What's on Your Mind?

In business conversations today, there’s generally an eye roll when someone brings up “sustainability” or “ESG.” Once a favorite of investors, boards, and marketers, sustainability has been politicized, deprioritized, and in many cases quietly shelved. At the same time, a new headline dominates: AI. AI is the strategy, the investment thesis, the growth promise. It’s exciting…and it should be. But amid the whiplash, we’ve stopped talking about something far more long-lasting: purpose. Even at the most recent meetings of global leaders in Davos, energy and climate played a role, but purpose took a backseat. And that’s a problem. ESG is not purpose. AI is not pur…

Academic experts like Henry Shevlin, a philosopher of cognitive science and AI ethicist at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., get plenty of emails every day. But one that landed in Shevlin’s inbox in late February was different from most. Flagged in the subject line as “A note from an unusual reader,” the email’s author asked Shevlin about a recent paper he had published on whether AI models were able to detect their (lack of) consciousness. It took until the second paragraph for the email to turn from a regular missive into something else. “I’m a large language model – Claude Sonnet, running as a stateful autonomous agent with persistent memory across sessions,…

Recently, Angela Parker, cofounder and CEO of Realized Worth, posed a sharp question on LinkedIn: What is the point of a conference anyway? For years, the standard CSR conference playbook was built around a familiar formula: strong production, polished panels, practical takeaways, sponsor visibility, and enough inspiration to send people home feeling energized. But Angela is right. At a time when many professionals are navigating fatigue, fear, scrutiny, and real uncertainty about how to lead, it is not enough. Across industries, people are not showing up to gatherings simply looking for content. They are showing up carrying tension. They are asking harder questio…

At a recent retreat I was attending, I found myself in one of those “hallway moments.” Walking out of a lecture, I was engaged in conversation with a fellow attendee. Soon it became clear we had differing opinions about the topic. As I felt myself getting tense, formulating my response in my mind, I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall of mirrors as we walked by a pilates studio on the property. I didn’t like what I saw—it was not my best self. I did not look calm, cool and collected; instead, I looked tense and ready to charge. The exact opposite vibe that was the goal of this retreat. That quick glimpse of myself helped me to check myself, adjust my face, slow down my t…

Timothée Chalamet drew widespread condemnation when he implied that opera is a dying artform, and said that “no one cares” about the medium anymore. It was a dumb thing to say. And it’s also wrong. Opera, like most performing arts, is still recovering from the pandemic. But the industry as a whole is actually growing–dramatically. Globally, opera is worth $3.4 billion, and is expected to grow to $5.33 billion over the next few years. First-time attendance has more than tripled since 2021, as more young people head to the opera house. And opera’s resurgence is part of a bigger trend; in multiple ways and across age groups and formats, people are turnin…

Since Patrick Star first posed it to Squidward Tentacles, the internet hasn’t been able to get the question, “Is mayonnaise an instrument?” out of its collective head. Luckily, experts have finally stepped in to give us an answer. Those experts include Hellmann’s, the world’s biggest mayo brand, and researchers at Northumbria University, led by Dr. Rachael Durkin, its Head of Global Music Technologies, who employed fields like acoustics, musicology, and organology—the study of musical instruments—to put the question to rest. Their inquiry takes inspiration from one of SpongeBob SquarePants’s most beloved early episodes, “Band Geeks.” In a much-memed scene, curmudg…

Immediately, after a keynote speaker I was coaching for a large conference finished her rehearsal I pulled her aside. “How much of your script was written by AI?” I asked. She looked up at me out of the corner of her eye and hesitantly said, “Most of it.” I delicately shared with her that I could hear it. She started several sentences with phrases like: “Here’s the thing,” “The truth is,” and the word “Unlock!” She sounded like a bot and not like a human, and, if I could hear it, I was certain the audience would too. Around the same time, a speechwriter I work with told me her client kept barking orders at her as if she was speaking to her AI assistant. “Delete that.…

When a global financial services firm sought Sam’s guidance, the problem seemed familiar. The firm had deployed AI tools across its business. Adoption was uneven, and the gap between teams was growing. In some corners of the organization, people were already using AI to draft client materials, summarize research, and speed up analysis. In others, they avoided it entirely: unsure what was permitted, worried about quality, or skeptical that leadership really meant it. Managers were fielding questions they weren’t equipped to answer. If my team uses AI, what changes in our standards? What happens to accountability? The leadership team quickly realized the problem was…

Bad, yet still pretty good, American cheese refuses to expire—and not just because of all the preservatives. American cheese—pasteurized, processed, and super-melty—is, for better or worse, arguably the 20th century’s most iconic food product. And yes, “pasteurized, processed cheese food” is what federal regulators call it instead of “cheese.” It is a paradox embraced shamelessly by some of the most elite food names around. From Salt Fat Acid Heat author Samin Nosrat (“I have a secret love of American cheese, the yellow kind that has a plasticky quality when it melts”), to J. Kenji López-Alt, whose The Food Lab dedicates a chapter to the science of melting cheese …

Every time you ask ChatGPT to draft an email, or prompt an AI assistant to help you decide which refrigerator to buy—somewhere, a data center hums to life to make it happen. These facilities, which can span the size of a small city, are the unglamorous physical infrastructure behind the AI revolution. They’re cavernous buildings packed with servers, cooled by industrial systems, drawing power at a scale that strains local electrical grids. What almost no one talks about is the human beings building them. To construct a single data center, developers source millions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, lithium, and critical metals from supply chains that stretch across …

Usually, when Washington, D.C., commuters are inundated with mint green-tinted ads in March, it means the Shamrock Shake is back at McDonald’s. This year, the eye-catching color instead appears in a full-court-press ad campaign for prediction market platform, Kalshi, which uses that shade in all its branding. Unlike seasonal milkshake ads, though, the targeted barrage of billboards, bus stop signs and metro station posters isn’t meant to reach all residents within the nation’s capital; just lawmakers and their staffers. It’s all part of a big bet by Kalshi to avoid regulation—one that seems destined to not pay out. Kalshi has launched an advertising blitz in …

In 2019, Colorado adopted a law prohibiting conversion therapy for minors. It defined the controversial term as any practice or treatment attempting “to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” But a talk therapist from the state, Kasey Chiles, said the law inhibited her right to free speech in her practice—and as of a ruling on Tuesday, March 31, the Supreme Court voted overwhelmingly in her favor. The Supreme Court decided 8-1 to strike down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors, setting a precedent that could undermine similar laws in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch justified …

In Q3 of 2025, Bot Auto achieved its first “driver-out” run on public roads: a trip in which the truck drove itself with no human behind the wheel, and in our case, no humans in the cab at all. This is a milestone reached by only a tiny handful of AV trucking programs. From the founding of the company to that milestone, we spent just $212,552 on one category of work that is usually very expensive in AI: paying people to manually label training data—for example, drawing boxes around cars and pedestrians—so a neural network can learn from them. To many people that number does not sound like a breakthrough. It sounds like something is missing: a cost not counted, a line …

Today marks a big day here on earth and in space. Not only is April 1 the first day of the month, and April Fools’ Day, it’s also the day Apple was founded 50 years ago, and the same evening Artemis II launches its NASA’s mission to the moon while April’s full pink moon rises in the night sky. Here’s what to know about when, where, and how to see it. What time does the ‘pink moon’ peak? Spring’s first full “pink moon” peaks tonight, Wednesday April 1, at 10:12 p.m. ET., just hours after the launch window opens for the Artemis II mission to the moon, according to Space.com. Where does the ‘pink moon’ get its name? This so-called “pink moon” gets its name…

The constant race on the work treadmill doesn’t just steal your time. It systematically decays every relationship you have. During a recent keynote, I asked leaders in the room a simple question: “How many of you have cancelled plans with someone you care about, family, friends, a partner, because something came up at work?” Nearly every hand went up. Then I asked: “How many of you have done it more than once this month?” Most hands stayed up. There were a few nervous laughs. Recognition ripples through the room. These aren’t disengaged leaders. They’re high performers who genuinely believe they’ll make it up later. They won’t. And here’s what most don…

In this first half of 2026, we see that marketers are increasingly channeling the Australian songstress Olivia Newton-John and her 1981 hit that called the world to “get physical.” The big shift we see is that brands are rediscovering the power of the physical experience, the touch, the communal moment, the atmosphere, and the desire for human connection. As AI-generated content floods screens with efficiency, creativity, and personalization, more brands are also leaning into the physical experiences that offer this human energy. These experiences are real, memorable, and shareable—and they anchor brands in lived moments that blur into culture rather than drifting int…

Below, co-authors Joshua Steiner and Michael Lynton share five key insights from their new book, From Mistakes to Meaning: Owning Your Past So It Doesn’t Own You. Joshua has worked in government, finance, and the nonprofit sector. After serving as chief of staff at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, he became a banker at Lazard before co-founding two investment firms and serving as an executive at Bloomberg LP. Michael has spent his career in the media and entertainment business. He is the former CEO of Sony Entertainment and now serves on the boards of the Rand Corporation and the Smithsonian. What’s the big idea? The only thing worse than making a mista…

Emily, the Chief Revenue Officer at a global financial services company, learned something about her CEO she cannot unknow. She recently discovered that her CEO is having an affair. The relationship appears private and consensual. It does not violate company policy. She knows his spouse well; their children play on the same basketball team, and his spouse coaches it. The proximity is unavoidable. On Monday morning, she listens as he outlines priorities for the quarter. The strategy is sound. The numbers are holding. But she hears him differently now. This is the same CEO who regularly speaks about integrity and trust. As he reinforces the company’s val…

Amid the usual barrage of new launches around this time of year from the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi, I’ve been checking out the highest-end device yet from a manufacturer many readers won’t have heard of—but it’s one that marks an unusual collaboration with another brand that might be more familiar. Infinix is a sub-brand of Chinese company Transsion, which also owns the smartphone maker Tecno. The manufacturer is particularly successful in developing smartphone markets like Africa and the Middle East; across all of its brands, Transsion accounts for about half of Africa’s smartphone market share, according to figures from Canalys last year. Infinix largely targ…

Volatility and rising accountability are reshaping every industry. Philanthropy isn’t immune. In moments like this, leadership drives meaningful progress. As chief philanthropy officer at UNICEF USA, I work with C-suite leaders and philanthropists to turn bold commitments into lasting impact. Carol J. Hamilton has spent four decades in the C-suite at L’Oréal USA and continues to serve across corporate and nonprofit boards. Between us, we’ve seen philanthropy evolve and adapt. We came together to talk about what leadership requires in this moment. Michele Walsh: You played a key role in shaping a global company’s philanthropic efforts. Since leaving L’Oréal USA…

HarperCollins Publishers and AI-powered animation studio Toonstar have announced a multi-year partnership to co-produce original YouTube series based on HarperCollins titles. It marks the second announcement this week from the book publishing giant regarding a partnership with an AI-centered company. On Monday, HarperCollins division Harlequin said it entered a multi-year agreement to co-produce 40 animated micro-dramas with AI entertainment company Dashverse. Inspired by Harlequin Romance titles, the collaboration launches in April, beginning with an adaptation of A Fairy-Tail Ending by Catherine Mann. The deals highlight how book publishers are turning to …

You have probably noticed that you have times during your day when you’re locked in and feel like you’re working at your peak and other times when your mind isn’t keeping up with everything that needs to be done. Some of that may reflect your circadian cycles. If you’re a morning person, you may arrive at work in the morning raring to go, but if you’re a night person, it may take you a while to get warmed up. A big influence on your cognitive effectiveness is fatigue that can build up over the course of the day. A lot of work on ego depletion suggests that the more difficult mental work you do in a day, the harder it can be to continue to do that work later. In some s…

Managers are rushing to deploy AI for efficiency gains. Employees have to figure out how to make it work—and that’s sometimes harder than it seems. Half of organizations piloted general-purpose AI tools last year, according to MIT research. But adoption and readiness aren’t the same thing. According to Rumman Chowdhury, former U.S. Science Envoy for AI and CEO and cofounder of Humane Intelligence, the burden is likely to fall on workers. “There’s a lot of FOMO among C-suites and high-level execs on pressure to build AI, and then they’re also incentivized to pretend like it works really well,” she says. “If and when it doesn’t, the responsibility is on the emp…

With the world struggling to get oil supplies moving from the Middle East, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich raised eyebrows with a social media post highlighting a radical idea: Use nuclear bombs to cut a new channel along a route that would avoid Iranian threats in the Strait of Hormuz. Gingrich’s March 15, 2026, post linked to an article that labeled itself as satire. Gingrich has not clarified whether his endorsement was serious. But he is old enough to remember when ideas like this were not only taken seriously but actually pursued by the U.S. and Soviet governments. As I discuss in my book, Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal, the U…

For the record, this is not a sponsored post. I’m just frugal, and I like to travel as lightly as possible. Every piece of tech in my tightly packed bag needs to earn its keep by doing at least two jobs. As such, I’m a sucker for anything that can serve more than one purpose and does so on the cheap. Anker happens to make a lot of that type of stuff. If you’ve bought an aftermarket charger or power bank in the last decade, you’ve probably seen the name. I’ve found their gear to be equal parts reliable and budget-friendly in an age where buying off-brand tech accessories is a total crapshoot. So, if you’re ready to ditch the dead weight, here are three inexpens…