What's on Your Mind?

When you think of dangerous jobs, an office job that requires you to sit for hours probably doesn’t come to mind. And while many jobs are objectively riskier, a sedentary job can pose a serious risk to your health. The average office worker spends 70% of their workday sitting down, according to data by workplace supplies firm Banner. Yet, research shows that sitting for prolonged periods without any physical activity significantly increases the risk of ill effects such as high blood pressure, numerous musculoskeletal issues, and potentially heart disease. All in all, a desk job increases your risk of mortality by 16%, according to a study published by JAMA. Our ma…

Saudi Arabia is officially gutting Neom and turning the Line into a server farm. After a year-long review triggered by financial reality, the Financial Times reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project is being “significantly downscaled.” The futuristic linear city known as the Line, originally designed to stretch 150 miles across the desert, is scrapping its sci-fi ambitions to become a far smaller project focused on industrial sectors, says the Financial Times. It’s a rumor that the Saudis originally dismissed when The Guardian first reported on it in 2024. The redesign confirms what skeptics have long suspected: The laws of physics and economics ha…

At the Consumer Electronics Show in early January, Razer made waves by unveiling a small jar containing a holographic anime bot designed to accompany gamers not just during gameplay, but in daily life. The lava-lamp-turned-girlfriend is undeniably bizarre—but Razer’s vision of constant, sometimes sexualized companionship is hardly an outlier in the AI market. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI CEO, who has long emphasized the distinction between AI with personality and AI with personhood, now suggests that AI companions will “live life alongside you—an ever-present friend helping you navigate life’s biggest challenges.” Others have gone further. Last year, a leaked…

Generative AI was trained on centuries of art and writing produced by humans. But scientists and critics have wondered what would happen once AI became widely adopted and started training on its outputs. A new study points to some answers. In January 2026, artificial intelligence researchers Arend Hintze, Frida Proschinger Åström, and Jory Schossau published a study showing what happens when generative AI systems are allowed to run autonomously—generating and interpreting their own outputs without human intervention. The researchers linked a text-to-image system with an image-to-text system and let them iterate—image, caption, image, caption—over and over …

While Silicon Valley argues over bubbles, benchmarks, and who has the smartest model, Anthropic has been focused on solving problems that rarely generate hype but ultimately determine adoption: whether AI can be trusted to operate inside the world’s most sensitive systems. Known for its safety-first posture and the Claude family of large language models (LLMs), Anthropic is placing its biggest strategic bets where AI optimism tends to collapse fastest, i.e., regulated industries. Rather than framing Claude as a consumer product, the company has positioned its models as core enterprise infrastructure—software expected to run for hours, sometimes days, inside healthcare…

Many people spend an incredible amount of time worrying about how to be more successful in life. But what if that’s the wrong question? What if the real struggle for lots of us isn’t how to be successful, but how to actually feel successful? That’s the issue lots of strivers truly face, according to ex-Googler turned neuroscientist and author Anne-Laure Le Cunff. In her book Tiny Experiments, she explores how to get off the treadmill of constantly chasing the next milestone, and instead find joy in the process of growth and uncertainty. “You’re probably doing better than you give yourself credit for,” she explained on LinkedIn recently, before offering 10 telltal…

The Grammy Awards return February 1 at a pivotal moment for the music industry, one shaped by trending Latin artists, resurgent rock legends, and even charting AI acts. To unpack what will make this year’s broadcast distinctive, the Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. shares how Grammy winners are chosen, and how music both reflects and influences the broader business marketplace. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenge…

January arrives with a familiar hangover. Too much food. Too much drink. Too much screen time. And suddenly social media is full of green juices, charcoal supplements, foot patches, and seven-day “liver resets,” all promising to purge the body of mysterious toxins and return it to a purer state. In the first episode of Strange Health, a new visualized podcast from The Conversation, hosts Katie Edwards and Dr. Dan Baumgardt put detox culture under the microscope and ask a simple question: Do we actually need to detox at all? Strange Health explores the weird, surprising, and sometimes alarming things our bodies do. Each episode takes a popular health or welln…

It’s 7:45 a.m. in the office. Someone bounces in, already back from the gym, already through their emails. Cheerfully asks if everyone’s “okay” because it’s so quiet and people seem a bit tired. Around the office, people clutch coffee like a life raft, waiting for their brains to come online and cursing the 8 a.m. meeting. And the cheerful colleague. But at least they got in early enough to find parking and grab coffee before it ran out—this time. Now: which person are you? The early riser, or the one watching them, wondering why you can never feel that awake at this hour no matter how hard you try? Those clutching their strong brews are probably not just tire…

For today’s young people, online content isn’t a backdrop to daily life—it is daily life. Streaming platforms, short-form video, and social media don’t just entertain; they influence how young people see themselves, their health, and what behaviors are seen as normal or aspirational. Movies, television, and streaming content still have influence, but as the digital ecosystem expands, so does its power to shape choices—for better and for worse. Take smoking, for example. The notion of cigarette nostalgia has unwittingly sparked a slew of recent news stories about the perceived increase in smoking on screens. The impact of that imagery? Tangible. While celebrities l…

We have been taught to segment people into neat design personas: young versus old, able-bodied versus disabled, patient versus caregiver. Those categories may help on a spreadsheet, but they rarely reflect real life. Ability is not a fixed identity. It is a state that shifts across hours, seasons, and decades. Most people are not “disabled” or “able bodied.” They are navigating a continuum. A parent carrying a toddler, a traveler pulling luggage, a cook with wet hands, someone recovering from surgery, a person with arthritis on a cold morning, an older adult managing fatigue at the end of the day. These are not edge cases. They are the mainstream experience of modern …

The enterprise world is awash in AI optimism. Boardrooms buzz with talk of transformation, and budgets swell to accommodate the latest platforms and AI assistants. Today, nearly three-quarters of companies report using generative AI regularly in a core business activity, according to recent McKinsey & Company research. But if you look past the headlines, a familiar pattern has emerged that reminds me of the dot-com era, when companies rebranded overnight, and investors chased the next big thing, often with little regard for a tangible way forward. Today, talk of an AI bubble isn’t just a matter of market speculation or start-up hype. It’s unfolding inside orga…

Every month, around two billion people see AI Overviews, Google’s AI-powered search feature that generates summaries to users’ queries. Now, a new study is revealing a concerning pattern among some of these responses: When asked health-related questions, AI Overviews appears to turn to YouTube significantly more often than trusted medical sites. Since its inception, AI Overviews has faced its fair share of controversies, from early reports of the product spewing nonsensical answers to a series of lawsuits from businesses and publisher groups alleging that the feature is damaging to organic traffic patterns. The most recent concern with AI Overviews emerged via an inve…

CEOs of Minnesota’s biggest companies signed a public letter calling for “immediate de-escalation of tensions” after weeks of silence following Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) descending upon the state, which has led to civilian deaths, abductions, economic stand-stills and a profound disruption of daily life. On Sunday, chief executives of more than 60 major corporations like Target, Best Buy, 3M and General Mills, called for “immediate de-escalation of tensions” in Minnesota. The letter came following federal agents shooting and killing Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse while he was on the ground. Weeks earlier, Renee Good, was also shot and killed b…

Nissan is recalling thousands of its 2025 and 2026 vehicles due to a flaw which could potentially cause the door to open while driving, increasing the risk of injury or a crash, according to a notice from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Nissan North America, Inc. is recalling approximately 26,432 vehicles, including certain “2025 Altima, Sentra, 2025-2026 Frontier, and 2026 Kicks” because the door strikers, which hold the door in place, may have been improperly welded and can break. The company estimates about 1% have the defect that prompted the recall. “Customers may notice a rattling noise from the door striker if only one side of …

The post-commute changing from sneakers to office-friendly pumps is something well-known to many workers. But could it become a thing of the past? At a growing number of startups and tech offices, workers are taking some of the comforts gained from work-from-home days… and leaving behind their shoes. “No shoes at Cursor NYC,” angel investor Ben Lang posted on social media in October, showing a pile of shoes at the AI company’s entrance. Wholly dedicated to the cause, Lang has created the website noshoes.fun, a “no-shoes office directory” for those who feel equally passionate about having their feet get some fresh air during the work day. Among the 21 co…

Below, Kati Morton shares five key insights from her new book, Why Do I Keep Doing This?: Unlearn the Habits Keeping You Stuck and Unhappy. Kati is a licensed therapist, author, and content creator. For over 14 years, she has been helping people better understand their mental health through therapy and YouTube videos. What’s the big idea? Why do we fall into the same patterns—whether that’s people-pleasing, perfectionism, or emotional numbing—even when we know they’re not good for us? These strategies help us feel safe, but replacing that armor with inner strength lets us move with freedom instead of fear. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read …

Back in October, Google ended software support for the original and second-generation Nest Learning Thermostats. On the surface, that doesn’t seem totally unreasonable, considering those original devices are roughly 14 years old at this point. If you have one, you can still use it as a thermostat, but it will no longer connect to the internet. As a result, you can’t connect to it using the Nest or Google Home apps. That may not seem like a big deal, except that the single greatest thing about using a Nest Thermostat wasn’t the fact that it would learn your habits and create routines, or that it would detect when you’re not home and adjust accordingly. No, the best thi…