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YouTube celebrated its 20th birthday last month. Currently, users watch more than a billion hours of content on the Google-owned video platform every day. And increasingly, that content is streamed on TVs rather than smartphones. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently announced that YouTube’s TV viewership surpassed smartphone viewership in the United States for the first time. To understand why, we turned to Kurt Wilms, a senior director of product management who oversees the company’s living room strategy. In a recent interview on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast, he talked about how content creators can optimize for the big screen and why so many people watch …

As artificial intelligence gets smarter, a growing number of companies are increasing its implementation in their operations or more heavily promoting their own AI offerings. The buzzword for this is “AI first.” Duolingo is among the latest to adopt an AI-first approach. The company’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, announced the change in an all-hands email Monday, saying it would stop using contractors to do work AI can handle and only increase head count when teams have maximized all possible automation. “The way we work is fundamentally shifting. AI is becoming the default starting point,” said Duolingo’s Chief Engineering Officer Natalie Glance in an internal Slack messa…

In my decades of working in cybersecurity, I have never seen a threat quite like the one we face today. Anyone’s image, likeness, and voice can be replicated on a photorealistic level cheaply and quickly. Malicious actors are using this novel technology to weaponize our personhood in attacks against our own organizations, livelihoods, and loved ones. As generative AI technology advances and the line between real and synthetic content blurs even further, so does the potential risk for companies, governments, and everyday people. Businesses are especially vulnerable to the rise of applicant fraud—interviewing or hiring a phony candidate with the intent of breaching an o…

Hiring an executive assistant (EA) to delegate work tasks and life admin to has long been something reserved for celebrities and Fortune 500 executives. But that belief might now be changing, as rank-and-file workers decide they, too, want a taste of the EA experience. As Callum Borchers wrote earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, more workers outside the C-suite are finding assistants—virtual, in person, or AI, and sometimes just for a couple of hours a month—to help with everything from booking bouncy castles to managing work calendars. Nowadays, everyone’s schedules are packed right down to the last minute. Plus, labor has never been easier to offload…

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have issued additional warnings related to possible Listeria contamination in pasta products. The warnings suggest that the Listeria outbreak, which has sickened at least 20 and killed four since last year, is far from over. Here’s what you need to know about the latest warnings and which foods are being recalled this time. What’s happened? On September 30, the FDA posted a new recall notice to its website, which adds 11 new items to the list of pasta products being recalled due to Listeria contamination fears. On the same day, the CDC updated its Listeri…

More and more people are turning to GoFundMe for help covering the cost of housing, food, and other basic needs. The for-profit crowdfunding platform’s annual “Year in Help” report, released Tuesday, underscored ongoing concerns around affordability. The number of fundraisers started to help cover essential expenses such as rent, utilities, and groceries jumped 20%, according to the company’s 2025 review, after already quadrupling last year. “Monthly bills” were the second fastest-growing category behind individual support for nonprofits. The number of “essentials” fundraisers has increased over the last three years in all of the company’s major English-speaking m…

Cellphones are everywhere—including, until recently, in schools. Since 2023, 29 states, including New York, Vermont, Florida, and Texas, have passed laws that require K-12 public schools to enforce bans or strict limits on students using their cellphones on campus. Another 10 states have passed other measures that require local school districts to take some kind of action on cellphone usage. Approximately 77% of public schools now forbid students from having their phones out during class—an increase from the 66% of schools that forbade students from using phones at school in 2015. Schools across the country are finding different ways to enforce no-phone po…

More severe storms were expected to roll across the central U.S. this week following the weather-related deaths of more than two dozen people and a devastating Kentucky tornado. The National Weather Service said a “multitude of hazardous weather” would impact the U.S. over the next several days—from thunderstorms and potentially baseball-size hail on the Plains, to heavy mountain snow in the West and dangerous heat in the South. Areas at risk of thunderstorms include communities in Kentucky and Missouri that were hit by Friday’s tornadoes. In London, Kentucky, people whose houses were destroyed scrambled Sunday to put tarps over salvageable items or haul them …

Nearly seven tons of ready-to-eat grilled chicken breast products are being recalled over Listeria concerns. According to a Jan. 16 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) notice, the product was distributed by Suzanna’s Kitchen, a Georgia-based food company known for its prepared meats. The recall targets 10-pound cases containing two 5-pound bags of fully cooked grilled chicken breast fillets with rib meat, which were produced on Oct. 14. 13,720 pounds of ready-to-eat chicken were recalled, per the notice. According to the notice, the lot code 60104 P1382 287 5 J14 is printed on the side of the case and on the package. The products were distributed to operat…

Suzanna’s Kitchen, a Georgia-based food production company, has issued a recall of 62,550 pounds of fully cooked, bone-in breaded chicken products. The chicken, which was distributed nationwide, was recalled over mislabeling. While the product was labeled with a product code that classifies it as non-allergen-containing, the product contains soy. According to the recall notice, which was issued on December 12, the affected product is the eight-piece cut, bone-in breaded chicken portions that were produced on October 16, 2025. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) mark of inspection and establishment number printed on the side of the package is “P-1380.” …

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on a stunning stat showing that OpenAI’s ChatGPT engages with more than a million users a week about suicidal thoughts. I also look at new Anthropic research on AI “introspection,” and at a Texas philosopher’s take on AI and morality. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (form…

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. When architects constructed the Notre-Dame Cathedral in the 13th century, they reinforced its structure with 28 flying buttresses. These famous buttresses are credited with saving the entire roof from collapse during the devastating 2019 fire. Today, as nonprofit organizations brace against shifting economic winds, I’m reminded of these critical architectural supports when I consider the wraparo…

Workers are stressed over job insecurity with many concerned about the possibility of an impending job loss. And that worry may be taking a toll on employees’ overall mental health—especially for younger workers. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2025 Work in America survey, which recorded online responses from 2,017 employed adults, more than half of American workers are bogged down with worry over their job security. A whopping 54% said concerns about their workplace stability has a “significant impact” on their stress levels. Why workers are concerned The concern appears linked to recent policy changes under the The President administrat…

For most baseball fans, hope springs eternal on Opening Day. Many of those fans—more than you might think—are women. A 2024 survey found that women made up 39% of those who attended or watched Major League Baseball games, and franchises have taken notice. The Philadelphia Phillies offer behind-the-scenes tours and clinics for their female fans, while the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees offer fantasy camps that are geared to women. The number of women working professionally in baseball has also grown. Kim Ng made history in 2020 when she became the first woman general manager of an MLB team, the Miami Marlins. As of 2023, women made up 30% of central office…

When New York-based Autumn Myers, 31, was interviewing for her current digital marketing job, she pushed back the interview date so it didn’t fall during Mercury retrograde. “Those jobs have always ended up in more grief for me,” she tells Fast Company. Myers also looks up her colleagues’ zodiac signs to guide her interactions with them. For example: People born under fire signs often thrive in leadership roles, but they can struggle with impulsiveness. Earth signs tend to be more dependable, but they can be risk-averse. “It’s very Scorpio of me to be that calculated,” she admits. “But it’s needed sometimes.” Myers isn’t alone. According to a 2024 Harris Pol…

More women are freezing their eggs, but few appear to be returning to use them, a new study found. The study was led by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and published last month in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. It found that the number of planned, elective egg freezing cycles increased exponentially between 2014 and 2021, jumping from 4,153 to 16,436. Notably, women increasingly chose to freeze their eggs at younger ages, the study found. In 2014, the average age for egg freezing was 36. Seven years later, in 2021, that had dropped to 34.9 years of age. “This is the largest U.S. study to date on elective fertilit…

Investors are celebrating a major shake up in how FICO scores will be shared with mortgage lenders, as shares of parent company Fair Isaac have rallied more than 20% on Thursday. That stock rally follows FICO’s announcement on Wednesday of a new pricing model that will allow mortgage lenders to calculate and distribute credit scores directly to borrowers, thereby eliminating the need to rely on the three nationwide credit bureaus for this information. In addition to its legacy pricing model, lenders can now opt for a direct license option that will save them up to 50% on per-score FICO fees. The FICO score is one of a few different credit scoring models that help …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. After taking a big macro hit during the 2022 rate-shock, United Wholesale Mortgage’s (UWM) refinance volume has found its footing—and keeps climbing: 2020: $140B 2021: $139B 2022: $36B 2023: $14B (cycle low) 2024: $43B 2025: $70B That’s a +387% increase in UWM’s refi volume since its 2023 cycle low. Even without a full refi boom, refinance volume is slowly coming back, with the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate as tracked by Freddie Mac down to 5.98% last week—or 1.81 bps below its cycle high of 7.79% in October 2023. Ma…

Iceland has long been known as the only habitable place in the world free from mosquitoes. (Antarctica is also mosquito-free, but is not habitable to humans). The Nordic country has been spared from the insects in part because of its intense winters and oceanic climate—until now. Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time this month, a sign of how our warming world is enabling the pesky and downright deadly insects to expand their range. An insect enthusiast in Kjós named Björn Hjaltason posted about his discovery in a Facebook group that translates to “Insects in Iceland,” multiple Icelandic news outlets have reported. “Ladies and gentlemen—may I i…