COVER STORY This issue: An interview with the President at a pivotal moment in his second term. Donald Trump struts onto the new White House helipad, an 80,000-sq.-ft. expanse of carved granite on the South Lawn. “Can you believe this?” he says, taking in the scene, the Washington Monument rising in the distance. The President lingers over the details of the project with obvious pleasure, pointing out the gray stone imported from Italy…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

Life once followed a familiar pattern. Myanmar is poorer and more violent since its dictator seized power. Now he wants rapprochement with the West. First came the mirror. before Min Aung Hlaing enters the room for his first Western media interview since seizing power in a 2021 coup d’état, aides maneuver an ornate Rococo-revival looking glass into place for preening. Then come requests for his portrait: light him from the left, the better to disguise a thinning hairline no longer hidden beneath an olive cap…

Every room has a parallel conversation running beneath the surface—a pulse, a vibe, a temperature. This undercurrent of unspoken behavior delivers data instantly, but only if you can decipher it. Neuroscientists, psychologists, anthropologists, and linguists have studied how subtle behaviors create meaning. I’ve spent the past decade training people to spot those signals: who holds power, which relationship will influence a decision…