Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Finding an affordable place to live right now is a challenge—but it’s one that different groups of Americans are grappling with in a variety of ways. A new report from Realtor.com explores the distinct barriers to affordable housing that renters face in an economy that has many budgets stretched thin. In the analysis, which draws on 2024 surveys of the country’s 100 biggest metro areas, Realtor.com found three distinct groups emerge in the U.S. rental market data: young renters, family renters, and long-term renters. The one thing those groups share in common? Making decisions about where to live is an exercise in financial survival these days—not a lifestyle choice. …

Two decades after the original film, Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep are returning to the world of The Devil Wears Prada for its long-awaited sequel. The Devil Wears Prada 2, which also sees the return of stars Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, follows Hathaway as journalist Andy Sachs and Streep as Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of fictional fashion magazine Runway, crossing paths again 20 years after the events of the first movie. When Streep and Hathaway starred in the original Devil Wears Prada, it was an untested franchise that fashion houses hesitated to lend their clothes and brand names to. But the sequel is an entirely different story, with the fashion…

Most people don’t actually want to give up their phone. They just want it to stop tugging at them like a needy toddler. There’s a difference. One suggests extremism and poor reception. The other is far more sensible: learning how to live with technology without letting it quietly take charge of your attention, mood, and nervous system while pretending it’s being helpful. Because for most of us, the problem isn’t “addiction” in the dramatic sense. No one’s pawning the sofa for screen time. It’s accumulation. A thousand tiny habits layered together until checking becomes automatic and being offline feels faintly unsettling, like you’ve forgotten something important …

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 …

Tax refunds are typically a welcomed reprieve for millions of Americans facing challenging financial times. While many tax filers are set to receive higher refunds this year, around 1.4 million Americans who typically receive paper refund checks may have to wait longer for their refund this year because the federal government has moved to phase out the paper check option. The deadline to file your taxes is April 15. But some filers may have to wait six weeks to 10 weeks longer to see their refund checks if they didn’t provide direct deposit information on their returns this year. The IRS is sending notices to those taxpayers of the extended wait time and the actions t…

The historically long security lines currently snaking through U.S. airports are the painful result of extreme circumstances. Callouts, no-shows, and resignations by Transportation Security Administration workers fed up with a lack of pay during a partial government shutdown, combined with a bump in spring break travelers, have created unusually congested airport security checkpoints. For the architects and airport authorities that work together to design these heavily regulated spaces, it’s the kind of convergence you can’t exactly plan for. But, according to some of the designers of these spaces, airports are increasingly incorporating design features that can help …

At last, Seedance 2.0 is now available in the U.S. This extraordinary generative video AI model made by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance is capable of creating high-definition video so realistic that it’s shattering our visual truth into a billion pieces. But hey, who cares? If we are going down in flames as a species, let’s have fun putting dumb videos together. I’ll tell you how to do it in this short guide on how to make Seedance 2.0 videos. Time to roll up for a Magical Mystery Tour. Step up right this way! Signing up for Higgsfield To use Seedance 2.0, you first need to sign up for Higgsfield. This platform is essentially a unified digital wor…

Not long ago, fractional executives were an edge case—temporary operators invited to fill a short-term gap at the leadership table. But what started as a cost-savvy strategy for cash-conscious startups is now a mainstream, strategic move for companies and executives alike. Fractional leaders are self-employed individuals who are focused on solving specific challenges. They offer domain expertise and the ability to move quickly inside of shorter decision-making cycles. They’re perfect for businesses that need senior-level strategic thinking—but not necessarily for forty-plus hours a week. (It’s also worth distinguishing between interim and fractional leadership. I…

In 1990, my mother discovered a four-year-old startup called American Girl, and she liked what she saw: Books about different eras in American history, told through the eyes of a girl roughly her daughter’s age, with an 18-inch doll based on each character. It was more educational and wholesome than Barbie, so she was happy to buy them for me. My favorite character was Molly McIntire, a 9-year-old living through World War II in Illinois, whose father had been sent to the front lines and hadn’t written home in months. What I loved about the books was that they trusted children to process difficult things—slavery, mortality, war—that adults typically shielded us from. …

Issa Rae’s next project is coming to you vertically—and on TikTok. Hoorae Media, the star’s media production company, and TikTok announced on Wednesday a partnership to bring free exclusive micro-series content to TikTok and its PineDrama app. The collaboration launches later this April starting with Screen Time, produced by Hoorae Digital. This will be Hoorae’s first micro-drama series, with the media company co-developing a slate of additional micro-series with TikTok as part of the deal. The partnership marks Rae’s return to her digital roots, she said at TheWrap’s Creator x Hollywood Summit on Wednesday. Her first digital series, “The MisAdventures of …

At long last, design nerds everywhere can build an outfit that’s (almost) entirely composed of apparel inspired by the works of the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Since his passing in 1959, Wright’s portfolio of iconic buildings and homes has become the inspiration for homeware, building block sets for budding designers, and even a Hollywood documentary that’s currently underway. But he’s also become the muse for a more unexpected segment of the American population: Gen Z fashion heads. In 2023, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation expanded its collaboration repertoire to include a colorful sneaker partnership with New Balance and two T-shirts with Kith. Now…

“Same soulless vibes. Fewer fossil fuels.” So says the website for Mumumelon, a new project that made exact dupes of Lululemon staples like hoodies and yoga pants—but with renewable energy and a detailed plan to cut emissions. Inside a fake pop-up store in London in late March, a fake employee gave customers the pitch: “We stole Lululemon’s designs and made them less terrible for the environment.” “We’ve been campaigning on Lululemon for a few years now to push them to invest in the renewable energy transition and phase out fossil fuels from their supply chain,” says Ruth MacGilp, a climate campaigner at the advocacy group Action Speaks Louder. “We wanted t…

No matter how talented and ambitious you are, your ability to do well in your job and career, and especially enjoy your professional life, largely depends on where you work—in particular, the workplace culture. Defined broadly as the formal and informal rules that determine “how we do things around here,” workplace culture is a sort of human algorithm that governs the social dynamics in organizations, much like national culture does so for countries. Although there is no such thing as a universally good culture, and there are many different ways of creating positive working environments under which people thrive, there are rather consistent patterns when it comes to t…

Canva built its 265-million-person audience by being the easy-to-use, template-friendly design tool for everyone. And when generative AI arrived, it quickly integrated the technology. Now, Canva is amongst the leading spenders on compute from platforms like ChatGPT, it’s building its own models and acquiring its own AI companies, and it’s launching even more AI design features as part of its Canva AI 2.0 release that it’s announcing today. But the headline marks a deeper, philosophical shift within Canva: From being “a design platform with AI tools” to becoming an “AI platform with design tools.” Connecting with Canva’s CEO, Mel Perkins, I asked about the …

Like many, I’ve never met a chatbot I trust completely. Not only do they have a propensity to hallucinate by making up facts, but you can never be sure what their parent companies do with the information you provide. Most AI companies say they use your data to further train their models, but anonymize it first. However, you just have to take them at their word on this. Still, chatbots can be useful for summarizing and explaining complicated information, such as the kind contained in many bank statements, medical reports, and mortgage contracts. So if you do choose to upload sensitive documents like this, you should take steps to redact as much personal information…

You can feel everything—the frustration, irritation, and fear—and still choose your response from a place of calm. That’s what the Stoics (thinkers from ancient Greece and Rome) have taught me. Stoicism is staying calm when life isn’t, focusing on what you can control, and not wasting energy on what you can’t. I’ve been studying Stoic philosophers for years, and the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus has transformed my relationship with myself and how I work. I now practice the art of making the most of the gap between feeling and action. These four Stoic teachings can help you become your best self at work. 1. You control the response The many e…

On February 10, 1985, an imprisoned 66-year-old male serving a life sentence was offered a conditional release that would have reunited him with his wife and children, from whom he had been separated for 23 years. The prisoner turned down the offer. His name was Nelson Mandela. In a rejection publicly delivered to the South African government by his daughter at a rally in Soweto, Mandela refused the condition that he permanently walk away from the country’s anti-apartheid movement. “I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom,” he stated, unwilling to “sell the birthright of the people to be free.” Mandela would spend another five ye…

On a March afternoon, artificial intelligence detected something resembling smoke on a camera feed from Arizona’s Coconino National Forest. Human analysts verified it wasn’t a cloud or dust, then alerted the state’s forest service and largest electric utility. One of dozens of AI cameras installed for the utility Arizona Public Service had spotted early signs of what came to be known as the Diamond Fire. Firefighters raced to the scene and contained the blaze before it grew past 7 acres (2.8 hectares). As record-breaking heat and an abysmal snowpack raise concerns about severe wildfires, states across the fire-prone West are adding AI to their wildfire detection t…

The AI data center building boom isn’t fueling just water shortage concerns and GPU-maker Nvidia’s coffers. It is now also firmly making memory chip makers and their investors significantly richer. Yesterday, two of the largest memory makers, Micron Technology and Sandisk, saw their stock prices soar more than 11% in a single trading session. And those gains are small potatoes compared to their five-day increases. But why is this happening? Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Yesterday, all four of the Nasdaq’s major memory chip makers saw their stock prices jump. Those four memory makers include: Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) Sa…

Every day, I see another LinkedIn post celebrating a company that’s AI-powered. Meaning, they have added AI systems to their workflow, built co-work agents, and are using the technology to assist their team. And every day, I find myself thinking that they’ve missed the point entirely. The problem isn’t that these companies are using AI. It’s that they’re applying 2026 innovation to a 2016 mindset. They’re slapping a Band-Aid on an old wound instead of asking where the wound came from and if it will happen again (or worse). THE AI ASSIST Consider social media management. The traditional AI-powered approach gives teams an AI assistant to help write posts fas…

Pinterest’s newest ad starts with two young women doomscrolling in the dark. It’s a familiar nightly ritual for millions. As one of them slumps on the bed in a Reels-induced semicoma, the other gets an idea and opens . . . you guessed it, Pinterest. Suddenly, an energetic dance track fills the room, and the two are inspired to get their best ’fits together for a night out. It ends with the tagline, “The best thing you can find online is a reason to go offline.” When the business model for every other social platform revolves around your attention and time spent as their primary product for brand advertising dollars, this may feel like a counterintuitive strategy…

When Luis von Ahn, Duolingo’s CEO, sent an internal memo about AI last year, he didn’t expect it to go viral—or to ignite a firestorm about the future of work. Now he unpacks what he got right, what he got wrong, and what the backlash taught him about the real limitations of AI. It’s a candid reckoning with hype, growth, and the surprisingly complicated promise of technology in education. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company, Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time…

Given its profound implications for the workforce, the environment, and humankind as a whole, it’s no surprise that almost everyone has an opinion on artificial intelligence these days, including the pope. Less than a year after his election, Pope Leo XIV just released his first encyclical, a pastoral letter aimed to offer guidance. Titled Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, the 42,300-word letter offers a glimpse into the pope’s stance on AI, highlighting various concerns over the dangers of technology as well as a need for safeguards to be put in place. “Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and e…