What's on Your Mind?

As Sesame Street’s 56th season gets underway, Elmo, Big Bird, and the Sesame organization are navigating a volatile chapter in the show’s history—marked by government funding cuts, evolving new media habits, and AI’s impact on education. Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame Workshop, discusses balancing risk-taking with brand trust, partnering with Netflix, and why emotional well-being and kindness are the skills that matter most in today’s world. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with t…

Sometimes, a simple summary is all you need. Me? I’m a man of many words. (Understatement of the century, I know.) I appreciate interesting writing, where language matters and a person’s personality shines through in the prose. But let’s be real: 99% of the articles you encounter on this musty ol’ web of ours aren’t exactly awe-inspiring. They’re a means to an end. The same is true for most videos, too. And in any such scenario, you aren’t in it for the pleasure of reading or viewing and being entertained. You just want to get the gist of what’s happening without wasting any time wading your way through unimaginative drivel. The next time you find yourself…

Jon Armstrong never intended to create the booming live-commerce platform Stacked Golf. All he wanted was to join the local golf club, but his wife, Ashley, gave him an ultimatum: Yes, he could join, but only if he could find a way to pay for it himself. His solution? Start a YouTube channel reviewing golf balls. The problem was that he didn’t even have the money to buy balls to review, so he scoured the woods at his Daytona Beach golf club for lost balls and started making videos comparing the Titleist Pro V1 balls he plays to whatever he found in the rough. Zero budget. Zero business plan. Just a guy with a phone and a hunch that people might search for golf ba…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. John Rogers, the chief data and analytics officer of Cotality (formerly known as CoreLogic), returned to ResiDay this year to give a two-part presentation: first, how risk—insurance, climate, construction cost—is reshaping the housing market, and second, how AI is about to turn property professionals into “superheroes.” In 2011, the firm was predominantly a U.S. mortgage-data company. Today, Cotality is a multicountry, multi-industry analytics platform that supports more than 1 million real estate agents, touches more than 8 out of every 10 U.S. mort…

In 2023, Pop-Tarts changed the world of brand mascots forever when it sacrificed the life of a Strawberry Pop-Tart and fed its remains to the Kansas State football team as a reward for winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl game. The weirdly macabre stunt got 4 billion media impressions, and in the eight weeks following the game, parent company Kellanova sold 21 million more Pop-Tarts than in the eight weeks before the game. Riding on that success, the brand upped its ambitions and brought three flavors to the Pop-Tarts Bowl last year, letting the winning team’s MVP choose which one was toasted and eaten (Iowa State’s quarterback, Rocco Becht, picked Frosted Cinnamon Roll). Now …

As best I can tell, the über-wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending, that there won’t be enough to go around, and that this means they need to accumulate as much money and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days. The way they do that is with an induced form of “disaster capitalism,” where they intentionally crash the economy in order to have some control over what remains. So the function of tariffs, for example, is to bankrupt businesses or even public services in order to privatize and then control them. Stall imports, put the ports out of business, and then let a sovereign wealth fund purchase the ports. Or as is happening r…

A snaggle tooth. A gap in someone’s smile. A birthmark or mole. What do each of these facial features have in common? They all have wabi-sabi. That’s according to TikTok’s latest trend, which has users highlighting their imperfections and labeling them “wabi-sabi.” Not to be confused with the sushi accompaniment, wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection and the natural process of aging—something we could all use a little more of in the age of “preventative facelifts.” The concept celebrates imperfection and the natural wear and tear that occurs with the passage of time, whether that’s a gently worn step, a chipped mug, or…

The National Park Service said Tuesday it is going to start charging the millions of international tourists who visit U.S. parks each year an extra $100 to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days that will be reserved for American residents. The announcement declaring “America-first entry fee policies” comes as national parks deal with the strain of a major staff reduction and severe budget cuts, along with recovering from damage during the recent government shutdown and significant lost revenue due to fees not being collected during that time. The fee change will impact 11 national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and…

Just know this: There’s going to be a conversation about artificial intelligence at Thanksgiving this year. An AI superfan is going to gush about chatbots and go on, at length, about how “These things just seem to know everything.” The dinner table’s funnyman will play a highly cringe video they made with the technology. Someone else will either be flummoxed or horrified. A proud guest will declare a vow of abstinence—in fact, they’ve never even used ChatGPT, they will reveal. One self-important guest will feel very smart when recounting the time they caught an AI making a mistake, once. They’ll tell everyone about it. These conversations will be bad. There will…

The number of people who have come to me whispering, “I want to be seen as a thought leader.” And yet when I say, “Amazing, let’s put you on camera,” I’m suddenly met with . . . crickets. I get it. Putting yourself out there can feel awkward. Exposed. Vulnerable. That’s how I feel about dancing in public. It’s my own personal nightmare. At Zumba, I’m hiding behind the water cooler. At my wedding, my husband had to mouth the 1-2-3-4 count so I wouldn’t lose the beat. And recently at a music festival, the band leader pointed at me to come dance on stage. I prayed he was pointing to the person behind me. Nope. As I sheepishly walked up the stairs to the stage, …

It’s long been the uniform of management consultants and finance bros, but now the humble quarter zip is being embraced by a rather unexpected demographic. ​​Over the past few weeks, FYPs have become dominated by the workwear staple. Young men who previously might’ve been seen exclusively in Nike Tech, have now traded them in for quarter zip sweaters. Across social media, they are sharing styling tips and hosting meetups at malls, all clad in business-casual. The trend gained widespread attention when, in early November, TikToker @whois.jason shared a video of himself sipping a matcha (the beverage of choice for the ‘performative male’) with a friend. Both are we…

In an age of high-turnover trends, ubiquitous screens, and fractured attention spans, a lengthy televised parade organized by a venerable department store sounds like a relic of a bygone era. But somehow, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has in recent years proved itself to be startlingly popular and relevant. In 2024, the parade drew an estimated 31.7 million viewers on NBC’s broadcast and Peacock stream—an all-time record, and a bigger audience than the Oscars or any entertainment broadcast. This year’s parade will include, along with balloons featuring legacy characters like Snoopy and Minnie Mouse, a Pop Mart float with an oversized Labubu, a Stranger Things flo…

Since 2019, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has undergone a resurrection from discarded early 2000s mall brand to a sought after brand for millennials and older Gen Zs. Abercrombie reported $1.29 billion in revenue for quarter three, up 7% year-over-year. The Tuesday, November 25 earnings report is the 12th in a row with consecutive growth between quarters. The company also beat Wall Street’s predicted $1.28 billion in revenue and reached earnings per share of $2.36 earnings, rather than the estimated $2.16, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Abercrombie’s shares (NYSE:ANF) closed Tuesday up more than 37% on Tuesday, though the stock is still down 39.…

The Thanksgiving travel period is in full swing. Today is the last day before Thanksgiving, which means millions of Americans will be taking to the skies to reach their holiday destinations. And myriad more will also be traveling to airports to pick up their incoming loved ones. But on one of the busiest travel days of the year, flight delays and cancellations are inevitable. Here are some tools to track delays, along with information on which airports are currently experiencing the worst delays and cancellations. FAA says this is the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in 15 years Earlier this week, Fast Company reported on the American Automobile Association (…

Shares in Europe and Asia advanced on Wednesday after benchmarks on Wall Street surged on hopes the Federal Reserve will soon opt to cut interest rates. The future for the S&P 500 gained 0.3%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2%. In early European trading, Germany’s DAX gained 0.2% to 23,500.98, while the CAC 40 in Paris also rose 0.2%, to 9,623.22. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1% higher. In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.9% to 49,559.07 in a broad rally that encompassed major exporters and technology shares. However, shares in Kioxia dropped 14.9% on reports that Bain Capital plans to sell $2.3 billion of the computer memory maker’s shares. …

Most people don’t give the display screens on their commuter trains a second thought, but for designer Emily Sneddon, they’ve proved to be a well of inspiration. Sneddon lived in San Francisco, where she worked at the design agency Collins, from 2021 until this year when she moved back to her home country of Australia. She designed Fran Sans, her first ever font, after noticing the display on San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) recently retired Muni Metro Breda Light Rail Vehicle. Unlike New York City, which handles its public transit through a single agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), public transportation in San Fra…

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, a time when we give thanks and practice gratitude for what we have, we turned to neuroscience to find out if doing so actually makes us happier and healthier. Here’s what we found. Is gratitude actually good for your health? “People who are grateful live longer, are happier, and also tend to hit workplace markers like [making] more money, and [getting] promoted more frequently,” Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., science director at U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, tells Fast Company. “But the key is not a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach—no, it’s real gratitude, real contentment, based on an accurate assessment of …