Now that the WNBA finds itself at the halfway mark of the season, its time for an All-Star break to celebrate.
Tip-off for the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game will take place tonight (Saturday, July 19) at 8:30 p.m. ET at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, home court of the Indiana Fever.
Fans, players, media, and coaches voted to create an All-Star pool from which team captains drafted two teams of 12 to go head-to-head.
Team captain Caitlin Clark and team captain Napheesa Collier are ready to lead their squads to victory, but only one can end up on top. Lets take a look at the rosters and some new exciting rules before we dive into how to tune in.
Who made the 2025 WNBA All-Star teams?
Clark and Collier became team captains because they received the most fan votes. They were tasked with drafting their teams from the pool of players.
Head coaches Cheryl Reeve and Sandy Brondello were chosen because the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty have the best records in their respective conferences so far this season.
Originally, Reeve was supposed to coach Team Clark, and Brondello, Team Collier, but the women switched things up since Collier and Brondello already have a working relationship.
Clarks loyalty to her Indiana Fever teammates runs deep and flows into the All-Stars. She chose Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell. Collier acted in a similar manner, choosing Courtney Williams from the Minnesota Lynx and selecting Kayla McBride as an injury replacement alternate.
You can view the full team rosters on the WNBA website.
What are the four new rules for the WNBA All-Star game?
The WNBA is keeping things fresh. To give players a chance to show off their skills, four-point circles will be added to the court. Clark, unfortunately, tweaked her right groin in a recent game and will now sit this game out.
The shot clock also got shortened. It was previously 24 seconds, but will be 20 on Saturday. This will keep things fast-paced.
Another rule will also move things along. There will be no free throws for the first 38 minutes of the game. Instead, when a foul occurs, the maximum points will automatically be awarded to the team of the player who was fouled. For the last two minutes of the game and any overtime period, free throws will take place.
Adding more drama to it all is the use of live substitutions. The offensive team can sub in one player at a time while the ball is in the backcourt. They are not allowed to touch the ball until it crosses half-court.
How can I watch or stream the 2025 All-Star Game live?
ABC has the privilege of bringing this high-energy game to the masses. If you have an over-the-air antenna, ABC is free to watch.
Traditional cable subscribers can easily find ABC in their channel guide and also watch ABC on its website if they sign in with their provider.
If you’ve cut the cord, some live-TV streaming services carry ABC and let you watch it live in some markets. Those include:
Hulu+Live TV
Fubo
YouTube TV
Be sure to double-check that these services carry ABC in your region before committing, due to regional differences.
The ink was barely dry on President Donald Trumps April tariff missive, when owners of independent nail polish brands sounded the alarm that the changes could chip away at their businesses.
That shocking executive order ushered in sweeping tariffs of as much as 145% on Chinese imports. Much has changed since then. In May, the U.S. struck a trade deal with China that included a 90-day truce and reducing tariffs to a still-high 30% for most imported goods; then, in June, President Trump said a trade deal with China is done and tariffs on goods imported from China will total 55%, while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the level wont increase again. There’s currently a pause on tariffs of goods imported from China, effective until August.
But the prolonged chaos of the past few months has dragged small beauty brands into the middle of a big trade war. And its created uncertainty that could leave a long-lasting smudge on business.
Even the latest news doesnt provide much reassurance, says Rachel Wraith, founder and owner of Rogue Lacquer, a Phoenix-based indie line of nail polishes. It still feels like a slap in the face and I never feel certain with any set decisions because everything seems to change, regardless she tells Fast Company.
Waking up each morning lately, Wraith says, has meant bracing herself for what news might come that day that will affect her livelihood. Hurdling one obstacle, she adds, makes her question what the next one will be. The uncertainty is very hard and very stressful.
Going rogue
For more than a decade, Wraith has been making customized nail polishes and she launched Rogue Lacquer in 2018. The business is a primary source of income for Wraith and her husband; he works full-time for the business, while she also has a full-time job in healthcare. The powdered pigments that Rogue imports from China are a crucial component for Wraith to create the customized nail polish colors that she sells in small batches.
And there arent really alternative locations to source these pigments, which meant news of tariff increases left Wraith with little option but to pay up. This is a broader problem for the beauty industry as a lot of manufacturing is concentrated in China, adds Sucharita Kodali, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.
The issue right now is there is no definitive place that is an alternative to China because you dont know what that situation is going to be in three months or six months, Kodali says. Until the dust settles, no one knows.”
Advantages for big brands
Even as tariff increases rocked indie beauty brands, the impact was less severe on the industrys biggest players. Thanks to margins of about 80% to 90% on many beauty products, some companies are able to absorb higher tariffs without making price increases, Kodali says.
But the longer-lasting impact tariffs will have on the beauty industry remains to be seen, notes William Curtis, senior industry and risk analyst at IBISWorld. In the short-term, the big winners will be the companies with a more diversified, more domestic manufacturing base.
Curtis points to LOréal, which has been actively diversifying where it produces its broad array of beauty products in recent years. Two-thirds of the LOréal products sold in the U.S. are now produced in the U.S., according to company figures.
Of course, moving production elsewhere isnt an option for small beauty brands. Business owners could have taken a lesson from Trumps handling of tariffs during his first administration, Kodali says, and their options now are rather limited, which means some will face irreparable harm.
Adds Wraith: Did anybody think to ask a small business how these decisions would affect them?
Pushback on pricing
After Trumps announcement of tariff increases in early April, many brandsincluding Rogue, Lurid Lacquer, Atomic Polish, and Dam Nail Polishposted candidly on social media that their businesses would be directly impacted, even if they werent quite sure then by how much. Comments from customers were overwhelmingly positive, with people empathizing about the stress the uncertainty was causing.
Some of that sentiment has since changed as brands have begun testing just how much they can increase prices without their polishes losing luster in the eyes of consumers.
Mooncat, an indie brand of nail lacquers, announced it would increase the price of its polishes by $1 to $2 each while also upping the free shipping threshold. Most bottles of Mooncat lacquer now retail for $16 to $18an amount some customers will happily pay, but a bridge too far for others.
I cannot ever imagine paying almost $30 (including shipping and tax) for one bottle of polish, one person posted on a thread discussing the price changes on the RedditLaqueristas subreddit. Other customers have complained in comments on Instagram that, amid the price increases, theres no longer transparency about how much money is going to benefit cats in need of new homes, the brand’s charitable mission.
Mooncat declined a request for an interview for this story.
Brands embrace transparency
ILNP and Cirque Colors have also recently announced price adjustments, with both brands opting for selective, rather than across-the-line, increases. Most bottles of ILNP polish now retail for $12.50 each, while many of Cirques polishes start at that same price but also go up to as much as $16.50.
The reception to these price changes has generally been more positive among the 940,000-plus members of the RedditLaqueristas community. Some people commended ILNPs transparency and others noted that Cirques hasnt raised prices in several years.
For beauty brands already struggling, tariffs have introduced a wild card that could make their future more uncertain, says Curtis.
In May, the owner of Dimension Nails announced she was shutting down her store effective June 30, though she didnt specifically cite tariffs as a reason. The owner of Triple O Polish announced in mid-April that she wouldnt be able to keep her business open if the highest-planned tariffs went into effect, though shes still operational amid the tariff pause.
What works best
While the community of indie nail polish brands is niche and very friendlya group where Wraith might seek out guidance or compare notesshes intentionally not monitoring what other brands are doing in the wke of tariff announcements.
I dont want to make a decision based on somebody else’s business model, she says. You just have to figure out what works best for your business.
The risk of mirroring price increases taken by other brands, Wraith says, is that doing so could lead to a drop-off in sales in a year thats already proven to be a bit weaker. That appears to be a broader trend, as LOréal reported that U.S. sales of beauty products were more challenging than anticipated in the first quarter.
For now, the biggest change Wraith has madewhich she announced in Aprilhas been to increase the threshold on orders eligible for free shipping, from $75 to $100. For those polishes made with high-end pigments, Wraith has bumped up prices by 50 cents, but shes resisted across-the-line price adjustments and most bottles of polish retail for $12 or $13.
Navigating a new normal
Prior to the initial tariff announcements, Wraith says she was fortunate to have a lot of pigments on-hand, and shes since limited imports to only those supplies she really needs. She has paid tariffs twice since April, including when they were at the highest level, and in this period of flux, shes opted not to branch out so much with the range of products shes creating.
By keeping costs more consistent, Wraith is optimistic that Rogue can ride out this period of uncertainty. But its hard to make decisions, she says, when theres the very real possibility that she could place an order one day, and tariffs could change the next.
This is characteristic of the chaotic rollout of tariff increases thats created a lot of confusion for small businesses, as Kodali notes. My hope is that in six months, all of these business owners will be in a better place.”
Even if nail polish is a luxury item, creating lacquersfirst as a hobby, now as a businesshas brought Wraith a lot of joy over the years because she enjoys making other people happy. And people need that more than ever right now.
The data, both empirical and intuitive, could not be more clear: Generic, direct-answer and productivity AI platforms, most notably OpenAIs ChatGPT, are dumbing down an entire generation of students, eroding critical thinking skills, and atrophying the muscle that is such a core component of what makes us human.
And yet, universities and K-12 institutions are agreeing to substantial deals and partnerships with generic AI platforms, such as ChatGPT EDU, to bring these destructive tools into their classrooms, encouraging their use among the student body even as the correlation between usage of current AI tools and critical thinking shows devastating negative effects. Reading competencies are down for the fourth straight year and 50% of students admit to using ChatGPT for a quiz, test or essay.
Weve all had some version of the same conversation about COVID’s effects on students. Many lost an entire year or more and were just passed through to the next grade level. It was a disastrous effect for students who were already behind the curve. In effect, direct answer generation AI tools are creating a “COVID 2.0” generation of students who wont lose just one year but a significant portion of their educational experience. Their development and personal agency is diminishing every day by using AI as a tool for shortcuts and cheating.
Its Worse than you Think
Theres a reason we dont allow children to drive a car before a certain age. Theres a level of responsibility society has determined is necessary to drive a powerful machine. AI is a powerful machine but were handing our children the keys to a Mustang GPT with no training and no protections. Predictably, its not going well.
You may be wondering why a founder of an edtech AI platform is critical of AI in education. To be clear, I know that AI can have an immensely positive impact on education. I know that AI can act as a force-multiplier for teachers and it can open up a world of knowledge and inspiration for every student, everywhere.
AI can do all of these things but not the way were currently using it. Not with generic AI platforms like ChatGPT that simply give students the answers.
AI makes things substantially easier, and that’s amazing. I use AI, including ChatGPT, consistently every day and it makes me and my team 10x more productive. Ive seen some amazing things, like a 6-year-old building a functioning app using AI, and so many others releasing a massive amount of creativity. But we cannot teach children that life is as easy as sticking in a prompt and waiting for an output, there will always be hard problems that require critical thinking and a lack of tools.
As a recent student, I have seen the outsized role this technology plays in our day-to-day lives, the immense ramifications of irresponsible integration, and that the situation is far worse than even the media is portraying it right now.
Let me repeat that: the situation is far worse than even the media is portraying it right now. Seemingly every headline regarding AI in education highlights the devastating impacts and, for maybe the first time in history, the media is actually downplaying the ramifications.
A friend and recent graduate told me that he hasnt typed an assignment in two years; hes simply copied and pasted from ChatGPT every single time. He just graduated from a top-tier university and is wholly unprepared for the workforce. Have an issue? Oh ill just ChatGPT it, no how, no why. This is the norm now, its not an outlier.
As 96% of teachers acknowledge AI is the future of education, change must be made today or this and subsequent generations of students will continue to see their critical thinking, literacy, attention spans, and ability to contribute to the workforce severely degraded. This change must begin with an acknowledgement by the wider educational and technology communities: generic productivity AI platforms, like ChatGPT, are not a solution to integrating AI into classrooms.
There is Hope, if We Act. Right. Now.
Every school needs to make a simple declaration today: they will not use platforms that do not focus on ethical and responsible use of AI for studying and learning. This means tools like ChatGPT, which allow for direct answer generation, have no place in our educational system.
The promotion of purpose-built AI learning platforms that dont give students the answer will provide schools and teachers, regardless of their bandwidth, with a foundation to take confident steps forward and create a better future for students.
Tech Leaders and Educators Must Work Together to Establish Guidelines
The education establishment is in a tough spot right now. They know they need to implement AI solutions into their classrooms to prepare students for the workforce of the future, but the leadership often doesnt see alternatives to generic tools like ChatGPT. Universities are eager to remain competitive and educators on every level want to give their students the best chance to succeed in the AI world.
We have to start with a set of core principals that we all agree is in the best interests of our students and in the best interests of society:
Responsible AI edtech companies must work hand-in-hand with educators at every level to develop and enhance AI platforms built for true learning.
Generic direct answer generation AI tools, like ChatGPT, have no place in the classroom.
AI must be used as a tool for learning, not shortcuts and cheating.
AI will never replace teachers. AI is a tool to help teachers, to save them time and free them up to focus on their students.
Any AI tool introduced to classrooms must be designed to promote responsible studying and true learning.
This is a list that will grow and evolve over time, but we have to start somewhere.
Tomorrow is Too Late
We have an opportunity right now, today, to act. Were already seeing the devastating effects of ChatGPT on our students and the worst side effects wont even show up for years to come. We have a chance to change course and realize all of the amazing things AI can bring to our students but only if we act now.
Its time to introduce responsible AI use to every student, everywhere, including productivity tips, prompt strategies, collaborative tutors, and true workforce prep for the AI world.
AI can have such a positive impact on education. It can help us realize true equality of opportunity for every student who wants to succeed.
The time to act is now. There are alternatives. There is a better way and a better future.
If we dont act soon, we risk lobotomizing an entire generation and making them completely dependent on I systems to do everything for them; but maybe that’s what some want . . .
Lets get to work.
Sudden equipment failures. Supply chain surprises. Retaining staff as the goalposts move in real time. These arent challenges Ive faced as a tech founderbut I have faced them running restaurants.
Twenty years ago, I cofounded a conveyor belt sushi concept that grew over 10 years across 12 units and six states. And if I’ve learned one thing from over two decades of operating restaurants, its that they require more discipline than any startup, with far less margin for error.
On paper, hospitality and tech dont seem to overlap. Yet, many of my current practices as a leader were forged in a restaurants back of house, where staying close to the numbers and the customer experience was key to survival.
A master class in leading under pressure
I didnt expect my time running a sushi chain to influence how I run my software company. But the leadership fundamentals that were critical in the restaurant business turned out to be the same ones needed in tech.
Putting out fires in tech usually means resolving a bug. At a restaurant, there could be a literal fire. Once, during a lunch rush at one of my restaurant chains Washington, D.C., locations, our hood system failed. As teriyaki chicken smoke filled the HVAC system and forced a 14-story building to evacuate, we scrambled to fix it without stopping the line.
Even when the crisis isnt so dramatic, leaders have to rally the team quickly. Staff and customers depend on you in person, so you think on your feet to handle any challenge at hand.
As you juggle priorities on the floor, youre also protecting razor-thin margins behind the scenes. Unlike in tech, theres no bridge round to float you through a rough quarter. Its your job to monitor costs and adjust staffing or procurement to keep things stable.
Anyone whos worked in a restaurant knows that its a unique type of chaos. But the instincts the environment encourages can also drive resilient tech companies.
3 restaurant rules that tech leaders should borrow
Restaurants dont have the luxury of recurring subscription paymentsthey have to fight every day for every dollar of revenue. That reality pushed me to be data-driven and relentlessly hands-on. While some lessons didnt feel obvious at the time, they guide how I lead in tech today. For example:
1. Be actually customer obsessedWell-run restaurants are maniacal about customer service. If you need proof, look to restaurateur Will Guidaras concept of unreasonable hospitality: creating extraordinary experiences by exceeding customers expectations.
In this mindset, every touchpoint during a meal matters, from the first greeting to how the check arrives. Staff are expected to embody that service culture, no matter their role.
Tech companies love to say theyre customer-centric, but how often does that ethos extend across the org? If customer experience is siloed to success or support teams, you limit your ability to build with empathy.
Tech leaders should take a page from restaurants and make it everyones job to surprise and delight customers. It can be as simple as a program that lets team members nominate partners and clients to receive curated giftswhether theyre celebrating a win or going through a difficult time. Real customer obsession shows up when service is a shared culture, not a siloed department.
2. Your unit economics matter
I could go on about how restaurants profit margins force you to get the math right. But one habit it encourages is a laser focus on unit level costs. If any element of a takeout order, from packaging to ingredients, is out of balance, your margin disappears. Before you know it, your profit & loss statements have red at the bottom.
Tech companies often overlook unit economics, but getting back to the basics of cost structure helps prevent unnecessary burn. Metrics like customer acquisition cost and lifetime value let you stay laser-focused on profitability and ensure you’re building a business that can sustain itself.
It’s surprising to me how many tech entrepreneurs will claim success when they have early clients with strong usage metrics but little or no revenue. If you cant charge for it, is it really adding value? Rigor at the unit level lets you scale responsibly and course-correct as the market shifts.
3. Break down silos and build a culture of teamwork
Imagine if the kitchen and front-of-house staff stopped talking during a dinner rush. Orders would back up, wait times would spike, and customers would walk out before their food hit the table.
Since coordination is make-or-break in a restaurant, leaders are wired to instill a culture of teamwork. Front-of-house and back-of-house employees don’t point fingers at each other, they solve issues together.
In tech, building that instinct to collaborate means giving teams visibility into each others work. Engineers listen in on customer support calls and product managers shadow the QA team. When staff realizes how their work ladders toward the same goals, people start offering support without being asked.
In fact, we are so focused on hospitality for our customers that we often see too many people running toward the same problem. But thats the better issue to haveit means teamwork is the norm, not an anomaly.
Bringing restaurant discipline to the startup world
When margins are tight, customer expectations are high, and every dollar of revenue takes real work, success depends on rallying employees with a culture of shared ownership. Thats the kind of leadership restaurant operators practice every daywhy should startups be any different?
The stakes are distinct, but the playbook holds: get close to your customer, know your numbers inside and out, and build a team that solves problems shoulder to shoulder.
The sooner tech leaders embrace this discipline, the better their odds of scaling something that lasts.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I noticed an unusual silence from my 9-year-old’s room. I was surprised to find she wasn’t taking advantage of her allotted two hours of screen time; instead, she was curled up on her chair reading a magazine.
Three decades ago, when I was her age, this wouldn’t have seemed strange. Starting in the late 1800s, the United States had a thriving culture around children’s magazines. Young children would get Jack and Jill, Turtle, or Sesame Street Magazine in the mail; teens would graduate to Sassy, Tiger Beat, or Teen People. But as the internet emergedwith blogs, streaming sites, and online games competing for young people’s attentionmagazines lost their luster. Although there are a few legacy magazines that still publish, like Sports Illustrated Kids, National Geographic Kids, and Highlights, most have gone out of business over the past 15 years.
[Photo: Honest History]
In a strange twist, however, kids’ magazines are making a comeback thanks to a new flock of startups. My daughter, for instance, was pouring over Anyway, a magazine for 9- to 14-year-olds that debuted in 2023. Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara launched the magazine with a Kickstarter campaign to see whether there was an appetite for a publication that deals with the issues tweens are facing, from understanding body hair to developing personal style. The founders reached their funding goal within days, and hundreds of families now receive their quarterly magazine.
Anyway is part of a broader wave of new publications that began nearly a decade ago with Kazoo, a quarterly magazine for 5- to 12-year-old girls that features contributors like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Jane Goodall, and has won a slate of awards. There’s Honest History, which makes history engaging to elementary school kids. And Illustoria, a kid’s magazine for children up to 14, meant to encourage creativity and imagination. One of the more recent entries is Spark, a monthly activity magazine for kids between 4 and 8.
According to these magazines’ founders, their publications are growing not in spite of smartphone culture, but because of it. As it becomes clear that too much screen time can be harmful to children, parents are willing to spend money on print magazines because they provide an alternative to technology. And this new world of kids’ magazines raises the interesting possibility that today’s children who grow up with print publications may continue to seek them out as they get older.
[Photo: Kazoo]
An Ad-Free Business Model
Erin Bried, founder of Kazoo, had spent her entire career in magazines, as an editor at Self and Glamour. She’d seen the industry collapse as advertising revenue dried up and people stopped buying print magazines. Despite this, she believed there was a market for a magazine for young girls that inspired them to be smart and strong. I would take my daughters to the magazine rack and there really wasn’t anything they were interested in, Bried says. It occurred to me that I could create it.
Bried quit her job to focus entirely on Kazoo. She began with a Kickstarter campaign to see if there was any appetite for the kind of magazine she had in mind, featuring stories by top children’s authors, interviews with heroines like Sonia Sotomayor and Misty Copeland, and comics. She raised an astounding $171,215 the highest figure for a magazine. Nine years later, the magazine has tens of thousands of subscribers who pay $58 a year, and every year the circulation grows. It’s the only children’s magazine that has won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence.
[Photo: Kazoo]
For Bried, it was crucial not to rely on advertising. She had seen how quickly advertisers had pulled out of magazines when they realized they could reach people more directly on social media and Google. But also, having direct subscribers gives Bried more control over her company. At so many magazines, you were reliant on ad dollars, clicks, and algorithms, she says. You were reliant on outside forces and never had total control over your own success. We aren’t in that situation.
While Kazoo is profitable, its budget is much smaller than those of kid’s magazines of the past. Bried has made the business work by doing most of the work herself. She writes most of the copy, assigns fiction stories and comics, and hires illustrators. I only bring on female creators, given the focus of the magazine, and I make sure to pay them well, she says. But you cannot imagine how much work I personally put into each issue. (For instance, she deals with customer service issues, which means walking to the post box to send off isses that got lost in the mail.)
It’s a similar story at the other magazines, which all rely on subscribers. The founders run a very tight ship, doing most of the work themselves, tapping on freelance artists and writers. And most are profitable. Sparks, founded by Katie and Cody Gibbs, is already in the black after one year, at a price of between $6.50 and $8.75 a month, depending on the length of the subscription. We didn’t want it to be cost prohibitive, Katie says. But we’re grateful to be profitable so quickly.
[Photo: Anyway]
Beautiful Immersive Art Objects
Given that these magazines are competing with the visual appeal of screens, the founders have worked to make them aesthetically appealing. Their covers are beautiful, featuring stunning, immersive art and very little text. Honest History‘s cover this moth features a retro-modern image of robots, circuits, and clocks to reflect the issue’s focus on the history of technology. Anyway‘s features stunning photography of a female skateboarder in mid air. They’re very different from the magazines of the ’80s and ’90s that tended to have crowded covers packed with text advertising the content inside.
While Katie Gibbs creates the content and puzzles in Spark, she partners with a design agency called Whiteboard that creates all of the illustrations. The magazine has a very clean aesthetic and consistent visual branding. There’s a lot of white space, a soft color palette, and some hand-drawn illustrations in the midst of the graphic design.
[Photo: Anyway]
In the past, consumers thought of magazines as disposable. But given that today’s consumers aren’t used to spending money on magazines, Honest History’s cofounder David Knight felt that it was important to deliver a product that felt more like a book or an art object that families would keep coming back to. When people are spending between $12 and $15 an issue, they’re more intentional about the purchase, and they’re looking to buy something that feels permanent, he says.
This influences how these magazines tackle content. While kids’ periodicals used to focus on current events, today’s magazines tend to focus on topics that tend to be more evergreen. We’re trying to stay plugged into the issues kid’s care about today, but we’re always thinking about whether a reader will find this interesting a few months, or years from now, says Anyway‘s Swetzoff.
[Photo: Emily Star Poole]
An alternative to screen time
Gen Z, who are now between 13 and 28, were the first cohort to grow up in a world of smartphones, social media, and video streaming. For years, it was unclear how this technology would impact them, but there’s now a growing body of data suggesting that it is problematic. A new meta-analysis of research suggested that children who spent a significant time on screens were more likely to develop socio-emotional problems. And a study by Gallup found that Gen Z reports the poorest mental health of any generation.
As parents of tweens, Swetzoff and McNamara were alarmed by all of this data. They scrambled to find ways to help their kids navigate technology and develop strategies for coping with emotional challenges. A print magazine seemed like a smart solution. When we first had the idea for coming up with a magazine for teens, some parents asked why it had to be on paper, when it could so easily be online, Swetzoff says. But then, more data began to emerge about the impact of digital media on our kids, and we saw a shift. Parents really understood the value of having a print magazine.
Anyway addresses some mental health issues directly. In the most recent issue, for instance, there’s a whole section about why sleep is important and how tweens can get better quality sleep. It’s also full of ideas for fun activities that don’t involve screens, like cooking and flower arranging.
[Photo: Emily Star Poole]
Parents of younger kids are eager to avoid the pitfalls of the previous generation. Spark is specifically designed to give 4- to-8-year-olds an alternative to screen time. It’s full of old fashioned puzzles and activities, like mazes, spot the difference pictures, and color by number.A big theme throughout our magazine is slowing down and noticing things, she says. We’re encouraging kids to look closely at the art. Can you find the flashlight somewhere in this camping scene?
Honest History is on a similar mission. There’s something inherently calming and regulating about giving children something they can sit down with and encouraging them to look carefully at pictures, says cofounder Brooke Knight. It encourages better focus and learning, as opposed to a screen where they have images flashing at them.
In an ironic twist, while technology killed the last generation of kid’s magazines, it is also technology that appears to be breathing life back into this business. Today’s parents seem willing to spend money on engaging and educational magazines, if it will get them away from shows and social media and video games. We’re seeing kids fall in love with magazines again, says Swetzoff. It’ll be interesting to see if they keep seeking out magazines as they get older. There’s a chance the magazine industry will make a comeback.
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Just weeks ago, Moodys chief economist Mark Zandi was signaling cautious optimism. In a mid-May conversation with Gunnar Branson, CEO of the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE)a global network of international investors focused on U.S. real estateZandi said the economy appeared resilient and that the additional housing market softening this spring looked more like yellow flares than anything more serious.
That caution has since escalated: Zandi is now issuing a red flare.
In a July 13 post on X, Zandi warned that home sales, homebuilding, and even house prices are set to slump unless mortgage rates fall materially from their current 7% rangesomething he believes is unlikely.
The housing downturn to date has been mostly about the depressed existing home sales, Zandi told ResiClub. New home sales, housing completions, and house prices have held up wellthats about to change.
Existing home sales have been stuck at historic lows since the pandemic housing boom ended in mid-2022. Between early 2020 and 2022, soaring house prices and then soaring mortgage rate hikes rapidly deteriorated U.S. housing affordability.
Since then, the housing sector has been in a slump, with continued job losses and slashed commissions for mortgage brokers and agents as transaction volumes receded.
But now, the housing market could be headed for even more weakness.
One of the clearest tells, according to Zandi, is that builders are now postponing land deliveriesa move that typically precedes a drop in construction activity and could mean fewer starts and completions in the quarters ahead.
Its not surprising that homebuilders are pulling back, given that unsold inventory just hit another 15-year high.
Click here for an interactive version of the chart below
According to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by ResiClub, the number of unsold completed homes hit 119,000 in May 2025the highest it’s been since July 2009, when it hit 126,000.
More home price declines are likely, especially in the South and West
Zandi told ResiClub that he expects national house prices to fall by a mid-single-digit percentage, from peak to trough, over the next 18 to 24 months, assuming mortgage rates remain near 7%.
But not every region will be impacted equally.
Prices will be weakest in the South and West, where affordability is lowest and there has been more construction, he said.
These regionsmany of which saw home prices stretch far beyond local income levels during the pandemicare now seeing softening demand and rising inventory.
Unlike the Sun Belt, many Northeast and Midwest markets experienced less pandemic-era migration and limited new construction. With tighter inventory and fewer builder-driven price adjustments, home prices in these markets have remained more stable heading into spring 2025.
Builders in metro areas like Austin, Phoenix, and Tampa, Florida, have leaned on incentiveslike mortgage rate buydownsto keep home prices elevated and maintain sales. But as those incentives become less effective or too costly, some builders are starting to cut prices outright, putting pressure on both the new and resale markets.
Simply put, Zandi thinks the housing downturn is broadening. So far, the housing downturn since mid-2022 has mostly hit one side of the market: existing home saleswhich remain at historically low levels due to lock-in and affordability barriers. But Zandis warning suggests the next phase of the downturn could cut deeper, dragging down home prices in some regional markets as well as construction activity.
Amazon recently announced that it had deployed its one-millionth robot across its workforce since rolling out its first bot in 2012. The figure is astounding from a sheer numbers perspective, especially considering that were talking about just one company. The one million bot number is all the more striking, though, since it took Amazon merely about a dozen years to achieve. It took the company nearly 30 years to build its current workforce of 1.5 million humans.
At this rate, Amazon could soon employ more bots than people. Other companies are likely to follow suit, and not just in factories. Robots will be increasingly deployed in a wide range of traditional blue-collar roles, including delivery, construction, and agriculture, as well as in white-collar spaces like retail and food services.
This occupational versatility will not only stem from their physical designsjoints, gyroscopes, and motorsbut also from the two burgeoning fields of artificial intelligence that power their brains: Physical AI and Embodied AI. Heres what you need to understand about each and how they differ from the generative AI that powers chatbots like ChatGPT.
[Photo: Amazon]
What is Physical AI?
Physical AI refers to artificial intelligence that understands the physical properties of the real world and how these properties interact. As artificial intelligence leader Nvidia explains it, Physical AI is also known as generative physical AI because it can analyze data about physical processes and generate insights or recommendations for actions that a person, government, or machine should take.
In other words, Physical AI can reason about the physical world. This real-world reasoning ability has numerous applications. A Physical AI system receiving data from a rain sensor may be able to predict if a certain location will flood. It can make these predictions by reasoning about real-time weather data using its understanding of the physical properties of fluid dynamics, such as how water is absorbed or repelled by specific landscape features.
Physical AI can also be used to build digital twins of environments and spaces, from an individual factory to an entire city. It can help determine the optimal floor placement for heavy manufacturing equipment, for example, by understanding the building’s physical characteristics, such as the weight capacity of each floor based on its material composition. Or it can improve urban planning by analyzing things like traffic flows, how trees impact heat retention on streets, and how building heights affect sunlight distribution in neighborhoods.
[Photo: Amazon]
What is Embodied AI?
Embodied AI refers to artificial intelligence that lives inside (embodies) a physical vessel that can move around and physically interact with the real world. Embodied AI can inhabit various objects, including smart vacuum cleaners, humanoid robots, and self-driving cars.
Like Physical AI, Embodied AI can reason about physics, as well as how one object affects another. However, since Embodied AI literally embodies a physical entity, such as a robot, it can also alter the real world around it, whether that be a robotic arm performing surgery, a humanoid bot working construction, or a self-driving truck transporting supplies from one location to another.
Embodied AI has advanced capabilities due to the mobility of its physical body and, as Nvidia explains, additional sensors, which can include cameras or LiDAR, that enable it to perceive its surroundings.
A real-time distinction
It is worth noting that the terms “Physical AI” and “Embodied AI” are increasingly being used interchangeably to describe any AI that understands the physics and spatial relationships of the real world and uses that understanding to power the brains behind bots.
However, most experts agree that Physical AI and Embodied AI are interrelated but distinct varieties of artificial intelligence.
Henrik I. Christensen, an expert on robotics and AI and a professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego, says that one distinguishing factor between the two is their real-time operational capabilities. “Physical AI denotes systems that [infer things] related to the physical world, such as friction, elasticity,” Christensen told me via email. This kind of system “may not operate in real time but has a detailed model of interaction in the physical world.”
Embodied AI, on the other hand, “denotes systems that operate in the physical world [and also] interact with objects in the real world, [so] they must operate in real-time,” Christensen says.
This real-time requirement is essential for robots working in the real world. If a robot doesn’t grab something as fast as it should, disaster can strike on the factory floor. He notes that Embodied AI systems often need to use simplified models to ensure they can “provide an answer fast enough.”
Will robots take all the jobs?
LLM artificial intelligence systems that power ChatGPT, Claude, Llama, Grok, and others have long been seen as a threat to white-collar jobs, since they can reason about information and generate answers based on that information, much like a human can. However, because LLMs lack both a physical presence and an understanding of how physics affects objects in the real world, they have generally been seen as less of a threat to blue-collar jobs, which typically involve physical labor and an understanding of how objecs interact in the real world.
But Physical AI and Embodied AI systems change the blue-collar risk assessment. Physical AI systems now possess reasoning capabilities regarding physical interactions, and Embodied AI enables robots to apply that understanding in the real world.
Yet, for now, at least, LLMs still pose a greater threat to white-collar jobs than Physical AI and Embodied AI do to blue-collar ones. This is because LLM technology is readily available and easily deployable across organizations at scale. While Physical AI systems could see nearly as speedy a rollout in the years ahead, Embodied AI systems face more hurdles due to the need to manufacture legions of robots capable of operating in real-world environments.
However, as Amazons one millionth robot rollout demonstrates, companies are increasingly interested in integrating more bots into the workforce, whether thats in the factory or in the kitchen flipping burgers. As for why? Well, to take a line from my own novel, Beautiful Shining People, bots never accidentally drop or damage thingsnot to mention they never get sick, or need days off, or give away free burgers to their friends.
In other words, Physical AI and Embodied AI-powered robots have the potential to save companies a significant amount on their biggest expense: labor. And they are sure to take advantage of it. The only question for me, then, is: When AI takes all our jobs, who will be left to buy the things these companies sell?
You dream of quitting a toxic job, pivoting to a new career, or starting your own business. But theres a financial reality to such a move: can you afford to earn less?
In 2021, I quit a job as an executive at a tech company. I pivoted into content marketing and journalism, and, initially, I was earning about one-third of my previous salary. But I had spent months looking at our household budget, and was prepared to earn even less.
When youre determined to make a change, youll look at your finances differently. You should calculate your freedom number and understand the changes you need to make in your budget.
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Keep in mind that your freedom number is not your final destination. Its a transitional change in your income to pursue the career you want.
Why your freedom number matters
Your freedom number is the bare minimum you need to cover your essentials: rent/mortgage, groceries, insurance, utilities, etc. Its not the same as what youre spending to support your current lifestyle.
Calculating your freedom number forces you to think about what youre willing to give upeven temporarily.
Lets say youre earning $100,000 today and think you need to earn $80,000. But once you go through the numbers and cut everything nonessential, you might find that the number is far below $80,000. Knowing that makes it easier to navigate a career change, because you know what you need to get by.
The bare minimum is your freedom number.
Closing the gap in your freedom number
If you dont think youll earn enough to cover your monthly expenses, there are ways to close the gap between your income and your freedom number.
You might build up some savings and draw from that account when you make your move. Or you could supplement your income with a side hustle.
When I first changed careers, I took a new full-time job and freelanced on the side. The combination of my new salary and my freelance earnings helped me reach my freedom number. It meant working in the evenings and on weekends, but it was worth it to make the change.
Keep in mind that a lower income might be temporary. Within eight months of starting a new career, I took a new job at a much higher salary. I just needed to get a bit of experience on my resume, and then many more doors opened for me.
As you settle into your career change and earn more, you can add back the things you enjoyed about your lifestyle. The temporary squeeze is worth it to find a freedom number that makes a lot of career options possible.
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On this week’s Most Innovative Companies podcast, Cloudflare COO Michelle Zatlyn talks with Fast Company staff writer David Salazar about hitting $1B in revenue and going global, as well as why defending businesses of all sizes online is more necessary than ever.
The week of the WNBA All-Star Game, Jess Smith, president of the Golden State Valkyries, shares how the team has quickly built a brand identity in its first year in the leaguebreaking season ticket records, surpassing expectations on and off the court, and setting a template for future expansion teams. Smith digs into the business impact of Caitlin-mania, how sports is a reflection of wider trends in society, and critical lessons learned in a career that spans the MLB, NHL, Major League Soccer, the National Womens Soccer Leagueand now the WNBA.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
Were halfway through the Valkyries’ inaugural season in the WNBA. How’s it going so far? I mean, the team is solidly mid-table in the standings. Is that better than you expected? Were you hoping for more?
I mean, for me, I oversee the business side of the Valkyries, but I’ve known since we hired general manager, Ohemaa Nyanin, and she hired Coach Natalie Nakase that the culture they were building was one of team over self where anything’s possible when you can work together.
And I think as a fan, for me, and watching this team come together, the defense they play, how they tackle each opponent one by one has just been remarkable. And I think it’s a joy to feel what the fans feel in those surprises compared to many expansion teams, regardless of sport, just in the history of sport. For us, that has just been remarkable and it’s been quite a journey.
How important to the league and to your team’s business has Caitlin mania been? I mean, your timing for a new franchise couldn’t have been better. You broke records for season ticket sales even before the season started. Is that because of that timing or are there other things that you were doing?
So previous to my time here at the Valkyries, I was a part of building Angel City Football Club from day one. That’s the women’s soccer club in Los Angeles beside Natalie Portman, Julie Uhrman, and Kara Nortman.
So different sport, different league, different market, and same playbook to many extents where when you build unapologetically and relentlessly to serve a unique fan base that has been waiting for something powerful in women’s sports, you see the output, you see sold-out arenas, sold-out venues, record-breaking merchandise that really translates to also lifestyle merchandise. You see unique audiences pouring in.
So the growth has been here for quite some time, and no growth is linear, right? So whenever I talk about growth, I also like to make sure that I’m chatting about since Title IX, there have been so many different moments in time that have led us to where we are today where you’re really seeing this full-scale, high-level expansion, no longer, “Will the league survive?” type of commentary.
I think Caitlinthe records she was breaking in college and how she can shoot the ball, the logo threesit’s fun, right? But what she’s brought into the league is that traditional sports fan, right? Somebody that tuned in because there was great basketball happening and then followed her into the WNBA and they’re like, “This league is great.”
And so certainly she personally has a ton of fans, as she should. She’s a great force and great athlete within this league. But I think you’re also seeing that as a part of the continued growth, right?
For us here at the Valkyries, we’re the first expansion team since 2008, and we’ve said from day one, well, maybe I’ve said and made everybody else say it, but that’s a great responsibility. People have been asking the W for more for a long time, more of everything. Right? We want more teams, we want more roster spots, we want more visibility, we want more, more, more.
Well, Golden State was the first answer to more. And so the world, as soon as that happened, kind of turned and said, “Okay, what are you guys going to do?” Right? To know that as the first expansion team since 2008, we were going to be what people looked at of what the standard would be, not just for us, not just for our fans, not just for the Bay Area, but the future state of this league.
And so I think for us it was a really monumental moment actually welcoming Indiana into Chase Center and into what we call Ballhalla. Because as I was talking to different media that week, a lot of what I said was, Caitlin’s used to obviously traveling and having a ton of fans wherever she goes, and I think she always will, but I don’t know if she was used to coming into an arena that was a sea of violet and truly there in a home court advantage that we were able to put together alongside our fans and community in a short period of time.
I’m curious about that audience differentiation. I mean, you mentioned you worked at Angel City FC, you’ve worked in Major League Baseball, you’ve worked in the NHL, you worked in Major League Soccer, you’ve been at a lot of different leagues. What’s different about the fan for the W than those other leagues, and I guess what’s different about the fan for the Valkyries specifically in your market?
Well, I think first and foremost, from the outside looking in, you kind of just assume a sports fan is a sports fan, right? If somebody is a traditional fan, they’re going to be a 49ers fan, Giants fan, Sharks fan, you’re going to kind of go through the major sports franchises. Well, sometimes that’s true. How those fans act within those different realms are much different. And every league does have profiles of demographics that are more apt to be their fans, right?
So that’s a science. The NHL and Major League Baseball are not approaching things the same way. And I think having experience in multiple different leagues gave me the confidence of understanding and in wanting to build things in a unique way, because that’s actually what makes each league powerful in its own.
And specific to the W and specific to women’s sports, but even more broadly than the W, is it’s the women’s sports fan that I think has been undervalued and understudied for a really long time, right?
So they’re not in people’s databases probably. I can’t tell you the number of people that would come up to me before we went on sale, before we really had a brand and just say, “Please sell me a premier experience. I want the club with the cool food and the floor seats. I don’t want something that assumes I want to pay less to gain more access.” Right? They wanted to be served something like they would be where you would traditionally see that in men’s sports.
We understood that really no matter what, whether it’s WNBA, NBA, MLS, NWSL, you were seeing from a ticketed fan base, from a season ticket holder really always les than 10% of a crossover, so why would you build your product that way?
So as I came to the Valkyries, I think the opportunity was so great in that Golden State, they built Chase Center, they’ve won a few championships along the way, and they’re just known to be genuinely caring and genuinely talented at whatever they do on and off the court. I feel like I’ve joined the Avengers in so many different ways when you walk in these walls.
How do you build into the innate trust of Golden State and yet build uniquely for this audience, this young diverse audience that probably isn’t closely following the NFL, the NHL, Major League Baseball? Maybe they go to games, maybe they know a little bit, maybe they’ve chosen one, but it’s an audience that is really thoughtful around right now where they spend their time and money. They want to be on things they believe is building a better tomorrow, things they believe brings them community, they want to be around like-minded organizations.
And I think for the Bay, this is a woman’s sports market. This market’s been waiting for something powerful to come. And Bay FC’s obviously done a tremendous job launching right before us as well. But this market’s also where the world looks to see what comes next. It’s innovative.
People here don’t have the mindset of needing to see something tested before they buy in. In fact, they take pride in wanting to buy in from day one and be those first and early adopters simply because of the region that we are a part of.
