Editor’s note: On April 18, Palantir posted a 1,000-word distillation of “The Technological Republic” to X, prompting a fresh wave of discourse on its theses. Our review of the Palantir book canon was originally published on March 17.

Last July, four high-ranking tech executives — all of them involved with artificial intelligence — were sworn into the US Army Reserves with the rank of lieutenant colonel. They were part of a new unit called Detachment 201, also known as the Executive Innovation Corps. The Pentagon has introduced many initiatives to deepen relationships with Silicon Valley. But making officers out of multimillionaire executives with no military experience served as a strong symbol of a new era in which venture capitalists and technologists see themselves as essential to the defense of the nation.

The tech industry, which once prided itself on its libertarian- and counterculture-inflected antiwar ideals, has emphatically re-enlisted in the American military project. Drawn by patriotism and lucrative government contracts, numerous tech companies — from established giants like Google and SpaceX to military-minded startups in Southern California — have started working for the defense establishment, from supplying the Department of Homeland Security to building AI-powered drones and autonomous weapons to be used in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. Anduril, a leading munitions startup, just announced a Pentagon contract that may be worth up to $20 billion.

No company has driven tech’s transformation from keyboard to warrior like Palantir, a data and analytics firm cofounded by Peter Thiel, which has a current market cap of $360 billion. Palantir’s financial network and its alumni are responsible for bringing numerous defense-tech startups into being. And it helped brush away the tech industry’s reticence to be involved in war-making.

Now, a growing canon of books by and about Palantirians is helping to crystallize, and proselytize, tech’s new hawkishness. Last year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his colleague Nicholas W. Zamiska published “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West,” which outlined their austere vision for a militarized republic secured by Silicon Valley technologies and led by highly skilled engineers. Last fall, New York Times Magazine contributor Michael Steinberger published an authorized biography, “The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.” Now, Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer and one of the four techies-turned-officers, has published “Mobilize: How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III.” Cowritten with his colleague Madeline Hart, “Mobilize” claims that the US government needs to urgently boost military production — with the help of Silicon Valley — in order to head off a conflict with China, which the authors think will attempt to capture Taiwan in 2027.

From these books, and from a battery of public statements by Karp and his cofounders, a distinctive worldview emerges — an unapologetically nationalistic attitude that has total contempt for one’s enemies in politics and business and that sees constant, world-rending conflict in our future. This belief system was developed by a group of people who exhibit a profound wish to live in interesting times, to be the shield defending America in a world of constant threats. You might call it Palantirianism.

Birthed from the 20-year-long global war on terror, which coincided with the tech boom, Palantirianism holds that America’s adversaries don’t negotiate for peace. They surrender entirely — or, as Karp has said, they will be too “scared” to challenge the US in the first place because they fear immediate destruction. Palantirians’ catchword is “deterrence” — derived not from fear of mutual nuclear annihilation or diplomacy but by developing overwhelming AI-based firepower. “The preconditions for a durable peace often come only from a credible threat of war,” Karp writes in “The Technological Republic.“

Under Palantirianism, the military-industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about is good for the world — but it would be far better with the tech industry’s participation and leadership. “Eisenhower wasn’t warning about the existence of the military-industrial complex; he was warning about its potential for undue influence, a distinction often lost,” write Sankar and Hart. In their view, bringing together Silicon Valley and the Pentagon is not a step toward undue influence for America’s tech billionaires. It’s exactly what the country requires: “American capitalism and the American military need each other,” they write. “Reuniting the American industrial base, commercial and defense, is an existential issue.”

Palantirianism exhibits a profound wish to live in interesting times, to be the shield defending America in a world of constant threats.

Palantirians see securing American military hegemony as the national priority. Karp, who once called himself a “neo-Marxist” and a Democratic Party supporter before drifting rightward, told his biographer that national security is the only issue that matters to him, and that the tech industry’s workers should devote themselves to the same. “A generation of programmers remains ready to dedicate their working lives to sating the needs of capitalist culture, and to enrich itself, but declines to ask more fundamental questions about what ought to be built and for what purpose,” he writes. The answer for Karp, the high priest of Palantirianism, is obvious: What ought to be built is what makes people safer. What makes people safer is empowering the military, police, and intelligence services. That is his vision of the common good.

His vision is now transforming the tech industry, the military, and how we look at national security. “We have made the mistake of allowing a technocratic ruling class to form and take hold in this country without asking for anything quite substantial in return. What should the public demand for abandoning the threat of revolt?” Karp writes, sounding like the Marxist of his youth. “Free email is not enough.”

Palantir grew out of a program at PayPal — where Thiel was CEO — to fight financial fraud in its system. The company itself was later founded in 2003 with an explicit mission: defending the West, which its founders see as imperiled. “A moment of reckoning has arrived for the West,” Karp writes early in his book. It’s not always clear what those threats are (or even what constitutes “the West”). In the conservative tech mogul’s imaginarium, wokeness and DEI seem to be as dangerous to the American public as a revanchist Russia. Karp frequently refers to an organized “assault on religion,” without elaborating except to say that it “left us vulnerable as a society.”

With seed money from the CIA’s In-Q-Tel venture capital firm — which the agency established to help incubate national-security startups — Palantir slowly grew to become the go-to analytics platform for much of the military and intelligence establishment. It wasn’t an easy ride: The company was in the red for more than 20 years, and it sued the US Army, claiming that it had boxed out Palantir by violating its own procurement rules. Palantir won the lawsuit, cultivated numerous government and military insiders (who were sometimes given its software for free), and now runs a software platform, known as Project Maven, that’s used across the US military and NATO. It has other software tools that have been used by corporations, police departments, hospitals, and the federal government when it was tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maven started as software to analyze drone video feeds, with a $10 million contract going to Google. After Google employees protested working for the Pentagon and Google dropped the project, Palantir, working alongside other tech companies, picked it up and ran with it. Maven eventually became “an all-purpose AI operating system” integrating vast data sources into a dashboard that intelligence analysts have said makes their work much easier, even saving lives in the field. Maven is now used in conjunction with other systems, such as Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, which sits on top of Palantir’s platform. The Washington Post reported that Claude was used to rapidly generate thousands of targets for the ongoing US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran. The US military is investigating whether AI was used to target the bombing of a school that killed at least 100 Iranian children. In a sign of how Maven has the potential to take humans out of the loop, Sankar and Hart note in their book that “machine-to-machine connections were enabled to allow Maven to communicate with weapons systems and send confirmed targets directly to artillery.”

With its martial mission, Palantir isn’t like many software companies. Most employees have one of three job titles: deployment strategist, product development engineer, or forward-deployed engineer. The latter group is software engineers sent to work directly with clients — whether in Manhattan or Kabul — to customize Palantir’s tools and troubleshoot on the fly.

Karp calls himself “a fluorescent praying mantis.”

Leading this motley “artists colony” is Karp, who has a Ph.D. from Goethe University, enjoys cross-country skiing with his Norwegian ex-commando bodyguards, practices tai chi, and retains four Austrian assistants with whom he speaks in German. An ex-Israeli intelligence officer serves as “a kind of fixer” for Karp, who describes to his biographer a lifelong feeling of personal vulnerability.

Karp once had a policy of never spending more than $1 million for a home; that was before he received a $1.1 billion pay package in 2020. Now he owns a private jet and lavish properties all over the country, most of them in ski areas. Recently, he spent $120 million on a Benedictine monastery in Colorado.

He calls himself “a fluorescent praying mantis.” With his many-limbed mannerisms and braggadocious quips, Karp has turned himself into a mascot for Palantir’s culture. “Always energetic and upbeat around the office,” he’s known for launching into impromptu talks with employees that become an “orgy of free association,” Steinberger writes. He can be “a little bit incoherent,” but also exhibits “crazy charisma.”

In public, his mad-mogul image can play well, generating viral clips of his vows to drone enemies with “fentanyl-laced urine.” TV producers began to love him because “he was reliably unfiltered, thanks in part to his practice of getting hopped-up on Mexican Coke beforehand.”

The son of a white Jewish father and a Black mother, Karp’s identity has been a core throughline in his life and career. As a child, Karp was bullied at school, contributing to a sense of fear and personal instability.

“You’re a racially amorphous, far-left Jewish kid who’s also dyslexic — would you not come up with the idea that you’re fucked?” Karp says to Steinberger. In this context, Karp’s sense of identity was hopelessly complicated and a potential social liability.

One of Karp’s close friends from college said, “He was much more of a Black man then than he is now.”

Karp didn’t tell his Palantir colleagues that he was Black until 2019, but he presented differently in his youth. He went to college at Haverford, where he “was active in black student affairs, and his social life mainly revolved around Haverford’s black community,” Steinberger writes. He organized a conference at Yale about racism on college campuses and wore a Palestinian keffiyeh in a yearbook photo. One of his close friends from the time said, “He was much more of a Black man then than he is now.”

After college, Karp enrolled at Stanford Law School, which he almost immediately regarded as a mistake. He became friends with another disenchanted classmate, Thiel, who at the time was already a deeply ideological veteran of campus culture wars.

After Stanford, Karp moved to Germany to pursue a doctorate in sociology at Goethe University. Karp would later say that Jurgen Habermas, one of Germany’s postwar intellectual giants, was for a time his dissertation advisor, which Habermas has denied. According to letters examined by Steinberger, Habermas tried to steer Karp toward an English-language degree in another subject. “Your topic would require a literary approach to a topic that often overwhelms the linguistic sensibility of us native speakers — and yours, you won’t blame me, even more so,” Habermas wrote to Karp.

Karp didn’t listen. He went on to finish his dissertation — an examination of how aggression is used as a tool of social integration — which he wrote in German under the supervision of Karola Brede, who had previously studied under Habermas. With Brede, Karp cowrote an academic article — the only one he published — a consideration of “eliminationist” anti-Semitism and Daniel Goldhagen’s book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.”

In the years since, Karp has embraced his Jewishness while expressing reluctance to claim his Black identity. The story of his parents’ relationship became for him a kind of cautionary tale of how identity politics run amok.

“My father wanted to marry a Black woman,” says Ben Karp, Alex’s brother. “Dating Leah was a powerful way of signaling his progressivism,” Steinberger notes. Leah Jaynes liked that Bob Karp was Jewish, and Karp liked that she was Black. They eventually divorced, after which Bob Karp remarried and adopted biracial children. Bob’s new family didn’t sit well with his sons. “Alex’s realization, years later, that racial and ethnic identity had been foundational to his parents’ relationship was part of the reason he developed a visceral dislike of identity politics,” writes Steinberger. “He felt as if he had been the product of virtue signaling, and it bothered him.”

Steinberger depicts Karp’s personal reckoning over his parentage as part of what moved him to the right. In 2015, he told company employees that he didn’t like Trump. According to “The Philosopher in the Valley,” Karp once told a friend that he wouldn’t mind pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of a helicopter. The company has gone on to work for ICE and other government agencies executing hardline Trump policies.

Two global events contributed to Karp’s political metamorphosis: COVID and Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. During the pandemic, Karp stocked up on canned food and bullets, and loved his time in isolation. “While the pandemic was wretched for most people, Karp found it blissful,” writes Steinberger. Plenty of time for cross-country skiing.

After Palantir returned from remote work, Karp’s proclamations became more extreme. He started calling Palantir “a prepper company” and reveling in its role in doling out violence to enemies of the West.

Oct. 7 reanimated Karp’s sense of personal vulnerability and his commitment to Israel. Having once celebrated the virtues of debate with his friend and political opposite Peter Thiel, he told Palantirians that the company wouldn’t tolerate any disagreement over its work for the country. Palantir took out a full page ad in The New York Times declaring, “Palantir Stands With Israel.”

Under Karp’s never-apologize-never-explain leadership, Palantir has become a leading bogeyman for opponents of the surveillance state. New York City is now speckled with posters denouncing the company as the “enemy.” Former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich recently called Palantir “America’s most dangerous corporation.”

The truth is more tangled. By its own claim, Palantir proudly stands for American militarism, abets the surveillance state, and has catalyzed a shift in the tech industry toward supporting the security services. But influential as Palantir is, the company makes software — tools to implement government policy. It does not directly collect data or conduct surveillance. It sucks up that information from clients, including authoritarian states, making the job of war-making or repression potentially much easier. There are numerous firms beyond Palantir — including the big five “prime” defense contractors — engaged in this kind of work.

Palantirianism — a belief system that is now being spread through venture capital investments in startups like Anduril, Saronic, and Shield AI, and tech’s close alliance with the Trump administration — is far more influential than Palantir itself. People “want to know they are safe, and safe means that the other person is scared,” Karp said at an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Defense Forum. This is the simple core belief that now animates the defense tech industry and swaths of the Silicon Valley elite. (Elon Musk is a Karp fan.)

By 2025, Karp was writing in shareholder letters that the West owed its success to its primacy at “applying organized violence” — a notion of which he evidently approved. He started talking about how certain cultures were “regressive and harmful” compared to others.

“We have been building products for a world that is violent, disjointed, and irrational, a world in which you have to show strength,” Karp said during an earnings call. People “have to pick sides.” Some people “are violent and not conformant with morality.”

For many years, Karp said that fascism was his greatest fear. He wanted nothing more than to stem the rise of the far right in America. Yet Karp’s company has provided direct assistance to what many observers have described as the most authoritarian president in US history. He did all this with the help of his close friend Peter Thiel, Palantir’s chairman, an early Trump supporter who decades ago said that he had tired of electoral democracy. Steinberger summed up the contradiction: “With Trump restored to power, it appeared that authoritarianism had triumphed in the United States and that Palantir, which Karp had always touted as a bulwark of the liberal international order, would henceforth be serving the agenda of a president who was contemptuous of America’s political tradition.”

Although Karp has matured, in his biographer’s view, into a “statesman CEO,” he is still driven by spleen. Throughout “The Philosopher in the Valley,” he repeatedly complains that his college alma mater hasn’t invited him to give a speech or cultivated him as a donor. Karp detests Haverford with a similar passion that he applies to terrorists and student protesters. “I eventually came to realize that he needed enemies,” Steinberger writes of Karp. That need, it turns out, has implications for us all.

Jacob Silverman is a contributing writer for Business Insider. He is the author, most recently, of “Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.”

The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed how businesses collect data, automate processes, and deliver services. But as connected devices become more deeply embedded in everyday operations, another layer of innovation is gaining traction alongside them: embedded finance.

Financial services are moving beyond traditional banks and separate payment systems. Now, they are built right into digital platforms, devices, and customer workflows. For service-based industries, this change is setting new standards for what a smooth customer experience means.

What Is Embedded Finance?

Embedded finance means adding services such as payments, loans, or insurance directly into non-financial platforms. This way, businesses can offer these services themselves, so customers do not have to go to outside providers.

This approach has changed industries like e-commerce and SaaS by enabling instant transactions and built-in financing. A 2024 Bain & Company report estimates that embedded finance could handle over $7 trillion in global transactions over the next 10 years, underscoring its rapid growth.

Where IoT Fits In

IoT is important for embedded finance because it creates ongoing, data-rich interactions between businesses and customers. Connected devices, such as smart home systems and wearable health monitors, provide real-time insights that can lead to services, maintenance, or upgrades.

What’s starting to happen now is that these alerts don’t stop at “something needs attention.” They push people closer to actually doing something about it.

Say an HVAC system detects a performance issue—it doesn’t just log it; it nudges the user to book a repair. A health device might flag an issue, prompting scheduling follow-up care. Fleet platforms do something similar, surfacing maintenance needs as vehicles rack up mileage.

At that point, the gap between spotting the issue and paying to fix it is getting smaller. In a lot of cases, it’s happening in the same place, almost as part of the same decision.

Adding financial options directly into these workflows makes the process smoother and helps people act on insights more quickly.

The Customer Experience Layer

As IoT systems become more common, people are getting used to things happening faster—and with less effort on their part. If something needs attention, they expect to deal with it right away, without jumping between platforms or repeating steps.

That expectation doesn’t stop at the service itself. It carries over into how people pay.

This is where embedded finance starts to matter. Instead of sending customers somewhere else to figure out payment, the option shows up at the moment they’re already making a decision. In service-based industries, especially, timing can make a difference. If the process feels quick and straightforward, people are far more likely to move forward rather than put it off.

Customer Financing as a Core Component

Customer financing is one of the most important uses of embedded finance, especially for expensive services.

Upfront costs can make it hard for people to access services like healthcare, home repairs, or elective treatments. Even if customers see the value, not being able to pay all at once can cause them to delay or give up on getting the service.

Adding financing options directly into the customer experience makes it easier for people to pay. For instance, platforms like Cherry allow customers to split payments for services so they can stay within the provider’s system. This approach makes financing feel like a normal part of the process and meets customers’ needs today.

Business Impact: Beyond Payments

For many businesses, embedded finance is increasingly seen as less of a “nice-to-have” and more of a driver of revenue.

When payment and financing options are built into the experience, customers are more likely to move forward. It removes a point of hesitation. In some cases, it also leads people to choose larger or more comprehensive services than they originally planned. McKinsey has noted that this kind of integration can lift revenue per customer by 5 to 15 percent in certain industries, particularly those with higher upfront costs.

For companies already using IoT systems, the effect can be even more noticeable. When a device flags an issue or recommends a service, and the customer can immediately see a way to pay for it, the gap between decision and action narrows. Instead of adding steps, everything happens in one place—and that tends to translate into higher follow-through.

Challenges and Considerations

That said, it’s not as simple as flipping a switch and adding financing to your platform.

Once you step into anything that touches payments or lending, you’re dealing with a different set of rules. Financial services are tightly regulated, and businesses need to be clear on what’s required from a compliance standpoint before rolling anything out.

There’s also the question of data. IoT systems already handle a steady stream of information, and adding financial interactions on top of that raises the stakes. Protecting user data and keeping systems secure isn’t optional—it’s part of maintaining trust.

The customer experience is also important. When financing options are confusing or hard to find, they make things worse. The goal is to keep everything simple, so customers know what they’re signing up for without having to pause and figure it out.

The Convergence of IoT and Finance

Bringing IoT and embedded finance together is changing how companies offer and monetize their services. Connected devices are no longer just for monitoring or automation. More often, they are becoming entry points for transactions and financial choices.

As this trend continues, companies that add financial features to their digital platforms will be better prepared to meet changing customer needs. Embedded finance is no longer just a bonus. It is now a central part of modern service systems, combining insight, action, and payment into one smooth experience.

The post IoT-Driven Embedded Finance: Transforming Customer Experience in Service Industries appeared first on IoT Business News.

• Sarah Israel, 40, found boxes of McDonald’s memorabilia from the ’70s and ’80s.
• Her dad, a McDonald’s executive, collected pins, a burger lamp, and branded items.
• She felt nostalgic, and thousands online shared the same reaction.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sarah Israel. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My dad has always been a collector. It was like a primal need of his, collecting.

Ever since I can remember, he would take my siblings and me to yard sales, flea markets, and garage sales. I hated it and begged him to stop taking us along to look at garbage. I wanted to go to the movies, not talk to vendors at flea markets about what they had on offer.

Although he collected anything and everything, or at least that’s what it felt like, he only displayed his music. His records were all out in our music room. He had thousands of vinyl records and CDs.

Almost everything else was just stored away in boxes in the basement: salt-and-pepper shakers, vintage shoes, and rooster figurines galore. This might have been a decision influenced by my mom, who hated clutter.

I helped my parents downsize

We didn’t know the extent of what he had collected until recently, when all of us siblings have been helping my parents downsize. We went into the basement and slowly started opening boxes, one by one, not sure of what we would find.

I opened a box, then a few more, all of which had McDonald’s collectibles. My dad had been an executive with McDonald’s for years in the 80s. He started as an assistant store manager here in Canada and eventually became the Training Director for the Canadian market, a role that involved lots of travel to the US for conferences. In the mid-80s, he moved to Paris to work as the Training Director for the European market, 19 countries in all, before finally settling back in Montreal in a role at the head office.

Throughout his years working for McDonald’s, my dad had picked up various items along the way. Things that were very specific to wherever he was. There were Happy Meal toys, clocks, watches, mugs, clothing, a voice note recorder, and lots of pins.

As I sorted through the boxes, all the memories came back to life of my childhood, the years before life became complicated. Life then was so simple, and waves of nostalgia washed over me as I held each item. These memories that had been tucked away in the recesses of my mind suddenly came back to the front and center.

People online were really into my dad’s collection

It wasn’t only me who felt this way; I found out all too quickly. As a seller of vintage items, I started making videos on social media about what I’d found.

The response was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and I’m sure it’s because I hit on this tender spot in millennials — this time in life when the most exciting thing was wondering what toy you’d get in your Happy Meal. The world’s landscape right now is really challenging, and I think people just want to lean into nostalgia, into a period in history when things didn’t feel quite so difficult.

Even though I have loved looking at the McDonald’s collectibles, I’ve decided to sell nearly all of them. I’ve looked at things one at a time, consciously appreciated them, and then moved on to the next thing. It’s hard to do, but it makes me happy to think about all these items in their new homes, being enjoyed by their new owners for years to come.

I won’t pretend it’s easy, though, because these McDonald’s items aren’t only a reminder of my own history, but also that of my dad’s. They remind me of who my dad once was and what he did for all those years while we were young children. And now I have to assign a monetary value to them so I can sell them.

I’ve decided to keep a few things, some pins from when my parents were in Paris, but I’ll be selling the rest.

I’m excited that people will buy their favorite items and will be so excited to display them. The collectible that has received the most attention is the burger lamp. It makes me feel good to know that the lamp, alongside all the other items, won’t be hidden away in boxes any longer.

• Redfin and Glassdoor identified the 10 best big cities for this year’s college graduates.
• Each city was ranked across metrics related to housing, career opportunities, and quality of life.
• Texas has more cities on the list than any other state, with three in the top 10.

Graduation season is upon us, and while this year’s graduates have much to celebrate, they’re also entering adulthood under significant financial pressure.

They have more student loan debt than previous generations, face an unforgiving job market, and are trying to navigate a housing market where high prices and mortgage rates have made homeownership feel unaffordable.

Where graduates choose to live after graduation could make a big difference, and a new report from Redfin and Glassdoor could help with their decision. The companies ranked 10 major metros using 13 indicators related to housing affordability, career opportunities, and urban quality of life.

Across all states, the ranking suggests Texas is a standout destination for college grads. Three of its largest cities — Dallas, Houston, and Austin — round out the top 10. Redfin and Glassdoor highlighted their strong job markets and relatively affordable rent for recent grads.

“These cities in Texas do great on all metrics: robust job markets, good amenities, and relatively affordable housing,” Asad Khan, a senior economist with Redfin, told Business Insider. “Strong housing supply growth in Texas has been key to allowing these cities to grow and attract young professionals from high-cost states around the country.”

“The strong industry mix also makes these cities more resilient and attractive to a wide range of early career workers,” Khan added.

Read on to find out which other cities made the cut. Here are the 10 best big cities for this year’s graduates, according to Redfin and Glassdoor.

10. Austin

• Average early-career earnings: $72,025
• Price of typical starter home: $276,600
• Years to save for down payment: 4 years, 1 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 30.3%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 35%

9. Miami

• Average early-career earnings: $62,748
• Price of typical starter home: $210,000
• Years to save for down payment: 3 years, 11 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 26.4%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 33%

8. San Diego

• Average early-career earnings: $74,053
• Price of typical starter home: $615,000
• Years to save for down payment: More than 10 years
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 65.4%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 64%

7. St. Louis

• Average early-career earnings: $61,834
• Price of typical starter home: $150,000
• Years to save for down payment: 2 years, 7 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 19.1%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 23%

6. Houston

• Average early-career earnings: $65,369
• Price of typical starter home: $215,000
• Years to save for down payment: 3 years, 7 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 25.9%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 18%

5. Chicago

• Average early-career earnings: $72,786
• Price of typical starter home: $202,000
• Years to save for down payment: 3 years
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 21.9%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 28%

4. Dallas

• Average early-career earnings: $67,451
• Price of typical starter home: $240,000
• Years to save for down payment: 4 years, 1 month
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 28%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 26%

3. Boston

• Average early-career earnings: $80,026
• Price of typical starter home: $460,000
• Years to save for down payment: 6 years, 8 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 45.3%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 53%

2. Omaha

• Average early-career earnings: $59,123
• Price of typical starter home: $195,000
• Years to save for down payment: 3 years, 8 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 26%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 28%

1. Washington, D.C.

• Average annual early-career earnings: $79,857
• Price of typical starter home: $320,000
• Years to save for down payment: 4 years, 2 months
• Monthly mortgage payment as percent of income: 31.6%
• Monthly rent as percent of income: 34%

• I’ve been unemployed for seven months, and I’m debating if getting a master’s degree would help.
• I know that a master’s doesn’t protect you from unemployment, but maybe I should expand my skills.
• I’m not sure if I will go back to school, but it would relieve some of my anxiety.

A few years back, when ChatGPT first became available, the hype got loud, and one of my freelance clients was shouting the loudest. He called me one afternoon and declared that paying writers was a thing of the past, as this new technology could do in five minutes what all his freelance writers could do in a month.

“You should have picked a different profession,” he said. He fired me a few months later.

I’ve been thinking about that interaction a lot lately, especially after seven months of unsuccessful job hunting. Countless hours of filling out applications have led to 10 interviews and zero job offers.

It’s got me wondering if, at age 45, I’ve somehow bottomed out of the job market. And if my skills have become irrelevant, I may go back to school.

How I got to this questioning place

A few months back, I had an interview for an administrative job at a state college. In addition to the pay and benefits, the prospective employers noted the job would include the ability to take six credit hours of college courses per semester once the probation period had ended. So, at six credit hours per semester over three semesters, I’d be able to complete a 36-credit-hour master’s program in two years. It didn’t seem like a bad path forward, assuming I got accepted to a program.

But my post-undergraduate plan never included a master’s. I wanted to get a job as a writer, and I did that with only a BA. For 20-plus years, my BA worked for both my primary and side-hustle careers.

I dismissed graduate school as another long-term financial burden that would never pay for itself.

Still, the idea of a master’s always had merit. Many of my friends and colleagues have at least a master’s degree in something, and for years, none of them seemed to be hurting for work or opportunities. My wife went back to night school in her 30s for two years to become a teacher, so maybe a similar path would be best for me, too.

I doubt another degree would help

To be honest, the desire to go back to school has less to do with being Step 1 in my mid-life career reinvigoration plan and more with the need for anything that will address my anxieties and uncertainties about the current job market.

Maybe going back to school would help me twofold: relieve my anxiety and help expand my skills.

But as has been shown over the last two years, higher education degrees and job-specific training do not make anyone immune to downsizing or job loss in the current economy. I know this because too many of my own friends and colleagues have been negatively impacted by the current economy. DOGE came for some of them, tariffs came for others, and their education and experience didn’t seem to count for much.

Turns out my old client was wrong; we all should have chosen a different profession.

I’m moving forward

Ultimately, I think the decision to pursue higher education works best when the person has a plan or wants to expand their existing skill set. I’m not sure I’m that person.

Going back to school for a master’s probably won’t solve my long-term unemployment problem.

But I’m still thinking about it. I should probably make a decision soon, though, because now I’m getting ads to join the Peace Corps in my feed. That’s going to make it hard to pick up the kids from school.

• “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” premiered in September 2004.
• It aired three seasons on MTV, launching stars like Lauren Conrad, Kristin Cavallari, and Stephen Colletti.
• Here’s where the cast members are today.

As the great Hilary Duff once sang, “Let’s go back, back to the beginning …”

The year was 2004, and “Laguna Beach” had just premiered on MTV, drawing immediate buzz. The show focused on a group of high school friends at Laguna Beach High School and promised to show the world what “real” high schoolers in Orange County were like, not like the 20-somethings on “The OC.”

The show lasted for three seasons, launched three spin-offs (“The Hills,” “The City,” and “The Hills: New Beginnings”), and created stars out of its teenage cast. It set the standard for a new type of high-gloss reality show.

However, while Conrad, Colletti, Cavallari, and Bosworth are still relatively well-known, the rest of the cast have resumed a normal life.

In 2026, many of the stars from the first season met up to film a true high school reunion, which dropped on the Roku Channel in April.

Here’s what the stars of “Laguna Beach” are up to now.

Lauren Conrad was the first narrator of “Laguna Beach” and the show’s relatable protagonist.

The first season of “Laguna Beach” documented the end of Conrad’s senior year of high school and followed her and her friends as they decided what to do after graduation.

A focus of the first season was the love triangle between Conrad, her friend Stephen Colletti, and Colletti’s girlfriend Kristin Cavallari. 

Season two followed Conrad as she dropped out of college and began dating Jason Wahler. Their relationship was explored further in the first season of “The Hills.” 

Conrad went on to star in “The Hills” for five seasons. Now, she’s a married mom of two with her own lifestyle empire.

Conrad, 40, was the star of “The Hills,” which documented her and a new group of friends as they followed their dreams in Los Angeles. But she left the show midway through the fifth season to pursue other projects.

Now, she has a fashion empire at Kohl’s. She’s also written multiple books in the fiction and non-fiction genres.

Conrad is married to William Tell, a lawyer, and they have two sons. They live in, you guessed it, Laguna Beach.

Kristin Cavallari was the show’s other breakout star, and she became the narrator after Conrad left “Laguna.”

Cavallari was a grade behind Conrad and her friends, and thus season two was all about Cavallari graduating, as well as her complicated relationship with Colletti, who was in school in San Francisco.

She left the show after season two.

She told Business Insider in 2022 that producers chose her to be the villain of the series.

Cavallari took over for Conrad on “The Hills,” and then starred in her own reality show, “Very Cavallari.” She also has her own lifestyle brand.

Cavallari, 39, was reintroduced to audiences when the torch essentially passed from Conrad to Cavallari during Conrad’s last episode of “The Hills.”

During season five’s episode 10, “Something Old, Something New,” Cavallari attended the wedding of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt then remained on “The Hills” until it ended in 2010.

In 2018, Cavallari began starring on her own reality show on E!, “Very Cavallari,” which focused on her life in Nashville with her now-ex-husband Jay Cutler, and her efforts to expand her lifestyle brand, Uncommon James. The show ran for three seasons.

Cavallari was married to former Chicago Bears quarterback Cutler from 2013 to 2020, and they have three children together. She lives in Nashville.

She has also written two cookbooks, and Uncommon James recently expanded to Uncommon Beauty, as well. 

She and Colletti cohosted “Back to the Beach with Kristin and Stephen,” a “Laguna Beach” rewatch podcast from 2022 to 2023.

Stephen Colletti was the object of both Conrad’s and Cavallari’s affections.

Colletti was the prototypical California surfer dude during the first two seasons of the show. Most of his storylines revolved around his on-again/off-again relationship with Cavallari. He also had a close friendship with Conrad that constantly seemed to be on the verge of something more, though nothing ever happened on-screen. 

He left after season two.

Colletti is now an actor and writer, but he still dabbles in reality TV.

Colletti, 40, began starring in “One Tree Hill” in 2007 as Chase Adams and remained on the show until it ended in 2012. He then appeared in a few episodes of the basketball drama “Hit the Floor” until 2016. He has also appeared in various TV movies.

Colletti and his “One Tree Hill” costar James Lafferty also co-wrote and co-starred in a pilot called “Everyone Is Doing Great.” They successfully funded the project with a Kickstarter, and it ran for two seasons.

He told Business Insider in 2022 that he was asked to be a recurring cast member on “The Hills” every season. He declined, but he did appear in episode 26 of season three. The episode was aptly titled “A Date with the Past.” 

In January 2026, Colletti returned to his reality TV roots by competing on season four of “The Traitors,” even if he did outrage every millennial by identifying as a star of “One Tree Hill,” not “Laguna Beach.”

Colletti began dating reporter Alex Weaver in 2022, and they got married shortly before the reunion special aired. They’re also expecting their first child together.

Jason Wahler popped up in season two as Jessica Smith’s boyfriend. He later dated Lauren Conrad.

Wahler originally appeared on the show as Jessica Smith’s boyfriend, though their relationship was full of ups and downs. After Conrad returned to Laguna Beach, the two began dating, and their relationship lasted through the first season of “The Hills.”

He was a recurring character in the series, and the show touched on his struggles with addiction. 

Wahler returned to MTV to appear on “The Hills: New Beginnings.”

Wahler, 39, was part of the cast of the rebooted “Hills,” alongside his wife, Ashley Slack. They have three children.

Before that, Wahler was part of the cast of the fourth season of “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” as he was an alcoholic and addicted to cocaine. He had been arrested multiple times before his appearance and has served jail time. He opened up about relapsing in 2018, per People.

Wahler is also the director of the Change Your Brain Foundation.

He did not appear on the “Laguna Beach” reunion.

Jessica Smith was one of Cavallari’s good friends, and she dated both Wahler and Dieter Schmitz.

Smith was the long-suffering girlfriend of Wahler, but the two eventually broke up after one too many fights about how she couldn’t trust Wahler during season two.

She had also dated Schmitz, one of Conrad’s friends, during season one.

Now, she’s Jessica Evans.

Evans, 38, is a mom of four. She and her husband, Michael Evans, live in the Dallas area. She has her own Amazon shop, but she has mainly stayed out of the spotlight since completing her time on the show. 

Lo Bosworth was Conrad’s best friend. She eventually popped up on “The Hills,” as well.

Bosworth and Conrad, or Lo and LC as they were nicknamed on the series, were the definition of BFF goals to any teen watching “Laguna Beach.” 

Bosworth also left the show after season two to attend UC Santa Barbara, but when she transferred to UCLA, she joined her bestie on “The Hills.”

She was more of a main character on that spin-off and was involved in many of its most dramatic moments. 

Bosworth remained on “The Hills” until the end. She founded a women’s body-care company, Love Wellness.

After “The Hills” ended, Bosworth, 39, started her own blog, “The Lo Down,” which she ran for years, and wrote a book of the same name in 2011. She also attended culinary school and started her own YouTube channel.

Bosworth hosted a podcast called “I Love Wellness,” and now hosts another one called “Tell Me I’m a Good Mom.”

In 2016, Bosworth founded Love Wellness, a women’s body care company that aims to “shatter the stigma around women’s wellness so that you have solutions you are comfortable with.” It offers supplements, multivitamins, sexual health items, and various wellness kits.

She married Dom Natale, an investor, in 2025.

Bosworth attended the reunion virtually because she was seven months pregnant at the time of filming and is based in New York City. Her daughter, Nelle, was born in January 2026.

Talan Torriero was the show’s resident ladies’ man in seasons one and two.

Torriero was a junior in season one, making him younger than most of the cast, but he was pretty consistently hooking up with older girls. He also briefly dated Cavallari, but it didn’t last long as she was still hung up on Colletti.

He left after season two.

Torriero is now married with children.

Before he got married, the former reality star, 39, remained in the headlines for dating celebrities like Kimberly Stewart and Nicole Scherzinger. However, he married Danielle Zuroski in 2014, putting his party boy past behind him. They have three children.

He and his wife now own and operate a farm, Torriero Farms, in Omaha, Nebraska. He also founded the company Ice Blankets.

Torriero attended the reunion.

Trey Phillips was the token artsy friend.

Phillips, 39, was good friends with Colletti and the other guys, though he had a special bond with Conrad. Phillips famously put on a fashion show that Conrad also used as a way to break into the fashion game.

Phillips left the show after season one to attend Parsons in New York City.

Phillips still works in the fashion industry.

Phillips was a designer at Vera Wang for years, but now he’s an app developer. He created a cooking app called Method Cooking.

He expanded on his experiences on the show during “Back to the Beach with Kristin and Stephen,” and he also attended the reunion.

Jen Bunney was one of Conrad’s good friends who would later pop up on “The Hills.”

Bunney didn’t really make an impression until she showed up on “The Hills,” and memorably hooked up with Brody Jenner even though Conrad had been on a few dates with him — and right after Conrad gifted Bunney with a diamond martini glass-shaped necklace for her birthday.

As a result, the two stopped being friends on the show.

The storyline was juicy, but Jenner said it was completely fake in a 2015 interview with Yahoo Style. 

Bunney, now Dunphy, works in healthcare. She has an MBA and a doctorate in public health.

She married Taylor Dunphy in 2014 and now goes by Jennifer Dunphy. They have two kids together.

According to her LinkedIn, Dunphy, 40, was the senior vice president and chief population health officer at Heritage Provider Network from 2014 to January 2026.

In 2023, she published a book, “Don’t Tell Me What to Do.”

Dunphy also remains close with “Hills” star Heidi Montag and is even the godmother to Montag’s son, Gunner.

When fans asked Dunphy why she wasn’t part of the “Laguna” reunion, she had a simple answer: She wasn’t invited. “I don’t know [why]. I can’t answer that question. I wasn’t in the room,” she told People.

Morgan Olsen, one of Conrad’s good friends, was mainly defined by her desire to attend Brigham Young University.

Olsen was part of Conrad’s friend group, although she was a bit more conservative than the rest of her friends, as evidenced by her decision not to go to Cabo for spring break and her desire to attend Brigham Young University (BYU), a Mormon school. She graduated in 2008.

She left “Laguna Beach” after season one.

She now goes by Morgan Smith. She founded her own apparel brand, Minnow.

She married Joel Smith in 2010, and the couple has three children together. Smith, 40, founded Minnow in 2016. It originally started as a swimwear line, but has since added clothing and accessories, as well as a brick-and-mortar store on King Street in Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives with her family.

Christina Schuller was Olsen’s best friend and part of the main friend group.

Schuller was also part of Conrad’s group of friends, though she and Olsen were closer to each other than the rest of the group. Her main contribution to “Laguna Beach,” though, was her infamous trip to New York City when she tried out for a Broadway musical.

Schuller left the show after season one.

Schuller now goes by her married name, Sinclair.

Sinclair, 39, moved to Miami with her husband, Chad Sinclair, and their three kids in 2022. She’s still close friends with Morgan Smith — in fact, they were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings.

During the reunion, Sinclair opened up about mental health struggles she had during her senior year of college and discussed being in and out of hospitals for a year.

“I really wanted to talk about something meaningful, and so I spent a lot of time praying and reflecting on what that would look like,” she told People. “It’s a part of my life that was important, and I think a lot of people can relate in some way or another. I wanted to share something meaningful.”

Dieter Schmitz was one of Conrad and Colletti’s best friends and was frequently the voice of reason among his friends.

Schmitz appeared in both seasons one and two with the title of “Stephen’s Friend.” Schmitz was one of the few cast members in a stable relationship during season one, with Jessica Smith — though the two wouldn’t last into season two.

Schmitz had a “Laguna Beach” reunion at his wedding.

Schmitz, 40, got into hospitality after leaving the show and now lives in New York City with his wife Isabell. They have two kids.

According to his LinkedIn, Schmitz is a general manager at Accor, a French hospitality group.

When he married his wife in 2016, many members of the “Laguna Beach” cast were present, including Conrad, Colletti, and Phillips (the latter two were groomsmen for their friend).

Alex Hooser, better known as Alex H., was a loyal friend.

Hooser is one of two cast members who stuck around for the first three seasons of “Laguna Beach,” along with Jessica Smith.

She was portrayed as a loyal friend to Kristin Cavallari — though at some points it did seem like her only lines of dialogue on the show were asking about Cavallari’s relationship status.

Hooser is Alex Olsen now. She opened up at the reunion about her family’s struggles during the show.

Hooser, 39, lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband and three kids. During the reunion, she discussed how, while filming the first season, her father was arrested, sent to prison, and eventually put on house arrest after making what she called “poor financial decisions.”

Similar to Smith’s Amazon shop, Hooser has a Shop My where people can buy products she’s curated.