The Wall Street Journal

James Parillo steps into the ring, completely focused on the prize.⁠ ⁠ “I’m going to win this,” Parillo says to himself. The message is more a reminder than a pep talk.⁠ ⁠ Parillo is wearing a T-shirt with “Legend” on the front and his name on the back. Soon enough, he’s winning. His seven competitors know this, too. A South Korean combatant known only as Jadoodoo pounds the table in frustration. Parillo can’t hear them. His headphones are blasting Phish’s “Tweezer Reprise.”⁠ ⁠ Welcome to lower Manhattan’s Church Street Boxing Gym, where steel usually sharpens steel. But on this Thursday night, the ring is occupied by traders buying and selling cryptocurrencies—bitcoin, ether, even Pengu, a penguin-themed memecoin. The prize: $10,000 in cash and an ornate Japanese katana.⁠ ⁠ And Parillo, a partner at a venture-capital firm, is methodically, brutally, pounding his rivals into submission.⁠ ⁠ This is the frontier of esports-style live trading competitions, a high-octane subculture that feels like an underground rave. Here, trading is reimagined as a sport, complete with play-by-play commentators dissecting every tick of the digital-assets market.⁠ ⁠ Eight players each start with $25,000 of paper money and battle through three 30-minute rounds of trading. Rankings are decided by profits and losses, with the weakest half eliminated in each round.⁠ ⁠ Drones buzz above. A feisty audience watches from the balcony or nearby monitors, where the action—and their prediction bets on it—flashes on the screens. Live trading spectacles like this have exploded in popularity, evolving from local underground meetups to high-production events around the world.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: @gabbyjones.jpeg for @wsjphotos

The number of people who died from drug overdoses dropped again in 2025, a promising trend as the U.S. emerges from a national fentanyl crisis that accelerated these fatalities.⁠ ⁠ There were an estimated 69,973 drug-overdose deaths in 2025, a nearly 14% drop from the year prior, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wednesday.⁠ ⁠ Drug-overdose deaths have now declined for three consecutive years, falling to levels closer to those not seen since before the Covid-19 pandemic, which intensified the drug-overdose crisis.⁠ ⁠ A drop in overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, largely fentanyl, is fueling the decline. In 2025, there were 38,084 deaths involving synthetic opioids, compared with an estimated 48,913 in 2024. Illicit forms of fentanyl have surged U.S. drug-related fatalities to record levels. The drug, which can quickly cause fatal overdoses, took off more than a decade ago. Drug overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 to 44, according to the CDC.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.

One of America’s most expensive graduate degrees is going on sale. More business schools are giving steep discounts on tuition that can save students tens of thousands of dollars a year. For professionals who are considering whether to go back to school, it can offer a pathway to get a degree while staying debt free. But for the schools, many of which have struggled to attract applications, the discounts may not be sustainable as a business model. The price breaks tend to be for shorter, more specialized business degrees aimed at workers struggling to gain traction in a tough hiring market. Younger professionals in particular may be concerned that AI will disrupt their career plans, so business schools are pitching them that a graduate degree will give them an edge without having to step away from a high-flying career for too long — or at all. Tap the link in bio to read more, via @wsj . Writer: Ray A. Smith (@rayalexsmith ) Photo: Getty Images

Nate Bargatze has a business plan so unheard of for a stand-up comedian that it sounds like the setup for a joke. ⁠ ⁠ He’s planning to build a theme park emblazoned with his name—Nateland—in his hometown of Nashville, Tenn., with roller coasters, live shows, restaurants, the works. It’s expected to cover more than 100 acres and cost about $350 million, a grand ambition for a guy who jokes about being slow on the uptake. ⁠ ⁠ Locking in on regular family life is what makes Bargatze a unicorn in his world. He’s the rare heavyweight comic whose material is clean and uncontroversial. No cursing, no politics, no culture warfare. His performances are geared for all-ages escapism, with some shows starting at 3 in the afternoon. ⁠ ⁠ He pictures the theme park as the culmination of these ventures: a home base for his ideas and a haven of family experiences. With Nateland, he wants to be a Tennessee Walt Disney, except he’ll also function as mascot. ⁠ ⁠ “I’m the Mickey Mouse,” he says. ⁠ ⁠ Read the full story at the link in bio or on wsj.com.⁠ ⁠ Written by @johnjurg ⁠ Photos: @whittensabbatini ⁠ Rendering: Storyland Studios

WSJ visits a little-known room at the New York Stock Exchange, where a group of certified coffee graders perform a job essential to global commerce.⁠ ⁠ Watch more at the link in our bio.

As Julia Letlow takes on Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, the race is becoming an early test of whether President Trump can still shape Republican primaries ahead of the midterms.⁠ ⁠ Reporter/Host: Olivia Beavers⁠ Producer/Editor: @farah_oteroamad

Mark Rothko’s “Brown and Blacks in Reds” just sold for $85.8 million at Sotheby’s, kicking off the spring auction season. In a rare occurrence, multiple works from the painter are up for auction this week, testing the market strength of the famous abstract artist.⁠ ⁠ Reporter: @kellycrowwsj ⁠ Producer: @jvsli

President Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing this week, his second state visit to China and the first U.S. presidential visit to the country in nearly nine years.⁠ ⁠ Here were the top takeaways from the summit:⁠ ⁠ 1️⃣ Trump said Xi asked if the U.S. would defend Taiwan. They discussed the possibility of U.S. troops being sent to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, as well as arms sales to Taipei.⁠ 2️⃣ The summit ended without any joint announcements on specific deals, or any broader communiqué covering trade or other matters, but both sides celebrated the visit as a reset in relations. China said the two sides agreed on a new vision of “strategic stability,” while Trump described the U.S.’s relationship with China as “a very strong one.”⁠ 3️⃣ Trump said the U.S. and China agreed that the war in Iran should end, that ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz should be free and that Iran should never get a nuclear weapon. China didn’t directly address Iran in its statements about the summit, but has previously supported such positions.⁠ 4️⃣ Trump touted “fantastic trade deals” struck at the summit, but so far, details have been scarce. The president said China agreed to buy 200 Boeing planes, as well as more American oil and agricultural products. China hasn’t yet announced any such purchases.⁠ 5️⃣ Trump invited Xi to the White House on Sept. 24, and both leaders may also see one another at two international gatherings set to take place this year.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photos: Mark Schiefelbein/AP, Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images, Xie Huanchi/Xinhua/ZUMA Press, Maxim Shemetov/Reuters, Evan Vucci/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

“I like to joke that my parents were my first patients," says clinical psychologist Dr. Orna Guralnik. "As a child, I’d first try to figure out internally what was going on between them, who was right and who was wrong, and who needed help. Then I worked hard to make them happy.⁠ ⁠ “My childhood was divided into two major chapters: when my family lived in the U.S. and after we moved to Israel. The latter was a shock, culturally and economically.”⁠ ⁠ Guralnik is the therapist on “Couples Therapy,” the Paramount+ documentary series that starts its new season on Friday. She spoke about mediating problems between her mother and father, her two-chapter childhood and working with patients in front of the camera.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Photo: Giovanna Schlüter Nunes/Paramount+

The World Cup that kicks off next month in North America has been defined by sticker shock ever since tickets first became available.⁠ ⁠ Host/Reporter: Rachel Bachman ⁠ Producer: Julia Munslow ⁠ Camera: Farah Otero-Amad⁠ Photo: Reuters

Anthropic is emerging as the presumptive front-runner in the race for artificial-intelligence supremacy, with faster growth and fundraising that could soon yield a higher valuation than rival OpenAI.⁠ ⁠ Once a scrappy underdog in a race that OpenAI appeared to have already won, the gap between the two companies has narrowed significantly this year, with new data suggesting Anthropic’s growth continues to accelerate rapidly. OpenAI’s, by some indications, has begun to plateau.⁠ ⁠ Anthropic has received investment offers in recent months valuing it at more than $900 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. That would more than double the company’s current valuation and surpass OpenAI’s for the first time. Earlier this year, OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation.⁠ ⁠ In data released Wednesday, finance startup Ramp said more of its customers used Anthropic’s models than OpenAI’s for the first time, with 34.4% using Anthropic versus 32.3% using OpenAI. Adoption of Anthropic’s Claude tools jumped 3.8% from March to April, while OpenAI adoption fell 2.9%, according to the data. Ramp analyzes the spend of approximately 50,000 customers to track AI adoption trends.⁠ ⁠ An OpenAI spokesman said the Ramp figures offer an incomplete picture of business customers because large enterprise clients don’t pay for software services through credit cards. Bloomberg earlier reported on Anthropic’s fundraising offers.⁠ ⁠ Before this year, OpenAI had long been seen as the default front-runner in the AI race, and its ChatGPT chatbot still maintains a sizable lead over Anthropic’s Claude in overall users.⁠ ⁠ Anthropic has caught up by focusing on developing a handful of products rather than trying to dominate every corner of the market, and its success with coding users and businesses has reset the AI race on its terms.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.

Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth and her husband became centimillionaires when they helped sell the company for $1.95 billion to PepsiCo last year. Ellsworth shares advice she got on tipping as a wealthy person.⁠ ⁠ At the link in our bio, Ellsworth opens up about how she and her husband manage their money, the post-exit blues and her $1 million family vacation to Europe.