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"content": "\u003cp>Living in California is cool. Not just because of the obvious stuff—like the weather and the coastline—but also because our state politicians excel at keeping us safe when we’re getting a little too rowdy. It’s why smoking has been banned in bars here since 1989. It’s why we’ve got the strictest emissions standards in the country. And it’s why we were one of the first 10 states to issue a mask mandate in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem with living in a state this sensible, however, is that politicians never have to cajole us into anything. Now, you might be thinking, “Isn’t that a good thing?” And sure, it probably was last week. But that was before West Virginia governor Jim Justice introduced the internet to his English bulldog, Babydog. (\u003cem>Babydog!\u003c/em>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Babydog was brought out 34 minutes into a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t76XdgqBJQw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">press briefing\u003c/a> about West Virginia’s response to COVID-19, and was promptly used as a bargaining chip. “If you won’t do it for me, if you won’t do it for your family, you’ve got to get vaccinated for Babydog,” Justice said, attempting to make his sentient potato look animated. “She wants you to get vaccinated so badly. She’s going to be the one to lead us through all these incentives. And without any questions, she’ll give you a high-five right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/HaleighHoffman/status/1398113249963528194\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would definitely get vaccinated two more times for a high-five from Babydog. After her nonchalant yet triumphant two-minute appearance was over, the meeting quickly moved to the office of retired general, Major Jim Hoyer. Hoyer visibly sighed before unmuting himself and uttering, “Well, I sure wish Dr. Marsh was here today, because I hate to follow Babydog…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By Friday, Babydog was trending on Twitter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/braegr/status/1398316290767474695\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/HulaGrlatHeart/status/1398300080571142149\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/NClbw825/status/1398344923917832198\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>West Virginia’s percentage of fully vaccinated people is currently at 33.8% versus California’s 42.2%. Just imagine how much further ahead we’d be if Governor Newsom made a similar video. Not with his golden retriever Max though. Rather, he should unfurl the real power pet in the Newsom household—the bunny that appeared in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=211471220270299\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">family video\u003c/a> last year. Which looks like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898075\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898075\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-800x652.png\" alt=\"Governor Gavin Newsom's long-haired pet bunny, appearing in a family video in 2020.\" width=\"800\" height=\"652\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-800x652.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-1020x831.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-160x130.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-768x626.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny.png 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foolishly, Governor Gavin Newsom’s pet bunny has never asked anyone to get vaccinated. \u003ccite>(Facebook/ @CAgovernor )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This eyeball in a floof pile probably wants you to get vaccinated just as much as Babydog. Hop to it, Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>West Virginia’s percentage of fully vaccinated people is currently at 33.8% versus California’s 42.2%. Just imagine how much further ahead we’d be if Governor Newsom made a similar video. Not with his golden retriever Max though. Rather, he should unfurl the real power pet in the Newsom household—the bunny that appeared in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=211471220270299\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">family video\u003c/a> last year. Which looks like this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898075\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898075\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-800x652.png\" alt=\"Governor Gavin Newsom's long-haired pet bunny, appearing in a family video in 2020.\" width=\"800\" height=\"652\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-800x652.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-1020x831.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-160x130.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny-768x626.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/bunny.png 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foolishly, Governor Gavin Newsom’s pet bunny has never asked anyone to get vaccinated. \u003ccite>(Facebook/ @CAgovernor )\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This eyeball in a floof pile probably wants you to get vaccinated just as much as Babydog. Hop to it, Newsom.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "‘Friends: The Reunion’ Provides Plenty of Laughs, Actively Avoids the Tough Stuff",
"headTitle": "‘Friends: The Reunion’ Provides Plenty of Laughs, Actively Avoids the Tough Stuff | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Watching HBO’s long-awaited \u003cem>Friends: The Reunion\u003c/em>, the thing that strikes you first is that, in many ways, the cast of \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>—Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Courteney Cox (Monica), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler) and David Schwimmer (Ross)—know less about \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> than the fans do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, Aniston asks Schwimmer, “Do you remember the episode with the ball and you couldn’t drop the ball?” And he frowns and looks confused because he has zero memory of it whatsoever. That season five episode is literally called “The One With the Ball.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_108851']At another point, LeBlanc tells Perry he kept the ball from Joey and Chandler’s foosball table as a souvenir from their time on the show. “You should’ve taken the table,” Perry replies, as if the destruction of that table wasn’t a prominent storyline in Friends’ very last episode, “The One Where They Say Goodbye.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most annoyingly, the entire cast happily concludes that, in 10 seasons—the show ran between 1994 and 2004—\u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> never once revealed what Chandler did for a living. It makes sense that neither Kudrow nor Perry would know this—both admit, mid-reunion, to having never watched the whole show. But absolutely no one else remembers that Chandler worked in “data reconfiguration and statistical factoring.” (If you don’t believe me, check “\u003ca href=\"https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/78832/what-was-chandler-bings-job\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The One With the Cooking Class\u003c/a>” from season eight and “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gjQ8_Gvu4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The One Where Rachel Goes Back to Work\u003c/a>” from season nine. It’s \u003cem>right there\u003c/em>, people!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYM1uQ7QrTc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As you can probably tell, I am, against my better judgment, a big fan of \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>. I know its overwhelming whiteness is hideous, particularly for a show set in New York City. And I dislike immensely that it’s so consistently drenched in what \u003cem>Honest Trailers\u003c/em> once accurately referred to as a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqDSrMK_Gyg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">thin layer of gay panic\u003c/a>.” Don’t even get me started on Joey’s tendency towards casual sexual predation. For some reason though, like a moldy old security blanket from childhood, I just can’t seem to let \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> go. And there are millions of other humans around the world just like me. As this special episode notes, the show is estimated to have been watched more than “100 billion times across platforms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_105499']I—and most everybody that still cares enough about this 27-year-old show to tune into a nearly-two-hour special about it—recovered months ago from the fact that this wasn’t a sitcom reunion in the traditional sense. It has been said repeatedly—and it’s reiterated during \u003cem>The Reunion\u003c/em>, lest we get any ideas—that there will never, ever be another episode of \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>. So what we have to settle for here, instead, is six entertaining people who used to play six hilarious characters, appearing together for the first time in public since 2004 and making each other laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interview with James Cordon is distinctly so-so—except during one genuinely funny portion where David Schwimmer angrily vents about how much he hated working with Marcel the monkey in season one. (“I would like you to be more serious about this,” Perry quips.) So too is a living room trivia quiz (based on the one from Cox’s favorite episode, “The One With the Embryos”) more contrived than it ought to be. There is, however, something genuinely moving about seeing the reunited cast on their old set, verklempt and reminiscing about old times. It’s in these more candid moments that some of the interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits emerge. (The graffiti LeBlanc left on the set after the final episode is a particular treat.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the most insightful revelations unfold, not via the cast, but rather through documentary-style interviews with \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>’ creators, writers and producers, Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane. These encompass the original inspiration for the show, casting decisions, and on-the-fly plot pivots. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=friends+pivot+gif&rlz=1C5GCEA_enUS937US938&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=kxLUKN6BoGo40M%252Cz62Kzgv2JUFq1M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kSjosDbXMEC6gEzAiLAY6Z1UzGjIw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZkqyhtunwAhXGjp4KHWywCZ0Q9QF6BAgUEAE#imgrc=kxLUKN6BoGo40M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>PIVOT!\u003c/em>\u003c/a>) When Bright reveals he only discovered Lisa Kudrow because she’d made an appearance on \u003cem>Mad About You\u003c/em> while his husband was writing for it, you appreciate just how precarious the show’s successful chemistry was. Also testament to that is the fact that the guy Joey tries to pass off as his identical twin in “The One With Unagi” was played by an actor who very nearly got the part of Joey himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Padding out all of this are a wealth of delightful appearances from former cast members. These include Reese Witherspoon (who played Rachel’s sister Jill), Tom Selleck (Monica’s boyfriend Richard), Christina Pickles and Elliott Gould (Ross and Monica’s parents), Maggie Wheeler (Janice!), James Michael Tyler (Gunther!), Thomas Lennon (Joey’s identical hand twin!) and Mr. Heckles himself, Larry Hankin. Paul Rudd is a glaring, unexplained absence difficult not to be bummed out about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the cameos don’t stop there. Justin Bieber makes an appearance that will have you \u003cem>really\u003c/em> liking Justin Bieber. Cindy Crawford shows up. So does BTS. And when Cara Delevingne emerges, Jennifer Aniston’s jaw literally drops. On top of that, David Beckham, Mindy Kaling, Kit Harington and Malala Yousafzai pick their favorite episodes. Oh, and the musical guest who shows up to sing “Smelly Cat” with Lisa Kudrow is so special, I don’t even wanna spoil it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So yes, this reunion is an enormous amount of fun. And there is plenty for fans to chew on here. Plus, of course, the warmth between the former castmates all these years later is legitimately a joy to behold. But where the reunion stumbles is in its unwavering commitment to keeping things light. Especially since Perry in particular seems genuinely overwhelmed by memories of that period in his life. He talks the least out of anyone else on set, and his occasionally slumped posture and difficulty enunciating hint at darker things going on beneath the surface. Occasionally, he tries to acknowledge them out loud, but these moments quickly pass.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_106765']“I felt like I was gonna die if they didn’t laugh,” Perry says of the anxiety he experienced performing in front of a live studio audience every week. “I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and go into convulsions.” Kudrow seems genuinely upset to only be hearing about this a quarter of a century after the fact. But rather than delving into whether or not this was a factor in Perry’s well-publicized struggles with addiction, \u003cem>Friends: The Reunion\u003c/em> rushes on to the next happier, shinier thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should come as no surprise then, that \u003cem>The Reunion\u003c/em> makes zero attempt to tackle the criticisms \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> now regularly receives around its lack of diversity and inclusion. Worse, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that, in a mid-show segment featuring fans from around the globe, 11 out of 13 of them are either folks of color or members of the LGBTQ community. Though these fans’ stories are genuinely moving, the segment feels like a cynical attempt by producers to convince modern viewers that \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> wasn’t so straight and white after all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, what \u003cem>Friends: The Reunion\u003c/em> does very well is what the sitcom itself excelled at: glossing over anything important or serious, and instead offering viewers something ridiculous to laugh at. And in that regard, it absolutely succeeds. Fans will undoubtedly want to watch this more than once. It’s just a shame the special doesn’t give its critics any reason to tune in.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Watching HBO’s long-awaited \u003cem>Friends: The Reunion\u003c/em>, the thing that strikes you first is that, in many ways, the cast of \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>—Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Courteney Cox (Monica), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler) and David Schwimmer (Ross)—know less about \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> than the fans do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, Aniston asks Schwimmer, “Do you remember the episode with the ball and you couldn’t drop the ball?” And he frowns and looks confused because he has zero memory of it whatsoever. That season five episode is literally called “The One With the Ball.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At another point, LeBlanc tells Perry he kept the ball from Joey and Chandler’s foosball table as a souvenir from their time on the show. “You should’ve taken the table,” Perry replies, as if the destruction of that table wasn’t a prominent storyline in Friends’ very last episode, “The One Where They Say Goodbye.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most annoyingly, the entire cast happily concludes that, in 10 seasons—the show ran between 1994 and 2004—\u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> never once revealed what Chandler did for a living. It makes sense that neither Kudrow nor Perry would know this—both admit, mid-reunion, to having never watched the whole show. But absolutely no one else remembers that Chandler worked in “data reconfiguration and statistical factoring.” (If you don’t believe me, check “\u003ca href=\"https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/78832/what-was-chandler-bings-job\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The One With the Cooking Class\u003c/a>” from season eight and “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gjQ8_Gvu4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The One Where Rachel Goes Back to Work\u003c/a>” from season nine. It’s \u003cem>right there\u003c/em>, people!)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/uYM1uQ7QrTc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/uYM1uQ7QrTc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As you can probably tell, I am, against my better judgment, a big fan of \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>. I know its overwhelming whiteness is hideous, particularly for a show set in New York City. And I dislike immensely that it’s so consistently drenched in what \u003cem>Honest Trailers\u003c/em> once accurately referred to as a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqDSrMK_Gyg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">thin layer of gay panic\u003c/a>.” Don’t even get me started on Joey’s tendency towards casual sexual predation. For some reason though, like a moldy old security blanket from childhood, I just can’t seem to let \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> go. And there are millions of other humans around the world just like me. As this special episode notes, the show is estimated to have been watched more than “100 billion times across platforms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I—and most everybody that still cares enough about this 27-year-old show to tune into a nearly-two-hour special about it—recovered months ago from the fact that this wasn’t a sitcom reunion in the traditional sense. It has been said repeatedly—and it’s reiterated during \u003cem>The Reunion\u003c/em>, lest we get any ideas—that there will never, ever be another episode of \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>. So what we have to settle for here, instead, is six entertaining people who used to play six hilarious characters, appearing together for the first time in public since 2004 and making each other laugh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interview with James Cordon is distinctly so-so—except during one genuinely funny portion where David Schwimmer angrily vents about how much he hated working with Marcel the monkey in season one. (“I would like you to be more serious about this,” Perry quips.) So too is a living room trivia quiz (based on the one from Cox’s favorite episode, “The One With the Embryos”) more contrived than it ought to be. There is, however, something genuinely moving about seeing the reunited cast on their old set, verklempt and reminiscing about old times. It’s in these more candid moments that some of the interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits emerge. (The graffiti LeBlanc left on the set after the final episode is a particular treat.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the most insightful revelations unfold, not via the cast, but rather through documentary-style interviews with \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>’ creators, writers and producers, Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane. These encompass the original inspiration for the show, casting decisions, and on-the-fly plot pivots. (\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=friends+pivot+gif&rlz=1C5GCEA_enUS937US938&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=kxLUKN6BoGo40M%252Cz62Kzgv2JUFq1M%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kSjosDbXMEC6gEzAiLAY6Z1UzGjIw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZkqyhtunwAhXGjp4KHWywCZ0Q9QF6BAgUEAE#imgrc=kxLUKN6BoGo40M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>PIVOT!\u003c/em>\u003c/a>) When Bright reveals he only discovered Lisa Kudrow because she’d made an appearance on \u003cem>Mad About You\u003c/em> while his husband was writing for it, you appreciate just how precarious the show’s successful chemistry was. Also testament to that is the fact that the guy Joey tries to pass off as his identical twin in “The One With Unagi” was played by an actor who very nearly got the part of Joey himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Padding out all of this are a wealth of delightful appearances from former cast members. These include Reese Witherspoon (who played Rachel’s sister Jill), Tom Selleck (Monica’s boyfriend Richard), Christina Pickles and Elliott Gould (Ross and Monica’s parents), Maggie Wheeler (Janice!), James Michael Tyler (Gunther!), Thomas Lennon (Joey’s identical hand twin!) and Mr. Heckles himself, Larry Hankin. Paul Rudd is a glaring, unexplained absence difficult not to be bummed out about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the cameos don’t stop there. Justin Bieber makes an appearance that will have you \u003cem>really\u003c/em> liking Justin Bieber. Cindy Crawford shows up. So does BTS. And when Cara Delevingne emerges, Jennifer Aniston’s jaw literally drops. On top of that, David Beckham, Mindy Kaling, Kit Harington and Malala Yousafzai pick their favorite episodes. Oh, and the musical guest who shows up to sing “Smelly Cat” with Lisa Kudrow is so special, I don’t even wanna spoil it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So yes, this reunion is an enormous amount of fun. And there is plenty for fans to chew on here. Plus, of course, the warmth between the former castmates all these years later is legitimately a joy to behold. But where the reunion stumbles is in its unwavering commitment to keeping things light. Especially since Perry in particular seems genuinely overwhelmed by memories of that period in his life. He talks the least out of anyone else on set, and his occasionally slumped posture and difficulty enunciating hint at darker things going on beneath the surface. Occasionally, he tries to acknowledge them out loud, but these moments quickly pass.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I felt like I was gonna die if they didn’t laugh,” Perry says of the anxiety he experienced performing in front of a live studio audience every week. “I would sometimes say a line and they wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and go into convulsions.” Kudrow seems genuinely upset to only be hearing about this a quarter of a century after the fact. But rather than delving into whether or not this was a factor in Perry’s well-publicized struggles with addiction, \u003cem>Friends: The Reunion\u003c/em> rushes on to the next happier, shinier thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should come as no surprise then, that \u003cem>The Reunion\u003c/em> makes zero attempt to tackle the criticisms \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> now regularly receives around its lack of diversity and inclusion. Worse, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence that, in a mid-show segment featuring fans from around the globe, 11 out of 13 of them are either folks of color or members of the LGBTQ community. Though these fans’ stories are genuinely moving, the segment feels like a cynical attempt by producers to convince modern viewers that \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em> wasn’t so straight and white after all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, what \u003cem>Friends: The Reunion\u003c/em> does very well is what the sitcom itself excelled at: glossing over anything important or serious, and instead offering viewers something ridiculous to laugh at. And in that regard, it absolutely succeeds. Fans will undoubtedly want to watch this more than once. It’s just a shame the special doesn’t give its critics any reason to tune in.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Gripping Marital Drama 'Killing of Two Lovers' is Brooding But Never Dull",
"headTitle": "Gripping Marital Drama ‘Killing of Two Lovers’ is Brooding But Never Dull | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Just about every era gets the great end-of-a-marriage movie it deserves, sometimes even more than one. The ’70s gave us \u003cem>Scenes From a Marriage\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Kramer vs. Kramer\u003c/em>; the past decade brought us the Iranian masterpiece \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2011/12/29/144405416/a-separation-in-tehran-houses-and-hearts-divided\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>A Separation\u003c/em> \u003c/a>and, more recently, the justly acclaimed \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/775397877/a-couple-faces-the-painful-end-of-the-line-in-marriage-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Marriage Story\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it doesn’t much resemble any of them, \u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em> belongs in their company. It’s a tense, stripped-down, superbly acted drama about a family at a perilous moment of transition. While the movie is never as brutal as its title might suggest, the threat of brutality seems to loom over every frame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clayne Crawford and Sepideh Moafi play David and Niki, a small-town Utah couple who have recently agreed to a trial separation. David has moved in with his dad just down the road, close enough to drop in frequently on Niki and their four kids. He’s hoping for a reconciliation so that their family can get back together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Niki sees the marriage as pretty much over: She and David wed young, right out of high school, and after years of career setbacks, financial difficulties and the many challenges of raising a large family, she’s ready to move on. She’s already moved on, in fact, with a boyfriend named Derek, played by Chris Coy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The terms of David and Niki’s separation allow them to see other people. But that’s small consolation for David, the story’s protagonist, who spends much of his time seething with fury. The movie begins with a scene in which you wonder if he really is going to kill the two lovers, whom he finds sleeping one morning in the bed that he used to share with his wife. Later he quietly stalks Derek around town, armed with a pistol that he looks all too willing to use. In both situations, though, his better judgment prevails and he backs down. David is capable of violence, as Crawford’s tightly wound performance makes clear. But he also turns out to be more complicated than he appears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the entire situation is more complicated than it appears. At one point David and Niki have an agreed-upon “date night,” and it’s clear from their tender, bittersweet conversation that they still love each other deeply. That doesn’t mean the movie is necessarily rooting for their reunion; while the story isn’t told from Niki’s point of view, Moafi’s smart, empathetic performance ensures that we see her side of it. The break-up is of course hard on the kids, whom David adores and tries to spend as much time with as possible, especially his moody teenage daughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqmVhNb6Z18\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em> was written and directed by Robert Machoian, a Utah photography professor who’s been making films for more than a decade, sometimes with members of his own family. (Here, his three boys play David’s sons, and his own father plays David’s father.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Machoian’s style is intimate and psychologically raw: Sometimes he and his gifted cinematographer, Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, bring the camera so close that you can see David’s every wrinkle and pore. Sometimes they pull back and position him against the flat Utah landscape, whose stark, wintry beauty seems to reflect his own desolation. The movie sounds even more arresting than it looks; instead of a traditional score, it features a soundscape consisting of everyday noises—like the repeated slamming of a car door—that capture the tedium of David’s routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this gives \u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em> an extraordinary level of moment-to-moment tension even when it seems as though not much is going on. That’s part of the movie’s point: So much of the drama in our lives arises not from major events, but rather from the anguished anticipation of those major events. But while David spends a lot of his time brooding, the story never feels dull or repetitive. It’s mesmerizing to watch him respond in real time to the fraught situation that he and his family have never been through before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I won’t reveal what happens at the end of \u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em>, except to say that it is credible yet surprising, and likely to fill you with a strange mix of hope and alarm. Machoian knows that when it comes to love and family, life is full of unexpected contradictions—and he’s done a brilliant job of turning those contradictions into art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Gripping+Marital+Drama+%27Killing+Of+Two+Lovers%27+Is+Brooding+But+Never+Dull+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Just about every era gets the great end-of-a-marriage movie it deserves, sometimes even more than one. The ’70s gave us \u003cem>Scenes From a Marriage\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Kramer vs. Kramer\u003c/em>; the past decade brought us the Iranian masterpiece \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2011/12/29/144405416/a-separation-in-tehran-houses-and-hearts-divided\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>A Separation\u003c/em> \u003c/a>and, more recently, the justly acclaimed \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/775397877/a-couple-faces-the-painful-end-of-the-line-in-marriage-story\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Marriage Story\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While it doesn’t much resemble any of them, \u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em> belongs in their company. It’s a tense, stripped-down, superbly acted drama about a family at a perilous moment of transition. While the movie is never as brutal as its title might suggest, the threat of brutality seems to loom over every frame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clayne Crawford and Sepideh Moafi play David and Niki, a small-town Utah couple who have recently agreed to a trial separation. David has moved in with his dad just down the road, close enough to drop in frequently on Niki and their four kids. He’s hoping for a reconciliation so that their family can get back together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Niki sees the marriage as pretty much over: She and David wed young, right out of high school, and after years of career setbacks, financial difficulties and the many challenges of raising a large family, she’s ready to move on. She’s already moved on, in fact, with a boyfriend named Derek, played by Chris Coy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The terms of David and Niki’s separation allow them to see other people. But that’s small consolation for David, the story’s protagonist, who spends much of his time seething with fury. The movie begins with a scene in which you wonder if he really is going to kill the two lovers, whom he finds sleeping one morning in the bed that he used to share with his wife. Later he quietly stalks Derek around town, armed with a pistol that he looks all too willing to use. In both situations, though, his better judgment prevails and he backs down. David is capable of violence, as Crawford’s tightly wound performance makes clear. But he also turns out to be more complicated than he appears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, the entire situation is more complicated than it appears. At one point David and Niki have an agreed-upon “date night,” and it’s clear from their tender, bittersweet conversation that they still love each other deeply. That doesn’t mean the movie is necessarily rooting for their reunion; while the story isn’t told from Niki’s point of view, Moafi’s smart, empathetic performance ensures that we see her side of it. The break-up is of course hard on the kids, whom David adores and tries to spend as much time with as possible, especially his moody teenage daughter.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/hqmVhNb6Z18'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/hqmVhNb6Z18'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em> was written and directed by Robert Machoian, a Utah photography professor who’s been making films for more than a decade, sometimes with members of his own family. (Here, his three boys play David’s sons, and his own father plays David’s father.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Machoian’s style is intimate and psychologically raw: Sometimes he and his gifted cinematographer, Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, bring the camera so close that you can see David’s every wrinkle and pore. Sometimes they pull back and position him against the flat Utah landscape, whose stark, wintry beauty seems to reflect his own desolation. The movie sounds even more arresting than it looks; instead of a traditional score, it features a soundscape consisting of everyday noises—like the repeated slamming of a car door—that capture the tedium of David’s routine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this gives \u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em> an extraordinary level of moment-to-moment tension even when it seems as though not much is going on. That’s part of the movie’s point: So much of the drama in our lives arises not from major events, but rather from the anguished anticipation of those major events. But while David spends a lot of his time brooding, the story never feels dull or repetitive. It’s mesmerizing to watch him respond in real time to the fraught situation that he and his family have never been through before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I won’t reveal what happens at the end of \u003cem>The Killing of Two Lovers\u003c/em>, except to say that it is credible yet surprising, and likely to fill you with a strange mix of hope and alarm. Machoian knows that when it comes to love and family, life is full of unexpected contradictions—and he’s done a brilliant job of turning those contradictions into art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Gripping+Marital+Drama+%27Killing+Of+Two+Lovers%27+Is+Brooding+But+Never+Dull+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "On 'Sour,' Olivia Rodrigo is a Lowercase Girl With Caps-Lock Feelings",
"headTitle": "On ‘Sour,’ Olivia Rodrigo is a Lowercase Girl With Caps-Lock Feelings | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Lowercase girls tend to fly under the radar by design, but once you start looking you’ll see them \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3z45v/internet-lowercase-spelling-taylor-swift-charli-xcx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">everywhere\u003c/a>. For one thing, they’ve been all over the streaming charts in the past few years: \u003cem>folklore\u003c/em>, \u003cem>evermore\u003c/em>, “thank u, next,” girl in red, mxmtoon, dodie, beabadoobee, \u003cem>how i’m feeling now\u003c/em>, “drivers license,” “deja vu,” “good 4 u”—to name just a few recent, femme-forward musical phenomena that wouldn’t even \u003cem>think\u003c/em> of imposing the tyranny of capital letters on the listener’s imagination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But lowercase girls have been there forever, in the back rows of classrooms and the corners of parties, daydreaming, doodling, stockpiling vivid details and observations in the marble notebooks of their minds—waiting for the precise moment to launch them like a carefully crafted dart that punctures everybody else’s apathy and proves just how sharply she has been paying attention. Some of the best of them never grow out of it. “My only advantage as a reporter,” Joan Didion wrote in 1968, unwittingly describing her own species perfectly, “is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does.” Beware the lowercase girl. Although she is usually overlooked, underestimated and even ignored, she sometimes turns out to be the one who’s been writing the story all along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such were the cultural forces that Olivia Rodrigo harnessed, streamlined and gloriously melo-dramatized earlier this year in her breakout single, “drivers license”—stylized all lowercase, because of course. A lifelong Swiftie (almost literally: When Taylor Swift’s self-titled debut album came out, Rodrigo was 3) and the daughter of a therapist, Rodrigo was raised to be the kind of person who didn’t exactly hide her feelings. On the chorus of the song that accelerated her to overnight fame, she saves her most impassioned vocal delivery for what she clearly considers to be her ex’s most grievous crime: \u003cem>Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me\u003c/em>. The implication being that in her songs, defiantly, she means every word.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmDBbnmKpqQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last few years, given the success of Billie Eilish’s ASMR jams and Swift’s soft acoustic reveries, it has sometimes felt like pop musicians are playing one big round of the Quiet Game, daring each other into an ever more provocative hush. “drivers license” certainly benefits from that tonal shift, but the most moving thing about the song is actually its careening sense of dynamism, the way it swings repeatedly from a private muttering to a collective, belt-it-out exorcism of the heart. Such is the power of That Bridge. (Perhaps the surest indication of the song’s massive, cross-generational appeal is the fact that its bridge inspired both a TikTok challenge \u003cem>and\u003c/em> an \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> skit—some kids may have been editing their small-screen video responses to it as their parents watched the episode on some old technological innovation called live TV.) Rodrigo’s songs play out like bottled-up soliloquies rather than two-sided conversations, which gives them the emotional force of someone who has previously felt unheard (by an apathetic boyfriend, or maybe by adult society writ large) finally speaking her mind. And so that bridge exposes the great irony of not only “drivers license,” but the lowercase girl herself. Because on the inside, where all the feelings are, her caps-lock key is JAMMED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“drivers license” would have been a hard act for any new artist to follow, but in the past month, Rodrigo has seized every opportunity to prove that there’s more to her than even that song could fully showcase. The two singles she’s released in the lead-up to her debut album, \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em>, have effortlessly slipped into unexpected genres—who among us could have predicted that the “drivers license” girl would go scorched-earth pop-punk on her third single, or that she’d pull it off?—and both have been sprinkled with striking, cleverly documented observational details. “Trading jackets, laughing ’bout how small it looks on you,” she sings on the hypnotic “deja vu,” as a chorus of backup Olivias exhale a scathing line of canned, can-barely-be-bothered laughter at such a romantic cliché: \u003cem>ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha\u003c/em>. “Guess the therapist I found for you, she really helped,” she shrugs on “good 4 u”—one of those kung fu lyrics that cuts its intended target in seven different places before he even realizes he’s bleeding. Rodrigo’s songs have lived-in details to spare, as though she had all this time been assembling a detailed dossier on the emotional minutiae of the teenage experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The remarkably potent \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em>, out today, plays a similar game of bait-and-switch with expectations. Far from the muted chords of “drivers license”—and \u003cem>worlds\u003c/em> away from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc8008B4ENI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">musical-theater sheen\u003c/a> of her songs for Disney+’s \u003cem>High School Musical: The Musical: The Series\u003c/em>—the album’s opening track, “brutal,” crashes in with a torrent of loud, crunchy guitars, overtop of which Rodrigo’s dryly compressed voice lists a seemingly unending string of adolescent neuroses: “And I don’t stick up for myself / I’m anxious and nothing can help / And I wish I’d done this before / And I wish people liked me more.” The \u003cem>and and and and\u003c/em>‘s pile up like a teetering Jenga tower of stress. Rodrigo proved on “good 4 u” that she can do a very effective vocal sneer, and on “brutal” she saves her most caustic one for the adults who insist, in their rose-colored recollections, that their teenage years were the best of their lives. “I’m so sick of 17,” she sighs, “where’s my f****** teenage dream?!” It’s an exhilarating lyric, an expertly calibrated eye roll at anyone over the age of 18—or maybe even at the previous generation’s entire philosophy about how pop music should be made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNi_6U5Pm_o\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m very emo,” Rodrigo said in a recent \u003cem>Rolling Stone\u003c/em> video interview, sitting beside her co-writer and producer Dan Nigro. “Dan was in an emo band, and he still tells me I’m emo—that’s how you know you’re \u003cem>really\u003c/em> emo.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now 39, Nigro used to be the frontman of the Long Island-based band As Tall as Lions, who found moderate success in the booming East Coast emo-punk scene of the early aughts. He might seem an unlikely musical partner for Rodrigo, until you remember that perhaps the most prominent current producer of pop music made by young women, Jack Antonoff, is a veteran of the very same scene. (His first band, New Jersey-based Steel Train, was signed to the beloved, influential pop-punk label Drive-Thru Records.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as a one-time lowercase girl / emo kid / Drive-Thru Records enthusiast from suburban New Jersey, I \u003cem>do\u003c/em> find it pretty surprising that two of the most successful producers in crafting pop music from a feminine point of view came out of that scene. Because, as I remember all too well, it was a realm almost entirely devoid of women’s voices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13883873']“From my early-to-mid adolescence,” I wrote years ago in a reassessment of this period in my music-obsessed life, “I listened almost exclusively to music made by sad boys.” And it wasn’t just that girls’ perspectives were \u003cem>absent\u003c/em> from this music that I loved so passionately during this confusing and hormonally tumultuous time: The Girl was always the reason the boys were sad. In these songs, she was often actively vilified, blamed for the Lead Singer Boy’s every earthly woe—and not infrequently the star of his violent revenge fantasies. “Even if her plane crashes tonight she’ll find some way to disappoint me,” went a song I can still sing by heart as an adult, “by not burning in the wreckage, or drowning at the bottom of the sea.” This was, to me, romantic, melodramatic, \u003cem>deep\u003c/em>. I doodled lyrics like those on the backs of worksheets, in the margins of my diary. I played guitar—much better than I ever gave myself credit for then—but was too shy to be in a band, so I resorted to playing covers of those sorts of songs alone in my bedroom. Maybe I would have uploaded them to YouTube if it had existed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I gravitated toward emo and punk music because I was seeking out some sort of alternative to life as I knew it, so I think if Olivia Rodrigo had existed when I was a teen I would have at first been a little skeptical of her mainstream popularity, her preternatural poise, her Disney past. But in the end I have to think I would have been pulled in by the oceanic undertow of her music’s subjectivity, an exquisitely detailed, deeply felt, young girl’s perspective that was woefully lacking in the music I listened to when I myself was learning how to parallel park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nigro’s production style for Rodrigo is both playful and atmospheric, conjuring a kind of dreamy internal space in which it seems like the listener is eavesdropping on the singer’s thoughts and impressions. Seemingly small, intimate moments—an ex sharing a Billy Joel song with his new flame, say, in “deja vu”—are underscored with operatic flair. Though updated for this world of social media surveillance and stream-of-consciousness text messages, this approach isn’t exactly new. It’s basically the foundation of modern pop music as we know it, dating back to the youth-oriented concerns of Brill Building songwriters in the 1950s and the early 1960s girl groups whose adolescent experiences were dramatized into three-minute symphonies thanks to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But also: No thanks to Phil Spector. Because his unavoidable centrality in the story of modern pop music also reminds us that it is an industry with a long, troubling history of exploiting—or worse—the affective labor of teenage girls. Accusations of abuse now also loom over the previous generation’s most influential pop hitmaker, Dr. Luke—ironically the architect of so-called “empowering” female-driven millennial pop anthems like “Roar,” “Since U Been Gone” and, yep, f-ing “Teenage Dream.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodrigo’s creative partnership with Nigro, though, seems to fit within a newer paradigm of pop star/producer power dynamics. Much like Antonoff’s pairings with some of the artists who have most directly inspired Rodrigo (Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey), and even a little like the intimate workings of Eilish’s bedroom pop laboratory with her brother Finneas, Rodrigo and Nigro present their work to the world as the result of a genuine, non-hierarchical collaboration. “I realize I’m okay at navigating my job because I played in a band for 10 years with three other very emotional, crazy people—myself probably being the most emotional crazy of the four of us,” Nigro \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8qbv/daniel-nigro-drivers-license-olivia-rodrigo-interview\">told\u003c/a> \u003cem>Vice\u003c/em> earlier this year. “Having those experiences with my bandmates has really helped me work with so many different artists, because I’m able to understand what they’re going through and get them to feel open enough to be who they actually are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But maybe that supposedly “new” paradigm also has crucial antecedents scattered throughout musical history, too. Nigro’s language there bears a striking resemblance to the way Alanis Morissette has described her creative partnership with producer Glen Ballard, with whom she first worked on another album with which \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> finds cross-generational echoes: \u003cem>Jagged Little Pill\u003c/em>. “glen’s presence with me had no agenda,” Morissette reflected in a 2015 \u003ca href=\"https://alanis.com/news/jagged-little-pill-an-essay\">essay\u003c/a> commemorating the 20th anniversary of that landmark album and written—it must be said—all in lowercase letters. “this presence and this lack of projecting onto me ‘what i should be’ was the ultimate freedom and support i needed to crack open.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that essay, Morissette acknowledges that part of her success was lucky timing: In the mid-’90s there was suddenly, she writes, “a readiness, perhaps, for people to hear about the underbelly, the true experience of being a young, sensitive, and brave person in a patriarchal world.” That moment proved to be fleeting, though, and by the early aughts and my early teens the mainstream culture had shifted back to its norm of only caring about macho, masculine angst. Any girl trying to use the idioms of punk or emo to express herself—like, say, Avril Lavigne—was immediately regarded as an intruder, a poser or a sell-out until proven otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I realize when I reflect back on the silent voices of my youth, though, is that we girls had \u003cem>so much\u003c/em> to rage and yell and be sad about—maybe even more than the boys ever did. Because for all the sense of community it gave me in connecting with like-minded friends, the punk and emo scene often still replicated the most misogynistic impulses of the broader culture. Something I have been sitting with for the past few years, and which I have not even known how to begin to process, is that the songwriter and frontman of my favorite emo band—the one who wrote those plane-crash lyrics I sang along to endlessly—was accused of sexual misconduct by girls who, at the time, were about the same age that I was when I idolized him. When I think too hard about that, I want to scream until my lungs explode.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cii6ruuycQA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodrigo and her peers have come of age at a time when a lot of the gender norms that reinforce those exploitative power dynamics are breaking down, in part because most of them grow up with an awareness and acceptance of gender fluidity. Terms like “lowercase girl,” or just “girl,” are more pliable, inviting and optional than they used to be. Some very popular, very emotional musicians have also paved certain paths, whether that’s Swift, Lorde, or Paramore’s Hayley Williams. Even if I didn’t always hear it affirmed in my own adolescence, it’s heartening to now hear Rodrigo asserting, from the top of the charts, that girls have \u003cem>plenty\u003c/em> to be emo about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> progresses, the ability to feel deeply and express herself becomes Rodrigo’s superpower. “Maybe I’m too emotional, or maybe you never cared at all,” she sings on the searing bridge of “good 4 u.” It’s not her, it’s \u003cem>him\u003c/em>, she concludes, diagnosing an unfeeling ex as acting “like a damn sociopath.” Rodrigo refracts the shattering experience of first heartbreak through a multitude of different moods and genres, and it’s a testament to her transfixing strengths as a songwriter and a vocal performer that it only starts to feel repetitive one song from the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13896717']Some of the most promising moments on \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> come when Rodrigo widens her view beyond The Boy or even herself, toward the larger forces keeping kids of her generation feeling so emo. “jealousy, jealousy” fixes its frustration on the picture-perfect distortions of influencer culture: “I kinda wanna throw my phone against the wall,” Rodrigo groans. In response to a culture saturated with quick-fix life hacks, self-help truisms and therapy-speak, Rodrigo is refreshingly good at illuminating the space between what she knows she \u003cem>should\u003c/em> feel and what she actually \u003cem>does\u003c/em> feel. “I know their \u003cem>beauty’s not my lack\u003c/em>,” she sings, harmonizing with herself so that the line sounds like one of those annoyingly tidy Instagram graphics with an inspirational note written in cursive. “Never doubted myself so much, like am I pretty, am I fun, boy?” she sings, airing her insecurities on the stirring “1 step forward, 3 steps back” (a song that interpolates, with permission, the piano riff from Taylor Swift’s “New Year’s Day”—the ultimate baton-pass). “I hate that I give you power over that kind of stuff,” Rodrigo sighs. And yet, how could she not? It’s brutal out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final song on \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> finds one last opportunity to flip expectations. “hope ur ok” is not—as its title might suggest—a feel-good message to the ex of “drivers license,” thus cleanly and cathartically closing the narrative loop. It is instead a series of character sketches of kids Rodrigo once knew well and lost touch with over the years. Each of them carries their own trauma, which Rodrigo sketches in empathetic, economical writing (“he wore long sleeves ’cause of his dad”). The song is sad but hopeful, radically unsettling at times, and almost disarmingly earnest in its benevolently universal well-wishing. Again, Rodrigo plays the girl who’s always been observing everyone around her with a gimlet eye, whether they realized it or not. Maybe, she seems to be concluding on behalf of her much-misunderstood generation, this is a more realistic teenage dream. Not to be ecstatic, euphoric, eternally empowered. Just to be—as Rodrigo puts it in unpresuming lowercase—”ok.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lindsay Zoladz is a critic, reporter and essayist living in Brooklyn.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=On+%27Sour%2C%27+Olivia+Rodrigo+Is+A+Lowercase+Girl+With+Caps-Lock+Feelings&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Lowercase girls tend to fly under the radar by design, but once you start looking you’ll see them \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3z45v/internet-lowercase-spelling-taylor-swift-charli-xcx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">everywhere\u003c/a>. For one thing, they’ve been all over the streaming charts in the past few years: \u003cem>folklore\u003c/em>, \u003cem>evermore\u003c/em>, “thank u, next,” girl in red, mxmtoon, dodie, beabadoobee, \u003cem>how i’m feeling now\u003c/em>, “drivers license,” “deja vu,” “good 4 u”—to name just a few recent, femme-forward musical phenomena that wouldn’t even \u003cem>think\u003c/em> of imposing the tyranny of capital letters on the listener’s imagination.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But lowercase girls have been there forever, in the back rows of classrooms and the corners of parties, daydreaming, doodling, stockpiling vivid details and observations in the marble notebooks of their minds—waiting for the precise moment to launch them like a carefully crafted dart that punctures everybody else’s apathy and proves just how sharply she has been paying attention. Some of the best of them never grow out of it. “My only advantage as a reporter,” Joan Didion wrote in 1968, unwittingly describing her own species perfectly, “is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does.” Beware the lowercase girl. Although she is usually overlooked, underestimated and even ignored, she sometimes turns out to be the one who’s been writing the story all along.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such were the cultural forces that Olivia Rodrigo harnessed, streamlined and gloriously melo-dramatized earlier this year in her breakout single, “drivers license”—stylized all lowercase, because of course. A lifelong Swiftie (almost literally: When Taylor Swift’s self-titled debut album came out, Rodrigo was 3) and the daughter of a therapist, Rodrigo was raised to be the kind of person who didn’t exactly hide her feelings. On the chorus of the song that accelerated her to overnight fame, she saves her most impassioned vocal delivery for what she clearly considers to be her ex’s most grievous crime: \u003cem>Guess you didn’t mean what you wrote in that song about me\u003c/em>. The implication being that in her songs, defiantly, she means every word.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ZmDBbnmKpqQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ZmDBbnmKpqQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the last few years, given the success of Billie Eilish’s ASMR jams and Swift’s soft acoustic reveries, it has sometimes felt like pop musicians are playing one big round of the Quiet Game, daring each other into an ever more provocative hush. “drivers license” certainly benefits from that tonal shift, but the most moving thing about the song is actually its careening sense of dynamism, the way it swings repeatedly from a private muttering to a collective, belt-it-out exorcism of the heart. Such is the power of That Bridge. (Perhaps the surest indication of the song’s massive, cross-generational appeal is the fact that its bridge inspired both a TikTok challenge \u003cem>and\u003c/em> an \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> skit—some kids may have been editing their small-screen video responses to it as their parents watched the episode on some old technological innovation called live TV.) Rodrigo’s songs play out like bottled-up soliloquies rather than two-sided conversations, which gives them the emotional force of someone who has previously felt unheard (by an apathetic boyfriend, or maybe by adult society writ large) finally speaking her mind. And so that bridge exposes the great irony of not only “drivers license,” but the lowercase girl herself. Because on the inside, where all the feelings are, her caps-lock key is JAMMED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“drivers license” would have been a hard act for any new artist to follow, but in the past month, Rodrigo has seized every opportunity to prove that there’s more to her than even that song could fully showcase. The two singles she’s released in the lead-up to her debut album, \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em>, have effortlessly slipped into unexpected genres—who among us could have predicted that the “drivers license” girl would go scorched-earth pop-punk on her third single, or that she’d pull it off?—and both have been sprinkled with striking, cleverly documented observational details. “Trading jackets, laughing ’bout how small it looks on you,” she sings on the hypnotic “deja vu,” as a chorus of backup Olivias exhale a scathing line of canned, can-barely-be-bothered laughter at such a romantic cliché: \u003cem>ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha\u003c/em>. “Guess the therapist I found for you, she really helped,” she shrugs on “good 4 u”—one of those kung fu lyrics that cuts its intended target in seven different places before he even realizes he’s bleeding. Rodrigo’s songs have lived-in details to spare, as though she had all this time been assembling a detailed dossier on the emotional minutiae of the teenage experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The remarkably potent \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em>, out today, plays a similar game of bait-and-switch with expectations. Far from the muted chords of “drivers license”—and \u003cem>worlds\u003c/em> away from the \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc8008B4ENI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">musical-theater sheen\u003c/a> of her songs for Disney+’s \u003cem>High School Musical: The Musical: The Series\u003c/em>—the album’s opening track, “brutal,” crashes in with a torrent of loud, crunchy guitars, overtop of which Rodrigo’s dryly compressed voice lists a seemingly unending string of adolescent neuroses: “And I don’t stick up for myself / I’m anxious and nothing can help / And I wish I’d done this before / And I wish people liked me more.” The \u003cem>and and and and\u003c/em>‘s pile up like a teetering Jenga tower of stress. Rodrigo proved on “good 4 u” that she can do a very effective vocal sneer, and on “brutal” she saves her most caustic one for the adults who insist, in their rose-colored recollections, that their teenage years were the best of their lives. “I’m so sick of 17,” she sighs, “where’s my f****** teenage dream?!” It’s an exhilarating lyric, an expertly calibrated eye roll at anyone over the age of 18—or maybe even at the previous generation’s entire philosophy about how pop music should be made.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gNi_6U5Pm_o'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gNi_6U5Pm_o'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“I’m very emo,” Rodrigo said in a recent \u003cem>Rolling Stone\u003c/em> video interview, sitting beside her co-writer and producer Dan Nigro. “Dan was in an emo band, and he still tells me I’m emo—that’s how you know you’re \u003cem>really\u003c/em> emo.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now 39, Nigro used to be the frontman of the Long Island-based band As Tall as Lions, who found moderate success in the booming East Coast emo-punk scene of the early aughts. He might seem an unlikely musical partner for Rodrigo, until you remember that perhaps the most prominent current producer of pop music made by young women, Jack Antonoff, is a veteran of the very same scene. (His first band, New Jersey-based Steel Train, was signed to the beloved, influential pop-punk label Drive-Thru Records.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as a one-time lowercase girl / emo kid / Drive-Thru Records enthusiast from suburban New Jersey, I \u003cem>do\u003c/em> find it pretty surprising that two of the most successful producers in crafting pop music from a feminine point of view came out of that scene. Because, as I remember all too well, it was a realm almost entirely devoid of women’s voices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“From my early-to-mid adolescence,” I wrote years ago in a reassessment of this period in my music-obsessed life, “I listened almost exclusively to music made by sad boys.” And it wasn’t just that girls’ perspectives were \u003cem>absent\u003c/em> from this music that I loved so passionately during this confusing and hormonally tumultuous time: The Girl was always the reason the boys were sad. In these songs, she was often actively vilified, blamed for the Lead Singer Boy’s every earthly woe—and not infrequently the star of his violent revenge fantasies. “Even if her plane crashes tonight she’ll find some way to disappoint me,” went a song I can still sing by heart as an adult, “by not burning in the wreckage, or drowning at the bottom of the sea.” This was, to me, romantic, melodramatic, \u003cem>deep\u003c/em>. I doodled lyrics like those on the backs of worksheets, in the margins of my diary. I played guitar—much better than I ever gave myself credit for then—but was too shy to be in a band, so I resorted to playing covers of those sorts of songs alone in my bedroom. Maybe I would have uploaded them to YouTube if it had existed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I gravitated toward emo and punk music because I was seeking out some sort of alternative to life as I knew it, so I think if Olivia Rodrigo had existed when I was a teen I would have at first been a little skeptical of her mainstream popularity, her preternatural poise, her Disney past. But in the end I have to think I would have been pulled in by the oceanic undertow of her music’s subjectivity, an exquisitely detailed, deeply felt, young girl’s perspective that was woefully lacking in the music I listened to when I myself was learning how to parallel park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nigro’s production style for Rodrigo is both playful and atmospheric, conjuring a kind of dreamy internal space in which it seems like the listener is eavesdropping on the singer’s thoughts and impressions. Seemingly small, intimate moments—an ex sharing a Billy Joel song with his new flame, say, in “deja vu”—are underscored with operatic flair. Though updated for this world of social media surveillance and stream-of-consciousness text messages, this approach isn’t exactly new. It’s basically the foundation of modern pop music as we know it, dating back to the youth-oriented concerns of Brill Building songwriters in the 1950s and the early 1960s girl groups whose adolescent experiences were dramatized into three-minute symphonies thanks to Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But also: No thanks to Phil Spector. Because his unavoidable centrality in the story of modern pop music also reminds us that it is an industry with a long, troubling history of exploiting—or worse—the affective labor of teenage girls. Accusations of abuse now also loom over the previous generation’s most influential pop hitmaker, Dr. Luke—ironically the architect of so-called “empowering” female-driven millennial pop anthems like “Roar,” “Since U Been Gone” and, yep, f-ing “Teenage Dream.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rodrigo’s creative partnership with Nigro, though, seems to fit within a newer paradigm of pop star/producer power dynamics. Much like Antonoff’s pairings with some of the artists who have most directly inspired Rodrigo (Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey), and even a little like the intimate workings of Eilish’s bedroom pop laboratory with her brother Finneas, Rodrigo and Nigro present their work to the world as the result of a genuine, non-hierarchical collaboration. “I realize I’m okay at navigating my job because I played in a band for 10 years with three other very emotional, crazy people—myself probably being the most emotional crazy of the four of us,” Nigro \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8qbv/daniel-nigro-drivers-license-olivia-rodrigo-interview\">told\u003c/a> \u003cem>Vice\u003c/em> earlier this year. “Having those experiences with my bandmates has really helped me work with so many different artists, because I’m able to understand what they’re going through and get them to feel open enough to be who they actually are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But maybe that supposedly “new” paradigm also has crucial antecedents scattered throughout musical history, too. Nigro’s language there bears a striking resemblance to the way Alanis Morissette has described her creative partnership with producer Glen Ballard, with whom she first worked on another album with which \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> finds cross-generational echoes: \u003cem>Jagged Little Pill\u003c/em>. “glen’s presence with me had no agenda,” Morissette reflected in a 2015 \u003ca href=\"https://alanis.com/news/jagged-little-pill-an-essay\">essay\u003c/a> commemorating the 20th anniversary of that landmark album and written—it must be said—all in lowercase letters. “this presence and this lack of projecting onto me ‘what i should be’ was the ultimate freedom and support i needed to crack open.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In that essay, Morissette acknowledges that part of her success was lucky timing: In the mid-’90s there was suddenly, she writes, “a readiness, perhaps, for people to hear about the underbelly, the true experience of being a young, sensitive, and brave person in a patriarchal world.” That moment proved to be fleeting, though, and by the early aughts and my early teens the mainstream culture had shifted back to its norm of only caring about macho, masculine angst. Any girl trying to use the idioms of punk or emo to express herself—like, say, Avril Lavigne—was immediately regarded as an intruder, a poser or a sell-out until proven otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I realize when I reflect back on the silent voices of my youth, though, is that we girls had \u003cem>so much\u003c/em> to rage and yell and be sad about—maybe even more than the boys ever did. Because for all the sense of community it gave me in connecting with like-minded friends, the punk and emo scene often still replicated the most misogynistic impulses of the broader culture. Something I have been sitting with for the past few years, and which I have not even known how to begin to process, is that the songwriter and frontman of my favorite emo band—the one who wrote those plane-crash lyrics I sang along to endlessly—was accused of sexual misconduct by girls who, at the time, were about the same age that I was when I idolized him. When I think too hard about that, I want to scream until my lungs explode.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/cii6ruuycQA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/cii6ruuycQA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Rodrigo and her peers have come of age at a time when a lot of the gender norms that reinforce those exploitative power dynamics are breaking down, in part because most of them grow up with an awareness and acceptance of gender fluidity. Terms like “lowercase girl,” or just “girl,” are more pliable, inviting and optional than they used to be. Some very popular, very emotional musicians have also paved certain paths, whether that’s Swift, Lorde, or Paramore’s Hayley Williams. Even if I didn’t always hear it affirmed in my own adolescence, it’s heartening to now hear Rodrigo asserting, from the top of the charts, that girls have \u003cem>plenty\u003c/em> to be emo about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> progresses, the ability to feel deeply and express herself becomes Rodrigo’s superpower. “Maybe I’m too emotional, or maybe you never cared at all,” she sings on the searing bridge of “good 4 u.” It’s not her, it’s \u003cem>him\u003c/em>, she concludes, diagnosing an unfeeling ex as acting “like a damn sociopath.” Rodrigo refracts the shattering experience of first heartbreak through a multitude of different moods and genres, and it’s a testament to her transfixing strengths as a songwriter and a vocal performer that it only starts to feel repetitive one song from the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Some of the most promising moments on \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> come when Rodrigo widens her view beyond The Boy or even herself, toward the larger forces keeping kids of her generation feeling so emo. “jealousy, jealousy” fixes its frustration on the picture-perfect distortions of influencer culture: “I kinda wanna throw my phone against the wall,” Rodrigo groans. In response to a culture saturated with quick-fix life hacks, self-help truisms and therapy-speak, Rodrigo is refreshingly good at illuminating the space between what she knows she \u003cem>should\u003c/em> feel and what she actually \u003cem>does\u003c/em> feel. “I know their \u003cem>beauty’s not my lack\u003c/em>,” she sings, harmonizing with herself so that the line sounds like one of those annoyingly tidy Instagram graphics with an inspirational note written in cursive. “Never doubted myself so much, like am I pretty, am I fun, boy?” she sings, airing her insecurities on the stirring “1 step forward, 3 steps back” (a song that interpolates, with permission, the piano riff from Taylor Swift’s “New Year’s Day”—the ultimate baton-pass). “I hate that I give you power over that kind of stuff,” Rodrigo sighs. And yet, how could she not? It’s brutal out there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final song on \u003cem>Sour\u003c/em> finds one last opportunity to flip expectations. “hope ur ok” is not—as its title might suggest—a feel-good message to the ex of “drivers license,” thus cleanly and cathartically closing the narrative loop. It is instead a series of character sketches of kids Rodrigo once knew well and lost touch with over the years. Each of them carries their own trauma, which Rodrigo sketches in empathetic, economical writing (“he wore long sleeves ’cause of his dad”). The song is sad but hopeful, radically unsettling at times, and almost disarmingly earnest in its benevolently universal well-wishing. Again, Rodrigo plays the girl who’s always been observing everyone around her with a gimlet eye, whether they realized it or not. Maybe, she seems to be concluding on behalf of her much-misunderstood generation, this is a more realistic teenage dream. Not to be ecstatic, euphoric, eternally empowered. Just to be—as Rodrigo puts it in unpresuming lowercase—”ok.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lindsay Zoladz is a critic, reporter and essayist living in Brooklyn.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=On+%27Sour%2C%27+Olivia+Rodrigo+Is+A+Lowercase+Girl+With+Caps-Lock+Feelings&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Facebook Calls Links to Depression Inconclusive. These Researchers Disagree",
"headTitle": "Facebook Calls Links to Depression Inconclusive. These Researchers Disagree | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And specifically, the new sense of “brokenness” she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/12/a-growing-number-of-american-teenagers-particularly-girls-are-facing-depression/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rising for over a decade\u003c/a>, and she sees social apps as a major reason.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman from Washington confronted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai with a list of statistics: From 2011 to 2018, \u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31415993/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rates\u003c/a> of teen depression increased by more than 60%, and from 2009 to 2015, emergency room admissions for self-harm among 10- to 14-year-old girls \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2664031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tripled\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897332\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13897332\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-800x529.png\" alt=\"Source: CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys.\" width=\"800\" height=\"529\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-800x529.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-1020x674.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-768x508.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-1536x1015.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM.png 1616w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys. \u003ccite>(Credit: Zach Levitt/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s a battle for their development. It’s a battle for their mental health—and ultimately a battle for their safety,” McMorris Rodgers told the tech leaders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when she pointed a question specifically to Zuckerberg, about whether he acknowledged a connection between children’s declining mental health and social media platforms, he demurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think that the research is conclusive on that,” replied Zuckerberg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a position that he and his company, which is working on expanding its offerings to even younger children, have held for years. But mental health researchers whom NPR spoke with disagree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They describe an increasingly clear correlation between poor mental health outcomes and social media use, and they worry that Facebook (which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp) in particular may be muddying the waters on that connection to protect its public image.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13886630']“The correlational evidence showing that there is a link between social media use and depression is pretty definitive at this point,” said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University. “The largest and most well-conducted studies that we have all show that teens who spend more time on social media are more likely to be depressed or unhappy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correlation is not causation, and one area of further study is whether greater social media usage leads to poor mental health outcomes or whether those who are depressed and unhappy are drawn to spend more time on social media. But researchers also worry that not enough government funding is going toward getting objective data to answer these sorts of questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Facebook also almost certainly knows more than it has publicly revealed about how its products affect people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR spoke with Twenge and two other academics whose work has focused on the links between depression and social media use and who say Facebook’s public affairs team reached out to them for the first time ever in recent months for input on internal information related to the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company declined to comment about the meeting requests and about its stance on research about its platforms. But the outreach comes at a pivotal time for Facebook and its plans for growth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Government regulation is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/25/981203566/5-takeaways-from-big-techs-misinformation-hearing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">closer than ever\u003c/a> before, and the issue of children’s mental health is one of the few concerns about Big Tech that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After it was revealed that Facebook was working on a version of Instagram for children under 13, a bipartisan group of 44 attorneys general \u003ca href=\"https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/naag_letter_to_facebook_-_final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote a letter\u003c/a> to Zuckerberg this month with a simple message: Stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Use of social media can be detrimental to the health and well-being of children, who are not equipped to navigate the challenges of having a social media account,” the letter reads. “Further, Facebook has historically failed to protect the welfare of children on its platforms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after McMorris Rodgers spoke at the March congressional hearing, Rep. Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, asked Zuckerberg whether he was familiar with a \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2737909\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2019 study\u003c/a> that found the risk of depression in children rises with each hour spent daily on social media. He said he was not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You enjoy an outdated liability shield that incentivizes you to look the other way or take half-measures,” Castor said, “while you make billions at the expense of our kids, our health and the truth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Internal “insights”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenge has been studying and writing about technology’s effects on people born between 1995 and 2012 for much of the last decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13885533']She dubbed the generation “iGen” in a 2017 book that features an abundance of charts showing huge drop-offs in happiness among teens in the last decade compared with previous generations and huge increases in loneliness and suicide risk, especially in teens who are on their phones more than an hour or two a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since 2017, those trends have mostly gotten worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For depression and anxiety and self-harm, those increases have continued,” Twenge said. “As smartphones became even more pervasive, social media became even more pervasive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the four years since her book came out, no one from any of the major social media companies reached out to her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until about three months ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I got an email from someone at Facebook who said they were putting together an advisory panel,” Twenge said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The email came from a lower-level employee at the company on behalf of Heather Moore, a public affairs executive at Facebook who helped create the company’s Oversight Board. (That panel, which is funded by Facebook through a $130 million independent trust, is made up of \u003ca href=\"https://oversightboard.com/meet-the-board/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">20 prominent experts\u003c/a> from around the world.) The board recently announced its biggest decision yet, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/07/994436847/what-we-learned-about-facebook-from-trump-decision\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">siding with the company\u003c/a> on its decision to suspend former President Donald Trump from the platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two other researchers NPR spoke with say they received a similar meeting request. One did not wish to be named in this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The request says Facebook is “currently working on speaking with a range of experts who study algorithms and virality,” but it doesn’t specify whether the company is planning to assemble a more organized public- or private-facing group of experts focused on the mental health effects of the platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Facebook declined to provide more detail about the requests, but a spokesperson did note that a company as large as Facebook reaches out to a variety of subject-matter experts frequently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The email does, however, allude to the company having relevant internal information regarding the mental health effects of its platforms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The team would like to share some insights about what we’re working on internally and ask for your input,” the email says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the March hearing on Capitol Hill, Zuckerberg told McMorris Rodgers that the company has specifically researched the mental health effects that his company’s platforms have on children. But when McMorris Rodgers’ staff \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/ctech-us-usa-congress-tech-idCAKBN2BM2UI-OCATC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">followed up\u003c/a> after the hearing, she says the company declined to share any of its research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that they have done the research. They’re not being transparent,” McMorris Rodgers told NPR in an interview. “They seem to be more concerned about their current business model, and they have become very wealthy under their current business model. But the fact of the matter is we’re seeing more and more evidence … that their current business model is harming our kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally in response to these kinds of questions, Facebook \u003ca href=\"https://about.fb.com/news/2017/12/hard-questions-is-spending-time-on-social-media-bad-for-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has pointed to research\u003c/a> indicating that poor mental health outcomes like depression stem from how people use the platforms and specifically whether they are “active” users who post and message people or “passive” users who mostly consume content.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The implication is that people have control over whether they feel bad from using the platforms, since users have a choice in whether they message their friends on Instagram, for instance, or whether they choose to scroll endlessly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Melissa Hunt, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says it’s not so simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13867167']The company’s success is dependent on keeping people engaged and selling advertisements based on that engagement, so Facebook, she says, is motivated to create systems that keep people on its platforms no matter the effect to their long-term well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hunt was another one of the researchers who received an inquiry from Facebook about \u003ca href=\"https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/social-media-use-increases-depression-and-loneliness\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">her work\u003c/a> linking social media use and depression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically all of the things that would contribute to these platforms being healthier for people to use, which is basically spend less time, don’t follow strangers, don’t spend time passively scrolling through this random feed that’s being suggested to you,” Hunt says. “That completely undermines their whole business model.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she got a request for her time from the company, she says she thought about it. Then she also thought about what Facebook is currently valued at: close to a trillion dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I decided that if they were serious about that, they could pay me a nominal consulting fee,” Hunt says. “So I let them know what my consulting fee was. I said I’d be delighted to weigh in and share my expertise with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She never heard back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, Twenge responded to the request from the company and said she was interested in setting up a time to talk, but after a few back-and-forth messages, she has yet to hear back again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenge feels strongly that while the research on the psychological impact of social media is relatively new, there are takeaways that can already be drawn, even as some insist on labeling it all “inconclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s similar to the way that climate deniers can point to a few people in that field and say, ‘There’s a few people who still doubt this.’ It’s that false equivalence that happens too often,” Twenge said. “In this case, that small but vocal group has been very skilled at getting that message out, perhaps because these companies are very receptive to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Questions without answers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent years, \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-social-media-is-more-_b_11297988\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some\u003c/a> have \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-said-at-davos-that-facebook-should-be-regulated-like-cigarettes-2018-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">taken\u003c/a> to comparing social media to something else that previous generations used to fill idle moments to the detriment of their health: smoking cigarettes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After smoking became \u003ca href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/sales-of-cigarettes-per-adult-per-day?time=1900..2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nearly universal\u003c/a>, cigarette companies \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/transcripts/89114979\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">famously\u003c/a> muddied the waters on research about how their products were harming people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Policy making is facilitated by consensus. However, scientific research is characterized by uncertainty,” wrote researcher Lisa Bero in \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497700/pdf/15842123.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a paper\u003c/a> about how cigarette companies manipulated research. “It is often to the benefit of interest groups to generate controversy about data because the controversy is likely to slow or prevent regulation of a given product.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Brian Primack, who leads the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, says comparing the current research situation around social media and cigarettes is too simplistic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Primack used to study tobacco. (“If it kills a lot of people, I want to study it,” he says about how he has chosen what to focus on throughout his career.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, he spends his time investigating the effects of social media. And he sees a clear connection between depression and the online platforms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study \u003ca href=\"https://news.uark.edu/articles/55480/increased-social-media-use-linked-to-developing-depression-research-finds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">he published last year\u003c/a> found that young adults who increased their social media usage over a period of time were also found to be significantly more likely to become depressed over that same time period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13883979']“There is an association between the two,” Primack says. “Just meaning that if you put people into equal buckets in terms of how much social media they use, the people who use the most social media are also the people who are the most depressed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But unlike cigarettes, which he says have no useful purpose, some people have shown positive health outcomes from using social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/06/19/621136346/a-look-at-social-media-finds-some-possible-benefits-for-kids\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brain development research\u003c/a> in recent years, for instance, found benefits in 9- and 10-year-olds from using social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Social media is very heterogeneous. In some kids it can be very beneficial, and in other kids it can be very detrimental,” said the author of that study, Dr. Martin Paulus of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. “But we still don’t understand which group of kids benefit from it and which group of kids may be harmed by it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paulus is not confident the social media companies truly want to get to the bottom of that question either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several years ago, Paulus gave a presentation at Facebook with a few other researchers who were looking at the effects of social media. He came away from the meeting feeling like the company wasn’t serious about actually having objective research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was more like a face-saving activity,” Paulus said. “Those companies, whether it’s Facebook or other companies as well, they say they want research… But they’re not necessarily interested in research that potentially would show that some of the things that they do are bad for kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a thorny issue to wade into. The company says that it employs hundreds of researchers and that it also supports efforts like Boston Children’s Hospital’s newly formed \u003ca href=\"https://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/news-and-events/2021/digital-wellness-lab-launch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Digital Wellness Lab\u003c/a> and the Aspen Institute’s \u003ca href=\"https://csreports.aspeninstitute.org/Lessons-in-Loneliness/2020/report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">roundtables on loneliness and technology\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it has also been criticized for using its platforms for research purposes. In 2012, the company allowed researchers to change what people saw on the platform in order to see how that would affect the nature of what they then chose to post.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study\u003c/a> did show evidence that people’s moods are affected by what they see other people posting, but some saw the exercise as emotional manipulation, and one of the authors seemed to express \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">regret\u003c/a> about conducting it after the backlash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a company with one of the largest data troves on the human population, this question of how best to conduct research expands to other sectors too. Disinformation researchers, for instance, have long been frustrated by what the company chooses and chooses not to share.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They could answer questions that we desperately need answered any time they want, and they just won’t do it,” said Ben Scott, executive director at Reset, an initiative aimed at tackling digital threats to democracy. “They’ve chosen, for public relations reasons, not to participate in helping the public interest… And that’s outrageous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The potential dangers of kids spending hours hypnotized by their screens has been apparent essentially since the social media platforms were created.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Founding Facebook President Sean Parker once described, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-unloads-on-facebook-god-only-knows-what-its-doing-to-our-childrens-brains-1513306792-f855e7b4-4e99-4d60-8d51-2775559c2671.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an interview with Axios\u003c/a>, the company’s algorithms as “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” Parker said. “The inventors, creators—it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people—understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is compounded by how little government funding is going toward studying the effects of these platforms, relative to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/971767967/trump-is-no-longer-tweeting-but-online-disinformation-isnt-going-away\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">how much of each day\u003c/a> many Americans spend engaged with the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is mostly focused on curing diseases, but because there is no specific disease officially associated with screen time, experts say it’s difficult to get studies funded by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced \u003ca href=\"https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CAMRA%20Act.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a bill\u003c/a> that would have provided a mechanism for more NIH research on the subject. The legislation had bipartisan co-sponsors and the support of Facebook, but it never made it to a vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without more of that sort of research, parents are essentially left in the dark guessing exactly how much is too much for their kids when it comes to their devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The truth of it, quite frankly, is we are probably living through one of the biggest natural experiments that we’ve gone through with our kids,” said Paulus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor’s note:\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cem> Facebook is among NPR’s financial supporters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Facebook+Calls+Links+To+Depression+Inconclusive.+These+Researchers+Disagree&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ biggest fear as a parent isn’t gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And specifically, the new sense of “brokenness” she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/07/12/a-growing-number-of-american-teenagers-particularly-girls-are-facing-depression/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rising for over a decade\u003c/a>, and she sees social apps as a major reason.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a hearing this March on Capitol Hill, the Republican congresswoman from Washington confronted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai with a list of statistics: From 2011 to 2018, \u003ca href=\"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31415993/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rates\u003c/a> of teen depression increased by more than 60%, and from 2009 to 2015, emergency room admissions for self-harm among 10- to 14-year-old girls \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2664031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tripled\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897332\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13897332\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-800x529.png\" alt=\"Source: CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys.\" width=\"800\" height=\"529\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-800x529.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-1020x674.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-768x508.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM-1536x1015.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Screen-Shot-2021-05-18-at-12.57.10-PM.png 1616w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys. \u003ccite>(Credit: Zach Levitt/NPR)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s a battle for their development. It’s a battle for their mental health—and ultimately a battle for their safety,” McMorris Rodgers told the tech leaders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when she pointed a question specifically to Zuckerberg, about whether he acknowledged a connection between children’s declining mental health and social media platforms, he demurred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t think that the research is conclusive on that,” replied Zuckerberg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a position that he and his company, which is working on expanding its offerings to even younger children, have held for years. But mental health researchers whom NPR spoke with disagree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They describe an increasingly clear correlation between poor mental health outcomes and social media use, and they worry that Facebook (which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp) in particular may be muddying the waters on that connection to protect its public image.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The correlational evidence showing that there is a link between social media use and depression is pretty definitive at this point,” said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University. “The largest and most well-conducted studies that we have all show that teens who spend more time on social media are more likely to be depressed or unhappy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Correlation is not causation, and one area of further study is whether greater social media usage leads to poor mental health outcomes or whether those who are depressed and unhappy are drawn to spend more time on social media. But researchers also worry that not enough government funding is going toward getting objective data to answer these sorts of questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Facebook also almost certainly knows more than it has publicly revealed about how its products affect people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR spoke with Twenge and two other academics whose work has focused on the links between depression and social media use and who say Facebook’s public affairs team reached out to them for the first time ever in recent months for input on internal information related to the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company declined to comment about the meeting requests and about its stance on research about its platforms. But the outreach comes at a pivotal time for Facebook and its plans for growth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Government regulation is \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/25/981203566/5-takeaways-from-big-techs-misinformation-hearing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">closer than ever\u003c/a> before, and the issue of children’s mental health is one of the few concerns about Big Tech that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After it was revealed that Facebook was working on a version of Instagram for children under 13, a bipartisan group of 44 attorneys general \u003ca href=\"https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/naag_letter_to_facebook_-_final.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote a letter\u003c/a> to Zuckerberg this month with a simple message: Stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Use of social media can be detrimental to the health and well-being of children, who are not equipped to navigate the challenges of having a social media account,” the letter reads. “Further, Facebook has historically failed to protect the welfare of children on its platforms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly after McMorris Rodgers spoke at the March congressional hearing, Rep. Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, asked Zuckerberg whether he was familiar with a \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2737909\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2019 study\u003c/a> that found the risk of depression in children rises with each hour spent daily on social media. He said he was not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You enjoy an outdated liability shield that incentivizes you to look the other way or take half-measures,” Castor said, “while you make billions at the expense of our kids, our health and the truth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Internal “insights”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenge has been studying and writing about technology’s effects on people born between 1995 and 2012 for much of the last decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>She dubbed the generation “iGen” in a 2017 book that features an abundance of charts showing huge drop-offs in happiness among teens in the last decade compared with previous generations and huge increases in loneliness and suicide risk, especially in teens who are on their phones more than an hour or two a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since 2017, those trends have mostly gotten worse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For depression and anxiety and self-harm, those increases have continued,” Twenge said. “As smartphones became even more pervasive, social media became even more pervasive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the four years since her book came out, no one from any of the major social media companies reached out to her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until about three months ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I got an email from someone at Facebook who said they were putting together an advisory panel,” Twenge said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The email came from a lower-level employee at the company on behalf of Heather Moore, a public affairs executive at Facebook who helped create the company’s Oversight Board. (That panel, which is funded by Facebook through a $130 million independent trust, is made up of \u003ca href=\"https://oversightboard.com/meet-the-board/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">20 prominent experts\u003c/a> from around the world.) The board recently announced its biggest decision yet, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/07/994436847/what-we-learned-about-facebook-from-trump-decision\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">siding with the company\u003c/a> on its decision to suspend former President Donald Trump from the platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two other researchers NPR spoke with say they received a similar meeting request. One did not wish to be named in this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The request says Facebook is “currently working on speaking with a range of experts who study algorithms and virality,” but it doesn’t specify whether the company is planning to assemble a more organized public- or private-facing group of experts focused on the mental health effects of the platform.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Facebook declined to provide more detail about the requests, but a spokesperson did note that a company as large as Facebook reaches out to a variety of subject-matter experts frequently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The email does, however, allude to the company having relevant internal information regarding the mental health effects of its platforms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The team would like to share some insights about what we’re working on internally and ask for your input,” the email says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the March hearing on Capitol Hill, Zuckerberg told McMorris Rodgers that the company has specifically researched the mental health effects that his company’s platforms have on children. But when McMorris Rodgers’ staff \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/ctech-us-usa-congress-tech-idCAKBN2BM2UI-OCATC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">followed up\u003c/a> after the hearing, she says the company declined to share any of its research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I believe that they have done the research. They’re not being transparent,” McMorris Rodgers told NPR in an interview. “They seem to be more concerned about their current business model, and they have become very wealthy under their current business model. But the fact of the matter is we’re seeing more and more evidence … that their current business model is harming our kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally in response to these kinds of questions, Facebook \u003ca href=\"https://about.fb.com/news/2017/12/hard-questions-is-spending-time-on-social-media-bad-for-us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">has pointed to research\u003c/a> indicating that poor mental health outcomes like depression stem from how people use the platforms and specifically whether they are “active” users who post and message people or “passive” users who mostly consume content.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The implication is that people have control over whether they feel bad from using the platforms, since users have a choice in whether they message their friends on Instagram, for instance, or whether they choose to scroll endlessly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Melissa Hunt, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says it’s not so simple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The company’s success is dependent on keeping people engaged and selling advertisements based on that engagement, so Facebook, she says, is motivated to create systems that keep people on its platforms no matter the effect to their long-term well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hunt was another one of the researchers who received an inquiry from Facebook about \u003ca href=\"https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/social-media-use-increases-depression-and-loneliness\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">her work\u003c/a> linking social media use and depression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically all of the things that would contribute to these platforms being healthier for people to use, which is basically spend less time, don’t follow strangers, don’t spend time passively scrolling through this random feed that’s being suggested to you,” Hunt says. “That completely undermines their whole business model.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she got a request for her time from the company, she says she thought about it. Then she also thought about what Facebook is currently valued at: close to a trillion dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I decided that if they were serious about that, they could pay me a nominal consulting fee,” Hunt says. “So I let them know what my consulting fee was. I said I’d be delighted to weigh in and share my expertise with you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She never heard back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, Twenge responded to the request from the company and said she was interested in setting up a time to talk, but after a few back-and-forth messages, she has yet to hear back again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Twenge feels strongly that while the research on the psychological impact of social media is relatively new, there are takeaways that can already be drawn, even as some insist on labeling it all “inconclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s similar to the way that climate deniers can point to a few people in that field and say, ‘There’s a few people who still doubt this.’ It’s that false equivalence that happens too often,” Twenge said. “In this case, that small but vocal group has been very skilled at getting that message out, perhaps because these companies are very receptive to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Questions without answers\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In recent years, \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-social-media-is-more-_b_11297988\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">some\u003c/a> have \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-said-at-davos-that-facebook-should-be-regulated-like-cigarettes-2018-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">taken\u003c/a> to comparing social media to something else that previous generations used to fill idle moments to the detriment of their health: smoking cigarettes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After smoking became \u003ca href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/sales-of-cigarettes-per-adult-per-day?time=1900..2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nearly universal\u003c/a>, cigarette companies \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/transcripts/89114979\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">famously\u003c/a> muddied the waters on research about how their products were harming people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Policy making is facilitated by consensus. However, scientific research is characterized by uncertainty,” wrote researcher Lisa Bero in \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497700/pdf/15842123.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a paper\u003c/a> about how cigarette companies manipulated research. “It is often to the benefit of interest groups to generate controversy about data because the controversy is likely to slow or prevent regulation of a given product.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Brian Primack, who leads the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, says comparing the current research situation around social media and cigarettes is too simplistic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Primack used to study tobacco. (“If it kills a lot of people, I want to study it,” he says about how he has chosen what to focus on throughout his career.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, he spends his time investigating the effects of social media. And he sees a clear connection between depression and the online platforms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A study \u003ca href=\"https://news.uark.edu/articles/55480/increased-social-media-use-linked-to-developing-depression-research-finds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">he published last year\u003c/a> found that young adults who increased their social media usage over a period of time were also found to be significantly more likely to become depressed over that same time period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“There is an association between the two,” Primack says. “Just meaning that if you put people into equal buckets in terms of how much social media they use, the people who use the most social media are also the people who are the most depressed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But unlike cigarettes, which he says have no useful purpose, some people have shown positive health outcomes from using social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/06/19/621136346/a-look-at-social-media-finds-some-possible-benefits-for-kids\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brain development research\u003c/a> in recent years, for instance, found benefits in 9- and 10-year-olds from using social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Social media is very heterogeneous. In some kids it can be very beneficial, and in other kids it can be very detrimental,” said the author of that study, Dr. Martin Paulus of the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. “But we still don’t understand which group of kids benefit from it and which group of kids may be harmed by it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paulus is not confident the social media companies truly want to get to the bottom of that question either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several years ago, Paulus gave a presentation at Facebook with a few other researchers who were looking at the effects of social media. He came away from the meeting feeling like the company wasn’t serious about actually having objective research.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was more like a face-saving activity,” Paulus said. “Those companies, whether it’s Facebook or other companies as well, they say they want research… But they’re not necessarily interested in research that potentially would show that some of the things that they do are bad for kids.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a thorny issue to wade into. The company says that it employs hundreds of researchers and that it also supports efforts like Boston Children’s Hospital’s newly formed \u003ca href=\"https://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/news-and-events/2021/digital-wellness-lab-launch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Digital Wellness Lab\u003c/a> and the Aspen Institute’s \u003ca href=\"https://csreports.aspeninstitute.org/Lessons-in-Loneliness/2020/report\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">roundtables on loneliness and technology\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it has also been criticized for using its platforms for research purposes. In 2012, the company allowed researchers to change what people saw on the platform in order to see how that would affect the nature of what they then chose to post.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study\u003c/a> did show evidence that people’s moods are affected by what they see other people posting, but some saw the exercise as emotional manipulation, and one of the authors seemed to express \u003ca href=\"https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">regret\u003c/a> about conducting it after the backlash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a company with one of the largest data troves on the human population, this question of how best to conduct research expands to other sectors too. Disinformation researchers, for instance, have long been frustrated by what the company chooses and chooses not to share.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They could answer questions that we desperately need answered any time they want, and they just won’t do it,” said Ben Scott, executive director at Reset, an initiative aimed at tackling digital threats to democracy. “They’ve chosen, for public relations reasons, not to participate in helping the public interest… And that’s outrageous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The potential dangers of kids spending hours hypnotized by their screens has been apparent essentially since the social media platforms were created.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Founding Facebook President Sean Parker once described, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-unloads-on-facebook-god-only-knows-what-its-doing-to-our-childrens-brains-1513306792-f855e7b4-4e99-4d60-8d51-2775559c2671.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">an interview with Axios\u003c/a>, the company’s algorithms as “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” Parker said. “The inventors, creators—it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people—understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The problem is compounded by how little government funding is going toward studying the effects of these platforms, relative to \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/971767967/trump-is-no-longer-tweeting-but-online-disinformation-isnt-going-away\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">how much of each day\u003c/a> many Americans spend engaged with the technology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is mostly focused on curing diseases, but because there is no specific disease officially associated with screen time, experts say it’s difficult to get studies funded by the federal government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2019, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., introduced \u003ca href=\"https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CAMRA%20Act.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a bill\u003c/a> that would have provided a mechanism for more NIH research on the subject. The legislation had bipartisan co-sponsors and the support of Facebook, but it never made it to a vote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without more of that sort of research, parents are essentially left in the dark guessing exactly how much is too much for their kids when it comes to their devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The truth of it, quite frankly, is we are probably living through one of the biggest natural experiments that we’ve gone through with our kids,” said Paulus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor’s note:\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cem> Facebook is among NPR’s financial supporters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Facebook+Calls+Links+To+Depression+Inconclusive.+These+Researchers+Disagree&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "As Many Entertainment Venues Start to Reopen, Nobody Does a Comeback Like the Movies",
"headTitle": "As Many Entertainment Venues Start to Reopen, Nobody Does a Comeback Like the Movies | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>With just two weeks to go before \u003cem>A Quiet Place Part II\u003c/em> makes your local multiplex a less quiet place, Hollywood has started the back-to-cinemas drumroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s nothing like that moment when the lights go down,” growls Vin Diesel, channeling his inner Richard Attenborough in \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eblKqTZ-0Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a trailer for \u003cem>F9\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the latest \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> installment. “The projector ignites, and we believe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As he says this, a jeep explodes in flames, somersaulting over his car, and the implication is inescapable—you pretty much have to see this on the biggest possible screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nobody does a comeback like the movies,” Diesel continues. And he should know. This online appeal arrived just hours before the Oscars telecast, as Universal was preparing to release all eight of the previous F&F films in theaters, one per week to build excitement for \u003cem>F9\u003c/em>‘s opening at the end of June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came a spot from Matthew McConaughey during the Oscars, singing the praises of the more than 150,000 cinema employees who’ve suffered through “the longest intermission they could’ve ever imagined”—a reference to the closure of theaters due to the COVID-19 pandemic—and are now eager to welcome patrons back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faoUct00qec\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That these are plugs not just for a movie, but for the movies, is the point. It’s not easy to jump-start a whole industry from a full stop. \u003cem>Tenet\u003c/em> tried back in September and fizzled when audiences weren’t ready (though it did decently overseas). Double-oh-seven’s been announcing and then cancelling premieres. Wonder Woman stuck to her Christmas opening date, but streamed the same day. Surveys indicate plenty of interest, but patrons haven’t been showing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So nothing’s being left to chance this time. Memorial Day weekend will have a couple of medium-size genre prequels to prime the pump—Disney’s live-action \u003cem>Cruella,\u003c/em> and the thriller \u003cem>A Quiet Place Part II\u003c/em>—with the big guns \u003cem>F9\u003c/em> and Marvel’s \u003cem>Black Widow\u003c/em> holding off until closer to July 4. That gives Hollywood studios time to sell the summer’s sizzle, and pandemic-weary patrons time to get comfortable with the idea of gathering in enclosed spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Theater operators, meanwhile, are \u003ca href=\"https://touch.facebook.com/LandmarkCinemas10Kingston/videos/welcome-back-preview-your-movie-going-experience/3091348557622093/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">leaning hard\u003c/a> on safety with social distancing protocols and new ventilation systems, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-4feoqrLlM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reassurance\u003c/a> from epidemiologists, and “safe-and-clean” \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/amctheatres/videos/were-excited-to-welcome-you-back-to-amc-theatres-heres-what-you-need-to-know-abo/667956943819398/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">initiatives\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13894499']And perhaps even more attentive than the big chains are art-houses, which cater to older audiences, so they’re especially conscious of risk and the need to make auditoriums safe. Their patrons will be coming back for more specialized fare. “Come on back,” says Nashville’s non-profit film center, The Belcourt, with plugs for \u003cem>Cinema Paradiso\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Hollywood Shuffle\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nobody does a “You Reeeally Want This” sales pitch quite like Marvel. Theirs starts with the voice of the late Stan Lee extolling togetherness over images of a crowded city street, then cuts to Iron Man pulling Spider-Man in for a hug, followed by more scenes of cinematic togetherness from a 23-film “Infinity Saga.” It all builds to a moment of shared movie excitement that was experienced by literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide: the climax of \u003cem>Avengers Endgame\u003c/em>, when all appears hopeless, defeat inevitable—until the movie music swells, and at the last possible second, reinforcements arrive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the theater audience erupts. The image on screen is of multiplex patrons leaping to their feet at an \u003cem>Endgame\u003c/em> showing—arguably the ideal argument for returning to cinemas—but not, it turns out, the real grabber in Marvel’s “Welcome Back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpxoFcdORI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trailer reserves that prime spot for the thing besides audiences that Hollywood hasn’t had for more than a year—the thing that is finally making it possible for cinemas to re-open—hard opening dates. As music thunders, they glisten and flare defiantly beneath titles: July 9 for the much delayed \u003cem>Black Widow; \u003c/em>Sept. 3 for \u003cem>Shang Chi\u003c/em> and the \u003cem>Legend of the Ten Rings;\u003c/em> Nov. 5 for \u003cem>The Eternals;\u003c/em> Dec. 17 for \u003cem>Spider-Man No Way Home\u003c/em>, and on and on through May of 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You don’t even have to like superhero movies to find the sheer “we’ve got you” bravado comforting when Gemma Chan’s Sersi gazes into a middle distance and declares, “We’re the ones who changed everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Different universe, of course. The pandemic changed everything in ours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But superheroes are still decent role models for audiences heading back to cinemas. Long before the rest of us, remember, quite a few of them were perfectly comfortable wearing masks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=As+Many+Entertainment+Venues+Start+To+Reopen%2C+Nobody+Does+A+Comeback+Like+The+Movies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>With just two weeks to go before \u003cem>A Quiet Place Part II\u003c/em> makes your local multiplex a less quiet place, Hollywood has started the back-to-cinemas drumroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s nothing like that moment when the lights go down,” growls Vin Diesel, channeling his inner Richard Attenborough in \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eblKqTZ-0Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a trailer for \u003cem>F9\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the latest \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> installment. “The projector ignites, and we believe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As he says this, a jeep explodes in flames, somersaulting over his car, and the implication is inescapable—you pretty much have to see this on the biggest possible screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nobody does a comeback like the movies,” Diesel continues. And he should know. This online appeal arrived just hours before the Oscars telecast, as Universal was preparing to release all eight of the previous F&F films in theaters, one per week to build excitement for \u003cem>F9\u003c/em>‘s opening at the end of June.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then came a spot from Matthew McConaughey during the Oscars, singing the praises of the more than 150,000 cinema employees who’ve suffered through “the longest intermission they could’ve ever imagined”—a reference to the closure of theaters due to the COVID-19 pandemic—and are now eager to welcome patrons back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/faoUct00qec'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/faoUct00qec'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>That these are plugs not just for a movie, but for the movies, is the point. It’s not easy to jump-start a whole industry from a full stop. \u003cem>Tenet\u003c/em> tried back in September and fizzled when audiences weren’t ready (though it did decently overseas). Double-oh-seven’s been announcing and then cancelling premieres. Wonder Woman stuck to her Christmas opening date, but streamed the same day. Surveys indicate plenty of interest, but patrons haven’t been showing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So nothing’s being left to chance this time. Memorial Day weekend will have a couple of medium-size genre prequels to prime the pump—Disney’s live-action \u003cem>Cruella,\u003c/em> and the thriller \u003cem>A Quiet Place Part II\u003c/em>—with the big guns \u003cem>F9\u003c/em> and Marvel’s \u003cem>Black Widow\u003c/em> holding off until closer to July 4. That gives Hollywood studios time to sell the summer’s sizzle, and pandemic-weary patrons time to get comfortable with the idea of gathering in enclosed spaces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Theater operators, meanwhile, are \u003ca href=\"https://touch.facebook.com/LandmarkCinemas10Kingston/videos/welcome-back-preview-your-movie-going-experience/3091348557622093/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">leaning hard\u003c/a> on safety with social distancing protocols and new ventilation systems, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-4feoqrLlM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reassurance\u003c/a> from epidemiologists, and “safe-and-clean” \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/amctheatres/videos/were-excited-to-welcome-you-back-to-amc-theatres-heres-what-you-need-to-know-abo/667956943819398/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">initiatives\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>And perhaps even more attentive than the big chains are art-houses, which cater to older audiences, so they’re especially conscious of risk and the need to make auditoriums safe. Their patrons will be coming back for more specialized fare. “Come on back,” says Nashville’s non-profit film center, The Belcourt, with plugs for \u003cem>Cinema Paradiso\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Hollywood Shuffle\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nobody does a “You Reeeally Want This” sales pitch quite like Marvel. Theirs starts with the voice of the late Stan Lee extolling togetherness over images of a crowded city street, then cuts to Iron Man pulling Spider-Man in for a hug, followed by more scenes of cinematic togetherness from a 23-film “Infinity Saga.” It all builds to a moment of shared movie excitement that was experienced by literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide: the climax of \u003cem>Avengers Endgame\u003c/em>, when all appears hopeless, defeat inevitable—until the movie music swells, and at the last possible second, reinforcements arrive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the theater audience erupts. The image on screen is of multiplex patrons leaping to their feet at an \u003cem>Endgame\u003c/em> showing—arguably the ideal argument for returning to cinemas—but not, it turns out, the real grabber in Marvel’s “Welcome Back.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/QdpxoFcdORI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/QdpxoFcdORI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The trailer reserves that prime spot for the thing besides audiences that Hollywood hasn’t had for more than a year—the thing that is finally making it possible for cinemas to re-open—hard opening dates. As music thunders, they glisten and flare defiantly beneath titles: July 9 for the much delayed \u003cem>Black Widow; \u003c/em>Sept. 3 for \u003cem>Shang Chi\u003c/em> and the \u003cem>Legend of the Ten Rings;\u003c/em> Nov. 5 for \u003cem>The Eternals;\u003c/em> Dec. 17 for \u003cem>Spider-Man No Way Home\u003c/em>, and on and on through May of 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You don’t even have to like superhero movies to find the sheer “we’ve got you” bravado comforting when Gemma Chan’s Sersi gazes into a middle distance and declares, “We’re the ones who changed everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Different universe, of course. The pandemic changed everything in ours.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But superheroes are still decent role models for audiences heading back to cinemas. Long before the rest of us, remember, quite a few of them were perfectly comfortable wearing masks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=As+Many+Entertainment+Venues+Start+To+Reopen%2C+Nobody+Does+A+Comeback+Like+The+Movies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Ellen DeGeneres Will End Her Daytime Talk Show in 2022",
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"content": "\u003cp>TV host Ellen DeGeneres is pulling the plug on her successful daytime TV variety/comedy/talk show at the end of this season. For more than 18 years, she has famously danced with her guests and the audience, played games and pranks with them and given away prizes. She has interviewed everyone from Hollywood A-listers to precocious children. But now, she and Warner Brothers Television have said \u003ca href=\"https://www.ellentube.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Ellen DeGeneres Show\u003c/em>\u003c/a> will end in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged,” DeGeneres told \u003cem>The Hollywood Reporter \u003c/em>in an exclusive interview, “and as great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’ll be talking about her decision on her show today. And tomorrow, she’ll sit down with friend and guest Oprah Winfrey to talk some more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13878678']“Although all good things must come to an end, you still have hope that the truly great things never will,” said Mike Darnell, the president of Warner Brothers Unscripted Television, in a statement. He said DeGeneres’ show “started as the little program that could and became an absolute phenomenon. Over the years, it established itself as the premiere destination for both superstars and incredible heartfelt human interest stories. The show and Ellen brought comedy, joy, happiness, comfort (and dancing!) to countless millions every day for 18 years. It was and is an indelible piece of the television landscape, and it will be sorely missed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The standup comedian began her talk show in 2003, five years after coming out on her sitcom, \u003cem>Ellen,\u003c/em> and \u003ca href=\"https://time.com/4728994/ellen-degeneres-1997-coming-out-cover/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announcing on the cover of \u003cem>Time \u003c/em>Magazine\u003c/a>: “Yep, I’m Gay.” For that, President Barack Obama bestowed on her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She’s won the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and her television show has earned daytime Emmy awards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In sharp contrast to her public image as everyone’s good friend, happy to listen, she presents herself—with tongue in cheek—as cartoonishly aloof and indifferent, stuck in a privileged bubble, cracking several jokes, for instance, about her fabulous wealth,” \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> wrote in a profile of DeGeneres. In the article, her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, encouraged her to move away from her talk show. “I just think she’s such a brilliant actress and stand-up that it doesn’t have to be this talk show for her creativity,” de Rossi said. “There are other things she could tackle.” But DeGeneres said her brother, and Warner Brothers executives, urged her to stay on, saying the audience needed her positivity on TV every day. She signed a new contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But last year, former and current staffers who remained anonymous claimed that the show was a toxic workplace. They told \u003ca href=\"https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/krystieyandoli/ellen-employees-allege-toxic-workplace-culture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Buzzfeed \u003c/em>\u003c/a>they experienced racist comments, fear and intimidation on set, and some alleged they were sexually harassed by the show’s producers. WarnerMedia investigated, and fired three of the show’s executive producers and the head writer. DeGeneres, who based her persona on urging people to “be kind,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/ellen-degeneres-apologizes-staff-after-reports-toxic-workplace-i-take-n1235443\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">apologized to her staff\u003c/a>. In a memo, she wrote that “she intended for her show to be a place where ‘no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egn3CuQRHW8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She opened her 18th season in September with an apology to her audience. “I learned that things happened here that never should have happened. I take that very seriously,” she said. “I know that I’m in a position of privilege and power, and I realize that with that comes responsibility, and I take responsibility for what happens at my show.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13884094']DeGeneres said the show was starting a new chapter. “My intention is to always be the best person I can be. And if I’ve ever let someone down, if I’ve ever hurt their feelings, I am so sorry for that. If that’s the case, I have let myself down and I’ve hurt myself as well because I always try to grow as a person. I look at everything that comes into my life is an opportunity to learn. I got into this business to make people laugh and feel good. That’s my favorite thing to do. That, and Jenga.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warner Brothers says DeGeneres will still continue on Fox’s \u003cem>The Masked Dancer\u003c/em>, NBC’s \u003cem>Ellen’s Game of Games\u003c/em> and HBO Max’s \u003cem>Ellen’s Next Great Designer\u003c/em>. Her Ellen Digital Ventures includes more than 60 original series, including \u003cem>Momsplaining With Kristin Bell\u003c/em>. She is also producing documentaries and specials for Discovery, and according to \u003cem>The Hollywood Reporter,\u003c/em> she is hoping for more acting roles and time for her conservation efforts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Ellen+DeGeneres+Will+End+Her+Daytime+Talk+Show+In+2022&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Although all good things must come to an end, you still have hope that the truly great things never will,” said Mike Darnell, the president of Warner Brothers Unscripted Television, in a statement. He said DeGeneres’ show “started as the little program that could and became an absolute phenomenon. Over the years, it established itself as the premiere destination for both superstars and incredible heartfelt human interest stories. The show and Ellen brought comedy, joy, happiness, comfort (and dancing!) to countless millions every day for 18 years. It was and is an indelible piece of the television landscape, and it will be sorely missed.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The standup comedian began her talk show in 2003, five years after coming out on her sitcom, \u003cem>Ellen,\u003c/em> and \u003ca href=\"https://time.com/4728994/ellen-degeneres-1997-coming-out-cover/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announcing on the cover of \u003cem>Time \u003c/em>Magazine\u003c/a>: “Yep, I’m Gay.” For that, President Barack Obama bestowed on her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She’s won the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and her television show has earned daytime Emmy awards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In sharp contrast to her public image as everyone’s good friend, happy to listen, she presents herself—with tongue in cheek—as cartoonishly aloof and indifferent, stuck in a privileged bubble, cracking several jokes, for instance, about her fabulous wealth,” \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> wrote in a profile of DeGeneres. In the article, her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, encouraged her to move away from her talk show. “I just think she’s such a brilliant actress and stand-up that it doesn’t have to be this talk show for her creativity,” de Rossi said. “There are other things she could tackle.” But DeGeneres said her brother, and Warner Brothers executives, urged her to stay on, saying the audience needed her positivity on TV every day. She signed a new contract.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But last year, former and current staffers who remained anonymous claimed that the show was a toxic workplace. They told \u003ca href=\"https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/krystieyandoli/ellen-employees-allege-toxic-workplace-culture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Buzzfeed \u003c/em>\u003c/a>they experienced racist comments, fear and intimidation on set, and some alleged they were sexually harassed by the show’s producers. WarnerMedia investigated, and fired three of the show’s executive producers and the head writer. DeGeneres, who based her persona on urging people to “be kind,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/ellen-degeneres-apologizes-staff-after-reports-toxic-workplace-i-take-n1235443\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">apologized to her staff\u003c/a>. In a memo, she wrote that “she intended for her show to be a place where ‘no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Egn3CuQRHW8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Egn3CuQRHW8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>She opened her 18th season in September with an apology to her audience. “I learned that things happened here that never should have happened. I take that very seriously,” she said. “I know that I’m in a position of privilege and power, and I realize that with that comes responsibility, and I take responsibility for what happens at my show.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>DeGeneres said the show was starting a new chapter. “My intention is to always be the best person I can be. And if I’ve ever let someone down, if I’ve ever hurt their feelings, I am so sorry for that. If that’s the case, I have let myself down and I’ve hurt myself as well because I always try to grow as a person. I look at everything that comes into my life is an opportunity to learn. I got into this business to make people laugh and feel good. That’s my favorite thing to do. That, and Jenga.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warner Brothers says DeGeneres will still continue on Fox’s \u003cem>The Masked Dancer\u003c/em>, NBC’s \u003cem>Ellen’s Game of Games\u003c/em> and HBO Max’s \u003cem>Ellen’s Next Great Designer\u003c/em>. Her Ellen Digital Ventures includes more than 60 original series, including \u003cem>Momsplaining With Kristin Bell\u003c/em>. She is also producing documentaries and specials for Discovery, and according to \u003cem>The Hollywood Reporter,\u003c/em> she is hoping for more acting roles and time for her conservation efforts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Ellen+DeGeneres+Will+End+Her+Daytime+Talk+Show+In+2022&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Story of 'Sesame Street': From Radical Experiment to Beloved TV Mainstay",
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"content": "\u003cp>For generations, \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> has been a mainstay of American children’s television. But when the show premiered more than 50 years ago on Nov. 10, 1969, it was considered controversial, even radical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In 1969, what was on TV for kids was a very dire landscape,” says Marilyn Agrelo, the director of a new documentary called \u003cem>Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically, the programming was geared to sell children toys, Tootsie Rolls and breakfast cereals, and there was no thought of educating them in any way,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> debuted on the airwaves in a tumultuous moment in U.S. history, and the bigger forces upending American life played a big part in shaping how and what the show came to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13895138']“The people that started the show were intent on harnessing all of the energy that was around the protests of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement,” Agrelo says. “They wanted to explain the world to children, but their bigger goal was to reach inner city children of color who were not getting the same educational opportunities as white children in the suburbs were getting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on the book \u003cem>Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street \u003c/em>by Michael Davis, the film weaves archival footage and interviews with the show’s longtime cast and crew. \u003cem>Street Gang\u003c/em> follows the show’s creators—Joan Ganz Cooney, Jon Stone and Jim Henson—as they craft a new way to bring educational programming into the homes of kids in all parts of the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agrelo and actor Sonia Manzano, who played \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> resident Maria for 44 years, spoke with NPR’s \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em> about why the show was so groundbreaking, why audiences connected with Muppets like Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch and its staying power, five decades on. Listen in the audio player above, and read on for a transcript of the interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHtU7ZkTLyo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mary Louise Kelly: Going back and watching the early episodes of the show, it is so striking. The whole idea was: This is going to look like a realistic city street. Oscar the Grouch is going to totally, plausibly live in a trash can because there’s like trash blowing down the street.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sonia Manzano:\u003c/strong> I remember being stunned when I saw the show for the first time. I was a college student at Carnegie Mellon University and there was James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet. And then they cut to Susan, the African American actress Loretta Long, on this urban street. And I was stunned because I am a Puerto Rican, from the Bronx, and I was raised in the ’50s, loved television, [but] never saw anybody who looked like me. And I began to feel on some level that I was invisible. I didn’t know what I would contribute to a society that was determined not to see me. So when I saw that show, I was absolutely thrilled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And how did that inform how you played Maria?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Manzano:\u003c/strong> I became Maria and never lost sight of myself as a little kid watching television. I watched television to find comfort and order in, what seemed to me, a tumultuous world. So when I became Maria, I never forgot that. And I always assumed that some kid was out there watching me, looking for the same comfort that I looked to find on \u003cem>Leave It to Beaver\u003c/em>. Except this is going to be better because I was one of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13896990\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 649px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13896990\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/streetgang04-002-1-be1e709891abf6d059f3a6ac2428ae83af3160be.png\" alt=\"Jim Henson, the puppeteer behind Ernie, and Frank Oz, the longtime voice of Bert, on the set of 'Sesame Street.'\" width=\"649\" height=\"486\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/streetgang04-002-1-be1e709891abf6d059f3a6ac2428ae83af3160be.png 649w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/streetgang04-002-1-be1e709891abf6d059f3a6ac2428ae83af3160be-160x120.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 649px) 100vw, 649px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Henson, the puppeteer behind Ernie, and Frank Oz, the longtime voice of Bert, on the set of ‘Sesame Street.’ \u003ccite>(Robert Fuhring/Courtesy Sesame Workshop)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You have this show that set out to intentionally feature a diverse cast of kids and adults. Marilyn, talk about how that went down. There was some pushback.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marilyn Agrelo:\u003c/strong> So in 1969, \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> unveils and there is a African American couple who live in the same neighborhood with their white neighbors—yes, with Big Bird and several other Muppets—but it’s a very integrated cast. The first time this [was] ever seen on television in Jackson, Miss., the public television station received a lot of complaints and they stopped airing the show. Miraculously, a commercial station in Jackson said, “If the public station won’t air it, then we will.” This is just an example of how groundbreaking this was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Muppets, the nonhuman characters on the show, connected so much with people. I know as a kid, I was not remotely aware of a lot of the nobler advancement of social justice and racial equity that you all were grappling with, I just thought, “This is really funny.” The Count and Oscar the Grouch had me rolling on the floor.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Agrelo:\u003c/strong> There were other shows with puppets on television, but there was something about the writing on \u003cem>Sesame Street.\u003c/em> You know, some of those Muppet skits had really sophisticated social satire, and this was all geared to bring the adults in. A perfect example of that is Alistair Cookie, the host of “Monsterpiece Theater.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Manzano:\u003c/strong> Certainly another example of how the show worked on two levels was “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51BQfPeSK8k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It’s Not Easy Being Green\u003c/a>,” Kermit the Frog singing that wonderful song with Lena Horne, the great jazz singer-activist. And I walked into the studio that day and I said, “Gee, are they singing about what I think they’re singing about? Are they singing about race?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, to me, they were. And that’s an example where it works on so many levels. If that’s what’s in your head, in your mind, in your experience, you would imbue that piece with that sensibility. And certainly kids did, or they just thought it was about what a drag it was to be a green Muppet. It worked on that level as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So a show that started out radical, political: Is it still, do you think? Where have we landed five decades later?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Agrelo:\u003c/strong> I think \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> is addressing the world as it is in the same way that they did then. I know that they have started writing moments where they’re explaining what a protest is. Certainly every child in America has seen the Black Lives Matter protests in the streets and sort of the upheaval that’s happening in our society again, like it did in 1969. So \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> continues to try to interpret the world with authenticity to really help explain to them what is happening around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street\u003c/em> is in theaters and streaming now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13896991\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13896991\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/gettyimages-3438411-b8620ea8316de07f3635107e5f81e9d344cd3ef1-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Cast members of the television show, 'Sesame Street' on the set in 1969, the year the show debuted.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cast members of the television show, ‘Sesame Street’ on the set in 1969, the year the show debuted. \u003ccite>(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sam Gringlas produced and Sarah Handel edited this story for broadcast.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Story+Of+%27Sesame+Street%27%3A+From+Radical+Experiment+To+Beloved+TV+Mainstay&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For generations, \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> has been a mainstay of American children’s television. But when the show premiered more than 50 years ago on Nov. 10, 1969, it was considered controversial, even radical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In 1969, what was on TV for kids was a very dire landscape,” says Marilyn Agrelo, the director of a new documentary called \u003cem>Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically, the programming was geared to sell children toys, Tootsie Rolls and breakfast cereals, and there was no thought of educating them in any way,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> debuted on the airwaves in a tumultuous moment in U.S. history, and the bigger forces upending American life played a big part in shaping how and what the show came to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The people that started the show were intent on harnessing all of the energy that was around the protests of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement,” Agrelo says. “They wanted to explain the world to children, but their bigger goal was to reach inner city children of color who were not getting the same educational opportunities as white children in the suburbs were getting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Based on the book \u003cem>Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street \u003c/em>by Michael Davis, the film weaves archival footage and interviews with the show’s longtime cast and crew. \u003cem>Street Gang\u003c/em> follows the show’s creators—Joan Ganz Cooney, Jon Stone and Jim Henson—as they craft a new way to bring educational programming into the homes of kids in all parts of the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Agrelo and actor Sonia Manzano, who played \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> resident Maria for 44 years, spoke with NPR’s \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em> about why the show was so groundbreaking, why audiences connected with Muppets like Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch and its staying power, five decades on. Listen in the audio player above, and read on for a transcript of the interview.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/rHtU7ZkTLyo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/rHtU7ZkTLyo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mary Louise Kelly: Going back and watching the early episodes of the show, it is so striking. The whole idea was: This is going to look like a realistic city street. Oscar the Grouch is going to totally, plausibly live in a trash can because there’s like trash blowing down the street.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sonia Manzano:\u003c/strong> I remember being stunned when I saw the show for the first time. I was a college student at Carnegie Mellon University and there was James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet. And then they cut to Susan, the African American actress Loretta Long, on this urban street. And I was stunned because I am a Puerto Rican, from the Bronx, and I was raised in the ’50s, loved television, [but] never saw anybody who looked like me. And I began to feel on some level that I was invisible. I didn’t know what I would contribute to a society that was determined not to see me. So when I saw that show, I was absolutely thrilled.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And how did that inform how you played Maria?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Manzano:\u003c/strong> I became Maria and never lost sight of myself as a little kid watching television. I watched television to find comfort and order in, what seemed to me, a tumultuous world. So when I became Maria, I never forgot that. And I always assumed that some kid was out there watching me, looking for the same comfort that I looked to find on \u003cem>Leave It to Beaver\u003c/em>. Except this is going to be better because I was one of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13896990\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 649px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13896990\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/streetgang04-002-1-be1e709891abf6d059f3a6ac2428ae83af3160be.png\" alt=\"Jim Henson, the puppeteer behind Ernie, and Frank Oz, the longtime voice of Bert, on the set of 'Sesame Street.'\" width=\"649\" height=\"486\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/streetgang04-002-1-be1e709891abf6d059f3a6ac2428ae83af3160be.png 649w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/streetgang04-002-1-be1e709891abf6d059f3a6ac2428ae83af3160be-160x120.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 649px) 100vw, 649px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jim Henson, the puppeteer behind Ernie, and Frank Oz, the longtime voice of Bert, on the set of ‘Sesame Street.’ \u003ccite>(Robert Fuhring/Courtesy Sesame Workshop)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You have this show that set out to intentionally feature a diverse cast of kids and adults. Marilyn, talk about how that went down. There was some pushback.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Marilyn Agrelo:\u003c/strong> So in 1969, \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> unveils and there is a African American couple who live in the same neighborhood with their white neighbors—yes, with Big Bird and several other Muppets—but it’s a very integrated cast. The first time this [was] ever seen on television in Jackson, Miss., the public television station received a lot of complaints and they stopped airing the show. Miraculously, a commercial station in Jackson said, “If the public station won’t air it, then we will.” This is just an example of how groundbreaking this was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Muppets, the nonhuman characters on the show, connected so much with people. I know as a kid, I was not remotely aware of a lot of the nobler advancement of social justice and racial equity that you all were grappling with, I just thought, “This is really funny.” The Count and Oscar the Grouch had me rolling on the floor.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Agrelo:\u003c/strong> There were other shows with puppets on television, but there was something about the writing on \u003cem>Sesame Street.\u003c/em> You know, some of those Muppet skits had really sophisticated social satire, and this was all geared to bring the adults in. A perfect example of that is Alistair Cookie, the host of “Monsterpiece Theater.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Manzano:\u003c/strong> Certainly another example of how the show worked on two levels was “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51BQfPeSK8k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">It’s Not Easy Being Green\u003c/a>,” Kermit the Frog singing that wonderful song with Lena Horne, the great jazz singer-activist. And I walked into the studio that day and I said, “Gee, are they singing about what I think they’re singing about? Are they singing about race?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, to me, they were. And that’s an example where it works on so many levels. If that’s what’s in your head, in your mind, in your experience, you would imbue that piece with that sensibility. And certainly kids did, or they just thought it was about what a drag it was to be a green Muppet. It worked on that level as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So a show that started out radical, political: Is it still, do you think? Where have we landed five decades later?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Agrelo:\u003c/strong> I think \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> is addressing the world as it is in the same way that they did then. I know that they have started writing moments where they’re explaining what a protest is. Certainly every child in America has seen the Black Lives Matter protests in the streets and sort of the upheaval that’s happening in our society again, like it did in 1969. So \u003cem>Sesame Street\u003c/em> continues to try to interpret the world with authenticity to really help explain to them what is happening around them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street\u003c/em> is in theaters and streaming now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13896991\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13896991\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/gettyimages-3438411-b8620ea8316de07f3635107e5f81e9d344cd3ef1-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Cast members of the television show, 'Sesame Street' on the set in 1969, the year the show debuted.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cast members of the television show, ‘Sesame Street’ on the set in 1969, the year the show debuted. \u003ccite>(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sam Gringlas produced and Sarah Handel edited this story for broadcast.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Story+Of+%27Sesame+Street%27%3A+From+Radical+Experiment+To+Beloved+TV+Mainstay&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Thirty years ago this month, \u003cem>Madonna: Truth or Dare\u003c/em> was released to much fanfare. The documentary—part concert movie, part backstage exposé—captured the singer’s 1990 Blond Ambition world tour. It would be the highest grossing documentary of all time for the next 12 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> stands as a feminist moment awkwardly sandwiched between its second and third waves. At the same time, the movie is probably most remembered for its strides toward gay visibility. The film presented Madonna’s touring crew as one big, (usually) happy family. And because all but one of her dancers were gay, same-sex relationships were presented in the film as just the same as everyone else’s. In 1991, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, the impact of that cannot be overstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSZeyJPQT2A\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t just Madonna’s relationships with her dancers, either. At one genuinely vulnerable point, she is seen dedicating a concert to \u003ca href=\"http://www.newnownext.com/keith-haring-birthday-60-madonna-brooke-shields/05/2018/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">her friend Keith Haring\u003c/a>, who had recently lost his life to AIDS-related complications. Later, we see her lunching with her friend Sandra Bernhard, as the two casually discuss the woman Bernhard is sleeping with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of the biggest pop stars in the world at the time, Madonna’s example mattered. She knew it, and so did Alek Keshishian, her 26-year-old director. “I was in this bubble where that was just all accepted,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/arts/music/madonna-truth-or-dare-alek-keshishian.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Keshishian told the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in 2016. “I felt instinctively that I wanted to get across how in Madonna’s world, homosexuality was just a fact of life. These dancers, who she felt so close to, they were going through that age of AIDS. There was still so much stigma against it. I felt personally the power of putting that out, but I had no idea that it might resonate with others quite the way it did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016, \u003cem>Huffington Post\u003c/em>‘s \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/madonnas-groundbreaking-t_b_9238490\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daryl Deino wrote\u003c/a> about the impact \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> had on him as a closeted young man in Skokie, Illinois.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>[There] was a scene of a gay pride parade—something I had never seen before … Madonna’s dancers stand in the sidelines while people march, screaming, ‘We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it!‘ There are all types of people … ‘Even I could fit in there,’ I thought. That moment changed my life … Madonna’s dancers were now my heroes. They let me know that it was okay to be different. Even if you are a part of the LGBT community, you wouldn’t understand what I felt unless you lived through the ‘80s or early ‘90s as a teenager.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It’s important to acknowledge in 2021 just how crucial the documentary was at the time. Because for audiences watching now who didn’t live through the era, there is much in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> to be offended by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one, the movie is riddled with gay slurs. It’s impossible not to flinch now, watching Madonna drop so many ‘F’ bombs. At one point, she tells one of her dancers, “I wouldn’t hire fags that hate women. I kill fags that hate women. In fact, I kill anybody who hates women.” Cringeworthy though it is, the scene is a reflection of the ‘90s as a period of reclaiming historically hostile language, and a reminder that allies at the time were permitted to do the same. (By the end of the decade, even the ladies of \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> were using the other ‘F’ word.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13915838']That outburst is especially tough to sit through after scenes in which the one straight dancer Madonna has hired appears to hate gay men. “It’s my first time working with fags,” Oliver Crumes tells the camera. “Have you ever seen [dancer] Luis [Camacho] walk in his underwear in front of just a whole bunch of people? I don’t have no kind of respect for these people. We know he’s a fag, or gay, or whatever you wanna call it. But you don’t have to show it to everybody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crumes \u003ca href=\"https://www.vulture.com/2021/05/madonna-truth-or-dare-oral-history.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recently admitted to \u003cem>Vulture\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “Before the tour started, I was homophobic. I wasn’t all with it. Learning from all the guys what their lives were like when they were young was just mind-blowing. If it wasn’t for Madonna and that tour, I would never have got that experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the same interview, backing vocalist Donna DeLory stands by the movie as one that empowers women. “My daughter is 18,” she says, “and in this day and age, she watches that movie and sees nothing but strength. She sees a role model. To be around a woman like Madonna was just like, ‘Yes!’ We felt taken care of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s true that, for the most part, the Madonna we see in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> is powerful, always in control, and astoundingly disciplined with her work ethic. She goes far above and beyond the 21st century idea of leaning in. But the way she handles a sexual assault, mid-tour, is jaw-dropping to witness in the post-#MeToo age. After one of her makeup artists, Sharon Gault, is attacked in New York City, the only member of the crew who seems appropriately concerned is dancer Carlton Wilborn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was at the club dancing,” Wilborn tells Madonna, backstage. “The next thing she knew was that she woke up in her room nude, and her stuff was stolen, and she went to the bathroom and her butt was bleeding.” Madonna responds by covering her face, nervously laughing, then offering an explainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know how you wouldn’t remember something like that,” she says. “They drugged her ass. All I can think of is that she started talking about how she was on tour with me, she’s staying at the Ritz Carlton and those guys, whoever they were, got it in their mind that they were going to fuck with her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Juxtaposed with the scene between Madonna and Wilborn is one in which Gault relays her experience. “I never thought that something like that would ever happen to me,” a visibly shellshocked Gault tells DeLory and fellow backing vocalist, Niki Haris. “It was a nice club. It was really nice. And there were nice people there, and I was dancing with these boys. I was totally sober … And then next thing I know, I wake up this morning. I’m never going to go out by myself again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_112976']At no point does anyone attempt to contact police, or the club at which Gault was drugged, or get medical or therapeutic assistance for her. The assault is treated as simply a hazard of being naive in New York City, and a particularly harsh life lesson. For anyone still wondering why so many of Harvey Weinstein’s and Bill Cosby’s accusers didn’t come forward sooner, this moment in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> stands as an efficient explainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legacy of \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> is further complicated by the fact that three dancers—Crumes, Gabriel Trupin and Kevin Stea—sued Madonna in 1992 over the film, in part, for invasion of privacy. The three had not wanted certain scenes included in the film, and felt they had not been adequately compensated for their contributions. The case was settled out of court in 1994. This year, Stea told \u003cem>Vulture\u003c/em>, “The choice I made to do the lawsuit was literally because I said, ‘What would she do? She would fight for herself’ … She kept telling me, ‘Don’t let people take advantage of you.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When all is said and done, \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> may not be perfect, but it \u003cem>is\u003c/em> a perfect snapshot of early 1990s culture, messy though it was. Its status as a groundbreaking work of both female and LGBT empowerment is certainly warranted, despite how 2021 audiences might react to the language and attitudes caught on camera. That three of the dancers featured—Wilborn, Trupin and Salim Gauwloos— were, unbeknownst to audiences, living with HIV or AIDS at the time of filming only serves to give the film added poignancy. (San Francisco resident \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/OBITUARY-Gabriel-Trupin-3017397.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Trupin\u003c/a> died just five years after appearing in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Alek’s particular vision really paid tribute to gay culture,” dancer Kevin Stea noted this year. “Being gay himself and sharing the humanity of our community is what gave this movie long-lasting legs, and power, and iconic status.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Thirty years ago this month, \u003cem>Madonna: Truth or Dare\u003c/em> was released to much fanfare. The documentary—part concert movie, part backstage exposé—captured the singer’s 1990 Blond Ambition world tour. It would be the highest grossing documentary of all time for the next 12 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> stands as a feminist moment awkwardly sandwiched between its second and third waves. At the same time, the movie is probably most remembered for its strides toward gay visibility. The film presented Madonna’s touring crew as one big, (usually) happy family. And because all but one of her dancers were gay, same-sex relationships were presented in the film as just the same as everyone else’s. In 1991, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, the impact of that cannot be overstated.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/NSZeyJPQT2A'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/NSZeyJPQT2A'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>It wasn’t just Madonna’s relationships with her dancers, either. At one genuinely vulnerable point, she is seen dedicating a concert to \u003ca href=\"http://www.newnownext.com/keith-haring-birthday-60-madonna-brooke-shields/05/2018/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">her friend Keith Haring\u003c/a>, who had recently lost his life to AIDS-related complications. Later, we see her lunching with her friend Sandra Bernhard, as the two casually discuss the woman Bernhard is sleeping with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of the biggest pop stars in the world at the time, Madonna’s example mattered. She knew it, and so did Alek Keshishian, her 26-year-old director. “I was in this bubble where that was just all accepted,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/arts/music/madonna-truth-or-dare-alek-keshishian.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Keshishian told the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in 2016. “I felt instinctively that I wanted to get across how in Madonna’s world, homosexuality was just a fact of life. These dancers, who she felt so close to, they were going through that age of AIDS. There was still so much stigma against it. I felt personally the power of putting that out, but I had no idea that it might resonate with others quite the way it did.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2016, \u003cem>Huffington Post\u003c/em>‘s \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/madonnas-groundbreaking-t_b_9238490\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daryl Deino wrote\u003c/a> about the impact \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> had on him as a closeted young man in Skokie, Illinois.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>[There] was a scene of a gay pride parade—something I had never seen before … Madonna’s dancers stand in the sidelines while people march, screaming, ‘We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it!‘ There are all types of people … ‘Even I could fit in there,’ I thought. That moment changed my life … Madonna’s dancers were now my heroes. They let me know that it was okay to be different. Even if you are a part of the LGBT community, you wouldn’t understand what I felt unless you lived through the ‘80s or early ‘90s as a teenager.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It’s important to acknowledge in 2021 just how crucial the documentary was at the time. Because for audiences watching now who didn’t live through the era, there is much in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> to be offended by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one, the movie is riddled with gay slurs. It’s impossible not to flinch now, watching Madonna drop so many ‘F’ bombs. At one point, she tells one of her dancers, “I wouldn’t hire fags that hate women. I kill fags that hate women. In fact, I kill anybody who hates women.” Cringeworthy though it is, the scene is a reflection of the ‘90s as a period of reclaiming historically hostile language, and a reminder that allies at the time were permitted to do the same. (By the end of the decade, even the ladies of \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> were using the other ‘F’ word.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>That outburst is especially tough to sit through after scenes in which the one straight dancer Madonna has hired appears to hate gay men. “It’s my first time working with fags,” Oliver Crumes tells the camera. “Have you ever seen [dancer] Luis [Camacho] walk in his underwear in front of just a whole bunch of people? I don’t have no kind of respect for these people. We know he’s a fag, or gay, or whatever you wanna call it. But you don’t have to show it to everybody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crumes \u003ca href=\"https://www.vulture.com/2021/05/madonna-truth-or-dare-oral-history.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recently admitted to \u003cem>Vulture\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “Before the tour started, I was homophobic. I wasn’t all with it. Learning from all the guys what their lives were like when they were young was just mind-blowing. If it wasn’t for Madonna and that tour, I would never have got that experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the same interview, backing vocalist Donna DeLory stands by the movie as one that empowers women. “My daughter is 18,” she says, “and in this day and age, she watches that movie and sees nothing but strength. She sees a role model. To be around a woman like Madonna was just like, ‘Yes!’ We felt taken care of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s true that, for the most part, the Madonna we see in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> is powerful, always in control, and astoundingly disciplined with her work ethic. She goes far above and beyond the 21st century idea of leaning in. But the way she handles a sexual assault, mid-tour, is jaw-dropping to witness in the post-#MeToo age. After one of her makeup artists, Sharon Gault, is attacked in New York City, the only member of the crew who seems appropriately concerned is dancer Carlton Wilborn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was at the club dancing,” Wilborn tells Madonna, backstage. “The next thing she knew was that she woke up in her room nude, and her stuff was stolen, and she went to the bathroom and her butt was bleeding.” Madonna responds by covering her face, nervously laughing, then offering an explainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know how you wouldn’t remember something like that,” she says. “They drugged her ass. All I can think of is that she started talking about how she was on tour with me, she’s staying at the Ritz Carlton and those guys, whoever they were, got it in their mind that they were going to fuck with her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Juxtaposed with the scene between Madonna and Wilborn is one in which Gault relays her experience. “I never thought that something like that would ever happen to me,” a visibly shellshocked Gault tells DeLory and fellow backing vocalist, Niki Haris. “It was a nice club. It was really nice. And there were nice people there, and I was dancing with these boys. I was totally sober … And then next thing I know, I wake up this morning. I’m never going to go out by myself again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At no point does anyone attempt to contact police, or the club at which Gault was drugged, or get medical or therapeutic assistance for her. The assault is treated as simply a hazard of being naive in New York City, and a particularly harsh life lesson. For anyone still wondering why so many of Harvey Weinstein’s and Bill Cosby’s accusers didn’t come forward sooner, this moment in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> stands as an efficient explainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The legacy of \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> is further complicated by the fact that three dancers—Crumes, Gabriel Trupin and Kevin Stea—sued Madonna in 1992 over the film, in part, for invasion of privacy. The three had not wanted certain scenes included in the film, and felt they had not been adequately compensated for their contributions. The case was settled out of court in 1994. This year, Stea told \u003cem>Vulture\u003c/em>, “The choice I made to do the lawsuit was literally because I said, ‘What would she do? She would fight for herself’ … She kept telling me, ‘Don’t let people take advantage of you.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When all is said and done, \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em> may not be perfect, but it \u003cem>is\u003c/em> a perfect snapshot of early 1990s culture, messy though it was. Its status as a groundbreaking work of both female and LGBT empowerment is certainly warranted, despite how 2021 audiences might react to the language and attitudes caught on camera. That three of the dancers featured—Wilborn, Trupin and Salim Gauwloos— were, unbeknownst to audiences, living with HIV or AIDS at the time of filming only serves to give the film added poignancy. (San Francisco resident \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/OBITUARY-Gabriel-Trupin-3017397.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Trupin\u003c/a> died just five years after appearing in \u003cem>Truth or Dare\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Alek’s particular vision really paid tribute to gay culture,” dancer Kevin Stea noted this year. “Being gay himself and sharing the humanity of our community is what gave this movie long-lasting legs, and power, and iconic status.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Peacock's 'Girls5eva' is Breezy, Sharp and Just Catchy Enough",
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"content": "\u003cp>In 2000, MTV dropped the made-for-TV movie \u003cem>2Gether\u003c/em>, a parody about a fictional boy band of the same name and its rival, Whoa. 2Gether consisted of five members, each cast to fit a very specific type, including “the bad boy” and “the heartthrob.” The not-a-real-boy-band boy band eventually became real enough—or rather, popular enough—to spawn a short-lived TV series spin-off and a second album, \u003cem>2Gether Again\u003c/em>. They even did a stint \u003ca href=\"https://ew.com/article/2000/08/15/2gether-talk-about-touring-britney-spears/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">opening for Britney Spears\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It seems doubtful the ladies of Girls5eva, the fictional late-’90s girl group in the new Peacock series \u003cem>Girls5eva\u003c/em>, will be touring with Olivia Rodrigo anytime soon, but they nevertheless share quite a bit of DNA with 2Gether. Created by Meredith Scardino (\u003cem>Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt\u003c/em>) and starring Sara Bareilles, Renèe Elise Goldsberry, Busy Philipps, and Paula Pell, the comedy follows the group members as they attempt to stage a comeback and rekindle the magic of their heyday 20 years later. It’s steeped in flashbacks poking fun at the same transparently manufactured bubblegum pop scene as that MTV predecessor, and the bonkers Girls5eva song lyrics are kindred spirits of 2Gether—compare “Gonna be famous five-ever/ ‘Cause for-ever’s too short” to, say, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMWxnjgvUQM#t=00m50s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">I know my calculus/ It says you + me = us.\u003c/a>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlUYv_EtEAg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first of eight episodes kicks off when a young rapper named Lil’ Stinker (Jeremiah Craft) samples an old Girls5eva song and invites the defunct group to perform with him on \u003cem>The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\u003c/em>. The reunion comes at a time when the four remaining members—we learn that fifth member Ashley (Ashley Park), who appears in flashbacks, died in a freak accident involving an Infinity Pool—are in various states of mid-life crises. Dawn (Bareilles) is feeling unfulfilled working in her brother’s restaurant; Gloria (Paula Pell) is a dentist reeling from divorce; Summer (Philipps) is a brand influencer trapped in a one-sided marriage; and Wickie (Goldsberry) has tried desperately to keep up the façade of a glam diva despite secretly being broke and out of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>relies too heavily on well-worn fodder; unlike \u003cem>2gether—\u003c/em>and later, \u003cem>Josie and the Pussycats \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping—\u003c/em>this satire is 20 years removed from the music genre it’s parodying, and sometimes, that’s more of a flaw than an asset. If silly bits about 9/11, \u003cem>Total Request Live\u003c/em>, and eccentric Swedish music hitmakers were the only things \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>served up, the enterprise would seem unnecessary, like a sophomore album arriving two decades too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet as the season carries on and the writers really latch on to the comedic tension between the past and the present, \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>blossoms into something beyond a blatant tool for nostalgia aimed squarely at millennials and Gen-Xers raised on a diet of Tina Fey and Fey-adjacent humor. (She and her husband/ frequent collaborator Jeff Richmond serve as two of the executive producers, and \u003cem>their \u003c/em>DNA is all over this, too, from the extremely high joke density to the quirky interstitial music to the very New York City-centric observations.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13890831']The \u003cem>Fallon \u003c/em>appearance inspires the group to give music another go, but they quickly realize their former manager Larry (Jonathan Hadary) was a controlling, exploitative sleazeball cut from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/21/490826928/lou-pearlman-backstreet-boys-nsync-boy-bands-dies-in-prison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lou Pearlman\u003c/a> cloth, and they don’t own the rights to any of their old songs. They’re also forced to reflect on the content of those songs—which, the show emphasizes, were written by men—and how they may have helped promote misogynistic ideals. One song we hear a brief snippet of is a sexy anthem about being jailbait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so they set off on their own to write and record a new song, with the goal of performing it at the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball (because why not?), going viral, and putting Girls5eva back on the map.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the women embark on their quest, it’s easy to hop along for the ride. There’s an oddly specific yet accurate running gag in one episode about boys who grow up as only children in New York City, and it gets more ridiculous with every repeated instance. Much of the soundtrack packs a comedic punch and is convincingly catchy, particularly the theme song, which you will not be able to stop singing if you binge multiple episodes in a row.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between the earworms and an array of pitch-perfect guest stars and cameos including Vanessa Williams and Bowen Yang, the central performances by the Girls5eva actresses are the glue. Each character is calibrated to just the right levels of wacky and sincere, and they play off of one another fluidly, embodying their individual “types”—Dawn as the plucky de facto leader, Summer as the group’s clueless Posh Spice whose only job is to “end songs with a sultry feminasty phrase,” Gloria as the uptight workaholic who is openly gay now but was firmly in the closet during Girls5eva’s peak—while finding notes and beats far surpassing shtick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_96840']This is especially true of Wickie, the show’s scene-stealer who possesses all of the vanity of \u003cem>30 Rock\u003c/em>‘s Jenna Maroney, but with a bit more heart and warmth. Goldsberry delivers gold anytime she belts out her sentences rather than speaks, which is often; or opines about her celebrity encounters and grand adventures, which is often; or dates a much younger guy, which is brief, but a delight to witness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>will feel familiar in ways both underwhelming and comforting, but the good outweighs the clichèd here. It’s just breezy enough, just sharp enough, and just catchy enough to have you rooting for a comeback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Girls5eva%27+Is+Just+Catchy+Enough&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In 2000, MTV dropped the made-for-TV movie \u003cem>2Gether\u003c/em>, a parody about a fictional boy band of the same name and its rival, Whoa. 2Gether consisted of five members, each cast to fit a very specific type, including “the bad boy” and “the heartthrob.” The not-a-real-boy-band boy band eventually became real enough—or rather, popular enough—to spawn a short-lived TV series spin-off and a second album, \u003cem>2Gether Again\u003c/em>. They even did a stint \u003ca href=\"https://ew.com/article/2000/08/15/2gether-talk-about-touring-britney-spears/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">opening for Britney Spears\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It seems doubtful the ladies of Girls5eva, the fictional late-’90s girl group in the new Peacock series \u003cem>Girls5eva\u003c/em>, will be touring with Olivia Rodrigo anytime soon, but they nevertheless share quite a bit of DNA with 2Gether. Created by Meredith Scardino (\u003cem>Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt\u003c/em>) and starring Sara Bareilles, Renèe Elise Goldsberry, Busy Philipps, and Paula Pell, the comedy follows the group members as they attempt to stage a comeback and rekindle the magic of their heyday 20 years later. It’s steeped in flashbacks poking fun at the same transparently manufactured bubblegum pop scene as that MTV predecessor, and the bonkers Girls5eva song lyrics are kindred spirits of 2Gether—compare “Gonna be famous five-ever/ ‘Cause for-ever’s too short” to, say, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMWxnjgvUQM#t=00m50s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">I know my calculus/ It says you + me = us.\u003c/a>”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/WlUYv_EtEAg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/WlUYv_EtEAg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The first of eight episodes kicks off when a young rapper named Lil’ Stinker (Jeremiah Craft) samples an old Girls5eva song and invites the defunct group to perform with him on \u003cem>The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\u003c/em>. The reunion comes at a time when the four remaining members—we learn that fifth member Ashley (Ashley Park), who appears in flashbacks, died in a freak accident involving an Infinity Pool—are in various states of mid-life crises. Dawn (Bareilles) is feeling unfulfilled working in her brother’s restaurant; Gloria (Paula Pell) is a dentist reeling from divorce; Summer (Philipps) is a brand influencer trapped in a one-sided marriage; and Wickie (Goldsberry) has tried desperately to keep up the façade of a glam diva despite secretly being broke and out of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>relies too heavily on well-worn fodder; unlike \u003cem>2gether—\u003c/em>and later, \u003cem>Josie and the Pussycats \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping—\u003c/em>this satire is 20 years removed from the music genre it’s parodying, and sometimes, that’s more of a flaw than an asset. If silly bits about 9/11, \u003cem>Total Request Live\u003c/em>, and eccentric Swedish music hitmakers were the only things \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>served up, the enterprise would seem unnecessary, like a sophomore album arriving two decades too late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet as the season carries on and the writers really latch on to the comedic tension between the past and the present, \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>blossoms into something beyond a blatant tool for nostalgia aimed squarely at millennials and Gen-Xers raised on a diet of Tina Fey and Fey-adjacent humor. (She and her husband/ frequent collaborator Jeff Richmond serve as two of the executive producers, and \u003cem>their \u003c/em>DNA is all over this, too, from the extremely high joke density to the quirky interstitial music to the very New York City-centric observations.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The \u003cem>Fallon \u003c/em>appearance inspires the group to give music another go, but they quickly realize their former manager Larry (Jonathan Hadary) was a controlling, exploitative sleazeball cut from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/21/490826928/lou-pearlman-backstreet-boys-nsync-boy-bands-dies-in-prison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lou Pearlman\u003c/a> cloth, and they don’t own the rights to any of their old songs. They’re also forced to reflect on the content of those songs—which, the show emphasizes, were written by men—and how they may have helped promote misogynistic ideals. One song we hear a brief snippet of is a sexy anthem about being jailbait.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And so they set off on their own to write and record a new song, with the goal of performing it at the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball (because why not?), going viral, and putting Girls5eva back on the map.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the women embark on their quest, it’s easy to hop along for the ride. There’s an oddly specific yet accurate running gag in one episode about boys who grow up as only children in New York City, and it gets more ridiculous with every repeated instance. Much of the soundtrack packs a comedic punch and is convincingly catchy, particularly the theme song, which you will not be able to stop singing if you binge multiple episodes in a row.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between the earworms and an array of pitch-perfect guest stars and cameos including Vanessa Williams and Bowen Yang, the central performances by the Girls5eva actresses are the glue. Each character is calibrated to just the right levels of wacky and sincere, and they play off of one another fluidly, embodying their individual “types”—Dawn as the plucky de facto leader, Summer as the group’s clueless Posh Spice whose only job is to “end songs with a sultry feminasty phrase,” Gloria as the uptight workaholic who is openly gay now but was firmly in the closet during Girls5eva’s peak—while finding notes and beats far surpassing shtick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>This is especially true of Wickie, the show’s scene-stealer who possesses all of the vanity of \u003cem>30 Rock\u003c/em>‘s Jenna Maroney, but with a bit more heart and warmth. Goldsberry delivers gold anytime she belts out her sentences rather than speaks, which is often; or opines about her celebrity encounters and grand adventures, which is often; or dates a much younger guy, which is brief, but a delight to witness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, \u003cem>Girls5eva \u003c/em>will feel familiar in ways both underwhelming and comforting, but the good outweighs the clichèd here. It’s just breezy enough, just sharp enough, and just catchy enough to have you rooting for a comeback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Girls5eva%27+Is+Just+Catchy+Enough&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "TikTok Dancer Pink Funky is Here to Ease Your Reopening Anxiety",
"headTitle": "TikTok Dancer Pink Funky is Here to Ease Your Reopening Anxiety | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>He’s just a guy, standing in front of a cell phone, asking us to love him. And, truth be told, it’s fairly impossible \u003cem>not\u003c/em> to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since June of last year, a mysterious nerdy white guy in sweat pants has been dancing—in very short bursts—for the internet’s entertainment. He calls himself Pink Funky, his energy is always infectious, and he grooves inside a space that resembles a Ramada Inn conference room.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CJzMl_NnvGu/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his earliest videos, Pink Funky bounced around various rooms in his house, starting with his \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6839559600824405254\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(very cluttered) garage\u003c/a>. He occasionally attempted a few \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6838415040350113030\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">skits\u003c/a>. But it’s when he finally settled on a single boring backdrop and just let his inner diva glow, that this dancing machine found his magic formula, sports socks and all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6927470242100677894\" data-video-id=\"6927470242100677894\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>💖 \u003ca title=\"rasputin\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/rasputin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##rasputin\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"boneym\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/boneym\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##boneym\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"retro\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/retro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##retro\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"oldies\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/oldies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##oldies\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"70s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/70s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##70s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"trend\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/trend\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##trend\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"tiktoktrend\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiktoktrend\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##tiktoktrend\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"disco\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/disco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##disco\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Rasputin (7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Rasputin (7″ Version) – Boney M.\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes, objects in the background change—a dog bed disappears, a giant teddy bear arrives. Sometimes, there are lined up album covers against the wall. Usually, ineffectual disco lights spin on the floor. It matters not, for Pink Funky’s invigorating moves are never anything less than inspiring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6881042647696379141\" data-video-id=\"6881042647696379141\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>✨💖☠️💖✨ \u003ca title=\"bellbivdevoe\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/bellbivdevoe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##bellbivdevoe\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"poison\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/poison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##poison\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"90s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/90s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##90s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fun\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fun\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"80s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/80s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##80s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"xyzbca\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/xyzbca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##xyzbca\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vibing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vibing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vibing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"goodvibes\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/goodvibes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##goodvibes\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"retro\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/retro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##retro\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pink\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pink\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vintage\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vintage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vintage\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##funky\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Poison - Bell Biv DeVoe\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/Poison-242490774100025344\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Poison – Bell Biv DeVoe\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pink Funky has racked up 1.3 million likes and almost 87,000 followers \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on TikTok\u003c/a>, because of his ability to be somehow unrelentingly fabulous and totally relatable at the same time. I mean, who \u003cem>hasn’t\u003c/em> spent a night during shelter in place shimmying around the living room to Shakira?\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6884038730521251077\" data-video-id=\"6884038730521251077\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>✨💖🔥💖✨\u003ca title=\"shakira\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/shakira\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##shakira\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"hipsdontlie\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/hipsdontlie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##hipsdontlie\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fun\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fun\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"xyzbca\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/xyzbca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##xyzbca\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"spanishmusic\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/spanishmusic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##spanishmusic\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vibes\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vibes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vibes\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vibing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vibing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vibing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"goodvibes\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/goodvibes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##goodvibes\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"mood\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/mood\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##mood\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pop\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pop\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Hips Don't Lie (feat. Wyclef Jean) - Shakira\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/Hips-Don't-Lie-feat-Wyclef-Jean-6696413240089380866\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Hips Don’t Lie (feat. Wyclef Jean) – Shakira\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of Pink Funky’s musical choices err on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6911438344861928709\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more explicit side\u003c/a>, so he’s not always appropriate for younger viewers. But for grownups feeling anxious about returning to the world after 14 months of sheltering in place, he’s just perfect. Learning to socialize again might be a nerve-racking prospect for many, but when in doubt, Pink Funky has the energy to motivate you into dancing right on out of the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if you’re returning to dating? Save this link:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6940787970786053381\" data-video-id=\"6940787970786053381\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>★ \u003ca title=\"donnasummer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/donnasummer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##donnasummer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"oldies\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/oldies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##oldies\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"retro\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/retro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##retro\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"70s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/70s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##70s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"disco\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/disco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##disco\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"foryou\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/foryou\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##foryou\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Hot Stuff - Donna Summer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/Hot-Stuff-6834889776521283585\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Hot Stuff – Donna Summer\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>He’s just a guy, standing in front of a cell phone, asking us to love him. And, truth be told, it’s fairly impossible \u003cem>not\u003c/em> to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since June of last year, a mysterious nerdy white guy in sweat pants has been dancing—in very short bursts—for the internet’s entertainment. He calls himself Pink Funky, his energy is always infectious, and he grooves inside a space that resembles a Ramada Inn conference room.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In his earliest videos, Pink Funky bounced around various rooms in his house, starting with his \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6839559600824405254\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(very cluttered) garage\u003c/a>. He occasionally attempted a few \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6838415040350113030\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">skits\u003c/a>. But it’s when he finally settled on a single boring backdrop and just let his inner diva glow, that this dancing machine found his magic formula, sports socks and all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6927470242100677894\" data-video-id=\"6927470242100677894\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>💖 \u003ca title=\"rasputin\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/rasputin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##rasputin\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"boneym\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/boneym\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##boneym\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"retro\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/retro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##retro\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"oldies\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/oldies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##oldies\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"70s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/70s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##70s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"trend\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/trend\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##trend\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"tiktoktrend\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiktoktrend\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##tiktoktrend\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"disco\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/disco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##disco\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Rasputin (7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Rasputin (7″ Version) – Boney M.\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes, objects in the background change—a dog bed disappears, a giant teddy bear arrives. Sometimes, there are lined up album covers against the wall. Usually, ineffectual disco lights spin on the floor. It matters not, for Pink Funky’s invigorating moves are never anything less than inspiring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6881042647696379141\" data-video-id=\"6881042647696379141\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>✨💖☠️💖✨ \u003ca title=\"bellbivdevoe\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/bellbivdevoe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##bellbivdevoe\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"poison\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/poison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##poison\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"90s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/90s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##90s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fun\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fun\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"80s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/80s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##80s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"xyzbca\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/xyzbca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##xyzbca\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vibing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vibing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vibing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"goodvibes\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/goodvibes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##goodvibes\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"retro\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/retro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##retro\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pink\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pink\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pink\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vintage\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vintage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vintage\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##funky\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Poison - Bell Biv DeVoe\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/Poison-242490774100025344\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Poison – Bell Biv DeVoe\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pink Funky has racked up 1.3 million likes and almost 87,000 followers \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">on TikTok\u003c/a>, because of his ability to be somehow unrelentingly fabulous and totally relatable at the same time. I mean, who \u003cem>hasn’t\u003c/em> spent a night during shelter in place shimmying around the living room to Shakira?\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6884038730521251077\" data-video-id=\"6884038730521251077\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>✨💖🔥💖✨\u003ca title=\"shakira\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/shakira\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##shakira\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"hipsdontlie\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/hipsdontlie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##hipsdontlie\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fun\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fun\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fun\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"xyzbca\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/xyzbca\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##xyzbca\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"spanishmusic\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/spanishmusic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##spanishmusic\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vibes\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vibes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vibes\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"vibing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/vibing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##vibing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"goodvibes\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/goodvibes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##goodvibes\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"mood\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/mood\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##mood\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pop\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pop\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Hips Don't Lie (feat. Wyclef Jean) - Shakira\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/Hips-Don't-Lie-feat-Wyclef-Jean-6696413240089380866\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Hips Don’t Lie (feat. Wyclef Jean) – Shakira\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of Pink Funky’s musical choices err on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6911438344861928709\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more explicit side\u003c/a>, so he’s not always appropriate for younger viewers. But for grownups feeling anxious about returning to the world after 14 months of sheltering in place, he’s just perfect. Learning to socialize again might be a nerve-racking prospect for many, but when in doubt, Pink Funky has the energy to motivate you into dancing right on out of the house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And if you’re returning to dating? Save this link:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky/video/6940787970786053381\" data-video-id=\"6940787970786053381\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@pink_funky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@pink_funky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@pink_funky\u003c/a>★ \u003ca title=\"donnasummer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/donnasummer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##donnasummer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"oldies\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/oldies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##oldies\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"retro\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/retro\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##retro\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dance\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dance\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancer\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"dancing\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/dancing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##dancing\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"70s\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/70s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##70s\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"disco\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/disco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##disco\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"fyp\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/fyp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##fyp\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"foryou\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/foryou\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##foryou\u003c/a> \u003ca title=\"pinkfunky\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/tag/pinkfunky\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">##pinkfunky\u003c/a>\u003ca title=\"♬ Hot Stuff - Donna Summer\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/Hot-Stuff-6834889776521283585\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">♬ Hot Stuff – Donna Summer\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "'Disaster Girl,' the Stuff of Memes, Sells For Nearly $500,000 as NFT",
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"content": "\u003cp>Zoë Roth was internet famous before many of us knew what that was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When she was 4, her dad \u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/travelingroths/2518727675/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">took a picture\u003c/a> of her standing in front of a burning house and a firetruck. She’s looking back at the camera knowingly, leaving the viewer to suspect she had something to do with this disaster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in reality, the fire scene was part of a training exercise for firefighters in Mebane, N.C., near where Zoë and her father, Dave Roth, lived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After he entered it in a photo contest in 2007, it soon became the stuff of internet legend, \u003ca href=\"https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/disaster-girl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">launching “disaster girl” memes\u003c/a> around the world: Zoë looking back as the Titanic sinks, Zoë looking back as a mushroom cloud rises, Zoë looking back from the burning house saying, “She Should Of Made Me Cookies!!!!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Zoë is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.newsobserver.com/article250944639.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">21-year-old senior\u003c/a> at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who works at an Italian restaurant. Earlier this month came a big payoff for all this fame: A “nonfungible token,” or NFT, of the original copy of the iconic photo sold at auction for \u003ca href=\"https://foundation.app/DisasterGirl/disaster-girl-25046\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nearly $500,000\u003c/a>. The buyer is 3F Music, a music studio based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which has collected \u003ca href=\"https://foundation.app/3FMusic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">several other NFTs\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NFTs are part of the latest internet craze.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As NPR’s Bobby Allyn \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974089381/whats-an-nft-and-why-are-people-paying-millions-to-buy-them\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">explained\u003c/a>: Nonfungible means “you can’t exchange it for another thing of equal value. A $10 bill can be exchanged for two $5 bills. One bar of gold can be swapped for another bar of gold of the same size. Those things are fungible. An NFT, though, is one of a kind. The token refers to a unit of currency on the blockchain. It’s how cryptocurrency like \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/971745290/bitcoin-revolutionary-breakthrough-or-mother-of-all-bubbles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bitcoin is bought and sold\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An NFT of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975450173/the-200k-nba-nft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a video clip of LeBron James\u003c/a> dunking recently sold for more than $200,000. Nyan Cat, a popular meme from 2011 that features an animated flying cat, sold for \u003ca href=\"https://news.artnet.com/market/nyan-cat-nft-sells-for-560000-1945679\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nearly $600,000\u003c/a>. That’s relatively small potatoes. Last month, a JPG file made by a digital artist known as Beeple sold for nearly \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/11/976141522/beeple-jpg-file-sells-for-69-million-setting-crypto-art-record\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$70 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Zoë Roth, all that internet fame has continued to puzzle her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As long as I’ve been on social media, it’s also been there doing its own thing,” she recently told \u003ca href=\"https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article250391541.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The News & Observer\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in Raleigh, N.C. “So I’ve never been able to separate myself from it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Disaster+Girl%2C%27+The+Stuff+Of+Memes%2C+Sells+For+Nearly+%24500%2C000+As+NFT&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NFTs are part of the latest internet craze.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As NPR’s Bobby Allyn \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974089381/whats-an-nft-and-why-are-people-paying-millions-to-buy-them\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">explained\u003c/a>: Nonfungible means “you can’t exchange it for another thing of equal value. A $10 bill can be exchanged for two $5 bills. One bar of gold can be swapped for another bar of gold of the same size. Those things are fungible. An NFT, though, is one of a kind. The token refers to a unit of currency on the blockchain. It’s how cryptocurrency like \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/971745290/bitcoin-revolutionary-breakthrough-or-mother-of-all-bubbles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bitcoin is bought and sold\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An NFT of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975450173/the-200k-nba-nft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a video clip of LeBron James\u003c/a> dunking recently sold for more than $200,000. Nyan Cat, a popular meme from 2011 that features an animated flying cat, sold for \u003ca href=\"https://news.artnet.com/market/nyan-cat-nft-sells-for-560000-1945679\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">nearly $600,000\u003c/a>. That’s relatively small potatoes. Last month, a JPG file made by a digital artist known as Beeple sold for nearly \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/11/976141522/beeple-jpg-file-sells-for-69-million-setting-crypto-art-record\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$70 million\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Zoë Roth, all that internet fame has continued to puzzle her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As long as I’ve been on social media, it’s also been there doing its own thing,” she recently told \u003ca href=\"https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article250391541.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The News & Observer\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in Raleigh, N.C. “So I’ve never been able to separate myself from it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Disaster+Girl%2C%27+The+Stuff+Of+Memes%2C+Sells+For+Nearly+%24500%2C000+As+NFT&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Bay Curious",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/baycurious",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 3
},
"link": "/podcasts/baycurious",
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"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious",
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}
},
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"id": "bbc-world-service",
"title": "BBC World Service",
"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
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"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcram/feed/podcast"
}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcrmag/feed/podcast"
}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CAT_2_Tile-scaled.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC6993880386",
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"code-switch-life-kit": {
"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Code-Switch-Life-Kit-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/1112190608?mt=2&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510312/podcast.xml"
}
},
"commonwealth-club": {
"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
"forum": {
"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/forum",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kqeds-forum/id73329719",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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}
},
"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 7pm-8pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Fresh-Air-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
}
},
"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
"title": "Here & Now",
"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
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}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
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}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"
}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
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