Julia Pugachevsky's face on a gray background.

I took my first in-person Peloton class. It felt like an exclusive event — which was the point.

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Admittedly, I missed out on the pandemic-era Peloton hype.

Even though most of my friends couldn’t fit the iconic exercise bikes into their cramped New York City apartments, they still enjoyed the perks of a membership.

They’d do audio-only classes and keep up with the brand’s rising stars. By osmosis, I knew who Ally Love was, and that she was teaching a themed ride to celebrate her wedding.

Years later, Peloton has had to adjust to a changing market. It reopened its in-person classes in 2022, launched AI-powered coaching features, and recently announced the launch of commercial gym bikes and treadmills.

After a pandemic-era subscriber surge and subsequent slowdown in growth, Peloton worked to find new ways to compete with in-person gym offerings, while also dealing with direct at-home workout competitors like Echelon and Tonal.

Amanda Hill, Peloton’s SVP of Global Content Strategy and Programming, told Business Insider that the brand plans to triple its in-person events in 2026, including collaborations with SXSW, F1, and the London Marathon.

“Human connection is an essential part of our magic formula,” Hill said. “Stoking community fuels our strong membership retention.”

So when I got an invite from Culturelle Probiotics to try an in-person cycling class with Jess King, their chief wellness ambassador, I was intrigued. Having never taken a Peloton class before, I was curious: Would the experience feel as dazzling to someone who hadn’t developed an attachment to its instructors?

I was starstruck despite being unfamiliar with Peloton

Before the class, the group of journalists and wellness influencers received a brief tour of Peloton’s facilities. It has the feel of a traditional gym and polished content operation — where small, in-person classes double as live broadcasts to its global subscriber base.

Located in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of Manhattan, the studio spanned two floors and was probably the most pristine gym I’ve ever been in.


Peloton stairs

The studio, opened right before the pandemic and reopened in 2022, looked spotless, thanks to some housekeeping rules. 

Joi-Marie McKenzie



We glimpsed into one production room for the brand’s virtual yoga class, a lone mat in front of loads of film equipment.

I could imagine the excitement of someone who took years of Peloton classes — to them, this would be the equivalent of a Hollywood tour.


Peloton yoga class studio

Behind-the-scenes of Peloton’s yoga class. 

Joi-Marie McKenzie



The class felt like a production, too. The lights were dimmed to a universally flattering purple, and a Peloton employee adjusted everyone’s bikes and helped them lock their shoes to their pedals.

Before King, who’s one of the brand’s stand-out personalities, emerged, an announcer mentioned going on the “ride of our lives.” I turned to the woman next to me, who blurted out exactly what I was thinking: “This is like Disney World.”


Peloton bike in class

The bikes were sleek and easy to adjust to as a total beginner. 

Joi-Marie McKenzie



While I’m personally used to a lot less fanfare in my fitness classes, the intentionality felt nice. This wasn’t just another workout squeezed in between waking up and hustling to work. It was 30 minutes of intense cycling mixed with the brand’s signature affirming energy.

Peloton fans who attend these classes typically register up to six weeks in advance. The ones visiting New York treat signing up similarly to getting rush tickets to Broadway, employing all the tricks to ensure they snag a spot to see their favorite Peloton stars.

It isn’t a class: It’s an event, after all.

The class flew by because it felt like a party

Never having taken a virtual class with King, who, before Peloton, was a professional dancer and even a finalist on “So You Think You Can Dance,” I still felt like I was in the midst of a celebrity when she entered the stage in fully bedazzled cycling shoes.


Jess King teaching Peloton class

Jess King entering the class. 

Joi-Marie McKenzie



King seamlessly walked us through how to adjust our bikes’ resistance with the muscle memory of someone who’s done this since 2014. She possessed the same charisma and discipline of a seasoned actor. King also emphasized letting go and having fun with her EDM soundtrack — a less common gym class instruction, in my experience.

The 30-minute class zoomed by. Even as a complete newbie, the gear was easy to use, and there was enough variety to keep the class neither too boring nor tediously challenging.

King’s words of encouragement, delivered with the cadence of a fitness star, also helped everyone relax into the workout.

It was a well-oiled production, which, ironically, is what made it feel so organic and fun.

Peloton isn’t building more studios anytime soon


Peloton store

Despite waitlists for its in-person classes, Peloton is not investing in more studios. 

John Smith/VIEWpress



That being said, at this time, the brand isn’t investing in building more studios outside its existing ones in New York and London.

I can understand the move. As someone who’s attended my fair share of classes at both luxury gym franchises and mom-and-pops, many have fallen into the same trap: wanting to make more money through rapid expansion at the expense of gym-goers.

Eventually, this can lead to more squished and precarious circumstances. Three people sharing a strength training station. Rushing to snatch the last pair of dumbbells that work for you. Suddenly, you feel less like a member and more like a body to stuff into a studio.

Peloton exploded in popularity because of its personalities and how safe they made their fans feel during an otherwise unstable time in their lives. I appreciate Peloton holding on to that magic like a card to its chest — even when it’s tempting to just be like every other fitness brand.




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The US is temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil, a key pressure point for the Kremlin’s war chest

by with No Comment Xpandfy

The US Treasury Department is lifting Russian oil sanctions until April 11, as the Trump administration seeks to relieve global crude supplies choked by war in the Middle East.

A notice issued by the department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Thursday laid out a roughly four-week window authorizing the “sale, delivery, or offloading of crude oil or petroleum products” from Russia.

The move eases a yearslong effort by the US and its allies to squeeze Russia’s finances in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Moscow, however, has still benefited from its energy trade — taxing the industry typically accounted for nearly half of its federal budget revenues before 2022 — by quietly transporting it via what the West has called a “shadow fleet” of third-party tankers.

An analysis from Urgewald, a German NGO, showed Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues averaged 510 million euros, or $587 million per day in the week following the strikes — 14% higher than the daily average in February daily average.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that Russia stood to benefit from the temporary lifting of sanctions, but described the gains as limited in scale.

“This narrowly tailored, short-term measure applies only to oil already in transit and will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction,” he wrote in a post on X.

Brent crude oil prices were 0.6% higher at $101.07 per barrel at 11:16 p.m. on Thursday while US West Texas Intermediate was 0.4% higher at $96.15 per barrel.

The US and Israel launched a massive airstrike campaign against Iran on February 28, attacking over 5,500 targets with land, sea, and air assets. Iran has, in turn, vowed to block the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway serving the Persian Gulf, which accounts for about a fifth of the world’s crude oil.

Traffic in the strait has plummeted in the past week amid over a dozen reports of commercial vessels being attacked in its vicinity.

Despite sweeping Western sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has reoriented much of its energy exports away from Europe and toward alternative partners in Asia, notably China and India, where discounted Russian crude has become a major source of demand.

Last week, the US granted a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil.

Ukraine and its allies have long raised concerns about Russia’s ability to muster resources from its global energy trade to feed its war manufacturing industry. The Kremlin is now spending record amounts of its federal budget on defense, reaching 6.3% of its GDP in 2025.

Daily revenues of $610 million would be the equivalent of 12,000 to 30,000 of Russia’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drones, based on estimates that the loitering munitions cost $20,000 to $50,000 each.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned Iran that continuing to impede traffic along the strait would incur further US military action.

But Tehran has maintained a defiant posture, retaliating with drone and missile attacks on its neighbors and US forces in the region. Reports say it’s also begun to sparsely lay mines along the strait, which would further delay an opening of the strait by forcing the US and its allies to meticulously sweep for and clear explosives.

On Thursday, the new Iranian supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a statement through a newscaster that his government would continue blocking the strait.




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US gas prices climb to the highest point in Trump’s second term. He says, ‘If they rise, they rise.’

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Gas prices continued their ascent on Friday as the escalating conflict with Iran sends shockwaves through global energy markets.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline climbed to $3.32 on Friday, according to AAA — that’s an 11.4% increase from last week’s price and the highest level since August 2024.

The jump follows a surge in crude oil prices after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iranian targets last Saturday, prompting retaliatory attacks from Tehran.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, traded above $91 a barrel Friday morning, its highest level since mid-2024, according to GasBuddy.

US pump prices could continue to climb. BloombergNEF estimates that about half of the eventual increase in retail gasoline prices typically shows up within 10 to 13 days, with roughly 90% reflected within about 21 days.

The firm added that if crude rises by $10 a barrel amid escalating tensions, US gas prices could climb by roughly 30 to 40 cents per gallon in the short term.

Oil supply chains have been particularly sensitive to threats around the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway along Iran’s southern coast that handles roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption.

Iran said it attacked a tanker passing through the waterway on Thursday.

Any disruption there could quickly drive oil prices higher — and those moves would show up at the pump within weeks.

Iran has also targeted regional energy infrastructure, including facilities tied to Qatar’s massive liquefied natural gas exports.

President Donald Trump downplayed the retail price increase when asked by Reuters about rising fuel costs this week, saying he does not “have any concern about it.”

“They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit,” he said.

He has said that the US Navy will escort tankers passing through the Strait.

Retail analysts warn that the impact of higher energy prices could extend beyond drivers. Higher fuel costs raise shipping and distribution expenses for businesses and can weigh on consumer spending.

“As oil prices rise, gas prices follow,” Carol Spieckerman, an independent retail analyst, told Business Insider. “And with the administration promising lower prices and consumers laser-focused on the pump, this metric has been given arguably more political and psychological energy than any other economic variable.”

She added that the impact will stretch far beyond the gas station. Higher fuel costs can push up travel, delivery, and retail prices — including goods made with petroleum-based materials.

“The ripple effects of fuel prices are far-reaching and underestimated,” she said. “It’s a compounding effect that touches nearly every corner of retail.”




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EY’s chief digital officer says marketing is at an AI ‘inflection point’

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Lou Cohen, EY’s chief digital officer, said many marketers are not yet taking advantage of the benefits of artificial intelligence.

Cohen, who is also a professor at New York University, Yeshiva University, and Baruch College, said marketing is at an “inflection point,” with investment shifting from general digital innovation to AI transformation.

Cohen said that marketers who understand how to use AI in an assistive way, by focusing on what outcomes it delivers best, will access a deeper level of audience segmenting, targeting, and testing. He was interviewed for CMO Insider at Business Insider’s studio in New York City.

Ultimately, Cohen said, the marketing function will embrace the new opportunity. “Marketers, they’re not afraid to try things,” Cohen said. “We’re going to learn more from the things that we fail with and that don’t work than the things that do.”

The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

We are at an interesting inflection point. In today’s marketing environment, you really need to understand how to make AI work for you; otherwise, you will end up working for it.

There are efficiency and operational gains to be had. But if you think about the outcomes that AI can enable from a marketing perspective, we could be smarter about how we segment our audiences for different campaigns. We could be more efficient in the ways our advertising runs. We could test more rapidly to get better-quality content in front of the right audiences at the right time in the right place.

But most marketing teams are not yet set up to take advantage of this potential. So the investments of the last 15 years in digital transformation are now shifting into AI transformation.

It’s a bit unknown now. Marketers are not totally comfortable with this because we’re so worried that it’s going to hallucinate or give us something that isn’t accurate. Marketers, they’re not afraid to try things. We’re going to learn more from the things that we fail with and that don’t work than from the things that do.

My colleague came up with a great way to evaluate the quality of our content using AI. We can paste in an article that a partner of ours wrote, and it will give us recommendations on how to make that piece of content better. But we’re never — I shouldn’t say never — we’re not likely to use content created by AI. But we certainly can use AI to enhance and give feedback to our content creators.

Hallucinations are real. The challenge is that as consumers of these technologies, we don’t yet understand the difference between probabilistic and deterministic outcomes. Probabilistic is the likely correct response that the AI is trying to give us. Deterministic is “one plus one equals two,” and arguably, one plus one always equals two.

When you’re doing a search on Google or Bing, for example, you are getting a deterministic response. You’re getting what it believes to be the likely to answer your question. Versus with the LLMs, the ChatGPTs, the Llamas, the Geminis of the world, you’re getting a probabilistic response. The model is bringing a bunch of different sources together to determine the answer it thinks you should get based on your prompt.

That means if we were using these tools for their designed purpose, we’d still need search engines to just navigate to the things we’re looking for, or to find the needles in the haystack of the internet. But LLMs give us a different opportunity. They can be assistants. That was some of the original idea behind these AI tools, to assist people in doing different tasks.

I think of these LLMs more as marketing assistants to give me real-time ideas, feedback, or suggestions, rather than doing the task for me. That’s a human putting AI to work to get better outcomes faster than if I were to just do it myself.




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Author of viral ‘Something Big is Coming’ essay says AI helped him write it — and that proves his point

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The author of the viral essay warning about impending AI disruption says he couldn’t wait any longer to get the word out.

“Let’s say there is just a 20% chance of it happening, which is maybe realistic, maybe underselling it,” Matt Shumer, GP of Shumer Capital, said during an interview with Business Insider. “Even if there is a 20% chance of this happening, people deserve to know and have time to prepare.”

The people in tech who previously warned about AI’s impact were mostly speaking to others in the industry, he said. Shumer said he wanted something that spoke to his dad, a lawyer who is just a few years from retirement and is hopeful he can run out the clock on the potential massive change on the horizon.

He’s certainly found an audience.

His essay, titled “Something Big is Coming,” has been viewed over 60 million times on X alone, as of Wednesday evening. In the nearly 5,000-word post, Shumer wrote that AI’s disruption to people’s lives could be “much bigger” than COVID — a comparison that has drawn some pushback online. Shumer’s past controversy over an open-source model he promoted in 2024 has also come under scrutiny, after AI researchers discovered the model didn’t live up to his performance claims. He previously apologized, saying “I got ahead of myself when I announced this project.”

In his essay, Shumer also wrote that what he’s seeing in tech is likely what awaits other industries.

“I don’t know that this is coming for sure, but I think a lot of us in tech really see this progress, and it’s frankly dizzying, and there’s a good chance of this,” he said. “And the more people know, the better.”

Shumer is not alone in his fears about the future.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who is known for writing eyebrow-raising essays of his own, has said that up to half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs may be wiped out in the next one to five years. xAI CEO Elon Musk has called AI a “supersonic tsunami” that will quickly eliminate jobs that don’t involve physical labor.

Shumer said even he is unsettled about the prospects of AI. After all, he’s 26 and still near the beginning years of his career. In 2020, he cofounded OthersideAI, which later spawned HyperWrite, an AI-assisted writing tool.

“I don’t know how many more years of my career there will be if this all actually comes to pass,” he told Business Insider. “So, it’s frankly a little confusing and terrifying for someone like me.”

Part of the issue is that AI is unlikely to affect all industries in the same way or at the same time, making career advice highly dependent on a person’s specific situation.

“If you’re a nurse, you’re probably going to be fine for quite some time,” he told Business Insider, adding that junior associates at law school face significantly more risk because many of the introductory-type tasks they do are already being targeted by AI companies.

In his essay, Shumer wrote that his realization of what’s in store came after his experience with OpenAI’s GPT-5.3-Codex, which was released last week. In its release notes, OpenAI said GPT-5.3-Codex was its “first model that was instrumental in creating itself.” Shumer wrote that AI is now capable of doing his technical work.

As for the other tasks, Shumer has been quite open about how AI helped him write his viral essay about AI. He said he spent hours working with Claude to craft his message.

“It did help a lot,” he told TBPN on Wednesday, “and I think that’s kind of the point.”

It’s why Shumer’s message to everyone who turned away from AI, perhaps after a clunky experience with an early version of ChatGPT years ago, is that they should seize the opportunity to see the breadth of what the technology can do now.

“If you look back 10 years from now and this did come to pass, you’ll be very glad you did,” he told Business Insider.




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I joined a decluttering challenge and got rid of 496 items in a month. I made a point to not throw anything in the trash.

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mesha Griffith, the author of The Bedtime Mantra. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m a children’s book author and mom. One day, I looked around the house and said, “We have too much stuff.”

I got the idea to declutter for 30 days and get rid of 496 items from The Minimalists podcast. You have to get rid of one thing on the first day, two on the second day, three on the third, and so on.

We started it in 2021. My husband and I, along with some extended family, would do a group text at the beginning of the year and say, “Here’s what I’m going to get rid of,” and send pictures back and forth to hold each other accountable.

I decided to share the challenge with my Instagram followers. I posted my first decluttering challenge in January 2025, and then I did the second one in December 2025. Someone said I should draw a random number every day for the December challenge, and I had to purge however many items the number said, which turned out to be the perfect way to gamify it — and to hold myself accountable to post consistently on social media.

Even though I had done this before, I had plenty to sort through

All of our stuff was once money, and I just started seeing everything as dollar signs. One day, I added everything up I was getting rid of that day and how much I originally spent on it, and it was $400.

I’m more aware of the things I’m buying and bringing into my house, but even we have clutter. For example, we collect so much paper. I threw away three expired insurance cards. I threw away instruction manuals. You can find the PDFs online.

The comments section became a community

Every day since this went viral with my decluttering videos, I have had people waiting to see what number I’d pull the next day. I didn’t want to let those people down. People even began doing their own challenge alongside me. It was more exciting to me that other people were inspired by my little challenge.

In the beginning, I’d get a lot of comments asking me whether I’d count this or that item, or how many items something like a Tupperware with a lid counted for.

I’d tell them not to focus on that — it counts because it’s causing you anxiety, stress, or agitation.

I was even intentional about how I got rid of stuff

Throwing stuff away was never an option. I had time, energy, and mental capacity to try to find new homes for as much stuff as I could.

I’d resell on Facebook Marketplace, but it would need to go quickly. I didn’t want to have a box of unsold stuff at the end of the month. If it didn’t sell quickly, I’d take it to the thrift store, the free pantry, or other places. For example, I took towels, sheets, and blankets to the Columbus Humane Society, and I took building supplies and working appliances to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore.

I don’t think I’ll do any more decluttering challenges for myself this year. I feel like I’ve run out of things to get rid of, but I would love to help either a family member or a friend declutter their home.




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Elon Musk says money can’t buy happiness. Research suggests it can — up to a point.

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Elon Musk wants you to know that the money hasn’t made him happy.

“Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about,” Elon Musk wrote in a post on X on Thursday with a sad-face emoji.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO is by far the richest person in the world. Per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $668 billion. The second-richest person in the world, Larry Page, is worth $285 billion.

Musk’s wealth has soared by $49 billion since the start of the year, buoyed by SpaceX’s high valuation and news of its merger with his AI startup, XAI.

So, is Musk right or wrong that money can’t buy you happiness?

Studies show that money does bring happiness, but there could be a limit for the ultrawealthy.

David Bartram, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester, told Business Insider that while wealth and happiness are linked, “It’s very much a matter of ‘diminishing returns.'”

“Once you’ve got a few million, anything extra is meaningless for happiness,” he said.

Bartram said for the very wealthy, “happiness is probably best achieved by having a sense that you’ve done some good in the world, and that you’ve treated people around you with care and kindness. It’s not exactly rocket science.”

A 2021 study by Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, found that happiness and feelings of well-being increased in tandem with a person’s rising income.

However, the amount of money needed for happiness becomes an exponentially moving goalpost, Killingsworth concluded in a 2024 paper.

While the data he analyzed did not examine what millionaires or billionaires are experiencing, Killingsworth said it was “plausible” that the pattern would continue among the world’s wealthiest.

Musk discussed the relationship between happiness and wealth in a recent conversation with Nikhil Kamath on the “People by WTF” podcast.

“Aim to make more than you take. Be a net contributor to society,” Musk said in November.

“It’s kind of like the pursuit of happiness. You know, if you want to create something valuable financially, you don’t pursue that. It’s best to actually pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence, as opposed to pursuing money directly,” he added.




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