Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Augustus Doricko, founder and CEO of cloud-seeding startup Rainmaker, surveys the sky from a sunbaked hillside 5 miles from Utah’s Great Salt Lake. On this balmy Sunday afternoon in late September, the lake is calm, but its serenity belies a potentially catastrophic problem: The Great Salt Lake is shrinking—and is at risk of disappearing altogether. At its peak 40 years ago, the lake covered 2,300 square miles; today, more than 800 square miles of lake bed are exposed. As more of the lake dries, scientists warn that dust storms made up of toxic heavy metals could plague the Salt Lake Valley, home to 1.2 million people, and beyond. Rainmaker’s futuristic technology could…

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered roughly 1,000 unprotected gateways to OpenClaw, an open-source and proactive AI agent that can be controlled through text conversations with apps like WhatsApp or Telegram. The gateways were found on the open internet, allowing anyone to access users’ personal information. One white hat hacker also reportedly gamed OpenClaw’s skills system, which lets users add plugins for tasks like web automation or system control, to reach the top of the rankings and be downloaded by users around the world. The skill itself was innocuous, but it exploited a security vulnerability that someone more nefarious could have used to cause serious har…

The town halls didn’t work. The twelve month wellness program didn’t work. The pricey motivational speaker definitely didn’t work. Your team looks busy, but is still very, very stuck. What looks like apathy is almost never laziness. What looks like resistance is rarely defiance. What you’re actually seeing is a nervous system in threat mode because change fatigue is fear fatigue. The fact is, the human brain just isn’t wired to fully distinguish between a physical threat and an organizational one. According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, half of employees in the U.S. and Canada reported significant daily stress, which is higher than all other glob…

When Accenture announced plans to lay off 11,000 workers who it deemed could not be reskilled for AI, the tech consulting giant framed the decision as a training issue: some people simply cannot learn what they need to learn to thrive in the world of AI. But this narrative fundamentally misunderstands—and significantly underplays—the deeper challenge. Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, pointed to this bigger challenge recently when he said, “AI is going to change literally every job.” Now, if this turns out to be true, every role will have to be reimagined. And when every role changes, this is more than a change in each job or even a specific field. It implies a profound…

OpenAI’s Codex AI coding assistant is having a growth spurt. OpenAI tells Fast Company that its weekly active users have tripled since the start of the year, while overall usage (measured in tokens) has increased fivefold. The surge is likely driven by the release of new models—GPT-5.2 last December and GPT-5.3-Codex in early February—as well as the launch of Codex’s app version a few weeks ago. OpenAI says the app has been downloaded more than a million times. Across all access points—including the cloud, app, and command line—more than a million developers and other users now rely on Codex at least once a week, according to the company. Generating computer code has em…

The workplace has seen its share of technological shifts, but the rise of AI is happening at a much faster pace. What once took years is now unfolding in months, leaving little time for companies or their employees to catch up. A new global study of 2,400 employees and C-suite leaders conducted by Workplace Intelligence and enterprise AI agent platform WRITER finds that 60% of companies plan to lay off employees who won’t adopt AI. Even more striking, 77% of executives say those who resist AI won’t be considered for promotions or leadership roles. AI isn’t just another tool. It’s quickly becoming a baseline expectation for staying relevant at work. This shift is already…

Just beyond a fenced-off access road in fields of tall grass on public land in Pennsylvania’s northwest sits a natural gas well pad that sat idle for close to a decade. The old fracking site suddenly roared back to life in 2022, spewing noise and pollution and rattling residents who were used to hunting pheasant on the quiet, bucolic terrain. Diversified Energy turned on the well pad, known as Longhorn Pad A, to funnel the natural gas into on-site generators powering cryptocurrency-mining supercomputers that churn away at numbers at all hours. The company set up and started the mine without securing a required air quality permit from state regulators, Capital & Ma…

It’s no secret that Flavor Flav loves the Olympics. The rapper and Public Enemy member has become one of the loudest supporters of women’s sports in the past few Olympic cycles. He is the official hype man and a sponsor for USA Water Polo. In October 2025, he announced he was bringing the hype to the Winter Olympics as a sponsor for USA Bobsled and Skeleton. Now, after the USA women’s hockey team declined a perfunctory invitation to the State of the Union address after President Donald The President shared a chummy locker room phone call with the men’s team—in which they laugh at the prospect of the women’s gold medalists attending—Flav is once again stepping up.…

America’s most iconic shoe giant is starting 2026 by laying off workers. Nike has confirmed that it will lay off 775 employees in the United States. The move marks the third year in a row that Nike has cut jobs. Here’s what you need to know about the latest Nike layoffs. What’s happened? On Monday, CNBC reported that shoe giant Nike would eliminate 775 jobs. The job cuts will primarily encompass positions at the company’s distribution centers in Mississippi and Tennessee. Nike has warehouses in those states that act as major hubs in the company’s supply chain. The distribution centers store the company’s inventory before shipping the products out to customers and r…

On January 23rd, outside an elementary school in Santa Monica, California, a Waymo vehicle hit a child. That’s what we know for sure. It sounds shocking, horrifying even. And it’s already giving plenty of groups cover to demand that California revoke Waymo’s license to operate its cars. But the details matter. And once you start digging a bit, the scary headline about a kid struck down by a heartless robot clearly isn’t the whole story. In fact, accidents like this provide a lens through which to improve both human and robot driving—and even save lives. Braking Hard The specifics of the incident in Santa Monica are still coming out. As it does…

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…

It’s the last week of Black History Month (BHM) and it’s clear Americans are over performative values. Trite BHM-inspired merchandise sits on retailer shelves untouched while media is abuzz covering the artistry, activism, and symbolism of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. The signal is clear: consumers are looking to brands for real solutions to real problems, not products that commodify culture. Most companies build everything from advertising to AI for the “average user,” but in doing so, they react to rather than lead markets. Strategic leaders look to growth audiences—underserved groups who are the fastest-growing demographics—as lead users. They are the “canari…

Following U.S. and Israeli strikes in Iran this weekend, airlines around the region and world have canceled thousands of flights amid continued conflict in the Middle East. Temporary regional airspace closures have led to airspace restrictions, forcing airlines to cancel flights and stranding countless passengers. As of Monday, March 2, 2026, airspace across many parts of the Middle East remained partially or fully closed. According to FlightRadar24, the following airspace regions remain partially or fully closed today: Iran Iraq Qatar Bahrain Jordan Kuwait Syria Israel United Arab Emirates (OMAE) airspace remains heavily restri…

In recent years, the FDA has approved dozens of gene and cell therapies that can potentially cure rare diseases like sickle cell disease and spinal muscular atrophy. But many patients still can’t access these treatments because insurers have refused to cover them. That reluctance is understandable, unfortunately. Widespread use of these multimillion-dollar therapies would bankrupt many health insurers. But the solution isn’t to deny lifesaving drugs to patients. Rather, it is to deploy creative financing solutions that deliver these therapies to sick Americans without collapsing the insurance system. The sickle cell dilemma Consider, for instance, the dil…

Below, Jay Belsky shares five key insights from his new book, The Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development. Belsky is emeritus professor of human development at the University of California, Davis. What’s the big idea? Seen through an evolutionary lens, early adversity can shape development in adaptive ways. And because children differ in their sensitivity to their environments, early experiences may matter a lot for some and much less for others. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Belsky himself—in the Next Big Idea app. 1. A radically transformed understanding of development It is beyond dispute that the Hu…

In some ways, the attention game for brands is only getting tougher. The increased pace of the cultural cycle and the tidal wave of slop hitting our feeds have added a layer of suspicion to any brand work. Is it real? How do you know? These are big, existential questions. This year, 20 companies, ranging from brands to agencies, are answering them from the perspective of marketers looking to build real connections with real people. The companies here are not only working to embed into and engage with culture, but they’re doing it in ways that reinforce the role of humans in that dynamic. It includes Dick’s Sporting Goods launching its own internal film studio to tell r…

As researchers approach the front doors of Oxford’s new Life and Mind Building (LaMB), they’re greeted with a towering concrete facade, rendered with a rippling surface effect. What first appears to be a mere stylistic choice actually encodes something more special: Each of the concrete’s waves and dips is derived from the brain scan of an Oxford researcher. Designed by the architecture firm NBBJ, the LaMB is a massive, 269,000-square-foot space that brings together two departments: experimental psychology, which studies the human brain and how it operates; and biology, which encompasses both zoology (animal studies) and plant sciences. When it opened last October af…

For years, retail investors were dismissed by some on Wall Street as “dumb money.” That typically referred to those prone to trading on hype, or chasing trends rather than company or industry fundamentals, or responding late to big market moves. That’s no longer the case. An analysis of where retail investors put their money last year shows they outperformed two of the most popular, professionally managed index funds, SPY and QQQ, whose goal is to mirror the performance of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, respectively. Retail investors accounted for $5.4 trillion in trading activity in 2025 across stocks and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, according to Vanda, an indepen…

Hinge Health Inc, the digital physical therapy health startup that is expected to make its market debut on Thursday, in a closely watched initial public offering (IPO) that will test the market’s interest for a new digital health offering, after what has been a challenging few years for the sector. Recently, there have been fewer tech IPOs, but they could be making a comeback, according to CNBC. The San Francisco-based company priced shares at $32 on Wednesday, the higher end of its expected range, in an offering led by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and BofA Securities. The stock will list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the “HNGE” ticker symbol. Bas…

It’s been a brutal week when it comes to layoffs. On Monday, shoe giant Nike announced it would lay off 775 employees, and on Tuesday, Pinterest announced it would lay off around 15% of its workforce. The same day, UPS announced 30,000 job cuts. Now Amazon is also joining their ranks with the announcement today of mass layoffs. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it was eliminating 16,000 positions across its workforce. The company has around 1.5 million workers worldwide. In an unfortunate event, on Tuesday, Amazon accidentally sent an email to employees referencing the layoffs before they had been commu…

We can’t afford to maintain the roads we have, so why do we keep building more? The Highway Trust Fund is the primary federal mechanism for surface transportation. It receives revenue mainly from the federal fuel tax (18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel) plus taxes on tires, heavy vehicles, and some other sources. The fund has two accounts: (1) the Highway Account (road construction, maintenance, and other surface transportation projects), and (2) the much smaller Mass Transit Account. Debates about how Americans should pay for roads are endless: General taxpayer funding, regardless of whether someone drives Per-mile ch…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. More than 600,000 podcasts released 27 million episodes in 2025. Keeping up with even a tiny fraction of those 70,000-plus daily releases is impossible. So I’ve been exploring new ways to keep up with audio: podcast summaries, audio digests, and cool new tools for finding and saving audio highlights. Podsnacks: Get podcast summaries by email Get podcast summaries delivered to your email with Podsnacks. Catch up on shows you don’t have time to listen to. The free digest includes AI-generated summaries drawn from 25 of the most popul…

After Pope Francis’ funeral was held over the weekend, attention has now turned to the papal conclave to choose the next Pope. If you’re Catholic—or if you recently watched Conclave—you might be hedging your bets on who will next be seated at the Vatican. While the process usually happens behind closed doors, one TikTok user has created a “Fantasy Pope League,” in a similar style to fantasy football, an online game in which players collect points based on how real-life footballers perform each week, allowing people to play along at home and win points based off the real-life conclave. “There are ten times the number of people in this sweepstake as there are cardi…

Inside a new HP laptop, the copper in its heat sink comes straight from old HP devices—making the company the first to reuse its own recycled metal in a closed loop. In partnership with HP, the Australia-based startup Mint Innovation took in circuit boards from thousands of old HP computers and servers, and then recycled them to supply pure refined copper back to the company. The process is designed to be more sustainable than traditional smelting. Instead of melting down metals in a furnace—an energy-intensive, polluting process—the startup uses a mix of chemicals and biology to recover valuable materials. “What HP is effectively doing is mining e-waste of their …

Most organizations think they have a productivity problem. They don’t. They have a work design problem. I’ve spent decades studying how people solve problems and take action, and the same pattern keeps showing up. Productivity dips, so leadership responds the way they always do: new tools, redesigned workflows, and an engagement initiative with a catchy name. And it works, but only for a while. Teams rally around the new process. Leaders feel good about the momentum. Then, a few months later, the same questions come back. Why does the work still feel harder than it should? Why are capable, committed people running on fumes? And typically, motivation is…