🌎 Grand Opening

US obesity rates have dropped amid record GLP-1 use

Ozempic is helping the national waistline trend in the right direction. A recent Gallup survey found the obesity rate among US adults has fallen to just 37% this year, down from a record 40% three years ago, and the first real sign of progress in years.

The decline is largely due to a meteoric rise in Americans taking GLP-1 injectables, like Ozempic and Wegovy, to try to lose weight.

A record rise… and fall

GLP-1 is a hormone your body produces to slow digestion, control appetite, and balance blood sugar. Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy copy that process, triggering the same brain pathways to help users manage their weight (watch video explanation).

According to the Gallup survey (see here), the percentage of Americans who report using these drugs specifically to lose weight has risen to 12.4%, more than double the 5.8% reported early last year.

• The spike comes after a nearly 40-fold increase in GLP-1 drug use for weight loss between 2017 and 2021.

• Adults aged 50–64 are the most likely to use GLP-1s to shed some pounds, at 17%.

Researchers note that the record rise in GLP-1 use and the sudden drop in US obesity rates are anything but a coincidence, and will be sure to have a significant impact on public health trends, as millions of Americans will have a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, and mental health issues.

It’s a lucrative space: Amid surging demand for the medications, analysts predict the global market for obesity drugs will be worth over $150 billion by 2030.

Amazon is bringing big changes to Whole Foods

Prepare to see Cheetos next to the produce aisle. Since it acquired Whole Foods Market in 2017, Amazon has mostly maintained the brand’s clean-living identity. Now, however, the e-commerce giant is looking to shake things up.

What’s changing?

In recent months, Amazon has begun integrating its operations more closely with the grocery chain, a shift the WSJ is calling the “Amazonification” of Whole Foods. For example:

• One Philadelphia location is testing “ShopBots,” or robots that fetch mass-market items like Pepsi and Tide Pods from a backroom for customers.

• In Chicago, one store opened a dedicated kiosk that will be stocked with everyday convenience items like Doritos and Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Some loyal customers and longtime staff argue the changes blur the line between the all-natural ethos of Whole Foods and Amazon’s broader grocery ambitions, pushing a mass-market image onto a store once known for being a premium organic grocer.

Staff weren’t exempt from Amazonification either: Earlier this summer, Whole Foods corporate employees were told they would become Amazon employees. Some perks, like the long-standing 20% discount, were dissolved, and bonuses tied specifically to Whole Foods’ performance were replaced with Amazon stock awards (don’t think there are too many complaints there, though).

Why is Amazon doing this? The grocery sector is one of the most consistent and lucrative areas of consumer spending, and Amazon hopes that by integrating Whole Foods’ operations into its overall business, it can become an even bigger part of customers’ everyday shopping routines.

Say hello to Egypt’s new $1 billion museum

The Louvre robbers better not get any ideas. After more than three decades and multiple delays, Egypt finally unveiled the Grand Egyptian Museum over the weekend, located near the iconic Giza Pyramids just outside Cairo.

It’s bigger than you think

The $1 billion facility is set to become the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilization, spanning over 5 million square feet (the same as ~80 football fields) and housing over 100,000 artifacts spanning ancient Egypt, from prehistoric times up through the Roman era.

As you can imagine, it was quite the lengthy project. Construction on the huge complex began in 2005, but was paused during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, parts of the pandemic, and during Israel and Iran’s airstrike exchange in June.

• It took crews seven months alone to dig out and clear away the massive amount of sand just to ready the site for construction.

Why put in all that work? The GEM is a key part of Egypt’s plan to revive its tourism industry, a main source of foreign currency amid economic pressures. Officials hope to attract 15,000 to 20,000 daily visitors initially and eventually reach 30 million annual tourists by 2032.

So, what’s in the darn thing?

One of the main attractions of the museum is two halls devoted to more than 5,300 artifacts from King Tutankhamun’s tomb, marking the first time all his treasures have been displayed together since their discovery in 1922.

• Some of the items include his golden mask, burial chariots, and other recovered artifacts that had previously been lost.

Other than just King Tut’s treasures, the GEM has another 95,000 ancient relics on display. Some of the highlights are:

• A 53-foot-high Hanging Obelisk (the only one of its kind in the world), an 83-ton, 3,200-year-old statue of King Ramses II, and a royal boat that once belonged to King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

When can you visit? The museum is set to fully open to the public today, so you'd better have booked your plane ticket, well, three weeks ago.

In partnership with Superhuman AI

Become the go-to AI expert in 30 days

AI keeps coming up at work, but you still don't get it?

That's exactly why 1M+ professionals working at Google, Meta, and OpenAI read Superhuman AI daily.

Here's what you get:

• Daily AI news that matters for your career - Filtered from 1000s of sources so you know what affects your industry.

• Step-by-step tutorials you can use immediately - Real prompts and workflows that solve actual business problems.

• New AI tools tested and reviewed - We try everything to deliver tools that drive real results.

• All in just 3 minutes a day

Join 1M+ pros

Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on a record $382 billion of cash

What gift did Warren Buffett get from Dionysus? On Saturday, the company reported that its cash reserves hit $381.7 billion, an all-time high, after five straight quarters of declining to buy back its own shares.

What does the cash hoarding mean?

The size of the tremendous cash pile could signal a couple of things, other than the fact that CEO Warren Buffett is exercising his well-known conservative financial strategy (see overview):

1. Buffett and his team are willing to sit on some cash rather than commit to deals that may not meet their long‑term standards.

2. Or they’re not seeing any attractive opportunities and are waiting for a better opportunity to arise.

Regardless of the company’s strategy, the report is the last before Buffett steps down as CEO, with Vice Chairman Greg Abel taking his place. The monumental cash pile will give Abel a plethora (I guess you could say buffet) of options to make his own mark.

To put the pile in perspective: The $381.7 billion mountain is larger than the combined market caps of Spotify, Robinhood, and DoorDash, and, per Barchart, is enough to buy any one of 477 companies in the S&P 500 outright.

Scientists discover new “death ball” sponge

And people say aliens don’t live in the ocean. While something called the “death sponge” alone would warrant an article, the circular oddity above is one of 30 other previously unknown deep-sea species discovered by researchers in the frigid waters off Antarctica.

Creepy crawlies

The findings stem from two expeditions, including one in the Southern Ocean, where researchers explored seafloor habitats around the Montagu and Saunders Islands and the South Sandwich Trench.

• The research team explored volcanic calderas, deep-sea trenches, and seafloor habitats previously sealed under ice as a part of the journey.

At around 12,000 feet under the ocean, they found the death sponge, along with several other notable sea creatures:

• New species found include armored and glowing sea worms, sea stars, and crustaceans, along with rare snails, slugs, and mollusks that evolved to live in volcanic habitats (see gallery of photos).

• Researchers also discovered “zombie worms” that seem to have no mouth or stomach (see here).

In total, the team collected nearly 2,000 specimens from 14 animal groups, but only about 30% of the species have been examined. Watch a short video of the expedition here.

One for the record books: During the trek, researchers also captured hours of ultra-deep-sea footage, including what may be the first-ever video of a juvenile colossal squid (watch here).

Catch up on this week’s weird news

 > At around 8:19 pm ET tomorrow, an unusually close supermoon (a celestial event where the moon's orbit brings it closer to Earth) will be at peak illumination in the night sky.

 > A bottle with legible handwritten letters from two young soldiers bound for WWI battlefields turned up during a routine beach-cleanup in Western Australia, more than a century after they were written.

 > Nature released its best science photos of October, showcasing an insect the size of a rice grain, a newly found dinosaur skeleton, skin-cell biocomputers, and more.

 > A group of infected monkeys broke free into the wild after a truck, which was transporting them between research facilities, crashed in Mississippi. Authorities later clarified that the animals were not actually infected, despite early disease warnings.

 > NASA completed its first test flight of the X-59—which is designed to fly faster than sound without the disruptive sonic boom—laying the groundwork for future commercial supersonic jets.