What's on Your Mind?

As the old folklore goes, if you are feeling extra tired and cranky this week, the upcoming full moon might be to blame. And while you definitely won’t turn into a werewolf, there is some data to suggest the old folklore is true, even if the scientific research on the topic is limited: A 2013 sleep study found that during a full moon, participants spent 30% less time in deep sleep and lost out on 20 minutes of slumber on average. However, skywatchers are in for a treat this weekend, even if they may be missing a little sleep, as a full moon will rise on Saturday night. Here’s what to know about the full moon, and how best to see it. What is the name of the full mo…

George Arison is telling me about a hookup. Arison, the 47-year-old CEO of the LGBTQ dating app and social network Grindr, recalls an encounter with a man who ranked low in physical chemistry—“it was in my bottom quartile of hookups,” he says, as if reviewing a spreadsheet of them—but high in intellectual compatibility. That bottom-quartile hookup is now a good friend of his. To Arison, the story illustrates how meaningful relationships can grow from the random connections Grindr facilitates. And if Grindr’s short time as a public company is any indication, solid financials can too. It’s been a rough stretch for dating apps. Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hing…

Want to enjoy your job a little more? Maybe you need a BFF at work. According to Gallup, having a best friend at work increases job satisfaction, innovation, engagement, and productivity, and it decreases your chances of leaving the company. But can that friend ever be your boss? “You may think, If I’m going to have a friend at work, shouldn’t it be the CEO? Why not go for the top and get the most benefits from the friendship?” says Steve McClatchy, author of Leading Relationships: Build Meaningful Connections, Eliminate Conflict, and Radically Improve Engagement. “Gallup is telling us that we should have a best friend at work, but it doesn’t say that best friend shou…

If someone driving a new version of a Subaru Forester crashes into a cyclist, an airbag will immediately inflate on the hood to help protect the person on the bike. The SUV, which offers the feature only on vehicles sold in Japan, isn’t the first Subaru to include an external airbag. The company started including pedestrian protection airbags on its Japanese cars nearly a decade ago. But the brand says the new design is the first in the world intended to also protect cyclists. It’s a basic, commonsense idea. “Airbags have been proven to be effective to protect the occupants in a vehicle,” says Ben Crowther, policy director for America Walks, a nonprofit focused on…

If there’s one thing worse than having to assemble a PowerPoint presentation, it’s being forced to sit through an achingly dull one conducted by someone else. So what if there were a better option—a way anyone, regardless of skill, could create a sleek and actually engaging slideshow that looks like a professional designer had a hand in it? If you ask Grant Lee, we’ve already reached the point where that’s possible. And it doesn’t end with presentations. Lee is the founder of an AI-centric startup called Gamma. You may not have heard of it yet, but 50 million people have—and are already using the service. That’s led the scrappy, 30-person company to reach a mi…

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that most customers never see—every single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. “We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks,” says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment …

The latest wave of tech layoffs doesn’t have to be a step backward—it can be a launchpad. If you’ve spent years shipping products, debugging systems, and partnering with go-to-market teams, you already have what many founders don’t: domain insight and a network. Pair that with AI “employees,” (role-specific software agents trained on your company’s data that can perform defined tasks like drafting on-brand content, qualifying leads, and updating CRMs) and your severance becomes seed capital for a lean, scalable company. What’s different now is that the traditional barriers to starting a business have collapsed. The math is transformative: What once required $500,000 …

To San Francisco chef and restaurateur Thomas McNaughton, QR codes are an efficient way to serve a crowd. Sure, the codes—and restaurants that use them—have endured much loathing. And, yes, people still love to criticize them. But at the newest location of McNaughton’s Flour + Water Pizzeria, set to open later this month, QR codes are the star. There’s good reason. The 1,800-square-foot restaurant sits a few blocks from Oracle Park, where the San Francisco Giants just opened the baseball season. It needs to handle serious spikes in business from game-day crowds and pump out pizzas fast. “We envision a scenario where, for two hours, it’s completely gangbusters befo…

Office work is officially back from the dead—if New York is any indication, that is. In Manhattan, businesses are leasing more office space than they have in close to a decade, in a sign that the return-to-office movement is likely to stick around. According to real estate investor CBRE, during the first nine months of 2025, Manhattan businesses leased 23.2 million square feet of office space, the most since 2006. Leasing has already surpassed last year’s total, with 143 leases at more than $100 per square foot. However, as the epicenter of business, New York City is an outlier: Nationally, leasing is still around 11% below the pre-COVID average. Unsurprisingly, …

The world’s auto industry is getting a shake-up from Chinese automakers that are quickly expanding across the globe, offering relatively affordable electric vehicles designed to wow car buyers with sleek designs and the latest high-tech interiors. Companies like BYD, Great Wall, Geely, and Chery Automobile are reaching outward as they build the scale they need to survive cutthroat competition in their home market. These generally are not state-run giants like SAIC, BAIC, and Guangzhou Automotive. The founder of Geely started out making refrigerators. BYD first built up its expertise in battery technology, now its biggest advantage as the world’s largest-selling EV make…

What happens when someone comes close to death and then returns to everyday life, including work? For some, the experience can be transformative. Near-death experiences (NDEs) are deeply personal experiences that some people report after a close brush with death. These experiences can include sensations such as floating above one’s body, reviewing moments from one’s life, encountering spiritual beings and feeling a profound sense of unity and love. Although NDEs have been studied since the 1970s, we know relatively little about how they affect people after the event. Research suggests people who have near-death experiences may feel increased empathy, spiritual gro…

Independent bookstores have long been champions of community, curiosity, and culture—and on Saturday, April 26, they get their moment in the spotlight. Independent Bookstore Day, a nationwide celebration of indie bookstores, invites readers to shop locally and support the spaces that keep storytelling vibrant. But this year, the festivities come with a wrinkle: Amazon is holding a major book sale at the same time, and many booksellers and readers aren’t having it. Independent bookstores and users on BookTok are expressing their frustration with Amazon while encouraging readers to stay off of the online shopping site and instead make the trek to their local bookstore f…

The average person changes jobs every two years and nine months, according to a survey by the career advice website Career Sidekick. If you work for 40 years, that translates to about 15 jobs—and 15 resignations. While the conversation can feel difficult, it’s important to be thoughtful about how you say goodbye, says Melody Wilding, author of Managing Up: How to Get What you Need from the People in Charge and human behavior professor at Hunter College in New York City. “A lot of people boomerang back to a company, team, or manager in a fairly short time,” says Wilding, who is also a contributor to Fast Company. “Having strong relationships with leaders and colleague…

Ever wonder why the sound of rain makes you instantly drowsy, but a ticking clock drives you up the wall? That’s because not all noise soothes the brain in the same way. Sleep sounds might seem like just background buzz, but they’re carefully engineered to allow your brain to let go. Behind every babbling brook or rainforest storm track is an intricate design meant to quiet the mind, block out distractions, and nudge you toward sleep. As more people rely on sleep sounds to wind down, the industry behind them has surged, which is evidence of just how common this nightly ritual has become. Mediation and mindfulness app Headspace, says 51% of listeners use its sleep con…

Inside a new factory near Louisville, Kentucky, bright orange robots will soon begin carefully loading boot parts into a machine that adds soles. It’s one step in the highly automated process of making a Keen work boot—and an illustration of what it looks like now to bring factories back to the United States. Keen, which is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, started planning the new factory last year, long before current tariffs were in place. And the company, unlike the majority of shoe brands, had already been manufacturing some shoes in Portland for more than a decade. The Portland factory is now closing as the company prepares to open the larger factory in Kentucky n…