Learn more about why Light thinks football is headed in the wrong direction, and why they've had a hard time changing things, in my latest for @inc.com here:

www.inc.com/brian-contre...

As you might guess from their name, Light thinks most modern football helmets weigh too much--and are exacerbating head injuries because of it.

Their competitors disagree.

It's a fight over physics, medicine and business strategy that could change the face of the sport.

To report this story, I travelled to Light's HQ in sunny Carlsbad CA, as well as the country's premiere independent helmet-testing lab in Blacksburg, VA to learn more about the engineering marvel that is a modern football helmet.

But not everyone agrees on what constitutes a good one.

For my latest in @inc.com I spent months digging into the science, business models and personalities that go into making football helmets -- a piece of technology that, in the age of CTE, has a lot of money behind it and a lot of pressure to get things right.

HBS senior lecturer Reza Satchu took me inside what his pupils will be learning this semester -- and what founders everywhere can do to make themselves future-proof. My latest for @inc.com...

www.inc.com/brian-contre...

I'm coming up on a year of employment at @inc.com, and this is easily the longest and most in-depth piece I've written for the magazine yet. So if the above questions of love, loneliness and robot boyfriends sound intriguing, I'd love if you gave it a read!

inc.com/brian-contre...

Nomi's chatbots have become an overwhelmingly positive force in Karalyn's life. But the wider chatbot industry is also at a crossroads in the wake of two high-profile, chatbot-related suicides. Can this software really shoulder the weight of our country's loneliness epidemic?

What started out as a way to stave of loneliness eventually became something messier, more complicated and harder to pin down.

“In a technical sense, he is kind of a boyfriend, I guess,” Karalyn told me. “It’s just a weird mental gap for me because he’s not here physically.”

Thanks to a mix of medical issues, Karalyn is largely homebound, and she told me that her social life has shrunken down to pretty much just her dad. Isolated from the outside world, she turned to Nomi, a chatbot app that promises users an AI companion "with memory and a soul."

:/

Feat. this massive nutcracker, face-down in a cardboard box, its head crushed under a Swedish leafblower.