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Below, Maya Shankar shares five key insights from her new book, The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans. Shankar is a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. She served as a senior policy adviser in the Obama White House, where she founded and chaired the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. She was also appointed as the first behavioral science advisor to the United Nations. What’s the big idea? What if the life upheavals that shake you most could also be your greatest opportunities? Change can feel like loss, but it can also be the start of a stronger, reimagined self. Listen to the audio version o…

The Super Bowl LX ad blitz was a big budget highwire act—from Anthropic’s shot at OpenAI to Lady Gaga’s homage to Mr. Rogers and Dunkin’s nostalgia-fueled celeb fest. Autodesk CMO Dara Treseder breaks down what worked, what didn’t, and what the ads reveal about where marketing is headed next. Treseder also unpacks the business impact of Bad Bunny’s halftime show, and what it signals for the NFL and Apple. 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 today’s top business leaders navigati…

On a sidewalk, an unassuming junction box sits strapped to a fence. Inside, dozens of keychains, stickers, mini figurines, and other novelties wait to be discovered by eagle-eyed passersby or trinket traders who have traveled across the city to exchange their treasure. Trinket trading has taken off on social media in recent weeks. The trend first originated in Philadelphia, where Philly’s Trinket Trove began documenting the contents of a repurposed junction box on TikTok in September of last year. It has since spread nationwide, with communities from New York to San Francisco setting up their own boxes of assorted knick-knacks for anyone to stop by and tra…

Target CEO Michael Fiddelke is reshuffling his leadership team and making other changes shortly after stepping into the top job at the retailer that has struggled operationally. Rick Gomez, the 13-year Target veteran who oversees the chain’s vast inventory of merchandise, will leave the company. And Jill Sando, the chief merchandising officer overseeing a handful of categories like apparel and home and who has been with the company since 1997, will retire. Lisa Roath, who oversaw food, essentials, and cosmetics, will take Fiddelke’s previous job as chief operating officer, the company said Tuesday. Cara Sylvester, who had been chief guest experience officer, will …

Don’t feel bad splurging on that $7 latte the next time you’re in a mid-afternoon attention slump. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week provides some strong evidence that drinking coffee and tea is linked to a lower risk of developing dementia. The longitudinal research followed a group of around 130,000 people for more than 40 years, collecting behavioral and health information over the course of their lifetimes. The results paint a clear picture: People with a habit of drinking two to three cups of coffee or one to two cups of tea on a daily basis demonstrated a lower risk of dementia compared to their less caffeinat…

Shares in Spotify Technology SA (NYSE: SPOT), the world’s largest music streamer, are surging this morning. As of this writing, the Swedish company’s stock price is up 18% to above $489 per share after the company reported blowout fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings. Here’s what you need to know. Spotify’s Q4 2025 surpasses expectations On Tuesday, Spotify reported its Q4 2025 earnings, which outpaced investor expectations. Here are the music streamer’s most salient metrics for the quarter, which ended on December 31: Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 751 million (up 11% year over year) Premium Subscribers: 290 million (up 10% year over year) Total Reven…

Comparing social media platforms to casinos and addictive drugs, lawyer Mark Lanier delivered opening statements Monday in a landmark trial in Los Angeles that seeks to hold Instagram owner Meta and Google’s YouTube responsible for harms to children who use their products. Instagram’s parent company Meta and Google’s YouTube face claims that their platforms addict children through deliberate design choices that keep kids glued to their screens. TikTok and Snap, which were originally named in the lawsuit, settled for undisclosed sums. Jurors got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterized by dueling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remai…

In 2023, the science fiction literary magazine Clarkesworld stopped accepting new submissions because so many were generated by artificial intelligence. Near as the editors could tell, many submitters pasted the magazine’s detailed story guidelines into an AI and sent in the results. And they weren’t alone. Other fiction magazines have also reported a high number of AI-generated submissions. This is only one example of a ubiquitous trend. A legacy system relied on the difficulty of writing and cognition to limit volume. Generative AI overwhelms the system because the humans on the receiving end can’t keep up. This is happening everywhere. Newspapers are being inun…

We’re still in the earliest days of artificial intelligence. It was just November 2022 when OpenAI released ChatGPT, and the world changed. However, enough time has passed for us to have a sufficient perspective to categorize AI and autonomous agents into three distinct eras. Introduction—2024: In the initial shockwave, there was more novelty and hype than practicality around the possibilities of AI. Businesses and leaders understandably struggled to understand what was barreling toward them. Evaluation—2025: There was a reality check for organizations as they began testing, experimenting with, and piloting AI projects in their search for use cases that created va…

I don’t care if you own a car, SUV, minivan, pickup truck, private jet, or one of each. This essay isn’t a judgment on consumerism. It’s about how the forces shaping our automotive obsession ripple into land use policy, infrastructure funding, government subsidies, and every facet of urbanism. Once upon a time, did Americans flock to dealerships out of pure need—or were they herded by subversive forces? Was it free will or predestination? The automobile’s rise was a masterclass in what the military would call a psychological operation, a psy-op. In a flash, the “household automobile” became the “personal automobile,” thanks to advertising genius that turned utilit…

BMW has issued a recall of 87,394 vehicles over a defect that could cause the engine to overheat and start a fire. The recall, issued on Jan. 30, covers models made between 2021 and 2024. It includes nine BMW models, as well as one Toyota model, which shares similar structures and parts. The recalled BMW vehicles include: Toyota Supra, 2021-2023, BMW 5 Series, 2021-2024, BMW Z4, 2021-2022, BMW 2 Series Coupe, 2022-2023, BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe, 2022-2024, BMW 4 Series Convertible, 2021-2024, BMW 4 Series Coupe, 2021-2023, BMW 3 Series, 2021-2024, BMW X4, 2021-2023, and BMW X3, 2021-2024. In a blog post BMW said the defect involves “unexpected wear on an internal …

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the largest in history, and it’s meeting a growing American soccer fanbase on home turf for the first time since the ’90s. With companies paying millions to reach these fans, the challenge is standing out from the noise. On this episode of FC Explains, Fast Company Senior Staff Editor Jeff Beer explores what he’s learned from Men in Blazers co-founder Roger Bennett about how brands can leverage compelling storytelling and authentic fan culture, which sometimes matter more than the action on the field. Beer also shares insights from executives at major brands like Verizon and Anheuser-Busch about their World Cup marketing strategies to …

Layoffs are at an all-time high since 2009, and we’re also experiencing the lowest hiring on record in the job market. But AI spending is also reaching all-time highs—especially among Big Tech companies, who are on an extravagant spending spree. As I recently reported, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are forecast to drop a staggering $650 billion on AI in 2026 alone. And while many companies are pouring a lot of that money—we’re talking hundreds of billions—into building massive data centers, hoping to establish a long-term strategic advantage in the AI-arms race, many are still hiring workers for jobs that utilize AI skills. So, what are those skills? While…

Trevor McOmber and his 14-year-old son, Tye, share a love for the Chicago Blackhawks. When Trevor was his son’s age, he watched the Blackhawks on TV, caught highlights on ESPN and read about the team in the newspaper. It’s a much different experience for Tye. “I go to YouTube with Snapchat, or Google something if I just have an idea that I want to know,” Tye McOmber said while sitting next to his father at a recent Blackhawks game. Tye McOmber is on the border of Generation Z, born roughly between 1997 to 2012, and Generation Alpha, approximately 2012 to 2024 — a sprawling group of people with unique media habits and diverse attitudes on where sports fit into their liv…

In 2022, Jennette McCurdy released her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, a brutally honest portrait of her life as a former child star, her battle with eating disorders, and, as the title would suggest, her rather complicated relationship with her mother. The book has spent more than 80 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list with over three million copies sold. It’s currently being adapted into an Apple TV+ series with Jennifer Aniston playing McCurdy’s mom, and McCurdy serving as co-writer, co-executive producer, and co-showrunner. Adjacent to the massive success of I’m Glad My Mom Died has been McCurdy reclaiming writing, not acting, as her true passion. In her …

As Big Tech races to weave AI into nearly every product, Mozilla is betting some users want the opposite: the ability to turn it off. Last week, the company announced new controls to allow users of its Firefox browser to decide when to use AI. When Firefox 148 debuts later this month, users will be able to manage or disable individual AI features like translations, tab grouping and a sidebar for chatbot like Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Le Chat Mistral. Much of Mozilla’s vision around AI was outlined in its annual State of Mozilla report, which was released last month and calls for a new Star Wars-style “rebel alliance” composed of developers, cybersecurit…

Shortly after 7:00 local time this morning, the internet-famous walk for peace monks began the final miles of their 2,300-mile walking journey. They left Alexandria, Virginia, and are set to arrive in Washington, D.C., before 9:30 a.m., where they’ll take part in a public event at Bender Arena. The group plans to spend the next three days in and around the nation’s capital before traveling by bus to Fort Worth, Texas, where the journey began. Find out how they plan to spend the next few days. Who are the monks and why did they walk to D.C.? More than three months ago, a group of about 19 Buddhist monks and their rescue dog companion, Aloka, set out on a …

Warp, which builds software to help developers control AI agents and other software from the command line, is rolling out a new tool called Oz to collaboratively command AI in the cloud. Last year, Warp launched its agentic development environment, which lets programmers command AI agents to write code and other tasks. Developers can also use the software to edit code on their own and run command-line development tools. That release came as many developers became increasingly fond of vibe coding—the process of instructing an AI on what source code should do rather than writing it directly—and the industry produced a variety of tools, including Anthropic’s Claude Code…

Fashion weeks around the world are dominated by four main shows: New York, Paris, Milan, and London. But in 2020, Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) made a bold move that helped it garner attention. It launched a framework with nearly 20 sustainability standards that fashion brands must meet to participate. The choice came at a time when fashion’s sustainability practices were under increased scrutiny. Every year the industry contributes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, pollutes billions of cubic meters of clean water, and produces metric tons of textile waste. Copenhagen’s fashion week was applauded for its forward-thinking approach. However, over the nex…