Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The Christmas holiday season is a time to step back from the busy pace of modern life and connect with our nearest and dearest instead of screens, apps and chatbots. Here are some suggestions on how to unplug from the online world for the next few weeks as you sit down for a festive meal, exchange gifts or take time out for some self-reflection. Do not disturb me Your phone already has built-in features that can help you stop getting distracted. To temporarily silence all those attention-seeking notifications, use the Focus setting on your iPhone or Android device. This mode is designed to stop interruptions when you want to concentrate. You can customize it by b…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During its earnings call on Wednesday, executives at Lennar—a giant homebuilder with a market capitalization of $27 billion—said the federal government is working on a plan to help alleviate strained housing affordability. Lennar executives said federal officials are actively engaging with homebuilders and industry groups to better understand constraints—and to avoid policies that could unintentionally damage supply. While no specific program was outlined, management suggested it would be “surprising” if no meaningful action emerged in 2026, given cu…

In 2025, AI became officially unavoidable: It had been lurking in the background before, as early adapters experimented with it. But this year, companies invested more than $202 billion in AI, a 75% increase from $114 billion invested in 2024. Major tech companies fought bitterly over AI talent, offering astronomical pay packages. There was a groundswell of demand for talent, and unsurprisingly this spread to the demand for AI, data science, and engineering jobs, which increased 28% compared to 2024, according to data provided to Fast Company by IT staffing company Mondo. The firm also provided data on the top five jobs that took off in 2025, which we’ve listed by vol…

The irony of modern work life hits you somewhere between your third consecutive hybrid meeting and the moment you realize you’ve been holding your breath for the past hour. We’ve engineered every process for maximum output, yet reports consistently show that workplace burnout is affecting us more than ever. As someone who followed the straight-A path from childhood—chasing perfect grades, moving from one goalpost to another through MBA to big tech product executive—I’ve witnessed this optimization obsession firsthand while shaping experiences for over half a billion users. But what if the solution isn’t another wellness program or time management technique? What i…

Ketchup-inspired luggage. Soap based on the characters from Stranger Things. A hot sauce energy drink. These are just a few of the brand collaborations that we’ve seen in 2025—and it’s safe to say that all’s not well in the world of brand partnerships. A few years ago, the art of the brand collab most often involved bringing together two brands that already had overlapping design styles, fanbases, or product categories. Recall partnerships like Nike and Apple’s successful 2016 Series 2 Watch launch, for example; or Dolce & Gabbana’s elevated designs for Smeg in 2019; or even Lego’s 2020 collection with Ikea. All of these pairings make some measure of intuitive sen…

Fast Company is now accepting applications for our annual Best Workplaces for Innovators awards. This marks the eighth year we will be recognizing companies and organizations around the world that most effectively empower employees at all levels to improve processes, create new products, or invent whole new ways of doing business. In addition to honoring the world’s overall Best Workplaces for Innovators, we will recognize companies in 19 categories, including a brand-new category, Skilled Labor, singling out companies that depend heavily on talented employees with the kinds of increasingly coveted technical expertise acquired through votech training and trade sch…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. In today’s article, we’re sharing the full results from the Q4 2025 Zoodealio-ResiClub Real Estate Agent Survey. To conduct our real estate agent survey, ResiClub partnered with Zoodealio, a cash-offer platform, and iBuyer-management software designed for real estate agents. Among the 204 agents who took the survey, half (51%) have been real estate agents for 15 years or longer. The survey was fielded from November 17 to December 29, 2025. Respondents included real estate agents spanning all regions of the U.S., giving us a ground-level view of b…

If you had a severe case of the Sunday Scaries last weekend, you are not alone. It’s a sentiment many have been sharing online. Ready or not, with it comes an influx of unread emails, meeting invites, and responsibilities—smugly pushed to the New Year in the last weeks of December—now coming back to haunt us all. Indeed, the first Monday of the year is the Monday-est Monday of all. “Oh god,” one TikTok user posted on Monday 6th. “Everyone is circling back.” “Worst aesthetic ever: Back to work in the first week of jan,” another wrote, riffing on TikTok’s “rare aesthetic” trend. Some have used the lyrics to The Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable No…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating a salmonella outbreak linked to dietary supplement powder that left 45 people sick and a dozen people hospitalized across the country. In the wake of the outbreak, New York-based Superfoods, Inc. has issued a voluntary recall of Live it Up-brand Super Greens dietary supplement powder in the original and wild berry flavors. However, the FDA cautions that additional products might join the recall during its investigation. “To determine a source of contamination, FDA is conducting a traceback investigation of products ill people reported consuming before becoming ill and is working with state partners to sample…

Efficiency dominates conversations about AI. We celebrate its ability to automate and optimize so businesses can move faster and people can work smarter. But AI is becoming more integrated into people’s lives in ways that go far beyond productivity. In a world obsessed with speed and efficiency, the future of AI isn’t just intelligent—it’s beautiful. AI is now a force that enhances creativity, self-expression, and confidence. AI does not just optimize life—it elevates it. Consumers are embracing AI for everything from recipe creation and travel planning to interior design and fitness regimens. They are turning to AI for recommendations on shows, movies, music, restaur…

Below, Chris Bailey shares five key insights from his new book, Intentional: How to Finish What You Start. Chris is an author and lecturer who explores the science behind living a more productive and intentional life. He has written hundreds of articles on the subject and garnered coverage in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Harvard Business Review, among many other outlets. What’s the big idea? Most of us struggle with follow-through, not because we lack discipline, but because we don’t understand what’s driving us and accommodate that which holds us back. When you clarify your core values, lower the friction to getting started, and align s…

For decades, people with disabilities have relied on service dogs to help them perform daily tasks like opening doors, turning on lights, or alerting caregivers to emergencies. By some estimates, there are 500,000 service dogs in the U.S., but little attention has been paid to the fact that these dogs have been trained to interact with interfaces that are made for humans. A team of researchers from the United Kingdom wants to change that by designing accessible products for, and with dogs. The Open University’s Animal-Computer Interaction Laboratory in the UK was founded in 2011 to help promote the art and science of designing animal-centered systems. Led by Clara Man…

Yahoo may not be the most headlined company in tech anymore, but its reach can’t be denied. With nearly 250 million monthly users across the country and 700 million globally, it’s still the second most popular email client in the world, and the third most popular search engine in the U.S. (even though that search engine has technically been powered by either Bing or Google since 2009). As a privately owned company since 2021 (once worth $125 billion, but purchased for a mere $5 billion at the time), its CEO Jim Lanzone says that the last few years have been about “getting the house in order.” But now, he promises, “this is one of the biggest turnarounds people have tr…

Whether he’s climbing skyscrapers in Taiwan or working to build the Honnold Foundation, free solo climber and activist Alex Honnold remains an optimist. He sat down with Fast Company to talk about why a good outlook is essential—both for his sport and in the fight for the planet. Honnold also reflects on education, human potential, overconsumption, and what’s at stake for American national parks and public lands. View the full article

Some high-profile acquisitions take out a rising competitor, such as Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed in 2009, some immediately expand a business’s suite of offerings, such as Salesforce’s 2020 purchase of Slack, and some may morph into an unrecognizable asset, like Amazon’s 1999 purchase of Alexa Internet, then a web traffic-tracking website. (The first Amazon Echo marking Alexa’s debut would launch in 2014.) But many lower-profile tech company acquisitions are made at least in part to gain access to specialized engineering talent. So-called “acquihires” haven’t traditionally raised many eyebrows. But the term’s definition has been expanding as the AI arms race …

If you’re a CEO, entrepreneur, recruiter, or hiring manager, you know how important it is to hire the right people for the right roles. But hiring the right people for the right roles goes way beyond simply attracting “the best and brightest” of your industry. Just because someone is highly qualified, great at what they do and has impressive experience, doesn’t mean they are a good fit for your organization or your culture. If you want your business to thrive in the marketplace, you need to filter out potential employees who may not be a great fit for your organization and attract those who are the most likely to thrive. Here are three ways to attract potential employees …

So-called rare earth elements aren’t actually rare. It’s just difficult to refine them into the purified forms that are needed for making things like electronics or clean energy tech. The standard processes are also toxic, which is one reason that the world has outsourced production to China. Supra, a startup that spun out of the University of Texas at Austin, is taking a different approach that’s clean, low-cost, and makes it possible to capture some of the billions of dollars’ worth of critical minerals that are trapped in waste in the U.S. Dr. Sessler The company’s technology uses supramolecular receptors, “a string of molecules built to grab specific molecu…

As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, the battle off the field for advertisers to win over 120 million-plus viewers will be just as heated as the rivalry between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. Dozens of advertisers are pulling out all the stops for Super Bowl 60, airing Sunday on NBC. They’re hoping that audiences tuning in will remember their brand names as they stuff their ads with celebrities ranging from Kendall Jenner (Fanatics Sportsbook) to George Clooney (Grubhub), tried-and-true ad icons like the Budweiser Clydesdales, and nostalgia for well-known movie properties such as “Jurassic Park” (Comcast Xfinity). Each year Super Bowl ads offer a snapshot of…

We live in a world of increasing change. The international order is shifting and political certainties are evaporating day by day. Technological shifts are changing how we experience the world and interact with others. And in the workplace, AI is poised to unleash what might be the most revolutionary set of changes humanity has experienced since the first hunter-gatherers settled down to grow crops and build cities. But while change is everywhere, we still find it hard to manage. The statistics around organizational change have always been brutal. For at least the last quarter century, corporate transformation efforts have failed at a remarkable rate: only three out o…

The European Union on Friday accused TikTok of breaching the bloc’s digital rules with “addictive design” features that lead to compulsive use by children, in preliminary charges that strike at the heart of the popular video sharing app’s operating model. EU regulators said their two-year investigation found that TikTok hasn’t done enough to assess how features such as autoplay and infinite scroll could harm the physical and mental health of users, including minors and “vulnerable adults.” The European Commission said it believes TikTok should change the “basic design” of its service. The commission is the EU’s executive arm and enforcer of the 27-nation bloc’s Digital …

Five years ago, a retired police officer spotted a 7-year-old girl walking alone in her New Jersey neighborhood. The stranger stopped her, questioned her about where she lived and whether she was alone, then called the police. When officers arrived, the girl gave them her address which was just a few blocks away. They walked her home and met her parents. But instead of leaving, the officer demanded ID. When the parents refused, arguing they’d done nothing wrong by letting their daughter go for a walk in the neighborhood, the officer called for backup and threatened to take their daughter into protective custody. The father tried to comfort his crying daughter. Police…

When viewers tune in to the 2026 Winter Olympics, they will see pristine, white slopes, groomed tracks, and athletes racing over snow-covered landscapes, thanks in part to a storm that blanketed the mountain venues of the Italian Alps with fresh powder just in time. But at lower elevations, where cross-country and other events are held, athletes and organizers have been contending with rain; thin, sometimes slushy snow; and icy, machine-made surfaces. “Most of our races are on machine-made snow,” 2026 U.S. Olympic team cross-country skier Rosie Brennan told us ahead of the Games. “TV production is great at making it look like we are in wintry, snowy places, but th…

Warp, which builds software to help developers control AI agents and other software from the command line, is rolling out a new tool called Oz to collaboratively command AI in the cloud. Last year, Warp launched its agentic development environment, which lets programmers command AI agents to write code and other tasks. Developers can also use the software to edit code on their own and run command-line development tools. That release came as many developers became increasingly fond of vibe coding—the process of instructing an AI on what source code should do rather than writing it directly—and the industry produced a variety of tools, including Anthropic’s Claude Code…

Meta announced on February 10 that it’s introducing a new AI animation feature that lets users turn their still profile photos into AI-generated looping videos. It reads like an uncanny valley version of yesteryear’s Boomerang. The option to animate appears when users click “Animate profile picture” on their Facebook avatars, and the feature gives a limited set of animation options, including party hat, confetti, wave, and heart, in which a photo’s subject makes a heart shape with their hands. Meta says there will be additional options in the future for “seasonal moments and special events.” The tech is imperfect and can only work with what it’s got. Meta says…