Table of contents for December 8, 2025 in TIME Magazine

As part of the TIME100 Talks series, TIME senior health correspondent Alice Park moderated a panel on Nov. 12 in New York City with, from left, Raj Panjabi, a former Biden White House official who works for Flagship Pioneering; fitness influencer Jillian Michaels; and Nir Barzilai of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Presented by Shaklee, the discussion covered longevity, the safety of vaccines, and the latest research on weight-loss drugs. Read more about the conversation at time.com/health-talk Branding 101 During a Nov. 18 TIME100 Talks event in New York City, presented by PMI U.S., branding experts discussed the future of the industry and the importance of authenticity and consistency in building trust with consumers: from left, Katy Milkman, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Nuno Leal…

The Trump Administration has begun promoting the idea of 50-year mortgages as a way to make homes more affordable for buyers—a plan that has drawn criticism even from some of the President’s allies, and that experts warn could come with potentially major drawbacks. President Trump floated the idea of introducing 50-year mortgages in a Truth Social post on Nov. 8. Soon after, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte wrote in a post on X: “Thanks to President Trump, we are indeed working on The 50 year Mortgage—a complete game changer.” The longer-term mortgage would mark a significant extension on the most common type of home loan in the U.S., a 30-year fixed mortgage, which borrowers repay over three decades. Several right-wing commentators and lawmakers were quick to voice opposition…

Food is the difference between life and death. Everyone knows this. But it’s also the difference between stability and instability, union and division, and peace and war. I have had a front-row seat to some of the worst recent humanitarian crises—from Yemen and Syria to Afghanistan and Gaza—and this has been true, time and time again. I’ve sat face-to-face with mothers who’ve told me, “My son didn’t want to join ISIS or al-Qaeda, but he had to feed his little girl.” These are families who don’t want to leave home, but will do what any mother or father would to feed their children, even if it means risking everything. The power of food is simple to understand, yet the systems around it are anything but. When famine strikes, we rightfully…

Photograph by AFP/Getty Images Photograph by Clarens Siffroy—AFP/Getty Images Photograph by Carol Guzy Photograph by Doug Mills—The New York Times/Redux Photograph by Andres Kudacki—Getty Images Photograph by Ethan Swope—AP Photograph by Chris McGrath—Getty Images Photograph by Ariana Cubillos—AP Photograph by Ariel Schalit—AP Photograph by Jeff Pachoud—AFP/Getty Images Photograph by Marco Restivo—AFP/Getty Images Photograph by David Guttenfelder—The New York Times/Redux Photograph by Vadim Makhorov—AP…

DIED James Watson Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA If it’s true, as former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, that a country goes to war with the army it has, not the army it wishes it had, so too is it true that a culture gets the heroes it gets. So you can’t have Charles Lindbergh without the Nazi sympathies. You can’t have Thomas Jefferson without the enslaving. And you can’t have Nobel laureate James Watson, who died on Nov. 6, at age 97, without his history of toxic remarks. Watson’s Nobel, which he won in 1962 and shared with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, recognized their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. They were celebrated at the time—but as the decades wore on, Watson’s star dimmed.…

Looking back, my elementary-school experience felt almost bucolic. My classmates and I ran around Saint Mark’s School’s 5½-acre campus carefree. With classrooms opening to the outdoors, we sat outside for lunch in the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains and feared being sent to the administration building, a two-story house converted into offices. The smell of burning forest was a recognizable, if not frequent, occurrence. Teachers would cancel recess, lunch was moved inside from the patio—an annoyance no more ominous than a rainy day. When I visited in February, just a month after the Eaton Fire had ripped through the town of Altadena, Calif., the campus had been transformed. For the most part, the buildings were gone. A chimney from the old house remained standing. A stairwell that once led…

Claire Danes gets a lot of attention for her “cry face.” It is, indeed, a sight to behold. Engulfed by waves of sorrow, her chin vibrates, her eyes scrunch, the corners of her mouth turn down as though tugged by invisible weights. But the crying is just an extreme expression of Danes’ greatest asset: her ability to convey abjection. This quality shaped her performances in roles as different as My So-Called Life’s angsty teen Angela Chase and the doomed female lead in Romeo + Juliet, the bipolar CIA agent in Homeland and the Manhattan supermom of Fleishman Is in Trouble. Even surrounded by misfit buddies or concerned colleagues, her characters feel wholly, miserably—but also, somehow, relatably—alone. Loneliness happens to be the defining attribute of Danes’ latest antihero, Aggie Wiggs, the…

As the industries and companies driving the American economy change, new generations of leaders are rotated in to take the helm. To understand the formative experiences and paths of American leaders, TIME and Statista analyzed the résumés of a diverse group of 4,800 of the most influential figures shaping U.S. society today—from policymakers and corporate executives to leading scientists, educators, and cultural innovators. The dataset is updated yearly to include younger leaders in emerging fields. The result is 125 universities and 175 companies that made the most frequent CV appearances. Many leaders still start their journeys at the elite schools that stay at the top of this list year after year, reflecting the enduring influence of certain established universities in shaping future leaders. Harvard, Stanford, and MIT continue to rank…

“The camera eats first.” A decade ago, that phrase was a joke about influencers and their avocado toast. Now it’s shorthand for how every corner of life—dinners, cleaning, milestones, even grief—can be packaged for public consumption. We live in a world where intimacy has become inventory, where the difference between living and posting is often just a matter of lighting. The rise of the creator economy has blurred the line between the personal and the performative. What was once private—a positive pregnancy test, a baby shower, a child’s first day of school—has become brand content. For many creators, the more intimate the moment, the more lucrative the post. The financial incentive to share has turned the private self into an asset class. The blueprint was laid years ago by mommy…

The new film Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s award-winning 2020 novel, imagines how William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in a haze of grief over the death of his son. In a sly bit of casting, director Chloé Zhao, the Oscar-winning flmmaker behind Nomadland, chose brothers to play the doomed child and the actor portraying his onstage avatar. Jacobi and Noah Jupe grew up in the U.K., raised by a producer dad and actor mom. (They also have a sister.) In the movie, they both share scenes with Paul Mescal, as the Bard, and Jessie Buckley, as his earthy wife Agnes. The Shakespeares are presented as loving parents who view the world differently—William is dedicated to his craft, Agnes to the mystical qualities of the land. After Hamnet’s death, both fall into…

There are no heroes in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel of end-stage French aristocratic decadence. Its chief villain is Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, a master manipulator who exploits her former lover the Vicomte de Valmont’s resurgent desire for her with a wager that dooms them both. As a teenage Fiona Apple dryly noted: “It’s a sad, sad world when a girl will break a boy just because she can.” The Seduction, HBO Max’s deliciously acted, baroquely libidinous yet sneakily substantive first French-language series, fleshes out that world. Created by Jean-Baptiste Delafon and directed by Jessica Palud, it centers Merteuil, adding backstory that recasts her as a hurt woman fighting for the freedom men enjoy. A fairy-tale cold open sees the young heroine (a magnetic Anamaria Vartolomei)…