Table of contents for July 3, 2023 in TIME Magazine

A greatest-hits soundtrack produced by self-criticism would sound something like this: You should have done better on that project. Why isn’t the house cleaner? You tanked the whole soccer game! You’re a bad parent, an even worse colleague, and a sorry excuse for a friend. And you’re wasting so much time right now that you’ll be late—again. The tendency to engage in negative self-evaluation afflicts almost everyone. “People treat their self-criticism as though it’s part of themselves, like their eye color,” says Rachel Turow, a Seattle-based clinical psychologist and author of The Self-Talk Workout. “They say, ‘Oh, I’ve just always been my own worst critic.’ And a lot of people don’t realize how damaging it is.” Listening to your loud inner critic is a habit—not a fixed personality trait,…

There’s a lot more to a good job than making money. But for more than 50 million Americans who work in low-wage jobs, pay matters a lot. Low and inconsistent pay wreaks havoc on workers’ lives, leaving no margin for emergencies and increasing stress, which leads to more errors. As a result, many find themselves in a vicious cycle: low pay hurts their performance, keeping them stuck in low-paying jobs. In my research and work with more than two dozen companies at the Good Jobs Institute, I’ve seen that companies, too, pay a steep price for low pay. Low pay drives high employee turnover, and in settings like senior living, call centers, warehouses, retail stores, and restaurants, we have seen some companies replace their entire frontline workforce annually. Many executives…

One of the highest-earning college athletes on the planet says a little prayer. Sam Hurley, a University of Texas sophomore, prays that God gives him the wings—represented by an angel tattoo on his left calf—to carry him over the high-jump bar. The overwhelming majority of college athletes who earn in the neighborhood of $1 million or more to market their name, image, and likeness (NIL), as Hurley does, perform athletic feats before 50,000 to 100,000 fans in packed football stadiums or in sold-out basketball arenas. But a few hundred eyes, at most, are fixed on Hurley as he attempts to win the Texas Invitational. On this April afternoon in Austin, Hurley, 19, soars, arches his back over the bar, and flops on the mat. To a smattering of applause, he…

BYD Global EV powerhouse BYD is the world’s most important automaker that most Americans have never heard of. The Shenzhen-based firm may shun the U.S. market for political reasons, but it accounts for 39% of electric or hybrid cars sold in China—the world’s largest auto market—and is present in 53 countries and regions around the globe. The $100 billion firm—whose initials stand for “Build Your Dreams”—aims to become the world’s top EV maker by selling 3.7 million cars in 2023, compared with a projected 2 million for Tesla. Backed by Warren Buffett, and led by founder and CEO Wang Chuanfu, it’s a vital driver of the green-energy revolution as the leading clean-car brand in markets as diverse as Brazil, Colombia, Israel, and Thailand. —Charlie Campbell MICROSOFT Integrating AI A…

The Bear isn’t just a TV show anymore; it’s a phenomenon. When it appeared on Hulu last year, viewers devoured the FX dramedy about a high-end chef who takes over his family’s Chicago sandwich shop after his brother’s suicide. Restaurant workers praised its verisimilitude. Its wild-haired star Jeremy Allen White became a sex symbol. Even Tom Colicchio was a fan. Still, I wasn’t immediately sold. The show’s tone felt inconsistent in early episodes. Characters languished for too long in the background. The plot barely moved for the first half of the season. But when The Bear stopped chasing its tail, the result was a brisk, gruff yet openhearted tale of a troubled kitchen evolving beyond both the precarity White’s Carmy inherited and the fine-dining hell he and his pragmatic…

TIME’s first original podcast, Person of the Week, is a weekly conversation with the world’s most influential people, hosted by senior correspondent Charlotte Alter. Listeners will hear candid conversations with politicians, business leaders, and celebrities—like actor Elliot Page (above right, with Alter in the studio), who spoke about his new memoir, Pageboy. Starting June 15, find new episodes wherever podcasts are available, and more information about each episode at time.com/personoftheweek SUBSCRIBE The TIME CO2 Leadership Report Insight from the intersection of business and climate change To receive senior correspondent Justin Worland’s new weekly column sent straight to your inbox, visit time.com/co2-report See all the newsletters Find all TIME’s email lists at http://time.com/newsletters SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT In the Brief (June 12), we misstated which year the app Grab was…

The cause of the haze was simple enough. As hundreds of wildfires burned in central Canada in early June, exacerbated by dry conditions and warm temperatures, cities across the eastern U.S. saw thick smog and record air pollution as minute particles hopped a ride on a breeze traveling north to south. “All the smoke that gets deposited up in the air gets caught in the wind flow and pushed out into the States,” says Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather. “These fires are still burning up there. They’re still putting smoke into the sky, and as long as you have a source of smoke it’s going to be an issue.” But if the science was simple, the scale was staggering: over 200 out-of-control blazes; New York City registering…

I still have the green dress I wore when I first met Peter Beard. It was a crisp November evening in 2004. I was 21 and had just moved to New York City. My father invited me to join him at Beard’s book party at the Explorers Club. A photographer and an artist—he was sort of a big deal in the ’70s. I’d never heard of him. I felt a jolt the moment we were introduced. Beard had a clear-cut, electric face. Sixty-six years old, he was a dominating presence. “Tell me about you,” he said. His focus on me was startling. When my father left to drive home to Connecticut after the party, he assumed I’d join, offering to drop me at the apartment I shared with my…

Within the pantheon of American folk heroes, no figure walks taller than Paul Bunyan. A giant lumberjack accompanied by a blue ox named Babe, he’s often credited with carving the Grand Canyon and spilling the trail of water that would become the Mississippi River. Tall tales aside, he literally towers over our national landscape in the form of flannel-clad roadside statues scattered from coast to coast—monuments to the rugged workingmen of an ascendant nation. A century after the Bunyan legend’s heyday, the U.S. is, to say the least, no longer on the rise. So it’s fitting that Boots Riley, the veteran rapper and activist who pivoted to the screen with 2018’s surreal anticapitalist satire Sorry to Bother You, has created a new supersize folk hero for our tumultuous times.…

Secret Invasion (JUNE 21) Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury takes center stage in the latest small-screen installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s TV expansion. The thriller follows the spy as he takes on the Skrulls, a hidden enemy waging a war in the shadows. Olivia Colman, Ben Mendelsohn, and Emilia Clarke also star in the limited series based on the comics. (DISNEY+) Directions to Myself By Heidi Julavits (JUNE 27) Heidi Julavits’ second memoir unfolds over four years, beginning with the summer when her then 6-year-old son approaches the “end times of childhood,” which sends Julavits spiraling as she reflects on memories. Issues of politics and gender thread together with the daily ins and outs of family life. The Horror of Dolores Roach (JULY 7) The eight-episode horror series, based…

DIED Tori Bowie Tragic reminder of a maternal-health crisis BY ALLYSON FELIX My former U.S. Track-and-Field teammate Tori Bowie was a beautiful runner. Effortless. At the Rio Olympics, I ran the second leg of the 4 × 100 relay. Tori was the anchor. When she got the baton, I remember thinking, “It’s over.” She just accelerated. At the 2017 World Championships in London, Tori won the 100-m title, earning the title of “world’s fastest woman.” Tori was 32 when she was found dead on May 2. An autopsy, the results of which became public on June 13, cited possible complications including seizures brought on by preeclampsia, a high-blood-pressure disorder that can occur during pregnancy. I developed preeclampsia during my pregnancy with my daughter. The doctors sent me to the…

Bobby Kennedy Jr. is still talking. Up in the hills of Los Angeles, in a house studded with family memorabilia, the scion of the Kennedy clan and Democratic presidential candidate has been expounding for 90 minutes on everything from Latin American populism to the CIA, from cryptocurrency to the war in Ukraine. His phone is pinging with messages from politicians and Twitter celebrities, and he needs to jump on a flight to Las Vegas, where he’ll address a tech convention. But Kennedy waves off his wife, actor Cheryl Hines, as she pops into the living room to remind him he still needs to pack. He wants to talk about how people are finally listening to him. “I am constantly surprised by it,” Kennedy says of the attention to his…

One day last fall, Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, came across a clip from Russian TV that had gone viral on social media. It showed one of Russia’s most prominent talk-show hosts calling for Ukrainian children to be killed—“thrown in a river with a strong current”—for speaking out against the Russian occupation of their homeland. Even by the ugly standards of Russian warmongering, the statement seemed to cross a line, and the host soon lost his job over it. But it continued to trouble Zelensky. “Their society accepts this, consumes it,” he told me with evident disgust a few weeks later. “They live in this paradigm.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine was in its ninth month at that point, long enough to harden Zelensky to many of its horrors—the…

KIA AMERICA Powerful EV pivot Kia America is shedding its reputation for inexpensive cars and embracing the industry’s future with stylish, award-winning electric vehicles. In 2022, the company hit a new annual sales record as it launched its first dedicated battery-only EV: the EV6 crossover, which helped Kia place second only to Tesla in U.S. EV sales for most of the year. The automaker’s transformation continues in 2023, with its new three-row SUV, the EV9; 15 EV models are planned for Kia’s global lineup by 2027. “People are surprised when they get into a Kia vehicle because it’s not the Kia they remember,” says Kia America CEO SeungKyu Yoon. Maybe that’s why Kia says that in 2022, 60% of its customers were new to the brand. —Novid Parsi TAZO…

AMEELIO Free connection Many in U.S. prisons have no choice but to pay shockingly high prices to call a loved one. Ameelio’s first-of-its-kind, free video-call and messaging app is gaining momentum as an alternative: Iowa, Colorado, and Maine expanded or began using it in 2022, and others are in the tech nonprofit’s pipeline for 2023. State prison systems are embracing change because they understand that greater connectivity helps lower recidivism rates, says CEO Uzoma Orchingwa. A 2020 study of Minnesota prisons found that receiving at least one video visit can reduce the likelihood of reconviction by 22%. As states debate making prison calls free and the FCC moves to regulate the industry, Ameelio’s mission may have found its moment. —Jeremy Gantz SCHNITZER STEEL Better metal From screws to skyscrapers,…

Kim Cattrall is back—and not just in a deliriously hyped And Just Like That cameo. The same day Max debuted Season 2 of its abysmal Sex and the City sequel, Netflix dropped Glamorous, a lighthearted drama that casts Cattrall as a model turned cosmetics magnate. Surely, the timing was no coincidence. The nice surprise is that this delightfully frothy show earns its shade. Glamorous is no SATC clone. It’s a glossy, self-consciously campy workplace soap that, like Ugly Betty and The Bold Type, follows a headstrong ingenue with a job in a competitive, female-dominated industry. But this time, the ingenue is Marco Mejia, a gender nonconforming queer man played with doe-eyed charm by YouTube breakout Miss Benny. Cattrall’s Madolyn Addison plucks Marco from a makeup counter and makes him…