What's on Your Mind?

When a stranger smiles at you, you smile back. That is why, when Sir Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings, X-Men, Amadeus) walked on the stage in front of me, looked me straight in the eye, and smiled at me, I smiled back. It was the polite thing to do. It was also completely unnecessary, because McKellen was not actually on the stage in front of me. He smiled at me through a pair of special glasses. The reason for this unusual social interaction is called An Ark, which bills itself as the first play to be created in mixed-reality. Using Magic Leap glasses, the play blends the physical world with the digital realm, creating an unusually intimate theater experience. Ope…

Saudi Arabia is officially gutting Neom and turning the Line into a server farm. After a year-long review triggered by financial reality, the Financial Times reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project is being “significantly downscaled.” The futuristic linear city known as the Line, originally designed to stretch 150 miles across the desert, is scrapping its sci-fi ambitions to become a far smaller project focused on industrial sectors, says the Financial Times. It’s a rumor that the Saudis originally dismissed when The Guardian first reported on it in 2024. The redesign confirms what skeptics have long suspected: The laws of physics and economics ha…

When one of the founders of modern AI walks away from one of the world’s most powerful tech companies to start something new, the industry should pay attention. Yann LeCun’s departure from Meta after more than a decade shaping its AI research is not just another leadership change. It highlights a deep intellectual rift about the future of artificial intelligence: whether we should continue scaling large language models (LLMs) or pursue systems that understand the world, not merely echo it. Who Yann LeCun is, and why it matters LeCun is a French American computer scientist widely acknowledged as one of the “Godfathers of AI.” Alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshu…

When people complain about a lack of work-life balance, they’re typically feeling that they are spending too much time working. They may be spending a lot of combined time at the office and commuting, or just putting in a lot of hours both at work and at home. Fixing that problem can’t be done abstractly, though. If you’re going to address the balance of work and life activities, you have to start getting specific about where your time is going and where you really want it to go. Think about how you’re spending your time. At work, you’re spending time in meetings, writing documents, engaging with clients, or doing particular technical tasks like coding. Similarly,…

Users of several trendy AI tools will now be able to demonstrate their proficiency with the software directly in their LinkedIn profile. On January 28, the company announced partnerships with three vibe coding platforms—Lovable, Relay.app, and Replit—that will allow qualified users to link their accounts on those apps to their accounts on LinkedIn, adding certificates based on their proficiency with the tools. The level of certification can increase over time as people continue to use a tool and demonstrate their sophistication with it, says Pat Whelan, head of career products at LinkedIn. While the details of the certification process are up to the individual partner c…

Allbirds shoe brand announced on Wednesday that it will close almost all of its U.S. stores by the end of February (except for two outlets) and go online, turning to e-commerce instead. It will continue to operate two London-based brick-and-mortar locations as well. Fast Company has reached out to Allbirds for more details about the locations that will be closing. “This is an important step for Allbirds, as we drive toward profitable growth under our turnaround strategy,” Allbirds CEO Joe Vernachio said in a statement. “We have been opportunistically reducing our brick-and-mortar portfolio over the past two years. By exiting these remaining unprofitable doors, we …

For designers of the built environment, it’s necessary to take a long view. Years or even decades can go into the design and construction of a single project, and the best built projects can stand for centuries. But the business of designing buildings is also subject to the upheavals and uncertainty of any given moment, including this very tumultuous one. Looking ahead to the (relatively) short-term future of the next year, Fast Company asked architects from some of the top firms working in the U.S. and around the world to predict the biggest forces shaping the industry this year, and the potential bright spots they might see. Here’s the question we put to a panel…

In 2010, clinical psychiatrist Dale Archer published the New York Times best seller Better Than Normal, a book that highlighted the often-underappreciated benefits of various psychiatric diagnoses. The book looked at strengths associated with conditions like bipolar disorder, OCD and schizophrenia. But there was one chapter that hit a little too close to home. After publishing it, Archer asked a colleague to conduct a psychiatric diagnostic on him. “She said, ‘you’re off the charts for ADHD,’ and I go, ‘Yeah, I know, I just wanted validation’,” he says. In 2015, Archer published a follow-up book, The ADHD Advantage, focusing on some of the more positive a…

Journalist Ira Glass, who hosts the NPR show “This American Life,” is not a computer scientist. He doesn’t work at Google, Apple, or Nvidia. But he does have a great ear for useful phrases, and in 2024, he organized an entire episode around one that might resonate with anyone who feels blindsided by the pace of AI development: “Unprepared for what has already happened.” Coined by science journalist Alex Steffen, the phrase captures the unsettling feeling that “the experience and expertise you’ve built up” may now be obsolete—or, at least, a lot less valuable than it once was. Whenever I lead workshops in law firms, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations, …

Last year was a brutal one for layoffs, with large cuts coming from Amazon, UPS, Microsoft and Verizon. And as things get rolling for 2026, it’s looking like this year won’t be any less uncertain for workers. This week has seen a slew of sizable job cuts from a wide variety of companies. As of Thursday morning, more than 61,650 positions have been eliminated. The actual number is likely a fair bit higher as many of the companies announcing layoffs—such as Shopify, Expedia, and Vimeo—did not release the number of jobs that were impacted. Dow Inc. was the most recent well-known company to announce cuts. On Thursday, the chemical maker said it would do away with…

Apple’s iPhone sales soared to a new quarterly record during the holiday season, despite artificial intelligence blunders that prompted the technology trendsetter to get a helping hand from Google. The October-December results announced Thursday reflect the allegiance of Apple’s fans, who eagerly snapped up the latest iPhone 17 models even though the company still hasn’t delivered on its 2024 promise to smarten up the device’s Siri assistance with AI. Apple tried to offset its AI miscues with a new “liquid glass” design for the iPhone 17 and older models installed by way of a free software upgrade released last September. That formula helped produce iPhone sales of $85.…

Record cold temperatures are once again expected to hit a swath of the country this weekend—even plunging Florida into its coldest stretch of the last 15 years, potentially bringing snow to areas of the state that haven’t seen it in four decades. This arctic blast is actually a sign of climate change, and how more extreme weather happens in an increasingly warming world, despite erroneous claims by the president and others. There’s a difference between weather and climate Ahead of the winter storm that brought intense snow, ice, and freezing temperatures to about two-thirds of the United States earlier this month, President The President took to Truth Social …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model they call the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicators—including home price changes, inventory levels, and days on market—to generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or higher = strong seller’s market Score f…

Recently, I have developed a conflicted relationship with Lego. I love it. There’s so much Lego in our apartment that you can remove the brick and mortar, and I would still have a standing home. But lately, I’m getting fed up with how hard the Danish company is pushing it. Pushing the absurd licensing deals. Pushing nostalgia. Pushing the gigantic sets that adults want, kids dream of, but so many parents can’t afford. And sure. I can’t really blame Lego for wanting to make money. It’s a private company, and they are in the business of, you know, selling stuff. But by pushing so hard in every department, Lego risks brand exhaustion. At least, it’s exhausting the br…

Biographies of exceptional achievers tend to explain their success through personality traits, highlighting the “killer psychological weapons” that made them great. So, Steve Jobs’s abrasiveness is reframed as visionary perfectionism, Elon Musk’s impulsivity as bold risk-taking, and Jeff Bezos’s relentlessness as uncompromising customer obsession. The same retrospective alchemy applies to women: Oprah Winfrey’s emotional intensity becomes radical empathy and authenticity; Indra Nooyi’s discipline and conscientiousness are recast as values-driven, long-term strategic leadership; and Diane Hendricks’s toughness and impatience with incompetence are celebrated as decisive exe…

Women in all parts of my life are encountering similar obstacles in their health journeys. The common thread is that when we don’t advocate for ourselves and ask the right questions, we don’t get the care we need. While volunteering as a women’s heart health advocate and immersing my public relations agency in the health innovation ecosystem, I’m constantly thinking about how to bring to light the issues—and solutions—that are all around us. “Women are dying because we aren’t marketing life-saving therapies to them,” said Rachel Rubin, MD, a urologist and sexual medicine specialist, and assistant clinical professor in urology at Georgetown University Hospital. She…

I’ve read a lot of books on building a culture at work. A lot of the advice is well intentioned but to me overly complex. A 20-step framework is a lot harder to live by than a simple operating principle. Culture is something people feel and live more than implement. Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote in his book What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture, “It’s not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meetings. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do.” For me, culture is created through actions. It’s the choices leaders make every day that shape how peop…

“As someone who has tried almost every workout class on the planet, there is nothing like SoulCycle,” said TikTok creator Matt Trav in a video posted in early January. “The average human being cannot understand what blowing out the candle during the soulful song can do to the human psyche.” Nearly 40,000 people who liked the video seem to agree. “Absolutely nothing can beat NYC SoulCycle circa 2016,” one commenter wrote. “Literally like going to church,” another added. Across social media platforms, that renaissance is already underway. Devotees have been sharing nostalgia-laced photos from years past, unearthing old merchandise, and swapping stories in co…

As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, the battle off the field for advertisers to win over 120 million-plus viewers will be just as heated as the rivalry between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. Dozens of advertisers are pulling out all the stops for Super Bowl 60, airing Sunday on NBC. They’re hoping that audiences tuning in will remember their brand names as they stuff their ads with celebrities ranging from Kendall Jenner (Fanatics Sportsbook) to George Clooney (Grubhub), tried-and-true ad icons like the Budweiser Clydesdales, and nostalgia for well-known movie properties such as “Jurassic Park” (Comcast Xfinity). Each year Super Bowl ads offer a snapshot of…

Mark Cuban’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence is well known. He has called the technology the “ultimate time-saving hack” and bluntly stated that if you’re not learning AI, “you’re f—ed.” But with his latest investment, the billionaire bypassed the plethora of AI startups and focused instead on something more human-centered. Cuban has invested an undisclosed amount in live events company Burwoodland, which produces nightlife experiences throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The investment will make him a minority owner in the company. Founded in 2015 by Alex Badanes and Ethan Maccoby, the New York City-based company says it has sold more than 1.5 million…

Last week, Google released Project Genie, a powerful new AI-powered platform for videogame design. Project Genie, which is currently only available for Google’s AI Ultra subscribers, uses AI to build virtual worlds. That sounds interesting, if not necessarily revolutionary. Videogame developers already model and build virtual worlds all the time. Project Genie’s simple concept, though, belies the tech’s potential impact. The new system, and the Genie 3 model behind it, have the potential to forever change how videogames are built and played. Model the World Most videogames today rely on a handful of game engines to render their virtual worlds so th…

Watching the Super Bowl without cable keeps getting more expensive. NBC will not offer a free stream of Super Bowl LX in 2026, an NBCUniversal spokesperson confirmed. Instead, cord cutters will need a Peacock Premium subscription, which costs $11 per month for the ad-supported tier. Cable subscribers who want to stream the game can log on to NBC’s apps. This isn’t the first time NBC has put the big game behind a paywall. It also required a Peacock subscription in 2022, but back then you could still stream the Super Bowl for free on your phone via the NFL or Yahoo Sports apps. (Also, a month of Peacock cost just $5 at the time.) It wasn’t always this way. In th…

Forget Donald The President. A new analysis suggests the U.S. public’s sharp lurch into polarization began in 2008, years before his first presidential campaign. Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Political Psychology Lab tracked shifts in Americans’ views across nearly four decades and found that divisions were broadly stable through the 1990s and early 2000s, before rising steadily from 2008 onward. Using more than 35,000 responses from the American National Election Studies between 1988 and 2024, they estimate that issue polarization has increased 64% since the late 1980s, with almost all of that change occurring after 2008. The research uses a machin…

As Valentine’s Day approaches, finding the perfect words to express your feelings for that special someone can seem like a daunting task—so much so that you may feel tempted to ask ChatGPT for an assist. After all, within seconds, it can dash off a well-written, romantic message. Even a short, personalized limerick or poem is no sweat. But before you copy and paste that AI-generated love note, you might want to consider how it could make you feel about yourself. We research the intersection of consumer behavior and technology, and we’ve been studying how people feel after using generative AI to write heartfelt messages. It turns out that there’s a psychologica…

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell sharply in January as higher home prices and possibly harsh winter weather kept many prospective homebuyers on the sidelines despite easing mortgage rates. Existing home sales sank 8.4% last month from December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. That’s the biggest monthly decline in nearly four years and the slowest annualized sales pace in more than two years. Sales fell 4.4% compared with January last year. The latest sales figure fell short of the 4.105 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet. “The decrease in sales …