR tech space, is facing serious allegations of corporate espionage, according to a lawsuit filed by its competitor, Rippling. The lawsuit—filed earlier this month in a California court—claims Deel orchestrated a “multi-month campaign to steal a competitor’s business information with help from a corporate spy.” Rippling alleges that Deel planted an employee to infiltrate its operations, targeting customers in an effort to lure them away. According to the suit, the alleged spying lasted over four months. During that time, the employee (identified in court documents only by…

From July 14 to November 9, 2023, the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, representing 160,000 people, went on strike over a labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Eventually, both sides agreed to terms that theoretically would put limits on how actor’s images and output could be used. Strike over, everybody went back to work and the entertainment industrial complex started humming again. But they apparently never took heed of the lessons offered by a somewhat obscure 2013 movie, The Congress, which eerily anticipated the crisis Hollywood is now facing. Caught by surprise? Really? Fast-forward to September of 2025. Dutch actor an…

The White House’s recent decision to grant press credentials to independent journalists, podcasters, and social media influencers marks a defining moment in the evolution of modern media. It acknowledges a reality that has been unfolding for years: How people consume information has fundamentally changed. For years, traditional media outlets have been the primary gatekeepers of news and information. Today, the landscape is fragmented, dynamic, and decentralized. Millions of people now turn to independent content creators, newsletters, and podcasts—often in place of mainstream news sources. This shift raises essential opportunities and challenges for companies and exec…

Half a century after the Apollo astronauts left the last bootprints in lunar dust, the Moon has once again become a destination of fierce ambition and delicate engineering. This time, it’s not just superpowers racing to plant flags, but also private companies, multinational partnerships and robotic scouts aiming to unlock the Moon’s secrets and lay the groundwork for future human return. So far in 2025, lunar exploration has surged forward. Several notable missions have launched toward or landed on the Moon. Each has navigated the long journey through space and the even trickier descent to the Moon’s surface or into orbit with varying degrees of success. Together,…

The 2025 Leonid meteor shower is forecast to peak this weekend, lighting up the night sky with up to 15 meteors an hour whizzing by at 44 miles per second, according to Live Science. The Leonids peak is expected to be visible in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere this Sunday, November 16 into early Monday, November 17, according to the Planetary Society. Expect prime meteor shower viewing, since the moon is expected to only be 9% full, giving viewers mostly dark skies. Here’s what to know about seeing the dazzling display. What is a meteor shower? Meteor showers, or “shooting stars,” occur as Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by…

Sometimes, being a leader means making tough calls—ones that aren’t popular, and sometimes even get misunderstood. You’ve probably heard the saying, “If everyone likes you, you’re not really leading.” Fair enough. But what do you do when you hear that no one wants to work with you? Maybe it comes up in passing from a colleague, or maybe it hits harder in a 360 review. Either way, that kind of feedback can sting. It’s that gut-punch moment where you think, Wait . . . what? You’ve been putting in the work, prioritizing the team (at least in your mind), but somehow people aren’t seeing it. They don’t get the pressure you’re under, the decisions you’ve had to make, or why…

For leaders today, the pressure to do more with less feels relentless. Leaner teams, flatter organizations, and the rise of productivity tools such as Slack, Notion.ai, and Monday.com promise efficiency but often deliver the opposite: more reporting, more deliverables, and the demand to be “always on.”​​Organizations are increasingly falling into the “acceleration trap,” taking on too much too quickly and undermining their effectiveness and well-being. Sandra, a senior leader in the tech sector, saw this firsthand. After a reorganization left her team stretched thin, she slipped into a “9-9-6” routine—working nine to nine, six days a week. Gallup’s research shows unma…

You’ve put in the hours, delivered results, and earned the respect of your peers. But when it comes to moving up, the biggest obstacle isn’t performance or policy—it’s your boss. Managers often hold disproportionate power over career mobility. Research shows they can become the gatekeepers who decide who advances and who stalls. Gallup finds managers account for up to 70% of the variance in engagement, and half of employees say they left a job to escape their manager. Add to that the fact that companies fail to pick the right person for the job 82% of the time, and it’s clear why bad bosses cost organizations billions in lost productivity, stalled growth, and attritio…

If you are dealing with an employee or colleague who consistently underperforms and makes excuses, it can be extremely frustrating. When someone underperforms it not only slows down team progress and lowers the quality of work, but also forces others to take on extra tasks. This increases the workload for the rest of the team, which often means more stress and potential burnout for those left picking up the load. It can also create a sense of unfairness and lead to conflicts among team members due to the uneven distribution of effort and responsibility. For managers, handling underperformance adds extra work as well, taking up valuable time and energy that could be sp…