Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

“Embrace the suck.” One of the first things you learn as a Marine is to “embrace the suck.” Not because it sounds tough—but because it’s how strength is forged. In today’s world, where ease is glorified, we need to remember this truth: real strength comes from struggle. Before I became a leadership coach and positive psychology expert, I was a United States Marine Corps officer. I learned quickly that discomfort isn’t a barrier to success—it’s the path to it. And that truth still guides everything I do. You don’t build strength by avoiding discomfort. You build it by seeking it. We live in a world where ease is glorified—but that pursuit is costing us our …

When the House of Cinema in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was demolished in 2017, it was an architectural awakening for the city. A large circular concrete building completed in 1982, the House of Cinema was an instant cultural and architectural landmark in the city, then part of the Soviet Union. Its demolition, to make way for a controversial commercial development project, spurred many in the city to worry about which landmark would fall next. That led the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation to launch a citywide research project to document endangered buildings. Most were built between the late 1960s and early 1980s when the Soviet Union sought to frame its ambi…

Once upon a time, there were two guarantees when getting a new job: a 401(k) and a work wife/hubby or bestie. No one assigns you. There’s no official moment. One day, they are just there. The person who can help you translate your boss’s cryptic email, exchange eyerolls after annoying comments at the staff meeting, or share your emergency stash of M&M’s at 3 p.m. But then 2026 happened and many of us work with colleagues we’ve only seen from the shoulders up on Zoom. So, I must ask, are work besties even a thing anymore? Or are they an outdated artifact of the pre-video conference culture? Why You Need a Work BFF Science backs up the value of office b…

AI is reshaping how work gets done in institutions, both public and private. However, the impact is uneven—consumer AI chat interfaces like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini are fundamentally mismatched to the realities of government work. That doesn’t mean government agencies aren’t turning to AI. They cannot hire their way to capacity, so they’re looking to technology to lighten the load. More than half of local governments report difficulty filling positions, a problem especially potent in larger metros. San Francisco’s local government, for example, has more than 4,700 open positions. Since 2020, state government employment has increased, but much of that is a bou…

Starting today, Google is weaving its massive investment in AI into one product nearly everyone already uses—and for many people, the change won’t feel optional. Google announced Thursday that a suite of new features powered by Gemini 3 will begin appearing in Gmail, introducing automation designed to reduce inbox overload. The most consequential update is a new Gmail view called AI Inbox, which reshapes email around summaries, topics, and to-dos, rather than individual messages. What changes the moment this turns on For users, the shift isn’t about learning new tools—it’s about no longer having to manage email the same way. Instead of opening Gmail to a chrono…

The fintech industry has spent the last decade obsessing over seamless experiences and bringing financial products inside the tools that consumers were already hooked on. Instant approvals, one-click funding, and frictionless onboarding became the benchmarks of success. And for good reason; they removed friction that had frustrated their customers for generations. But here’s what we’re learning as embedded finance matures: The consumers and businesses that use embedded financial products repeatedly and stay loyal to their platforms are not just staying for the technology and platform. They’re staying because when they need it, they’re able to get help from people who und…

“Climate tech” isn’t a thing. It has shifted in recent years from a category to define clean energy companies to an umbrella phrase that loses meaning the more we use it. Granted, the term is everywhere: inserted into VC pitch decks, plastered on billboards along highways from San Francisco to Austin to Boston, wedged into government policy papers, and featured prominently on conference agendas. Media properties from CNBC to GreenBiz rely on it as a traffic-driving category. And there’s a reason why. A changing climate is the most complex and vast challenge and opportunity confronting our society today. That also means we can’t afford ambiguity. We need accountabi…

Hiring professionals who see countless job applications every year begin to notice patterns of red flags that can instantly disqualify a candidate. Here, experts share their thoughts on the most commonly made mistakes. Avoid the White Fonting Trick Surprisingly, many candidates still use the “white fonting” tactic on their résumés. This practice stems from an outdated piece of advice that has spread over time: include extra keywords or copy the entire job description, reduce the font size, and change the color to white. The intention is to make the text invisible to the eye but still detectable by applicant tracking systems. It’s essentially an attempt to game the system…

Andrew Hoffman is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He has been writing and teaching about business and environmental issues for almost 30 years, having published 18 books and over 100 articles. His work has been covered by the New York Times, Scientific American, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and NPR. What’s the big idea? We need to rethink business education. If we keep producing business graduates who care only about making their wallets fatter and exploiting a broken system, then we’re doomed. It’s urgent that we reshape how we teach business in higher education so that we create a different kind of business leader. W…

You shouldn’t have to cross your fingers and hope for a strong stock market to coincide with your short-term goals. And right now, you probably wouldn’t want to. Because you’re working within a short time frame—think two to six years—investing for shorter-term goals like buying a house or paying for a wedding should look different from the portfolio you build for retirement. But don’t stop putting away money for your long-term goals while you’re working toward your short-term ones. So, how do you balance saving for both? How to think about funding short-term and long-term goals Don’t forgo saving for the long term to meet your short-term goals. Thanks to the power of c…

There’s a lot of fear these days in the media world over the “zero-click” future. AI chatbots and search engines ingest content, interpret it, and then summarize it for users, with the inevitable consequence being that people no longer visit your site. This is not theoretical. Data from Chartbeat, an analytics company that serves media sites, shows global publisher traffic from Google dropped by one-third last year, with smaller publications hit hardest. So yes, AI substitutes content, but it doesn’t do so evenly. A recent analysis from Define Media Group looked at how the presence of Google AI Overviews affected traffic to different types of content over the past year. …

For decades, huge swaths of Brazil’s Cerrado ecosystem have been used to support the global demand for burgers. Forests and grasslands were replaced by pastures along with farms growing soy to feed cattle. But a major restoration project is now underway on an area nearly twice as large as Manhattan. If you fly over one part of southwestern Brazil, you’ll see a patchwork of dozens of square plots where a local university is studying different methods of helping native plants regrow on former cattle pastures. On more than 25,000 acres, along rivers and the edge of remaining pieces of forest, new vegetation has been growing quickly over the past two years. Wildlife cameras …

First there was Spotify Wrapped. Then came Snapchat Wrapped, YouTube Wrapped, and even Uber Eats Wrapped—shortly after, SNL parodied the idea. If you thought you were officially wrapped up for the year, LinkedIn had other plans. The platform just dropped its inaugural Year in Review—essentially, LinkedIn Wrapped. LinkedIn’s Year in Review recaps your activity on the platform, from how often you logged on and when you were most active to how many posts you shared. It tallies your comments, new connections, and total profile impressions, then assigns you a personality type based on how you used LinkedIn. The feature also taps into the platform nostalgia trend, w…

Never underestimate the news media’s ability to amplify the mundane with urgent-sounding headlines. If you follow the twists and turns of the retail industry as closely as we news-watchers do, you may have noticed recently that the simple act of closing for the Easter holiday has been rebranded as a “retail blackout.” If you’ve been at all confused by this oversold terminology, here’s a brief explainer to help break it down: What’s happening? Over the last week or so, a number of news organizations—mostly from outside the United States—have reported on a so-called “retail blackout” that is set to take place on Sunday, April 20, which is Easter Sunday. E…

Chili’s Grill & Bar turned 50 this year. But as a new generation of diners is learning, it’s still got it. Thanks to a series of well-timed marketing efforts—and at least one viral hit appetizer—diners are flocking to the restaurants, which just posted a same-store sales increase of more than 30 percent in its last fiscal quarter. Traffic is up more than 20 percent. Kevin Hochman, CEO of Chili’s parent Brinker International, credits some of this success to operational adjustments: better kitchen technology, better cook training, and a recent dishwasher-listening tour in which the often invisible, but absolutely vital, employees who clean the chain’s dishes were asked…

ChatGPT wants to be your personal shopper. PayPal announced Tuesday that its digital payment system will be integrated into ChatGPT, inviting anyone who uses it to shop directly from the chatbot. Starting next year, ChatGPT users will be able to check out with a click through a PayPal account and connect directly with the tens of millions of sellers who rely on PayPal’s payments system. “By partnering with OpenAI and adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol, PayPal will power payments and commerce experiences that help people go from chat to checkout in just a few taps for our joint customer bases,” PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said in a press release. PayPal’s shares ro…

The U.S. Justice Department is doubling down on its attempt to break up Google by asking a federal judge to force the company to part with some of the technology powering the company’s digital ad network. The proposed dismantling coincides with an ongoing federal effort to separate Google’s Chrome browser from its dominant search engine. The government’s latest proposal was filed late Monday in a Virginia federal court two-and-half weeks after a federal judge ruled that its lucrative digital ad network has been improperly abusing its market power to stifle competition to the detriment of online publishers. In a 17-page filing, Justice Department lawyers argued tha…

Henry Ford famously noted, “Whether you think you can do it or not, you are usually right.” His point was that beliefs, especially about our talents, performance, and even luck, can be self-fulfilling. Irrespective of whether they are right or wrong, they will become true by influencing objective success outcomes. Ford was hardly alone. Along the same lines, decades of psychological research show that beliefs matter, often profoundly so. Perhaps the most influential work comes from Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy, defined as people’s beliefs in their capability to organize and execute the actions required to manage prospective situations. Across hundreds of stu…

Apple could owe you part of a class action lawsuit settlement centered around the company’s voice assistant, Siri. The settlement was reached in January, and Apple agreed to set aside $95 million to pay people who allegedly had their conversations or queries recorded after unintentionally activating Siri. Here’s what you need to know about the settlement, key dates, and how to determine whether you can participate in the $95 million payout. What is the settlement about? Back in 2014, Apple added a “Hey, Siri” hotword command that, when spoken, automatically triggers Siri on a compatible Apple device to listen to what is being said. The feature was meant to be u…

The Centennial State may become first in the nation to require retailers to warn consumers that burning fossil fuels “releases air pollutants and greenhouse gases, known by the state of Colorado to be linked to significant health impacts and global heating.” The warning is the linchpin of a bill—HB25-1277—that narrowly passed the state House on April 2 and is scheduled to be heard in the Senate’s Transportation & Energy Committee this week. Its Democratic sponsors say the bill will raise awareness among consumers that combusting gas in their vehicles creates pollutants that harm their health and trap heat in the atmosphere, leading to more intense and extreme weat…

The enterprise world is awash in AI optimism. Boardrooms buzz with talk of transformation, and budgets swell to accommodate the latest platforms and AI assistants. Today, nearly three-quarters of companies report using generative AI regularly in a core business activity, according to recent McKinsey & Company research. But if you look past the headlines, a familiar pattern has emerged that reminds me of the dot-com era, when companies rebranded overnight, and investors chased the next big thing, often with little regard for a tangible way forward. Today, talk of an AI bubble isn’t just a matter of market speculation or start-up hype. It’s unfolding inside orga…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. This year, I launched my first direct-to-consumer product: Scribbly, an AI-powered children’s book company that puts your kid right into the story. Until now, I’ve mostly built apps for businesses, and collecting user feedback for those projects has been straightforward and structured. The D2C world is different. Read the Google reviews of any hotel or restaurant, and you’ll get a feel for…

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. François Chollet on AI benchmarks I wrote an exclusive feature this week about the launch of a new AI benchmark called ARC-AGI-3. The benchmark was created by influential AI researcher Francois Chollet, who also created the widely-used Keras deep learning framework, a simplified toolkit for building AI models. Chollet has long argued that current AI models are limited in their ability to navigate novel situations and problems. The ARC test, which humans can master but not most AI system…