What's on Your Mind?

Most of us assume bullying is something we age out of by middle school, high school at the latest. By the time you’re a professional—especially one with credentials, experience, and a résumé you worked hard for—you expect a baseline of mutual respect. And yet. If you’ve spent enough time in workplaces, on boards, or in other community organizations, you’ve probably had that moment where your stomach tightens in a meeting and you’re not entirely sure why. A comment lands sideways. A tone shifts. Someone interrupts you for the third time. You walk away replaying the exchange, wondering whether you imagined it or whether something subtle but unmistakable just happene…

Electric vehicles have seen a lot of success in recent years, but there are still some concerns—from range anxiety to insufficient charging infrastructure—that limit their overall adoption. Hybrids don’t have those same worries, and hybrid sales have been gaining momentum as the growth of EV sales has slowed. That’s caused some carmakers to pull back on EV offerings and prioritize hybrids instead. But now a company called Horse Powertrain is offering an alternative to carmakers who are hesitant to go fully electric while still allowing them to develop EVs—and keep their EV production lines. Called the Future Hybrid Concept, it’s essentially a way for automakers to re…

Although the definition is a little loose, “middle age” is the name we give to the period of life before we decide someone is officially old. When someone in the United States has reached the age of 40, they can expect to live for more than 40 additional years, on average. Given this lifespan, as well as changes in beliefs about age and fitness, people don’t really start getting “old” until their mid-60s. So, middle age involves the period between 45 and 60 to 65. There are several excellent reasons to want to reconsider goals for your life somewhere in this period of life. In fact, it can be a great time to reset and think about what else you’d like to accomplish. …

Is doomscrolling on your phone unhealthy for your brain? Oxford University Press’s word of the year, “brain rot,” seems to suggest so. It defines the condition as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” The key word, though, is “supposed,” as there is there is no such thing as mindless scrolling, says Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, the author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience and a Harvard physician who specializes in stress. “’Brain rot’ is not a word or phras…

Valentine’s Day is known as the day to celebrate all things love—and also a day for expensive dates. However, a new offering from one of your favorite fast food chains may have you skipping the white table cloths and snagging something from McDonald’s instead. McDonald’s is serving up caviar this Valentine’s Day. But there’s a catch. In a Feb. 2 announcement, the chain explained what the latest offering entails. “To be known is to be loved, and we know our fans love pairing our crispy Chicken McNuggets with their favorite caviar,” it said. “Inspired by this perfect match, we’re dropping our first-ever McNugget Caviar kits featuring premium Baerii Sturgeon caviar o…

We often celebrate courage in its most dramatic forms: the whistleblower who risks everything, the bold innovator who disrupts an industry, or the leader who stands alone in a moment of crisis. These stories inspire us—but they can also feel out of reach. Most of us don’t face life-or-death decisions on a daily basis. Yet, every day we encounter moments that call for a different kind of courage: the courage to speak up, to question the status quo, to lead with vulnerability. This is what I call “micro-bravery”—the small, everyday acts of courage that often go unnoticed, but collectively shape the culture of an organization. While grand gestures of bravery grab h…

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…

On the way to work, you see a TikTok video of the president admitting to a crime. In the elevator, you hear your favorite band, but the song is completely unfamiliar. At your desk, you open an email from an executive in another department. It contains valid sales information and discusses a relevant legal issue, but the wording sounds oddly wooden. After lunch, the CEO sends all managers a link to a new app she had casually proposed just a few days earlier. Later, you interview a job candidate via Zoom, but the person looks different from his LinkedIn picture. Any or all of these things—the video, the song, the email, the CEO’s app, the candidate—could have been gener…

When film cameras were invented, people didn’t become filmmakers overnight. We pointed cameras at theater stages, digitizing what already existed. It took us a while to reimagine what film cameras could unlock. The real opportunity wasn’t recording theater plays. It was stepping outside and inventing cinema. That’s where many nonprofits are with AI today. Most still layer it on top of existing processes, not because they don’t care about innovation, but because they lack both the frameworks to identify the right use cases and the capacity to act on them. True innovation starts when organizations have the space, skills, and confidence to reimagine how impact itse…

AI tools are everywhere, changing the way we work, communicate, and even create. But which tools are actually useful? And how can users integrate them in a way that’s both practical and ethical? In a recent conversation for FC Live, Fast Company tech editor Max Ufberg and longtime contributor Jared Newman explored the real-world impact of today’s AI tools—how they work, what they’re good for, and where they still fall short. From writing assistants to productivity hacks, they broke down what’s worth your time—and what’s just hype. If you missed the subscriber-only event, you’re in luck. You can catch the whole conversation in the video above. View the full articl…

Resilience is no longer just about grit or recovering from setbacks. It’s about anticipating change, staying agile in uncertainty, and continuously evolving. The most future-ready organizations build resilience not just at the leadership level, but across their entire workforce—equipping employees with the skills, mindsets, and support systems they need to turn disruption into momentum.  People today expect more—learning, development, well-being, and strong leadership—to help them navigate the future of work. Companies that invest in these areas don’t just retain top talent; they build workforces that are unstoppable. Here are four powerful strategies to embed r…

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 …

A decade ago, when Claire Burgi moved to New York City, she decided to cut meat out of her diet. The 33-year-old actor and audiobook narrator, who lives in Queens, grew up in California, where she’d seen the effects of climate change firsthand. She knew that meat consumption was a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions and that vegetarianism was a way to help conserve resources and reduce pollution. “When I was young, it rained a lot,” she says. “Now, it rains much less. All the fires are astoundingly horrific.” The December 2017 Thomas wildfire burned more than 280,000 acres in and around Burgi’s hometown of Ventura, just north of Los Angeles. “I just didn’t w…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus, and the remote work boom. Federal Reserve researchers estimate “new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand.” Unlike housing demand, housing stock isn’t as elastic and can’t quickly ramp up. As a result, the heightened demand drained the market of active inventory and caused home prices to overheat, with U.S. home prices in June 2022 sitting a staggering 43.2% above March 2020 levels. S…