COVER STORY This issue:   TIME 100 Next: Artists. Kelsea Ballerini and I first met at a country-music awards show. I remember thinking back then how talented she was as a songwriter at asuch a young age. She’s an old soul in many ways. As a veteran songwriter, I’m always looking for authenticity, and I’m really inspired by clever songwriting—songwriting that is not only thought-provoking and meaningful but most of all original. Kelsea writes with all those qualities. She isn’t afraid to be vulnerable and really brave…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

Stella McCartney doesn’t want you to feel, bad. The British fashion designer understands it’s easy to get overwhemed by all the ways the products we eat, buy, and wear come with unintended consequences—for society, for animals, for the planet. And so even if she’s talking about the harrowing conditions workers…

Peter Paccone, a social-studies teacher in San Marino, Calif., has a new teacher’s aid helping him in the classroom this year. He plans to defer to his helper to explain some simpler topics to his class of high schoolers, like the technical aspects of how a cotton gin worked, in order to free up time for him to discuss more analytical concepts, like the effects of the first Industrial Revolution. His new assistant? ChatGPT. “What I feel that I don’t have to do any longer is…