What's on Your Mind?

The workplace presents a distinctive set of disclosure dilemmas, beginning with the strange fan dance of interviewing. We are trying to put our best foot forward; to convince our potential employer we’re a perfect fit and consummate professional, yet we’re asked, “What are your weaknesses?” and “What are the biggest mistakes you’ve made?” Even the seemingly laidback “So, tell me about yourself” can feel like a trap. Where should we start? There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the benefits of “bringing your whole self” to work. There’s some evidence for those benefits. Letting others see more of you than you might ordinarily show them forges bonds, includ…

If you have ever interviewed for a job, there is a non-trivial probability that you have encountered “tricky” or quirky interview questions. These are questions that are intentionally unexpected, abstract, or only loosely related to the actual requirements of the role. Rather than systematically assessing job-relevant skills, they are designed to surprise candidates, test composure, or signal creativity. Interviewers often defend these questions as clever ways to evaluate problem-solving ability, cultural fit, or performance under pressure. The evidence tells a different story. Decades of research in industrial-organizational psychology show that unstructured, brainte…

Our capacity to juggle several tasks at once is among the most important capabilities of the human cognitive system. Just consider a typical day in the life of a modern human: you glance at your phone while waiting for coffee to brew, skim headlines while half-listening to a podcast, mentally rehearse a client pitch while walking your child to school, reply “noted” on Slack during a meeting while updating a slide deck, check your bank balance while standing in line, and, in a moment of entirely optional productivity theatre, scroll through a friend’s Facebook feed to see what their cat had for breakfast (admittedly, not the most important addition to our already heavy…

A CEO sits in a boardroom, staring at a strategy deck generated overnight by AI. The analysis is sharp. The recommendations are confident. The numbers line up. And yet something feels off. It feels flat, almost a little too perfect . . . This moment is becoming increasingly common for leaders. Artificial intelligence is now one of the most powerful management tools ever created. It can analyze markets in seconds, surface patterns no human team could find, and generate plans on demand. For many executives, AI already feels indispensable. But as intelligence scales at unprecedented speed, a quieter question is emerging inside organizations: How do we ensure AI…

New York City is a city of walkers. More trips are made on foot than by car (41% versus 28%) and the city’s “80X50” climate action plan envisions that 80% of all trips by 2050 will be made either on foot, by biking, or by public transit. The problem is that pedestrian movement in the city has remained largely unmapped and underestimated—until now. Together with a team of researchers, Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has built what he says is the first complete model of pedestrian activity in New York City—and it’s a model that can now be applied to any U.S. city. The model, which maps foot traffic across al…

Ghost jobs are postings for positions that don’t actually exist for various reasons, and they waste countless hours for job seekers who apply to roles that were never meant to be filled. Experts in recruiting and career strategy have identified specific warning signs that reveal when a posting is likely fake or abandoned. This guide breaks down how to recognize these red flags before investing time in an application, so you can better focus your efforts on genuine opportunities. Prioritize Responsive Employers that Show Immediate Engagement One reliable way to identify a ghost job is to see whether applying to it leads to any human response at all. Today, silence h…

After officials released millions of pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, revelations in his emails and other files have led to the resignations of multiple corporate executives, new investigations into abuses by Epstein and potential accomplices, and even the arrest of the United Kingdom’s former Prince Andrew. For those looking to research Epstein’s vast correspondence and web of connections across industry, government, and academia, some of the most effective tools have been built not by federal investigators or big-name news organizations but by a scrappy team of volunteer developers. Starting with a website called Jmail, which …

With uncertainty as the new norm, leaders are understandably searching for psychological anchors. They’re looking for ideas that can steady people and sustain energy through change. One of those anchors is hope. Across corporate mission statements, fresh publications from thought leaders, and HR manifestos, corporations have elevated hope from a state of being to a strategic imperative. But what happens when an emotion becomes a business model? How to define hope in an organizational context Psychologically, hope is a cognitive and motivational state defined by three elements: agency (belief in your capacity to shape outcomes), pathways (the ability to identify…

If you’re in the Northeast, there’s a good chance you’ll be hunkering down inside for a few days as a major snowstorm batters the East Coast. And if you have a flight to catch, well, there’s a high probability that it might not be taking off at all. Due to the blizzard, which is forecast to bring up to two feet of snow in some areas, thousands of flights have already been canceled or delayed. Here’s what you need to know if you have a flight to catch. Thousands of flights have already been canceled due to the snowstorm As of the time of this writing, 5,348 flights within, into, or out of the United States today have already been canceled, according to data…

Before the holidays, Adam Conner began vibe coding. Like everyone else in the know, he was using Claude Code. Compared to popular chatbots, Anthropic’s advanced AI agent speaks the language of computers: code. Normally, you click buttons in browsers, open folders, and drag files. But you can also do so by coding—interacting with software by typing commands into a terminal, a text-based app. Claude Code goes beyond such primitive tasks, though: an AI that can code can effectively do nearly anything on a computer. “We expected developers to use Claude Code for coding, but then something unexpected happened,” an Anthropic spokesperson tells Fast Company. “We started…

Bourbon was once hailed as the poor man’s drink. The spirit has since developed, however, from a mass-market American staple into a luxury class, and limited releases, higher prices, and brands vying for prestige have caused a crowded top tier. Even though the premium field has widened, the very top of the market remains stubbornly narrow, according to whiskey expert Fred Minnick. During a blind tasting of his top 100 American whiskeys of 2025, Minnick evaluated leading contenders anonymously. Even without labels, the rankings reflected the same hierarchy seen at retail and on the secondary market. The most scarce, high-status bottles still rose to the top, regar…

Authoritarian acolytes will tell you that, to be strong, a country must “demonstrate force.” White House advisor Stephen Miller recently put that worldview plainly on CNN, arguing that “the real world…is governed by strength…by force…by power”—a claim belied, as it were, by history. America did not become a superpower primarily by proving it could dominate. It became a superpower by proving it could partner. After World War II, the United States stood unrivaled militarily. Yet it did not rely on force alone to secure its position. Instead, it invested in rebuilding a shattered world. The Marshall Plan was not charity—it was a strategy, linking economic recover…

The Ford Mustang Mach-E cruises down a London road choked with traffic, using its onboard AI system to avoid jaywalkers and cyclists, and navigate roadwork as it drives to its destination. The autonomous vehicle from British startup Wayve Technologies is on a test run ahead of the U.K. government’s robotaxi trials set to launch in the spring. Tech companies including U.S. company Waymo and China’s Baidu also plan to take part in the pilot program, making London the latest arena in the global robotaxi competition. While self-driving cabs aren’t new, London’s ancient road layout and busy streetscapes could pose special challenges for the technology. There’s also skeptici…

A turf war has broken out between the fandoms of Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones over the highest-rated episode spot on IMDb. Released last month, the Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, set a century before the events of the HBO drama, has garnered much praise. A Guardian reviewer said it has “saved the Game of Thrones universe.” Fans appear to agree, as the fifth episode, In the Name of the Mother, which aired February 15, briefly secured a rare 10/10 rating on IMDb. Unfortunately for fans, it didn’t last long. For over a decade, “Ozymandias”—the 14th episode of the fifth and final season of Breaking Bad, and the climax of the series—ha…

AI is reshaping how work gets done in institutions, both public and private. However, the impact is uneven—consumer AI chat interfaces like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini are fundamentally mismatched to the realities of government work. That doesn’t mean government agencies aren’t turning to AI. They cannot hire their way to capacity, so they’re looking to technology to lighten the load. More than half of local governments report difficulty filling positions, a problem especially potent in larger metros. San Francisco’s local government, for example, has more than 4,700 open positions. Since 2020, state government employment has increased, but much of that is a …

For years, retail investors were dismissed by some on Wall Street as “dumb money.” That typically referred to those prone to trading on hype, or chasing trends rather than company or industry fundamentals, or responding late to big market moves. That’s no longer the case. An analysis of where retail investors put their money last year shows they outperformed two of the most popular, professionally managed index funds, SPY and QQQ, whose goal is to mirror the performance of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, respectively. Retail investors accounted for $5.4 trillion in trading activity in 2025 across stocks and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, according to Vanda, an indepen…

Friday’s news of a major shakeup at Microsoft’s Xbox division caught the gaming world by surprise. Phil Spencer, who has run Xbox for almost 12 years, announced his retirement, effective immediately—just months after Microsoft insisted he was “not retiring anytime soon.” Asha Sharma, the president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product, was tapped to run the division. Once a powerhouse earner, Xbox has seen its profitability and influence shrink in recent years. (Xbox president Sarah Bond, long seen as Spencer’s heir apparent, was passed over and also left the company.) Sharma may face an uphill battle. Microsoft has not reported updated Xbox console sales or Game Pass…

It’s a good day to be the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. This morning, the company unveiled its latest innovation in the weight-loss drug wars: the KwikPen. Per a press release , the KwikPen contains a months-worth of Zepbound, Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 designed to combat obesity, and it’s designed to make taking the medicine more convenient. Alongside the announcement of this new innovation, Eli Lilly’s main competitor, Novo Nordisk, dropped the news that its experimental drug, CagriSema, perfomed worse for patient weight loss in a head-to-head trial against Eli Lilly’s proprietary drug, tirzepatide. A November study from the health policy non-profit KFF found that abo…

Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight. Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom. Many of these data centers want the kind of f…

If Domino’s earnings on Monday prove anything, it’s that people are still eating pizza—even if fast food sales, in general, are slumping. “There seems to be a narrative out there that pizza is a challenged and declining category,” Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner said in an earnings call on Monday. “That is just not true, looking back to 2019, you’ll find a category that has generally grown approximately 1-2% each year, including last year 2025.” Weiner did, however, acknowledge the market was “mature.” The pizza giant reported strong fourth-quarter earnings results, with revenue coming in at 1.54 billion, beating estimates of $1.52 billion. It also reported a 15% quar…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just +0.2% year-over-year between January 2025 and January 2026. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlier—though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking a tad higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up. 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10% of …

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, will head to the Pentagon on Tuesday to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about how the military uses the company’s artificial intelligence models. And it’s likely to be a tense meeting, as sources first told Axios. Contract talks between the AI startup and the Department of Defense have gone off course in recent weeks as Anthropic has insisted on some safeguards for how its technology will be used. While the San Francisco-based company is willing to loosen some of its usage restrictions for the Department of Defense, it doesn’t want its models used for at least two specific purposes: spying on Americans or developing autonomous …

Author and alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra is the latest celebrity to come under scrutiny after the Department of Justice (DOJ) released more than three million pages of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. A slew of famous names pop up in the DOJ’s files, released on January 30, including business leaders like Casey Wasserman and powerful politicians like former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Chopra was among them, and a new investigation from CNN reveals the extent of his ties with Epstein. On February 4, Chopra posted on X defending his appearance in the files and distancing himself from Epstein’s crimes, which include operating a sex-tr…