Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Jimmy Fallon has done plenty of commercials and branded segments on his late-night show. Last year, he partnered with Beats by Dre for a signature set of headphones and put them head-to-head against Kim Kardashian’s design. Now, The Tonight Show host is taking his business interests to a new level by becoming a brand partner and investor in tortilla chips and salsa brand Xochitl. His first challenge is pretty basic: teach people how to pronounce the brand name. (It’s so-cheel.) “It’s like so-chill. Or so-cheel media. So-cheel network. So-cheel distortion,” says Fallon. “It gets easier the more you practice it. So that’s my first job. And then once I get that out …

If you have any vegetable products in your kitchen, you’ll want to be aware of the latest recall posted on the website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The recall involves numerous vegetable products and fears that they could be a breeding ground for Clostridium botulinum bacterium, which can produce the deadly botulinum toxin. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On March 3, the FDA posted the notice of a voluntary recall from AKT Trading Inc. of Torrance, California. The recall was initiated after the company discovered that some of the prepared vegetable products manufactured by Choshiya Honten Co., Ltd had the potential to harbor the Cl…

Energy drink company Celsius Holdings announced today that its subsidiary brand, Alani Nu, has notched more than $1 billion in sales over the past 52 weeks—representing a head-turning 72.4% year-over-year sales increase. The company’s impressive success demonstrates that the functional beverage craze may not be merely a passing fad for consumers. Celsius Holdings, which also owns the popular energy drink Celsius, officially acquired Alani Nu last month for $1.8 billion. The brand was originally founded by entrepreneur Katy Schneider and husband Haydn Schneider in 2018, and has since found a growing audience of Gen Z and millennial consumers looking for a low-calorie, …

Could it be any clearer that Sam Altman intends for OpenAI to be a sprawling consumer tech company, not just an AI lab? His public comments certainly suggest as much. Today, The Verge reported that OpenAI has been working on an internal prototype of a social network that would let people share their AI-generated images. OpenAI began as a fairly rudderless little AI lab back in 2015. “We literally had no idea we were ever going to become a company—like, the plan was to put out research papers,” Altman said in a recent Stratechery interview. “But there was no product, there was no plan for a product, there was no revenue, there was no business model, there were no plans…

Music is everywhere—playing in coffee shops, on hold lines, in Ubers, behind YouTube ads, and of course, in your earbuds while you work. It’s so constant, we often treat it like harmless background noise. But the brain doesn’t. Whether we realize it or not, music is processed across multiple brain regions tied to attention, memory, and emotion—meaning even passive listening can impact how we focus, feel, and make decisions. “Background music” is never truly in the background. It either supports or competes with your mental state. And that means we have a choice. In today’s fast-paced work culture, where multitasking is the norm and focus is scarce, how we use musi…

Nathan Fielder’s comedy can feel like watching a slow-motion plane crash. On semi-scripted shows such as Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, the comedian makes real people squirm with his bizarre suggestions, which he offers with rigor mortis-level deadpan. Some of it is best viewed through the slightly parted fingers of a face-obscuring hand. The second season of The Rehearsal, returning to HBO on April 20, is no exception. Like its predecessor, the show again uses elaborate role-play to game out difficult social scenarios, only this time the stakes are way higher. Season 2 focuses on the dynamic between copilots—and how it can lead to, or possibly prevent, plane crash…

Recently, after decades of paying high fees for the aging photo-sharing site Flickr, I finally moved all my images to Google Photos. It saved money and offered advanced features, like very accurate search results. But uploading years of pictures triggered the dreaded warning that I was approaching the storage limit of my Google account, which also holds Gmail, documents, spreadsheets, and other files. Cloud storage (be it Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox) is just one more in a growing list of subscriptions we all face, such as video and music streaming services, online magazines or newspapers, newsletters, Patreon sponsorship, and often just the right to keep using so…

Bui Van Phong faced a choice when the Vietnam War ended 50 years ago: stay in his small village, helping his parents carry on the family’s centuries-old tradition of making fish sauce, or join the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing his country for a better life. Phong chose to stay behind and nurtured a business making the beloved condiment, known as nuoc mam in Vietnam, that is now in its fourth generation with his son, Bui Van Phu, 41, at the helm. Fish sauce from the village has been recognized by Vietnam as an indelible part of the country’s heritage and the younger Bui is acutely aware of what that means. “It isn’t just the quality of fish sauce. It is a…

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology just invented a building material that could make construction projects stronger and more sustainable—and it’s based on the skeleton of an invertebrate that lives at the bottom of the ocean. The material, recently presented in the journal Composite Structures, was developed by RMIT University engineers. It’s inspired by the skeleton of the deep-sea sponge, whose lattice-like internal structures, which have been optimized over millions of years in the ocean, allow it to thrive thousands of feet underwater. The material’s unique structural properties make it simultaneously lightweight, strong, and extra resi…

Monday, April 21, 2025, is Easter Monday. It’s the final day of the long weekend of Easter celebrations that traditionally kicks off on Good Friday and is celebrated by millions of people across the world. But while Easter Monday may be a widely celebrated religious holiday, many institutions remain open on the day, even if they were closed on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. However, some institutions will be closed in observance of the day. Here’s what you need to know about what’s open and closed on Easter Monday 2025. Is Easter Monday a federal holiday? No. Easter Monday is not a federally recognized public holiday in the United States. This means that fe…

Over the course of my career as an executive at Google, Yahoo, and Meta, and now as founder and CEO of my own firm, I’ve hired thousands of people. Across all those roles, one thing has stayed consistent: the applications that stand out are the ones that go beyond simply checking the boxes. In today’s job market, with a challenging economy and the rise of AI, fewer jobs are getting posted, and more people are applying for every job. So it’s all the more important to take the steps that will make your application stand out. Last year, we opened a chief of staff role at my company. Within days, we received more than 800 applications. My team and I read through every one…

Centuries before encrypted texts and secure video conferencing, people relied on physical engineering to keep their written messages sturdy, sealed, and secure against eavesdroppers. In a new book, researchers Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith outline the “letterlocking” techniques used by figures from Queen Elizabeth I to poet Emily Dickinson to protect their paper letters—and the methods Dambrogio, Smith, and a growing number of other scholars have developed to reverse-engineer those historic documents, from algorithmic analysis of X-ray images to careful paper modeling. Dambrogio, a conservator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries, traces…

Kendrick Lamar isn’t just a Grammy-winning rapper—he’s also behind pgLang, a groundbreaking creative company shaping the future of media, music, and storytelling. But what exactly is pgLang? And how is it redefining the creative agency model? This is FC Explains, where Fast Company breaks down the most innovative companies of the year. View the full article

When Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton announced in December that he would be leaving the Mercedes team for Ferrari after 246 Grands Prix, 84 victories, and 6 drivers’ championships in 12 seasons, much of the focus was on Hamilton’s future plans. Just as compelling was the empty seat Hamilton was leaving at Mercedes. His departure triggered an intense internal process for the automaker—the search for a successor. Many of the discussions and debates that resulted in Mercedes choosing young Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli played out over messaging app WhatsApp. That process is now the subject of a new one-hour documentary on Netflix called The Seat, dro…

Trying to find authentic, consistent joy in the midst of a reality that is relentlessly delivering devastating blows feels akin to finding a needle in an impossibly large haystack. But according to Michelle Obama, it is possible—and the power lies in acknowledging the depth of despair and apathy while still finding reasons for hope. At SXSW this week, the former first lady and her older brother, Craig Robinson, who is executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, took the stage for a live session of their new podcast, IMO. The pair were joined by Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist, the Yale professor behind the school’s most popular class t…

Half a century after the Apollo astronauts left the last bootprints in lunar dust, the Moon has once again become a destination of fierce ambition and delicate engineering. This time, it’s not just superpowers racing to plant flags, but also private companies, multinational partnerships and robotic scouts aiming to unlock the Moon’s secrets and lay the groundwork for future human return. So far in 2025, lunar exploration has surged forward. Several notable missions have launched toward or landed on the Moon. Each has navigated the long journey through space and the even trickier descent to the Moon’s surface or into orbit with varying degrees of success. Together,…

The skies over New York City may soon get even more crowded as electric air taxi company Archer Aviation is planning to launch a network that connects the city’s major and regional airports with vertiports in Manhattan. The company, which is teaming up with United Airlines for the effort, announced the plans on Thursday. It hopes to connect Manhattan with six airports in the area—LaGuardia, JFK, Newark, and regional airports, Republic, Teterboro, and Westchester—with flights as short as five minutes. Archer’s “Midnight” aircraft could save passengers hours when trying to get between those airports or the three vertiports in Manhattan, according to the company. An…

Rich Diviney spent 21 years as a Navy SEAL, leading and operating on missions around the globe. In that time, he completed multiple combat deployments and had the honor of serving as the Commanding Officer of a SEAL Command. One of his most pivotal roles was running a specialized Selection and Assessment program for one of the most elite SEAL units. He also spearheaded the SEALs’ “Mind Gym” to train soldiers’ minds to perform better under stress. Today, he teaches optimal performance to thousands of business, athletic, and military leaders. What’s the big idea? What makes someone able to thrive in conditions of extreme stress, challenge, and uncertainty? Why do som…

Artificial intelligence: it’s not just for tech experts anymore. Instead, a heaping helping of free online resources has emerged. These classes are specifically designed to welcome beginners into the world of AI, even if they possess little or no prior technical background. I selected these Coursera courses for their beginner-friendly approach, high ratings, and comprehensive coverage of foundational concepts and key AI domains. AI For Everyone If you’re taking your very first steps into AI, “AI For Everyone” on Coursera is a great starting point. The course requires no prior experience in AI or programming, making it truly accessible to everyone, and it’s …

Zipline’s cofounder and CEO Keller Cliffton charts the company’s recent expansion from transporting blood for lifesaving transfusions in Rwanda to retail deliveries across eight countries—including high-profile partnerships with the likes of Walmart, Chipotle, Panera, and the Mayo Clinic. Zipline’s do-good health efforts and commercial deliveries are all part of Cliffton’s vision for a radical, new transportation network that meets consumers’ desire for accessibility and speed. 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 Res…

On April 14, 2025, Blue Origin launched six women—Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn and Lauren Sánchez—on a suborbital journey to the edge of space. The headlines called it a historic moment for women in space. But as a tourism educator, I paused—not because I questioned their experience, but because I questioned the language. Were they astronauts or space tourists? The distinction matters—not just for accuracy, but for understanding how experience, symbolism and motivation shape travel today. In tourism studies, my colleagues and I often ask what motivates travel and makes it a meaningful experience. These women crossed a boundary …

Nations are trying to reach an agreement to charge commercial vessels a fee for their emissions in what would effectively be the world’s first global carbon tax. The International Maritime Organization, which regulates international shipping, set a target for the sector to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by about 2050, and committed to ensuring that fuels with zero or near-zero emissions are used more widely. Its Marine Environment Protection Committee meets Monday through Friday in London. The committee, comprised of IMO member states, is working to approve proposed new global regulations to put a price on maritime greenhouse gas emissions and to set a ma…