What's on Your Mind?

Vaping devices are getting a makeover—one that seems likely to turn more teens into consumers. Experts have long worried that nicotine vapes appeal to minors with flavors like Cotton Candy and Blue Razz, along with bright candy-colored designs. Today’s vapes double as digital gadgets. Some mimic video games, others resemble smartphones or tamagotchi-style pets that “die” if you stop puffing. It’s gamified addiction. Behind the flashy designs lies a serious danger. Research shows that vaping harms both cardiovascular and respiratory health and can lead to nicotine dependency. Many of these new products are also unregulated, often smuggled in from overseas manuf…

In today’s dynamic, diverse, and rapidly changing workforce, organizations’ success is dependent upon creating an environment where different perspectives come together. That’s how we produce the best ideas. Despite the recent attacks on them, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles provide a crucial foundation for thriving companies. If companies want to experience the benefits of broad ideas, they need to attract talented employees from different backgrounds. And once they’ve hired those top talents, they need to make sure that they don’t exclude anyone from participating in discussions and sharing their honest views. Many arguments support why successful or…

Our phones are making us unhappy, but I’m not sure cutting myself off from humanity’s universe of information with a dumbphone is the answer. It’s kind of like how we know walking is healthier than driving, but it’s a moot point when the average person lives 27 miles from their workplace. However, maybe our smartphones don’t need a lobotomy. Maybe they just need to respect our boundaries. This is an idea explored in a new concept called Aperture, by the London studio Special Projects. It’s a case that crops your smartphone into a small square of your screen when you flip your case over, revealing a series of smart widgets. By the same firm that developed ideas like discre…

Meghan Markle has been teasing the launch of her lifestyle brand, now called As Ever, for a while now, and Markle finally revealed its product line earlier this week. But while followers of the Duchess of Sussex are just now learning what her brand will offer, Markle’s fledging business has already faced its fair share of controversy. In the spring of 2024, Markle dropped the first hint at a potential business in the form of several artisanal jars of jam sent to various celebrity friends, each branded with the name “American Riviera Orchard.” The next update didn’t arrive until this February, when Markle announced on Instagram that she had scrapped the “American Rivie…

The web is being swamped by AI slop—but the swamp is creeping closer to home. Your email inboxes, phone SMS apps, instant messaging, and social media services are all being overtaken by inauthentic content. From AI-generated footage of Hollywood actor Brad Pitt that conned a French woman out of $800,000, to phishing emails that direct victims to live chats with AI bots purporting to be from a legitimate business but which are actually criminals, AI scams are everywhere. Two in every three people tested by Vodafone failed to identify an AI-driven phishing attack. One of those people was George Wilson, the founder of a small business based in Marietta, Georgia. Wils…

It’s telling that the plot premise of the first episode for the new Apple show The Studio—episode three drops today—revolves entirely around the notion of a Kool-Aid movie. Created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the entire show revolves around the elevation of Rogen’s character Matt Remick to studio head, a job he got only because he committed to getting into bed with the brand IP of a 98-year-old beverage. How the premiere episode subsequently ties in Martin Scorcese and a film about Jonestown to the Kool-Aid brand is both hilariously absurd and somehow absolutely believable. Speaking of believable, watch the scene in which filmmaker Nick Stoller (Forgetting …

On the evening of January 7, the Eaton Fire hit Altadena, destroying more than 10,000 commercial and residential homes and displacing thousands of families. Just a little over two months later, and this historically Black community is facing a new threat. Shortly after the fire, a private developer paid $550,000 in cash for the first vacant lot left behind from the wildfires, about $100,000 above asking price. In the days since, at least 13 more properties have sold, at least half of them by offshore private developers. But community leaders are working to beat back the tide. Last month, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit purchased a burned lot in the neig…

When it comes to wealth, most of us think about money. You measure your financial wealth by looking at your assets and your debts. But there are other areas in your life where you can be wealthy, including time. Would you consider yourself time-affluent or are you living the life of a time pauper? “Time wealth is all about freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and when you trade it for other things,” says Sahil Bloom, author of The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. Building time wealth is about awareness and action, says Bloom. Be aware that time is your most precious asset and the…

Why are AI chatbots so intelligent—capable of understanding complex ideas, crafting surprisingly good short stories, and intuitively grasping what users mean? The truth is, we don’t fully know. Large language models “think” in ways that don’t look very human. Their outputs are formed from billions of mathematical signals bouncing through layers of neural networks powered by computers of unprecedented power and speed, and most of that activity remains invisible or inscrutable to AI researchers. This opacity presents obvious challenges, since the best way to control something is to understand how it works. Scientists had a firm grasp of nuclear physics before the first …

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. What do David Beckham, Shaquille O’Neal, and Serena Williams have in common—aside from their standout sports careers? They’ve all built thriving businesses. Sure, having capital and global name recognition helps. But reducing their business success to just fame only tells half the story. The other half is that top athletes spend years honing discipline, resilience, and the ability to think s…

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. Regardless of whether your company has a strict in-office policy or supports a flexible schedule, the reality is that office attendance is at its highest levels in five years, according to Bisnow. Nobody would argue the need for a healthy office, especially one with more people in it. And if you ask what makes a healthy office, most would say it is one that supports physical health and safet…

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. Here’s a question for business leaders: When was the last time you or someone on your team had a frustrating experience as a customer? Perhaps you were shuffled between departments, asked to repeat information multiple times, left feeling like no one grasped your specific needs, or that the information changed depending on who you talked to. Now flip the scenario. How many of your customers …

A Jesuit priest says he prefers going to prison than paying a 500-euro ($541) fine for participating in a climate activists’ street blockade in the southern German city of Nuremberg. The Rev. Jörg Alt started serving his nearly month-long prison sentence on Tuesday in Nuremberg. “Today, I am starting my 25-day alternative custodial sentence in Nuremberg prison,” he said before entering the prison. “I don’t like doing this, especially as my health is no longer the best at the age of 63. But I see no alternative, because it’s the last form of protest I have left in this specific case to draw attention to important issues” such as climate change. In November, Alt…

Think you’ve got game? Time to put it to the test with Tinder’s latest launch in collaboration with OpenAI. On Tuesday, Tinder rolled out The Game Game—a new experience designed to help users practice their flirting skills by chatting with an AI voice, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. Players are dealt a stack of virtual cards, each introducing a different AI persona and a hilariously exaggerated rom-com scenario (think: a luggage mix-up at the airport or accidentally crushing someone’s sunglasses on the beach). Your challenge? Charm your way through it. The bot makes the first move, and users respond in real time—earning feedback on their game as they go. Nail t…

NFL games are slow. They’re 11 minutes of actual action, spread across a 3 hour and 12 minute broadcast. You can blame that pace of the game on penalties, injuries, and, of course, commercials. But now, the NFL is teaming up with Sony to fix one of the game’s biggest time sinks: measurements. Beginning in the 2025 NFL season, all 30 teams will switch from human measurements to computer automation. Each stadium will be equipped with six, 8K Sony Hawk-Eye cameras that track the position of the ball on the field. It’s a significant upgrade to century-old technology. Chains have been used to measure the position of the football since they were first introduced in 1898…