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Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer on Wednesday handed the International Olympic Committee a petition signed by more than 21,000 people and professional athletes who want to stop fossil fuel companies from sponsoring winter sports. Schirmer delivered the “Ski Fossil Free” petition to the IOC’s head of sustainability, Julie Duffus, at a hotel in the Italian city of Milan two days before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kick off. The petition asks the IOC and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, FIS, to publish a report evaluating the appropriateness of fossil fuel marketing before next season. Schirmer, a filmmaker and two-time European Skier of the Year, spoke…

As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, the battle off the field for advertisers to win over 120 million-plus viewers will be just as heated as the rivalry between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. Dozens of advertisers are pulling out all the stops for Super Bowl 60, airing Sunday on NBC. They’re hoping that audiences tuning in will remember their brand names as they stuff their ads with celebrities ranging from Kendall Jenner (Fanatics Sportsbook) to George Clooney (Grubhub), tried-and-true ad icons like the Budweiser Clydesdales, and nostalgia for well-known movie properties such as “Jurassic Park” (Comcast Xfinity). Each year Super Bowl ads offer a snapshot of…

TV host, producer, author, and United Nations Development Program Goodwill Ambassador Padma Lakshmi has some candid advice for business leaders when it comes to speaking out, showing courage, and staying true to themselves, particularly amid the The President administration’s violent immigration crackdown. A passionate voice at the intersection of food, culture, and identity, Lakshmi shares how she’s shaking up food media with her new series America’s Culinary Cup, and offers a refreshingly human take on modern work life. 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 b…

Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants has announced that it will shut down its Bahama Breeze restaurant chain for good. But in an unusual move, some current Bahama Breeze locations will live on as a different brand, while the remaining stores will close. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Tuesday, Darden Restaurants revealed the fate of one of its restaurant chains. The restaurant group, which is based in Orlando, Florida, owns LongHorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and others. In a news release, it announced the closure and conversion of all of its Bahama Breeze restaurants. That Darden is jettisoning Baham…

I was a latchkey kid. Most afternoons, I came home to an empty house, let myself in with my own key, and figured it out—homework and snacks. There was inherent trust from my parents that I’d figure it out, and everything would be alright. You learned fast. If you got stuck, you improvised. If you were scared, you got practical. If you needed help, you decided whether it was “worth” bothering anyone. And if you were the oldest—if you were parentified—you were given responsibilities without guidance, expected to “just know.” Thirty years later, I’m watching middle managers experience the exact same thing. We hand them keys instead of house rules, responsibil…

Los Angeles Lakers guard Bronny James quietly debuted a new logo for his signature shoe during last week’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers: a lowercase b (for Bronny) that features a 9 (for his jersey number) inside the letterform. The logo appeared on a bright pink pair of James’s father’s shoe, the LeBron Witness IX, but there was another logo on the shoe that was notable: a backwards Nike Swoosh. Since debuting in 1971, the Nike Swoosh has become one of the most iconic brand logos of all time. Still, Nike designers have occasionally had some fun with it by breaking brand guidelines and flipping the logo around. Though there’s no formal rule for who gets…

On a recent stroll by my local Allbirds store in Harvard Square, I had to do a double take. In the window, the brand was advertising its new Varsity collection: a ’70s-inspired sneaker line with a rubber sole and a feminine color palette that weaves together pink, olive green, mustard, and brick red. It’s an unmistakably fashionable shoe that wouldn’t look out of place at New Balance and Saucony, or even Valentino and Celine. Allbirds, which launched in 2014, isn’t known for chasing trends. It has always led with sustainability, starting with the “wool runner” that quickly became a cult sneaker in tech circles. Over the years, it hasn’t strayed far from this original …

AI can do incredible things. So far, though, most of those things have been virtual. If you want a killer article for your bichon frise blog or an expertly crafted letter disputing a parking ticket you probably deserve, chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini can deliver that. All those things are locked into the nebulous world of information, though. They’re helpful, but the products of today’s large language models (LLMs) and neural networks aren’t actually doing much of anything. AI’s silicon-bound status, however, is beginning to change. The tech is increasingly invading the real world. 2026 is the year that AI gets physical. And that shift has huge impl…

AI isn’t eliminating human work. It’s redistributing human judgment, away from routine tasks and into the narrow zones where ambiguity is high, mistakes are costly, and trust actually matters. This shift helps explain a growing disconnect in the AI conversation. On one hand, models are improving at breathtaking speed. On the other, many ambitious AI deployments stall, scale more slowly than expected, or quietly revert to hybrid workflows. The issue isn’t capability. It’s trust. The trust gap most AI strategies overlook AI adoption doesn’t hinge on whether a system can do a task. It hinges on whether humans are willing to rely on its output without checking …

“As someone who has tried almost every workout class on the planet, there is nothing like SoulCycle,” said TikTok creator Matt Trav in a video posted in early January. “The average human being cannot understand what blowing out the candle during the soulful song can do to the human psyche.” Nearly 40,000 people who liked the video seem to agree. “Absolutely nothing can beat NYC SoulCycle circa 2016,” one commenter wrote. “Literally like going to church,” another added. Across social media platforms, that renaissance is already underway. Devotees have been sharing nostalgia-laced photos from years past, unearthing old merchandise, and swapping stories in co…

Heat pumps can reduce carbon emissions associated with heating buildings, and many states have set aggressive targets to increase their use in the coming decades. But while heat pumps are often cheaper choices for new buildings, getting homeowners to install them in existing homes isn’t so easy. Current energy prices, including the rising cost of electricity, mean that homeowners may experience higher heating bills by replacing their current heating systems with heat pumps—at least in some regions of the country. Heat pumps, which use electricity to move heat from the outside in, are used in only 14% of U.S. households. They are common primarily in warm southern s…

Roughly one out of three Americans has a side hustle—and that number is expected to increase in 2026, something that’s driving a shift in the modern working world. Many of those with a side business are just looking for a little extra income, but roughly one in five are hoping to make their side hustle into a full-time business. Those who are entrepreneurially minded will want to chose a side business that has the potential to scale. Here are some fields that are showing a lot of promise for 2026. Consulting and online courses No matter what field you’ve worked in, your wisdom could be lucrative via a consulting business. Firm up your résumé, highlighting achie…

When New York-based Autumn Myers, 31, was interviewing for her current digital marketing job, she pushed back the interview date so it didn’t fall during Mercury retrograde. “Those jobs have always ended up in more grief for me,” she tells Fast Company. Myers also looks up her colleagues’ zodiac signs to guide her interactions with them. For example: People born under fire signs often thrive in leadership roles, but they can struggle with impulsiveness. Earth signs tend to be more dependable, but they can be risk-averse. “It’s very Scorpio of me to be that calculated,” she admits. “But it’s needed sometimes.” Myers isn’t alone. According to a 2024 Harris Pol…

“Snow Will Fall Too Fast for Plows,” “ICE STORM APOCALYPSE,” and “Another Big Storm May Be Coming …” were all headlines posted on YouTube this past weekend as the biggest snowstorm in years hit New York City. These videos, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of views, are part of an increasingly popular genre of “weather influencers,” as Americans increasingly turn to social media for news and weather updates. People pay more attention to influencers on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok than to journalists or mainstream media, a study by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford found in 2024. In the U.S., social media is how 20% of adults get their ne…

TikTok’s U.S. operations are now managed by a new American joint venture, ending a long-standing debate over whether the app would be permanently banned in the United States. The good news for TikTok users is that this deal guarantees that the app will continue to operate within America’s borders. But there’s some bad news, too. Successive U.S. administrations—both Biden’s and The President’s—argued that TikTok posed a national security threat to America and its citizens, partly because of the data the app collected about them. While all social media apps collect data about their users, officials argued that TikTok’s data collection was a danger (while, say, Face…

When one of the founders of modern AI walks away from one of the world’s most powerful tech companies to start something new, the industry should pay attention. Yann LeCun’s departure from Meta after more than a decade shaping its AI research is not just another leadership change. It highlights a deep intellectual rift about the future of artificial intelligence: whether we should continue scaling large language models (LLMs) or pursue systems that understand the world, not merely echo it. Who Yann LeCun is, and why it matters LeCun is a French American computer scientist widely acknowledged as one of the “Godfathers of AI.” Alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshu…

Generative artificial intelligence technology is rapidly reshaping education in unprecedented ways. With its potential benefits and risks, K-12 schools are actively trying to adapt teaching and learning. But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there’s a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students, and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, “You have policy and what’s actually happening in the classrooms—those are two very differ…

Amazon will double down on the Whole Foods brand, killing two of its own physical retail experiments in the process. The online retail giant said Tuesday that it will close all of its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar grocery stores. In total, around 70 locations across the two sub-brands will close starting at the beginning of February, with some to later reopen under the Whole Foods brand. Amazon Fresh stores served as a physical counterpart to Amazon’s online grocery delivery service by the same name while Amazon Go stores offered convenience store staples with a high-tech checkout twist. “After a careful evaluation of the busin…

Downloads of UpScrolled, a new short-form video app, are surging after TikTok’s recent change to U.S. ownership. Developed by Palestinian-Australian Issam Hijazi, the social media app currently ranks #2 in the U.S. in the Apple store among free apps, following ChatGPT, and markets itself as a place “where every voice gets equal power.” “No shadowbans . . . No pay-to-play favoritism. Just authentic connection where your content reaches the people who matter most,” reads UpScrolled’s website. Last week, Chinese-owned TikTok closed a $14 billion deal, brokered by the The President administration, to avoid a ban in the U.S., creating an American subsidiary with ne…

Kim (not her real name) is a scientist and tenured faculty member at a high-profile university. For years, she steadily moved up the hierarchy, yet no one could point to what she accomplished. She kept transferring from role to role, not because she succeeded. In fact, it was the opposite. Kim wasn’t delivering measurable results, and no one liked working with her. She occupied an uncomfortable middle ground: not unsuccessful enough for the university to dismiss her, but no longer effective enough to stay. They transferred her to a newly created role. It came with bigger, but opaque responsibilities. The result looked like a promotion, but functioned as avoidance.…

You know the ancient proverb: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. For leaders, first-generation AI tools are like giving employees fish. Agentic AI, on the other hand, teaches them how to fish—truly empowering, and that empowerment lifts the entire organization. According to recent findings from McKinsey, nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI, yet about the same number report no bottom-line impact. Agentic AI can help organizations achieve meaningful results. AI agents are highly capable assistants with the ability to execute tasks independently. Equipped with artificial intelligence that…