Navigating Public Policy, Technology, Health, Data, and Innovation for a Fairer Future
Good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sports stories are supposed to simplify that further still, handing us a winner and a loser, a hero and a villain. Somebody raises the trophy. Somebody drops the ball. Everybody knows whom to cheer and whom to blame. This story refuses to cooperate. Late on Read More “The Team That Tried Too Hard to Win”
There was a time when horse racing was gloriously inefficient, which is to say human. A man in a wrinkled seersucker suit could study a racing form folded soft from handling, squint toward the paddock, listen to a rumor drifting through cigar smoke, and persuade himself that wisdom, not luck, had brought him to the Read More “This is why we can’t have nice things”
There are times in sport when beauty is obvious. A gymnast floats. A skater lands as if gravity signed a waiver. A downhill racer carves a line so clean it looks drawn by a compass. And then there are times when beauty arrives wearing a mouthguard. The United States women’s hockey team may be the Read More “They Are Team USA Too”
On certain February Sundays the country pauses and performs a ritual that feels older than it is. Families gather, food is arranged in elaborate, slightly comic abundance, and a football game unfolds in the background while commercials and halftime performances take turns at center stage. The Super Bowl has long functioned as one of the Read More “The Quiet Reinvention of America’s Last Shared Event”
The game unfolds the way it always has, without apology, without hurry, without the slightest concern for what the rest of us have decided constitutes progress. A pitcher works through his ritual. A batter steps out, adjusts his gloves, steps back in. The crowd murmurs rather than roars. This is baseball, which is to say, Read More “The Ninth Inning of American Patience”
There are many ways to become an Olympian, and they tend to follow familiar lines. Childhood specialization. Early promise. A narrowing of options so complete that by the time the athlete arrives at the Games, there is little left in life that has not already been shaped around that single pursuit. This is not one Read More “Who is Simona de Silvestro and why you want to know.”
When Philadelphia learned it would host World Cup matches in 2026, city officials projected the usual benefits: tourism revenue, global exposure, infrastructure improvements that would look good in a slide deck long after the fans went home. Missing from those projections, at least publicly, was a simpler question. How many people who live in Philadelphia Read More “The World Cup Was Built on Cities It Locked Out”
American life has developed a convenient habit: we treat outcomes as moral verdicts. If you succeed, you must have earned it. If you fail, you must have fallen short. The logic is simple, efficient, and deeply misleading. This confusion is not accidental. Judging people by outcomes rather than effort flatters those already advantaged and punishes Read More “The Moral Difference Between Effort and Outcome”
Commissioner Engelbert, WNBPA leadership, team owners, and members of the basketball community: I am writing as a longtime supporter of the WNBA who believes that the league is entering an important moment in its history. The momentum around women’s sports has never been stronger, and the WNBA stands at the center of a cultural shift Read More “An Open Letter to the WNBA and Its Stakeholders”
Night in Las Vegas behaves like a living thing. The Strip glows with gold and neon. Light swallows the stars. Every sound echoes off monuments to audacity, each casino reflecting the certainty that anything built with enough money and nerve can be justified later through legend. Inside the Formula One paddock the atmosphere narrows into Read More “What Happens When Apple, Cadillac, and Democracy Walk Into a Pit Lane”