Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

During his commencement address at Dartmouth College in 2024, Roger Federer cited a statistic that people rarely associated with his success. In the 1,526 singles matches he played in his career, while he won almost 80% of the time, he only won 54% of the points he played. He told the audience, “To succeed, you must become a master at overcoming hard moments. To me, that is the sign of a champion.” His speech attracted millions of views because it was unusual for a champion to reveal the wrinkles beneath such a successful career. But I suspect that was the point Roger was trying to make. No successful sporting star, politician, CEO, or community activist is immune to …

Election after election, Democratic strategist James Carville’s maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid!” has held true. But in coming political campaigns, candidates will encounter an especially virulent strain of economic anxiety—driven by artificial intelligence—that is proliferating among lower-wage, working Americans. AI’s advances are directly intersecting with Americans’ economic security. Candidates across parties, states, and offices will have to adapt to this new reality, quickly. New data show why. As AI reshapes the labor market and impacts individual economic prospects, these voters view it in increasingly dire terms. Merit America, the workforce developm…

In 2002, 45% of the world’s top 250 companies reported on sustainability. Today, 96% do. Sustainability metrics that once differentiated companies have become the new baseline. This doesn’t mean sustainability has stalled. Rather, it has matured. As geopolitical and regulatory risks continue progressing, what it means to be a sustainable business is evolving. For leaders guiding their companies into the future, sustainability must be more than an aspiration or a value. It’s a practical tool for operating stronger, more resilient businesses. The leaders best positioned for success are the ones integrating sustainability as a core business function, operating at the in…

Shares of Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) are getting battered this morning, one day after the company reported its Q1 2026 financial results—the first since the streaming giant abandoned its plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in February. In addition to its quarterly earnings, Netflix also announced a bombshell: its cofounder and current chairman, Reed Hastings, will be exiting the company this June. The departure of Hastings, who has been the de facto face of the company since its inception, has left many investors wondering about Netflix’s future. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Thursday, Netflix announced its Q1 2026 finan…

These days, many founders feel pressure to raise tremendous amounts of venture capital. But it wasn’t always like this. Most people are surprised to learn that four of the most valuable companies in the world barely raised any VC funding at all by today’s standards. Apple is believed to have raised less than $1 million before its IPO. Amazon raised about $8 million. Microsoft raised about $1 million. Google raised $25 million. Add it all up, and it’s less than $35 million in total VC funding. Granted, that’s about $74 million in today’s dollars, but it’s still a relatively small investment that led to four companies that are worth around $14 trillion today. Before…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home prices—as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index—will shift +0.0% between March 2026 and March 2027. That’s a mild downward revision from its 12-month forecast published last month (+0.5%). U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, are currently up +0.8% year-over-year. Zillow’s latest 12-month outlook (+0.0%) expects national home prices to remain near that subdued pace. As long as national home price growth remains below U.S. income …

Compliments come in many forms, and handling them well is an important part of building strong relationships and projecting a positive image. Sometimes a simple “Thank you” will do. But in other cases, praise may have a negative undertone, which you will want to respond to. Still others may be laudatory comments that you can build upon. Here’s how to respond to a broad range of compliments. 1. “I LIKE YOUR STYLE” The best and easiest answer to this compliment is “Thank you.” Whenever someone compliments you on your style (“I love your look” or “I love your purse/tie”), responding with “Thank you” shows grace and appreciation. Don’t undercut those complimen…

The United States’ advanced manufacturing future may have an unexpected limiting factor: a dire shortage of welders. While venture capital has placed big bets on a cutting-edge future of data centers, defense tech, and robotics, actually making the physical devices remains a challenge without finding the right talent to melt, fuse and repair metal. The American Welding Society projects that the country will need more than 320,000 new welding professionals by 2030, which means hiring about 80,000 new welders every year. Path Robotics believes the future of America’s manufacturing workforce will be augmented with torch-wielding robots. The Columbus, Ohio-based company,…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. AI flattery drives engagement—and distorts judgment Social networks like Facebook and TikTok use a range of techniques to keep us engaged and scrolling (and ultimately viewing ads). One of the most effective is tailoring content to our tastes and preferences, a strategy that has proved highly addictive. Last month, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta’s and Google’s use of infinite scrolling and algorithmic recommendations caused a young user to become addicted, and ordered the compa…

April is shaping up to be yet another brutal month for job cuts in the technology sector. But the announcements may not have the immediate effect that many companies are hoping for. Here’s the latest on the situation. Microsoft to offer buyouts to 7% of its US workforce While Microsoft hasn’t announced another round of layoffs, the Windows giant is planning job reductions of another kind. As Fast Company reported yesterday, the Redmond, Washington, company is expected to offer buyouts to 7% of its U.S. workforce by the end of June. A buyout is when a company offers an employee a financial incentive to resign. Buyout helps companies avoid being forced to ch…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. 2026 is already overflowing with new and improved sites and services. In today’s post I’m sharing five I’ve tested and found particularly useful. Kraa: Make Gorgeous Documents I love minimalist tools like the free Kraa, a wonderful new digital writing surface. I’ve started experimenting with creating quick, simple pages, which Kraa calls “leaves.” The example pages shared by Kraa’s founding team will give you a feel for it: A news story with an image gallery, pull quotes, and comments A blog post with images, quotes, an…

Passengers flying with low battery on their phones might be out of luck—at least if they are flying American Airlines. The country’s largest airline is implementing a new policy that will restrict how many portable chargers passengers may bring to the aircraft, citing potential safety concerns from lithium batteries. “We know our customers rely on portable chargers to keep devices powered throughout their journey,” the carrier told CBS. “To support safety on board while ensuring our customers continue to have the ability to charge when on the go, American is requiring customers to keep these devices easily accessible during flight.” The new policy goes into ef…

“When are you looking to retire?” It may seem like a harmless question for a boss to pose to an employee, but for older workers, it can come with a coded message—it’s time for you to end your career. “There could be insinuations, like, ‘What are you looking to do after this?’ Or, ‘how long do you anticipate being here?’” says New York-based employment lawyer Mahir Nasir, who’s had multiple older clients come to him with scenarios of getting nudged towards retirement. He’s seen this play out in various ways. For instance, say an employee’s been working at a bank for 20 years, during which they’ve established strong relationships in the specific territory they…

Every drink has its trade-offs: Plastic bottles are lightweight and leak-proof, but they come at a cost to the environment. Cans are convenient and recyclable, but are prone to spilling. A new can design marries the best of both. ReLid USA designed a fully recyclable aluminum can that’s resealable, thanks to a patented tab that opens and closes using a built-in sliding mechanism. You lift the tab end and slide it open to drink; when you want to reseal it, you slide the tab back to its original position. According to ReLid, the tabs work for at least 14 reseals. The design and development of the cans began in 2020 by Re-Lid Engineering AG, a Liechtenstein-based pac…

Growing up, graphic designer, editor, and author Chip Kidd was about as artsy as he could be in 1970s suburban Reading, Pennsylvania. “I glommed onto comic books very early on,” he says. “I loved to draw. I loved to write. I took up the drums and joined the marching band; all of this typical artsy-gay-kid-that-can’t-come-out stuff.” Still, he says, he knew he wasn’t the most talented in drawing. “There’s always that other kid that draws better than you who gets the gig to draw everything for the yearbook; It’s not tragic. It’s like, alright, I’ve got to figure something else out.” That something else, as it happens, worked out pretty well. Today, Kidd is app…

I mowed a lot of lawns and cleaned a lot of gutters as a kid, but my first consistent job was delivering newspapers. Today that sounds quaint, but it was a rite of passage back in the day. I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., raised primarily by my mom and in the most modest house of anyone I knew. She used to say we were never poor– we just didn’t have a lot of money. So at age 15 when I heard that a Washington Post delivery route paid $100/month, I jumped at the chance. This was the Post in its prime, not long after its reporting on the Watergate scandal made the paper famous. Every home in the area had a subscription. Politicians, …

Americans paid more for their groceries last month, but high gasoline prices resulting from the Iran war were only one of the reasons why. Prices for food eaten at home rose 2.9% in April compared to the same month a year earlier, according to government figures released Tuesday. That was the highest year-over-year inflation rate for the category since August 2023. Prices at restaurants, fast-food chains and other places to get prepared meals also increased, putting overall food prices up 3.2% in the last year, the Labor Department’s consumer price index showed. Fuel prices have soared while the Iran war prevents cargo ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a…

The Wendy’s Company could go private if billionaire Nelson Peltz has anything to say about it. The Trian Fund Management cofounder is looking for outside investors to help with a takeover of Wendy’s, the Financial Times reports. The news isn’t exactly surprising—in February, Trian used its regulatory filing to announce it might sell its stake or attempt a takeover of Wendy’s. Peltz and Trian currently own a 16% stake in Wendy’s, along with the Peltz family’s minority stake in a New York-area Wendy’s franchise owner. Peltz’s son, Bradley Peltz, and Trian cofounder and president Peter May are also on the board of Wendy’s. Fast Company reached out to Trian and W…

The closest thing to the idealized mall you recall either from personal memory or from cultural lore exists on a block in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, New York Magazine aptly dubbed “Tween Row.” On a recent spring afternoon, tween girls outfitted in cable knit cardigans, pink camis, hoodies, and lowrise jeans, chatted with each other (or their willing parents) as they popped into favorite shops: Brandy Melville, Edikted, Princess Polly. As of May 14, Tween Row will get a new tenant jockeying for their attention: Victoria’s Secret’s Pink. The store, the first designed by creative director Adam Selman, points to the retail experiences Gen Z and Gen Alph…

A decade of light-night history is closing out this week, with Stephen Colbert’s tenure as the host for “The Late Show” coming to an end on Thursday. Filmed in the Ed Sullivan Theater, The Late Show is CBS’s flagship late night talk show, first airing in 1993 with David Letterman hosting. Colbert first joined the show in 2015 following successful stints at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, with his political monologues during the first The President administration helping grow his popularity, particularly among more liberal viewers. His vocal critique of The President is also seen by many as precipitating the end of his hosting duties. CBS parent company P…

Google recently announced its partnership with Accenture, Deloitte, and McKinsey—backed by a $750 million fund—to speed up enterprise adoption of its tech stack. I believe that rather than accelerating the successful adoption of AI, this partnership will kneecap it—and break down trust in the wider consultancy industry in the process. Why? Because the success of both of these things is premised on trust. Enterprises, having come through a rough period of hype-driven spending on artificial intelligence, are now looking for AI investments they can trust to deliver results. In that search, they’re turning to their trusted consulting partners to support them through t…

Work is the closest thing most adults have to a full-time identity. Strip away sleep, and roughly half of our waking lives are spent working. If you take a conservative estimate—40 to 50 hours a week, across four to five decades—you end up with well over 80,000 hours on the job. And yet, the most salient feature of work is not how many hours we devote to it, but rather how we experience it, which varies wildly. For some, it resembles what the sociologist Max Weber once described as a “calling,” a source of meaning and even a kind of secular transcendence. For others, it’s closer to what Karl Marx labeled alienation: a draining, joyless routine that disconnects effort …

In boardrooms right now, speed is winning. Product cycles are compressing. Strategy decks are assembled in hours, not weeks. Cross-functional alignment—once the bottleneck of execution—is increasingly frictionless. This looks like progress. But a less visible shift is underway—one with direct consequences for innovation and competitive position. As AI removes coordination friction, it is also eroding cognitive friction: the productive tension through which original ideas emerge. Organizations that optimize too aggressively for speed and alignment risk becoming fast followers of yesterday’s logic rather than creators of what comes next. Why this Matters Now …

There’s a saying I’ve found myself sharing in coaching conversations with senior leaders lately. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. It’s my response to a significant pattern playing out right now across every sector I work in, and that’s constant busyness masquerading as leadership. We know from the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2025 that 80% of employees and leaders lack sufficient time or energy to do their work. Meetings are ad hoc and continue after hours. Some 52% of leaders say their work feels chaotic and fragmented. These leaders are facing the biggest shifts or inflection points their businesses have possibly ever experienced. For many, this is da…

Conversations about youth mental health and addiction are often treated as separate issues—different experts, different headlines, different policy conversations. But for today’s young people, these challenges are deeply intertwined. The same forces driving rising levels of anxiety, stress, and social comparison are also shaping their risk for substance use. In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that the rapid shift to phone-based childhood fundamentally changed the developmental environment for young people. Attention, reward, identity formation, and peer validation have been rewired by digital platforms engineered to maximize engageme…