Table of contents for December 25, 2023 in TIME Magazine

Drugs for obesity, Alzheimer’s, and infectious diseases herald a new era of innovation in the pharma business BY ALICE PARK It’s been a while since the pharmaceutical industry last saw a year like 2023, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a slew of groundbreaking and life-changing medications that represent a surge in innovation—and a potential boon to the drugmakers’ bottom lines. Eisai and Biogen kicked off the year with the approval of lecanemab (Leqembi) for Alzheimer’s disease, which is the second medication designed to treat the root causes of the memory-robbing condition, but appears to be the most effective. GSK and Pfizer dropped the first-ever vaccines for RSV in adults, giving older and pregnant people a way to protect themselves—and, in the case of expectant mothers, their…

TIME100 SUMMIT AND IMPACT AWARDS AFRICA The Nov. 17 TIME100 Summit in Kigali, Rwanda—sponsored by Visit Rwanda, Kigali International Financial Centre, and RwandAir—was the first TIME100 event in the region LATINO LEADERS A dinner presented by Nissan in L.A. on Nov. 29 brought together Latino leaders like Dolores Huerta, center, and Eva Longoria, to her right AI EVERYWHERE TIME CEO Jessica Sibley at “Bringing AI Everywhere,” a conversation on Nov. 30 in San Francisco, presented by Intel TIME100 IMPACT DINNER AT COP28 A gathering on Dec. 1 in Dubai, sponsored by Amazon, Deloitte, the U.K. Department for Business and Trade, and MOL THE POWER OF PURCHASE TIME’s Justin Worland, left, at COP28 during a TIME100 Talks panel on Dec. 3, presented by MasterCard TALK TO US SEND AN EMAIL:…

Plumbing the mystery of why some fan-favorite famous couples called it quits after decades BY BELINDA LUSCOMBE The conventional view of marriage holds that its satisfaction levels are U-shaped. There’s a hyped-up romantic part at the start, and then a decline as people come to terms with the fact that life with another person is only sometimes an escalator to the upper reaches of happiness and often more of an Iditarod to a less hostile locale. And then, slowly, satisfaction returns, either because people have made peace with their lot or because they have negotiated their way to a more perfect union. But if 2023’s catalog of prominent marital events suggests anything, it’s that a long marriage is not always a forever marriage. Especially if it’s between two famous, driven…

It was easy to miss, amid the horrors, what answered them. In the blood-soaked weeks that started on Oct. 7, the most consequential acts in Israel and in Gaza may also have been the least noticed, carried out not by those who claimed leadership but by those whom leaders had failed. The people who pulled others out of rubble, or out of hiding, who sheltered strangers, who bent to heal wounds seen and unseen, they all answered unspeakable violence with a shared humanity. But their selflessness did more than save lives. It illuminated the connection at the heart of a contest that has preoccupied the world for most of a century, the fellow feeling that defines a community and, more broadly, a nation. Amid the negation of war, and in…

Donald Trump The GOP front runner kept his eyes on the Oval Office, even as the court cases mounted BY BRIAN BENNETT Some former Presidents retreat to privacy after the pressures of the job. (Exhibit A: George Washington.) Others find a way to stay in the spotlight. (Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter.) Then there’s Donald Trump, who remained the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination throughout 2023 as his pileup of legal woes led pundits and reporters to wear out the word unprecedented. Before Trump’s 91 charges over four indictments, no former U.S. President had ever been indicted even once. The first indictment came in March from New York, tied to his trying to cover up an affair with an adult-film actress. Then came federal charges in June over…

For the young plaintiffs in a landmark environmental case, victory was “a great first step” BY NINIS TWUMASI In 2020, 16 plaintiffs, ages 5 to 22, took the state of Montana to court for, they said, violating their right to a clean environment, which is enshrined in the state’s constitution. This year, after a protracted court fight, they won: on Aug. 14, in a decision that the state attorney general has appealed, a judge ruled that Montana must consider the effects of climate change when deciding whether to begin or renew fossil-fuel projects. Held v. State of Montana is a first of-its-kind case, but—given a rising generation of young activists who know the power of speaking their minds—it is unlikely to be the last. Who better to interview young climate…

TV SHOWS By Judy Berman 1. SUCCESSION and RESERVATION DOGS (tie) This was the rare year when two series brilliantly, in their own ways, fulfilled the potential of television. HBO’s Succession, an Emmy-winning drama that drove watercooler conversation, was the obvious choice. Creator Jesse Armstrong and his virtuosic cast didn’t waste a second of the show’s final arc, which unfolded largely in the aftermath of media mogul Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) ingeniously executed midair death. Every episode earned the fanfare that greeted it: Swedish tech edgelord Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) waging psychological warfare on the Roy kids in Norway! That white-knuckle election episode! That tour de force funeral episode! The bangers just kept coming. And the finale made the biggest bang of all, ending a race to the bottom…