See how a top Peloton instructor spends her day

Peloton instructors have built expansive personal brands

Outside of teaching Peloton classes, many instructors have amassed large social media followings and brand deals—ranging from modeling for Puma and Adidas to "Dancing With The Stars" appearances. On top of their influencer work, leading instructors at Peloton—like Cody Rigsby, Emma Lovewell, and Robin Arzón—reportedly earn salaries of more than $500K.

Jenn Sherman was the first Peloton instructor

Jenn Sherman sent an email to Peloton with the title, "This is why you need to hire me." After auditioning, she became the very first Peloton cycle instructor. Since then, she's amassed a loyal following for her brash personality.

The fitness industry has seen a lot of fads—and Peloton might be one of them

Like SoulCycle and Tae Bo, Peloton has struggled to stay at the forefront of the fitness industry. Despite periods of incredibly high interest and high-profile users (like the Obamas), Peloton has lost many users since the pandemic ended—and has struggled to add more. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Palantir CEO Alex Karp is an avid skier

Karp takes health and fitness very seriously and reportedly skis more than five hours each week. He has frequently recommended Norwegian-style cardio training, which emphasizes the length of a workout rather than effort level. In 2023, Karp reported having just 7% body fat—similar to that of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps during the 2008 Olympics.

Ashrita Furman, owner of over 600 world records

What does it take to break so many world records? Hardcore spiritual discipline, at least according to Ashrita Furman, who was trained by an ascetic teacher to do challenging things. Read up on his accomplishments in this photo essay.

Cathie Wood is one of the most famous modern figures in ETF investing

Cathie Wood is the fund manager and stock picker behind Ark Invest and its flagship Ark Innovation ETF. Her strategy centers around disruptive technology, and she’s made bold bets on cryptocurrency and companies like Tesla, Robinhood, and Nvidia. Wood has a loyal following of retail investors who watch her daily trades religiously.

Martha Graham on preparation and discipline

This clip from the 1957 documentary "A Dancer's World" features the dancer explaining why she's committed all of her energy to her art. "Spontaneity … is something arrived at over years and years of training," she says, "it is not a mere chance."

How fee-free Robinhood makes money

Robinhood is both loved and hated by retail investors. Although its mobile app is easy to use and transactions on its platform are fee-free, many individuals have taken issue with a controversial practice that drives 75% of its revenues. Robinhood uses payment for order flow, essentially taking payment from other brokerages to redirect users’ trades. Read up on how PFOF works here.

What it takes to become a professional jockey

This short documentary follows a young, amateur jockey through early mornings and exhaustive gym sessions, where she rides a simulator made to look like real horses. It's a peek into a highly specialized (and highly unusual) athletic pursuit.

Berenson's frailty led her to basketball

When Senda Berenson tried to study piano at school, she realized she was too frail. In 1890, she dropped piano and enrolled in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics to increase her strength, which led her to a career in physical education.

An anthropologist spent years riding garbage trucks to understand what our trash says about us

Robin Nagle rode with New York City sanitation workers to trace the hidden life of what we throw out. Her research explores what the things we discard reveal about who we are. 1440 explores the hidden life of trash.

A fascinating look at how a journalist spends 24 hours in the metaverse

A Wall Street Journal strapped on a VR headset for a full day. Here's what happened when she went to work meetings, hung out with new avatar friends and attended shows — all in the metaverse.

The exercise sweet spot is shorter than you'd think—and longer workouts aren't generally better

A meta-analysis concluded that resistance training for about 60 minutes per week provided the best health benefit—decreasing the likelihood of death for individuals within a specific timeframe around 27%.

Ruby Franke is an influencer serving time in jail for child abuse

The story of this parenting influencer is perhaps one of the darkest stories to come out of the creator economy. Ruby Franke previously ran a YouTube channel with millions of followers where she made money by monetizing her controversial parenting advice. Now she’s serving jail time for child abuse.

One of Nike’s most transformational executives started out as its lawyer

Rob Strasser helped settle a lawsuit against Onitsuka Tiger when Blue Ribbon Sports became Nike and stopped distributing the Japanese shoes. Strasser then became a powerhouse at Nike credited with saving the company from going under in the 1970s, before leaving the company in 1987.

After the owner fell into a Ponzi scheme, one braiding shop in suburban Maryland began making $130K a day by staying open for 24-hours

Because braiding often takes a long time, the salon prioritizes fast, efficient styles, with two braiders often working together on a client, which increases revenue by increasing turnover. The salon has 120 seats and more than 400 contracted braiders across its 10,000-square-foot space.

Watch legendary Tennessee coach Pat Summitt talk to her team at halftime

Pat Summitt won eight NCAA titles at Tennessee, with every eligible player graduating under her watch. This behind-the-scenes look from the halftime of the 2007 Final Four shows how she made that happen: She was confident, calm, and communal, even concluding her halftime speech by asking her players what they'd noticed on the court.

Why Robyn's 'Dancing on My Own' became an anthem

Robyn's "Dancing on My Own," was a low-key hit when it was released in 2010, but it's become an anthem in the time since then, influencing artists like Lorde and Charli xcx and inspiring an iconic scene on HBO's "Girls." This article breaks down why that is, studying the song's beats per minute, which match humans' typical walking pace, and the queer experience reflected in its lyrics.

Simone de Beauvoir was a serious hiker

The existentialist icon began hiking as a young school teacher in Marseilles. Eventually, she would plan out long trips that covered up to 18 miles and took her around 12 hours to complete. She would later write that the hikes saved her “from boredom, regret, and several sorts of depression.”

Read what it's like working in emergency medicine

A board-certified emergency medicine physician working in the Bronx writes about what her workweeks look like and what attracted her to this fast-paced medical specialty, including being able to help suffering patients quickly, treating a wide range of ailments, and tending to disadvantaged communities.

One private school network prefers AI to teachers

Alpha School, a private school network that uses AI tutors and human "guides" rather than teachers, is expanding across the US. Its founder says that two hours a day with AI-powered software frees students to pursue their passions. Critics, including the Pennsylvania Department of Education, say the methods are untested.

Who is the woman behind today's CPR doll?

According to a recent survey, about half of Americans know how to do CPR—many of whom learned on a mannequin called Rescue Annie. It turns out that this training doll may be based off a woman who became famous after drowning in the Seine, after...

The average TikTok user spends 95 minutes on the app per day

According to HubSpot, the average TikTok user spends 95 minutes per day using the app, and an estimated 90% of users access TikTok daily. TikTok also has the highest average session length among social media platforms: Its users spend almost 11 minutes per session.

Inside a congressional office, the scheduler is more powerful than you think

A former congressional scheduler explains that a member's time is the scarcest resource in any Hill office, and controlling the calendar means understanding every competing claim on it, from the legislative team to the member's family. The interview demystifies how a typical House office actually functions, from staff hierarchies to outside resources like the Congressional Research Service.

Netflix has sometimes struggled with technical aspects of live-streaming

Anne Aaron, Netflix’s senior encoding tech director, spent a decade improving how Netflix streams its content. Then came the challenges of live events. Netflix has experimented with live content like stand-up comedy and sporting events. In this interview with The Verge, Aaron walks through the associated technical and coding challenges.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Explore what it's like inside a patient isolation unit, used in situations such as treating a patient or suspected patient with Ebola.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.