What's on Your Mind?

Workers are stressed over job insecurity with many concerned about the possibility of an impending job loss. And that worry may be taking a toll on employees’ overall mental health—especially for younger workers. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2025 Work in America survey, which recorded online responses from 2,017 employed adults, more than half of American workers are bogged down with worry over their job security. A whopping 54% said concerns about their workplace stability has a “significant impact” on their stress levels. Why workers are concerned The concern appears linked to recent policy changes under the The President administrat…

Congress may stop California from implementing its first-in-the nation rule banning the sale of new gas powered cars by 2035. A Senate vote expected as soon as this week could end the nation’s most aggressive effort to transition toward electric vehicles as President Donald The President’s administration doubles down on fossil fuels. California makes up roughly 11% of the U.S. car market, giving it significant power to shape purchasing trends. Vehicles are one of the largest sources of planet-warming emissions. The Republican-controlled Congress is targeting three California waivers that set stricter emissions rules than the federal government. The House voted to block…

The world’s sources of critical minerals are increasingly concentrated in just a few countries, most notably China, leaving the global economy vulnerable to supply cutoffs that could disrupt industry and hit consumers with higher prices, a report said Wednesday. The Paris-based International Energy Agency’s report looked at the availability of minerals and metals that may be small in quantity — but large in impact when it comes to shifting the economy away from fossil fuels toward electricity and renewable energy. It found that for copper, lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements, the average market share of the three top producing countries rose to 86% in 2024…

This week, the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) announced that it’s putting the revenue from selling U.S. Open tickets and $23 signature Honey Deuce cocktails toward a new cause: Completing an $800 million renovation of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (NTC), the sports complex that hosts the annual tennis championship. The renovation represents the single largest investment in U.S. Open history, according to a press release published by the USTA. It will encompass a full transformation of the Arthur Ashe Stadium, where championship games are played, as well as a luxe new player performance center on the NTC’s campus. The work will be spearheaded by the …

As nasty tornadoes popped up from Kansas to Kentucky, a depleted National Weather Service was in scramble mode. The agency’s office in Jackson, Kentucky, had begun closing nightly as deep cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began hitting. But the weather service kept staffers on overtime Friday night to stay on top of the deadly storms, which killed nearly 20 people in the Jackson office’s forecast area. It’s a scenario likely to be repeated as the U.S. is on track to see more tornadoes this year than in 2024, which was the second-busiest tornado year on record. Forecasters said there was at least a 10% risk of tornadoes Tuesday for 10.6 million peop…

Hollywood loves a sequel. And it turns out, Burger King loves them too. For the third consecutive year, the fast-food operator is debuting a limited-time menu tied to a big box film, this time How to Train Your Dragon, ahead of the live-action film based on Universal Pictures film that will be released in June. Beginning May 27, Burger King will start selling a new red-and-orange marble colored Whopper and Dragon-inspired mozzarella fries, strawberry lemonade, and a chocolate sundae, all taking inspiration from a franchise that has grossed more than $1.6 billion at the global box office and earned four Academy Award nominations. Burger King says the partnersh…

Countless Rite Aid customers and employees are still waiting to learn the fate of their local pharmacies as the bankrupt drugstore chain sells off its assets and winds down operations. Now, at least three Rite Aid landlords are asking for more transparency into the process. Last week, Rite Aid announced that it has reached agreements to sell its prescription files for most of its 1,200 retail pharmacies, with successful bidders including CVS, Walgreens, and Albertsons, among others. Perhaps most notably, CVS agreed to buy prescription files for 625 of those pharmacies, even as it said it would only take over 64 physical Rite Aid locations in three states: Washington, …

Right-leaning comedy podcasts are a gateway to conspiracy theories and misogynistic content, a new study has found. While these podcasts may seem harmless at first—often discussing sports like the NFL and MMA and featuring guests such as Ben Affleck and David Goggins—a new report reveals that engaging with their content online can open a Pandora’s box of aliens and Andrew Tate, the former professional kickboxer who built his platform by promoting misogynistic ideas. In a study published this week, the nonprofit Media Matters for America examined five comedy shows that platformed Donald The President during the 2024 presidential election while claiming to be nonpol…

Sales at Target fell more than expected in the first quarter and the retailer warned they will slip for all of 2025 year as its customers, worried over the impact of tariffs and the economy, pull back on spending. Target also said that customer boycotts have also done some damage. The company scaled back many diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in January after they came under attack by conservative activists and the White House. Target’s retreat created another backlash, with more customers angered by the retailer’s reduction of LGBTQ+-themed merchandise for Pride Month in June of 2023. Shares fell more than 4% before the opening bell Wednesday. Sales fell 2.8…

Google has built a massive business selling ads that appear around search results: In its 2024 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported roughly $198 billion under “Google Search & Other,” its largest profit segment and more than half of its parent company Alphabet’s total revenue. But search is undergoing a foundational shift toward accessing the web’s information with the help of powerful AI models, and nobody has yet found a winning model for placing ads around AI search results. At the same time, new generative AI models can now handle much of the cognitive efforts users typically expend to arrive at their intended web cont…

“Follow your dreams.” It’s the first piece of advice most of us are ever given: as kids in the classroom, as students on campus, as graduates preparing to enter the workforce, and as working adults. We are told that jobs are for pursuing passions, not just paychecks. If we do what we love, money and success will follow. If we love what we do, we’ll never work a day in our lives. And the corollary to all that dreaminess? If we don’t find employment doing whatever we find most fulfilling, we’re somehow failures. We don’t have to follow our dreams to end up with our dream jobs. In fact, I’d argue the opposite. When it comes to careers, “follow your dreams” can be nightm…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s workplace advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer your biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: What should I do if my coworker is using AI unethically? A: This is a question that feels new but is actually just an evolution of a classic workplace issue. You can slot any number of issues in the place of “AI” and the problem is essentially the same: What’s the best way to handle misconduct at work? The answer for all situations, including this one, comes down to a few factors: 1. Do you know (or just suspect) your coworker is doing something they s…

After years of AI disrupting industries and streamlining repetitive workflows, the technology is now poised to transform animation. In 2024, director and writer Tom Paton’s AiMation Studios released Where the Robots Grow, a fully AI-animated feature film. Everything from animation and voice acting to music was generated using AI, at a cost of just $8,000 per minute—totaling around $700,000 for the 87-minute production. While IMDB reviewers criticized the film as “soulless and uninspired,” it proved that AI can deliver full-length animated features at a fraction of traditional budgets. But it’s not just filmmakers driving this shift. Indie game developers want to prototy…

Diversity training is more effective when it’s personalized, according to my new research in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Psychology. As a professor of management, I partnered with Andrew Bryant, who studies social marketing, to develop an algorithm that identifies people’s “personas,” or psychological profiles, as they participate in diversity training in real time. We embedded this algorithm into a training system that dynamically assigned participants to tailored versions of the training based on their personas. We found that this personalized approach worked especially well for one particular group: the “skeptics.” When skeptics received training tailored…

It’s no secret that when it comes to simplicity and convenience, insurance has lagged behind modern businesses across most industries. While many legacy products have been overturned by newer, intuitive solutions or adapted to meet today’s consumers’ needs, insurance offerings have remained a complex anomaly—built more for business and regulatory needs rather than real people. We already know that healthcare in America is too expensive, and far too many people simply can’t afford to get sick. Health insurance deductibles are at an all-time high, while denied and delayed claims payments persist. Insurance companies have continued making money while a staggering number …

In the entertainment industry, as in life, change is the only constant. It wasn’t that long ago that streaming services such as Netflix were the outsiders making waves and altering the way audiences watched movies. Today, there’s a new kid on the block rapidly growing in popularity. Vertical dramas, essentially a 90-minute soap opera broken down into one-minute episodes viewed—you guessed it—vertically on smartphones, are here to shake things up even further. (I know this firsthand as an actor who has recently worked on some of these projects.) Joey Jia, the CEO of Crazy Maple Studios, is at the forefront of this movement. His content creation company was named o…

The year, 1993. A rudimentary computer-generated T. rex—a reptilian skin stretched over a wire frame—played on a loop in a computer at Industrial Light & Magic in California. Three film legends—VFX supervisor Dennis Muren, animator Phil Tippett, and director Steven Spielberg—watched silently as the implications sank in. “Cinema history changed,” Rob Bredow recounts in his April 2023 TED Talk, which has just been published on YouTube. Tippett, a stop-motion pioneer, dryly told Spielberg, “I feel like I’m going extinct.” As most movie buffs know, that line landed in Jurassic Park. Tippett’s fear, however, turned out to be unfounded. The legendary effects company fused T…

The companies behind AI models are keen to share granular data about their performance on benchmarks that demonstrate how well they operate. What they are less eager to disclose is information about their environmental impact. In the absence of clear data, a number of estimates have circulated. However, a new study published in Cornell University’s preprint server arXiv offers a more accurate estimation of how AI usage affects the planet. The research team—comprised of scientists from the University of Rhode Island, Providence College, and the University of Tunis in Tunisia—developed what they describe as the first infrastructure-aware benchmark for AI inference, …