What's on Your Mind?

As our attention spans and cognitive abilities are increasingly damaged by digital overuse and AI-mediated shortcuts, the ability to focus deeply and learn something in depth is quickly becoming a critical skill. Never have we had such broad access to information. And never have so many people felt unable to concentrate long enough to truly master anything. Learning is everywhere, yet depth feels elusive. In a world where artificial intelligence can retrieve, summarize, and recombine information faster than any human, what remains valuable is the capacity to incorporate it. And for that to be possible, you need to stay with a subject long enough for it to transf…

Quiet quitting. Silent space-out. Faux focus. Call it what you want, a lot of today’s workers are going through the motions on the surface while quietly powering down beneath it. Nearly half of Gen Z employees say they’re “coasting,” and overall U.S. employee engagement sits at a decade low. When engagement fades, performance becomes performative. But disengagement isn’t just a problem to solve, it’s a signal to heed. Employees aren’t turning off. They’re trying to tell us something. As CEO of SurveyMonkey, I’ve witnessed how curiosity can be the cure to the workplace phenomenon “resenteeism”—a state of resentment combined with absenteeism—which is often fueled by…

Another year, another fresh start. And if you’re like me, that fresh start often comes with the best intentions of getting into shape. But then reality hits: It’s January, it’s cold, and the idea of leaving the house to brave the gym (and all the other resolution people) is wholly unappealing. Fear not, fellow homebody. This year, we’re going to conquer those fitness goals from the comfort of our own living rooms. No gym fees, no icy commutes, no waiting in line for a treadmill. Seven (iOS/Android) For better or worse, if you have a phone and seven minutes, you no longer have an excuse. Seven is the heavy hitter in the “micro-workout” space. It focu…

If you’ve already given up on your 2026 rebrand because you couldn’t stick to your six gym sessions a week and no-sweet-treats resolutions, adopting a “vegan plus bacon” mindset may be the answer to all your problems. TikTok creator @addietheoptimist broke the idea down in a recent video: “Someone on here went viral because they said if you think you can’t go vegan because you love bacon too much, just become vegan plus bacon,” she explained in the now-viral clip. “I’m here to tell you you can just apply that mentality to so many things in your life.” While the original creator was referencing harm reduction in relation to veganism (that if you only eat baco…

A few weeks ago, my iPhone woke me up at 3:30am. In a way, it was my fault. I’d technically set the alarm “for three thirty.” In another way, it was Siri’s fault. Apple’s AI assistant never thought to question if I was asking for AM or PM. And it simply assumed the most painful option for me. It’s just one of countless tiny examples of how Siri, 16 years since Apple acquired the technology, has been a disappointing product. Siri was already looking dusty before modern LLMs, and with the launch of ChatGPT, it has been completely left behind. Which is why in June 2024, with fans and investors growing impatient, Apple promised a new era of AI—”Apple Intelligence.” …

New AI tools from Docusign aim to make contracts easier to understand and quicker to prepare. For people signing documents like leases or purchases agreements, a new AI feature will make it possible to request an overall summary of the contract and its key terms. Users will also be able to ask questions about the document, which for consumer agreements could include requesting details about cancellation procedures, fees that may apply, relevant timelines, or terms of a warranty. “The whole purpose of this is to allow and provide a level of trust to the signer so that they understand what is it that they’re signing,” says Mangesh Bhandarkar, GVP of product manage…

By now, the headlines almost write themselves: humanoid robots everywhere, AI in everything. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 didn’t disrupt that narrative—it confirmed it. What changed was the subtext. This was the year AI stopped feeling experimental and started feeling infrastructural. Intelligence has shifted from novelty to baseline, forcing harder questions about consequence, control, and agency—not just what technology can do, but how it reshapes systems once opting out is no longer realistic. For years, progress at CES has been measured in speed, scale, and spectacle. In 2026, a different metric quietly surfaced: judgment. The most advanced products we…

In the summer of 2024, Squarespace’s chief marketing officer, Kinjil Mathur, attracted criticism when she told Gen Z job seekers that they, like her, should be “willing to do anything” to land their first job. “I was willing to work for free, I was willing to work any hours they needed—even on evenings and weekends,” Kinjil told Fortune. “You really have to just be willing to do anything, any hours, any pay, any type of job.” The online backlash to Kinjil’s statement was immediate and brutal, forcing her to walk those comments back. “I shared my own college internship experiences, and my words were misrepresented as career advice for a whole generation,” Kinjil later …

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, as part of a broader push to feed as much of the military’s data as possible into the developing technology. “Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas. The announcement comes just days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deep…

In a reversal from previous years’ pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released Tuesday. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of data centers and cryptocurrency mining, and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by President Donald The President’s administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said.…

The first Big Tech layoffs of 2026 have happened. This week, Facebook owner Meta Platforms reportedly informed employees that up to 1,500 positions in its Reality Labs division would be eliminated. Here’s what you need to know about the job cuts. What’s happened? Meta this week notified employees in its Reality Labs division that up to 10% of jobs could be lost, according to a Bloomberg report. A day earlier, the New York Times reported that the layoffs were expected. Reality Labs is a division of the social media giant primarily responsible for developing the company’s augmented and virtual reality products. The division was responsible for spearheading Meta’…

Back in November, Fast Company and Johns Hopkins partnered for the first-ever World Changing Ideas Summit in Washington, DC, an event that convened leaders across business and academia to engage with the ideas and innovations reshaping the future. Knowing we were heading into a new year that undoubtedly is bringing new challenges to every industry, we asked some of our speakers working in space, healthcare, AI, and the intersections therein, what would be top of mind for them in 2026: “We’re in a race against resistance.” Akhila Kosaraju, founder and CEO of Pharebio, is using predictive and generative AI to power drug discovery. The startup plans to develop 15…

“Get ready with me as an absolute piece of shit ICE agent,” one such video begins, posted by comedian Adam Macias. These videos are comedic skits, rather than from the social media accounts of actual ICE agents, but have quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views as the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency faces intense backlash after the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. “I wake up screaming and shooting. Not because I’m scared but because my sleep paralysis demon looks like someone’s tía,” the skit begins (tia is Spanish for aunt). “I start the day off with a shower but no matter how hard I try I just can’t seem to get clean,” it continues. …

Fewer Americans are signing up for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans this year, new federal data shows, as expiring subsidies and other factors push health expenses too high for many to manage. Nationally, around 800,000 fewer people have selected plans compared to a similar time last year, marking a 3.5% drop in total enrollment so far. That includes a decrease in both new consumers signing up for ACA plans and existing enrollees re-upping them. The new data released Monday evening by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is only a snapshot of a continuously changing pool of enrollees. It includes sign-ups through Jan. 3 in states that use Healt…

Chris Cuomo is returning to SiriusXM, putting him on the air with morning and evening talk shows. He will host a two-hour weekday show centered on listener calls on the satellite radio company’s P.O.T.U.S. channel, starting Jan. 20 at 7 a.m. Eastern. Guests on his first few shows include Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, sportscaster Bob Costas, and political consultant James Carville, the company said Tuesday. Cuomo previously hosted a show at the network but quit in 2021, shortly after he was fired from CNN when it was revealed that he assisted his brother, former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in fighting accusation…

When I looked ahead to 2026, one issue jumped out in every conversation I had with business leaders: Resilience is buckling under pressure. The pace of change is no longer just fast—it is accelerating beyond the reach of traditional playbooks. We are entering an era of complexity risk, where the greatest threats stem not only from malicious actors, but from the sheer entanglement of our own systems. Below are the four shifts business leaders must prepare for to navigate 2026. 1. Recovery will become the most important metric For years, companies have focused their investments on prevention. But AI changed the economics of cyber risk. Offensive AI makes it fast …

Advancements in artificial intelligence are shaping nearly every facet of society, including education. Over the past few years, especially with the availability of large language models like ChatGPT, there’s been an explosion of AI-powered edtech. Some of these tools are truly helping students, while many are not. For educational leaders seeking to leverage the best of AI while mitigating its harms, it’s a lot to navigate. That’s why the organization I lead, the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund, collaborated with the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI) and Education First to write Proof Before Hype: Using R&D for Coherent AI in K-12 Education. …

In two years, there could be a space station orbiting the moon. NASA’s Gateway Lunar Space Station, set to launch as early as 2027, will support the Artemis IV and V moon missions and, eventually, be a jumping-off point for missions to Mars. And maybe, one day, a colony. But before any of that can happen, the Gateway will need a power source—a powerful one, at that. The challenge is getting that energy supply into orbit the way anything reaches space: in the nose cone of a rocket. Gateway’s power will come from a pair of blankets of photovoltaic cells, known as Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSAs). Each is roughly the size of a football end zone, and together they’ll pro…

In a recent interview with Wired, billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates made clear she is no friend of hustle culture and nonstop busyness. “My parents were countercultural. They actually taught us that you needed breaks,” she says. “We took Sundays off as a family, and guess what else? My parents actually taught me the importance of rest, of taking a short nap every day.” Building quiet, restful moments into your day doesn’t just help you think more clearly and feel better physically, she continues. It also helps you check in with yourself and your values. It is important to “know who you are as a person and to live in that direction and in that lane,…