What's on Your Mind?

Few people know fame like Robert Downey Jr. The Oscar-winning actor has done everything from critical darlings like Oppenheimer to pop culture juggernauts like The Avengers. While Downey took a more traditional path to celebrity, many up-and-coming stars got their starts on social media. Two of this year’s Grammy nominees for Best New Artist, Addison Rae and Alex Warren, were known for their TikToks before they were known for their music. Several of the biggest new names in filmmaking, including directors Danny and Michael Philippou of Talk to Me and Kane Parsons of the upcoming Backrooms, went viral on YouTube before breaking into Hollywood. But according to Dow…

Many schools and colleges are underperforming when it comes to sex education. Going beyond the classroom condoms-and-bananas approach, a group of students have taken it upon themselves to deliver sex ed, TikTok-style. The TikTok account @sexedforguys, which has more than 117,000 followers, started as a school project by four students at Colby College, a private liberal arts school in Maine. Launched in 2022, the account features skits tackling consent, toxic masculinity, and homophobia—essential lessons in a time when manosphere content is flooding For You Pages and Gen Z boys and men are more likely than baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than …

“You really have to stand up for yourself.” That’s the message Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran sent loud and clear in a recent interview she gave LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. The interview is full of powerful lessons from Corcoran’s life, but one story stood head and shoulders above the rest: The time Shark Tank fired her, before she taped a single episode. Corcoran said she received a call from a woman asking her to be on a new show called Shark Tank. Ecstatic, Corcoran agreed. She immediately went on a shopping spree, buying new outfits and autograph-signing materials. “I’m going to Hollywood!” she excitedly told her friends. Then, Corcoran got a dreadf…

I recently helped my mom sort through boxes she inherited when my grandparents passed away. One box was labeled – either ironically or genuinely – “toothpick holders and other treasures.” Inside were many keepsakes from moments now lost to history – although we found no toothpick holders. My favorite of the items we sorted through was a solitary puzzle piece, an artifact reflecting my late grandmother’s penchant for hiding the final piece to a jigsaw puzzle just to swoop in at the last moment and finish it. After several hours of reminiscing, my mom and I threw away 90% of what we had sorted. “Why did I keep this?” is a question I hear frequently, both from my…

In the past five years, more satellites have been launched into Earth’s atmosphere than the preceding 60 years combined. And now, scientists believe that climate change is set to increase the number of old satellites that will turn into floating obstacles. That’s according to a study published last week in the Nature Sustainability journal by a team of aerospace engineers at MIT. The researchers examined how greenhouse gases are impacting Earth’s upper atmosphere and, in turn, the objects orbiting within it. They found that, as emissions increase, they’re actually altering the natural process that allows satellites to fall out of orbit and disintegrate, resulting in a…

The crash of a small plane in southwestern Brazil killed four people including Chinese landscape architect and urban planner Yu Kongjian, Brazilian authorities said Wednesday. The accident happened late Tuesday during a landing attempt at a large farm about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the municipality of Aquidauana in Mato Grosso do Sul state, firefighters said. Yu, who was known for promoting ecologically sound development, was traveling with two Brazilian documentary makers, Luiz Fernando Feres da Cunha Ferraz and Rubens Crispim Jr., who were making a film about the Pantanal wetlands. All three were killed along with pilot Marcelo Pereira de Barros, authorities sai…

By now, the so-called “Staples Baddie” may have crossed your feed with her tutorials and informational videos exploring her workplace. TikTok creator @blivxx, known online as Oblivion, started getting attention in January for highlighting niche services and products offered at Staples. It’s a distinctly Gen Z approach to social media. Videos from Staples Baddie (whose real name is Kaeden) feature ASMR, heavy slang, and an authenticity that has viewers—and brands—hooked. Comments on Kaeden’s videos range from tame (“Staples better give you your flowers asap” on a January 21 post about business cards) to unhinged (“Staples did my BBL” on a February 6 video about the…

As many families are preparing to gather for the holidays, influenza (flu) cases are spiking across the country. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), positive test results have reached the highest levels seen so far this season. ​The most frequently reported influenza virus this season is the influenza A H3N2 virus. Last week, Fast Company reported on a new mutated strain of influenza A H3N2, known as the subclade K flu variant, which emerged after multiple mutations. Here’s what you need to know. Recent data shows positive cases are spiking According to CDC data for the week ending December 13, 14.8% of …

A cardinal of the Catholic church going viral for singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” was not on this year’s bingo card. Pope Francis’s passing on Easter Monday sent shockwaves around the world, with around 250,000 visitors flooding St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to say goodbye to the progressive Pontiff. As the Vatican readies for the conclave, speculations on who might take over the highest role in the Catholic Church is on the rise. But, on TikTok, users have already chosen its favorite contender: Filipino prelate Luis Antonio Tagle. Videos of Tagle–a liberal-leaning front runner for pope referred to as “Asian Francis”–resurfaced in the days following the p…

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…

Chances are, you or someone you know has been the target of a scam. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), reported scams cost Americans more than $12.5 billion in 2024—a 25% increase from the previous year. But as scams grow more sophisticated, so do their opponents. A growing number of online vigilantes are flipping the script, turning the scam on the scammers—and racking up millions of views in the process. Mashable’s Chris Taylor recently spoke to a few who’ve turned scambaiting into full-time work. Rosie Okumura got into scambaiting after her mother was tricked out of $500 by a pop-up on her computer. Now, she channels her acting skills—mimicking we…

Calling the groups in charge of professional tennis “a cartel,” the players’ association co-founded by Novak Djokovic filed an antitrust lawsuit against the women’s and men’s tours, the International Tennis Federation and the sport’s integrity agency on Tuesday in federal court in New York. The suit by the Professional Tennis Players’ Association says the organizations that run the sport hold “complete control over the players’ pay and working conditions” and their setup constitutes “textbook violations of state and federal law” that “immunize professional tennis from ordinary market forces and deny professional tennis players and other industry participants their rig…

A viral TikTok video showing an empty book signing for an elderly author tugged at millions of hearts—until it was exposed as a marketing stunt. The book in question, Just Cuz, was reportedly written by Barbara Miller as a tribute to her late husband, Marv. “She wrote it as a way to deal with her grief,” the video’s voiceover explained. Posted last month, the video shows an empty bookstore with “Aunt Barb” setting up her books on a table to sign for customers who were nowhere in sight, followed by a dejected but hopeful “Aunt Barb”—and it quickly racked up more than 33 million views, sparking an outpouring of support. Hundreds of commenters pledged to buy the book and…

A lone anglerfish has captured the internet’s heart. Usually found 6,500 feet under the sea, this black seadevil was filmed by marine researchers in Tenerife swimming towards the water’s surface on January 26. The shark conservation NGO Condrik Tenerife called the black, razor-toothed creature “a legendary fish that few will ever have the privilege of observing alive,” when sharing their footage on Instagram. Tragically, the fish died just hours after being spotted, making its final swim all the more poetic. This scientific discovery has since spread across social media and sparked an emotional outpouring for this six-inch fish. “I just found out abou…

Michael Patrick King has spent decades writing about people navigating worlds where everything feels transactional. With the colossally successful Sex and the City, which spawned multiple films and the sequel series And Just Like That…, King explored how identity, romance, and status become tangled up in consumerism and self-invention. In the long-running sitcom 2 Broke Girls, the focus shifted toward economic precarity and the humiliations of trying to survive in a world where money shapes nearly every relationship. But King’s sharpest work may be The Comeback, the HBO cult classic he co-created with Lisa Kudrow, who stars as Valerie Cherish, a washed-up sitcom actre…

About 20 minutes into the Devil Wears Prada—the 2006 David Frankel film that constitutes one of the most important and perfect films ever produced (please hold all dissent)—Meryl Streep delivers a critical speech to Anne Hathaway that encompasses the plot’s primary tension. The moment, which may come up in the sequel (an Instagram post from a professional dyeing service in New York suggests this may be the case), comes as Streep’s Miranda, the frigid chief editor of a top fashion magazine is pondering items that might be featured for an upcoming issue, while surrounded by her stressed-out underlings. Also in the office is Andie (Hathaway), a comparatively disheveled …

The hottest parties right now are happening in the metaverse. VRChat, a video-game-like social platform hosted in virtual reality, saw more than 130,000 people in attendance on New Year’s Day 2025, according to a VR culture blog. Before 2020, VRChat had hardly seen more than 20,000 concurrent users, according to Wired. While virtual clubbing began in the early 2000s on platforms like Second Life, VRChat, and AltspaceVR, the COVID-19 lockdowns brought a new wave of virtual ravers as traditional nightclubs closed and people looked for online alternatives. Today, VR clubbers line up each week for dozens of fully immersive virtual parties hosted across the U.S., Europ…