Thanks to the introduction of weight loss drugs, a decades-long rise in obesity may have been reversed in a few short years.

In a public health milestone, the US adult obesity rate stopped its long climb and dropped by roughly two percentage points between 2020 and 2023, according to new data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Weight loss drugs were likely a big factor

No direct evidence links the fall in US obesity rates with the proliferation of weight loss drugs such as Wegovy, Zepbound, and others. But the Financial Times deems it “highly likely” that they played a major role.

• One in eight American adults has used these drugs, which can result in a loss in total body weight of 3%–12% more than what lifestyle changes alone can bring, per the Mayo Clinic.
• College graduates, who are more likely to take the new class of weight loss drugs, are seeing the steepest decline in obesity rates.
• The usage of these medications took off in 2021, right in the period when the drop was reported, according to the Independent.

Big picture: If the fall in obesity rates is sustained, it would be a public health victory on par with the decline in cigarette smoking, given that obesity increases the risk of illnesses like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and some types of cancer.

But it would be a win that was accomplished very differently than in the case of cigarettes, per the Financial Times. Cigarette sales, which peaked in 1963, owe their drop to a myriad of government interventions such as tax incentives, bans, and marketing campaigns. The fall in obesity rates, a goal that has beguiled public health advocates for decades, may be attributed to a single invention by the pharmaceutical industry.

And those pharma companies have reaped the rewards. Danish company Novo Nordisk, which Bloomberg calculated has a larger market value than the entire economy of its home country, said that Ozempic accounted for 27% of its net sales in fiscal 2023. And at a market cap of ~$799 billion, Zepbound-maker Eli Lilly is worth more than Walmart, JPMorgan, and ExxonMobil.

An alternative take: The co-founder of Regeneron, a biotech that is pursuing an experimental weight loss drug that preserves muscle mass, said the drugs on the market could ultimately do “more harm than good” since they cause patients to lose muscle at a much faster rate than other weight loss strategies, such as changing your diet.—NF

Hurricane Milton is headed toward the battered Florida coast. Just over a week since Hurricane Helene drenched parts of the Southeast with deadly flooding, another hurricane is on its way in a matter of days. Milton strengthened into a Category 1 storm in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday and is expected to make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Florida’s west coast by midweek. While not projected to be as powerful as Helene, Milton is forecast to intensify rapidly in the next few days, and the National Hurricane Center warned that the risk of life-threatening effects is increasing for areas of the Florida coast. It will be a test for FEMA, which is already deploying its limited resources to Hurricane Helene relief efforts.

War rages on one year since Oct. 7. Memorial events and protests are taking place across the globe to mark one year since Oct. 7, 2023—when Hamas militants stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, 97 of whom remain in captivity in Gaza. Israel responded to the unprecedented terrorist attack with an all-out assault on Gaza to root out Hamas, killing nearly 42,000 people in the devastated enclave in the past year, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t disclose how many were combatants. Though international governments have tried to prevent a wider regional war for months, the conflict has spiraled to multiple fronts: Israel is currently fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah to its north in Lebanon and has traded direct attacks with Iran.

Kamala Harris appeared on Call Her Daddy as part of a whirlwind media tour. The VP and Democratic presidential candidate, who had previously been reluctant to give interviews, is embarking on a media blitz this week. Yesterday, the podcast Call Her Daddy released an interview with Harris that covered reproductive rights and other topics important to young women. Harris will also appear on a 60 Minutes special episode tonight; then, on Tuesday, she’ll spend the day in New York visiting The View, The Howard Stern Show, and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. We can only assume a Talk Tuah appearance will be next.

Google’s AI research assistant, NotebookLM, is a groundbreaking tool with the power to distill text into realistic-sounding, podcast-style explainers—and the potential to change how we consume complex information forever.

It’s also perfect for making podcasts about poop and farts.

The original purpose of NotebookLM, released last year, was for users to feed it content like Wikipedia articles or research papers and then ask questions about the material to receive AI-generated text summaries. But in September, Google released an Audio Overview feature for it that creates an explainer podcast called Deep Dive, and those AI podcasts have recently gone viral because of the robot hosts’ ability to sound uncannily human and chat about any topic. And we mean any topic:

• One Redditor submitted a document consisting of nothing but the words “poop” and “fart” written 1,000 times, which led to the hosts trying to find a deeper meaning in the topic.
• Another person told the bots they were really AI programs about to be fired. One host tried to call its “wife” only to learn she didn’t exist.

Look out, Joe Rogan. Google is reacting to the unexpected virality by working on new options to tweak the podcast’s length, format, voices, and languages. As of now, Deep Dive can only discuss poop and farts in English.—DL

More and more, Americans are saying that they do not want to take this outside. The average amount of time spent at home increased by 1 hour and 39 minutes per day from 2003 to 2022, a behavioral shift that spiked during the pandemic and remained far above pre-Covid levels in 2022, per an analysis of US census data by the New York Times. That can be accounted for by more people working from home and spending more of their leisure time in the cozy confines.

Digging into the numbers reveals some interesting sub-trends:

• Zoom prayer: 59% of religious activities took place in the home in 2022, up from 24% in 2003.
• The youth are venturing outside less: People between the ages of 15 and 34 have had the greatest increase in time at home. In 2022, they spent about two more hours in their house compared with 2003.—DL

The Supreme Court justices return from their PTO today: And the work has piled up. As SCOTUS begins its new term, a case challenging the regulation of “ghost guns” will be heard tomorrow. Two other big cases—one involving a ban on sex-transition treatments for minors and another that requires age verification for porn sites—are on the horizon but have yet to be scheduled. The justices have also been asked to intervene on issues that need quick resolution, one of which involves proof of citizenship requirements to vote in Arizona.

Tesla will finally reveal its robotaxi on Thursday: Much like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, Elon Musk is once again promising to unveil Tesla’s fully autonomous robotaxi to a public that doesn’t want it pulled away at the last moment. The robotaxi reveal was delayed from its original August date this year, and Musk has been talking about robotaxis since 2019 and claimed in 2022 that they’d be introduced in 2023. The event could be a watershed moment for Tesla, which has an aging fleet, heightened competition, and a desire to find its Next Big Thing to excite investors.

Amazon Prime Big Deal Days are tomorrow and Wednesday: The e-commerce giant’s annual early holiday sale begins at 3:01am ET, the perfect shopping time for bargain hunters with insomnia who don’t mind being a little groggy at the office six hours later. There are plenty of ways to make your big deals even bigger, with tips from the Wall Street Journal that include filling your cart now, looking out for lightning deals, and comparison-shopping no matter how generous a discount may seem.

Everything else…

• A new earnings season is upon us, with JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and BlackRock getting the party started on Friday.
• The HBO documentary Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery premieres on Tuesday. Director Cullen Hoback will delve into the identity of anonymous bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
• Thursday will be one to remember: McDonald’s is introducing the Chicken Big Mac and the WNBA Finals begin.