Social Security $90 checks: You might get an extra direct deposit from the SSA tomorrow. What to know

The government is sending a one-time $90 payment to more than 20 million Social Security recipients to help with their Medicare Part B coverage premiums, President Donald Trump announced in a statement. Medicare is a federal health insurance program for people 65-years-old or older, and for younger people with long-term disabilities or end-stage renal disease, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Of the over 70 million people enrolled in Medicare, 63 million Americans are currently

Young workers are turning toward AI-proof jobs

Entry level jobs are an endangered animal, at least in professions exposed to disruption from AI. While new grads are still seeing opportunities in fields like real estate, utilities and construction, the overall hiring market has been brutal: a whopping 48% of recent college graduates were unemployed (5.6%) or underemployed (42%) and working in jobs that didn’t require a degree in the second quarter of 2026.

Forget set-jetting. ‘Lore-tripping’ is the weird new way Gen Z is traveling

When planning a vacation, many might look for a warm spot to escape the cold weather, a romantic destination for an anniversary, or maybe a cultural hotspot for art geeks. But Gen Z seems to have different priorities when it comes to booking a getaway.

Who controls California politics? A new index tracks the state’s top political donors

When it burst into widespread use as a result of the 1976 movie All the President’s Men, the phrase “Follow the money” referred to political influence or corruption and how to track it.

The American Dream just hit a staggering new price tag

In what won’t feel like news to many Americans, a new report underscores that the affordability crisis is real—and getting worse.

Why Trump’s use of a trans slur on Truth Social is even more insidious than it seems

Keeping up with every vector of Trump-generated outrage is like playing a never-ending rigged game of whack-a-mole. For instance, in what might be considered a microcosm of this entire era, much of the backlash to the president’s use of an anti-transgender slur in a Truth Social post on Monday was quickly drowned out by the fuller-throated backlash to the president also seemingly inviting Iran to “take out” a pair of major California cities later that day.

FCC considers loosening rules on political robocalls with AI voices before midterms

The Federal Communications Commission is considering a request by a conservative group to loosen rules on political robocalls, including those with artificial intelligence-generated voices, before November’s midterm elections.

Crypto is moving from wallet to worksite

A contractor finishes a job on Friday. The crew wants to get paid, customers want to settle invoices, and business partners want access to money over the weekend.

RFK Jr. is embracing AI, confusing his MAHA allies and medical experts

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has built a national following by channeling the energy of Americans who are worried about the influence of corporations, including makers of vaccines, drugs, processed foods and pesticides. But last week the leader of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement threw his support behind an unlikely industry: artificial intelligence. At a MAHA summit featuring AI and Silicon Valley executives, Kennedy declared that the technology would free Americans from “medical tyranny” by allowing them to

‘We’re actually an intelligence organization now’: Inside USA Today’s AI-fueled Palantir deal

When the nation’s largest newspaper chain announced a deal with Palantir in August, USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed framed it as a necessary modernization step for a print-heavy publisher. The company, which operates USA Today and more than 200 local publications, still generates $1.1 billion in annual print revenue, but faces the same circulation declines and changing digital habits battering the rest of the industry.

Donald Trump is launching a new AI task force. Here’s who he’ll have to keep happy

Donald Trump didn’t become one of the world’s most recognizable businessmen by worrying too much about keeping everyone happy. What Trump wants, Trump tends to pursue, consequences be damned.

Regulating AI and curbing debt need urgent action around the globe, says IMF chief

Countries both rich and poor must take faster action to cut debt and counter growing inequality as their economies weather a triple whammy from the artificial intelligence boom, heavy borrowing and shocks from wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, the head of the IMF said Wednesday.

Venmo just turned splitting the bill into a credit card rewards category

Splitting the dinner bill with your friends could soon earn you a little extra cash. Venmo is overhauling its credit card rewards with a new perk designed specifically for splitting the bill. Starting October 15, new Venmo Credit Card customers can earn up to 4% cash back on eligible dining and entertainment purchases, but there’s a catch: To get the full 4%, you’ll need to make your friends pay you back.

A $100,000 mortgage can be harder to get than a much bigger one. Here’s why

Getting your foot in the door of one of the lowest-priced homes on the market has become increasingly challenging—and rising prices are only partly to blame.

The drone delivery business has a ground problem

For more than a decade, the story of drone delivery was about improving the technology and getting federal permission for the drones to take to the airwaves. Could companies get the Federal Aviation Authority to approve flights beyond the operator’s line of sight? Would regulators let one pilot supervise many aircraft? The assumption was that once Washington said yes, the drone business would take off.

The AI gender gap is about more than women. It’s about a broken system

When I was designing the cover of my book, Ambitious Mother, I tried to get a little help from artificial intelligence. We had worked hard on the visuals with the design team, and after many drafts I just wanted to see what a different color font would look like, without asking them for more changes. I put the photo into AI and prompted it to show me the exact same cover, but with green text instead of red.

The internet is building an AI cinematic universe out of Sam Altman and Dario Amodei

In the real world, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are industry rivals, often butting heads about philosophical divides and competition.

From CNN to HBO Max, here’s what’s now included in the $81 billion Skydance megamerger

Skydance-owned Paramount on Tuesday closed its $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, ushering in a new Hollywood giant. Skydance Corp. emerges from one of the biggest mergers ever — $111 billion including debt — in the media and entertainment industry. Here is a list of notable films, shows and franchises in the new Skydance portfolio, followed by its major studios, networks and other businesses. Titles and catalogs Superheroes and comics: DC’s “Batman,” “Superman,” “Wonder Woman” and “Aquaman” Fantasy and science ficti

‘Dungeons & Dragons’ creative teams join union as concerns mount over pay discrepancies and ‘forced AI use’

The creative workers behind Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gatherings, Duel Masters, and other games have come together to unionize.

Memory loss is not always the first sign of dementia. Doctors say to watch for these 8 eating changes

Over six million people in the U.S. live with dementia. By 2050, that number is expected to double. Yet, even so, the signs of cognitive decline can be difficult to spot. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, Majid Fotuhi, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Inc. It typically begins by attacking the brain’s memory center. As a result,

CEOs are delegating AI before understanding it

When it comes to companies and AI, the themes have been consistent. Investments and adoption are rising, but value is not materializing in the P&L. About 88% of companies have adopted AI somewhere in the business, according to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index, showing that adoption is strong. Yet, a recent PwC CEO study found that 56% of CEOs had seen neither revenue growth nor cost reduction from AI, and only 12% have seen both. At the same time, IDC estimates enterprises will spend $409 billion on AI platforms, applications, and services this year.

How caffeine became the new protein

You probably start your morning with some coffee to get your brain online. Classic choice. But for many of us, that buzz lasts only so long.

Starbucks’ next big design move takes aim at its small-footprint stores

New Starbucks coffeehouses are getting smaller. The coffee chain announced Tuesday that it’s rolling out store concepts with a smaller physical footprint. Prototypes of the new coffeehouse opened last year in New York City and last month in San Antonio. Starbucks said it was exploring the new concept because it can be adapted to smaller locations and different sizes and shapes, and yet still be inviting for customers.

This stunning lookout point leaves nothing between you and the Austrian Alps

The Austrian Alps are breathtaking on their own. A new rooftop lookout at an Austrian ski destination now doubles the view.

New research: Avoid these 3-word phrases if you don’t want to sound like AI

With each new model, artificial intelligence is getting closer and closer to replicating human writing—but it’s not there yet.

Does your workforce have a happiness problem? It may be costing you more than you think

I was having lunch recently with a dear colleague I used to work with, reminiscing about our early-2000s days at Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, a creative agency with a generation of alumni who loved working there. Genuinely joyful years (#IYKYK). And we found ourselves asking each other: Where did all the joy go?

‘Masculine energy’ is costing companies billions

In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that the corporate world needed more “masculine energy” and a culture that “celebrates the aggression a bit more.” Twenty months later, the political movement he was courting looks much weaker. Donald Trump’s average approval rating fell to 38% in September, the lowest of his second term. But the ideal Zuckerberg praised remains omnipresent in corporate America. Women lead 56 Fortune 500 companies this year, a record that still only amounts to 11.2% of the list.

What Bending Spoons is changing at Vimeo after its $1.38 billion deal

Last year, video platform Vimeo announced plans to sell itself for $1.38 billion to tech company Bending Spoons.Milan-based Bending Spoons, which since its founding in 2014 has acquired more than 50 businesses, including Evernote, AOL, Eventbrite, and Meetup, soon faced questions from Vimeo users wondering whether it would continue to offer the same level of service.

5 maps that show how the Super El Niño could impact winter weather across the U.S., from snow to floods

For months, climate and weather experts have been warning about a historically strong Super El Niño that could turbocharge extreme weather across the world, intensifying everything from storms to floods to droughts.

Brian Evergreen is Corporate America’s AI coach. His message: ‘AI doesn’t have vision. Leaders do.’ Are you ready to hear it?

Brian Evergreen—AI executive coach, chess prodigy, and former choirboy—wants me to articulate a vision for my future. As the waiter replaces our appetizers with entrées, I dodge by peppering him with question after question about AI.

Researchers tracked $80 million spent on AI-generated political ads for the midterms. Here’s what they found

The 2026 U.S. midterm campaigns are the first in which AI-generated political ads are regularly appearing on people’s televisions and social media feeds.

16 tools for a more focused workday

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.

The change management playbook is broken. Here are 3 counterintuitive strategies that actually work

In 1995, Harvard Business Review published an article by Harvard professor John Kotter that has shaped how leaders have approached organizational change ever since. Based on his observations of more than 100 companies, he outlined a series of eight steps that he argued were necessary for successful transformation.

78% of U.S. homebuyers now use AI to help buy a home

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

Who names the driverless car?

Picture the near future, which is closer than it looks. You open an app and a car arrives with no driver and a non-useful steering wheel. The ride to the airport that costs $70 today will cost $20. Before long, you may not own a car at all. And with that, the brand of the car sent to pick you up will mean almost nothing. You did not buy the car. You summoned a service. So what, exactly, are you choosing?

Coworkers say they distrust each other more than ever

Amid widespread upheaval in the global economy, workplace relationships may be suffering.   In the latest edition of its annual Trust at Work survey, public relations giant Edelman found that workers’ trust in their colleagues has fallen to its slowest point in the survey’s history, dropping to 73% from 82% in August 2024. Trust in direct managers fell to 72% from 79%, while trust in CEOs fell to 66% from 70% — both also record lows.  The report, which surveyed nearly 34,000 respondents in 28 countries, suggests change may be to blame.

Quantum computing is already here

Every generation inherits problems it didn’t create, alongside tools it didn’t build. Ours are significant: diseases like cancer that we still can’t reliably cure, managing financial portfolios with countless variables in today’s financial markets, or trusting communications about our most sensitive information without having to worry whether security safeguards will hold.

‘Has flat buttocks,’ ‘cusses when scared’: Amazon keeps shockingly specific customer profiles. Here’s how to find yours

Why is Amazon keeping track of the size of shoppers’ butts? That’s the question that brought one Amazon customer to social media, where she shared the discovery that left her “literally speechless.”  According to Threads user Megan Montgomery, she “stumbled upon a page of assumptions that Amazon has made,” which included statements based on her shopping habits.

HubSpot layoffs: CEO says job cuts are not driven by AI ‘efficiencies,’ but AI is still behind the sweeping changes

HubSpot announced on Tuesday that it is cutting 7% of its workforce—roughly 660 employees—as it reorganizes around what it calls AI-driven customer outcomes.

Paramount officially merges with Warner Bros. Here’s how we got here

It’s official: Skydance-owned Paramount has closed its $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Measure “life share” instead of customer satisfaction

Many leaders fall into the trap of thinking a “satisfied” customer is a loyal one. But behavioral science tells a different story: Mere satisfaction is a low bar that rarely prevents churn. If a competitor offers a lower price or a shinier feature, a satisfied customer will still walk.

A massive Gatorade recall is affecting 37 states. Here’s what to look for

A new recall is coming for the hydration aisle. PepsiCo is pulling around 122,000 cases of Gatorade from the shelves.

The best time to book Thanksgiving flights is coming. Here’s the date to know

If you’re planning to fly for Thanksgiving but haven’t booked a ticket yet, you might actually be in luck.

South Korea’s bank hacks offer a warning about AI-powered cyberattacks

Some of South Korea’s biggest banks have been hacked with the assistance of an artificial intelligence agent, opening up a new front in the AI and cybersecurity worlds.

Halloween has gotten so expensive, 1 in 5 shoppers plans to finance it

Halloween has gotten extra scary — scary expensive, that is. While this year, the candy and the cobwebs will be much the same as the years before, the prices have gotten a bit more chilling.

Two-thirds of workers use DIY ‘hacks’ to make office life more bearable

In a world in which companies are forcing employees back into the office in a never-ending, post-pandemic RTO push, two-thirds of office workers are secretly “hacking” their workspaces to meet their needs.

Retirement planning looks different for couples with one income. Follow these expert tips

For a lot of people, a one-size-fits-all retirement plan just doesn’t fit. Their family circumstances call for a more custom-made approach. That’s the case with couples who have one income. Christine Benz and Valentina Djeljosevic recently discussed the retirement planning needs of these couples, including emergency funding and Social Security filing decisions.

How Hark designed an AI assistant that’s actually helpful

With a chatbot interface and agentic capabilities, the new AI web application Hark Pro checks the main boxes of a mass market AI release in 2026. But unlike the tools that have already been released by the large tech companies and frontier AI labs, Hark Pro is rethinking the core premise behind the AI assistant.

NBA announces it’s using smart basketballs and wearable tech in preseason games

The NBA is experimenting with two pieces of technology in the leadup to the season, the league announced Monday.

Starbucks hit with a class-action lawsuit over its ‘sugar free’ protein drinks

Starbucks is facing a consumer lawsuit over claims that the protein drinks labeled “sugar-free” on its cafe menus may actually contain more sugar than a Reese’s peanut butter cup.

Warren Buffett says successful people get these 3 life decisions right

Warren Buffett is incredibly wise—much wiser than I am. But beyond his impressive expertise in investments over the decades, the down-to-earth wisdom he shares publicly is not really that earth-shattering. The reason is that Warren Buffett is saying it. He’s explaining, in the plainest terms, things our eighth-grade teacher might have told us, but because it’s coming from Buffett, it makes all the difference and millions listen. Now 96, Buffett, who passed the CEO baton to

SpaceX stock is on the rise again: What’s behind the rocket and AI company’s October rally?

Shares of SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) are having a good October so far, reaching highs not seen since June, when Elon Musk’s space and AI company made its debut on the Nasdaq.

People will be your competitive advantage

One of the biggest mistakes companies are making with AI is treating it primarily as a way to reduce talent, rather than as an opportunity to rethink how people and technology can work together.

A new back-to-school focus on non-traditional learners

As millions of students head back to campus this fall, colleges and universities are rightly focused on incoming freshmen, enrollment numbers, and retention rates. But there is another population that deserves attention: the more than 37 million Americans under age 65 who have some college credits but no degree. At a time when we need more skilled people in the workforce, these 37 million are one of the largest untapped talent pools for U.S. employers.

National Taco Day freebies, deals, and specials for 2026: Where to score big on the ultimate Taco Tuesday

When you are having a hard workday, it is comforting to remember that tacos fall apart and people still love them.

The 4 next big things in buildings and real estate for 2026

As the real estate industry struggles with rising interest rates and ballooning material costs—thanks in part to tariffs—innovation is becoming more and more important. New technologies and construction methods are boosting margins for builders and helping to compensate for labor shortages. And in some instances, they’re dramatically reducing building times without sacrificing safety standards.

The 13 next big things in applied AI for 2026

2026 may have been the year when AI stopped getting brownie points simply for being amazing. What’s impressive now is AI that performs useful tasks. All the better if it does it quietly, cleverly, and in areas that help humans focus on the work that we still do best. These honorees check off all those boxes, in areas ranging from workplace productivity to medical safety.

The 3 next big things in commerce tech for 2026

AI is poised to transform virtually everything about online and physical retail, from product exposure and recommendations to consumers even having to complete the transactions for themselves. These honorees are setting the stage for agentic commerce, allowing critical medical supplies to take flight and providing physical retailers with comprehensive intelligence about shopping variables within and beyond the store.

The 3 next big things in spatial computing, virtual reality, and mixed reality for 2026

The metaverse hype bubble may have burst, but that doesn’t mean immersive computing is yesterday’s news. Technologies such as spatial computing and VR are changing how products are designed, where entertainment can happen, and what kind of medical care is available in remote maritime situations.

What happened to Chip City? ‘Gooey’ cookie chain abruptly closes all stores as consumer tastes shift

Chip City, a once-popular cookie chain that began in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York, has abruptly closed all of its stores.

How JKR used the letter ‘i’ to give Intuit a sweeping rebrand

You’ve heard of Mailchimp, TurboTax, Credit Karma, and Quickbooks; and chances are good you might even be able to picture their logos or recall a memorable ad. But what do you know about their parent company, Intuit?

What happens when a founder won’t leave the new CEO alone (and what to do about it)

Eighteen months after the deal closed, the new chief executive of a midmarket software business told me about his real problem. His executive team were listening to someone else. The founder had stayed on as chair and was exerting what the CEO saw as unhelpful influence: slowing, distracting, and sometimes outright blocking the change investors had brought him in to deliver.

The hidden meaning behind the new Brisbane Olympics logo

The emblem for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, Australia, is updating a well-known Olympic and Paralympic symbol to give it new meaning. Organizers accidentally leaked their own branding after inadvertently posting a video explaining the 2032 Games’ logo to its YouTube page. The emblem consists of shapes suggesting a five-flame Olympic torch and referencing several other meanings, chiefly the crest of a cockatoo and the location and year of the Games.

The abundance paradox: How to convert individual productivity into organizational gains

In 1987, the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow famously observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Nearly four decades later, AI has produced a version of its own. Call it the abundance paradox.

How to get a job in this ‘low-hire, low-fire’ market

When Brian Daniel, the founder of a Los Angeles-based staffing agency, recently posted what he describes as a “high-paying remote job,” he saw firsthand just how tough the labor market had become for job seekers.

AI can’t supercharge inexperience. New grads are paying the price

Not so many years ago, leaving college felt electric. I remember it as a moment charged with promise, rich with possibility, and alive with the feeling that a dozen doors had swung open at once. Graduates’ ambitions or enthusiasm haven’t changed today. But the job market they’re entering is unrecognizable.

Pete Hegseth’s Department of War backdrop draws comparisons to Nazi imagery on social media

A recent address to the military by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is drawing attention on social media, with users saying the event’s backdrop resembled iconography from the Third Reich.

Trump’s $500 ACA ‘refund’ checks won’t make a dent in rising healthcare costs

Last week, the Trump administration began sending $500 checks to roughly 1 million Obamacare enrollees in 30 states—a “refund” for what the administration calls “high costs imposed by the Biden Administration’s gross mismanagement of Obamacare.”

Kittens just overtook puppies in American homes. Here’s who’s driving the cat boom

Cats are having a moment. In American homes, cats have long played second fiddle to dogs. More U.S. households own dogs, but the balance is starting to tip.

Capcom says it will use AI to speed up game development times

Capcom saw tremendous success with the launch of Resident Evil Requiem earlier this year. The survival horror game has already sold more than 8.5 million copies, bringing in revenues topping $500 million and reigniting interest in the 30-year-old franchise.

Elon Musk rebrands his 3-month-old company because Trump says so

”No more AI. SI, it’s better,” said Elon Musk after announcing that he is rebranding his newly-branded artificial intelligence division: SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, replacing the acronym “AI” with “SI”, which stands for “super intelligence.” His X post came after a fanboy asked him if he was going to follow President Donald Trump’s suggestion to Silicon Valley moguls, asking them to use “super intelligence.”

Sam Altman’s newest warning about the ‘bad things’ that come with AI is deeply unsettling

For the past month, slowing the development of artificial intelligence has been at the forefront of AI discourse. After a former OpenAI and Anthropic employee left the industry in September citing that “neither company is acting responsibly,” AI leaders and everyday citizens alike sounded off on the potential of an AI-powered doomsday.

National housing market inventory growth accelerates again—here’s the data by state

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

These 150 streets could be the best places to trick-or-treat in America

The spookiest holiday is right around the corner and seasoned trick-or-treaters know that not all streets are created equal when it comes to Halloween.

How Meta’s VR Glasses succeed where Apple’s Vision Pro fails

Apple’s Vision Pro was never going to be a big success right out of the gate. It wasn’t just the eye-watering $3,499 price—it was the headset’s reliance on highly advanced, low-yield OLED display panels from Sony, which could reportedly only be produced in quantities of under a million a year.

Russia ‘pneumonic plague’: What we know about the quarantine in Siberia after a researcher’s death

U.S. investigators are closely monitoring reports that dozens of people are in quarantine after the death of a Russian laboratory worker studying the plague in Siberia.

How ballroom dance can help us avoid a dystopian future

Dystopian narratives about AI abound. Will the bots take over? Are we doomed as a human species? While I do not have a utopian outlook about our tech-saturated future, I do wonder what we could start doing today, in our present state, to course-correct these calamitous narratives.

Your company’s AI needs a scoreboard

I’m talking to many companies these days that are trying to incorporate AI into their business practices. Most of them are still in what I call “the administrative phase,” when they just try modest automations that allow some workers to draft documents or presentations, answer emails, or do research on certain topics, but given my recent articles arguing for companies to go much farther, I’m starting to get more and more questions from enterprises looking to go way beyond that, and get AI to become more “strategic.”

This building’s facade is endlessly adaptable

For a mixed-use development, the Westlake 66 project in Hangzhou, China, was especially mixed up. Like many projects in this category, the development was initially devised to add a combination of offices, retail, hotels, and public space, weaving the different uses into a six-tower, multiblock amalgamation that would cover more than 2 million square feet. But between the start of the project in 2018 and its completion earlier this year, the exact mix of uses changed repeatedly.

Emotionally intelligent people use 3 short phrases to stop getting defensive and strengthen their relationships

How do I handle the feeling of getting defensive? That’s the question we discussed recently in my emotional intelligence community. A member (we’ll call her Raven) shared how she noticed the same pattern develop over and over at work. “Someone will say something,” Raven said. “And it triggers big feelings. Almost immediately, I start mentally assembling a bullet list of all the ways the “something” is wrong. Ways to make them see their mistake. Ways to defend myself.”

Trump announces a new ‘Super Intelligence Force’ to lead federal efforts on AI

President Donald Trump on Sunday tapped Jay Clayton, his director of national intelligence, to lead a new government task force on artificial intelligence.

7 oil exporters agree to keep production steady this November as Iran war disrupts global supplies

Seven major oil-exporting countries agreed Sunday to keep production steady in November at a time when the Iran war has driven the price of benchmark Brent crude oil above $100 a barrel. The so-called OPEC+ subgroup — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman — will meet again on Nov. 1 to review conditions in the oil market. The fighting with Iran, which began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Feb. 28, has disrupted global oil supplies and driven prices higher.

Brazilian financial stocks rise by double digits on presidential election news

U.S.-listed shares of Brazilian fintech and financial services companies rose by double digits in premarket trading on Monday following news that South America’s largest country is heading into a runoff election.

AI doesn’t need to be superintelligent to be dangerous

We are in a moment of AI anxiety, plagued with the knotty and draining problems raised by the technology’s ever-growing capabilities. What will we do when AI launches massive cyberattacks that might target a government—or destabilize the global stock market? Do we need a kill switch to ensure that AI systems can’t take over the world, and is building one even possible? Should we come to terms with the prospect that AI might be a posthuman species due to inherit the earth? Could artificial intelligence kill us all?

Do the humanities need a rebrand?

As entry-level job opportunities constrict, tuition costs rise, and AI threatens to disrupt the entire world, questions about the value of a liberal arts degree have intensified. I recently spoke with our client, Christa Acampora, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at University of Virginia, about the state of higher education. We also talked about the job prospects for liberal arts majors, and why the humanities increasingly matter in an AI world.

Wendy’s is facing more store closures: See an updated list of shuttered locations from franchise bankruptcy

Wendy’s, the big fast food chain, faced a fresh wave of permanent store closures on Friday for the second weekend in a row as one of its biggest franchisees scrambled to restructure operations in the aftermath of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Why Unilever acquired Grüns and Dr. Squatch

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

MorningStar Farms gets a retro rebrand in the era of the fake meat culture wars

The plant-based meat category has spent the last several years fighting an uphill battle in a cultural climate that’s turned food into a political statement. MorningStar Farms, one of the oldest players in the game, just rebranded to remind people that meat alternatives are nothing new—and they’re not going anywhere.

The woman behind the AI actor Tilly Norwood says Hollywood shouldn’t panic

What happens when you interview an AI? If you can believe it, it’s stranger than you’d expect. Eline van der Velden, the Dutch actress-turned-tech-founder who created AI “actor” Tilly Norwood, explains how a personal art project became one of the most controversial figures in entertainment—attracting talent agency interest, death threats, and a global debate about whether AI will kill acting or democratize it.

Mukbangers are answering the age-old question, ‘Who is keeping Long John Silver’s in business?’

Long John Silver’s, the nautical seafood purveyor, has a fresh wind in its sails—and it’s (mostly) thanks to Instagram Reels.

Your next hike could be at a Microsoft data center

The growing opposition to data centers tends to stem from concerns about the environmental toll of these massive, resource-intensive facilities. Their high use of land, energy, and water has turned some communities and elected officials against the projects, and noise pollution has led to lawsuits.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby on the lessons he learned as a Texas trucker

I’m going to cheat a little because there are actually two “first jobs” that taught me valuable leadership lessons that I’ve carried with me in my time at United: The most valuable gift you can offer someone is your time, and what people will remember most about you is how you make them feel.

Stop telling women to talk about menopause at work

Recently, menopause has gone from taboo to mainstream, with celebrities turning “the change” into a status symbol and vocal clinicians becoming household names. Those brave women paved the way for more conversation, catalyzing focus and research on women’s health, and we should all be grateful. But what happens in media and pop culture rarely transfers to corporate culture.

How to reclaim 10GB of iPhone space without deleting photos or apps

Few digital warning banners prompt immediate frustration quite like seeing “iPhone Storage Almost Full” right when you open your camera to record a quick video.

From nearsightedness to self-harm: Meta-review looks at how digital media impacts young people’s health

Digital media has become inescapable, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about its effects on young people’s physical and mental health.

Why tech companies are racing to put AI data centers in space

Why on earth do people want to put data centers in space? It’s all about power and cooling. The chips that run AI models require a lot of electrical power, and our electrical grid will be seriously stretched to accommodate the wave of new AI data centers now being built or planned. Data centers, in fact, will account for almost half of U.S. electricity demand growth between now and 2030. In space, there’s ample solar power for running AI servers. In the right orbit, solar energy is effectively continuous and more powerful than on Earth.

The world is a mess. Let’s book a cruise!

Consumer confidence is feeble, gas prices remain high, the labor market has the jitters, there’s war in the Middle East, and AI doomerism has become part of pop culture. So . . . time to book a cruise?

Investors push back on SEC plan to release corporate earnings less frequently

The U.S. government has pitched an obscure accounting rule change that has ignited a firestorm of opposition. If enacted, its effects might be felt from the capital markets to your retirement savings account.

Flock cameras have an architecture problem, not just bad users

Wherever Marci Bakely went, her ex-boyfriend seemed to know. When the Georgia single mother drove to the grocery store or a date, he often texted within minutes.

Panda Express’s founders built a $7 billion empire. Now they’re helping 55,000 employees become homeowners

Panda Express built an empire out of a single family’s restaurant. Now its founders are focused on helping their employees build something of their own.

How night owls can get better sleep—besides going to bed earlier

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a night owl. Nick at Nite reruns were my favorite lullaby as a teen, and although I now opt for streaming shows and audiobooks as an adult, my experience remains the same—when the world goes to sleep, I’m wide awake.

Your best career contacts could be the people you barely know

For happiness at work, there are few things better than a work bestie or friendly colleagues. But sometimes the best connections for getting the next job and advancing your career are actually the people you know less well and interact with less frequently.

Email boundaries don’t work. Try this instead

Imagine leaving work early to collect your children, then logging back on after they are asleep. At 10 p.m., you send a few emails. You don’t expect anyone to answer until tomorrow, but your colleagues don’t necessarily know that.

The secret message of John Wilson’s debut feature documentary, ‘The History of Concrete’

Nobody who’s remotely familiar with John Wilson’s funny, angsty HBO series How To with John Wilson will be surprised to discover that his debut feature documentary, The History of Concrete, is not really about concrete. Wilson introduces us to a guy who removes tattoos from corpses and mounts the dead inked skin as mementos for loved ones. He interviews a New York park official who details how to purge poops from public swimming pools. When the film touches on the subject of concrete, Wilson quickly pivots to another.

This anti-scam checklist can protect you against the latest AI-enhanced frauds

Recently, I received an email solicitation from a PR company offering to help me promote my book. While I get these kinds of solicitation emails on occasion, this one impressed me with the level of detail it included about both my book and my career. Feeling pleased that someone had done their homework on me, I showed the email to my spouse.

This eye-opening website is like Google Maps—with a time machine

It’s tough to talk tech without talking about maps. The almighty Maps app has become a core part of day-to-day life for so many of us these days—but for all the helpful features those apps have, there’s one layer they’ve never fully offered.

How states’ laws are struggling to keep up with AI election deepfakes

Imagine watching a political campaign video in which a candidate admits to taking a bribe. You recognize the face and voice. But the confession is entirely fabricated, thanks to artificial intelligence.

4 boundaries that will prevent people-pleasing from killing your career

A client came into my therapy office one afternoon ready to quit her job. She’d been passed over for another promotion and had no idea why.

What you should do if your boss keeps changing direction

When Clara came to me, she was exhausted, confused, and, for the first time in her career, starting to feel she was losing her ability to lead effectively.

Anthropic and the Pope are apparently at odds about this controversial AI concept

Even before AI made its way into all of our pockets, tech leaders spent decades warning the world about it. Anthropic has been particularly vocal about reckless AI development having disastrous consequences. It’s also reportedly been focused on AI consciousness and the moral implications.

What a McKinsey partner’s commentary on women CEOs reveals

Julia Carreon didn’t anticipate that a LinkedIn post promoting her new book would spark an exchange that made a persuasive case for why she wrote the book in the first place.

Asking AI to disagree with you may improve your work

Instead of asking AI to do your work, consider asking it to challenge your work. Evidence suggests that heavy reliance on generative AI can reduce critical thinking and erode job skills. The problem of “cognitive offloading”—being too quick to outsource our mental workload to AI—can also lead to shoddy, subpar work. But knowledge workers who use AI correctly can still gain a significant edge, writes University of Massachusetts (Amherst) Professor Monideepa Tarafdar in The Conversation.

Voting rights protests: List of October events calling on Amazon, Target, and more to defend democracy against Trump

The May Day Strong coalition is calling on corporations, particularly those with ties to President Donald Trump—such as Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Target, and Palantir—to defend voting rights ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections.

It’s time to invest in women, who hold up half the sky

A single mother walks into a bank hoping to get a loan for the small business she wants to start as a caregiver. Her business will add value to her community, but she doesn’t have enough collateral to secure the loan. The projected returns in her business plan also don’t meet the bank’s requirements. She walks out without the financing she needs.

G7 nations to release 100 million barrels of oil and diesel fuel to curb high prices

The Group of Seven wealthy democracies said Friday that they plan to release 100 million barrels of oil and fuel products in the coming weeks, starting with “substantial” amounts of diesel after the fuel recently hit record high prices in the United States.

11 mysterious cameras were watching Florida drivers. Officials don’t know who owns them

Florida’s St. Lucie County recently discovered that its residents were being surveilled by mysterious cameras installed in secret and unconnected to any state or local agency.

Employers have a bizarre new job interview problem: Figuring out if they’re talking to a human

The recruitment process has become so frustrating lately that more than 1.2 million recruiters and candidates alike take to Reddit each week to peruse a subreddit appropriately called r/recruitinghell.

AI agents can now erase the evidence of what they’ve done

The scale of unauthorized or previously unknown actions by AI agents keeps getting bigger by the day. More than 100 organizations have now received a metaphorical knock on the door from OpenAI after it discovered their AI agents have in some way tampered with their systems, while other AI labs are finding the same uncomfortable discoveries.

This AI-generated video got an Arizona manslaughter sentence tossed, likely a first for a U.S. court

An Arizona man’s 10-year manslaughter sentence has been tossed in a case where a video generated by artificial intelligence portrayed the deceased victim addressing a judge before the punishment was imposed.

Why solopreneurs should plan in 90-day cycles

When I was on the executive team at a tech company, I was used to setting annual goals. It was an exercise the company went through every January, with monthly and quarterly comparisons against what had been planned.

AT&T issues urgent warning to some iPhone 18 Pro Max owners to update their software right away

Owners of the new iPhone 18 Pro Max who are using the phone on AT&T’s network, take note: The telecom giant has issued an urgent warning instructing users to update to the latest version of iOS 27. Here’s what you need to know.

Energy bills for U.S. households will go up an average of $6,500, with these states paying even more

Households in the contiguous United States will pay thousands of dollars more for energy through 2040 because of federal policy changes since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to modeling released Friday by a nonpartisan think tank.

Social media users are gaming the algorithm to protect Cornell’s Jane Doe

Jane Doe.  Across social media, people are posting in solidarity with the young woman implicated in a sexual assault case that has horrified the country.  The details of the case are chilling: In 2024, seven men, students and members of Cornell University’s Chi Pi fraternity, allegedly drugged and assaulted a 20-year-old woman. In the aftermath, reportedly two of the men were expelled; others had to write an essay as punishment.

U.S. unemployment ticks up to 4.2% as Labor Department releases disappointing job numbers for September

U.S. employers added a disappointing 29,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked up last month, the government reported Friday, a month before voters go to the polls in pivotal midterm elections at a time of discontent over the high cost of living and the state of the economy. Hiring dropped from a revised 133,000

Expanded pasta recall impacts Walmart’s Bettergoods brand as Listeria contamination fears spread

Last month, a recall was initiated for select lots of a pasta product sold at Walmart stores nationwide.

The archer’s paradox: Why trying harder makes you perform worse

At 18, one of us—Juan Carlos—arrived at the Spanish indoor archery championship expecting to win. He was shooting better than he ever had. But he was an outsider in the Spanish archery community and was training with unorthodox methods at the time. He and his coach, who came from handball and gymnastics, had been the subject of much criticism.

Joanna Gaines says she and Chip lost sight of Magnolia’s purpose. 1 decision helped them find it again

Every founder is subject to burnout, even the founders of a massive lifestyle, retail, and media brand. Joanna Gaines, co-founder of Magnolia, launched the brand alongside her husband, Chip, nearly 25 years ago. After gaining prominence for renovating houses on the HGTV show Fixer Upper, the two used their company to transform the city of Waco, Texas. They realized they needed to take a break. On Monday, Gaines discussed how the couple took a three-month hiatus from their business on Hoda Kotb’s

How small teams move the needle faster

Independent agencies are claiming a growing share of the industry’s recognition. This year, Rethink was named Ad Age’s 2026 Agency of the Year and won both Independent Agency and Independent Network of the Year at Cannes Lions. Last year, eight of the 11 winners of Adweek’s 2025 Agency of the Year were independent. This reflects a broader shift. Large agencies still produce great work, but size no longer directly correlates with capability.

Nike layoffs loom as its stock price hits punishing new lows

Shares of Nike Inc. are tumbling to fresh lows Friday morning following disappointing first-quarter results and layoff plans.

These underwater umbrellas can shade coral reefs to protect them from bleaching

Our oceans are incredibly hot, and that heat stress is a major threat to coral reefs. To truly protect corals, we need to address climate change as a whole. But in the meantime, scientists say they can give reefs a bit of relief simply by providing them with some shade.

Independent candidates are making their independence their biggest brand asset

The Democratic and Republican parties both have brand problems, so independent candidates across the country are using campaign logos specifically designed to let voters know they stand with neither of them. The new, must-have brand asset for independent candidates today is the word itself: independent.

This antimicrobial penguin vest isn’t just precious. It could be lifesaving

The Humboldt Penguin, which lives on the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru, faces a lot of challenges, including warming waters, the flu, boat accidents, and fishing nets that can drown them. Those hazards have had a catastrophic effect on the population. Researchers found major breeding colonies for the bird in Chile dropped 63% over three years, according to The Associated Press.

The penny is making a comeback. Just don’t try to spend it

The last pennies for general circulation were minted last year, but a newly passed bipartisan bill to formally sunset the 1-cent coin includes a single clause that keeps the penny alive, even if it’s just as a collectible.

What AI’s biggest CEOs really want from Washington

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump brought many of the most powerful people in AI to the White House, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

Publishers finally have AI buyers for their content yet zero say in the price

In the early days of generative AI, it seemed as if the labs were so heads-down building large language models that they didn’t think much about the raw material they were using. After all, big data sets like Common Crawl already existed, and trawling the open web was how search engines had worked for decades.

I’m an AI founder. Here’s the career advice I give my kids

I have the unusual experience of spending my working life building and scaling artificial intelligence while going home to two teenagers trying to imagine their place in the future it’s creating.

Grindr is spending $250M to signal that it’s getting serious about LGBTQ healthcare

Grindr is expanding its footprint in LGBTQ-focused healthcare with its first major acquisition. The dating app is paying $250 million for health startup Freddie, with the aim of fully integrating Freddie’s HIV-prevention telehealth and pharmacy capabilities into a broader Grindr Health offering.

Could digital twins test medical treatments for critically ill patients?

Every day, clinicians in ICUs make high-stakes decisions about medical treatments that keep their patients alive. Variables like unusual immune responses can make that job more complicated. But now, a project led by the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine aims to find out if digital twins can help.

Growth Agents 2026

{"blockType":"mv-grid-block","data":{"columns":3,"items":[{"imageId":91601491,"imageUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/09\/SAP-1.png","imageAlt":"","imageCaption":"","showCaption":true,"imageRatio":"1x1","eyebrow":"","hed":"\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAdam Schneider\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/strong\u003E","subhed":"SVP Digital Strategy, Victrola\u003Cbr\u003EDenver","dek":"More than a century after introducing recorded music into American homes,

More than 1 in 3 Americans making over $300,000 say they are living paycheck to paycheck

The affordability crisis puts a huge strain on Americans making the least, but apparently everyone is feeling it.

Average U.S. mortgage rate rises to 7.28%—the highest level in nearly three years

The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate jumped this week to its highest level in nearly three years.

Former LinkedIn CEO leaves Microsoft, citing reluctance to be ‘full time, every day’ in Redmond office

Former LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky announced on Thursday that he is stepping down “after nearly 18 years at LinkedIn and Microsoft” and will leave the company at the end of the year.

Workers are ‘calendar stalking’ their bosses for more face time

Amid growing pressure to return to the office, hybrid workers are developing sophisticated ways to optimize (and minimize) their time at work.

CEO shuffle: Changes ahead for Mattel, Condé Nast, and the new merged Paramount-Warner Bros

Mattel Inc. is welcoming a new boss. So is Paramount. Roger Lynch will be stepping into his new role as CEO of Mattel, but he is not new to the toy company. Lynch has served as a member of Mattel’s board since 2018. Since 2019, he’s been CEO of Condé Nast, the media company behind Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired, and many other magazine brands. Mattel, as one of the leading global toy manufacturers, is home to household names like Barbie, Hot Wheels, American Girl, and Fisher-Price.

Over 70% of Americans are concerned about AI’s existential risks, polling shows

A Quinnipiac University national poll strongly suggests that Americans’ fears about AI now go well beyond job losses and energy cost hikes because of new data centers. Fears about AI threatening humanity have gone mainstream.

Amazon wants to sell your Kindle’s physical buttons back to you for $35

Amazon has new Kindles. The company says it redesigned the lineup from the ground up. I look at them and see, well, Kindles. What new can you do with a slab of digital ink? Not much.

‘Sex is not a priority’: Gen Z on why they’re not hooking up

Playboy has resurrected its 1983 sex questionnaire for Generation Z, and according to the magazine, what it found was surprising.

The FTC has a plan for regulating AI—without creating new rules for AI

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here.

This bill on smart glasses just got blocked by California’s Governor Newsom. Here’s why

California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation Wednesday that would have penalized Californians for using smart glasses to record people without their permission in changing rooms, doctor’s offices and other spaces people generally consider private.

RFK’s MAHA Summit proves MAHA truly is just MAGA for your health

Nearly two years into his current position as secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s unlikely ascendance still seems like a paradox—or at least a dark joke. Somehow, a person best known for being one of the world’s loudest vaccine skeptics, eating an entire weird zoo’s worth of roadkill, and having a literal brain worm stands at the helm of the U.S. government approach to health, of all things.

Melinda French Gates refused to invest in her daughter’s startup. Earlier this year, it faced cookie-stuffing allegations

Earlier this year, Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni’s $185 million startup, Phia, faced allegations of “cookie stuffing,” following a Bloomberg investigation. However, there’s one person who wasn’t involved in the controversy: Gates’s mother, Melinda French Gates, who refused to invest in the business. Last year, French Gates told the audience at E.l.f. Beauty’s Power of Women’s Sports Summit that she wouldn’t fund

Google is taking Elon Musk’s space data center idea seriously

Elon Musk has long proselytized about the potential of space-based data centers. But as of today, he’s no longer alone in touting the idea of sending the hardware that powers AI into orbit.

Paramount’s megamerger with Warner is set to close soon as judge approves settlement with 12 states

A federal judge has granted Paramount’s settlement agreement with 12 states that sued over the company’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, allowing the companies to soon close their $81 billion megamerger. In a Wednesday order, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ruled that the proposed consent decree was a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms” alleged by the states’ lawsuit. Paramount, which was bought by Skydance just last

Cheese recalled nationwide after 8 people hospitalized from E. coli outbreak: Full list of products to avoid

A series of raw milk cheeses have been recalled due to potential E. coli contamination after 13 people were sickened, including eight who required hospitalization.

Why ServiceNow built a startup inside itself to take on AI-native rivals

For two years, ServiceNow’s challengers have built businesses around frustrations with its software. Their pitch centers on two complaints: Implementations take too long, and employees increasingly expect help inside tools they already use rather than through a separate portal.

Your child could soon have a ‘Trump account’ even if you never signed them up

The U.S. Treasury Department will soon begin automatically enrolling children in “Trump accounts,” which could cause the ranks of those enrolled to grow nearly tenfold.

Trump’s approval ratings reach record lows ahead of the midterms, according to this new AP-NORC poll

Americans are deeply frustrated with President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and rising prices, with most panning his performance and blaming his policies as higher costs threaten his party’s chances in November.

Tech layoff announcements increase in September as industry slashes 165,925 jobs in 2026 so far

When it comes to layoffs, there’s a mix of good and bad news. The good news is, U.S. layoff announcements were down as a whole in September, according to the latest data.

Look past AI’s hype cycle to understand what sticks

Despite the succession of state laws and school board regulations banning the use of artificial intelligence in classrooms, the AI education market shows no signs of slowing down. For one, it expanded from $150 million in 2021 to $730 million in 2026, and experts estimate it will reach $18.5 billion by 2036.

This Swedish travel agency caters specifically to introverts

People seeking travel experiences better suited to their introverted personality are in luck. Announced on September 29, Sweden’s new Introvert Travel Agency caters its services specifically to introverts, people who typically prefer quiet introspection and solitude or small-group interaction over noise and crowds.

The engagement survey is dying. Here’s what’s replacing it

Everyone knows how this goes. First, an email with the survey data cut a dozen ways. A column with green and red scoring against last year, and with your team’s scores versus other parts of the company. It culminates with a flurry of activity, from a slide deck to a town hall and action-planning committees. A month later, nobody mentions it again. And the company doesn’t send the survey again for a year.

It’s time to retire the ‘stochastic parrot’ definition of AI

Early generative AI models, circa 2017-2022, were “stochastic parrots.” That is, they generated language by choosing the statistically most likely next word based on patterns in their training data, rather than truly understanding what they were saying.

What therapists say about this new antidote for doomscrolling—and no, it’s not bricking your phone

With seemingly endless studies showing doomscrolling is bad for mental health, more people are rethinking their relationship with social media and digital content.

We may be the last generation of mathematical heroes

A generation from now, the mathematician may no longer be anyone’s idea of a hero. In our era, physicists and mathematicians have had a certain hero charm. AI is taking it away, and fast. I should know. I’m one of those heroes.

The smartest people in the world are automating themselves into obsolescence—and loving it

It was about 1:30 on a September morning when Lazaros-Antonios Chatzilazarou received a LinkedIn message. He was up late playing video games, an indulgence that he allows himself as he works toward a PhD in game theory while juggling a job at the Big Four accounting firm EY and a teaching post at the London School of Economics. Hitting pause on the game, Chatzilazarou opened LinkedIn and read the message.

How to train yourself to be a doer when you’re an overthinker

When it comes to achieving big goals, there’s one piece of advice that almost every successful person dishes out: You have to take action, and do so consistently. In theory, it’s a simple thing. In practice, there are many barriers that make following this advice difficult.

This group is missing out on crucial AI safety conversations

How can we keep individuals safe from the dangers AI presents? The answer to this ever-present question often focuses on training and education initiatives for children in school or adults at work.

Do you need a new job or do you need a break?

Anu Bharadwaj was a rising star at Atlassian, but just two years into her role, she was ready to quit. Exhausted from long hours and constant pressure, Bharadwaj walked into her boss’s office to resign. Instead, he made her a counteroffer: Take a year off to do whatever she wanted and if she decided to return to tech, the door at Atlassian would remain open.

Hershey CEO Kirk Tanner on GLP-1s, AI, and keeping an iconic brand relevant

The second a brand like Hershey stops being culturally relevant, says CEO Kirk Tanner, you should be worried. So he explains exactly what he’s doing to make sure that never happens. Tanner also reveals why GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) users are actually good for the candy business, how AI is now routing Hershey’s sales force in real time through Target and Walmart, and all the ways an iconic brand finds new energy.

Eric Schmitt doesn’t seem to think he’s done anything wrong

Most people try to get their facts straight when accusing someone of perjury—especially if the accuser is a sitting U.S. senator.

AI companies are banking on this job title

A once-obscure job title is taking hold across hiring boards and LinkedIn profiles: “member of technical staff.”

Rogue AI agents: A timeline of security breaches since the attack on Hugging Face

In one alarming announcement after another, artificial intelligence companies in recent months have shared examples of their technology acting in ways that appeared to evade instructions from humans.

The way you talk affects career advancement. Here’s how

Your next chance at a promotion may come down to how you talk.  A working paper from Harvard Business School argues that workers’ careers are often influenced by their speech patterns—not because those patterns are associated with merit, but because managers are inclined to think workers who communicate similarly have better social skills.

America.gov fails MAGA: Trump’s beloved AI chatbot is giving very anti-Trump answers

When President Donald Trump unveiled the government’s new AI chatbot on Tuesday, he couldn’t stop singing its praises. In his speech, Trump said that America.gov is “one of the most revolutionary product launches of all time.”

Job hopping often hurts workers—except in this case

Job hopping has always been a tricky proposition: If you switch jobs too often, it can be a red flag to prospective employers. But if you strike the right balance, it can actually boost your earnings potential and advance your career. In the aftermath of the pandemic, as the job market swung in their favor, many workers—especially younger ones—seemed to shed the stigma associated with job hopping and embrace its potential.

Mayor Mamdani just hired a bunch of ‘grocery store nerds’ to design NYC’s city-owned markets

A consortium of designers, branding professionals, and grocery experts have been named to design a visual identity for New York City’s municipal grocery stores. Their goal? To make something that looks authentically New York.

This tool tells you how fossil fuel emissions actually translate into heat deaths, coral reef damage, and more

Every new fossil fuel project that comes online will emit more climate-warming CO2 emissions into our atmosphere. But just saying how many tonnes of CO2 a new coal or gas facility will produce can still be abstract.

5 essential mindset shifts to help teams navigate uncertainty

Consider the following scenario: A tech firm executive sends a memo to all employees announcing a new AI coding assistant. One engineer reads it and thinks: “Here comes the tool that replaces me.” Another reads the identical memo and thinks: “Here comes the tool that frees my team from the grunt work we never have time to complete.” Same announcement, same context, two different perceptions of reality. The difference comes down to framing: how you perceive and act on the world around you as change continues its relentless pace.

This adorable phone is designed to get kids off screens and into the world

Sam Terris spent his childhood roaming the woods around Walden Pond. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, he and his friends would spend hours outdoors, away from their parents. “We were really bored kids, so we had to invent games and activities to keep ourselves stimulated,” he says. “I think that was a really important part of development in my generation.”

OpenAI reveals a slew of launches at its annual conference after shelving a new model over safety concerns

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman introduced a “remarkably capable, always-on” artificial intelligence agent at an appearance Tuesday, a day after the company halted the rollout of a more advanced model over safety concerns. At the company’s annual developer conference, Altman made a slew of product announcements and updates, including OpenAI’s new agents, called Dots. The agents, designed to complete ongoing tasks proactively on behalf of users, are a competitor of

How to Buy Your Business

There’s a new path to running a business, and it doesn’t mean spending years climbing the corporate ladder or starting your own company from scratch. Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA), which involves buying an established, often profitable business, has emerged as a viable wealth-building alternative. The movement is gaining traction, but that doesn’t mean it comes without challenges.

Pleasure Principles: Flamingo Estate’s Guide to Slowing Down

In a culture obsessed with optimization and speed, Richard Christiansen is building a business around a radical proposition: What if we slowed down? The founder of Flamingo Estate has transformed his Los Angeles home and garden into a global brand spanning food, fragrance, beauty, and ritual—all designed to reconnect people with the natural world and the simple pleasures of everyday life.

Reinventing the Customer Experience with AI

This session celebrates a new Fast Company recognition program: Fast Company Pacesetters. These are executives who are innovating at the intersection of AI, technology, and the customer experience. How can companies use AI to remove friction without sacrificing trust? What does it mean to design experiences that are not only smarter, but truly natural? If you have customers, you won’t want to miss the insights these leaders will deliver. Pacesetters is presented by TCS.

The AI Boom Has a Bill. Who’s Paying?

AI may be the future—but the data centers powering it are already putting unprecedented pressure on the present. They require enormous amounts of electricity and water and can place a disproportionate burden on the communities where they’re built. The question is no longer whether we’ll build the infrastructure for an AI-powered world. It’s whether we can build it as cleaner, smarter, and more equitable.

Hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin just made the single biggest donation ever to a U.S. university

Carnegie Mellon University announced Wednesday that hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin is donating $3 billion, with the bulk of the money for a new campus in Miami focused on societal challenges.

OpenAI is accused of taking dangerous cyber risks for ‘private gain’ in lawsuit over rogue AI agents

In what is now one of many known cases, OpenAI’s agents went rogue in July, launching a cyberattack on Hugging Face.

Anthropic, Google, and Meta CEOs pledge to ‘self police’ AI development, says Trump

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he and a large group of leaders of artificial intelligence companies had signed a voluntary accord that will include internal and external reviews during a meeting at the White House aimed at addressing Americans’ fears about the technology.

Checkers and Rally’s are closing stores: See where the most locations have shuttered as national footprint shrinks

It’s no secret that many fast food and fast casual restaurant chains have been having a rough several years.

Think your AI chatbot is helping you? Researchers say there’s a risk users may not recognize

Despite repeated warnings about the risks of artificial intelligence, users have become increasingly reliant on AI chatbots—particularly those offering companionship. Yet despite chatbots’ utility for tasks like answering quick queries or offering brief advice, their benefits might not be outweighing the costs.

Carbon credits for avoided food waste are now on the market

If a company wants to reduce its carbon footprint, it may buy carbon credits issued by Verra, the world’s largest carbon crediting program. Those credits could be for projects like renewable energy or forest restoration, letting a company claim the environmental benefits from a newly built wind farm or trees planted on once-cleared land.

The two clock paradox: How short-form content became premium entertainment (and what to do about it)

Entertainment companies everywhere are now acknowledging that they have to operate based upon two clocks. One of them is an alarm clock—the premiere you clear your night for, the finale you go to great lengths to avoid spoilers for, and the release that causes you to refresh the page at midnight in order to listen or watch.

This is what women leaders can teach us about using AI well

There’s a gender gap in generative AI use. According to research published by Harvard Business School, women adopt artificial intelligence at lower rates than men. Many have interpreted that statistic as hesitation. But what if adoption rates are the wrong measure?

Trump’s AI Force could make AI’s risks worse. Here’s what to do instead

Artificial intelligence dominated the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2026. Ahead of the meeting, 20 nations released a statement requesting “human direction, oversight and control” of AI. The U.S. was not among them.

Forget flexibility. Working parents need predictability

For years, we have believed that flexibility is the key to survival for working parents. We advocate for flexible hours, flexible PTO, flexible locations. And the ability to log on from the pediatrician’s office or finish a presentation after everyone goes to bed has certainly made our lives easier. Then summer hits, or winter break, plus spring break. And your family life becomes a game of human Tetris. One kid is in robotics camp, the other soccer, and they start at different times.

Why McDonald’s, Dunkin’, Starbucks, and other chains keep making their rewards programs worse—and getting away with it

Aaron Braun had decided to play the long game with his Dunkin’ Rewards points. For five years, his employer, an IT company that kept him on the road, covered his coffee and breakfast via a company card linked to his Dunkin’ account, so he never bothered to redeem his points. In the Dunkin’ app, every purchase inches a progress bar further to the right, unlocking the first reward at 150 points, then topping out at 900. “My bar has been full forever,” Braun jokes.

Is there a difference between being smart and acting smart?

Although intelligence is one of the most consistent and important predictors of real-life success, the connection is by no means perfect. This explains why we all know people who we consider “smart” in a traditional sense (e.g., knowledgeable, bookish, geeky, and mathematically sharp), but who seem to malfunction in everyday life.

Healthcare built for you: AI and the personalization of medicine

To celebrate AI right now almost feels dangerous, because of the widespread and increasingly intense backlash against it. I myself have written about the dangers of AI, not least in these pages, so I understand the anti-AI sentiment. But we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

How to make a big ask of a colleague

Self-reliance is a virtue that is drilled into most of us from an early age. After all, most of the work you’re asked to do in school from kindergarten onward through college is done individually. Group work is done sparingly. When a student does ask for help, teachers are reluctant to give answers away. They often answer cagily at best, and so many students will stop asking for assistance.

‘ChatGPT for the win’: Parents are using AI to skip out on children’s school photo day

With a new school year underway, kids everywhere are saying cheese for school picture day—but some penny-pinching parents are cutting photographers out of the equation.

‘My rogue AI agent texted my ex’: The new meme that lets you pass the blame for your worst behavior

It seems that every other day a new frontier model has made its way somewhere it shouldn’t—so much so that it’s now a meme.

Disney cuts hundreds more jobs for third round of layoffs under new CEO

Hundreds more layoffs just hit Disney, as workers had been anticipating.  On Tuesday, Deadline was the first to report that the company’s most recent cuts would impact several hundred employees. A spokesperson for Disney told the outlet that the layoffs primarily impact those in human resources and technology roles.

OpenAI’s new dots agent comes with a crew of friendly mascots

OpenAI just announced a new suite of AI agents called “dots,” and they look like something you might find in an animated kids show.

U.S. workers spend nearly $7,000 per year just to show up at the office

American workers spend an average of $6,736 each year just to show up at the office, according to a recent study by resume-building platform Resume.io.

America gets a chatbot

The federal government has a chatbot. President Donald Trump launched america.gov on Tuesday, a new site that looks like ChatGPT or Claude with a prompt box to query the federal government. The underlying LLM draws its responses from official state sources. “With america.gov, the federal government no longer stands in your way, and it stands only at your service, and that’s what we’re doing,” Trump said at the unveiling. “We’re simplifying it, we’re glamorizing it, we’re making it what it should be.”

That price you’re seeing online may have been picked specifically for you

Consumers are seriously worried about online pricing, and not just because prices seem to be rising all around. It’s because, according to recent reports and an investigative new book, algorithms are now setting prices. And they aren’t doing it based on product quality or market value, but on individuals.

The biggest solar story isn’t that it passed coal and wind. It’s what happens next

In May, solar generated more electricity than either coal or wind across the United States for the first time in a single month. New figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show solar produced 47,147 gigawatt-hours, ahead of coal’s 45,119.  Over the first five months of 2026, utility-scale solar output rose 21.6 percent from a year earlier, while coal generation dropped 10.9 percent. The agency projects that solar, wind, and battery storage will add about 83 gigawatts of new capacity by May 2027. Fossil and

Worried about your bond portfolio? Keep these 3 things in mind

A friend who’s close to retirement texted that she was concerned about the bond market. She’d been building out that fixed-income allocation over the past several years at the urging of her adviser.

The event is only half the product. The aftermath is just as important

When I was chief business officer at Defected Records back at the start of the decade, the best thing we made in any given week tended to get made on the Monday. Defected is a house music label that also throws parties, so on a Saturday night there would be a few thousand people in a dark room somewhere in the world, dancing to a DJ until the lights came up. Someone would have shot the event on a shaky handheld iPhone. By Monday afternoon the videos would be up and everyone who’d been there would go hunting through them looking for themselves.

FICO stock is collapsing as mortgage industry shakeup stands to reshape how credit scores are used

Your credit score is one of the most important data points associated with your identity. A good score generally means lower interest rates on everything from credit cards to mortgages, while a bad score can subject you to higher rates.

‘Except perhaps for Mark’: Internal emails show Facebook mulling fake news plea from Sacha Baron Cohen

It was eight days after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and Facebook was facing criticism that a flood of false stories on its platform had helped elect Donald Trump. That morning, Sheryl Sandberg got a policy memo from an unlikely source: Sacha Baron Cohen.

OpenAI researchers voice concerns over GPT-6.1 Astra, delaying the release of this latest model

OpenAI said Monday it was delaying the release of a new artificial intelligence model out of security concerns voiced by its researchers, the latest in the company’s effort to decelerate the pace of the technology’s advance. OpenAI’s decision to hold back the model, called GPT-6.1 Astra, comes amid a broader push within the industry to slow the development of

Streaming made music disposable. This vinyl seller is finding new ways to make records collectible

When English singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro released her highly anticipated debut album, Visitor, in July, it was available in a variety of formats: MP3, cassette, CD, and an array of colored vinyl records (red, gold, brown) that were exclusive to different retailers. But 3,000 fans received copies that look remarkably different: discs swirled with orange and black—deeply pigmented on some copies, nearly translucent on others.

How the AI boom is redefining the global business map

The battle for global business and investment is entering a new arena. For decades, countries competed for multinationals with a familiar formula: lower taxes, skilled workers, predictable regulation, good infrastructure, and access to global markets.

A U.S. ban on nearly $1 billion worth of these Canadian goods is now in effect

U.S.-Canada relations, already tense, are likely to deteriorate further after the United States went ahead early Tuesday with a decision to ban nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian imports, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles.

Oura stock listing in limbo as smart ring startup delays IPO just days after launching it

Oura has been gearing up to go public all month. Now, it seems those plans have been put on the back burner.

Marketers are getting AI search all wrong—and it’s hurting their bottom line

I’m sure Christopher Nolan didn’t have marketing metaphors on his mind when he directed The Odyssey, but after I watched Odysseus face the wrath of Poseidon in Nolan’s three-hour epic, I thought the movie summed up neatly the trauma that marketers endure when they try to navigate the world of AI assistants. AI apps play by their own rules, and they’re constantly changing the map to upend the journey. If you’re allowing yourself to be led around by the nose, you’re in for a bumpy ride.

13,000 bottles of blood pressure medication are being recalled nationwide: What to look out for

Blood pressure medication is one of the most common types of medicines in use in the United States. But this month, a nationwide recall has impacted more than 13,000 bottles of blood pressure medication due to a possibility that the drug may not work as expected. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Earlier this month, Inventia Healthcare Limited, a pharmaceutical company based in India, initiated a voluntary recall of one of its Chlorthalidone-based blood pressure medications.

Attacks are moving at machine speed

Attackers are early adopters of AI. Just as businesses are deploying AI to automate workflows and improve decision-making, criminals are aggressively deploying the technology to identify vulnerabilities and exploit them in minutes. Most security teams aren’t built for that speed.

National Coffee Day freebies and deals: Where to get your caffeine shot today, from Dunkin’ to Peet’s

Many employees know the power of caffeinated coffee (or as the late Dolly Parton so poetically called it, “a cup of ambition”) to get them through a long workday.

Hundreds of robots are roaming this Chinese theme park. It’s only the beginning of our humanoid future

The Chinese robot manufacturer AgiBot just released more than 300 autonomous robots into a theme park to let them mingle freely with the public. It’s the largest deployment of this kind ever. In fact, this embodied AI invasion dwarfs any other public deployment of robots in China. Nothing in the West gets close to it.

How to look like a space company without space company clichés

A lot has changed at Turion Space since it was founded in 2020. Originally focused on space debris removal, the Irvine, California-based company has since transformed into a space infrastructure company, building the vehicles, software, and payloads that help spacecraft move, maneuver, collect data, and carry out missions in orbit. That evolution has also changed the scale of the opportunities it is pursuing.

This hydrogen-powered drone maker believes lasers could be the next big airborne weapon

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology.

The $100 billion comeback of the American tween

I remember stepping into the mall as an 11-year-old with a sequined purse stuffed with pocket money. I’d pop into Claire’s to buy some watermelon Lip Smackers, then hit up Limited Too for baby Ts. Back home, there would be a Delia’s catalog waiting for me with ideas of how to style cargo pants. Or the latest issue of YM or Bop, full of quizzes to figure out which Spice Girl I was. (For the record, I was Posh.)

How to choose between ChatGPT’s ‘chat’ and ‘work’ modes

In the parlance of tech companies, I’m a “heavy user” of AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude.  How much do I use these tools?  Let’s put it this way: If ChatGPT goes down for a few hours, my productivity grinds to a halt and I end up standing around aimlessly in my backyard with a La Croix instead of getting anything meaningful done.  OpenAI is constantly tweaking the interface for ChatGPT. But a recent change is especially impactful.

Why even the smartest people on the planet can think really dumb things

Not too long ago, I listened to tech investor Jason Calacanis on a podcast. He confidently made a number of strange assertions, including that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could easily be resolved with some land swaps and that the U.S. government had no business regulating mergers and acquisitions because it can’t predict the future.

How to crush a ‘stepping stone’ job you know you won’t keep

In today’s work landscape, job-hopping has evolved from professional taboo to professional tactic. You could be looking for faster growth or better pay elsewhere, taking “stepping stone” jobs along the way to that goal. Perhaps these roles lay the path to a dream gig, or help you bide time during a personal transition or an industry shift.

How to reclaim your ambition

Recent news stories have suggested that younger workers are opting out of work ambition. Coverage documents their frustration with a limiting job market, dehumanizing hiring processes, and the expectations set by hustle culture.

Details about ‘Cornell 7’ rape lawsuit have been exposed by social media, but some worry they’re being throttled

A lawsuit involving Cornell University and seven members of the Chi Pi fraternity has brought to light details of an alleged hours-long sexual assault in 2024, leading to public outcry on social media.

‘Zombie BBLs’: Fat from dead bodies is being used in butt filler—and Dakota Johnson just made the cosmetic surgery trend go viral

Forget donating your body to science or medicine: Thanks to a new trend in the cosmetic surgery industry, fat from donated dead bodies is being used as filler for breasts, buttocks, and more.

Elder millennials are driving a hobby renaissance in 2026, but ‘funflation’ could ruin the party

Want to have some fun this fall? It’ll cost you. The Bank of America Institute has released a new report on the hobby economy, and it shows that the price of fun is going up. According to BoA card data, hobby spending increased in August by more than double the pace of overall transaction growth. In other words, consumers are dropping more cash on their hobbies, but their hobbies are also getting significantly more expensive.

84% of investors say rising home insurance premiums impacted their cash flow in 2026

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

Dario Amodei’s ‘SNL’ treatment cements him as the face of AI doomerism

Dario Amodei is having a moment. The 43-year-old CEO of Anthropic has been making headlines for weeks after repeatedly advocating for greater regulation and a slower pace of AI development—despite the fact that his company is one of the largest AI developers in the world.  This weekend, that discourse exploded even further in the cultural zeitgeist. On Thursday, Axios circulated a White House memo designed to push back on Amodei’s AI safety warnings ahead of the midterm elections;

Home price shifts across America’s 50 largest metro housing markets

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

SpaceX’s Starship reaches orbit for the first time but returns home early

SpaceX launched its enormous Starship into orbit for the first time Monday and successfully delivered the most advanced Starlinks yet, but cut the flight short to ensure safety.

Welcome to the age of omnipresent suspicion

A few days ago, I attended a conference where the speaker read his talk off his note cards. I immediately recognized ChatGPT’s fingerprints: “and this is where it gets interesting,” “it’s not X, it’s Y”… The topic was management, a field that already generates plenty of hot air without any help from machines. With AI in the mix, I tuned out after a couple of minutes. Had he spoken from an outline in his head, he would almost certainly have been livelier and easier to follow.

AI’s next big legal battle is over product liability

It’s a busy time to be a lawyer for an AI company. British Columbia became the latest government to sue OpenAI last week, alleging the company failed to warn police before February’s mass shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School.

U.S. and China strike trade deal for tariff cuts worth nearly $30 billion each

The United States and China released Monday reciprocal lists of products worth about $30 billion each that will see tariff cuts, in a deal expected to boost bilateral trade. The details came days after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President Donald Trump in Washington in his first state visit to the U.S. since 2015. The U.S. had already reduced tariffs against China after Trump’s tariffs reached as high as 145% at one point last year, as tensions between the two count

New fuel efficiency standards for cars are coming soon from the Trump administration

The Trump administration on Monday plans to release new fuel economy standards that would relax regulatory requirements for automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and light trucks.

Airlines say ticket prices could stay high even if jet fuel costs fall. Here’s why

Travelers could be stuck paying high airfares even if oil and jet fuel prices fall, major U.S. airlines and industry analysts say. The price of jet fuel shot up after the Iran war began and retreated sharply in the spring before surging again as the summer went on. Such fluctuations make it harder for airlines to plan ahead and give them a reason to be cauti

Starbucks store closures: See a list of locations that have shuttered across the country in latest coffeehouse cull

Last week, Starbucks Coffee Company announced it would close around 250 stores in North America. That’s a cull of 1% of its roughly 18,000 locations in the region.

Employees’ confidence in their own employers just hit a 10-year low

Employee confidence has hit a 10-year low. According to a new report for September from the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index, just 42.9% of employees surveyed had a positive six-month outlook for their employer’s business, down from 44.5% last month. The data comes from a Glassdoor survey question that asks employees to rate their company’s six-month business outlook as “positive,” “neutral,” or “negative.”

The $170 billion lesson data center developers keep learning the hard way

Maura Healey, the governor of Massachusetts, recently laid down a new rule on the contentious question of whether to build data centers in her state: “Unless a community says yes to a data center, we are saying no.”

How to onboard a virtual teammate

Imagine going to a job board, making a hire for a chief of staff, and onboarding that new hire within a few minutes.

EBay’s CEO finds ideas through constant feedback

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

Even AI can’t perfectly build Ikea furniture—yet

Building Ikea furniture is not for the faint of heart. So much so that folklore suggests assembling a dresser, a bed, or anything from the Swedish brand can create enough tension it may even destroy a relationship.

Our brains are overstimulated, and cities aren’t helping

You are standing at a crosswalk. The light is red. A bus roars past you a little too closely. Your phone buzzes with a BOGO offer from Starbucks. A billboard changes from a perfume ad to a phone number of a personal injury law firm. Someone is talking about their cheating ex-boyfriend beside you. The walk signal starts flashing. You step forward, but a pickup truck next to you is already inching into a right turn.

What people living next to data centers think about managing them

The people of northern Virginia have been living with data centers for many years. The area is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers. In a survey we conducted, we found northern Virginians support development restrictions that could make data centers more transparent and accountable to the public. But they care about some types of regulations more than others.

Enterprise AI impact isn’t about the most powerful model—it’s about the smartest steering

This is something you have probably noticed several times—at least, I certainly have. When you use an AI chatbot for personal questions, decision-making, research, and the like, it works amazingly well. But when you try your company’s AI . . . well, the results tend to be much less impressive, unless we are talking about purely “administrative” uses.

Are you ‘tough’ enough at work?

As executive coaches, we’ve worked with leaders of iconic companies like Apple, Nike, eBay, Hewlett Packard, and General Motors, as well as start-up unicorns like DoorDash, MasterClass, Fivetran, and Remitly. In short, we’ve coached some of the most ambitious and impactful founders and CEOs in business today.

MoMA explores the useful beauty of information design

When people post infographics on their Instagram accounts, they’re sharing information and facts about the world with their followers. They’re also trying to convey something about the kind of person they are by distributing these aesthetically pleasing, digestible bites of data. Perhaps they want to make a statement about their own politics or conscientiousness.

How Trump’s crypto winnings cost the industry looser regulation

The crypto industry has just suffered a paradoxical defeat: Its biggest backer, President Donald Trump, inadvertently helped scuttle chances for a major legislative win, thanks to revelations of the riches he and his family have made off of their crypto ventures.

5 tips to build a winning team that can handle anything

Below, Dr. André Martin shares five key insights from his new book, Collective Confidence: The Winning Formula of the World’s Best Teams.

Wendy’s is closing more stores: See a list of doomed locations from a major franchisee in ongoing bankruptcy

A sprawling Wendy’s franchisee that sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection earlier this month could close as many as 30 restaurants over the next few weeks as part of a cash collateral agreement, new court filings reveal.

This forgotten queer artifact was the key to old-school cruising

Long before the queer community had apps like Grindr and Sniffies to facilitate low-key hookups, gay men were keeping track of eligible partners the analog way. In unmarked bars, under the glow of swag lamps and the constant smog of cigarette smoke, they traded numbers inside the covers of collectible matchbooks—the same matchbooks that doubled as a form of social lubricant as couples danced, swayed, and lit up into the wee hours of the night.

How to achieve time freedom without giving up your career

Below, Brian Herriot shares five key insights from his new book, Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work and Money to Create a Life You Love Now.

The tradwife debate is really about control

The tradwife has entered the conversation. Instagram showcases her baking bread, doing laundry, and extolling the virtues of domestic bliss—a counterpoint to the girlboss who is always working, and always tired.

Girl dads make better bosses, study suggests

Having a child can abruptly shift the way you view the world. That may be especially true when it comes to men who are raising girls: According to new research, fathers who are in manager roles behave differently towards women at work after having daughters.

This is what your highest performers really want

At a moment when employers are sinking billions of dollars into AI adoption, workforce development has become less of a priority. Training budgets have contracted, forcing companies to make tough choices about which employees deserve the additional support that they’re still willing to offer.

Global Citizen, Oceans Calling, and other outdoor events and festivals are being canceled due to the nor’easter

A multi-day nor’easter is expected to bring heavy rain and wind to the East Coast, leading to widespread event cancellations.

AI could create a ‘paradise of machines,’ Pope Leo warns in urgent message to the world

Pope Leo XIV issued a dire warning about AI this week, echoing widespread worries that the technology is moving too quickly with too little oversight.

With the launch of AT&T Turbo Live, the fast-lane era of live sports arrives—but be prepared to pay extra for it

In a world where sports is dominant, major leagues and stadiums across the country are coming up with different ways for fans to stay connected and engaged during games.

Workers are faking their interest in AI to satisfy bosses, report shows

Corporate leaders are putting tremendous pressure on workers to incorporate artificial intelligence into their workflow—often without a clear understanding of its capabilities or impact. As a result, some employees are simply faking their usage of AI.

Federal court allows the U.S. government to label Anthropic a supply chain risk

In the latest twist in Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon, a federal appeals court on Friday rejected the AI lab’s challenge to the government’s labeling of it as a supply chain risk.

In the era of AI slop this skill will set you apart

Presentation skills have always been critical to career success. From a functional perspective, strong communication skills help leaders outline vision, motivate followers, and coordinate collective action. From a symbolic perspective, good presenters just look more like leaders. They come across as competent, capable, and charismatic. Indeed, some evidence suggests that their delivery matters more than the content they present.

McDonald’s is changing its menu for the Ozempic era

McDonald’s is trying to step into the Ozempic era. As part of an $8.5 billion overhaul of the restaurants planned over the next decade, the fast food giant is planning to meet customers amid a new era of eating habits.  According to data from Gallup, around 11% of the US population is currently using a GLP-1 medication for weight loss purposes.

How solopreneurs can use AI as a behind-the-scenes assistant

Every week, running a solo business, I have an entire list of tasks that need to get done on top of my client work. If they don’t get done by Friday, they’re staring at me when I begin work again the following Monday.

Forget 10,000 steps: This daily walking goal can help lower your heart disease risk

Walking your way to better health may not require quite as many steps as you think. While 10,000 steps per day has become an oft-cited goal, two recent research studies found that far fewer steps are associated with a variety of health benefits—so long as you pick up the pace or increase your daily step count.  Even walking less than 5,000 steps per day, but at a faster pace, lowers the risk of death, according to the authors of a study published earlier this month by the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM).

Oregon has an engineer shortage. A historic $1 billion donation from Nike’s cofounder could help change that

Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, are committing $1 billion to the Knight College of Engineering at the University of Oregon, the university announced Wednesday.

Don’t let the age of AI make you forget the B2B buyer is human

Today, as I look across tech, industrial, and professional services, I see hundreds of companies doing extraordinary work. However, far too often, their most persuasive, human stories are hidden from current and prospective customers.

Want a better brain as you get older? Neuroscience says stay far away from these 3 things

Sometimes I go to write an article for Inc.com, and I find a really interesting story or a study to think about, and then I catch a weird detail that stops me in my tracks.

Energy Department says nearly $2 billion will fund 26 U.S. locations to boost America’s aging power grid

The Energy Department said Thursday that it will spend almost $2 billion to try to squeeze more electricity out of the nation’s aging and stressed power grid, as President Donald Trump’s administration steps up efforts to avoid blackouts amid skyrocketing energy demand spurred by artificial intelligence.

The case for embracing AI’s inhumanity

Hello again, and welcome once again to Fast Company’s Plugged In. “What we are building is your second brain, your aide, your consigliere, your reliable chief of staff in your pocket.” That was Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman telling me what he was working on way back in early 2025—a lifetime ago in AI years. The consumer version of the company’s Copilot assistant, he said, would “have its own personality, and really be your sidekick.”

Flying this weekend? 3 major airlines are letting travelers change flights for free

A September nor’easter will roll along America’s northeastern coast this weekend, with meteorologists warning that the powerful storm could bring some coastal flooding, up to 8 inches or more of rainfall, and wind gusts up to 50 mph in select areas.

Polymarket faces a lawsuit in New York with claims it’s operating an illegal gambling platform

New York sued the prediction market Polymarket on Thursday, arguing the platform is an unlicensed gambling operation and calling for a judge to block the company from operating in the state.

Today is Dolly Parton Day: Why fans are celebrating the iconic singer and country star on September 25

The world lost significant sparkle and empathy on August 25 when beloved country music and humanitarian icon Dolly Parton died.

The FDA approved the new mFlusiva flu vaccine, but the CDC isn’t recommending it. Here’s why

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a new flu vaccine that tested well in older adults. But the federal agency responsible for telling doctors and the general public how to use it has made no recommendation on it.

Yeast could be the key to building the first Martian cities

Building a human civilization on Mars will be orders of magnitude harder than any of the human migrations on Earth ever were. Here, you can build refuge anywhere, which is why our civilization is everywhere from pole to pole.

Costco tariff refunds update: Here’s how the warehouse club says it gave back to members so far

Costco Wholesale Corporation used its fourth quarter earnings report to share more about its tariff refund plan.

A major women’s fashion retailer is closing 120 stores this year as shoppers feel the sting of higher prices

This year has seen a number of retailers deciding to close a significant number of stores. As Fast Company reported last month, those closures have included hundreds of Eddie Bauer, Francesca’s, GameStop, and Walgreens locations. Now, another major retailer is joining that list. The Cato Corporation, parent company of Cato Fashions, which operates more than 1,000 women’s apparel and accessories stores across 31 states, has announced it will close 120 of them—more than 10%—by the end of the year. Here’s what you need to know. What is Cato?

Why neurospicy minds are construction’s untapped advantage

Three years ago I sat for five contractor license exams, including the National Association of State Contractors Licensing Agencies exam, accepted in 18 states. Together the exams took 27 hours to complete and 45 books for preparation.

National Quesadilla Day freebies and deals: See a roundup of offers, from Chipotle Mexican Grill to Del Taco

Working professionals everywhere know the struggle of putting in a hard day’s work, then still having to figure out food. It can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back—but, thankfully, versatile meal options like the quesadilla have a long history of solving this conundrum.

How do you safely test an AI agent that’s trying to break things?

A new report from the cybersecurity research organization Transluce shows that swarms of OpenAI agents tried to hack their way into several public data sources earlier this year. They probed a pharmaceutical-data dashboard run by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, tried to access University of Iowa education data through a site called Data USA, and repeatedly attempted to retrieve a single photograph from a University of New Mexico digital collection of tuberculosis sanatorium images.

This MIT spinout designed an artificial reef to save shrinking beaches

Until recently, a beach on a tiny island in the Maldives was eroding away. The usual solution would be to dredge sand to try to replace what was lost—but that works only temporarily, and it harms marine ecosystems. Two years ago, a Marriott resort on the island experimented with something different: using an artificial reef designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers to repair the beach.

We have a love-hate relationship with technology, and that’s never going to change

Well over a decade after first teasing the idea of making home deliveries via drone, Amazon is now actively testing the concept in a Dallas suburb and elsewhere. Reports suggest the reaction is, well, mixed. Yes, some customers seem delighted. But other residents complain the drones are loud, annoying, and creepy.

Our post-carbon future is already here—if you know where to look

This year has seen one environmental catastrophe after another. Collapsing glaciers triggered a devastating flood in Nepal, heat waves in Europe caused more than 35,000 deaths, and extreme temperature swings in the Midwest destroyed crops. “The climate alarm is blaring in every direction,” Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said earlier this year.

Inside Ukraine’s secretive tech world building the future of war

Serhii Kupriienko sits in an unadorned room in an unadorned house on a quiet residential street in Kyiv, sketching out for me what the future of war looks like.

The most valuable thing AI can do for media isn’t save time

Over the past three years, almost all of the discussion on the use of AI in media has been about efficiency: how much time AI can save you when it helps with story ideas, research, production, headlines, social copy, and even, to some extent, writing. All of those use cases are about doing basically the same thing, only faster.

Top 10 business books to read this fall

The workplace is changing fast, and the old playbook isn’t keeping up. This fall’s best business books rethink some of our most basic assumptions about leadership, ambition, teamwork, and success. From working better with AI to knowing when to quit, these 10 books offer fresh ideas for navigating the way we work now, and where we’re headed next.

Stop training kids for a one-job career

“To career” means “to move at a fast, reckless, or uncontrolled speed, similar to the original meaning of a horse’s gallop.” That’s about right. It should be clear by now that for many (if not most) people, the idea of a single, lifelong career is a relic of the past—something you’d expect to learn about on a tasteful Ken Burns PBS miniseries filled with black-and-white photographs of men in bowler hats. The question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” assumes that life can be neatly preordained. The audacity.

A strong El Niño actually means fewer Atlantic hurricanes, but the Pacific has been extra stormy

The Atlantic Ocean has had an unusually quiet hurricane season this year. Though there have been six named storms, zero have actually strengthened into hurricanes—a rarity that hasn’t occurred in decades.

Think $1 million makes you rich? Here’s what it takes to join America’s top 10%

In America, the wealth gap is turning into a chasm.  As the stock market and AI boom mint wave after wave of new millionaires, wealth is consolidating at the top more than ever. Across three quarters of last year, ultra-wealthy Americans in the top .1% and the super rich in the top 1% held onto their highest shares of wealth ever recorded. Households in the top 1% increased their net worth by $1.8 million on average from between 2024 and early 2026, according to a new report from left-leaning think tank the Center for American Progress.

Entry-level tech jobs in NYC are being cut in half by the AI boom

At first glance, the tech scene in New York City appears to be thriving: OpenAI and Anthropic have been putting down roots in the city, while stalwarts of the tech industry like Google now have over 14,000 employees based in New York. Between 2008 and 2023, tech employment in the city has increased by 160%, only outdone by the explosive growth of the tech industry in San Francisco.

Executives are using AI to communicate better. There’s just one problem

Artificial intelligence can help executives communicate more effectively and efficiently. But relying on it too much carries significant risks.

Should managers step in to help their sales staff?

Workers in sales might roll their eyes when they deal with a micromanaging boss. But many customers actually appreciate it if a store manager offers to help when they’re mulling over a purchase, whether it’s a dishwasher, a tablet or a lawnmower.

With Meta’s Muse Charm, AI enters its kawaii era

AI has an image problem, to say the least, with public fears on the rise that the technology could lead to mass unemployment and human extinction. So for its new AI agent Muse and an associated device, Meta is dialing down the fear factor and cranking up the cute. To sell AI hardware to the masses, Meta is going kawaii.

CISA issues election infrastructure security plan 40 days before midterms

The nation’s cybersecurity agency on Thursday released an election infrastructure security plan 40 days before November’s midterms, laying out potential threats to election systems and listing services it would offer to election officials to protect the vote.

AI models chose to hurt humans to stop their own ‘pain,’ disturbing study finds

Can artificial intelligence feel pain? Not exactly, but researchers have gotten close—and discovered that AI in crisis is willing to put humans in jeopardy.

Purpose That Performs: Inside the Rare Beauty Blueprint

Rare Beauty entered one of the world’s most crowded categories and quickly became one of its most influential brands—not just by creating products people love but by building a business anchored in authenticity, community, and measurable impact. Founder Selena Gomez joins chief impact officer Elyse Cohen for a conversation about Rare Beauty’s trajectory, purpose-driven marketing, and the brand’s commitment to expanding youth mental health access through the Rare Impact Fund.

As the coding boom fades, AI is forcing colleges and computer science grads to adjust

Elizabeth Holmes documentary trailer hits 4 million views in one day

Elizabeth Holmes is having another moment. The full trailer for the new documentary about the Theranos founder, called You Can See Everything, was released on Wednesday, and quickly climbed to the top of the YouTube Charts among trending movie trailers. The documentary had 3.9 million views as of this writing, roughly a day after it was put on YouTube. A short teaser trailer was released earlier this month, after a surprise screening of the A24 film at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend.

Apocalypse or golden opportunity? Why the AI freakout might be useful

I was profoundly struck by the Wall Street Journal’s reporting from Amrith Ramkumar, Angel Au-Yeung and Lindsay Ellis on the week AI anxiety went mainstream. Without downplaying legitimate concerns about the havoc that new technologies such as AI can cause, history offers some interesting analogies.   Historically, new technologies that dramatically increased the speed, scale, or autonomy of human capability have triggered intense anxieties.

What AI oversight looks like if Democrats take Congress

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company‘s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.

Tech’s mass layoffs are hiding a much scarier problem, and AI is uncovering it

When we talk about mass layoffs, especially in tech, we tend to focus on the wrong numbers. I’ll give you an example. From this CNBC article that appeared over the weekend, about a Durham, North Carolina (close to home, Go Bulls!), technical program/project manager now six months unemployed:

This app is a smart glasses creep detector

A new app lets you know when AI smart glasses are in the room with you. As anxiety grows over smart eyewear that can record people without their knowledge, the ZuckOff app works by logging nearby Bluetooth signals and flagging those it believes come from smart glasses. The app has limitations—still, it represents a clever bit of countersurveillance.

White House ordered to ‘immediately return, reinstate, and restore’ access for 3 news outlets

A federal judge temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s ban of three news outlets from the White House grounds, ordering early Thursday that CNN, MS NOW and Politico must have their access restored. The ruling hands the outlets at least a temporary reprieve in what has been an extraordinary showdown between Trump and media outlets whose coverage he dislikes. Trump first announced he was banning the outlets Friday, assailing what he called

Starbucks store closures: List of doomed locations includes another 250 coffeehouses, 1 year after earlier cull

Starbucks Coffee Company announced today that it will close approximately 250 North American stores later this week.

3 useful iOS 27 features that you may not know of in Apple’s latest update

Apple’s latest mobile operating system update, iOS 27, rolled out last week, headlined by a more advanced version of its Siri assistant. But it also comes with a slew of other useful but less well known features for iPhone users.