Month: July 2024

Manifesting is real if you know how to do it. Ariana Grande manifested her Wicked role over a decade before being cast in the film, while Austin Butler manifested his Oscar nom through a High School Musical spinoff movie, so every little bit counts! Scarlett Johansson has been seemingly and subconsciously manifesting her Jurassic Park role since she was a little kid… and it only took a quick chat with Jimmy Fallon to realize it.

Johansson stopped by The Tonight Show on Monday to promote her new movie Fly Me To The Moon, but her upcoming leading role in the next Jurassic World movie was obviously mentioned. Johansson is set to star in a new installment in the Jurassic universe, taking the reins from Chris Pratt & co. Now, Fallon is taking all the credit for her big casting news after she mentioned her childhood love of Jurassic Park the last time she was on The Tonight Show.

“Once you came onto the show, we were talking abut your favorite gift, and you said it was a Jurassic Park Pup Tent… now you are starring in the new Jurassic World movie,” Fallon began, to which the actress replied, “I think we manifested it on the show. It’s kind of crazy.”

Johansson explained, “This was pre-Jurassic casting, and I said I asked for a Jurassic Park Tent when I was like seven. And now I am in the new Jurassic World. I think we manifested it!”

In November, Johansson stopped by The Tonight Show to talk Christmas gifts (obviously) and she mentioned the Jurassic Park-themed tent. “My favorite thing I ever got. I slept in for like six months, in my bedroom on the floor,” she said. “That was enough for the universe to offer Johansson another great gift: a leading role in a popular franchise. Luckily, she’s been down that road before, so she will be able to handle it.

Check out the clip below:

Now that the NBA’s free agency period has largely settled down, we have a pretty good idea of what rosters will look like heading into the 2024-25 season. Obviously, the potential exists for other moves elsewhere in the league — looking at you, Lauri Markkanen — but for the most part, teams have put their rosters together save for some moves on the fringes.

All of this gives us a sense of what the league will look like next season, and which teams and players are going to be under the brightest spotlights. Today, we wanted to highlight the players that are going to be under the most pressure for one reason or another as next year rolls around.

Everyone on the Knicks

For years, the New York Knicks have waited for the moment that they could push their chips all-in and put together a roster to compete for a championship. They clearly viewed the last few months as a chance to do that, as the team acquired OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges via trades, then gave Anunoby a gigantic contract extension. The result: An expensive team built around Jalen Brunson, Donte DiVincenzo, Josh Hart, Julius Randle, Bridges, and Anunoby. The Knicks lose Isaiah Hartenstein because he cost too much, and if Mitchell Robinson can’t stay healthy, things get really thin, really quickly in the frontcourt. The good news is New York should still be quite good, and the team very well could compete in the East.

Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors

On the balance of things, the Warriors had a nice offseason, as they added three really good pros (Kyle Anderson, Buddy Hield, De’Anthony Melton) to their roster, and all three of them should help, especially if Melton can get past the back issues that plagued him last season. Of course, losing Klay Thompson goes far beyond just basketball, but the team itself is in a good spot. So, why is Green on this list? Two reasons: 1. Golden State decided to give him a 4-year, $100 million extension, while reports indicated the team couldn’t commit to a 2-year, $40 million deal for Thompson, essentially meaning they chose to give Green a long-term deal over Thompson (albeit at different times), 2. The team just cannot afford to have him miss 27 games again, with a number of them coming via suspensions. If he’s at anything but his best for the entire season, the Warriors are going to be in a tough spot in the ultra-competitive Western Conference.

Klay Thompson, Dallas Mavericks

Thompson got what he wanted this offseason: A multi-year contract that would pay him good money on a contender. That team is not the Warriors, but instead, it’s the defending Western Conference champions and a team that could really use his services, even if he is not the player that he was prior to his knee and achilles injuries (although it is going to be interesting to see just how much of his struggles last year were related to the uncertainty with his professional situation). But he’s also heading to a situation where he has to produce, as the Mavs are going to be expected to compete as long as Luka Doncic is in town. A revitalized Klay Thompson can do that, but he will have to hit the ground running as he suits up for a new team for the first time in his career.

Christian Braun, Denver Nuggets

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is gone. That is a gigantic problem for the Nuggets, as Caldwell-Pope was the perfect guy to play in the backcourt alongside Jamal Murray — he was low usage, but always was ready when opportunities to hit shots came about, and he dogged opposing players on the defensive end whenever he was on the floor. That is the perfect role player for a team with championship aspirations, and Denver let him leave for financial reasons, which is an absolute gut punch. Braun has been a very nice role player for the Nuggets since he broke into the league, but he’s going to have to slide into that role as the team’s wing stopper and lowest usage offensive player. If he can, Denver should be ok. If not, there is going to be some major criticism headed the team’s way for letting KCP go.

Paul George and Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers

I mean, yeah. There may not be two players in the league right now who are more defined by the fact that they have never been to the NBA Finals — in Embiid’s case, he’s never been to the conference finals. Now, the two are paired up after George went looking for a max contract and got one from the front office trying to build a contender around Embiid. It goes without saying, but at some point, the Sixers have to get over the hump with Embiid, and putting a player of George’s caliber next to him means that the team now has, quite possibly, the best trio in the entire NBA with Tyrese Maxey. If they can’t do it now, it’s safe to wonder if it will ever happen, which is a horrifying proposition for everyone in the City of Brotherly Love.

Chet Holmgren, Oklahoma City Thunder

A bit of an outside the box pick, but remember two years ago, when Cleveland got Donovan Mitchell and there was a belief that they’d be in an excellent position to compete going forward, in large part because they had Evan Mobley and he looked to be a future star? And then, Mobley’s development on offense stalled out, and the Cavs never took that step into the top tier of the Eastern Conference? I thought about that with the Thunder after their big offseason, and how so much of the optimism around their future (both immediate and long-term) revolves around Holmgren becoming a star. The good news is I think he’s wired to be that kind of impact player, but the difference between OKC being a contender in the West and OKC being potentially the NBA title favorites just might be Holmgren avoiding a sophomore slump.

Damian Lillard, Milwaukee Bucks

The Bucks essentially decided to run it back while making a couple of nice moves to bring in Taurean Prince and Delon Wright. They didn’t make any trades to shake up their roster, and while part of this is surely that they don’t have a ton to move, the bet is clearly that the second year of Lillard in Milwaukee will go much better than the first. This sentiment applies to Kevin Durant in Phoenix, too, but the Bucks went all-in on Lillard being the championship-level superstar their team needed, and last year, it was nowhere near good enough. The bet is that continuity will be the thing that fixes everything, and Lillard looking like the guy who can single-handedly give you an elite offense would fix a lot of problems in Milwaukee.

Kendrick Lamar‘s “Not Like Us” video may have ruined Drake’s holiday, but according to TMZ, it certainly helped boost the local economy in Kendrick’s hometown. Tam’s, the greasy spoon takeout restaurant that features prominently in the video — and in Kendrick’s life and music — reported a boost in sales at its Rosecrans location in Compton (there are several other Tam’s restaurants dotted throughout LA County) picked up by 30 to 40 percent, with a large influx of tourist interest in the location.

(This is all well and good, thank you for your support, but speaking as a local… please do not get y’all selves in trouble trying to play tourist. For one thing, you’re missing the point of the song.)

So, what is Tam’s, and how has it played a role in Kendrick Lamar’s art and life?

The first Tam’s was opened in 1971, selling not just burgers and fries, but also Mexican staples like tacos, burritos, quesadillas, and the like. Kendrick’s Tam’s is located at the corner of Rosecrans and Central (mine was on Alameda between Rosecrans and Compton) and K Dot has mentioned it in songs like “Element,” where he raps, “I be hangin’ out at Tam’s, I be on Stockton.”

In a 2012 interview with Nardwaur, Kendrick says his order at Tam’s is chili cheese fries, although TMZ notes he also orders the bacon cheeseburger:

Kendrick also mentioned Tam’s in a 2012 interview with Complex, where he compared it to the more well-known West Coast staple In-N-Out: “Everybody loves In-N-Out, but it’s a very clean-cut burger,” he said. “Tam’s is street-sloppy, burgers and shakes. It’s a chain, but it’s still hood.”

With the constant entertainment mergers and shifting names of streaming services in response to consolidation, it’s easy to get confused about who owns who. Heck, John Oliver is known to swing at his “business daddy” in response to rebranding cycles, and speaking of which, the WBD-owned Cartoon Network is the subject of a current X/Twitter hashtag (#RIPCartoonNetwork) that is causing a ruckus for obvious reasons.

Cartoon Network is still alive. Perhaps it isn’t “well,” but it’s hanging in there, and the hashtag sources back to grave concern from the Animation Workers Ignited movement, which posted a video — voiced by Adam Conover (Adam Ruins Everything) and Alex Hirsh (Gravity Falls) — to highlight the ongoing upheaval of the industry, which is feeling the pain as streaming services scale back from their attempt to outdo Netflix during the pandemic. This tweet thread is a rallying cry meant to call attention to what could happen to the entire animation industry if current trends continue. Yup, the “Cartoon Network is dead?!?!” sure grabs attention and is having the intended effect.

Fortunately, a community note is popping up on tweets with the hashtag, and Bleeding Cool summarizes some of the ongoing issues including job losses in the animation field. The below X thread also hits the essentials with a link to a pertinent survey from the Animation Guild.

It’s also worth noting that many of the tweets with the #RIPCartoonNetwork hashtag post photos of the former (iconic) Cartoon Network headquarters building, which closed its doors in 2023 amid the WBD rollout, which merged Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. Animation. At the time of that shuttering, ComicBook published a fine explanation of that studio shift, which also caused people to wonder if Cartoon Network was heading into he sunset.

Again, Cartoon Network remains open for business, although that road remains bumpy and likely will for some time.

At this point, it’s pretty firmly established that Drake took the L in his back-and-forth with Kendrick Lamar earlier this year. Only Aubrey himself (or his staunchest online supporters) could make the argument that Kendrick did NOT run roughshod over Drake’s reputation with his flurry of aggressive diss tracks, which included the presumptive song of the summer, “Not Like Us.”

Fortunately for Drake, there is a path to redemption — at least, according to former Kendrick Lamar labelmate, Ab-Soul. The Carson artist, who is still signed to Top Dawg Entertainment and appeared in the “Not Like Us” video alongside the other original members of the label, shared his theory on Twitter (back to not calling it “X”).

“If Drake is the MC I imagine he can be,” he wrote. “Redemption is not off the table.”

Of course, this is pretty much the crux of the divide between the two rappers, as well as being the main case against Drake from the majority of his critics over the past decade and a half. Drake spent his first two mixtapes, Room For Improvement and Comeback Season, courting the underground before blowing up seemingly overnight after the leak of a reference track of Drake’s song, “Brand New,” which he’d written for an unnamed R&B singer.

Since then, Drake has split his time on recordings between harder-edged, tough guy-style rapping (because the backpacker thing was never all that profitable) and brokenhearted crooning. In an effort to appeal to the zeitgeist, though, both his raps and his singing have taken on a manosphere-inspired, Red Pilled outlook, which has alienated a bunch of his most dedicated fans. Ab-Soul’s comments reflect a general vibe on rap discussion forums like Twitter that there’s a version of Drake that could potentially earn back his lost respect as a rapper, but he’d have to reject some of his biggest defenders, ditch the toxic attitudes, and start writing like his old rhyme heroes Phonte and Lupe Fiasco again.

It’s a bold theory, and I’m not sure it’d hold true in practice, but therein lies the rub: If skills sold, truth be told…

Breaking Bad is rightly considered one of the best TV shows of all-time, but it wasn’t a big hit, at least not in the early seasons. Only one episode in the first four seasons was viewed by over two million people — yet every episode in the final season hit that mark, including 10 million for the series finale.

Why did Breaking Bad suddenly get so big? “I think Netflix kept us on the air,” creator Vince Gilligan said back in 2013. “I don’t think our show would have even lasted beyond season two… It’s a new era in television, and we’ve been very fortunate to reap the benefits.”

Breaking Bad was one of the first shows to benefit from the Netflix Effect. And it’s happening again for another Bryan Cranston-starring series. Your Honor, which aired for two relatively anonymous seasons on Showtime, has become a surprise success on the streaming service. According to Variety, the legal drama “was watched for 1.5 billion minutes from June 3 to June 9. This accounts for viewership across both Paramount+, where the series was already available, and Netflix, where it had its first full week of availability after being added on May 31.” A month later, Your Honor is still in the Netflix top 10.

“A first time experience gets a lot of attention, but there is a lot to be said for a second time,” Cranston said in a statement. “To have Your Honor get new life at Netflix is the dream scenario. Millions more people now have the chance to catch up with this extraordinary show that I am so proud of.”

If Your Honor gets big enough, maybe there will be a prequel series.

(Via Variety)

Ambition isn’t always a great thing (particularly when it’s directionless). But it’s always powerful.

For better or worse, the third season of The Bear will be defined by its relationship to ambition – both within the story of the show and in the ways that that story is told.

This is the season that proved that perfection is the enemy of progress and that Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) is the enemy of everything (and everyone) else, his idiosyncrasies devoid of charm, his intense passion more easily defined as toxic rage and psychotic obsession. He was consumed.

Carmy has become such an alienating force in the world of the show that no one is really fighting him or fighting for him. Save for one moment, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) mostly moves around him. Natalie (Abby Elliott) doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore.

Think about the intensity of his and Richie’s (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) fridge showdown last season. All that was said – hard, pointed blows meant to break a forcefield. This season, it’s all surface level “fuck you’s” and that one, wordless stare through the dividing wall between their worlds that called back to the finale.

You can see it on everyone’s faces – concern, exhaustion, disgust as they’re forced to take a backseat to Carmy’s do-it-all, screamo energy. “Joy” is not a non-negotiable at The Bear and certainly not when in Carmy’s view or orbit.

Turning people against your lead character is, for sure, a bold, ambitious choice. It’s one I applaud that fits what I perceive the larger story to be. It’s also a move that indicates extreme faith in the audience’s willingness to hang in and be challenged. Based on some reviews, though, The Bear may be paying a price for it, among other things this season.

I have, at this point, run through this season of The Bear three times. I get every criticism dropped on the show (too many filler episodes, too much of the Fak Brothers, not enough focus on Sydney’s flirtation with leaving, no real narrative payoff). I agree with those that say it’s not as good as it has been in the past, but it’s still pretty great, incredibly interesting, and obviously invested in pushing boundaries in service to a larger story.

That amazing, mostly wordless season premiere (“Tomorrow”) was the exact right tonal bookend for the season 2 finale, filled with solitary contemplation and a rededication to the tenets that had served Carmy well through his career: his non-negotiables. It’s going to break bad, but in that episode we understand that the idea of control and these sort of commandments serve as a place for him to hide his hurt heart and his fear of failure.

The premiere also sets us off on a beautifully shot season that often highlights the art and alchemy of cooking and the ritualistic nightly cleansing of a place that becomes, for Carmy, more like a temple than a kitchen. Throughout the entire season, it’s the only place where he seems even remotely at ease — alone with his tweezers and his latest creation, trying to solve a riddle that no one else can really gauge.

In episode 2 and 3 (“Next” and “Doors”) the frenzy returns as the restaurant fills up with other people and a buzz over the fridge lock-in and everything that went down. These are some of the hardest watches of the show’s run, particularly “Doors.” Carmy is unhinged. Again, it’s bold as hell to shock viewers’ systems with these 3 episodes right at the start.

Episode 4, “Violet,” begins with a throwback to last season and an intimate conversation in bed between Carmy and Claire (with a reminder of what real stakes look like). It upsets the pace perfectly while creating a devastating reminder of the sacrifices Carmy believes he needs to make to get a Michelin star and establish The Bear.

Love or loathe the binge model, you have to admit that The Bear crew seeks to be intentional with how episodes flow into one another. Not always the case with this model.

I don’t think Carmy smiles until the 7th episode of the season, “Legacy,” when he’s in flashback talking with Claire (Molly Gordon). Soon after, he’s talking about wanting a “panicless” legacy devoid of anxiety in one of few chill moments of conversation between him and one of the people he works with, in this case Marcus (Lionel Boyce). It’s a sign that he’s at least somewhat a captive of his ambitions and emotions.

In episode 9, “Apologies,” Carmy acknowledges his pain more fully, calling Claire “peace” in contrast to chaos and admitting that he thinks about her every day, this while standing atop a heap of boxes that never seem to fit into their bin.

It takes a long way to get there, but these are key moments of growth, demonstrating the kind of dimension and relatable storytelling that has always won the show fans. All while pushing Carmy to the maximum of what a lot of fans will accept (and maybe a little beyond).

There are other such moments scattered throughout: Richie telling Natalie about the birth of his daughter, the strengthened bond between Sydney and Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), Gary “Sweeps” Woods (Corey Hendrix) talking about his failed baseball career while stocking bottles of wine in the midst of working to become a sommelier. Even Carmy and Unc (Oliver Platt) dancing around guilt (and other things). Spare little moments of care, friendship, love, concern.

Liza Colón-Zayas is perfect in the Ayo Edebiri-directed, flashback-laden episode “Napkins,” the season’s 6th. It lives to remind us all of the history of The Beef (complete with a great Jon Bernthal appearance) and the stakes at play here. The heartbreak of her character’s journey as a middle-aged worker lost in the grey of a job market that wants, at once, younger and differently qualified, whispers about the worries her character and a lot of others on this show are likely feeling. Because if The Bear fails, their lives will be severely upended.

“Ice Chips,” this season’s 8th episode, feels like this year’s “Fishes” with its focus on family trauma, but it’s more hopeful as Donna (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the only option to help when Natalie (Abby Elliott) goes into labor.

Outside of any one moment, exchange, or look, it’s the fact that both characters are making an effort with each other. Donna is doing her best to keep her emotions in check, and Natalie is dodging the motherly blows that slip out of Donna’s mouth. It’s a highly relatable dance for a lot of people, captured magnificently. It also doesn’t feel made-for-TV. It’s messy. A moment of desperation that produces an uneven thaw. It’s a start.

The last episode, “Forever,” feels very much like a season finale with rampant guest stars, multiple threads begging for resolution, a big confrontation between Carmy and Joel McHale’s archdickhead mentor chef that borrows from a Mad Men all-timer, and some Yoda-chef wisdom from Olivia Colman’s character. All this before Carmy’s phone reveals a mix of texts and voicemails that create chaos, but also maybe some clarity… for next season.

I don’t think a season 3 that continued churning through story at the pace of the first 2 seasons would have been very good. Not with a season 4 (and maybe 5) on the horizon.

It would have felt incredibly rushed and unrealistic if Carmy had some kind of instant epiphany. He had to run a gauntlet of emotional and career devastation to prove the point that I think the show is trying to make (which we were harping on last season as well) about the hierarchy of dreams, work, craft, family, friends, and love. In a culture that’s been sold on a hustle first, second, and third mentality, there is a lie that there’s always going to be time for everything else after we get where we want to get in our careers – a goal that constantly moves. I think Carmy is in the process of understanding the cost that he is levying against himself to go all-in on The Bear.

What all of that means for Carmy and Claire, Carmy and Donna, Carmy and The Bear, and the future of the show, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t think the gauntlet is done, nor do I think this one relationship should be presented as a fix-it-all for the character. The point is more that Carmy develop some kind of guidance system for his own ambition while also maybe realizing that the clock-adjacent sign that says “Every second counts” might have less to do with rushing through dinner service and more to do with being present.

‘The Bear’s third season is currently streaming on Hulu.

Ariana Grande has recently teased that she’d like to go on tour again, but now it seems like the idea is moving in a more concrete direction.

On the July 9 episode of the Shut Up Evan podcast, Grande said, “I still want it, too, that’s the thing. I think it would be a really lovely idea to be able to trickle in some shows in between the two Wicked films, you know? I think there’s a version of that that exists. It’s definitely, for a multitude of reasons, not going to be a tour in the way that I used to tour: It would be a mini little sampling of shows, I think. But I do think it would be really nice to do that, and it’s something that my team and I are working on.”

The first Wicked movie is set to hit theaters on November 22, while the sequel is currently scheduled for November 26, 2025, so based on what Grande said, her tour would fall somewhere between those two dates.

This follows a February interview in which Grande said, “I would love to do shows. I love being on stage, I miss being on stage, I miss my fans so much, that’s the honest-to-God truth. […] It would obviously be shorter. If it were anything, it would be a littler something, but I definitely do have the itch. I miss my fans and miss being on stage, but then again, I also am not ready to announce any sort of thing or get people too excited, because I don’t want to disappoint.”

There’s not one book or experienced parent that will tell you that parenting is easy. In fact, you’ll likely find people either dancing around how hard it can be or simply being brutally honest about the struggles that come with trying to raise tiny humans. It’s a noble job that is not for those with a weak constitution…or emotional state.

There are days when you may find yourself so sleep deprived that you cry right along with your baby, hoping against hope that an adultier adult comes to rescue you. Alas, you are the adult, unless you’re a teenager who is stuck caring for a plastic baby for your early childhood class.

Shaquita White shared a video of her teenage daughter’s experience caring for the woman’s temporary plastic grandchild. The teen was tasked with caring for the “real care baby” over the weekend for a grade in her early childhood class. Seems like the girl was immediately in for a heaping dose of reality after being lulled into a false sense of confidence when the baby sat quietly all day–until it wasn’t.

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As soon as the video starts, the girl declares that she has already failed the assignment while at her track meet before explaining, “I got the baby at two o’clock. I get out of school at 2:45, I’m on the bus it’s 3:15. It hasn’t made one noise, it hasn’t even cooed, it hasn’t even giggled, it hasn’t even made nothing. And then as soon as I want to start doing my warmups and I have the baby with one of my friends cause it’s not making any noise. This baby wanna start yelling and start crying.”

The young temporary mom rushed to care for the baby only to realize that she couldn’t find the diaper bag that contained the bottles, diapers and other things she needed to make the crying stop. Turns out she forgot the bag on the school bus and had to open the emergency exit door to retrieve it.

That would’ve been enough to make any new parent stressed out but this all took place in the first few hours of caring for it, she still had to get through the rest of the weekend. Seems the track meet was just the preview of how her weekend undertaking was going to pan out because that little plastic baby definitely had the teen rethinking future decisions.

At one point in the video the teen proclaims she has baby brain from being so frazzled trying to care for the baby while at school. Once the baby screamed so long in the middle of the night that “grandma” woke up to see what was going on only to find her daughter exhausted after waking up every two hours to feed the baby. The teen was so tired that she begins to cry when her mom wakes her up to care for the plastic doll.

Commenters were proud of the teen for doing such a good job caring for the realistic doll while thought the baby is a good reality check for teens.

“At the end She said this baby gotta go! thanks for sharing, I think this is a wonderful project!,” someone says.

“Give this girl an A!!! She was trying!!,” another person writes.

“I laughed so hard!!! Poor baby!!! Poor Mommy!!!! Poor Grandmother!!!! Hahaha!!!!! Every young girl needs to experience one of these so that they will know teenage pregnancy and parenthood is no joke… Thank you for sharing. This was very entertaining,” one person laughs.

“I love her! She is so sweet and responsible- running to the bus. I really felt for her when she cried because she was so tired. She did a great job. You did a great job supporting her too. Well done,” another shares.

By the time the weekend was over, the entire family, including the teens siblings were ready for the baby to go back to the early childhood classroom. Even fake babies keep the entire family awake when it would rather cry than sleep. This will be a life lesson that all the kids in the house remember for the rest of their lives.

Once upon a time, our only option for getting clothes clean was to get out a bucket of soapy water and start scrubbing. Nowadays, we use fancy machines that not only do the labor for us, but give us free reign to choose between endless water temperature, wash duration, and spin speed combinations.

Of course, here’s where the paradox of choice comes in. Suddenly you’re second guessing whether that lace item needs to use the “delicates” cycle, or the “hand wash” one, or what exactly merits a “permanent press” cycle. And now, you’re wishing for that bygone bucket just to take away the mental rigamarole.

Well, you’re in luck. Turns out there’s only one setting you actually need. At least according to one laundry expert.

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While appearing on HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast, Patric Richardson, aka The Laundry Evangelist, said he swears by the “express” cycle, as “it’s long enough to get your clothes clean but it’s short enough not to cause any damage.”

Richardson’s reasoning is founded in research done while writing his book, “Laundry Love,” which showed that even the dirtiest items would be cleaned in the “express” cycle, aka the “quick wash” or “30 minute setting.”

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Furthermore the laundry expert, who’s also the host of HGTV’s “Laundry Guy,” warned that longer wash settings only cause more wear and tear, plus use up more water and power, making express wash a much more sustainable choice.

Really, the multiple settings washing machines have more to do with people being creatures of habit, and less to do with efficiency, Richardson explained.

“All of those cycles [on the washing machine] exist because they used to exist,” he told co-hosts Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson. “We didn’t have the technology in the fabric, in the machine, in the detergent [that we do now], and we needed those cycles. In the ’70s, you needed the ‘bulky bedding’ cycle and the ‘sanitary’ cycle … it was a legit thing. You don’t need them anymore, but too many people want to buy a machine and they’re like, ‘My mom’s machine has “whitest whites.”’ If I could build a washing machine, it would just have one button — you’d just push it, and it’d be warm water and ‘express’ cycle and that’s it.”

According to Good Housekeeping, there are some things to keep in mind if you plan to go strictly express from now on.

For one thing, the outlet recommends only filling the machine halfway and using a half dose of liquid, not powder detergent, since express cycles use less water. Second, using the setting regularly can develop a “musty” smell, due to the constant low-temperature water causing a buildup of mold or bacteria. To prevent this, running an empty wash on a hot setting, sans the detergent, is recommended every few weeks, along with regularly scrubbing the detergent drawer and door seal.

Still, even with those additional caveats, it might be worth it just to knock out multiple washes in one day. Cause let’s be honest—a day of laundry and television binging sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?

To catch even more of Richardson’s tips, find the full podcast episode here.

This article originally appeared on 2.4.24