Table of contents for February 28, 2022 in TIME Magazine

IVAN REITMAN WASN’T ALWAYS THE funniest guy in person, but in his body of work, he was one of the greatest comedic geniuses of our time. He directed and produced so many beloved films, including National Lampoon’s Animal House, Space Jam, Kindergarten Cop, and Ghostbusters, which I starred in. Reitman, who died on Feb. 12 at 75, knew what was funny, and he had the ability to bring it out on screen. In 1982, I ran into Reitman by accident on an elevator while shooting a movie. That’s when he first mentioned Ghostbusters—and that there was nothing in it for me. So I said, “Good luck with that.” But then I auditioned anyway and they loved me. My career would not have been the same if it weren’t for Reitman.…

COMPETING FOR CHINA ON FEB. 8, THE U.S.-BORN freestyle skier Eileen Gu landed a spectacular left double-1620 with safety grab on her final run to win gold. She’d never pulled off the daring trick in competition before—much less in front of a global audience—and it instantly made her one of the Games’ biggest stars. Excitement was so great over Gu’s first medal that chatter about it temporarily crashed the internet in China, where the 18-year-old has been nicknamed Snow Princess and has graced local editions of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Not everyone is cheering her on, however. Born to a U.S. father and a Chinese mother, Gu spent a few seasons competing at major events for the U.S., where she was raised and still lives. But in 2019, at age…

As the pandemic has evolved and most Americans have sought vaccines for protection, and as those who chose to forgo vaccination became infected (often more than once), the risk that COVID-19 poses for most Americans has declined. It’s estimated that more than 90% of Americans have some level of immunity to COVID-19 through vaccination or prior infection. Along with this wall of immunity, approaches adopted when we had few tools to prevent spread are no longer providing benefits that always justify their costs of social disruption, diminished classroom experiences, and economic drag. But we’ve been slow to adapt our strategies to the evolving notions of risk. The CDC is soon expected to update its policies, moving away from national recommendations and instead tying to measures of local prevalence its guidance…

DANIEL PINK IS THE AUTHOR OF SEVERAL BEST-SELLING books that probe human behavior. He’s written on the importance of timing, the mechanism behind motivation, and the sociology of selling things. His new book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, is about the wrongheadedness of the “no regrets” credo. Why write a book on regret? The external reason is that we’ve gotten it profoundly wrong. If we do not understand this emotion, then we are leaving its capability on the table. For me personally, it’s largely because I have regrets of my own. I can’t imagine having written this book in my 30s. But in my 50s, it felt kind of inevitable. You write about four core categories of regret: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and…

On a cold October morning in Lander, Wyo., Liz Lightner makes a few mental notes as she sits by a stranger’s bedside. The man is 79, has lung cancer, and is in a deep-sleep coma. He’s wearing a blue scuba-diving shirt that’s worn out and looks as though it’s been loved, washed, and rewashed for many years. Besides the company of Lightner and his cat, the man is alone and moments from dying. Using only words, Lightner, 49, carries him away from a home he can’t physically leave anymore and guides him under the sea, where she knows he used to be happy. She leans her head against his chest and tells him they’re now swimming together in the tropical ocean, where so many vibrant schools of fish surround them.…

CASH DANIELS ONCE FOUND A “CREEPY DOLL head” in the river. “We find more strange things than you’d think,” he says: a tiny Mickey Mouse figurine, two old cassette tapes with songs that dated back long before 12-year-old Daniels was born, shotgun shells. But mostly he unearths cans, straws, and plastic bottles that threaten the wildlife he treasures. He posts some of his most bizarre finds on Instagram and then usually tosses or recycles the trash—although a friend kept the creepy doll head. Daniels spends several hours every week cleaning up cans and bottles in the rivers near his home with other teen environmentalists in Chattanooga, Tenn. Together, they have collected more than 1 ton of aluminum cans, nearly 1,000 cans a week for a year. His goal for…

THE WEREWOLF MOVIE MAY BE A HORROR STAPLE, BUT the sad reality is that compared with vampires, our furry, fanged friends lag in popularity by a moonlit country mile. Werewolves don’t ignite the erotic imagination like vampires do; voraciousness isn’t as sexy as neck-biting. But there’s still poetry to be found in the idea of doomed beings stuck in a cycle of perpetual hunger. The Cursed, written and directed by English filmmaker Sean Ellis, isn’t a werewolf picture in the strict sense: there’s nothing shaggy or wolflike about the beasts in question. But they are, as the title suggests, beings brought to life by a deadly bite, their unearthly cravings an affliction foisted upon them by an unnamed ancient spirit. Set somewhere in 19th century France, this is a movie…

SABAA TAHIR STILL REMEMBERS WHEN A classmate at her high school in California’s Mojave Desert probed her about whether she had a green card. The Pakistani American author remembers countless mispronunciations of her name. She remembers violent threats. Tahir’s family owned an 18-room motel off the main road of their isolated, majority-white town. Her parents’ accents and the family’s religious traditions made them different. “We felt it every day,” says Tahir, now 38, “the things kids said to me at school—asking questions that indicated not just a lack of knowledge, but disdain.” That feeling of being othered runs through Tahir’s latest young-adult novel All My Rage, out March 1, which closely follows two Muslim Pakistani American teenagers—Noor and Salahudin—as they navigate grief, faith, love, and trauma while coming of age…

On his first day at work at a Russian art gallery last year, a security guard doodled eyes on the faceless figures in a valuable avant-garde painting, the gallery said on Feb. 7. He reportedly said he was “depressed” by the artwork. Though the piece was restored successfully, Russian police have since opened an investigation into the incident. Here, more scandalous vandalism and misguided touch-ups. —Eloise Barry MIRACULOUS MAKEOVER An 81-year-old amateur painter was credited with reviving the tourist economy of her town in northeastern Spain in 2012 after her botched restoration of a centuries-old fresco of Jesus in a local church went viral. STICKY SITUATION After staff at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum dislodged the beard on King Tutankhamun’s 3,300-year-old funerary mask in 2014, they stuck it back on with adhesive,…

Nearly 100% of the snow at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was artificial—pumped out by snow machines rather than by Mother Nature. The lack of natural snow is a first for the Winter Games—though the machine-made stuff has become increasingly common. Artificial snow was first used at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., to supplement natural snowfall. It has grown substantially in importance since. About 80% of the snow used in Sochi in 2014 was artificial, and up to 98% of the snow for the 2018 PyeongChang Games was machine-made. The reliance on artificial snow in Beijing highlights an escalating problem with hosting a snow-based global event as the climate changes. There is essentially no natural snowfall in the Chinese capital, and the average daytime temperature does not…

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HOLDS THAT 2021’s much anticipated hot vax summer never happened, but John Waters knows different. Cinema’s Pope of Trash rents a home in Cape Cod’s queer party destination Provincetown every summer, and last year “it was like the movie The Swarm, but with gay people,” Waters laughs. Although the season marked the filmmaker, author, and cultural icon’s 57th in Ptown, the convergence was like nothing he had seen before. “I hid,” he says—writing in the mornings and spending afternoons on the beach. A self-described “filth elder” who spent his 20s making movies transgressive enough to send his parents’ generation into conniptions, the Pink Flamingos auteur sympathizes with the youth, whose decadent and libidinous urges he knows well. “I feel bad for them,” he says. “They’re quarantined and aroused,…

IN VIENNA, AN EIGHTH round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program continues with little cause for hope that a deal is near. The Biden Administration wants a return to the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal agreed to in 2015 by Iran, the Obama Administration, France, the U.K., Germany, Russia, and China. Then President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from that deal in 2018, and Biden ran for President on pledges to bring it back. For now, Iran’s negotiators remain at the table, but they’ve made clear Iran is far from satisfied with the terms on offer. A decision in early February by Iran’s army to show off a new long-range missile doesn’t help. The talks aren’t dead. In fact, a return to JCPOA would,…

IN A DRAB OFFICE building near a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi, nearly 200 young men and women from countries across Africa sit glued to computer monitors, where they must watch videos of murders, rapes, suicides, and child sexual abuse. These young Africans work for Sama, which calls itself an “ethical AI” outsourcing company and is headquartered in California. Sama says its mission is to provide people in places like Nairobi with “dignified digital work.” Its executives can often be heard saying that the best way to help poor countries is to “give work, not aid.” Sama claims to have helped lift more than 50,000 people in the developing world out of poverty. This benevolent public image has won Sama data-labeling contracts with some of the largest companies in…

In November 2020, a flatbed truck pulled onto the Sterling Heights, Mich., campus of military contractor BAE Systems and unloaded two huge, lozenge-shaped Bradley vehicles—a special delivery from the U.S. Army. Workers moved the vehicles into a garage and began pulling them apart, swapping in smaller gasoline engines, electric motors, and a new lithium-ion battery (the exact battery capabilities are a military secret). The result, a hybrid-electric troop transport, is best likened to a 28-ton Prius, plus tank treads, a turret, and a 25mm cannon—all with an expected 10% to 20% improvement in fuel economy. “The Army is getting greater capability, dependability, and survivability with hybrid-electric drive,” says Jim Miller, head of business development at BAE’s combat-systems division. “And then they get the environmental impact.” To be clear, even a…

GITANJALI RAO WAS TIME’S FIRST KID OF THE YEAR, named in 2020 for her work as a scientist and leader. Now 16, Rao remains focused on her research and on expanding access for kids to use their unique perspectives to innovate as well. She spoke with TIME about what she has done with her title. It’s been a year since you were named TIME’s Kid of the Year. What have you been up to? It has been an absolute whirlwind of emotions. I’m glad that it has given me a more impactful voice. I work very closely with the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation and Angelina Jolie, and I worked with students in Cambodia for their workshop. Also, I have spoken at so many conferences now. I’ve talked on the future…

The heart of a city may beat loudest in its restaurants, the places where people gather to eat and drink, to gossip and celebrate. In New York City and Philadelphia, for some 80 years, the Horn & Hardart Automats were perhaps the best measure of the pulse of city life, according to first-time filmmaker Lisa Hurwitz’s delightful documentary The Automat. The idea of “automating”—where individual items sat behind little windows, purchased by dropping nickels in a slot—would become the hallmark of a chain that existed only in two cities but whose cultural reach was vast. During the Depression, a cup of coffee and a slice of pie cost just a few nickels at Horn & Hardart, providing sustenance and pleasure for city dwellers stretched thin. The coffee would flow…

THE WOMEN’S FIGURE SKATING EVENT IN Beijing was teed up to be a celebration: a showcase for a remarkable group of Russian teenagers who are pushing the boundaries of their sport, with jaw-dropping quadruple jumps proving that women are capable of the same athletic feats as their male counterparts. Then one of those women—the youngest and most talented of the three—tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug. Kamila Valieva, 15, failed a drug test taken on Christmas Day, but because of delays in reporting, her results didn’t become available until after she had competed in the team event at the Olympics, where she became the first woman ever to land a quadruple jump at the Games, helping the Russian team top the U.S. for gold. She successfully appealed a suspension, and…

IT TOOK ONE MORE OLYMPICS than he—and everyone else in the figure-skating world—expected, but American Nathan Chen finally has his Olympic medal. And it’s gold. The 22-year-old Salt Lake City native skated the program of his life in Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium on Feb. 10 to stand atop the podium. Japan filled the remaining spots, with Yuma Kagiyama earning silver and Shoma Uno bronze. “I just had a blast out there,” said Chen, who skated to a medley of Elton John tunes including “Rocket Man.” “I’m so happy; that program is so much fun to skate.” It was Chen’s gold to lose, just as it was heading into the Games four years ago. He was considered a favorite in PyeongChang, but Chen couldn’t meet the moment and skated an uncharacteristically…

A Ukrainian soldier observes pro-Russian forces amassed on the front line in the breakaway Donetsk region of Ukraine on Feb. 8. A massive Russian troop buildup on the border has sparked fears of an invasion. In a Feb. 15 statement, President Joe Biden said the U.S. had been engaging in diplomacy with Russia in an attempt to stave off a major military conflict. Russia’s demands include legal guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO. Biden said the U.S. was ready to respond “decisively” if Russia invades Ukraine. ▶ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox…

I ALWAYS TAKE NOTE OF PICTURES OF WOMEN WHO ARE not flashing a camera-ready grin. They make me wonder what such a woman has done with her life that it need not be rendered more palatable with a big, uncomplicated, toothpaste-ad smile. So the first photo I saw of Claudia Booker—the one the people who loved her selected for her obituary when it ran nearly two years ago—held my attention from the beginning. As I explored the life of Claudia Booker, who died on Feb. 19, 2020, at 71—after careers as a teacher, a community activist, a lawyer, a Carter Administration staffer, an administrative judge, and, finally, a doula, childbirth educator, and midwife—I found not simply the story of a woman with a remarkably agile mind. A few days before…

IN MOST STATES, ASPIRING BARBERS have to spend as many as 1,000 hours in training to get a license. To drive a 40,000-lb. truck, though, there’s no minimum behind-the-wheel driving time required, no proof of ability to navigate through mountains, snow, or rain. There’s a multiple-choice written exam, a medical test, and a brief driving test—which in some states can be administered by the school that drivers have paid to train them. As trucking companies hustle to hire more drivers in response to supply-chain issues, the roads may grow more dangerous. First-year drivers are involved in more crashes than other truckers, and putting more inexperienced ones on the roads could increase accident rates. The 5,005 fatalities from crashes involving large trucks in 2019 were a 43% increase from 2010, even…

On the day he was scheduled for a COVID-19 vaccination, 77-year-old Jaikishan Ram wrapped himself in a well-worn wool jacket, cap, and sweater to prepare for the three-hour trek down the mountain. To access the main road from his home high in the Himalayan mountains of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, Ram had to first climb down a mile of steep, unpaved, sloping path. From there, it was another 90 minutes on the main road to the village of Padampuri. That’s where the only government hospital and walk-in COVID-19 vaccination center in the Dhari area—home to some 30,000 people spread across 46 villages—is located. It was early September, and India was still recovering from a devastating second COVID-19 wave, driven primarily by the Delta variant. According to official government figures,…

FOR MINA FEDOR, THERE WAS NO OPTION BUT TO speak up. The preteen had witnessed a harrowing rise in anti-Asian violence since the start of the pandemic, including a troubling incident that happened to her mother, who is Korean, near their home in Oakland, Calif. Fedor started small, calling out xenophobia during a virtual school assembly in March 2020. But after seeing the organizing around the Black Lives Matter movement and a shooting in Atlanta that killed eight—six of them women of Asian descent—nearly a year later, she wanted to do more to stand up to racist hate. In March 2021, she organized a rally to call for a stop to racist violence toward Asian Americans, hoping that at least 70 people would attend; the rally drew a crowd of…

THE 1990S AND EARLY 2000S WERE A golden era of odd but ambitious little American indies like Burr Steers’ Igby Goes Down and George Huang’s Swimming With Sharks. They may not have been perfect, but at least they had chutzpah on their side. Fewer of those movies find their way into the mainstream today, but Brian Petsos’ wonky comedy Big Gold Brick shows a similarly idiosyncratic, go-for-broke spirit. Its low-key eccentricity—driven by an affably capricious performance from Andy Garcia—is its greatest pleasure. Aspiring writer Samuel (Emory Cohen) has already found great success at being a loser. He’s about to be tossed out of his apartment, and he’s had it with life. After stumbling out onto a dark road, he’s hit by a car. Behind the wheel is middle-aged gent Floyd…