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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. In a world with a constant information deluge and a labyrinth of disinformation to continually navigate through, people are exhausted. What is true? Who is honest? Who and what can I believe? Who can I trust to lead in a way where I know they understand what I need? Will anyone do what is best for me? It is no wonder that people are frustrated with those in charge—everywhere. Politic…

The tech industry is often cautious about tying layoffs to performance, even if it might play a role in who gets dismissed during widespread job cuts. But this year has signaled a noticeable shift in how some of the biggest players in tech approach layoffs: Earlier this year, Meta cut more than 3,000 employees in a move that the company framed as “non-regrettable attrition.” The number of Amazon employees on performance improvement plans reportedly surged in recent years, leading up to layoffs—and Microsoft has allegedly cut thousands of employees who were classified as “low performers.” Now Microsoft is giving low performers the option to accept a payout and leave th…

Rare cosmic events can feel like being smiled down upon from up above. However, on the morning of April 25, an actual smiley face will appear in the sky—kind of. Venus, Saturn, and the moon will align in a pattern called a triple conjunction. Given the moon will be in its crescent form, the lineup will resemble a smiley face, but only for a short time on Friday morning. “Venus is higher above the eastern horizon with Saturn lower, and a thin, crescent moon a bit lower and a little farther north,” Brenda Culbertson, NASA solar system ambassador, told Kansas TV station KSNT. “The thin, crescent moon looks like a smile. To some people, the triangle of bright objects …

The past few days in the stock market have been so wild—a plunge on Monday, a sharp pivot upward on Tuesday, a rise with lots of oscillations on Wednesday—that a record set by the Dow Jones Industrial Average on last week’s final day of trading has been largely overlooked. That’s unfortunate, because there’s a lot to be learned from that record about how financial markets work. I’m referring to the record loss inflicted on the Dow last Thursday by the three-digit share price drop of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), the large healthcare and insurance company. (Thursday was the last day of trading last week because the market was closed for Good Friday.) That price d…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Back in the housing frenzy of 2021, homeowners were bombarded with inquiries from eager investors looking to see if they were open to selling. The outreach came in all forms—text messages, postcards, phone calls—and often felt relentless. Redfin data shows that in Q4 2021, investors scooped up 94,715 U.S. homes, a 51% jump from the 62,581 homes they purchased in Q4 2019. But that investor-driven surge—powered by rock-bottom interest rates, pandemic stimulus, and the remote work boom—began to fade as the Federal Reserve pivoted to fighting inflati…

Every week, millions of Americans toss their recyclables into a single bin, trusting that their plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and cardboard boxes will be given a new life. But what really happens after the truck picks them up? Single-stream recycling makes participating in recycling easy, but behind the scenes, complex sorting systems and contamination mean a large percentage of that material never gets a second life. Reports in recent years have found 15% to 25% of all the materials picked up from recycle bins ends up in landfills instead. Plastics are among the biggest challenges. Only about 9% of the plastic generated in the U.S. actually gets recycled, a…

Jack in the Box announced Wednesday that it will close between 150 and 200 underperforming restaurants as part of a broad restructuring effort, with approximately 80 to 120 restaurants shuttering by December 31, 2025. The remainder will close over time, based on the termination dates of their respective franchise agreements. Fast Company reached out to Jack in the Box for a list of locations it will be closing, but did not hear back by time of publishing. The initiative is part of the company’s “JACK on Track” strategy—a comprehensive plan aimed at improving long-term financial performance across its restaurant system, strengthening its balance sheet, and reaffirm…

Even as the right to disconnect movement has picked up steam, true work-life balance is still hard to come by for many employees. Fielding emails and other work-related messages after hours continues to be the norm across workplaces, despite ample evidence that it can contribute to burnout and actually decrease productivity. Part of the issue may be that the average workday is punctuated by a mounting number of drains on productivity. A new report from Microsoft, which compiled input from 31,000 workers across more than 30 countries, sheds light on the scale of interruptions and hurdles workers are currently facing on the job, as well as the degree to which the averag…

Texas has more than 600 known cases of measles on Tuesday as the outbreak in the western part of the state approaches the three-month mark. The U.S. was up to 800 cases of measles nationwide on Friday. Two unvaccinated elementary school-aged children died from measles-related illnesses in the epicenter in West Texas, and an adult in New Mexico who was not vaccinated died of a measles-related illness. Other states with active outbreaks—defined as three or more cases—include Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. The U.S. has more than double the number of measles cases it saw in all of 2024. North America has two other outbreak…

Over the past 30 days, many big-name tech giants have seen their stock prices fall hard, largely thanks to President The President’s chaotic tariff rollout. For example, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has seen its shares fall 11% over the past month, while Nvidia has seen its shares fall (Nasdaq: NVDA) fall over 12%. But until yesterday, IBM (NYSE: IBM) was one of the big-name tech giants that rode out the tariff storm pretty well. While the company’s stock price did tank along with the rest of the markets in early April, it has recovered nicely since then and, as of the close of bell yesterday, its shares were actually up just a bit (about 0.6%) over the past 30 days. But…

So many mourners lined up to see Pope Francis lying in state in a simple wooden coffin inside St. Peter’s Basilica that the Vatican kept the doors open all night due to higher-than-expected turnout, closing the basilica for just an hour Thursday morning for cleaning. The basilica is bathed in a hushed silence as mourners from across the globe make a slow, shuffling procession up the main aisle to pay their last respects to Francis, who died Monday after a stroke. The hours spent on line up the stately via della Conciliazione through St. Peter’s Square and through the Holy Door into the basilica has allowed mourners to find community around the Argentine pontiff’s legacy…

We’ve all heard the familiar directive: “We’re going through another reorganization and will be cutting 20% of headcount, but priorities remain the same and, in fact, may expand.” Meanwhile, you’re being told to “just make it work” without offering additional resources, guidance, or support. This conversation, unfortunately, isn’t unique. It represents the silent crisis engulfing middle management across America. Middle managers—who oversee 90% of the U.S. workforce—are facing unprecedented challenges in 2025. Recent KPMG data reveals nearly one-third are actively disengaged, while 62% report unsustainable stress levels as they struggle with expanded responsibilit…

On a quiet residential street lined with unassuming homes and white picket fences in Gliwice, Poland, one building is not like the rest. It’s a hulking, bright silver structure that’s covered entirely in pipes. This eye-catching building is the new headquarters for Gambit, a Polish pipe distribution company specializing in underground water systems. Designed by the architecture firm KWK Promes, the headquarters takes Gambit’s building materials aboveground, transforming pipes from a utilitarian necessity into an aesthetic material that encases the building’s entire exterior. The result is a visually striking structure that cleverly merges architecture with product ad…

Oceans cover about 70% of the Earth’s surface, yet the ocean floor remains largely untouched by humans. But perhaps not for long. A Canadian-based firm called the Metals Co. (TMC) recently announced plans to ask the The President administration to allow it to mine the deep seabed for valuable critical metals in the Pacific Ocean. President Donald The President is reportedly considering an executive order that would speed up permitting for deep-sea mining, which has prompted outrage from other countries. While some small and exploratory deep-sea mining operations already exist, the practice has yet to happen on a large commercial scale, partly due to fears that it cou…

Substack and Patreon are vying to become creators’ primary revenue stream. For most influencers, payouts from platforms like Meta or Google aren’t enough to build a sustainable career. Rather than spending their days hawking products, many creators are turning to direct fan support, and two companies dominate that space: Patreon and Substack. Patreon’s latest move targets streamers. Its native livestreaming feature, currently in demo and set for a broad rollout this summer, could attract gamers and broadcasters alike. But Substack beat them to it, launching a similar live video tool just three months earlier. As the two platforms expand their offerings, the rivalr…

Welcome to the world of social media mind control. By amplifying free speech with fake speech, you can numb the brain into believing just about anything. Surrender your blissful ignorance and swallow the red pill. You’re about to discover how your thinking is being engineered by modern masters of deception. The means by which information gets drilled into our psyches has become automated. Lies are yesterday’s problem. Today’s problem is the use of bot farms to trick social media algorithms into making people believe those lies are true. A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. “We know that China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and North Korea are using bot networks to amplify…

The ever-increasing power of generative AI has divided the graphic design community. Many are embracing the tools in their workflows, while others believe they’ve stolen from culture and commoditized a craft. In any case, we all live in a strange time, when people are often presenting fully generative work as their own. Sometimes that’s innocuous. And sometimes that’s icky. But now Adobe wants to offer the public a means to distinguish the authentic from the automated. A new “created without generative AI” tag in Adobe Fresco—the company’s drawing and painting app—will let you mark work as being free from the use of generative AI tools, to certify that you create…

As the 2025 Major League Baseball season gets into full swing, you’d expect the league to use its marketing muscle to hype the heroics of its biggest stars. But its anime-style ad campaign takes that idea to a new level. “Heroes of the Game” mixes the on-field superpowers of players like Shohei Ohtani, Paul Skenes, Julio Rodríguez, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge with the pop cultural artistry of anime hits like One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist. Created with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, the league also partnered with Passion Pictures and Echelle Studios in Japan, as well as acclaimed animation director Hiroshi Shimizu, to make the work. The first ad features a whol…

When it opened in 2001, watchmaker Timex’s new headquarters building in Middlebury, Connecticut, was an architectural wonder. Its all-glass walls and open floor plan put the entire 275-person company in one big, light-filled workspace, covered by a swooping arched roof. It was a radical embrace of the ideals of openness, collaboration, and anti-hierarchical social interaction. On top of all this, the award-winning building had one additional—and unique—feature: a hole in the top that shines sunlight down on an ancient time-marking device known as a meridian line. Covering the building at the time, Fast Company noted “the building itself is a watch.” But now the buildi…

Coral reefs are vital to the health of the oceans, but in recent years they’ve been decimated by climate change, pollution, and overfishing. While this has been widely covered, a new documentary sheds light on the groundbreaking efforts to restore these fragile ecosystems, and the scientists and communities working to bring them back to life. Reef Builders showcases the work of the Sheba Hope Grows initiative, part of one of the largest coral reef restoration efforts globally, led by Mars Sustainable Solutions. Sheba, a cat food brand owned by global conglomerate Mars Inc., has been supporting reef restoration through its Hope Grows program since 2019. Th…