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Hollywood is waking up to the power of influencers. That starts with MrBeast. Amazon’s Beast Games cost hundreds of millions to produce. Some of that came from the streamer, but much of it came from the pockets of MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson. On the Diary of a CEO podcast, he estimated “tens of millions” in losses from the show, admitting that he was an “idiot” for spending so much. But it was all for one goal: To knock down the Hollywood door so other creators could score their own production deals. But MrBeast misunderstands the power balance. In the attention economy, influencers have the eyeballs right now. Amazon’s acquisition of Beast Games …

MrBeast is currently the most-subscribed YouTuber in the world—but his biggest moneymaker isn’t content. It’s chocolate. The 26-year-old creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, owns the snack brand Feastables, which generated $251 million in sales and more than $20 million in profit last year, according to investor documents obtained by Bloomberg. By contrast, his main media business—including his blockbuster YouTube channel and the Amazon Prime reality competition show, Beast Games—brought in similar revenue but lost nearly $80 million over the same period. With 372 million subscribers at the time of writing, MrBeast’s videos range from spending “100 hours i…

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is ready to spill the tea in a new newsletter. Called The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, the revamped newsletter for the popular morning show on the network that will soon be called MS NOW (the name change is official on November 15, the network says) took its inspiration from the world of print magazines. It’s designed to be part of a larger flywheel to grow and connect with the show’s audience. “We wanted something that was visually arresting, that was simple, elegant, and that people could read and get insight from,” Scarborough tells Fast Company. The newsletter will be sent in the early afternoon, Monday through Friday, …

Asked what viewers should expect when television’s MSNBC makes its corporate divorce from NBC News final this weekend, network president Rebecca Kutler points to a poster on the wall of a conference room at its new offices off Times Square. Its message reads: “Same Mission. New Name.” “To me, that encapsulates exactly what we need to be saying,” Kutler said. “Our job in the next few weeks is to flood the zone … and make sure they know the thing that they love will be the exact same thing on Nov. 15.” Saturday is when MSNBC officially becomes MS NOW, standing for My Source for News, Opinion and the World. That’s the most visible manifestation of parent company …

Muhammad Ali once joked that he should be a postage stamp because “that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.” Now, the three-time heavyweight champion’s quip is becoming reality. Widely regarded as the most famous and influential boxer of all time, and a cultural force who fused athletic brilliance with political conviction and showmanship, Ali is being honored for the first time with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp. “As sort of the guardian of his legacy, I’m thrilled. I’m excited. I’m ecstatic,” Lonnie Ali, the champ’s wife of nearly 30 years, told The Associated Press. “Because people, every time they look at that stamp, they will remember him. And he wi…

Consider this: You want to book a multicity, international trip with flights from New York City to London, then Paris, and then back to New York City. There are numerous variables in the mix—different airlines, various ticketing levels, and more—that make the booking more complicated than anticipated. Accordingly, you may end up booking several separate flights, with multiple tickets and confirmation codes to keep track of. If you travel a lot, that can be a lot to manage. But Navan, a corporate travel and expense platform, says it has smoothed the whole process out for booking flights. Navan—which went public less than a month and a half ago, and mainly competes…

Police in Munich are investigating a mystery: More than 1,000 stickers were put on gravestones and wooden crosses at three cemeteries in the German city, without any indication of where they came from or why. The 5×3.5-centimeter (1.95×1.2-inch) stickers are printed with a QR code, that, when scanned, shows the name of the person buried in the grave and its location in the cemetery — but nothing else. “We haven’t found any pattern behind this yet. The stickers were put both on decades-old gravestones and very new graves that so far only have a wooden cross,” police spokesperson Christian Drexler told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “People who have witnesse…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a recall notice that warns consumers to dispose of a certain brand of mushrooms, which have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially deadly bacterium. Here’s what you need to know about the recall. What is the reason for the recall? On April 16, Harvest NYC Inc. of Brooklyn, New York, announced a recall of an Enoki Mushroom product due to fears of potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. Two days after Harvest NYC initiated the recall, the notice was posted on the FDA’s website. According to the notice, the recall was initiated after the New York State Depar…

Six months after Elon Musk left the The President administration to the great relief of Tesla investors worried about boycotts, the world’s richest man has announced some good news: Sales of Tesla cars are back. Well, maybe. The electric vehicle maker run by Musk reported Thursday that car sales jumped 7% in the three months through September after plunging for most of the year, as people turned off by his embrace of President Donald The President and far-right politicians in Europe balked at buying his cars. But the jump comes with a significant caveat: Tesla benefited from consumers taking advantage of a $7,500 tax credit before it expired on September 30, a…

Elon Musk‘s lawyers will urge the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday to restore his $56 billion pay package from Tesla, as one of the biggest corporate legal battles enters its final stage nearly two years after a lower court judge rescinded the Tesla CEO’s record compensation. The outcome could have substantial consequences for the state of Delaware, its widely used corporate law, and its Court of Chancery, a once-favored venue for business disputes that has recently been accused of hostility towards powerful entrepreneurs. The January 2024 Court of Chancery ruling striking down Musk’s pay has become a rallying cry for Delaware critics. Chancellor Kathaleen McCo…

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…

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is preventing most users from generating or editing any images after a global backlash that erupted after it started spewing sexualized deepfakes of people. The chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has in the past few weeks been granting a wave of what researchers say are malicious user requests to modify images, including putting women in bikinis or in sexually explicit positions. Researchers have warned that in a few cases, some images appeared to depict children. Governments around the world have condemned the platform and opened investigations into the platform. On Friday, Grok was responding to image alteri…

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: My boss is playing favorites, what should I do? A: So much of adult life can feel like you’re perpetually stuck in high school: gossip and office politics, making friends, and who the boss favors. If you feel like your boss is playing favorites, the first step is evaluating why you feel this way as objectively as possible. The more specific you are about the problem, the more specific you can be about how you address it. A vague feeling of “I think you like …

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: My coworkers are always complaining. What should I do? A: The world is made of all kinds of people, and so it follows that in any workplace you’ll also find a lot of personality types: The narcissist, the interrupter, the martyr, the workplace BFF (if you’re lucky), and the straight up jerk (if you’re unlucky). The office complainer is challenging in their own way. If you have one who is getting on your nerves, here are some ways to handle the situa…

Most of us know the general (albeit simplified) story: Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov used a stimulus—like a metronome—around the dogs he was studying, and soon, the hounds would start to salivate. They had learned that the sound meant food was coming. The phenomenon, now known as classical conditioning, became one of modern psychology’s foundational discoveries. It’s an unconscious process where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a naturally occurring stimulus, eventually leading to a connection between the two. The dogs, seeing the researcher who often brings them food or hearing the noise of the cart on its way, would immediately know they were about to h…

A reader asks: A while back, an employee who reported to me (I’m a man) became visibly pregnant soon after she started. But she never brought it up. Not with me, not with HR, not with anyone. I didn’t ask her about it, though nearly everyone else in our office asked me. I cringed when I responded since it was obvious she was pregnant but I felt that I needed to protect her privacy. I felt like I was walking around on pins and needles with this very obvious elephant in the room. Her job description included occasionally lifting objects up to 40 pounds, and the only way I treated her differently was that I went out of my way to pick up anything remotely heavy. E…

A reader asks: I run a small business that supplies a product to major companies. To keep the details anonymous, let’s say that we supply garments to a few mid-tier clothing retailers that you can buy in the mall. The problem is that one of my employees two levels down (he reports to someone who reports to me), Dave, behaves as though we’re making clothing for Gucci or Prada. This causes enormous production headaches. It means everything moves much more slowly through his department, because he is extremely conscientious about quality. That is admirable, but it results in things like being short with our subcontractors because they have not produced the products t…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Recently, I shared the tools that power my mornings. Now let’s explore what I rely on from lunch to bedtime. Below you’ll see sites, apps, and gadgets that carry me from noon to night. From a niche workshop platform to my quirky ‘invisible’ clock, these are the tech companions that help me wrap up a fruitful day. 2 p.m.: Lunch and thinking break I often abandon screens for my midday pause. Other times I use apps like these: Healthy Minds: Short audio pieces help guide me through mindfulness practices. I like th…

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers. 1. I’ve fired my new employee before I recently took a new job in my same industry and city. In my new role, I’ll have a team of eight reporting to me in various capacities and functions. During the interview process, I got a brief read-out on the team and a high-level talent assessment. Nothing stood out as an issue. On my first day, I met the team reporting to me. One of the people on the team is someone w…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Short on time? Read this 30-second summary of today’s post. 👇 Download a free, private AI program to run on your computer. Use it offline without any subscription cost and avoid the risk of having sensitive info ingested into a large language model like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. The newest versions of private AI tools like Jan run easily on my 2021 Mac laptop, cost nothing, and are easy to use. They’re a good alternative to costlier AI platforms. 🔰 Quick start guide Download and install Jan for free. Other goo…

The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that a worrying mystery illness is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The unknown disease has so far sickened hundreds and killed dozens since reports of it first emerged in early January. Here’s what to know about the outbreaks so far. What is the disease? At this time, health officials do not know what the disease is. In the WHO’s weekly bulletin for the February 10- 16 period, the agency says the unknown disease “poses a significant public health threat.” The disease is currently active in two regional clusters, according to the report, and worryingly, of those who have died from it, nea…

Napheesa Collier is more than just a WNBA star who is critical of her league and its leadership. The Minnesota Lynx player is a vice president of the players union, which means she will be sitting across from WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert at the negotiating table ahead of an Oct. 31 deadline to reach a new collective bargaining agreement. If that doesn’t cause enough tension, Collier is also a co-founder of Unrivaled, a three-on-three women’s basketball league that plays in the winter and features WNBA stars. That could give her additional leverage to try to press the WNBA as talks unfold. Here’s a look at some of the implications of Collier’s headline-gra…