Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

As we scroll through our feeds, it’s not unusual to stumble upon AI-generated slop—the kind of empty, nonsensical content that’s unmistakably artificial. You click on one, and before you know it, your feed’s flooded with more of the same. It’s left users craving the authenticity they once savored—a pervasive frustration spreading across social media Pinterest has not been immune to the phenomenon. Described by Futurism as “strangled by AI slop,” the platform has been “engulfed in a torrent of uncanny AI-generated content, drowning out the human-made inspiration that once thrived there.” Amid a surge of complaints, the platform has rolled out new generative AI cont…

Skyscanner, a leading global travel booking site, released its 2026 Travel Trends report on Thursday. And the forecast for the year ahead includes trips down the supermarket aisle, literary-inspired itineraries, in-flight beauty routines, and some surprising trending destinations (looking at you, New Haven). If travel in 2025 was about collective experiences, the new travel mindset for 2026 is clear—it’s no longer solely about community connections, it’s about prioritizing travelers’ individual interests and passions. The report also looked at the role AI is likely to play in travel search and planning in 2026: 54% of travelers said they felt confident using AI to…

When entrepreneurs list their principal reasons for launching a company, small business owners often cite being their own boss, flexibility in setting their working hours, and turning a commercial concept into reality as their main motivations. Now, new data identifies another incentive that may convince future entrepreneurs to take the plunge. According to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the average self-employed person earns significantly more income during their career than people who work for someone else. However, the report’s findings also note the widely varying levels of income among small business owners, and the length of time u…

It’s not always fun to look your finances in the eye, but it can unlock a rewarding path forward. These five books make tackling personal finance approachable, clear, and—dare we say it—an enjoyable journey. Rule Breaker Investing: How to Pick the Best Stocks of the Future and Build Lasting Wealth By David Gardner The real secret to building lasting wealth on the stock market is breaking the old investing rules. In Rule Breaker Investing, Motley Fool cofounder David Gardner teaches how to craft a purpose-driven portfolio, manage investments, and even master time management for a smarter, happier, richer investment journey. Listen to our Book Bite summary, r…

Every January, millions of people set ambitious New Year’s resolutions. They do this with genuine enthusiasm, hoping to transform their lives. Yet research indicates that by January 8th, just one week into the year, a quarter of these resolutions have already failed. By the end of the year, most individuals return to their familiar patterns, and the promises they made to themselves are often abandoned. My life doesn’t permit me the luxury of being part of that statistic. I operate at the intersection of three distinct and demanding identities: a PhD scholar at Oxford researching outer space financing, the founder of a career advancement platform called Network Capital…

A typical three-bedroom house in Austin, Texas, can sometimes rack up monthly utility bills of $200 or $300 in the summer. But in new homes under construction in a nearby suburb, residents will owe little beyond the basic utility connection fee. The homes, built by Habitat for Humanity, tap into a shared geothermal system in a fully geothermal neighborhood. Heat pumps in each house connect to pipes that loop hundreds of feet underground, making use of the earth’s steady temperature for heating and cooling. The houses are also built to use as little energy as possible, with features like deep eaves that shade the interior and reduce the need for air-conditioning. Solar…

As I uploaded a 1940s photo of my grandpa Max and hit a few buttons in Google’s Veo 3 video generator, I saw a familiar family photo transform from black and white to color. Then, my grandpa stepped out of the photo and walked confidently toward the camera, his army uniform perfectly pressed as his arms swung at the sides of his lanky frame. This is the kind of thing AI lets you do now—virtually bring back the dead. As a hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch this weekend highlighted, though, just because we can reanimate our departed loved ones, that doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Grilling the dog The sketch, which The Atlantic has alrea…

This year delivered whiplash: geopolitics, tariffs, and technology all shifting at once. And heading into 2026, the disruption isn’t easing up. Bob Safian distills hard-won lessons from his Rapid Response podcast this year on how to lead when the ground won’t stop moving—featuring standout moments from Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Runway’s Cristóbal Valenzuela, Meta’s Clara Shih, LinkedIn’s Aneesh Raman, Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson, and the NWSL’s Jessica Berman, with practical takeaways for turning uncertainty into advantage. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. F…

For its first brand refresh in 13 years, Domino’s updated its color palette, packaging, and font to look more engaging. When it came to making new tagline, though, the Michigan-based pizza chain is trying something unique: they just added more Ms to their wordmark. Mmm. Domino’s announced a rebrand Wednesday that includes brighter reds and blues and a new font called Domino’s Sans that was designed to “be thicker and doughier” and proves that using sans serifs doesn’t have to be bland. Team members will get new branded gear to wear in the kitchen and out delivering orders, and there’s a reimagined suite of new pizza boxes, including one black-and-metallic-gold box des…

A new kind of warehouse has just popped up, nestled in seven acres of forest in northern Indiana. It’s the latest delivery station for Amazon, one of hundreds of logistics centers around the world that handle the package sorting and van loading for last-mile delivery. But while this delivery center will be doing all that standard work, it’s also acting as a living laboratory to test out what the future of Amazon’s delivery stations—and maybe the future of warehouses writ large—will look like. The delivery center, known as DII5 and located in the town of Elkhart, has been designed to test and evaluate more than 40 sustainability initiatives that Amazon hopes to apply t…

“How did you get to where you are in your career?” My interest in this question dates back 45 years to when I was an MBA student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Whenever corporate executives were guest speakers at our classes, I would listen intently as they described what contributed to their career advancement. In the same vein, as I speak with leaders today, I always make a point of asking them what they consider to be the main drivers of their success. Over more than four decades, the two most common responses are: (1) “I worked hard” and (2) “I have several unique skill sets.” As I look back on my corporate career, including as chai…

Formula 1 announced a five-year deal Friday with Apple, which will be the global motorsports series’ U.S. broadcast partner beginning next season. ESPN had been the broadcast partner since 2018 and through the explosion of popularity of F1 in the United States, but notified the series at the start of this year it would not be extending its deal. At the same time, Apple was working with the series on “F1 The Movie,” an original film released internationally in cinemas and IMAX in June. It will make its global streaming debut on Apple TV in December, has already grossed nearly $630 million globally as both the most successful sports movie in history and most lucrati…

After a decade in development, legendary documentarian Ken Burns is set to release his long-awaited series, The American Revolution. In the lead up to the premiere, Burns shares key lessons he gleaned from the founding of the United States—and the parallels between the revolutionary era and today. He also reflects on his admiration for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, and the obstacles he faces in his ongoing quest for truth. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top busine…

As any Studio Ghibli fan will testify, an afternoon spent binging Hayao Miyazaki classics is guaranteed to leave a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Now, this feeling is backed by science. A study published by JMIR Serious Games, a peer reviewed journal focused on how gaming is connected to education, health, and social change, looked into how the brain responds to both watching films produced by the Japanese animation studio and playing the open-world game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The researchers gathered 518 postgraduate students and divided them into four groups. Some played Breath of the Wild and some watched Studio Ghibli films like My Neighbor Totor…

A new study out Wednesday in the journal Nature from the University of California, Berkeley found that women are systematically presented as younger than men online and by artificial intelligence—based on an analysis of 1.4 million online images and videos, plus nine large language models trained on billions of words. Researchers looked at content from Google, Wikipedia, IMDb, Flickr, and YouTube, and major large language models including GPT2, and found women consistently appeared younger than men across 3,495 occupational and social categories. (Note: It’s possible that filters on videos and women’s makeup may be adding to this age-related gender bias in visual cont…

Gap just released an animated ad to promote its collection with designer Sandy Liang, and we need it to become its own TV show ASAP. Created by animator Annie Choi, who has a history of illustrating campaigns for luxury fashion labels, the ad stars a young girl modeled after Liang herself. While dreaming up new clothing designs inside her childhood bedroom, the girl discovers that her closet has been imbued with magical powers—and when she opens its doors, she’s transformed, Sailor Moon–style, into a new version of herself dressed head-to-toe in Gap x Sandy Liang. The Gap x Sandy Liang ad, titled “Sandy’s Dream Closet,” is part of the roll-out for Liang’s bigges…

Shares of Tesla Inc. are enjoying a premarket upswing on Friday as they head into their first trading day of 2026. The rising stock price (Nasdaq: TSLA) comes despite low expectations for the EV maker’s fourth-quarter 2025 deliveries, which are expected to show a significant decline when compared to the previous quarter. Here’s what you need to know: Tesla stock is starting 2026 on a high note In premarket trading on Friday, shares of Tesla were up around 2% as of this writing. The stock has been on an upswing for the last several months since CEO Elon Musk stepped back from his controversial job-slashing activities at the Department of Government Efficienc…

The one practical career security no one can take from you is control. I’ve built my career on five core mindsets that helped me transition to being responsible for my own career success. It’s how I run my professional life. Careers are not just built. They’re owned. That’s how you become indispensable. Your career isn’t a ladder. It’s a business. And you are in charge. Most people treat it like a job. I treat it like an asset. Every skill, every project, every task matters. If you want leverage, freedom, and a career that works for you, these mindsets can help you take your career to another level. They can determine your choices, growth, and freedom. And change how you …

As a community organizer in New York City, Sharifa Khan spends a lot of time visiting food distribution hubs, community gardens, and local shelters. While speaking with community members, she often encounters the same issue: people want to get involved in volunteering, but they’re not sure where to start. So, Khan decided to make a tool to address that—and it couldn’t have come at a more important moment. Dora.nyc, short for Directory of Resources & Aid, is a new website dedicated to compiling New York City’s mutual aid offerings into one easy-to-understand resource. It’s designed both for those seeking aid—like food, housing, and immigration services—as well as t…

Leaving your corporate job for a solopreneur path is a bold move—and it can feel terrifying. But as long as you’re prepared, it can be a smart move, especially in the current rocky job market. I worked at one corporate job for 15 years. Then I pivoted to a new career in marketing. Eighteen months later, I was working for myself as a full-time freelance writer. Within two months of going solo, I had replaced my salary at a marketing agency, but I’d also taken a lot of baby steps in advance of making the switch. You can make the transition to solopreneurship easier if you build a safety net before you walk out the corporate door. Here’s how. Calculate how much…

You probably know filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi from directing work like the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok or the Oscar-award-winning film Jojo Rabbit. What you might not know is that he’s also the creative mind behind multiple Old Spice ads, a bout of early 2010s PSAs for his home country of New Zealand, and some of the most iconic Super Bowl commercials of all time. From the early days of his career, between directing short films and appearing in acting gigs, Waititi has kept up a consistent cadence of ad work, ranging from spots for local names like the New Zealand Transport Agency to bigger brands like Samsung. Even as his Hollywood work has expanded, ad work r…

OpenAI has announced that starting in December, ChatGPT will allow the generation of erotic content for verified adult users. At the same time, Elon Musk’s xAI has launched Grok Imagine, an image-generation system that already includes an NSFW mode for producing explicit imagery. None of this should surprise anyone. Desire, fantasy, and pornography have always been powerful engines of technological adoption. Photography, video, the internet, and even online payments all grew, in part, because of it. The interesting question is not about sex: it’s about what these decisions reveal about the kind of humanity Big Tech companies are shaping. Desire as a managed serv…