Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

What’s the best way to respond when customers, former fans, or anyone else criticizes your work? Taylor Swift just provided a perfect script for what to say. It’s a great example for any entrepreneur, business leader, or creator to follow. Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, released 10 days ago, is unquestionably a commercial success. It broke streaming records on Spotify with more than five million pre-saves, as just one example. But that doesn’t mean that everyone loves it. The reaction from music critics has been lukewarm and the reaction from fans is decidedly mixed, with some saying they adore the album and others saying they can’t stand it. One brand st…

Residents of the mostly Black communities sandwiched between chemical plants along the lower Mississippi River have long said they get most of the pollution but few of the jobs produced by the region’s vast petrochemical industry. A new study led by Tulane University backs up that view, revealing stark racial disparities across the U.S.’s petrochemical workforce. Inequity was especially pronounced in Louisiana, where people of color were underrepresented in both high- and low-paying jobs at chemical plants and refineries. “It was really surprising how consistently people of color didn’t get their fair share of jobs in the petrochemical industry,” said Kimberly T…

On Maui’s North Shore, inside an industrial building that was once a pineapple cannery, an architecture office sits across the hall from a surfboard manufacturer. When the architects first moved in, they noticed something: Every few days, the dumpsters in the back would fill up with scraps of foam from making the boards. David Sellers, one of the architects, realized that the foam could be used in a building material—insulated blocks that are typically made from a mix of concrete and new polystyrene foam. “I was just like, ‘We shouldn’t be throwing this away,’” says Sellers, principal architect at the firm, Hawaii Off Grid. “We live on an island, with limited space. So h…

Morningside Park, a beloved neighborhood park in Miami with sweeping views of Biscayne Bay, will soon pilot an innovative approach to coastal resilience. BIOCAP tiles, a 3D-printed modular system designed to support marine life and reduce wave impact along urban seawalls, will be installed on the existing seawall there in spring 2025. BIOCAP stands for Biodiversity Improvement by Optimizing Coastal Adaptation and Performance. Developed by our team of architects and marine biologists at Florida International University, the uniquely textured prototype tiles are designed to test a new approach for helping cities such as Miami adapt to rising sea levels while simulta…

“The boomers are all about money. Gen X is like, ‘is it all about money’? Millennials are like, ‘where is the money’? And Gen Z is like, ‘what is money’?” That’s the conclusion Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler came to on an episode of her podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler. Since the episode aired last year, a clip has since been shared widely of her breaking down how each generation relates to money. She adds, “That’s my bad stand-up about it.” As the clip has gained traction online, on TikTok, actor Freddie Smith said that Poehler “totally nails it.” He then took it one step further and broke it down in terms of how each generation’s economy helped shape th…

Happiness over one’s lifetime has been popularly described as looking like a U-shaped curve: The joys of youth are followed by the challenges of our 20s and 30s before an upswing later in life that reaches a peak after retirement. While that may be true—or not—in wealthier countries such as the United States, it doesn’t apply to low-income, nonindustrialized societies. That is the main finding of a study I led that examined aging in rural, subsistence-oriented communities in 23 countries across the Global South. And our results have implications for global health amid aging populations and growing economic insecurity. In our study, we found that happiness levels did not…

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. For the last decade, chief marketing officers (CMOs) haven’t felt as appreciated and necessary as they once were. But that may be changing—I should stress “may.” I’m thinking of the 2024 CMO Tenure Study by marketing consultancy Spencer Stuart. They’ve been issuing this study for two decades. Four years ago, the length of CMO tenure tightened to its smallest interval in more…

Picture this: It’s lunchtime in the 1960s, and you’re out with co-workers enjoying not one, not two, but three cocktails with your meal. While the three-martini lunch seems improbable today, workplaces still can be boozy places. After-work happy hours, corporate parties and client meetings at fancy bars are still expected in many areas of American corporate culture. Talking about sobriety with managers and colleagues therefore can be daunting for people in recovery from alcohol addiction. Professionals in some industries fear being judged for needing help or missing out on career advancement opportunities if social drinking is encouraged as part of a job. Treatment pro…

Two years ago, the last pay phones were disconnected in Rochester, New York. But a group of volunteers has started bringing a handful of phones back—and making them free to use. Called the GoodPhone Project, the effort is aimed at people who still don’t have reliable access to a mobile phone, including those experiencing homelessness. As pay phones have disappeared, alternatives have been hard to come by. “A lot of community centers, and especially the Monroe County libraries, were being inundated with people asking to use their front desk phones,” says Eric Kunsman, one of the volunteers behind the project. There’s a clear need: The handful of phones tha…

Around the world, farmers are retooling their land to harvest the hottest new commodity: sunlight. As the price of renewable energy technology has plummeted and water has gotten more scarce, growers are fallowing acreage and installing solar panels. Some are even growing crops beneath them, which is great for plants stressed by too many rays. Still others are letting that shaded land go wild, providing habitat for pollinators and fodder for grazing livestock. According to a new study, this practice of agrisolar has been quite lucrative for farmers in California’s Central Valley over the last 25 years—and for the environment. Researchers looked at producers who had idled …

Around a decade ago, Chad Dale watched as some of his friends started to leave Seattle. “They wanted to stay in an urban environment, but the city was too expensive for them to have all the things that they wanted to have,” Dale says. His friends who were beginning to have kids wanted backyards and guest rooms for visiting in-laws; they looked for single-family houses in the suburbs. But Dale, a developer, wondered whether there could be a different solution. What if he and several friends joined together to build their own apartment building—and all lived in the same place? Some friends had already bought a vacation home together on nearby Whidbey Island, and they lik…

In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth push past the local limits of its most vital natural resource. On one side: Georgetown, the fastest growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east. On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station, and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, …

For years, companies have assumed that their digital relationship with customers would happen in a place they controlled: their website, their app, their checkout flow, their interface, their carefully optimized funnel. That assumption shaped an enormous amount of corporate behavior. Brands invested fortunes in design systems, SEO, conversion optimization, customer journeys, and digital experiences because the screen was where persuasion happened and where transactions were completed. That assumption is starting to break. The next wave of AI is not just about answering questions better. It is about acting. OpenAI’s Operator is designed to go to the web and perfo…

Plenty of brands use AI to talk to consumers. In other words, they’re tapping AI to generate customer service responses, automate interactions, and speed up outreach. But what they’re not doing is investing in the listening side of AI or leveraging into its vast capabilities here—i.e., using AI to better understand customer friction, synthesize feedback, spot patterns, or act on what people are saying. And to me, this is a major miss. Whenever leadership looks out onto their world below—rather than from within the trenches—gaps can emerge. And while leaders routinely make business decisions with the aid of spreadsheets, dashboards, and second-hand summaries, you can’t m…

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…

Below, coauthors Ulrik Juul Christensen and Tony Wagner share five key insights from their new book, Mastery: Why Deeper Learning Is Essential in an Age of Distraction. Ulrik is founder and CEO of Area9 Lyceum. Formerly a member of the McGraw Hill executive board, he is a frequent keynote speaker and regular contributor to Forbes. He also serves on several boards including the Technical University of Denmark. Tony is senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and former codirector of Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Change Leadership Group. He is the bestselling author of Creative Innovators and The Global Achievement Gap. What’s the big idea? In a w…

As soon as ChatGPT launched, Odyssey Gohain saw the writing on the wall. The now 27-year-old was working as a marketer in Amsterdam at the time, looking to move into a more senior role when the powerful AI tool started replacing individual tasks, then team members—including an older colleague whose career Gohain idolized. “I thought maybe in three, four years, I’ll be in her place. And she got laid off,” says Gohain, who was let go soon after. After moving back home with her parents in 2023, Gohain started an independent marketing business as a solopreneur. Two years later, she is still earning less than at her previous role, but says the transition has offere…

For U.S. soldiers who find themselves at the front lines of a future conflict, it’s fast becoming gospel, due to the way warfare is rapidly evolving on the battlefields of Ukraine, that drones will be crucial to winning (or losing) the fight But the roughly 500 U.S. dronemakers can only build about 100,000 a year combined, according to Ryan Carver, communications manager for the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International. For comparison: One Chinese firm, DJI, can pump out millions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a year — 70% of the global supply. To ameliorate this challenge/problem, a number of startups believe 3D printing, specifically of drones,…

In the future, your roof could generate power not only from the sun but also from falling rain. In a recent study, scientists demonstrated a new way to capture renewable energy from rainwater. “There is a large amount of energy in rain,” says Siowling Soh, an engineering professor at the National University of Singapore and author of the study, which was published in ACS Central Science. “This large amount of energy is wasted every day. There is currently no commercial technology that tries to harvest it.” When water flows down a pipe, it can pick up and move tiny electric charges from the pipe’s surface. That creates a small electric current. It’s similar to the way ru…

Reddit is now the fourth most visited social media platform in the U.K., overtaking TikTok. The online discussion platform has seen immense growth over the past two years, reaching 88% more internet users in the U.K., thanks to a combination of shifting search algorithms and social media habits. Three in five Brits now encounter the site while online, according to Ofcom, up from a third in 2023. The U.K. now has the second largest user base behind the U.S., according to company records shared with the Guardian. Reddit has also witnessed a drastic demographic change over the same period. More than half of the platform’s users in the U.K. are now women and one…

When Cadillac designed its new ultraluxury EV, the handcrafted Celestiq, the design team had to completely rethink its battery pack: a standard EV battery wouldn’t fit inside. “We had a challenge, because due to the low roof height and the expressive proportions, there wasn’t room for a typical battery in this vehicle,” says Tony Nausieda, chief engineer of electrical propulsion systems at GM. “It would have been probably pretty straightforward to do something like an internal combustion powertrain, but that was not at all what anybody wanted to do. This was conceived to be an electric vehicle.” They couldn’t compromise on the low lines of the car. It also had…

If the thought of being hunted by something that can see your every move makes your skin crawl, you might want to steer clear of Eyes Never Wake. This viral horror game takes immersion to the next level, using your webcam to let a lurking monster track your movements in real time. To survive, players must physically move to avoid detection—ducking under desks, leaning out of sight, and staying perfectly still as the creature stalks the room. The game doesn’t stop at just watching. It listens, too. The game listens, too. With your mic always on, the AI-driven entity reacts to sound, forcing players to stay silent to avoid being found. “Every corner you turn is a ch…