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A painting by street artist Banksy with an environmental message and an estimate of up to 5 million pounds ($6.3 million) is going up for auction, with some of the proceeds helping victims of the Los Angeles wildfires. Sotheby’s auction house said Tuesday that “Crude Oil (Vettriano)” is being sold in London next month from the collection of Mark Hoppus, bassist with California skate-punk band Blink-182, who sees Banksy as a kindred spirit. Hoppus said he was drawn to the subversion, humor and intelligence of Banksy’s work and the similarities between “skateboarding, punk rock and art.” “I feel like street art and punk rock have the same core,” Hoppus said. “Th…

When Dr. David Rabin told me how Apollo Sessions worked, my exact first thought was, “poppycock.” This was an app, he said, that would turn my iPhone into a healing device using the vibrations of the phone’s haptic engine. By stimulating the vagus nerve—a core component of the parasympathetic nervous system responsible for the body’s recovery and relaxation mechanisms—using certain frequencies, this iOS app would make me feel different. It works, he assured me. With trauma patients in clinical settings, he claimed. As someone who is skeptical about wundermedicine by default, I didn’t believe it. But as someone who has lived through a few years of a traumatic experience, I…

Bowling Green, Kentucky, is known for being the city from which Corvettes roll off the production lines, and for Fruit of the Loom underwear, which is headquartered there. But the city of 76,000 could soon be known for something else: its AI-powered mass civic engagement project that is using public surveys to chart the future of the city. In the next 25 years, the county within which Bowling Green sits is set to double in size, thanks largely to the growth of nearby Nashville. Figuring out what to do about that vexes the public officials in Bowling Green and the greater Warren County. The “What Could BG Be?” project is an open consultation open to all residents…

I broke its neck. When making a vase at the potter’s wheel, I torqued its slippery neck clear off the pot as I tried to thin it into a graceful curve. I find vases gratifying to make and their shapes especially pleasing to the eye. But vases also must be handled with particular care because one part of their “body” – the neck – is often so narrow that it can be easily broken. That day at the wheel, I realized that it was not unlike the human neck. Though only a small portion of the human body – about 1% by surface area – our necks have an outsize influence on our psyche and culture. From selfies to formal portraits, the neck positions the head in expressiv…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Most ordinary people know little about the calculus, statistics, linear algebra, logic, and programming languages required to design projects and products to leverage artificial intelligence. However, we are not exempt from using products and services that rely on AI. If we do not learn how to maximize these tools, our organizations—businesses, schools, and governments—will …

Sunday night marked Hulu’s first time airing the Oscars live. But its academy awards debut ended on a chaotic and frustratingly premature note. Hulu’s livestream cut off in the final moments of the show — with two major award categories, best actress and best picture, still to be announced because of a scheduling system issue. Those viewing the awards ceremony on Hulu instead saw an error code message that stated the event was over. Viewer outrage, predictably, ensued online. Fans, including those throwing Oscar-viewing parties, eagerly await the final, pivotal moments of the show. Hulu viewers missed Mikey Madison and “Anora” win the night’s titles for both b…

Does your manager hate to delegate tasks? It might sound like a good thing—after all, that means less work for you. But, just like having a micromanaging boss is no fun, having a manager who takes on much of your work can create a work environment that is both stifling and unproductive. We asked three experts about what causes some bosses to act this way and how to encourage your supervisor to step aside and allow you to do your job. What is a ‘snowplow manager’? A “snowplow manager” is a supervisor who takes on excessive work themselves rather than delegating to their team, says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of videoconferencing tech company Owl Labs. His team recentl…

Nearly a year after Adobe first teased video AI features, the company is finally bringing its new video AI model to market. Today, the company is launching its Firefly Video Model in public beta. The model comes alongside a new Firefly web application, which essentially gathers all of Adobe’s AI tools, including existing features like Text to Image and Generative Fill, under one roof. Users can access Firefly’s web app through two subscription tiers—Firefly Standard and Firefly Pro—which retail for $9.99 and $29.99 per month, respectively. [Image: Adobe]What is Adobe’s new Firefly video model?Firefly Video Model is Adobe’s answer to existing video models like Open AI’s S…

Japan’s Seven & i, the parent company of the Japanese 7-Eleven convenience store chain, said Thursday it is selling its supermarket store assets to Bain Capital for about $5.4 billion. The company announced the deal a day after naming Stephen Dacus, its board chairman, to be its president and CEO. It also said it plans an initial public offering in the U.S. of 7-Eleven or SEI, its convenience store business in North America, by the end of 2026. Funds from the IPO and the sale to Bain will be returned to shareholders in the form of share buybacks worth 2 trillion yen ($5.4 billion). Seven & i’s share price jumped 6.1% in Tokyo. The deal follows Seven & i’s …

For transgender students involved in a very special project at a culinary school in Pakistan, there is more to a class than just learning the art of cooking. Neha Malik used to dance at parties and weddings for a living and was, occasionally, a sex worker. Since January, she has been enrolled in a new course for the trans community at the Culinary & Hotel Institute of Pakistan. The free six-month program in the city of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, welcomed its first group of 25 trans students in January; the second group of 25 began training on February 1. Now, Malik, 31, dreams of working as a chef in Dubai, the futuristic, skyscraper-studded city in the U…

In the business world, advertisers are the stunt performers. Our fragmented media and pop cultural landscape has forced brands to really push stunts into the weird and wonderful. Whether it’s Snoop threatening to give up smoking, Ben Affleck working a Dunkin’ drive-thru, or a devil baby terrorizing the streets of New York. Meanwhile in Hollywood, the stunt performers are the ones who actually pull off the death-defying action that can make us gasp. They’re a breath of IRL fresh air in a world blanketed by visual-effects technology. Now, for the biggest night in entertainment, these two worlds converge for a pretty epic stunt by both worlds’ definition. Disney Adverti…

In 2023, creator and social agency Whalar Group announced an ambitious plan to create physical campuses for content creators to learn, make, and collaborate with their peers. Now the company is opening the doors to its first campus in Venice, Calif. this month with an additional location in Brooklyn launching this spring and a London location slated for 2026. Part production studio, part co-working space, part university, The Lighthouse is membership-based community designed to help creators and their teams level-up both their content and the businesses they’re building around it. “If you look at [20th century German art school] Bauhaus, Andy Warhol’s Factory, Sil…

Let’s face it: The workplace is pretty much an extrovert’s world, with all those meetings and open work spaces. It’s not always easy for introverts and people who prefer a quieter setting to be at the top of their game, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be productive in an office and have a really successful career. The trick is finding the right job fit. Resume Genius, a website for job seekers, recently released its curated list of introvert-friendly well-paying jobs for 2025. Jobs were ranked based on four factors: autonomy, amount of social interaction, minimum median salary of $48,000 a year, and high job-growth potential. The researchers compiled their results …

The war in Gaza has come with an awful cost. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, and thousands more are missing. And while a temporary ceasefire has allowed for increased aid delivery, easing the plight of those facing disease and hunger, experts predict malnutrition and health issues to persist for months or even years. Much of the territory’s infrastructure—its schools, hospitals and homes—has been damaged or destroyed. And yet, the tremendous human and societal loss has been augmented by a lesser reported but potentially catastrophic, consequence: environmental devastation. In June 2024, the United Nations Environment Programme conducte…

March might be over but the madness continues into April. The NCAA’s 68 Division I men’s college basketball teams have battled it out on the courts in single-elimination play, leaving four teams standing. This year the Final Four have something in common: They all were granted No. 1 seeds on Selection Sunday. Duke, Florida, Auburn, and Houston were all safe bets when filling out a bracket, and they delivered on that promise. Here’s what you need to know heading into the remaining competition, and how to tune in. Do the No. 1 seed teams always make it to the end? The short answer is no. This is only the second time in history this has happened. The last time was 200…

The Coca-Cola Co. just announced its newest limited-time soda, and it’s a combination of Sprite and tea that was initially floated by a team of interns six years ago. Sprite + Tea just hit shelves earlier across the U.S. and Canada, and is expected to remain on the market through October. The soda is available in both regular and zero-sugar varieties, and, according to a press release, it “blends the crisp, lemon-lime refreshment of Sprite with the classically refreshing flavor of tea.” The new product arrives just a month after Coca-Cola announced better-than-anticipated first-quarter 2025 financial results, logging a 2% year-over-year revenue decline but maintaining…

In 1957, Hollywood released The Deadly Mantis, a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it. The rampaging insect menaces America’s Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City. Yes, it’s over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. military’s concerns then and now about the Arctic’s stability and its role in national security. A poster advertises The Deadly Mantis, a movie released …

Ford has used some version of its famous script logo for more than a century, but despite its widespread usage, people are scratching their heads over a detail they just noticed. In a viral TikTok, user Monica Turner asked viewers to pick the correct version of the automaker’s logo, one with a funny-looking flourish on the logo’s “F” and one without. Viewers were split on which version they thought was correct, and to some commenters’ surprise, it’s the one with the curlicue. Side by side and to the untrained eye, the real Ford logo looks fake next to its dupe. In the age of corporate blanding, the curlicue flourish reads as fake, but it’s been there as f…

Sometimes, authenticity can be a film’s most special effect. It took months for Best Actress front-runner Mikey Madison to learn how to pole dance like the titular exotic dancer in Anora and for her fellow nominee Timothée Chalamet to passably play guitar as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. The naturalism of both performances helped keep audiences under the spell cast by their surrounding films. So, it should probably come as no surprise that a backlash has emerged in response to several of this year’s Oscar-nominated films using AI, paradoxically, to achieve “authenticity.” The reaction began on January 11, when editor Dávid Jancsó revealed in an interview that h…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: How can I get over decision paralysis? A: I feel this one. I think we all do. By most estimates, the average person makes around 35,000 decisions per day. Most of those are small choices like what to wear, what to have for lunch, what to post on social media. Hopefully you’re not paralyzed by those choices. But you also shouldn’t discount them completely. If you spend too much time mulling over the less consequential parts of life, you can end up with dec…

Yellow Tail, the budget-friendly Australian wine brand known to college students everywhere, has barely touched its branding since its debut in 2001. Now, though, the company is tweaking its look—including its iconic kangaroo logo—in an attempt stand out on shelves as younger generations turn away from the wine aisle and toward trendy canned cocktails. The new branding, which includes a more vibrant “Roo” mascot and crisper product labels, will hit shelves in the U.S. this coming June. The understated update seems like a bid to remind consumers of what once made Yellow Tail’s accessible, easy-to-parse branding so innovative—but it’s less likely to make a splash in a n…

Jeff Bezos once said, “I like to wander.” That may seem counterintuitive in a business world obsessed with speed, but in a relentless pursuit of momentum, many leaders forget that speed without reflection leads to burnout, inefficiency, and poor decision-making. A report by Asana revealed that nearly 70% of executives say burnout has affected their decision-making ability. The paradox is clear: The faster we try to move without reflection, the more we risk burnout, inefficiency, and short-sighted decision-making. Leaders often mistake pausing for procrastination. However, the reality is that strategic pausing is a high-performance leadership move that separates r…

Sharing personal hardships like divorce, health issues, and family emergencies can make workplace conversations emotionally difficult and professionally complex. But given that our working lives are not getting shorter anytime soon, it’s not a question of if individuals will need to have these conversations, but when. And navigating these conversations professionally while managing emotions and privacy requires careful thought and preparation. Here are some strategies to help you handle sensitive discussions with confidence while maintaining personal boundaries. 1. Determine the purpose of sharing your news Getting clear on your reasons for sharing will help yo…

In “The Mindset of Making,” Oliver Jeffers shared a compelling invitation: “Simply make as an extension of being alive.” His wisdom ignited my imagination. Too often, we associate creativity with being an artist, when all of us are creators. What might the world look like if we tapped into our innate creativity? “The world is a result of all of us as creators and storytellers,” Jeffers shares. “All human beings are is a collection of stories: There are the stories that we’re told, the stories that are told about us, and then the stories that we tell.” “We’re all born with this sense of surviving and then making—that is the reason that civilization flourishe…

A glance at the day’s headlines reveals a universal truth: Leadership matters. Whether uplifting and ethical or toxic and abusive, leaders profoundly shape our lives. And this is especially true on the job. Research consistently shows that leadership influences employees’ attitudes, behaviors and emotions, driving key organizational outcomes such as creativity, employee engagement, well-being and financial performance. Unfortunately, research also shows that supervisors abuse their employees far too often and then try to manage impressions to compensate for their bad behavior. But what happens when a leader tries to “make up” for past abuse by suddenly acting ethi…