What's on Your Mind?

Owning a home sounds like a dream, sure, but a majority of Gen Z Americans feel discouraged about whether they can make this sort of lifetime goal a reality. To blame? Housing just isn’t affordable. While two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 27 say that homeownership is a lifetime goal, 82% of people in this generation believe that actually buying a home is more difficult for them than older generations, according to a new survey of 1,000 Gen Z adults released today by Realtor.com. Things are so bad, in fact, that 16% of Gen Zers rate housing affordability as one of their top life concerns. And it’s not just a feeling: Younger generations have been l…

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid for the 2026-27 school year has officially opened. Despite the U.S. government shutdown, the Education Department will continue to process the FAFSA. If you plan to attend college next year, Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, recommends that you fill it out as soon as you can. If it’s your first time applying, here’s what you need to know: How does the FAFSA work? The FAFSA is a free government application that uses students’ and their families’ financial information to determine whether they can get financial aid from the federal gov…

When the corroded pipeline burst in 2015, inky crude spread along the Southern California coast, becoming the state’s worst oil spill in decades. More than 140,000 gallons (3,300 barrels) of oil gushed out, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, polluting a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals, and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry. Plains All American Pipeline in 2022 agreed to a $230 million settlement with fishers and coastal property owners without admitting liability. Federal inspectors found that the Houston-based company failed to quickly …

With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now they are confronting new uncertainty with the The President administration’s promised layoffs. Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with Republicans and Democrats digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is among several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate. “Luckily, I was able to pay rent this month,” said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal worke…

When you type a question into an AI search engine like ChatGPT or Google AI Mode and it comes up with an answer, that information comes from somewhere. Scouring the web for content that’s contextually relevant to the asker, it typically assembles an answer based on several different sources, interpreted through the lens of its training data and system prompt. The fight over being one of those sources is the new game of online discovery that’s replacing SEO. Typically called GEO or AEO for generative/answer engine optimization, the field is nascent, and the rules, best practices, and even the benefits aren’t entirely clear. There’s one thing everyone agrees on, though:…

An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft, and Nvidia is buying one of the world’s biggest data center operators with nearly 80 facilities in a deal worth $40 billion to secure coveted computing capacity for artificial intelligence. The purchase of U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers from Australian Macquarie Asset Management on Wednesday is the first deal for the AI Infrastructure Partnership formed last year which includes Abu Dhabi-based fund MGX and Elon Musk’s startup xAI among its backers. “With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink,…

Walmart will be putting millions of sensors on its pallets across its supply chain chain, in a move that technology partner Wiliot is calling “the first large-scale deployment of ambient Internet of Things (IoT)” sensors in the retail industry. The technology is currently deployed in 500 Walmart locations, and the retail giant plans to expand nationwide in 2026. The ambient IoT sensors are battery-free and operate by harvesting energy from sources such as radio waves, light, motion, and heat, according to CNBC. The wide rollout will cover 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and over 40 distribution centers, generating high-resolution supply chain…

Grindr’s days as a public company could be numbered. The hookup and dating app, which went public via a SPAC merger in fall 2021, announced Tuesday that its largest shareholders, Raymond Zage and James Lu—who led the company’s go-public efforts—were exploring the possibility of acquiring Grindr’s outstanding stock, which would take the company private again. The confirmation of Lu and Zage’s goal of taking the company private followed reporting on Monday from Semafor, which outlined that a recent Grindr stock slide led a lender to seize shares that at least one of the men had used to back a personal loan. Semafor reported that the two were in talks with Fo…

If you have ever welcomed a new baby into the world, you know the mix of hope and uncertainty that comes with those first days. For decades, newborn screening has been a quiet triumph of public health, catching rare but serious conditions before symptoms appear and giving families a head start on care. Now, genomic newborn screening, which includes whole genome sequencing, is poised to take this life-saving work further by screening for hundreds of genetic conditions at birth and changing the standard of care. FROM RESEARCH TO REAL-WORLD IMPACT The GUARDIAN study is pioneering genomic newborn screening in New York City. As the largest genomic newborn screening prog…

We don’t fully understand human biology. Not proteins, or cells or tissues—and certainly not how they all interact in the dynamic systems that make up our body. I believe AI is the answer to that problem. It offers the promise of a step-change in data analysis and eventually will understand our bodies’ processes at a fundamental level. It will “solve” biology. But it can’t be done by generalist large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. We’re going to need domain-specific agentic software that plans, acts, and adapts. The sort of AI that can support us across messy, multimodal workflows inherent to biological research. This is how we unlock the medicines and treat…

In January 2025, Los Angeles suffered an unspeakable wildfire tragedy, destroying at least 17,000 structures, and with tens of thousands of people forced out of their homes. Almost immediately, government officials declared a state of emergency and laid out a path to rebuild “like for like.” However, in the aftermath of such disasters when rebuilding from the ground up, is “like for like” the best way to proceed? These disasters provide an opportunity to future-proof our neighborhoods for the next generation of environmental challenges. In face of seemingly endless, floods, fires, rising temperatures, and energy crises, we must take the time to rethink our way forward. …

“We are fully committed to AI adoption,” the CEO told me, proud of the company’s recent employee training initiatives. “But is AI just another tool in their toolbox, or a new way of working?” I asked. Silence. “Your number one enemy is the lack of an answer to this question,” I continued. “Your employees are hearing doomsday predictions about how AI will soon eliminate their jobs, so they resist and reject these technologies. Most importantly, they have no idea who they will become after AI is adopted,” I concluded. This isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed this overly enthusiastic, roll-the-dice approach to AI. Once again, technologists are scaring busines…

It’s been a long, hot summer for America’s universities. Columbia, accused by the The President administration of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, settled with the federal government for a whopping $200 million, while Harvard is struggling to defend itself against allegations that it unduly favored some students based on ethnicity, in violation of the prohibition to consider race in college applications. Similar cases abound, making it seem as if our institutions of higher education are little more than heated ideological battlegrounds, offering students an uncertain future and therefore, considering the ever-rising price of tuition, a risky bet. Apologies,…

Have you ever felt like your brain was one of those viral egg experiments, cracked open and sizzling on a bare sidewalk that was truly, much too hot? You may have been experiencing signs of burnout (and dehydration). As an introverted professional, I’ve been there as well, many times in my career. Over the years, I’ve developed healthy reflective coping methods to recharge my batteries and prevent (or at least combat) that intense feeling of overwhelm. As a LinkedIn Top Voice and a very public keynote speaker who’s learned to grow in the spotlight on my own terms, I’m not the best at pretending to be an extrovert for any extended period of time—it’s too tiring! Inste…

When Steve Jobs wanted to motivate his Mac team at Apple, he didn’t give them corporate pep talks or send them to management retreats. Instead, he told them they were “pirates” fighting against the “navy.” The message was clear: stay scrappy, stay rebellious, and don’t let the corporate machine slow you down. That pirate mentality worked. The Mac team moved fast, took risks, and delivered something revolutionary. But here’s the irony: Apple was itself the navy they were once fighting against. Today, with over 160,000 employees and a market cap exceeding $3 trillion, Apple faces the same challenge that confronts every successful company—how do you stay pirates when you…

Office work is officially back from the dead—if New York is any indication, that is. In Manhattan, businesses are leasing more office space than they have in close to a decade, in a sign that the return-to-office movement is likely to stick around. According to real estate investor CBRE, during the first nine months of 2025, Manhattan businesses leased 23.2 million square feet of office space, the most since 2006. Leasing has already surpassed last year’s total, with 143 leases at more than $100 per square foot. However, as the epicenter of business, New York City is an outlier: Nationally, leasing is still around 11% below the pre-COVID average. Unsurprisingly, …

Every office has that coworker that turns up to a meeting coughing and sniffling while proudly proclaiming they have never once taken a sick day in their career. (If there isn’t one, maybe it’s you.) But as one viral TikTok makes clear, those attitudes towards taking sick days may be changing—just as sick days themselves are changing, as some think being sick isn’t a real excuse to not work in the WFH era. The skit—which has more than 2.3 million views—sees popular TikTok creator Delaney Rowe adopting the role of that coworker, turning up to a meeting with a hospital tag still on wrist, oh-so bravely battling through the workday while simultaneously making it eve…

Below, Scott Anthony shares five key insights from his new book, Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World. Scott is a clinical professor of strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. His research and teaching focus on the adaptive challenges of disruptive change. Previously, he spent over 20 years at Innosight, a growth strategy consultancy founded by Harvard Business School professor (and father of the idea of disruptive innovation) Clayton Christensen. What’s the big idea? In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon wrote that there were three technologies for which it was possible to draw a clear line before and after: the printing pre…

A majority of Gen Z workers are turning to AI chatbots during the workday for personal reasons, including mental health support, with 40% saying they talk to AI for at least an hour every day, according to a new Resume.org survey. “Many Gen Zers entered hybrid or remote jobs where casual mentorship or watercooler chats never formed, so AI fills that relational void,” said Kara Dennison, Resume.org’s head of career advising. “It listens, it responds thoughtfully, and it never criticizes.” She added: “That creates a sense of psychological safety that’s often missing in corporate hierarchies. It’s about connection, control, and immediacy. They’re using AI the way ear…

I was interviewing for a job as a customer service agent with Anna. She had a low, pleasant voice and she’d nailed the pronunciation of my name—something few people do. I wanted to make a good impression except I had no idea what Anna was thinking because Anna couldn’t think. Anna wasn’t technically a person. She was AI. Not only is AI changing how we do our jobs, it’s also changing how we get jobs. This ranges from using AI to screen resumes, schedule interviews, even conduct them. According to a 2025 report, 20% of companies are using AI to interview candidates. Even so, nothing can replace human recruiters, the folks who’ve deployed Anna into the wild stressed …

Generative AI is evolving along two distinct tracks: on one side, savvy users are building their own retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, personal agents, or even small language models (SLMs) tailored to their contexts and data. On the other, the majority are content with “LLMs out of the box”: Open a page, type a query, copy the output, paste it elsewhere. That divide — between builders and consumers — is shaping not only how AI is used but also whether it delivers value at all. The difference is not just individual skill. It’s also organizational. Companies are discovering that there are two categories of AI use: the administrative (summarize a report, dr…

To announce its entrance into 5G home internet service, Mint Mobile found the real-life version of a new AI-generated actress, even if only in (nick)name. Tilly Norwood is the name of a so-called AI actress launched by AI talent studio Xicoia. It also happens to be the name of a woman who stars alongside Ryan Reynolds in Mint Mobile’s new ad for its home internet service, which it’s branding “Minternet.” “It’s hard to believe that Mint is launching 5G home internet. It’s also hard to believe that a real version of an AI actress is out there,” a Maximum Effort representative tells Fast Company. “And thanks to the incredible and somewhat disturbing stalking detectiv…

The J.M. Smucker Co. says it doesn’t have a problem with other companies selling their own prepackaged, crustless sandwiches like its own popular Smucker’s Uncrustables. They just have to get their own design. Uncrustables is on its way to becoming a $1 billion brand, so of course there will be knockoffs, but according to Smucker, a recent Trader Joe’s version of Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches is a bit too blatant. The company is using the design of the Trader Joe’s product and packaging to prove its point in a new lawsuit. Smucker accused the grocery store chain of “an obvious attempt to trade off of the fame and recognition” of Uncrustab…

If you hear your organization talking about the Great ShakeOut, it has nothing to do with Taylor Swift or Florence and the Machine. Instead, this international event promotes earthquake preparedness. Having a plan greatly improves outcomes and saves lives. On October 16 at 10:16 a.m. local time, millions will be practicing how to properly drop, cover, and hold on. Let’s take a look at the science behind earthquakes, the regions they impact, and how to participate in the Great ShakeOut. What actually causes an earthquake? The Earth’s outer layer is made up of seven major tectonic plates. Think of these as patches of a quilt that isn’t stitched together per…

The whole idea of advertising—using pictures and words to get people to buy stuff, or to do something—is old indeed, with the first known example dating back almost 5,000 years to the heady days of Ancient Egypt. The ads business changed a lot since we were writing notices on papyrus, but one thing that—until recently—remained the same was that it was a deeply intentional business. The advertiser had to think about the language they used, the imagery they employed, the types of people they sought to reach, and how they would go about doing that. Whether the advertiser was touting a weaving shop on the banks of the Nile during the days of the Pharaohs, or selling…