What's on Your Mind?

2026 will be a year of architectural showstoppers. Major projects, from corporate headquarters to sports stadiums and museums, will wrap construction and open to the public in 2026, bringing bold, sometimes audacious buildings to cities around the world. Here are nine buildings opening in 2026 to watch for. Arena Milano—opening in February Milan David Chipperfield Architects Built partly to host ice hockey games during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arena Milano is a 16,000-seat multipurpose arena that’s expected to become a new center for sports and concerts in Milan. Pritzker Prize-winning David Chipperfield Architects’ design, done in conjunction with Arup, is t…

A few months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video that stopped me in my tracks. It starred an animated frog, dressed in a wizard hat, robe, and pink nail polish, superimposed over a psychedelic background and speaking in a hypnotizing, ethereal voice. “It’s time to stop doing nothing, and start doing something,” he crooned. “I cast . . . motivation!” I’d stumbled across the Pine Wizard Frog—a recurring character on the official TikTok account of household cleaning fluid Pine-Sol. Pine-Sol’s page, with its surrealist visuals and hypnotizing songs, is an example of what I call “brain-rot-brand TikTok”: It’s a subgenre of digital marketing that …

In a world where trust in institutions is at an all-time low and the pace of change is relentless, the most effective leaders are not those who hide behind polished press releases or corporate jargon. They are the ones who step forward with authentic stories—stories that reveal not just their vision, but their humility, values, and the messy realities of leading in uncertain times. Welcome to the era of the storytelling CEO, where transparency isn’t just a buzzword, it’s the new leadership currency. Why Stories Matter More Than Ever For millennia, stories have been the glue that binds communities, shapes cultures, and helps us make sense of the world. Today, as org…

When someone takes a shower at a new apartment complex in Washington, D.C., the water is heated in part by a brewery downstairs. The mixed-use development—part of a larger new neighborhood called the Bridge District—is designed to be as sustainable as possible. That includes using waste heat from commercial tenants like the brewery to save energy in the apartments. Atlas Brew Works, a solar-powered brewery that serves craft beers, moved into the building in November. At most breweries, the heat that’s generated from the brewing process would be vented outside. But in the new building, any hot water that the brewery doesn’t reuse is sent into a heat exchanger, …

Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage. Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026. The bubble won’t pop While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bu…

For venture capital, 2025 was all about artificial intelligence—a trend that’s all but certain to carry into 2026. More than half of all VC dollars—and 36% of total deals—now flow to AI companies, according to a recent Silicon Valley Bank report. Crunchbase recently reported that 14% of all global venture investment in 2025 went to AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic. The year also saw huge deals like a $2 billion seed round raise by Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. AI deals are also often closing quickly, with investment rounds that once would have taken weeks to close being handled in a manner of days, says Tim Tully, a …

I am not clairvoyant and have no crystal ball. But I’ve got some predictions for 2026. I learned about predictions from a master of the craft: Byron Wien, a market strategist who rose to Wall Street prominence in the 1990s for his annual “Ten Surprises” list. Back in the day, I spent several weeks shadowing Wien as a reporter, and the lessons have long stuck with me. Wien said that the prediction game wasn’t about being right. It was about identifying trends. He knew many of his “surprises” would never come to pass, at least not in the extreme form that he shared. But they sparked dialogue and got people to confront their assumptions. And every now and then, he’…

The design of the steel-ribbed umbrella has changed little since it was introduced in the 1850s, but the mechanical engineers and origami experts who made an umbrella that works by folding say they’ve finally improved upon it. The $249 Ori umbrella has a frameless design with a laminate composite canopy, which fits into a 3.5-centimeter cylinder smart handle with an OLED display. That means there are no steel elements that can go haywire and leave you with a misshapen mess when you’re caught in a strong wind. It seems we finally have an umbrella that looks like it was invented in the 21st century. The design team included origami experts who usually work in aerosp…

2026 will be a crucial inflection point for businesses. The data are striking—the proportion of employees using AI in their role in the U.S. doubled between 2023 and 2025. Across the Atlantic, 30% of EU workers are already using AI in their jobs. And according to Gartner, by 2026 more than 100 million workers will collaborate with “robo-colleagues.” The question for the coming year, then, is no longer whether AI will transform your organization, it’s whether your leadership team will guide that transformation thoughtfully or let it happen haphazardly, tool by tool and team by team. I have spent much of the past year working with my research team and industry partn…

With President The President back in the White House, this year has brought a barrage of executive orders and edicts that target workers. The President reduced the minimum wage for federal contractors, made major cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—whose express mission is to keep people safe in the workplace—and attempted to undermine collective bargaining rights for federal workers. He has also, of course, set his sights on dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across both the federal workforce and corporate America. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope for workers: Many states have taken it upon themselves to enshrine policie…

Lorrie Faith Cranor’s latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably can’t read it yet. Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh school’s CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 2016–2017 stint as the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords. In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published children’s book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a loc…

The holiday season always reminds me that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My kids start winter break thrilled—new toys to play with, days at home, permission to veg out. But by the time the new year rolls around, they’re itching to go back to school, eager to show off their favorite holiday gifts and dive back into their routine. It got me thinking: why don’t we, as adults, approach returning to work after a vacation with that same positive energy? More often than not, coming back from time off stirs up feelings of anxiety. For some, it reaches the point of canceling out any lingering benefits of the break. Others overcompensate by overworking u…

The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said its president had been captured and flown out of the country after months of intense pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald The President on social media hours after the attack. The legal authority for the strike — and whether The President consulted Congress beforehand — was not immediately clear. The stunning American military action, which plucked a nation’s sitting leader from office, echoed the U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of its leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1990 — exactly …

The new year often brings sticker shock. A glance at our bank statements and credit card bills shows just how much we spent during the holidays, serving as a painful reminder that with the festivities behind us, we should work on getting our expenditures under control. A good first step toward doing that is to cancel unnecessary subscriptions—whether that’s Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or any other service you pay for monthly but don’t use. These unnecessary subscriptions can add up—especially as prices continue to rise. A 2025 CNET report found that the average U.S. adult spends $17 a month on subscriptions they don’t use—that’s more than $200 a year. (A Self…

Every January, leaders are told to do the same thing: set ambitious goals, map out the year, and commit to executing harder than before. We frame this as discipline or vision, but more often than not, it is a ritual of pressure. The assumption is that success comes from wanting more and pushing faster. After years of leading teams, building companies, and advising executives at the intersection of AI, work, and leadership, I realized something uncomfortable. Most people are not failing because their goals are unclear. They are failing because their capacity is already exhausted before the year even begins. That realization fundamentally changed how I approach the …

New York City kicked off the new year with a new mayor in democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, whose inauguration flooded the internet with viral moments. Mamdani took the oath of office via two separate swearing in ceremonies. The more intimate one took place underground at midnight at a decommissioned City Hall subway station. With just a few hours as mayor under his belt, Mamdani was then sworn in for a second time by fellow Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders. Mamdani first reached internet stardom during his mayoral campaign thanks in part to his campaign’s design and witty social media content, prompting a landslide victory and the highest mayoral race voter…

A California lawmaker has introduced a first-in-the-nation bill meant to ban companies from embedding AI chatbot technology into toys designed for children. Announced on Friday, the measure comes amid growing concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence on child welfare, and a number of local and federal proposals to limit kids’ access to LLM chatbots. This particular legislation would target toys that simulate friendship and companionship through large language technology. For toy manufacturers, LLMs can provide an easy, albeit risky, way of creating a personality for a particular doll or character. AI models aren’t pre-scripted the way most talking toys are…

For many Americans, 2025 wasn’t a great year financially. The affordability crisis and general economic concerns became defining themes of the year as people dealt with rising costs and a worsening job market. But for billionaires, 2025 was a boon to their already exuberant wealth. The 15 richest billionaires in the United States saw their wealth grow by more than $1 trillion over the course of the year, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. As of the end of 2025, those 15 billionaires—each with assets over $100 billion—have a combined wealth of $3.2 trillion, up from $2.4 trillion a year ago. …

America’s National Parks offer some of the country’s most impressive vistas – and that fact draws hundreds of millions of people to the parks each year. But more changes are on the way for the National Parks in 2026 and visitors aren’t likely to be happy with all of them. Anyone traveling to visit a destination that’s part of the park system — especially from abroad — should expect to see an array of new policies implemented under the The President administration, which already made sweeping cuts to the parks budget and began to weave its “America first” agenda into some of the country’s most cherished places in 2025. On some level, the The President administrati…

This new year comes with a new moon. Skywatchers are in for a treat this weekend as 2026 rings in the first supermoon of the year, along with a Quadrantid meteor shower. The January full “wolf moon” is forecast to appear overnight into tomorrow morning Saturday, January 3, peaking at 5:03 a.m. ET when it will be at its fullest, according to EarthSky. However, don’t be fooled: It will appear full both nights, due to its close proximity to Earth (making it appear 14% larger), and proximity to Jupiter and Gemini’s twin stars—all of which will make it appear even brighter. All that light, however, could make it harder to see the Quadrantid meteor shower: bright, …

President Donald The President has spent much of his two-week vacation in Florida golfing. But when he gets back to the White House, there’s a military golf course that he’s never played that he’s eyeing for a major construction project. Long a favored getaway for presidents seeking a few hours’ solace from the stress of running the free world, the Courses at Andrews — inside the secure confines of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the White House — are known as the “president’s golf course.” Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden have spent time there, and Barack Obama played it more…

A new year has brought a new pay rate for more than 8.3 million Americans. The minimum wage is going up in 19 states this week, with workers in Hawaii earning as much as $2 more an hour. Collectively, these pay increases will boost paychecks by a total of $5 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute. While the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour hasn’t budged in nearly two decades, and still applies in eight states, many states and cities have steadily been increasing their minimum wages to well over double that amount. Seattle’s minimum wage, at $21.30 per hour, is now nearly triple that federal threshold. As is the case with Seattle, 47 cities …

Even when Americans have health insurance, they can have a hard time affording the drugs they’ve been prescribed. About 1 in 5 U.S. adults skip filling a prescription due to its cost at least once a year, according to KFF, a health research organization. And 1 in 3 take steps to cut their prescription drug costs, such as splitting pills when it’s not medically necessary or switching to an over-the-counter drug instead of the one that their medical provider prescribed. As pharmacy professors who research prescription drug access, we think it’s important for Americans to know that it is possible to get prescriptions filled more affordably, as long as you know how be…

Tesla lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker on Friday as a customer revolt over Elon Musk’s right-wing politics, expiring U.S. tax breaks for buyers, and stiff overseas competition pushed sales down for a second year in a row. Tesla said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9% from a year earlier. Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles last year, is now the biggest EV maker. It’s a stunning reversal for Musk, who once dismissed BYD as a threat as Tesla’s rise seemed unstoppable, crushing traditional automakers with far more resources and helping make him the world’s richest man. For the fourth quarte…

A group of about 19 Buddhist monks and their rescue dog, Aloka, are walking from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to promote world peace. Their planned route spans approximately 2,300 miles across 10 states and is expected to take 120 days to complete. Here’s what to know about their journey and how to follow along in real time: Why are the monks walking? The group has been sharing updates about their journey on their official Walk for Peace Facebook page. According to the Facebook page, the walk is intended to promote the “awareness of peace, loving kindness, and compassion across America and the world.”​ Their movement has drawn massive support …