Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The call comes on a Tuesday morning. Taiwan Strait tensions have escalated overnight. Markets are already moving. Your CFO is on one line, your General Counsel on another. By the time you’ve hung up, your head of communications is in the doorway. Most CEOs have planned and prepared for this moment. In my work running a global communications firm, I’ve been part of the war-gaming sessions. But I’d contend that most leaders aren’t ready for it. Not because they haven’t been paying attention to geopolitics—they have. But because their teams have been assessing the Taiwan risk through a single lens: geoeconomic exposure. The financial model has been stress-tested. The…

Tax Day isn’t usually cause for celebration. The annual due date for filing taxes usually comes with headache-inducing financial stress and mountains of difficult-to-decipher paperwork. But this year, Tax Day apparently came with an unexpected upside for some New Yorkers, thanks to an announcement from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,” Mamdani said in a video posted to social media on April 15. “Today, we’re taxing the rich.” Mamdani went on to say he had secured a new pied-á-terre tax, or second home tax, a first for the state of New York. The tax would incur an annual fee on residential properties wor…

Errands, Target runs, tennis games, and even flying to Europe—these are just some of the things employees have done while taking “soft off days.” The idea of taking soft off days, in which you use a work day to do just about anything else, has become a phenomenon. Videos across social media instruct employees on the best way to take a soft day while assuaging any guilt. While employers might see it as wasting company time, many people believe soft off days are harmless—even needed. So-called “time theft,” the practice of running errands or doing personal matters on the clock, has become widely pervasive since the pandemic normalized remote work. From consciously…

Last year at SXSW, I got on stage with a colleague from Tangent, a London-based digital design agency, to ask a simple question: What if every time you checked your phone, a visible puff of smoke rose into the air? While we can’t immediately see the environmental impact of our digital lives, it is very real. Over the past two decades, the digital ecosystem has become society’s invisible infrastructure. More than 60% of the global population is now online. Each user generates 229 kilograms of carbon dioxide, amounting to almost 4% of average per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Most of us don’t know or even consider the hidden cost of our increasingly digitized world. …

Technology tycoons Elon Musk and Sam Altman are poised to face off in a high-stakes trial revolving around the alleged betrayal, deceit and unbridled ambition that blurred the bickering billionaires’ once-shared vision for the development of artificial intelligence. The trial, which is scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection, centers on the 2015 birth of ChatGPT maker OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk before evolving into a capitalistic venture now valued at $852 billion. The trial’s outcome could sway the balance of power in AI — breakthrough technology that is increasingly being feared as a potential job killer and an existential threat to h…

When you interact with a chatbot, there’s a good chance that everything you say, and every prompt you give, isn’t just used to generate replies to your queries. Nearly every chatbot company on the planet also uses the information you provide to train its AI models. This can leave your privacy—and even your employer’s confidential information—exposed. But you can mitigate these privacy risks by telling chatbots not to use your data for training. Here’s how. What is AI chatbot training? In order for a chatbot to provide knowledgeable and (hopefully) accurate answers, the underlying large language model (LLM) that powers it needs to assimilate a massive amount of info…

Coinbase is cutting around 700 roles—or 14% of its workforce—because of AI, according to CEO Brian Armstrong. On Tuesday, Armstrong made a post on X that included the full email he sent to employees regarding the layoffs. “We’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth,” Armstrong wrote. Coinbase will not only cut costs and reduce head count but also “fundamentally” change how the company operates, he said. For one, Armstrong said the company would flatten its structure to a maximum of five layers between executives and employees. The billio…

In November 2025, nearly 300 designers began work on their submissions for the competition of a lifetime: the opportunity to design a bathroom for one of the most famous architects of all time. The competition called on designers to imagine a new public restroom for the Gropius House, the family home of the late German architect Walter Gropius. Gropius founded the famed art and design school the Bauhaus (1919–1933), which defined an entire era of modernist design through its innovative approach to technology and almost reverent obsession with materials. His self-designed home is now preserved and made open to the public by Historic New England, a non-profit that …

The next time you take a call on your iPhone, the other person could be recording every word you say, and you may not even realize it. Ever since iOS 18.1, Apple has offered a call recording feature on its smartphones. The feature has legitimate uses, and because of its embedded audio notifications, Apple would presumably argue that it meets both the “single party” and “all party” consent requirements in various states. But the problem with Apple’s implementation is that the company has done a poorer job than it could have in letting users know precisely when their calls are being recorded—and has given them even less control over putting a stop to it. Apple makes…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicators—including home price changes, inventory levels, and days on the market—to generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or higher = strong seller’s market …

Maury Povich’s daytime TV show Maury—a parade of salacious domestic disputes and paternity tests—ran for a whopping 31 seasons until his 2022 retirement. Which is why it was unexpected that 87-year-old Povich found himself at the SoHo headquarters of AI-enhanced cloud services company Air on May 5, mingling with a crowd 20- and 30-somethings, his slacks, button down, and knit half-zip sweater standing out easily amid the maxi skirts and stick-and-poke tattoos. He was there as part of Air’s “Cinco de Maury” event, a launch party and screening of the company’s new campaign, On Air with Maury Povich. The 12-minute video brought the host out of retirement (temporarily) t…

A few weeks ago, I stood on a stage at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), looking out at the Class of 2026. The air was thick with a very modern kind of tension. While previous generations might have experienced the standard “graduation jitters,” what I saw was something far more intense: a profound sense of confusion and chaos. I was there to help them decode it. For the past four years, these students have been caught in a crossfire of conflicting narratives. On one side is the traditional establishment promising that a degree is a golden ticket to a linear, predictable path. On the other is a loud, disruptive chorus telling them that in the age of Ar…

A few weeks ago, a Rhode billboard appeared on the road along the way to Coachella. Powder pink background, hot pink type, and multicolored daisies. It didn’t look like Rhode’s typical visual brand, which is defined by subtle Swiss minimalism, conveyed in cool grays, white, and boxy sans serifs. It signaled something new. “See you down the Rhode,” it said. What was at the other end? The billboard was part of a larger product launch teed up on social the week before: “spotwear” pimple patches and banana peel eye patches in partnership with Rhode founder Hailey Bieber’s husband, Justin Bieber, who performed at the festival (shout-out, Beliebers and lonely girls). Th…

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…

One of the more annoying things that could happen is that you spend $3,300 on a brand-new display, only to find out that, just after you’ve passed the return window, the price has dropped by $400. Nothing else has changed; just the price gets cheaper after you’ve already paid for it and can no longer return it to the store. That’s what happened for customers who bought Apple’s brand-new Studio Display XDR, the company’s high-end mini-LED monitor targeted at professionals with a few grand to spend on a monitor. The company offered the Studio Display XDR with two stand options—a VESA mount adapter and what Apple calls a “tilt-and-height-adjustable stand.” Both versions …

It’s graduation season, and that means commencement speakers are offering up their best advice for how to live a happy, healthy, and successful life. But instead of being met with welcoming smiles and engaged head nods, one topic is being met with anger and boos—AI. In a series of recent incidents, listeners have balked as commencement speakers have either told them to embrace artificial intelligence, or have otherwise mentioned the ever-expanding technology in a speech. It happened when Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances for the Orlando-based company Tavistock, began telling the graduating class at the University of Central Florida’s Col…