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"content": "\u003cp>What you get out of \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> depends entirely on how big a fan you are of the actress. The biggest fans—the ones who know her movies by heart, the ones who still pay her tribute annually, the ones who have long questioned the circumstances of her death—won’t learn a huge amount. But for folks who fell in love with Murphy in \u003cem>Clueless\u003c/em>, cheered her on in \u003cem>8 Mile\u003c/em>, and then wrote off her death as just another Hollywood tragedy, \u003cem>What Happened\u003c/em> is an emotional, often confounding, rollercoaster.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crucially, at the end of this two-part documentary, viewers will be no clearer about why Brittany Murphy died. Of course, we’ve known since her 2009 passing that the cause of death was a combination of pneumonia, anemia and “multiple drug intoxication.” The reasons for her not receiving—or seeking out—medical assistance in the days before her death, however, remain incredibly murky. What is clear from various testimonies is that she almost certainly could have been saved had she made it to a hospital in time. \u003cem>What Happened\u003c/em> also manages to vividly paint a picture of the perfect storm that Murphy found herself in at the time of her death. Her physical and mental health were suffering, as was her career—the result of an overbearing husband and lack of real emotional support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaQvsFIB4Uw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What Happened\u003c/em> subjects Murphy’s husband Simon Monjack to intense scrutiny—and rightfully so. He is shown to be a pathological liar, a controlling partner, and a man who responded to his wife’s death in a variety of deeply inappropriate ways. Among other things, in the months after Murphy’s death, he posed for portraits with Murphy’s mother Sharon in a manner that made them look like a couple. He walked a reporter from \u003cem>People\u003c/em> magazine through Murphy’s scene of death in her cluttered bathroom, down to the exact position she was found in. He set up a website asking for financial contributions, then quickly took it down when people started asking questions. Various bombshell revelations about his past and the depth of his deceptions drop throughout the documentary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13903795']It’s impossible not to draw parallels—especially so soon after \u003cem>Britney vs Spears\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Controlling Britney Spears\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Framing Britney Spears\u003c/em>—between the way Jamie Spears treated his daughter and the way Monjack treated his wife. The financial benefits of Monjack marrying Murphy were huge—he is accused in the film of spending $3 million of her money in just three years. Like Spears, Murphy was also kept isolated by her male guardian, and became woefully reliant on him. Unlike Spears, Murphy never managed to navigate a path out. In a strange coincidence, Murphy died in a house that Spears sold to her in 2003.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other main object of scrutiny in \u003cem>What Happened\u003c/em> is the Hollywood system that subjects women to grotesquely restrictive beauty standards. Murphy is shown transforming from an excited wunderkind into a joyful teen starlet, and then an insecure woman, forced to alter her body, her hair and her style to appease casting agents. The film presents the tabloid press as complicit in this. It is remarkable to see a contrite Perez Hilton, looking back with regret at how his website mocked and dehumanized vulnerable celebrities, including Murphy, in the first decade of the 2000s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>What Happened\u003c/em> also, thankfully, finds time to remind viewers just how enormously talented Murphy was—making Hollywood’s focus on her appearance even more galling. In particular, clips of Murphy in \u003cem>Girl, Interrupted\u003c/em> hammer home her acting chops—and what we lost when she died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13903591']At the center of \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> is the codependent triumvirate of Brittany Murphy, Simon Monjack and Sharon Murphy. It’s fascinating and uncomfortable to witness their strange dynamic playing out in the documentary. Private photos Monjack took of Murphy at home are nothing less than chilling. It’s not a spoiler to say there isn’t a happy ending for any one of the three. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its core, \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> is about wish fulfillment. It’s about what happens when unsuspecting people believe too much in fairytales. One gets the sense that Sharon and Brittany believed in—and craved—their own happily-ever-after so much, they didn’t stop to question who was offering it to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the documentary points out, the strangeness of Murphy’s death is already a well-worn topic online, particularly among true crime vloggers. The value of \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> is in its ability to also remind you of her humanity, her talent, and just how tragic the end of her life was. It also serves as a reminder that good people don’t always get what they want or what they need. And that, sometimes, the very people assigned to protect them are the ones that ultimately do the most harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘What Happened, Brittany Murphy?’ begins streaming Thursday, Oct. 14, on HBO Max. \u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/coming-soon/what-happened-brittany-murphy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At the center of \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> is the codependent triumvirate of Brittany Murphy, Simon Monjack and Sharon Murphy. It’s fascinating and uncomfortable to witness their strange dynamic playing out in the documentary. Private photos Monjack took of Murphy at home are nothing less than chilling. It’s not a spoiler to say there isn’t a happy ending for any one of the three. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At its core, \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> is about wish fulfillment. It’s about what happens when unsuspecting people believe too much in fairytales. One gets the sense that Sharon and Brittany believed in—and craved—their own happily-ever-after so much, they didn’t stop to question who was offering it to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the documentary points out, the strangeness of Murphy’s death is already a well-worn topic online, particularly among true crime vloggers. The value of \u003cem>What Happened, Brittany Murphy?\u003c/em> is in its ability to also remind you of her humanity, her talent, and just how tragic the end of her life was. It also serves as a reminder that good people don’t always get what they want or what they need. And that, sometimes, the very people assigned to protect them are the ones that ultimately do the most harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘What Happened, Brittany Murphy?’ begins streaming Thursday, Oct. 14, on HBO Max. \u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/coming-soon/what-happened-brittany-murphy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "HBO’s ‘15 Minutes of Shame’ Smartly Unpacks Our Culture of Public Shaming",
"headTitle": "HBO’s ‘15 Minutes of Shame’ Smartly Unpacks Our Culture of Public Shaming | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>In 2021, how you perceive online shaming campaigns often has a great deal to do with your political leanings. In the broadest of terms, if you fall on the right, it’s called “cancel culture”—a merciless, life-ruining takedown of fallible human beings. On the left, it’s called “consequence culture”—wrongdoers being held accountable for their own awful behavior. Now, a new documentary called \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/coming-soon/15-minutes-of-shame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/a>\u003c/i>—executive produced by Monica Lewinsky and directed by Max Joseph—is here to fill out the space in between. And it is a thoroughly enlightening, if anxiety-inducing, watch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lewinsky’s involvement here is key. In the film’s introduction, she refers to herself as “Patient Zero of having a reputation completely destroyed, worldwide, because of the internet.” And while that is an accurate assessment, \u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> is not here to tell you the unfettered power of the internet is an exclusively bad thing. If anything, its end goal is to insert into these narratives the thing that is so often missing on the internet: humanity in all of its shades of gray.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhJrnNdH-aw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like Jon Ronson’s excellent 2015 book, \u003cem>So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed\u003c/em>, \u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> focuses not on humiliated celebrities, but rather a handful of everyday people whose lives have been decimated by their online characterizations. There’s Matt Colvin, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the guy who bought up 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer\u003c/a> at the start of the pandemic. There’s Emmanuel Cafferty, a Latino employee of San Diego Gas and Electric who lost his job after a member of the public accused him of making a white power hand gesture. And there’s Laura Krolczyk, who, in a fit of frustration with COVID deniers, wrote on her Facebook page: “Trump supporters need to pledge to give up their ventilators for someone else.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_10583072']The documentary allows each of these figures some space to explain themselves, but the point is not to vindicate them. The point is to take a deep dive into the cultural, social and psychological drivers behind internet take-downs. And it’s in those moments that \u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> does its most interesting work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary sketches a fascinating “brief history of public shaming,” starting at the dawn of civilization, running through the introduction of the pillory, and then onto the invention of the printing press, tabloids and, finally, the internet. At one point, while talking about punishments doled out in town squares hundreds of years ago, cultural historian Dr. Tiffany Watt says: “This is a person who is suffering because they’ve done something wrong. And we have to punish them in order to tell everyone else not to do the same thing.” It’s clear in that moment the impulse to publicly shame is a thread that’s been present throughout history, and that the internet is merely the latest conduit for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> excels when discussing the psychology behind internet pile-ons. UCSF neuroscientist and psychologist Dr. Helen Weng explains why it’s harder for our brains to recognize people as full humans when we can’t see their faces and body language. Watt shares that one study of soccer fans found they felt a greater sense of joy from seeing rival teams fail than they did from seeing their own teams score. “What that showed,” Watt notes, “is that we enjoy seeing other people fail more than we enjoy winning, ourselves.” Being divided into “rival tribes,” Watt adds, “is a very, very dangerous place for a society to be in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cultural commentators throughout \u003cem>15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/em> offer up similarly thought-provoking analysis. Segments with Roxane Gay perfectly encapsulate the struggles of online discourse. On one hand, Gay talks about why fighting back online is so necessary. “People are so unseen and so unheard and they’ve been so unrepresented for so long, and you see something done about it. That is incredibly satisfying.” On the other hand, Gay acknowledges the deep flaws of the format. “People love to say … ‘I am not responsible for dehumanizing the person, the internet is,’” she notes. “The internet is there, but we are responsible for the ways in which we dehumanize each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> also takes the time to find out how tech companies are complicit in that dehumanization. Technology ethicist Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, explains: “One NYU study found that for every word of moral outrage—negative human emotions—that you added to a tweet … it increased the retweet rate by 13%.” Harris goes on to compare Twitter’s algorithm to rubbernecking. Its desire, he notes, is to feed us “car crash after car crash after car crash.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13902631']Ultimately, \u003cem>15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/em> is a documentary that, on the surface, seeks to capture our global online culture at this time and in this place. But it also contextualizes how we got here and, importantly, makes some suggestions as to how we can get better at handling it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lewinsky bookends the film with a single proposition: “Imagine waking up one morning with the whole world suddenly knowing your name.” But, at the end of the 86-minute film, she adds a question. “What kind of world do you want that to be?” You’ll have a much better idea after watching \u003cem>15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘15 Minutes of Shame’ begins streaming Thursday, Oct. 7, on HBO Max. \u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/coming-soon/15-minutes-of-shame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary sketches a fascinating “brief history of public shaming,” starting at the dawn of civilization, running through the introduction of the pillory, and then onto the invention of the printing press, tabloids and, finally, the internet. At one point, while talking about punishments doled out in town squares hundreds of years ago, cultural historian Dr. Tiffany Watt says: “This is a person who is suffering because they’ve done something wrong. And we have to punish them in order to tell everyone else not to do the same thing.” It’s clear in that moment the impulse to publicly shame is a thread that’s been present throughout history, and that the internet is merely the latest conduit for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> excels when discussing the psychology behind internet pile-ons. UCSF neuroscientist and psychologist Dr. Helen Weng explains why it’s harder for our brains to recognize people as full humans when we can’t see their faces and body language. Watt shares that one study of soccer fans found they felt a greater sense of joy from seeing rival teams fail than they did from seeing their own teams score. “What that showed,” Watt notes, “is that we enjoy seeing other people fail more than we enjoy winning, ourselves.” Being divided into “rival tribes,” Watt adds, “is a very, very dangerous place for a society to be in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cultural commentators throughout \u003cem>15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/em> offer up similarly thought-provoking analysis. Segments with Roxane Gay perfectly encapsulate the struggles of online discourse. On one hand, Gay talks about why fighting back online is so necessary. “People are so unseen and so unheard and they’ve been so unrepresented for so long, and you see something done about it. That is incredibly satisfying.” On the other hand, Gay acknowledges the deep flaws of the format. “People love to say … ‘I am not responsible for dehumanizing the person, the internet is,’” she notes. “The internet is there, but we are responsible for the ways in which we dehumanize each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>15 Minutes\u003c/em> also takes the time to find out how tech companies are complicit in that dehumanization. Technology ethicist Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, explains: “One NYU study found that for every word of moral outrage—negative human emotions—that you added to a tweet … it increased the retweet rate by 13%.” Harris goes on to compare Twitter’s algorithm to rubbernecking. Its desire, he notes, is to feed us “car crash after car crash after car crash.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Ultimately, \u003cem>15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/em> is a documentary that, on the surface, seeks to capture our global online culture at this time and in this place. But it also contextualizes how we got here and, importantly, makes some suggestions as to how we can get better at handling it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lewinsky bookends the film with a single proposition: “Imagine waking up one morning with the whole world suddenly knowing your name.” But, at the end of the 86-minute film, she adds a question. “What kind of world do you want that to be?” You’ll have a much better idea after watching \u003cem>15 Minutes of Shame\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘15 Minutes of Shame’ begins streaming Thursday, Oct. 7, on HBO Max. \u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/coming-soon/15-minutes-of-shame\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Beloved 'Sex and the City' Actor Willie Garson Dies at 57",
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"content": "\u003cp>Willie Garson, who played Stanford Blatch, Carrie Bradshaw’s friend on TV’s \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> and its movie sequels, has died, his son announced Tuesday. He was 57.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I love you so much papa. Rest In Peace and I’m so glad you got to share all your adventures with me and were able to accomplish so much,” Nathen Garson wrote on Instagram. “I’m so proud of you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You always were the toughest and funniest and smartest person I’ve known,” his son added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CUGhqQHv9UV/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No details of Garson’s death were released. Messages seeking comment from his representatives weren’t immediately returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garson portrayed Blatch, a talent agent and the devoted and stylish best male friend to Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie for six seasons. He reprised the role in the films \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Sex and the City 2\u003c/em>, and had been filming an upcoming series revival for HBO Max called \u003cem>And Just Like That\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes in the series, expressed her sorrow in a tweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We all loved him and adored working with him. He was endlessly funny on-screen and in real life,” she wrote. “He was a source of light, friendship and show business lore. He was a consummate professional—always.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/CynthiaNixon/status/1440481643936948238\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t have had a more brilliant TV partner,” tweeted \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/macantone/status/1440466454160101382\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mario Cantone\u003c/a>, who played Garson’s husband in \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em>. “I’m devastated and just overwhelmed with sadness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added: “You were a gift from the gods.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Willie Garson was in life, as on screen, a devoted friend and a bright light for everyone in his universe. He created one of the most beloved characters from the HBO pantheon and was a member of our family for nearly 25 years,” an \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/HBO/photos/a.10151984366148933/10160234254523933\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HBO Facebook statement\u003c/a> said. “We are deeply saddened to learn of his passing and extend our sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g8w4ikcR5g\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born William Garson Paszamant in Highland Park, New Jersey, Garson began studying acting at age 13 at the Actors Institute in New York. He made hundreds of appearances on TV and in motion pictures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Besides \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em>, he was perhaps best known as Mozzie, a con man on the TV show \u003cem>White Collar\u003c/em>, and also had recurring roles on \u003cem>NYPD Blue\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Hawaii Five-0\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Supergirl\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garson, who was an advocate for adoption agencies, adopted his son, Nathen, in 2009 and marked the adoption in a January \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/willie.garson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Instagram posting\u003c/a> that read: “Best day of my life. Always.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CQVvJn4HNOu/\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=Beloved+%27Sex+And+The+City%27+Actor+Willie+Garson+Dies+At+57&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Willie Garson, who played Stanford Blatch, Carrie Bradshaw’s friend on TV’s \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> and its movie sequels, has died, his son announced Tuesday. He was 57.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I love you so much papa. Rest In Peace and I’m so glad you got to share all your adventures with me and were able to accomplish so much,” Nathen Garson wrote on Instagram. “I’m so proud of you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You always were the toughest and funniest and smartest person I’ve known,” his son added.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>No details of Garson’s death were released. Messages seeking comment from his representatives weren’t immediately returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garson portrayed Blatch, a talent agent and the devoted and stylish best male friend to Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie for six seasons. He reprised the role in the films \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Sex and the City 2\u003c/em>, and had been filming an upcoming series revival for HBO Max called \u003cem>And Just Like That\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cynthia Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes in the series, expressed her sorrow in a tweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We all loved him and adored working with him. He was endlessly funny on-screen and in real life,” she wrote. “He was a source of light, friendship and show business lore. He was a consummate professional—always.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t have had a more brilliant TV partner,” tweeted \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/macantone/status/1440466454160101382\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mario Cantone\u003c/a>, who played Garson’s husband in \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em>. “I’m devastated and just overwhelmed with sadness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added: “You were a gift from the gods.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Willie Garson was in life, as on screen, a devoted friend and a bright light for everyone in his universe. He created one of the most beloved characters from the HBO pantheon and was a member of our family for nearly 25 years,” an \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/HBO/photos/a.10151984366148933/10160234254523933\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HBO Facebook statement\u003c/a> said. “We are deeply saddened to learn of his passing and extend our sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.”\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/4g8w4ikcR5g'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4g8w4ikcR5g'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Born William Garson Paszamant in Highland Park, New Jersey, Garson began studying acting at age 13 at the Actors Institute in New York. He made hundreds of appearances on TV and in motion pictures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Besides \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em>, he was perhaps best known as Mozzie, a con man on the TV show \u003cem>White Collar\u003c/em>, and also had recurring roles on \u003cem>NYPD Blue\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Hawaii Five-0\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Supergirl\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garson, who was an advocate for adoption agencies, adopted his son, Nathen, in 2009 and marked the adoption in a January \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/willie.garson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Instagram posting\u003c/a> that read: “Best day of my life. Always.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "5 Takeaways From The 2021 Emmy Nominations",
"headTitle": "5 Takeaways From The 2021 Emmy Nominations | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>This year’s Emmy nominations cover a time when the coronavirus pandemic turned the TV industry upside down. So it makes sense that the shows and performances announced Tuesday might include some choices that are a bit … unconventional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Netflix’s continuation of \u003cem>The Karate Kid\u003c/em> franchise, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/05/02/607087244/a-crane-kick-of-nostalgia-right-to-the-throat-cobra-kai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Cobra Kai\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, nominated as best comedy series? \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/16/901256615/lovecraft-country-facing-monsters-and-a-monstrous-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a series that was essentially canceled by HBO when it decided not to make a second season, racking up 18 nominations, including best drama series? Netflix’s middling comedy \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919086574/emily-in-paris-is-a-painless-and-pretty-frolic-and-that-s-about-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Emily in Paris\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, widely ridiculed for snagging a Golden Globe nomination this year, also nominated for a best comedy series Emmy?[aside postID='arts_13884214']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thankfully, the nominations announced this year were mostly devoid of head-scratching choices and did an admirable job of reflecting both promising newcomers and old masters during a period when lockdowns threatened to cripple the industry. It’s a heartening sign that it will take more than a pandemic to wipe out innovation and quality work in today’s TV universe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five more takeaways I had from the nominations for the 73rd Emmy Awards:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Streaming services are more dominant than ever\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sure, the most nominated media platform is HBO with 130 nods. But it only got there by including the nominations for streaming corporate sibling HBO Max with its total. Even so, streaming giant Netflix had the second-largest number of nominations at 129, and upstart Disney+ landed in third place with 71.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A peek at the most-nominated shows reveals Netflix’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/11/933785969/season-4-of-the-crown-introduces-princess-diana-and-more-juicy-drama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Crown\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and Disney+’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/30/929505050/return-of-the-mandalorian-and-baby-yoda\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Mandalorian\u003c/em>\u003c/a> tied with 24 nominations, followed quickly by Disney+’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/973989043/wandavision-wraps-a-season-that-was-never-what-it-seemed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>WandaVision\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (23) and Hulu’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759437597/margaret-atwood-on-the-enduring-resonance-of-the-handmaid-s-tale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Handmaid’s Tale\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (21). Indeed, among the top 10 most-nominated shows, just three—NBC’s \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em>, along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/30/1001577416/mare-of-easttown-your-finale-questions-answered\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Mare of Easttown\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em> on HBO–were not created by streaming services.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Lots of diversity, though still often focused on Black people\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13897419']It was wonderful to see \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/06/1000646372/farewell-to-pose-which-fused-grief-and-joy-right-up-to-the-finale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Pose\u003c/em>\u003c/a> star Mj Rodriguez nominated as best actress in a drama, recognizing her powerhouse performance on that show with the first lead acting nomination for a transgender person. And for a critic like me, who has advocated for ethnic diversity in TV for decades, seeing nominations for ambitious, Black-centered shows such as \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>, Amazon Prime Video’s \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> and ABC’s \u003cem>Black-ish\u003c/em> right next to key nods for accomplished Black performers such as \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/949236178/bridgerton-is-a-delicious-raunchy-tale-of-1-very-hot-family\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>\u003c/a>’s Regé-Jean Page and Uzo Adubo from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010891216/uzo-aduba-in-treatment-hbo-orange-is-the-new-black-crazy-eyes-netflix\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>In Treatment\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is like a dream come true. Best of all, the Emmys recognized Michaela Coel and her groundbreaking series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/06/07/871472968/i-may-destroy-you-is-hbo-s-new-unforgettable-unmissable-drama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>I May Destroy You\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003c/em>, when the Golden Globes did not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it is time for the Emmys—and the TV industry at large—to spread that wealth beyond Black performers and Black-centered shows. Yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rosie Perez, Anthony Ramos, Bowen Yang and Phillipa Soo all got key nominations. But if Disney+’s version of \u003cem>Hamilton\u003c/em> hadn’t been eligible, many of those nominations would not have occurred. So I’m hopeful this is a first step toward bringing even more—and more well-rounded—diversity to big Hollywood awards nominations.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Geeks rejoice! Superhero and genre shows get more love than ever\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>True enough, \u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em> often soaked up loads of nominations back in the day. But this year, several shows in the horror/superhero space, so often overlooked by major Hollywood awards, got love in major categories, including \u003cem>WandaVision\u003c/em>, \u003ci>The Mandalorian\u003c/i>, \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em> and Amazon Prime Video’s dark superhero satire, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/09/02/908811190/the-boys-return-for-a-2nd-season-even-more-twisted-than-the-1st\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (which was the biggest surprise for me). We saw powerhouse studio Marvel get its first Emmy nominations this year, which likely means this is just a taste of future geekdom to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Saturday Night Live’ remains an influential powerhouse\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Every few years, a snarky critic writes an epitaph for this annoyingly inconsistent-yet-often-brilliant sketch comedy landmark. And then \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> racks up the Emmy nominations to prove just how premature those rumors of death truly are. It’s not just that its 21 nominations beat comedy favorite \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em> by one nod; it had a significant presence in supporting and guest acting comedy categories. Kenan Thompson even managed to snag a nomination as best lead actor in a comedy for his sitcom, \u003cem>Kenan\u003c/em>, while still starring as a major player on \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em>—where he was also nominated for best supporting actor in a comedy.[aside postID='arts_13897829']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of its domination this year came from reduced competition in the comedy space, for sure. (The pandemic seems to have cleared out more comedy shows than dramas.) But \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> also pulled off some brilliant shows when the entire cast and writing staff were working remotely from home, following those episodes by welcoming back a live audience well before vaccines were widely available. Not bad for a series nearly ready for its own AARP card.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fewer notable snubs, but intense competition made some inevitable\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>No matter what was nominated as best limited series, there were bound to be major shows left out—just because the competition in this space has grown immensely, thanks to big-name stars signing on for projects designed to last just one season. This includes series such as Kate Winslet’s \u003cem>Mare of Easttown\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it was unfortunate that Steve McQueen’s ode to Black immigrants in Britain, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/936635676/small-axe-a-searing-portrait-of-racism-and-a-communitys-will-to-survive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Small Axe\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> was left out of the category, along with Showtime’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/05/920311084/ethan-hawke-on-playing-john-brown-early-fame-and-making-a-friend-of-fear\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Good Lord Bird\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> HBO Max’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/02/19/968381311/its-a-sin-brings-a-lost-generation-of-gay-men-to-life\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>It’s a Sin\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and HBO’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/25/926843328/the-undoing-review-hbo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Undoing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Similarly, \u003cem>Undoing\u003c/em> star Nicole Kidman’s lack of an acting nomination had to be one of the highest-profile acting snubs, along with Ethan Hawke from \u003cem>The Good Lord Bird\u003c/em>. And the Emmys also seemed to turn their back on the third season of Netflix’s \u003cem>Master of None\u003c/em>, passing up the opportunity to honor Naomi Ackie and Lena Waithe’s portrayal of a crumbling marriage. This snub made me wonder if onetime series star Aziz Ansari’s #MeToo controversy had an impact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And much as I loved seeing the final season of \u003cem>Conan\u003c/em> get nominated as best variety talk series and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/31/907762048/black-lady-sketch-show-is-tv-we-d-never-seen-before-says-dime-davis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>A Black Lady Sketch Show\u003c/em>\u003c/a> nominated for best variety sketch series, Emmy dropped the ball by not showing love for NBC’s \u003cem>Late Night With Seth Meyers\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Amber Ruffin Show\u003c/em> on Peacock in those categories. (\u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em> got a directing nod, and \u003cem>Amber Ruffin\u003c/em> was nominated for writing.) It’s time to expand these categories a bit so more great work can earn its due.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winners for the 73rd Emmy Awards will be announced during a ceremony aired and streamed Sept. 19 on CBS and Paramount+, hosted by Cedric the Entertainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Copyright 2021 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This year’s Emmy nominations cover a time when the coronavirus pandemic turned the TV industry upside down. So it makes sense that the shows and performances announced Tuesday might include some choices that are a bit … unconventional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Netflix’s continuation of \u003cem>The Karate Kid\u003c/em> franchise, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/05/02/607087244/a-crane-kick-of-nostalgia-right-to-the-throat-cobra-kai\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Cobra Kai\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, nominated as best comedy series? \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/16/901256615/lovecraft-country-facing-monsters-and-a-monstrous-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a series that was essentially canceled by HBO when it decided not to make a second season, racking up 18 nominations, including best drama series? Netflix’s middling comedy \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/02/919086574/emily-in-paris-is-a-painless-and-pretty-frolic-and-that-s-about-it\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Emily in Paris\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, widely ridiculed for snagging a Golden Globe nomination this year, also nominated for a best comedy series Emmy?\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thankfully, the nominations announced this year were mostly devoid of head-scratching choices and did an admirable job of reflecting both promising newcomers and old masters during a period when lockdowns threatened to cripple the industry. It’s a heartening sign that it will take more than a pandemic to wipe out innovation and quality work in today’s TV universe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five more takeaways I had from the nominations for the 73rd Emmy Awards:\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Streaming services are more dominant than ever\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Sure, the most nominated media platform is HBO with 130 nods. But it only got there by including the nominations for streaming corporate sibling HBO Max with its total. Even so, streaming giant Netflix had the second-largest number of nominations at 129, and upstart Disney+ landed in third place with 71.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A peek at the most-nominated shows reveals Netflix’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/11/933785969/season-4-of-the-crown-introduces-princess-diana-and-more-juicy-drama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Crown\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and Disney+’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/30/929505050/return-of-the-mandalorian-and-baby-yoda\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Mandalorian\u003c/em>\u003c/a> tied with 24 nominations, followed quickly by Disney+’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/973989043/wandavision-wraps-a-season-that-was-never-what-it-seemed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>WandaVision\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (23) and Hulu’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759437597/margaret-atwood-on-the-enduring-resonance-of-the-handmaid-s-tale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Handmaid’s Tale\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (21). Indeed, among the top 10 most-nominated shows, just three—NBC’s \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em>, along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/30/1001577416/mare-of-easttown-your-finale-questions-answered\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Mare of Easttown\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em> on HBO–were not created by streaming services.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Lots of diversity, though still often focused on Black people\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It was wonderful to see \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/06/1000646372/farewell-to-pose-which-fused-grief-and-joy-right-up-to-the-finale\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Pose\u003c/em>\u003c/a> star Mj Rodriguez nominated as best actress in a drama, recognizing her powerhouse performance on that show with the first lead acting nomination for a transgender person. And for a critic like me, who has advocated for ethnic diversity in TV for decades, seeing nominations for ambitious, Black-centered shows such as \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>, Amazon Prime Video’s \u003cem>The Underground Railroad\u003c/em> and ABC’s \u003cem>Black-ish\u003c/em> right next to key nods for accomplished Black performers such as \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/949236178/bridgerton-is-a-delicious-raunchy-tale-of-1-very-hot-family\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>\u003c/a>’s Regé-Jean Page and Uzo Adubo from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/28/1010891216/uzo-aduba-in-treatment-hbo-orange-is-the-new-black-crazy-eyes-netflix\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>In Treatment\u003c/em>\u003c/a> is like a dream come true. Best of all, the Emmys recognized Michaela Coel and her groundbreaking series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/06/07/871472968/i-may-destroy-you-is-hbo-s-new-unforgettable-unmissable-drama\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>I May Destroy You\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>\u003c/em>, when the Golden Globes did not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it is time for the Emmys—and the TV industry at large—to spread that wealth beyond Black performers and Black-centered shows. Yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rosie Perez, Anthony Ramos, Bowen Yang and Phillipa Soo all got key nominations. But if Disney+’s version of \u003cem>Hamilton\u003c/em> hadn’t been eligible, many of those nominations would not have occurred. So I’m hopeful this is a first step toward bringing even more—and more well-rounded—diversity to big Hollywood awards nominations.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Geeks rejoice! Superhero and genre shows get more love than ever\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>True enough, \u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em> often soaked up loads of nominations back in the day. But this year, several shows in the horror/superhero space, so often overlooked by major Hollywood awards, got love in major categories, including \u003cem>WandaVision\u003c/em>, \u003ci>The Mandalorian\u003c/i>, \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em> and Amazon Prime Video’s dark superhero satire, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/09/02/908811190/the-boys-return-for-a-2nd-season-even-more-twisted-than-the-1st\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Boys\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (which was the biggest surprise for me). We saw powerhouse studio Marvel get its first Emmy nominations this year, which likely means this is just a taste of future geekdom to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘Saturday Night Live’ remains an influential powerhouse\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Every few years, a snarky critic writes an epitaph for this annoyingly inconsistent-yet-often-brilliant sketch comedy landmark. And then \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> racks up the Emmy nominations to prove just how premature those rumors of death truly are. It’s not just that its 21 nominations beat comedy favorite \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em> by one nod; it had a significant presence in supporting and guest acting comedy categories. Kenan Thompson even managed to snag a nomination as best lead actor in a comedy for his sitcom, \u003cem>Kenan\u003c/em>, while still starring as a major player on \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em>—where he was also nominated for best supporting actor in a comedy.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of its domination this year came from reduced competition in the comedy space, for sure. (The pandemic seems to have cleared out more comedy shows than dramas.) But \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> also pulled off some brilliant shows when the entire cast and writing staff were working remotely from home, following those episodes by welcoming back a live audience well before vaccines were widely available. Not bad for a series nearly ready for its own AARP card.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fewer notable snubs, but intense competition made some inevitable\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>No matter what was nominated as best limited series, there were bound to be major shows left out—just because the competition in this space has grown immensely, thanks to big-name stars signing on for projects designed to last just one season. This includes series such as Kate Winslet’s \u003cem>Mare of Easttown\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, it was unfortunate that Steve McQueen’s ode to Black immigrants in Britain, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/936635676/small-axe-a-searing-portrait-of-racism-and-a-communitys-will-to-survive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Small Axe\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> was left out of the category, along with Showtime’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/05/920311084/ethan-hawke-on-playing-john-brown-early-fame-and-making-a-friend-of-fear\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Good Lord Bird\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> HBO Max’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/02/19/968381311/its-a-sin-brings-a-lost-generation-of-gay-men-to-life\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>It’s a Sin\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and HBO’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/10/25/926843328/the-undoing-review-hbo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Undoing\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Similarly, \u003cem>Undoing\u003c/em> star Nicole Kidman’s lack of an acting nomination had to be one of the highest-profile acting snubs, along with Ethan Hawke from \u003cem>The Good Lord Bird\u003c/em>. And the Emmys also seemed to turn their back on the third season of Netflix’s \u003cem>Master of None\u003c/em>, passing up the opportunity to honor Naomi Ackie and Lena Waithe’s portrayal of a crumbling marriage. This snub made me wonder if onetime series star Aziz Ansari’s #MeToo controversy had an impact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And much as I loved seeing the final season of \u003cem>Conan\u003c/em> get nominated as best variety talk series and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/31/907762048/black-lady-sketch-show-is-tv-we-d-never-seen-before-says-dime-davis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>A Black Lady Sketch Show\u003c/em>\u003c/a> nominated for best variety sketch series, Emmy dropped the ball by not showing love for NBC’s \u003cem>Late Night With Seth Meyers\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Amber Ruffin Show\u003c/em> on Peacock in those categories. (\u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em> got a directing nod, and \u003cem>Amber Ruffin\u003c/em> was nominated for writing.) It’s time to expand these categories a bit so more great work can earn its due.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Winners for the 73rd Emmy Awards will be announced during a ceremony aired and streamed Sept. 19 on CBS and Paramount+, hosted by Cedric the Entertainer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Copyright 2021 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "What's Making Us Happy: A Guide For Your Weekend Watching, Listening and Reading",
"headTitle": "What’s Making Us Happy: A Guide For Your Weekend Watching, Listening and Reading | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>It’s been a hot week full of court documents and news drops. And now, we’re ready for a calmer and cooler break with time to breathe. And fortunately, we’ve got recommendations for podcasts, binge-able television and good reading for your holiday weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/80991848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Sex/Life,\u003c/em>\u003c/a> Netflix\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Netflix has a show called \u003cem>Sex/Life \u003c/em>and the reason I am interested in it is that it is yet another example of Netflix’s strange positioning in the streaming wars. It’s sort of like if you took\u003cem> Fifty Shades of Grey \u003c/em>but actually put sex in it, but then also overlaid a Lifetime movie on that. It has that feeling of softcore Showtime from the ’80s. It’s funny as hell, and campy, and silly… and you know, they don’t make movies like that anymore—your \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108162/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Sliver\u003c/em>s \u003c/a>and your \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103772/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Basic Instinct\u003c/em>s\u003c/a>—your sex thriller or your disaffected housewife infidelity film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ’90s had a whole world of that and Netflix is weirdly jumping in that pool and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe streaming is bringing back a diversity of programming—like all these little genres that kind of fell away under the Marvel steamroller. So I can’t recommend \u003cem>Sex/Life,\u003c/em> necessarily—but I’m happy that the streaming wars are still bringing us new things. I like that we’re in that moment. \u003cem>– Audie Cornish\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x580mowu5Gs\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Jean Smart Renaissance\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>What’s making me happy is the Jean Smart-ification of HBO. The fact that she stars in the amazing comedy\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996117911/hacks-a-comedic-generational-divide-gets-bridged-jean-smartly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> \u003cem>Hacks.\u003c/em>\u003c/a> She’s got a juicy, completely different role in the drama \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/30/1001577416/mare-of-easttown-your-finale-questions-answered\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Mare of Easttown\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She killed it in \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/770754377/who-watches-this-watchmen-i-will-and-you-should\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Watchmen\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Jean Smart has been doing the work for decades. I was a fan back in the \u003cem>Designing Women\u003c/em> days. She was incredible in the season of \u003cem>Fargo\u003c/em> where she played the mother of a Jewish organized crime family. She is \u003cem>such\u003c/em> a good actor with such a wide range. And right now she’s everywhere and I’m thrilled about it. Give me more Jean Smart—comedy, drama, thriller. I don’t care. All of it. I’ll take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT1qxLIMW8Y&t=81s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amazing YouTube video\u003c/a> in which the comedian Megan Stalter—who has a bit part in\u003cem> Hacks\u003c/em> and is also having a moment—interviews all the members of the cast of \u003cem>Hacks\u003c/em> and just bulldozes them and does her thing and there is a genius moment where she’s interviewing Jean Smart and it becomes clear that she is confusing Jean Smart with Kim Cattrall from \u003cem>Sex in the City\u003c/em>. And to see Jean Smart’s reaction in the moment, it’s perfect comedy.\u003cem> — Ari Shapiro\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpE4893PxqE\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/jay.nedaj/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@jay.nedaj\u003c/a> on Instagram\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>There’s this guy named Jay Nedaj on Instagram. He has this cornucopia of wigs and outfits, and I came across this video he did where he was reenacting ’90s girl group videos and all the tropes of those videos—the wind blowing the hair and the shifting, the posing they do in \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgd6MccwZc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“Say My Name.”\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lately he has been doing these great videos, to try and get the attention of Beyoncé. He is just taking clips from her various live performances and he’s in his living room—sometimes his dog is in the background just being like, “What are you doing?” And he’s just lip-syncing these moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It really just makes my heart warm. I love seeing all of the different outfits and the commitment. It’s desperate and it’s also just filled with so much love. I highly recommend if you’re a Beyoncé fan and also love random parodies of Black movies and TV shows and Black music—follow\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/jay.nedaj/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Jay.nedaj. \u003c/a>\u003cem>— Aisha Harris\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CQuf18ajNIr/\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>New ways to discover music at NPR.org and Arooj Aftab’s album, \u003cem>Vulture Prince\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>NPR Music just launched a new blog called\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/1002643619/now-playing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Now Playing \u003c/a>where you can get quick recommendations of new songs. We’re trying to take the fire hydrant of new music and turn it into a fire hose of new music. I’ve been contributing to that—everybody at NPR Music has—and there’s tons of great music there already.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also just launched a package with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/30/1011549351/npr-musics-favorite-albums-of-2021-so-far\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the best music of the year so far, \u003c/a>which gave me a chance to finally write about my favorite album of 2021—\u003cem>Vulture Prince \u003c/em>from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/989059064/arooj-aftab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Arooj Aftab\u003c/a>. She was born in Pakistan, and is based in Brooklyn, and she’s kind of reimagined South Asian music. She grew up listening to singers like\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15892051/nusrat-fateh-ali-khan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan\u003c/a>, and she creates these absolutely hypnotic and breathtaking songs. I have been marinating in this album for days, and days, and days now. —\u003cem> Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCUFC-ULdOk\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>And a couple more bonus picks from Linda Holmes:\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://theplotthickens.tcm.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Plot Thickens\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> podcast, with Julie Salamon\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>Julie Salamon’s book \u003cem>The Devil’s Candy\u003c/em>, about the making of the movie \u003cem>The Bonfire of the Vanities\u003c/em>, is a favorite of mine. I was delighted to hear that Salamon herself was making and narrating a new season of the Turner Classic Movies podcast \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plot-thickens/id1504732282\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Plot Thickens\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which tells the story in podcast form. The first episode is entertaining—and just as juicy as the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Ryan_Ken_Acts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>@Ryan_Ken_Acts\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> on Twitter\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nOne of my favorite recent Twitter follows is \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Ryan_Ken_Acts?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ryan Ken\u003c/a>, a master of the “looks easy to get right, is actually hard to get right” captioned video comedy format. Their stuff is often not just funny, but provocative and insightful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYNHTDQuvpMLCewEAAAAG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>All That Glitters,\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> HBO Max\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Last weekend, I binge-watched the HBO Max (originally BBC) show \u003cem>All That Glitters\u003c/em>, which is meant to be the jewelry-making equivalent of \u003cem>The Great British Baking Show \u003c/em>or \u003cem>The Great Pottery Throw Down \u003c/em>or the glass-blowing show \u003cem>Blown Away\u003c/em>. While it didn’t thrill me quite as much as some comparable programs do, it was a very enjoyable afternoon of viewing, and I know a lot more about bracelets than I used to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBPzxmxf9ig\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36894026/john-benjamin-hickey-pride-interview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>“John Benjamin Hickey Is Still Figuring Out What It Means to Be an ‘Elder’ “\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> by Dave Holmes, \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Esquire\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe terrific actor John Benjamin Hickey \u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36894026/john-benjamin-hickey-pride-interview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked to the terrific writer\u003c/a> Dave Holmes for \u003cem>Esquire\u003c/em> about getting older as a gay man, and their conversation is a great read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There’s more where this came from! Five days a week, \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510282/pop-culture-happy-hour\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Pop Culture Happy Hour\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> serves you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, books, videogames and more. \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510282/pop-culture-happy-hour\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Subscribe here >>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\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=What%27s+Making+Us+Happy%3A+A+Guide+For+Your+Weekend+Watching%2C+Listening+And+Reading&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s been a hot week full of court documents and news drops. And now, we’re ready for a calmer and cooler break with time to breathe. And fortunately, we’ve got recommendations for podcasts, binge-able television and good reading for your holiday weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/80991848\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Sex/Life,\u003c/em>\u003c/a> Netflix\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Netflix has a show called \u003cem>Sex/Life \u003c/em>and the reason I am interested in it is that it is yet another example of Netflix’s strange positioning in the streaming wars. It’s sort of like if you took\u003cem> Fifty Shades of Grey \u003c/em>but actually put sex in it, but then also overlaid a Lifetime movie on that. It has that feeling of softcore Showtime from the ’80s. It’s funny as hell, and campy, and silly… and you know, they don’t make movies like that anymore—your \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108162/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Sliver\u003c/em>s \u003c/a>and your \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103772/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Basic Instinct\u003c/em>s\u003c/a>—your sex thriller or your disaffected housewife infidelity film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ’90s had a whole world of that and Netflix is weirdly jumping in that pool and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe streaming is bringing back a diversity of programming—like all these little genres that kind of fell away under the Marvel steamroller. So I can’t recommend \u003cem>Sex/Life,\u003c/em> necessarily—but I’m happy that the streaming wars are still bringing us new things. I like that we’re in that moment. \u003cem>– Audie Cornish\u003c/em>\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/x580mowu5Gs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/x580mowu5Gs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch3>The Jean Smart Renaissance\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>What’s making me happy is the Jean Smart-ification of HBO. The fact that she stars in the amazing comedy\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996117911/hacks-a-comedic-generational-divide-gets-bridged-jean-smartly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> \u003cem>Hacks.\u003c/em>\u003c/a> She’s got a juicy, completely different role in the drama \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/05/30/1001577416/mare-of-easttown-your-finale-questions-answered\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Mare of Easttown\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She killed it in \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/770754377/who-watches-this-watchmen-i-will-and-you-should\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Watchmen\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Jean Smart has been doing the work for decades. I was a fan back in the \u003cem>Designing Women\u003c/em> days. She was incredible in the season of \u003cem>Fargo\u003c/em> where she played the mother of a Jewish organized crime family. She is \u003cem>such\u003c/em> a good actor with such a wide range. And right now she’s everywhere and I’m thrilled about it. Give me more Jean Smart—comedy, drama, thriller. I don’t care. All of it. I’ll take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT1qxLIMW8Y&t=81s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amazing YouTube video\u003c/a> in which the comedian Megan Stalter—who has a bit part in\u003cem> Hacks\u003c/em> and is also having a moment—interviews all the members of the cast of \u003cem>Hacks\u003c/em> and just bulldozes them and does her thing and there is a genius moment where she’s interviewing Jean Smart and it becomes clear that she is confusing Jean Smart with Kim Cattrall from \u003cem>Sex in the City\u003c/em>. And to see Jean Smart’s reaction in the moment, it’s perfect comedy.\u003cem> — Ari Shapiro\u003c/em>\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/QpE4893PxqE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/QpE4893PxqE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch3>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/jay.nedaj/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@jay.nedaj\u003c/a> on Instagram\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>There’s this guy named Jay Nedaj on Instagram. He has this cornucopia of wigs and outfits, and I came across this video he did where he was reenacting ’90s girl group videos and all the tropes of those videos—the wind blowing the hair and the shifting, the posing they do in \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgd6MccwZc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“Say My Name.”\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lately he has been doing these great videos, to try and get the attention of Beyoncé. He is just taking clips from her various live performances and he’s in his living room—sometimes his dog is in the background just being like, “What are you doing?” And he’s just lip-syncing these moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It really just makes my heart warm. I love seeing all of the different outfits and the commitment. It’s desperate and it’s also just filled with so much love. I highly recommend if you’re a Beyoncé fan and also love random parodies of Black movies and TV shows and Black music—follow\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/jay.nedaj/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Jay.nedaj. \u003c/a>\u003cem>— Aisha Harris\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003ch3>New ways to discover music at NPR.org and Arooj Aftab’s album, \u003cem>Vulture Prince\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>NPR Music just launched a new blog called\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/1002643619/now-playing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Now Playing \u003c/a>where you can get quick recommendations of new songs. We’re trying to take the fire hydrant of new music and turn it into a fire hose of new music. I’ve been contributing to that—everybody at NPR Music has—and there’s tons of great music there already.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also just launched a package with \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2021/06/30/1011549351/npr-musics-favorite-albums-of-2021-so-far\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the best music of the year so far, \u003c/a>which gave me a chance to finally write about my favorite album of 2021—\u003cem>Vulture Prince \u003c/em>from \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/989059064/arooj-aftab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Arooj Aftab\u003c/a>. She was born in Pakistan, and is based in Brooklyn, and she’s kind of reimagined South Asian music. She grew up listening to singers like\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15892051/nusrat-fateh-ali-khan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan\u003c/a>, and she creates these absolutely hypnotic and breathtaking songs. I have been marinating in this album for days, and days, and days now. —\u003cem> Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\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/oCUFC-ULdOk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/oCUFC-ULdOk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch3>And a couple more bonus picks from Linda Holmes:\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://theplotthickens.tcm.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Plot Thickens\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> podcast, with Julie Salamon\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>Julie Salamon’s book \u003cem>The Devil’s Candy\u003c/em>, about the making of the movie \u003cem>The Bonfire of the Vanities\u003c/em>, is a favorite of mine. I was delighted to hear that Salamon herself was making and narrating a new season of the Turner Classic Movies podcast \u003ca href=\"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plot-thickens/id1504732282\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Plot Thickens\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which tells the story in podcast form. The first episode is entertaining—and just as juicy as the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Ryan_Ken_Acts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>@Ryan_Ken_Acts\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> on Twitter\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nOne of my favorite recent Twitter follows is \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Ryan_Ken_Acts?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ryan Ken\u003c/a>, a master of the “looks easy to get right, is actually hard to get right” captioned video comedy format. Their stuff is often not just funny, but provocative and insightful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYNHTDQuvpMLCewEAAAAG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>\u003cem>All That Glitters,\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> HBO Max\u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>Last weekend, I binge-watched the HBO Max (originally BBC) show \u003cem>All That Glitters\u003c/em>, which is meant to be the jewelry-making equivalent of \u003cem>The Great British Baking Show \u003c/em>or \u003cem>The Great Pottery Throw Down \u003c/em>or the glass-blowing show \u003cem>Blown Away\u003c/em>. While it didn’t thrill me quite as much as some comparable programs do, it was a very enjoyable afternoon of viewing, and I know a lot more about bracelets than I used to.\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/MBPzxmxf9ig'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/MBPzxmxf9ig'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36894026/john-benjamin-hickey-pride-interview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>“John Benjamin Hickey Is Still Figuring Out What It Means to Be an ‘Elder’ “\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> by Dave Holmes, \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Esquire\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\nThe terrific actor John Benjamin Hickey \u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a36894026/john-benjamin-hickey-pride-interview/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked to the terrific writer\u003c/a> Dave Holmes for \u003cem>Esquire\u003c/em> about getting older as a gay man, and their conversation is a great read.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There’s more where this came from! Five days a week, \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510282/pop-culture-happy-hour\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Pop Culture Happy Hour\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> serves you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, books, videogames and more. \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510282/pop-culture-happy-hour\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>Subscribe here >>\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\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=What%27s+Making+Us+Happy%3A+A+Guide+For+Your+Weekend+Watching%2C+Listening+And+Reading&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The 'Friends,' Ranked, From Ross to Best",
"headTitle": "The ‘Friends,’ Ranked, From Ross to Best | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Sometimes, suspense is overwhelming. Who would win that first season of \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>? Who would win the presidential election? Will the bread dough rise? Will it rain on your birthday party?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suspense was not overwhelming when we asked our listeners to rank the friends of \u003cem>Friends \u003c/em>from best to worst, at least in one regard: We suspected Ross would come in last and be named Worst Friend. And it was true. Let’s talk about the way our listeners ranked the Friends, beginning with Ross and working our way up to your BFoFF—Best Friend on \u003cem>Friends \u003c/em>Forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[Just a note: As it turned out, these calculations weren’t complex. The ranking of who received the most votes for Best Friend was the exact opposite of the ranking of who received the most votes for Worst Friend. So Ross received both the most Worst Friend votes and the fewest Best Friend votes, and so on.]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>6. Ross\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_106765']Ross got very mopey over the show’s ten seasons, and he developed a temper at one point and started yelling at his co-workers, and he said Rachel’s name during his wedding to Emily, and it took him forever to stop resenting Susan for being married to Carol, and so forth and so on. But I must say, I was still impressed to see that Ross received 76 percent of the thousands of votes for Worst Friend that came in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s so many! That means that if the other five Friends were statistically similar to our listeners, 3.8 of them would have thought he was the worst one in the group! Hopefully, Monica wouldn’t, since that’s his sister, so out of the four Friends he’s not related to, only .2 people—like, just Phoebe’s arm—picked anybody other than Ross as Worst Friend! Maybe he should have abandoned the \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n67RYI_0sc0&ab_channel=TheGodAccount\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pivot Couch\u003c/a> earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898884\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898884\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-800x524.jpg\" alt=\"A pregnant Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) lies in a hospital bed, with Ross (David Schwimmer) at her bedside..\" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-800x524.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-1020x668.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-768x503.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-1536x1007.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-2048x1342.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-1920x1258.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Ross (David Schwimmer). \u003ccite>(Warner Bros. Television/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>5. Rachel\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>This one surprised me a little more! I grew to appreciate Rachel’s goofy sense of humor, but it’s true that in the beginning, she was presented as spoiled and self-interested, obsessed with shopping and buying and reluctant to abandon her father’s credit cards. Over time, I think Jennifer Aniston’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqAWNVHBwo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">offbeat comic energy\u003c/a> gave Rachel a highly necessary jolt of strangeness, and I will never tire of her warm friendship with Joey, which led to such highlights as their exchanging their favorite books. Putting \u003cem>Little Women \u003c/em>in the freezer was maybe the most Joey thing to ever happen, and it was Rachel who understood best that he needed to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>4. Monica\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>I think Monica fell into a little bit of the TV writing problem in which competence, especially in women, is easily exaggerated until it becomes a kind of neurotic unpleasantness (the same thing happened to Rebecca, played by Kirstie Alley, on \u003cem>Cheers\u003c/em>). In the early going, Monica was the nurturer, the mom, the host, the adult. Over time, especially after she and Chandler were married (…spoiler alert?), she got kind of mean and critical in a different way I enjoyed a lot less. I think early Monica would have fared better if she hadn’t been saddled with the problems of later Monica, much as I think later Rachel would have done better in our vote without the limitations of early Rachel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look, it’s just science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mQea59u5hA\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>3. Joey\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Joey became, for my money, the big beating heart of this show by the time it ended. It absolutely didn’t have to be that way—he began as a kind of grody womanizer who had more hair than heart. But the sillier the character got, and the more they discovered Matt LeBlanc’s extraordinary \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nt9mS2j4Uc&ab_channel=GowthamRajBM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talent for face-pulling\u003c/a>, the more Joey became a big lovable doofus who I prooooooobably would have ranked above Chandler, if it were up to me. He’s probably the character who changed for the better the most, and if I had to pick one of these people to actually know in real life, there’s a good chance I’d pick Joey. He has foolishness and insensitivity in him, but no meanness.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>2. Chandler\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>I was nearly a contemporary of these characters, which means that when Chandler was a twentysomething sarcastic joke-maker who seemed a little allergic to sincerity, I was a twentysomething goober with a soft spot I couldn’t shake for sarcastic joke-makers who seemed a little allergic to sincerity. Chandler was my favorite in the early going, because I liked his jokes the best. But more and more, I’ve come to appreciate the perspective of Phoebe’s psychiatrist boyfriend, played by Fisher Stevens, who was presented as irredeemably annoying but who nailed Chandler’s personality when he said, “You’re so funny! I wouldn’t want to be there when the laughter stops.” Chandler’s position here, near the top, is probably a product of his sharp wit and the degree to which his sense of humor came to define the show’s voice, in spite of what I would argue was eventually his exhausting and relentless funny-guy neediness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDqE2MZiXCY\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>1. Phoebe\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13897888']Of course it’s Phoebe! Phoebe didn’t nail down Best Friend with quite the emphatic stomping that Ross nailed down Worst Friend; she received 50 percent of the vote for Best Friend. But given that there are six Friends to choose from, it’s still a clear and resounding victory. Phoebe was always the gentlest and the nicest of these people, despite what had been a tough upbringing and a lot of pain. She found love with a couple of different lovely partners, including Hank Azaria’s David and then Paul Rudd’s wonderful Mike Hannigan, and nobody deserved true happiness more. She carried triplets for her brother, she played the guitar, and she would do anything she could for any of these goofballs, even when they were ridiculous. What’s not to love?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast panel includes Barrie Hardymon, Sam Sanders, and Bedatri D. Choudhury. The audio was produced by Jared M. Gair, and edited by Jessica Reedy. \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+%27Friends%2C%27+Ranked%2C+From+Ross+To+Best&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sometimes, suspense is overwhelming. Who would win that first season of \u003cem>Survivor\u003c/em>? Who would win the presidential election? Will the bread dough rise? Will it rain on your birthday party?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suspense was not overwhelming when we asked our listeners to rank the friends of \u003cem>Friends \u003c/em>from best to worst, at least in one regard: We suspected Ross would come in last and be named Worst Friend. And it was true. Let’s talk about the way our listeners ranked the Friends, beginning with Ross and working our way up to your BFoFF—Best Friend on \u003cem>Friends \u003c/em>Forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[Just a note: As it turned out, these calculations weren’t complex. The ranking of who received the most votes for Best Friend was the exact opposite of the ranking of who received the most votes for Worst Friend. So Ross received both the most Worst Friend votes and the fewest Best Friend votes, and so on.]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>6. Ross\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Ross got very mopey over the show’s ten seasons, and he developed a temper at one point and started yelling at his co-workers, and he said Rachel’s name during his wedding to Emily, and it took him forever to stop resenting Susan for being married to Carol, and so forth and so on. But I must say, I was still impressed to see that Ross received 76 percent of the thousands of votes for Worst Friend that came in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s so many! That means that if the other five Friends were statistically similar to our listeners, 3.8 of them would have thought he was the worst one in the group! Hopefully, Monica wouldn’t, since that’s his sister, so out of the four Friends he’s not related to, only .2 people—like, just Phoebe’s arm—picked anybody other than Ross as Worst Friend! Maybe he should have abandoned the \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n67RYI_0sc0&ab_channel=TheGodAccount\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pivot Couch\u003c/a> earlier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898884\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13898884\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-800x524.jpg\" alt=\"A pregnant Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) lies in a hospital bed, with Ross (David Schwimmer) at her bedside..\" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-800x524.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-1020x668.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-768x503.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-1536x1007.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-2048x1342.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/gettyimages-1132327_enl-ca60cd2925807382c606aae4620a08d83fabda91-1920x1258.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) and Ross (David Schwimmer). \u003ccite>(Warner Bros. Television/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch3>5. Rachel\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>This one surprised me a little more! I grew to appreciate Rachel’s goofy sense of humor, but it’s true that in the beginning, she was presented as spoiled and self-interested, obsessed with shopping and buying and reluctant to abandon her father’s credit cards. Over time, I think Jennifer Aniston’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqAWNVHBwo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">offbeat comic energy\u003c/a> gave Rachel a highly necessary jolt of strangeness, and I will never tire of her warm friendship with Joey, which led to such highlights as their exchanging their favorite books. Putting \u003cem>Little Women \u003c/em>in the freezer was maybe the most Joey thing to ever happen, and it was Rachel who understood best that he needed to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>4. Monica\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>I think Monica fell into a little bit of the TV writing problem in which competence, especially in women, is easily exaggerated until it becomes a kind of neurotic unpleasantness (the same thing happened to Rebecca, played by Kirstie Alley, on \u003cem>Cheers\u003c/em>). In the early going, Monica was the nurturer, the mom, the host, the adult. Over time, especially after she and Chandler were married (…spoiler alert?), she got kind of mean and critical in a different way I enjoyed a lot less. I think early Monica would have fared better if she hadn’t been saddled with the problems of later Monica, much as I think later Rachel would have done better in our vote without the limitations of early Rachel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look, it’s just science.\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/8mQea59u5hA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/8mQea59u5hA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch3>3. Joey\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Joey became, for my money, the big beating heart of this show by the time it ended. It absolutely didn’t have to be that way—he began as a kind of grody womanizer who had more hair than heart. But the sillier the character got, and the more they discovered Matt LeBlanc’s extraordinary \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nt9mS2j4Uc&ab_channel=GowthamRajBM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talent for face-pulling\u003c/a>, the more Joey became a big lovable doofus who I prooooooobably would have ranked above Chandler, if it were up to me. He’s probably the character who changed for the better the most, and if I had to pick one of these people to actually know in real life, there’s a good chance I’d pick Joey. He has foolishness and insensitivity in him, but no meanness.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>2. Chandler\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>I was nearly a contemporary of these characters, which means that when Chandler was a twentysomething sarcastic joke-maker who seemed a little allergic to sincerity, I was a twentysomething goober with a soft spot I couldn’t shake for sarcastic joke-makers who seemed a little allergic to sincerity. Chandler was my favorite in the early going, because I liked his jokes the best. But more and more, I’ve come to appreciate the perspective of Phoebe’s psychiatrist boyfriend, played by Fisher Stevens, who was presented as irredeemably annoying but who nailed Chandler’s personality when he said, “You’re so funny! I wouldn’t want to be there when the laughter stops.” Chandler’s position here, near the top, is probably a product of his sharp wit and the degree to which his sense of humor came to define the show’s voice, in spite of what I would argue was eventually his exhausting and relentless funny-guy neediness.\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/pDqE2MZiXCY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/pDqE2MZiXCY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003ch3>1. Phoebe\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Of course it’s Phoebe! Phoebe didn’t nail down Best Friend with quite the emphatic stomping that Ross nailed down Worst Friend; she received 50 percent of the vote for Best Friend. But given that there are six Friends to choose from, it’s still a clear and resounding victory. Phoebe was always the gentlest and the nicest of these people, despite what had been a tough upbringing and a lot of pain. She found love with a couple of different lovely partners, including Hank Azaria’s David and then Paul Rudd’s wonderful Mike Hannigan, and nobody deserved true happiness more. She carried triplets for her brother, she played the guitar, and she would do anything she could for any of these goofballs, even when they were ridiculous. What’s not to love?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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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": "A Comedic Generational Divide Gets Bridged in HBO's 'Hacks'",
"headTitle": "A Comedic Generational Divide Gets Bridged in HBO’s ‘Hacks’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There exists, in some alternate universe, a version of the new HBO Max series \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>that is spikier, faster, meaner—and as a result, considerably thinner, less generous and less rewarding—than the one that premieres today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Happily, this one’s pretty great, because it achieves and maintains a delicate balance born out of: 1. Knowing its subject and 2. A determination to treat its two lead characters fairly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a make-or-break moment in the pilot that establishes that balance, that confidence and that generosity all at once: Ava (Hannah Einbinder), a successful young comedy writer fallen on hard times, has been forced by her manager (co-creator Paul W. Downs) to meet legendary standup comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) at her Vegas home. Deborah’s Vegas residency is threatened by a casino owner looking to reach a younger audience than Deborah draws, so she reluctantly agrees to the meet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13895500']The battle lines are drawn: Deborah is a comic of the Joan Rivers generation and mindset—her act is full of bawdy zingers at her ex-husband and winking self-deprecation at the prospect of aging. Every joke builds to a punchline that’s been honed to practiced perfection over the years. She’s a consummate pro, even if her references are getting rusty (she’s still going to the Anna Nicole Smith well, for example). There’s an edge to her comedy, sure, but it’s not one so sharp that it threatens to cut any of the thousands of tourists that show up to see her shows between hitting the nickel slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ava’s comedy is weirder, more conceptual. Younger. Birthed and fueled by social media, she sees traditional punchlines as a marker of hackdom; they are things to be fled, in favor of, say, “a 25-tweet thread from the perspective of my Lexapro.” She’s also got a set of hackles that get dependably raised by Deborah’s coarser, less enlightened jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show is teetering on knife-edge, in this scene. You can imagine it going one of two ways: Either it adopts Ava’s point of view and proceeds to depict Deborah as a cartoon of an out-of-touch comedy relic with a fossilized understanding of race and gender whose wealth and station have turned her into a pampered diva. Or it takes Deborah’s side, and becomes a thin excuse for an endless string of exasperated jokes about Millennials, vaping, sexting and “cancel culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We then learn that Ava’s lost her cushy gig writing for a show in L.A. because of a joke she tweeted about a US Senator. And we think: That’s it then, the die is cast. The show’s an excuse to whine about “cancel culture” and vape pens and avocado toast. Whee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, soon after the Ava-Deborah meeting goes south, we learn what exactly the tweet in question was, and we deflate even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because we’ve seen comedy written about the comedy business before, countless times, and it rarely works. It’s come to be called the \u003cem>Studio 60 \u003c/em>phenomenon, named for Aaron Sorkin’s \u003cem>Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip\u003c/em>, his attempt to offer a behind-the-scenes peek at the makings of an \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em>-like sketch comedy show. The behind-the-scenes stuff was full of the kind of comedic dialogue Sorkin could write in his sleep. But the \u003cem>scenes\u003c/em>? The actual sketches? Upon which the conceit of the series entirely depended? Were so woefully, painfully unfunny they represented a serial assault on the audience’s suspension of disbelief, from which the show could never recover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We think that’s what’s going on, here, too, at first. Because Ava’s tweet 1. Would never, on the face of it, result in anything approaching “cancellation” and 2. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, that’s the thing. That’s when the show firmly establishes that it knows whereof it speaks. Because that’s when Deborah rolls her eyes at Ava, and tells her exactly what we the audience is thinking: “It’s just not funny,” she says. (They proceed to workshop the joke, and they make it better. Better, not good. This seems important.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE51pzVpwBg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From that moment on, \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>lets the hard, caricature-like outlines of both Ava and Deborah proceed to abrade away as the two women are allowed to become rounded, real characters. They still clash, often, over the course of the season (the first six episodes out of the season’s ten were released to press), because that’s where the show’s humor is chiefly located. But those clashes tend to be small, smartly observed and specific, not cartoonishly broad. That they will both grudgingly come to acknowledge and validate each other’s comedic sensibilities is a foregone conclusion, given the series’ odd-couple setup; the delight resides in the unforced chemistry between Smart and Einbeinder, and in how that mutual respect evolves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know if the role of Deborah Vance was written for Smart, but she certainly makes it seem like it was. Moments that could be played for unkind laughs—a Sally-Field-in-\u003cem>Soapdish \u003c/em>moment when Deborah boards a Hollywood tour bus in search of validation, say—are instead played for their humanity and vulnerability. As a result, the payoffs prove infinitely more satisfying. Smart’s also convincing as a standup, performing Deborah’s vaguely hokey routines with a naturalistic flair as if she was born to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13891872']Einbinder’s role is arguably trickier, as she’s tasked with playing someone the audience is inclined to empathize with, even as she continually evinces behavior that’s self-involved or self-destructive. But again: \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>isn’t interested in painting either of its leads with a broad brush, and Ava is given several moments of self-awareness and selflessness that add layers of nuance, and understanding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To say that \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>is refreshingly and surprisingly generous to its two leads—and to its supporting characters, like Carl Clemons-Hopkins’ gently sardonic C.O.O. Marcus and Kaitlin Olson as Deborah’s messy daughter—isn’t to slot it into the warm-fuzziness of a show like say, \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em>. It’s both sharper and (not for nothing) queerer than that. But like that hugely engaging series, \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>creates a world of characters and dialogue and situations you want to spend as much time with as possible.\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=%27Hacks%27%3A+A+Comedic+Generational+Divide+Gets+Bridged%2C+%28Jean%29+Smartly&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There exists, in some alternate universe, a version of the new HBO Max series \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>that is spikier, faster, meaner—and as a result, considerably thinner, less generous and less rewarding—than the one that premieres today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Happily, this one’s pretty great, because it achieves and maintains a delicate balance born out of: 1. Knowing its subject and 2. A determination to treat its two lead characters fairly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a make-or-break moment in the pilot that establishes that balance, that confidence and that generosity all at once: Ava (Hannah Einbinder), a successful young comedy writer fallen on hard times, has been forced by her manager (co-creator Paul W. Downs) to meet legendary standup comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) at her Vegas home. Deborah’s Vegas residency is threatened by a casino owner looking to reach a younger audience than Deborah draws, so she reluctantly agrees to the meet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The battle lines are drawn: Deborah is a comic of the Joan Rivers generation and mindset—her act is full of bawdy zingers at her ex-husband and winking self-deprecation at the prospect of aging. Every joke builds to a punchline that’s been honed to practiced perfection over the years. She’s a consummate pro, even if her references are getting rusty (she’s still going to the Anna Nicole Smith well, for example). There’s an edge to her comedy, sure, but it’s not one so sharp that it threatens to cut any of the thousands of tourists that show up to see her shows between hitting the nickel slots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ava’s comedy is weirder, more conceptual. Younger. Birthed and fueled by social media, she sees traditional punchlines as a marker of hackdom; they are things to be fled, in favor of, say, “a 25-tweet thread from the perspective of my Lexapro.” She’s also got a set of hackles that get dependably raised by Deborah’s coarser, less enlightened jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show is teetering on knife-edge, in this scene. You can imagine it going one of two ways: Either it adopts Ava’s point of view and proceeds to depict Deborah as a cartoon of an out-of-touch comedy relic with a fossilized understanding of race and gender whose wealth and station have turned her into a pampered diva. Or it takes Deborah’s side, and becomes a thin excuse for an endless string of exasperated jokes about Millennials, vaping, sexting and “cancel culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We then learn that Ava’s lost her cushy gig writing for a show in L.A. because of a joke she tweeted about a US Senator. And we think: That’s it then, the die is cast. The show’s an excuse to whine about “cancel culture” and vape pens and avocado toast. Whee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, soon after the Ava-Deborah meeting goes south, we learn what exactly the tweet in question was, and we deflate even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because we’ve seen comedy written about the comedy business before, countless times, and it rarely works. It’s come to be called the \u003cem>Studio 60 \u003c/em>phenomenon, named for Aaron Sorkin’s \u003cem>Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip\u003c/em>, his attempt to offer a behind-the-scenes peek at the makings of an \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em>-like sketch comedy show. The behind-the-scenes stuff was full of the kind of comedic dialogue Sorkin could write in his sleep. But the \u003cem>scenes\u003c/em>? The actual sketches? Upon which the conceit of the series entirely depended? Were so woefully, painfully unfunny they represented a serial assault on the audience’s suspension of disbelief, from which the show could never recover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We think that’s what’s going on, here, too, at first. Because Ava’s tweet 1. Would never, on the face of it, result in anything approaching “cancellation” and 2. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, that’s the thing. That’s when the show firmly establishes that it knows whereof it speaks. Because that’s when Deborah rolls her eyes at Ava, and tells her exactly what we the audience is thinking: “It’s just not funny,” she says. (They proceed to workshop the joke, and they make it better. Better, not good. This seems important.)\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/wE51pzVpwBg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/wE51pzVpwBg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>From that moment on, \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>lets the hard, caricature-like outlines of both Ava and Deborah proceed to abrade away as the two women are allowed to become rounded, real characters. They still clash, often, over the course of the season (the first six episodes out of the season’s ten were released to press), because that’s where the show’s humor is chiefly located. But those clashes tend to be small, smartly observed and specific, not cartoonishly broad. That they will both grudgingly come to acknowledge and validate each other’s comedic sensibilities is a foregone conclusion, given the series’ odd-couple setup; the delight resides in the unforced chemistry between Smart and Einbeinder, and in how that mutual respect evolves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know if the role of Deborah Vance was written for Smart, but she certainly makes it seem like it was. Moments that could be played for unkind laughs—a Sally-Field-in-\u003cem>Soapdish \u003c/em>moment when Deborah boards a Hollywood tour bus in search of validation, say—are instead played for their humanity and vulnerability. As a result, the payoffs prove infinitely more satisfying. Smart’s also convincing as a standup, performing Deborah’s vaguely hokey routines with a naturalistic flair as if she was born to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Einbinder’s role is arguably trickier, as she’s tasked with playing someone the audience is inclined to empathize with, even as she continually evinces behavior that’s self-involved or self-destructive. But again: \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>isn’t interested in painting either of its leads with a broad brush, and Ava is given several moments of self-awareness and selflessness that add layers of nuance, and understanding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To say that \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>is refreshingly and surprisingly generous to its two leads—and to its supporting characters, like Carl Clemons-Hopkins’ gently sardonic C.O.O. Marcus and Kaitlin Olson as Deborah’s messy daughter—isn’t to slot it into the warm-fuzziness of a show like say, \u003cem>Ted Lasso\u003c/em>. It’s both sharper and (not for nothing) queerer than that. But like that hugely engaging series, \u003cem>Hacks \u003c/em>creates a world of characters and dialogue and situations you want to spend as much time with as possible.\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=%27Hacks%27%3A+A+Comedic+Generational+Divide+Gets+Bridged%2C+%28Jean%29+Smartly&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Q: Into the Storm' Director Unravels the Twisted Knots of the QAnon Movement",
"headTitle": "‘Q: Into the Storm’ Director Unravels the Twisted Knots of the QAnon Movement | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was predictable if you were following message boards on shadowy corners of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, I thought Jan. 6 was going to be really bad,” Cullen Hoback, director of the documentary \u003cem>Q: Into the Storm, \u003c/em>told NPR in a recent interview. “I got hardly any sleep the two nights before it. I was very anxious going into that day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoback followed the growth of the QAnon movement for three years and unravels the twisted knots of the conspiracy theory in a six-part series on HBO. He focuses on the interpersonal drama between those behind the website 8chan (later 8kun), where an enigmatic “Q” posted false conspiracy theories that convinced millions there were nefarious Democratic actors involved in child-trafficking rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13890913']Spurred on by former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election that he lost to President Biden, many Q believers were among a larger group of anti-government extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in protest of the usually ceremonial counting of Electoral College votes affirming the election result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drama in the film develops incrementally as the inner workings of the dark web are explained for an audience unfamiliar with this world—which includes Fredrick Brennan, who created 8chan, and Jim and Ron Watkins, who later take on ownership and administration of the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary centers on the rivalry between Brennan and the shadowy father-son duo of Jim and Ron Watkins. Though they once all worked together, Brennan turns and winds up strongly \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/technology/8chan-shooting-manifesto.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">advocating against 8chan\u003c/a>. He does not believe the Watkinses, who test the bounds of free speech on the internet, are responsible stewards of the site, particularly after episodes of murder and violence that were linked to posters on the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through his investigation, Hoback believes he has revealed the identity of Q. Through anonymous “drops,” Q boasted of dates—that never materialized—when the cabal would be toppled. Followers of the movement believed Q must be someone high up in Trump’s inner circle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR has not independently verified Q’s identity, but Hoback’s film shows strong evidence that Ron Watkins was Q. He’s not someone particularly special and didn’t have any real ties to Trump, but he is someone who had access and motive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope that by revealing the mechanics behind Q and the personalities behind it,” Hoback said, “that they see that it really is just this kind of absurd cast of characters that created this massive global movement and that it is not this sort of scary mystery box.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movement grew so large that QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885991730/gop-candidates-open-to-qanon-conspiracy-theory-advance-in-congressional-races\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expressed openness to Q\u003c/a>” even \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901628541/qanon-supporter-who-made-bigoted-videos-wins-ga-primary-likely-heading-to-congre\">won\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901628541/qanon-supporter-who-made-bigoted-videos-wins-ga-primary-likely-heading-to-congre\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seats\u003c/a> in Congress, where they continue to spread misinformation. Greene even \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1383106255930155008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reportedly\u003c/a> tried to start an “America First” caucus that would have focused on “Anglo-Saxon” values. After initially \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/groundyourstand/status/1383198051217465346\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seeming to defend it\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.salon.com/2021/04/17/marjorie-taylor-greene-forced-to-abandon-america-first-caucus-after-republican-outrage/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">she backed off\u003c/a> after the effort drew a sharp backlash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in her tenure this year, she was stripped of committee assignments and yet, despite her marginalization—or perhaps because of it—she raised $3.2 million in the first three months of this year. It’s a sum that’s not just high for a member of Congress but rivals many Senate candidates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q hasn’t posted since the election, and many of its followers have been disappointed that its supposed prophecies haven’t come true. So where does the grassroots energy behind the movement, with its distrust of experts and willingness to believe misinformation, go from here?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK_Gf9H2CWI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoback talked with NPR about his investigation, what he hopes people take away from it and what it all might mean for the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The following is a selection of our conversation and was edited for length and clarity:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>NPR: You were following QAnon far back when most of us—it was under our noses and just didn’t really understand it. Why did you then think that this was an important topic to cover and what drew you to it?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HOBACK: I thought it was a sign of things to come, both in the ways Q was being managed online, removing Q or suggesting that this thing was something that was too dangerous to be allowed on Reddit. It made me wonder if it actually was going to have the opposite effect, if it was going to make it bigger. To me, it looked like something that was likely to continue to grow. And I was just drawn to the mystery as well. I felt that unmasking Q might bring the whole thing to a conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I’m a political editor. Jan. 6 was one of the most harrowing moments in the film. What do you take away from the lead-up to Jan. 6? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13891014']The day itself, I found to be rather nerve-wracking. I think anybody who had really been tracking what was going on could see that this was the moment in which those power players who had been circling around Q, whether that’s Roger Stone, [retired Maj.] Gen. [Paul] Vallely, [retired] Gen. [Michael] Flynn, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, all of these guys, they were all prodding in the runup to Jan. 6 in a way to make the Q narrative real. And there were these overlapping groups that were all driving toward something similar. So I think if you were tracking it closely, you probably would have thought like myself that it was going to be even worse than it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How much fault do you think Ron and Jim deserve for that day? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, I don’t think Jan. 6 happened because of Q, but I also don’t think it would have happened without Q.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How interconnected was Trump world and Q?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I would like for there to be more investigation into the ties between Ron and Jim and some of these power players in D.C.—Gen. Flynn and these other characters. I mean, we’ve seen some forensic evidence, and certainly after the 2016 election, it stands to reason that, given the amount of traffic 8chan was turning to Trump’s own campaign, that they would have reached out. I think the series paints a pretty good case for their ties to these D.C. operatives. But the exact nature of that relationship remains a little unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who were some of the key players and how much were they feeding Q information?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the series, we show what we know, which is that Jerome Corsi, the known conspiracy theorist, had ties with all of these guys, close ties, and was one of the first to bolster Q. He says that a couple of people he holds very close to him—and we know that he has ties to Vallely—said you need to start paying attention to this. Bring it on Alex Jones’ [show]. Make it bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that would indicate that very early on, some of these ex-military networks saw the value in Q, saw that it was gaining steam and wanted to bolster it. When you talk about the information that’s being funneled, I don’t think there was really any meaningful information being funneled to Q. Q was just basically picking its favorite research out of things that the anons [anonymous posters] were collecting on 8chan and then 8kun, and then reflecting that research, or those ideas or the conspiracy theories back to the anons in the form of questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So you didn’t have to be Gen. Michael Flynn to write the Q drops. You just needed to be an incredibly engaged and active user of 8chan and very well versed in the research and analysis and all the internet data points that were being collected in order to create that narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The documentary builds a powerful case that Ron is Q. Ron denies this, but in the documentary, he seems to relish the idea of being suspected. After the election, he comes out of the shadows and begins posting in his own name on Twitter about the election. He even \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/trump-meets-qanon-influencers-conspiracy-theory-s-adherents-beg-dictatorship-n1252144\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>appears on OAN\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>, the right-wing cable TV platform, to share his false conspiracies about Dominion voting machines. Along with Trump, Ron was banned from Twitter. Tell us more about why you think it’s him.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s so much more evidence I have pointing to Ron than what I was able to keep in the series. There’s mountains of it, including things he said to me since then. That’s part of why it was so valuable to spend this much time with them, because they’re not going to tell me the truth. So the answers lie in the omissions, in how they change their stories, in basically what they’re hiding and then what they eventually sort of choose to reveal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the things Ron messaged me after the series dropped, he said, “You know, Cullen, I identify more with villains.” He wrote, “Something I learned a long time ago is that internet personalities are just actors on a stage. Making things larger than life makes for a better story and ultimately a more entertaining existence.” And then he goes on to say, “Getting away from the narrative that Ron is Q will be impossible, so I may as well embrace it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that it’s, like, almost an admission in and of itself. And there have been a few of those since then. You know, I think deep down he wants the credit, but he can’t take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you hope people take away from knowing who Q was?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that when you demystify something, it takes away its power. You’re left with the baggage of the man and the motives of the man, and it just changes the equation. You know, if you talk to a Q follower, they could imagine that Q could be any number of things. It could have all of the benefits and none of the cons. And also it allowed them to imagine that there was this massive, super top secret military operation in the works. And I think that the truth matters. I think that it’s important to reveal the forces behind the operation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I think deep down, most of those who believed in Q wanted to know the truth. Whether or not they’re willing to accept it is another story. I just present them with the information, and they’ll draw their own conclusions. I don’t expect QAnons to watch this and suddenly, be like, “Well, I don’t believe in Q anymore.” The misery of shame is too great. I think that it’s a process, and that story may continue to evolve, but I think, also, the people who’ve seen who’s behind the operation, will they be likely to believe in Q now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Have you heard from any Q followers or supporters?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13891257']I have heard from a number of folks, I mean, my DMs on Twitter have been just insane. Some of them had been from Q followers. Some of them have been from family members of Q followers. And I’ve gotten more than a dozen messages now from people who said that, for the first time in a year in some cases, they’re communicating with their family members who were believers in Q. They feel like they understand now what this thing was that they believed in. They can talk about sort of the underlying mechanics and who was behind it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mileage may vary. I don’t expect that that’s going to be the case for everybody. But anecdotally, there’s been a number of cases now where lines of communication are reopening between those who believe in Q and their family members. I think that’s really important, because I have a lot of Q followers who sometimes just call me in the middle of the night, because they were lonely or because they needed someone to talk to or they just saw me as a grounding force, and I would often tell them, “Look, you need to try to try to talk to your brother, try to find some common ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where does this all go from here? What happens to Q followers and the movement?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’ve probably seen the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/inauguration-day-live-updates/2021/01/20/958907699/the-qanon-storm-never-struck-some-supporters-are-wavering-others-steadfast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Telegram groups\u003c/a>. They’re not that gigantic, maybe 100,000 people or so. And they’re a pretty passionate community. I suspect that it will evolve. It will splinter into factions. Elements of QAnon will be absorbed into the main line of the GOP. But I think Q, as we knew it, will not remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What is the point that you’re most hoping audiences take away from your film? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that the antiseptic of sunlight is a powerful force. And by having people sit down and actually engage with sort of the ugly reality of Q, it also gives them a language. It not only helps them understand what was really happening this whole time, but it also helps a lot of people kind of communicate with those who maybe were on the brink of buying into Q or currently believe in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not going to be an easy path going forward coexisting with a lot of people who believe in this stuff, but I think that we’re already starting to see that the series is helping families reopen lines of communication now. To me, that’s the most positive outcome I’ve seen so far. And I hope it continues.\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=Q%26A%3A+Documentary+Unravels+Twisted+Knots+Of+QAnon+Movement&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was predictable if you were following message boards on shadowy corners of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yeah, I thought Jan. 6 was going to be really bad,” Cullen Hoback, director of the documentary \u003cem>Q: Into the Storm, \u003c/em>told NPR in a recent interview. “I got hardly any sleep the two nights before it. I was very anxious going into that day.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoback followed the growth of the QAnon movement for three years and unravels the twisted knots of the conspiracy theory in a six-part series on HBO. He focuses on the interpersonal drama between those behind the website 8chan (later 8kun), where an enigmatic “Q” posted false conspiracy theories that convinced millions there were nefarious Democratic actors involved in child-trafficking rings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Spurred on by former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election that he lost to President Biden, many Q believers were among a larger group of anti-government extremists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in protest of the usually ceremonial counting of Electoral College votes affirming the election result.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drama in the film develops incrementally as the inner workings of the dark web are explained for an audience unfamiliar with this world—which includes Fredrick Brennan, who created 8chan, and Jim and Ron Watkins, who later take on ownership and administration of the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The documentary centers on the rivalry between Brennan and the shadowy father-son duo of Jim and Ron Watkins. Though they once all worked together, Brennan turns and winds up strongly \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/technology/8chan-shooting-manifesto.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">advocating against 8chan\u003c/a>. He does not believe the Watkinses, who test the bounds of free speech on the internet, are responsible stewards of the site, particularly after episodes of murder and violence that were linked to posters on the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through his investigation, Hoback believes he has revealed the identity of Q. Through anonymous “drops,” Q boasted of dates—that never materialized—when the cabal would be toppled. Followers of the movement believed Q must be someone high up in Trump’s inner circle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NPR has not independently verified Q’s identity, but Hoback’s film shows strong evidence that Ron Watkins was Q. He’s not someone particularly special and didn’t have any real ties to Trump, but he is someone who had access and motive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hope that by revealing the mechanics behind Q and the personalities behind it,” Hoback said, “that they see that it really is just this kind of absurd cast of characters that created this massive global movement and that it is not this sort of scary mystery box.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The movement grew so large that QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/885991730/gop-candidates-open-to-qanon-conspiracy-theory-advance-in-congressional-races\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expressed openness to Q\u003c/a>” even \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901628541/qanon-supporter-who-made-bigoted-videos-wins-ga-primary-likely-heading-to-congre\">won\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901628541/qanon-supporter-who-made-bigoted-videos-wins-ga-primary-likely-heading-to-congre\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seats\u003c/a> in Congress, where they continue to spread misinformation. Greene even \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1383106255930155008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">reportedly\u003c/a> tried to start an “America First” caucus that would have focused on “Anglo-Saxon” values. After initially \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/groundyourstand/status/1383198051217465346\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seeming to defend it\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.salon.com/2021/04/17/marjorie-taylor-greene-forced-to-abandon-america-first-caucus-after-republican-outrage/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">she backed off\u003c/a> after the effort drew a sharp backlash.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in her tenure this year, she was stripped of committee assignments and yet, despite her marginalization—or perhaps because of it—she raised $3.2 million in the first three months of this year. It’s a sum that’s not just high for a member of Congress but rivals many Senate candidates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Q hasn’t posted since the election, and many of its followers have been disappointed that its supposed prophecies haven’t come true. So where does the grassroots energy behind the movement, with its distrust of experts and willingness to believe misinformation, go from here?\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/rK_Gf9H2CWI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/rK_Gf9H2CWI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Hoback talked with NPR about his investigation, what he hopes people take away from it and what it all might mean for the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The following is a selection of our conversation and was edited for length and clarity:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>NPR: You were following QAnon far back when most of us—it was under our noses and just didn’t really understand it. Why did you then think that this was an important topic to cover and what drew you to it?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HOBACK: I thought it was a sign of things to come, both in the ways Q was being managed online, removing Q or suggesting that this thing was something that was too dangerous to be allowed on Reddit. It made me wonder if it actually was going to have the opposite effect, if it was going to make it bigger. To me, it looked like something that was likely to continue to grow. And I was just drawn to the mystery as well. I felt that unmasking Q might bring the whole thing to a conclusion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I’m a political editor. Jan. 6 was one of the most harrowing moments in the film. What do you take away from the lead-up to Jan. 6? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The day itself, I found to be rather nerve-wracking. I think anybody who had really been tracking what was going on could see that this was the moment in which those power players who had been circling around Q, whether that’s Roger Stone, [retired Maj.] Gen. [Paul] Vallely, [retired] Gen. [Michael] Flynn, Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, all of these guys, they were all prodding in the runup to Jan. 6 in a way to make the Q narrative real. And there were these overlapping groups that were all driving toward something similar. So I think if you were tracking it closely, you probably would have thought like myself that it was going to be even worse than it was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How much fault do you think Ron and Jim deserve for that day? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, I don’t think Jan. 6 happened because of Q, but I also don’t think it would have happened without Q.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How interconnected was Trump world and Q?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I would like for there to be more investigation into the ties between Ron and Jim and some of these power players in D.C.—Gen. Flynn and these other characters. I mean, we’ve seen some forensic evidence, and certainly after the 2016 election, it stands to reason that, given the amount of traffic 8chan was turning to Trump’s own campaign, that they would have reached out. I think the series paints a pretty good case for their ties to these D.C. operatives. But the exact nature of that relationship remains a little unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Who were some of the key players and how much were they feeding Q information?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the series, we show what we know, which is that Jerome Corsi, the known conspiracy theorist, had ties with all of these guys, close ties, and was one of the first to bolster Q. He says that a couple of people he holds very close to him—and we know that he has ties to Vallely—said you need to start paying attention to this. Bring it on Alex Jones’ [show]. Make it bigger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So that would indicate that very early on, some of these ex-military networks saw the value in Q, saw that it was gaining steam and wanted to bolster it. When you talk about the information that’s being funneled, I don’t think there was really any meaningful information being funneled to Q. Q was just basically picking its favorite research out of things that the anons [anonymous posters] were collecting on 8chan and then 8kun, and then reflecting that research, or those ideas or the conspiracy theories back to the anons in the form of questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So you didn’t have to be Gen. Michael Flynn to write the Q drops. You just needed to be an incredibly engaged and active user of 8chan and very well versed in the research and analysis and all the internet data points that were being collected in order to create that narrative.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The documentary builds a powerful case that Ron is Q. Ron denies this, but in the documentary, he seems to relish the idea of being suspected. After the election, he comes out of the shadows and begins posting in his own name on Twitter about the election. He even \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/trump-meets-qanon-influencers-conspiracy-theory-s-adherents-beg-dictatorship-n1252144\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cstrong>appears on OAN\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>, the right-wing cable TV platform, to share his false conspiracies about Dominion voting machines. Along with Trump, Ron was banned from Twitter. Tell us more about why you think it’s him.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s so much more evidence I have pointing to Ron than what I was able to keep in the series. There’s mountains of it, including things he said to me since then. That’s part of why it was so valuable to spend this much time with them, because they’re not going to tell me the truth. So the answers lie in the omissions, in how they change their stories, in basically what they’re hiding and then what they eventually sort of choose to reveal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the things Ron messaged me after the series dropped, he said, “You know, Cullen, I identify more with villains.” He wrote, “Something I learned a long time ago is that internet personalities are just actors on a stage. Making things larger than life makes for a better story and ultimately a more entertaining existence.” And then he goes on to say, “Getting away from the narrative that Ron is Q will be impossible, so I may as well embrace it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that it’s, like, almost an admission in and of itself. And there have been a few of those since then. You know, I think deep down he wants the credit, but he can’t take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you hope people take away from knowing who Q was?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that when you demystify something, it takes away its power. You’re left with the baggage of the man and the motives of the man, and it just changes the equation. You know, if you talk to a Q follower, they could imagine that Q could be any number of things. It could have all of the benefits and none of the cons. And also it allowed them to imagine that there was this massive, super top secret military operation in the works. And I think that the truth matters. I think that it’s important to reveal the forces behind the operation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And I think deep down, most of those who believed in Q wanted to know the truth. Whether or not they’re willing to accept it is another story. I just present them with the information, and they’ll draw their own conclusions. I don’t expect QAnons to watch this and suddenly, be like, “Well, I don’t believe in Q anymore.” The misery of shame is too great. I think that it’s a process, and that story may continue to evolve, but I think, also, the people who’ve seen who’s behind the operation, will they be likely to believe in Q now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Have you heard from any Q followers or supporters?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I have heard from a number of folks, I mean, my DMs on Twitter have been just insane. Some of them had been from Q followers. Some of them have been from family members of Q followers. And I’ve gotten more than a dozen messages now from people who said that, for the first time in a year in some cases, they’re communicating with their family members who were believers in Q. They feel like they understand now what this thing was that they believed in. They can talk about sort of the underlying mechanics and who was behind it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mileage may vary. I don’t expect that that’s going to be the case for everybody. But anecdotally, there’s been a number of cases now where lines of communication are reopening between those who believe in Q and their family members. I think that’s really important, because I have a lot of Q followers who sometimes just call me in the middle of the night, because they were lonely or because they needed someone to talk to or they just saw me as a grounding force, and I would often tell them, “Look, you need to try to try to talk to your brother, try to find some common ground.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Where does this all go from here? What happens to Q followers and the movement?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’ve probably seen the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/inauguration-day-live-updates/2021/01/20/958907699/the-qanon-storm-never-struck-some-supporters-are-wavering-others-steadfast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Telegram groups\u003c/a>. They’re not that gigantic, maybe 100,000 people or so. And they’re a pretty passionate community. I suspect that it will evolve. It will splinter into factions. Elements of QAnon will be absorbed into the main line of the GOP. But I think Q, as we knew it, will not remain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What is the point that you’re most hoping audiences take away from your film? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think that the antiseptic of sunlight is a powerful force. And by having people sit down and actually engage with sort of the ugly reality of Q, it also gives them a language. It not only helps them understand what was really happening this whole time, but it also helps a lot of people kind of communicate with those who maybe were on the brink of buying into Q or currently believe in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not going to be an easy path going forward coexisting with a lot of people who believe in this stuff, but I think that we’re already starting to see that the series is helping families reopen lines of communication now. To me, that’s the most positive outcome I’ve seen so far. And I hope it continues.\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=Q%26A%3A+Documentary+Unravels+Twisted+Knots+Of+QAnon+Movement&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "HBO's 'The Nevers': When Steampunk Gets Foggy",
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"content": "\u003cp>Unfocused and overstuffed, the first four episodes of HBO’s \u003cem>The Nevers \u003c/em>provided to critics lack a sufficiently strong narrative backbone to support the surfeit of characters, subplots, themes and familiar storytelling tics thrown at the viewer. The series pairs all this tumult with a frustratingly incremental approach to disclosing What Is Really Going On; as a result, allegiances shift, plots twist and characters take actions for reasons we can only guess at—provided we’re willing to bother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those sudden reveals and reversals are meant to surprise and delight, of course. And maybe they would, if the show spent more energy attempting to get us invested in these characters and what happens to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of the fourth episode, viewers who’ve paying close attention will have developed a working theory about Amalia True (Laura Donnelly), the leader of a rag-tag group of women in Victorian London who’ve been granted weird powers by a mysterious event. Amalia’s got the power to experience sudden ripples of the future, see. She’s also fond of the occasional donnybrook, and is an uncannily exceptional hand-to-hand fighter in a way that doesn’t seem connected to her particular power (her “turn,” in the show’s parlance). She’s also got a complicated past she doesn’t like to talk about, including a connection to another one of the “Touched” (others who acquired powers in the same event)—a murderous madwoman named Maladie (Amy Manson). Amalia’s taciturn about pretty much everything, in fact, except for her stated mission, which is to gather together the “Touched” (mostly women of lower station) at the orphanage she runs, so as to offer them protection from a populace growing increasingly hostile to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s more to it, and to her, and the conclusion of the fourth episode suggests that we’ll get to know Amalia’s whole deal in the two episodes that follow (HBO is dividing up \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em>‘ season into two six-episode chunks—the second of which has yet to be filmed, and does not yet have an air date). Potential viewers will have to make their own personal calculations to gauge their willingness to invest their time into a show so devoted to cultivating and perpetuating inessential mystery in lieu of clear storytelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs-ODufnJ8Y\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not the only calculation they’ll have to make for themselves, either. \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em> was created by Joss Whedon; he wrote and directed the pilot, and directed the second episode as well. \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/ray-fisher-opens-up-about-justice-league-joss-whedon-and-warners-i-dont-believe-some-of-these-people-are-fit-for-leadership?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Actor Ray Fisher raised allegations about Whedon’s abusive behavior on the set of \u003cem>Justice League\u003c/em>; \u003cem>Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u003c/em>‘s Charisma Carpenter and others \u003c/a>have since added their voices to the mix. Whedon officially exited \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em> in November of last year; Philippa Goslett took over post-production and was named the series’ new showrunner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be interesting to see if the back half of this first season, which won’t involve Whedon, will be able to shake off the thick coating of familiar Whedony writerly tics weighing down these early episodes. To be clear, Whedon doesn’t own the patents on badass women, quippy dialogue, misogynistic villains, sudden character deaths, moony-yet-vicious serial killers or any of the other tropes that recur in his work. But as executed in \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em>, these factors slot too neatly into the well-worn grooves we’ve seen from him before. Easily the series’ most familiar, and most tiresome, component is Manson’s Maladie, who swings from giddy, throat-slicing malice to a childlike woundedness in precisely the way—using snippets of the same dialogue—that so many Whedon villains have done before her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The world-building, at least, is extensive, and it’s possible later episodes might benefit from having carved out so much narrative real estate, so many competing interests. But these early episodes are crowded with various factions and alliances whose motivations remain unclear; to accommodate them all, the series keeps checking in on them in scenes too brief to land with the weight they need to, and the series’ insistence on keeping its narrative cards so close to its vest means we often don’t know what we’re supposed to glean out of a given meeting or conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re willing to give \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em> a chance, it contains the potential to reward your patience, given the introduction of a clear and direct narrative infrastructure to help focus its—and our—attention. Whether that’ll happen, and if anyone will still be watching if it does, is anyone’s guess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Nevers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> debuts on HBO at 9pmET on April 11.\u003c/strong>\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=%27The+Nevers%27%3A+When+Steampunk+Gets+Foggy&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Unfocused and overstuffed, the first four episodes of HBO’s \u003cem>The Nevers \u003c/em>provided to critics lack a sufficiently strong narrative backbone to support the surfeit of characters, subplots, themes and familiar storytelling tics thrown at the viewer. The series pairs all this tumult with a frustratingly incremental approach to disclosing What Is Really Going On; as a result, allegiances shift, plots twist and characters take actions for reasons we can only guess at—provided we’re willing to bother.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those sudden reveals and reversals are meant to surprise and delight, of course. And maybe they would, if the show spent more energy attempting to get us invested in these characters and what happens to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of the fourth episode, viewers who’ve paying close attention will have developed a working theory about Amalia True (Laura Donnelly), the leader of a rag-tag group of women in Victorian London who’ve been granted weird powers by a mysterious event. Amalia’s got the power to experience sudden ripples of the future, see. She’s also fond of the occasional donnybrook, and is an uncannily exceptional hand-to-hand fighter in a way that doesn’t seem connected to her particular power (her “turn,” in the show’s parlance). She’s also got a complicated past she doesn’t like to talk about, including a connection to another one of the “Touched” (others who acquired powers in the same event)—a murderous madwoman named Maladie (Amy Manson). Amalia’s taciturn about pretty much everything, in fact, except for her stated mission, which is to gather together the “Touched” (mostly women of lower station) at the orphanage she runs, so as to offer them protection from a populace growing increasingly hostile to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s more to it, and to her, and the conclusion of the fourth episode suggests that we’ll get to know Amalia’s whole deal in the two episodes that follow (HBO is dividing up \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em>‘ season into two six-episode chunks—the second of which has yet to be filmed, and does not yet have an air date). Potential viewers will have to make their own personal calculations to gauge their willingness to invest their time into a show so devoted to cultivating and perpetuating inessential mystery in lieu of clear storytelling.\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/gs-ODufnJ8Y'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gs-ODufnJ8Y'\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>That’s not the only calculation they’ll have to make for themselves, either. \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em> was created by Joss Whedon; he wrote and directed the pilot, and directed the second episode as well. \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/ray-fisher-opens-up-about-justice-league-joss-whedon-and-warners-i-dont-believe-some-of-these-people-are-fit-for-leadership?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Actor Ray Fisher raised allegations about Whedon’s abusive behavior on the set of \u003cem>Justice League\u003c/em>; \u003cem>Buffy the Vampire Slayer\u003c/em>‘s Charisma Carpenter and others \u003c/a>have since added their voices to the mix. Whedon officially exited \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em> in November of last year; Philippa Goslett took over post-production and was named the series’ new showrunner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be interesting to see if the back half of this first season, which won’t involve Whedon, will be able to shake off the thick coating of familiar Whedony writerly tics weighing down these early episodes. To be clear, Whedon doesn’t own the patents on badass women, quippy dialogue, misogynistic villains, sudden character deaths, moony-yet-vicious serial killers or any of the other tropes that recur in his work. But as executed in \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em>, these factors slot too neatly into the well-worn grooves we’ve seen from him before. Easily the series’ most familiar, and most tiresome, component is Manson’s Maladie, who swings from giddy, throat-slicing malice to a childlike woundedness in precisely the way—using snippets of the same dialogue—that so many Whedon villains have done before her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The world-building, at least, is extensive, and it’s possible later episodes might benefit from having carved out so much narrative real estate, so many competing interests. But these early episodes are crowded with various factions and alliances whose motivations remain unclear; to accommodate them all, the series keeps checking in on them in scenes too brief to land with the weight they need to, and the series’ insistence on keeping its narrative cards so close to its vest means we often don’t know what we’re supposed to glean out of a given meeting or conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re willing to give \u003cem>The Nevers\u003c/em> a chance, it contains the potential to reward your patience, given the introduction of a clear and direct narrative infrastructure to help focus its—and our—attention. Whether that’ll happen, and if anyone will still be watching if it does, is anyone’s guess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Nevers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> debuts on HBO at 9pmET on April 11.\u003c/strong>\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=%27The+Nevers%27%3A+When+Steampunk+Gets+Foggy&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "JD Salinger’s Pursuit of Teen Girls Gets Renewed Attention After ‘Allen v. Farrow’",
"headTitle": "JD Salinger’s Pursuit of Teen Girls Gets Renewed Attention After ‘Allen v. Farrow’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Yesterday, \u003cem>Vanity Fair\u003c/em> published \u003ca href=\"https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/04/joyce-maynard-on-chilling-parallels-woody-allen-and-jd-salinger\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a compelling essay\u003c/a> by prolific author \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Maynard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joyce Maynard\u003c/a>. In it, she drew a parallel between Woody Allen and J.D. Salinger, saying both men harbored obsessions with very young women. Maynard was inspired to write the piece after watching recent HBO documentary series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13892800/allen-v-farrow-is-the-most-damning-indictment-of-woody-allen-yet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Allen v. Farrow\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. But her motivation was born from the fact that, when she was a teenager, she had a relationship with the then-53-year-old Salinger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A few months past my 18th birthday, J.D. Salinger wrote me a series of letters that led me to believe he loved me as no one else ever had … He told me I was brilliant and perfect, his soul mate and that we would live our days out together … I withdrew from college … walked away from a full scholarship at Yale, a writing job in New York City, the book tour for my first published work … He sent me away less than a year later with words of contempt and disdain … [It] left me in a state of profound shame that endured for decades.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Like so many Woody Allen fans who felt awakened by \u003cem>Allen v. Farrow\u003c/em>, I saw Salinger in a completely new light after reading Maynard’s essay. Until yesterday, I had been entirely in the dark about his life-long pursuit of, and dalliances with, teen girls. Which is incredibly embarrassing to admit, particularly as someone who has read “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor”—a story in which an army sergeant obsesses over a young teenage girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard continues:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Over the years that followed, I heard from well over a dozen women who had a similar set of treasured letters from Salinger in their possession, written to them when they were teenagers. It appeared that in the case of one girl, Salinger was writing letters to her while I sat in the next room believing he was my soul mate and partner for life.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>After reading Maynard’s\u003cem> Vanity Fair\u003c/em> article—titled, incidentally, “‘Predatory Men With a Taste for Teenagers’ Joyce Maynard on the Chilling Parallels Between Woody Allen and J.D. Salinger”—the proverbial floodgates opened. I realized that information about Salinger’s predilections had been in plain sight for years, and not hiding even a little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A quick internet search revealed to me that \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/06/jd-salinger-teenage-lover-challenges-her-predator-reputation-joyce-maynard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>the Guardian\u003c/em> had written\u003c/a> about Maynard and Salinger’s destructive relationship in 2018. Maynard had also \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/was-salinger-too-pure-for-this-world.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">written about it\u003c/a> in \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> in 2013. \u003ca href=\"https://www.salon.com/2010/02/09/jd_salinger_and_the_women/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Salon\u003c/em> wrote about it\u003c/a> in 2010, right after Salinger died. As did a pre-fame Lena Dunham, on Twitter!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/lenadunham/status/8336385963\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, Maynard has been talking about the emotional and mental damage wrought by J.D. Salinger’s pursuit of her since she first revealed details of the affair in her 1998 memoir, \u003cem>At Home in the World\u003c/em>. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emat-home-in-the-worldem_b_441253\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2010 review\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Huffington Post\u003c/em> relayed that the J.D. Salinger described in Maynard’s book was, “pompous, astoundingly unfeeling, deceptive and defiantly hypocritical.” [aside postid='arts_13892800']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The memoir also details abusive and coercive behavior by Salinger, including restricting Maynard’s diet to such a degree that her periods stopped. And while \u003cem>At Home in the World\u003c/em> reveals that their relationship was never fully consummated—because Maynard was too fearful of losing her virginity—there is at least one description of her orally servicing Salinger while openly weeping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the book had even come out, a 1998 \u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/2162/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York\u003c/em> magazine article\u003c/a> detailed Salinger’s habit, at the age of 34, of “entertaining teenagers who attended the local high school. In particular, he often escorted teenage girls to school dances and sporting events.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve never been in the habit of researching the spouses of writers, but Salinger’s relationship history—now that I actively look for it—is one giant alarm bell. When he was 30, Salinger met and formed an attachment to 14-year-old Jean Miller. The two exchanged letters throughout her teens, apparently despite the objections of her mother. When she finally slept with him, at the age of 20, he immediately ditched her. When he was 36, he married 21-year-old Claire Douglas. When he was 69, he married 21-year-old Colleen O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So why didn’t I hear about all this sooner? Perhaps if I was active in literary circles, I would have known this whole time. Perhaps selective deafness was somehow at play because I spent so many of my teen years enthralled by Salinger’s work. Perhaps, after he died, I was too busy reading romantic eulogies about his brilliant, reclusive self to hear anything that his critics were saying about him. [aside postid='arts_13894392']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After \u003cem>At Home in the World\u003c/em> came out, Maynard was roundly criticized by both Salinger fans and the press at large for the details she shared about him. (In fact, she battled the same vitriolic public disdain that Mia Farrow had endured just six years earlier, during her divorce from Woody Allen.) In her \u003cem>Vanity Fair\u003c/em> essay, Maynard recalls being called a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/19/opinion/liberties-leech-women-in-love.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">predator\u003c/a>” in \u003cem>The \u003c/em>\u003cem>New York Times \u003c/em>and “\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/08/24/avert-your-eyes-but-read-this-first/a83298f7-c63d-49e3-94d5-be60a479daa6/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">indescribably stupid\u003c/a>” in \u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>Washington Post. \u003c/em>By the time Maynard sold her letters from Salinger in a Sotheby’s auction for $156,000, even \u003cem>Entertainment Weekly\u003c/em> was calling her “\u003ca href=\"https://ew.com/article/1999/06/25/joyce-maynard-sells-jd-salingers-letters-156000/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a self-absorbed blab-it-all\u003c/a>.” Perhaps it was criticisms like these that formed a firm barrier between me and the truth about the J.D. Salinger. Or maybe I just looked the other way because I didn’t want to hear it. Frankly, I don’t even know at this point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, I wrote about the cruelty of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894392/hbos-tina-raises-questions-about-how-we-treat-famous-survivors-of-abuse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">making Tina Turner repeat\u003c/a> the details of her abuse over and over again for the sake of public education (and entertainment). But if Maynard hadn’t repeated herself over and over \u003cem>and over\u003c/em> again for the last 23 years—if she hadn’t continued being the much scoffed at “blab-it-all”—I, and other readers, likely would never have heard her at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes an enormous amount of strength and will for anyone to share details of their own abuse. But when those details concern a person who is more famous and more beloved and more respected than you, then the uphill battle requires an unbelievable reserve of tenacity. Maynard should not have had to spend literal decades battling to be heard over all that other noise. No survivor should. But I for one am grateful that she did. Shamefully, it took this long for her to get through to me.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Joyce Maynard has been sharing her abuse story on a regular basis since 1998. So why are some of us only just hearing about it?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Yesterday, \u003cem>Vanity Fair\u003c/em> published \u003ca href=\"https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/04/joyce-maynard-on-chilling-parallels-woody-allen-and-jd-salinger\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a compelling essay\u003c/a> by prolific author \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Maynard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Joyce Maynard\u003c/a>. In it, she drew a parallel between Woody Allen and J.D. Salinger, saying both men harbored obsessions with very young women. Maynard was inspired to write the piece after watching recent HBO documentary series, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13892800/allen-v-farrow-is-the-most-damning-indictment-of-woody-allen-yet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Allen v. Farrow\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. But her motivation was born from the fact that, when she was a teenager, she had a relationship with the then-53-year-old Salinger.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A few months past my 18th birthday, J.D. Salinger wrote me a series of letters that led me to believe he loved me as no one else ever had … He told me I was brilliant and perfect, his soul mate and that we would live our days out together … I withdrew from college … walked away from a full scholarship at Yale, a writing job in New York City, the book tour for my first published work … He sent me away less than a year later with words of contempt and disdain … [It] left me in a state of profound shame that endured for decades.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Like so many Woody Allen fans who felt awakened by \u003cem>Allen v. Farrow\u003c/em>, I saw Salinger in a completely new light after reading Maynard’s essay. Until yesterday, I had been entirely in the dark about his life-long pursuit of, and dalliances with, teen girls. Which is incredibly embarrassing to admit, particularly as someone who has read “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor”—a story in which an army sergeant obsesses over a young teenage girl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maynard continues:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Over the years that followed, I heard from well over a dozen women who had a similar set of treasured letters from Salinger in their possession, written to them when they were teenagers. It appeared that in the case of one girl, Salinger was writing letters to her while I sat in the next room believing he was my soul mate and partner for life.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>After reading Maynard’s\u003cem> Vanity Fair\u003c/em> article—titled, incidentally, “‘Predatory Men With a Taste for Teenagers’ Joyce Maynard on the Chilling Parallels Between Woody Allen and J.D. Salinger”—the proverbial floodgates opened. I realized that information about Salinger’s predilections had been in plain sight for years, and not hiding even a little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A quick internet search revealed to me that \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/06/jd-salinger-teenage-lover-challenges-her-predator-reputation-joyce-maynard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>the Guardian\u003c/em> had written\u003c/a> about Maynard and Salinger’s destructive relationship in 2018. Maynard had also \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/was-salinger-too-pure-for-this-world.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">written about it\u003c/a> in \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em> in 2013. \u003ca href=\"https://www.salon.com/2010/02/09/jd_salinger_and_the_women/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Salon\u003c/em> wrote about it\u003c/a> in 2010, right after Salinger died. As did a pre-fame Lena Dunham, on Twitter!\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>In fact, Maynard has been talking about the emotional and mental damage wrought by J.D. Salinger’s pursuit of her since she first revealed details of the affair in her 1998 memoir, \u003cem>At Home in the World\u003c/em>. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.huffpost.com/entry/emat-home-in-the-worldem_b_441253\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2010 review\u003c/a>, \u003cem>Huffington Post\u003c/em> relayed that the J.D. Salinger described in Maynard’s book was, “pompous, astoundingly unfeeling, deceptive and defiantly hypocritical.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The memoir also details abusive and coercive behavior by Salinger, including restricting Maynard’s diet to such a degree that her periods stopped. And while \u003cem>At Home in the World\u003c/em> reveals that their relationship was never fully consummated—because Maynard was too fearful of losing her virginity—there is at least one description of her orally servicing Salinger while openly weeping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the book had even come out, a 1998 \u003ca href=\"https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/2162/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York\u003c/em> magazine article\u003c/a> detailed Salinger’s habit, at the age of 34, of “entertaining teenagers who attended the local high school. In particular, he often escorted teenage girls to school dances and sporting events.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve never been in the habit of researching the spouses of writers, but Salinger’s relationship history—now that I actively look for it—is one giant alarm bell. When he was 30, Salinger met and formed an attachment to 14-year-old Jean Miller. The two exchanged letters throughout her teens, apparently despite the objections of her mother. When she finally slept with him, at the age of 20, he immediately ditched her. When he was 36, he married 21-year-old Claire Douglas. When he was 69, he married 21-year-old Colleen O’Neill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So why didn’t I hear about all this sooner? Perhaps if I was active in literary circles, I would have known this whole time. Perhaps selective deafness was somehow at play because I spent so many of my teen years enthralled by Salinger’s work. Perhaps, after he died, I was too busy reading romantic eulogies about his brilliant, reclusive self to hear anything that his critics were saying about him. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After \u003cem>At Home in the World\u003c/em> came out, Maynard was roundly criticized by both Salinger fans and the press at large for the details she shared about him. (In fact, she battled the same vitriolic public disdain that Mia Farrow had endured just six years earlier, during her divorce from Woody Allen.) In her \u003cem>Vanity Fair\u003c/em> essay, Maynard recalls being called a “\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/19/opinion/liberties-leech-women-in-love.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">predator\u003c/a>” in \u003cem>The \u003c/em>\u003cem>New York Times \u003c/em>and “\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1998/08/24/avert-your-eyes-but-read-this-first/a83298f7-c63d-49e3-94d5-be60a479daa6/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">indescribably stupid\u003c/a>” in \u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>Washington Post. \u003c/em>By the time Maynard sold her letters from Salinger in a Sotheby’s auction for $156,000, even \u003cem>Entertainment Weekly\u003c/em> was calling her “\u003ca href=\"https://ew.com/article/1999/06/25/joyce-maynard-sells-jd-salingers-letters-156000/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a self-absorbed blab-it-all\u003c/a>.” Perhaps it was criticisms like these that formed a firm barrier between me and the truth about the J.D. Salinger. Or maybe I just looked the other way because I didn’t want to hear it. Frankly, I don’t even know at this point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, I wrote about the cruelty of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894392/hbos-tina-raises-questions-about-how-we-treat-famous-survivors-of-abuse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">making Tina Turner repeat\u003c/a> the details of her abuse over and over again for the sake of public education (and entertainment). But if Maynard hadn’t repeated herself over and over \u003cem>and over\u003c/em> again for the last 23 years—if she hadn’t continued being the much scoffed at “blab-it-all”—I, and other readers, likely would never have heard her at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes an enormous amount of strength and will for anyone to share details of their own abuse. But when those details concern a person who is more famous and more beloved and more respected than you, then the uphill battle requires an unbelievable reserve of tenacity. Maynard should not have had to spend literal decades battling to be heard over all that other noise. No survivor should. But I for one am grateful that she did. Shamefully, it took this long for her to get through to me.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Lovecraft Country' Creator Aims to Reclaim the Horror Genre for People of Color",
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"content": "\u003cp>The HBO series \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em> takes the real horrors of the Black experience in the 1950s and adds to it the supernatural terrors of the horror genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Series creator Misha Green says she sees the show—and the novel by Matt Ruff upon which it is based—as a chance to reclaim “the genre space for people of color and for people who had usually been left out of it.” [aside postid='arts_13884889']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Horror, which is my favorite genre, works best for me when there’s a metaphor,” Green says. “One of my themes I keep coming back to is: What are people willing to do for metaphorical and physical survival? And that’s always the stuff that scares me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One episode explores the theme of white privilege through the lens of Ruby, a Black woman who becomes white after taking a potion. After some discussion of what Ruby would do as a white woman, the writers decided that she would enjoy a mundane day at the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is really what part of the privilege of being white is: You get to live your life uninterrupted,” Green says. “A person of color in America has so many moments daily where they’re interrupted because of their skin color.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We don’t know yet if there will be a second season of \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>, but if there is, Green knows what she’d call it: “This would be the title of it—\u003cem>Lovecraft Country: Supremacy\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEvK1Zwi9XY\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview highlights \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On why she loves horror \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just like to be scared. I think it’s also one of the reasons I feel like we go to drama in the first place, to live vicariously through something. So you get to live your fears on screen and then you go, “OK, I can tackle that, maybe.” You get a little braver in life. … When I was a kid, like watching \u003cem>It,\u003c/em> watching \u003cem>Alien\u003c/em>, watching those kinds of movies, I was like, “OK, I’m terrified. But now I feel a little braver.” Afterwards, I feel like I can go and tackle the real horrors a little bit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On Black representation in genre fiction \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I feel like one of my absolute favorites is the original \u003cem>Night of the Living Dead\u003c/em> and then \u003cem>The People Under the Stairs \u003c/em>[and]\u003cem> Candyman\u003c/em>. So there [were] spaces for Black horror, they just weren’t rampant. I feel like that’s all of Black art right now. People are like, “We’re in this huge renaissance!” and I’m like, “I remember in the ’90s I could go on TV and see more all-Black casts than I can see now.” So I feel like it’s always been there, but you have to seek it out. And the mainstream—definitely when it comes to horror, sci-fi and all of these genre fantasy spaces—are all white in a way. And so that was exciting to me, to have this kind of show that could jump to all the places and be like, “Yeah, we can be here and we don’t have to die first, guys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On developing the sound for \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Lovecraft Country,\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> which sources audio from different moments in culture, like a Nike Ad or the poem “Whitey on the Moon”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wanted to do something different than I had done on \u003cem>Underground\u003c/em> with sound. We used contemporary music on [the WGN America show] \u003cem>Underground\u003c/em> [which Green co-created] and it was very successful in kind of bringing the past into the present and I wanted to build on that. I want to come in with an audio viewpoint on the show. [aside postid='arts_13853443']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the things that we were talking a lot about with the show was this idea of it being out of time, that they’re going and doing things, they’re going to space, they’re going back in the past, so how do we break that up? And then that idea of “scource” as we called it, which is source and score, came to me of using these pieces. I had been soaking in things like Beyoncé’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/04/26/475629479/close-to-home-a-conversation-about-beyonc-s-lemonade\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lemonade\u003c/em> \u003c/a>and \u003cem>I Am Not Your Negro\u003c/em>. And it was hearing those voices in those poems and [James] Baldwin’s voice. And I was going, “Oh, can we do that in \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>?” So that was kind of our big audio swing, was this idea of taking found footage audio and placing it wholesale over scenes and using it as [a] score.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her priorities for developing her own writer’s room \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diversity and younger writers, I think that it was important to me. It’s one of the things that I said to HBO is that I don’t want upper-level writers. They were really pushing upper-level writers, which was understandable, because it’s a very big, ambitious show, an intricate show. But for me, I was like, I want new voices. Hollywood is the biggest storytelling machine there is and we all live our lives through stories, so it is giving us a story on how to live our lives, and right now it’s a monolith of white men. And I think it’s very important to change that. So when I had my own room, I knew that it was not going to look like the rooms I had been in before and that it was going to be a struggle, too, because I think in a lot of rooms, the minority voices are not there to actually be heard. So figuring out how to encourage everybody to be like, “You have a platform here, speak up! Speak up! Let’s talk. Let’s figure it out.” [That] was also an interesting new turn for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heidi Saman and Kayla Lattimore produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\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=%27Lovecraft+Country%27+Creator+Aims+To+Reclaim+The+Horror+Genre+For+People+Of+Color+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The HBO series \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em> takes the real horrors of the Black experience in the 1950s and adds to it the supernatural terrors of the horror genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Series creator Misha Green says she sees the show—and the novel by Matt Ruff upon which it is based—as a chance to reclaim “the genre space for people of color and for people who had usually been left out of it.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Horror, which is my favorite genre, works best for me when there’s a metaphor,” Green says. “One of my themes I keep coming back to is: What are people willing to do for metaphorical and physical survival? And that’s always the stuff that scares me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One episode explores the theme of white privilege through the lens of Ruby, a Black woman who becomes white after taking a potion. After some discussion of what Ruby would do as a white woman, the writers decided that she would enjoy a mundane day at the park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That is really what part of the privilege of being white is: You get to live your life uninterrupted,” Green says. “A person of color in America has so many moments daily where they’re interrupted because of their skin color.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We don’t know yet if there will be a second season of \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>, but if there is, Green knows what she’d call it: “This would be the title of it—\u003cem>Lovecraft Country: Supremacy\u003c/em>.”\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/eEvK1Zwi9XY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/eEvK1Zwi9XY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview highlights \u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On why she loves horror \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just like to be scared. I think it’s also one of the reasons I feel like we go to drama in the first place, to live vicariously through something. So you get to live your fears on screen and then you go, “OK, I can tackle that, maybe.” You get a little braver in life. … When I was a kid, like watching \u003cem>It,\u003c/em> watching \u003cem>Alien\u003c/em>, watching those kinds of movies, I was like, “OK, I’m terrified. But now I feel a little braver.” Afterwards, I feel like I can go and tackle the real horrors a little bit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On Black representation in genre fiction \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I feel like one of my absolute favorites is the original \u003cem>Night of the Living Dead\u003c/em> and then \u003cem>The People Under the Stairs \u003c/em>[and]\u003cem> Candyman\u003c/em>. So there [were] spaces for Black horror, they just weren’t rampant. I feel like that’s all of Black art right now. People are like, “We’re in this huge renaissance!” and I’m like, “I remember in the ’90s I could go on TV and see more all-Black casts than I can see now.” So I feel like it’s always been there, but you have to seek it out. And the mainstream—definitely when it comes to horror, sci-fi and all of these genre fantasy spaces—are all white in a way. And so that was exciting to me, to have this kind of show that could jump to all the places and be like, “Yeah, we can be here and we don’t have to die first, guys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On developing the sound for \u003c/strong>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Lovecraft Country,\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> which sources audio from different moments in culture, like a Nike Ad or the poem “Whitey on the Moon”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wanted to do something different than I had done on \u003cem>Underground\u003c/em> with sound. We used contemporary music on [the WGN America show] \u003cem>Underground\u003c/em> [which Green co-created] and it was very successful in kind of bringing the past into the present and I wanted to build on that. I want to come in with an audio viewpoint on the show. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the things that we were talking a lot about with the show was this idea of it being out of time, that they’re going and doing things, they’re going to space, they’re going back in the past, so how do we break that up? And then that idea of “scource” as we called it, which is source and score, came to me of using these pieces. I had been soaking in things like Beyoncé’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/04/26/475629479/close-to-home-a-conversation-about-beyonc-s-lemonade\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lemonade\u003c/em> \u003c/a>and \u003cem>I Am Not Your Negro\u003c/em>. And it was hearing those voices in those poems and [James] Baldwin’s voice. And I was going, “Oh, can we do that in \u003cem>Lovecraft Country\u003c/em>?” So that was kind of our big audio swing, was this idea of taking found footage audio and placing it wholesale over scenes and using it as [a] score.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her priorities for developing her own writer’s room \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Diversity and younger writers, I think that it was important to me. It’s one of the things that I said to HBO is that I don’t want upper-level writers. They were really pushing upper-level writers, which was understandable, because it’s a very big, ambitious show, an intricate show. But for me, I was like, I want new voices. Hollywood is the biggest storytelling machine there is and we all live our lives through stories, so it is giving us a story on how to live our lives, and right now it’s a monolith of white men. And I think it’s very important to change that. So when I had my own room, I knew that it was not going to look like the rooms I had been in before and that it was going to be a struggle, too, because I think in a lot of rooms, the minority voices are not there to actually be heard. So figuring out how to encourage everybody to be like, “You have a platform here, speak up! Speak up! Let’s talk. Let’s figure it out.” [That] was also an interesting new turn for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"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. ",
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"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. ",
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"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.",
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"mindshift": {
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"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>",
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"order": 12
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"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.",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"perspectives": {
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
"airtime": "SUN 12am-1am, SAT 2pm-3pm",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/reveal300px.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/reveal",
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"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 16
},
"link": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
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