Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

It’s only 9 a.m. and Michelle, a middle manager in a government organization, just received her eighth panicked email from a team member asking about the impending layoffs that were announced yesterday afternoon. People are clearly worried, and Michelle is beginning to feel overwhelmed. She’s in an unfortunate, yet common, position. She wants to keep people calm and focused, but information comes in drips from leaders above her. The culture she worked so hard to build is becoming flooded with uncertainty. People are scared. What can Michelle do to minimize feelings of threat and help the team keep running smoothly? Layoffs aren’t the only context in which uncerta…

Fewer than 1% of NCAA Tournament brackets were still perfect after Thursday’s 16-game slate, according to several services where fans attempt the all-but impossible task of predicting every March Madness game correctly — or, barring that, win their office pools. ESPN’s tracker listed 25,802 perfect brackets remaining out of more than 24 million filled out on its site following the final game of the day, Texas Tech’s win over UNC-Wilmington. The NCAA said 0.0938% of more than 34 million brackets were still perfect. The numbers were similar at CBS Sports, where 0.09% of brackets were unblemished following the first day of action. Yahoo Sports said 99.9% of i…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices have risen by 2.1% year-over-year from February 2024 to February 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. That’s a deceleration from the 4.6% year-over-year rate last spring. However, not every housing market is seeing rising home prices. Among the 300 largest metro area housing markets, 42 markets are seeing falling home prices on a year-over-year basis. That’s up from last month when just 31 of the nation’s 300 largest metro area housing markets had falling year-over-year home prices. While home prices continue to r…

ADHD content has been trending on TikTok for a while. Unsurprisingly, much of it has been found to be misleading. A study published last week in the journal PLOS One found that fewer than half of the claims in popular ADHD-related TikTok videos aligned with clinical diagnostic criteria or professional treatment guidelines. Researchers also warned that the more ADHD content young adults consume on TikTok, the more likely they are to overestimate both how common and how severe ADHD symptoms are in the general population. Even those with an ADHD diagnosis struggled to separate reliable information from misinformation. The sheer amount of misinformation becomes …

When we think of summer bags, we tend to think of big totes we can carry to the beach or a farmers market. But this year, bag designers are reimagining the summer staple as a piece of art you can carry around with you. They’re taking the seasonal materials we’re used to seeing—raffia, straw, wicker—and transforming them into beautiful, interesting shapes. They’re meant to do more than hold your phone; they’re designed to give you pleasure and start conversations. Here are our favorite sculptural bags of the season. Camilla Clutch Cult Gaia, $298 Cult Gaia first made a name for itself with a half-moon-shaped bamboo Ark bag, which went viral. Since then,…

AI is poised to reshape businesses, but too many executives are oversimplifying its potential, focusing on automation rather than collaboration. As someone who’s spent my career studying the future of work, I’m excited about AI’s breakthrough potential—but cautious of the narratives being rushed into the spotlight. Recently, I reviewed Anthropic’s study, Which Economic Tasks Are Performed with AI? Evidence from Millions of Claude Conversations, and found that AI’s real impact isn’t as clear-cut as many believe. While AI is transforming business, leaders are overlooking key realities about AI’s impact and its real-world applications. Here’s what many are still getting…

Americans often receive a lot of grief for being less internationally traveled than citizens of other countries. But in recent years, more Americans are traveling abroad than ever before. Numbers compiled by the digital magazine Travel and Tour World (TTW) show that in March 2025, 6.56 million Americans flew outside of the country. That’s 1.6% more than the same period a year earlier, and more than 22% more than in 2019—the year before the pandemic caused international travel to grind to a halt. TTW cites “pent-up demand, strong personal savings among affluent demographics, and a growing appetite for immersive cultural experiences” as the main reasons more Americans a…

Have you ever noticed that the qualities we sometimes see as weaknesses can actually be our secret strengths? Think about the quiet, shy colleagues who excel at listening or those who seem a bit lazy but always find the most efficient way to get things done. Even self-doubt—which studies show 70% of professionals experience at some point in their careers—can lead us to make more thoughtful decisions and spark creative breakthroughs. These qualities, sometimes perceived as weaknesses, can be the traits that shape effective leaders. As the leader of a bootstrapped company for nearly two decades, I’ve faced my fair share of uncertainty. Between economic turbulence a…

It is 6 p.m. You have logged off from work and are unwinding with a glass of wine. You turn on the TV, but instead of Netflix, you click on a new app called 6pm in Paris, and spend the next 30 minutes learning French. Not on your desk. Not on your phone. But on your couch, watching a short movie. This is the vision behind a new language learning platform that recently launched. 6pm in Paris merges Netflix’s addictive streaming format with the short lessons style of Masterclass. The concept is simple yet effective: Each week, you pick a short film from a curated collection of French licensed movies. Then, you dive into the story and language through an informal video l…

If you’re planning to see the new Minecraft movie and haven’t heard of the viral “chicken jockey” trend wreaking havoc in theaters across the country, read on. The trend gets its name from the block-shaped zombies in the video game Minecraft that occasionally ride chickens—thereby becoming chicken jockeys. In a scene from the new film A Minecraft Movie, based on the popular game, Jack Black’s character Steve at one point screams out, “Chicken jockey!” The phrase has since become a battle cry for teen-filled audiences to yell at the top of their lungs, flash phone lights, and launch popcorn and drinks at the screen. In one video, a moviegoer perched on another’s sh…

A new technology can pinpoint victims of intimate partner violence four years earlier than other detection systems and with 80% accuracy. The Automated Intimate Partner Violence Risk Support System (AIRS) utilizes clinical history and radiologic data to pinpoint patients seen in the emergency room who may be at a risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Developed over the past five years, AIRS has been rolled out to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Emergency Rooms in Boston as well as surrounding primary care sites. Currently, the tool has been validated at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center and is being evaluated by the Alameda Health Syste…

Superman was born Kryptonian, raised Methodist, and sketched into existence by two Jewish teens in 1930s Cleveland. Faith and morality are his DNA. There are no overt religious references in Superman comics. But over eight decades, he’s been viewed as a divine entity, a savior figure—his sacrifice Christlike, his will to lead as strong as Moses parting the Red Sea, and his compassion akin to a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who guides Buddhists on the spiritual path. While scholars, comic book writers, and fans alike are struck by the religious undertones in Superman comics, they say what separates Superman from the ever-growing pack of superheroes is his singu…

Venice is charging day-trippers to the famed canal city an arrivals tax for the second year starting Friday, a measure aimed at combating the kind of overtourism that put the city’s UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status at risk. A UNESCO body decided against putting Venice on its list of cultural heritage sites deemed in danger after the tax was announced. But opponents of the day-tripper fee say it has done nothing to discourage tourists from visiting Venice even on high-traffic days. Here’s a look at Venice’s battle with overtourism by the numbers: 5–10 euros (about $6–$11) The fee charged to visitors who are not overnighting in Venice to enter its histor…

UnitedHealth Group spent nearly $1.7 million on security for its top executives in 2024, the healthcare conglomerate disclosed on Monday, months after the fatal shooting of senior executive Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel in December. The company also paid $207,931 on behalf of certain family members of the executives to provide them with personal and home security services, it said. The security spending disclosures, absent from UnitedHealth’s previous annual filings, underscore how the December shooting is prompting companies to reassess the risk of targeted violence against top management. U.S. drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly also in…

Measles cases continue to rise in the United States nearly two and a half decades after the virus had been declared eliminated in the country. Currently, the epicenter of the U.S. measles outbreak is in Texas, where one child has now died from the disease. Here’s what to know about the outbreak, how far it has spread, and the symptoms to watch out for. Measles U.S. outbreak map As of the time of this writing, there are more than 130 cases of measles across two states alone, reports Reuters. Those states are Texas and New Mexico. However, while Texas has garnered the headlines due to it having the majority of cases, the disease has been found in other U.S. states si…

In this hectic modern world, it’s natural to feel like your ducks aren’t in a row, but every so often the planets seem to align. This week, Mercury is joining Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune for a seven-planet parade (although not all of them will be visible to the naked eye). Here’s what that all means and how best to see it. How exactly do planets align? According to NASA, the term planetary parade isn’t really a technical term in astronomy, but it’s cute and paints a fun picture. Additionally, planetary alignment has a few different meanings; it can refer to when the planets line up with each other or when they line up with the moon or stars. F…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. The 2025 spring selling season isn’t shaping up the way publicly traded homebuilders had hoped. KB Home, a giant homebuilder, told investors on March 24th that the traditionally strong spring buying window was off to a weaker-than-anticipated start. Just days earlier, Lennar, the nation’s second-largest builder, had offered a similar readout on its March 21 earnings call. Now, D.R. Horton—the largest homebuilder in the U.S. and No. 120 on the Fortune 500—is adding its voice to the chorus. “This year’s spring selling season started slower than exp…

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. There’s no question that artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. However, as the initial excitement over the technology fades, we find ourselves in a new phase of thoughtful exploration. There are many innovative AI startups that have captured the world’s attention; however, many organizations still struggle to develop a clear roadmap to take full advantage of this transformative t…

Your flights will probably get noticeably bumpier over the next few years, according to new research on how climate change is affecting turbulence. Paul Williams is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England who has researched turbulence for more than a decade. In a presentation at the European Geosciences Union conference last week, Williams shared his research showing how global warming is likely leading to an uptick in something called “clear-air turbulence,” or turbulence that can’t be seen on an airplane monitor or from the cockpit. Based on Williams’s research, severe clear-air turbulence has increased by 55% since the 1970s…

Around the U.S., about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste is stored at more than 100 sites in 39 states, in a range of different structures and containers. For decades, the nation has been trying to send it all to one secure location. A 1987 federal law named Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, as a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste—but political and legal challenges led to construction delays. Work on the site had barely started before Congress ended the project’s funding altogether in 2011. The 94 nuclear reactors currently operating at 54 power plants continue to generate more radioactive waste. Public and commercial interest in nuclear power is rising because of …

People with a healthy limit on their screen time probably haven’t noticed—but there’s been a meme shortage this March. On TikTok, some have declared a full-blown “Meme Drought,” dubbing it the “Great Meme Depression of 2025.” The panic began on March 10, when user @goofangel posted a video titled “TikTok Great Depression March 2025.” He says, “Nine days into March and we haven’t had a single original meme.” The post quickly racked up nearly a million views and clearly struck a chord, if the comments are any indication. “October to February was an insane run,” one commenter reminisced, recalling a time when everyone was “holding space” for “Defying Gravity”…

I was watching comedian and political commentator Bill Maher talk about Reverse Improvement (RI), and it struck me how profoundly relevant this idea is to the leadership challenges highlighted in this article and the themes we’ve explored in my upcoming book, TRANSCEND: Unlocking Humanity in the Age of AI. Reverse Improvement, as Maher describes it, occurs when technological progress unintentionally diminishes core human skills and values. Maher’s idea of RI isn’t just about clunky tech updates or frustrating software upgrades—it’s about a much larger, more insidious phenomenon: how technological “advancements” can subtly, and sometimes drastically, lead to the erosion of…