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Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the alleged murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is in prison awaiting trial. But he still managed to launch a new website, along with his first official statement since his arrest, via his legal team. The message states that Mangione, who is being held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, has been “overwhelmed” by and “grateful” for the support he’s received in the form of letters from those who have been moved by his story. Although federal charges against the 26-year-old Mangione include stalking and murder for allegedly gunning down Thompson in front of a New York City hotel, some Americans who are frustrated wit…

The wellness market is the biggest it has ever been, with a valuation of nearly $2 trillion, according to a McKinsey report. But somehow today’s workforce is more burnt-out than ever before. Research by the Boston Consulting Group shows that 48% of workers are exhausted from stress. The reason? Wellness works, but the way we are working doesn’t. After spending a decade on Wall Street, I can attest that high stress periods at work are inevitable. Unfortunately, anyone advocating for better “stress management” often receives an eye roll due to the misconception that it means avoiding stress altogether. When I learned that “stress management” is not about removing stress…

In 1957, Hollywood released The Deadly Mantis, a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it. The rampaging insect menaces America’s Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City. Yes, it’s over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. military’s concerns then and now about the Arctic’s stability and its role in national security. A poster advertises The Deadly Mantis, a movie released …

It’s been a year since Intuitive Machines (IM) made history with the first private soft landing and first American spacecraft since the Apollo program to land on the moon, after a nail-biting descent that came perilously close to failing. But this time around, they’re veterans. As they ready their second mission, IM-2, with an updated lunar lander named Athena, the vibe at the startup’s Houston headquarters is decidedly more relaxed and confident. “We’ve made 85 improvements to the vehicle and the process used for building and flying it,” says Trent Martin, IM’s senior VP of space systems. “That includes 10 for landing and determining its location in space, which we s…

In the lower Manhattan neighborhood of NoHo, the crowded area around Lafayette Street was once called Gasoline Alley because of the many auto shops and gas stations housed there. While New York is still crowded with cars, gas stations in Manhattan are now more rare (there are none today in Gasoline Alley, only one left in all of lower Manhattan.) But off of Lafayette, there’s a new kind of space-inspired gas station that reveals the future of fuel—a future in which we power vehicles across land, air, and sea with CO2 instead of fossil fuels. The Fuel Store is an immersive concept store by AirCo, a Brooklyn-based startup that turns captured CO2 and hydrogen into synthe…

There’s nothing more annoying than arriving at your destination and finding that your checked baggage didn’t make the trip. But thanks to Apple’s new partnership with 15 different airlines, it’s easier than ever to track down your lost luggage—provided you have the right $29 gadget. Here’s what you need to know to help track down your missing baggage as efficiently as possible. U.S. airlines mishandle millions of bags every year While most checked bags get on the proper flight with their owner and arrive as planned, the U.S. Department of Transportation says over 2.8 million bags were “mishandled” by reporting U.S. carriers in 2023. The agency defines a “mishandled…

YouTube celebrated its 20th birthday last month. Currently, users watch more than a billion hours of content on the Google-owned video platform every day. And increasingly, that content is streamed on TVs rather than smartphones. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently announced that YouTube’s TV viewership surpassed smartphone viewership in the United States for the first time. To understand why, we turned to Kurt Wilms, a senior director of product management who oversees the company’s living room strategy. In a recent interview on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast, he talked about how content creators can optimize for the big screen and why so many people watch …

Having a helicopter manager can bring you down. It’s exhausting to have a boss who constantly monitors you, requires you to check in all the time, and takes away your authority to make decisions. This sort of micromanagement can lead to decreased employee morale, lower productivity, and reduced job satisfaction, according to experts. “Whether intentional or not, helicopter managers send clear signals that they do not trust their direct reports and are concerned about the work getting done correctly,” says Matthew Owenby, chief strategy officer and head of human resources at Aflac. “Helicopter managers can often exacerbate burnout by making employees feel that they ar…

Starchitecture is heading to the moon. A lunar design from the international architecture and design firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) is part of a just-launched rocket mission that expects to land on the moon in early March. Not architecture per se, the design encases a shoebox-size data storage center that’s attempting to prove the concept of off-world disaster recovery services. Commissioned by Florida startup Lonestar Data Holdings, the solar-powered 8-terabyte data storage device is tacked onto the side of the lunar lander now making its way to the moon. A thin, 3D-printed object with sleek curves and a matte-black finish, BIG’s design sets a higher bar than the wire-ju…

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is “years, not decades” away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed. Quantum computing holds the promise of carrying out calculations that would take today’s systems millions of years and could unlock discoveries in medicine, chemistry and many other fields where near-infinite seas of possible combinations of molecules confound classical computers. Quantum computers also hold the danger of upending today’s cybersecurity systems, where most encryption relies on the assumption that it would take too l…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. When you factor in home, school, work, and other public spaces, the average person spends 90% of their time indoors. Given this, it’s probably no surprise that the built environment is responsible for 42% of the world’s carbon (CO2) emissions. This number is too big and the likelihood of it increasing is high when you consider aging buildings, extreme weather, a rising number of…

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Eggs Up Grill has 90 restaurants in nine southern states, up from 26 in 2018. Florida-based Another Broken Egg Café celebrated its 100th restaurant last year. Fast-food chains are also adding more breakfast items. Starbucks, which launched egg bites in 2017, now has a breakfast menu with 12 separate items containing eggs. Wend…

For more than two decades, users have turned to search engines like Google, typed in a query, and received a familiar list of 10 blue links—the gateway to the wider web. Ranking high on that list, through search engine optimization (SEO), has become a $200 billion business. But in the past two years, search has changed. Companies are now synthesizing and summarizing results into AI-generated answers that eliminate the need to click through to websites. While this may be convenient for users (setting aside concerns over hallucinations and accuracy) it’s bad for businesses that rely on search traffic. One such business, educational tech firm Chegg, has sued Google i…

One of the world’s most well-known stock market indexes, the S&P 500, will soon look a little different. That’s because its roster of 500 companies is getting a shakeup, which will see the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global join the index. In the process, Coinbase will replace legacy financial services company Discover Financial. Here’s what you need to know about the changes coming to the S&P 500. What is the S&P 500? The S&P 500 is one of the world’s best-known stock market indexes. A stock market index is essentially a running list of publicly traded companies whose stock prices are tracked. These indices can help give investors an overv…

For many new mothers, one of the most mysterious and elusive parts of breastfeeding is the latch. While some babies’ mouths manage to automatically make an airtight seal around their mother’s nipple, others can have difficulties, or physical impediments, that make achieving good suction and proper nursing almost impossible. One solution care providers have offered is the nipple shield, a cuplike perforated silicone device that fits on top of a mother’s nipple and areola and improves the way babies make their latch. It’s typically a short-term method for addressing issues ranging from tongue-ties to flat nipples to engorgement. The problem with nipple shields—and even …

Americans largely agree that women have made significant gains in the workplace over the past two decades. But what about men? While many Americans believe women are thriving, over half believe men’s progress has stalled or even reversed. To make matters more complex, recent research has revealed a massive divide along gender and partisan lines. The majority of Republican men think full gender equity in America has been achieved, while the majority of Democratic women think there’s still work to be done. As researchers at the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, we think this divide matters a lot. And for business leaders, this gap isn’t just a social or politica…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. In the past few years, the housing market has experienced a “lock-in effect,” in which many homeowners with lower monthly payments and mortgage rates (some even below 3%) are unwilling to sell and purchase another home with a significantly higher monthly payment and mortgage rate. Last year, researchers from the Federal Housing Finance Agency estimated that the lock-in effect had resulted in more than a million “lost” home sales. But what mortgage rate would it take for homeowners to consider moving? ResiClub aimed to find out with the ResiClub Housi…

The question came innocently enough: What do you want to be when you grow up? Lindsay’s daughter, after a brief pause, looked up and confidently replied, “I want to be a client.” The simplicity of the answer hid the complexity of what she had observed: The clients always seemed to get the very best version of her mother. In her daughter’s young mind, being a client meant holding a special place—one that commands focus, care, and an unwavering commitment. As two mothers navigating full-time legal careers, that moment was not lost on either of us. It reveals a truth that is often glossed over in the narratives about working women, especially those of us balancing pr…

Last fall, Will Ferrell sang an homage to PayPal to the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Everywhere.” The payments platform was making a big swing with the comedy legend for its biggest-ever U.S. ad campaign. It was also the first major piece of work under PayPal chief marketing officer Geoff Seeley, who joined the company in February 2024. The campaign was created with agency BBH, with an assist from Publicis Groupe creative shop Le Truc. But there was another partner holding influence over the brand strategy, all behind the scenes. The Intangibles—which some might call the Avengers of marketing—is a marketing powerhouse that has largely operated in the shadows unti…

The return-to-office (RTO) pendulum continues to swing toward the wants of CEOs, and we expect this trend to continue. A 2024 survey of CEOs by KPMG found that 79% believe employees will be back in the office five days a week within three years—a dramatic increase from 2023’s survey. For many leaders, the workplace remains a vital tool for reinforcing company values and driving strategic alignment across teams. Yet, while employers prioritize a return to the collaboration, culture, and innovation that the office fosters, employees say they enjoy the autonomy and flexibility they’ve gained working remotely. If leaders don’t act consistently and communicate a RTO strate…

You know the feeling—your calendar is packed, your inbox is overflowing, and every decision, big or small, lands on your desk. Leadership today isn’t just about managing teams and making strategic calls; it’s about navigating an endless stream of meetings, emails, and expectations. While burnout is widely recognized, most solutions focus on time management rather than cognitive bandwidth management. The real issue isn’t just being overworked—it’s being oversaturated. Leaders are drowning in information, decisions, and interruptions, leaving little room for the deep thinking required for creativity, strategic foresight, and high-quality decision-making. A study fr…

In many ways, architecture is the star of the 2024 film The Brutalist. Nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the film follows decades of the life and work of László Tóth, an ingenious Bauhaus-trained Hungarian architect who survives the Holocaust and immigrates to the United States to pursue a new life. Cowritten and directed by Brady Corbet, it’s a fictional story with underpinnings of world and architectural history. The narrative centers around Tóth, played by Academy Award winner Adrien Brody, designing and building a monumental, brutalist-style community center and church-like space for a wealthy and mercurial client. That building, known i…

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment. So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for exam…