Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

I’m always amazed at how easily we give our time to others without thinking, and then are mad later when it was wasted. What exactly did we think was going to happen? That everyone was going to be prepared, productive, and appreciative? Time has become the ultimate luxury—we never have enough of it, and are jealous of those that have it. For too many of us, endless meetings, back-to-back emails, and constant interruptions leave little room for focused, meaningful work. Additionally, in our effort to be nice or generous, we offer our time even when we’re running on empty. But what if I told you that much of this time theft could be prevented with a little more min…

Three of the world’s biggest tech companies face a landmark trial in Los Angeles starting this week over claims that their platforms—Meta’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Google’s YouTube—deliberately addict and harm children. Jury selection starts this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It’s the first time the companies will argue their case before a jury, and the outcome could have profound effects on their businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms. The selection process is expected to take at least a few days, with 75 potential jurors questioned each day through at least Thursday. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat…

Another day, another announcement of restaurant closures in the casual-dining space. Earlier this week, FAT Brands filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As part of that process, the restaurant company is seeking to reject leases for a number of shuttered company-owned restaurants, including locations for Johnny Rockets, Smokey Bones, and Yalla Mediterranean, court filings show. FAT Brands owns 18 restaurant chains in total, including Fatburger, Round Table Pizza, Great American Cookies, and more. Most of its more than 2,200 locations worldwide are franchised. FAT Brands said in its bankruptcy filing that owns roughly 150 locations directly. “Our dynamic…

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…

Journalist Ira Glass, who hosts the NPR show “This American Life,” is not a computer scientist. He doesn’t work at Google, Apple, or Nvidia. But he does have a great ear for useful phrases, and in 2024, he organized an entire episode around one that might resonate with anyone who feels blindsided by the pace of AI development: “Unprepared for what has already happened.” Coined by science journalist Alex Steffen, the phrase captures the unsettling feeling that “the experience and expertise you’ve built up” may now be obsolete—or, at least, a lot less valuable than it once was. Whenever I lead workshops in law firms, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations, …

A decade ago, when Claire Burgi moved to New York City, she decided to cut meat out of her diet. The 33-year-old actor and audiobook narrator, who lives in Queens, grew up in California, where she’d seen the effects of climate change firsthand. She knew that meat consumption was a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions and that vegetarianism was a way to help conserve resources and reduce pollution. “When I was young, it rained a lot,” she says. “Now, it rains much less. All the fires are astoundingly horrific.” The December 2017 Thomas wildfire burned more than 280,000 acres in and around Burgi’s hometown of Ventura, just north of Los Angeles. “I just didn’t w…

At least three-quarters of the speaking invitations I get these days are about AI. But lately, they’re for different reasons. Companies used to bring me in under the assumption that artificial intelligence was going to change everything. So they’d ask me to talk about the jobless future, prompt engineering, or automating marketing online. Today, they’re asking a different kind of question: What went wrong? Where are the promised productivity gains? In other words, why isn’t AI helping our company do stuff? And if I were to answer honestly, I’d tell them the simple truth: It’s because you and your people don’t know what you want to do with it! This is not a technology…

Last Saturday, more than six million people held their breath as Alex Honnold took his first step up Taipei 101. The Free Solo climber, who went on to ascend Taiwan’s tallest building without the safety of a rope and harness, drew crowds all around the building, as well as on Netflix, where the ascent was live-streamed as part of a show called Skyscraper Live. Some of these people had likely already watched Honnold scale the 3,000-foot rock wall of Yosemite’s El Capitan. But for many, the climber’s ascent up a man-made structure was likely an introduction to an altogether different kind of climbing: not on the face of a cliff, but the side of a building. This type…

It’s shaping up to be a busy year for initial public offerings from some of the most closely watched companies. Rumors have been floating around for a while now that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company, and Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind Claude, could make their market debuts in the summer and by the end of 2026, respectively. And now, a report says that OpenAI—Anthropic’s main competitor, and the owner of ChatGPT—could go public before the end of the year, too. Here’s what you need to know about OpenAI’s rumored IPO plans. OpenAI may go public in 2026 A report from the Wall Street Journal yesterday has investors buzzing: ChatGPT owner…

More than 11.5 million fans signed up for presale tickets to Harry Styles’s upcoming Madison Square Garden residency for the Together, Together tour. But when tickets went on sale January 26, amid the excitement, many fans were left frustrated by lengthy virtual queue waits. For those who made it through, the relief proved fleeting when they encountered ticket prices exceeding $1,000. Many turned to social media to direct their ire at both Ticketmaster and Styles himself. “$1000 for lower bowl at msg is genuinely the most insulting thing ive ever seen. that’s one months rent,” one person posted on X. “Its getting to the point where I feel like im being f…

In 2021, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Thomas Haigh began teaching a course on the history of computers. Haigh, the coauthor of a book on the subject published around that same timenoticed that many classic histories of computing from the 1990s assumed that readers would have firsthand knowledge of technology from around that era—desktop PCs and Macs, early game consoles, and the once-ubiquitous floppy disk. But for many of his students, that equipment was obsolete before they were born. While it might make millennials grimace, Windows 95 and Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007 are now firmly in the purview of the history department. “With today’s…

Women in all parts of my life are encountering similar obstacles in their health journeys. The common thread is that when we don’t advocate for ourselves and ask the right questions, we don’t get the care we need. While volunteering as a women’s heart health advocate and immersing my public relations agency in the health innovation ecosystem, I’m constantly thinking about how to bring to light the issues—and solutions—that are all around us. “Women are dying because we aren’t marketing life-saving therapies to them,” said Rachel Rubin, MD, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist, and assistant clinical professor in urology at Georgetown University Hospital. She…

Mark Cuban’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is well known. He has called the technology the “ultimate time-saving hack” and bluntly stated that if you’re not learning AI, “you’re f—ed.” But with his latest investment, the billionaire bypassed the plethora of AI startups and focused instead on something more human-centered. Cuban has invested an undisclosed amount in live events company Burwoodland, which produces nightlife experiences throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The investment will make him a minority owner in the company. Founded in 2015 by Alex Badanes and Ethan Maccoby, the New York City-based company says it has sold more than 1.5 million…

Laying people off takes its toll. “Going back 25 years plus ago, I can still remember every situation that I had to do it in,” says Robert Kovach, a work psychologist and former corporate executive. The experience sticks with you, he says. Because it’s not just about “operational stress: Have I filled out the forms? Made the calls?” It’s also filled with “moral stress,” he adds. “Even when the decision is necessary, it can feel like a violation of your own personal values.” People laying off their coworkers often feel a clash between their responsibility to their company and their responsibility to be a good person to the people they’re laying off—parti…

Rewind to 2025. The National Football League is fresh off an unbelievable, yet controversial, Super Bowl halftime performance by the superstar hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar. The country has just been introduced to a diversity-hostile administration, which has practically squashed any zeal toward diversity, equity, or inclusion that corporate America once seemingly held. As the NFL’s leadership team explores talent considerations for next year’s performance in the midst of this cultural backdrop, someone recommends Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican-born megastar whose songs are performed almost entirely in Spanish, and, surprisingly, the league acquiesces. The public blowback is…

It looks like a standard shipping container. But a metal box at a London factory is aimed at solving one of the shipping industry’s biggest challenges: how to cut CO2 emissions on cargo ships. The tech, from a startup called Seabound, can capture as much as 95% of the CO2 emissions from the exhaust on ship. The company is now preparing to install a set of the containers on a cargo ship in its first commercial deployment after years of development and pilot tests. “The shipping industry is one of the last hard-to-abate sectors,” says 30-year-old CEO Alisha Fredriksson, who cofounded the company in 2021 after working as a consultant and seeing the need for a new…

Friday is the opening ceremony for the 2026 Winter Olympics. But, if you’ve spent any time on TikTok over the past week, you might have already got a sneak peek at some behind-the-scenes content courtesy of the athletes themselves. In 2024, the International Olympic Committee loosened its rules governing what athletes can capture and share on social media. The shift helped spark viral moments during the Paris Games, when Team USA rugby star Ilona Maher and Norway’s swimmer Henrik Christiansen, whose chocolate muffin reviews became an unlikely hit, took over TikTok feeds. This year, Olympians have already been posting vlogs of their journeys to the Olympic Village…

Below, Shadé Zahrai shares five key insights from her new book, Big Trust: Rewire Self-Doubt, Find Your Confidence, and Fuel Success. Shadé is a peak performance educator to Fortune 500 companies, leadership strategist, and former lawyer. Over the past decade, she has trained leaders at Microsoft, Deloitte, JPMorgan, and LVMH, educated millions through LinkedIn Learning, and spent five years researching self-doubt and self-image as part of her PhD. What’s the big idea? When you change how you see yourself, you change what’s possible for you. Big Trust doesn’t require becoming someone new; it requires you to finally trust who you already are. By strengthening th…

For decades, tuning into a sporting event at home involved watching a traditional broadcast on your TV. These days, however, many viewers aren’t just watching on their TV—they’ve got the game streaming right to their phones. After more than two decades, NBC and the NBA have revived their partnership just in time to face this new challenge. In a media landscape where fans consume sports across traditional broadcasts, streaming platforms, and mobile devices, the question is no longer about how to televise the game, but how to design an experience that cultivates the league’s next generation of stars, its culture, and fandom while honoring the nostalgia that once defined th…

At the Winter Olympics, skiers, bobsledders, speedskaters, and many other athletes all have to master one critical moment: when to start. That split second is paramount during competition because when everyone is strong and skilled, a moment of hesitation can separate gold from silver. A competitor who hesitates too much will be left behind—but moving too early will get them disqualified. Though the circumstances are less intense, this paradox of hesitation applies to daily life. Waiting for the right moment to cross the street, or pausing before deciding whether to answer a call from a number you don’t recognize, are daily examples of hesitation. Importantly, some ps…

Before the holidays, Adam Conner began vibe coding. Like everyone else in the know, he was using Claude Code. Compared to popular chatbots, Anthropic’s advanced AI agent speaks the language of computers: code. Normally, you click buttons in browsers, open folders, and drag files. But you can also do so by coding—interacting with software by typing commands into a terminal, a text-based app. Claude Code goes beyond such primitive tasks, though: an AI that can code can effectively do nearly anything on a computer. “We expected developers to use Claude Code for coding, but then something unexpected happened,” an Anthropic spokesperson tells Fast Company. “We started…

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…

Throughout Kim Kardashian’s two-decade career in the public eye, the reality TV star’s entrepreneurial endeavors have included shapewear clothing brand Skims, makeup brand KKW Beauty, cofounding a private equity firm, and a super popular mobile game. But with her latest venture, Kardashian is stretching her mogul credentials into beverages, which has been familiar terrain for celebrities. She has become a “cofounder” of the energy drink company called Update. Though the startup has existed for four years—meaning Kardashian wasn’t a day-one founder—Update’s CEO and cofounder Daniel Solomons tells Fast Company that she has been a steady customer since 2023 and two years…

Last October, 35 major donor families, calling their collaborative The Audacious Project, gathered in California and committed $1.03 billion to more than a dozen nonprofits whose proposed projects span multiple years and take on major challenges. The collaborative, housed at TED, announced the winning nonprofits Tuesday, after spending more than a year selecting the groups and helping them sharpen pitches for larger projects than philanthropic funders typically support. It’s not until the donors meet in person that they decide how much to give to each group. Jennifer Loving, the CEO of the San Jose-based nonprofit Destination: Home, said it was “shock and awe,” when the…

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 “can…