What's on Your Mind?

When a new song attributed to country singer Blaze Foley, “Together,” appeared on his Spotify profile last year, something didn’t seem right. For starters, Foley had been dead for more than two decades, and the cover art featured AI artwork of a man who wasn’t Foley, and the song wasn’t uploaded by Foley’s longtime distributor. Fake tracks have appeared on various artist profiles, including easy-listening act The Sweet Enoughs, and Australian bands Alpha Wolf and Thy Art Is Murder. Smaller artists are not safe either, with musician Catherine Brennan taking to TikTok saying “in the past two weeks I’ve had two albums released under my name that are not mine.” Spoti…

The best leaders share a few predictable habits: They’re curious, self-aware, and genuinely invested in their team’s growth. But there’s a big difference between simply having these traits, and developing new leaders to embody these traits as well. A 2022 study published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that when leaders visibly act with curiosity—by questioning, learning, and exploring—they signal to team members that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. In turn, employees feel more confident speaking up, sharing ideas, and contributing meaningfully. In a new book, The Power of the Learning Mindset, autho…

When leadership trends become corporate wallpaper, they risk losing the very edge that made them useful in the first place. That’s where psychological safety risks finding itself today. It’s plastered on slide decks, plugged into engagement surveys, and whispered in HR circles as the answer to “Why don’t people speak up?” but it’s rarely connected to what happens after someone actually does speak up. This distinction between permission to speak and protection from consequences matters more than leaders often realize. Psychological safety tells you that people feel comfortable raising questions or concerns and that they believe they won’t be overtly sanctioned for …

Below, Dr. Sunita Sah shares five key insights from her new book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. Sah is a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. She teaches business and healthcare students at Cornell University and Cambridge University, and served as commissioner on the National Commission of Forensic Science. What’s the big idea? Learning how to defy is important, relevant, and meaningful for anyone who wants to speak up when it matters and to do the right thing in the moment. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Sah herself—in the Next Big Idea app, or buy the book. 1. We’re wired to comply. Soon aft…

Most people use AI like a search engine: type a question, get an answer. It’s an easy, well-understood use case for tools like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT. But for solopreneurs, the real value is in setting up dedicated projects with a lot of background information about your business. Most AI tools let you create project workspaces where you can add context about who you are and what you do. You can attach relevant files, and keep the conversation focused on one specific idea or area of your business. I have 23 AI projects in Claude for everything from strategic planning to building a website. Some are used a few times per month, while others I rely on almost …

Work stress has become one of the most common challenges in modern life. According to recent national reports, nearly seven in ten employees say work is a major source of stress, putting us right back where we were in the early months of the pandemic. No matter where you work—at a desk in an office, from your kitchen table, or bouncing between the two—the pressure to perform has never been higher. Burnout has reached a six-year high despite the fact that most of us are doing everything we can think of to get rid of stress. We sign up for wellness webinars. We shuffle schedules. We tell ourselves we’ll rest “as soon as things slow down.” But instead of helping, those …

Here’s a story you’re probably familiar with: You buy the reusable coffee cup. It’s beautiful, ethical, made from recycled ocean plastic, and you feel good about your purchase. But then it leaks in your bag, ruins a notebook, and by week two it’s sitting in a cabinet while you’re back to disposable cups and a vague sense of guilt. Or maybe it’s the “eco mode” on your washing machine that takes three hours instead of one. The sustainable packaging that requires scissors, sweat, and a YouTube tutorial. The electric vehicle charging app with six steps when a gas pump has one. We’ve all been there. But here’s what’s interesting: The problem isn’t that you don’t care a…

There’s a lot of fear these days in the media world over the “zero-click” future. AI chatbots and search engines ingest content, interpret it, and then summarize it for users, with the inevitable consequence being that people no longer visit your site. This is not theoretical. Data from Chartbeat, an analytics company that serves media sites, shows global publisher traffic from Google dropped by one-third last year, with smaller publications hit hardest. So yes, AI substitutes content, but it doesn’t do so evenly. A recent analysis from Define Media Group looked at how the presence of Google AI Overviews affected traffic to different types of content over the past yea…

Having rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD, is physically painful, all-consuming, and disproportionate to the event that triggered it. While a neurotypical person is able to recognize rejection, rationalize it, feel bad about it, and then move on with their day fairly quickly, RSD feels like a bull has charged at you and headbutted you in the chest, and it comes with a tremendous amount of shame. RSD is defined by the Cleveland Clinic as “severe emotional pain because of a failure or feeling rejected,” and is a symptom of the emotional dysregulation often seen due to the extra criticisms a person with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) will have enc…

For years, we have been outsourcing pieces of cognition so gradually that the shift barely registered. We outsourced memory to search engines after the well-known “Google effect” showed that when people expect information to remain accessible online, they are less likely to remember the information itself and more likely to remember where to find it. We outsourced navigation to GPS, even as research began to show that heavy reliance on it can weaken spatial memory when we have to find our own way. And we outsourced more and more of our social coordination to platforms that decide what we see, when we respond, and how we stay in sync with one another. Now we are begin…

Over the course of his 50 years in the art world, Michael Hafftka’s figurative expressionist work has been exhibited at many of the world’s most prominent galleries. His paintings have hung at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Sauf Gallery in Paris. Now, his work is being presented in a more unusual place: on Hugging Face, the AI website. The New York–born artist, now 72, has uploaded roughly half his oeuvre to the platform. He did it on his own initiative after researching Hugging Face and recognizing it as a gathering place for AI work. The move functions as both an artistic gesture and an archival one. His path to AI is less surp…

Fashion resale company Poshmark just got its first app redesign in 15 years, and it’s taking a page out of Depop’s book of UI. The new look encompasses an updated algorithm, redesigned navigational tools, and a new, streamlined aesthetic. It comes as a pivotal moment for the second market, which, according to ThredUp’s 2025 Resale Report, is expected to reach $367 billion by 2029, growing 2.7 times faster than the overall global apparel market. The majority of this growth, the report notes, has been driven by young consumers—millennials, Gen Zers, and Gen Alpha shoppers who are familiar with buying products through apps or in-app features like TikTok Shop. And com…

As I walked into a Sunset Boulevard venue this past February, Luka Dončić’s face greeted me, flashing across a wall of old-school televisions. The TV screens flickered between a surreal reel of images: Dončić’s mug, a NTSC rainbow effect, a Valentine sweetheart candy image with the words “too small,” and a graphic with the words “Lil Luka’s Heartbreak Factory: Level 1.” For the uninitiated, this scene probably makes no sense. But for superfans of Dončić, star player of the Los Angeles Lakers, the messages are like a secret code to a new kind of fandom. Luka Dončić In February, Dončić celebrated the launch of his new direct-to-fans media company, 77X, by transfo…

For the first time in 36 years, the old-school Adidas trefoil logo will appear at the World Cup. The vintage Adidas logo shows three leaf-shaped foils with three parallel horizontal lines that cut through the bottom of the shapes. It previously appeared on Adidas World Cup kits until it was replaced by the brand’s triangular three-bars logo in the 1990s. Now, for the 2026 World Cup, the trefoil logo is making a comeback, appearing on the right chest of away jerseys for 25 countries, including Japan, Mexico, and Ukraine. Bringing the old logo back is a nostalgia play. Sam Handy, general manager of football for Adidas, said in a statement that the German sportsw…

Back in the 1980s, stack-ranking employees was seen as a state-of-the-art management practice. CEOs like Jack Welch at GE divided employees into three distinct segments: the top 20% of performers, the middle 70%, and the bottom 10%. Those at the bottom would be forced out to make room for new blood. The strange thing about stack ranking is that it’s long been shown to be ineffective and, in many cases, to undermine performance. The problem is that stack ranking doesn’t create a meritocracy. It creates a political system. The winners tend to be those most skilled at claiming credit, shifting blame, and building alliances. Yet still, the practice persists. The tru…

When global trade buckles, Ryan Petersen is the person executives call. The founder and CEO of Flexport offers a real-time account of the Strait of Hormuz crisis—what he’s seeing on the ground, on the water, and across the supply chains straining under the pressure. As ripple effects of the crisis are being felt in different ways in different parts of the world, Petersen provides both a micro and macro view that business leaders need to hear. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations…

Microsoft’s recently announced use of a West Virginia data center that will run entirely on natural gas could cause the company’s emissions to skyrocket by 44%. That’s according to a new report from Stand.earth researchers, who say Microsoft’s power needs at the facility will see it burning the same amount of methane as annually as more than 1.2 million homes. The data center, called the Monarch Compute Campus, is an example of a “behind-the-meter” or “off-grid” data center, which generates its own electricity, bypassing the public grid. With the growth of AI data centers threatening to overload the electricity grid and raise residents’ energy bills, these…

American Express is making a push to play a bigger role in how businesses operate day to day with a new card and tools to support it. Alongside the launch of its Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card, the company on Wednesday announced a broad set of updates across its commercial and AI-powered tools. Together, they signal a shift in how Amex wants to present itself to business customers. At the center of the rollout is a new product called the Graphite Business Cash Unlimited Card. But the bigger story is how that card fits into a larger system designed to help businesses manage spending, track expenses, and automate routine work. Expanding beyond the card …

Today, Alix Earle is launching a skincare line—but if you’ve been looking close enough you probably knew it was coming. For the last year, the influencer has been dropping Easter eggs across her social feeds in the lead-up to her debut venture. There were the vlogs from her dermatologist’s office. The un-get-ready-with-me posts featuring unnamed products in unbranded packaging. The puzzle-like billboard in NYC that popped up with missing pieces. Now today, Earle is finally revealing Reale Actives, a skincare brand that Earle developed for acne-prone skin but is “designed for everyone” launching March 31. Those who have been following Earle for years might say…

Shares of Arm Holdings plc (Nasdaq: ARM) are surging this morning after the semiconductor design firm announced it will begin making its own chips for AI workloads. The move from chip designer to chipmaker represents the most significant shift in the company’s business model in its 35-year history. Here’s what you need to know. Arm ravamps its business model For over three decades, the British semiconductor firm had one primary business model: it designed chips and then licensed those designs to other companies, including Apple and Qualcomm, which would then make their own semiconductors based on Arm’s designs. Under this business model, Arm essentially made t…

Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian, the founders of Proximity Media, share their top leadership tips for creatives. View the full article

This is ‘The Truth About Leadership,’ Fast Company’s latest video series, where CEOs and industry leaders speak honestly and candidly about what it’s really like to be at the top. No corporate jargon—just real talk. First up: Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy and founder and CEO of Unwell. View the full article