What's on Your Mind?

U.S. figure skating champion Alysa Liu captivated audiences during the 2026 Winter Olympics. Now, the young skater is offering some life advice. The 20-year-old won two gold medals in the recent Milan-Cortina games, charmed crowds with her style, cheered on her competitors, and offered her refreshing take on skating for joy, rather than medals. Liu told Today.com she had some nontraditional advice about pushing kids to continue to play sports, even when they want to quit. To put it simply, the Olympian said: “Don’t.” “It does not work,” she explained. “The kid knows himself pretty well, and it’s just never good to force anything.” While Liu’s advice is s…

Raising venture capital for a physical-world company can feel harder than getting struck by lightning. You could be standing on a mountain for months, holding a metal pole in a storm, waiting. And you probably still wouldn’t get hit. Meanwhile, it can seem like founders in San Francisco announce a new AI round every other week. Capital moves quickly when you’re building software that rides the current hype cycle. If you’re building something that touches atoms instead of code, like manufacturing, energy, agriculture, or materials, you’re often grinding quietly. The timelines are longer. The checks are fewer. The rejections stack up. And pardon my French, but you get y…

The Social Security Administration is rolling out some big changes to how it handles disability payments while also upgrading its customer service. The changes come in the aftermath of a major overhaul by DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, in 2025, which resulted in the layoffs of more than 7,000 workers. First, let’s take a look at disability payments. The new process aims to cut the time it takes to determine eligibility for Social Security, speed up the time it takes beneficiaries to receive their checks, and, according to the Washington Examiner, reduce the agency’s current backlog. The SSA had a backlog of claims that was on track to exc…

It sounds like an obvious business decision: cut headcount, reduce costs, and signal efficiency to the market. When Block CEO Jack Dorsey eliminated more than 4,000 jobs—nearly half the company’s workforce—citing AI-driven efficiency gains, the company’s stock rose more than 20% within hours. Citigroup is executing CEO Jane Fraser’s plan to cut 20,000 roles by the end of 2026. Morgan Stanley recently reduced its workforce by 2,500 positions across its major business divisions, despite posting record revenues in 2025. The announcements are framed as strategic resets. The market often rewards them. But the real consequences rarely show up in the stock price. They sh…

Blue skies ahead? Jay Graber, the CEO of social media network Bluesky, announced that they were stepping down on Monday. Graber is “transitioning from CEO to a new role as Bluesky’s Chief Innovation Officer,” she wrote in a Bluesky post, and will be succeeded by new interim CEO Toni Schneider. Schneider, a venture capitalist and partner at True Ventures, wrote that he was “thrilled to announce that I’ll be joining Bluesky as interim CEO. I deeply believe in what this team has built and the open social web they’re fighting for,” in a post of his own. Bluesky was founded by Jack Dorsey in 2019, and actually began as an internal project at what was then Twitter …

At 92 years old, Willie Nelson has aged out of his title as the “world’s most prolific octogenarian,” but that doesn’t mean he’s slowed down. The country music legend, who has released more than 150 albums over his more than six-decade-long career and sold more than 40 million in the United States alone, has found a new milestone to reach. This time, as an entrepreneur rather than an outlaw. Nelson’s eponymous THC-infused beverage brand Willie’s Remedy+ has hit an $80-million run rate, according to the company—a multi-platinum feat for a startup that only started selling its cans and bottles online less than a year ago. For Nelson, who used to smoke two to three…

Despite decades of scientific research, incredible advances in deep analytics and AI, and no shortage of good intentions, many organizations still struggle to select and develop the leaders they need to navigate increasingly complex and unpredictable business challenges. Markets are volatile, uncertainty is constant, and leadership quality matters more than ever. Yet many firms still fail to identify and elevate the best (or at least right) leadership talent available. Contrary to what many people think, more often than not, the problem is not a shortage of capable leaders. Rather, it is a failure of the systems designed to identify, develop, and advance them, which s…

Fresh off a historic 40-point performance in the finals of the Unrivaled season, WNBA player Kelsey Plum is taking a different shot: an AI twin. Fans can now voice call with a digital version of the Los Angeles Sparks star. Plum announced the twin on her personal Instagram account on March 6, asking her AI self for advice on her ponytail and coffee versus energy drink. Plum is the first professional female athlete to launch a verified AI digital twin. It’s a move that’s earning plaudits as a way for women in sports to take control of their image and expand their reach. “The opportunity to have a twin that can connect with fans, with young people, people tha…

Whatever your take on humanity, it is hard to deny one fact: we are, as a species, more hypocritical than we think, and tend to display a curious tendency for holding strong moral principles on one hand, and disregarding them without much guilt or awareness on the other. Unlike humans, a penguin does not preach fidelity in the morning and download Tinder by lunch. A meerkat on guard does not issue a memo on teamwork before sneaking off duty. A wolf does not publish a servant-leadership manifesto before stealing the kill. Across history, human moral systems have shared a curious pattern: the stricter the rulebook, the richer the archive of exceptions. Religions preach …

Most people think of wisdom as an arrival. You accumulate enough experience or perspective, then you get there. You become the sage. And stop making mistakes. They’ve got it completely backward. The wisest or smartest people I know are still making mistakes. They’re just much better at noticing them, sitting with them, and learning from them. “Let’s never speak of this again” is not a thing for them. Wisdom is a practice. And failure is the training. Experience alone is not enough. You can accumulate all the experiences in life and still deflect, rationalize, or tell yourself a comforting story in your head. Some people even think of their mistakes as someon…

AI disruption and geopolitical upheaval are forcing business leaders to make high-stakes decisions—fast. Accenture CEO Julie Sweet shares what she’s hearing from her 9,000 clients, and the hard-won advice she’s giving them. Sweet reveals why AI proficiency is now a requirement for promotion at Accenture, why she’s doubling down on entry-level hiring amid the automation wave, and she unpacks the hidden power of “leader-led learning.” This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with toda…

Each year, some of America’s greatest artists, thinkers, and business leaders have a chance to come together at SXSW in the spirit of creativity, innovation, and future-building. And with everything currently happening in technology and the workforce, this year’s gathering feels particularly timely. Of course, questions around AI will take center stage and remain our primary cultural fixation: How long until the next incredible breakthrough? Should Americans be fearful about an impending AI apocalypse or hopeful about the prospect of unlimited productivity gains? These topics are all valid, urgent, and deeply worthwhile to explore, but I also believe the most impo…

By now you may have heard about the so-called “Gen Z pout,” a selfie face pose that comes as a response to the now “cringe” millennial duck face made popular by the Olsen twins in the 2000s, who would purse their lips to look pouty and suck in their cheeks when posing. Here’s what to know about the newest Gen Z slang. What exactly is the Gen Z pout? This week, a bunch of articles came out about this new trend and the nuances surrounding it that the untrained eye might miss. The pose has been seen on the faces of celebs such as Love Island’s Iris Kendall, or actresses Rachel Sennott, Lily-Rose Depp and Ariana Greenblatt. “If millennials pursed and pointed ou…

Since first appearing on the Masters of Scale podcast at the height of the Ozempic-Wegovy-Zepbound boom, Zach Reitano, CEO of Ro, has helped scale his company into a leading provider of branded GLP-1s—grabbing headlines with a 2026 Super Bowl ad featuring tennis champion Serena Williams and landing a major partnership with Novo Nordisk for the pill version of Wegovy. Now Reitano has new challenges to address: the long-term health unknowns of the medications, the cultural backlash to “Ozempic face,” and what this wave of disruption could mean not just for pharma but for the future of healthcare. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. To maintain sales in this softer housing market environment, Lennar spent an average of 14% of the final sales price on incentives in Q1 2026—back to its 2010 levels. Put another way, a $450,000 home sold with a 14% incentive rate translates to $63,000 spent on buyer incentives. That’s a lot of incentives. Ever since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, homebuilders like Lennar have compressed their gross margins—which hit all-time highs during that boom—in order to deploy bigger incentives to entice homebuyers. Indeed, at the height of the p…

K-12 teachers and students across the country are increasingly using AI in and out of classrooms, whether it is teachers turning to AI to refine lesson plans or students asking AI to help them research a particular topic. An estimated 85% of K-12 public school teachers recently reported that they used AI during the 2024-2025 school year, often for curriculum and content development. In 2023, 13% of teens said they used ChatGPT to complete their schoolwork, while 26% of them said in 2025 that they were using ChatGPT for this purpose. Similarly, 86% of K-12 students shared in 2025 that they have used AI in general. An estimated 50% of students reported that they…

It’s still more than two years until the cauldron lights up for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but we now know what the multibillion-dollar global sports spectacle will look like. The design team at LA28, the local organizing committee for the games, has given Fast Company a preview of the concepts and visuals that will guide the look and feel of the 2028 Olympics. The design approach is conceptually based on the superbloom, a natural phenomenon sometimes experienced in Southern California when an unusually wet winter leads to an explosively colorful spring bloom of wildflowers. The LA28 design approach uses bright, almost neon tones and an abstract graphic …

Market research can be a slow, fragmented, and difficult process, often involving tedious internet searches, questionable data sources, and time-consuming manual synthesis. This makes it a great candidate for some assistance from AI. What’s more, an update to a popular feature on ChatGPT has made it even better at doing this kind of work. Imagine that you have a potential business idea but still need to validate how viable it actually is, identify primary competitors in your market, and develop an ideal customer persona. Instead of spending hours collating data, explains Dan McCarthy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maryland, you can use Deep…

Is leadership dead? Perhaps not, but its branding is definitely on life support. Younger professionals are not chasing titles for prestige or salary alone. In fact, many are actively opting out of traditional leadership tracks because the trade‑offs look misaligned with the life they want. It’s a trend many people and culture leaders I speak with are worried about. For Gen Z and younger millennials, leadership no longer automatically signals status and security; it often looks like stress, fragility, and moral compromise. In Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, only 6% of Gen Z respondents cited reaching a leadership position as their primary career goal, with…

Elon Musk runs an auto company. He oversees an aerospace company. And he controls a social media outlet. Now he wants to add chipmaker to his resume. The multi-hyphenate billionaire announced plans over the weekend to build a chip manufacturing factory in Austin, Texas, which will produce chips for SpaceX and xAI, which recently merged. Musk, at a presentation Saturday, said the project, dubbed Terafab, will be the “most epic chip building exercise in history by far.” Musk has been talking about Terafab for a while, but the event on Saturday marked the official start to the project. While xAI and other artificial intelligence companies have largely depended on TSM…

If you have a direct report who identifies as neurodivergent, you may wonder how best to be their manager. Often, when we manage others, we imagine how we would react to the things we plan to ask, or the feedback we plan to give, and the work environment we aim to create. That strategy is not always effective in general, and it is likely to fail spectacularly when engaging with neurodivergent colleagues. Here are a few things to consider when supervising a neurodivergent employee. Engage with curiosity Start by being curious. Meet with your supervisee and get their permission to ask questions so that you know best how to enable them to succeed. Trust your emplo…