Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

This year’s busiest shopping day was a boon for live-shopping apps. Even at a time of inflation and economic uncertainty, Americans were ready to spend come Black Friday. U.S. online spending was up 9.1% from last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics. While holiday spending has typically been dominated by traditional e-commerce, live-shopping platforms TikTok Shop and Whatnot also reported record-breaking sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On Black Friday, the livestream marketplace Whatnot reported more than $75 million in single-day live sales, tripling last year’s total. On average, shoppers bought 40 items per second. One small busi…

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has created a new $1 billion grant program to make U.S. airports more family- and health-friendly. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched the “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” campaign alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday, December 8, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “I am talking about ushering in the golden age of transportation,” Duffy said, adding they are hiring more air traffic controllers, and asking retiring air traffic controllers to stay on the job. However, the Transportation Secretary said the funding is dedicated to “making the experience better in airports and its…

Every December, something strange happens inside companies. Decisions that were stuck for months suddenly fly through. Projects get approved. Budgets get finalized. People stop debating and finally choose. Leaders usually chalk this up to “year-end energy” or “the holiday push.” That is an easy story, but it hides what is actually going on. December forces leaders into a tighter frame. There is less time to overthink, fewer acceptable choices, and clearer expectations. In other words, the environment is designed in a way that produces commitment instead of delay—even though for complex, novel strategic bets, the calendar alone is rarely enough. This isn’t holiday …

For many of us, December rushes by in a blur of holiday merrymaking and gift-giving, end-of-year invoicing and accounting, and hasty planning for the year ahead. In the rush, the thoughtful year-end reflection we might have hoped for often doesn’t happen. That’s a missed opportunity. Reflection doesn’t have to be complicated, though. Here’s a simple end-of-year exercise to help you process the year, stay aligned with your goals, and move forward with intention. Year in Review First, remind yourself what actually happened this year. It’s easy to fall prey to recency bias, focusing on the last few weeks and forgetting earlier events. We also tend to fixate on whe…

As employers have wrested back control of the job market, it has been a sharp contrast to the post-pandemic years when workers seemed to hold the power. In 2025, employees fretted about their job security and the sweeping impact of artificial intelligence on their work lives—not to mention corporate America’s continued commitment to keeping them in the office for longer. Here, we’ve compiled some of the most popular Work Life stories from this year—on the issues that consumed you most. The “996” schedule This year saw the return of hustle culture in Silicon Valley, as AI startups popularized a grueling work schedule that became popularized in China. The “996” schedul…

I just launched a wine app, which means I’ve spent the last six months thinking obsessively about one thing: how do you remove friction from decisions that shouldn’t be hard? The answer taught me something bigger about rituals, and why so many of the ones we create at the end and beginning of the year fail us. Here’s my founder story, but from the wine aisle. Last December, I was standing in front of a wall of bottles, paralyzed. Not because I don’t like wine. I do. I was paralyzed because the entire experience was designed to make me feel small. The sommelier energy, the gatekeeping language, the implied message that if I couldn’t name the terroir, I didn’t d…

Kim Kardashian’s apparel brand Skims is outfitting American athletes at the Olympics for the fourth time in a row, and this year’s collection is its cheekiest one yet. Skims and Team USA have established something of an annual tradition. The brand has dressed Olympic and Paralympic athletes in new loungewear-slash-underwear capsules at the Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022, and Paris 2024 Games—and now, it’s back for Milano Cortina 2026. This year’s collection includes everything from Americana-themed panties to cozy pajama sets, tasteful sweaters, menswear, and accessories. The collection will be available to average folk starting on January 8 at Skims.com and some Skims…

On the edge of Boulder, Colorado, a remarkable convergence of mutually beneficial collaboration is underway, and it could reshape how housing gets built, who builds it, and who is able to afford it. This is all happening inside BoulderMOD, a new modular housing factory built by the city of Boulder for use by the local Habitat for Humanity affiliate and powered by the labor of apprentice modular home builders from area public high schools. The students come to the factory several hours a day for hands-on education in advanced home building, working on actual modular homes that are now being installed in a section of Boulder devastated by flooding. At full capacity, the …

New York Attorney General Letitia James is demanding more information about Instacart’s recent, and highly controversial, price tests, and suggesting that the scheme—which saw customers charged notably different prices for the same products, when offered at the same stores—might have violated a new state law. Late last year, Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative released an investigation that found that a single item posted on Instacart could have as many as five different prices, and that costs for a single item could range from just seven cents to $2.56. The investigation found that while some prices changed, and some differed only marginally, for some ite…

A new insult for artificial intelligence just dropped thanks to Microsoft’s CEO. If you use Microsoft products, it’s near impossible to avoid AI now. The company is pushing AI agents deep into Windows, with every app, service, and product Microsoft has on the market now including some kind of AI integration, without the option to opt out. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently shared a blog post to LinkedIn titled “Looking Ahead to 2026” offering an insight into the company’s focus for the new year. Spoiler alert: it’s AI. Nadella wrote that he wants users to stop thinking of AI as “slop” and start thinking of it as “bicycles for the mind.” Many took the post…

Thousands of nurses in three hospital systems in New York City went on strike Monday after negotiations through the weekend failed to yield breakthroughs in their contract disputes. “Nurses on strike! … Fair contract now!” they shouted on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s campus in Upper Manhattan. Others picketed at multiple hospitals in the Mount Sinai and Montefiore systems. About 15,000 nurses are involved in the strike, according to their union, the New York State Nurses Association. The hospitals remained open, hiring droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. The strike involves private, nonprofit hospitals, not city-ru…

If a City is going to operate a multimodal transportation system, then it helps to understand the motivations of people who continue to choose personal cars for their short trips. Bicycle advocates often talk about this in terms of “bike trips not taken” because of a lack of quality infrastructure. Survey after survey shows that many people opt out of cycling because of gaps in the bike lane network, busy intersections to cross, or other real or perceived pain points. And case study after case study shows that when cities create comfortable and convenient bike infrastructure, more people choose to ride bikes. There’s a similar issue with public transportation tha…

Most organizations still hire for culture fit—even those that loudly champion diversity and inclusion. The phrase sounds benign, even wise: who wouldn’t want colleagues who “fit in”? But behind this feel-good notion lies one of the biggest obstacles to innovation and progress in modern workplaces. Culture fit has become a euphemism for cultural cloning: selecting people who already look, think, and behave like the incumbents. It’s a polite way of saying, we want people like us, because there’s nothing more comforting than working—and hanging out—with people who are just like you! The irony, of course, is that such homogeneity kills the very things organizations claim to …

Having a baby isn’t cheap, but sometimes, even the delivery alone can be a crushing burden on families. According to a new survey, even moms who are insured can end up saddled with medical debt that adds to the financial stress of growing a family. What To Expect, a website that provides new and expecting parents with resources, surveyed 3,285 women on their experiences with labor and delivery charges. The research found that one in four moms have gone into debt due to the costs associated with giving birth. The survey found that, on average, moms are leaving the hospital with around $3,000 in debt. And that’s before the baby expenses—diapers, formula, daycare!—…

It’s 9:30 p.m. Snack time. A sacred fourth meal, when I pull out my handwash-only kobachi and drop in a small handful of Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds. I’ve been eating them for more years than I care to admit, appreciating the mix of natural (high protein and fiber) almonds with a splash of addictive processing (mmm, hickory smoke flavor and maltodextrin) to keep them feeling dangerous. It’s the perfect portion of the perfect snack in the perfect bowl. Almost. The problem with Blue Diamond Smokehouse isn’t the product. It’s the packaging. Specifically, the Ziploc-esque “resealable” zipper stops working, like clockwork, when I’m about halfway through the ba…

Back in October, Google ended software support for the original and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats. On the surface, that doesn’t seem totally unreasonable, considering those original devices are roughly 14 years old at this point. If you have one, you can still use it as a thermostat, but it will no longer connect to the internet. As a result, you can’t connect to it using the Nest or Google Home apps. That may not seem like a big deal, except that the single greatest thing about using a Nest Thermostat wasn’t the fact that it would learn your habits and create routines, or that it would detect when you’re not home and adjust accordingly. No, the best thi…

We’re witnessing an unprecedented explosion in creative capability. Voice interfaces are removing barriers for billions who found keyboards cumbersome. AI image generators can mock up virtually any creative direction instantly. The technical constraints that once defined creative work are dissolving. Yet this abundance creates a new challenge: when everything becomes possible, the possibilities overwhelm us. What then becomes most valuable is knowing what’s worth making. I predict that in 2026, the question “should we build this?” will matter more than “can we build this?” The capability surplus The AI conversation is all about capabilities. What you can ma…

For designers of the built environment, it’s necessary to take a long view. Years or even decades can go into the design and construction of a single project, and the best built projects can stand for centuries. But the business of designing buildings is also subject to the upheavals and uncertainty of any given moment, including this very tumultuous one. Looking ahead to the (relatively) short-term future of the next year, Fast Company asked architects from some of the top firms working in the U.S. and around the world to predict the biggest forces shaping the industry this year, and the potential bright spots they might see. Here’s the question we put to a panel of de…

Virginia-based Gerber Products Company is voluntarily recalling limited batches of Gerber Arrowroot Biscuits, a cookie-like snack meant for children 10 months or older. On January 26, the baby food and snack producer issued the voluntary recall due to the potential presence of soft plastic and paper pieces that “should not be consumed,” the company said this week. The material comes from a supplier of arrowroot flour that initiated its own recall, Gerber said. The company said it was no longer working with the supplier, though it did not name the supplier in its recall notice on Monday. No illnesses or injuries have been reported. Gerber says it is issuing t…

It’s been more than half a century since astronauts last stepped onto the moon. Now, NASA’s Artemis II will return four humans to its vicinity in a 10-day lunar loop that lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center as early as February 8. An Orion spacecraft will carry NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, some 230,000 miles to the far side of the moon—farther from Earth than anyone has traveled. Using a free-return trajectory enabled by lunar gravity, they will slingshot back to Earth for a splashdown off the coast of San Diego. NASA’s Artemis program, along with private and international partner…

Don’t tune into the Super Bowl hoping for a break from the tumultuous politics gripping the U.S. The NFL is facing pressure ahead of Sunday’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots to take a more explicit stance against the The President administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. More than 184,000 people have signed a petition calling on the league to denounce the potential presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Super Bowl, which is being held at Levi’s Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area. The liberal group MoveOn plans to deliver the petition to the NFL’s New York City headquarters on Tuesday. Meanwhile, anticipation…

A quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship, according to Associated Press-NORC polling. The one thing missing? Somewhere to take your AI Valentine on a date. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, EVA AI decided to solve that problem. The app—where users can text or, more recently, video chat with AI dates—organized a pop-up social experiment at Same Same Wine Bar in Manhattan this week. Over February 11 and 12, the dimly lit space was filled with patrons seated at tables for one, their AI companions propped up on phone stands. Attendees could bring their own existing AI partners or speed date from a selection of 100 characters. “This is another …

The Nancy Guthrie investigation is now in its third week, which means it was only a matter of time before the case piqued the interest of online armchair detectives. Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie, was reported missing on Feb. 1. In the weeks since, the street outside her home in Tucson, Arizona, has become a destination for true-crime livestreamers. Online sleuths have dissected the publicly available details of the ongoing case while spreading far-fetched conspiracy theories. Some have filmed themselves driving through Guthrie’s neighborhood. The hashtag #nancyguthrie currently has more than 16,000 posts on TikTok, where users an…

At first glance, it could be the trailer for a new Hollywood blockbuster starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. “This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2,” Irish filmmaker Ruairí Robinson clarifies in a caption on X of the 15-second clip, which shows two of the industry’s biggest stars locked in a fistfight on a crumbling rooftop, complete with sweeping camera angles and crisp sound effects. This was a 2 line prompt in seedance 2. If the hollywood is cooked guys are right maybe the hollywood is cooked guys are cooked too idk. pic.twitter.com/dNTyLUIwAV — Ruairi Robinson (@RuairiRobinson) February 11, 2026 The viral AI-generated clip has garnered more than 1.8 milli…

The venerable business case study method got its start in 1921 at the Harvard Business School. The method became standard at the school throughout the 1920’s and since then Harvard has a near-monopoly grip on the business, selling its cases to over 4,000 rival schools. Cases can be useful and informative, but recognize that they aren’t reality. The companies featured typically require that the case writer submit the case to them for approval. That introduces survivor bias—whoever is still around at the time of publication gets to dictate how the narrative is told. Another issue is that the companies selected and held up as exemplars are subject to the halo effect. This …