Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

We live in a world that is saturated with leadership wisdom—from countless books to endless streams of think pieces—yet the gap between what leaders know and what they do is as wide as ever. The thing is, leadership transformation is hard. It takes courage to step outside the status quo. And it’s deeply human to cling to comfort and choose habit over risk. In our years of working with leaders, we’ve noticed those who succeed at continuously evolving their leadership mettle strike a balance between three impulses. To make the concept easier to grasp, we visualize each impulse as a persona: the Kid, the Scientist, and the Gardener. These personas act as a framewor…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: How can I get more sleep? A: I am writing this at 11:12 p.m., so this advice is as much for myself as it is for anyone else. Here’s what we should all be doing differently: First, set a schedule and stick to it. The “stick to it” part is hard. But it’s called the golden rule of sleep for a reason. Set a bedtime, and then plan at least 20-40 minutes back from that time to start your bedtime routine. You might even need an alarm to remind you that it’s tim…

So you flew too close to the sun—downloading app after app, recording hi-res video, binging podcasts—and now you’re faced with the dreaded “Storage Almost Full” pop-up on your iPhone. It’s OK: we can handle this together. Here are three extremely expeditious tricks you can use to clear out the clutter and get back to a carefree life of digital hoarding. Detach from big message attachments Every hilarious GIF. Every video of someone’s kid skiing. Every duck-faced selfie. They’re all taking up space, and you’ll almost never need to revisit them. Free up a metric pant-load of storage in mere moments by heading to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > …

A computerized system that calls balls and strikes is being tested during Major League Baseball spring training exhibition games starting Thursday after four years of experiments in the minor leagues. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is an advocate of the Automated Ball-Strike System, which potentially as early as 2026 could be used to aid MLB home plate umpires, but not replace them. Starting in 2024, MLB focused testing on a challenge system in which the human umpire makes each original call. Data from the spring training test could cause MLB to make alterations to the system for Triple-A games this season. How does the Automated Ball-Strike System work? …

When international architecture firm Snøhetta found its New York City lease was coming up last year, a search kicked off for a new workspace. The firm, which had been located in Manhattan for 21 years, scoured neighborhoods near and far, such as the Brooklyn Navy Yards. But in the end, the choice was one many such firms had been making recently, according to partner and managing director Elaine Molinar. They wanted a building with character that was conducive to creative work, and found it within a 25,000 square feet space at 55 Washington Street in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, where about 70 workers will move in later this year. “The space is on the ninth flo…

A group of investors led by Elon Musk has given OpenAI an unsolicited offer of $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit part of OpenAI. An attorney for the group submitted the bid to OpenAI Monday, the Wall Street Journal reports. Per the Journal, the other investors in the group include Valor Equity Partners, Baron Capital, Atreides Management, Vy Capital, and 8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of sports and entertainment company Endeavor, is also backing the offer through his investment fund. OpenAI uses a hybrid business structure that consists of a nonprofit parent entity (OpenAI, Inc.) and a for-profit subsidiary (OpenAI LP…

Sixteen years ago, I received a phone call that was both unexpected and surprising. On the other end of the line was Lisa (a pseudonym) who had previously been the leading applicant for an open job position at our agency. Lisa had learned about our agency from some of her peers who worked with us and who had encouraged her to apply for a position in the firm. But, halfway through the interview process, Lisa informed us that even though she really wanted to work with us, she had received an offer from a competitor that she just couldn’t refuse. At the time, we were a start-up agency that was bootstrapping its way forward. We simply couldn’t match the salary that the co…

On Valentine’s Day 2025, heavy rains started to fall in parts of rural Appalachia. Over the course of a few days, residents in eastern Kentucky watched as river levels rose and surpassed flood levels. Emergency teams conducted over 1,000 water rescues. Hundreds, if not thousands of people were displaced from homes, and entire business districts filled with mud. For some, it was the third time in just four years that their homes had flooded, and the process of disposing of destroyed furniture, cleaning out the muck and starting anew is beginning again. Historic floods wiped out businesses and homes in eastern Kentucky in February 2021, July 2022 and now February 20…

Chipotle—one of the original and most influential fast-casual spots in the country—just hit a major milestone. In 2024, they opened 304 new restaurants, marking the highest number of openings in a single year in their franchise history, according to a Tuesday earnings call. For a bit of context, they opened 271 locations in 2023, and in the two years before that, they were hovering just above 200 each year. And the growth isn’t slowing down—they’re planning to open between 315 and 345 new restaurants in 2025. The fast-casual juggernaut also reported a total revenue of $11.3 billion—an increase of 14.6% from last year’s $9.9 billion. The chain’s operating margin a…

The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas makes provisions for the passage of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. This support is much needed given that Gaza’s agricultural system has been severely damaged over the course of the war. Over the past 17 months we have analysed satellite images across the Gaza Strip to quantify the scale of agricultural destruction across the region. Our newly published research reveals not only the widespread extent of this destruction but also the potentially unprecedented pace at which it occurred. Our work covers the period until September 2024 but further data through to January 2025 is also available. Before the war, tomato…

With less than a week before this year’s Super Bowl, many advertisers are already armpit-deep into their big game strategy. Brands have dropped teasers, trailers, and even full ads in anticipation of getting us all excited about what they view as their holiest of days: the Only Day People Actually Look Forward to the Commercials. Depending on who you ask, every Shakespeare play can be divided into three or four types: Tragedy, Comedy, History, and “Problem Plays.” Meanwhile, past researchers have analyzed thousands of novels to find six basic plot points that underpin every story: Rags to riches (a steady rise from bad to good fortune); Riches to rags (a fall from go…

In his last semester at college, in between studying labor law and environmental impact assessment, Alex Elderbroom took a class on something very different: how to build a tiny house. In the class, at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York—a school that mixes traditional academics with more practical courses—a small group of students spent three months last fall going through each step of the construction process, from planning and purchasing materials to building basic furniture for the finished 8-by-10-foot space. Elderbroom, who just graduated, happens to already rent a tiny cabin. He was interested in learning how to build one of the homes himself. “It seem…

It’s been gradual, but generative AI models and the apps they power have begun to measurably deliver returns for businesses. Organizations across many industries believe their employees are more productive and efficient with AI tools such as chatbots and coding assistants at their side. Numerous AI startups found traction offering such solutions during 2024. Glean, for example, puts cutting-edge AI search capabilities in the hands of employees so that they can tap into various apps and platforms to find documents and corporate intelligence. Contextual AI lets organizations put a company’s proprietary intelligence into a secure data store, then lets them build AI apps tha…

Three decades before TikTok’s obsession with tinned fish brought us sea-cuterie boards, tinned fish cookbooks, and trendy brands like Fishwife and Scout, there was Bela Brand Seafood. This OG tinned fish purveyor hit grocery store shelves back in 1997 with aesthetic, design-centric packaging—and now, it’s refreshing its brand identity to remind modern audiences that it took a bet on tinned fish before it was cool. Bela (formerly known as Bela Brand Seafood) was founded by native New Englander Joshua Scherz and his mom, Florence. The brand has remained family-owned since its inception, quietly growing without any funding from outside investors. But during the pandemic, Sch…

If you’ve skimmed your feeds today, there’s a good chance you’ve seen many headlines exclaiming that around two million donuts have been recalled due to possible listeria contamination. However, these headlines are a bit misleading as the recall happened over a month ago. Confused? Here’s what to know about the listeria donut recall, whether your morning donut is safe to eat, and why you’re just hearing about the recall now. What’s happened? Over the past day, the internet has been flooded with articles about a massive donut recall, with two million of the tasty treats affected. However, though this recall is widely being reported on now—the second week in Febr…

When both my picky kids discovered they loved eggs, it was a blessed relief for meal planning. After years of trying to find dinners that everyone was happy to eat, my kids’ affinity for eggs added quiche, frittatas, and omelets to our cooking repertoire. We now go through two dozen eggs a week at chez Guy Birken. Which means I have personally been paying very close attention to spiking egg prices. My local grocery store is selling a dozen eggs for $5.99—more than two times the price of eggs as of March 2024. If you’ve been wondering why you need a second mortgage to afford your breakfast, here’s what you need to know about this price eggsplosion. Supply and dema…

The heated race to develop and deploy new large language models and AI products has seen innovation surge—and revenue soar—at companies supporting AI infrastructure. This year’s Most Innovative Companies in computing include TSMC; the Taiwan-based fabricator’s N3P chip offers the smallest, most densely packed transistor size yet, while the company Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology is integral to AI accelerator chips, including Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU. Lambda Labs’ new 1-Click service provides on-demand, self-serve GPU clusters for large-scale model training without long-term contracts. SambaNova Systems takes another tack with its SambaNova Cloud, an …

There’s no question that the face of America is changing. Those under 18 are the first majority minority generation: 53% are non-White; one in four are Hispanic, and one in five are the children of immigrants. But while evolving racial demographics are reshaping rising generations, we are no longer a young nation: by 2030, Americans older than 65 will outnumber those under 18, a major deviation from 2000 when 26% were under 18 and just 12% were over 65. Add to that a widening wealth gap: The gap between top one fifth incomes and bottom one fifth incomes has increased by 53% in the past decade. To better understand the impact of these changes on the mindset and needs o…

When Netflix was finally ready to bring back its massive international hit TV series Squid Game for Season 2 after a three-year hiatus, it had a unique marketing challenge: remind people why they fell in love with a Korean action drama that revolves around a murderous contest. Approximately 39 months had passed since the debut of Squid Game took the world by storm with its coordinated green tracksuits, Pink Guards, and twisted takes on children’s games. The first season exploded to the surprise of everyone, becoming a global pop culture sensation. Back in 2021, Netflix marketing outside Asia was largely reactive to what audiences were excited about. This time, there …

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Typing isn’t always the best way to get your thoughts down. Sometimes talking through an idea leads to better clarity. New AI tools can reliably transform those spoken thoughts into clean, organized text. I’ve spent months experimenting with voice AI tools—first on my phone, and now on my laptop. They’ve been helping me pull ideas from my brain onto paper. The tools below have become crucial to my workflow. Why voice AI beats traditional transcription Traditional transcription simply converts speech to text. Mod…

Southwest Airlines’ signature tagline “Bags Fly Free” seems to be a thing of the past. Since its inception nearly 60 years ago, the airline has offered customers two complimentary checked bags as part of its pitch to distinguish it from competitors. But by this summer, it seems, Southwest will have to replace its oft-repeated slogan with a new one: “bags fly for an added fee.” That’s because any customers who are not members of Southwest’s frequent fliers programs or traveling in an upgraded seat will have to pay for their checked bags, starting with flights booked after May 28, according to a company press release. The airline did not provide specific rates for…

The Super Bowl is one of the world’s most significant single-day sporting events. It attracts over 100 million U.S. viewers and tens of millions of international viewers, making it an entertainment phenomenon. For Eagles fans who are not making the trip to the Superdome in New Orleans, there will be plenty of places to watch in Philadelphia—including rowdy bars, living rooms and even home tailgates, all while the city is lit in Eagles green. For me, the Super Bowl is a real-life laboratory. As a sports scientist, neuropsychology professor and the former athletic director at Drexel University in Philadelphia, I investigate how high-performance athletes prepare cogn…

Nike is making a major play for female consumers and the athleisure market with its Skims partnership for a new women’s brand called NikeSkims. Set to debut this spring, the line will include apparel, footwear, and accessories. The two companies are marketing it as a blend of what each brand is best known for—Nike for its innovation, sports science, and athlete insights, and Skims for its style and body-inclusive design. “Over the past five years, Skims has redefined the intimates and casual apparel landscape, championing inclusivity and confidence,” Skims CEO and cofounder Jens Grede said in a statement. “Now, by partnering with Nike, the undisputed leader in ath…