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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. Many companies forget AI-powered enterprise applications are just business apps at the end of the day. The reality is, AI is simply another arrow in our quiver, albeit incredibly more powerful. But what IT has done since generative AI exploded on the scene is frantically rush to deploy any and all possible applications, causing massive confusion and huge resource wastes, without delivering much …

Pet owners know finding a good veterinarian is hard. But in much of the country, finding a vet at all is increasingly tough. A new report released by veterinary telemedicine company Dutch, found that around 38% or 129 million Americans may be living in a veterinary care desert, meaning they don’t have accessible, affordable, or available care for their pets. Dutch’s State of Online Veterinary Care report found that 22% counties nationwide have zero vets per 1,000 households, and pet care is particularly hard to come by in parts of California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas. It’s an issue founder and CEO Joe Spector says likely won’t improve quickly. …

I’ve served the NASA space program for many years as an adviser, research scientist, flight surgeon—and astronaut. My career has encompassed both in-flight and non-flight contributions to NASA, supporting space missions, space medicine, and research in advancing human space flight. Space exploration encompasses a fair amount of uncertainty by nature. The space program’s early days were fraught with a number of crew losses, including the Apollo 1 mission, and the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle missions. The challenges of space flight were on full display during the Apollo 13 crew’s near-disastrous mission on the way to the moon in 1970. We all know those infamo…

I will never forget the day I realized how rare it is to see businesses support parents—or what a huge impact even the tiniest efforts can make. “We’re just going to run into the store for a few quick things!” I called to my two kids with confidence as I unloaded them from the car, skipping the bulky stroller and putting my 1-year-old in the shopping cart seat. But what should have been a simple trip took a turn when we unexpectedly needed to visit the restroom. As any mom knows, this is where things can start to unravel: You can’t take the cart inside, so what are you supposed to do with your not-yet-walking child while you help the bigger one use the toilet? A…

Don’t let Canva’s rainbow gradients fool you. The Aussies are relentless, and their global conquest through easy-to-use design software continues as they set their sights on markets owned by Adobe and Microsoft. Even after a controversial price increase last year, growth is still explosive. Canva has added 50 million active users over the past 12 months, bringing its total to 230 million, with $3 billion in annual revenue. But despite this success, Canva decided it was time for a redesign. And it’s launching what the company considers its biggest overhaul since the app launched in 2012. It includes a Teams-crushing approach to file collaboration, a powerful AI-fueled spre…

The NFT market crash has a long tail. In the late 2010s, crypto enthusiasts and web3 advocates celebrated the arrival of digital art. Non-Fungible Tokens, they argued, could offer the permanence and investment value of a traditional painting. Not anymore: even amid President The President’s memecoin surge, NFT valuations continue to hit new lows. The market has been in free fall for nearly two years, with no bottom in sight. While NFTs may be dead, NFT lawsuits are alive and well. Corporate suppliers are beginning to regret their blockchain experiments. The NFT lawsuit boom Most recently, buyers of Nike’s NFTs sued the retailer for $5 million. Nike had acqu…

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. At the Exceptional Women Alliance (EWA), we enable high level women to mentor each other for personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from some of the thought leaders who are part of EWA. This month I introduce to you Emily Moorhead, president of the Henry Ford Jackson Hospital. …

Researchers funded by the U.S. Navy have used gene-editing technology to make house spiders produce red fluorescent silk. This might seem like a quirky scientific novelty, but the breakthrough is a critical step toward modifying spider silk properties and creating new “supermaterials” for industries ranging from textiles to aerospace. The team at Germany’s University of Bayreuth, led by Professor Thomas Scheibel, successfully applied CRISPR-Cas9—a molecular tool that acts as “genetic scissors” to cut and modify DNA sequences—to spiders for the first time. The study, published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, demonstrates how this technology introduces modi…

One recent rainy afternoon, I found myself in an unexpected role—philosophy teacher to a machine. I was explaining the story of the Bhagavad Gita to a leading large language model, curious to see if it could grasp the lessons at the heart of one of the world’s most profound philosophical texts. The LLM’s responses were impressively structured and fluent. They even sounded reflective at times, giving a sense that the AI model knew that it was itself part of this millennia-long conversation. Yet there was something fundamental that was missing from all the answers the machine gave me—the lived experience that gives wisdom its true weight. AI can analyze the Gita, but i…

The European Union’s law enforcement agency cautioned Tuesday that artificial intelligence is turbocharging organized crime that is eroding the foundations of societies across the 27-nation bloc as it becomes intertwined with state-sponsored destabilization campaigns. The grim warning came at the launch of the latest edition of a report on organized crime published every four years by Europol that is compiled using data from police across the EU and will help shape law enforcement policy in the bloc in coming years. “Cybercrime is evolving into a digital arms race targeting governments, businesses and individuals. AI-driven attacks are becoming more precise and de…

Tonight will be the perfect evening to stay up late in the United States, because the moon is going to put on a spectacular show. In the wee hours of the morning, night owls can witness a full blood moon, supermoon, “worm” moon, and a total lunar eclipse. In addition to Americans, parts of Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and Africa can also get in on the action. Let’s take a deeper look at what that means and how you can see the spectacle: The March 2025 full moon is many things According to NASA, in the 1930s the Maine Farmers’ Almanac started publishing names for the full moons based on Native American traditions. This took off and became the pre…

Design industry leaders trust artificial intelligence less than they did a year ago, and many see the world as an increasingly uncertain place. These are a few of the most striking takeaways from the 2025 State of Design & Make report from the design and engineering software maker Autodesk. This third annual design industry outlook is based on surveys and interviews with 5,594 industry leaders, futurists, and experts across industries including architecture, engineering, construction, and operations, design and manufacturing, and media and entertainment. Leaders from what Autodesk calls the “design and make” industries were asked to report on a wide range of t…

SAG-AFTRA is expanding its reach into the influencer economy. In late April, the union’s board unanimously voted to establish a new influencer committee, appointing New York-based lifestyle influencer Patrick Janelle as chair. SAG-AFTRA’s involvement with influencers isn’t new. In 2021, the union introduced an influencer agreement and waiver to cover branded content work—an initiative that thousands of members have used. While that agreement marked a major step forward, it notably excluded original creative content, which remains the core of many creators’ livelihoods. “It really became clear that if we’re going to continue to expand, and especially outside of…

The headlines scream it daily: Markets are fluctuating wildly, AI is transforming entire industries overnight, supply chains are fracturing, and the workforce is reshuffling at unprecedented rates. According to the World Economic Forum, 78 million new job opportunities will emerge by 2030, but this comes amid massive workforce transformation, with 77% of employers planning upskilling initiatives while 41% anticipate reductions due to AI automation. All these moving parts are playing out against a global background of financial insecurity, war, climate change, and political disruption. The age of anxiety Welcome to the age of VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity…

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…

The acting chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday he has directed staff to look at ways to abandon a plan that would have widened the definition of alternative trading systems to include some cryptocurrency firms. The SEC in 2022 proposed requiring some crypto firms to register as alternative trading systems, drawing criticism from the sector in the face of potentially heightened oversight and additional rules. Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda told an audience of bankers he has instructed staff to look at ways to abandon that portion of the plan, which has yet to be finalized. It was an expansion of an earlier effort aimed at trading of Trea…

It’s no secret: Landing a job in today’s economy can feel overwhelmingly difficult. Qualified candidates regularly apply to hundreds—sometimes even thousands—of positions before receiving that one coveted offer. In fact, over half of unemployed job seekers have been searching for four months or longer, highlighting how competitive the market has become. And it’s not just the job market itself that’s challenging. We’re living through one of the most turbulent periods in modern history: The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 4.1%, the highest in over two years. 23,000+ tech layoffs occurred in the first three months of 2025 alone. Nearly 50% of Americans are liv…

Grindr is expanding its scope in a way that is entirely on brand. On Tuesday, the company unveiled Woodwork, a telehealth service that will help users access medication for erectile dysfunction. Currently available to Grindr users in Illinois and Pennsylvania, Woodwork will expand nationwide throughout the rest of 2025, according to the company. Grindr CEO George Arison says the company performed internal research that found more than a third of its users take erectile dysfunction drugs. “That gave us a very clear opportunity,” he tells Fast Company in an exclusive, in-depth interview on how he’s growing Grindr’s scope. “Users want it, but they’re buying these product…

In a first-of-its kind move, Hawaii lawmakers are ready to hike a tax imposed on travelers staying in hotels, vacation rentals and other short-term accommodations and earmark the new money for programs to cope with a warming planet. State leaders say they’ll use the funds for projects like replenishing sand on eroding beaches, helping homeowners install hurricane clips on their roofs and removing invasive grasses like those that fueled the deadly wildfire that destroyed Lahaina two years ago. A bill scheduled for House and Senate votes on Wednesday would add an additional 0.75% to the daily room rate tax starting Jan. 1. It’s all but certain to pass given Democrats hold…