How a Texas metal shop became Igloo
Nearly three out of four American households own an Igloo cooler. The brand is so woven into American summer that it’s hard to remember anyone had to…
Category: Business
Ice down the hall: a peculiarly American demand
Step off an elevator in almost any American hotel and you’ll find it: a humming ice machine, free for the taking. Step off an elevator at a hotel in…
Doing business by sail: when an order took a year
Imagine placing an order with a supplier and waiting a year for delivery, then paying with a piece of paper backed by tobacco. That was business in…
How your dog may be leading the way for lab-grown meat
In February 2025, a British pet food company called Pets at Home began selling dog treats made with chicken that had never come from a chicken. The…
Your next cereal spoon might be part of breakfast
Imagine finishing your morning cereal — and eating the spoon. That is not a joke, it is where food utensils and packaging are headed, and faster than…
From wallpaper cleaner to toy box legend
In the early 1950s, a Cincinnati company called Rainbow Crafts made a compound designed to strip coal soot from wallpaper. It was a grayish, pliable putty…
Is AI a magic wand that creates good — or evil?
With AI surging through the business world, the question of how the technology will affect work, and the people who do the work, is unknown. But the…
Impossible to replace: The pool guy
You cannot Zoom into a green pool. You cannot outsource a pump replacement to Mumbai. And you definitely cannot train an algorithm to diagnose why the…
Made in America: Why it’s a 20-year project, not a one-year fix
Every time someone questions whether tariffs are working, the same counterargument surfaces: give it time. There is actually some evidence to support that…
How one question is changing farming
A simple, What if’ question, combined with the convergence of gene-editing technology and AI, has advanced humanity’s most ancient (and first) technology:…