Month: October 2021

Succession returns on Sunday, October 17 after almost exactly two years off the air. There’s good news and bad news wrapped up in all of this. The good is that, well, it’s back, finally, and having a good show — one of the best, even — back is always good news, especially since the new season lives up to the high standards of the first two seasons. Do you want to see these awful creatures tear each other apart? Do you want to hear Logan Roy grumble profanity like a wounded beast? Do you want to experience the pure joy of Cousin Greg discussing memes? Baby, that is all coming your way very soon. It’s exciting.

The bad news is that this long hiatus may have dulled the sharp edges of your memory of the show. You might not recall important plot points. And while the ideal solution to this is a full-on rewatch, or at least a mini-binge through the last three or four episodes of season two, time is getting a little tight for that. You went and procrastinated again and here you are. We’ve talked about this.

So, here’s what we’ll do. Below, please find a mini-refresher that can get you mostly caught up before the premiere, with 100 words or less devoted to each major character. It’s not perfect or comprehensive or ideal. A rewatch is still preferable. But you really can’t go about complaining to me when you put yourself in this situation. What I’m saying here is that I’m sorry this isn’t everything but you’re welcome that it is something. We’re all doing the best we can.

Here we go.

Kendall Roy

What a whirlwind. Kendall went from performing the world’s cringiest rap tribute to his father — shoutout to his boy Squiggle for the beat — to defending his father and the company in front of Congress to hanging the whole operation out to dry at a press conference where he was allegedly going to take the fall for the whole cruise ship fiasco. He’s a man on an island now. The island is called Ambition Island. It is infested with termites and might get swallowed up by a wave at any moment. But he’s there and he’s not leaving now.

Logan Roy

Logan enters season three under attack from multiple angles. He’s fighting off a proxy battle from his investors and facing heat from Congress over years of sexual harassment/abuse on his cruise line and his own son is now leading the charge. And yet… look at his face. He seems like he’s relishing it all, whether it’s the adrenaline rush from the old scrapper getting in one last fight or the perverse pride he feels in a traitorous son he had just chastised for not being “a killer.” He needs this stuff to feel alive. And he’s getting it all at once.

Shiv Roy

Shiv was passed over as CEO in favor of Rhea Jarrell (Holly Hunter), who left the company about 90 seconds later when she realized she couldn’t trust Logan. Then Shiv had it out with her husband, Tom, over the way she treats him. Then, with tears in her eyes, she begged her dad to not make Tom the sacrificial lamb for the cruise business, which resulted in her brother getting the short straw and choosing to burn the house down instead. The Roys are an extremely normal family.

Roman Roy

All things considered, putting aside the thing where he was briefly kind of held hostage while attempting to secure a major cash infusion from an oil-rich Middle Eastern family, Roman came out of season two in decent shape. He impressed Logan with his read on the situation, he got promoted to COO, he has his unconventional thing going on with Gerri. He’s a slime puppy, of course, always and forever, but he’s a good boy. Kind of. And either way, his existence allows me to keep using that screencap up there, so… no complaints here.

Connor Roy

The oldest and most-forgotten of the Roy children financed his girlfriend’s play and watched it bomb through a combination of terrible reviews and potential lawsuits related to vermin infesting the set. He felt out a run for political office and was told to end it by Logan, who, using his gift for language and paternal worth, said “everyone thinks you’re a joke and you’re fucking embarrassing me.” Also, in what is maybe the perfect Connor moment yet, he introduced himself using his full name in a tribute to his father, as though he might not be recognized otherwise. Not great!

My beautiful lanky boy Cousin Greg

Cousin Greg:

• Is a sweet boy
• Might be developing a secret cocaine problem
• Appears to be siding with Kendall in the family free-for-all, based only on the shot at the press conference of him in the back holding a folder full of documents

I love him.

Tom Wambsgans

Tom got cooked at the hearing about the cruise ships, most memorably for the “can’t make a Tomlette without breaking a few Greggs” line. He got weepy with Shiv about the power dynamics in their relationship and the thing where she told him on their wedding night that she wanted it to be open. Tom is in an interesting place. He can either buckle in and fight with the family or wriggle free and help Kendall take them down. I’m fine with either as long as he and Greg share the screen 4-5 times per episode.

Gerri Kellman

Gerri is in a weird spot as the highest-ranking non-Roy at Waystar. She’ll never get the top job even though she is more qualified, she’ll always be one move away from personal and professional ruin, and she’s engaged in that whole mommy-son non-sexual humiliation-based thing with Roman. Gerri has a lot going on. I root for her. I kind of hope she quits the company in the middle of season three and gets way into, like, hang gliding. Gerri deserves a break.

Marcia Roy

Marcia is the best. Logan’s third wife pops up like once or twice per episode and says the most cutting things you’ve ever heard anyone say, then she just zips off for a while until she comes back to do it again. I get legitimately excited every time she shows up. I would watch an entire episode from her perspective, just one full hour of her chopping people down and being ruthless. I hope she ends up running the company.

Willa

Willa, Connor’s younger actress and playwright lover, was last seen heaving a tablet into the salty abyss after reading the reviews of the play she wrote and Connor funded. It was notable for a few reasons but mostly because it made for a very useful GIF that I have posted above for your “right click + save as” needs. My gift to you. And Willa’s gift to you. Our gift, really.

Various Franks and Carls and Hugos and Karolinas

The collection of non-Gerri, non-Roy members of the Waystar team. They’re the best because they are constantly ready to sell each other out if it means their own survival. Which makes sense. Think about the work it took to navigate those shark-infested waters in a way that allowed them to rise to this level. These people are survivors. They’re just as cutthroat as anyone, but they have to mask it in servitude and politeness lest they offend one of the failsons and kneecap their future. My favorite is Karl, but please know this situation is fluid and subject to change.

Stewy and Sandy

Currently leading the proxy fight among the Waystar shareholders to takeover the company. In the finale, Logan and Kendall took their yacht to Greece to visit Stewy and make him a pitch to retain control and Stewy a) told them to go screw, and b) looked like this. He’s a sicko money vulture and everything I hate in the world and yet I adore him immensely. Sometimes he shows up in sweaters that look so stylish and comfortable I might update my will to request I be buried in them. It’s all very conflicting.

The Pierce Family

The Pierce family is notable for three main reasons:

• They were briefly in the mix as a lifeline for Waystar but things got complicated over politics
• Naomi Pierce remains an on-again, off-again fling for Kendall, even if Logan had her kicked off the yacht at the end of season two for various reasons related to her and Kendall doing drugs together a lot
• At one point in season two, Nan Pierce, the family’s matriarch, brushed off some hooey by describing it as “horse potatoes,” and that phrase has lived in my head ever since

Horse potatoes!

Ewan Roy

Ewan Roy rules. He hates everyone so much and loves telling them to their faces. At one point, he made a surprisingly reasonable argument that Logan is worse for society than Hitler. I want him and Marcia to get married and defy biology to have a dozen of the meanest and crankiest children in the world. This is not an unreasonable request.

Succession is a good show. I’m so glad it’s back on Sunday night.

As NBA star Kyrie Irving continues to stir up controversy by refusing to get the COVID vaccine, essentially preventing him from playing home games for the Brooklyn Nets, he’s had no shortage of right-wing voices rushing to his defense. This time around, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who rode into office as the “QAnon congresswoman,” fired off a wildly offensive and scientifically illiterate attack on the NBA.

“The fascist NBA won’t let Kyrie Irving play for refusing a vaccine,” Greene tweeted. “But yet they still let Magic Johnson play with HIV.”

Naturally, as with all things related to MTG, there’s a lot wrong here. Right off the bat, the NBA has not banned Irving from playing — the team he plays for (the Brooklyn Nets) made the decision to force him to sit out until he is either vaccinated or New York City drops its vaccine mandate for indoor events. Secondly, HIV and COVID-19 are two extremely different diseases, particularly when it comes to how they’re transmitted. While COVID-19 is so contagious that you simply have to be in the room as an infected person, HIV can only be transmitted via sexual intercourse, sharing intravenous needles, or a contaminated blood transfusion. Last time we checked, absolutely none of those are happening on the court during an NBA game, and social media lit Greene up for her asinine tweet.

Greene joins fellow right-wing figures like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr. who have voiced support for Irving’s decision to continue to buck New York’s vaccine mandate. Cruz suggested that Irving should be traded to Houston where fans would be happy to see him play.

Trump Jr. skewed a little bit more towards MTG-level of hyperbole by suggesting that Irving sacrificed more than Colin Kaepernick.

And the world spins madly on.

(Via Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter)

Guilty Party: Season 1 (Paramount+ series) — Kate Beckinsale stars in this charming-looking dramedy series about a disgraced (and opportunistic) journalist who works to redeem herself by digging for the real story on a young mother who was convicted of murdering her husband, a crime that the mother insists that she did not commit. Expect (strangely enough) some whimsy amid this seemingly serious premise, including some adversaries that are a real pain in the butt.

Indefensible: Season 1 (SundanceTV and AMC+ series) — This show works to put a different spin on the true-crime genre with host Jena Friedman, who previously wrote for The Late Show With David Letterman and produced for The Daily Show. Friedman aims to take the story beyond the conventionally satisfying outcome, where the criminal gets locked up, end of story. She’s digging far beyond, into the dysfunction inherent within the criminal justice system and the reasons why the crimes in question could’ve happened.

Aquaman: King of Atlantis: Season 1 (HBO Max) — While DC fans sit in the limbo in between live-action Jason Momoa movies, this three-part animated miniseries from James Wan could tide things over a bit. This week’s installment involves the Dead Sea with Aquaman learning that he’s still got a lot of learning to do upon becoming king. The voice cast includes Cooper Andrews, Gillian Jacobs, Dana Snyder, and Thomas Lennon.

The Kids Tonight Show: Season 1 (Peacock series) — One late-night show wasn’t enough for Jimmy Fallon, who executive produces this child-friendly version that introduces talented young kids and lets them dominate the airwaves.

Ghosts (CBS, 9:00pm) — A freelance journalist and a chef move into a massive country estate while hoping to transform it into a bed-and-breakfast. As the title indicates, however, there are ghosts afoot, and they’re comedic. So, there’s a Prohibition-era lounge singer, a hippie who indulges in hallucinogens, a scout leader, and a Militiaman. This week, one character gets to (at long last) enjoy a traditional Viking funeral.

Legacies CW, 9:00pm) — Season 4 begins with the Super Squad and Hope hatching a rescue plan while Malivore has apparently taken over souls and bodies, and what the hell is going on here?

Law & Order: SVU (NBC, 9:00pm) — Season 23 (!) continues with an episode called “Fast Times @ The Wheel House,” and I’m not sure if a Spicoli-themed character will appear, but there will probably be more strange expressions from Benson while she thinks about Stabler.

Law & Order: Organized Crime (NBC, 10:00pm) — Bearded Stabler is still doing the enormously risky undercover thing while uncovering what Flutura is really doing in the family business, all while Bell is maneuvering on a case, and Bernadette and Eli are getting used to their new circumstances.

Late Night With Jimmy Fallon — Jamie Foxx, Jodie Comer, Tom Thakkar

Doom Patrol: Season 3 (HBO Max series) — DC’s struggling misfit superheroes are back for another round of being portrayed by an incredible cast. Brendan Fraser has received plenty of raves for his fury-filled Cliff Steele/Robotman, and more kudos should go to Diana Guerrero (Orange is the New Black) as Crazy Jane, which is actually a role that requires Diane to play dozens of incarnations, including a very timely take on a Karen.

In case you missed this pick from last week:

One of Us Is Lying: Season 1 (Peacock series) — The New York Times bestselling novel comes to life when a group of give teens go to detention, and one of them does not emerge. Naturally, the four remaining students are all suspects, and all of them are looking sketchy for one reason or another.

House Haunters: Season 1 (Discovery+ series) — Yep, this house is exactly what it sounds like: a play on the long-running House Hunters series. Join up with comedian Anthony Anderson and his mom, Doris, who inject some horror into the housing market by pranking the hell out of prospective buyers and their realtors alike.

Unless you’ve also been living under leaf litter, in the dank reaches of a shady forest, you surely know that the mushroom revolution is upon us. Foraging is all anyone in the food world can talk about, as more and more people take part in sourcing their own ingredients; psilocybin mushrooms are at the forefront of medical research while also racing toward legalization; and non-psychedelic, medicinal mushrooms are being added to everything from hot chocolate to face cream. Plus you’ve got a million Steve Bramuccis at every party trying to bend your ear to the joys of microdosing (I promise to back off if I see you roll your eyes at the phrase “neural flexibility”).

Yes, the mushroom boom very is real. Interest in medicinal, edible, and psychedelic mushrooms is spiking in a way that is both measurable and easily perceptible. Instagram has a whole mushroom hunting community now. Reddit has multiple forums dedicated to the subject. Joe Rogan discusses his microdosing often. Shows feature psilocybin storylines or themes that would have been taboo (or played with little nuance) until quite recently. And Coach Beard from Ted Lasso is literally obsessed.

Perhaps the most notable moment of mushrooms permeating pop culture over the course of the pandemic has been the reception given the documentary Fantastic Fungi. The Brie Larson-narrated film was recently given a new life after being licensed by Netlfix and has become Google Meets discussion fodder in virtual workplaces worldwide.

The documentary is based heavily on the work of mushroom rock god Paul Stamets — who has appeared on Rogan, spoken at EDM festivals, and is truly the lion’s mane of the fungal jungle. It’s directed by Louie Schwartzberg, a genuine mushroom aficionado and a pioneer of timelapse filming techniques, who captures the beauty and magic of his subject matter (both its edible and hallucinogenic varieties) with an inventive approach and a loving eye. Together, they tell a story that acts as a sort of Trojan Horse — hooking audiences by explaining the mind-boggling complexity of mycelial networks and the importance of fungi in a thriving ecosystem, before shifting to psilocybin and the massive amounts of research and anecdotal evidence that point to it being what the FDA has labeled a “breakthrough drug.”

With Fantastic Fungi drawing new voices into the conversation around mushrooms, Stamets and Schwartzberg have planned the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit — a virtual gathering of some of the most well-regarded names in the field, along with mushroom-friendly musicians, actors, spiritual leaders, and artists. I spoke to the duo on the eve of the summit about how all mushrooms shape our world and how psilocybin, in specific, has the potential to completely reframe it.

Our conversation is below, edited for brevity.

Let’s get started with the beauty of the movie, because I think that was a really active choice — making sure that people felt the magic, first of all, that Paul has always talked about in mushrooms but also just that we see in the natural world. What was the visual language that you wanted to share with people to make sure they could understand, for instance, mycelium networks, throughout this film?

Louie: The beauty — I’ve always been saying this that is what I’ve learned from 40 years of filming, is that beauty is nature’s tool for survival. Because we protect what we love. So I think it’s enabled DNA to move forward and life to move forward. It’s intrinsic to the films that I make. And it’s not a superficial, glossy exterior. It’s really inherent to the story, because of how it engages your emotions.

It certainly encourages reproduction, throughout all species. Whether it’s pollinators or animals. It’s a language that makes life go forward.

Paul: What I would like to add is… think about it — people go for a walk in the woods, okay? It’s nice to go for a walk in the woods. Good exercise. You’re out in nature. Then they get turned on to mushrooms and they suddenly see these mushrooms everywhere. So often what I hear is, “How could I not see them before? They’re all over the place. And moreover, there are so many colors and shapes and forms.” So, formerly, they would just go for a walk in the woods. And secondarily, now they have an interest in finding mushrooms as they walk in the woods. That changes until, primarily, their motivation for walking in the woods is finding mushrooms. And it sort of elevates this whole idea of hiding in plain view these majestic forms and expressions of nature that are so colorful, so exciting.

You could take some of them home and eat them. You could engage your kids. It’s like an Easter egg hunt for adults and children. So it brings the family together on this shared adventure, and you have this “eureka!” experience. Now, it’s a really important thing. How many of us have a eureka experience? Not that often. That eureka experience biochemically creates an endorphin rush and it becomes a little bit addictive. You’re so excited, and you’re so excited to be out with your family with a shared joy of your five-year-old son or your daughter finding some mushrooms, and you rejoice with them.

I think it’s very primal, and I think it hits these very fundamental receptor sites of what excites us as a community. And this film very eloquently brought that into front view.

It absolutely did. And it validated those who were already on this wave.

Louie: The fact of the matter is, 99% of the people watching movies and films are not hunting mushrooms. But they see it sort of like it’s almost cheating in a way because the movie brings it to the forefront without them having to do the exercise. But now they see them everywhere. Mushroooms have become a zeitgeist of our time. There is a mycological revolution sweeping the planet — largely sparked by Paul — that brought this into the forefront during these COVID times where you cannot be indoors. You want to be outdoors, and this is a shared purpose and a way of sharing joy amongst your family.

Paul: That’s why babies are cute and puppies are cute and kittens are cute. We want to protect life.

I feel like the growing interest in mushrooms — and the doc did such a good job with this — helps people reframe our notions of life and death as somehow permanent. You go into a forest and you see fruiting bodies coming off of a theoretically dead tree and you realize that the dead tree is alive. I remember the artist Andy Goldsworthy once talked about how rocks were alive in some sense because they’re turning from sand to stone to sand. That may not be true. That may be more metaphorical. But obviously, with the forest, it’s very much true.

Louie: Well, I mean Paul really had beautiful words. It’s not the end of life. It would be the beginning of life. But 20, 30 years ago I shot that mouse trap rotting. And who would think that observing that was actually very beautiful. Watching it decompose. Watching the bones separate. Watching new life come through the ground.

I think it’s important what you’re saying. It does change … It changes your spiritual outlook and your worldview. And if you do that, you lose the fear of dying — which is another important part of the movie with John Hopkins and the people taking psychedelics — is that they have this physical-mystical experience and they lose their fear of dying. Why should we have this fear of dying when perhaps we can accept it as feeling the wonders of the universe?

I love the choice to have Brie Larson be the voice. It’s funny because I get PR emails and things like that and they say “narrated by.” Most documentaries have a celebrity narrator at this point, so I didn’t really think much of it. But when I saw the movie and I realized she was literally voicing the mushrooms themselves. How did that choice come about to kind of let her articulate the point of view of mycelium and mushroom and fungi?

Louie: The stories that I like to tell are more the feminine side of nature, not the macho stories that you’re going to find on Discovery or BBC. Kill or be killed; survival of the fittest. That creates drama and anxiety. But what I find, and I’m sure Paul does as well, what is more spectacular are the millions upon billions of interactions that are going on that we’re not aware of.

Before I did Fantastic Fungi, I did Wings of Life — where I had Meryl Streep be the voice of a flower seducing the pollinators. So I think it’s cool to give nature a voice. Brie Larson had yet to become a superhero for Marvel when she agreed to work with me on it. That was way before that occurred. But when you think about it, how beautiful is it that she represents such a feminine side of nature but she’s also a superhero?

In the movie, what’s really cool is she’s really having a dialogue with Paul in that she sort of is the voice of nature and Paul is the voice of the enlightened, scientific mind trying to understand the fungi world and the cycle of life. But they’re actually having a bit of a back and forth, which is subtle but I think creates a really engaging dynamic narrative dynamic.

So Paul… now I’m going to do the thing that every — I would imagine that so many of the people interviewing you do. I feel like everyone wants to hold off a little bit, and you probably anticipate it, but before long can you sense people getting ready to turn the interview to the talk of psychedelics?

Paul: Well, it’s hard to ignore the amazing avalanche of scientific articles and peer review journals validated by the FDA occurring in reputable medical journals showing that psilocybin is one of the most profoundly beneficial therapeutic drugs with the lowest toxicity index of practically any drug used in psychotherapy. That is not an exaggeration, folks. That is not an exaggeration. This is a statement of fact.

So many of these anti-depressant drugs mollify or dumb you down. They down-regulate emotional response and connectivity. The use of the psilocybe mushrooms is coming at a time-critical point in medicine. The massive stressors that our society is experiencing internationally due to the COVID pandemic just further support the urgent need for these breakthrough medicines.

And that’s what the FDA has called psilocybin — a breakthrough medicine. This is why there are over 67 clinical [currently 76] trials listing psilocybin at clinicaltrials.gov. And think about this: they have to go through the institutional review boards, called IRBs, that are curated by physicians and scientists to address primarily three subjects. One, does it address an urgent need that is not being addressed currently by conventional or existing medicines? Two, is it harm reduction? Is it known or can be shown that it’s unlikely to cause you harm? And three is scalability. Or is it medicine that is so expensive that it can’t be scaled?

All of those three boxes are checked. Then the fourth one was “is there good scientific evidence already published and supported?” So those are the four major criteria that I’m aware of that the IRB boards … And when you consider that 67 of them, and maybe 68 as of today, have passed the litmus test, then I think it’s a profound medicine of our times.

It’s staggering.

Thank goodness that our cultural intelligence, our scientific intelligence, has escaped the gravitational pull of Tim Leary and the 1960s and the war on drugs, which was so misdirected. That now these substances like psilocybin can be looked at scientifically — with scientific objectivity – and based on medical intelligence, not on political convenience.

I think we’re in a new dawn in a new era of medicine.

I’m actually part of your Microdose.me study. Before you started that study, my own microdosing was just kind of blind and figuring out dosage on the fly. But one thing I learned through you that I think surprises a lot of people that maybe you can unpack a little bit is that with microdosing — a lot of the positive effects have actually been found to be … which is reverse intuitive, have found to be bigger, or better rather, when there is no effect felt on the user. That a microdose is perhaps most effective on a subliminal level.

Can you unpack and explain that just a little bit for people who are interested in microdosing?

Paul: Well, when you talk about depression and anxiety, these are subjective. Psychiatrists are trying to help a patient to feel better and escape their depression. How do you feel? So the microdosing and the study we have right now that has just passed peer review and is soon to be published in a major scientific publication of the highest reputation. The kind that when this interview is out I can tell you what the journal is.

But we surveyed over 8,000 individuals. Surprisingly, more than 4,000 people were not microdosers. We were just shocked. They wanted to have a baseline of known cognitive, emotional, and psychological health. So we had a very good balance between microdosers and non-microdosers. The people who microdose, this is open-label, right? People know that this is not a placebo, double-blind control study. This is an observational study that the people are reporting through microdosing what happens after four weeks. Statistically, that’s a highly significant reduction in depression and anxiety — higher than that any other conventional drug.

Any pharmaceutical company would leap for joy to see how specifically significant these results are.

So that is one aspect to it. But what we have been looking at is more of the neurophysiological benefits. And what we’re finding is that beyond the subjective, “How do you feel,” we’re able to demonstrate now neurophysiological benefits that show that microdosing improves the health of your neurological landscape even through the central nervous system.

I think this is the beginning of a whole new chapter in medical history.

So Louie, just to add to that, I’m also a big believer in the macro-dose — the “hero dose” of psilocybin. Obviously, you were going to be touching on psilocybin in the movie. The psychedelic experience has been portrayed to all different levels in film and television, and quite often poorly or quite often focusing on paranoia aspects, et cetera.

What were the conversations you and Paul had around how to portray it? Or just kind of the visual aspects of the psychedelic experience. What did you guys talk through about that?

Louie: Well, I don’t recall us having many conversations about it because it’s kind of a personal experience we have. What I did was I had some incredible content that I have in my library, which I’ve always been filming these patterns and rhythms of nature, which I think is a gateway to your soul, these universal rhythms and patterns.

Then I was able to then blend it into sort of a mandala pattern that I felt was very organic and similar to what I had experienced in my life. And I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and say, “Wow, that’s the best example I’ve ever seen of a psychedelic experience.”

Paul, how did you feel about how psilocybin has been represented in the past in film and TV? And then how do you feel about how it was represented here?

Paul: Well, that’s a great question, because that’s where I think Louie’s film sets a new standard — showing more accurately the reality of psilocybin mushroom use. The absolute academic bankruptcy of these other films that try to jump onto the stereotypical reaction of people saying, “shrooms.” It’s not happening as much, but all of us have this experience. You mention mushrooms with a group of friends or at a social event who are not experienced. You bring up the subject, and very quickly, from my experience, 90% of the time somebody will make a stupid joke, someone will sneer, someone will say maybe like, “far out, man,” and they’ll totally discount this.

What Louis did is a total aikido move. I didn’t tell him to do this. No one told him to do this. Louie set the stage. First talk about culinary mushrooms and the history of mushrooms and their evolution. And then he was able to set a foundation of common wisdom, commonly accepted wisdom, based on cultural and scientifically backed themes, sub-themes, and then brings in psilocybin.

So he set this stage intellectually and emotionally and made that connection with the audience. And then he brings in this subject. Had Louie done this at the beginning, this movie would not have been successful.

I think that’s very true.

Louie: One other quick note about the psychedelic visualization. People do say when they’re on a journey, it’s like a filter is removed and you’re seeing trees or mountains breathing and moving. You’re actually maybe seeing what pure energy really looks like. That’s what I love to film. I can see that through the camera — like ripples on the ocean or reflections on the water and that pattern, that is a universal pattern. That’s what I use. And I kind of layer it and manipulate it. But the motion and the energy is medicine. And it’s one form of medicine that can heal your soul.

There are studies that have shown obviously that being in nature is the perfect combination of a psychedelic journey. That’s why I’m excited about doing this because we’re bringing the sacred visual medicine of nature into the home environment. And not just a shot of a tree or a river but seeing it through the altered perception of time and scale, which automatically gets the brain in the position to let go from the pre-conceived notions of the human point of view.

Is there something that you want to say to the person reading this who is thinking, “Oh this is a wave that I want to be on?” I’m sure you get asked that question a zillion times a week. What do you tell people who are looking to kind of embark in this process?

Paul: I think the take-home message is that it creates emotional intelligence. But I believe it increases intelligence, kindness, and courage. These are fundamental to the health of our society. When you have somebody who has been abused, raped, or a victim of a violent crime, of course, the victim is in the epicenter. But it affects their family. It affects their narration with their neighbors, within the neighborhood.

When that goes out into the cities and all the violence that we see, it’s a shared community of emotions. The opposite of that is that psilocybin can help cure these people fundamentally at the epicenter of this emotional and oftentimes physical tragedy. Then as a result, like a pebble on a pond, is the emanation of ripples of kindness, courage, and increasing emotional intelligence that ripples out through society.

This is a paradigm shift.

I say this now after saying this for a long time, but I say this now with great scientific backing. This is not me saying it or a few other lone rangers that are out there in the wilderness of science saying it. It has become a strong narrative of our time. Yale University, Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Imperial College, King’s College. You only have to be mildly inquisitive to have heard about this.

It’s a true paradigm shift that can actually transform society. Which is a vision that people have often had for psychedelics but finally feels viable now.

Louie: One of the things that Paul was talking about was the takeaway from the experience. I would say that the takeaway from the movie, which is something I did not anticipate or have a preconceived idea about, was the fact that looking at the fungal network, we’re looking at this underground network of a shared economy, where information is shared without greed for ecosystems to flourish. That’s a religious mantra. That is nature’s operating instructions.

That’s an actual way that we can rethink the world, right?

It’s actually a rethinking of all of society. It’s a non-hierarchical vision for the world.

Louie: That’s why the forest is a forest, a community. And they’re all caring for each other. You don’t have to have this dog-eat-dog attitude about competition, selfishness, et cetera because we all know whether it’s government or society, any culture, when we all do well, we all also individually do well.

I think we’ve got to use that as a moral compass as we move forward, looking at how human beings cooperate with each other.

I have one last question. I am sure that taking mushrooms with Paul is on the bucket list of about 100,000 or maybe 200,000 people on this planet. I can’t imagine that too many people get to do it. First of all, I guess Paul, how many times do you hero dose a year? And second of all, did you guys get to have that experience together in preparation for the movie?

Paul: We’re two brothers from separate mothers, okay? So I’m not going to speak to what Louie and my personal experiences are. That’s not right. But I would say to the hundreds of thousands, and to hear it from my perspective, it seems like millions of people want to take psilocybin mushrooms with me. I would just respond with, “You are taking psilocybin mushrooms with me every time you journey.”

This is something that has deeply improved my life, the lives of our community, and our associates. So we’re joining together as one giant consciousness.

That’s about all I feel safe about saying. In terms of my personal use with psilocybin mushrooms, I have said for 30, 40 years, I will never be an apologist for my interest and expertise in psilocybin mushrooms. I have stated that dozens and dozens of times. And I do heroic journeys at least once a year. I oftentimes ask myself why am I not doing this more often?.

Psilocybin mushrooms are anti-addictive by their very nature. This is what is a big “a-ha” moment for so many people not experienced. That these are some of the most anti-addictive of all drugs. And all the other psychotherapeutic drugs have oftentimes, most of them, as far as I know, have an element of addiction and dependency upon them.

The fact that you can have a paradigm-shifting or a therapeutically powerful experience that can improve your life, but you only have to do them once a year. Some people select never to do them again. It has fundamentally changed their psyche to the point that they feel comfortable. They don’t feel diseased or distressed. They feel healed. So once healed, they no longer feel the need for the medicine.

Louie: I know we’re running out of time, Stephen. But for my last comment on that would be that my psychedelic experience early on in my college years definitely influenced my filmmaking. It’s why I became this pioneer of time-lapse — because I realized that this point of view, this narrow point of view of 24 frames per second real-time isn’t the way you experience life. It’s not the way a bee or a redwood tree looks at life.

I know that this isn’t just about the movie for either of you. You have the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit — which is free — coming up from October 15th to 17th. All these massive names from science to self-help to Hollywood…

I hope you will let your audience know to visit Fungiglobalsummit.com where I’ve got Paul and many thought leaders like Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil from Johns Hopkins. We have conversations about psychedelics, about wellness, about culinary arts… Jason Mraz. Lots of musical performances. And it’s free, and it’s a great way to dig deeper into the subject matter.

There is this movement. And now it’s kind of like “well you’ve seen the movie” — but people want more information. So the summit is going to be an opportunity where I did 50 interviews with 50 of the top voices from the underground of the experts in psychedelics, in medical, in wellness, culinary, arts, and science where we can do a deeper dive.

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Fantastic Fungi is streaming on Netflix. The Fantastic Fungi Global Summit is free and runs from October 15th-17th online. Steve Bramucci can be found on Instagram.

Ana de Armas is only in No Time to Die for about 10 minutes, but Anthony Hopkins is only in The Silence of the Lambs for 16 minutes and he won an Oscar for his performance, so…

I’m not saying de Armas deserves an Academy Award for her role as CIA agent Paloma, but I am saying her sequence in Cuba is the best stretch of the movie. She has crackling chemistry with Daniel Craig, and Paloma’s scenes with James Bond bring much-needed levity to a somber (but entertaining) three-hour movie.

It’s an extra-impressive performance once you learn she didn’t have long to train. “My preparation for No Time To Die was not as long as I would have liked it to be. I was shooting [Marilyn Monroe biopic] Blonde, and I had only a few days to train, so I went straight from Blonde to shoot for Bond,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “I didn’t have the time to actually commit to any kind of diet or workout or training because my schedule just didn’t allow for it.” In the brief amount of time that she did have to prepare, de Armas “had the gun training and learned the choreography for the scenes… It was a short but intense immersion into the Bond universe, so I quickly transformed into a CIA agent.”

And if you got in her way while she was training, look out.

Give Paloma her own spin-off movie.

(Via Harper’s Bazaar)

Litigation has always been a favorite weapon of Donald Trump’s but, according to new reports, he might be having a tough time recruiting lawyers to his legal team right now.

Currently, Trump is preparing to face off against the House Oversight Committee investigating the Jan. 6th insurrection he helped launch. The plan was to argue against over 40 documents being released by the National Archives to the committee that contained sensitive information about his final months in office. Trump is hoping to argue executive privilege, a loophole presidents have been able to exploit since the Watergate scandal to keep specific records of their time in office confidential. Basically, Trump doesn’t want the House to get their hand on documents detailing the inner workings of his administration, and he’s trying to wield the power of the courts to make that happen.

The only problem? No one worth their salt wants to represent him.

In a recent CNN report, several people who have knowledge of Trump’s current legal predicaments allege that the former president’s team has reached out to a handful of top conservative lawyers around the country and no one has answered the call. In fact, plenty of lawyers who once defended Trump in court during his presidency are now sitting on the sidelines, refusing to help him with one of the more complicated legal battles he’s faced since leaving office.

“It’s not a 10-foot pole,” John Yoo, a University of California at Berkeley law professor told CNN when asked how far these firms would go to distance themselves from Trump. “It’s a 1,000-foot pole.”

Their reasoning is fairly easy to guess. Some are reportedly worried Trump won’t pay them — he has a history of stiffing his employees. Others have seen the legal consequences their fellow attorneys are now facing — both Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell are now defendants in billion-dollar defamation suits after representing Trump — and they just don’t want that kind of trouble. Even big names like white-collar crime lawyer William Burck who represented 11 Trump associates in and after the Mueller investigation have repeatedly turned the former president down in recent months.

It’s almost sad, knowing how much he loves to sue people, that Trump can’t even get members of longtime partner firms to come to his aid. Maybe he should enlist the services of that MAGA rioter who demanded to represent himself in court and accidentally admitted to committing even more felonies in the process? He seems like a pretty sharp guy.

(Via CNN)

Young Thug’s new album Punk drops in just a few hours after months of hyping the project’s fitting, against-the-grain nature. With Thug teasing the new music pretty much everywhere he’s gone, from Paris Fashion Week to Lyft rides from the studio, it’s been clear that he’s taking a non-traditional approach to promoting the project, just like a real punk should. At the album release party in Hollywood earlier this week, the Atlanta trap mad scientist doubled down by doing something completely unexpected: Smashing up a brand-new car with baseball bats. After all, what could be more punk than that?

Video of the celebration hit the internet a day later, catching Young Thug, Gunna, and Metro Boomin swinging baseball bats at the Rolls-Royce’s windows, which were spray-painted with the word “Punk.” Smashing up the luxury car seemed to be their way of embracing punk’s anti-capitalistic philosophy, but some fans didn’t see it that way, with a few pointing out that there would be better uses for the money that went into purchasing the car for the sole purpose of destruction.

However, the video seems to have done its job: Getting people talking about Young Thug and his upcoming album, so… mission accomplished. Wasteful or not, the video’s release ensures that fans know his album’s dropping — which means for Thug, it was well worth the expense.

Punk is out tonight at midnight ET via Atlantic and YSL.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

As the NBA season approaches and training camps get underway, we’ll be taking a look at the player on each team that holds the key to unlocking their full potential.

In Brooklyn, the real answer here is whether Kyrie Irving comes back, as well as the health of their now Big 2, because it’s pretty hard to see a whole lot of outcomes where they’re anything but great so long as Kevin Durant and James Harden are close to full strength come playoff time. That is certainly not guaranteed, but for a team with championship or bust expectations, the others are still going to be important to just how good they can be. Joe Harris has to knock down shots better than he did in the playoffs against Milwaukee. Bruce Brown continuing to be as impactful as he was as a small-ball center is likewise important.

But I’m most intrigued by Nic Claxton, the third-year center out of Georgia who is, at the moment, the only true center you can be sure of on this team.

In this day and age, and with the collection of talent in Brooklyn, they don’t need to be carrying a bunch of centers. Still, with LaMarcus Aldridge coming back from an irregular heartbeat and Blake Griffin, Paul Millsap, and Brown as the other “big” options, Claxton is going to be their defensive anchor in the middle when they aren’t going small, and that’s a pretty important role on a team trying to win a title. Claxton played extremely well last year to usurp DeAndre Jordan as their best center and earn this opportunity, averaging 6.6 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks in just 18.6 minutes per game (in 32 regular season games). His athleticism and timing on the defensive end was incredibly helpful for a Brooklyn team that doesn’t employ a ton of defense-first players, and on offense he is a terrific lob threat on a team filled with great lob tossers.

This season, Claxton’s minutes will likely increase and while the Nets will still look to play small-ball plenty come playoff time, he is, truly, the only real rim protector left on the roster. The improvement of the Nets on the defensive end when Claxton was on the court was very noticeable, as Brooklyn boasted a 102.1 defensive rating and opponents shot just 41.4 percent from the field in the 594 minutes he played in the regular season. That’s not a huge sample, but it’s indicative of how much his presence in the paint bothered opponents.

This year, he is the guy at center and if he can sustain that kind of impact in an expanded role to give Brooklyn a legitimate center on top of the danger they present as a small-ball group, that will only make them more dynamic as the title favorites. We know the Nets have tons of small lineup versatility, but having the ability to go big will only give them more options no matter their opponents in the postseason.

The New Orleans Pelicans turned heads at their media day when the team announced that standout third-year big man Zion Williamson underwent foot surgery during the offseason. While executive David Griffin said “his timeline should get him back on the court in time for regular season,” it turns out Williamson will not be ready in time.

There was plenty of skepticism over that timetable earlier this week when head coach Willie Green said Williamson had not even began running, his inability to take the floor to start the year became official on Thursday, when Griffin said Williamson will get a new round of scans on his foot in the next few weeks.

Unsurprisingly, there were questions for Griffin regarding the timetable he laid out that made it sound like Williams and would be able to play in the season opener. In response, Griffin said that he never said the thing that he said, and then backtracked to say he meant something other than game one.

The Pelicans have tended to take a very conservative approach to injuries when they are suffered by their young All-Star. /he team will start its regular season schedule at home on October 20 when they play host to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Emerging R&B star Nevaeh Jolie has come out as transgender after being encouraged by others’ coming-out stories on National Coming Out Day (this past Monday, October 11). The singer, best known for the single “Screwed Up” featuring A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, announced coming out in an Instagram post, writing in the caption, “Even though I never felt like I wasn’t myself, engaging with ppl, I just knew nobody knew what I thought of myself when I looked in the mirror. And why I was so sad. I saw a boy. In a girl’s body.”

Nevaeh also explained that he would begin hormone therapy this week to begin the transition, explaining that with the help of therapy and the support of a loving circle, he was able to find the courage to make the announcement and share the change with the world.

“There would also be times I just felt like everyone around me knew my secret,” he wrote. “”I created a version of myself that was toxic, I demonized myself, and convinced myself I’d never be able to love. After moving away from home and just experiencing the world and how my dysphoria (before I even knew what that was) worsened, I finally did what I was dreading … I looked up the word ‘transgender.’” After reading others’ stories, Nevaeh realized that it was possible to accept himself, come out, and receive acceptance from others as well.