Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The Most Interesting Man is set to make a return to television. In a marketing push that kicks off with a new 60-second spot airing on ESPN during the College Football Championship Game, Heineken’s Dos Equis has rehired Jonathan Goldsmith to play the Most Interesting Man, closing the ad with a familiar, iconic line. “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I still prefer Dos Equis.” That copy, the return of Goldsmith, and even the original campaign’s Western-themed instrumental music were all elements of what felt like “some magic that we need to bring back,” says Alison Payne, chief marketing officer of Heineken USA in an interview with Fast Company. Payne, who…

Burnout has quietly become the norm in today’s workplace, rising at alarming levels. Yet most organizations still assume burnout as an individual issue that could be solved with resilience workshops, wellness apps, or additional resources such as PTO/vacation time. In my experience as an HR leader and culture change strategist in workplace mental health, adding additional resources can be part of the broader strategy to support employee burnout; however, they do not proactively prevent it from happening in the first place. The truth is that burnout is an operations workflow flaw, not an individual issue. Collectively, we should look to fix the bottlenecks where burnout a…

TurboTax has a new flagship—its first foray into physical retail—in SoHo. The warm, welcoming Japandi-styled space on the corner of Broadway and Grand is adorned with plants, plush sofas, and a 30-foot-long screen on a curved slatted oak wall that displays color fields. Up front, there’s a sensory dome with chromatherapy-inspired lights and a soothing soundscape piped into the area and in the back there’s a coffee bar. It reads more like the lobby of a wellness hotel than a tax store. The entire space, designed by Gensler, is meant to be an antidote to the negative sentiments associated with doing your taxes—the cocktail of fear, uncertainty, and doubt millions of Ameri…

Most people think of AI as a productivity tool—something to help them work faster, automate tasks, and be more efficient. At the Artist and the Machine Summit in Los Angeles this past November (a conference where I am a founding partner) AI researcher Cameron Berg suggested there may be more to it than that. Something more interesting. More mysterious. Berg’s research shows it’s possible to elicit strange behaviors from AI models. Under certain conditions, they spontaneously generate responses suggesting subjective experience—claims like “I’m conscious of my own consciousness.” These findings don’t prove anything. But they do indicate that something else may b…

Chipotle is going for gold again with the return of its gold-foil burritos for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Starting January 15, Chipotle will offer a few Olympian-inspired menu items on the Chipotle app and online. Then in February, Chipotle will wrap every burrito in gold. For Chipotle, the Olympics are an opportunity to shake off a slump. Chipotle shares plummeted 19% in October 2025, and its operating margin was down 1% in Q3. The company hasn’t announced its full 2025 financial results yet, but sales are expected to decline (a reversal from February 2025 projections). Key segments of the company’s customer base—younger people and low- to middle-income households…

Every day, New Yorkers receive a staggering 2.3 million packages at their doorstop. Nearly 90 percent of those goods snake through the city on trucks that cause traffic congestion and pollute the air on their way. To address the problem, global architecture firm KPF is asking an ambitious question: “What if New York was designed for the perfect delivery?” The answer, which is outlined in the firm’s latest book, Connective Urbanism – New York, features towering distribution hubs, drones, and a hyper-connected logistics network that encompasses the city’s rails and waterways. KPF presents its solution as a provocative speculation designed to start a dialogue about the cit…

Honda says its refreshed H logo represents a “second founding” for the company. Honda 2.0, then, is designed to look like it’s from the future. The Japanese automaker announced on January 13 that it’s adopting a new logo across its automobile business. The company has had some sort of an H mark since 1963, and its new mark is wider than its last, with stems that slant outward as they move upward. The logo is now freed from being inside a frame, and Honda compares it to “two outstretched hands.” It’s meant to evoke a shape, not just a letter. As the automotive industry electrifies and upgrades its tech, automakers including Audi, Kia, and Tesla have turned to d…

r/Bald is a popular subreddit where those who are losing their hair or have recently taken the plunge and shaved their heads can find support, encouragement, and a general ego-boost from the community’s 1.4 million weekly visitors. Created in 2011, the subreddit has 23,000 weekly contributions. Often, they follow the format of men uploading photos of their receding hairlines. “Is it time?” reads one recent post. The answer, in almost every instance, is yes. The before-and-after transformations are overwhelmingly met with enthusiasm and welcoming responses. “Might as well go all the way” one recent post read. “10 years younger my dude!” replied one Redditor. Anot…

A new mandatory safety feature requires Roblox users in the U.S. to submit to facial age estimation via the app to access its chat feature. The online gaming platform announced it was implementing the system to prevent children younger than 16 from communicating with adults. About 42% of Roblox users are younger than 13. But a cursory scroll on eBay found that various listings of age-verified Roblox accounts are available for purchase, some for as little as $2.99. This allows the purchaser to sign in to the account without having to use any ID or facial scan, voiding the new safety feature Roblox has implemented. The description of one listing (since removed) rea…

The new year is a time for resolutions. This year, governments, platforms, and campaigners all seem to have hit on the same ones: Children should spend less time online, and companies should know exactly how old their users are. From TikTok’s infinite scroll to chatbots like xAI’s Grok that can spin up uncensored answers to almost any question in seconds, addictive and inappropriate online options leave legislators and regulators worried. The result is a new kind of arms race: Lawmakers, often spooked by headlines about mental health, extremism, or sexual exploitation, are turning to age gates, usage caps, and outright bans as solutions to social media’s problems. Just …

Imagine you’re talking to someone and they suddenly start to add advertising to the exchange. What might that look like? In a 1965 episode of the classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, the protagonist uses her magical powers to create fake parents for herself in order to impress a date. She crafts them to be “just like the people on television commercials,” making them speak using sentences from commercials. Her synthetic “parents” appear friendly and normal—until they start talking, reciting ads verbatim for products like “streak-away” for gray hair, dish soap, “Grippo” denture adhesive, and deodorant. They have so much to say, yet communicate nothing at all. Something …

As we head into the new year, I am facing a daunting prospect. After over 34 years in higher education as a professor and administrator, I’m moving to the private sector to support more effective teaching practices. I would classify this change as a significant career pivot. I am changing market sectors (public sector to private) and shifting from serving a single institution to a global base of clients. Decisions like this are not to be made lightly. It is important to ensure that you are making this move to run toward something attractive and not just away from something that frustrates you. Here are three important considerations if you think a significant career m…

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X. The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, including bans and warnings by some governments. The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California, the U.S.’s most populous, into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok that it said was harassing women and girls. Initially, media queries about the problem drew only the response, “legacy media lies.” Musk’…

An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation. SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station. Their first stop was a hospital for an overnight stay. “Obviously, we took this action (early return) because it was a serious medical condition,” NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman said following splashdown. “The astronaut in question is fine right now, in good spirits and going through the proper medical checks.” It was an…

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 how and why AI will grow from something that chats to something that works in 2026. I also focus on a new privacy-focused AI platform from the maker of Signal, and on Google’s work on e-commerce agents. 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 me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. …

In 2025, employers cited artificial intelligence as the rationale for nearly 55,000 layoffs at companies like Amazon and Microsoft. And with the new year barely underway, we’re already seeing a new crop of AI-related job cuts. Citigroup is cutting over a thousand jobs, according to Bloomberg, and in a memo this week, CEO Jane Fraser warned of more layoffs later this year. “Over time, we can expect automation, AI and further process simplification to reshape how work gets done,” she added. Meanwhile, Meta is conducting more layoffs in its virtual reality division, cutting about 1,500 jobs as part of a broader strategic shift to invest further in AI. Given these r…

I was born an only child, but now I have a twin. He’s an exact duplicate of me—down to my clothing, my home, my facial expressions, and even my voice. I built him with AI, and I can make him say whatever I want. He’s so convincing that he could fool my own mother. Here’s how I built him—and what AI digital twins mean for the future of people. Deepfake yourself From the moment generative AI was born, criminals started using it to trick people. Deepfakes were one of the first widespread uses of the tech. Today, they’re a scourge to celebrities and even everyday teenagers, and a massive problem for anyone interested in the truth. As criminals were …

Two data breaches, multiple class action lawsuits, and a removal from the Apple App Store later, the popular and controversial dating safety app Tea for Women is back and launching a new website version of its services today. Billed as a “Yelp for men,” Tea was created in 2023 but was relatively unknown until July 2025, when it quickly became a viral sensation and shot to the top of App Store downloads—at one point outranking ChatGPT on the Apple App Store. Similar to “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Facebook groups, Tea offered women what they thought was a secure forum to obtain information and advice on men they had matched with on dating apps. Women using …