Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Valentino, who died on Monday at 93, leaves a lasting legacy full of celebrities, glamour and, in his words, knowing what women want: “to be beautiful”. The Italian fashion powerhouse has secured his dream of making a lasting impact, outliving Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. Valentino was known for his unique blend between the bold and colourful Italian fashion and the elegant French haute couture—the highest level of craftsmanship in fashion, with exceptional detail and strict professional dressmaking standards. The blending of these styles to create the signature Valentino silhouette made his style distinctive. Valentino’s style was reserved, and over…

I like to say that my job as a charity auctioneer is the ultimate sales role. I stand onstage night after night encouraging people to give money, playing off the audience to push them to bid higher, in the name of charity. If there’s one thing the stage has taught me, it’s that flexibility is everything. The faster you can adapt and offer a solution, the more successful you’ll be whether you’re selling a product or an idea. Here are three of my favorite sales secrets. 1. THE POWER OF SUGGESTION One of the quickest ways to lose someone’s attention is to tell them how you think your product should work for them. If a donor has offered their mountain house as “the ultimate …

Companies have never had more tools to measure engagement, yet employees have never reported feeling more disconnected. It’s one of the defining paradoxes of modern work: Engagement scores are the obsession of many organizations, yet loneliness, turnover, and team friction are rising. People are completing their tasks but not always experiencing the relationships that make work sustainable, creative, or truly human. Engagement measures motivation, whereas connectedness assesses whether people can work effectively together over time. Many researchers and thinkers have named the forces shaping the future of work. Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, highlights how t…

Starting a new job is exhilarating and exhausting. Exhilarating, because you’re trying new things, meeting new people, and picking up new skills. Exhausting, because all of those activities tax your brain, so that by the end of the day, you just want a nap. Over time, though, some of the things you’re doing become routine. You know the general tasks that drive your workday, and you can solve most of the problems that come up on most days. Once that happens, you go from being exhausted to being bored. Ultimately, your brain craves a middle-ground in which your world is generally predictable, but there are enough novel situations that you have to pay attention, think a bit…

Every month, around two billion people see AI Overviews, Google’s AI-powered search feature that generates summaries to users’ queries. Now, a new study is revealing a concerning pattern among some of these responses: When asked health-related questions, AI Overviews appears to turn to YouTube significantly more often than trusted medical sites. Since its inception, AI Overviews has faced its fair share of controversies, from early reports of the product spewing nonsensical answers to a series of lawsuits from businesses and publisher groups alleging that the feature is damaging to organic traffic patterns. The most recent concern with AI Overviews emerged via an inve…

We have been taught to segment people into neat design personas: young versus old, able-bodied versus disabled, patient versus caregiver. Those categories may help on a spreadsheet, but they rarely reflect real life. Ability is not a fixed identity. It is a state that shifts across hours, seasons, and decades. Most people are not “disabled” or “able bodied.” They are navigating a continuum. A parent carrying a toddler, a traveler pulling luggage, a cook with wet hands, someone recovering from surgery, a person with arthritis on a cold morning, an older adult managing fatigue at the end of the day. These are not edge cases. They are the mainstream experience of modern …

In Southwest Airlines’ new Super Bowl ad, boarding looks more like the Hunger Games than an orderly process. Set in an airport that’s been reimagined as a dense jungle, passengers rush to secure their preferred seats before it’s too late: a woman swings on a giant vine to cut her fellow travelers; a grandma shoulder-checks a passerby; and a man creates a dummy seatmate out of twigs to convince other fliers that his aisle seat has already been snagged. The ad is a parody of Southwest’s former open boarding policy, which, since the airline’s official founding in 1971, allowed passengers to choose their own seats in a system that aimed to reduce the hierarchy of tiered sea…

We talk constantly about age—in politics, in leadership, in debates about retirement and the future of work. Yet we rarely stop to ask a simple question: What is age, exactly? Most of us rely on a single number, as if people were stamped with a vintage year like bottles of wine. But age is far from a fixed or universal metric. It is multidimensional, deeply unequal, and increasingly misleading when used as a shortcut for ability, potential, or readiness. As people live longer, change careers more often, and experience work in different conditions, understanding what age actually measures is becoming essential for companies trying to build fairer workplaces and adapt t…

As Big Tech races to weave AI into nearly every product, Mozilla is betting some users want the opposite: the ability to turn it off. Last week, the company announced new controls to allow users of its Firefox browser to decide when to use AI. When Firefox 148 debuts later this month, users will be able to manage or disable individual AI features like translations, tab grouping and a sidebar for chatbot like Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Le Chat Mistral. Much of Mozilla’s vision around AI was outlined in its annual State of Mozilla report, which was released last month and calls for a new Star Wars-style “rebel alliance” composed of developers, cybersecurity expe…

Below, co-authors Jared Lindzon and Joe O’Connor share five key insights from their new book, Do More in Four: Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek. Jared is a freelance journalist who has been reporting on the future of work for publications like Fast Company, Time magazine, and the Globe and Mail for over a decade. Joe is the CEO and cofounder of Work Time Reduction, a global consulting and research organization that helps organizations find innovative ways to reduce working hours. Over the last eight years, it has helped hundreds of companies and thousands of employees pilot a four-day workweek in North America, Europe, the U.K., and Australia. What’s the big idea? …

It looks like ordinary paint, but a new coating called Lilypad Paint has a hidden ability to pull moisture out of the air. It works like a dehumidifier, without the energy use. If it’s on the wall in your bathroom, it can suck water vapor out of the air after you’ve taken a shower. The paint holds the humidity in nano-size pores, and then slowly releases it as humidity levels fall in the room. Under the paint, a layer of custom primer “acts like a smart gatekeeper ensuring that vapor doesn’t end up accumulating in the wall,” says Derek Stein, founder and CEO of Adept Materials, the startup behind the product. A passive fix for moisture in modern buildings The tech spun …

A new 3D-printed construction technique turns corn into a novel building material. Corncretl is a biocomposite made from corn waste known as nejayote that’s rich in calcium. It’s dried, pulverized, and mixed with minerals, and the resulting material is applied using a 3D printer. This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture.…

From afar, Lego’s new set inspired by Claude Monet’s painting Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies looks like a slightly more vivid version of the original. Step a bit closer, though, and you’ll find that its intricate brushstrokes are composed of Lego bananas, katana swords, and carrot tops. The new 3,179-piece set was created in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Monet’s original 1899 artwork, inspired by his idyllic garden in Giverny, is on display. Lego’s designers spent more than a year working in tandem with the museum’s curators to faithfully re-create the original painting’s iconic Impressionist scene. The set will be available to the public s…

From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, many executives think that bringing employees back to the office is the secret to restoring productivity. But they’re wrong. That’s not what’s happening in those newly populated offices. Instead, your employees are more likely to be joining video calls from company desks and wearing noise-canceling headphones while doing work they could have done at home. Only now they’re paying $20 to commute and eating sad desk salads to get through the day. The timing couldn’t be more ironic. A new wave of return-to-office (RTO) mandates arrive just as companies pour millions into AI initiatives designed to automate work, eliminate roles, an…

New York City is a city of walkers. More trips are made on foot than by car (41% versus 28%) and the city’s “80X50” climate action plan envisions that 80% of all trips by 2050 will be made either on foot, by biking, or by public transit. The problem is that pedestrian movement in the city has remained largely unmapped and underestimated—until now. Together with a team of researchers, Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has built what he says is the first complete model of pedestrian activity in New York City—and it’s a model that can now be applied to any U.S. city. The model, which maps foot traffic across all side…

AI is now the first stop for many customer journeys, from brainstorms and searches, to recommendations and planning. Recent research from The Knot Worldwide found that 36% of couples are now actively using AI in their wedding planning—nearly doubling year-over-year—as couples turn to AI platforms for wedding inspiration, writing, and organization. A couple might use AI to start their wedding planning journey, but as they move closer to choosing a venue or vendor, they naturally look for signals that help them feel confident—authentic reviews, a consistent online presence, and expert content—so that they gain additional context and trust before taking their next step. Wed…

Seventy-three-year-old Delroy Lindo just received his first Oscar nomination of his career—and he has advice for anyone who’s been in their fields for decades like he has. “The first thing that you have to come to terms with as an actor is being rejected,” the actor told The Wall Street Journal this week. That’s key for anyone trying to make it in Hollywood. But Lindo, who plays blues musician Delta Slim in Best Picture nominee Sinners, has been working in the industry since moving to New York in his 20s, and finally got his first Academy Award nomination this year (for Best Supporting Actor). He told the Journal that he wouldn’t be where he is today without trus…

If I had a nickel for every time over the past two decades that I’ve heard someone say, “Apple is many things, but affordable isn’t one of them,” I’d probably have enough to buy the latest 16-inch M5 MacBook Pro, introduced this week at an eye-watering $2,699. And if I had another nickel for every time someone shot back, “What do you expect? Apple is a luxury brand—like Ferrari, after all,” I could probably pick up the $3,299 Studio Display XDR the company unveiled this week, too. The thing is, despite the high prices of the devices I’ve mentioned, these arguments were never entirely accurate. That became especially true after this week, when, along with those pricey …

OpenAI confirmed on March 6 that it is delaying the rollout of “adult mode” in ChatGPT, a feature that would give verified adults access to less-restricted content. The company first announced plans to begin age-gating users last year but has now pushed back the launch twice. Segregating adult users from minors could help in some of OpenAI’s legal and revenue challenges, but nailing the technology may not be easy. Adult mode had been expected this quarter and still is, just later than originally planned. OpenAI referred Fast Company to a comment it gave to Alex Heath’s Sources newsletter saying it was pausing the feature to focus on improvements to ChatGPT, inclu…

Nearly every major policy paper, and the wannabe thought leaders that quote them, says that university enrollment and programming skills are the winning combination for the next Industrial Revolution. My analysis of 11 million professional programmers at Gild completely disagreed. This is not the Industrial Revolution. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment . . . and be honest. You are the CEO of a multinational company with 100,000 employees. Rate all of their jobs on a scale from ‘lowest’ to ‘highest’ skill. Now consider a near future in which AI and automation have disrupted the bottom 80% of those jobs by skill-level. Those 80,000 jobs are not needed anymore,…

Traditional economic development tends to focus on investments made and jobs created. For this year’s group of Most Innovative Companies—or in many cases, foundations or governments, in this case—the key performance indicator isn’t dollars spent, but connections made. Growth comes not from directing resources, but finding a better way to nurture what you already have. Governments found creative ways to unleash the potential of their residents, workers, and civil servants. The state of New Mexico, for example, made a first-in-the-nation move to subsidize childcare for all, giving working parents and families a leg up. In Illinois, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act offe…

This is ‘The Truth About Leadership,’ Fast Company’s latest video series, where CEOs and industry leaders speak honestly and candidly about what it’s really like to be at the top. No corporate jargon—just real talk. First up: Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy and founder and CEO of Unwell. View the full article

As part of a strategic move to optimize its store footprint, Noodles & Company closed 33 company-owned restaurants in 2025. In January, the chain said it would close dozens more stores this year. However, despite the shrinking restaurant count, sales have grown. The fast-casual eatery held its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call on Wednesday, March 25. It reported that comparable store sales increased 6.6% in the final quarter of 2025. Sales growth and traffic are also up as of early 2026. Following the strong earnings report, shares of Noodles & Company (Nasdaq: NDLS) soared over 50% on Thursday. The stock is up almost 60% year to …

It’s no secret that children and adolescents have a lot more eyes on them these days thanks to everything from social media to cameras in everyone’s pockets. This experience (along with encouragement from brands such as Disney) has created space for young people to mimic adults, embracing cosmetics and anti-aging creams. Now, Italy’s consumer protection regulator says it is looking into the marketing strategies of some of the main contributors to this phenomenon: beauty companies. The country’s Competition Authority (AGCM) has launched two investigations into Sephora and Benefit Cosmetics for allegedly failing to clearly indicate that their products are not…

Modern leadership is defined by paradox. Leaders are expected to set clear direction while remaining open to challenge. To move quickly with decisive action while also taking people with them. To hold authority while fostering shared ownership and to deliver results without eroding trust. These demands are not occasional tensions; they sit at the heart of the role. Under this sustained pressure, many leaders have a tendency to reach for dominance. Dominance can feel efficient. It centralizes control, projects certainty and offers a reassuring sense of direction when the ground feels unstable. In moments of volatility, it can look like strength. Yet dominance c…