What's on Your Mind?

Media personalities and online influencers who sow social division for a living, blame the rise of assassination culture on Antifa and MAGA. Meanwhile, tech CEOs gin up fears of an AI apocalypse. But they’re both smokescreens hiding a bigger problem. Algorithms decide what we see, and in trying to win their approval, we’re changing how we behave. Increasingly, that behavior is violent. The radicalization of young men on social networks isn’t new. But modern algorithms are accelerating it. Before Facebook and Twitter (X) switched from displaying the latest post from one of your friends at the top of your feed with crazy, outrageous posts from people you don’t know…

When I launched my first business in my twenties, I thought success meant doing everything alone. I believed that if I worked hard enough, read every business book, and put in the hours, I’d eventually figure it all out. What I quickly realized, however, is that you don’t find the most valuable growth strategy in your balance sheet. You find it in your network. As the founder of Boston Business Women, I’ve watched thousands of women start and scale companies over the last decade. In 2024, women started 49% of all new businesses in the U.S., up from just 29% five years earlier. And while that growth is impressive, the gap between potential and access still looms large.…

Chris was frustrated. He’d used Artificial Intelligence (AI) extensively in college. Now at his first job, he saw very few of his colleagues ever experimenting with it. At first, Chris tried bringing up AI conversationally. He mentioned creating a meal schedule, as well as planning a cool weekend trip itinerary. But when he suggested to his manager how they might want to incorporate AI into their workflow, he felt rebuffed. Chris isn’t alone. As the first group of highly experienced AI users is starting work, they have experience with AI. However, they lack the credibility and subject matter expertise to transform workflows. Championing change management initiativ…

You’re probably winding down from work and getting ready for a few days at home with your family. But anybody with caregiving responsibility knows that the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks will not be relaxing. Since the United States does not have a federal policy that gives workers paid time off after giving birth, having a medical procedure, or to care for a loved one, many will cram this labor into their precious holiday time. Many of us have a colleague who will come back to work exhausted after spending time with a dying parent, having taken advantage of the time off from work to figure out hospice and funeral arrangements. Or one who will be caring for a sibl…

After entrepreneur Brynn Putnam sold her smart fitness company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million in 2020, she was looking for her next big idea. It was the middle of the pandemic, and Putnam was living with five kids ranging in age from 2 to 21. She says she often found herself dreaming of an activity that would get her whole family to sit down and connect with each other. Brynn Putnam “When we played games, we were either playing board games like Candyland, so that the littlest ones could participate, or we would try to play video games, but the teenagers who’ve logged a lot of hours on sort of modern controllers would always smoke us,” Putnam says. “There wa…

Leaving your corporate job for a solopreneur path is a bold move—and it can feel terrifying. But as long as you’re prepared, it can be a smart move, especially in the current rocky job market. I worked at one corporate job for 15 years. Then I pivoted to a new career in marketing. Eighteen months later, I was working for myself as a full-time freelance writer. Within two months of going solo, I had replaced my salary at a marketing agency, but I’d also taken a lot of baby steps in advance of making the switch. You can make the transition to solopreneurship easier if you build a safety net before you walk out the corporate door. Here’s how. Calculate how much…

In a new legal filing, Meta is being accused of shutting down internal research that showed people who stopped using Facebook experienced less depression, anxiety, and loneliness. The allegations come as part of a lawsuit filed by several U.S. school districts against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and other social media companies. The brief, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California but is not yet public, reportedly claims the study, called Project Mercury, was initiated in 2019 and was meant to explore the impact of apps on polarization, news-consumption habits, “well-being, and daily social interactions.” Plaintiffs in the suit say…

Just days before Thanksgiving, as Americans shop at supermarkets nationwide for their holiday meals, Ambriola Company, which makes some Boar’s Head products, has issued a recall for select pecorino romano cheese products due to possible contamination from listeria. Supreme Service Solutions LLC, also known as Supreme Deli, is assisting in the Class I recall. There have been no illnesses or consumer complaints reported to date for items purchased from Supreme. What is listeria, and what are the symptoms? Listeria monocytogenes is a type of disease-causing bacteria that is generally transmitted when food is harvested, processed, prepared, packed, transported, or…

I feel it—the strain, the fractured attention. The constant tug to check, scroll, click. Everything we want is a tap away. Yet when we chase it all, something essential slips through our fingers. I see it clearly in my own world of conferences and events. These are spaces meant for connection, yet people often leave feeling overwhelmed and oddly under-connected. The truth is that genuine engagement is rare. According to Gallup, only 21% of employees are fully engaged. Most are simply going through the motions. It’s a similar story at large-scale events and webinars, where participation beyond passive listening has long been the exception, not the norm. That’s exactly …

Changing an organism’s genome is a profound act, and the tools you use to make the changes don’t alleviate the need for responsible regulation. Since bursting onto the scene in 2012, CRISPR technology has been used to modify dozens of species from bacteria to livestock to plants, and even human embryos. Many countries have put ethical guardrails in place to prohibit creating designer babies. However, in agriculture, gene-edited crops are largely exempt from regulatory oversight, creating a “Wild West” where anything goes and edited crops are free to enter the food supply. Unlike “traditional” genetically modified organisms (GMO)—used since the 1990s to create Roun…

Leading the Exceptional Women Alliance gives me a front-row seat to how accomplished women lift each other through mentorship and growth. Joanna Dodd Massey is a corporate board director and Fortune 500 executive with expertise in risk, governance, and crisis leadership. She has a PhD in psychology and advises boards and executives navigating high-stakes challenges and organizational change. Q: Why do family conversations turn so tense during the holidays? Massey: Alcohol and forced family fun play a role, but underneath it all is our biology. Human beings are one of those species that can’t survive alone—we’re hardwired for connection because our survival depends …

Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) announced it will close select Foot Locker stores and raised its full-year year outlook, in its third quarter earnings report on Tuesday. While Dick’s has not disclosed how many locations it will shutter (Fast Company has reached out for confirmation), it is part of a larger restructuring effort, according to executive chairman Ed Stack who spoke with CNBC. Dick’s acquired leading footwear and apparel retailer Foot Locker for $2.5 billion back in September, according to its latest earnings release. As of November 1, the company was operating 3,230 store locations across the combined Dick’s and Foot Locker businesses globally. …

Sales at U.S. retailers and restaurants increased modestly in September as resilient consumers moderated their spending after splurging over the summer. Sales rose 0.2% in September from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, in a report delayed more than a month because of the government shutdown. Sales jumped 0.6% in July and August and 1% in June. Numerous reports on inflation, employment, spending, and growth remain delayed and the government won’t likely be caught up until late December. The retail sales figures, which aren’t adjusted for inflation, suggest that Americans pulled back on spending in September as many households struggled wit…

If everything feels expensive this year, you’re not alone. The high cost of living is on many Americans’ minds heading into the tail end of the year – a period defined by ceaseless shopping, whether it’s for the Thanksgiving menu or a last minute gift for under the tree. Americans need to buy stuff (perhaps not so much stuff), but they’re also feeling the pinch of persistent inflation, chaotic tariffs and a frozen job market in 2025. How those forces will play out this holiday shopping season remains to be seen. According to a recent survey from consulting firm Deloitte, more people will be shopping this Black Friday through Cyber Monday, but they plan to spend le…

Tests of ByHeart infant formula tied to a botulism outbreak that has sickened dozens of babies showed that all of the company’s products may have been contaminated. Laboratory tests of 36 samples of formula from three different lots showed that five samples contained the type of bacteria that can lead to the rare and potentially deadly illness, the company said Monday on its website. “Based on these results, we cannot rule out the risk that all ByHeart formula across all product lots may have been contaminated,” the company wrote. At least 31 babies in 15 states who consumed ByHeart formula have been sickened in the outbreak that began in August, according to …

Spurred to action by tech industry lobbyists and insiders, Republicans in the Senate appear to be planning to add language to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would preempt states from passing laws regulating AI labs. Two sources with knowledge tell Fast Company that a small group of GOP lawmakers, staffers, and tech lobbyists worked through the weekend crafting the new language. Heading into Thanksgiving, much uncertainty hangs over the fate of the state-level moratorium – and a fair amount of secrecy about how the AI industry and its MAGA allies will try to tie the hands of states, and Congress, to regulate AI. Democrats and others may not b…

U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring, and stubborn inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest reading since April, when President Donald The President announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge. The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found. Declining confidence could pose political problems for The President and Republi…

If you ask New Yorkers on the street what they think about the giant, controversial print ad campaign in the NYC subway system, their initial response might be, “Which one?” In the past two months alone, not one, but two ad campaigns fitting that description have appeared on the subway. The first debuted in late September, when Friend, an AI company billed as a portable “companion,” ran a $1 million print campaign featuring a variety of servile messages like, “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink.” The campaign received massive criticism, to the point that the MTA was forced to continuously remove Friend’s vandalized ads. In an interview with Fast Company, Frien…

In a packed room at a library in downtown Boston, Rep. Ayanna Pressley posed a blunt question: Why are Black women, who have some of the highest labor force participation rates in the country, now seeing their unemployment rise faster than most other groups? The replies Monday from policymakers, academics, business owners, and community organizers laid out how economic headwinds facing Black women may indicate a troubling shift for the economy at large. The unemployment rate for Black women increased from 6.7% to 7.5% between August and September this year, the most recent month for available data because of the federal government shutdown. That compares with …

The The President administration is hunting for ways to block the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence. In response, dozens of state attorneys general have now sent a letter pressing Congressional leadership not to approve language that would preempt their governments’ freedom to propose their own legislation on the technology. “Broad preemption of state protections is particularly ill-advised because constantly evolving emerging technologies, like AI, require agile regulatory responses that can protect our citizens,” they write in a Tuesday memo. “This regulatory innovation is best left to the 50 states so we can all learn from what works and what do…

Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead perform a trial run with cargo to prove its safety. Monday’s announcement comes eight months after the first and only Starliner crew returned to Earth aboard SpaceX after a prolonged mission. Although NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams managed to dock Starliner to the International Space Station in 2024, the capsule had so many problems that NASA ordered it to come back empty, leaving the astronauts stuck there for more than nine months. Engineers have since been poring over the thruster and other issues that plagued the Starliner capsule. Its next carg…

President Donald The President is directing the federal government to combine efforts with tech companies and universities to convert government data into scientific discoveries, acting on his push to make artificial intelligence the engine of the nation’s economic future. The President unveiled the “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order he signed Monday that directs the Department of Energy and national labs to build a digital platform to concentrate the nation’s scientific data in one place. It solicits private sector and university partners to use their AI capability to help the government solve engineering, energy and national security problems, including s…

Only a week after experiencing a dreaded “death cross,” and subsequently seeing its value fall to less than $81,000, Bitcoin is showing some signs of recovering. On Monday, BTC’s price topped $89,000, and as of early Tuesday, are hovering around $87,500. To be clear, the slump is far from over—the coin saw its price top $124,000 just last month—and no one can predict what will happen next, but it’s a clear upswing in momentum. All told, when Bitcoin bottomed out at $81,000, it had fallen around 35% off its high. There were several reasons for the selloff, including outflows from large institutional investors and broader economic uncertainty, among other thin…

Apple said on Monday it is cutting jobs across its sales teams to strengthen its customer engagement efforts, noting that only a small number of roles will be impacted by the layoffs. An Apple spokesperson told Reuters that the company is continuing to hire and the affected employees can apply for new roles. The impacted employees include account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies, according to Bloomberg News, which had reported the news earlier in the day. Staff who operate Apple’s briefing centers for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective customers were also affected, Bloomberg said. One of the …

I keep coming up against a logical fallacy in strategy that I feel compelled to address. The logic holds that when a company has a shareholder-unfriendly component of its portfolio—e.g. the business in question is cyclical, or it is low-growth or low margin—the company should diversify to make that business less-shareholder unfriendly. I take on the fallacy in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece entitled Diversification Can’t Disappear a Strategy Problem: It Just Creates a Different Problem. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The argument The usual motivator of this argument is cyclicality: We have a cyclical business, an…