Table of contents for May 8, 2023 in TIME Magazine

Kate Hanselman’s home is like a shrine to hobbies past and present. There’s fencing gear from previous lessons, and two pairs of shoes she used during her love affair with rock climbing. “I find yarn everywhere because I love knitting, and I have a whole set of embroidery stuff,” she says. Plus: stacks of puzzles, her partner’s golf clubs, and equipment from his flying lessons. “Our house is like a full hobby station,” she says with a laugh. Challenging, fun, and engaging hobbies have the power to make us happier and healthier, says Hanselman, a psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner with the counseling practice Thriveworks. Such pursuits help us grow in creative, physical, or intellectual ways, and can boost self-esteem. Plus, they often foster connection with others. Research suggests that…

TIME’s mission is to tell the stories of the world’s most influential individuals and to recognize their contributions to life on this planet. And there is perhaps no greater form of influence today than working to combat the climate crisis, an imperative that has long animated TIME’s coverage of the problem. Last year TIME created TIME CO2, a platform for climate action, and now, in partnership with it, is launching the Earth Awards to recognize leading figures in the most important work there is. Our first Earth Awards honorees embody values we see as pillars of a more sustainable future. Mark Ruffalo and Gloria Walton have, for a decade, worked together at the Solutions Project, fighting for the belief that clean energy increases racial equity. Lisa P. Jackson joined…

Vanessa Nakate grew up in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. In 2019, at the age of 22, she began to realize how deeply climate change was affecting her country, and launched what has developed into one of the world’s most impactful youth-led movements for climate justice. Among other things, Nakate founded the Africa-based Rise Up Movement and has served as a Sustainable Development Goals young leader at the U.N. Her leadership, poise, and clear-eyed approach to climate change make her uniquely qualified to answer some of the most pressing concerns we have on what we all can do to alleviate the problem at hand. She gave her take on TIME’s questions about how the climate crisis affects our personal lives. How do you deal with friends or family members…

I have been in dance therapy for all of 90 seconds when I embarrass myself. The group is doing a follow-the-leader exercise, with one person picking a dance move that everyone else must mimic. When my name is called, I panic and launch into an extremely uncool move that could be generously described as disco-inspired, my cheeks flaming as a group of strangers mirror it back at me. I’d traveled to the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine to take this humiliating stab at vulnerability in the name of science (and my own sanity). The Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab (CORAL), an ongoing research project at the school, aims to help people who are burned out from their jobs build resilience and improve their mental well-being. For three months, participants meet…

If you set out to make a show that would attract the broadest possible worldwide audience—and you had a Tolkien adaptation—you might come up with Citadel. Helmed by Marvel hitmakers the Russo brothers, Amazon’s espionage thriller casts Indian megastar Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard “Robb Stark” Madden as top operatives and former lovers in an elite international spy agency known as Citadel. Episodes jump from location to glamorous location (a multilingual, intercontinental Citadel universe is in the works). Action spectacles take up a huge percentage of the total screen time. It’s James Bond meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith, minus the self-aware fun. In a kinetic opening sequence, Chopra Jonas’ Nadia Sinh and Madden’s Mason Kane are on a train zooming through the Alps, bantering flirtily and battling thugs in…

On April 25, TIME hosted a day of conversations in Manhattan to celebrate the 2023 TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people. Counterclockwise from left: philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs (left) and TIME CEO Jessica Sibley; director Steven Spielberg; singer Milck; former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; basketball stars Carmelo Anthony (right) and Nneka Ogwumike (left) with Mellon Foundation head Elizabeth Alexander; New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (left) and TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs; star Kim Kardashian. More at time.com/100 The Earth Awards TIME hosted the Earth Awards, honoring leaders in climate action, with TIME CO2, which supports businesses working to solve the climate crisis. From left: TIME’s president of sustainability Simon Mulcahy; Sibley; former EPA head Lisa P. Jackson; activist Vanessa Nakate; organizer Gloria Walton; U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres; actor…

The abortion pill mifepristone has been on uncertain legal ground since a Texas judge ruled on April 7 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s approval more than two decades ago should be suspended. After the Department of Justice appealed the decision and requested that the Supreme Court step in, the high court decided that mifepristone should remain available while courts continue to decide its legal fate. With one abortion pill in legal limbo, experts are now worried about possible threats to the other one: misoprostol. The drug is FDA approved to treat ulcers and, when used with mifepristone, to induce abortion in a person’s first trimester of pregnancy. Taking the pills together is more effective and linked to fewer side effects than using misoprostol alone. In many…

When Iga Swiatek, the world’s top-ranked women’s tennis player, travels to tournaments around the globe, her bag is filled with the usual accoutrements of superstars in her sport: racket, wardrobe, Legos. OK, Swiatek is likely the only three-time major winner toting around tiny plastic bricks. During the pandemic, Swiatek began toying with Legos; she finds the process of building the Disney World castle, or a Porsche, or the International Space Station relaxing. Her habit isn’t kid’s play. Swiatek, the Poland native who has held the No. 1 ranking for more than a year, has expertly approached tennis from all angles, combining psychological training—her shrink introduced her to Legos—biomechanical expertise, and a fierce forehand to ascend to the top of her game. Swiatek earned a pair of Grand Slam titles—the…

The average U.S. life expectancy has hit its worst decline in 100 years, and America’s standing is dismal among peer nations. But the average obscures a more complex story. The U.S. is facing the greatest divide in life expectancy across regions in the past 40 years. Research from American Inequality found that Americans born in certain areas of Mississippi and Florida may die 20 years younger than their peers born in parts of Colorado and California. The decline is not occurring equally throughout the country. In the land of opportunity, millions of people are not even given a fair shot at life. America is unique among wealthy countries when it comes to how young its people die, and the trend is only getting worse. From 2019 to 2021, U.S. life…

My dear great-great-granddaughter, I wish I could be with you as you open this letter in the year 2100. My mind is flooded with curiosity about your life, your hopes and dreams, and what kind of world is outside your window. But I must confess, I am fixed on one question: Will you open this letter in a spirit of happiness and gratitude—or with disappointment and anger at my generation? As I write you in 2023, humanity is losing the fight of our lives: the battle against climate upheaval that threatens our planet. If I were with you now, you might ask if we saw disaster coming. Yes, we did. We are making a mess of our planet through bottomless greed, timid action, and an addiction to fossil fuels that…

As a plot driver, the traumatic home invasion has long been a staple of both film pulp—movies like Cape Fear, Death Wish, and John Wick—and artier projects like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and Ari Aster’s anxious new Beau Is Afraid. All play into our collective fears of lawless hooligans invading our personal space. But a plot device, as every sane person knows, is simply a tool for the creation of fantasy. In the space of three days, two individuals more than a thousand miles apart kicked back against innocent young people who, they apparently were convinced, posed a threat to their safety. On April 13, in Kansas City, Mo., 84-year-old Andrew Lester, who is white, shot and seriously wounded 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who is Black, after the teen mistakenly stopped…

Squinting at his computer through wire-rimmed glasses, Greg Hartl monitors an unmarked 18-wheeler as it cuts through the American heartland. Data from the truck’s satellite tracking devices stream into his windowless command center at Scott Air Force Base, about 20 miles east of St. Louis, showing Hartl each stop the driver makes and the weather and road conditions ahead. Most important, as the driver navigates rush-hour traffic and stretches of interstate alongside unknowing travelers, Hartl can track the condition of the volatile cargo: hundreds of high-explosive 155-mm artillery shells bound for Ukraine. The race to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs to win the war against Russia unfolds on Hartl’s glowing screen at U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) headquarters. As a branch chief with the Army’s Defense Transportation Tracking System,…

Political leaders often boast of inner steel. Imran Khan can point to three bullets dug out of his right leg. It was in November that a lone gunman opened fire on Khan during a rally, wounding the 70-year-old as well as several supporters, one fatally. “One bullet damaged a nerve, so my foot is still recovering,” says the former Pakistani Prime Minister and onetime cricket icon. “I have a problem walking for too long.” If the wound has slowed Khan, he doesn’t show it in a late-March Zoom interview. There is the same bushy mane, the easy laugh, prayer beads wrapped nonchalantly around his left wrist. But in the five years since our last conversation, something has changed. Power—or perhaps its forfeiture—has left its imprint. After his ouster in a…

Nobody was supposed to get hurt. This is the irony that drives Love & Death, creator David E. Kelley’s empathetic HBO Max docudrama based on the true tragedy that befell two young, churchgoing couples raising families in small-town Texas in the late 1970s. When starry-eyed Candy Montgomery (Elizabeth Olsen) talks pragmatic Allan Gore (Jesse Plemons) into having an affair with her, over the course of many anxious “strategy sessions,” the lovers-to-be agree: neither of their spouses, especially Allan’s psychologically fragile wife Betty (Lily Rabe), can ever find out about them. They set up rules, meeting only on weekdays, at an out-of-town motel. Candy packs them a meal to share, in order to conserve time on Allan’s lunch breaks. As adultery goes, it’s all kind of adorable—until it really isn’t.…

How much do you really want to know about horrormeister Ari Aster’s preoccupations and anxieties? Consider that seriously before subjecting yourself to Beau Is Afraid, a bleak black comedy that’s very occasionally hilarious, though mostly just tedious. Joaquin Phoenix stars as bundle of neuroses Beau Wassermann, who’s born into this world in the movie’s opening scene, escorted by his mother’s muffled screams and staticky, ominous-sounding thundercracks. Initially, the infant isn’t crying, and presumably not breathing; his mother panics, snapping at the doctors. Then we hear a slap and a yowl, and one man’s life begins. Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night. Beau Is Afraid is three hours of one man’s dark night of the soul, a howl of pain that occasionally twists itself into…