Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The “American woman in Pakistan” now has a crypto coin. If you don’t know who that is, American Onijah Andrew Robinson recently went viral after claiming she flew to Pakistan to marry a 19-year-old she met online, only to be rejected. Instead of returning home, she has become somewhat of a celebrity in Pakistan, holding high-profile press conferences in Karachi where she demands money and declares her plans to “rebuild” the country. Thanks to TikTok, she has since gone international as that “American woman in Pakistan.” In an interview with the City 21 news channel, Robinson announced her entry into the crypto market last week. “I would like to say I am launching…

We are living through the most rapid and sweeping digitalization in history. The average adult touches their phone hundreds if not thousands of times a day. And yet, at this moment of peak digital saturation, a countermovement is taking shape in schools, governments, and research institutions. More and more people have reached the conclusion that for human beings to think well, learn deeply, and stay mentally healthy, we may need significantly less technology. Consider what’s happening in education. Australia passed legislation banning children under 16 from social media entirely. Sweden, having spent a decade rolling tablets into every classroom and replacing textboo…

The ongoing government shutdown is delaying the announcement of the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for tens of millions of beneficiaries. Originally scheduled for Wednesday, the 2024 Social Security COLA announcement will now be Oct. 24. It is timed to the September Consumer Price Index, which also has not yet been released. The agency adjusts its benefits every year based on inflation. The postponement of the announcement is the most recent example of how the government shutdown, entering its third week and with little progress made toward a resolution, has made it more difficult for people to plan out their finances. Projections by Senior Citizens L…

When the NFL and Apple Music announced Bad Bunny as the 2026 Super Bowl half-time show headliner, the choice surprised some. But to anyone tracking the data over the past few years, it was inevitable. In 2022, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti redefined the market, driving Latin music’s streaming growth to new heights. It later became the first Spanish-language album nominated for Grammy Album of the Year. The takeaway is simple: When you have accurate, real-time data, you don’t guess where culture is going, you know. That kind of foresight is exactly what industries need now, especially as AI accelerates change at a pace that demands evidence, not instinct. In real time, we…

Every year, the $463 billion global footwear industry make 20 billion pairs of shoes for just 8 billion humans. Since virtually none of them are recyclable, they will end up clogging up landfills around the world. For decades now, the fashion industry has been on a mission to make products recyclable. But shoes have been a much harder puzzle to crack than clothing. While garments are made from just a handful of materials, shoes are far more complex objects. A sneaker can be made of 50 different materials from foam insoles to leather exteriors to cotton laces, all glued together with adhesives. A handful of brands have prototyped one-off recyclable shoes, like Adidas’s …

The hardest part of teaching—or leading meetings—is sparking engagement. Getting people to engage enthusiastically with something new can be tough. It’s especially challenging if people are overwhelmed, super busy, or just tired. As we aim to stretch people’s thinking in a new direction, tools are just one part of the overall picture. But they can help. Last week I shared five tools for creating learning paths, interactive lessons, and new kinds of digital notebooks. Today’s follow-up recommendations focus on creative engagement. You don’t have to be a teacher to find these resources for opening up participation useful. If you lead a team, run meetings, or collaborate w…

There are many ways to measure the success of CompanyCam, a Lincoln, Nebraska-based startup unicorn that popularized a photo-focused construction tracking app that’s become popular within the roofing industry. But one of the clearest signs that its design, utility, and functionality are hitting the mark is the variety of users the app continues to attract. There are shipbuilders who use it to track how vessels are built and to certify the strength of a hull. Retail merchandisers love the ability to showcase product setups and track subcontractors. Property managers use it to oversee buildings. “We have some aestheticians—which I think our terms of service say th…

What’s behind a new wave of apps in the Apple App store? It’s probably two words: vibe coding. Apple’s App Store was flooded with 235,800 new apps in the first quarter of this year—an increase of 84% over the same time last year, according to new data published by The Information—after steady declines of 48% from 2016 to 2024. That builds on a trend from last year, in which developers created a whopping 600,000 new apps, leaving people wondering what is behind the big push. It turns out—perhaps not surprisingly, with artificial intelligence tools making it easier to create an app more quickly—that there’s more apps flooding into Apple’s App store. What’s t…

Apple Watch sales are enduring a years-long backslide. While Apple first launched its watch in 2015, sales didn’t spike until the pandemic, when consumers were highly focused on their health. But competitors quickly caught up, with fitness-focused companies like Garmin integrating more smart technology. Meanwhile, Apple stumbled in adding compelling new features—getting into some legal spats along the way. For the past three years, Apple Watch sales have declined year-over-year, according to research firm IDC. In 2022, Apple sold 43 million units; by 2024, that number dropped to 34 million. The Apple Watch also lost market share, falling from 29.6% to 22.5%, while…

In 1994, Bernard Tschumi, then Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture in New York, launched an experiment that banned paper and hand drawings, requiring architecture students to use computers instead. Together with the rise of computer-aided programs, Tschumi’s “Paperless Studio” accelerated the profession’s embrace of digital tools and reshaped how architects conceived ideas. Now that AI has entered the picture, you’d be forgiven for thinking the architectural sketch as we know it is dead. Quite the opposite. “We are in a world that is now completely dominated by digital tools, but something strange is happening: The hand sketch is back,” says And…

There only a few absolute truths in life. The two most recognizable are death, and unless you’re very rich or politically connected, taxes. There are, however, numerous others just a slight tier below; not the least of which is that nearly everyone has a story of themselves or someone close to them wanting to be an architect at some point in their lives. In our collective societal brains we envision these rarified individuals to be highly creative thinkers and mathematical whizzes who are constantly innovating. Those who study history might even think of the great masters of antiquity such as Imhotep, Vitruvius, Brunelleschi, or other unknown masters of ancient Rome, Per…

This week, the labor movement in architecture scored a win. Sage & Coombe Architects, a women-led firm based in New York City, unanimously approved a collective bargaining agreement. It’s the second American practice to ratify a contract, after Bernheimer Architecture in 2024. “This contract, the second in the industry, sets a standard for workers at Sage and Coombe and beyond,” Architectural Workers United (AWU), a group that has been helping firms organize, announced on April 1 via Instagram. The agreement’s details have yet to be made public. The milestone marks a significant move in the design industry’s unionizing efforts, especially after high-profile se…

We talk constantly about age—in politics, in leadership, in debates about retirement and the future of work. Yet we rarely stop to ask a simple question: What is age, exactly? Most of us rely on a single number, as if people were stamped with a vintage year like bottles of wine. But age is far from a fixed or universal metric. It is multidimensional, deeply unequal, and increasingly misleading when used as a shortcut for ability, potential, or readiness. As people live longer, change careers more often, and experience work in different conditions, understanding what age actually measures is becoming essential for companies trying to build fairer workplaces and adapt t…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. This year, I launched my first direct-to-consumer product: Scribbly, an AI-powered children’s book company that puts your kid right into the story. Until now, I’ve mostly built apps for businesses, and collecting user feedback for those projects has been straightforward and structured. The D2C world is different. Read the Google reviews of any hotel or restaurant, and you’ll get a feel for…

When influencer and entrepreneur Emma Chamberlain stepped out on the carpet at the 2026 Met Gala, it was in a swirl of acrylic ink and thick, glossy paint. She looked like a painting come to life—as if, with each next step, a prismatic smear of color might follow in her wake. Chamberlain was wearing a custom-made Mugler gown by creative director Miguel Castro Freitas. But what laid on top of the dress’ expert construction is what turned it into a head-turning spectacle: The entire piece was painstakingly handpainted, from hem to neckline, by artist Anna Deller-Yee. She relied entirely on real fine art supplies to achieve the final look, a process that took 40 hours of p…

If you were to join a team meeting at Parity on any given day, you might sense something unusual. One colleague may have just returned from a strength session. Another might be joining from an airport between competitions. Someone else might be analyzing sponsor data mere hours before competing in a world-class event. This is what it looks like to lead a company where a significant portion of the workforce comprises elite women athletes. And I believe it represents a powerful window into the future of work. At most companies, people point to a visionary founder or a breakthrough product as the thing that makes an organization stand out. At Parity, the differentiator i…

U.K. banks and government tech systems going down. University students in Australia struggling to complete their coursework. Homes across Europe losing access to their Ring doorbells. While you were sleeping, large parts of the Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based internet went offline around the world. According to the AWS outage monitor, the problem stemmed from a misconfiguration of Domain Name System (DNS) resolution within the company’s cloud infrastructure. The problem was remedied within three hours of being encountered—by people unable to log onto Roblox or search the web with Perplexity. But the outage highlights just how much the web’s day-to-day function…

If you only skim the headlines lately, you’d believe “conscious consumerism” is in full retreat, backpedaling to obscurity. ESG has become a political flashpoint. Corporate purpose feels diluted. DEI has been rebranded, softened, or even shelved altogether. Brands, wary of backlash, are pulling back from impact language. And yet, consumers didn’t get the memo. According to our own 2026 Conscious Consumer Report, conducted with our partners Ipsos and Engage for Good, 40% of North American purchases are now influenced by social and environmental considerations, which is up from 38% in last year’s report. That growth struck even during inflation, heightened price sen…

As backlash over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show rippled through conservative media, a notable group of right-leaning commentators broke with President Donald The President to defend the performance—in some cases walking back their own earlier criticism. Despite Bad Bunny’s message of love and unity, the performance has been placed squarely at the center of the culture war in recent weeks. After initially calling for viewers to turn off the halftime show and labeling Bad Bunny a “fake American citizen” who “publicly hates America,” influencer and boxer Jake Paul, 29, has now claimed amnesia over his viral rant. “Guys i love bad bunny idk what happene…

In recent weeks, a project called Jmail.world has quickly recreated the online life of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender with myriad ties to the rich and powerful. The effort started with a reproduction of the tranche of released emails in common Gmail style, searchable just like your own email app. Earlier this week, the team behind Jmail, software engineer Riley Walz and CEO of Kino Luke Igal, revealed JPhotos, which is inspired by Google Photos and is full of images that have been made public. The Jmail.world archive now includes sections imitating Google Drive, as well as “JFlights,” a section tracking Epstein’s flight history, “Jemini,…

Some days, starting feels effortless. A clear challenge or opportunity presents itself, an idea crystallizes, and then contracts into a single coherent thought. Today, frankly? That’s not happening. I’m staring at a pristine white canvas while the cursor mocks me. That uncomfortable space—the blinking cursor, the first messy draft, the false starts—isn’t a nuisance. It’s where creativity lives. Today, the temptation is to skip past all that. With AI, you don’t even need to know where you’re going. The bot can map it out, hand you something good enough. But what does good enough mean if you didn’t wrestle with the idea yourself? A recent MIT Media Lab study, Your Brain …

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. More than 600,000 podcasts released 27 million episodes in 2025. Keeping up with even a tiny fraction of those 70,000-plus daily releases is impossible. So I’ve been exploring new ways to keep up with audio: podcast summaries, audio digests, and cool new tools for finding and saving audio highlights. Podsnacks: Get podcast summaries by email Get podcast summaries delivered to your email with Podsnacks. Catch up on shows you don’t have time to listen to. The free digest includes AI-generated summaries drawn from 25 of the most popul…

For all the advances in data science, artificial intelligence, and behavioral assessments, one hiring ritual remains stubbornly unchanged: the job interview, where candidates are still subjected to awkward brainteasers about golf balls in airplanes, forced to disclose their “biggest weaknesses” to amateur psychologists, asked whether they would keep working after winning the lottery, or made to present to silent panels who seem less interested in evidence of competence than in observing how gracefully applicants endure a mildly humiliating social experiment. Despite decades of research showing that traditional interviews are only moderately reliable predictors of perform…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Books offer a compelling, slower alternative to the onslaught of negative news. With terrific new free tools, it’s increasingly easy to access print, digital, and audio books. Read on for my favorite book sites and apps. The heavy-hitters Libby lends out free e-books and audiobooks through libraries in 78 countries. It works for 90% of U.S. libraries. You can search for and check out nearly anything, instantly, for free, on any device. Audiobooks: Check out and listen to audiobooks at any speed. You may not need t…