What's on Your Mind?

As wind-driven wildfires spread through the Los Angeles area in January 2025, fire-spotting technology and computer models were helping firefighters understand the rapidly changing environment they were facing. That technology has evolved over the years, yet some techniques are very similar to those used over 100 years ago. I have spent several decades studying combustion, including wildfire behavior and the technology used to track fires and predict where wildfires might turn. Here’s a quick tour of the key technologies used today. Spotting fires faster First, the fire must be discovered. Often wildfires are reported by people seeing smoke. That hasn’t…

For the first time in more than 40 years, a new hormone-free intrauterine device (IUD) is coming to market in the U.S.—and it’s designed with patients’ comfort in mind, both during the insertion process and once it’s in place. The new IUD, called Miudella, comes from the pharmaceutical company Sebela Women’s Health Inc. It was approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in late February, and is the second hormone-free IUD to be approved since 1984, when the copper-based option Paragard first became available. With the addition of Miudella, there will now be six IUD options available in the U.S. Not only does this advancement provide patients seeking a horm…

As fires burned tens of thousands of acres across Los Angeles County, officials were warning residents that the air was a “toxic soup” of pollution—fueled by the fact that not only vegetation but cars, buildings, homes, and all the plastics and electronics inside them were going up in flames. But to some residents’ surprise, the Air Quality Index (AQI) on their phones didn’t relay that same message. That’s because AQI doesn’t capture the full scope of air pollution—which, during the fires, was made up of toxins including lead, chlorine, and bromine. To give residents a fuller picture of what exactly was in the air around L.A., scientists with an air monitoring projec…

When Ben Stiller goes out to dinner, he drinks between one and three Shirley Temples. But a fully-grown adult ordering a classic child’s beverage can elicit funny looks. So, to help cut the stigma, and the sugar, the actor, director, and producer launched his own soda company last month—called Stiller’s Soda—with a grown-up version of a Shirley Temple as one of its three flavors. He simply wanted a version “that he could feel good about drinking himself,” says Stiller’s Soda cofounder Alexander Doman, a serial food and beverage entrepreneur. Stiller’s isn’t the only soda company suddenly flirting with the Shirley Temple. In the past year, soda powerhouses and…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: How should I respond to rude comments at work? A: If I were to make a pie chart of most people’s complaints about work, the actual work would be one of the smallest slices. Bad bosses and annoying coworkers would take up the biggest slices, for sure. There are a few factors to consider if someone in your office is making rude comments. Is it a one-off or part of a pattern? If someone who is usually pleasant to work with says something rude out of …

Spot the robin’s egg blue of a Tiffany box, and you know there’s luxury inside. Or the sturdy brown of the UPS truck, and you expect reliable service. Yellow Minions make you smile, and Valentino’s vivid Pink PP Collection makes you want to step out and step up. Color is more than decoration. Color is a powerful tool that drives business and creates cultural relevance. The right hues build trust, drive sales, and make brands unforgettable, while the wrong ones can cost you customers and credibility. The launch of Coke Life in a green rather than familiar red can probably contributed to the product’s uphill battle with consumers. Even tinkering with a color combina…

My wife and I visited Singapore last week for the first time in a couple of years, and I was reminded how impressed I am with the country. It illustrates a great strategy point, the subject of this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece, which borrows from Billy Preston, whose Billboard No. 1 hit song in October 1974, Nothing From Nothing, contained the immortal line: “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.” This piece is a play on the line entitled Something From Nothing Leaves Something: How Strategy Choice Can Make Something out of Very Little. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. Impressive Singapore The minute you land at Changi…

You quit the 9-to-5 to have more control over your time. You wanted flexibility, autonomy, and the freedom to structure your days around your life instead of someone else’s schedule. Yet here you are, apologizing to a client for not responding to a message immediately. Feeling guilty on a Tuesday afternoon when you’ve only worked for four hours that day. Checking Slack at 9:00 PM because that’s been your routine for most of your working career. Many solopreneurs don’t realize they’ve inadvertently recreated corporate life until they’re already living it. You traded a demanding boss for a dozen demanding clients. You swapped mandatory meetings for back-to-back Zoom…

Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” as the opening to the first Star Wars movie, later labeled Episode IV: A New Hope. But at least four important aspects of the Star Wars saga are much closer—both in time and space—than Lucas was letting on. One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, Star Wars-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores. And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that migh…

I was one of the millions of people who lost someone to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the nonstop news about the “new normal,” my grief felt invisible. I took shallow solace in my phone and turned to social media to numb me from the reality that I now lived in: a world without my dad. One day, while mindlessly scrolling, I came across the r/Squishmallow subreddit, where a girl had posted her collection of more than 100 round plush toys. They were called Squishmallows—round stuffed animals invented in 2017 that have become one of the most popular toy lines in the world, with more than 100 million sold each year. I was hypnotized. I expected that my dive into the S…

St. Patrick’s Day usually conjures images of partying, Catholicism, Irish nationalism and, perhaps most famously, the color green: green clothes, green shamrocks, green beer and green rivers. So my students are often surprised when I tell them that St. Patrick’s Day was once a solemn feast day when you’d be far more likely to see the color blue. In fact, there’s even a color known as St. Patrick’s blue. ‘True blue’ Historians don’t know much about St. Patrick. But they believe he was born in the fifth century as Maewyn Succat. He wasn’t Irish; rather he was born in Wales, the son of a Roman-British official. He was, however, captured by Irish pirates and en…

In a new holiday ad for Starbucks, set to the tune of I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers, two adorable animated figures traipse across Starbucks’s red holiday cups to reunite. It’s a sweet video that highlights Starbucks’s transition into the winter holidays, one of the biggest sales moments of the year for the company. But while the iconic red cups are starring in Starbucks’s early holiday promotion, they’ve also become the center of an ongoing dispute with Starbucks Workers United—and a potential strike. On November 6, Starbucks released its holiday menu in stores, including seasonal beverages, treats, and cups. The rollout heralds the arrival of …

Student loan debt has an influence over borrowers’ career choices long after graduation, affecting their job satisfaction, career advancement, and investment strategies. According to a recent study conducted by MissionSquare Research Institute, the debt that’s carried by one in four Americans under 40 affects job-acceptance decisions for 56% of public-sector employees and 62% of those working in the private sector. “When they choose to accept . . . jobs, [the] majority of them have considered how that position or that job can help them with their student loan debt,” says the report’s author and MissionSquare’s head of research, Zhikun Liu. “It not only impacts pe…

Greg Walton, PhD, is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Walton’s research is supported by many foundations, including Character Lab, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He has been covered in major media outlets including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times. What’s the big idea? Stanford psychologist Greg Walton reveals how small psychological shifts—known as wise interventions—can create profound change in our live…

Fast Company is the official media partner of Summit Detroit. For the past 17 years, Summit, an organization hosting conferences and immersive experiences around the world, has brought together entrepreneurs and creatives in lush settings that double as vacation destinations—think Tulum, Mexico; Palm Desert, Calif.; Powder Mountain, Utah; and even out on the open sea. This year marks the end of Summit’s larger-scale events as the company pivots toward more intimate gatherings. So it’s little surprise that more than a few eyebrows were raised when Summit announced Detroit as its last big hurrah this June 5-8. [Illustration: Summit] “We came together and decided…

Fast Company is the official media partner of Summit Detroit. From the mouths of most companies, the word “community” amounts to nothing more than another cliched buzzword drained of any substance. But in some instances, the idea of community is so intrinsic to what the company is and stands for that the meaning behind the word evolves into something more. It’s why Jody Levy, CEO of Summit, had a hard time defining the word as it applies to her organization that hosts conferences and immersive experiences around the world. “Community is not the right word. Network is not the right word. Tribe is not the right word. None of these words actually describe what bein…

Expect more security — and nerves — at this year’s Super Bowl victory celebration regardless of who wins Sunday’s matchup in New Orleans between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. A shooting that killed one person and wounded about two dozen others marred last year’s Chiefs victory rally, and a Philadelphia Eagles fan died last month after falling from a light pole while celebrating the team’s NFC championship victory. Kansas City plans to boost its police presence if the Chiefs win a third-straight title, and Philadelphia might grease its poles to thwart climbers if the Eagles win. New Orleans, which was the scene of a New Year’s Day truck-ramming at…

Superman was born Kryptonian, raised Methodist, and sketched into existence by two Jewish teens in 1930s Cleveland. Faith and morality are his DNA. There are no overt religious references in Superman comics. But over eight decades, he’s been viewed as a divine entity, a savior figure—his sacrifice Christlike, his will to lead as strong as Moses parting the Red Sea, and his compassion akin to a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who guides Buddhists on the spiritual path. While scholars, comic book writers, and fans alike are struck by the religious undertones in Superman comics, they say what separates Superman from the ever-growing pack of superheroes is his singu…

You’ve just finished a strenuous hike to the top of a mountain. You’re exhausted but elated. The view of the city below is gorgeous, and you want to capture the moment on camera. But it’s already quite dark, and you’re not sure you’ll get a good shot. Fortunately, your phone has an AI-powered night mode that can take stunning photos even after sunset. Here’s something you might not know: That night mode may have been trained on synthetic nighttime images, computer-generated scenes that were never actually photographed. As artificial intelligence researchers exhaust the supply of real data on the web and in digitized archives, they are increasingly turning to synth…

In the tournament of pop culture—an arena increasingly obsessed with charts, data, and stat lines—Taylor Swift has, by most measures, already emerged the victor. In her nearly two decades in the public eye, she has become a billionaire by engineering one of the most dependable fan bases on the planet: a legion willing to buy every vinyl variant for her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, and generate such collective frenzy at her 149-date Eras Tour that it registered as seismic activity. Swift has become something like an institution, around whom various rituals and practices have formed, whether the exchanging of friendship bracelets or sharing easter eggs wi…

For Paul, a finance administrator, things came to a head when his report mistakenly included £7,000,000 of costs rather than £700,000. Fearing accusations of fraud, Paul disclosed his recent dementia diagnosis to his boss. Six weeks of sick leave became six months, and then a stepping stone to early retirement. Several years later, Paul regrets his unwanted unemployment, but at the time there didn’t seem to be an alternative. Paul was participating in an unrelated study about public transport when he told us about his unemployment. As researchers, we had heard many similar accounts—so we decided to dig down into the research on work and dementia. We were curious a…