What's on Your Mind?

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…

McDonald’s’ latest menu drop is making a Mormon treat mainstream. On Tuesday, April 28, McDonald’s officially announced six new beverages coming to its menu on May 6. That includes three “crafted sodas”—Sprite Berry Blast, Orange Dream, and Dirty Dr Pepper—which combine sodas with flavored syrups and cold foam. The drinks make McDonald’s the latest franchise to embrace the concept of “dirty soda,” or soda with mixed-in flavors and creams. But dirty soda is more than just a viral food trend: It’s a cultural mainstay of Mormon communities, which have embraced the concept since it first rose to prominence in Utah, where 42% of the adult population identifies as Morm…

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…

Welcome to exhausted America 2025: Most adults are more than a little fine with doling out cash as gifts, and many plan to be asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to a new AP-NORC poll. About 6 in 10 Americans say cash or gift cards are “very” acceptable as holiday presents, but they’re much less likely to say that about a gift that was purchased secondhand or re-gifted, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. “Cash is OK for the grandkids I guess,” said Nancy Wyant, 73, in rural central Iowa. “But I’m a gift giver.” Come New Year’s Eve, she’ll be fast asleep before 2026 rolls around. “At our ag…

If talent is the oxygen of a company, succession planning is the life-support system. Yet too many organizations treat it like an org chart exercise, waiting until someone resigns or retires before scrambling to find a replacement. When a leader walks out, the ripple effects are immediate: strategy stalls, teams lose momentum, and culture wobbles overnight. The bigger problem? Most companies aren’t ready when it happens. According to DDI’s 2025 HR Insights Report, only 20% of CHROs say they have leaders prepared to step into critical roles, and just 49% of those roles could be filled internally today. That means most organizations are closer to a leadership cr…

I’ve heard it too many times to count, “We’ve never done PR before and are getting ready to announce [insert your major milestone of choice]” Too often, businesses wait until they have big news to begin thinking about strategic communications. They’re about to close a funding round, launch a product, or enter a new market. But here’s the thing: If you’re just starting to think about PR now, you’re already behind. After nearly 20 years leading communications for fintech companies and financial institutions, I can confidently say that the organizations that benefit most from major announcements began building visibility long before the moment arrived. WHY CO…

While most employers offer mental health care coverage as part of their health insurance packages, major gaps in care exist. According to new research, many employers aren’t sure how mental health care services are being used by employees. The 2025 Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) Employer Survey, released Friday, polled professionals at 400 companies with 500 or more employees who made benefits decisions. Mental health coverage was a given almost across the board (97% of respondents said their company offered it), and several companies covered nontraditional programs, like financial therapists (62%) and mindfulness apps (74%). However, there were also s…

I spend most days in rooms where four generations argue about the same spreadsheet. Boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z staff the same executive teams, often guided by directors from a fifth—the Silent Generation. Four different eras, four different mental operating systems, one quarterly earnings call. When leaders tell me, “We’ve got a generation problem,” what they usually have is a self-awareness problem. A widely cited review of so-called generational differences at work found that many popular stereotypes don’t hold up very well when you look at actual data on values and attitudes. At the same time, more recent research shows that age-mixed teams can outp…

“Violence is just part of the job. Every nurse and healthcare worker experiences it at some point.” Sentiments like this echo across American hospitals and healthcare facilities, capturing a disturbing and growing reality. Though Americans think of nursing as the most trusted profession, we often fail to see that it’s also one of the most dangerous. An alarming 8 in 10 nurses face violence at work. As a result, healthcare workers are more than four times as likely to be injured by workplace violence than workers in all other industries combined. Despite these staggering numbers, the full extent of this epidemic may not be fully understood because nurses and ot…

Two new experiments show that most people do not even consider that a personal message could be AI-generated, even when they themselves use artificial intelligence to write. To see how people judge someone based on their writing in the age of ChatGPT, my colleague Jiaqi Zhu and I recruited more than 1,300 U.S.-based participants, ages 18 to 84, and showed them AI-generated messages like an apology sent in an email. We split our volunteers into four groups: Some people saw the messages with no information about who or what wrote them, as in everyday life. Others were told the messages were definitely written by a human, definitely AI-generated, or that the source could…

Some of the most familiar moments in a day begin with something simple like boiling water. The first cup before the day starts, a pause in the middle of it, a quiet reset at the end. These moments are easy to overlook because they are routine, but they are also where design shows up most clearly. Not just in how something looks, but in how it behaves when it is used again and again. A kettle is a good example. It is a familiar object, one that has existed in roughly the same form for generations. It is not a category most people would describe as needing innovation. And yet, the experience is often defined by small, persistent points of friction. Handles that feel un…

It’s a new year, which means millions of people are setting resolutions they genuinely want to keep. We want to eat better. Move more. Make more money. Finally get control of our time. We’re taking advantage of the Fresh Start Effect, a principle rooted in the idea that people often view new beginnings as an opportunity to distance themselves from past failures and shortcomings. This can lead to a psychological reset, where we experience a renewed sense of optimism, self-efficacy, and motivation, common around the New Year. And yet, by February, most of this motivation will quietly evaporate—not because people don’t care, but because the way we set resolutions i…

While working as an engineer at Tesla, Niccolo Cymbalist never planned to start a business. But he’d been considering an idea for new technology—an autonomous, wind-powered cargo ship. Then, while on paternity leave in 2024, he discovered a free program that helps scientists and engineers launch businesses for the first time. Weeks after finishing the program, called 5050, Cymbalist had launched a startup called Clippership. The company’s first ship is being built in the Netherlands this year. Without the accelerator, he says, the company likely wouldn’t exist. The program has now helped scientists and engineers launch 100 businesses, from Huminly, which uses enzy…

Customer experience is entering the sci-fi age: knowing and understanding customers on an individual level, providing personalized service, and dedicated moments. All of this is becoming possible thanks to technological innovation. And as it shifts, we’re moving beyond the age of reactive service, where customer satisfaction was measured by stale, bi-annual surveys. We’re entering an era of proactive, predictive customer care. Companies’ missions today should be to transform every interaction into a moment of loyalty and growth, a goal we are working to achieve through our latest in-house innovation: the Customer Experience Index, or CXI. While many companies talk abo…

Have you ever opened a jar of Crisco and proceeded to slather it all over your body? I have, in the summer of 1992. I was just exiting sixth grade, and my friend was over for an afternoon of suntanning. When I reached for the brown bottle of suntan lotion, my friend stopped me, “Let’s go look for your mom’s Crisco.” “Crisco???” I said. “Yes, it’s how my older sister gets so tan.” Although I was suspicious that vegetable shortening was good for my skin, I silenced my doubts when I pictured her older sister in my mind—she was gorgeous, popular, and bronze. From a young age, we have an immature relationship with authority. Psychologists call this authority bias, whic…

Shares in America’s publicly traded movie theater chains surged yesterday, the first day of trading after the Memorial Day holiday. It’s a holiday weekend that saw moviegoers flock to theaters in droves, snapping up tickets and leading to the best Memorial Day weekend box office in history. Here’s what you need to know about the Memorial Day box office and its impact on shares in movie theater companies. Memorial Day box office was the best on record Movies generated a record $326 million at the Memorial Day box office this weekend, a period that ran from Friday, May 23, to Monday, May 26. That four-day haul record was largely fueled by two films. The first was…

In hindsight, NATO was an unnecessarily confusing acronym for a trade organization representing movie theater owners. For 60 years, the National Association of Theatre Owners has promoted interests of movie theaters, from the biggest chains to the one-screen mom and pop shops. They’ve also regularly gotten mail and phone calls intended for the other NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the theater owner’s organization is looking to the future, with a new name and a refocused mission. The group will now be known as Cinema United, president and CEO Michael O’Leary told The Associated Press Tuesday. “It can be a little complicated having the same name as…

Several weeks ago, Mozilla Firefox dodged a bullet aimed at its business model—a potential court-ordered cutoff of the Google search-default payments that constitute its primary course of income. But that escape from one feared outcome of the U.S. search-antitrust case against the web giant doesn’t change two other things: Firefox remains in an embattled position. That’s bad news for users. Without Firefox, web competition itself would be in a far more dire state. To address its longstanding competition problem, Mozilla’s developers are putting AI to work—albeit, in a less pushy manner than their competitors. A conversation with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at Web Su…