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It’s been a tough few weeks for the consumer health company Kenvue, after President The President publicly spread unproven claims about Tylenol, one of its core subsidiary brands. Today, though, it seems like there might finally be some good news for Kenvue. This morning, Kimberly-Clark, the personal care corporation behind brands like Kleenex, Huggies, and Cottonelle, announced that it’s struck an agreement to acquire Kenvue (which, alongside Tylenol, also owns brands like Band-Aid, Zyrtec, and Listerine). The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2026, will proceed through a cash and stock transaction that’s set to value Kenvue at around $48.7 billi…

How do you say yes when you have no idea how to deliver? My cofounders and I built Moment Factory by saying yes to projects most people thought were impossible. Long before the technology existed, we designed interactive concerts, illuminated night walks through forests, and towering LED installations in airports. Every project started with the same challenge: Finding the path to make the impossible possible. The unknown isn’t unique to our industry. Every creative team faces it—startups launch apps no one knew they needed, architects design spaces no one had imagined, chefs invent dishes no one had tasted. At the beginning of every project, you don’t know the outcome…

One year after Donald The President retook the White House and set into motion a dramatic expansion of executive power, the Republican president figures prominently in state and local elections being held Tuesday. The results of those contests — the first general election of The President’s second term — will be heralded by the victors as either a major repudiation or resounding stamp of approval of his second-term agenda. That’s especially true in high-profile races for Virginia and New Jersey governor, New York City mayor and a California proposition to redraw its congressional district boundaries. More than half of the states will hold contests on Tuesday. Here’s a l…

In addition to voting in the highly anticipated mayoral race this November, New Yorkers will make another consequential decision this election day. They’ll also decide whether the city will begin holding elections only on even-numbered calendar years. While it may sound irrelevant, it’s an important yay or nay. The measure, as written in Ballot Proposal 6, would mean that off-year primary and general elections would begin taking place in the same year as the presidential elections. If New Yorkers voted for the proposal, it would be in line with what New York state has already been moving toward. Earlier this month, the Court of Appeals unanimously voted to uphold …

Flight delays continued at U.S. airports Sunday amid air traffic controller shortages as the government shutdown entered its second month, with Newark airport in New Jersey experiencing delays of two to three hours. New York City’s Emergency Management office said on X that Newark delays often ripple out to the region’s other airports. Travelers flying to, from or through New York “should expect schedule changes, gate holds, and missed connections. Anyone flying today should check flight status before heading to the airport and expect longer waits,” the social media post added. George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and…

President Donald The President’s administration faces deadlines on Monday to tell two federal judges whether it will comply with court orders that it continue to fund SNAP, the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown. The U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to freeze payments to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it due to the shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net — and it costs about $8 billion per month nationally. The situation leaves millions with uncertainty about how the…

The government shutdown is poised to become the longest ever this week as the impasse between Democrats and Republicans has dragged into a new month. Millions of people could lose food aid benefits, health care subsidies are set to expire and there are few real talks between the parties over how to end it. President Donald The President said in an interview aired on Sunday that he “won’t be extorted” by Democrats who are demanding negotiations to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year for millions of Americans. Echoing congressional Republicans, the president said on CBS’ “60 Minutes” he’ll negotiate only when the government is reopen…

Most people don’t realize how overstimulated they are until they finally step away from the noise. As an executive at a hospitality brand that helps guests reconnect with nature, I see it all the time: Guests arrive tense and distracted, constantly checking their phones. But after just a day or two offline in nature, something shifts. You can see it in their posture, their breath, their pace. They didn’t realize how much they needed to disconnect until they did. It’s not just about screens, though screen time is a big part of it. It’s the entire rhythm of modern life—always on, always reacting. That’s why more people are rethinking what luxury really means. Luxury…

Why are some jobs better than others? Well, it largely depends on people’s preferences. In other words, one person’s dream job may be another person’s nightmare. And yet, there are also clearly some universal or at least generalizable parameters that make most people accept the idea that some jobs are objectively better than others — or at least seen by most as generally preferable. Pay and purpose For example, jobs that pay well, offer stability, and provide opportunities for growth are almost universally considered better. A tenured professorship, a senior engineering role at a reputable company, or a stable medical position all combine financial security…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Glenn Fogel joined dot-com darling Priceline in early 2000, a year after the “name your price” travel site’s blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). “I joined one week before the Nasdaq peaked,” Fogel recalls. Within a year of his arrival, the stock had cratered to $6 a share. By March 2…

When Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, his AI-generated encyclopedia intended to rival Wikipedia, it was not just another experiment in artificial intelligence. It was a case study in everything that can go wrong when technological power, ideological bias, and unaccountable automation converge in the same hands. Grokipedia copies vast sections of Wikipedia almost verbatim, while rewriting and “reinterpreting” others to reflect Musk’s personal worldview. It could genuinely be conceived as the antithesis of everything that makes Wikipedia good, useful, and human. Grokipedia’s edits aggressively editorialize topics ranging from climate change, to immigration, to (of course…

Below, Gene Ludwig shares five key insights from his new book, The Mismeasurement of America: How Outdated Government Statistics Mask the Economic Struggle of Everyday Americans. Gene is the former Comptroller of the Currency and founder of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a nonprofit dedicated to uncovering the truths that official statistics too often obscure. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Politico, The Financial Times, and TIME. What’s the big idea? Americans keep hearing that the economy is strong. Unemployment is low. Wages are rising. Growth is steady. But for millions of…

With more than 100,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, nearly 900,000 square feet of floor space, a site that spans more than 120 acres, and a total price tag estimated to be more than $1 billion, it’s not hyperbole to call the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt, the most significant museum project in recent decades. It’s the kind of blockbuster building that would have even the starriest of starchitects salivating at the chance to lay claim to what’s likely become one of Egypt’s most visited tourist attractions. So, in hindsight, it’s a bit unexpected that the architecture firm that won the museum’s international design competition way back in 2002 …

The Customs and Border Protection agency aims to establish a framework for the “strategic use of artificial intelligence” and outline rules for ensuring safe and secure use of the tech, according to an internal document viewed by Fast Company. The directive, obtained through a public records request, spells out CBP’s internal procedures for sensitive deployments of the technology. Agency officials are banned from using AI for unlawful surveillance, according to the document, which also says that AI cannot be used as a “sole basis” for a law enforcement action, or to target or discriminate against individuals. The document includes myriad procedures for introducin…

On May 19, 2023, a photograph appeared on what was then still called Twitter showing smoke billowing from the Pentagon after an apparent explosion. The image quickly went viral. Within minutes, the S&P 500 dropped sharply, wiping out billions of dollars in market value. Then the truth emerged: the image was a fake, generated by AI. The markets recovered as quickly as they had tumbled, but the event marked an important turning point: this was the first time that the stock market had been directly affected by a deepfake. It is highly unlikely to be the last. Once a fringe curiosity, the deepfake economy has grown to become a $7.5 billion market, with some prediction…

Have you ever been to the Gamerhood? Part game show, part reality series, it recently wrapped its fourth season in August. Over five weekly episodes on Twitch and YouTube, the show pitted gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy, against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges. The third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views. In September, the show went mainstream when season four landed on Prime Video. Even before that, just on YouTube and Twitch, season four was getting about 20 million views for each episode. Not too shabby for a show created by a brand. That’s right, Gamerhood is fully owned by St…

Across the streaming world, companies have been focused on adding features that make their top-tier subscriptions more valuable to the users who consume their content. Anime streamer Crunchyroll recently added access to a library of digital manga for top-paying customers. Spotify—somewhat belatedly—has begun offering high-quality audio for its Premium subscribers. SoundCloud is taking a different approach. It operates a standard streaming platform, with 100 million licensed tracks. But SoundCloud also has an enviable base of creators—musicians, DJs, podcasters, and more—who have uploaded 300 million tracks on the service to reach fans and make money from their stream…

PepsiCo, the food and bev giant behind childhood favorites like 7UP, Mountain Dew, Lay’s, and Doritos, just got new branding, and it looks nothing like its namesake product. The new PepsiCo brand identity, which includes a fresh wordmark, logo, and tagline, is the company’s first rebrand since 2001. The company has had three different corporate identities since its inception in 1965, and all of them have taken their most prominent design cues from Pepsi, the soda brand that started it all—until now. When PepsiCo designed its last identity in 2001, it owned 13 consumer brands. Today, it owns more than 500. And, over the past several months, PepsiCo has signaled…

It looks and feels like any other luxurious cashmere sweater. But a new oversized crew from Reformation is made entirely from recycled fiber, a milestone three years in the making. The brand now makes a cardigan, crew, V-neck, and five other styles from a carefully developed blend of 95% recycled cashmere and 5% recycled wool—the unexpected material that made 100% recycled fiber feasible. Some other pieces in its lineup still use a small amount of virgin cashmere, but Reformation is aiming to eliminate it completely. “It really does have an outsized and shockingly large footprint compared to other fiber,” says Kathleen Talbot, Reformation’s chief sustainability of…

Amidst much confusion, polarization, and debate around how AI will impact work, the fact of the matter is that many people are concerned by automation and the prospect of AI job elimination. For example, the simple notion that “AI is going to take my job” is a thought that has crossed the minds of 25% of workers. For some, this may be true, although the magnitude of AI-driven job displacement is still uncertain; depending on assumptions, AI-driven job displacement could potentially range from 3% to 14%. What will the ultimate figure be? It’s hard to know: nobody has data on the future, and any projection is merely extrapolating from past data and past innovation, whic…

It’s 10 a.m. on an October morning, and I’m in the middle of a one-on-one Zoom interview when a sudden trilling sounds from behind me. I try to ignore it, but several other strange noises follow. My eyes glaze over as I commit myself to feigning complete obliviousness to my sonic surroundings. It’s easier than explaining that the noises are coming from my AI-powered pet. This awkward encounter came thanks to Moflin, a $429 AI pet built by the electronics company Casio. According to Casio’s official description, the Moflin is “a smart companion powered by AI, with emotions like a living creature.” This robot friend looks a bit like a Star Trek tribble, in that it’s an …

In what might be the most up-front leave request of the year, a Gen Z employee emailed his boss asking for 10 days off to recover from a breakup. “I recently had a breakup and haven’t been able to focus on work. I need a short break,” they wrote in an email that was recently screenshotted and posted to X. Entrepreneur and CEO Jasveer Singh shared the unusually candid request on social media, captioning it: “Got the most honest leave application yesterday. Gen Z doesn’t do filters!” (Singh just so happens to be the cofounder and CEO of Knot Dating, a dating app. Coincidence?) Whether the email was genuine or a clever PR stunt, it gained nearly 14 million views…

What’s the best way to respond when customers, former fans, or anyone else criticizes your work? Taylor Swift just provided a perfect script for what to say. It’s a great example for any entrepreneur, business leader, or creator to follow. Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, released 10 days ago, is unquestionably a commercial success. It broke streaming records on Spotify with more than five million pre-saves, as just one example. But that doesn’t mean that everyone loves it. The reaction from music critics has been lukewarm and the reaction from fans is decidedly mixed, with some saying they adore the album and others saying they can’t stand it. One brand st…

As more than 19 million U.S. college students prepare to wrap up their fall semester and begin looking ahead to securing internships and jobs next spring, it’s natural for them—and their families—to worry about the fate of the job market in the age of AI. Indeed, Anthropic’s CEO predicted this summer that within the next five years—and maybe even sooner—adoption of AI could reduce entry-level hiring in white-collar professions by 50%. The impact is already being felt: postings for early-career corporate jobs are down 15%, while applications have spiked 30%. A separate Stanford study found that AI displacement, at this point, seems to be disproportionately affecting younge…

Moving into a new leadership role is a big moment. But in today’s rapidly shifting environment—where change moves faster than ever—you don’t have the luxury of slowly assessing your team and making gradual adjustments. The pace of technology and AI, hybrid work, low employee engagement, evolving strategies, and shifting workforce dynamics demand that you assess your team quickly and confidently. Gone are the days of “observe and wait.” You’re expected to deliver results fast, and your team needs to be plug-and-play—and that means quickly understanding who on your team is ready to move with you, who might need support, and where changes might be necessary. Here are…