• When Shruti Mangawa tried applying for jobs after taking a career break, she was often ghosted.
• She felt guilt about being unemployed, particularly when people said she was "just a housewife."
• Returning to work after her break taught Mangawa how to view success differently.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with 35-year-old Shruti Mangawa from New Mexico. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I grew up and studied in India. In 2018, I joined Hindustan Unilever, a subsidiary of Unilever, where I became an area sales and customer manager.

In 2021, I took a sabbatical due to a spinal injury. I came to the USA, where my husband worked, to spend some time with him and recover.

But after a few months in America, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, so I couldn't go back to work. My company extended my sabbatical, but my health got worse.

I knew I couldn't go back to India or my job. I spent most of the following two to three years in treatment and recovery.

When I started looking for work again in the US in 2024, I had a hunch that the huge gap in my résumé was preventing me from finding a job.

I've struggled with guilt about being unemployed because I tied my identity to my job. It's taken me a while to embrace my career break and adopt a different view of success.

I struggled to find employment in the US after my recovery

My role at Unilever was my dream job. I was in a leadership role managing a team.

I was used to being financially independent and I tied my identity to my job. I saw the shine of pride in my parents' eyes about what I had achieved. In our family circle, people younger than me looked up to me as an inspiration.

Then it all went away.

My diagnosis turned my entire world upside down. The cancer was pretty aggressive and had a big toll on my body. Thankfully, I had financial support from my husband and family.

I was more worried about my professional life than my recovery. I was conscious that any time spent in recovery was increasing the gap in my work experience.

When my doctor said I was cancer-free, I thought I'd be able to pick up my career from where I left off. It didn't happen that way. My energy levels weren't the same, and I didn't feel as motivated as I was in my 20s.

I felt guilty and like I was worthless because I wasn't working

When I was cancer-free but still dealing with long-term side effects, people would ask me what I did for a living, and it made me feel empty inside. Some acquaintances said: "Oh, so you're just a housewife, then?" I don't know if their intentions were bad, but I felt guilty. My parents spent so much on my education, but now I was sitting at home.

Being a housewife isn't a bad thing. My mom was a homemaker. But in my generation, everyone's used to working. I felt like if I wasn't, I was worthless.

When I tried to re-enter the workforce in 2024, people advised me to figure out a way to cover my gap by doing some freelancing or not putting it on my LinkedIn. We may preach that it's OK to take a break and not attach our image to job titles, but people do.

I applied for marketing roles and any jobs where I thought I had transferable skills, but I'd get ghosted or rejected even before the interview stage. I felt like I didn't even get a chance to explain my story.

Once, a recruiter told me that because I had a big career gap and all my prior work experience was based in India, I might need to lower my expectations for the roles I was going for.

I'm focusing on building a personal brand and have changed the way I think about success

Since I was so drained physically and mentally, I forgot what I used to be able to handle professionally. I started to feel that nobody would hire me, and this was my future.

Thankfully, my husband snapped me out of my negative thought patterns.

Around October 2024, I decided that instead of waiting for opportunities, I'd create my own. I thought by developing a personal brand, I'd stand a better chance in the job market. With such a big career gap in a rough market, I needed to find a way to stand out.

I stopped applying for jobs and focused on my writing — posting essays on Medium and producing a newsletter. Getting positive feedback from readers gave me more confidence.

I've decided to focus on brand-building for at least a year and a half while I figure out how I want to transition my career.

Though people have advised me to hide my career gap, I've decided to be more open about it, disclosing it on my LinkedIn.

Embrace detours in working life

In life, you'll have to take detours. I know people who've been laid off or who've had their life disrupted for other reasons. I'm in my 30s and have had to restart my career. Things aren't always linear.

I no longer think success is just about your career and money but also about other parts of life. If my husband says, "I'm lucky to have a wife like you" — even that is success to me now.

Now, when challenges come, I don't just panic. I ask: "What is this here to teach me?" That mindset shift is what I consider my biggest success.

Do you have a story to share about your career break or sabbatical? Contact this reporter at [email protected]

• A Redwood Materials executive sees rising EV demand.
• Concerns about an EV adoption slowdown are overblown, said Redwood's Chief Commercial Officer.
• US EV sales grew 11% year-over-year in Q1 2025, with legacy brands like Porsche seeing major gains.

I recently visited Redwood Materials, a company that's deeply entrenched in the electric vehicle industry.

This startup has agreements worth billions of dollars with major automakers and EV battery manufacturers, including VW, Toyota, GM, and Panasonic. So when I sat down with Redwood Chief Commercial Officer Cal Lankton, I asked for his outlook on EV sales.

Elon Musk's DOGE activities have dented the allure of Tesla vehicles, and there are nagging questions over EV demand and whether the auto industry is all in on this technology — or not.

Lankton, though, was unequivocal during our interview:

"We've been very fortunate to have a strong set of partners — to be very tied into their demand plans and how they see the market evolving — and we have not seen softening," he said.

"In fact, EV demand is continuing to increase. 2024 was the largest year of EV shipments on record in North America, and I think 2025 will be even larger," Lankton added.

Concerns about a potential slowdown in EV adoption have been overblown and driven by "some in OEMs in particular," Lankton explained, without naming names. OEM refers to "original equipment manufacturer," or companies that design and make their own cars.

"But the consumer is looking at EVs as compelling options," he said. "OEMs in North America are offering more and more compelling options and we feel very bullish about the long-term growth of electric vehicles."

It's fair to take Lankton's view with a pinch of salt. Redwood Materials is relying on EV demand staying strong to support its ambitious business plans.

However, the data also supports his view. According to Cox Automotive's Q1 2025 report, the US EV market continues to grow. And while certain brands have lost ground, others are leaning into long-term demand with confidence.

In the first quarter, almost 300,00 EVs were sold in the US, up 11% from a year earlier, Cox estimated.

While Tesla saw a decline, legacy auto brands such as Chevrolet, VW, Toyota, and Honda saw massive growth, year over year. Porsche was a real standout. It sold more than 4,000 EVs in Q1, up 250% from a year earlier. Taycans aren't cheap either!

"Despite many obstacles — and what you may read elsewhere — electric-vehicle sales continue to grow at a healthy pace in the US," Cox wrote in its latest report.

• Many leaders still face uncertainty even after the White House paused some tariffs.
• The 90-day respite offers some relief yet still makes it hard for some CEOs to know how to proceed.
• One startup CEO told BI that he has to keep closer tabs on what the government is doing.

When you're a CEO with big decisions to make, 90 days can feel like an eternity.

Some leaders' relief about President Donald Trump's decision to ease up on some tariffs for three months has quickly given way to more questions.

One of the biggies: What's next?

For many CEOs, the immediate answer is more uncertainty.

The lack of clarity — and the relatively limited 90-day tariff pause that omits China — means that many corporate chiefs who are accustomed to the slow churn of government rather than more rapid-fire policymaking are likely to find it hard to settle on any big decisions.

"It is the uncertainty and the unpredictability that paralyzes decision-making," Joe Galvin, chief research officer at the executive-coaching firm Vistage, told Business Insider.

Chat Joglekar, cofounder and CEO of the startup Baton, told BI that the 90-day pause offers some relief yet doesn't make clear whether there will be changes between now and then, or what comes after that.

"What happens on day 91?" he said.

Watching the government

Other leaders appear unsure as well. Delta and Walmart pointed to that this week. Delta said economic uncertainty around global trade was hurting its business, and Walmart's CFO said the retailer is facing "day-to-day" volatility in sales.

Joglekar said that until recently, he'd never had to run his New York City company — a marketplace for buying and selling small businesses — while keeping news sites open on his computer. He said the volleys over tariffs have become something of a distraction.

"You shouldn't need to be watching a ticker for what the government is doing every single minute of the day," Joglekar said.

Financial markets tumbled anew Thursday after the White House clarified that tariffs on China are now 145%.

The level of "absolute chaos" and uncertainty — and what appears to be mercurial policymaking to critics — is likely to drive some investors and companies away from the US to areas where the view of what's ahead is less opaque and where trade barriers are lower, said Sebastien Breteau, founder and CEO of QIMA, a UK supply-chain services company that works with some 30,000 global and regional brands.

"Trump wanted 'America first.' A lot of people say it will be 'America alone.' I think it will be 'America shrunk,'" he told BI.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment from BI. Administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have said the partial tariff pause reflects the president's negotiating strategy.

Galvin, from Vistage, said that in a March survey by the company, confidence among small-business CEOs fell by "a historic" 22.1 points in the first quarter. That followed a surge in CEO sentiment in the final three months of 2024, which included Trump's reelection.

'A defensive posture'

Galvin said that in the "rising tide" decade of 2010 to 2020 — until the pandemic arrived — CEOs could make decisions with a reasonable degree of certainty, in part because major shifts in government policy often didn't occur in a matter of hours. Now, that's not necessarily the case, he said.

Galvin said that while tariffs are a challenge, the main problems are uncertainty and unpredictability. That makes it hard for CEOs to make commitments, he said.

"They have to take a defensive posture," Galvin said. He said the not-knowing will likely push some CEOs to take steps such as hoarding cash, postponing investments, and slowing hiring.

Galvin said that uncertainty over what decisions might emerge from the White House without warning also makes it hard for company heads to plan.

"What's making people crazy is the Mr. Miyagi approach of 'tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs on, tariffs off,'" Galvin said, referring to the fictional character from "The Karate Kid" franchise.

Worries about the prospects for the US economy could lead some CEOs to cut workers. While 45% of leaders said in the Vistage survey they planned to add employees in the next 12 months, 14% said they plan to cut. Since the survey's inception in 2003, the only other times the share of chiefs planning cutbacks was that high was during the pandemic and the financial crisis in 2009.

The survey, which involved nearly 1,800 business leaders in the US, took place during the first two weeks of March.

The China factor

The tariffs on imports from China remain a major question mark for Haas Automation, which builds machine tools used in manufacturing. The Oxnard, California, company said Tuesday it had halted hiring because it had seen a "dramatic decrease" in demand from its US and foreign customers.

A spokesperson told BI on Thursday that Haas, which employs about 1,700 workers, plans to maintain its freeze. That's because the company still faces a tariff on components it can only source from China.

The spokesperson said that pausing hiring is better than laying people off and that Haas's situation isn't "all doom and gloom."

Typically, the company posts about a dozen openings a month because of worker turnover. The spokesperson said Haas plans to maintain the hiring freeze until the US and China can reach some agreement concerning trade.

"Our competitiveness against foreign products is going to suffer until this thing is worked out," the spokesperson said.

Breteau, the QIMA CEO, said that not having a better handle on what will happen next means that some corporate chiefs will likely hold off on some decision-making — even with the 90-day pause.

"It looks like a timeout in a game that never ends," he said.

• UGG is the number one fashion trend among upper-income females in 2025, a survey said.
• Stanley Cups and other recently hot brands are waning in popularity, according to Piper Sandler.
• Nike is still the most popular clothing brand for teens, though its mindshare dropped for females.

Teenage girls seem to be having a retro moment.

Some big brands, including Nike and Sephora, maintained their popularity with teens, according to Piper Sandler's semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey, published on April 9.

Yet Hollister and UGG, which were staple brands among millennial and elder Gen Z teens over a decade ago, are rising in popularity again with Gen Alpha and young Gen Zers in 2025, the Piper Sandler report said. The investment bank got input from 6,455 teens with an average age of 16.2 years.

Hollister, for example, became known for its "dead" locations that were transformed into aquariums or other businesses just a few years ago. Now, it's the No. 1 apparel brand for female teens, disrupting Nike's dominance.

UGG grew the most since Piper Sandler's last survey in fall 2024, edging out Lululemon and its popular leggings for the top trend among upper-income female teens.

The teens surveyed are spending about $2,388 annually on their favorite brands, the bank said, up 6%, year-over-year from 2024. It's mostly on clothes and food, with personal care and video games tying for third place for average-income teens.

Despite maintaining its number one ranking in footwear for all teens, mindshare for Nike dipped below 40% for female consumers, the lowest since 2020, the survey said. On Running, a Nike competitor, gained share in the footwear category, but Hey Dude shoes slipped out of the top 10 for the first time since fall 2023.

Victoria's Secret is continuing to climb out of its slump, with female teens ranking it as one of the top places to shop for fragrances.

Stanley Cups and Crocs were all the rage a few years ago, but upper-income female teens told Piper Sandler that they're "on the way out" in 2025. Both skinny jeans and baggy pants made the top of the "out" list, so it's unclear what teenagers consider the correct fit for pants.

Sephora remained the favorite beauty shopping destination for teens. However, e.l.f., the top cosmetics brand this season, isn't sold by the retailer. They can go to Ulta, the runner-up, for that.

• I convinced my company to send me to Ukraine to cover the war.
• Getting the approval demanded months of planning. It also required me to sell it to management.
• This is how I got my boss to take a chance on me.

Do you want your boss to give you a shot at something big? I can tell you what worked for me when I asked Business Insider to send me to a country at war.

I'm a defense reporter, and I spent a little over a week on the ground in Ukraine last month, reporting extensively on the country's military, the booming defense industry, and its hard fight against Russia.

Getting there wasn't easy. It required months of planning, security reviews, safety considerations, logistics, and hiring the right people to help get the job done.

Before that, though, it required convincing my new boss to send me on this risky, costly, and logistically complicated trip. The lessons from my approach can apply to anyone looking to win management's approval for an ambitious idea.

Laying the groundwork to sell a big idea

I had expressed interest in covering the war on the ground in Ukraine early on in the conflict and brought it up regularly, but it wasn't until June 2024 that my supervisor and I began discussing the idea seriously. Up until that point, it had felt like a pipe dream.

What opened that first door? My editor later told me it was my hustle and record of strong work.

That conversation followed a promotion that came with an expectation for more ambitious projects. It also followed roughly two and a half years of near-daily Ukraine war coverage and key source development. It also came after an embed opportunity with the Navy on the front lines of the Red Sea conflict.

I had long been passionate about going to Ukraine, wanting to deepen my reporting on the war. However, if the company was going to send me there, I had to show growth and experience and that I had a reliable support network to do the work expected.

Doing that changed the conversation. That was just a first step, though.

Next, I needed to make a plan, and then, I needed to sell the idea to our company's top decision-makers. The most important thing was not why the trip mattered to me but making sure leadership saw the value in doing this, despite the risks and the cost.

I refined a pitch in collaboration with my editors to include reader interest data, relevance to the BI brand, how we would pull this trip off, and dollar figures. It was a monthslong process putting that together.

Pitching to the top boss

In November, our new editor in chief asked me to meet her in Manhattan.

It was our first-ever meeting since she joined our company in late September. She wanted to learn more about me and get a better sense of why I wanted to go to Ukraine so badly, so she asked me to fly down from Boston, where I'm based, for a day trip and a lunch meeting.

I was nervous. This was my one shot, and I had to make it count. Our new top editor, an industry veteran, had only been at the helm of our newsroom for a few weeks. I was coming to her as a stranger, only a few years out of college, with a big request.

I really wanted to make a good first impression, so I dressed up nicer than I would for my routine visits to the NYC office — collared shirt, khakis, dress shoes. At lunch, I wasn't terribly hungry, but I forced myself to eat my fish so it wouldn't be awkward. All I could think about was rehearsing my pitch over and over again in my head.

She asked me why BI needed to put someone on the ground. I explained the conflict's significance and why it was worth it for our long-term coverage.

Here's where she was during that meeting:

"When a reporter shows drive and curiosity and is willing to take a risk and wants to, I want to hear it out," Jamie Heller, BI's editor in chief, told me later while reflecting on the lunch.

She wanted to understand what I hoped to accomplish in Ukraine and why I felt it was so important to my reporting. But she also needed to know that I was capable of evaluating risk when I was there and could make smart decisions about my personal safety. This is something that came up repeatedly as a priority.

"I was betting on the coverage but also betting on the person," she said. "I needed to have confidence that you not only had a vision for the coverage but could handle a trip like this with wisdom and judgment, which you did."

By the end of the lunch, she seemed persuaded.

Overcoming more hurdles

Later in November, we hit a significant roadblock when it looked like the insurance costs to send me to Ukraine would be too high. It looked like the trip was not going to happen, but BI said it would take another look once we got a new director of newsroom operations.

Work went on, and I tried to keep from getting my hopes up. Then, we got a breakthrough in January, and I was told the trip had finally been given the green light. I'll never forget when my editor called me to share the news that I genuinely didn't believe I'd ever receive.

It was a blur getting things together.

There was the accreditation, coordinating with fixers, booking flights and trains, hostile environment training, a bunch of unanswered questions, and my regular reporting job to tackle in a very short time.

Then, in the eleventh hour, just weeks before I was supposed to leave for Ukraine, I was pulled into a room at our New York office where I had to discuss with Heller how our coverage might change even if the fighting stopped or the conflict ended abruptly. I still believed it was important for the trip to proceed, and I calmly made my case.

They told me all systems were a go.

On the night of March 3, I crossed the border from Poland into Ukraine by train. I couldn't believe it. The trip finally felt real — the accumulation of months of work.

"You're there, man," my editor said to me on Slack. "Been a long road."

The trip has already produced more than a dozen stories, with more still to come.

I went to management with a big ask, and it was many months before I finally got approval. The process involved months of hard work, thorough research, intricate planning, and anxiety-inducing waits for answers. I learned patience. These things take time.

With a big ask, ambition is great. What matters most, though, is having the track record and homework done so you can answer when asked why you want it so much — and why your company should bet big on it.

Jake Epstein is a senior defense reporter at Business Insider.

• Laura Gassner Otting, an executive coach, advises taking control of work aspects you can manage.
• If you're motivated to find a new job but don't know if it's the right time, assess your stress.
• It could be the right time if you get the Sunday Scaries or have had a change in life circumstances.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Laura Gassner Otting, a career expert and executive coach in Boston. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a career expert, executive coach, and the author of three books about career satisfaction and workforce engagement.

In the current economy, with looming fears of layoffs, workers are favoring stability over upward mobility. Rather than seeking greener pastures elsewhere, they want to improve their current working environment.

When it feels like layoffs are lurking around every corner, it's easy to think the best thing you can do is keep your head down and hope no one notices you.

The truth is, now is the time to step up — not step back — and take ownership of the parts of your work you can control.

I started my career at one of the best search firms in the country

I worked at Isaacson Miller for five years. One day, I realized I could do this work better and faster, with more profit for us and less cost for our clients. My boss didn't agree, so I quit.

In 2002, I founded Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, a global executive search firm, and started calling highly successful people to recruit them. We found them by calling industry leaders across fields and asking for recommendations for shining stars. The recruits called us back because they were successful but weren't happy in their roles.

In my experience, everyone always wonders if there is something better out there. Recruiting firms would've gone out of business long ago if this weren't the case.

I sold that search firm to the team of women who helped me build it in 2016.

Money is not the only consideration for people wanting a new job

Many people think the top consideration for jumping ship is money, but in my more than two decades of experience, I've found that's not the case.

In recruiting, we say there are about eight motivating factors that will inspire anyone, anywhere, at any time to consider taking a new job:

• Money
• Mission
• Leadership
• Challenge
• Scope of impact
• Acquisition of new skills
• Prestige
• Personal needs

In research I spearheaded through Limitless Assessment, with more than 7,000 responses from people in 74 countries, only 36.7% said that money is the most important factor in determining their happiness at work.

If you're motivated to find a new job based on one or more of those eight factors but are unsure if it's the right time, there are indicators that you need to make a move now.

Here are the top reasons people should leave a job for a new opportunity

1. You're exhausted at the end of every day

If your boss, colleagues, or clients are draining you of energy, it's a good sign that they aren't bringing out the best version of you but the one constantly feeling stressed and defensive. If that's the case, odds are that you aren't doing your best work, and your career will eventually stagnate.

2. You have the Sunday Scaries every single week

Our research found that almost all of us want work to be part of what inspires us to get out of bed every morning. If you start to get depressed on Sunday evenings, that's not happening for you.

3. You're making your need-to-make number but not even approaching a plan to get to your want-to-make number

Your need-to-make number is what it costs, at minimum, to afford the life that you have now, while your want-to-make number includes going out for meals, taking a vacation, and other expenses.

4. There's greater potential available for you beyond your current role

Feeling boxed into narrow responsibilities can be frustrating. One client of mine stepped in for a last-minute presentation to her Fortune 100 company board and discovered she loved being onstage. Realizing she wanted a public-facing leadership role, she left her current company when it couldn't offer one, joining a competitor where she could pursue her ambitions.

5. There's a shift in your life circumstances

A startup founder who once thrived on long hours and intense work had a change in priorities after the birth of his daughter. Wanting to be more present at home, he sought a job with better work-life balance and financial stability.

6. You feel unseen in your current role

Another client felt her contributions were undervalued and overshadowed by a louder colleague. When her boss didn't address the imbalance, she left for a new job where the recruitment process and a significant pay increase made her feel more appreciated and valued.

Don't let other people decide what success is for you

The most common mistake I see in my line of work is people judging their current definition of success by the outdated definitions handed to them by other people. While they may be filling in all the checkboxes, they still feel empty.

You can't be insatiably hungry for someone else's goals, so you will never work hard enough for the achievement that belongs to someone else's success. This always leads to boredom, disengagement, and career stagnation.

The myopic, one-size-fits-all, fastest, and most expedient path to the corner office is the old definition of success, but today, there are innumerable ways to work that align with who we want to be, not just what we've been told we have to be.

• Retraining GPT-4 would now take as few as five people, thanks to big advances.
• GPT-4.5, launched in February, was OpenAI's most powerful model yet, the company said.
• Its breakthroughs would make rebuilding GPT-4 much easier.

Building GPT-4 took a lot of manpower. Now, OpenAI says it could rebuild GPT-4 with as few as five people, all because of what it learned from its latest model, GPT-4.5.

In a company podcast episode published Friday, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, asked a question to three key engineers behind GPT-4.5: What's the smallest OpenAI team that could retrain GPT-4 from scratch today?

Altman said building GPT-4 took "hundreds of people, almost all of OpenAI's effort" — but things get much easier once a model is no longer at the frontier.

Alex Paino, who led pre-training machine learning for GPT-4.5, said retraining GPT-4 now would "probably" take just five to 10 people.

"We trained GPT-4o, which was a GPT-4-caliber model that we retrained using a lot of the same stuff coming out of the GPT-4.5 research program," Paino said. "Doing that run itself actually took a much smaller number of people."

Daniel Selsam, a researcher at OpenAI working on data efficiency and algorithms, agreed that rebuilding GPT-4 would now be far easier.

"Just finding out someone else did something — it becomes immensely easier," he said. "I feel like just the fact that something is possible is a huge cheat code."

In February, OpenAI released GPT-4.5, saying it was the company's largest and most powerful model to date.

Altman described it in a post on X as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person."

Paino said GPT-4.5 is designed to be "10x smarter" than GPT-4, which was released in March 2023.

"We're scaling 10x beyond what we did before with these GPT pre-training runs," Paino said.

"No longer compute-constrained"

Altman also said OpenAI is no longer "compute-constrained" on the best models it can produce — a shift he thinks the world hasn't really understood yet.

For many AI companies, the biggest hurdle to building better models is simply having enough computing power.

"It is a crazy update," Altman said. "For so long, we lived in a world where compute was always the limiting factor," he added.

Big Tech has been pouring billions into AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are expected to spend a collective $320 billion in capital expenditures this year to broaden their AI capabilities.

OpenAI announced in March that it had closed the largest private tech funding round on record, including $30 billion from SoftBank and $10 billion from other investors, bringing the company's valuation to $300 billion.

The fresh capital will help OpenAI scale its computing power even further, the company said in a statement at the time.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on an earnings call in February that demand for AI compute will only grow.

"Reasoning models can consume 100x more compute. Future reasoning can consume much more compute," Huang said on the call.

As for what's needed to hit the next 10x or 100x jump in scale, Selsam, the OpenAI researcher, said it's data efficiency.

The GPT models are very efficient at processing information, but there's a "ceiling to how deep of an insight it can gain from the data," he said.

"At some point, as the compute keeps growing and growing, the data grows much less quickly," he said, adding that "the data becomes the bottleneck."

Pushing beyond that, he said, will require "some algorithmic innovations" to squeeze more value from the same amount of data.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook has navigated Trump's China tariffs before.
• Can he do it again? This time around, Trump is even more aggressive about punishing China — which Cook depends on to make his iPhones.
• One thing in Cook's favor: Apple is so big that the ripple effects from its tariff troubles could affect lots of people.

The tariffs are paused, except the ones that aren't. Which includes a whopping 145% for products shipped from China.

What does that mean for Apple?

Yes, lots of giant tech companies have deep ties to China, from Amazon to Meta to Tesla. But Apple is fully enmeshed in China, where it has spent years building up the supply chain for its iPhones, which are the company's core business.

If those tariffs stay in place, it could jack up the price of an iPhone by hundreds of dollars. Maybe more.

So now what?

Spoiler: No one seems to know. (An Apple rep declined to comment; I haven't heard back from the White House.) But if you're an Apple optimist, you are probably wishing for one, or both, of these plans.

Plan one: Tim Apple to the rescue.

After Trump's first election in 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook basically wrote the playbook for business leaders hoping to stay afloat in Trumpland. He frequently engaged with Trump privately, never criticized him publicly, and was willing to play along when Trump wanted to use Apple as a symbol of Big American Companies That Are Coming Back to America.

That included keeping mum when the president falsely claimed that Apple had opened a MacBook plant in Texas during Trump's reign (the plant had opened years before, during the Obama administration).

And that work paid off when Apple got exemptions from the China tariffs Trump enacted during his first term.

Now Apple bulls are hopeful Cook will find a way to wriggle out again. They're especially buoyed by Trump's comments on Wednesday suggesting he will give certain companies some kind of tariff relief.

"Some companies, through no fault of their own, they happen to be in an industry that is more affected by these things than others," Trump said. "You have to be able to show a little flexibility, and I'm able to do that."

On the one hand, it would seem much harder for Trump to give Apple a pass this time around, since his administration has consistently talked about getting Apple to build iPhones in the US. Exempting Apple from some or all of his tariffs makes that even less likely.

On the other hand, Trump is consistently inconsistent. For instance, while it is engaging with China in a trade war and talking about the need for the US to stay ahead of China in the AI arms race, Trump's administration has reportedly given Nvidia its blessing to sell its top-of-the-line chips to China. Prior to that, Trump was reportedly set to halt those sales.

Plan two: The short-term end-run

Maybe Cook convinces Trump to give Apple a pass, or a partial pass. But in the meantime, Cook has been trying to give himself as much flexibility as possible, by reportedly shipping planeloads of iPhones — perhaps as many as 1.5 million units — from China and India to the US in advance of new tariffs. That would give him the ability to keep selling the current versions of iPhones at the same price, at the same profit margin, at least for a while.

But then what? Apple usually unveils, and starts shipping, new iPhone models in the fall. It's almost impossible to imagine those getting made anywhere but China, no matter how hard Apple scrambles to find extra production capacity in lower tariff countries like Vietnam or India. And those 1.5 million older model phones won't satisfy demand for a company that sells a reported 220 million phones a year around the world.

And … that's kind of it, as far as options go. Note that there's no real consideration of Apple building up a brand new supply chain infrastructure that's fully separate from China — certainly not in the short to mid-term.

Meanwhile, even if you don't own an iPhone and/or never plan on buying a new one again, Apple's iPhone dilemma is probably still your dilemma. Even if you don't own Apple stock directly, you are almost certainly exposed to it, because the $3 trillion company makes up a giant slice makes up a giant slice of the major stock indexes.

As journalist Patrick McGee notes: "If your retirement is invested in index funds, Apple is your single biggest investment."

The fact that Apple's stock price only dropped by 4% on Thursday — compared to 7% drops for Meta and Tesla, and 5% for Amazon and Nvidia — suggests that investors feel reasonably confident that Tim Cook can navigate this one. Maybe they're right. Then again, these are the same investors who were surprised by Trump's tariff rollout last week. I wouldn't feel confident about any of these outcomes.

• John Coogan and Jordi Hays's livestreamed daily talk show "TBPN" has gained rapid popularity.
• The show features startup founders and venture capitalists in 15-minute interviews.
• VCs like Keith Rabois, Alexis Ohanian, and Plaid CEO Zach Perret have appeared on the show.

Entrepreneurs John Coogan and Jordi Hays appeared in a YouTube video last October in rumpled T-shirts. For an hour, they riffed on the week's tech news and launched their talk show, "Technology Brothers," with an unapologetic swagger.

Coogan, who cofounded the once-hyped meal replacement startup Soylent, and Hays, the cofounder of a fundraising startup, have since ditched the tech bro T-shirts for crisp suits, big personalities, and even bigger hair. Their daily show, now rebranded as "TBPN," short for the "Technology Business Programming Network," has evolved into a sports talk show-like livestream where tech founders and investors call in for 15-minute interview slots.

"The name 'tech bros' had been a slur, right?" Hays told Business Insider. "We wanted to reclaim that word in a fun way by saying, 'No, we're not tech bros — we're technology brothers.'"

So far, the show's guest list has included star venture capitalists like Keith Rabois, Trae Stephens, and Garry Tan, as well as Plaid CEO Zach Perret and Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen. In just a few months, "TBPN" has amassed a few thousand YouTube subscribers while publishing daily on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Its X account has nearly 40,000 followers.

The duo's calculated charisma has sparked a social storm because of its redux of the podcast, a played-out format in tech and venture capital. Many main character-coded investors and tech luminaries have podcasts of their own — from Harry Stebbings' "The Twenty Minute VC" to the "All-In Podcast," where Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg hold court online.

Fans of the show are also driving "TBPN"'s fame: "None of the men posting these have the courage to call @johncoogan and @jordihays hot outright," Erika Bricky, who works at a fintech startup, wrote on X. "Which is actually what we've been missing in tech pod hosts."

Not just another tech podcast

Coogan has "never really had a real full time job," he said, but has built a roster of companies. In 2013, Coogan cofounded Soylent, which quickly amassed a cult following. After Soylent, he cofounded Lucy, which makes nicotine gum and pouches. He's also an entrepreneur in residence at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.

"TBPN" isn't Coogan's first time running a tech media playbook. He skims The Wall Street Journal in print while lounging in his gym's sauna every morning and channeled that ritual into content during the pandemic with a news-driven YouTube channel that has nearly half a million subscribers.

In college, Hays built a YouTube ad network to help podcasts monetize. He then started fintech company Party Round, later renamed Capital, which helped startup founders raise money. Capital was acquired by the business banking platform Rho in 2023. Hays also angel invests in early-stage startups and advises others, like Coogan's Lucy.

The pair decided to take their idea for a founder-friendly talk show more seriously late last year. "We were joking that technology needs a podcast," Coogan said. "Because, obviously, there's a ton."

Two months after their first episode in October 2024, Coogan and Hays were uploading three episodes a week.

In January, they began featuring guests and moved to broadcasting every weekday. Episodes are shot live, and interviews with founders are unedited. On a good day, like last week's defense tech-focused show, "TBPN" interviews 10 people, though usually they average four to six guests. Coogan and Hays also react to articles of interest, like an Economist story on defense tech's rise in Silicon Valley.

"TBPN" has not raised any money from venture investors and doesn't plan to, Coogan said. The company relies on advertising revenue from sponsors like fintech company Ramp and bed cooling system startup Eight Sleep.

The show currently runs lean, with a small crew of editors and three full-time staffers who handle production. Coogan said that, in a bid to level up its content, "TBPN" is close to signing a lease on a Hollywood soundstage.

'Digitally-native news anchors'

Perhaps "TBPN" has gained appeal because Coogan and Hays are both investors and operators, David Zagaynov, cofounder and CEO of Poseidon Aerospace, wrote to BI in an email. He appeared on "TBPN" on April 1, the day after his company launched out of stealth.

Although "TBPN" is relatively new to the tech podcast scene, a guest appearance has become a signal to some in the startup ecosystem: "I now only respond to VC cold emails/DMs if they've been on @tbpn," Cy Sack, head of business systems at Anduril, wrote on X. "Serious alpha," Seven Seven Six investor Alexis Ohanian, who has been on the show, responded.

Coogan and Hays don't pretend to be journalists. They think of themselves as "digitally-native news anchors," Hays said.

They aren't venture capitalists either (though they do occasionally angel invest). While some of their tech brethren have raised funds off their podcast momentum (Stebbings, for example, started 20VC's fund in 2020 after his podcast took off), the pair has different intentions.

"We want to do what we're doing now for decades," Hays said. "We're not doing this so that in a year we can raise a fund."

• Former executives from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 are in senior positions across the industry.
• The leading firms have become a pool of talent for smaller rivals to poach from.
• Managers such as Walleye, Capula, Fortress, Jain Global, and more have hired alums of the biggest funds.

As Dmitry Balyasny thought about the next stage of his eponymous firm's evolution and the leaders to shepherd it, he wanted someone who had been there before.

Balyasny hired Millennium's one-time chief financial officer, Kevin Byrne, as its chief operating officer last summer. This move brought on one of the few people who can say they know what it's like to work in the C-suite of a large multistrategy firm. Byrne had been among the leadership of Izzy Englander's firm when it was roughly the size of $23 billion Balyasny today.

For those in charge of smaller multistrategy funds, the place to find the talent to take you to the next level is obvious: the three biggest firms in the sector, Englander's Millennium, Ken Griffin's Citadel, and Steve Cohen's Point72.

The three firms, which manage more than $180 billion combined and employ more than 10,000 people, have become the recruiting grounds for firms in need of experienced executives in the same way that Julian Robertson's Tiger Management was once the launching pad for aspiring fund founders.

It's another example of the institutional qualities of the top tier of the $4.5 trillion industry. Decades ago — when a hedge fund would have felt crowded with more than 100 people on staff — banks, consulting firms, law firms, and accounting giants served as feeders for hedge funds looking to fill out their executive ranks.

No one could say they knew what it takes to run a multistrategy firm with tens of billions in capital because it had never been done. Now that's changed, and those involved with the day-to-day management of the biggest firms in the industry have become hot commodities for those hoping to break into the top tier.

"When you sit in those circles, when you sit on those committees, you learn about how to run this kind of business," said John Pierson, an industry recruiter who founded P2 Investments.

"They want that DNA, that top .0001% DNA, from the top shops," he said, referring to the biggest multistrategy firms.

The names

The firms tapping into this talent include upstart platforms like Walleye, new launches like Jain Global, and established managers hoping to carve out their own spot in the multistrategy sector like Capula. And for those who leave Millennium, Citadel, and Point72, it's often for jobs and titles that give them more responsibility and runway, Pierson said.

"It's all about control and creation," he said.

While many of these roles are filled by people who made their name in the industry because of their investing chops — and a select few do still trade a book — the real value from these individuals comes from their managerial or business-building abilities.

And titles can be deceiving. Chief investment officers and strategy heads at most platforms do not run a portfolio themselves, but instead manage, recruit, and train legions of investors beneath them.

Below is a rundown of some names and roles that fit the bill. The story continues below the table. Those with an asterisk next to their name have worked at several different firms, often other multistrategy hedge funds, since leaving one of the three big platforms.

These three managers have also been the place where many founders of new multistrategy firms — which require more boardroom tact than market savviness from their leaders — have been groomed. Millennium spawned the industry's two biggest platform launches: Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint and Bobby Jain's Jain Global.

Englander's former executives have also started two of Asia's biggest multistrategy launches: Jonathan Xiong's Singapore-based Arrowpoint Investment Partners and Kurt Baker's Hong Kong-based 30th Century Partners.

Equity-focused multimanager funds from Citadel alumni have vaccumed up billions in capital. Managers include Holocene Advisors, founded by Brandon Haley; Candlestick Capital, founded by Jack Woodruff; Woodline Partners, cofounded by Michael Rockefeller and Karl Kroeker; Cinctive Capital, cofounded by Richard Schimel and Larry Sapanski; and, most recently, Freestone Grove Partners, founded by Todd Barker. Additionally, Dymon Asia cofounder Danny Yong was once Citadel's top Asia executive before starting his own firm.

Two former executives from Cohen's umbrella, Doug Haynes and Tom Conheeney, have each tried to launch their own multi-strategies offering, but both were ultimately unable to get them off the ground. Still, Point72 executive Angus Wai launched Asia-based Polymer Capital in 2019.

Balyasny as a case study

There's a road map for founders tapping talent from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 in the hopes of spurring their next wave of growth: Balyasny.

While it hasn't always been smooth, the Chicago-based fund has expanded significantly in recent years. At the end of a tough 2018 that resulted in dozens of layoffs, the manager had $6 billion in assets. It now runs $23 billion and has expanded into asset classes like commodities and geographies like Denmark and Dubai.

While Balyasny and his cofounders Taylor O'Malley and Scott Schroeder still lead the firm, with Balyasny himself recently taking on more control over the fund's stockpickers, the firm's executive ranks are littered with alums of its three larger rivals, including the aforementioned Byrne. In fact, the firm's past poaching of Citadel talent — which also included Runnfeldt and Giannini — sparked a mini turf war between Griffin and Balyasny years ago.

Current Balyasny executives from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 include:

• Alex Lurye, former chief risk officer for Citadel, who now sits in the same seat at Balyasny
• Steve Goldberg, one-time senior portfolio manager at Citadel, who coheads the fixed-income and macro investing teams at Balyasny
• Francine Fang, once the deputy head of investments for Cohen's quant unit Cubist, who currently is Balyasny's global head of systematic
• Bill Wappler, a former Point72 research executive, who is a partner and director of research at Balyasny
• Gappy Paleologo, an alum of Millennium and Citadel, who is Balyasny's new global head of quantitative research
• Peter Goodwin, a one-time star PM for Point72, who is running his own unit, Longaeva Partners, within Balyasny
• Thomas Stephens, a former PM for Millennium and Citadel, who is the senior managing director of stock-picking unit Corbets Capital
• Steve Schurr, a Point72 portfolio manager before joining Balyasny, who is a senior managing director of fundamental equities
• Joe Lanzillotti, a one-time controller at Millennium, who is Balyasny's deputy CFO
• Anita Nassar, once a partner at Citadel, who is the global head of the client relations group for Balyasny
• Joe Snodgrass, the former spokesperson for Millennium, who is the chief communications officer at Balyasny

As Citadel and Point72 return capital and Englander considers selling a stake in Millennium, Balyasny has positioned itself as not just a rival to the three biggest firms, but a legitimate peer.

One point of proof is that smaller multi-strategy funds, as well as the biggest in the industry, are hiring Balyasny alums to be leaders.

Walleye, for instance, named former Balyasny PM Anil Gondi the firm's head of long-short equity last year, and Daylamani and Runnfeldt worked in leadership roles at Balyasny before joining Engineers Gate and Fortress, respectively. Schonfeld's co-heads of its macro and fixed-income investing unit, Colin Lancaster and Mitesh Parikh, both traded for Balyasny before starting their own firm and eventually joining Schonfeld.

Jared Hade, meanwhile, will start as Point72's chief financial officer in the second half of the year after spending close to 20 years at Balyasny.

"The big three," as one industry recruiter put it, "is now the big four."

• Photographer Whitney Boykin rents out her home each year for the Masters golf tournament.
• Boykin, her husband, and their two kids pile into an RV while guests stay in their home.
• They spend $5,000 getting the house ready, but the eight-day booking pays their mortgage for a year.

This week, golf's greatest stars descend on the tiny city of Augusta, Georgia, in pursuit of the famous green jacket awarded to winners of the Masters Tournament.

It's also time for photographer Whitney Boykin and her family to pile into their camper to make way for the guests renting their home in North Augusta, South Carolina.

"I'm one of the rare locals who says I love Masters week. I just want visitors to see how amazing it is here," Boykin told Business Insider.

Boykin and other locals rent out their properties to golfers and visitors directly, on Airbnb, or via other platforms. In the city of Augusta alone, the number of rentals jumped from 725 in March 2024 to 1,700 in April 2024, data from short-term-rental analytics site AirDNA shows. The average revenue for rentals in the city jumped from $2,700 in March 2024 to $5,300 in April 2024, AirDNA found.

While Boykin declined to share exactly how much she makes, she said it's enough to cover the family's mortgage payments for a year. This is the seventh year the family is renting out their house for the Masters.

As of April 4, homes similar to Boykin's listed on Airbnb were available to rent from about $9,000 a week to $28,000 a week.

For Boykin, one week of sleeping in a camper with her husband, their two kids, their cat, and their dog is more than worth it. Take a look inside the home they rent out during the Masters.

Whitney Boykin and her family moved into their North Augusta, South Carolina home in December 2020.

The house, just over the state line from Georgia, has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms, two half bathrooms, and a large outdoor space designed for entertaining.

The home is a 12-minute drive to Augusta National Golf Course. But during Masters week, traffic adds up to about 30 minutes.

Boykin said she passes the Augusta National Golf Club when she drives her kids to school.

"The rest of the year, it's just not that big of a deal," she said.

Boykin said many North Augusta locals rent out their homes for the Masters and use the money to go on vacation for a week.

Area schools typically schedule spring break to sync up with the tournament.

"Everyone looks forward to this because it's great money," Boykin told Business Insider.

In the past, Boykin has used Airbnb and Vrbo to rent out the home. There is even a local rental agency dedicated to the event called the Masters Housing Bureau.

For the past two years, Boykin's family has rented their house to a Texas company that brings its employees to the tournament.

Boykin was connected with the company through a local friend.

In January each year, Boykin starts to think about getting the house ready for the Masters. The family spends about $5,000 to prepare it for renters.

"Once the Christmas lights get put away, it's time to get ready," she said.

Preparations include pressure-washing the facade, adding new landscaping, and getting the home professionally deep-cleaned.

Boykin stores all her seasonal Masters gear in a section of the attic that's off-limits to the rest of the family.

She keeps paraphernalia including flags, pillows, and golf supplies with the Masters logo locked away for most the year, along with special sets of crisp, white linens for the bedrooms.

"My kids know which sheets are Masters ones. We don't touch them," she said.

Guests arrive the Sunday before the tournament begins and pay for an eight-day stay that includes the Monday after the finals.

Local schools have extended spring break, Boykin added, with kids returning to the classroom on the Tuesday after the tournament.

Boykin likes to check on the home twice during the week to clean and make sure everything is OK.

Boykin said cleaning visits are more for her peace of mind because they've rarely had issues. Visitors in town for the Masters often try to maximize their time at the golf course.

"They're not spending a lot of time in our home," Boykin said. "They take care of our things better than we do."

Other families renting out their homes travel, but Boykin's family stays in an RV for Masters week.

Boykin's husband, who works in the car industry, is especially busy in early April.

This year, the family will park the RV at a local equestrian facility that has dozens of walking trails.

Boykin's family first stayed in a camper one year when their home was still accidentally listed for rent in July.

Out-of-towners rented their house for a youth basketball tournament called Peach Jam.

Even though the family had no plans to rent out their house for any time other than the Masters, Boykin said her husband felt it was worth it.

He drove to Myrtle Beach to pick up an RV he found online so the family could honor the booking.

Boykin added that he told her it would allow them to take "an extra vacation."

• China hit the US with a 125% tariff on imports on Friday.
• The move is the latest in a series of tit-for-tat tariff increases.
• China's finance ministry accused the US of "bullying and coercion."

China hit back at the US with a 125% tariff on imports on Friday, the latest escalation in the trade war between the two superpowers sparked by President Donald Trump's trade tariffs.

"The US's imposition of abnormally high tariffs on China seriously violates international economic and trade rules, basic economic laws and common sense, and is completely a unilateral bullying and coercion," China's finance ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The new tariffs will come into effect on Saturday, the ministry said.

Previously, China had said the tariff rate on US imports would be 84%, a level imposed on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Trump's White House clarified that the combined tariff rate being imposed on China was 145%, not the 125% that had previously been reported.

Earlier in the week, Trump announced that he would pause a large swathe of his tariffs for 90 days, though many — including tariffs on China — remained in effect.

"At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

China's announcement of fresh retaliatory tariffs pushed European stocks lower on Friday after earlier gains.

Britain's benchmark FTSE 100 was down 0.6% at 9:45 a.m. local time (4:45 a.m. ET), having been up by close to 1% earlier. Europe's broad Stoxx 600 fell 0.9%.

US futures were trading a little lower, with the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all set to open about 0.7% lowe.

This is a developing story. Please refresh for further updates.

Two hours into a red-eye flight from Singapore to Sydney, I'm about to lose it. My 6-foot-3 frame is crammed into a seat barely big enough for a toddler. To my right, a pensioner is snoring like a buzz saw, releasing pungent plumes of a half-digested tuna fish sandwich. It brings to mind the famous quote from the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: Hell is other people. Only I'm quite sure Sartre never had to endure the middle seat in economy.

Deeply exhausted and slightly nauseous, I reach for a YouTube video I've watched countless times, and switch from tuning out to tuning in.

"Hi there," it begins. "I'm Doctor Webber, and I'll be doing your eye test today."

For the next 10 minutes — and then longer, as I play it on repeat — a soothing female voice leads me through an ophthalmology exam, speaking at just above a whisper. Waves of goosebumps move across my body as she inquires about my family history of glaucoma and commands me to "follow the light with your eye" — though her precise words are beside the point. Once again, my sanity had been saved by ASMR.

I'm not alone in turning to the calming, repetitive blandness of ASMR to endure the misery of modern flight. About one in five travelers say they rely on audiovisual content that's designed to generate an autonomous sensory meridian response — a sort of low-grade euphoria known as "tingles" — to cope with overbooked flights, unruly travelers, lost luggage, and absurdly cramped seating. My own video of choice has half a million views, and YouTube offerings that mix ASMR with the friendly sounds of air travel — the gently whirring engines, the soothing voice from the cockpit — register in the millions.

In the past few years, the airlines have started getting in on the action. JetBlue released AirSMR, a nine-minute audio experience that captures what the narrator introduces as "the calming sounds of the airport," like rolling suitcases and a beverage being slurped through a straw. Delta, noting the popularity of the ASMR trend among its millennial and Gen Z passengers, released a 13-hour video on TikTok, to commemorate the debut of its direct flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand. Your carrier might not be able to get you to your destination on time, but they're happy to offer you some ASMR peanuts while you're stuck on the runway.

"I've been chasing ambient noise similar to that of being in the air," one YouTube commenter gushed. "This is heaven on earth to me."

Some of the most elaborate videos are those offered on the Whispering Wings ASMR channel on YouTube. The videos, some of which are 11 hours long, are designed to mirror actual flight paths from the point of view of a passenger and feature audio and hyperrealistic cabin visuals captured from online flight simulators. Whispering Wings even records its own pilot announcements, and pairs them with real-life communications from air traffic control. The goal is to help travelers focus on the sounds of flying that might be considered more calming, without all the crying babies and irate passengers. "I've never felt this at peace on a plane before," a commenter wrote about one Whispering Wings video, which follows an eight-hour trip from Toronto to Frankfurt, Germany.

Still, for all of ASMR's popularity among frequent flyers, the weirdness factor has kept it from going fully mainstream. "I find it's still kept quite hush-hush," says Sasha Mukerjea, an events marketer and frequent traveler who uses ASMR to relax her nerves. "Some people find the phenomena baffling."

I've been experiencing ASMR "tingles" since I was a kid. My family moved frequently before finally settling in Singapore, and I used to seek out sources of white noise as a way to relax. Once ASMR videos became available, I started consuming them like aspirin.

The specific ASMR "triggers" we respond to are as personal as our taste in food. Tuning into a certain sound — someone chomping into a pickle, say — may gross one person out while causing waves of pleasant chills in others. But while the term ASMR is relatively new, researchers say the response itself is as old as time. When we respond to soothing sounds, our brains are flooded with dopamine and oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, creating a feeling of euphoria that's been referred to as "braingasms."

"ASMR can be very helpful to decrease the stress of traveling," says Craig Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University who partnered with JetBlue on the airline's ASMR content. Still, he says, more study is needed to better understand what content works best on flights, since the increased pressure from high altitudes on the inner ear can dampen the body's receptiveness to ASMR.

ASMR videos aren't the only way to use the sounds of air travel to make the experience of air travel less stressful. I've found that tuning into even the most fleeting triggers, like the ding of the "fasten seatbelts" sign, can help induce a state of relaxation, helping to lower my heart rate and provide me with a sense of calm. As Richard explains it, these short sounds, if tied to warm memories, may trigger a kind of Pavlovian response that can stimulate ASMR by "reminding someone of pleasant travel experiences."

I remember trying this DIY version of ASMR during a flight to London. It was my first trip to Europe since the pandemic, and the indignity of modern travel seemed like a small price to pay for a vacation I'd been craving. For the first few hours of the flight, everything was hunky-dory. Then, three rows ahead of me, a baby started wailing. My iPhone was out of juice, so I couldn't reach for my tried-and-true ASMR video. I tried to drown out the noise by cranking up the volume on "Casino Royale," the in-flight movie I was watching. But not even 007, with his license to kill, could silence the ceaseless cries.

Then I noticed that the two passengers to my right were speaking slowly and softly in a language I couldn't make out. By focusing on their voices, I was able to restore my calm.

Mukerjea, the events marketer who relies on ASMR to travel, recalls a similar experience. When bad weather extended her layover in Delhi, at one of the world's busiest airports, she found herself overwhelmed by "the blistering fluorescence and relentless tide of people." So she began zeroing in on sounds that felt more calming. "Instead of getting lost in the chaos, I leaned into the rhythmic undercurrent," she recalls. As she listened to "the murmur of voices, the soft rolling of suitcases over tiled floors," the stress of yet another travel nightmare left her body.

Once in the air, Mukerjea favors what the ASMR community calls "unintentional" videos — those not specifically tagged as ASMR. "I avoid overly refined ASMR videos and prefer something more real: walking tours through quiet villages, the crunch of gravel underfoot, and sounds of the wind rustling through a harvest field," Mukerjea says. "These natural sounds pull me beyond the cabin, making my journey feel less confined."

Like every quirky subculture, ASMR airheads revel in meeting a fellow traveler. "Every time someone finds out about ASMR and comments on one of my videos, there is a sense of intense relief and happiness to finally find fellow people that 'get it,'" says Ilse Blansert, whose YouTube channel boasts millions of views. "It really feels like it unites us and makes us closer, because we had this incredibly human experience in common."

My own embrace of ASMR has improved not only my flights but also the rest of my vacations. My ability to identify triggers in the wild, and then to dial into them as a way to reduce my stress, is something I often lean on as I explore new places and experiences. It's also made me a better travel companion to my wife, who's much more easygoing than I am.

In 2023, our honeymoon in Japan coincided with a ferocious heat wave. Pounded by hundred-degree temperatures, we bravely — some would say stupidly — decided to take a three-hour midday walk in Kyoto's Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. Airless and humid, the heat was even worse in the park than in the city. I found myself bathed in green light and heavy sweat as the sun knifed through the leaves, wishing I could be anyplace cooler.

I was starving, cranky, and seconds from snapping at my new bride — not a great start to the honeymoon. Then, out of desperation, I turned to ASMR. I stopped listening to my heavy, annoyed breathing and zeroed in on the wall of sound that I'd been ignoring for hours: the steady chorus of the cicada. Almost like magic, I was hit by a wave of goosebumps — and gratitude for the music of the moment. I came to a standstill and just listened, appreciating for the first time the bamboo forest that towered 65 feet above our heads.

"Why have you stopped, hon?" my wife asked. "Tired?"

"No," I said. "Just tingling."

Daniel Seifert is a freelance writer. He lives in Singapore.

• Americans who secretly work multiple remote jobs are finding ways to reduce their tax burdens.
• Some said establishing an S-Corp and maxing out their 401(k)s are among their top tax strategies.
• Others contribute to charities or deduct business expenses from their incomes.

Damien has secretly worked multiple remote jobs, earning six figures on and off for years. To reduce his hefty tax burden, he's used several strategies, including maxing out his 401(k).

Damien, who works in IT support, is on track to earn $386,000 this year from three full-time remote jobs, two of which are 1099 contractor roles. The earnings from his contract positions flow to an LLC he established in 2022, which he elected to be taxed as an S Corporation. This helps him reduce the amount he owes in self-employment taxes, he said.

"Tax wise, it's a substantial difference," said Damien, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but who asked to use a pseudonym, citing a fear of professional repercussions. "I would have to guess it's tens of thousands of dollars that I'm saving."

Damien is among the Americans who have secretly juggled multiple remote jobs to boost their incomes and who have found strategies to reduce their tax burdens. Others make charitable donations and deduct business expenses from their incomes. Over the past two years, BI has interviewed more than two dozen "overemployed" workers who've used their additional earnings to travel the world, buy weight-loss drugs, and pay down debt.

Six job jugglers shared their experiences on the condition that pseudonyms would be used, for fear of professional repercussions. BI has verified their identities and earnings.

To be sure, what works for these job jugglers may not make sense for everyone. Tax professionals can provide advice for specific situations.

S-corps and business deductions help job jugglers reduce their taxes

John, who works in IT, earned more than $300,000 in 2023 secretly working two remote jobs. His earnings from one contract job flow into his S-Corp, which he also uses to deduct business expenses, reducing his taxable income.

Business expenses include software subscriptions to ChatGPT, online programming courses, and the home office deduction, which allows him to deduct $5 per square foot of his home office.

"If I needed a new computer desk or chair, I'd run that through my business," said John, who is based in California.

To reduce his taxable income further, John said he donates to charitable organizations and makes significant 401(k) contributions.

Harrison also has an S-Corp, but his tax situation is more complicated. Harrison has six full-time remote jobs as a quality assurance professional in the IT sector and estimates he'll earn roughly $800,000 this year. He's built a team of seven workers who help him complete his duties.

Three of Harrison's jobs are contract roles, and he said the income for these flows into his S-Corp, which he said helps reduce his taxable income.

Lisa Greene-Lewis, a CPA and tax expert with TurboTax, said that S-Corps can help people legally reduce the amount they owe in self-employment taxes. Individuals are required to pay themselves a "reasonable" salary — which is subject to employment taxes — but then can take additional distributions from profits their companies generate that are not subject to these taxes. But she said there are limits to an S-Corp's tax benefits.

"In the eyes of the IRS, you could not pay yourself a majority of your business income to avoid more self-employment taxes," she said, adding, "If you pay yourself too little, the IRS could determine the amount they think you should be paid based on your business profit."

She added that S-Corp owners tend to have more tax prep-related expenses and must file a business tax return by March 1st, rather than the April 15 deadline for personal tax returns.

Despite the tax benefits that come with his S-Corp, Harrison said he tends to owe a significant amount of money in taxes. But he said he's still coming out ahead financially.

"Making more and paying more in taxes is better than making less and paying less," he said.

Some job jugglers accept their higher taxes

Adam earns roughly $170,000 annually secretly working two remote security risk jobs. He plans on reducing his taxable income this year by contributing $23,500 to his 401(k) — the maximum amount allowed by the IRS — and donating about $1,200 to charitable organizations.

However, not every job juggler is taking significant steps to reduce their taxable income. Daniel earns about $250,000 annually working two remote IT gigs in the finance industry. He said his main focus is withholding enough in taxes to ensure his tax payment isn't too steep.

"I've never had an issue with paying taxes," he said.

Kelly is on track to earn nearly $300,000 this year secretly working two full-time remote jobs as an engineer. She said her taxes aren't too complicated and finding ways to lower her taxable income isn't something she thinks too much about.

"I don't mind paying taxes on both jobs even if I owe," she said.

Do you have a story to share about secretly working multiple jobs or discovering an employee is doing so? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at jzinkula.29.

• The markets jumped after Trump paused his tariff plans — but the IPO window is still closed for now.
• Experts told BI the public markets won't reopen for IPOs until volatility drops significantly.
• Companies like Klarna and StubHub delayed their IPO plans after last week's tariff announcement.

After a brutal week for public markets, the major indexes jumped Wednesday when President Donald Trump said he would pause his plans for tariffs on most countries.

But industry insiders say the IPO market isn't out of the woods.

"People that are saying 'let's thread the needle' are desperate," a healthcare banker told BI on condition of anonymity. "Anybody can jump out of a window."

Tech companies and investors have been anxiously awaiting what they hoped would be a big year for public market debuts after a multiyear IPO drought. Trump's announcement last week that nearly 90 countries would face reciprocal tariffs ranging from 10% to 50% on their imports to the US shattered those hopes.

Some companies gearing up to IPO, including Klarna and StubHub, delayed their plans after the reciprocal tariffs announcement. Hinge Health was also considering a delay, Business Insider reported, although the physical therapy startup hoped to push through the market volatility to enact its IPO plans.

When Trump abruptly paused most of the tariffs on Wednesday, the public markets soared, with the S&P 500 posting its biggest single-day gain since 2008 at 9%.

But it's the market volatility that's giving bankers and analysts pause. Even if the stock market improves, as it did Wednesday, the whiplash of its rapid fall and rise in the past week isn't inspiring confidence.

Indeed, the S&P 500 tumbled by nearly 4% on Thursday as Wall Street reacted to the additional tariffs Trump still plans to levy on China.

Only a sustained period of market stabilization will be enough to reopen the IPO window for most companies, experts told BI. A temporary tick-up in stock prices just won't cut it.

Why volatility is such a deal killer

Bankers, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak with the press, said they're watching one major metric as they advise companies on their next steps toward the public markets: the volatility index.

The index, which has the ticker VIX, is designed to measure the 30-day expected volatility of the stock market. VIX values of 30 or above generally signal high volatility, while values of 20 or below signal more stability.

Market volatility doesn't necessarily correlate with lower all-time public market valuations. But high volatility makes it much harder for public investors to price a potential IPO, like trying to hit a moving target, bankers said. Plus, the volatility makes those investors less confident that the company's stock won't tank after the IPO, they said.

Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said the index would need to settle below 25 for several consecutive weeks for IPO activity to meaningfully pick up. Other sources told BI they'd want the index to stay below 20.

Right now, that target looks far away. At its peak Thursday, the index leaped 52% to 54 points.

"The volatility certainly isn't encouraging companies to start the roadshow now. Whether the stock market goes up or down over the next couple of weeks, there will be very few quality companies going public," said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida.

Even if the market stabilizes, expect discounts

If the market ticks back up and volatility remains low for multiple consecutive weeks, some public investors may be willing to put funds toward IPOs again. But they'll expect a significant price cut, Kennedy said.

"Any sensible investor would still demand a pretty substantial discount to buy IPOs in this market," he said. "After all, if we get more turbulence, IPOs will be the first to sell off."

Bankers said that if companies are willing to accept that discount, they may still be able to go public in the second quarter of this year, provided that the market stabilizes further.

Still, Kennedy said the market slump has undoubtedly pushed many companies' IPO plans back into the later quarters of this year, at the earliest.

The slump may also further encourage companies to stay private for longer and look for payouts elsewhere, Ritter said.

"The volatility and valuation drops in public markets will be good for EquityZen, Nasdaq Private Market, Forge Global and other secondary markets, where companies that would be otherwise going public will say, we're going to let our companies sell stock on these venues, and the markets are going to have higher volume as a result," he said.

• New York-based Noto has raised $3.8 million to modernize tutoring centers and lesson-based businesses.
• Noto's platform uses AI to cut admin by automating billing, scheduling, and payroll.
• Check out the 44-slide pitch deck that helped Noto land its seed round from Base10 Partners.

Noto, a startup that provides software to automate tasks like billing and payroll for educational businesses, has raised $3.8 million in seed funding led by Base10 Partners.

AJ Ding and Steve Wang founded the startup after they spent last summer knocking on the doors of small firms across New York City, and they kept hearing the same story: business was booming, but operations were a mess.

"We ended up interviewing about 150 businesses over two weeks, walking around six hours a day," Ding, Noto's cofounder and CEO, told Business Insider.

The pair said many of the lesson-based businesses they visited — including tutoring centers, music schools, and driving schools — still ran on sticky notes, Google Sheets, and outdated software systems.

Owners were "drowning in admin," Ding said.

Ding told BI that Noto's platform, which launched in September 2024, is designed specifically for lesson-based businesses and their unique operational challenges. They include managing parent-child-instructor relationships, shifting schedules, and complex billing rules.

Noto uses large language models to draft lesson reports, reschedule classes, and summarize parent communication. The goal, Ding said, isn't to replace tutors but to free up their time.

Ding, a second-time founder and Yale-trained statistician, previously built an AI recruiting platform. His cofounder, Wang, was the founding engineer at Nitra, a software company for doctors' offices backed by A16z.

"The lesson-based business segment has been chronically underserved by technology," Caroline Broder, a partner at Base10, said.

With the new funding, Noto plans to grow its engineering team, hire a business operations lead, and improve the platform's AI capabilities, including AI onboarding, rolling out student-facing insights, and AI-assisted admin agents.

Check out the 44-slide pitch deck Noto used to raise $3.8 million from Base10 Partners.

• Secretary of Education Linda McMahon referred to AI as "A1" during a panel this week.
• A.1.'s marketing team jumped in to savor the moment.
• The brand created an image of a bottle with a new label: "For education purposes only."

Linda McMahon may have meant artificial intelligence — but steak sauce brand A.1. heard opportunity.

After the Secretary of Education repeatedly referred to artificial intelligence as "A1" on a panel this week, the brand jumped in to savor the moment.

"You heard her. Every school should have access to A.1.," the brand wrote in a Friday Instagram post, alongside an image of their iconic bottle slapped with a new label: "For education purposes only."

The big slogan across the graphic read: "Agree. Best to start them early."

McMahon made the slip while speaking at the ASU+GSV Summit, a conference on the future of education and work. She was on a panel discussing the role of AI in the workforce — but things took a saucy turn.

"You know, AI development — I mean, how can we educate at the speed of light if we don't have the best technology around to do that?" she said. The former CEO of WWE used the correct abbreviation for artificial intelligence, before pivoting into the world of condiments.

McMahon said she heard about "a school system that's going to start making sure that first graders, or even pre-Ks, have A1 teaching in every year." McMahon continued: "That's a wonderful thing!"

"Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything," she added. "It wasn't all that long ago that it was, 'We're going to have internet in our schools!' Now let's see A1 and how can that be helpful."

McMahon and A.1. did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

It's the latest example of a brand seizing a quick moment of fame on social media.

Coffee Mate's marketing team sprang into action after the season finale of "The White Lotus," creating a semi-viral post that played off a key moment from the show.

The coffee creamer brand worked with the hit HBO series on two limited-edition flavors ahead of the latest season: piña colada and Thai iced coffee. An executive said his team had no idea that piña coladas would be featured on the hit show's finale on Sunday night.

• President Donald Trump says he doesn't need Elon Musk in his administration.
• Trump said the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is still around because he likes Musk.
• Trump previously said he expects Musk to leave government "in a few months."

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he doesn't really need to have Elon Musk in his administration.

"Elon has done a fantastic job. Look, he's sitting here, and I don't care. I don't need Elon for anything other than I happen to like him," Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Trump said on Thursday that he had recently purchased a Tesla vehicle as a "show of support" for Musk.

"I don't need his car. I actually bought one, and they said, 'Oh, did you get a bargain?' No. I said, 'Give me the top price.' I paid a lot of money for that car," Trump said.

Trump's purchase took place during a White House event last month, where he was seen trying out a red Tesla Model S with Musk.

"He's done a fantastic job but he hasn't been treated properly," Trump said of Musk on Thursday.

Musk, who was at the meeting, was seen smiling and nodding to Trump's remarks.

Musk has been spearheading cost-cutting efforts at the White House DOGE office. In an attempt to slash spending, DOGE has laid off thousands of government workers and shuttered foreign aid programs. These rapid cuts have sparked fear and chaos across the government.

Musk said at the Thursday Cabinet meeting that DOGE will cut nearly $150 billion in spending for the 2026 fiscal year.

But these broad cuts at DOGE and the turmoil that comes with them have also hit Musk's business interests. Tesla showrooms nationwide have been the target of protests, and Tesla owners have said their vehicles have been defaced.

"If you read the news, it feels like armageddon. I can't walk past the TV without seeing a Tesla on fire. What's going on?" Musk told Tesla employees during an all-hands meeting last month.

"Listen, I understand if you don't want to buy our product, but you don't have to burn it down. That's a bit unreasonable," Musk added.

Musk has been one of Trump's biggest supporters. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO spent at least $277 million supporting Trump and other GOP candidates in last year's elections.

But Musk appeared to break with the administration after Trump announced sweeping tariffs on over 180 countries last week.

Musk called for a "free trade zone" between Europe and the US during a meeting with Italy's League Party on Saturday. Musk also criticized Trump's top advisor, Peter Navarro, saying he was "dumber than a sack of bricks" after he called Musk a "car assembler."

Last week, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News in an interview that Musk would stay on as an advisor even after he completes his work with DOGE.

Trump said on April 3 that he expects Musk to leave his administration "in a few months" but said he wants Musk to stay on for "as long as possible."

Musk is now working for the administration as a special government employee. Per federal law, such employees cannot work for more than 130 days in a 365-day period.

"Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete," the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, wrote in an X post on April 2.

Musk and the White House did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• "The Last of Us" season two picks up five years after the events of the first.
• It sees Ellie embark on a mission of revenge after a tragedy.
• Viewers are encouraged to consider whether trauma defines the characters.

"The Last of Us" season two picks up five years after the first: Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) have a strained relationship after he lied to her about saving her from the Firefly hospital, and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), a Firefly soldier, seeks revenge against Joel for murdering her father.

This sets the scene for some of the most emotionally devastating TV in recent memory. The show masterfully explores how trauma, violence, grief, and love shape each character, bringing viewers closer to Joel and Ellie in particular.

It's done with astounding elegance, allowing the shock and horror to bleed into intimate moments.

That being said, viewers hungry for jaw-dropping set pieces won't be disappointed. One assault from an army of the infected, which can be seen in the trailers, is a pulse-pounding fight for survival for Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and the other residents of Jackson, Wyoming. It easily rivals battles in "Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon."

The characters also spend plenty of time skulking around shadowy corridors, fearing they will be hunted by the infected, which brings delicious tension. But much like the first season, the threat of the infected just sets the scene: The real meat of the story comes in the character dynamics and how they have each been changed by their post-apocalyptic world.

Let's address the elephant in the room: Fans of the beloved video games that the show is based on may think they know what's coming in season two.

Regardless of what does or doesn't happen, fans should know that the adaptation by showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann is uncompromising.

Bella Ramsey delivers one of the most powerfully raw performances of the last few years, as Ellie edges closer to becoming something truly dangerous on her rage-fueled quest to Seattle.

But Ellie is too skillfully developed as a character to only be vengeful. The show spends time carefully crafting a beautiful connection between her and Dina, played by "Alien: Romulus" star Isabela Merced, who has difficulties of her own. When this dynamic takes a backseat, it's used as a clever tool to challenge Ellie's lust for blood.

Although Ramsey is the driving force of the season, Merced, Pedro Pascal, and Gabriel Luna are there to provide a balance between the trauma, revenge, and those pesky plant zombies.

Pascal, in particular, shows that he's capable of being more than the grizzled badass he has played in "The Mandalorian," "Gladiator II," and "Narcos."

Joel's character is expanded through soft, quiet moments, which will no doubt make audiences emotional. If these are the types of performances that Pascal can deliver, then his career is only going to become more interesting.

Ultimately, trauma is used in the season to lead the audience to question whether its main characters are defined by the horrors they've experienced. While some are able to process it and move on, others are completely consumed by it.

Either way, the audience gets one of the most beautifully written seasons of TV of the year, and it's only April.

• Gwyneth Paltrow is reflecting on the lessons she learned while trying to blend her family.
• "If I look back at my mistakes as a stepmother, I should have just treated them both like my kids way faster," Paltrow said.
• Navigating the stepparent dynamic was difficult and often felt "full of minefields," she said.

Gwyneth Paltrow says she waited too long to fully embrace her stepchildren as her own.

On the April 8 episode of her "Goop" podcast — which featured her husband, Brad Falchuk, as a guest — Paltrow spoke about the work that went into blending their families.

Paltrow has two kids with her ex-husband Chris Martin, whom she divorced in 2016 after 13 years of marriage. In 2018, she married Falchuk, who has two kids from his previous marriage.

"We traversed through some really rough things," Paltrow told Falchuk. "One of the most profound lessons that I've learned from my relationship with your daughter — which is now so fantastic — is there was a testing going on. She was testing me at the time to see at what point I would reject her."

To overcome that initial friction with her stepdaughter and avoid being seen as the "evil stepmother," Paltrow says she decided to embody a maternal essence.

"I was going to be that presence for her, always loving and forgiving in the face of, you know, if she acted up, and show her that ultimately I was so there for her that she would not question my intentions or think that I was there to take you away from her," Paltrow said to her husband.

But it wasn't easy and she often had to remind herself to be the adult if they ran into conflict.

At the same time, Paltrow was worried because she felt like she didn't have "jurisdiction" to tell her stepkids how they should behave.

"I thought that in my case, if I assert my boundaries or my expectations around manners, or anything like that, it will exacerbate the situation," Paltrow said.

It was difficult navigating the stepparent dynamic, which often felt "full of minefields," she said.

"If I look back at my mistakes as a stepmother, I should have just treated them both like my kids way faster," Paltrow said. "Like I was too worried about everyone's feelings, in a way."

During the Visionary Women's International Women's Day Summit in 2024, Paltrow said that being a stepmother was one of her "biggest learnings as a human being."

"And my area of growth personally came from the initial difficult relationship I had with my stepkids, and now they're like my kids," she said, per Us Magazine.

Parenting experts previously told Business Insider about the common mistakes that stepparents make when trying to connect with their stepkids.

One mistake is trying to compete with the stepkids' biological parents.

"Instead, speak directly to the child about their parent and encourage the relationship between the child and parent. This will help make clear that this isn't an either/or situation," Sarah Epstein, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in family dysfunction, told BI.

Another mistake is trying to discipline stepchildren before building a relationship. Clinical psychologist Dr. Kasi G. Patterson told BI it would be better to let the biological parent handle it first.

Only after a trusting relationship has been developed will the kids learn to view both parents — biological and stepparent — as authority figures and "can accept discipline from each of them," he said.

A representative for Paltrow did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by BI outside regular hours.