What's on Your Mind?

If you handle hiring, generic AI-generated cover letters are probably a familiar foe by now. Nearly two-thirds of job seekers are using AI to help craft their applications. It’s understandable. In a world where some job seekers are having to send up to 50 applications to land a role, tools like ChatGPT enable them to cast their net wide and increase their chances. But this spray-and-pray approach to job hunting is a headache for hiring managers. It’s driving the volume of applications up and the quality down, making it harder to spot great candidates. The natural knee-jerk reaction from HR is to start playing a game of “I spy AI.” If we can just root out the …

Lay’s sells more than 200 flavors of potato chips across the globe. Only one of them puts a potato on the package. That’s because in many ways, the largest potato chip company in the world, Lay’s, is the embodiment of a modernist brand. Hear the word Lay’s and its red and yellow logo pops into your brain, quickly followed by a hallucinated blast of salt on your tongue. The logo is an abstract hero, associated with chips only through constant consumer exposure. But in Lay’s own market testing, it discovered a cost to this approach: Only 42% of people realized that Lay’s potato chips are made from potatoes. Now—as the long, liberal war on ultra-processed food has …

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Our new print issue features “How YouTube Ate TV,” an oral history of the video-sharing site’s impact on entertainment, culture, and business as told by dozens of eyewitnesses past and present. As we stitched sound bites together into a story, it became clear that our interviews had provided an embarrassment of riches. Indeed, we had too many great stories and insights to cram into one magazine article. So we expanded the online version of the article into five oral histories. Two are live on our site now, covering the company’s earliest days and acquisition by Google. Three more will roll out next week,…

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the power of a group gasp. Years ago, at a Baltimore Ravens game, a film I’d helped create played across the stadium’s newly installed LED screens. In the climactic moment (a close-up shot as the kicker’s foot struck the ball) the entire crowd seemed to freeze, breath held, before erupting in a wave of energy that swept the stands. That’s because the shot was perfectly timed with the real kick-off that started the game. Picture 70,000 people rising to their feet in unison, their collective gasp creating a moment of pure electricity. That wasn’t chance. It was the result of designing an experience where story, environment, and aud…

“Happy Friday” is ranked as one of the worst ways to begin an email and it is also one of the worst ways to end a piece of correspondence. While “Happy Friday” may seem like a friendly send-off to colleagues as they approach the weekend, it can easily offend for many reasons. Here are three excellent reasons never to use this expression. #1: IT CAN BE ANNOYING This expression may be used by people who are trying to lift the spirits of a colleague or make the recipient feel relieved that the workweek is coming to an end. But your colleague may be involved in working hard to complete an assignment, or be involved in a project that needs to get done. If…

Creating a standout résumé or cover letter is your first (and sometimes only) chance to make a strong impression with prospective employers—to really sell yourself. But there’s a caveat, HR experts say: don’t sound desperate. While we’re taught to tailor résumés for the job and really showcase accomplishments, experts argue there’s such a thing as going overboard. Employers could find it off-putting. Or worse, they could think you’re overrepresenting your credentials. According to job search platform FlexJobs’ 2025 Job Search Trends Report, one in three professionals admitted to lying on a résumé or cover letter—often to appear as the “perfect fit” or to meet pe…

Fans of Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant will be disappointed to learn that the beloved restaurant and pub chain has abruptly closed all of its locations across multiple states. Here’s why and what you need to know about Iron Hill Brewery’s closure. What’s happened? Yesterday (Thursday, September 25), Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant made several announcements. Effective immediately, it was closing the doors to all its locations, the company revealed. Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant was founded nearly 30 years ago. Its first location opened in Newark, Delaware, in 1996. Since then, it had expanded to multiple states along the country’s eastern coast, in…

If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to spend less time on devices and get more “cultured,” the Metropolitan Opera is here to help—even if you don’t find yourself in New York City. On Saturday, January 24, 2026, at 1 p.m. ET in select theaters, it will premiere a special “Live in HD” presentation of its recent production, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Let’s take a look at the plot and the artists involved, before we get into more details on the logistics of how to see it. What is ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’ about? Although this work is considered a modern opera, the action in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay …

“Christmas at Pemberley Manor” and “Romance at Reindeer Lodge” may never make it to Oscar night, but legions of fans still love these sweet-yet-predictable holiday movies—and this season, many are making pilgrimages to where their favorite scenes were filmed. That’s because Connecticut—the location for at least 22 holiday films by Hallmark, Lifetime, and others—is promoting tours of the quaint Christmas-card cities and towns featured in this booming movie market; places where a busy corporate lawyer can return home for the holidays and cross paths with a plaid shirt-clad former high school flame who now runs a Christmas tree farm. (Spoiler alert: they live happily eve…

The Cold War lasted 45 agonizing years. Daily life in the Soviet Union was a mixture of dread and horror—children taught to report their parents’ whispered doubts, families queuing for hours for bread, dissidents vanishing in the night. November 8, 1989, was just another day of knowing World War III might pop off at any time. But on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. No tanks. No gun battles. No sabotage. Just a peaceful, surreal collapse. The empire fell both slowly and suddenly. Gen Xers and boomers remember the disorienting feeling of watching the impossible happen on evening news broadcasts. With the benefit of hindsight and declassified records now avai…

If you ask New Yorkers on the street what they think about the giant, controversial print ad campaign in the NYC subway system, their initial response might be, “Which one?” In the past two months alone, not one, but two ad campaigns fitting that description have appeared on the subway. The first debuted in late September, when Friend, an AI company billed as a portable “companion,” ran a $1 million print campaign featuring a variety of servile messages like, “I’ll never leave dirty dishes in the sink.” The campaign received massive criticism, to the point that the MTA was forced to continuously remove Friend’s vandalized ads. In an interview with Fast Company, Frien…

On Wednesday morning, local time, over one million Australian children discovered their social media accounts had vanished. And it may not be long before kids in other countries find themselves in a similar predicament. Under the new law, which was approved late last year, no one under the age of 16 in Australia will be allowed to set up accounts on platforms including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat, Twitch, and Reddit. Any accounts for people in that age category will be deactivated or removed. The law is meant to protect the mental health of children from the addictive nature of social media. Australia’s law goes three years beyond the de fact…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. The authors of the most powerful memoirs, self-help books, and leadership bibles combine deep research and self-reflection—in the same way today’s executives need to blend data insights with emotional intelligence. As we look ahead to 2026, I asked eight authors of recent business and busin…

They made things exciting. You thought you were in love. And now a week has gone by with no reply. Odds are they’re not getting back to you. But don’t take it personally: We’re all ensnared in a ghosting epidemic. According to the Thriving Center for Psychology, one in four Gen Zers and millennials have been ghosted after just a few dates. And to twist the knife even deeper, one in ten report being ghosted after a couple of months of dating. Tragically familiar, isn’t it? Brands like Sweethearts have been quick to capitalize on the reality of today’s dating landscape. In 2024, the heart-shaped candy brand launched “Situationship Boxes,” featuring candies …

Move over quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays, and career cushioning. A new workplace behavior is on the rise: the self-aware underperformer. Contrary to hustle culture, these workers are knowingly underperforming and not doing anything about it. It used to be the delusional underperformer—the employee who thought they were doing a great job—that gave HR headaches. The self-aware underperformer, on the other hand, is aware that they’re underperforming and not taking any actions to rectify it. As leaders, this isn’t something you can afford to ignore. After all, underperformance doesn’t just materialize. The culture has been brewing and cultivating on our watch. U…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Heading into the fall last year, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate slipped to a low of 6.07% by September 17, 2024, as the market reacted to weaker-than-expected labor market data. At that point, there was a noticeable upswing in refinances as some 2022–2024 borrowers took the opportunity to get payment relief. However, it was short-lived and quickly fizzled out once labor market data tightened a bit and mortgage rates popped back up. Fast-forward to September 2025, and we’re once again seeing a mini “refi boomlet.” Similar to early las…

At first glance, Clove’s collaboration strategy may seem a little wacky. Why, you might ask, is a startup that makes sneakers for healthcare workers partnering with Land O’Lakes butter, Levain cookies, and Olipop prebiotic sodas? It’s a good question, but there’s method to the madness. Clove’s team members spend their days studying the lives of doctors and nurses, and they’ve discovered that food is a rare source of pleasure and joy in a very stressful workplace. “I watch nurses get ready with me videos as a form of ethnographic research,” says Jordyn Amoroso, Clove’s co-founder and chief brand officer. “You see nurses pack their lunches with a baked good, or a health…

OpenAI’s announcements at its third annual developer conference told a lot about where the company is in its evolution. In the past, the company’s executives talked mainly about new models that were smarter, cheaper, or more efficient. At the event in San Francisco on October 6, the company’s leaders said relatively little about their latest models, and nothing about AGI or superintelligence. Instead, they discussed new ways to make the AI do real work that matters. Building functional agents One of the keys to enterprise customers realizing a return on their investment in AI is the creation of intelligent agents capable of completing complex business tasks. …

While dozens of companies have suddenly retreated from DEI efforts this year, leaders in inclusivity say there’s reason to be hopeful that this work is continuing—albeit more quietly than before. Even as companies like Target, IBM, and Goldman Sachs have ditched their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, other leaders still firmly believe that diverse teams offer a competitive advantage. There has been progress in the past decade-plus, but it has looked like three steps forward and two steps back—which underscores that such work has never been more important, according to Jana Rich, founder of Rich Talent Group. “What you’re seeing, I think, are some re…