Day: November 27, 2025

• Gilen Chan and Gene Preudhomme, both 63, started a podcast interviewing retirees around the world.
• The couple didn’t know where to retire, so they asked others to share their stories.
• Over five years later, their podcast has grown steadily and now features over 200 episodes.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gilen Chan and Gene Preudhomme, both 63 and retired lawyers, who are the creators and hosts of the “Retire There with Gil & Gene” podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s been over five years since we started our podcast.

In early 2020, we were both thinking about retirement and knew we wanted to leave Brooklyn, where we’d raised our son and lived for many years.

The idea of being surrounded by nature appealed to us, so we began considering a move to a different state. We decided to take a trip to explore our options and headed to Winter Park in Florida. It was nice, but we knew right away that it wasn’t for us.

We returned to New York, wondering where our next scouting trip would take us. However, the pandemic struck a few weeks later. All travel had stopped, and we found ourselves stuck, just like everyone else.

We came up with the idea of starting a podcast about where to retire. We wanted a show where we could interview people across the country and hear their stories.

Starting our own podcast

We reached out to family, friends, and their networks, and we were lucky to find people willing to share their experiences. We knew that new podcasts often launch with several episodes, so we recorded four right away.

Finding guests, however, has remained one of the most challenging aspects of producing the show. Just as our pool of interviewees from our initial circle began to run dry, a friend introduced us to someone who had retired in Paris. We interviewed him, and he became our first international guest.

When we started the podcast, we were a little intimidated. At the time, we assumed most podcasters were younger than we were. But since we’re both fairly tech-savvy, we figured if they could do it, so could we.

When we were living in Brooklyn, we recorded from our basement, which we’d soundproofed. Each conversation lasts about an hour to an hour and a half, and can take between four to five hours to edit.

Our podcast has over 200 episodes so far, and we’ve learned that the best guests are also willing to admit when things have not gone as planned. Some have shared that while they love a place for vacation, living there long-term simply does not feel right for them.

We’ve had some memorable guests through the years, including an American retiree who wanted to move to Costa Rica while his wife wasn’t so sure.

To change her mind, he hired a local expert to take her on a solo trip around Costa Rica for two months. When she returned, she told her husband she couldn’t wait to move there. That was a good one.

We recently received a sponsorship. It’s not a large amount, but it covers the cost of the services we use, like our recording software subscription, editing software, and our website.

Broadening our perspectives

Interacting with so many people about their retirement experiences has shaped the way we think about our own, especially after we began speaking with those who chose to live internationally.

It broadened our perspective and inspired us to think about spending part of our retirement overseas.

We’re now based in Pennsylvania. Our plan is to find a home here — which we’re still searching for — and spend about three months each year living abroad, choosing one city at a time and exploring from there.

Before the podcast, we would’ve never considered living abroad ourselves. We were both poor growing up, and the thought never crossed our minds. But then we met ordinary folks who seemed just like us who’d made it happen.

We realized that a flight from New York to California takes about six hours, and a flight to Europe can take about the same amount of time. Psychologically, it suddenly didn’t feel so far away.

In the end, we felt our lives could be so much richer if we could give it a try. Our son, who we’re very close to, lives in Rhode Island, so we aren’t ready to make the leap to live permanently abroad just yet. That’s why we’re going to start small.

In the countries we’ve visited, including France, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, we’ve enjoyed every one

What retirement has really taught us is that we’re now at a stage where we feel safe in knowing who we are. Traveling has only expanded our minds.

Do you have a story to share about relocating to a new city? Contact this reporter at agoh@businessinsider.com.

• AI training jobs offer flexible — and sometimes lucrative — side hustles.
• Major companies like Meta and OpenAI use data labelers to improve their chatbots’ performance.
• Five people share why they like freelancing as AI trainers and how much money they’ve made.

AI training is a booming industry that is making the human contributors behind the screen more important than ever.

As data from publicly available sources runs out, companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI are hiring thousands of data labelers around the world to teach their chatbots what they know best.

Data labeling startups like Mercor and Handshake advertise that contributors can earn up to $100 an hour for their STEM, legal, or healthcare expertise. Other companies are banking on armies of generalists to rate AI responses, annotate social media videos, or improve a chatbot’s understanding of native languages. The flexible work appeals to parents, full-time professionals, and students alike — but it can be tedious, often convoluted, and slow to onboard.

Five contractors shared how they broke into the sometimes lucrative world of AI training, including how much money they’ve made.

These as-told-to-essays are based on conversations with the contractors, and they have been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified their work.

Jessica Hamilton, Illinois

I’ve always been an entrepreneur and have been running my e-commerce business since I was in college, which I graduated in 2018. I came across Prolific in 2023 after seeing it mentioned on a Reddit group called Beer Money.

There were enough people on Reddit who were giving Prolific credit that I decided to go for it. I signed up at the start of 2023, but it was not until 14 months later that I was taken off the waitlist and started getting projects.

I’ve been active on the platform since May 2024 and have worked on a wide range of projects. Prolific started off as an academic research tool, and most of the surveys were in politics, psychology, or health-related topics. AI training work, which is newer to the platform, involves evaluating or comparing AI responses and doing fact checks.

I’ve tried other platforms like DataAnnotation, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Appen, and Telus, which did not have as long a waitlist. But once I started to get work on Prolific, and especially AI tasks, it has become my primary platform. I’ve also found it to pay a lot better than a lot of the other companies.

I keep my laptop open between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., five days a week, and check Prolific for projects every now and then. Through this work, I made $1,200 in September, $1,100 in August, and about $1,000 in July.

The extra money supplements my income from my e-commerce store and my family’s go-karting business. It has helped me pay off student loans faster and will help pay for a new laptop. Last August, I went to the Olympics in Paris and to three other countries. I was able to pay for it because of my income from these platforms.

Elizabeth Boyd, Florida

In July 2023, I received a LinkedIn message from a Scale AI recruiter inviting me to apply as a law domain expert on Remotasks, a Scale AI-owned platform that preceded Outlier.

I was onboarding by early August, but didn’t do much work on the platform until March or April of 2024. They were offering daily bonuses for working a set number of hours. Good pay rates with regular bonuses, weekly payments, and not needing to look for clients on a regular basis made the AI work more attractive than the content creation work I’d been doing. I put my travel agency franchise on the back burner.

Since then, AI training has been my main source of income. I typically work around 30 to 35 hours a week, and I supplement that with some online writing.

Though I started as a law domain expert, I rarely ever worked on projects with a legal focus. Instead, I work on a wide variety of general, non-STEM topics that require specialized multimedia prompt engineering and AI response evaluation skills, as well as quality assurance work.

I worked on the Mindrift platform very briefly last year. However, nearly all my AI work was with Remotasks, then Outlier, until this summer. Now, the bulk of my AI training work is with the Mercor AI platform.

Outlier paid me $45 per hour, then $40 per hour. Now my rate with them ranges from $35 to $50, but they have a setup that drops the rate to $21.16 after a set time that is never sufficient for completing the task, so the effective rate is always lower than the starting or stated rate. It’s one more reason I generally avoid working there now.

Mercor pay rates vary greatly, but the projects I’m currently working on pay $45 and $45.50 per hour.

Some highs of freelancing on these platforms include the opportunity to work in a cutting-edge industry and being able to attain valuable skills. It’s also attractive pay for my experience and skills. Another plus is teamwork with some very smart, funny, and talented co-workers.

There are lows as well. There is no job security, and some projects are short-term, which means I have to continuously apply to new ones. However, project extensions are frequent, and I am often referred to new projects by my project leads for doing good work.

The work can be monotonous, and some of the projects can be run poorly, resulting in chaos and frustration.

A Scale AI spokesperson told Business Insider that Outlier gives contractors pay rates and estimated task times at the start of a project. “When contributors flag that certain tasks regularly take longer than expected, we review those tasks and adjust where appropriate.”

Ryan Adams, Virginia

I’ve been tasking on Outlier for about a year and a half now, and I do it alongside my full-time job at a health and environmental nonprofit in Virginia.

I came across Outlier through a simple Google search because I was trying to learn more about AI. I applied to the platform and started receiving projects about three weeks later, after completing some onboarding and training.

I’ve worked on about 30 projects since, including training video chat models and voice recording projects. I spend about 20 to 25 hours on Outlier each week, and up to 30 hours when there are incentives like bonus pay.

I’ve been approached by another platform, but chose to work only on Outlier because it’s been a good fit for me, and I can’t take on more platforms with my full time job.

Per hour, I can make close to what I make in my full time job. I’ve earned about $31,000 so far, which is about one-third of what I made in my job over the last year and a half.

It’s allowed me to invest more and build emergency savings. My credit score is the highest it’s ever been, and I’ll be able to pay off my car loan by the end of the year. Eighteen months ago, I would not have believed that I could have an AI-related side hustle without working in tech.

Fred Nau, Florida

I’m a school chemistry and physics teacher. I heard about Outlier after my master’s when someone from the platform reached out to me on LinkedIn. They said that my experience in chemistry was something they were specifically looking for.

I applied at the start of 2024, and I started receiving projects within a couple of weeks. I majored in chemistry in college, and a lot of the projects I’ve taken on centered on chemistry or physics and rating different model responses in terms of accuracy. The platform has a lot of specialists, including people with PhDs from various academic backgrounds.

I try to work on the platform for one to two hours after work and five to 10 hours over the weekend, which gives me about 15 to 20 hours a week. Last year, I was working a lot less than I am now, but I made about $15,000.

I’ve used the extra income to pay for a down payment, and I’ve also used it to go on vacation with my girlfriend.

Even as a teacher in the district I work for, they’re making a huge push toward using AI and AI tools. For me, it’s a good opportunity to not only ensure that AI performs better by working on projects that improve data quality, but also to gain a better understanding of how AI works.

I’ve recommended it to other teachers because students are using AI. If you’re a teacher, it’s great to have exposure to these tools and the data that goes into this technology.

Peter Intile, Wisconsin

I have an extensive educational background in microbiology and immunology, and I earned a Ph.D. in the field. At my day job, I work for a management company, but still get to use my scientific knowledge for our projects.

I’ve always been involved in research work and was familiar with the kind of academic research platforms like Prolific or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk help with. Toward the tail end of the pandemic, when I had some extra time, I revisited Mechanical Turk, which I had used before.

I came across messaging boards and social media platforms that all said that Prolific is the place you should be going to for such work now. They noted several reasons, including better pay and a wider range of projects.

I signed up, was accepted in about two weeks, and have been working on it for about two and a half years. Since I first joined, the work has transitioned from academic studies and surveys into more AI-focused tasks. Much of it is about making the AI more human, such as behaving in ways that a human would anticipate or provide information.

I don’t use my scientific background very often in my AI task work — it’s mostly using my writing or critical thinking skills. I occasionally will get one or two that ask very specific biology-related questions, and those are fun because they bring me back.

It’s better than sitting on social media and scrolling aimlessly. It is a valuable use of my time, and it feels like meaningful work because I know researchers need good data in order to make conclusions about their research. I’m happy to participate in that.

I usually spend about two to three hours a day on the platform, primarily after work hours. I make somewhere between $20 to $100 a day, with the pay being around $20 an hour. I find myself getting enough tasks on Prolific that I haven’t spread myself out on other data labeling platforms.

We’re approaching Christmas, and this side hustle is paying for gifts. The other thing is vacations and being able to do things with my family a little bit more freely.

Have a tip? Contact Shubhangi Goel via email at sgoel@businessinsider.com or Signal at shuby.85. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.

• Billy McFarland is trying once again to pull off a new festival 8 years after his failed Fyre Festival.
• McFarland, who served prison time for wire fraud and owes his victims millions, has long talked up a “Fyre Fest 2” comeback.
• McFarland talked with Business Insider about the event, which he’s renamed “PHNX” after selling the rights to the Fyre brand.

Billy McFarland sits in the back of a pickup truck, a breeze blowing through his slicked-back hair. As the 33-year-old rides along the bumpy roads of the Caribbean island of Utila in Honduras, he holds up his phone and films himself.

“It’s happening, folks,” McFarland exclaims, almost shouting into the camera. “French Montana is the headliner of the 2025 Phoenix Festival!”

400 guests on a Caribbean island, hundreds of thousands watching virtually. An unforgettable exclusive event for wealthy clients, influencers, and music fans. That’s Billy McFarland’s vision, anyways — and yes, it sounds a lot like his high-profile failure with the Fyre Festival in 2017, which eventually landed him in prison.

In a phone call, McFarland tells Business Insider that this time is different. But convincing people to plunk down their money on a McFarland venture is likely to be a tough sell.

McFarland, who grew up in a wealthy New Jersey entrepreneurial family, was released from prison more than two years early in 2022. He’s been in Honduras for several weeks, and preparations for his festival, now re-named to “Phoenix,” or PHNX, are in full swing. While French Montana’s management did not respond to a request to confirm his participation in the festival, the artist recently posted an ad for PHNX on his Instagram page.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Fyre Fest debacle, the short version goes like this: As a result of botched preparations, a lack of money, and several breaches of contract, the festival turned into a viral failure and led to McFarland getting hit with fraud charges. A later released documentary on Netflix shows how hundreds of guests who had traveled to a remote Bahamian island were eventually evacuated and confined in an airport terminal because there was virtually no accommodation or sanitation facilities at the festival site. Concerts did not take place, and the organizing team fled the island.

It was a festival-goers nightmare, to put it mildly, and in March 2018, the McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges and was sentenced to six years in prison in the state of Ohio and ordered to pay his victims $26 million.

The festival, which spawned Hulu and Netflix documentaries, has long since become a running joke on the internet, overshadowing McFarland’s second attempt at a “Fyre Fest 2” in Mexico, which fell through even after his insistence that “it will definitely happen.”

Speaking to Business Insider from a hotel room in Honduras on Monday evening, McFarland seemed cheerful and answered questions without hesitation. He says that the plan for a Fyre Fest 2 in Mexico did not work out because he was not allowed to leave the US due to court restrictions and the local government pulled its support after reading some critical reports following his announcement of the event.

Now, he’s trying once again — this time with a new name: PHNX 2025. The festival is scheduled to begin on December 6 in Utila Bay, an island about 30 kilometers off the coast of Honduras. Some divers are regularly drawn there, and the remote island is also popular with fishermen and backpackers. However, the infrastructure for a major event is lacking — as was the case with the 2017 Fyre Festival. Utila has a population of just under 3,000 and can be reached by ferry from the nearest island or via a mini airport, which is little more than a bumpy runway in the middle of the jungle.

For several weeks now, there has been an unusual amount of hustle and bustle on the island, which covers just 42 square kilometers. McFarland posts videos of the preparations and construction work almost daily. Local workers can be seen building a wooden stage. While festival guests are staying in hotels, as McFarland explains, the concerts are to take place on an even smaller offshore island connected by water taxi.

Regular tickets to PHNX cost $599; but for an eye-watering $140,000, guests can get a VIP pass, including round-trip flights from Miami.

In a matter of days, it will become clear whether the festival will actually take place as announced. McFarland now says that all artists have received their advance payments for PHNX and that the contracts have been signed.

Reflecting on his Fyre failure, McFarland says he’s remorseful.

“I made mistakes back then, and the criticism is justified,” he tells Business Insider. “My biggest offense was lying to the investors.”

He also says that he is in the process of paying back his debt to ex business partners and claims that almost all of the money that he owed to contractors in the Bahamas, who built the Fyre Festival site in 2017, has been paid.

McFarland says there are no major investors for the “Phoenix” festival.

“There are three pillars,” he says. First, ticket sales—the revenue from which is unlikely to be anywhere near enough to pay the artists due to the low number of tickets sold. Secondly, there are pay-per-view tickets, of which the organizers want to sell “hundreds of thousands” (McFarland declined to provide specific figures on actual sales when asked). And third, McFarland says he signed a deal with a production company that is filming a reality show on the island.

McFarland is no stranger to cameras. During the preparations for the Fyre Festival, he had cameras follow him around constantly, and parts of the footage were later shown in a Netflix documentary. The film, which chronicles the epic failure of the organizing team, reached an audience of millions worldwide. (McFarland himself says he has never seen the documentary.)

In an interesting twist, a Fyre-branded festival could actually take place in the future, separate to PHNX.

McFarland recently sold the “Fyre” trademark rights to Lime Wire, the once-popular file-sharing platform that was shut down amid a piracy crackdown, for $245,000. Nevertheless, he says he remains associated with the brand through licensing agreements.

The new rights holders are also planning a separate, unrelated music festival — and are advertising it with McFarland’s failure and the inglorious history of the name.

“Fyre Festival now belongs to Lime Wire,” says the website with a Mexican domain. “Fyre is back — and this time it’s really worth being there.”

“Two infamous names, one comeback story,” the website says. “What could possibly go wrong?”

McFarland has proven that the answer can be “quite a lot.” But, as his PHNX efforts prove, he’s not afraid to try again — and again.