What's on Your Mind?

This past June, Meta set off a bomb in the marketing world when it announced that it would fully automate the advertising on its platforms by 2026. People in advertising wondered: Is this the end of ad agencies as we know it? Has the AI “slopification” of social media finally been fully realized? The hyperbolic reaction is understandable—maybe even justified. With 3.43 billion unique active users across its platforms around the world, and an advertising machine that brought in $47.5 billion in Q2 sales alone (up 22% over last year), Meta is an accurate bellwether for where the ad business is heading. Meta has been working for years to build a machine that is al…

Megan Rapinoe, Caitlin Clark, Serena Williams, Mia Hamm, Lindsey Vonn—the list of high-profile, recognizable women athletes is growing. And track and field athletes may be the next to become household names. That’s the bet that Alexis Ohanian is making with Athlos, an all-women’s track and field league, which is hosting its second event in New York this week. Ohanian is perhaps best known as the cofounder of Reddit, but he’s also an investor who’s made no secret of his interest in investing in sports. During a press event in New York City this week, he said the idea for Athlos came to him while watching the Olympics, during which millions of people tune in to wa…

Greetings, salutations, and my thanks—as always—for reading Fast Company’s Plugged In. Me: “Are you here just to monitor for safety?” Guy sitting in the driver’s seat of the Tesla Model Y I’m riding in: “I can’t specify.” That was the extent of the conversation during a recent trip I took using Tesla’s Robotaxi service. I was curious why the car that picked me up had a human in it: After all, Tesla bills its service as “the future of autonomy,” and the car did, in fact, drive itself for the entirety of my 4.5-mile journey. But I didn’t get any answers from this guy—or Tesla the corporate entity, which prides itself on ignoring the media and didn’t reply to my …

With year-to-date hiring plans sinking to a 16-year low according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, many people are beginning to feel the impacts—and it’s reasonable enough to believe that artificial intelligence (AI) might have something to do with the slump. Zip, a company that creates procurement software, recently released a study that shows how AI might be factoring into hiring decisions even more than previously believed. The report surveyed 1,030 “experienced leaders” who are also responsible for some degree of spending and supply management within their companies. Seven in 10 of the leaders—which amounts to 67%—reported that they’re alre…

European shares were mixed in early trading while Asian shares mostly fell on Friday after a respite from Wall Street’s recent feverish rally. The price of gold also pulled back from record highs following recent torrid runs. The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were both up less than 0.1%. Oil prices slipped. In early European trading, Germany’s DAX rose 0.2% to 24,652.73, while France’s CAC 40 added 0.4% to 8,076.96. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.1% to 9,498.95, weighed down by losses for mining and energy stocks. Most Asian indexes fell. But South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1.7% to 3,610.60 as trading reopened after a holiday. India’s BSE …

Oil prices declined on Friday, after settling around 1.6% lower in the previous session, as the market’s risk premium faded after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a plan to end the war in Gaza. Brent crude futures were down 66 cents, or 1%, at $64.56 a barrel at 1016 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was down 61 cents, or 1%, to $60.90. “Finally having some kind of peace process in the Middle East is lowering the shoulders a little bit,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB. This could ease fears about crude carriers passing through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, he said. BOTH BENCHMARKS ON TRACK FOR WEEKLY GAINS Isra…

America’s defense technology sector is rapidly expanding. Top talent, ambitious founders, and serious capital are flooding into a mission that matters, delivering products and solutions that will send us to the moon, deploy unimaginably capable unmanned aerial devices, and redefine what’s possible in modern warfare. It’s an exciting moment—one full of possibility and potential. But here’s the problem: while everyone is focused on the moonshots, we’re overlooking the foundation. The unsexy stuff. The quiet, mission-critical gaps that don’t make headlines but could leave us dangerously vulnerable. We’re building skyscrapers without checking if the ground beneath us is s…

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.” The former opposition presidential candidate is a “key, unifying figure” in the once deeply divided opposition to President Nicolás Maduro’s government, said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee. “In the past year, Ms. Machado has been forced to live in hiding,” Watne Frydnes said. “Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired m…

With Halloween on the horizon, Chicago Costume is stuffed. Packaged costumes, including superheros and Japanese animation characters in both kid and adult sizes, dangle near colorful wigs and bottles of fake blood. Downstairs, vintage clothes from the 1970s beg for one more boogie night. The frightening possibilities mask the work that’s gone on behind the scenes to stock the family-owned shop and its sister store for the spooky season. Owner Courtland Hickey said he ordered 40% fewer costumes this year because of President Donald The President’s tariffs on products from China. To fill the gap, Hickey and his mother, Chicago Costume founder Mary Hickey Panayotou, looked…

Yet another food retailer has joined the growing list of companies that have recalled pasta-related products over the last few weeks. Sprouts Farmers Market, a supermarket chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, with stores across more than two dozen states, has voluntarily recalled select lots of Sprouts Smoked Mozzarella Pasta Salad due to a risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. On October 9, a recall notice was published to the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). To date, no illnesses have been reported in connection with this recalled product. According to the notice, the recall is in response to Sprouts being alerted by…

Abu Dhabi carrier Etihad said Friday it is launching flights to Kabul, making it the latest airline to offer direct routes to the Afghan capital. Etihad, which announced a record $476 million profit in 2024, said the new service responded to “growing demand” for travel between the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan and that the three weekly flights starting in December would support “trade, travel, and community ties.” “The UAE hosts one of the largest Afghan communities in the Gulf, with around 300,000 Afghans living and working in the country, according to the Afghan Business Council,” the airline said in a statement. “The new flights will further strengthen these e…

Pope Leo XIV encouraged international news agencies on Thursday to stand firm as a bulwark against the “ancient art of lying” and manipulation, as he strongly backed a free, independent and objective press. History’s first American pope called for imprisoned journalists to be released and said the work of journalists must never be considered a crime. Rather, journalism is a right and a pillar upholding “the edifice of our societies” that must be protected and defended, he said. “If today we know what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine and every other land bloodied by bombs, we largely owe it to them,” Leo said of journalists. “These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are the …

The other day, a friend confessed her new nightly routine: hiding in the bathroom for ten minutes after putting her kids to bed. The reason wasn’t to scroll TikTok, but to breathe. “It’s either that or cry into the mac and cheese,” she laughed. It struck me: parenting in 2025 often looks like quietly triaging our own stress while juggling work deadlines, permission slips, Slack pings, and dinner prep. Headlines scream about the youth mental health crisis, but what rarely makes the front page is the state of the people raising those kids. Working parents are running on fumes. And here’s the part we can’t gloss over: our kids’ emotional health is directly tied to ours. …

A potentially worrisome trend is emerging among young adults. Instead of landing a job and moving to the big city after graduation, many are moving back into their childhood homes instead. About 1.5 million more adults under 35 live with their parents today than a decade ago. That’s a 6.3% jump, more than double the rate of growth for the young adult population overall. The issue is affordability. Over the past decade, urban rents have climbed about 4% per year, while wages for full-time workers have increased by only 0.6% annually. That means it’s harder than ever to live in a big city on the typical salary—especially if you’re a new graduate without much work experi…

The teaching profession requires a certain degree of patience. Particularly when students discover a new trend to latch onto and repeat at every given opportunity. The latest so-called “brain rot” phrase to flood the classroom: “6-7.” If you don’t have any Gen Alphas in your life and have no idea what I’m talking about, count yourself lucky. Some teachers have taken to social media to share their exasperation with the trend that has recently overrun classrooms, with schools outright banning it in some instances. “Say 6-7 one more time,” one teacher posted on TikTok, pretending to address a student in her class. “We’re gonna call your mom in about 6-7 minutes, let …

To survive in today’s market, enterprises must deliver experiences that feel instant and intelligent. Customers expect brands to anticipate their needs and guide them through interactions that are seamless and personal. It’s the promise of having the right conversation at exactly the right moment. But here’s the reality check: While “real time” dominates boardroom conversations, most data ecosystems are anything but. MOVING BEYOND “NEXT BEST ACTION” For years, the “next best action” model has been the playbook for customer engagement. It takes available data, analyzes it, and delivers a single, data-driven response, like recommending a product or sending an off…

Commuting in New York City can be a relentless sensory overload—the hustling, the pushing, the yelling, the ads whirling from every side. Getting to work can feel like a frantic race of people trying to escape the train station all at once. While the city hurtles past in a blur, Brandon Stanton has stopped to write it a love letter—on the walls of Grand Central itself. For the first time, the terminal and its subway station have been completely cleared of flashing advertisements and replaced with art. Brandon Stanton More than 150 digital screens now display thousands of portraits and stories from Stanton’s Humans of New York—the largest and most diverse colle…

Connecting with Gen Z is crucial for brands, especially as teens and twenty-somethings gain spending power and influence. But doing so can be a bit of an art. That’s why a new crop of companies are offering “translation” services for brands that want to speak Gen Z’s language and, as they say, get “locked in.” While many Gen Z translation businesses are still in their infancy, the Wall Street Journal reported that it already represents a multi-million-dollar industry. Some analysts estimate that Gen Z’s spending power is set to grow to $12.6 trillion by 2030, up from $9.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Journal. At the same time, Gen Z is far more digitally n…

Family members of dead celebrities including Robin Willians and George Carlin are calling foul over AI-generated videos of their loved ones appearing on OpenAI’s new app, Sora. OpenAI’s new video generation app is just a few weeks old, but it rapidly rocketed to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store within days of its release. And perhaps as rapidly, experts and creators raised copyright concerns around Sora, as the app appeared to let users create content of well-known cartoon characters and deepfakes of public figures. OpenAI has since curbed those kinds of videos, but The Washington Post and other outlets have reported that family members of dead celebrities do…

After a number of big announcements this week, it’s hip to be Square. Square announced several upgrades and features to its platform this week, including an expansion of tools for restaurant owners and operators, new intelligence capabilities under its Square AI suite, the unveiling of Square Bitcoin, allowing platform users to conduct transactions in Bitcoin. As a cherry on top, Cash App, a sister company to Square under its parent firm, Block, also announced Neighborhoods, a feature that connects customers with local businesses, creating local networks in which customers can place orders and accumulate rewards points to spend with nearby businesses, and helps t…

We know that people with ADHD often approach work differently than might a neurotypical person. And while ADHD can manifest in traits like impulsivity and being easily distracted, the condition is also associated with many desirable qualities—including, it seems, incredible creativity. That’s the upshot of new research recently presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress in Amsterdam. Researchers conducted a pair of studies involving 750 participants, finding that those with ADHD may experience more frequent episodes of mind-wandering, and that that, in turn, could lead to greater creative thinking abilities. “Previous research …

How many female entrepreneurs, bankers, and industrialists from the past can you name? You could be forgiven for thinking that, until relatively recently, there were none at all. Women are commonly assumed to have spent most of history as housewives. But in my new book, Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, I present a revised economic history of the world—one that places women at the heart of the development of the global economy. Here are just five of the (many) ways that women have powered the global economy from the Stone Age to the present day. 1. Creators of global money Before electronic payments, banknotes, and silver coins, it was cloth—…

Quantum computing promises to disrupt entire industries because it leverages the rules of quantum physics to perform calculations in fundamentally new ways. Unlike traditional computers that process information in a linear, step-by-step fashion, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent multiple states simultaneously. This leads to breakthroughs in areas such as drug discovery, financial modeling, and cybersecurity by overcoming computational barriers that have limited progress for decades. Quantum computing is transitioning from theoretical research to a transformative force for industries worldwide, much like AI and cloud computing before it. …

Innovation hubs were once the darlings of corporate strategy, promising to future-proof businesses and spark breakthrough ideas. But two decades in, the cracks are showing. Too many hubs have struggled to prove their worth, and some have quietly shut down altogether. In reality, these costly spaces never lived up to the hype—and the future lies elsewhere. Rather than investing in shiny new labs, organizations should be cultivating innovation communities: networks of people, inside and outside the company, who collaborate around shared challenges and opportunities. Looking Back: Proliferation Innovation hubs have proliferated through private enterprise over the…

This year, Columbus Day, also known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, lands on Monday, October 13. While it’s a federal holiday and many schools have it off, there are plenty of businesses still open—as well as U.S. stock markets. Here’s what to know about the holiday, and what’s open and closed today. Why is the holiday called Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day? Columbus Day, named after Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, occurs on the second Monday in October of every year, and celebrates Columbus’s arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492, in the Bahamas. However, due to criticism over the treatment of Native Americans who were here when Colum…