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…

You’re interested in AI but you’re human: You’ve got emails to answer, deadlines to meet, and you don’t have 40 hours a week to sift through academic papers on large language models. You just want to know what’s happening, why it matters, and maybe how to use it to get home a little earlier. In that spirit, here are five AI podcasts to help you get smarter and stay informed without wasting your time. The AI Daily Brief For the busy professional who needs the headlines fast, there’s The AI Daily Brief. It’s usually about 20 minutes, which is perfect for the commute or while you’re brewing that second pot of coffee. Host Nathaniel Whittemore does a great …

American statesman and polymath Ben Franklin’s legacy includes inspirational quotes on frugality, honesty, and hard work. He’s less frequently thought of as an icon of successful aging. But as doctor and author Ezekiel Emanuel recently pointed out on Big Think, “At a time when the average age at death was under 40, he lived to 84, fully mentally competent all the way to the end.” That makes the founding father a worthy source of advice on aging well. What’s the biggest lesson we can learn from him. Unsurprisingly, given he lived at a time when dentures were made out of wood and surgery was done without anesthesia, Franklin can’t teach us anything about the latest …

The fleeting nature of the Olympic Winter Games makes them all the more alluring. The scarcity is almost sacred. Competitors work their whole lifetimes for one shot at glory that takes place over a period of just a few weeks. To celebrate every athletic achievement at the XXV Olympic Winter Games, the closing ceremony will take place Sunday, February 22. Here’s everything you need to know including how to tune in. Where will the Milano Cortina Olympic Closing Ceremony take place? Just like William Shakespeare intended, it’s fair in Verona where we lay our scene. The Milano Cortina Closing Ceremony will be held at the Verona Arena, which many historians believe …

AI is transforming how teams work. But it’s not just the tools that matter. It’s what happens to thinking when those tools do the heavy lifting, and whether managers notice before the gap widens. Across industries, there’s a common pattern. AI-supported work looks polished. The reports are clean. The analyses are structured. But when someone asks the team to defend a decision, not summarize one, the room goes quiet. The output is there, but the reasoning isn’t owned. For David, the COO of a midsize financial services firm, the problem surfaced during quarterly planning. Multiple teams presented the same compelling statistic about regulatory timelines, one that tur…

Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it? These concerns are understandable. But focusing so much on cheating misses the larger transformation already underway, one that extends far beyond student misconduct and even the classroom. Universities are adopting AI across many areas of institutional life. Some uses are largely invisible, like systems that help allocate resources, flag “at-risk” students, optimize course scheduling, or automate routine administrative decisions. Other uses ar…

I’ve been using ChatGPT and other AI tools recently for quite a few things. A few examples: Working on strategy and operations for my latest business venture, Life Story Magic. Planning how to get the most value out of the Epic ski pass I bought for the year, while balancing everything else. Putting together a stretching and DIY physical therapy plan to get my shoulders feeling better during gym workouts. Along the way, I’ve done what I think a lot of AI power users eventually wind up doing: I’ve gone into the personalization and settings and told the chatbot to be neutral, direct, and just-the-facts. I don’t want a chatbot that tells me “That is a bril…

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers. 1. A new employee missed the fourth day of work, saying “something came up” I had a new employee start on a Tuesday. That Friday, I woke up to a text from my new hire from the night before, saying that she would not be in on Friday, that something had come up and she would see me on Monday. This is an in-person job in a corporate environment. I fully respect a person’s right to take a sick day and I fee…

The highlight reel of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics was defined by extreme tricks—corkscrews, twists, and flips performed by snowboarders and freestyle skiers. These aerial feats are complex, but in many cases, they can be traced back to a simple tool: hours spent spinning and flopping into oversize plastic bags. Over the last 20 years, a handful of manufacturers—such as Bagjump, Progression Airbags, and BigAirBag—have perfected the art of making massive plastic landing pads, ideal for aspiring extreme sports athletes to push the boundaries of their skills and test out new tricks year-round. Beginning with the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, athletes like Sha…

I called Burger King president Tom Curtis a few times this week, but it went straight to voicemail. You can try too, his number is (305) 874-0520. Okay, so maybe it’s not his personal cell number, but Curtis is still taking calls and texts from anyone and everyone. On February 17, Burger King announced he would be spending at least four hours a day over the next two weeks—including nights and weekends—taking unfiltered calls and texts from customers, hoping to hear their input about all things Burger King. Want a new Whopper variation? Call him. Have a complaint about your local BK? Call him. Come up with a fun marketing idea? Call him. Want to propose marriage? Mayb…

Biometric authentication—the ability to unlock your devices by using just your face or fingerprint—is one of the few smartphone features that, even today, leave me feeling like we’re living in the future. When I was a kid, technology like facial recognition was limited to science fiction. But as cool and useful as biometric authentication is, the technology can also leave us vulnerable. Here’s why—and how to protect yourself. It’s not just journalists and activists who can have their biometrics used against them Last month, journalists got a stark reminder that their biometrics might not keep the data they have on their devices safe from law enforcement searches. W…

Olympians aren’t just physically exceptional—they’re masters at managing where their attention and energy go. Cognitive research finds a key link between working memory and performance: elite athletes are better able to regulate their memory and attention than their less-trained peers, and this ability predicts better performance under pressure. What separates peak performers isn’t just effort, but also the discipline to balance their mental load. In other words: their “thoughtload.” Consider thoughtload the invisible tax on your ability to perform. It consists of three problems that erode your effectiveness: The cognitive demands of competing priorities…

The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics may be winding down, but the memories will linger for years to come. The competition began on Wednesday, February 4, with the official opening ceremony on Friday, February 6. A little more than two weeks later, the Games will conclude with an epic closing ceremony on Sunday, February 22. So much action was packed into the event that it was a full-time job keeping up. Since a lot of people have actual full-time jobs, here’s a look back at the highlights, endearing moments, and heartbreaks of the XXV Olympic Winter Games. How can I track 2026 Winter Olympics medals? First things first. You can stay up to date with all of the …

Alysa Liu, who quit skating at 16, didn’t ‘need’ a gold medal, she told reporters in Milan—she had already found joy. The 20-year-old from California, who won the first individual Olympic gold in women’s figure skating for the U.S. after 24 years, didn’t need to be champion. She says she was just thrilled to perform. “I don’t need this [medal],” Liu said right after winning, full of joy, while cheering on her competitors. “But what I needed was the stage and I got that, so I was all good. No matter what happened.” Liu isn’t feigning enthusiasm for the cameras. You can feel it radiating from her body when watching her skate—which she did, flawlessly, when perfo…

As major employers have slashed jobs over the last year, many of them have cited artificial intelligence or automation to justify the cuts. AI was referenced in nearly 55,000 layoffs in 2025, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas—and the latest figures suggest that trend is continuing into this year alongside a record-high surge in job cuts, which crossed 108,000 in January alone. But economists and experts have repeatedly said that employment data does not indicate AI is replacing jobs en masse at the moment. And it seems even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares this skepticism over whether AI is actually responsible for the layoffs roiling the wo…

The Class of 2020 still aren’t over the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling their graduation. Apparently they never stop bringing it up, according to TikTok. Now their complaints are being used as a punchline. Being robbed? “Did you know that I didn’t get a graduation.” Slip on ice? “I didn’t have a prom, I didn’t have a homecoming.” Oh, your grandma just died? “Okay, well if you think that’s bad, I literally didn’t graduate.” While the trend has been around since Gen Z did—or didn’t—graduate in 2020, with some reminiscing on those “unprecedented” times and others crashing their siblings’ graduations in place of their own, it has recently picked up traction again…

We’re told from a young age to follow our dreams. But for Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, chasing your dreams is overrated. Instead, she recommends a different approach, especially for young people: “Chase your talents, not your dreams.” The 49-year-old, who has a $400 million-plus net worth, shared the advice in an Instagram reel this week: “I just got off the phone with a young woman who is looking for career advice,” she says in the clip, which has since racked up over 482,000 likes and thousands of comments. “She wants to switch from one job to another,” Witherspoon says, adding that the woman is currently unhappy at work. This is a predicament many …

My family had Slide Show Night when I was growing up. Not every Saturday, but a whole bunch of Saturdays. Either my sister or I would be in charge of setting up the projector, the screen, and loading the carousel. During the show, there’d be a few landscapes or skylines taken during vacations, but almost all the shots were up close. Like most dads, mine wasn’t a professional photographer, but he did a good job of capturing memory triggers: faces, gestures, and decorations. Before we were driving age, my sister and I were given our own cameras as Christmas gifts. We’d spend our own money buying and developing film. We basically documented our Gen X life: playing in th…

A federal judge has ruled that Tesla is still required to pay $243 million over a 2019 crash involving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot, despite the company’s efforts to overturn the verdict. In August 2025, a jury found Tesla liable for the death of Naibel Benavides Leon, a 22-year-old woman who was killed when George McGee, who was driving a Tesla Model S, drove through an intersection while he bent to look for his dropped phone. The crash occurred in Key Largo, Florida, in 2019. McGee’s vehicle, which was equipped with Tesla’s Autopilot technology, crashed into an SUV that was parked on the shoulder, killing Leon and injuring Dillon Angulo. “I trusted the…