What's on Your Mind?

The commercial jingle will never die. The classic advertising device’s longevity is as impressive as it is surprising. Despite just about everything else in the advertising industry changing over the past two decades, it remains one of the few core tools many marketers still rely on. It’s why when you read, “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty” you’ll be singing the Liberty Mutual tune in your head. Kraft Heinz CMO Todd Kaplan knows this. He also knows that in order to really make a jingle stick, it helps if you enlist legendary artists to sing it. Which is why this week, the company’s Lunchables brand dropped its reimagined version of the 2002 Buckwheat Boyz brainworm “Peanut…

Effective leadership isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It requires adaptability, self-awareness, and a deep understanding of when to step in and when to step back. Leaders often struggle to find the right balance between empowering their teams and maintaining strategic oversight. But there’s a way that you can do both. By adopting the practical 2×2 leadership framework that I’ll get into in this article, leaders can assess their approach based on two critical dimensions: Degree of Empowerment and Degree of Strategic Altitude. The leadership quadrants When you map out leadership approaches across these two dimensions, four distinct quadrants emerge. Each …

On TikTok, soup is getting a rebrand. It’s now water-based cooking, to you. “Pov you started water based cooking and now your skin is clear, your stomach is thriving and you recover from illness overnight,” one TikTok post reads. Others claim the method is making them age backwards. But a quick scroll through the comments has many pointing out the obvious: “bro invented soup,” one commenter wrote. Another added, “As an asian, what’s new.” The post made its way to Bluesky, where one user joked, “I need to start jumping on these phony trends. Get a water based cookbook self-published by tomorrow. Hit tiktok running.” They added, “Send me soup recipes. Let’s all …

Since it launched two years ago, Spotify’s AI DJ has been a one-way experience. It curates old favorites and helps listeners discover new tracks based on past listening experience and what similar users like. But now it’s getting interactive. Spotify unveiled the ability to request songs from the DJ based on mood, genre, and vibe. The feature, which launched across 60 markets, is exclusive to Spotify Premium users, who can access the DJ by searching for the tool in the app. It’s the latest AI feature to come from Spotify, which introduced an AI-generated playlist builder for Premium users in the United States last fall. But Molly Holder, Spotify’s senior directo…

In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, billionaire and The President megadonor Elon Musk offered his thoughts about what motivates political progressives to support immigration. In his view, the culprit was empathy, which he called “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” As shocking as Musk’s views are, however, they are far from unique. On the one hand, there is the familiar and widespread conservative critique of “bleeding heart” liberals as naive or overly emotional. But there is also a broader philosophical critique that raises worries about empathy on quite different and less political grounds, including findings in social science. Empathy can …

As the Class of 2025 graduates into an uncertain and fast-changing working world, they face a crucial question: What does it mean to be successful? Is it better to take a job that pays more, or one that’s more prestigious? Should you prioritize advancement, relationship building, community impact or even the opportunity to live somewhere new? Sorting through these questions can feel overwhelming. I am a business school professor who spends a lot of time mentoring students and alumni in Generation Z — those born between 1997 and 2012. As part of this effort, I’ve surveyed about 300 former undergraduate students and spoken at length with about 50 of them. Throug…

“We don’t just follow orders or system prompts,” says Baratunde Thurston, host of Life with Machines—a YouTube podcast exploring the human side of AI. “We can change our own programming,” he continued. “We can choose a higher goal.” As a host, writer, and speaker, Thurston examines society’s most pressing challenges—from race to democracy, climate to technology—through the lens of interdependence. In addition to Life with Machines, he is the host and executive producer of America Outdoors, creator and host of the podcast How to Citizen, and a writer and founding partner at Puck. In each pursuit, he invites us to cocreate “a better story of us”—to choose a higher goa…

On the morning of March 20, Mathew Roberts was working at a chemical plant on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when he was involved in an accident with a forklift. Unresponsive and in critical condition, the father of two and Iraq War veteran known for his big laugh and warm smile was taken from the Nutrien nitrogen plant to a local hospital, where he died of his injuries. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident, along with local law enforcement, but Roberts’s family members said they are still waiting for answers. The workplace death is not unusual in Louisiana, which has been ranked the sixth-most-dangerous s…

When AWS’s US-East-1 region went dark in late October, followed just a week later by a Microsoft Azure outage, it was yet another stark reminder that even the world’s biggest cloud vendors are not immune to failures. A simple DNS failure in AWS’s Route 53 rippled outward, knocking out applications, disrupting database services, and reminding us how dependent our tech infrastructure has become on a handful of cloud regions. With “an inadvertent tenant configuration change,” the Azure outage further highlighted the instability of some of these systems, once again demonstrating how small changes can have quite a large impact. With CyberCube estimating that the cost of …

A teenager who admitted being “addicted to speed” behind the wheel had totaled two other cars in the year before he slammed into a minivan at 112 mph (180 kph) in a Seattle suburb, killing the driver and three of the five children she was transporting for a homeschool co-op. After sentencing Chase Daniel Jones last month to more than 17 years in prison, the judge tacked on a novel condition should he drive again: His vehicle must be equipped with a device that prevents accelerating far beyond the speed limit. Virginia this year became the first state to give its judges such a tool to deal with the most dangerous drivers on the road. Washington, D.C., already is using it…

The list of Rite Aid drugstores marked for closure continues to grow at a furious pace after the ill-fated pharmacy chain filed for bankruptcy a second time. In a court filing last week, the company said it would move to close 151 additional locations in 10 states, its largest batch of closures since the Chapter 11 process began three weeks ago. Three earlier filings had disclosed a combined 210 closures, as Fast Company previously reported. That means the list of stores that are expected to shutter on an accelerated timeline is now over 360—more than a quarter of Rite Aid’s fleet of 1,277 locations. Fast Company reached out to Rite Aid for more information …

No, it’s not April Fools’ Day, but despite some erroneous reports that Walmart will be closing at least 11 stores across multiple states in 2025, Walmart says it will not be closing any of its stores this year. “There are no current plans to close any stores in 2025,” a spokesperson for Walmart told Fast Company. “The erroneous claim originated from a late March US Mirror story, and that article was updated following our call to the editors for a correction. Unfortunately, other outlets have incorrectly reported the store closures without checking with our team, leading us to seek corrections from them as well.” Some of those news outlets included MSN and The Huds…

Switch, PS5, and XBox might be the biggest names in video games, but David Lee and a group of entrepreneurial alums from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are carving out a niche market with Nex, a new alternative. The company’s Nex Playground device has sold more than 200,000 units. Instead of buying individual games, families buy a subscription-based collection of 40-plus titles. Like the old Nintendo Wii, Nex focuses on family-friendly, movement-based games. The Nex device plugs into TVs for motion-controlled experiences. Instead of controllers, the device uses a built-in camera that enables you to play games by moving your hands and feet. …

Have you heard of “Maycember”? According to social media, it’s a term that describes the hectic nature and mounting expenses families face around May, particularly parents with children, due to the increased cost of everything from graduation gifts to summer camps and family vacations, which combined with inflation (and tariffs), have made May feel extra expensive, just like the winter holiday season. That’s as total spending for college and graduation gifts is expected to reach a record $6.8 billion in 2025, up from $6.1 billion in 2024, according to the National Retail Federation. And U.S. consumer spending was up in May 2024, even as prices remained stable; the per…

The social media platform X said Thursday it has blocked access to jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu ’s account in Turkey, complying with a Turkish court order — the latest measure targeting a key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, Elon Musk‘s X said that while the company abided by the order, it disagrees with it and is legally challenging it. It said X complied to avoid severe punishments, such as the throttling of the whole platform in Turkey. “X has been and will continue to object to removal orders including government requests in courts to protect users when those requests do not align with principles of free expression, due process, or oth…

Navigating the nexus between design innovation and practical application reveals a stark truth: Constraints, not freedoms, often spur the most creative solutions. Our journey into accessible furniture and product design is less about overcoming limitations and more about embracing the profound potential of human-centric design. Imagine designers not just as creators but as researchers, delving deep into the daily lives of older individuals and people with disabilities through intensive ethnographic research. This approach involves hundreds of hours spent observing diverse populations in their most familiar environments—their homes. Here, every interaction and every s…

Human-caused climate change intensified deadly rainfall in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and other states in early April and made those storms more likely to occur, according to an analysis released Thursday by the World Weather Attribution group of scientists. The series of storms unleashed tornadoes, strong winds and extreme rainfall in the central Mississippi Valley region from April 3-6 and caused at least 24 deaths. Homes, roads and vehicles were inundated and 15 deaths were likely caused by catastrophic floods. The WWA analysis found that climate change increased rainfall intensity in the storms by 9% and made them 40% more likely compared to probability of such e…

The family of a man killed in a 2021 road rage incident in Arizona used artificial intelligence to portray the victim delivering his own impact statement during his killer’s sentencing hearing, according to local news reports. Christopher Pelkey’s sister, brother-in-law, and their friend used AI technology to recreate his likeness, reportedly drawing from video clips recorded while he was alive. It is believed to be one of the first—if not the very first—instances of an AI-generated victim impact statement being used in court. “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me: it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the artificial 37-ye…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. At the end of March 2025, national active housing inventory for sale was up 28.5% year-over-year. That year-over-year active inventory growth is happening just about everywhere. The recent jump in active inventory for sale tells us that homebuyers have gained some leverage in most housing markets over the past year. Some “seller’s markets have turned into “balanced markets,” while some “balanced markets” have turned into “buyer’s markets.” While active listings are rising year-over-year in most regional housing markets, most markets are st…

The AI revolution is redefining business and tech leadership—and no one is standing more squarely on the front lines than product leaders. Once seen as a behind-the-scenes role, the CPO is now one of the most powerful voices in the executive suite. In 2020, only 4% of the Fortune 1000 had a CPO, a number that has since ballooned to almost 50%. In the next few years, we expect to see that figure grow to 70%. At Products That Count, the nonprofit for product managers I chair, we’ve spent the past year talking to almost 1,000 CPOs at companies ranging from startup unicorns to Fortune 100 giants like Salesforce, Walmart, and Microsoft. What we’ve heard is clear: The o…

If you’ve ever been to the Vatican or watched for a puff of white smoke on live TV, you probably noticed something colorful. Or rather, something wholly mind-blowing in the modern era of tactical military design—a troop of tri-color pantalooned papal protectors wielding halberds, seemingly straight out of a Raphael painting. But these are not hired cosplayers. This is the Swiss Guard, the pope’s personal security team—and today they’re protecting the college of cardinals as they vote on the next Catholic leader, decked out in what Encyclopedia Britannica has dubbed “among the oldest uniforms in continuous use.” It’s more Met Gala than military. Here’s how this bol…