Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In a recent meeting with a large retailer, my contact shared that each buyer on her team receives over 100 emails daily referencing data on a variety of topics, from out-of-stock issues and inaccurate pricing to recommendations for driving e-commerce. On the supplier side, the situation is similar: delivering Monday morning reporting to retailers, preparing for line reviews, monitoring out-of-stocks, and pushing new promotions. Emails and Excel are still the primary drivers of the $5 trillion retail industry, in the U.S. alone. The opportunity for error in complex retail supply chains is immense. If demand forecasting and inventory management across thousands of store…

Ferrari’s first-ever all-electric vehicle, the Luce, was designed to look “entirely new,” the company says, and so far the reaction to the new EV has been polarized. Shares of the Italian luxury automaker fell in premarket trading Tuesday after Ferrari unveiled the car named after the Italian word for “light” on the anniversary of its first Rome Grand Prix victory. The Luce, expected to sell for about $640,000, was designed by former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive and Marc Newson through their design collective LoveFrom. Online, people expressed their disappointment. The Luce doesn’t look like a Ferarri, some complained, suggesting it has the sleek, …

After years of “career experiments,” two clear life paths stand out to me. Just two choices people make, sometimes without realising it. Decisions that define almost every area of our lives. The most successful people pick one of these paths early. And stick around long enough for it to work. Everything that follows grows from those two decisions. The work you do. The skills you build. And the doors that open for you. I’ve seen both work. Different roads. But they can all help you build the life you want. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You can’t. No one can. But once you understand these two choices, you start aiming for what you want. Choice one: Be the …

With over 800 student organizations on campus, the University of Pennsylvania already seems to have a club for every interest, from investment banking to beekeeping—even cheese. Now, add AI to the mix. In September, dozens of Penn students gathered in the engineering school auditorium for the debut of the Claude Builder Club, sponsored by AI company Anthropic. Over the course of this semester, the Builder Club has plans to host a hackathon, demo night, and other opportunities to create projects using artificial intelligence. “I need the Claude premium for a year,” says Crystal Yang, a freshman who attended the first meeting. Claude, she had heard, is “better for c…

If budgeting spreadsheets and lofty financial goals leave you stressed rather than inspired, consider another New Year’s ritual: an end-of-year money audit. The word “audit” might not sound all that fun. But just like an accountant, it’s helpful to approach your money behavior as neutral and impersonal as possible. “At the end of every year, people tend to jump straight into resolutions: cutting spending, tightening budgets, and promising themselves they’ll ‘finally get disciplined’ in the new year,” Jack Howard, Head of Money Wellness at Ally Bank, told Fast Company. “But I think the most meaningful financial reset starts somewhere much quieter: with your em…

It’s no secret that internships offer a higher chance of landing a full-time job. However, they can be hard to nail down. Landing a full-time graduate job has become increasingly competitive, especially in an era where AI is prevalent. Researchers such as Sarah Bana talk about how companies will use AI to perform tasks like research and information gathering, basic content creation, and administrative tasks that were usually given to entry-level employees. In one study, 69% of hiring managers believed AI could do the work of a recent college graduate. This begs the question: How can you land an internship or a job as a young person just starting in the workplace…

U.S. life expectancy rose to 79 years in 2024 — the highest mark in American history. It’s the result of not only the dissipation of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also waning death rates from all the nation’s top killers, including heart disease, cancer and drug overdoses. What’s more, preliminary statistics suggest a continued improvement in 2025. “It’s pretty much good news all the way around,” said Robert Anderson, of the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released the 2024 data on Thursday. Life expectancy, a fundamental measure of a population’s health, is an estimate of the average number of years a baby b…

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. This week, I’m focusing on the terms of Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI, in which the GPU maker gets guaranteed chip sales, an equity stake, and likely a product road map for years to come. I also look at the industry’s fixation on huge models and the quiet appeal of small ones. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow …

When a global financial services firm sought Sam’s guidance, the problem seemed familiar. The firm had deployed AI tools across its business. Adoption was uneven, and the gap between teams was growing. In some corners of the organization, people were already using AI to draft client materials, summarize research, and speed up analysis. In others, they avoided it entirely: unsure what was permitted, worried about quality, or skeptical that leadership really meant it. Managers were fielding questions they weren’t equipped to answer. If my team uses AI, what changes in our standards? What happens to accountability? The leadership team quickly realized the problem wasn’t th…

The stock market survived the longest government shutdown in U.S. history with minimal impact. But it tumbled on Thursday, November 13, amid a sell-off of tech stocks as worries about overinflated values and interest rate cuts grew. Take the S&P 500, which shrank 1.66% to 6,739.49, or the Dow Jones Industrial average, which went down by 1.65% to 47,457.22—both at their lowest in over a month. It was only the day before that the Dow had surpassed 48,000, reaching a new record high. The Nasdaq composite met a similar fate, dropping 2.29% to its month low of 22,870.36. Many tech stocks felt the effect. Shares of electric vehicle maker Tesla (Nasdaq:TSLA) dr…

CoreWeave stock dropped 8% Monday after the AI cloud computing company announced plans to raise another $2 billion, this time through convertible debt, to finance its rapid build-out of new data centers. On Tuesday, the company said it would increase the total offering to $2.25 billion. CoreWeave, which sells access to powerful Nvidia GPUs to run AI models, may be a bellwether in an industry placing unprecedented bets on an AI boom they believe is around the corner. CoreWeave is a “pick-and-shovel” infrastructure company in AI (like Nvidia) whose fortunes may test the narrative that tech companies — and their stock values — are riding the long wave of the next technolog…

Polaroid’s new collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA) is designed to make your retro photos look like colorful works of pop art—and it feels like a flashback to 2014. The partnership includes two exclusive items: an $130 Polaroid camera and a separate $22 set of eight custom film frames. The camera itself is an analog instant camera—specifically, Polaroid’s Now Generation 3 model—rendered in a bright blue housing, complete with the “MoMA” wordmark in a lighter blue across the front. Included with the device are three neon, MoMA branded wrist straps to customize the look. Where the collaboration really shines is with its custom Polaroid film …

The biggest accounting firm in the U.S. just announced a major structural reset: PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will now only hire new associates in its advisory division to work out of 13 offices, down from 72. Yolanda Seals-Coffield, chief people and inclusion officer for PwC US, confirmed the decision to Business Insider, explaining that the move aims to foster a sense of community among workers. “The idea is that we want to bring people together in a connected way for those first couple of years,” Seals-Coffield said. “You may start in Atlanta and then say, ‘Great, I’ve got my two years of experience. I want to go work in Alabama, which is where I’m from and w…

REI has long enjoyed a reputation as a progressive company that promises strong benefits and promotes a culture of inclusion and sustainability. As a consumer cooperative, the outdoor retailer has also eschewed a typical corporate structure. But in recent years, against the backdrop of a union drive, some workers have described a culture at odds with REI’s purported values. Despite successful union efforts at 11 of its 180 total stores, REI workers have not managed to successfully negotiate a contract with the company. The National Labor Relations Board is also currently looking into dozens of unfair labor practice charges brought by workers. Last week, REI members vo…

Whoopi Goldberg has been a household name since she starred in The Color Purple in 1985. Fast forward over 50 years, and she’s still as driven as ever. Goldberg, 70, cohosts daytime talk show The View. In 2024, she founded AWSN, the All Women’s Sports Network. She’s also an author, activist, mother, and grandmother. And, she’s also doing it all solo. Goldberg is happily single and has been for decades. She says that will never change. In a recent interview with Interview magazine, Goldberg opened up about her solo life, which she happens to genuinely love. So much, in fact, that she says she plans to stay single because, as she put it, “in the last 25 years, I re…

The rise of artificial intelligence in recent years, along with the surge in AI-generated online content, has given more credibility to a decades-old conspiracy theory known as the Dead Internet Theory. It holds that most of the content we encounter online isn’t actually produced by living humans but by lifeless bots. AI is increasingly turning the once-fringe theory into a reality, but even today, at least one of the participants—the living, breathing observer browsing the web on the other side of the screen—is still usually a real, sentient being. Yet this may not be true for much longer. Thanks to AI systems’ increasing reliance on a technology known as headl…

If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you—but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn’t, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing. So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched Western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Na…

Imposter syndrome happens when we have the feeling that we do not deserve what we have achieved, fearing that we’ll be discovered to be fakes or frauds. Our successes, we tell ourselves, were achieved not through our actual abilities and talents, but through some combination of luck, timing, and mistakes others made that allowed us to slip through the cracks. Nobody is immune to this feeling, and it affects all segments of the public—from leaders, artists, actors, and the people we see as high achievers. Sheryl Sandberg, Harvard grad and former Facebook COO, wrote in her 2013 book Lean In: “Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I di…

We’re more than half a decade removed from pandemic lockdowns—when remote work profoundly upended the 9-to-5—yet the preference for workday flexibility endures, a new report shows. According to the recently released ninth annual State of Hybrid Work report from Owl Labs, a video conference tech company, 65% of workers are interested in a concept the report refers to as “microshifting”: “structured flexibility with short, nonlinear work blocks matched to your energy, duties, or productivity.” In other words: breaking up your work shift into a bunch of tiny ones. Perhaps you log on at 6 a.m. to get a head start, then take a break for a midmorning Pilates class befo…

On a recent stroll by my local Allbirds store in Harvard Square, I had to do a double take. In the window, the brand was advertising its new Varsity collection: a ’70s-inspired sneaker line with a rubber sole and a feminine color palette that weaves together pink, olive green, mustard, and brick red. It’s an unmistakably fashionable shoe that wouldn’t look out of place at New Balance and Saucony, or even Valentino and Celine. Allbirds, which launched in 2014, isn’t known for chasing trends. It has always led with sustainability, starting with the “wool runner” that quickly became a cult sneaker in tech circles. Over the years, it hasn’t strayed far from this original …

On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers spun sheets of vinyl into tinsel for Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that’s nearly a century old, churning out strands of bright silver tinsel along its 35-foot (10-meter) length. Latino is the CEO of Lee Display, a Fairfield, California-based company that his great-grandfather founded in 1902. Back then, it specialized in handmade velvet and silk flowers for hats. Now, it’s one of the only companies in the United States that still makes artificial Christmas trees, producing around 10,000 each year. Tariffs and trees Tariffs shone a twinkling light this year on fake Christma…

As of yesterday’s market close, Netflix is the only Big Tech company whose stock is trading at four figures, but that will soon change. The TV streaming giant, whose shares closed at $1,089 on Thursday, has announced that it will initiate a stock split next month. That will send the stock’s price per share much lower, though it will not change the company’s fundamental value. Here’s what you need to know about Netflix’s upcoming stock split. What’s a stock split? A stock split is when a company decides to divide the number of its existing shares in order to create new ones—hence the term “split” the shares. A stock can split by any factor a company wan…

Designer and educator Omari Souza conceived of his new book Design Against Racism: Creating Work That Transforms Communities, well before the The President administration began its campaign to demonize diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the ideas the book wrestles with aren’t a reaction to a single moment in time; they’re deeper, and go to the heart of design’s pitfalls—and potential. Souza, a first-generation American of Jamaican heritage, born and raised in the Bronx, now teaches at the University of North Texas in Denton. In September 2020, his online event “The State of Black Design” drew more than 2,000 live viewers. Souza’s book challenges design students and p…