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Today’s U.S. farmers and agricultural businesses are navigating a complex landscape, with unique near-term and long-term challenges that include intensified global competition, record trade deficits, rising costs, and more frequent and extreme weather events. These challenges have created economic instability across the entire agriculture sector with U.S. row crop farmer net income remaining persistently low for the third straight year. Estimates from the University of Illinois show that corn and soybean farmers could face a net loss of between $50 and $70 per acre this growing season. On top of this, global acreage has leveled off at 2.3 billion acres and the avera…

How many times have you been asked by someone at work whether you know about a particular project, are familiar with a specific concept, or know a person? Chances are, you have answered “yes” to that question a few times when you did not, in fact, know what they were talking about. There are several reasons why people will say the know things they don’t. For one thing, there is a desire in conversations to be cooperative with your partner. When they ask a question, the default cooperative answer is usually “yes,” so you often go with that default. On top of that, it you may feel deficient if you’re lacking knowledge or awareness that someone else has. Despite thes…

It’s telling that the plot premise of the first episode for the new Apple show The Studio—episode three drops today—revolves entirely around the notion of a Kool-Aid movie. Created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the entire show revolves around the elevation of Rogen’s character Matt Remick to studio head, a job he got only because he committed to getting into bed with the brand IP of a 98-year-old beverage. How the premiere episode subsequently ties in Martin Scorcese and a film about Jonestown to the Kool-Aid brand is both hilariously absurd and somehow absolutely believable. Speaking of believable, watch the scene in which filmmaker Nick Stoller (Forgetting …

Starbucks in South Korea has barred customers from using the names of South Korea’s six presidential candidates in their orders ahead of next month’s presidential election. A Starbucks Korea spokesperson told NBC News the policy was introduced “in order to prevent inappropriate and abusive use of the names.” The decision comes as South Koreans have increasingly used their Starbucks’ orders to make a political statement—ordering via app under presidential candidates’ names, and using phrases in support of or to oppose them, forcing baristas to call them out for pickup, per NBC. Some examples of those orders include: “arrest Yoon Suk Yeol” and “[opposition leader] …

Recently, Figma CEO Dylan Field assembled employees from throughout the company for a demo of a new-ish tool for generating, refining, and editing synthetic images and videos. Rather than being built around one-off prompts, it allowed users to create visual workflows for comparing and manipulating options created by different AI models. It also facilitated putting imagery through multiple rounds of polishing and remixing, adding a large dose of human taste and quality control to the process. According to Field, they were “mesmerized” by what they saw. “We had it scheduled for 20 minutes,” he remembers. “And 20 minutes came, and everyone’s like, ‘No, no, please keep go…

At Google, AI is reshaping employees’ titles and how they work. Last month, Google Cloud’s senior director and chief evangelist Richard Seroter told Fast Company that software engineers have turned into product engineers, or architects, as they move away from manual coding to directing teams of AI agents. It seems that AI also changed how Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, works, too. “I just think the CEO job is not that complicated,” Pichai said when asked how close AI is to replacing him as a CEO during a recent interview with The Verge. “There are aspects of it where I think [AI] is going to be very, very helpful in terms of decision-making.” The CEO added that AI …

Fast Company’s Creative Director Mike Schnaidt shares a first look at the magazine redesign. So if you are a typeface fanatic, you won’t want to miss this breakdown. View the full article

Since the term “design thinking” took off in 2000, the once boutique industry of design became a household term. Spurred on by the stratospheric growth of Apple after the iPhone launch in 2007, businesses invested untold sums purchasing design companies and building design proficiency in-house. The cherry on top arrived when McKinsey published a report in 2018 cementing the value of design in leading businesses cross-sector. And then? For the last several years, the design industry has quietly lost some of its luster. We’ve published multiple stories examining how the world of business broke up with design, while a generation of design leadership has grappled with the…

I’m a journalist, and the first 30 minutes of my day used to be spent mainlining newsfeeds. Now, more often than not, it’s dedicated to LinkedIn. Such is the natural course of technology; I seek an engaged audience for pieces built on considered thought. And I discovered the pseudo social network that I’d once found cringe is actually full of smart people—who crop up if I’m willing to spend a bit of extra time sharing my writing with them. We are now in the era of the AI-born LinkedIn expert. Their mastery is dropping a story into ChatGPT and asking for a perky LinkedIn post summarizing it. (LinkedIn even has its own AI writing assistant that encourages people to …

Basketball great LeBron James has become the first professional male athlete to have his likeness depicted in a Ken doll. Mattel Inc. unveiled the LeBron Ken doll on Wednesday to kick off the toy manufacturer’s “Kenbassador” series. Last year, nine female athlete Barbies, including tennis star Venus Williams, were introduced. “As a young kid, I was fortunate to have role models who not only inspired me but also showed me what’s possible through hard work and dedication,” James said. “Now, as an adult, I understand how vital it is for young people to have positive figures to look up to. That’s why partnering with Barbie to release the LeBron James Kenbassadors doll…

Over the last century of glorious, tragic, turbulent, and innovative human endeavour, the cover of the New Yorker magazine has used only the illustrated image to communicate talking points of American—and specifically New York City—life and culture. Beyond the masthead and issue date, no set typography has ever been allowed, maintaining a unique wordless space in magazine publishing where only an image connotes the idea. The absence of copy is arresting, the silent core of what the solely visual can communicate. Though notably, the majority of weekly sales are by subscription, not impulse buys. There are few of the New Yorker’s 1925 newsstand contemporaries left. …

Rather than clocking in at a Saturday job or selling old clothes for quick cash, Gen Z has another side hustle up their sleeve: selling their personal data. To take advantage of the nearly seven hours a day Gen Z spend on their phones, a new app called Verb.AI, launched by youth polling company Generation Lab, is now offering to pay young people for their scrolling time. By installing a tracker which monitors what they browse, buy, and stream, Verb creates a digital twin of each user that lives in a central database. From there, companies and businesses can query the data in a ChatGPT-like interface, and get a more accurate picture of consumer preferences than the…

Barclays Center in Brooklyn is abuzz as the Brooklyn Nets’s Jalen Wilson catches the ball, readies himself, and releases a contested three. The ball arcs high above the Knicks defender’s outstretched arms and swishes through the net. As the stadium erupts, Bryan Velazquez throws a fist in the air. Even though he is blind, he knows that his team just scored. He felt it on his fingertips. Velazquez, who works as an outreach coordinator at Omnium Circus, is using a new kind of haptic device that translates live game action into vibrations. Developed by Seattle-based startup OneCourt, the laptop-size device consists of a silicone relief map displaying a basketball court with …

The recent announcement by McKinsey & Company that it plans to cut roughly 10% of its workforce has sent ripples through the consulting world, reigniting debate about the future of the industry. This is not about one firm, one round of layoffs, or one business cycle. It signals an irreversible shift in how value is created in consulting. Having spent a significant part of my career at McKinsey, I saw it grow and flourish in an era when information was scarce. Even basic market intelligence required large teams working for months to gather and synthesize data. The digital age brought a data explosion and democratized access, and McKinsey adapted again by expanding …

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 …

“The apocalypse will start having vermouths and tapas,” a friend told me yesterday. Just a day before, the electricity shut down for all of Spain and Portugal, trapping thousands in subways, trains, and elevators for hours, forcing people to walk miles back to their homes, putting hospitals on backup power, and turning off traffic lights, phones, and credit card readers. It shut down everything. Officials are still calculating the economic costs, but it will be in the billions. As this was happening, I still saw the people drinking in bar terraces too, as I was walking up the street to pick up my son early from school. They were joking and making fun. Others were…

Want to use Discord from next month? You’ll have to hand over a photo of your ID or a scan of your face to verify you’re of age. It’s part of a new process introduced by the chat app aimed at ensuring no one underage is using the platform. All new and existing users, the company says, will be given a “teen-appropriate experience” by default, including content filtering and limited access to spaces that host adult content. To regain the experience they previously had, users will need to prove their age through one of several options, including video selfies or sharing a photo of an identity document. (Discord did not immediately respond to Fast Company’s request for co…

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. How do big companies evolve? How do they learn to do something new? These are questions that have taken up untold pages of books, magazines, and journal articles. As a venture capitalist (VC) in water, I’ve seen firsthand that most large companies in the sector struggle to effectively engage with external innovation, particularly with entrepreneurs developing technologies that could enhance thei…

A study has confirmed what we all suspected: “K” is officially the worst text you can send. It might look harmless enough, but this single letter has the power to shut down a conversation and leave the recipient spiraling. According to a study published in the Journal of Mobile Communication, “K” was ranked as the most negatively received response in digital conversations—worse than being left on read or even a passive-aggressive “sure.” The study found that the single-letter reply often signals emotional distance, passive-aggressiveness, or outright disinterest. Despite its brevity, “K” carries surprising emotional weight. Adding an extra letter—making it “kk”—so…

Over the last year, Gap has been popping up in an unexpected place for a heritage casual wear brand: the red carpet. Last July, Anne Hathaway wore a white shirt dress with matching bralette and Bulgari jewelry. In December, Demi Moore appeared in a black knit jersey dress and moto jacket. And just this past February, Timothée Chalamet showed up in a black satin workwear set. Zac Posen, Gap Inc.’s executive vice president and creative director, had designed all of them under the new label, GapStudio. And now, Gap is bringing GapStudio to the masses as it officially launches the new, higher-end Gap sub-brand, designed to elevate Gap’s perception, extend its reach to yo…

These days, you can’t swing a vintage pair of Doc Martens without hitting a new study or article describing why Gen X won’t live up to its retirement potential. Prudential warned us in 2023 that more than a third of Gen Xers had less than $10k in retirement savings. In 2024, Natixis Investments found that 48% of Gen Xers said it would take a miracle for them to retire securely (up from only 41% of Generation X counting on divine intervention as of 2021). Even the much-lauded great wealth transfer—the $124 trillion in assets that baby boomers will pass along to their heirs by the year 2048—will largely skip over Gen X. The wealth management firm Cerulli Associates …

This desert city gets less than 9 inches of rain a year and experienced the two hottest years in its recorded history in 2023 and 2024. But El Paso Water started planning decades ago for this hotter, drier climate. Last Thursday, the utility broke ground on its latest project to secure water for the city of 700,000: an advanced water purification facility that will deliver 10 million gallons per day of purified water from the city’s wastewater stream directly into its drinking water supply. El Paso’s Pure Water Center, which will go online by 2028, is the first direct-to-distribution reuse facility in the country. Treating wastewater for reuse as drinking water …

When Anirudh Rao was 4 years old and living in Nashville, his friend’s house was destroyed by a tornado. A year later—yes, as a kindergartner—Rao started sketching a potential solution for better tornado warnings. Now 12 years old and living in Colorado, Rao is pursuing a more advanced version of his concept: a network of drones that could theoretically sense infrasound, a wave phenomenon emitted before and during tornadoes with frequencies below the threshold of human hearing. “On the outskirts of the city, there’ll be a base station and a network of autonomous drones that fly in all directions,” says Rao. He envisions sensors detecting infrasound along with temp…