2025 was a turbulent year … but there was also a lot of good news you may have missed. For one thing, a lot of social ills are on the decline. In May, it was reported that drug overdose deaths had dropped to their lowest level since 2019, declining nearly 27% in the last year alone. Thanks largely to new weight-loss drugs, obesity is also on the decline. America has 7.6 million fewer obese adults than it did when the number peaked back in 2022. And in August, the FBI reported that nationwide crime numbers had dropped in every single category in the previous year. There was also good news for the planet. Despite widespread fears that the planet is facing another mass extinction, researchers at the University of Arizona reported … that the extinction of plants and land animals peaked 100 years ago and has been on the decline ever since. 2025 was also a big year for innovation. Researchers at the University of Maryland identified a gene with the potential to triple wheat yields, which could allow us to feed vastly more people around the world. In June, Japan completed work on a system of ocean cables that allows it to better detect earthquakes … giving an extra 20 minutes of warning in the case of life-threatening tsunamis. And in October it was revealed that a three-year-old British girl who was born deaf can now hear on her own thanks to a gene therapy treatment that took only 15 minutes.

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