What's on Your Mind?

The name Village Roadshow might not ring a bell with every moviegoer, but the company’s logo almost certainly will. Its shimmering, nested “V” of metallic ribbons that taper inward like a cinematic illusion played before dozens of movies that collectively spawned 34 No. 1 opening weekends, 19 Academy Awards, and $19 billion in worldwide box office gross. The veteran production house behind seismic hits like The Matrix, Ocean’s 11, and Mad Max: Fury Road has been delivering hits for decades, mostly through coproductions with Warner Bros. But last week, following a years-long decline in box office performance, the company filed for bankruptcy. How did a highly pedig…

You might think the most important amenities a hotel could provide would be a comfortable bed and a friendly concierge. For workers looking to shake up their WFH routine, though, a lightning-fast internet connection and electrical outlets aplenty may top that list. The chicer cousin of the coworking space, a hotel lobby is no longer a place to simply check in or out: It’s an often overlooked third space in major cities, where guests and remote workers alike can mingle, relax, and get work done. Kayla Terzi is a recent convert. The hospitality real estate broker used to bounce around different cafés while working remotely in New York City—that is, until she discov…

Your team is busier than ever. Calendars are packed, inboxes are overflowing, and everyone is racing from one meeting to the next. So why aren’t the breakthroughs happening? Here’s the paradox: We’ve optimized for activity, not creativity. According to Microsoft research, people now spend 60% of their workday on communication tasks alone. That’s meetings, emails, and messages. Another study from Dropbox found that 46% of knowledge workers say they don’t have enough time for creative work, and only 8% of employees regularly propose new ideas. The problem isn’t that your team lacks creativity. It’s that we’ve scheduled every minute for execution and left zero ti…

Though many companies are still in the early days of AI adoption, one thing is clear: Many of our interactions—between employees and even organizations—are already being carried out entirely by agentic technology. As this trend increases, the need for leaders to keep humanity at the core of their businesses is critical. That’s why this year’s annual meeting of the Fast Company Impact Council was centered on the theme of “Maintaining a Human Touch in a Digital World.” In May, 123 of the Impact Council’s 422 members gathered in New Canaan, Connecticut, at the 80-acre headquarters of humanitarian nonprofit Grace Farms. In panels and roundtables held across the organizati…

Artists and cultural workers are falling through the cracks of our economy at a time when their work has never been more needed in society. Their ability to exist and thrive is threatened by the cost of living and housing affordability crisis, our increasingly precarious economy, and cuts to grant funding under the new administration. Many exist in a structural grey area between independent gig workers and small business owners. Their work is often episodic, making them easily left out of safety net programs like unemployment and healthcare—this is especially true for artists from historically marginalized communities. To address these challenges, we need new syst…

Your paycheck could be a little bigger in 2026, even if you didn’t get a New Year’s raise. That’s because, in order to adjust for inflation, the IRS made some major changes to the tax code last year. In case you missed it, the changes were announced back in October. Notably, the standard deduction for 2026 (to be filed in 2027) — which reduces the amount of your income you will be taxed on — will rise. “For tax year 2026, the standard deduction increases to $32,200 for married couples filing jointly,” the October announcement explains. “For single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately, the standard deduction rises to $16,100 for tax year 2026, and for he…

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment. So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for exam…

Altadena Girls began as a pop-up shop immediately after the Eaton Fire tore through Los Angeles, born out of a desire to help affected teenage girls regain a sense of their identity. The mission was simple yet profound: offer a space where they could rebuild what had been lost—clothing, makeup, and other items that help define who they are. The impact was significant as it reached more than 42 million people on social media in the first few weeks while receiving support from high-level brands and celebrities. Now, Altadena Girls is planning to open a community center dedicated to empowering young girls, helping them through trauma, and providing long-term support…

For transgender students involved in a very special project at a culinary school in Pakistan, there is more to a class than just learning the art of cooking. Neha Malik used to dance at parties and weddings for a living and was, occasionally, a sex worker. Since January, she has been enrolled in a new course for the trans community at the Culinary & Hotel Institute of Pakistan. The free six-month program in the city of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, welcomed its first group of 25 trans students in January; the second group of 25 began training on February 1. Now, Malik, 31, dreams of working as a chef in Dubai, the futuristic, skyscraper-studded city in the U…

Few things are as quintessential Mexico as spotting a large, lab-coat-wearing mustachioed mascot dancing in the streets. This character—dubbed Dr. Simi—is one of Mexico’s most recognizable figures. Its life-size version can be found on social media riding a bike, dancing to regional music, breaking Guinness world records, and, on occasion, fighting other mascots like Duolingo’s Duo. Customized Dr. Simi plushies have made their way onstage with the world’s most celebrated artists, including Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, and Adele, and even into the hands of the late Pope Francis. AdeleX The playful, and sometimes mischievous, mascot is the face of Farmacias Similares, a c…

When a grizzly bear attacked a group of fourth- and fifth-graders in western Canada in late November 2025, it sparked more than a rescue effort for the 11 people injured—four with severe injuries. Local authorities began trying to find the specific bear that was involved in order to relocate or euthanize it, depending on the results of their assessment. The attack, in Bella Coola, British Columbia, was very unusual bear behavior and sparked an effort to figure out exactly what had happened and why. That meant finding the bear involved—which, based on witness statements, was a mother grizzly with two cubs. Searchers combed the area on foot and by helicopter and tra…

One April night eight years ago, two tech leaders sat down with a former Forest Service employee at Terroir, a natural wine bar in San Francisco. Then they started sketching out a plan that would eventually reshape California’s housing policy. Landmark housing reforms that passed in the state in 2025, one that allows more housing to be built near transit stops, and another curbing the use of environmental law to block new housing—and which many believed would never succeed—can be traced back to that night, five bottles of wine, and crucial backing from Silicon Valley executives. An unlikely new leader Brian Hanlon, the Forest Service employee, was an unlikely l…

It’s not often that headlines about customer “brawls” end up morphing into good news for a brand. But that’s arguably what’s happened to Starbucks thanks to the bungled rollout of its limited-run “Bearista” cups becoming the first new craze of this holiday season—even including good-natured copycat tributes from the likes of Aldi and Walmart. At first, the Bearista debut on November 6 seemed like a black eye. The 20-ounce glass tumbler, shaped like a cute bear sporting a Starbucks beanie, sparked immediate viral demand, with customers at some locations lining up at 3 a.m. to score one. This apparently caught the company off guard, and supplies of the $30 object ran ou…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. A year ago, our company made a bold move. We put up a million dollars in prize money for any of our team members—no matter their role—who came up with transformative ways of using AI to serve our clients. As a health marketing agency, we saw it as our version of the renowned XPRIZE, hoping that this initiative would truly spark meaningful change and inspire us to think bigger for our clients. …

In HBO’s hit show Succession, patriarch Logan Roy pitted his children against each other for the top spot of leading his media conglomerate. Those who’ve seen the show will know how it ends, but what if he took a different route? What if he established a collaborative, multi-generational leadership team to guide Waystar RoyCo into the future? Granted, it would have made for far less dramatic tension (and probably fewer award wins) for the show. But for Roy’s shareholders, it would’ve been a smarter move in a rapidly changing media industry. Succession planning is a non-negotiable principle for any thriving organization, yet it’s also one of the hardest to get right. …

As national Democrats search for a unifying theme ahead of the fall’s midterm elections, a California proposal to levy a hefty tax on billionaires is turning some of the party’s leading figures into adversaries just when Democrats can least afford division from within. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders traveled to Los Angeles on Wednesday to campaign for the tax proposal, which has Silicon Valley in an uproar, with tech titans threatening to leave the state. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is among its outspoken opponents, warning that it could leave government finances in crisis and put the state at a competitive disadvantage nationally. At an evening rally near downtown, Sande…

Carroll Tower, a 194-apartment public housing development in Providence, Rhode Island, was built in 1974. For more than 50 years, residents there relied on electric baseboards for heating and their own window air conditioners, if they had them, in the summers. But now, the entire building has been retrofitted with a modern HVAC system: 277 heat pumps from Gradient, a San Francisco-based climate tech startup, will heat and cool the property. The heat pumps were installed as part of a $1.25 million public-private project between the Providence Housing Authority, Gradient, the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, energy consulting firm Abode Energy Management…

Her voice cracking with emotion as she stood under the fluorescent lights, Janice Blanock asked her local legislators in southwestern Pennsylvania to take a moment and leaf through the photos of her son that she’d handed them. “There’s really nothing different that I can say to you that I haven’t said already over the last several months,” she told supervisors for the tiny township of Cecil outside Pittsburgh. “I can, however, share these photographs. These are just a few of the many pictures we have of our son Luke, from the time he became ill until before he died.” The supervisors were gathered to vote on a zoning ordinance amendment that would greatly increase …

If you enter a query into Quili.AI on January 31, your question won’t be answered by a large language model, but instead by residents from the Chilean community of Quilicura. The project aims to replace artificial intelligence with “analog intelligence,” to both highlight the environmental impact of AI, and to get people thinking consciously about their AI use. “We’re inviting people to have a day without AI,” Lorena Antiman from Corporación NGEN, an environmental organization focused in part on protecting Quilicura’s wetlands, says while speaking through a translator. Corporación NGEN spearheaded the project. Instead of going through a data center, each pr…

It’s the sort of thing you might not notice until it really matters, but the U.S. Postal Service recently changed how it defines the “postmark” on a piece of mail—warning that the postmark date is not a reliable indicator of when you actually mailed something. If you’re the sort of person who waits until the last minute to send time-sensitive mail, that means you’ll need to stand in line at your local post office and request a manual postmark when dropping off your mail. While the way mail is postmarked hasn’t undergone some major shift recently, the postal service set out earlier this year to clarify earlier what a postmark means and how the process works. B…