Author: wildgreenquest@gmail.com
Published September 22, 2026 01:08PMIn Greek mythology, one of the heroes of the Trojan War was Achilles, whose mother dipped him as a baby into the river Styx to make him impervious to enemy attacks. But he had one weak link: when his mother plunged him into the magic waters, she held him by the heel, failing to provide it with the same protection. Eventually, he would be felled by an arrow to the tendon now named in his honor.This ancient story offers many lessons, but for runners, the most interesting is that one of Achilles’s great strengths was his…
This story appears in the September 2026 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe » Do you know what customers see when they walk into your store? Or more importantly, what do they remember when they walk out? For many business owners, there’s one refrain they hear again and again. Maybe it’s a first impression of the space, or praise for the service, or surprise at the offerings. Whatever it is, it’s likely that customers will take that comment to the bank. Here, five of America’s Favorite Mom and Pop Shops® share what their customers find comment-worthy. Customers notice the: Longtime employees and…
This story appears in the September 2026 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe » Is there a business in your community that you’re proud to be a patron of? If so, we’d bet it’s a mom-and-pop shop. There’s just something that feels good about giving your hard-earned money to a small, independent business run by people dedicated to the city or town you call home. (And there’s something even better about being the person who owns and runs one of those businesses!) The entrepreneurs behind these local establishments add color, history, and real human faces to Main Street. That’s why, every year,…
Published September 22, 2026 09:00AMHow We Reported This The author attended the Tanenbaum Institute for Science in Sport Conference in Toronto to hear directly from Margie Davenport and Michelle Mottola, key researchers shaping the upcoming 2027 International Olympic Committee guidelines. The resulting piece analyzes their latest clinical and survey data on pregnant athletes engaging in heavy weightlifting, high-intensity intervals, endurance sports, and rock climbing. Back in 2019, I wrote about a new set of guidelines for exercise during pregnancy. These guidelines were revolutionary—up to a point. Advice from doctors at the time was often extremely conservative, like never letting your…
Warren Buffett has done it again. This time it seems like it may be an accident, but who really knows how his genius works. The Oracle of Omaha, now 96, stepped down as Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman last week, with a track record of investing in mundane industries like insurance, railroads and utilities. They don’t have the flash of the big AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, but turns out it didn’t matter. The real AI windfall is coming from somewhere nobody would guess: power companies. In 2000, Berkshire bought MidAmerican Energy, a utility serving Iowa and the Midwest, with zero…
Published September 22, 2026 10:13AMIn June, a carefully curated group of running influencers all over the country were unboxing the new Radical AirFlow shirt from Nike’s All Conditions Gear (ACG)—and apparently, organically, losing their shit.“I flatlined when this box showed up,” one New York City–based influencer wrote in the caption to her reel. She donned the crop-cut, hole-punched long sleeve and declared, “It’s chic as hell.” Another influencer wondered: “Am I out of line for thinking this thing looks pretty sick?” A third quipped: “‘Running isn’t a fashion show.’ OK, bet.” The Radical AirFlow—or what Nike cleverly dubs its “Holey…
Airline pilots can earn as much as $100,000 in a single month during peak flying conditions, but that income is far from steady. Pay depends almost entirely on seniority, which planes a pilot flies, their schedule and their hourly rate, according to the Wall Street Journal. If the airline goes bankrupt or hits hard times, that can cut their pay as much as 60% overnight, as many pilots learned after United filed for bankruptcy following 9/11. Then retirement hits. About 4,300 pilots reach the FAA’s mandatory retirement age of 65 every year through 2042, many walking away with a pension,…
The latest Long Read on the Outside Podcast is set in the seaside town of Ocean City, New Jersey, where marauding seagulls were scaring off tourists. The city hired birds of prey to chase the gulls away. So far, it’s working. Published September 22, 2026 09:06AMA few years ago Ocean City, New Jersey had a problem with seagulls. Every summer, clouds of marauding gulls would descend on the sand and boardwalk to hunt for treats. Usually this mean snatching pizza, chips, popcorn, and other goodies away from tourists. To curb the gulls, Ocean City hired East Coast Falcons, a group…
Every time you watch a little bar on your app move from “order placed” to “out for delivery,” you have Domino’s to thank. In the mid-2000s, David Haubenstricker was in Domino’s IT department when the company was struggling after scrapping its famous 30-minute delivery guarantee, according to NPR’s Planet Money podcast. Customers were getting too anxious waiting for their pizzas to arrive without any way to know what was actually happening. So Haubenstricker’s team built the Domino’s Pizza Tracker, a real-time animation of a pizza’s journey from order to delivery. It debuted before the 2006 Super Bowl and became an…
Published September 22, 2026 06:29AMLong before modern science revealed the mechanisms behind leaf color change, Indigenous communities connected this seasonal transformation to stories of battle, bravery and bloodshed.The Oneida Indian Nation and Meherrin people tell similar versions of a story in which three men pursue a great bear to the ends of the earth and into the sky. The hunters wound the bear, whose blood drips to Earth, painting the leaves shades of crimson. In the Oneida Indian Nation’s telling, the bear escapes and reappears in the night sky as the Big Dipper, and the chase starts over again. These…