What's on Your Mind?

The number of people who have come to me whispering, “I want to be seen as a thought leader.” And yet when I say, “Amazing, let’s put you on camera,” I’m suddenly met with . . . crickets. I get it. Putting yourself out there can feel awkward. Exposed. Vulnerable. That’s how I feel about dancing in public. It’s my own personal nightmare. At Zumba, I’m hiding behind the water cooler. At my wedding, my husband had to mouth the 1-2-3-4 count so I wouldn’t lose the beat. And recently at a music festival, the band leader pointed at me to come dance on stage. I prayed he was pointing to the person behind me. Nope. As I sheepishly walked up the stairs to the stage, …

It’s long been the uniform of management consultants and finance bros, but now the humble quarter zip is being embraced by a rather unexpected demographic. ​​Over the past few weeks, FYPs have become dominated by the workwear staple. Young men who previously might’ve been seen exclusively in Nike Tech, have now traded them in for quarter zip sweaters. Across social media, they are sharing styling tips and hosting meetups at malls, all clad in business-casual. The trend gained widespread attention when, in early November, TikToker @whois.jason shared a video of himself sipping a matcha (the beverage of choice for the ‘performative male’) with a friend. Both are we…

A Thanksgiving tradition since 1924, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has not quite turned 100 years-old yet. How is this possible you might wonder? Because it was skipped for three years—1942, 1943, and 1944—during World War II. Nevertheless, its 99th anniversary is shaping up to be spectacular. Here’s everything you need to know about the (mostly) annual event in New York City, including how to tune in. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade by the numbers It takes many people to pull off the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Some even do the pulling literally.) There will be more than 5,000 volunteers working hard to make magic happen. This spectacle inclu…

For the past 99 years at Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, spectators have craned their necks to watch giant balloons and larger-than-life floats pass through the streets of New York City. But a word to the wise this year: Don’t forget to look down. You might just catch a glimpse of the tiniest float in the parade’s history. The float—which is 49 times smaller than the average display—comes courtesy of Goldfish, which is returning to the parade for the first time in more than a decade. The float’s design features a wintery snowscape covered with frolicking Goldfish crackers towed by an equally tiny Ram truck. According to Brendan Kennedy, director of creative pr…

For many children, the experience of getting their first pair of glasses is an inevitable milestone, the first in a lifetime of visits to the eye doctor. But what if those lenses could actually help preserve the child’s vision and reduce the chances for more serious eye problems in adulthood? That’s the promise of a new type of lens approved by the Food and Drug Administration in September. While the technology has previously been available in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world, it’s now rolling out in the U.S. Here’s what to know about the new approach. What is myopia and why is it increasing? Myopia, commonly called nearsightedness, is when people can c…

Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday. The company will also pay $3.4 million in civil penalties under the agreement with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. It also agrees to comply with the city’s Fair Workweek law going forward. A company spokeswoman said Starbucks is committed to operating responsibly and in compliance with all applicable local laws and regulations in every market where it does business, but also noted the complexitiesc of the city’s law. “This (law) is notoriously c…

The early stages of building a brand are critical. Beyond identifying their audience, brands also have to connect with them while demonstrating their utility. For the five companies recognized as 2025 Brands That Matter honorees in the on the rise category, in four years or less they have managed to do both those things with aplomb. Whether it’s Unrivaled’s unique NIL and athletic proposition for WNBA athletes, Scarlett Gasque’s ability to tap into underserved shoppers, or Alan-1’s efforts to give the arcade game an upgrade for avid players, these brands have proven their strengths. Alan-1 Alan-1 creates arcade and video game products inspired by the 1980s. In …

During college, a friend convinced me to take an improv comedy class. An introvert by nature, I was way out of my depth. On the first day, I was so nervous I thought I might faint. But I ended up loving it—and learning a lot. In addition to silly warm-ups to get rid of inhibitions (zip, zap, zop, anyone?), I discovered the magic of “Yes, and . . .” In improv, “Yes, and” is more than just a phrase; it’s a mentality—to accept whatever idea or proposition is thrown at you, no matter how outlandish, rather than shutting it down. This mantra helped the flow of our improv performances, but it turned out to be a great life lesson as well. From that point on, I tried practici…

In the race to deploy large language models and generative AI across global markets, many companies assume that “English model → translate it” is sufficient. But if you’re an American executive preparing for expansion into Asia, Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, that assumption could be your biggest blind spot. In those regions, language isn’t just a packaging detail: it’s culture, norms, values, and business logic all wrapped into one. If your AI doesn’t code-switch, it won’t just underperform; it may misinterpret, misalign, or mis-serve your new market. The multilingual and cultural gap in LLMs Most of the major models are still trained predominantly on Engli…

Hit-Boy has made chart-topping beats for the likes of Beyoncé, Jay Z, Nas and Doechii but behind the scenes he was stuck in a restrictive publishing deal. In this interview, Hit-Boy talks But now he’s in full control of his art and his story. He’ll also dive into his creative process and how he’s walking the line of AI and art. View the full article

New research now suggests that our brains are still in the teenage phase until we “peak” in our early thirties. Researchers from the University of Cambridge looked at scans from around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Rather than progressing steadily over our lifetimes, research published in the journal Nature Communications suggests our brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points happening at ages nine, 32, 66, and 83. The first stage, from birth to nine, sees the brain rapidly increasing in size. Around age nine, the “adolescent” phase begins as the brain works on increasing its e…

Amid an uncertain economy—the growth of AI, tariffs, rising costs—companies are pulling back on hiring. As layoffs increase, the labor market cools, and unemployment ticks up, we’re seeing fewer people quitting their jobs. The implication: Many workers will be “job hugging” and sitting tight in their roles through 2026. Put more pessimistically: Employees are going to feel stuck where they are for the foreseeable future. In many cases, that means staying in unsatisfying jobs. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workforce report shows that employee engagement has fallen to 21%. And a March 2025 study of 1,000 U.S. workers by advisory and consulting firm Fractional I…

Changing prices for what the market will bear has long been a staple of pricing for everything from airplane seats to a gallon of gas to hotel rooms. Indeed, an entire field of so-called “dynamic pricing” exists to figure out how to extract the most profit from the most willing customers has now emerged. But we’re at an inflection point now in which such practices are going from the exception, and for relatively few items, to the norm. The regulatory framework is at the moment right in the midst of figuring out what the guardrails will be. The Intermediary Industrial Complex Remember when a gallon of milk cost the same for everyone who walked into the store? That …

The biggest story in tech is AI’s increasing capacity to take on tasks once reserved for human beings. But the agents driving that change aren’t machines. They’re humans—inventive, ambitious, enterprising ones. Our third annual roundup of some of the field’s most intriguing players includes scientists and ethicists, CEOs and investors, big-tech veterans and first-time founders. These 20 innovators are tackling challenges from training tomorrow’s AI models to speeding drug discovery to reimagining everyday productivity tools. Household names they’re not. Yet, they’re already changing our world, with much more to come. Oriana Fenwick Michelle Pokrass Technical…

We Googled “Labubus.” We searched for “beaded sardine bags,” and recipes like “cabbage boil” and “hot honey cottage cheese sweet potato beef bowl.” We wanted information about Charlie Kirk and Zohran Mamdani, about Sinners, Weapons, and KPop Demon Hunters. We desperately needed to know why kids kept saying “6-7.” Together, these queries defined 2025. The 24th edition of Google’s Year in Search, the company’s annual top 10 lists of users’ most-searched items, debuted today. These hundreds of lists both validate our own obsessions and take us out of our own bubbles and echo chambers, offering insights into what our fellow humans are interested in. …

Artificial intelligence is radically changing how healthcare providers tackle vision loss, with tools that can be used from diagnosis to treatment and even follow-up care. One such example is Visilan, which uses smartphone imaging, telemedicine, and AI to screen, diagnose, and monitor patients for vision care. And with this technology, more of the 1 billion-plus patients who live with vision loss can be treated, Jordan Shuff, executive director and founder of Visilan, said at last month’s World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. But in this race to expand care, it’s also important to have guardrail…

Since Pantone began naming its Color of the Year in 2000, we’ve seen two flavors of both brown and yellow, three variations of purple, blue, and turquoise, and four distinct takes on orange. But for the first time ever, Pantone’s color is essentially a non-color. Or you could call it every color. Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year is a white. In Pantone language, that’s code 11-4201—aka Cloud Dancer. Pantone—which operates somewhere between a trend forecaster and social psychologist—argues that Cloud Dancer is part of a great cultural reboot. In the era of AI, everything feels like it’s changing on a daily basis, and the overstimulation of the internet is only…

When I was cycling across the country on my bike, I spent anywhere from six to nine hours a day in the saddle—for almost three solid months. It made a lot of people wonder: What did you listen to all day long? “Was it mostly music, or more like audiobooks, podcasts?” asked a friend of mine when we went for a drink at a bar after I got back home. “What was on your playlist?” “Nothing,” I said. She frowned slightly, as if she’d misheard me. “What do you mean, ‘nothing?’” “I mean, nothing. I don’t listen to anything when I ride,” I replied. “I don’t even wear earbuds.” You could see the wheels of her mind grind to a standstill. “What the hell. You…

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. It fuels boardroom debates, guides priorities, defines access to information, and nudges consumer experiences. But while AI promises sharper insights and faster action, it also accelerates blind spots leaders already struggle with. The paradox is this: AI can widen vision, but if used without the right insight, it narrows it. And when those blind spots meet the speed of AI adoption, the consequences multiply. I’ve seen this play out across industries—through my leadership roles at Google, Maersk, and Diageo, and in advising executives shaping some of the world’s largest organizations. The pattern is clear: technology does not…

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…

If your sofa was made between 1970 and 2014, its foam is likely loaded with flame retardants—chemicals that can escape into dust and end up in the air you breathe. A new study led by the California Department of Public Health shows the payoff of swapping it out: people who replaced their old, chemical-filled sofas or chairs with new, flame-retardant-free models saw levels of one common chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), drop by half in just over a year. The chemicals became ubiquitous in upholstered furniture thanks to older regulations in California. The state’s large market meant that flame retardants were used in furniture nationwide. The tob…

The Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, may be visible in more than a dozen U.S. states Tuesday, December 9, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA). A full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME) is expected to reach Earth early to midday on Tuesday, potentially causing periods of “strong” G3 geomagnetic storms (on a scale of G1 to G5). The aurora borealis is the result of a geomagnetic storm that occurs when a coronal mass ejection (CME), an eruption of solar material, reaches Earth and causes swaths of purple, blue, and green in the night sky. This year’s increased solar activity (and thus, …

Once upon a time, San Francisco was a manufacturing town. For decades, the Union Iron Works built ships—such as the U.S. Navy’s U.S.S. Oregon (1893) and U.S.S. Wisconsin (1898)—in its plant on Pier 70 in the neighborhood now known as Dogpatch. In recent years, that sprawling, long-abandoned complex has been rehabbed and filled with office space, housing, retail, and art studios. Among its tenants are startup accelerator Y Combinator and HR platform Gusto, neither of which has much in common with the Union Iron Works. And then there’s Astranis. The company is returning Pier 70 to its roots by applying human labor to turn raw materials into finished products. The produc…

Remember earlier this year when everyone on your feed was wearing bizarre shoes, like Maison Margiella’s ballerina flats with split toes and mesh ballet flats? Or when statement scrunchies were all the rage? Don’t feel bad if you missed it. Blink, and the trend was over. Over the past 15 years, the pace of fashion trends has sped up thanks to social media and fast fashion brands. But over the past five years, with the rise of TikTok and Shein, they’ve gotten out of control. Micro-trends pop up in a subculture of the internet, lasting for just a few days before fading into oblivion. It’s gotten to the point where many people have lost interest in fashion trends al…

Today, investors are waking up to red on their screens as many tech and AI stocks are dropping in premarket trading. But why are shares in these companies falling? Much of it has to do with the cloud infrastructure company Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and its latest quarterly earnings results. Here’s what you need to know. Oracle’s Q2 2026 results send ORCL plunging Yesterday, Oracle reported financial results for its second quarter of fiscal 2026. To say investors were disappointed in the results is an understatement, given how poorly ORCL shares are performing in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, ORCL shares are down over 12% as inve…