Time Magazine - December 14 2015

D E C E M B E R 1 4 , 2 0 1 5

t i m e . c o m

By Lev Grossman

The Geniusof Star Wars

Copyright © 2014 Pfi zer Inc. All rights reserved. April 2014 TRA563107-01

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VOL. 186, NO. 24 | 2015

TIME (ISSN 0040-781X) is published weekly, except for two combined issues in January and one combined issue in February, April, July, August, September and November by Time Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 225Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281-1008. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS (See DMM 507.1.5.2); Non-Postal and Military Facilities: sendaddress corrections to TIME Magazine, P.O. Box 62120, Tampa, FL 33662-2120. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40110178. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Postal Station A, P.O. Box4322, Toronto, Ontario M5W 3G9. GST No. 888381621RT0001. © 2015 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. TIME and the Red Border Design areprotected through trademark registration in the United States and in the foreign countries where TIME magazine circulates. U.S. Subscriptions: $49 for one year. SUBSCRIBERS: If the Postal Service alerts us thatyour magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within two years. Your bank may provide updates to the card information we have on file. You may opt out of thisservice at any time. CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: For 24/7 service, visit time.com/customerservice. You can also call 1-800-843-TIME; write to TIME, P.O. Box 62120, Tampa, FL, 33662-2120; or [email protected]. MAILING LIST: We make a portion of our mailing list available to reputable firms. If you would prefer that we not include your name, please call or write us. PRINTED IN THE U.S. ◆◆◆◆◆◆◆

On the cover:Photograph by Marco Grob for TIME

Very Soon, Right Herein the Milky Way

By Lev Grossman 56

Cover Story

Unsafe at AnyAltitude?

By Massimo Calabresi 44

Sisters in Arms

By Mark Thompson 52

Fans in Times Square in 1983 await the premiere of Return of the Jedi

6 | From the Editor9 | Conversation14 | Verbatim

The ViewIdeas, opinion,innovations

33 | Are the PC left and

the Trumpian right

polar opposites ormirror images?

34 | Why don’t morepeople care about

policies that affect

them directly?

37 | PhilosopherWilliam MacAskill:Give a gift that really

counts this holidayseason

40 | The FDA hasapproved geneticallyengineered salmon.But is it safe to eat?

Time OffWhat to watch, read,see and do

77 | Movies: In the

Heart of the Sea,

Hitchcock/Truffaut,

The Big Short

80 | An excerpt fromAmy Cuddy’s Presence

82 | Transparent’sSeason 2

86 | Aziz Ansari’s newshow, Master of None

86 |Misery on Broadway

88 | New music frompop auteur Grimes

88 | Quick Talk withrapper Rick Ross

90 | SusannaSchrobsdorff onboomers and

millennials at work

92 | 9 Questions withTiger Woods

The BriefNews from the U.S. andaround the world

15 | It’s Rubio vs. Cruz

for the soul of the GOP

17 | Pope Francis visits

a mosque in Africa

17 | The rise of France’s

far right

19 | Ian Bremmer onhow to defeat ISIS

24 | A backlash against

refugees greets aSyrian family in Texas

26 | Who is yourfinancial adviser really

working for?

28 | Understanding theclimate negotiations

30 | Face time for worldleaders in Paris

In the Heart ofthe Sea, page 77

4 TIME December 14, 2015

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Two new voiceson the artsTHE ROLE OF CULTURE CRITIC HAS NEVER BEENmore vital, now that we can watch, read or lis-ten to just about anything at any time, anywhere.So it is with special pleasure that I introduce twonew TIME critics. Covering movies, StephanieZacharek comes to us from the Village Voice, whereshe was a finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize forcriticism. Stephanie brings to these pages and toTIME.com a sharp critical sensibility combinedwith a warm and helpful voice. “What I love mostabout movies, and about writing criticism,” shesays, “is the excitement of facing something neweach week. Even in a terrible movie, you might seean actor doing something spectacular. The chal-lenge, and the joy, of writing about movies is to bealive to what’s in front of you at all times.”

Leading our coverage of television will beDaniel D’Addario, who joined our staff last yearand has been writing features on subjects rangingfrom Atticus Finch’s newfound bigotry in HarperLee’s Go Set a Watchman to the “perfect marriage”between Jon Stewart and HBO. “Television is themost exciting field to cover right now because it’schanging so rapidly,” Dan observes. “In the pastfew years alone, services like Netflix and Amazonhave become awards magnets, while broadcast TVhas become vastly more representative of Ameri-ca’s diversity. What writer wouldn’t want to followan art form and an industry this unpredictable?”

THIS WEEK ALSO MARKS THE LAUNCH OF TIME’Snew online shop (shop.time.com), designed tomake both your decorating and gift giving easierthis holiday season. We have created high-qualityprints of 12 of the most beloved photosfrom the LIFE picture collection, in-cluding Alfred Eisenstaedt’s V-J Dayin Times Square and Dmitri Kessel’sEiffel Tower, 1948.

Nancy Gibbs, EDITOR

From the Editor


Back in TIMESTAR WARSWhen the first Star Wars hit theaters, TIME called it“a grand and glorious film that may well be the smashhit of 1977, and certainly is the best movie of the yearso far”—but we had no idea what a phenomenon itwould become. Here, a brief history of the franchise’scultural evolution, as told through TIME covers. Readthe full stories at time.com/vault.

TIME’s Radhika Jones(right), editor of thisweek’s Star Wars story,as a Stormtrooper inthe early 1980s

Feb. 10, 1997May 19, 1980 May 23, 1983

April 26, 1999 April 29, 2002 May 9, 2005

Visit shop.time.com to see the full selection of prints

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STUDENT LOANS HaleySweetland Edwards’dive into the ObamaAdministration’s efforts toaddress the $1.3 trillioncollege-student debt crisisprompted warnings thateven new plans may be, asTiffany Naylor of Clinton,N.C., put it, “too good tobe true.” Others worriedthat plans involving debtforgiveness could end upharming nonstudents: “AsI understand it, when thefederal government forgivesdebt, we, the taxpayer,are on the hook for thedebt,” wrote Carl Fedako ofBloomsburg, Pa.

Conversation

9

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facebook.com/time@time (Twitter and Instagram)

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Letters should include the writer’s full name, address and home telephone and may be edited for purposes of clarity and space

TALK TO US

HEALTHY EATING Our list of the healthiest foods of all time hasgained 50 new items, from standbys like greens to surprises likesauerkraut—with recipes for all. See them at time.com/50-healthy.

What yousaid about ...

FIGHTING ISIS AFTER PARIS TIME’sNov. 30/Dec. 7 cover story, which exploredthe failures of the U.S. and NATO to deterISIS, drew many reader comments—in par-ticular regarding the story’s portrayal of Pres-ident Obamaas too passive.Although someagreed withwriter DavidVon Drehle’sassessment,others, likeJohn Pearson ofLa Crescenta,Calif., said it’s unfair to criticize Obama forhaving insufficient “cheerleading skills.”And where’s the U.N.? asked Rick Ferrellof Centreville, Md.: “They remain silent,and none of the world’s leaders point thisout.” But ISIS is a tricky enemy—so muchso that Digamber Borgaonkar of Green-ville, Del., found the story’s comparisons toWW II inapt. While the Allies fought a physi-cal entity, he wrote, “ISIS is an ideology.” Still,Marcia Klotz of Tucson, Ariz., holds out hopefor diplomacy. “Given the impossibility ofmilitary victory, as this article so thoughtfullydemonstrates,” she wrote, “I would have likedto hear more about the prospects of a negoti-ated peaceful solution.”

‘ISIS is just thetip of an icebergthat covers mostof the world.’PETER BAXTER,Brighton, U.K.

‘Thanks forthe articleon studentloans—itreally hitclose tohome forme andmany otheryoungadults.’LOYAL COSHWAY,Columbus, Ohio

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ▶ In “The Man Who Brought DownVolkswagen” (Nov. 30/Dec. 7) we misidentified one of the Volkswagen modelstested by Dan Carder that uses the selective catalytic reduction emissions regu-lation system. It is the Passat.

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Verbatim

‘We are truly saddened by this incident.’TURKISH PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, after his country’s air force shot down a Russian warplane it said had

violated its airspace; Russia denies that, and has placed surface-to-air missiles in Syria

‘We shouldnot haveto live in aworld whereaccessinghealth careincludessafe roomsand bullet-proof glass.’VICKI COWART, CEO of Planned Parenthood ofthe Rocky Mountains, after a shooting at oneof the group’s clinics in Colorado left threedead and nine others injured

$110,000

KOBE BRYANT, basketball star,announcing his retirement

after 20 seasons in the NBA,all of them with theLos Angeles Lakers

Value of

40,000 lb.

of beef

(18,000 kg)

stolen from a

Pennsylvania

meat plant

‘We want you to growup in a world betterthan ours today.’MARK ZUCKERBERG, Facebook CEO, and his wifePriscilla Chan, announcing in an open letter totheir newborn daughter that they will donate99% of their Facebook shares—currently worthabout $45 billion—over the course of theirlives for philanthropic purposes

Amazon

It sold arecord number ofits own devices onBlack Friday andover the holiday

weekend

518,838Number of lights on

an artificial Christmas

tree in Australia,setting a new Guinness

World Record

700,000Number of lung-

cancer deaths

expected per year inChina by 2020, as the

country deals withpollution and rising

smoking rates

‘Addressing climatechange shouldnot deny thelegitimateneeds ofdevelopingcountries.’

GOOD WEEKBAD WEEK

The Amazon

Half the rainforest’s tree

species may beendangered

CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING, duringinternational climate talks in Paris

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POLITICS

Marco vs.Ted: Insidethe rivalryreshapingthe GOPBy Philip Elliott andZeke J. Miller

Cruz, left, and Rubio have long held each other in low esteem. Their primary fight is personal

A BITTER RIVALRY BETWEEN TWOfreshman Senators has become themost riveting subplot in the race forthe Republican presidential nomina-tion. For weeks, the sniping has onlygrown louder. When Florida SenatorMarco Rubio says Texas Senator TedCruz voted on budgets to “hurt themilitary,” Cruz fires back that Rubioembraces “military adventurism,” in-cluding standing with Hillary Clin-ton in the strategy to topple Libyandictator Muammar Gaddafi. WhenCruz attacks Rubio for working withDemocrats on a path to citizenship forimmigrants in the country illegally,Rubio’s aides are quick to contend thatCruz also supported a different type oflegal status for the same group.

“There are Republicans, includ-ing Senator Cruz, that have voted to

weaken those programs,” Rubio saysof the National Security Agency’sdomestic-spying powers. Cruz jokesat events that supporters should leavetheir cell phones on “because I wantPresident Obama to hear every wordwe say.”

So it has gone, day after day, and soit will continue, with both men jock-eying for position in early polls withpolitical amateurs Donald Trump andBen Carson. The feud between Cruzand Rubio represents a battle for thesoul of the Grand Old Party and, per-haps more important, its future. In the2016 Republican field, no two candi-dates share so similar a background—both freshman Senators with Cubanand Tea Party roots—yet have such di-vergent visions for the GOP.

Their disagreement begins with

‘MORE THAN FOUR YEARS INTO THE WAR IN SYRIA, THE U.S. STILL HAS NO CREDIBLE PLAN TO DEFEAT ISIS.’ —PAGE 19

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ELECTIONSMore than 900 women

are running for public

office in Saudi Arabia’smunicipal elections onDec. 12, the first sincethe late King Abdullahgranted women theright to vote and runin local elections in

2011. Some women’s-rights activists say theyhave been barred from

taking part.

ENERGYThe American

Automobile Associationsays drivers paid thelowest gas prices

since 2008 thisThanksgiving and

predicts the nationalaverage per gallon willfall below $2 before

the end of December,because of cheap oil

and increasedrefinery output.

POLICINGChicago mayor RahmEmanuel asked police

chief Garry McCarthy

to resign Dec. 1, afterprotests following thefatal police shooting

of black teenagerLaquan McDonald inOctober 2014. OfficerJason Van Dyke was

charged with the teen’smurder on Nov. 24.

TRENDING

TheBrief


BIG QUESTION

Where do peoplestill hunt whales?Japan’s whaling fleet set sail on Dec. 1 indefiance of a 2014 U.N. order to cease thepractice. It’s not the only place to bypass theInternational Whaling Commission’s 1986 banon commercial operations. —Naina Bajekal

NORWAY

Respected the IWCban until 1993, then

used a loopholeto declare itself

exempt. Oslo hassince lifted its

annual kill quotafrom 425 in 1996

to over 1,200 today,though fishermenusually catch only

half that many.

GREENLAND

Has historically beengiven permissionfor its native Inuitto hunt whales for

subsistence needs,currently set at 207kills per year. Criticssay the quota is toohigh, so the surpluswill continue to besold commerciallyand to tourists.

ICELAND

Declared itselfexempt from the IWCmoratorium in 2004.

Iceland’s quotaallows for the exportof 154 endangered

fin whales to Japan—though demand for

the meat is scarce—and over 200 minkewhales for domestic

consumption.

ALASKA

Indigenous peoplesliving along Alaska’s

coast have beenhunting bowhead

whales for thousandsof years. The Alaskannatives were set anoverall quota of 306bowheads from 2013to 2018; catches are

shared among thewhole community.

opposing prescriptions to fix what ails their party:Rubio wants to reshape the electorate with an ap-peal to Hispanic and younger voters, while Cruzwants to energize mostly white evangelical Chris-tians, whom he contends have stayed home out ofdisgust with the two previous nominees. You couldsay one represents the ego of the Tea Party and theother its id.

The rivalry has been years in the making. WhenCruz was trying to win the Texas nomination forthe Senate in 2012, he repeatedly sought the en-dorsement of Rubio, a newly elected star who’dtrod the same anti-Establishment path two yearsearlier in Florida. But the charismatic Floridianwithheld his imprimatur and dodged meetingswith the confident Texan at the urging of his fel-low Republicans. Cruz has not forgotten the slight.When given the chance for retribution, Cruz tookit, leading the opposition in 2013 against Rubio’swork on a comprehensive immigration bill, whichearned the White House’s backing and passed theSenate, only to die in the House.

The two men’s personal styles bear no re-semblance to each other. When Rubio arrived inWashington, he set out to learn how the Senateworks, linking up with reform-minded leaders anddefense hawks like Senator John McCain of Ari-zona, only to find himself dragged into the con-stant fight against his own party. He kept his headdown, busied himself in committee meetings andsought respect from his colleagues by pitching inwhen asked.

Cruz, by contrast, went to Washington to plotthe destruction of the city’s Establishment powernetworks. A self-appointed hell-raiser, he threwtantrums, routinely insulted his party’s leadershipand was shameless in promoting his own brand.Senators tried to bring him into the fold, elect-ing him vice chair of their campaign committee,only to see him raise cash for candidates who werechallenging incumbent colleagues, prompting hisouster. His Senate critics—and there are many—say he seldom spoke up at Republicans’ weeklylunches but had no problem leaving the ornate din-ing room off the Senate floor and making a beelineto reporters. Tables were barely cleared of chinabefore it was clear Cruz was not on the team.

Rubio, the son of a bartender, and Cruz, theson of a political refugee, have shown they can begritty—and petty—in their ambition. Cruz enjoysthe upper hand in building a political machine andrecruiting fervent followers, while Rubio’s poten-tial is just starting to materialize. The personal an-imus between the two colors so much about theirinteractions, and both seem likely to be amongthe last contenders chasing the nomination. Thestakes for this sparring are high. But so is the po-tential to reshape American politics. □

TRENDING

10.3%Drop in U.S. sales at brick-and-mortar stores

on Black Friday, down from $11.6 billion in

2014 to $10.4 billion this year; online sales

on the same day leaped 14% from last year,

bringing in a total of $2.72 billion

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MARINE LE PEN’S FAR-RIGHT NATIONALFront (FN) party is on course to win tworegions in French regional elections onDec. 6 and Dec. 13, which would com-plete its transformation from a fringe partyto a major political force. The resurgence ofthe anti-Europe, anti-immigration FN spellstrouble for President François Hollande’s So-cialist Party and former President NicolasSarkozy’s center-right Republicans ahead of2017’s presidential elections. Here’s what’sdriving the conservative upswing:

ISLAMIST EXTREMISM In the wake of theNov. 13 attacks by ISIS that left 130 dead inParis, the FN’s anti-Islam rhetoric helpedit surge in the polls. “France and theFrench are no longer safe,” Le Pen said,calling for borders to be closed and mi-grants deported, and blaming Hollande’sgovernment for failing to protect France.

TOMORROW’STALLEST TOWERS

Saudi Arabiasecured fundingNov. 29 to build

the world’s tallesttower, one of

several mammothskyscrapers in

the works:

Jeddah Tower

Saudi Arabia(projected3,280 ft.)

To open in 2021

Signature Tower

Indonesia(2,093 ft.)

To open in 2021

KL118 Tower

Malaysia(2,113 ft.)

To open in 2019

Ping An Finance

Center China(1,969 ft.)

To open in 2017

Wuhan Greenland

Center China(2,087 ft.)

To open in 2018

DATA

◁ Le Pen’s party is favored towin control of two of France’sregions for the first time

MIGRANT CRISIS More than 878,000 migrantshave arrived in Europe this year, raising concernsamong the French population that there aren’tenough schools, jobs or housing to go around. TheFN has tapped into such fears, with Le Pen say-ing all migrants should be deported, even refu-

gees fleeing war. The party is favored to win thesouthern region of Marseille-Nice, where many

refugees enter France through Italy.

UNPOPULAR LEADERS Hollande consistentlypolls as the least popular President in recenthistory, thanks to France’s turgid economy.

Sarkozy too was a deeply unpopularleader, disliked for his flashy life-style. And while the FN hasn’tbeen embraced by the main-stream, Le Pen has softened theparty’s image, paving the way for aserious challenge to the status quoin 2017. —NAINA BAJEKAL

SPOTLIGHT

The forces fueling therise of France’s far right

PAPAL MASSES Pope Francis waves to crowds on Nov. 30 at the Koudoukou school in Bangui, the capital of CentralAfrican Republic, which has been riven by a civil war for nearly three years. At a visit to a mosque, the Pontiff toldworshippers that “Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters.” The final stop on the Pope’s tour of Africa markedthe first time he has visited an active war zone. Photograph by Gianluigi Guercia—AFP/Getty Images

TheBrief

THE RISK REPORT

Six steps to buildingan ISIS strategyBy Ian Bremmer

MORE THAN FOUR YEARS INTO THE WAR INSyria, the U.S. still has no credible plan todefeat ISIS. It doesn’t help that the playersin Syria seem to change every few weeks orthat each newcomer has his own list of alliesand enemies. But America needs an ISISstrategy—and these steps offer a startingpoint.

1. THE U.S. SHOULD CONTINUE targeted airstrikes against ISIS, but under no circ-umstances should it lead the military cam-paign in Syria. As in Libya, lead from be-hind, following Europe’s more pragmaticapproach. But with ISIS, unlike Libya, don’tleave a power vacuum. Focus on ISIS andleave Bashar Assad where he is—at leastfor now.

2. THE U.S. SHOULD HELP establish clear no-flyzones around Syria. This has less to do withISIS than with reducing the risk of another“incident” between Russia and Turkey—orthe U.S. The players in this conflict zone havetheir own agendas. Even if those agendascan’t be perfectly aligned, steps should betaken to ensure they don’t collide.

3. INTENSIFY EFFORTS to track ISIS funding.That means working with the hacker collec-tive Anonymous, the latest group to join thewar on ISIS. If Anonymous is willing to workwith governments to attack ISIS’s ability toraise cash, draw recruits and hide its plans,seize the opportunity.

4. ORGANIZE MODERATE Muslim leaders tofind a sustainable solution in Syria. Regionalheavyweights like Turkey and Egypt willhave their say, but Indonesia, Malaysia andNigeria can also help.

5. AMERICA NEEDS to get the Gulf statesin the game. Saudi complacency has al-lowed ISIS to become the best-equippedand -funded terrorist group in history. Thetime for official tolerance in these countriesfor the funding of radicalism has passed.

6. USE FINANCIAL INCENTIVES and politicalpressure to ensure that Iraq’s Sunnis have astake in their country’s future by establish-ing their place within the leadership in Bagh-dad. Shi‘ite militia groups and the Shi‘ite-dominated Iraqi army will never fight to thedeath for Sunni cities. Until Sunni tribal lead-ers and those who follow them turn on ISIS,the group can’t be fully dismantled.

These steps alone won’t destroy ISIS. Butshort of Western boots in another MiddleEastern country, they are the best options. □

SURVEILLANCEOn Nov. 28, the NSAended the practice

of collecting U.S.

telephone data in

bulk, exposed bywhistle-blower EdwardSnowden in 2013. Thegovernment must nowseek court orders for

telecom companies tomonitor call records.

CRIMEPolice said at least

14 people were killedin a shooting in San

Bernardino, Calif., onDec. 2. The incident

took place at theInland Regional Center,

a facility for peoplewith disabilities. Early

reports suggestedas many as three

shooters.

CURRENCYThe International

Monetary Fund saidNov. 30 that it will add

the Chinese renminbi

to its elite group of

reserve currencies—

the dollar, euro, poundand yen. The move,effective October

2016, is a symbolicvote of confidence forthe world’s secondbiggest economy.

TRENDINGTRENDING

You’ve written a new

biography, The Triumph

of William McKinley.

Why should we care

about him? Becausehe is the author of arealigning election thatchanged America’spolitical system fromdysfunctional andbrought about an era ofdurable dominance forhis party that lasted 36years.

What has surprised

you most about the

2016 race? How manycandidates and howcomplicated it is andhow angry the GOPelectorate is at Obama.

Trump is still ahead

after four months.

How come? Becausehe speaks to theangst of blue-collarRepublicans who don’tcare about his specificviews, detailed plansor past statementsand actions. All theycare about is havingsomebody whoappears to be a strongleader who channelstheir concerns aboutimmigration andAmerica’s status inthe world and theeffect of the economyon their personalcircumstances.

Can he win the

nomination?

I don’t thinkhe will. I don’t

want to say the chancesare zero. I think it’sgoing to be difficultfor him. The questionis who is going toconsolidate the not-Trump voters.

Your party has opposed

same-sex marriage

in past elections. Is

it time to change?

The issue is settledby the SupremeCourt. I’m still ahopeless traditionalist,surrounded by peoplewho I love dearly I wouldlove to see get married.So I’m hopelesslymuddled.

Chances for a brokered

convention next

summer? Not brokered.But Republicans couldend up going to a multi-balloted conventionfor the first time since1948.

—Michael Duffy

◁ Rove co-foundedthe super PACAmericanCrossroads

QUICK TALK

Karl Rove

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The Brief Spotlight


Then they waited. For refugees, thevetting process is often a multiyear od-yssey. The Sharaas registered with theU.N. refugee agency and began a set ofbackground checks. At first Swedenseemed like an option. After a thirdinterview, they were told they wereheaded to Finland. Finally, after nearlytwo years in limbo, they learned theywere destined for Dallas.

They flew to Texas in February. It wasal Sharaa’s first time on a plane. Theylanded with a baby daughter, born in Jor-dan, another on the way and little moneyor language skills. The U.S., which hasadmitted 2,200 Syrian refugees since2011, provides fewer benefits than someEuropean nations, and al Sharaa wasdaunted by the challenge. “I didn’t wantto come to America,” he says.

Of the more than 4 million Syrianswho have fled their homeland, al Sharaais among the lucky ones. He found a jobon the graveyard shift at Walmart, stock-ing shelves in the frozen-food section.

THE FALLOUT CAUGHT FAEZ AL SHARAAby surprise. Shortly after terrorists at-tacked Paris, the 28-year-old Syrian refu-gee found his new life in Texas upendedby the politics of national security. Morethan 30 governors, including the LoneStar State’s Greg Abbott, vowed to blockthe resettlement of new Syrians seekingasylum. “America prides itself on diver-sity,” al Sharaa says in his living room ina Dallas suburb, decorated with a goldenplate inscribed with the shahada, theMuslim profession of faith. “Some aremisinformed, or not informed, by what isgoing on in Syria.”

Al Sharaa decided to flee Syria in 2013after nearly being killed while walkingto work in the southern city of Dara‘a.His daily commute was fraught withrisk; clashes between President BasharAssad’s forces and antigovernment in-surgents had turned his neighborhoodinto a battlefield. Dissidents were disap-pearing. Children had been plucked offthe streets and tortured.

On that Tuesday morning in Syria,soldiers pursuing a gunman detainedal Sharaa, accused him of terrorism andheld him at gunpoint with three others.“We felt death upon us,” he recalls. Thenan old woman barreled into the street,begging the soldiers to spare al Sharaaand his counterparts, saying they wereher family members and neighbors. Hehad never seen the woman before, butthe stranger saved his life.

That night, al Sharaa reached out on-line to a group that smuggles Syriansinto Jordan. The next morning, he andhis wife Shaza darted through crum-bling streets to meet the car that wouldcarry them out of Syria. On the way, amissile crashed into a building mere feetaway. “We could have been killed,” hesays. Two days later, they arrived at theZaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Fromthere, Shaza’s family brought them toAmman, where Faez found a job.

The Sharaas arrived in February, nearly two years after leaving Syria

Syrianrefugees inthe U.S. feel abacklashBy Alex Altman/Dallas

‘It shocked me, becauseAmerica prides itself ondiversity.’FAEZ AL SHARAA, on political opposition toadmitting more Syrian refugees in the U.S.

He and Shaza are picking up English.Their daughters are healthy and happy;baby Sara, now 4 months, is an Americancitizen. Neighbors have been welcoming.Faez began to regard the U.S. creed ofequality as reality, not just rhetoric.

But with fear of terrorism spreadingand solutions in short supply, refugeeshave become scapegoats, he says, eventhough they are just seeking sanctuaryfrom violence. Recent polls show that amajority of Americans oppose admittingmore Syrian refugees. Gun-toting pro-testers gathered outside a mosque in anearby suburb of Dallas. And Republicanpresidential front runner Donald Trumphas promised to deport refugees likeal Sharaa if he becomes President.

Six of al Sharaa’s family members,fellow refugees seeking asylum, willarrive in Dallas in December over Ab-bott’s objections. The state has sued theU.S. government to stop future resettle-ment of refugees in Texas, includinghis family. A few weeks ago, al Sharaawas laying long-term plans for a futurein Texas. Now he has a simple messagefor his leery neighbors. “I want them toknow the Syrian people are not terror-ists,” he says. “We are against ISIS. Wedon’t support them. They are a crimi-nal organization. Syrian citizens are theones paying the price.” □

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We go to the storyso you get the story.

Lester HoltParis

The Brief Retirement


Network, claims her advisers see thatkind of behavior all the time.

Under the Department of Laborrule, which is expected to be finalizedin early 2016, the standard will shifttoward the consumer. Anyone offeringfinancial advice on retirement accountswould be required to adhere to the fi-duciary standard. The rule marks thebiggest change to the Employee Retire-ment Income Security Act, which es-tablished minimum standards for pen-sion plans, in 40 years.

But many, including Republicans inCongress, argue that the Department ofLabor’s rule is unworkable and will putunnecessary burdens on small-businessowners. Because of how it governsIRAs and employer-provided plans,they argue, the rule would make it hardfor small-business owners to help theiremployees get financial advice. Theyalso say the change will adversely im-pact lower- and middle-income Ameri-cans, the same investors who are themost at risk.

“All sides in this debate agree thatadvisers should work in their clients’best interests. But Americans’ best in-terest will not be served by a regulatoryscheme that directs small businessesand people to advisers too costly forMain Street America,” Dirk Kemp-thorne, president and chief executiveof the American Council of Life Insur-ers, wrote to the Washington Post. TheDepartment of Labor found that in-sufficient or nonexistent investmentadvice led owners of IRAs and otherretirement accounts to lose out on$114 billion in 2010.

The split over the rule has fallenalong party lines. Perhaps not surpris-ingly, harsh rhetoric on both sides hasfollowed. The Republican-led Congresshas drafted a bill that would block theDepartment of Labor from implement-ing the new rule. Obama has issued aveto threat. Either way, a great deal is atstake. Says Garrett: “When people havemore faith and trust in our industry,they’ll start investing more.” □

THE WAY AMERICANS PLAN FOR RETIREMENT IS ABOUTto change—again. At the urging of President Obama, theDepartment of Labor is backing a rule that would alter whocan offer financial advice on retirement funds. On its face,the idea seems superfluous: the rule, which would go intoeffect next year, requires that individuals providing adviceon retirement savings put their clients’ interests ahead oftheir own.

Isn’t that what people hire advisers to do in the firstplace? “Anyone can call themselves a financial adviser,” saysDavid Certner, legislative-policy director at AARP, the lobby-ing organization for seniors. Many consumers believe all fi-nancial advisers operate under uniform codes like doctors orlawyers. “But people don’t understand that there are differ-ent types, and they can act against your interest and in theirown,” says Certner.

There are two standards brokers have to adhere to. There’sthe fiduciary standard, which requires financial advisers—registered investment advisers and those appointed underexisting law—to offer financial advice that takes their clients’best interests into consideration. But there’s also a less strin-gent “suitability” standard, which gives advisers leeway tooffer advice that works for their client but can also help themearn a higher commission or some other financial incentive.According to the Department of Labor, that loophole causesAmericans to lose out on making an additional $17 billion ontheir investments every year.

The stakes have grown as the nature of retirement hasshifted. Over the past four decades, for example, there hasbeen a sharp decrease in the number of employer-providedretirement-benefit plans, or pensions, and a steep rise inthe number of employees setting aside their own fundsin 401(k) and 403(b) plans and individual retirement ac-counts, or IRAs.

As a consequence, Americans have grown to rely moreheavily on financial advisers and planners who can helpthem navigate the confusing or stress-inducing process ofsaving for retirement. According to a survey conducted bythe Certified Financial Planners Board, which licenses fidu-ciary financial planners in the U.S., 40% of Americans nowwork with a financial adviser to secure their retirement, upfrom 28% in 2010.

AT THE GARRETT PLANNING NETWORK, a nationalfinancial-planning firm, advisers often share stories from cli-ents who found themselves on the receiving end of bad re-tirement advice. During an exchange last spring, one adviserrecalled encountering a woman who was about to retire andhad asked a nonfiduciary adviser for advice about her $1 mil-lion 401(k) rollover. She was advised to invest in an annuityand a trust, a move that earned her adviser a tidy 7% salescommission. Sheryl Garrett, founder of the Garrett Planning

STATE OFRETIREMENT

Why Washington is fightingover your financial plannerBy Maya Rhodan

10,000Number of Americans

who will turn 65every day from now

until 2030

10 to 12Times your annual

income: whatinvestors say youshould have saved

for retirement

52%Percentage of

Americans at risk ofhaving insufficientretirement fundsto maintain theircurrent lifestyle

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The climate contestInside the confusing alliances and battle lines at the

major U.N. climate summit in Paris By Justin Worland

The E.U.’s 28 nations negotiate ina bloc and push for tougher

climate action

Oil exporters that have ahistory of blocking

meaningful climate action

OPECNations

KUWAIT

Umbrella GroupA coalition of non-E.U. developed

countries that have been foot draggers onclimate change in past summits

NEWZEAL AND

NORWAY

EuropeanUnion

The Brief Environment

U.S.

RUSSIA

JAPAN

GERMANY

CANADA

U.K .

ITALY

AUSTRALIA

FRANCE

POL AND

UKRAINE

SPAIN

K AZAKHSTAN

NETHERL ANDS

IRAN

IRAQ

BELGIUM

CZECHREPUBLIC

NIGERIA

ROMANIA

GREECE

ADDIT IONAL REPORT ING BY MERRILL FABRY NOTE: NOT ALL COUNTRIES

SAUDIARABIA

Saudi Arabiahas asked forcompensationfor any lost oilrevenue due toa climate deal

The U.K. hasproposed

eliminating allof its remaining

coal powerplants by 2025 New Canadian PM Justin

Trudeau has promised agreener government

The U.S. aimsto cut carbon

emissionsby 32% from2005 levels

by 2030

Chinaannounced

plans todevelop anational

carbon cap-and-tradeprogram

Transparency

Developed countries wantstrong measures to ensure that

developing countries followthrough with their commitments

Ambition

These nationsare pushing for

a more aggressivecarbon-cut target ...

Differentiation

... as well as an agreementthat differentiates between theresponsibilities of developed

and developing countries

COMMON

PRIORITIES

OF THE

ABOVE

GROUPS:

MAJORNEGOTIATINGGROUPS:

OTHER

GROUPS IN

THE CLIMATE

NEGOTIATION

PROCESS:

Least-DevelopedCountries

African Nations Coalition forRainforest Nations

League of ArabStatesThe group aims to raise

the influence of Africa,which is very vulnerable

to climate change

All are very poor andneed help adapting to

climate change

These nations couldface terrible heat—butdepend on oil revenue

This group advocatesreforestation to mitigate

climate change

Numberof

countriesin eachgroup

AUSTRIA

INDONESIA UAE

VENEZUEL A

ALGERIA

QATAR

48162254

Adaptation

Many of the most vulnerablewant the agreement to focus onmethods to adapt to warming,

not just slow it down

Group of 77 and China EnvironmentalIntegrity

GroupThis mix of developed and

developing countries tries tofind common ground on

climate change

This influential group of developingnations now includes 134 countries

A coalition of 44 low-lying and small island

countries that pushes forambitious carbon cuts

Alliance ofSmall Island

States

MORE THAN 100 HEADS OF GOVERNMENT AND 40,000 OTHER ATTENDEES ARE GATHERED INParis to craft a global climate deal. It’s challenging work, made more complicated by the slew of al-liances among countries—especially since nations can belong to multiple groups. The likely out-come is a pact that will formalize the carbon cuts that countries have promised to make, with roomfor debate. But as President Obama said at the summit’s start, “no nation—large or small, wealthy orpoor—is immune” to the effects of climate change. Here’s a breakdown of the players at Paris:

CUBA

SINGAPORE

JAMAICA

DOMINICANREPUBLIC

TRINIDAD ANDTOBAGO

Majoralliances

KEY

Top 50 countriessized by their carbon

footprint in 2011

INDIA

INDONESIA

SAUDIARABIA

CHINA

SOUTH AFRICA

BRAZIL

THAIL AND

VIETNAM

MAL AYSIA

EGYPT

ARGENTINA

VENEZUEL A

PAKISTANIRAQ

KUWAIT

QATAR

UNDER TOP 50 CARBON PRODUCERS ARE L ISTED FOR SPACE. SOURCES: JENNIFER MORGAN, WRI; CD IAC; U.N.; THEROADTHROUGHPARIS.ORG; U.N. FRAMEWORK CONVENT ION ON CL IMATE CHANGE; U.N. STAT IST ICS D IV IS ION; WORLD BANK; NPR

Mexico’s stockexchange

launched aprogram to

allow pollutersto trade carbon

credits

Small islandnations emit arelatively small

amount of carbon,but they have alot to lose fromrising sea levels

India’s plan tocut emissions

has beencriticized astoo vague

Loss and damage

These groups want clearterms outlining how to handleloss and damage related toclimate events in the most

vulnerable places

Finance

These groups say that adequatelyaddressing climate change in the

developing world will hinge on financialcommitments to the tune of $100 billion ayear flowing from rich nations to poor ones

Like-Minded Group ofDeveloping Countries

Independent Association ofLatin America and the

Caribbean

BASICCountries

Agenceintergouvernementale

de la Francophonie The major developingnations: Brazil, South

Africa, India and ChinaThis group pushes foradaptation funding

They represent morethan 50% of the world’s

populationThis alliance is composed of

French-speaking nations

SOUTHKOREA

MEXICO

IRAN

CHILE

OMAN

PHIL IPPINES

NORTHKOREA

COLOMBIA

UAE

ALGERIA

NIGERIA

54 4718

MONACO

SWITZERL AND

LIECHTENSTE IN

French President François Hollande—who is hosting the Paris summit—also hosted Xi and Obama; on the sidelines, Netanyahu and Abb

Prince Charles, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany’s Angela Merkel had a jovial meeting—while Netanyahu and Putin d

Hollande, the man of the hour, was everywhere, greeting Netanyahu and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Xi and Brazilian Presiden

bas shook hands for the first time in years, though it wasn’t clear if they spoke

id not. Obama, Hollande and India’s Narendra Modi found time on the sidelines

nt Dilma Rousseff shook hands in a meeting of developing-world powerhouses

LightBox

▶ For more of our best photography,visit lightbox.time.com

PHOTOGR APHS BY SIPA (2); GETTYIMAGES; REUTERS (4); ABACA; POLARIS

SOMETIMES IN DIPLOMACY, THEsideline is where all the action is.That was the case at the launch ofthe Paris climate summit on Nov. 30,where nearly 150 world leaders metin one of the largest such gatheringsin history. They were ostensiblythere to talk about global warming,but with Paris less than three weeksremoved from a horrific terrorist at-tack and the Middle East in chaos,presidents and prime ministers tookthe opportunity to discuss global se-curity issues just offstage of the sum-mit. So President Obama sat downwith Russian President VladimirPutin to talk about the conflicts inSyria and Ukraine, and with ChinesePresident Xi Jinping to discuss thepossibility of broader anti-terrorisminitiatives. Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu and Palestin-ian Authority President MahmoudAbbas—sharply at odds this year—even found time to exchange a rarehandshake at the summit.

The threat of terrorism domi-nated the sideline discussions—somuch so that some critics asked whyit wasn’t the main event. But climatechange and terrorism are part of thesame threat. National security ex-perts have warned for years that cli-mate change contributes to the socialinstability that in turn feeds extrem-ist groups like ISIS. Before leavingParis, Obama made the same point:“This one trend, climate change, af-fects all trends.” And it will only bestopped by global action.

—JUSTIN WORLAND

PARIS

World leaders getsome face-to-facetime at the U.N.climate summit

33

A new wave of campus revolts and campaign speeches is fueling a dangerous war on words

NEWTON’S THIRD LAW HOLDS THATfor every action, there is an equal andopposite reaction, which may providethe best explanation for what is occur-ring simultaneously on the left and onthe right, on America’s campuses andthe campaign trail. In both cases it’senough to make defenders of the FirstAmendment curl up in despair.

The campus revolts just keep com-ing, as students go to ever greaterlengths to defend their right not to beupset. This has now gone well past ad-ministrators’ labeling texts with “trig-ger warnings” to help students avoidhaving to read about difficult topicslike racism or rape, or Mount Holy-oke’s canceling a performance of TheVagina Monologues for fear of exclud-ing women who don’t have vaginas.

Students at the University of Ot-

tawa protested a campus yoga class,charging that yoga was a form of “cul-tural appropriation.” At Smith Collegein November, students associated withthe Black Lives Matter movementasked visiting media to declare theirsupport for their cause before theywere admitted to cover a sit-in.

This wave of political correctnessis born, essentially, of a noble idea.Minority students, facing bullying orbelittlement, argue for the need to pro-tect themselves, to create a safe space.As one Yale undergraduate put it, “It’sabout creating a home here.” But increating that space, these advocatesrisk walling themselves off from theunexpected, albeit sometimes ugly,reality of engaging in pitched debatewith people with whom they do notsee eye to eye. They are rejecting the

‘THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT SOME OF THESE CHANGED DECISIONS WOULD IMPROVE OUR QUALITY OF LIFE.’ —PAGE 34

NATION

The fallacy of‘free speech’By Haley SweetlandEdwards

PHOTO-ILLUSTR ATIONS BY AZIZ + CUCHER © 1994

The View


sometimes crushing but always formative experi-ence of discovering that you disagree, deeply andfundamentally, with a friend, and then deciding tostay friends anyway. It is a crucial lesson for anyoneliving in a pluralistic democracy, especially one inwhich Donald Trump, the human equivalent of atrigger warning, dominates the Republican field.

Which brings us to the equal and opposite reac-tion. It is tempting to see the popularity of Trump,who has managed in the past four months to insultnot only women, immigrants and Muslims but alsothe entire nation of China and anyone with a dis-ability, as a direct response to the rise of politicalcorrectness. Trump supporters argue that, havinghad to watch carefully what they say and how theysay it for years, there is something liberating abouta candidate who seems not only to say whateverpops into his head but to delight in the possibilitythat he’s not supposed to say it. On the campaigntrail, Trump often prefaces his most shocking lineswith a confrontational preamble: “Are you readyfor this?”

But the idea that Trump’s front-runner status isa reaction to the renewed burst of political correct-ness is also a little too clean. After all, his rhetoricis born of the same impulse: to jettison intellectualengagement in favor of an emotional response, toprize feelings over reason, to intimidate, ratherthan engage with, those who would disagree.

Conservatives blame what they see as a liberal“culture of victimhood” for the rise of political cor-rectness. If everyone is a victim, they argue, every-one must be coddled and no one can say anythingthat might offend anybody. But conservatives’anger at political correctness often stems fromtheir belief that they too are victimized—by theliberal thought police, by mainstream media, bylefties on Twitter all too willing to smear the nextluckless pol as racist or sexist or just plain wrong.

Both defenders of PC culture and its criticsargue that in order for democracy to work, every-one must feel welcome to say what they think, toengage with the issues that bedevil us as a society.But it’s not enough to restrict speech in order tomake people feel safe, and it’s not enough to be de-liberately offensive so that people feel welcome tosay what they want. Our politicians must actuallygrapple with solutions. Trump recently lambastedPresident Obama and Hillary Clinton for refusingto use the term radical Islamic terrorism: “you can’tsolve a problem if you refuse to talk about whatthe problem is,” he said, and went on to use thephrase gleefully, to the delight of the crowd. Butwhen pressed on what he would actually do aboutterrorism—radical, Islamic or otherwise—he didn’tneed to give that infinitely complex challenge asecond thought. “I’m going to bomb the sh-t out ofthem,” he said. The crowd roared. □

WHY DON’T MOREvoters come for-ward to support—orreject—new lawsand regulations thatwould directly af-fect them? In hisnew book, Unin-formed: Why People Seem to Know SoLittle About Politics and What We CanDo About It, political scientist ArthurLupia argues that it’s a matter of educa-tion. And America’s key influencers, hewrites, should address this—by makingthings personal. Rather than focusingon how an environmental regulationmight slightly change the temperatureon a polar ice cap, for example, Lupiacontends that journalists, teachers andadvocates should explain how it willsave a local elementary school fromending up underwater. Once voters arehooked on a big-picture concept, it’seasier to get them engaged with the de-tails of a law, rule or regulation—andtake informed action to help it pass, failor evolve. “There is no question,” Lupiawrites, that knowing more “can changeour decisions. There is no question thatsome of these changed decisions wouldimprove our quality of life.”

—SARAH BEGLEY

THE NUTSHELL

Uninformed

CHARTOON

Life’s box of chocolates

VERBATIM

‘In thisinstance wefailed to live

up to our ownstandards of

sensitivity anddiversity ... Wehave, can and

will continue todo better. ’

LIONSGATE STUDIOS, in astatement apologizing

for casting whiteactors—including

Gerard Butler (below)and Game of Thrones’

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau—to play the titular gods

in Gods of Egypt, aforthcoming fantasy epic

set in North Africa

BU

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JOHN ATK INSON, WRONG HANDS

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INVESTING IN MEDICAL RESEARCH HAS A PROVEN HISTORY OF SUCCESS.

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Soaring Costs: The most expensive disease in the country will quadruple to more than $1 trillion over the next generation, threatening family savings and the future of Medicare.

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NOW’S THE TIME TO MAKEALZHEIMER’S DISEASE HISTORY.

1942 1952 1967 1987

CHEMO-THERAPY

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HEART TRANSPLANT

AZTPOLIO VACCINE

37

WHAT WAS THE BEST GIFT I EVERreceived? Well, I’m a music lover, so I’dhave to say it was either a Spotify sub-scription or my top-of-the-range SonyMDR-7506 headphones. Togetherthey’ve provided me with countlesshours of high-quality audio accompani-ment. Growing up in a loving, well-offfamily in one of the richest countries inthe world, what more could I want?

Giving gifts to loved ones is great:it’s a rewarding way to spread joy andstrengthen friendships and family ties.But (at the risk of sounding like BobGeldof) at this time of year I’m alwaysreminded of how many people not onlyget no presents but also lack the basics toallow them to live healthy lives. For me,luxury headphones were the perfect gift;

The best gift this year? Giving—and here’s how to make it countBy William MacAskill

The View Spotlight

for the world’s poorest, it would be nutri-tious food, clean water and health care.

The poorest 10% of the world’s popu-lation, some 700 million people, liveon less than $1.90 per day. And that’sadjusting for local purchasing power:they live on what $1.90 would buy in theU.S. Faced with this kind of budget, andoften geographically isolated, they areforced to eat whatever they can find anddrink and wash in unsafe water. Theycan only pray that they don’t succumb tomalnutrition, malaria or any number ofother diseases that, while perfectly cur-able in rich countries, frequently ruin orend lives in the developing world.

I don’t seek to make anyone feel guiltyfor exchanging luxury goods with thepeople they love. But it seems to me thatthere’s another type of giving that is, ifanything, even more profound: givingthe basics of life to those most in need.Sure, you might not get a thank-you let-ter (who does these days?), but you’llhave done something extraordinary.

‘I gave my husband a voucherthree Christmases ago whichsaid, “You can redeem anytime,anywhere, for a two-hourdeep-tissue massage which Iwill give you.” For three yearshe has said, “Tonight?”’Blanchett stars in Carol

‘When I was 5 or 6, myfather was a hard-rock

geologist, and hedidn’t get a Christmas

bonus that year. Sohe convinced a friend

of his, who flew ahelicopter, to put on aSanta suit and land inour backyard outside

of Arvada, Colo., whichwas just a field, and hegot out of the helicopterand gave us little 25¢toys, and it was the

greatest Christmas ofmy life: the year Santacame to our house in a

helicopter.’

Rove is the author ofThe Triumph of William

McKinley

KARL ROVE

From the heartActors, comedians and other influencers share the gifts that have meant the most, from thoughtful meals

cooked by their kids to an annual closet cleanout turned clothing giveaway

MARGARET CHO

‘One thousand rolls of toilet paper from Charmin to helpmy homeless outreach #BeRobin, a charity founded tocelebrate the philanthropic life of Robin Williams. Theybrought it in a truck. I wept. It was truly beautiful.’Cho’s stand-up special PsyCHO airs on Showtime this month

CATE BLANCHETT

MacAskill isa philosopherat Oxford and

a co-founder ofthe effective-

altruismmovement

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The View Spotlight

However, I’m not just interested in peo-ple giving more to charity (although thatis important). I’m also passionate aboutpeople giving smarter, because whereyou give can make a huge difference onthe impact you’ll have.

What do I mean by that? Well, tostart with, there’s a reason I’ve beentalking about the developing world.Even average earners in the West are in-credibly rich compared with the globalpoor, so a sum of money consideredmoderate for some could make a hugedifference in the poorest countries.

That’s not to say that all developing-world poverty-relief charities are goodat making a difference—that’s certainlynot the case. Plenty of money donatedin good faith is lost to local corruption,poor administration or programs of in-tervention that sound great in theorybut don’t achieve much in practice. Asa result, it’s crucial to look at the ef-fectiveness of the work a charity doesbefore committing your money. Howmuch good does it achieve for each dol-lar donated? Is there robust evidencefor the impact of its programs?

It’s not always easy for people to findthe answers, but they are vital questionsto ask. That’s why there are now orga-nizations devoted to finding and pro-moting the best charities. As part of theeffective-altruism movement, they arededicated to helping people make thebiggest possible difference with theirdonations.

I love my music, and I love my head-phones. But this year, the best gift Icould get is to see as many people aspossible giving generously to the mosteffective charities in the world.

MacAskill is theauthor of DoingGood Better anda co-founder ofthe charity GivingWhat We Can

‘I’m pretty sure it’d be theChristmas dinner my sonand daughter threw metwo years ago. They justmade all kinds of food. Iwent over there and theysprayed [Silly String] inmy face. They recorded itand put it online.’Ross releases a new album, Black Market, this month

RICK ROSS

‘I always appreciate practical gifts. I’m a minimalist—I’m not into tchotchkes. I’m always trying to get ridof stuff. Every so often I’ll invite my friends over to gothrough my closet and take my clothes. So I guess myfavorite gifts are basic things like a wallet I’ll use foreveror a great pair of jeans.’

Ritter is the star of Jessica Jones, on Netflix

KRYSTEN RITTER

ROONEY MARA

‘I have such a huge familythat the holidays give me a

lot of stress and anxiety,because I just feel

that it’s so wastefuland we don’t needanything—it’s justlike you’re tryingto find a present for

someone. Last year,me and my siblings

and even my parentswere like, “No, I donot want a gift. I’mnot getting you agift. We’re going todonate.” Now I giveeveryone Oxfam—Iget everyone goatsand pigs and cows.’Mara stars in Carol

‘The best gift I’ve evergotten, I’ve gotten everyday of my life, and that’swaking up. I love waking

up. I’m a morning,afternoon and eveningperson. There are two

small words that are themost important words

in the English language:over and next.

If there were a hammockin the middle between

over and next, that wouldbe living in the moment.Waking up in the morning

is the next moment.The next moment to me is

the taste of coffee.’

Lear is a televisionproducer

NORMAN LEAR

RIT

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R: N

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AS

HU

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—G

ET

TY

IMA

GE

S; R

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AP

Two bold ristretto shots of Christmas Blend Espresso Roast

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Christmas Blend Espresso Roast not available in all stores. While supplies last.© 2015 Starbucks Coffee Company. All rights reserved.SBX16-121185

GMO AquAdvantagesalmon are full grown

at 18 months

Standard Atlanticsalmon at the

same age

GENETIC MATERIAL FROMTWO OTHER FISH IS ADDEDTO ATLANTIC SALMON

THE RESULT: A SHORTCUT TO A BIG FISH

THE GMOSALMON GROWFASTER

Atlantic salmon

GMOsalmon Standard

salmon

Chinook salmon

Ocean pout

6KG

10YEARS FROM FIRST FEEDING

2

4

2

0

Thebase

Forgrowthhormone

HelpsactivateChinookgene


The View Health

A SALMON THAT HAS NEVER BEENseen in nature but grows twice as fastas regular salmon just got closer tostore shelves and restaurant menus.AquAdvantage—a patented Atlanticsalmon that includes genetic materialfrom two other fish species—has beenthe subject of controversy for years,but on Nov. 19, the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration said its scientists haddeemed it safe for humans to eat. It’sthe first genetically modified animal theagency has greenlighted for human con-sumption. The fish will be bred in land-based tanks in Canada and Panama.

Gene-altered salmon may have trou-ble winning over some consumers andretailers who are wary of the potentialenvironmental and health hazards ofeating genetically modified animals.Here’s what all the fuss is about.

Is genetically modified salmon safeto eat? The FDA says its scientists“rigorously evaluated extensive datasubmitted by the manufacturer, Aqua-Bounty Technologies, and other peer-reviewed data” and determined thatthe salmon is safe to eat for both hu-mans and animals. There was no dif-ference, from a safety perspective, be-tween eating farmed salmon and eatingAquAdvantage salmon.

Most of the studies in which animalsate genetically modified foods do notshow any serious health effects. A smallnumber of studies do hint at possibleproblems—but research on the long-term safety for humans is scant.

Will I know which salmon aregenetically modified and which arenot? Not necessarily. There is no regu-lation in the U.S. requiring companiesto label genetically modified organisms(GMOs) as such. That means any indi-cation to consumers that a food is genet-ically altered would be voluntary. Butthe FDA did issue recommendations

The firstgenetically alteredanimal is approvedfor eatingBy Alice Park

for how companies should note geneticchanges should they choose to do so.

What other GMO foods are approved?Most corn, soy, cotton and sugar beets—as well as some alfalfa, potatoes, papayaand other crops—that are grown in theU.S. are genetically engineered to eitherproduce higher yields or resist pests anddrought. Up to 80% of the processedfoods sold in the U.S. contain GMOs.

What does gene-altered salmon tastelike? AquaBounty says it is indistin-guishable from farm-raised salmon.

Why do some people oppose GMOs?Opponents have several concerns. First,the genetic alterations could change theplant or animal in ways that could beharmful for the people who eat it. Someworry that tinkering with genes maycause changes that could damage theplant or animal by making it less fit forsurvival. Finally, AquAdvantage salmonare raised in containers, not in the wild,

but if the new species were to make itsway into rivers and oceans, for instance,some worry that it could alter the exist-ing environment.

Will changing the genes harm thefish? The data isn’t clear on this yet.Studies have shown that geneticallyaltered fish tend to eat more to sup-port their growth-promoting genes, butAquaBounty says its salmon consume25% less feed than Atlantic salmon.

Where will the genetically modifiedsalmon be sold? AquaBounty says itmay take a year to raise enough fish tosupply supermarkets. But certain re-tailers, including Costco, Whole Foods,Trader Joe’s, Safeway, Kroger and Aldi,said that as of now they do not intendto sell the fish. Still, with $85 millioninvested so far in the development ofthis unprecedented species, the com-pany will likely be working hard incoming months to find viable retailchannels for its fish. □

SOURCE: AQUABOUNT Y TECHNOLOGIES

EDUCATION MARKETPLACESPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

TO ADVERTISE IN OUR EXECUTIVE EDUCATION SECTIONS, CONTACT DIRECT ACTION MEDIA 1-800-938-4660 OR RON MOSS 212.522.6069

PHOTOGR APHS BY RYA N LOW RY FOR TIME

Clockwise from top left, at Chicagoairports: a passenger checkpoint,a full-body scanner, searching acarry-on, checked-baggage scans

THE PRICE OA TIME INVESTIGATION

By Massimo CalabresiTSA’S EMERGENCY POWERS ARE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD

F SECURITY


THEY POSED AS TRAVELERS, PACKING FAKE BOMBSinto suitcases and checking them at ticket countersin airports around the U.S. Then the team of covertinspectors from the Department of Homeland Secu-rity tracked the response of the Transportation Se-curity Administration (TSA). In a few cases last year,the fake bombs slipped through TSA’s $1.38 millionbag-scanning machines undetected. Worse, when thedummy explosives set off an alarm, the suitcases stillmade it past TSA screeners more than half the time,several people who have read the inspectors’ classi-fied report tell TIME. Says one source familiar withthe findings: “The performance is eye-opening andreally, really poor.”

What makes these failures particularly troublingis that since 2008, TSA has spent more than $2 bil-lion to improve the screening of checked baggage.How can a federal agency spend that much on sucha critical component of aviation security and have solittle to show for it? For starters, it helps to have nooversight and no accountability.

TSA spent all of that $2 billion through a little-known power that lets the agency ignore every ruleand law controlling government spending, a TIMEreview of the agency’s records shows. The loophole,known as “other transaction” authority, can be usedby only a handful of agencies. And those who knowabout it say it’s a recipe for disaster. “The mere factthat an agency opts into an other transaction agree-ment is almost a guarantee that it’s going to go wronglater,” says Steven Schooner, a George WashingtonUniversity Law School professor who trains federalprocurement officers.

This is a particularly dangerous moment for air se-curity to work better in theory than in practice. U.S.intelligence has concluded that ISIS likely plantedthe bomb that brought down a Russian jet over theSinai Peninsula on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people onboard. Among the methods ISIS may have used toget the device on board, intelligence officials say:a suicide bomber carrying it onto the plane, an air-port worker planting it there or someone hiding it inchecked baggage. U.S. officials suspect the group mayhave recruited or converted followers with bomb-making skills from military forces or other extrem-ist groups, like al-Qaeda, that have targeted Westernairliners in the past.

If ISIS is expanding its threat to American trav-elers, TSA is still struggling to overcome 14 yearsof failures. Among the litany of errors in the yearsince the checked-baggage fiasco: TSA officialscleared 73 airport workers for access to restrictedareas even though their names appear in the gov-ernment’s database of those with suspected ter-rorist connections, and TSA officers helped smug-gle drugs past security at airports in Los Angelesand San Francisco. In June, Homeland Security In-spector General John Roth found that TSA failed

to catch threats at passenger checkpoints a stag-gering 96% of the time.

TSA’s leaders have accepted Roth’s findings andsay they are working to improve performance. But aclose look at TSA’s history shows the agency’s specialpowers are an underlying and intractable source ofits problems. Created in the panicked days after 9/11,TSA won from Congress a blanket pass on many ofthe federal oversight and accountability rules thatgovern other agencies. The result, say longtime TSAwatchers, is an agency with a disgruntled workforce,ineffective equipment and procedures that don’t pro-vide safety. But Congress has its own reasons for leav-ing those powers in place.

EVEN THE PHRASE other transaction authority is oneof those Washington confections designed to makethe curious look elsewhere. The loophole traces itsroots to the Cold War, when the U.S. was racing tocatch up with the Soviet Union after the launch ofthe world’s first satellite, Sputnik. In the Space Actof 1958, Congress gave NASA the power to “enterinto and perform such contracts, leases, cooperativeagreements, or other transactions as may be neces-sary in the conduct of its work.” Frustrated by gov-ernment contract regulations that required every-thing from competitive sourcing to auditing, NASA’stop lawyer, Paul Dembling, noticed the rules nevermentioned “other transactions.” So he turned Con-gress’s afterthought into a way to skirt oversight.NASA could simply cite the “other transaction,” andthe federal government’s rule-free spending systemwas born.

For decades, only NASA got away with this ploy.Then in 1989, DARPA, the Pentagon lab that devel-oped the Internet and GPS, convinced Congress itshould have the same power. Soon enough, otheragencies wanted the authority to skip every rule inthe 2,000-page book of Federal Acquisition Regula-tion. By 2001, the rest of the Pentagon, as well as theFAA and the Department of Transportation, had it.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 presented an urgentchallenge to the government’s spending system. Noone had built an agency from scratch during a na-tional emergency since World War II. In creating theTSA, Congress gave it just one year to have a sys-tem in place for screening all passengers and bags atevery U.S. airport. “It was an impossible task,” saysSam Whitehorn, one of the Senate staffers who wrotethe bipartisan act that created TSA on Nov. 19, 2001.“So we made sure they had all the authority that theyneeded to act quickly.”

Other transaction authority was just one of thepowers given to TSA at its inception. To get screenersinto airports quickly, TSA also got a pass on federalhiring rules. By November 2002, nearly 60,000 fed-eral workers were screening every passenger at everycommercial airport in the country. And by the end of

96%TSA’s failure ratewhen Homeland

Securityinspectors

attempted tosneak fakebombs andweaponsthrough

passengercheckpoints

this year

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Obama did become President, he set in motion TSA’smost aggressive use of superpowers yet.

IN 2009, with the Great Recession looming and law-makers in a hurry to spend, Congress gave TSA $1 bil-lion to optimize checked-baggage inspection. Overthe next three years, TSA used its special spendingpower to pay 29 airports more than $700 millionto streamline clunky screening processes in depar-ture terminals. That often meant creating elaborateconveyor systems in the bowels of airports wherechecked bags would be scanned and suspect onesdiverted for inspection in specially equipped rooms.TSA told the airports it would pay for 90% of all reno-vations to accommodate the changes; the result wasglittering new terminals from Baltimore to Honolulu.

When the stimulus funds ran out, TSA stayed inthe business of subsidizing airports. The agency col-lects $5.60 from travelers for every U.S.-based trip.In fiscal year 2013, TSA used those fees to under-write $800 million worth of other transaction agree-ments to speed checked-baggage inspection, includ-ing $24 million for Chicago’s O’Hare and $25 millionfor A.B. Won Pat airport in Guam. In a 2012 reviewof the program, the Government Accountability Of-fice found it was boosting airports’ bottom lines andthat TSA could save $300 million if it cut its contri-bution from 90% to 75%.

Big-ticket items aren’t the only expenses TSA ispaying for outside the government’s system for over-sight and accountability. The agency funds canineteams, armed guards, janitors and electricity at air-ports using its rule-free powers. In 2011, New York-ers who lived near shuttle stops to Kennedy airportcomplained to Senator Chuck Schumer that TSAagents were taking up parking spots. In January2014, TSA signed an other transaction agreementto pay JFK $1.5 million a year for parking.

that year, TSA was running every suitcase throughelectronic screening machines. Even agency criticssay the turnaround was impressive. Without suchflexibility, says Michael Jackson, then deputy headof the Department of Transportation, “we would nothave been able to accomplish what we did.”

But the speed came at a cost. A federal audit foundTSA used its hiring-rules exemption to hold recruit-ment sessions for would-be screeners in places likeTelluride and resorts in the Florida Keys and the U.S.Virgin Islands, adding more than $300 million to itsstartup costs. In 2004, TSA used its superpowers tospend $30 million on 207 passenger scanners knownas “puffer” machines because they blew jets of airover travelers and sniffed the eddies for traces ofexplosive materials. The machines didn’t work inthe field, and the Government Accountability Of-fice found TSA failed to do testing that would havebeen required under normal federal rules.

TSA’s special powers may have been critical forthe agency’s launch, but they soon became hard tojustify. In 2006, the Senate unanimously voted tostrip TSA’s use of another power, the AcquisitionManagement System, but the provision disappearedbefore President George W. Bush signed the bill. Itwas finally axed the next year, but amid the claimsof reform, few noticed the lawmakers had left TSA’smore powerful procurement exemption, other trans-action authority, in place. A staffer involved in thelaw’s passage says doing so wasn’t an oversight butrather a “half-step” result of negotiation.

In 2008, TSA’s superpowers briefly became apresidential campaign issue. Wooing unions thatopposed TSA’s hiring exemptions, then candidateBarack Obama promised, “As President, I will makesure that the documented waste and mismanage-ment at TSA is subject to the same rules regardingcontracting as other federal agencies.” But when

Charged with ensuringthe safety of 660 mil-lion passengers andnearly 2 billion bagsa year, TSA has spentheavily but often noteffectively in an attemptto fulfill its mission.Nearly a third of theagency’s funds comefrom passenger andairline security fees.

THETROUBLEDTSA

$42 millionNAKED

SCANNERS

2007–13

TSA deployed, thenwithdrew, hundreds ofmachines that showedpassengers’ bodies onofficers’ screens. More

recently, inspectorsfound that checkpoints

miss threats 96% ofthe time.SOURCES: OMB; DHS; GAO;

NEWS REPORTS

$30 millionPUFFER

MACHINES

2004–09

TSA putexplosive-material

sniffers in 37 airports,but dust and humidityprevented them fromworking properly. GAOfound that field testswould have spotted

the problem.

$1 billion+OBSERVATIONSCREENING

2007–present

The SPOT programaimed to catch

terrorists via behavioralclues. In 2010, GAOfound the programhad missed knownterrorists 23 timesand recommended

defunding it.

Securityfees

$7.4B

0

2

4

$6B

’15’10’05’02FISCAL YEAR

Governmentfunds

ANNUAL SPENDING COSTLY AND CONTROVERSIAL PROGRAMS


Some particularly unusual TSA practices are nowunder scrutiny. In January 2014, TSA began payingthe American Public Transportation Association(APTA) $1.5 million a year via other transaction au-thority for a series of publications on terrorist threatsto surface transportation that it circulates to lawmak-ers and government officials. The lobbyists in turnhave spent $3 million since then influencing thebill that funds TSA, a review of lobbying disclosureforms shows. TSA’s payments to APTA don’t violatethe federal Anti-Lobbying Act, which criminalizesthe use of federal funds to lobby members of gov-ernment, because the Justice Department has inter-preted the law to apply only to grassroots campaigns.But the newsletter “is obviously lobbying,” says CraigHolman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, and“is a violation of the spirit of the act.”

Finding waste, fraud and abuse in TSA’s off-the-books spending is difficult because “the methods ormechanisms used to track contractor performanceand results also do not apply,” says the Congressio-nal Research Service. And TSA makes public scru-tiny even harder by labeling much of its work secretor sensitive: last January, DHS Inspector GeneralRoth publicly accused TSA of using its authorityto classify spending audits to prevent their releaseto the public. In the unclassified summary of hischecked-baggage report, Roth said there had beenno improvement in TSA’s ability to find bombs inbags since 2009.

A BROADER LOOK at TSA’s missteps reveals a pat-tern: expansive use of special powers in the yearssince 9/11, followed by failure to deliver on its coremission. Take the TSA’s exemption from federal hir-ing rules for transportation security officers (TSOs),the people in blue shirts and black pants who staffthe screening stations. Thanks to that exemption,the agency can advertise entry-level TSO jobs foras little as $28,000 a year, which is below the fed-eral poverty level for a family of five. And that paydoesn’t grant the job security of many other govern-ment employees. In 2014, 165 TSOs were terminatedfor medical conditions including arthritis, asthma,cancer, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder,according to TSA records obtained by TIME. Whileheadquarters officials might be reassigned for thosemedical conditions, the TSOs are fired outright.

It will surprise few then that TSA agents haveamong the worst morale and highest turnover ofgovernment employees. That contributes to poorperformance by screeners who spend hours staringat monitors to spot bombs and weapons that rarelycome. Over the past year, Roth ran covert tests at pas-senger checkpoints and found TSA was missing 96%of threats there. Sometimes the agency’s full-bodyscanners missed the threats, several sources familiarwith the classified report tell TIME. But often it was

the screeners themselves making a mistake or usingfaulty procedures.

TSA’s new leader, Peter Neffenger, defends thescreeners, saying most are dedicated and “have saidyes to a very challenging, critically important job.”Confirmed in June, he is requiring all officers to re-ceive basic training at the agency’s boot camp inGeorgia in an effort to improve TSO performanceand boost focus and morale. He says he is reviewingthe agency’s use of superpowers but seems more in-terested in refining them than giving them up. Theissue, he says, is “How do I train people and makethem feel connected to the national mission?”

Even if Neffenger finds the agency’s special pow-ers are doing more harm than good, though, Con-gress has its own reasons to keep them in place:they help keep the money flowing from taxpay-ers and campaign contributors. Republicans arguethat screener woes show that the TSA workforceshould be privatized and have created a limited op-tion for airports to do so. Democrats say the answeris unionization, and TSA has allowed limited stepsin that direction. Neither position will win outright,but the ongoing battle has benefits. For the 2014election cycle, campaign donations from the trans-portation industry and labor groups to members ofthe House committees with oversight of the TSA to-taled over $10 million. In the Senate, the donationsneared $16 million.

Congress is nonetheless eager to give the impres-sion it wants reform. Last year both chambers unan-imously passed the Transportation Security Acqui-sition Reform Act. Its author, Republican RichardHudson of North Carolina, said it would “root outthe waste . . . and increase safety by ensuring that themost effective, cost-efficient security tools are imple-mented.” It was quickly signed into law by Obama.But the measure pushes TSA to spend more, not less,in coming years.

After the Russian jet bombing, Neffenger andDHS Secretary Jeh Johnson ordered “a series of in-terim, precautionary enhancements to aviation se-curity” at some Middle Eastern airports. After Roth’sreport on passenger checkpoints in June, they an-nounced similarly unspecified security enhance-ments at domestic airports. A close look at what TSAis doing, rather than what it is saying, is not reassur-ing. Documents obtained by TIME show TSA intendsto spend $51 million on new full-body scanners eventhough it has failed to show the machines will catchthreats better than the old ones. And the AcquisitionReform Act of 2014 left TSA’s other transaction au-thority in place. So far in 2015, the agency has usedthat power to sign agreements worth $85 million. By2020, the agency plans to spend $330 million on newchecked-bag scanning systems for airports across thecountry. —WITH REPORTING BY TESSA BERENSONAND PRATHEEK REBALA/WASHINGTON □

35%The percentageof TSA’s annualprocurement

budget that wasunderwrittenduring fiscalyear 2013

using “othertransaction”

authority

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S E N D I N G W O M E

U.S. Marine CaptainEmily Naslund onthe front line of theAfghanistan war in2010, patrolling avillage in Helmandprovince

PHOTOGR APH BY LY NSEY ADDARIO

E N T O W A R

A BOMB RIPPED THROUGH A U.S. AR-mored vehicle patrolling a Baghdad streetin the darkest days of the Iraq War, set-ting it ablaze and filling the crew com-partment with smoke. As flames lickedthe fuel tanks, busted hydraulics keptthe hatch locked. Amid the carnage andchoking, the four soldiers trapped in-side heard enemy small-arms fire hittingtheir 18-ton Stryker. After finally gettingthe hatch open, a lieutenant pulled out astaff sergeant who had lost his leg belowthe knee. That left two people inside: agrievously wounded 6-ft. 1-in. sergeant,250 lb. in his gear, and a 5-ft. 2-in. soldierweighing half as much.

“She pulls him out of this burningvehicle, which is amazing in itself,” hercommander recalled. “Getting in andout of the vehicle with all of your kit onis difficult enough on its own, especiallyif you add smoke, fire and the chaos ofgetting shot at, and bullets pinging offthe outside of the armor, but she does itanyway,” he continued in an interviewfor an Army history project. “As she’sdragging him back, she’s shooting one-handed with her M-16 toward the badguys. Completely phenomenal! She’sjust f-cking awesome!”

The woman wasn’t an infantryman butan Army lab technician who spent mostof her time spinning vials of blood backat the unit’s base, not trying to kill roof-top attackers 100 yards away. But on thatgrim day in 2006, her commander didn’tcare. While she had come along on themission in case female Iraqis needed to besearched, she proved capable of far morethan that. “It changed my opinion about

53

B Y M A R K T H O M P S O N


where women ought to be in the fight,” hesaid. “When the chips are down, a goodsoldier is a good soldier.”

Good enough to be assigned to thetoughest combat jobs in the U.S. mili-tary? That’s the historic question nowpending inside the Pentagon. A genera-tion ago, the possibility of women servingon the front lines seemed as unlikely as,well, a female President. Now both couldhappen in 2016.

Women have been advancing towardthe front lines for more than a generation.They climbed into Air Force fighter-jetcockpits in 1993 and aboard Navy subma-rines in 2011. But when it comes to com-bat on the ground—generally the dirtiestand bloodiest jobs in any military, and arequired ticket-punch for ground-forcepromotions—progress has been slow.Women have been edging closer by serv-ing in intelligence, logistics and other sup-port roles. But in 2013 then Defense Sec-retary Leon Panetta ordered a review ofthe physical demands of combat slots andany justification for the Pentagon’s policythat keeps women out of front-line com-bat billets. Defense Secretary AshtonCarter is expected to decide in January ifwomen should be permitted in all militaryroles, including the ones reserved untilnow for brothers—not sisters—in arms:the infantry grunts, those riding tanks andartillery into battle, and special operators.

The Air Force and Navy, which do lit-tle fighting on the ground, have alreadyopened up 98% of their slots to women,and their uniformed leaders have ap-proved going all the way. But that hasbeen a relatively easy choice comparedwith the decision to add women to theranks of combat infantry in the Army andthe Marines. While the Army, which cur-rently allows women in 82% of its jobs, isgreen-lighting all jobs for women so longas they can meet certain physical stan-dards, the Marines are holding out, Penta-gon officials say. Marine ground-combatunits, which make up 25% of Marine slots,should remain all-male bastions, accord-ing to recommendations from corps of-ficials. “Women don’t have the brutestrength that’s needed in combat,” saysJude Eden, a woman who served as a Ma-rine sergeant in Iraq for seven months in2005 and 2006. A Marine study last sum-mer reported that 13% of female Marineswere injured in infantry training, com-

require such intense tests. That’s aboutto change. The prospect of women serv-ing on the front lines led Pentagon ci-vilians to order the military to draftphysical-fitness standards for each mil-itary job. Generally speaking, it will beeasier for men to meet such standards:assessments of the Army’s storied 101stAirborne Division found that the aver-age female weighed only 80% as much asthe average male, with 10% more bodyfat and 30% less muscle.

But the military is more than muscle,some advocates argue. On average, menare more aggressive, which can be ben-eficial in combat. But that trait also con-tributes to more accidents and injuries,as well as suicides. Women are smaller—their stride is shorter, requiring them tomarch faster to cover the same terrain.And they may be more susceptible to in-jury: from 2001 to 2012, female troopswere medically evacuated from Afghani-stan at a rate 22% higher than men, eventhough they were formally barred fromground combat. In 2014, female troopswere hospitalized 40% more often thanmen, even after eliminating pregnancyfrom the calculation. At the same time,the Marines’ own research shows thatmixed-gender units solve problems bet-ter and have fewer disciplinary headachesthan all-male outfits.

“Units would be better off by hav-ing women in them,” says David Barno,a retired three-star Army general whocommanded all U.S. troops in Afghani-stan from 2003 to 2005. “You get a bet-ter product when you’ve integrated menand women on staff, and when you’vegot women commanders.” Nonetheless,if women end up on the front lines, “it’sgoing to be a significant emotional event,”Barno says. “You’ve got rifle squadsand Marine infantry companies full of18-year-old football players just out ofhigh school, and there weren’t any womenon that football team—that’s the psychol-ogy of a rifle squad full of young men.”

Physical-fitness standards may elimi-nate a greater percentage of women thanmen, but they will also assure that allground troops are up to the task regard-less of gender. In the past, simply being aman was good enough. Standards, whenthey existed, were flimsy. “We kind ofhad good-ol’-boy, ‘It’s a road march atthis speed,’” explained Lieut. General

pared with 2% for men. “And women’shigher injury rates certainly don’t addstrength to combat units,” she says.

Advocates of preserving the status quocite the life-and-death brutality of close-in combat—blood-spitting, skull-split-ting fights with knives, rocks and barehands. A tidy concept like fitness doesn’ttouch the gory reality. “There is a mon-umental difference between fitness,”a Marine major wrote in a 2013 study,“and fighting in a hand-to-hand matchto the death.” Even advocates of openingcombat to women concede that the aver-age male military recruit is stronger andfaster than the average female military re-cruit. (Gender-specific physical standardsacknowledge the fact: a 22-year-old malesoldier has to run 2 miles in no more than17 min. 30 sec.; his female comrade gets20 min. 36 sec.).

But plenty of women are above aver-age, and some are extraordinary. If themilitary wants the best available troopsfighting the nation’s wars, argue support-ers of opening combat ranks to women, itcan’t rule out half the population.

THE ARMY’S APPROACHTHREE WOMEN HAVE PASSED THEArmy’s punishing Ranger School coursein recent months, but few assignments

19%Air Force

18%Navy

14%Army

8%Marine Corps

WOMEN IN THEARMED SERVICES

(as a percentageof total force)

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Bob Brown, who is responsible for Armyleadership development, at a Septembergathering in Fort Benning, Ga. Anyonewho can meet the new standards shouldbe allowed to serve, he said.

“There will probably be some malesoldiers in the infantry today that don’tmeasure up, don’t qualify to be the infan-try,” added the commander of the Army’s18th Airborne Corps, Lieut. General Ste-phen Townsend. “That’s O.K. with me.It’s also O.K. with me if there are femalesoldiers who qualify.”

THE MARINES RESISTIN CONTRAST WITH THE ARMY, THEMarines have dug in behind the idea thatfront-line units should remain all-male.“To move forward in expanding oppor-tunities for our female service memberswithout considering the timeless, brutal,physical and absolutely unforgiving na-ture of close combat is a prescription forfailure,” an internal Marine study com-pleted in August concluded. “Those whochoose to turn a blind eye to those im-mutable realities do so at the expense ofour corps’ war-fighting capability and,in turn, the security of the nation.”

Gregory Newbold, a retired Marinelieutenant general, says that physicalstrength is only part of the combat cal-culus. If there is a time for men to bebrutes, this is it. “Crude traits are kindof useful,” he says of testosterone-ladencamaraderie. “It’s important that ISIS or[Vladimir] Putin knows the other side canbe ruthless.” And he says he worries thatthe sexual dynamics inherent in addingwomen to the front lines would dilutecombat power.

In its key tests, the Marine Corpspitted all-male squads against mixed-gender units through nine months ofassessments involving 350 Marines, in-cluding 75 women. All-male squads didbetter than mixed-gender units in 93 of134 events. Mixed-gender units outdidtheir all-male counterparts in just two.There were no significant differencesin performance in the other 39 events.“The majority of the operationally rel-evant differences occurred in the mostphysically demanding tasks, such as ca-sualty evacuations, long hikes underload, and negotiating obstacles,” an in-ternal Marine assessment said. Infantrytasks, in other words.

Brenda “Sue” Fulton, a former Armycaptain, says the tests were designed toproduce lopsided results. The womenin the mixed units weren’t trained to thelevel of their male counterparts. “The Ma-rines are tossing women into the deep endof the pool and saying, ‘Compete withthe varsity swim team,’ ” she says. Thecorps has “very low expectations” of itswomen because of “an institutional beliefthat women simply are not up to it,” addsFulton, a 1980 West Point graduate whochairs the academy’s Board of Visitors.

The Marines do agree with the Armyon one thing: the new standards will bea welcome chance to weed out male re-cruits who can’t meet the demands ofthe infantry. Fitness tests “will serve toreduce some of the ‘wastage’ that occursin our ground combat arms units due toMarines being physically incapable ofmeeting the demands of service,” an-other internal Marine report said.

DECISION TIMEOTHER NATIONS, INCLUDING CANADA,Denmark, Germany and Norway, permit-ted women in combat beginning in the1980s. Canada experienced no “nega-tive effect on operational performanceor team cohesion,” a 2009 study found.But their presence is minimal. That’s be-

cause many women—like many men—have no desire to risk their lives. Womenaccount for fewer than 1 of every 100soldiers in the Canadian army’s infantryunits. (They comprise 3% of the tankerforce and 5% of artillery.)

Low numbers complicate the chal-lenge of integrating women. Ample re-search supports the idea that lastingchange requires an as-yet-unspecifiedcritical mass of women serving in com-bat units. “One of the biggest challengesfrom an implementing point of view willprobably be the tyranny of small num-bers,” says General David Perkins, theArmy’s top trainer.

Opening the combat ranks will alsoraise a couple of thorny legal issues: reg-istration for the draft, and involuntaryassignment to combat units. Womencurrently don’t face either of these pros-pects. While the chance of a draft is un-likely, all men in the U.S. are required toregister with the Selective Service whenthey turn 18. Because Congress orderedthe registration of “male persons,” itwould have to pass new legislation if itwanted to include women.

And if women seek to take the finalstep toward full participation in the mil-itary, it hardly seems fair that they shouldbe able to say “No thanks” if they’reneeded to fight. “Are we willing to causewomen to serve in infantry units againsttheir will, as we do men?” asked retiredadmiral Eric Olson, chief of U.S. SpecialOperations command from 2007 to 2011,at a July gathering. “About 30% of infan-try units are men who didn’t volunteer tobe in front-line combat.”

For now, it’s unusually quiet on theWashington front. Defense SecretaryCarter issued a directive on Oct. 2 in-structing the military to remain mumas he mulls the divergent recommen-dations. But he seemed to tip his handwhen he said in September, “Everyonewho is able and willing to serve and canmeet the standards we require shouldhave the full opportunity to do so.”

Pentagon officials believe that Carter,who never served in the military, willoverrule the Marines’ objections whenhe issues his decision. And the men ofthe corps will be expected to performthat time-honored acknowledgment ofauthority: a salute, along with a “Yessir!” □

1%Air Force

2%Navy

18%Army

25%Marine Corps

MILITARY JOBSCLOSED TO WOMEN

(as a percentageof all slots)

By Lev Grossman

Photographs byMarco Grob for TIME

A NEWNEW HOPE:

HOWJ.J. ABRAMS

BROUGHTBACK

STAR WARSUSING

PUPPETS,GREEBLES

ANDYAK HAIR

BB-8ASTROMECH DROID

Abrams wasdetermined to

use as little CGIas possible, so he

made BB-8—afully functioningrobot—who has

already become aniconic character.

T O M A K ET H E F O R C EA W A K E N S ,

A B R A M SR E T U R N E D

T O T H EF U T U R E O FT H E P A S T


containing a conference table, a giant screen anda good six meters of softly glowing consoles andmonitors—the kind of room from which an inter-continental ballistic missile could plausibly belaunched. Its official name is the Howard HawksMixing Stage, and at the moment it also containsJ.J. Abrams and 22 other people who are mak-ing final tweaks to the audio of the new Star Warsmovie, The Force Awakens, which will be in theaterson Dec. 18.

They pause on a moment when a Stormtroopernamed Finn, played by the English actor JohnBoyega, takes off his helmet. As he does so there’sa quiet whoosh sound, as of a vacuum seal beingbroken.

Question: Do Stormtrooper helmets form a sealwhen you put them on, which is then broken whenyou take them off? An engineer points out that bothLuke Skywalker and Han Solo take off Stormtrooperhelmets in the first movie with no whoosh sound ofany kind. Abrams—compact build, serious mien,black-frame glasses, plaid shirt and Daily Show base-ball cap that he doesn’t take off indoors—considers.

“I know,” he says finally. “But this is the futureof the past.” In the future of the past, Stormtrooperarmor seals tight.

I have seen the future of the past, or about 20 min-utes of it. In that 20 minutes—mild spoilers follow—a young woman named Rey, played by Daisy Rid-ley, sits disconsolately on a dead-end desert planetin the shade of a wrecked AT-AT, waiting for her lifeto happen. (“I know all about waiting,” she says.) Heronly companion is a friendly droid named BB-8. Atthe same time Poe Dameron, a captured rebel pilotplayed by Oscar Isaac, is being tortured by the sin-ister masked dark-sider Kylo Ren (Adam Driver)aboard a Star Destroyer belonging to the evil FirstOrder, a military faction inspired by the Empire.Finn, the Stormtrooper, having realized that hewants to be one of the good guys, busts Poe out andtogether they steal a TIE fighter (“I’ve always wantedto fly one of these things,” says Poe).

They crash-land on the desert planet where Reylives. Poe is presumed dead in the crash, but Finn

meets up with Rey and BB-8, who turns out to becarrying information vital to the resistance. TheFirst Order is hot on their heels. They need to es-cape. There’s a ship, Rey says, but it’s “garbage”—aclapped-out old rust bucket. Pan over to the garbageship. It is the Millennium Falcon. And scene.

If I’d seen that footage in a movie theater, I wouldnot have asked for my money back, but when it’s fin-ished Abrams snaps out 50 or 60 separate notes onthe audio effects alone. There is very serious talkabout footsteps (the phrase space floors crops up),droid language, the muffled, Dopplered scream thataccompanies the passage of a TIE fighter, the rela-tive awesomeness of various hatch noises and how toget midrange frequencies in there for people who aregoing to one day be watching this on their iPhones.They are nothing if not thorough.

It’s often said that the original Star Wars movieschanged the movie industry, but they also changedsomething else: the way we make fiction onscreen.They were a new kind of illusion, one that felt realin a way that no fantasy or science-fiction movieever had before. “When that giant spaceship flewover your head, and it was preceded by that kind ofold-fashioned title crawl,” says Harrison Ford, whoplayed, and plays, Han Solo, “and then the rumblingsound of that spaceship, you were in the movie forapproximately 30 seconds before you knew you werein for something that you had not seen before andthat was gut-level engaging.”

The universe of Star Wars didn’t just feel real inthe moment; it felt as if it had existed before thefilm started and would go on long after it was over.It felt as if it extended out beyond the visible frameof the image, on and on, world without end. “I re-member when I was watching Star Wars when I waskid, and these two droids were walking along thedeserts of Tattooine, and I knew they were there,”Abrams says. “It wasn’t some painted backgroundon an interior set, it wasn’t some lame visual effect,or even a great matte painting. You knew. They werereally somewhere else.” It was a new kind of worldbuilding, and it has influenced if not transformedevery piece of popular entertainment since then,from Harry Potter to Avatar to The Hunger Games toGame of Thrones.

It was a powerful illusion, but it has proved tobe an elusive one, difficult to reproduce. It’s hardto put your finger on what makes it work. The StarWars universe is a little like Narnia: even thosewho have been there can never be sure of getting inagain. Since Return of the Jedi was released in 1983it has yet to be demonstrated that it’s possible tomake another really good Star Wars movie. The pre-quel trilogy was a cautionary tale: not even GeorgeLucas, the man who built the Star Wars universe inthe first place, could bring it back to life. But it’s in-teresting to watch Abrams try.

J.J.Abrams

DIRECTOR

Abrams, 49,co-created Lost,

created Aliasand rebooted

Star Trek beforehe took on The

Force Awakens.“I wanted to feelthat thing I’d feltwhen I was a kid

watching thismovie.”

Inside Building 29on the Fox Studioslot in Los Angelesthere is an enormouswindowless room

DaisyRidley

REY

Ridley worked outfor hours everyday to play Rey,

who can take careof herself. “Thismisconceptionthat girls whohave muscles

can’t be feminineis ridiculous.”

JohnBoyega

FINN

His characteris Stormtrooper

FN-2187, alsoknown as Finn,

who joins theresistance. “He’strying to figureout his place in

this fight.”


JEFFREY JACOB ABRAMS first saw Star Wars at theAvco Center theater in Los Angeles, at age 11. It’s fairto say it made a big impression on him. “It was a con-fluence of greatness, all these levels of things work-ing spectacularly together,” he says. “It was a kind ofreality that was not normally associated with fantasyor science-fiction stories, a level of filmmaking thatwas not typically associated with mainstream genre.And it had incredible heart. There was a sweetnessto the story that gave the film this palpable sense ofhope.” Hope: it’s the keystone concept in the StarWars legendarium. One of the eternal mysteries ofStar Wars is that it looks like science fiction, with ro-bots and lasers and such, but at the same time it’s setfar in the past and has the dustiness and feel of an-cient history. It catches you up in a double-reverse, atemporal anomaly subtler than anything in Star Trek,that leaves you with a strange nostalgiclonging for the future. And what is hopebut a longing for the future?

It’s de rigueur to describe anybodytaking over a beloved franchise as a die-hard fan, but Abrams genuinely doesseem like a huge Star Wars fan. “On oneof the first days that we showed him an X-wing,” says Gary Tomkins, the art direc-tor on The Force Awakens, “we were talk-ing about various technical details, and hesaid, ‘Hey—just give me a minute. I’ve gotmy own X-wing here.’ And suddenly the8-year-old boy in him came out.”

Being the director, co-writer and co-producer of the first Star Wars moviein a decade is an amazing position fora grownup fanboy to be in, but it’s alsoa delicate one. Abrams has come into amagnificent inheritance, but it is not unencumbered.Tens of millions of fans also share ownership of it,if not in a legal sense then in a moral and emotionalone. Disney, which bought Lucasfilm in 2012, ownsit too. “[Abrams] and I had dinner alone together,and it was primarily for us to raise a glass to what wasabout to become our future,” says Bob Iger, Disney’schairman and CEO. “But it was also for me to lookhim in the eye, nicely, as a friend and say, ‘Look, wejust paid over $4 billion for this franchise.’” Iger sayshe was more personally involved with the making ofThe Force Awakens than with any movie since he be-came CEO 10 years ago.

Furthermore, the person Abrams inherited it allfrom is still around. The Star Wars movies have al-ways been to an unusual degree the expression ofLucas’ personal vision, and whatever else he is,Abrams is not Lucas.

For starters, Abrams is, it is generally attested,a considerably more verbal person than Lucas.“George doesn’t really talk,” says Carrie Fisher, whoreprises the role of Princess Leia in The Force Awak-

ens. “We were going to make a sign for him whenhe got sick at one point, saying FASTER AND MOREINTENSE, because those were his directions. J.J. is avery good communicator, so really in that sense he’sthe opposite.” Adam Driver, who plays the Vader-esque Kylo Ren, notes that even with vast set piecesin play Abrams has a gift for changing direction andimprovising in the moment. Everybody agrees thatAbrams is funny and relaxing to be around. There arerumors of his beatboxing over the on-set PA system.The humor comes through: whereas in Lucas’ moviesthe jokes were sudden isolated phenomena, like balllightning, the humor in The Force Awakens is moreorganic, part of the fabric of the movie. Abrams’ StarWars is slightly warmer to the touch.

What Abrams and Lucas do share is an obses-sion with controlling minute details, in particu-

lar the minute details of Star Wars. “J.J.has always cared about the design pro-cess, but I have to say that on Star Warshe was different,” says Michael Kaplan,who oversaw the costumes for the newmovie. “He even once asked me whereI was planning on putting a seam in acostume, which really made me laugh. Imean, no director has ever asked me thatbefore.” (Lucas wasn’t involved with TheForce Awakens after Abrams got on board,something he has expressed mixed feel-ings about. Abrams offered to show it tohim early, but Lucas demurred. “He wasan incredibly gracious guy,” Abrams says.“He wanted to wait till it was done, be-cause he’s never gotten to see a Star Warsmovie from the outside in.”)

Another delicate matter: Abrams hasto figure how to be true to Lucas’ vision, and alsohow to avoid being true to the bits of Lucas’ visionthat didn’t really work. Abrams is diplomatic aboutthe prequel trilogy, but it’s safe to say they weren’this primary model for The Force Awakens. (It’s nei-ther fun nor original to beat up on the prequels,but they really weren’t very good.) “Even in thebeginning, J.J. would say, ‘I don’t want it to be likethe prequels, because I don’t want it to be all clut-tered and about senate embargoes and all sorts ofmiddle-aged kinds of concerns,’” says Rick Carter,the movie’s production designer, who has workedon basically every Hollywood megahit since TheGoonies. “‘I want this to be about the edge of thefrontier, with real threats and real people.’”

The approach Abrams arrived at was to go back tothe techniques Lucas used the first time around, thetime that really mattered, all the way back in 1977.Abrams almost literally devolved the entire produc-tion of The Force Awakens technologically to an ear-lier era of filmmaking. He shot on film. Whereverpossible he abandoned CGI in favor of models and

Lucas, left, wanted to remake FlashGordon. When he couldn’t get the rights,

he created a far greater mythology.

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practical effects, and green screens in favor of ac-tual sets and physical locations. “I wanted to feelthat thing that I’d felt when I was a kid watching thismovie, which was that this was actually happening,”Abrams says. “So the decision was made very earlyon to build as much as we can and actually film it.And what that would do is obviate the need to try tomake people believe it was actually happening. Be-cause it simply would be happening.”

There’s both a logic to it and a funny perversity:what Lucas did then, with crude untried technol-ogy and minimal computer power, on a bare-bonesbudget and under desperate time pressure, Abramshas redone with all the time and money and com-puting power in the world. “We were very carefulnot to be overclever or overcomplicated or use toomany sophisticated materials or techniques,” saysNeal Scanlan, who was in charge of the creatureshop on The Force Awakens. “We wanted them tofit very much in the world of New Hope, Empire andReturn—that dare-I-say precious world was onethat we tried never to step beyond either visually orconceptually with technology.”

It’s almost like a historical re-enactment of themaking of Star Wars. Abrams is engaged in a kind ofcinematic archeology, digging back in time, in searchof that original, primal dream.

IT HELPED THAT he had key members of the originalcast on board. Lucas himself reached out to them in2012. “I was happily engaged in other things,” Har-rison Ford says. “I did not think there was going tobe another one. I never thought about it.” As it hap-pens Ford already liked Abrams—they’d worked to-gether a quarter-century ago on Regarding Henry,when Abrams was a 23-year-old screenwriter. “It didoccur to me that it might feel silly to run around in abelt and tight pants, tight boots and a 7-foot giant-dog suit, but in fact—this may be revealing about mycharacter—it didn’t feel funny at all. It was fun.” (Iask him if he could have said no, given all the pres-sure from Lucas and Abrams and Disney and thefans. This produces a classic Han Soloism: “Sure,why not? I have money in the bank.”)

Fisher has sometimes expressed ambivalenceabout Star Wars—she told Daisy Ridley in an inter-view, “Don’t be a slave like I was,” referring to theinfamous gold bikini she wore in Return of the Jedi—but she didn’t hesitate either. “I’m a female in Holly-wood, and it’s difficult to get work after 30, maybeit’s getting to be 40 now,” she says. “I also long agoaccepted that I am Princess Leia. I have that as a largepart of my identity.” When I ask her if she missed StarWars in the decades in between, she laughs. “Thatunstable I’m not.”

Abrams, left, andBoyega on set.Abrams shot

everything hecould on location,

rather than infront of a green

screen, to heightenthe sense of

physical reality.


Of the old guard, the onewho waited the longest wasMark Hamill—he didn’t callLucas back for weeks. Con-trary to popular mythology,Hamill has a busy acting ca-reer, and he won a BAFTA in2012. “I assumed it was aboutpublicity for whatever, Blu-ray release, 3-D conversion, Idon’t know,” he says. “My wifesaid, ‘What if he’s going to doanother trilogy?’ And I justlaughed.” Even when he didcall back, Hamill had to thinkit over. “I said, ‘It’s got to besolidarity—I bet you Harri-son won’t do it,’” Hamill says.“I probably still would havedone it, but I would have hadan out.” Eventually he gave in.He shudders to think of the fanreaction if he hadn’t. “Remem-ber all the torch-bearing angryvillagers that stormed the Cas-tle Frankenstein? I had imagesof that. Substitute lightsabersfor torches.”

When Abrams was castingthe new generation of leads,he went looking for relativeunknowns, just as Lucas had.“In trying to remember thatfeeling I had seeing Star Wars,” he says, “it wasn’tone of seeing people I had seen in other movies orrecognized from other things as much as discoveringnew people in a new place.” Other than that his onlyrequirement was range. “Actors who could do every-thing. Except for singing, there was nothing that wasnot going to be required of them.” (For the record,Hamill has lodged an official protest over the fact thatthere are no musical numbers in The Force Awakens.)

If you’ve seen John Boyega before, it was prob-ably in the cult hit Attack the Block in 2011. In TheForce Awakens he plays Finn, the recovering Storm-trooper, and part of his learning curve was just get-ting into the armor every day, seal or no seal. “It origi-nally took about five people to do it,” he says. “Bestcosplay outfit I’ve ever worn.” Ridley went throughthree months of physical training to play Rey, whoin the 20 minutes I saw kicked three people’s assessingle-handedly. “She is very much alone,” Ridleysays. “There’s no real excitement in her life. Everyday is kind of the same—and then she gets drawn intothis incredible adventure which is not only excitingand filled with creatures and space but is also incred-ibly emotional for her. She makes these connectionswith people she’s never had.” To Abrams that’s one

of the bedrock themes of thewhole movie: “This is a storyof disparate orphans who dis-cover each other, and who dis-cover that they can trust eachother.”

Ridley wasn’t even par-ticularly a Star Wars fan. Lu-pita Nyong’o, who won anOscar for her role in 12 Yearsa Slave, grew up in Kenya,where the Star Wars movieswere shown on TV on pub-lic holidays: “I always asso-ciated them with time awayfrom school.” Nyong’o playsa mysterious CGI charactercalled Maz Kanata. There’s asharp limit to how much theactors can say about the char-acters they play, which resultsin a lot of careful circumlocu-tions and awkward pauses. “Ican tell you,” Nyong’o says,“that she is a larger-than-life,strong character with a color-ful past.”

Oscar Isaac was alreadyemphatically a fan. “Wewould actually memorizethe fight scenes and try to re-enact them with lightsabers,to a T,” he says. “You know,

like, O.K., no, no, no he goes left, right, left, right andthen down.” Here’s his heavily redacted sketch ofPoe Dameron: “He’s incredibly dedicated. He’s per-haps sometimes a little overenthusiastic with want-ing to prove himself as a pilot and so can sometimesfind himself in slightly reckless situations. I thinkpart of his journey is figuring out what a real leaderis, what it means to be a leader, what it means to bea hero.”

Among the new cast the most hardcore StarWars fan was probably Gwendoline Christie, the6-ft. 3-in. English actor best known for playing Bri-enne of Tarth on Game of Thrones. “I really was be-sotted with R2-D2,” she says. “There was somethingabout that robot—I couldn’t work out why I was soattached to him.” When she heard they were mak-ing a new movie, she began answering any and allemails from her agent, on any topic, with the words,“I want to be in Star Wars.” She got a meeting withAbrams and eventually won the part of CaptainPhasma, who spends the entire movie encased ingleaming chrome Stormtrooper armor. “She’s aBoba Fett–style character in that she isn’t at theforefront of the action all the time,” she says, “butshe definitely has a lot of impact.” She describes

KathleenKennedy

PRODUCER,PRESIDENT OF

LUCASFILM

Kennedy andAbrams prized the

rough, physicallook of the originalmovie. “You lookat Star Wars andyou realize theygot away with

painted plywood.”

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Phasma as Star Wars’ first female villain. “Beingbad is just fun, isn’t it now? Unfortunately, it cameall too easily.”

One imagines a kind of passing-of-the-batontaking place on set, from the first generation of StarWars leads to the third, but nobody will cop to muchin the way of mentoring. “I told Daisy that datingwas difficult,” Fisher says. “I never wanted to giveanyone the anecdote, ‘I slept with Prin-cess Leia.’” Ford coached Isaac on how topilot a spaceship, or at least how to looklike you’re piloting one. (On his first dayIsaac was given a blueprint of an X-wingcockpit, laying out every button and whatit had been used for in every film, includ-ing the all-important launch sequence.He still has it.) “With Harrison I remem-ber there were these action things,” Isaacsays. “This was after he had hurt his leg,so I said, Have you been working out alot? What are you going to do with thatstuff, and all the shooting, and you haveto jump over these boxes and run and doall that stuff? How do you think you’regoing to do that?”

“And he goes, ‘I’m going to act it.’”

WE DON’T KNOW much about what’s hap-pening in The Force Awakens in terms ofthe larger galactic military and politicalsituation, but we do know when it’s hap-pening. It’s 30 years after the end of Re-turn of the Jedi—the future of the past. It’sclear that the Battle of Endor wasn’t as de-cisive as we thought, because the stars arestill at war. The Ewoks partied too soon.There’s a New Republic, but the Empire-inspired First Order is still a force to bereckoned with.

Because so much time has passed,everything in the Star Wars uni-verse—X-wings, TIE fighters, light-sabers, Stormtrooper armor—has had toevolve technologically. “If you imagine aPorsche 911 from the 1960s and a Porsche911 from today, it’s still recognizable as aPorsche 911, but it is a completely different beast,”says Tomkins, the art director. “So if you look at anold X-wing with our new Force Awakens X-wing sideby side, you’ll find it’s a little bit slicker, a little bitsmoother. The engines obviously have changed.They’re not two circles on top of each other; they’retwo semicircles.” Tomkins is second-generation StarWars: his father was an art director on The EmpireStrikes Back, and he spent his 15th summer on theice planet Hoth (a.k.a. a soundstage in the suburbsof London) making cardboard models of snowspeed-ers. Early in his career Tomkins himself worked as a

draughtsman on Phantom Menace, which makes himone of the few people to have worked on all threetrilogies, and as such a key repository of institutionalmemory. “We had very, very many meetings with J.J.looking for what became known as the Star Wars ver-nacular,” says Tomkins. “The style of Star Wars, whyit’s so unique. It’s not slick and it’s not necessarilyhigh-tech, but it has a certain look about it.”

Part of his job was showing Abramsone concept drawing after another, hun-dreds of them, and waiting for him to sayno, not that, or yes, this. It was yet an-other delicate balance for Abrams. “Itwas a very tricky thing, continuing whatwe inherited,” he says. “What do weembrace? And when is embracing thatthing simply repetition?” A key attri-bute of the Star Wars vernacular, thoughyou wouldn’t necessarily guess it, is sim-plicity. Everything’s based on easy basicshapes—Carter, the production designer,describes the look as Norman Rockwellmeets Edward Hopper. “The MillenniumFalcon is a very simple shape,” he says.“The Star Destroyer’s very simple. TheTIE fighter—the TIE fighter looks likea bat.”

They weren’t just evolving existingtechnology. Abrams and his team had toimprovise new creations in the vernac-ular, most prominent among them thedroid BB-8, which has already becomethe iconic ambassador of The Force Awak-ens. “We knew we had to have a star droidin this movie that was not a familiar face,”Abrams says. “I just drew a sketch of himand believed that we could get an enor-mous amount of expression from the mo-tion of these two spheres. We needed tofeel that it was of that universe, so the topsphere, the dome of BB-8’s head, is verymuch a reference to what we saw in R2—and yet not exactly that.” (It’s worth not-ing that with his broad rolling body BB-8is better designed for a desert world thanR2-D2 or C-3PO were.)

A lot of directors would have created BB-8 asCGI, but in keeping with the spirit of ’77 Abramshad the droid physically built instead. Like the orig-inal Yoda, BB-8 is a puppet. “Having a droid as oneof the stars of the movies that was being puppe-teered, and physical and practical and tangible, al-lowed actors like Daisy to interact with it in a waythat was 100% legit, because she was performingwith someone who was performing with her.” Reyhas a special a bond with BB-8, and Ridley had towork out her own relationship with the droid. “Iremember J.J. saying, ‘He’s not a child,’” she says.

BODY ARMOR ANDPRINCESS LEIA HAIR

Three women cosplay as Princess Leiaat a Star Wars convention in 2007. The

movies have gone beyond entertainmentand become part of people’s lives.

Assorted Stormtroopers, an Imperial pilotand a Rebel pilot stroll through a park inGermany. The Force Awakens is set to

open in nearly 70 countries.

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CarrieFisher

LEIA ORGANA

Fisher returns asthe iconic PrincessLeia from the first

trilogy. “I got so farinto character,” shesays wryly, “that I

can’t get out.”

HarrisonFord

HAN SOLO

“It did occur to methat it might feel

silly to run aroundin a belt and tightpants, tight boots

and a 7-foot giant-dog suit,” Ford

says. “But it didn’tfeel funny at all.

It was fun.”

OscarIsaac

POE DAMERON

Playing a pilotmeant spendinga lot of time in a

simulated cockpit.“It’s tough . . . there

are only so manyways you can say

‘Woo-hoo!’”

LupitaNyong’oMAZ KANATA

Her character isCGI. “It’s the onechance you get toplay a character

not limited byyour physical

circumstances.”

“Obviously the impulse is, because he’s small andcute, to infantilize him. But he’s not a child—he’s adroid with a mission.”

CGI is the devil on the director’s shoulder, alwaystempting him or her to stray from the simplicity ofthe Star Wars vernacular and clutter up the frame.“If you need a hundred villains and you’re only afew keystrokes from having a thousand, and whatthe hell, the same price,” says Harrison Ford, “whathappens is you overwhelm the human experiencewith kinetics and you lose what I refer to as scale.What needs to be preserved is the emotional expe-rience a human being can identify with.” (I ask himif he thinks this was a problem in the prequel tril-ogy. This produces another classic Soloism: “Nicetry, cowboy.”)

When Lucas made Star Wars, computer graphicsbarely existed—the crudely animated pilots’ briefingbefore the Battle of Yavin was the absolute state ofthe art. Lucasfilm’s computer-graphics departmentwould eventually be spun off, bought by Steve Jobs,and turned into Pixar, but at the time Lucas had noreal options besides models and physical creatures.That had the effect of giving the droids and aliens andspaceships in Star Wars a sense of physical weightand presence that’s missing from, say, the CGI di-saster Jar-Jar Binks. There’s no way you can make amovie like The Force Awakens entirely without CGI,but Abrams was determined to keep it to an abso-

lute minimum—in effect, he took a world that hadbecome virtual and forced it back into the realm ofthe actual. “I can tell you a lot of movies that I’veseen and I’ve loved where I don’t quite believe it’sreal,” Abrams says. “You can feel somehow the ar-tifice of it. You can’t even necessarily quantify whyit doesn’t feel real, because everything that you’reseeing is intellectually what it should look like. Andyet somehow it’s missing that thing.” He used CGIas much for taking out the visible apparatus of thepractical effects—wires, rigs, puppeteers—as he didfor putting things in.

For A New Hope the crew scavenged interesting-looking spare parts from model kits and junkyardsto make the ships and vehicles. Tomkins worksthe same way now. “It’s found items, you know, beit parts from an airplane breaker’s yard or from aplastics-molding company or a dismantled photo-copier,” he says. Tomkins likes to crack open wash-ing machines and fridges and TVs in search of inter-esting shapes, which then become what are knownin the trade as greebles: the tiny functional-lookingdetails and asymmetrical sticking-out bits that en-crust most technological artifacts in the Star Warsuniverse. “They’re all glued on, and little pipes areadded to them—it’s kind of industrial collage, is thephrase that I like to use.”

It gives the Star Wars universe something elsetoo, something even subtler than solidity: an


AdamDriverKYLO REN

Driver’s characteris evil, but he had

fun. “It’s so surrealto walk into a

huge hangar andsee a life-size TIE

fighter.”

GwendolineChristie

CAPTAIN PHASMA

A lifelong fan,Christie was

thrilled to be cast.“I was walking

around thinking,I’m in Star Wars,I’m in Star Wars,I’m in Star Wars.”

uncanny familiarity. When you’re watching StarWars, you’re often looking at car and airplane parts,the guts of electronics, bits of appliances, fragmentsof the everyday world, but they’re so far removedfrom their familiar context that you don’t recognizethem—except that on some level you do. This is asubliminal but crucial component of the Star Warsvernacular that almost everyone on the productionside talks about. “You might go to your local garageto have your car fixed, and there’s the compressorin the corner and the heavy engineering equipmentover there, the guys wearing some safety equip-ment,” says Scanlan. “Or maybe you’d go to a hospi-tal and see certain things there. These are all thingsthat we are familiar with, and what Star Wars doesso beautifully is to take those things and reinventthem, repackage them, reconceptualize them, insuch a way that they become new and fresh and dif-ferent to us—but we still have a connection, a visualumbilical between the world that we’re living in inour everyday lives and the one we’re watching onthe screen.” It’s an effect not far, far away from Pi-casso’s collages or Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades.It’s the quotidian made strange and beautiful, theterrestrial made alien.

But the most important, most un-simulatablequality of real objects is their raw physicality, astubborn intractability and imperfection that’s pro-foundly convincing both to the audience and to the

actors who have to work with them. “It helps you bein the moment,” John Boyega says. “There are hid-den gems within a performance when you’re actuallythere that you can never get if you’re on a soundstagewith just blue screen, or if you’re looking at a crea-ture that isn’t actually there. There’s just somethingabout the physical thing being in your face.” This isespecially true of Scanlan’s creatures. “Each one isa little piece of theater,” he says, “and I think that’swhat the viewer picks up on.” He builds them out offoam latex and high-end aeronautical carbon fiber,silicones and urethanes. Chewbacca’s skin—in caseyou ever wondered about it—is hand-knitted, as inwith needles, and then each hair (it’s a mix of yak hairand mohair) is knotted to it individually. As a resultit moves with the physical heft of a real organic crea-ture’s pelt. In a very real sense the creatures becomeperformers just as much as the actors are. “The base-line reality,” Scanlan says, “is that they are there onthe day, they are under the lighting, the atmosphere,everything about them is real.”

Physical things can also get dirty, which is im-portant. One of the most radical things about StarWars in 1977 was that it wasn’t clean. The spaceshipsin Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Space:1999 looked like they’d just come out of cellophane—they were practically mint in box—but everything inStar Wars felt scuffed and used and old. Accordingto Chris Taylor’s excellent history of the franchise,

71

MarkHamill

LUKE SKYWALKER

Hamill hadmisgivings, buthe’s glad to beback. “You’re

talking tosomeone whoseinitial dream ofbeing in show

business was tobe a game-show

host.”

How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Lucas hada phrase for it, “a used universe,” and when he wasmaking the first movie the cleaning crew used tocome round during the night and wipe all the dust offthe unclean “used universe” surfaces, so that it hadto be reapplied in the mornings. The dirt gave every-thing an extra dimension, not of space but of time:the objects in the Star Wars universe hada history that stretched back before thestart of the movie. “I think it’s sort ofholographic,” Abrams says. “Whether itwas references to the Clone Wars, whichof course you wouldn’t have a clue about,or it was the wear and tear that was ona particular ship or a droid, all of thesethings implied this very rich history fromwhich the story came.”

Immense care goes into creating thatwear and tear. Kaplan, the costume de-signer, had an entire department de-voted to distressing the clothing in TheForce Awakens. “There’s nothing better tobring you into the world of believabilitythan when clothes look like they’ve beenworn quite a bit,” he says. “You won’t seebrand-new soles running through a sceneor when a character puts his feet up. It’snot a fashion show.” One of the tough-est scenes to create was the crash site ofFinn’s and Poe’s TIE fighter. “We had toget two trenches dug in the sand in themiddle of a desert in Abu Dhabi, about800 feet long, and then add debris thathad fallen off the wings,” Tomkins says.“That particularly had a lot of weather-ing and distressing around it.” Each bitof debris was hand-painted with its ownindividual damage.

One way to gauge the power of theStar Wars universe is that although no-body really knows what The Force Awak-ens is about, they don’t really care thatthey don’t know. “Normally, when amovie comes out the most importantthing is who’s in it and what’s it about,”Carter, the production designer, says. “What’s in-teresting about Star Wars, this one, is that you cansee that people don’t even really know who’s in it.You don’t know what it’s about, you don’t know thenarrative—but you know what it feels like to be inthe movie.” There are stars in Star Wars, but the uni-verse is bigger than them. The universe is the su-perstar. “There’s such a thing, in a weird way, as thespirit of place. You can feel it. There’s an invitationto come and be a part of this world.”

OF COURSE there’s also a story going on in thatworld. From what I’ve seen so far, that story is,

just like the spaceships and creatures, a collage ofthe familiar, reconfigured. There are recognizableelements from A New Hope: a young person stuckon a nowhere desert planet; a droid carrying se-cret information vital to the resistance; a maskedadept of the dark side interrogating a resistancefighter—Kylo’s banter with Admiral Hux, played by

the ubiquitous Domhnall Gleeson, evenhas a strong Vader–Grand Moff Tar-kin vibe. The repetition is, oddly, pleas-ant rather than tiresome. The recycledplot elements have the feel of a themebeing reprised toward the end of a longsymphony.

Some of the repetition makes intrin-sic logical sense: the characters are in-heriting the past, just like Abrams is.“This is in a world where the bad guy isgoing to be cognizant of Darth Vader,”he says, “and when the bad guys have amassive weapon that can destroy a starsystem, they’re going to reference theDeath Star, because this is their historytoo.” But it goes beyond that. It’s therefor people to recognize—it’s nostal-gia for the future. Back in the HowardHawks room, working through the audiotrack, there’s a moment when a couple ofStormtroopers spot Finn and Rey, andone of them says, “Blast them!” It’s alittle scrap of audio lifted intact from ascene in A New Hope. (Abrams decidedto move it, but it’ll still be in the fin-ished movie. Probably.) At times Abramseven reaches beyond the Star Wars uni-verse. Singling out the sound of a ring-ing bell, he says, “You know why I likeit? It reminds me of E.T.” This is botha brave new world and a long-awaitedhomecoming.

There’s a robust academic literaturedevoted to analyzing the meaning ofthe first two Star Wars trilogies, whichmakes illuminating if occasionally pain-ful reading. In a lot of ways the movies

are period pieces, and like a lot of period pieces theirpolitics haven’t aged particularly well. It’s entirelypossible to read Star Wars as a movie about whitemen fighting to regain their rightful position as rul-ers of the universe, against a man who, if he’s notactually black, wears all black and has the voice of ablack man. (Vader was voiced by James Earl Jones.)With a few notable exceptions—Princess Leia,Yoda, maybe Admiral Ackbar—women and non-human races are relegated to the sidelines. Humanmales run the show. Star Wars is framed as a storyabout revolution, but in some ways it’s also a fableabout maintaining an old worldview of race and

73

A NEW HOPE,AN UNEXPECTED HIT

Fans lined up in front of the AvcoCenter theater in Los Angeles in 1977.Abrams saw Star Wars there that year

“between five and 10 times.”

At the 1978 Academy Awards, Star Warslost out to Annie Hall for Best Picture butstill had 10 nominations and seven wins,

including one for Best Original Score.

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gender. The prequels tried to balance the slate a lit-tle (Queen Amidala, Samuel L. Jackson) but endedup just making it worse (Jar Jar Binks, the TradeFederation and, when you think about it, QueenAmidala).

Obviously, Abrams—and Disney—are consciousthat times have changed. “J.J. can’t relyon going in and making a movie that justcalls upon everything that came before,”says Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lu-casfilm. “He has to come up with newideas, new points of view, and he has tomove it from 1977 to 2015.” The cast-ing alone is more diverse. “It was veryimportant to me that this movie lookmore the way the world looks than not,”Abrams says. Women figure in a moredynamic, physically powerful capacity.Gwendoline Christie points out how rareit is to have a female character dressedthe way Phasma is, totally unrevealingly.“It felt to me that here was a characterwhere we would respond to her due toher actions and what she representedrather than a more conventional delin-eated flesh outline,” she says. “That feltreally, really progressive to me. I’m veryproud to play this part.” We’re a long wayfrom the gold bikini.

On another level Star Wars is also,like a lot of science fiction, about howhumans relate to technology. This isan open-source, hackable, homebrew-computer-club world. When a droidgoes on the fritz, Luke doesn’t take itto the genius bar, he repairs it himself.When something goes wrong with theMillennium Falcon, Chewie pops open apanel and gets up in there. Interestingly,the technology that looks most like ourglossy, sealed, Apple-dominated pres-ent belongs to the Empire. That gap inC-3PO’s golden skin, for example, withthe wires showing through between hisabdomen and his pelvis—Jony Ive would never havesigned off on that.

But the heart of Star Wars is and always has beenthe ghost in the machine, the human trapped inthe Stormtrooper armor. “I’m not so much inter-ested in science fiction as I am in human, emotionalstories,” Ford says. Hollywood movies tend to ex-plore either a fascinating, spectacularly CGI’d outerworld or the textured inner worlds of a character,but rarely do you get both worlds at once. You doin Star Wars. Even if the plot isn’t necessarily themost original thing anybody’s ever written—it toesthe Joseph Campbell party line pretty closely—thecharacters have a rough, vital complexity. There

are life forms on board. “They’re not superheroes,”Fisher says. “Good people do bad things, and thereare bad people who do good things. We got ’em allin Star Wars.”

And what those people do matters. They’re odd-balls and misfits, but their actions disturb the uni-

verse. “It was one of the things that gotme most excited about being involvedwith this,” Abrams says. “The idea thatthere would be a new generation ofyoung people, a new generation of no-bodies. That was what Star Wars was forme, so wonderfully: a story of desperatenobodies who became somebodies.”

As Lucas discovered, there is a wholeworld out there of people who want tofeel like somebodies, and Star Wars givesthem a world where that can happen. Thepoint of Abrams’ effort is to make thatworld one they can believe in—a worldso plausible, so tangible, that they can al-most step into it.

It won’t be a new world, not the wayit was in 1977. It’s not like we’ve neverseen this Jedi mind trick before. In asense, Abrams is restaging a revolutionthat already happened, decades ago. Butwhile The Force Awakens won’t have theelement of surprise, it does have anotheradvantage, which is that even withouthaving seen it, people already love it.They want this Jedi mind trick to workon them. On the first day tickets wereavailable, Oct. 19, Fandango reportedthat The Force Awakens octupled theprevious record for advance sales set byThe Hunger Games; at the theater chainAMC the factor was 10. One thing al-most everybody involved with the moviewanted to talk about was what it’s beenlike getting up in front of fans: the out-pouring of enthusiasm has been unlikeanything they’ve ever experienced, eventhe veterans. Hamill was at the Star Wars

Celebration in Anaheim, Calif., in April when theyplayed the new trailer. “To see that many peopletransported with joy just for a few minutes was sooverwhelmingly satisfying for me, I got the chills,”says Hamill. “I was choked up. I thought, Wow. Solucky. I’m so lucky.”

Christie’s first experience of it was at Comic-Conin July in front of a crowd of 6,000. “There was afeeling in that room, and it was palpable,” she says.“I talked to J.J. after and said, What is that feelingeveryone has? It isn’t hysteria. It has a real intensity,it has a euphoria—but what is it? Everyone clearlyhas such a love for this, but what is it?”

“And J.J. said, ‘It’s hope.’” □

FINE ART,STREET ART

Visitors at the 2002 exhibit “Star Wars:Magic of Myth” at the Brooklyn Museum

saw original artwork, costumes andprops, including the puppet of Yoda.

Darth Vader and Chewbacca eat pretzelson a San Francisco street in 2015.

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A non-humanoidwho speaks onlyBinary, R2-D2still has more

personality thanmost people. The

unit in the newmovie was built

by members of theR2-D2 BuildersClub, a hobbyist

group.

WATCH NOWWWW.TIME.COM/SPACE

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‘FOR MOST OF ITS COMPACT 90 MINUTES, MISERY IS SHREWD AND GRIPPING.’ —PAGE 86

MOVIES

In the Heartof the Sea—vintage valorfrom a whaletale that’sno flukeBy Stephanie Zacharek

A vengeful whale inspires awe and terror in Howard’s unfashionable but gallant film

IN OLDEN TIMES—AND NOT IN Agalaxy far, far away but in this one—boys and sometimes girls would thrillto tales of adventure set in the jungle,in the Old West, on the surface of ahighly imaginary Mars or, perhapsbest of all, on the high seas: wheremen brave enough to set out in fragilewooden vessels would find themselvesat the mercy of disgruntled sea beastsand capricious weather patterns. RonHoward’s In the Heart of the Sea—adapted from Nathaniel Philbrick’srousing 2000 book of the same name,about the 1820 destruction of thewhaling ship Essex by one exceedinglypissed-off creature of the deep—is thatkind of adventure story.

The picture is sometimes waywardand unwieldy, its dialogue creaky andawkward, like an amateur’s attempt at

scrimshaw. (“It’s he,” says one whaler.“Yes, it’s him all right,” says another.)But in a movie climate rife with super-hero reboots and rehashings of child-hood favorites, it’s a small marvel thatIn the Heart of the Sea exists at all.Who cares anymore about the sea, orsailors, or whales who decide, withan almost biblical vengeance, that it’spayback time? Howard cares, and hismovie, flawed as it is, is so unfashion-able that it’s almost gallant.

Chris Hemsworth and BenjaminWalker star as Owen Chase and GeorgePollard Jr., first mate and captain, re-spectively, of the doomed Essex. Chase,an experienced whaler, had hoped forthe captain’s post. Pollard, the son ofan esteemed officer, has merely inher-ited the job, and the two men clash.Pollard has no natural leadership

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Howard and cinematographer AnthonyDod Mantle capture the workaday rou-tine of life at sea with brio. An earlyscene shows the crew setting sail, map-ping out the process in a crisply editedmosaic of whirring, unspooling ropeand snapping canvas. And in the fin-est sequence, Chase and crew pack intoa small, tipsy-looking whaling boat tocircle and kill their first whale. Heavyon CGI, this scene is a whaling reverie.Rainbow droplets of water dot a sky ofpainted clouds as the men, balancedin their little boat, stab away at theirquarry with harpoons. The scene hasa storybook glow, like an N.C. Wyethillustration, as well as integrity. We can’tre-create historical events exactly the

way they happened, so why not makethem into our dream of history? If themovies don’t give us that freedom, whatdoes? When that whale is vanquished,Howard marks its death with a de-spairing visual: water from the poorcreature’s blowhole is mingled withblood, splashing the men’s faces likeunholy rain.

And then there’s the sperm whalewho took down the Essex, a mottled-white leviathan with a mad, broad fore-head and tiny, judgmental eyes—hisside eye is something to be feared.He’s the uncompromising star, withno clue that the movie around himis out of fashion—and what does hecare if it is? The courage of his con-viction makes all the difference.

Zacharek is TIME’s new film critic

capabilities. Chase has the crew’s re-spect from Day One. He makes it hisduty to toughen up the ship’s greenhornfirst mate, teenager Thomas Nickerson(Tom Holland), at one point sending thetimid, smallish lad down into the cave-like head of the crew’s first kill, the bet-ter to extract every drop of precious oilfrom its stinky, mucusy interior.

That kid will grow up to be a disso-lute man who spends his nights drink-ing and then obsessively erecting min-iature ships in the empties—he’s playedby Brendan Gleeson, and when we firstmeet him, the Essex tragedy is 30 yearsbehind him and haunting him still. He’svisited in his Nantucket home by a be-whiskered, thoughtful-looking fellow

who, it turns out, is Herman Melville(Ben Whishaw, who has the face of anardent listener, inquisitive and recep-tive). Melville, formerly a whaler, hasan idea for a book and wants to learnmore about the disaster from one of itsfew survivors. (Chase’s 1821 account ofthe event, Narrative of the Most Extra-ordinary and Distressing Shipwreck ofthe Whale-ship Essex, partly inspiredMelville to write Moby-Dick.)

Of the 20 crew members aboard theEssex, only eight came home. They hadendured some 90 days at sea, far offthe coast of South America, with insuf-ficient water and food rations. The taleis at times thrilling and distressinglybleak. (Howard is discreet in handlingsome of the grislier details, but youmight think twice about taking youngeror sensitive kids.) Mostly, though,

MOVIES

A Hitch in thehistory offilmmaking

KENT JONES’ FLEET, STUR-dily poetic documentaryHitchcock/Truffaut is partly astory about two filmmakers,but mostly it’s the story of abook: in 1962 French direc-tor François Truffaut, then30, sat down with AlfredHitchcock, 63, for a week-long chat that would result,four years later, in a nearsacred text for movie lov-ers, one that would influ-ence many of the filmmakerswhose work we enjoy today.

Jones draws from theoriginal interview tapes—adding a rigorous selectionof film clips—to show howthat book, titled Hitchcockin the U.S., took shape. Healso rounds up a clutch offilmmakers who have takeninspiration from it, includ-ing Martin Scorsese, DavidFincher, Richard Linklaterand Wes Anderson, whosepersonal paperback copyhas been so well loved thatit’s now held together with arubber band. “It’s not even abook anymore,” he says. “It’s,like, a stack of pages.” This isa jewel box of a movie for any-one who loves either Hitch-

cock or Truffaut—orbetter yet, both.

—S.Z.

Hemsworthplays first mateOwen Chase,whose accountpartly inspiredMoby-Dick

Hitchcock’ssummit with

Truffaut began on his 63rdbirthday

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IN 2007, ONE YEAR BEFORE THE AVARICE OF THE BANKINGindustry spurred a devastating market collapse, directorAdam McKay shocked the world with an unprecedented por-trait of greed and corruption. In his potent 2-min. 21-sec.drama The Landlord, a wolf in Baby Gap clothing—playedby McKay’s then toddler Pearl, terrifying in a ruffled bluepinafore—shakes down a distraught Will Ferrell for back rentshe knows he can’t pay. Discomfiting as it is, The Landlordwas just a run-up to The Big Short, McKay’s serrated true-life tragicomedy about four outlier investors who foresee thesubprime-mortgage meltdown and cannily set out to shortthe housing market—only to realize, to their horror, that thesystem they’ve managed to game is so rotted through thatmillions of Americans will soon lose their homes and jobs.

Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, the one-eyed savantwho, by scrutinizing reams of data, first spots hidden cracksin the housing market’s foundation. Steve Carell is renegadehedge-funder Mark Baum, who takes Burry’s research evenfurther, uncovering sickening global ramifications. RyanGosling and Brad Pitt show up as, respectively, a slick WallStreeter with untrustworthy hair and a reclusive formerbanker with a penchant for organic produce and colonics.

McKay approaches this adaptation of Michael Lewis’ bookwith wit, energy and a surprising degree of clarity. But if themovie is a crackerjack entertainment, it’s one with a con-science. McKay invites us to laugh at the meltdown’s abundantabsurdity but makes sure the bitterness of the joke lingers.Pearl the landlord even surfaces, briefly, in a greed-is-goodmontage. In retrospect, this tiny tyrant doesn’t seem like sucha bad egg. We just didn’t know how good we had it. —S.Z.

MOVIES

The Big Short knows whyyour rent is too damn high

McKay invitesus to laugh atthe meltdown’sabundant absurditybut makes sure thebitterness of thejoke lingers

TIMEPICKS

MUSICIn honor of thecentennial of FrankSinatra’s birth, TonyBennett, Usher andothers will pay tributeto the crooner on thespecial Sinatra 100:An All-Star GrammyConcert, airing on CBSDec. 6.

△MOVIESIn the tender dramaYouth (Dec. 4), MichaelCaine and HarveyKeitel play lifelongfriends grapplingwith how to squeezemeaning out of life,even in its final chapter.

DANCEOn Dec. 4 the Alvin

Ailey American Dance

Theater will kickoff its season withAwakening, a richlytextured ensemblepiece by artisticdirector Robert Battle.

▽TELEVISIONBill Murray playshimself in the star-studded (Amy Poehler,George Clooney)special-within-a-special A Very Murray

Christmas, premieringon Netflix Dec. 4.

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Dogs bark, but themarket rolls on forCarell, center, andGosling, right

Time Off Books


EXCERPT

Strike a powerpose—but doit in privateBy Amy Cuddy

CAN TAKING CONTROLof your body languagehelp you become hap-pier and more success-ful? In the time sincemy collaborators, AndyYap and Dana Carney,and I first publishedour experiments with

power posing in 2010, there has beena substantial amount of inquiry intothis and closely related body-mind phe-nomena, which together illuminate themany benefits of adopting expansive,bold poses and upright, good posture.

A lot of the research uncovers some-thing astonishing. It’s not only boldpower poses that have an effect. Evenvery subtle types of expansion—likesimple, good, “sit up straight” posture—can do the same sorts of things. Expan-sive movement—and even vocal ex-pansiveness, like speaking slowly—canaffect the way we think, feel and behave.Our presence.

Carrying yourself in a powerful waydirects your feelings, thoughts, behav-iors and body to feel powerful and bepresent (and even perform better) insituations ranging from the mundane tothe most challenging.

But is our presence apparent to thepeople with whom we interact? Anddoes it really improve our performancein a measurable way? We decided to doanother study. We hypothesized thatengaging in preparatory power posesbefore a stressful job interview wouldimprove presence, which would lead tomore favorable evaluations of perfor-mance and more favorable hiring deci-sions. Why before? Because adopting bigpower poses during social interactionsoften backfires: it’s not only strange; italso makes people uncomfortable. Imag-ine meeting someone for the first time asthey stand in the victory pose or sit withtheir feet on a table and arms akimbo.Now imagine a job candidate doing thatwhile you’re interviewing her.

wore lab coats and held clipboards,were trained to give no feedback of anykind—just neutral expressions. Receiv-ing no feedback from a listener is oftenmore disturbing than getting a negativeresponse.

While preparing their speeches, thesubjects were asked to adopt either thehigh-power or low-power poses thatwe’d used in earlier studies. They didtheir posing before the interviews, notduring—a critical feature of this study.Each interview was recorded on video,and the recordings were evaluated bythree pairs of judges who had no ideawhat our hypothesis was or anythingelse about the experiment. This isimportant.

Two of the judges evaluated theinterviewees for performance andhireability, two judges evaluated theinterviewees for the quality of the ver-bal content of their answers, and twojudges evaluated them for the variableI was most interested in: the applicants’nonverbal presence (confident, enthusi-astic, captivating and not awkward).

As expected, the subjects whoprepared for the interview withhigh-power poses—the more presenceour job interviewees displayed—thebetter they were evaluated and morestrongly they were recommended forhire by the judges. But here’s the catch,as we found in a related follow-upstudy: presence mattered to the judgesbecause it signaled genuineness andbelievability; it told the judges thatthey could trust the person, that whatthey were observing was real. In short,manifest qualities of presence are takenas signs of authenticity. The more weare able to be ourselves, the more weare able to be present. And that makesus convincing. Your body shapes yourmind. Your mind shapes your behav-ior. And your behavior shapes your fu-ture. Let your body tell you that you’repowerful and deserving and you’ll be-come more present, enthusiastic andauthentically yourself.

Cuddy is a social psychologist andassociate professor at Harvard BusinessSchool. Excerpted from Presence by AmyCuddy. Copyright © 2015 by Amy Cuddy.Reprinted with permission of Little,Brown and Company.

After arriving at the lab, subjects weretold they would be participating in anintense mock interview for their dreamjob. They had a short time to preparea five-minute response to the question“Why should we hire you?” They weretold they’d be presenting their answersas speeches to two trained interviewerswho would be evaluating them. Theywere also informed that they’d be video-taped and judged later by a separatepanel of experts. And they were told theycould not misrepresent themselves andhad to speak for the entire five minutes.

The two judge-researchers, who

How your bodyshapes your mind

Powerless Cuddy and her colleaguesfound that drawn-in poses loweredtestosterone and raised cortisol

Wonder Woman Cuddy’s 2012 TEDtalk on how placing arms akimbo or

“starfish up” can be empowering hasbeen watched nearly 30 million times

Powerful By contrast, expansivepostures led to positive psychological

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Time Off Reviews


IN TRANSPARENT’S SECOND SEASON, WHICHbegins streaming on Amazon on Dec. 11, a charac-ter whom the Pfefferman family has treated some-what shabbily crashes a party they’re hosting todeliver a message: “You are all monsters!” They’renot. But there’s a reason the line is so thrilling. It’stoo rare that any perspective on the Pfeffermansother than the show’s own extremely forgivingone sneaks in. The family is now more than ever aclosed circuit, and Transparent may be running outof things these people can teach us in the vacuumof their intra-family affairs.

Transparent’s debut season won Amazon itsfirst Emmys and Golden Globes and contributedto a heightened visibility of transgender people.(That visibility didn’t come without controversy:the trans community protested the casting of amale actor, Jeffrey Tambor, to play the show’s cen-tral character, Maura.) At its best, the show is acompassionate look at the struggle to define one-self, from gender identity to, in the case of Maura’skids, finding one’s place in early middle age.

Maura, in Season 2, debates whether to getgender-reassignment surgery, a reminder that thework of defining one’s identity only begins withcoming out. The presence of her friends, trans-gender women with far less cultural and economiccapital, is a saving grace, both from the standpointof politics—different perspectives on the trans ex-perience matter in a show like this—and of enter-tainment. For all that is tough, they at least have asense of humor about themselves.

By contrast, watching the rest of Maura’s familyis drudgery. Her children have commitment issuesthat differ only on the surface. It’s understandable,given their upbringing, but once the Psych 101work is done, we’re still stuck with these mopes.Their love lives, like nearly every other aspect ofthe second season, have no real stakes as couplingsswirl from off to on again at random. Who caresif Sarah (played by Amy Landecker) will go backto Tammy (Melora Hardin) after calling things offduring their wedding reception? If they do reunite,they’ll break up again in two episodes.

Maura’s relationship with ex-wife Shelly (JudithLight) is similarly overplayed; Light is too big byhalf as she elaborately performs girl-friendly cama-raderie. The best TV series tend to open up as they

go on; Transparent, with Shelly’s increased screentime and the children’s repetitive story lines, hasgrown even more myopic. With few exceptions, in-cluding random flashbacks to Weimar-era Berlin,the show feels more claustrophobic than ever.

Midway through the season, we get anotheroutsider’s perspective, when one of Maura’sfriends points out her privilege. “We don’t all haveyour family. We don’t all have your money. I’m a53-year-old, ex-prostitute, HIV-positive womanwith a d-ck.” She’s right—there are certain expe-riences Maura can’t intuitively understand. Andthey’re less widely covered and more interestingthan upper-middle-class anomie. In confining suchpainful realities to brief moments, Transparentretreats from its initial promise.

D’Addario is TIME’s new television critic

TELEVISION

The Transparenttrap—more angst,less insightBy Daniel D’Addario

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Time Off Reviews


LARDED WITH REVIVALS, MOVIE ADAP-tations and Hollywood stars, Broad-way is largely a play-it-safe zone thesedays. Yet Misery—which boasts botha presold property and a bona fidemovie star, Bruce Willis, in his Broad-way debut—is a riskier venture thanone might think. For one thing, it’s thatrarest of theater specimens: a go-for-broke horror-thriller. Sure, there’s theoccasional murder mystery or twistypsychodrama. But a story that puts itsprotagonist in real physical peril, ratch-ets up the suspense and culminateswith a violent confrontation rather thanjust heated words? On the screen, fromJames Bond to The Hunger Games, it’sas easy as next week’s box office smash.Onstage, next to impossible.

In some respects, Misery is ideallysuited to the stage, with just two maincharacters and the action confined to aremote cabin, where a famous romancenovelist, hurt in a car crash, is nursedback to health and then terrorized by his“No. 1 fan.” It has a showy and surefireleading role in the deranged Annie Wil-kes, and stage vet Laurie Metcalf has awhale of a time with it. She’s less overtlynutty than Kathy Bates, who won an

Oscar for the 1990 film, but more down-to-earth, ferocious and frightening.

The problem is on the other end ofthe hypodermic needle. As bedboundwriter Paul Sheldon, Willis is bland andremote. But the fault lies less with hiscompetent performance than in the lim-its of the stage. Paul is largely immobilethroughout most of the play, and we de-pend on seeing his facial reactions: therising fear, the silent winces and winksand wheels-turning-inside cogitationthat James Caan conveyed so effectivelyin the movie. But he had closeups.

Still, for most of its compact 90 min-utes, Misery is shrewd and gripping.The film’s screenwriter, William Gold-man, wrote the efficient adaptation,and director Will Frears manages theclaustrophobic tension well, helped im-mensely by David Korins’ revolving set,which transports us through the houseas Paul makes futile attempts at escape.Misery seems to have caused nothingbut misery for most critics, who nevermuch cotton to these lowbrow genrepieces. But I found it a startling and sat-isfying break from Broadway routine.Which I guess makes me its No. 1 fan.

—RICHARD ZOGLIN

THEATER

The thrill is back: Miserybreaks both legs on Broadway

TELEVISION

Netflix’s newlove storyAZIZ ANSARI MADE HISmark on TV as the outsizeTom Haverford, a material-istic city employee on Parksand Recreation. Writing forhimself, Ansari has tonedthings down with the newsitcom Master of None, nowstreaming on Netflix. It’s anendearingly earnest look atthe state of modern love thatstill fits in plenty of big ideas.

The show, co-created byAnsari and Alan Yang, starsAnsari as Dev, an aspiringactor looking for love and re-ally good tacos. Over the 10episodes, Dev goes on dates(including a memorable flingwith a food critic played byClaire Danes) and falls, grad-ually, in love with a musicpublicist (Noël Wells).

These characters’ jobs,along with their apartmentsand nights out, situate this ina fantasy New York City, onethat’s as pleasant as RachelGreen’s or Carrie Bradshaw’s.Otherwise, Master of Nonekeeps things real, about thepainful aspects of seekinglove and life as a South Asianactor in a prejudiced indus-try. That Ansari has, yes,mastered both in a single se-ries elevates him from giftedcomic to the first great mil-lennial showrunner.

—DANIEL D’ADDARIO

As Annie, Metcalf isferocious, while Willissuffers from the limits

of the stage

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www.time.com/adsections

It should come as no surprise that Ecuador—encompassing an expanse of the Andes; partly shrouded by the Amazonian rain forest; sitting abreast the Pacific coast; and laying claim to the

famed Galápagos Islands—is often cited as be-ing four worlds within one.

In a move to steer away from reliance on oil revenues, Ecuador has implemented meas-ures to diversify the economy and has seen the non-oil economy grow at an average of 5% in a 10-year period. Trade and the private sector are flourishing as a result. Marcelo Ramírez, managing director of trade specialists Mar-global Global Maritime Agency, explains the strength of industry in Ecuador: “The growth of exports in Ecuador is based on the excel-lence of our products. Our strategy is focused on helping the most important commodities seek new approaches to logistics.” Aside from trade, policy reforms passed in 2008 have also been integral in the country’s reformation and rebirth, particularly as they have a strong focus on the sustainable development for the nation.

At the center of this development lies human capital. Yachay: City of Knowledge, a planned

city, is primed to become Latin America’s an-swer to Silicon Valley. Héctor Rodríguez, man-aging director of the project, notes: “If we can generate our own technology, and capture the world’s highest-quality talent, then we can generate the necessary research to promote good living conditions.” Thus, Yachay is a cen-tral component of “buen vivir”—the concept of seeing humans as part of the natural and social environment—and with a university at the heart of the city, it is evident that educa-tion plays a pivotal role in the country’s future prospects.

In order for Ecuador to export education, as Yachay is prepared for, Enrique Ayala Mora, rector of the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (UASB), recognizes that the country must first open up to the rest of the world and increase international exposure: “Ecuador is small enough to realize that if it is not part of a unit, there is no future.” Institutions like UASB are giving Ecuador the necessary recognition abroad to build it into a destination for education.

An initial focus on internationalization is key to quality education in today’s global world, al-

Ecuador

though many universities are looking beyond this by preparing students for a knowledge-based society which ensures success, regard-less of the culture or climate: “Knowledge and know-how are the emblem of our university,” notes the rector of the Universidad de los Hem-isferios, Diego Alejandro Jaramillo Arango. He explains that this type of knowledge is gained by encouraging adaptability in students for the international world.

Open to foreign trade, expanding markets, and diversification of industry—Ecuador may be small, yet the measures it is enacting for growth and a sustainable future are indeed mighty. Slowly but surely, Ecuador is building itself up to be far more than just the geographical center of the world.

Enhancing skills, engaging students and ensuring excellence:

the Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar is on its way to becoming one of Latin America’s most innovative universities. www.uasb.edu.ec

Journey to the Center of the Earth

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Rick RossThe rapper will release his eighth album,Black Market, on Dec. 4 after a roller-coaster year that included his engagement(to model Lira Galore) and a period ofhouse arrest for an alleged kidnapping andassault (the case is ongoing). —N.F.

You recently remixed Adele’s newsingle, “Hello.” That’s an unlikelycandidate for a hip-hop makeover.I’ve been a fan of Adele since her firstproject. She’s such a powerful singer,such a powerful voice. I believe it’s been[a few] years since the 21 project, so shegave us time to miss her a lot. She cameback with the “Hello” record, and whenI heard it, it was just like, Damn.

How did your time in the headlinesshape the album’s direction? It mostdefinitely made it a more personal rec-ord. I had a lot of time to just sit by my-self, so I had a lot more things I wantedto address. One [song] goes by the nameof “Ghostwriter.” I finally wrote a recordtelling the way it feels for me to be aghostwriter, and not only a ghostwriterbut one of the biggest in the rap game.

You own several Wingstopfranchises and actively promoteLuc Belaire rosé. Will you ex-pand the Rick Ross brand into afull-fledged lifestyle company?We’re most definitely havingconversations. If it’s a part of thelifestyle that we live, I’m all forit. I was offered a nice seven-figure deal to do business witha cigarette company, but I don’tsmoke cigarettes, and I don’t wantthat small check to get me to startsmoking.

You’ve credited CrossFit withyour recent weight loss, and nowfans tweet about exercise with thehashtag #RossFit. Is there room forfitness in your empire? Of course.Right now it’s all about encouraging.Let’s get the movement going. So foreverybody that’s using #RossFit,let us know how much weight youdropped, how you lookin’, how youfeelin’. Ladies, dudes—all aboard.

Grimes learned to play the violin, ukulele and otherinstruments while recording her new album

Time Off Reviews


MUSIC

Grimes’ Art Angelshints at pop’s dark sideIN 2011, THE MUSICIAN KNOWN AS GRIMESreleased “Oblivion,” an eerie electronic song thatwas created with Apple’s amateur recording soft-ware GarageBand and touched on her experi-ence with assault. (Sample lyric: “I never walkabout after dark … someone could break yourneck.”) That’s not typical Top 40 fodder, but itmade Grimes (born Claire Boucher) an unlikelypop tastemaker—and critical acclaim for her thirdalbum, 2012’s Visions, led to a management dealwith Jay Z’s Roc Nation and the opportunity towrite for Rihanna.

Her follow-up album, Art Angels, which was re-leased digitally last month and will have a physicalrelease on Dec. 11, explores her pop side without in-dulging it entirely. Like her career so far, the albummakes distinctions between mainstream and under-ground irrelevant. For every song like “Flesh With-out Blood,” with a buzzing guitar riff that wouldbe at home in a Katy Perry track, there’s a songlike “Scream,” which features Taiwanese MC Aris-tophanes rapping in Mandarin while Grimes howlsin the background. The album’s split personality isno accident, given that Grimes writes, records, pro-duces and engineers her music. That can be frus-trating for fans who wish she’d commit to one side,but it makes her songwriting and sound truly singu-lar (if an acquired taste). Is Grimes a pop star or anauteur? Maybe it doesn’t matter—the way she blursthe line between the two is far more interesting thanthe answer.—NOLAN FEENEY

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Tell me the news.

What album is this?

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Play my “Friday Night” playlist.

Hands-free and always on to read the news, answer questions, play music, check traffi c,

weather and much more. Just ask.

I N T R O D U C I N G

Connected to your life. Controlled by your voice.


A FRIEND OF MINE, WHO’S A LITTLE OVER 50, MET WITHa big firm about a job recently. The good news was that theyloved his ideas. But they said he would have to get someoneelse to present all his great ideas to clients. In other words,someone who can wear a hoodie to work without irony. Like abusiness body double. A millennial beard. That way, the com-pany could keep looking young while still benefiting from hisdeep knowledge of the business and, well, human nature.

The concept isn’t as unfair as it sounds. As a late boomer,I have high hopes for this arrangement. We are increasinglycodependent generations. Millennials need boomers andolder Gen X-ers so they know what to improve on. And weneed millennials to get our ideas across. Just ask anyone who’stried pitching a startup to investors without a 20-somethingon her team. Even middle-aged people don’t trust anyoneover 30. That’s why 40- and 50-somethings fall all over them-selves in meetings to show who can most enthusiasticallyagree with a millennial’s idea.

It’s a little desperate, our bid for relevance by associa-tion. But we oldsters feel insecure without a 20-somethingas backup, especially when it comes to anything involvingthe word content. Or Snapchat. Or any kind of sharing thatdoesn’t involve food or money. More important, millennialsare now the largest, hardest-working sector of the workforceand the most desirable market for most businesses, and wedon’t want them to turn on us.

At Google, where the median employee age is about 29,the company has a support group for people over 40 calledGreyglers. In the blurb about Greyglers, the company notesthat they hope to promote “age diversity awareness” atGoogle and foster the success of their “elders.” Yes, middleage is now a special-interest group. This is perhaps why28-year-old tech gurus fret about losing their jobs to collegeinterns who are cheaper and more current. It’s also why Botoxis booming in the Valley among some older engineers.

CLOSELY RELATED IS a new corporate trend called “reversementorship.” That’s when millennials take older employeesunder their wing to teach them how most corporate revenueproblems can be solved with a few social-media tricks, andwhy you shouldn’t ever leave voice mails for anyone.

Nonetheless, I’m all for millennial mentors. (And I agreeabout voice mail.) I used to run TIME’s editorial-technologydepartment, back when people used dial-up modems. Sincethen I’ve learned to make deals in advance with a millennialto ensure support before I suggest anything vaguely technicalin a meeting. You need a millennial front person for an ideato succeed. Partly because when they believe in something,they will put in 7,000 thankless hours to make it happen.Plus, life is so much better when it’s infused with the energy

of people who aren’t hobbled by the memory ofwhat didn’t work “the last time we tried that.” Turnsout, tech knowledge is a lot like online celebrity. It’shighly perishable.

AND THAT’S WHERE WE BOOMERS can come inhandy for millennials. We’ve already done all thatreckoning. We learned a long time ago that there isalways someone younger, thinner and more digitalwaiting right behind you.

Remember, back in the 20th century, we were thesmartest kids in the room. But then we had kids our-selves, and the stakes got higher when it came to ca-reers and relationships. We couldn’t just keep tradingup or moving on; we had to learn to hold on instead.And work started bleeding into our nights and week-ends, thanks to the very technology that everyone stillstruggles to keep ahead of now. Time was no longerlimitless, and it stretched thin faster than we expected.

This new generation will face all that soonenough. Even Mark Zuckerberg, who famously saidthat “young people are just smarter,” might not feelso smart now that his first child has arrived. Ba-bies can do that. Family is the one variable you can’tcontrol for. You can’t scrap them for a new version.There’s no A/B testing or product road map, and thepeople in your life will be unfailingly unpredictable.You’ll often decide to choose their happiness overyour ambitions. And they will get sick or die whenyou don’t expect it.

Life is inherently disruptive. You just have toadapt. There’s no secret hack, no work-around, no protip for that. Except maybe this: to manage the per-sonal hurricanes that will blow your way, you’ll needaid and comfort from the people where you work. Andthat’s when a little intergenerational codependencecan be a very good thing. □

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPY-ISH

The millennial beard: whyboomers need their youngercounterparts. And vice versaBy Susanna Schrobsdorff

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You tried to make it work for a while.It was too tough, too tough. But we’veworked so hard at co-parenting, to makesure that their lives are fantastic. For in-stance, I’ve taken the initiative with thekids and told them, “Guys, the reasonwhy we’re not in the same house, whywe don’t live under the same roof,Mommy and Daddy, is becauseDaddy made some mistakes.” Iwant it to come from me so thatwhen they come of age, I’ll justtell them the real story.

What happened with LindseyVonn? We never had time to-gether. It’s a relationship thatwas fantastic, but it just can’twork on that level. It was doingan injustice to both of us.

Are you able to maintain a sense ofpeace? My only peace has been in be-tween the ropes and hitting the shots.

When did you begin to sense this? Ididn’t play for any attention. I playedfor the hardware. I wanted to know thatI beat everyone, and I wanted them toknow that they got their butt kicked. Ipeaked at 11, to be honest with you. Iwent 36-0 that year, never lost a tour-nament and I probably had the cutestgirlfriend all of sixth grade. And I hadstraight A’s. No A-minuses. I’ve beentrying to get back to that since.

Do you think about your legacy? Thegreatest thing that could happen is tonot be remembered. What I mean bythat is, the kids right now, they have noidea who Michael Jordan was, but theJumpman logo is cool. My learning cen-ter, kids go through it and they don’tknow who I am. They don’t know whatI’ve done. But it’s a safe haven for themto learn and grow.

—LORNE RUBENSTEIN

What’s a day of rehab like for younow? I walk 10 minutes on the beach.That’s it. Then I come home and lie backdown on the couch, or a bed.

Do you have any recovery goals afteryour third back surgery? There’s notimetable. And that’s a hard mind-set,because I’ve always been a goal setter.Now I’ve had to rethink it, and say, O.K.,my goal is to do nothing today. I’velearned a little bit of it, I think. I knowthat, one, I don’t want to have anotherprocedure. And two, even if I don’t playagain, I still want to have a quality of lifewith my kids.

Are you saying that if it does allend because of your injuries, you’reO.K.? It’s not what I want to have hap-pen, and it’s not what I’m planning onhaving happen. But if it does, it does.I’ve reconciled myself to it. It’s moreimportant for me to be with my kids.I don’t know how I could live with my-self not being able to participate in mykids’ lives. That to me is special. Now Iknow what my dad felt like when we’dgo out there and play nine holes in thedark.

Do you watch golf? I can’t rememberthe last time I watched golf. I can’t standit. Unless one of my friends has a chanceto win. I watched Jason [Day] win thePGA. But it was on mute. It’s always onmute and I have some other game onanother TV.

Your private life was exposed in2009. What would you have donedifferently? In hindsight, it’s not howI would change 2009 and how it allcame about. It would be having a moreopen, honest relationship with my ex-wife. The relationship that I have nowwith her is fantastic. She’s one of mybest friends. We’re able to pick up thephone, and we talk all the time. We bothknow that the most important thingsin our lives are our kids. I wish I wouldhave known that back then.

Tiger Woods The golf champion, who turns 40 on Dec. 30,talks about his recovery from back surgery, his legacy andwhat he wishes he had known before everything changed

‘I can’t remember the lasttime I watched golf. I can’tstand it.’

▶ To read the extended interview, go to time.com/tiger

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citi.com/progress

At one point, 40 percent of streetlights in Detroit didn’t work.

This made life even more diffi cult for a city that was already struggling.

The Public Lighting Authority of Detroit devised a plan to reilluminate

the city. But fi nding a bank to fi nance the project during Detroit’s bankruptcy

was challenging. Citi stepped up and committed its own capital, which

encouraged other investors. So far, thousands of new LED lights have been

installed, lighting the way as a model for similar projects around the world.

For over 200 years, Citi’s job has been to believe in people and help

make their ideas a reality.

“IT’S NOT JUSTSTREETLIGHTS.IT’S ABOUT A SENSEOF COMMUNITY.” ODIS JONESCEO, PUBLIC LIGHTING AUTHORITY OF DETROIT