WSJ: “The podcasting industry has been embracing video to a degree where audio-only shows are becoming the exception rather than the norm. YouTube is now the nation’s largest podcasting platform. Spotify and Apple Podcasts have enabled video in their feeds. Netflix is adding dozens of established podcasts to its streaming-video lineup. The shift is eliciting strong opinions from longtime listeners. While some say video is boosting podcasts’ appeal and making shows easier to discover on social media, others feel that their beloved medium is neglecting them as it caters to another audience. They fear that video might—once again—kill the radio star.”
FT: “Now a second [China] shock is under way — one that is even more threatening to China’s trading partners: an assault on high-end manufacturing. Vicious domestic competition, coupled with vast industrial scale, ample pools of engineering talent and some of the highest subsidies in the world, has generated world-beating Chinese champions in EVs, solar panels, batteries, wind turbines and a lengthening list of advanced manufacturing sectors. But the same forces that forge those companies also tend to generate overcapacity, crushing margins at home while flooding global markets and fuelling trade tensions. Aided by an undervalued exchange rate, Chinese groups are cutting a swath through the most advanced industries around the planet.”
Mint: “It is critical to distinguish between AI-assisted and AI-executed commerce. While fully autonomous agent-led transactions are still early, the influence layer—where AI shapes decisions—is already at scale. This matters because influence precedes monetization. Once decision-making shifts, value pools follow. Unlike earlier digital shifts, Agentic AI is not building new infrastructure—it is riding on existing rails. Payments, logistics, merchant networks and digital behaviour are already in place. Here’s a realistic adoption curve—Near term (0–2 years): AI-led discovery and recommendations scale; medium term (2–4 years): Early agent-led transactions in repeat categories; long-term (4–6 years): Scaled autonomous commerce.”
WSJ: “Speculators have poured their earnings into all kinds of investments since ancient times, but they always return to gold. The precious metal is a constant in human history—a store and symbol of wealth for everyone from Egyptian royals entombed in golden masks, to working-class immigrants crossing the Atlantic with gold coins sewn into their belts…Currencies cease circulation, markets fluctuate, tastes shift. Yet gold holds its value, even as its price ebbs and flows. Perhaps now more than ever, its safe-haven status has made it a reliable hedge against a tumultuous world. “[Gold is] one asset that’s easy, global, portable, accepted everywhere, with a 5,000-year history and not likely to go to zero,” says Steven Feldman, the CEO and co-founder of GBI.”
