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At a recent retreat I was attending, I found myself in one of those “hallway moments.” Walking out of a lecture, I was engaged in conversation with a fellow attendee. Soon it became clear we had differing opinions about the topic. As I felt myself getting tense, formulating my response in my mind, I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall of mirrors as we walked by a pilates studio on the property. I didn’t like what I saw—it was not my best self. I did not look calm, cool and collected; instead, I looked tense and ready to charge. The exact opposite vibe that was the goal of this retreat. That quick glimpse of myself helped me to check myself, adjust my face, slow down my t…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. AI and energy are two of the most critical forces shaping the future of our planet—and their relationship is impossible to ignore today. From the significant power consumption of data centers to the growing energy requirements of AI-driven applications, the rapid adoption of AI is driving a surge in global energy demand that is outpacing the growth of renewable energy source…

Thank you once again for reading Fast Company’s Plugged In. A quick programming note: We will be taking the next two Fridays off. Happy holidays to all, and I look forward to resurfacing in your inbox next year. For any number of reasons, 2025 has hardly been my favorite year. But if I were to make a list of things that went well, my relationship with AI would be on it. This was the year I went from being an AI dabbler to a daily user. And while some of that usage still amounts to messing around—hello, Sora!—even more involves tasks that make me more productive. More importantly, it brings me better results, a goal I hold dear. (Sadly, not every AI enthusiast …

While headlines about AI replacing workers dominated 2025, behavioral health is charting a different path. The industry thrives on human connection, measuring success in trust, healing, and human relationships, not throughput. That’s not to say AI isn’t rapidly reshaping the industry—it is. Its role here fundamentally differs because it supports clinicians rather than sidelines them. Over the next year, I predict we’ll see a paradox play out: Behavioral health will become increasingly AI-enabled, and simultaneously, more human than it’s been in decades. The reason is simple. Burnout and administrative burdens have been increasingly limiting what clinicians can do. Pro…

Generative AI was trained on centuries of art and writing produced by humans. But scientists and critics have wondered what would happen once AI became widely adopted and started training on its outputs. A new study points to some answers. In January 2026, artificial intelligence researchers Arend Hintze, Frida Proschinger Åström, and Jory Schossau published a study showing what happens when generative AI systems are allowed to run autonomously—generating and interpreting their own outputs without human intervention. The researchers linked a text-to-image system with an image-to-text system and let them iterate—image, caption, image, caption—over and over …

To help small aerial robots navigate in the dark and other low-visibility environments, my colleagues and I developed an ultrasound-based perception system inspired by bat echolocation. Current robots rely heavily on cameras or light detection and ranging, known as lidar, or both. But these sensors fail in visually challenging conditions, such as smoke, fog, dust, snow, or complete darkness. I’m a scientific engineer who develops bio-inspired microrobots. To solve this challenge, my research team looked at nature’s experts at navigating in poor visibility: bats. They thrive in dark, damp, and dusty caves and can detect obstacles as thin as a human hair using echol…

When someone opens the door and enters a hospital room, wearing a stethoscope is a telltale sign that they’re a clinician. This medical device has been around for over 200 years and remains a staple in the clinic despite significant advances in medical diagnostics and technologies. The stethoscope is a medical instrument used to listen to and amplify the internal sounds produced by the body. Physicians still use the sounds they hear through stethoscopes as initial indicators of heart or lung diseases. For example, a heart murmur or crackling lungs often signify an issue is present. Although there have been significant advances in imaging and monitoring technologies, t…

Megan Rapinoe, Caitlin Clark, Serena Williams, Mia Hamm, Lindsey Vonn—the list of high-profile, recognizable women athletes is growing. And track and field athletes may be the next to become household names. That’s the bet that Alexis Ohanian is making with Athlos, an all-women’s track and field league, which is hosting its second event in New York this week. Ohanian is perhaps best known as the cofounder of Reddit, but he’s also an investor who’s made no secret of his interest in investing in sports. During a press event in New York City this week, he said the idea for Athlos came to him while watching the Olympics, during which millions of people tune in to wa…

Under the rally cry of “Altadena Is Not for Sale,” the people of the multi-racial, middle-class town of Altadena, California, are aiming to take charge of their own recovery and rebuilding from the Los Angeles Eaton fires, which killed 17 people, burned more than 14,000 acres, and destroyed over 9,000 homes and businesses. Three community organizations and the local Native American tribes reflect the various perspectives, and collective unity, on how Altadena might avoid the fate of other communities whose recovery ended up being controlled by big developers. Altadena: Not For Sale, My Tribe Rise, and Altadena Strong are three community organizations who have cohosted…

When Hurricane Melissa began moving toward Jamaica earlier this week, Amazon’s chief meteorologist was watching closely—not just for the company’s global shipping operations, but also to see how its disaster relief team might need to act. “As soon as the hurricane formed, we had eyes on it,” says Abe Diaz, principal technical product manager for Amazon’s disaster relief team. “We’ve been tracking this for multiple days.” Inside an Amazon fulfillment center near Atlanta, pallets are stacked with disaster relief supplies, from medical supplies to solar-powered lights. It’s one of 15 massive “disaster relief hubs” that the company has stationed inside warehouses …

Amazon once seemed poised to wipe out the American bookstore. As online shopping exploded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, independent shops struggled to compete with endless inventory and lower prices. By 2009, many believed indie bookstores were on the brink of extinction. But instead of disappearing, they adapted. The future of books, it turns out, isn’t just online. It’s local. View the full article

A bartender makes a Brandy Alexander, pouring equal parts of a Courvoisier V.S.O.P brandy, Marie Brizard crème de cacao, and fresh cream. He shakes it with ice, strains through a fine mesh strainer, and finishes it off with a neat pile of freshly-grated nutmeg. This imagery may seem to be out of a bartending documentary, but it’s actually a scene from an anime series, Bartender: Glass of God. It’s this unavoidable, radical attention to detail in the animation itself that tells the story of a Japanese way of life–putting extreme care into one’s craft. During scenes inside the bar, the liquor wall features an elaborate selection of spirits, the labels of which are …

Monday night’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was missing something—an entire interview. But viewers weren’t left in the dark about why—host Stephen Colbert told his audience that CBS didn’t air his interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico due to concerns it could run afoul of shifting FCC rules. “We were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said on the air Monday. That didn’t stop him from calling out the move in the episode and poking at FCC chair Brendan Carr and CBS—and it didn’t stop him uploading the entire interview to YouTube. But the incide…

All sense of survivors’ guilt was fleeting for those residents whose homes remained standing after wildfires ripped through the Los Angeles area three months ago. Many worried that smoke from the Eaton wildfire that destroyed more than 9,000 structures and killed 18 people may have carried toxins, including lead, asbestos and heavy metals, into their homes. But they struggled to convince their insurers to test their properties to ensure it was safe to return. Nicole Maccalla, a data scientist, said embers burned more than half of her roof, several windows and eaves were damaged, and her house in Altadena was left filled with ash, debris, soot and damaged appliances. She…

The Bronx stands apart from New York City’s four other boroughs in stark ways. Home to 1.4 million residents and the nation’s poorest congressional district, it once flourished as fertile farmland. Today, we’re restoring this land—not to its agricultural roots, but as fertile ground for raising healthy, happy, and prosperous children. And in the process, we’re cultivating opportunity for a new generation of citizens. My wife Lizette and I founded and run Green Bronx Machine (GBM). Our nonprofit is dedicated to rewriting the narrative about the Bronx and its residents. Inside Community School 55, just across the tracks from rows of dilapidated public housing towers…

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…

The Oscars are less than a month away, but before Hollywood’s biggest night, the folks across the pond have their turn to celebrate. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (BAFTAs) will take place on Sunday, February 16, at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Historically viewed as a strong predictor of the Oscars, the BAFTAs just might offer a sneak peak of what’s to come—especially in this unconventional year full of controversies, disasters, and shifting front-runners. Here’s everything you should know and how to tune in. What does Prince William have to do with it? As part of his royal duties, the prince of Wales is the president of BAFTA. He and…

Watch any sporting event live or on television, and you’re guaranteed to be treated to the spectacle of at least one athlete celebrating. Football players develop elaborate dances in the endzone following a touchdown. Soccer players will tear off their shirts as they run to the corner of the field after a goal. Volleyball teams will congregate on their side to congratulate each other on winning a rally. In sharp contrast to these ubiquitous celebrations, many of us fail to acknowledge great things that have happened in the workplace. Work successes are also worth some demonstration of joy. So, why do athletes get to have all the fun? There are several reasons why …

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that most customers never see—every single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. “We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks,” says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment …

It’s simple to accidentally become entranced by an endless loop of videos on Instagram or TikTok. But sometimes, that mindless scroll is interrupted by a reminder that what you thought was a 10-minute break spent on your phone was closer to 30 minutes. Olivia Yokubonis, armed with a kind voice and scientific research, often pops up in feeds on social platforms, gently reminding viewers that they might not remember the video they saw two videos before she appeared on the screen. Yokubonis is a content creator who goes by the name Olivia Unplugged online, making videos to combat overuse or mindless use of social media. For the most part, people who view her videos w…

Before there was an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad, or an Apple Watch—before there was a Macintosh or Apple II or even an Apple-1—there were a couple of kids who came of age in Silicon Valley in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were brought together by a shared fascination with electronics. Supported by friends, family, and a burgeoning community of hobbyists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, just as the microprocessor was ushering in a new era, they channeled their strikingly different skills into joint projects. On April 1, 1976, along with Jobs’s former coworker Ronald Wayne, the two Steves formed a partnership to market Wozniak’s latest …

Ever since DeepSeek burst onto the scene last month, there’s been no shortage of opinions about what the Chinese startup’s artificial intelligence accomplishments mean for America’s AI giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. However, there’s one company that’s usually been absent from any discussion of just how bad DeepSeek’s arrival is for many of America’s tech giants: Apple. Whenever a tech insider or analyst mentions Apple and DeepSeek together, its usually to suggest that the arrival of the Chinese LLM could be beneficial to the iPhone maker. Is that really the case? AI technology is moving so quickly (DeepSeek virtually appeared out of nowhere) th…