Los Angeles is a town of sports legends. But in my opinion, few can rival @candaceparker . On the court, she’s earned virtually every accolade possible. Off the court, she is a ground-breaking commentator and investor.
When Parker announced her retirement, many of us were shocked—not because she hadn’t accomplished enough to hang up her jersey—but because it seemed like she would go on forever.
I got the chance to speak with Parker about her next move as president of women’s basketball at @adidas and about how to push brands to truly invest in women’s sports.
Big thanks to @msjeannegraves@simone.niamani and @fastcompany
Please check it out.
When President Donald Trump announced his plans to turn Venezuela into an American protectorate, control Venezuela’s oil industry, and depose Venezuela’s President, he labeled his foreign policy the “Donroe Doctrine,” a Trump-ification of President James Monroe’s doctrine to oppose interference in the Western Hemisphere.
“This is OUR Hemisphere,” declared the U.S. State Department.
Cuba, Trump said, would be next.
The island nation lost access to Venezuela’s oil, which it had relied on for decades. Shortly after, the U.S. effectively cut Cuba off from the rest of the world’s oil. Some 11 million Cubans paid the human, economic, and geopolitical costs.
Cuban patients died for preventable reasons, a symptom of a strangled healthcare system. Blackouts caused Cuba’s economy to wither, exacerbated by the trillion-dollar trade embargo the U.S. has had on Cuba since the 1960s. Cuba became a crucible for Trump’s doctrine.
For TIME, the incredibly talented photographer @moisessaman traveled across Cuba, capturing the state of the country. And thee of Cuba’s leading writers—Leonardo Padura, Carlos Eire, and Ricardo Torres—wrote about what Cubans want and need.
Please check it out.
Women’s basketball is skyrocketing. The WNBA continues to break viewership and attendance records. And thanks to a new CBA, WNBA players are set to become some of the highest-paid women athletes in the world this the upcoming season.
But this growth didn’t happen overnight.
“From the beginning, there was optimism and real conviction about what women’s basketball could become. But belief and scale are not the same thing. The early years proved the concept; they did not yet build the engine,” writes Keia Clarke, CEO of the New York Liberty for TIME. “You cannot grow a billion-dollar enterprise on enthusiasm alone. Sustained growth requires sustained infrastructure. Elite performance requires elite conditions.”
The New York Liberty are already considered the most valuable women’s sports franchise in the world.
Clarke’s goal: build the first billion-dollar WNBA franchise.
Read her full insights.
Since the U.S. launched military operations against Iran, and especially since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices have spiked. But pain at the pump is just the beginning, warn Ryan Cummings and Neale Mahoney in TIME.
“For ordinary American families, the impact of the war in Iran will not be a single price spike, but rather a rolling series of shocks that will hit their wallets at every turn,” they explain.
These rising costs threaten to undermine any efforts, real or postured, to address the issue of affordability, which is increasingly important to voters.
“For American consumers already stretched thin, the message is an unwelcome one: Trump has launched a war without a playbook for managing the economic fallout, and the cost-of-living crisis isn’t going away anytime soon,” write Cummings and Mahoney.
The Pentagon and Anthropic are in a heated battle—and the temperature is only rising.
For TIME, @alexandra1dc argues that the issue at the heart of the standoff is privacy and a “data broker loophole” which enables the government to purchase troves of personal data.
“The Fourth Amendment, our nation’s fundamental shield against mass surveillance, generally requires a judge’s approval for government surveillance. It’s why police can’t purchase the authority to warrantlessly search a house or wiretap a phone,” she explains. “But law enforcement and military intelligence agencies are frequent customers of the commercial data brokers that stockpile and sell the most intimate details of Americans’ lives—their device locations, web browsing records, communications metadata, purchases, and online searches.”
Jeffrey Epstein has, rightfully so, been labeled a “monster.”
But as @taranajaneen expertly argues, this title “obfuscates the insidiousness of sexual violence.”
The Epstein scandal should spark anger, she explains. But it should also compel us to address the underlying system which has normalized sexual violence.
Do not miss her powerful words.
It was a joy to work with @cyrusveyssi on their thoughtful article exploring the economic, cultural, and political impact of influencers.
Be sure to check it out!
Honored to have been able to work with @jordanchiles who is speaking out about the ongoing controversy which has surrounded her 2024 bronze medal.
“As an athlete, I am taught that details matter. That timing matters. That fairness matters. So when those same values were missing in the legal process, it was impossible to stay silent. Some people want me to move on and just accept what has happened, but this fight is too important to every Olympic athlete who receives a medal and stands proudly on the podium representing their country,” she writes for TIME.
“The decision by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court affirmed something essential. That fairness matters. That facts and evidence matter.”
Be sure to read her full article.
Especially proud to have worked on TIME’s latest cover, which highlights words of five incredible Iranian writers: Azar Nafisi, Arash Azizi, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Azadeh Moaveni, and Shahrnush Parsipur.
In the aftermath of the Islamic Republic regime killing thousands of Iranian protestors, this package captures Iran’s beauty, conflict, and evolution with nuance and authenticity.
The first month of 2026 has brought violence to Minnesota at the President’s command.
As protesters push back against the deadly policing of their neighborhoods, the standoff between federal forces and citizens is ultimately “about an authoritarian grab for power, whether our fragile democracy can repel it, and what it will take for Americans to take action,” writes Kica Matos for TIME.
The Architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year. The recognition reflects not just the power of AI as a technology, but of the power brokers actively shaping how our society is structured.
This question of power is one I posed to AI’s most prominent thinkers. The result: a package of op-eds that captures AI’s significance—as well as AI’s risks.
Geoffrey Hinton, one of the “godfathers of AI” and a professor at the University of Toronto wrote about how AI “is the most impactful technological development of our time.”
Fei-Fei Li, “godmother of AI,” co-director of Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI Institute, and CEO of World Labs explored AI’s next frontier.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and CEO of Relativity Space explained how AI is shaping the world order—and set the stakes for why, and how, the United States must win the AI race.
Yoshua Bengio, the world’s most-cited computer scientist and professor at Université de Montréal highlighted the potential “catastrophic outcomes” of unfettered AI development. As he puts it: “Intelligence gives power, potentially highly concentrated, and with great power comes great responsibility.”
I can’t stop thinking about this poor robot.
Russia’s “AI-powered” AIDOL robot “toddles” to the stage and then crashes—forcing his babysitters to drag his broken body off the stage and for the production crew to scramble to close the curtains.
When we place our sci-fi expectations on innovation, we not only get hilarious mishaps like this, but we ignore the very real ways tech like AI, machine learning, and robotics is actually disrupting our society.
Poor AIDOL was set up to fail. And boy did he fail. But that doesn’t mean that robotics aren’t rapidly transforming our economy.
