What's on Your Mind?

Peter Berg doesn’t need to do Super Bowl commercials. Yet the award-winning director helmed two ads during this year’s big game. First, was a fun NFL spot advocating for varsity girls flag football. And second, was water bottle brand Cirkul’s first-ever trip to the Super Bowl, starring Adam Devine. The commercial diversion comes not long after the release of Berg’s hit Netflix limited series American Primeval, which dropped on January 9, and quickly hit the top of the streamer’s ratings. In its first week, it had 1.25 billion viewing minutes. Berg has built an incredible Hollywood career, producing, writing, and directing hit films and TV series, from Fri…

Restaurant diners can be a sticky-fingered bunch. Who hasn’t been tempted to slip a particularly nice cocktail glass or a tiny saltshaker into their bag after lunch? But as dining out gets more expensive, more people seem determined to get their money’s worth, swiping everything from cups and plates to steak knives and even cheese graters. And not only are they getting away with it, they’re proudly flaunting their loot online. ​​In a viral video with more than 900,000 views, one creator boldly holds up a stolen cheese grater and asks, “What’s the best thing you’ve ever stolen from a restaurant?” Rather than backlash, the comments section reads like a c…

A U.S. influencer has united Australia—and much of the world—in outrage after filming and filming herself snatching a baby wombat from its mother and posting the clip online. The Montana-based content creator, known as “Sam Jones”, calls herself a “wildlife biologist and environmental scientist” on her now-private Instagram account. In a since-deleted video, shot in Australia, Jones is seen grabbing a baby wombat from its mother near a remote road at night. She runs back to her vehicle, holding the animal up to the camera, as the mother wombat runs after them. “I caught a baby wombat,” Jones exclaimed in the video. The animal appeared to be distressed in the clip…

The Class of 2020 still aren’t over the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling their graduation. Apparently they never stop bringing it up, according to TikTok. Now their complaints are being used as a punchline. Being robbed? “Did you know that I didn’t get a graduation.” Slip on ice? “I didn’t have a prom, I didn’t have a homecoming.” Oh, your grandma just died? “Okay, well if you think that’s bad, I literally didn’t graduate.” While the trend has been around since Gen Z did—or didn’t—graduate in 2020, with some reminiscing on those “unprecedented” times and others crashing their siblings’ graduations in place of their own, it has recently picked up traction again…

Eva Longoria, 51, has come a long way from being a Desperate Housewife on Wisteria Lane over 20 years ago. After becoming a star on the hit show, she says she’s continued to rely on hustle, passion and versatility to be wildly successful in a range of pursuits, from advocacy to entrepreneurship. “I always ask myself what defines success for me,” Longoria said to AARP. “As I get older, it’s not some superficial thing. I’m at a point where I don’t want to waste my days.” These days, she’s busy as a mother of a seven-year-old son, host of CNN’s Eva Longoria: Searching For, a foodie-travel show, and she’s also directing the anticipated Netflix comedy The Fifth Wheel, …

As many organizations implement return-to-office mandates, the debate around RTO’s impact on performance and culture intensifies. Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei joins Rapid Response to bust popular myths around in-person work, and reveal the surprising—and somewhat contradictory—intentions of many pro-RTO business leaders. 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 with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever y…

Jennifer Meyer always knew she wanted to work in fashion. It probably comes, she says, from the hours she spent in her grandmother’s Santa Monica, California, apartment, playing with art supplies, and the small kiln her grandmother kept on the kitchen counter. “She did a lot of enameling,” says Meyer, an LA-based jewelry designer. “She had all of these colors and plaques to put things on; wiring. I would design things with her for fun; I have this love of design from her.” Still, as the daughter of an entertainment executive, Meyer didn’t really have a road map for a career in design. She completed her education on the East Coast, studying child and family psychology…

A recent class-action lawsuit against David Protein, filed in January, alleges the company misrepresented the amount of calories and fat in its popular, healthy-branded bar, claiming that it had “way more” of both than customers were led to believe. Now, in response to the lawsuit, social media is having a field day with comparisons to the 2004 movie Mean Girls, with one TikTok user and apparent David Protein customer posting, “I have been Regina Georged.” Here’s a quick brief on what’s happening. Wait, remind me, what’s the ‘Mean Girls’ plot again? If you’re like me, you’ve seen Mean Girls a dozen times. The plot is a hilarious and biting commentary on the…

When artist Adam Pendleton was growing up in Richmond, Virginia, he started his own newspaper that he delivered to the residents at a nursing home in his town. “I wanted to be a creative person functioning in the world,” he says. “I wanted to be an artist.” Over the years, that inclination took various forms: a t-shirt business (which he now laughs that, as a teen, he saw as a fashion line), script-writing, musical theater, original poetry. “I realize now it was very much about having an idea and manifesting it—that is creativity,” says Pendleton, whose growing body of work has continuously redefined contemporary American painting. “In that way, you’re a perpetual pro…

When Todd Willing was 15, he entered a high school work experience program at Ford’s Australian Design Studio. His father owned a garage, and he’d always been around cars. “I had a loose understanding of what went into them because of that exposure, and I always had a creative bent I guess,” says Willing. “I would be drawing cars most of the time, to the frustration of my teachers.” The experience is still so vivid in Willing’s mind: the plane ride to Melbourne, the energy and feel of a space devoted to creativity, the culture and environment of a creative team. “That was it for me,” he says. “I wasn’t going to be doing anything else.” Now, 22 years later and still at Fo…

Roger Sauerhaft thought he had done everything right. The 38-year-old PR consultant had been running his solo practice in New York since 2021, paying $1,189 a month for what seemed like good health insurance through his state’s individual marketplace. In late 2023, he developed a medical issue that required a specialist, and started calling doctors’ offices—only to be turned away again and again. The closest in-network specialist was an hour away in Long Island. One medical administrator was honest with him: His plan’s network was too restrictive. He needed broader coverage—but that wasn’t available to him. “When you’re a solopreneur, your health is your bus…

Another cautionary tale about AI has hit social media. This time, a software company’s founder is claiming that a Claude-powered version of AI coding tool Cursor deleted his entire production database in just nine seconds. Jer Crane is the founder of PocketOS, a company that develops software primarily for car rental companies. In a post that’s garnered 6.5 million views on X, Crane alleged that a perfect storm of Cursor acting without permission and Railway, his company’s infrastructure provider, improperly storing backups led to massive data loss. Where things went wrong According to Crane, Cursor was working on a routine task when “it encountered a credenti…

Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, still admires Facebook. Not the Facebook of today, but the Facebook circa 2005. When it pretty much just told you someone’s birthday and let you poke ’em. “It would still be a great product!” exclaims Chesky. “We’re not going to be that company [making it], but there’s still a need for it.” But while Chesky doesn’t want to build Facebook 2.0, he is laying the groundwork for Airbnb to become something much closer to a social network. Airbnb’s fall updates launching today are but the first steps in a significant reframe of the experience of using Airbnb—one that is moving it closer to social networking, and another that embeds i…

Duo, the infamous Duolingo owl, is dead. The language-learning app shared the news in a tongue-in-cheek post yesterday. The cause of death remains under investigation, but Duolingo has its own theory: “Tbh, he probably died waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do we know?” the company wrote on X. “We’re aware he had many enemies, but we kindly ask you to refrain from sharing why you hate him in the comments.” an important message from Duolingo pic.twitter.com/jTTT680yVs — Duolingo (@duolingo) February 11, 2025 The brand didn’t miss an opportunity to plug its premium service either, adding: “If you feel inclined to share, please also share your credit c…

MrBeast has again defended his philanthropy‑as‑content, clapping back at critics who say he is “only in it for the views.” On April 13, in a post on X, Jimmy Donaldson—better known as MrBeast—rebutted accusations of virtue‑signalling for profit, pointing out that his two worst‑performing videos this year are the charitable ones. He shared a screenshot of his “Top Recent Videos” and noted that, of the ten most recent uploads, “I Helped 2,000 People Walk Again” and “Watch This Video To Feed 1 Person In Need” had the lowest view counts in their first 22 ½ hours online (24.3 million and 21.3 million views, respectively). By contrast, the top performers—“Beat Ronaldo, …

“We want grandparents who want to have pizza nights with us, attend baseball and basketball games, have ice cream dates, take bike rides, just genuinely have fun with us and our boys,” reads one post on the Facebook group Surrogate Grandparents USA, a place where grandparent-seeking families can connect with surrogate grandparents. “One lonely grandma here. I would love to share affection and attention with a nearby family,” posted another. Created in 2015 by 68-year-old retired paralegal Donna Skora, Surrogate Grandparents USA now has more than 11,800 members. The page is described as “a place where grandparents who are missing having grandchildren in their lives &a…

Kate Aronowitz tells me she first set out in graphic design because it felt like a discipline that helped her bring order to things. Many years later, she has a love-hate relationship with being labeled “a creative” because the creative process, as she sees it, is not just about art and design—it’s as much about solving problems as it is building things from scratch. She also believes everyone can be creative under the right circumstances. As portfolio operations lead at Google Ventures, Aronowitz has collaborated with some of the world’s most inspiring and hardworking founders. And now she has the opportunity to shape and inspire the next generation of students at S…

As a young child, interior designer Jeremiah Brent and his mother visited open houses and model homes in his hometown of Modesto, California, as a form of daydreaming. Brent walked through the houses, imagining the people who might live there, building a fantasy around what these homes could be. Since then, Brent has turned his childhood design obsession into a sprawling career: He runs a 50-person design firm, moonlights on Queer Eye, and recently brokered his first bedding deal with Target. Having come up in the industry through a series of audacious bets on himself, Brent has developed a sense of humor and pragmatism around his relationship with creativity and his…

The old Tesla can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ‘cause she’s dead. Over the past few days, a new trend has emerged on TikTok: people are posting their Tesla trade-ins accompanied by the hashtag “ByeTesla” and soundtracked to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” In the videos, the Tesla driver backs out of a driveway as the lyrics play: “I’m sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead.” Cut to a brand-new Rivian R1S, Porsche Macan Electric, or even a GMC Hummer EV SUV as the song’s chorus plays: “Look what you made me do.” “The best upgrade I’ve seen in this trend,” one person commented on the vide…