Fast Company

How can 1 in 7 people be malnourished in the modern world? A beautifully illustrated video shows the causes. To understand the complexities of the international food market--and how traders in Chicago can cause Africans to starve--you could get a ph.D. in economics, or read a 400-page report from...

Read more

The Us Weekly readers who know freak-folk musician Devendra Banhart as the hippie-haired beardo on the arm of Natalie Portman probably won't recognize him now. The Portman thing ended a while ago, for one. Plus he's wearing glasses these days, prescribed to him when he started getting headaches from poring...

Read more

NPR's Planet Money produces an astounding infographic that shows just how bad a bet the banks made when they went crazy for bundles of subprime mortgages. Toxic assets brought our economy to its knees. You remember those, right? They were bundles of sub-prime mortgages, which were sold to banks like...

Read more

No joke: this is your last chance to get a ticket to attend Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference on April 21.Who will be there? Along with the editors and writers from this magazine (which is being honored as a finalist for ASME's Magazine of the Year), you'll get direct access...

Read more

The Guggenheim is auctioning off the works displayed in its recent exhibition, Contemplating the Void. Recently, we brought you a slideshow preview of a lovely exhibition at the Guggenheim, Contemplating the Void, which runs through April 28. In it, the Guggenheim invited 200 artists and designers to imagine radical installations for...

Read more

Finally! Our wildest dreams for hobo-tech can now be had for $250. As a regular reader of FastCompany.com, you know that we keep sharp about developments in hobotech: From hobo-conventions for techies to rolling hobo shelters. So it's with great excitement that we bring you the JakPak, a jacket that...

Read more

Using a video projection and text-message billing, a new project opens up hearts and wallets to problem of homelessness. A problem like homelessness hides in plain sight: It's easy not to give, because, as any city dweller knows, you simply don't notice the homeless after a time. And even if...

Read more

Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter, has given a lengthy interview to the BBC World Service, in which he claims that social media is fundamental to the spread of democracy. Or should that be the other way around? In the 30-minute program, which debuts tonight, he also touched...

Read more

Although the NBC Universal-Comcast hook-up was announced at the end of last year, it's taken three months for the FCC and the Justice Department to decide whether they're going to scrutinize the merger. (More time, even, than it took 30 Rock to parody the merger -- clip from Thursday night's...

Read more

Apple's iPad went on pre-order for the lucky Amer'cans today (the rest of us have to wait an interminable extra week or so) but Apple also revealed a little more about its iBooks effort. Guess what? It's surprisingly open. Clicking on the iPad page at Apple.com now reveals a segment in...

Read more

We've joked about the robocalypse a lot, but robot tech really is developing at one hell of a clip. And you may be rubbing, um, shoulders with robo-house assistants sooner than you think, as two recent developments from France and Japan remind us. First up is France's Robosoft with Kompai, who's...

Read more

Inhabitants of the picturesque village of Woolhampton, 50 miles west of London, are set to be guinea pigs for an interesting broadband experiment. Virgin Media is to trial running fiber-optic cables from telegraph poles, piping ultra-fast broadband direct to the villagers' homes. Although you might think that it's just case of...

Read more

Christoph Niemann's latest project is an atlas of daily life. Maps aren't just for getting around anymore; they've become so ubiquitous--and so easy to manipulate--that they're more like raw materials that artists, designers, and everyone else use to make sense of the world as it is, or just make a new...

Read more

For the Meat Packing District eatery due to open March 17, designers ICrave hired artists on Craigslist and Etsy, a plumber who also designs lighting fixtures in styrofoam, a former Swiss goldsmith who recycles street signs, and a pair of women carpenters from Brooklyn who create dazzling floors from reclaimed...

Read more

Anything that Stella McCartney can do, Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone Penn Ritchie Insert Your Name Here And Win A Prize! obviously feels she can do better. She's just inked a deal with Iconix Brand Group that will see her producing a range of clothes for children that will be sold...

Read more

It's been the retailing story for years--and new research says it still is! Yes, online sales continue to soar, recession be damned. We were all probably at least vaguely aware of this phenomenon but to see it in such stark numbers astounds anew. Perhaps the most eye-opening figure of all...

Read more

From a 5,000-square-foot family home in rural New York to majestic hillsides outside Santiago, Chile, with stops in Hamburg, Hong Kong and Seattle; Planet Green goes inside some of the most environmentally and aesthetically conscious homes in the world. Here's a look at a select few. ...

Read more

Let's admit that most green consumer products look terrible--if it's made out of recyclables, odds are, it also looks like it was made by someone wearing patchouli and dreadlocks. DBA, a small start-up based in New York, is looking to change that, with products that are both seductively minimal and fastidiously...

Read more