Fast food workers in California are seeing an increase in their paychecks. This is because of a recent minimum wage law that went into effect earlier this month. The law requires fast food chains like McDonald’s and Starbucks to pay workers $20 per hour. It will also affect restaurants that have at least 60 other locations nationwide. Opponents of the law say it will lead to layoffs and store closures . . . but for fast food workers who have been fighting for better pay, this could mean being...

Boeing has been in the news recently . . . Between a door plug blowing off mid-flight and sudden nose dives causing injuries, the company has been in very hot water. ‘Fast Company’ contributing writer Clint Rainey joined us to explain what’s really going on at Boeing and how it plans to address safety and quality concerns. For more on our Boeing coverage. Then, we spoke with Ghia founder and CEO Melanie Masarin and Nowadays cofounder and CEO Justin Tidwell to understand what’s behind all the...

Two weeks ago, the former Republican National Committee boss Ronna McDaniel was hired and then fired as an MSNBC contributor. This came about after pushback from staff, including complaints that she had touted Donald Trump’s debunked claims of voting malfeasance in the 2020 election. At the same time, there was backlash from people on the right who chalked up her dismissal as proof of left-wing media bias. Presiding over the chaos was NBCUniversal News chairman Cesar Conde, who has been...

Truth Social went public last week. The company disclosed its finances in an SEC filing that revealed it had brought in just over $4 million in revenue while losing more than $58 million in 2023. Those numbers don’t seem to make sense. ‘Fast Company’ senior staff editor Max Ufberg joined us to break down what is responsible for the dire state of that business. Also, tweens and teens experimenting with makeup and skincare is nothing new, but there’s a new trend happening where tweens are...

The impact of AI on finance departments will be huge.

Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list is out! We chatted with Fast Company Executive Editor Amy Farley to hear about the top five winners and who her personal faves were. Spoilers: Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft were at the top but some surprises were the National Women's Soccer League, United Auto Workers and ... Chess.com. Then, Fast Company Senior Staff Editor Jeff Beer sat down with Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant and CMO Taylor Montgomery to discuss how the fast-food company is one of...

Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list is out! We chatted with Fast Company Executive Editor Amy Farley to hear about the top five winners and who her personal faves were. Spoilers: Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft were at the top but some surprises were the National Women's Soccer League, United Auto Workers and ... Chess.com. Then, Fast Company Senior Staff Editor Jeff Beer sat down with Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant and CMO Taylor Montgomery to discuss how the fast-food company is one of...

This past weekend, Fast Company hosted a three-day event as part of SXSW in Austin. Yaz moderated a bunch of panels, Josh was producing podcasts, and best-friend-of-the-pod Max Ufberg also moderated a number of panels. We met up with Max in person to record the show for the first time! Here's our recap of the weekend at the Fast Company Grill. Then, Netflix’s new series “3 Body Problem” is based on the first volume of the Chinese science fiction trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.” The...

How artificial intelligence is shaping the product journeys from procurement to end customers.

What is an Oscar campaign? How do studios run them? When does Oscar campaigning start? We spoke with Allie Carieri to learn all about the work (and the money) that go into creating Oscar campaigns. Carieri creates experiences and events around entertainment, awards, film, and television as an independent marketing strategist. She also oversees experiential marketing activations as an accounts director at Civic Entertainment Group. She told us about the history of Oscar campaigns, the budgets...

In this podcast, leaders in HR and AI reveal what it will take for businesses to get their staff on board.

In 2022, The Bored Ape Yacht Club was kind of inescapable on some parts of the internet. People—including a range of celebrities from Gwyneth Paltrow to Eminem—were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire some monkey jpegs store on the blockchain as NFTs. The conglomerate overseeing the collection along with other NFT series, such as CryptoPunks, is called Yuga Labs. VCs including A16z flocked to invest in it, valuing the company at $4 billion. Yuga’s stated ambition at the time...

We’re about to hit the end of peak dating season with Valentine’s Day this week and what better way to commemorate that than to chat about the state of the dating industry. Fast Company Staff Writer Jess Bursztynsky joined us to chat about what the apps are doing to address dating fatigue and how they're continuing to incorporate AI into their strategies, for example, Tinder is able to use AI to help users pick out which photos in their camera rolls would work best for their profiles.  Then...

The Super Bowl is set to kick off this Sunday, and we’re taking a look at some of the ads that are already out there. ‘Fast Company’ senior staff editor Jeff Beer joined us to share what he thinks about this year’s slate of ads. He’s noticed how brands are evolving to use the Super Bowl itself in their teasers and ads, which shows the trajectory of the way brands are going . . . they used to go for funny or emotional but now it’s an ad about being an ad. Using the game itself to help...

Yaz wrote a story about an upstart wrestling league called All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and its founder and CEO Tony Khan. ‘Fast Company’ deputy editor David Lidsky joined us to chat about Yaz’s piece on Tony, why he formed AEW in 2019, and how he was a huge wrestling nerd who grew up doing e-wrestling. And here are some more wrestling updates: Starting in January 2025, WWE’s flagship series, Raw, will be moving to Netflix WWE will still have some shows streaming on Peacock and still has...

Daily Harvest is introducing a new collection of meals tailor-made for people on weight-loss medications like Ozempic. Daily Harvest president Ricky Silver explained how Daily Harvest’s January Jumpstart program includes GLP-1-focused meal plans. Then we chatted with Sharp Entertainment CEO Matt Sharp. Sharp is the guy behind such reality TV hits as ‘90 Day Fiancé,’ ‘Inmate to Roommate,’ and ‘Help! I’m in a Secret Relationship!’ He told us about how many nos he got from networks before...

A number of recent court cases are using a new tactic to take on tech platforms, including Snap, Meta, and TikTok. ‘Fast Company’ contributing writer Issie Lapowsky walked us through the complicated legalese behind these cases. Basically, they’re using a novel legal workaround to Section 230 called a ‘product liability claim.’ Rather than faulting these platforms for other people’s posts—the kind of claims Section 230 protects them from—these cases accuse the companies of essentially building...

We spoke with Jeff Lee, cofounder and CEO of DIBS Beauty about his approach to building brand awareness, partnering with celebrities, and starting a company during the pandemic. “What makes us so unique, I think, is the way we speak with our customer at DIBS; we like to joke that it’s reverse master class. People used to learn about makeup from celebrities, from celebrity makeup artists. . . . We’re just about, take the stick, take the brush, take the powder, put it on—you won’t mess it up....

And that's a wrap on 2023. Join our podcast hosts, Kathleen Davis, KC Ifeanyi, Yasmin Gagne and Josh Christensen as they look back on this past year. Happy New Year!

In the United States, nearly three-quarters of adults qualify as overweight or obese, 42% of whom are considered obese. The World Obesity Federation predicts that 51% of the global population will be overweight or obese by 2035. ‘Fast Company’ contributing writer Adam Bluestein joined us to break down how Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy, developed and marketed its weight-loss drugs. He also explained why the drugs have become so popular in the U.S., how drug pricing is...

From YouTube to late night to actor to writer, Lilly Singh has always been a storyteller. In that vein, she started a company called Unicorn Island Productions a few years ago. The company has both a production arm and a nonprofit arm, which is Unicorn Island Fund. Singh told us that the company's mandate is simple. It's making stories that look like the real world. That means making stories that highlight underrepresented voices—which, more and more that's becoming South Asian voices—and...

Shein is a giant fast fashion retailer that's looking into filing an IPO. Fast Company Senior Staff Writer Liz Segran helps break down what that might mean for both the company and the fast fashion industry at large. For more on Shein, check out Liz's article Serendipitously, Shein’s head of strategic communications Peter Pernot-Day also joined us. He filled us in on how the company's on-demand model is constantly responding to consumers, creating low inventory levels, which leads to...

The long-simmering fault lines within OpenAI over questions of safety with regard to the deployment of large language models like GPT, the engine behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E services, came to a head on November 17 when the organization’s nonprofit board of directors voted to fire CEO Sam Altman. But then he was reinstated on November 22. It’s been a wild ride, but Fast Company senior writers Ainsley Harris and Mark Sullivan joined us to help break down the confusing back and forth at...

Ideo is one of the most famous global design agencies in the world. Founded in 1991, it is celebrated for popularizing the modern corporate mantra of design thinking. It’s also known for a top-tier client list including companies such as Coca-Cola, Disney, and Apple, with estimated annual revenues of more than $100 million. But Ideo has been shedding employees since 2020. This is the second round of layoffs in 2023 alone. Ideo has since confirmed to Fast Company that it’s eliminating 32% of...