What's on Your Mind?

With GLP-1 use on the rise in the U.S., one grocery store chain made a starter kit for first-time customers that could help capture a higher percentage of their food budget at a time when it’s becoming increasingly important. ShopRite’s “Wellness Your Way” branded kits are free for customers filling their first GLP-1 prescription at the East Coast grocer’s in-store pharmacies. They’re one part informational, another part promotional, and they’re designed to look like they’re from a direct-to-consumer subscription healthcare brand, taking advantage of ShopRite’s specific store model. The blue mailer box, which is available while supplies last, opens from a front fl…

We live in a time when our expectations for ethical business practices are no longer predictable. Global regulation, along with ideas around standards like ESG, are in flux—and building debate around what the standards should be for leaders and managers. “Some governments are tightening oversight, while others are relaxing enforcement,” write ethics leaders at the World Economic Forum. Companies may focus on strictly following the law, thinking that it doesn’t make sense to go beyond regulatory expectations. But being compliant doesn’t mean you’re being ethical. There are three common signals that your company is headed towards a flawed business practice—decision…

Roger Bennett is the witty and charismatic co-host of the popular “Men in Blazers” soccer media network. Born in Liverpool, England, he moved to the United States and has since helped popularize the sport in this country through podcasts, television shows, and books, including his best-selling memoir Reborn in the USA. His new book, WE ARE THE WORLD (CUP), is a personal history of what he calls “the world’s greatest sporting event.” In the following excerpt, he chronicles his experience of the 1994 World Cup, the last event held in the U.S prior to this summer’s tournament. 1994 was also the year Bennett moved to the U.S. The 1994 World Cup brought football to the Un…

Zig-zagging around the glass-and-steel perimeter of the UC Berkeley Grimes Engineering Center, 36 thin metal rods could be what it takes to prevent the building’s total destruction. The rods are the central element of a novel seismic-responsive structural system that is designed to help the building snap back to its original shape in the event of a major earthquake. Their trick is an embedded cluster of taut cables made from a highly flexible compound called a shape-memory alloy that’s capable of bending under tension—like the lateral shaking in a California earthquake—and then straightening out. Developed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill …

In 2023, as Texas lawmakers debated Senate Bill 13—a controversial bill aimed at restricting certain books in public school libraries and expanding parental oversight—Steve Wandler was among the dozen-plus parents, educators, and advocates who testified before the legislature. Wandler wasn’t just another concerned citizen. He was a Canadian entrepreneur who had relocated to Texas the year before to found Bookmarked, a fledgling startup that promises to help school districts manage their library collections and give parents greater visibility into what their children are reading. The legislation addressed the very issue Wandler believed his company could help solve. Th…

Inside a new HP laptop, the copper in its heat sink comes straight from old HP devices—making the company the first to reuse its own recycled metal in a closed loop. In partnership with HP, the Australia-based startup Mint Innovation took in circuit boards from thousands of old HP computers and servers, and then recycled them to supply pure refined copper back to the company. The process is designed to be more sustainable than traditional smelting. Instead of melting down metals in a furnace—an energy-intensive, polluting process—the startup uses a mix of chemicals and biology to recover valuable materials. “What HP is effectively doing is mining e-waste of their …

Gold-medal moments for American athletes abounded at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Among a slew of highlights, Alysa Liu brought the U.S. Olympic gold in singles figure skating for the first time since 2002, Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin topped the podium in Alpine skiing. The Paralympics, which start March 6, will likely see more medals for women athletes, and many of them will be celebrating in Las Vegas this summer. But data from ticket exchange and resale site StubHub shows that the U.S. women’s hockey team’s triumph over Canada for gold in Milan will have a lasting effect on attendance at Professional Women’s Hockey League games. The company’s internal dat…

Early this year, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood awards season kicked off with the Critics Choice Awards, and soon everything will culminate with the Academy Awards on March 15. With the Oscars just two weeks away—and the rest of awards season nearly behind us—it’s the perfect time to overanalyze what movie will emerge victorious on the big night. All this overthinking could even help you win your office competition (or make some money on Polymarket or Kalshi). Here’s everything you need to know to make an informed Oscar prediction ballot: How Oscar nominations are chosen The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Osca…

When I hosted a client dinner honoring my good friends Jules Kroll and his extraordinary wife Lynn, I did not expect to get one of the best bits of life advice I’d ever heard. Jules and Lynn met in college about 65 years ago and raised four wonderful children together. Toward the end of dinner someone asked, “How do you raise good kids?” Lynn, an amazing force of nature, answered swiftly: “You need to raise the children you have—not the ones you would have liked to have.” I was stunned by the clarity and simplicity of what she said and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. LEARN THE HARD WAY AS A PARENT My father died when I was five. My family situ…

Working in tech, I learned that technology alone doesn’t spark transformation. The people do. And people approach new technologies in wildly different ways. To be successful, companies need to adapt to that line of thinking, just like companies expect their teammates to adapt to transformative technologies, like AI. 3 TYPES OF AI ADOPTERS When we rolled out a custom-built company GPT to our 14,000 teammates several years ago, we saw three clear groups emerge. First, there was the “jump-in-with-both-feet” crowd. These are the early adopters who treat anything new like a shiny toy. Next were the skeptics who wondered how much of an impact AI would have on their d…

Target Corporation on Tuesday reported its all-important fourth-quarter results, which run from the key holiday shopping season in November through January. Unfortunately for the company, its results were, at best, a mixed bag. Yet despite the underwhelming earnings report, shares in the company are currently rising. Here’s what you need to know. Target’s Q4 2025 at a glance Before the opening bell this morning, Target reported its fourth-quarter earnings, which ended on January 31. Out of all the earnings periods Target reports over the year, Q4 is the most important because it covers the holiday shopping season when consumers are traditionally most will…

In a year of tremendous uncertainty, one of the few constants has been the swift uptick in gold and silver prices. Both metals have reached record high after record high as investors turn to safe-haven assets. Yet, as war escalates across the Middle East, the prices of silver and gold are currently falling. Most notably, silver fell over 11% on Tuesday and is down over 7% to about $82.50 per ounce at the time of publication. That’s more than a 5% drop over the last five days and close to 3% down for the past month. Silver’s all-time high price came on January 29, with a whopping $129.64 per ounce. Even with the significant drop from that peak, silver is…

One of the great tales from basketball lore is how coach Phil Jackson led teams like the Bulls and the Lakers to dynasty status. Working with legends like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, he might have let the all-stars run the show. Instead, his success hinged on transparency. Jackson gave players clear, constructive feedback. For example, he urged Jordan to cut back on scoring and involve his teammates more, recognizing that team success required more than a scoring leader. It’s a valuable lesson for business leaders today. Feedback can be tough to give. It can be uncomfortable. But withholding honest feedback is a disservice—to employees and to the company. As C…

Two months ago, a state administrative judge in California determined that Tesla broke the law by misleading consumers. The argument: Tesla led them to believe that its cars had real self-driving capabilities, calling them “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” (commonly known as FSD). The issue is that Teslas can’t really drive by themselves; they still require drivers to remain constantly vigilant to prevent catastrophe. The verdict prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles to threaten a temporary suspension of Tesla’s manufacturing and sales licenses. Two months after the ruling, on February 13, Tesla’s attorneys filed a complaint alleging the state “wrongf…

America’s three major stock markets, the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P, are all down sharply in morning trading as of this writing. The wave of red across investors’ monitors is primarily due to one major factor: uncertainty around how far the Iran conflict will travel and how long it will last. Here’s what you need to know about how markets are reacting. What happened? Over the weekend, President Donald The President ordered strikes on Iran, during which the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed. The death of Iran’s leader and the ongoing conflict in Iran will have significant consequences for the region as a whole for years to come. Yet wha…

A note to corporations everywhere: Asking politely for the internet to stop making fun of you often has the opposite effect. Microsoft may have just learned that lesson the hard way, after it accidentally helped a not-so-nice nickname go viral. As Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot is integrated into features across the company’s products—from its controversial Recall feature, to a dedicated AI button on Windows keyboards—it’s catching more and more flak, including a new term coined just to clown on Copilot: “Microslop,” a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and “AI slop.” The word was flying freely on Microsoft’s official Copilot Discord server, until users noticed a new fi…

Oil prices are on the rise, hitting an 18-month high as of Tuesday as the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran continues. The war against Iran, which started in earnest over the past weekend, has disrupted oil and gas shipments in the Middle East, constricting supply, and with no clear timetable as to when the war could end (or if there’s a plan for a drawdown), markets are spooked about the potential for a prolonged conflict and market hiccups. Specifically, concerns about shipments getting through the Strait of Hormuz—a busy shipping lane for fossil fuel-carrying tankers—have been effectively stopped, and no one knows with any certainty as to when i…

HBO Max might be getting a brand update. Again. The streaming service has notoriously waffled between different names and logos over the past several years. More recently, it got caught up in an intense bidding war between Netflix and Paramount Skydance to acquire its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. On February 27, Netflix finally admitted defeat and abandoned its takeover bid—meaning Paramount is set to acquire WBD for $110 billion. The transaction is expected to close later this year. This supersized deal will undoubtedly have major ripple effects across the broader entertainment industry. But, for HBO, it might mean yet another blow to an already di…

When Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant first joined the company as chief brand officer back in 2021, he saw a unique opportunity in the brand’s cultural potential. “Sports, entertainment, music, food…it was like the Beautiful Mind meme with the equations spinning,” he told me in 2024. “They just needed someone to put it on the wall.” None of his moves since embody this idea more than Live Mas LIVE, Taco Bell’s live stage show in the spirit of Apple’s WWDC. The show began in 2024, when Taco Bell fanatics (myself included) traveled to Las Vegas to watch company execs unveil the brand’s new and limited edition menu items for the year. It was an absurdly perfect premise (a…

The battle of the burgers is on. But at the center, there’s no actual fast food. Instead, it features viral moments of the companies’ leaders. In case you missed it: Last weekend, an Instagram video of McDonald’s CEO and chairman Chris Kempczinski—looking rather uncomfortable as he sampled his own company’s newly launched Big Arch burger—was widely circulated and mocked across the internet. He took only one small bite and repeatedly called the food a “product.” “I love this product,” Kempczinski said. “It is so good.” The comments were ruthless. “From this video, it seems likely the CEO of McDonald’s has never eaten McDonald’s before,” one user wrote. “What a…

Anthropic is making hay while the sun shines. The AI company’s high-stakes dispute with the Pentagon—in which it refused to allow its product to be used for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance—generated intense mainstream media coverage and a wave of public support, including from many within the artificial intelligence community. Claude rose to No. 1 in the Apple App Store’s free app rankings on Sunday, February 28, and on Tuesday, March 3, it hit No. 1 in a similar ranking for the Google Play store. The government is effectively banning the use of Anthropic models and tools within government agencies and their suppliers, and has labeled Anthropic…

A journalist is assigned a profile of a prominent politician on a tight turnaround. With the interview just hours away, she asks ChatGPT to generate a list of questions. Satisfied with the 30 questions churned out in under a minute, she shares them with her editor to make sure no stone is unturned. The editor nearly rewrites the list entirely. It’s missing questions about pivotal early-life experiences, why the senator dropped out of college, parting ways with her first campaign manager, and more. All of these missing questions stem from understanding the larger context and years of honing editorial judgment—the kinds of things AI can’t replace. Just as generative…