Table of contents for September 25, 2023 in TIME Magazine

TIME should not just reflect the present, it should push us forward I first heard Wemimo Abbey speak in August at the inaugural TIME Impact House in Martha’s Vineyard. It was clear to everyone that night that Abbey’s is a story worth sharing. Together with Samir Goel, the two co-founders have built Esusu, a five-year-old company that helps Americans use their rental history to build credit scores. Abbey, who emigrated as a 17-year-old to the U.S. from Nigeria, watched his mother struggle to repay a high-interest loan because of a lack of credit history—something without which millions of people and communities across the country are unable to access loans that can create wealth. Abbey’s example is a powerful one, showing how personal insight can inspire societal change. It demonstrates…

You don’t have to be a swiftie to have been touched by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which kicked off in March and ended its first U.S. leg on Aug. 9. The tour, which pays homage to every era of the artist’s 17-year career, is set to become the biggest of all time a third of the way through its run: analysts estimate ticket sales will hit $1 billion in March, surpassing the current record-holder, Elton John’s farewell tour, on its way to a projected gross of $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone. BOOSTING LOCAL ECONOMIES The money goes far deeper than ticket sales. The Eras Tour is projected to generate close to $5 billion in consumer spending in the U.S. alone, with fans dropping an estimated $1,300…

Every Fall and Winter, as temperatures drop, it’s a battle between man and microbe, as viruses take advantage of our nesting instincts to spread sore throats, runny and stuffy noses, fevers, and coughs that won’t stop. This respiratory-disease season, however, we’re armed for the first time with tools against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes disease primarily in older people and infants. That means more shots for these groups, but also hopefully fewer infections, visits to the hospital, and even deaths from RSV. Here’s advice from some experts on how to navigate the new choices, and who should be getting which vaccines against the major respiratory diseases we’ll face in coming months. Flu: Everyone 6 months or older should be getting a flu shot to protect against influenza, says…

KELSEA BALLERINI 30 • Old soul By Shania Twain 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 such 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 with her songwriting. She’s also a great friend. We have such a special relationship that is just so real, and that can be rare in our industry. I watch her work incredibly hard and challenge herself, but she also has fun, and…

MORY SACKO 30 • Eclectic chef By Omar Sy I watched him from afar, making his way without fuss, then winning everything from Top Chef to a Michelin star for his Paris restaurant, MoSuke. Then one day, as a gift, Mory Sacko came to cook at my place. I was already curious about Mory’s rise to fame, because I’m touched by his background: he’s the same age as my little brothers. A young Black man of Malian descent, one of nine children, he grew up in the suburbs of Paris reading manga and loving Japanese culture. The TV was his window on the world. Mory learned from his mother and her African dishes that to feed your people is to love them, to bring them together in pleasure and…

The classic vision of therapy revolved around a person on a couch, supine, tapping into their deepest and darkest hopes and fears to a seated guy with a beard. A modern-day remix might look like this: still on a couch, but at home, scrolling through a constantly refreshing selection of mental-health content on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Though it may feel therapeutic, experts advise proceeding with caution. As an increasing number of psychologists step into the role of mental-health influencer, opening the door to fame and financial incentives, their posts are reaching millions of people. It can be difficult to suss out which so-called experts are credible and whether their information is trustworthy—risking misinformation and harmful misunderstandings. If your algorithm is feeding you mental-health content, keep…

Guatemala and Ecuador held elections on Aug. 20; two small countries, but revealing some key trends in Latin American politics. In Guatemala, the progressive anticorruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo won the presidential runoff in a landslide against the conservative former First Lady, Sandra Torres. In Ecuador, the right-wing populist businessman Daniel Noboa edged his way into an October runoff against former President Rafael Correa’s chosen candidate, Luisa González, whom he is favored to defeat. For starters, both Arévalo and Noboa are outsiders who were polling in the low single digits just weeks before overcoming establishment candidates in their respective first-round elections. This evinces strong voter frustration with the status quo in both countries. Guatemala accelerated its slide toward authoritarianism when electoral authorities controlled by the ruling pact arbitrarily barred multiple…

JALEN HURTS 25 • The future of football By Peyton Manning I first met Jalen Hurts—who led the Philadelphia Eagles to the Super Bowl earlier this year—when he was in college and a counselor at the Manning Passing Academy, a summer football camp for high school players. I’ve admired him ever since. I strongly respect his willingness to learn. He’s always thinking about getting better. For example, he will sometimes text me questions about plays that his team can run in the red zone. Though I sometimes have to remind him I haven’t played in seven years (I have to dig into some old archives to remember plays), I’ve so enjoyed these conversations. Jalen is a natural leader who cares about his job and the organization that he plays…

Ali Sayyid, father of six, tries to quickly change direction when his children hear the sound of an ice cream truck coming down a New York City street. He can’t afford it. “In Afghanistan, life was good and they were eating everything,” says Sayyid, who was a civil engineer before the Taliban’s 2021 takeover. He fled with his family first to Brazil and then across the southern border into the U.S., an epochal journey that landed him not only in a new land, but also in its politics. Sayyid is among more than 100,000 migrants who have arrived in New York City over the past year. It’s an influx that threatens to overwhelm the carrying capacity of a city that has made opening its arms to newcomers so fundamental to…

DIED Bob Barker Enduring host It was only fitting that the longest-running game show in North America, The Price Is Right, was home to the host who became synonymous with television longevity: Bob Barker, who helmed the CBS show from 1972 to 2007, and died Aug. 26 at 99. Television came into Barker’s life in the 1950s, when, after making a name for himself in radio, he hosted his first game show, Truth or Consequences, an NBC fixture that dated from 1940. He hosted it until the mid-1970s, even as it coincided with the dawn of his The Price Is Right era. Following his retirement from The Price Is Right in 2007, Barker focused on animal-rights activism—a cause he had embraced for decades, and championed on air. In 2015,…

To hear his rivals tell it, he’s a charlatan unfit for the job. But if you listen closely enough, you also hear fear about the prospects of Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old tech bro who was the surprising bull’s-eye of Aug. 23’s first Republican presidential debate. Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and just might have enough self-made money to go the distance. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie snarled that he’d “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT.” Sniped former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it…

VICTOR J. GLOVER JR. 47 • Lunar pilot Victor Glover was standing in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building in 2013, serving as a legislative aide to Senator John McCain, when his phone rang with an entirely different kind of job offer. It was NASA calling, to ask Glover if he wanted to join the incoming class of rookie astronauts. The former fighter pilot, who saw action in the Iraq War and had applied to the space agency months before, accepted without hesitation. The next morning, he received an email from NASA with details about his new position. The subject line was simply “It wasn’t a dream.” Glover went on to fly aboard the International Space Station from November 2020 to May 2021. In April 2023, NASA…

TXAI SURUÍ 26 • Protecting Native lands Txai Suruí already has the kind of credentials accumulated across a lifetime of advocacy. A member of the Paiter Suruí Indigenous community in Brazil, the 26-year-old activist founded the Indigenous Youth Movement of Rondônia, which rallies young people in her state, and coordinates the Associação de Defesa Etnoambiental—Kanindé, a community organization that has worked with Indigenous people for over 30 years. Suruí also was the first woman in her community to obtain a law degree, which she used, with peers, to sue the Brazilian government for defaulting on its emissions commitments under the Paris Agreement. With the help of cameras, drones, and GPS technology, she works with her community to monitor land invasions and improve accountability. Suruí says that defending human rights…