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Below, Judd Kessler shares five key insights from his new book, Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want. Judd is an award-winning professor of economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research and writing have been featured in leading media, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review, among others. For his work on organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes. He has been researching market design for the past 15 years. What’s the big idea? Life is full of hidden markets quietly deciding who gets…

January is a time when many people reflect on their goals for the year ahead—a new job, a promotion, hitting the gym, or overall better health—but research from Baylor College of Medicine and psychologist Richard Wiseman shows 88% of people actually fail to achieve their New Year’s resolutions. But according to the experts we asked, you should forget resolutions—and do these things instead. Rewire your brain “Repetition, not intention, rewires behavior,” says Cherian Koshy, author of Neurogiving. “Resolutions fail because they rely on willpower, and willpower is unreliable. What works is design.” “The brain follows what’s easy, not what’s aspirational, and …

Imagine this: One day, you won’t have to waste hours of your life doing your most arduous, least favorite forms of shopping. You know what I’m talking about—buying Christmas presents for distant aunts, getting supplies for your kid’s birthday, ordering groceries for dinner. In the near future, you’ll empower your AI agent to tackle the task, then off it will go, identifying the right items, comparing prices and—most impressively—making the purchase for you. Within hours, a tin of your aunt’s favorite biscuits, the correct number of Peppa Pig plates, and a bag of groceries will arrive at your doorstep. We’re not quite there yet, but experts say that this future is …

Shares of Tesla Inc. are enjoying a premarket upswing on Friday as they head into their first trading day of 2026. The rising stock price (Nasdaq: TSLA) comes despite low expectations for the EV maker’s fourth-quarter 2025 deliveries, which are expected to show a significant decline when compared to the previous quarter. Here’s what you need to know: Tesla stock is starting 2026 on a high note In premarket trading on Friday, shares of Tesla were up around 2% as of this writing. The stock has been on an upswing for the last several months since CEO Elon Musk stepped back from his controversial job-slashing activities at the Department of Government Efficienc…

Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City on Thursday, taking over one of the most unrelenting jobs in American politics with a promise to transform government on behalf of the city’s striving, struggling working class. Mamdani, a Democrat, was sworn in at a decommissioned subway station below City Hall just after midnight, placing his hand on a Quran as he took his oath as the city’s first Muslim mayor. After working part of the night in his new office, Mamdani returned to City Hall in a taxi cab around midday Thursday for a grander public inauguration where U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the mayor’s political heroes, administered the oath for a second time. “Beg…

Every January, leaders are told to do the same thing: set ambitious goals, map out the year, and commit to executing harder than before. We frame this as discipline or vision, but more often than not, it is a ritual of pressure. The assumption is that success comes from wanting more and pushing faster. After years of leading teams, building companies, and advising executives at the intersection of AI, work, and leadership, I realized something uncomfortable. Most people are not failing because their goals are unclear. They are failing because their capacity is already exhausted before the year even begins. That realization fundamentally changed how I approach the …

The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said its president had been captured and flown out of the country after months of intense pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald The President on social media hours after the attack. The legal authority for the strike — and whether The President consulted Congress beforehand — was not immediately clear. The stunning American military action, which plucked a nation’s sitting leader from office, echoed the U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of its leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1990 — exactly …

The holiday season always reminds me that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My kids start winter break thrilled—new toys to play with, days at home, permission to veg out. But by the time the new year rolls around, they’re itching to go back to school, eager to show off their favorite holiday gifts and dive back into their routine. It got me thinking: why don’t we, as adults, approach returning to work after a vacation with that same positive energy? More often than not, coming back from time off stirs up feelings of anxiety. For some, it reaches the point of canceling out any lingering benefits of the break. Others overcompensate by overworking u…

With President The President back in the White House, this year has brought a barrage of executive orders and edicts that target workers. The President reduced the minimum wage for federal contractors, made major cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—whose express mission is to keep people safe in the workplace—and attempted to undermine collective bargaining rights for federal workers. He has also, of course, set his sights on dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across both the federal workforce and corporate America. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope for workers: Many states have taken it upon themselves to enshrine policie…

2026 will be a crucial inflection point for businesses. The data are striking—the proportion of employees using AI in their role in the U.S. doubled between 2023 and 2025. Across the Atlantic, 30% of EU workers are already using AI in their jobs. And according to Gartner, by 2026 more than 100 million workers will collaborate with “robo-colleagues.” The question for the coming year, then, is no longer whether AI will transform your organization, it’s whether your leadership team will guide that transformation thoughtfully or let it happen haphazardly, tool by tool and team by team. I have spent much of the past year working with my research team and industry partn…

Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage. Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026. The bubble won’t pop While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bu…

A few months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video that stopped me in my tracks. It starred an animated frog, dressed in a wizard hat, robe, and pink nail polish, superimposed over a psychedelic background and speaking in a hypnotizing, ethereal voice. “It’s time to stop doing nothing, and start doing something,” he crooned. “I cast . . . motivation!” I’d stumbled across the Pine Wizard Frog—a recurring character on the official TikTok account of household cleaning fluid Pine-Sol. Pine-Sol’s page, with its surrealist visuals and hypnotizing songs, is an example of what I call “brain-rot-brand TikTok”: It’s a subgenre of digital marketing that …

President Donald The President’s plan to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry and ask American companies to revitalize it after capturing President Nicolás Maduro in a raid isn’t likely to have a significant immediate impact on oil prices. Venezuela’s oil industry is in disrepair after years of neglect and international sanctions, so it could take years and major investments before production can increase dramatically. But some analysts are optimistic that Venezuela could double or triple its current output of about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day to return to historic levels fairly quickly. “While many are reporting Venezuela’s oil infrastructure was unharmed by U…

Most people never change careers, which is remarkable when you consider how little evidence most of us had when we chose our first one. For many professionals, early career decisions are shaped less by talent or long-term fit than by convenience and coincidence. We follow friends into certain degrees, accept the first decent offer, listen to family advice, or pursue interests that feel meaningful at 18 but prove less durable at 38. These choices are understandable, but they are weak predictors of where our strengths will compound over time, or of what will sustain both performance and satisfaction across decades of work. In essence, we follow our own or other people’s…

The countdown is on for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. The torch relay is already underway and some of the top athletes are already making headlines. There are 16 sports in all, including some never seen before, and 116 gold medals are waiting to be awarded when competition begins in less than a month. This will be the most spread-out Winter Games in history: The two primary competition sites are the city of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the winter resort in the Dolomites that is more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) away by road. Athletes also will compete in three other mountain clusters besides Cortina, while the closing ceremony will be in Verona, 160 km (100 mile…

If you’ve been noticing that cobalt-hued water bottles have started to pop up everywhere you’re not alone. The water has recently made an appearance on shelves at major retailers including Whole Foods and 7-Eleven, starred in viral social media videos created by fitness influencer Ashton Hall, adorned on tables at the Golden Globes, and beginning this week, will star in a fresh new advertising campaign featuring WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins. All of these marketing efforts represent a more expansive pitch by Saratoga Spring Water that the brand’s premium-priced water isn’t just for fine dining– which has been the brand’s core focus for the past several years — it’s …

Is cable television truly dead? The markets are about to test the hypothesis. Shares of Versant Media Group began trading on the Nasdaq Monday under the ticker symbol VSNT, effectively completing Versant’s spinoff from parent company Comcast Corporation. Versant comprises a bundle of cable television networks and similar digital businesses, with notable properties including MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), CNBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, and SYFY. It also includes online platforms such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. Peacock, the popular streaming service owned by NBCUniversal, will remain under the Comcast umbrell…

With the start of the New Year squarely behind us, it’s once again time for the annual CES trade show to shine a spotlight on the latest tech that companies plan to offer in 2026. The multiday event, organized by the Consumer Technology Association, kicks off this week in Las Vegas, where advances across industries like robotics, healthcare, vehicles, wearables, gaming and more are set to be on display. Artificial intelligence will be anchored in nearly everything, again, as the tech industry explores offerings consumers will want to buy. AI industry heavyweight Jensen Huang will be taking the stage to showcase Nvidia’s latest productivity solutions, and AMD CEO Lisa Su…

While most EVs tip the scales at several tons, a new “featherweight” electric sports car weighs half as much—or less—than others on the road. Longbow, the U.K.-based startup behind the sleek EV, plans to bring its first vehicle to market later this year with a limited run of 150 cars, starting at £84,995, or roughly $110,000. A high-performance version of the design is on display at CES this week. The company’s aim is to reverse the car industry’s weight problem—something that’s especially an issue for EVs that have large batteries inside. Heavier vehicles have bigger carbon footprints, use more energy, and are more dangerous in a crash for pedestrians. They also …

When I was Chief of Staff at CoinDesk, I was in charge of the publication’s approach to AI. One of the earliest debates our internal AI committee had was about whether we should allow AI to index our articles or not. Most of the people on the committee thought we should block AI crawlers. While the fury of media copyright lawsuits had yet to begin, the issue had gotten some traction, and it was easy to make the case that we shouldn’t give our content away to AI companies to summarize unless we were compensated in some way. But one person boldly made the case for the other side: He argued that, if AI becomes the new way people find information, shutting ourselves o…

Your paycheck could be a little bigger in 2026, even if you didn’t get a New Year’s raise. That’s because, in order to adjust for inflation, the IRS made some major changes to the tax code last year. In case you missed it, the changes were announced back in October. Notably, the standard deduction for 2026 (to be filed in 2027) — which reduces the amount of your income you will be taxed on — will rise. “For tax year 2026, the standard deduction increases to $32,200 for married couples filing jointly,” the October announcement explains. “For single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately, the standard deduction rises to $16,100 for tax year 2026, and for he…

It’s all fun and games, until there are billions of dollars involved. But these Brands That Matter honorees manage to tap into our love for sports and entertainment in ways that only help boost that passion. BritBox Read about how BritBox’s first major brand campaign showcased the craftsmanship of British TV. NBA Read about how the NBA made its app a destination for fans by building a network of creators it equipped with editing tools and 25,000 hours of game footage. State Farm As crazy as it sounds, this is an insurance company steeped in culture. This past year, State Farm pushed its Super Bowl ad to March Madness, due to sensitivity around the L.…

In a crowded field like food and beverage, companies must do all they can to stay ahead of the pack. The 2025 Brands That Matter honorees in the space used inventive campaigns, celebrity influence, and nostalgic throwbacks to stand apart. Corona brought its product to Olympian heights, and Sprite reinvigorated a classic slogan with a new generation of talent. Sometimes achieving brand relevance is as easy, as Heinz proved, as putting a little mustard on it. Califia Farms A recognizable presence in the plant-based dairy aisle, Califia Farms spent the past year recommitting itself to values of health and sustainability. In response to consumer demands for more organi…

Social media users may love the “6-7” trend, but when it comes to their advice for baby boomers, a number of recent posts from TikTok financial influencers have users recommending that people start collecting their Social Security benefits early, at age “62.” However, this differs from what financial planners typically recommend, which is that people delay their Social Security claim as long as possible to get the maximum monthly benefit at age 70. Here’s what to know about the online debate. How does age affect Social Security payments? Before you do anything, it’s important to understand how Social Security works—and that you contact your financial adviso…

Amazon Music just dropped its 2025 Delivered, an annual recap of your most streamed songs, artists, podcasts, and audiobooks, and the platform’s answer to the popular Spotify Wrapped. Here’s what to know, and how to access the feature. What is Amazon Music’s 2025 Delivered? 2025 Delivered transforms your streaming history on Amazon Music into a virtual music festival poster with your “dream lineup” of artists. Users are given special “Trendsetter” and “Headliner” badges for being an early album adopter or an artist’s top listener, respectively. From the moment you snap on your virtual festival wristband, 2025 Delivered will share personal insights from the …