Category: News

Following the release his debut album Top Shotta and his appearance on the 2020 XXL Freshman Class cover, Memphis rapper NLE Choppa completes his victory lap with a passionate performance of his album’s closing track “Depression” for UPROXX Sessions.

The 17-year-old rapper’s performance may surprise longtime fans who know him from high-energy tracks like “Walk ‘Em Down” and “Top Shotta Flow,” as he taps into a moody vein of introspective crooning for “Depression.” As Choppa reflects on his early years and lost friends, he employs a singsong flow that showcases his growth as an artist since his star-making single “Top Shotta” made him one of the artists to watch throughout 2019 and early 2020.

Watch NLE Choppa perform “Depression” from his new album Top Shotta above and watch Uproxx’s “Who Is NLE Choppa?” documentary below.

Top Shotta is out now via NLE Choppa Entertainment and Warner Records

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s new performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too..

NLE Choppa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

NFL teams have begun training camps around the country, steadily working their way into a return to football while also trying to thread the needle of doing so during a pandemic without seeing outbreaks among teams.

For this to work, teams must be diligent about testing, tracing, and having protocols in place to mitigate the risk for players. But most importantly, players have to do the right things when they are outside of the facility. Positive tests are inevitable, but the league and teams are hopeful they can isolate those cases and not lead to baseball-like team-wide shutdowns. Whether that’s possible outside of a bubble remains a point of contention, but the league is insistent on giving it a go and teams are taking their protocols very seriously.

Seahawks rookie cornerback Kemah Siverand learned exactly how serious all this is when he was cut this week for reportedly trying to sneak a woman into the team hotel disguised as a player by dressing her in team gear, per Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.

Given the situation, this is a serious issue and one teams and players have to call out, because the risk of transmission in a locker room is incredibly high and players bringing in someone from the outside isn’t just selfish, but threatens the entire start of the season. As such, a player without any tenure in the league is not going to get any sort of benefit of the doubt in a situation like this, and now, the undrafted rookie out of Oklahoma State is out of a job before he even got a chance to try and secure his place in the league.

On Tuesday, XXL unveiled the poster for their highly-anticipated 2020 Freshman Class. Among the inductees were NLE Choppa, Jack Harlow, Chika, and Mulatto, and people had their fair share of opinions about the picks. Now, the rappers have come face-to-face with their haters with XXL‘s new series, Mean Comments. The rapper took a look at what some people were saying about them online and had some choice words in response.

At just 17 years old, NLE Choppa has made a name for himself in music and now expects to get a career boost with the XXL co-sign. While his career is impressive at such a young age, not everyone has respect for the rapper. One Instagram commenter wrote: “why yall putting a 14 year old on xxl.” NLE laughed at the comment, jokingly responding with, “Why are you saying 14? I could be 15 at least.”

Jack Harlow also got some hate for his appearance, with one user saying he has a remarkable resemblance to Drake’s son Adonis. “Drakes son grew up fast damn,” they wrote. Harlow shook off the comment, even agreeing with the fan. “Shesh I’ve been hearing that a lot, actually,” Harlow said. “I suppose we share some features.”

Chika had the most words for her haters. After one user said she reminds them “of a librarian,” Chika quipped: “You know what? I’mma take that because, yeah, I read you n****s every single day on the internet. Its all I do — is drag y’all on Twitter. It’s all I have time to do. So, thank you. I hope I remind you of a librarian. B*tch.”

Another user called her an “industry plant” to which she replied: “Who would have planted me here? I’m the neediest plant they ever would have had. You know how much I cancel myself on a regular basis? Nobody planted me here. No, I’m not feeding any narrative for the industry. I fought to be here. Do you wanna fight me? Literally, pull up I’ll drop the location.”

Watch NLE Choppa, Jack Harlow, Chika, and more react to mean comments above.

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

Dua Lipa released her shimmering sophomore album Future Nostalgia earlier this year, debuting to critical acclaim and earning a spot in Uproxx’s Best Albums Of 2020 So Far list. With the record, Lipa made a decisive turn to ’80s-inspired pop music, making the reference apparent through brightly-colored spandex in her “Physical” video. Since Lipa’s Future Nostalgia era has been peppered with references to the decade, it’s only fitting that the singer collaborated with an iconic star from the time.

On Thursday, Lipa served up a remix of her track “Levitating” and it features verses from Madonna and Missy Elliott. For the instrumentals, Lipa tapped DJ The Blessed Madonna, formerly The Black Madonna, to transform the laid-back, groove-driven beat to have pounding bass and flickering synths. Lipa described how the epic collaboration came to be in a statement: “I decided to take the party up a notch with the incomparable The Blessed Madonna, who secretly helped me to craft the mixtape that would become Club Future Nostalgia and the absolute queens Missy Elliott and Madonna joined me for an epic remix of ‘Levitating.”

The Blessed Madonna echoed Lipa’s excitement about the remix, saying it was her “dream come true” to work with a team of big-name like Lipa, Madonna, and Elliott: “It is no overstatement to say that reimagining Dua’s amazing record ‘Levitating’ with Madonna and Missy Elliott was my dream come true. That’s a phrase that is overused, but in this case, it is absolutely literal…Being a part of this was not only an honour but the very best medicine for dancing feet that are stuck at home. I hope it lifts up the spirits of everyone that hears it, as much as it has lifted mine. Truly, I am levitating.”

Listen to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” remix with Madonna and Missy Elliot above.

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

Summer Walker dropped her latest release, the Life On Earth EP, in July, and she returns today with a fresh visual from the project, for “White Tee.” The clip (presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, as opposed to the more modern 16:9) appears to have been filmed on an old camcorder, and it shows walker and NO1-NOAH (who is featured on the track) enjoying a night out on the town.

Walker told Apple Music of the song, “‘White Tee’ is another song featuring NO1-NOAH, and in the chorus he talks about treating someone like a white tee. You know you always wanna keep a white tee fresh and clean, but in my verse, I’m basically saying the opposite.”

Meanwhile, Walker will have a presence at the VMAs in a couple weeks, as her guest appearance on Khalid’s “Eleven” earned her a Best R&B nomination. She also made the long list for Best New Artist, but ultimately didn’t make the cut when the list was pared down to six nominees. One list she did make, though, was the tracklist for Aminé’s recently released new album, Limbo.

Curiously, she also seemed to have drawn the attention of Donald Trump recently when the POTUS liked a tweet about her new album bringing “the stripper back.”

Watch the “White Tee” video above.

Life On Earth EP is out now via Lvrn/Interscope. Get it here.

You might not realize it, but Goose Island has been releasing its Bourbon County Stout for ten years. The first ever offering was made for the 2009 Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beers, in Chicago. While that wasn’t available to the public, the first official Bourbon County Stout was released on Black Friday in 2010. This is the part where we normally say that the rest is history. But if Goose Island Brewmaster Greg Hall hadn’t met Jim Beam Master Distiller Booker Noe at an industry dinner ten years earlier, the beloved beer might never have been made.

At the beer, bourbon, and cigar dinner, Hall wanted to talk to Noe about what to do with the 1,000th batch of beer for the Goose Island Clyburn Brewpub. The legendary Master Distiller decided to give Hall four former bourbon barrels to use. This is exactly the moment when the idea for bourbon-barrel-aged beer was born. Without this random meeting between the two, we’d have no Founders KBS, Deschutes The Abyss, or even Firestone Walker Parabola. Also, we’d definitely have no Bourbon County Stout.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of this iconic brew, Goose Island is releasing seven variants this year. This includes Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island Bourbon County Kentucky Fog Stout, Goose Island Bourbon County Special #4 Stout, Goose Island Bourbon County Caramella Ale, Goose Island Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island Birthday Bourbon County Stout, and Goose Island Anniversary Bourbon County Stout.

There’s no barley wine this year, but Bourbon County Kentucky Fog is the first-ever tea-based offering with the addition of Earl Grey and Black Tea as well as clover honey to create a very unique flavor experience. Also, what started as a beer aged in former Jim Beam barrels has branched out into many of the most well-respected brands on the market. To celebrate a decade of barrel-aging, variants in 2020 have been aged in Buffalo Trace, Old Forester, and Heaven Hill casks. This includes aging in the beloved Old Forester Birthday Bourbon to create Birthday Bourbon County Stout, as well as Weller 12 Year for the eagerly awaited Anniversary Bourbon County Stout.

While we love learning about the new Bourbon County variants every summer, it’s kind of a bummer to have to wait until November to try them. Just like every year, we can’t get our hands on any bottles until Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). Luckily, we have plenty of barrel-aged beer recommendations to tide you over in the meantime.

Mikal Bridges is spindly. Seventy-eight inches tall, 85 inches across from finger tip to finger tip, 209 pounds heavy. While not the bulkiest dude in the league, the length overshadows this hurdle, guaranteeing it’s one he can clear and is not tripped up by as he carves out an NBA career. Approaching the conclusion of his second season with the Phoenix Suns, Bridges has solidified himself as a complementary player next to Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton, providing necessary skills alongside the franchise cornerstones.

Bridges’ length permeates throughout the entirety of his game, particularly on defense. The 23-year-old is soon to be a mainstay in All-Defensive team discussions for the foreseeable future. While he’s probably a small, yet existent, rung below that caliber at the moment, he should garner some consideration from voters for his 2019-20 campaign. Tasked with an array of responsibilities all season, he’s quite superb already.

Among 49 players (min. 500 minutes) classified as “Wing Stoppers” by Basketball Index, Bridges spent the sixth-most time defending All-NBA assignments at 12.3 percent. These duties ranged across positions, too. Against the Los Angeles Lakers or Dallas Mavericks, for example, he’s defended LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Luka Doncic, and Kristaps Porzingis. He is comfortable guarding anyone, 1-4, as evidenced by the fact that 8.6 percent of his minutes come against centers and the rest come against individuals who play the other four positions, according to Basketball Index. The crux of this versatility is his length, which helps compensate for a lack of functional strength and swift foot speed.

Bridges weaponizes his 7’1 wingspan to smother opponents and it increases his margin of error. If someone scoots a step by him or leverages their strength advantage to generate space, he’s still equipped to alter shots or combat drives because his reach is widespread. He can contest shots from a rearview and his sublime body control enables him to contort himself in a distinct manner to avoid fouls while maintaining a presence in the play. Applying his quick hands like pinball flippers, he strips ball-handlers and overwhelms them on the perimeter to spur turnovers. Merge that with his shot alteration capabilities and Bridges is a staunch on-ball defender, even though bigger wings (think Luka and LeBron) can pose issues.

The best form of defense is deterrence, whether it be snuffing out an entire action, dissuading shots, or forcing takeaways. If an offense can’t dictate the possession and has to adjust its approach because of the opposition, that’s usually a win for the defense. This is where Bridges shines, and it might be the most valuable portion of his defensive impact, a lofty sentiment given his on-ball exploits. His best component of deterrence is thwarting dribble hand-offs. With sprawling arms, Bridges is a menace blowing up this action. His screen navigation permits him to warp around picks in a jiffy and remain tethered to players.

Bridges is positionally sound and cognizant of team defense requirements, predominantly as the weak-side helper in pick-and-rolls or at the nail on drives. He has a proclivity for darting in to snare passes or prompting teams to redirect plays outside the jurisdiction of his limbs. Many of his steals stem from intelligent reads and rotations, but other times, it’s as though people simply underestimate his combination of length and reactionary speed (1.9 steals per 36 minutes for his career).

When they do properly price these traits into the equation, he moonlights as a shutdown cornerback, closing off a segment of the court or denying his assignment a chance to organize the possession as they prefer. You have to be especially precise delivering passes near his orbit. And don’t try aimless entry passes around him, because he gobbles those up which means you can’t easily exploit him in the post, which contributes to his versatility. He’s a risk-taking maven, prepared to wisely gamble without amassing voluminous foul rates (2.9 fouls per 36 minutes in two seasons). Steals and swats headline Bridges’ defensive highlight reels, but equally important are the instances in which his length and positioning subtly reroute offensive sets. Both are essential to fostering the defensive impact he does.

The eye test operates in concordance with the numbers, too. Bridges’ positional versatility, frequency of All-NBA matchups, and blend of on- and off-ball prowess are reinforced by Defensive Player Impact Plus-Minus. Not only does he undertake strenuous assignments up and down the lineup sheet, he performs well in them. He ranks sixth in DPIPM (plus-1.72) among 49 “Wing Stoppers.” Across all archetypes outside of centers — DPIPM can skew heavily in their favor and blurs how well perimeter players fare compared to their contemporaries — he is 26th overall this season.

Fewer than two seasons into his career, Bridges has established himself as a starting-caliber player on a team eyeing the playoffs. His defense is sterling, but sustained offensive development is the tipping point of his long-term standing league-wide and why he could emerge as a top-30ish guy at his peak.

Coming out of Villanova, he was rightfully billed as a high-level shooting prospect, having netted 40 percent of his 428 long balls in three seasons. But sometime during the pre-draft process, he developed a hitch in his mechanics, which were subdued for a period before prominently resurfacing midway through his rookie year. He shot just 33.5 percent from deep last season and was hesitant to let it fly too often, failing to provide the floor-spacing Phoenix expected and desired. For one reason or another, Bridges didn’t trust his jumper enough and there seemed to be some confidence eroded. While he’s not returned to the ilk of his collegiate tenure, the hitch, primarily evident on wide open shots, seems to have mostly dissipated in recent months.

No longer does he pause at the start of his windup, extend the ball out and shoot. The other hitch, one more difficult to notice, occurred when he’d situate the ball at his left hip and swing it around to the top of his head. Neither is prevalent anymore and since Dec. 1, he’s shooting 38.3 percent (62-for-162) from deep, returning to his previous two-motion approach. Contrast clips from his rookie year and pre-hiatus second season with his jumper in Orlando. You’ll notice a more fluid release (programming note: the first play is slowed to emphasize the elongated path the ball travels).

The next step of Bridges’ renaissance is becoming a more proficient and frequent threat above the break. Phoenix loves to station him in the corners, but it’s limited his credibility and impact in other spots around the arc. Through two years, he’s converted 35.1 percent of his corner threes and 33.9 percent of his above-the-break triples. Corner threes compose 47.6 percent of his total attempts, while above-the-break looks compose 52.4 percent of them. Both seasons, he’s ranked higher than the 70th percentile in corner three frequency among wings and lower than the 50th percentile in non-corner three frequency, according to Cleaning the Glass (CTG). Even during his stretch from Dec. 1 onward this year, he’s still only knocked down 33.3 percent of his long balls outside of the corners. Being effective from the corners has utility, but those zones constitute a small fraction of the three-point line. To emerge as the floor-spacer his offensive ceiling includes, he must expand his volume and success rate above the break.

The reason Bridges routinely inhabits those corners is because of his cutting expertise. He is truly one of the NBA’s premier cutters, ranking in the 89th percentile on cuts this season and 84th percentile last season. In addition to striking at the proper times, what makes him so effective in this role is his finishing; this also manifests on the break, where he whizzes through creases of the defense for early offense scores (93rd percentile in transition efficiency, according to Synergy). He’s shooting 72 percent at the rim this year (93rd percentile, per CTG) and his length/contortion empower him to score around size from distinct angles. Considering the low-usage nature of his responsibilities on that end and the gravitational pull Booker’s three-level scoring elicits, rostering someone who understands how to manufacture offense without the ball is a snug fit for the Suns.

If Bridges continues this upward trajectory as a shooter, the ancillary gears of his offense will be amplified. Not only is he an instinctive cutter, he’s well-versed in the relocation game, aware of when to migrate around the perimeter to broaden or construct passing outlets for open threes. If defenders have to close out aggressively more often, he’s suited to attack off the catch, eat up space with bounding strides and exercise his finishing craft or interior passing chops. Timid, slightly imperfect closeouts also present opportunities for him because of the way he envelops real estate and can reach the basket in one dribble. Phoenix’s offensive scheme excels at tilting defenses via motion and screening. Bridges is suited to exploit these advantages with his cutting, finishing, and off-ball activity.

While the majority of his offense is derived off the ball, Bridges touts a bit of on-ball potential, too. Envision him operating the occasional ball-screen action, creating from a hand-off or leveraging his elevated release point over small defenders to fashion some pull-up shooting equity. Through nearly two seasons, he’s registered 91 off-the-dribble shots in the half-court, placing him in the 62nd (2019-20) and 57th (2018-19) percentiles. The efficiency is largely trivial, though. More salient are the developmental reps he receives to secure these scenarios as part of his skill package if/when the Suns aim to employ them down the line. Soon enough, this type of stuff is likely going to be in his arsenal, completing the transition from flashes to repertoire and implementing greater variance into Phoenix’s possession-by-possession approach.

Still, it’s doubtful Bridges ever functions on the ball with regularity. He needs the three-point ball to re-emerge full-time, especially above the break, which remains in flux. But the first chapter of salvaging his jumper is eliminating the array of hiccups that plagued his form and he’s close to accomplishing that goal. As he further distances himself from those hitches and becomes increasingly comfortable as a shooter again, the efficiency will return. Then, the 3-and-D moniker will be more fitting, though it fails to reference his cutting, finishing, and modicum of pull-up shooting.

At that point, Bridges is going to carry significant value because his defensive impact is already mirrored by a select amount of wings around the league. Disposed to accept wide-ranging star assignments, he’s hounding on the ball and remains disciplined, astute, and oriented toward havoc off the ball. Every franchise requires complementary pillars to fortify their bedrocks. Phoenix houses its offensive engine, Booker, and is banking on Ayton prolonging his defensive growth to anchor the interior. Bridges is an apt supporting cast member. He finds avenues to offensive merit, despite intermittent touches and an on-the-mend jumper, and has been a genuine difference-maker defensively since his October 2018 debut.

A 23-year-old averaging 10.9 points per 36 minutes for his career isn’t traditionally thought to warrant excitement about their long-term peak. This is an exception. Mikal Bridges is good. Spindly. Seventy-eight inches tall, 85 inches across from finger tip to finger tip, 209 pounds heavy. Soon, he’ll be all of this, only “good” won’t suffice at that point. Bridges will become remarkably good at what he does, cementing himself as a crucial piece to the Suns’ puzzle going forward.

Unless you’re a die-hard Star Wars fan, or a child who was very badly scarred in the late 70s after catching it on TV, you probably never heard of the infamous “Star Wars Holiday Special” that was so bad everyone involved hates talking about with a white-hot vengeance. Well, good news, kind of: Disney+ is bringing it back, but this time with a Lego twist and four decades worth of Star Wars content to pull from. Although, sadly, no Bea Arthur. (RIP.)

Airing November 17, “The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special” will focus on Rey, Finn, Rose, Poe, and Chewie in an all-new holiday-themed adventure set after the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Via Variety:

The 45-minute special will follow Rey as her further investigation of the Force launches her and BB-8 across the history of the Skywalker Saga — as Finn, Poe, Rose, and Chewbacca prepare for the “Star Wars” holiday Life Day on Chewie’s home planet of Kashyyyk.

A rep for Lucasfilm tells Variety that a few “Star Wars” actors will reprise their roles for the special, but it’s still unclear whether Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, or Kelly Marie Tran are returning.

Here’s where things get really nerdy. “Life Day” is the event being celebrated in the original “Star Wars Holiday Special” that only aired once on CBS and was so terrible that George Lucas has done almost everything in his power to keep it from ever seeing the light of day again. Time hasn’t healed that wound. Shortly after selling Star Wars to Disney, Lucas was asked about the infamous special, and well, this is what he said, according to Salon: “If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it.”

However, on an interesting note, the holiday special marked the first appearance of Boba Fett, who showed up in an animated short before making his live-action debut in The Empire Strikes Back. During the short, Boba Fett uses a two-pronged rifle, which became a direct inspiration for The Mandalorian. In an episode of the behind-the-scenes series Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, Lucas actually visited the set during production on the first season, and showrunner Jon Favreau jokingly asked him if he recognized the rifle. Lucas’ response? He rolled his eyes.

The hate is still strong with this one.

(Via Variety)

The NBA has been in the Disney bubble for more than a month now, which means players are pretty well settled into their new environment and have done whatever they can to make themselves as comfortable as possible.

The summer camp vibes of the videos coming out of the bubble on social media of guys having swimming races in the pool, fishing, golfing, and all of the other activities have been pretty incredible. Still, while players make the most of the situation, it’s still difficult for everyone to be away from their families for such an extended period of time, which is why the upcoming entry of families into the bubble has many quite excited.

For now, though, they’ll still have to get through another couple weeks of NBA summer camp and that means a lot of team bonding and finding ways to pass the time together. Lakers veteran forward Jared Dudley spoke with Kyle Goon of the OC Register recently in a delightful interview and dished on how the Lakers are handling the bubble, including a breakdown of the various “vibes” one can find in different Laker players hotel rooms.

“Dion’s got a great vibe to his room, different hookah. Bron has OCD, where it’s super clean and very nice and spacious. Kuz has the night cap of the stars and all that. It depends on what kind of vibe you’re going for. I like AD’s and Bron’s rooms, because they got the candles. I had my wife send me some candles. I got my room smelling good now.”

All of this is extremely on brand, from Waiters room being the team hookah lounge to Kuzma being the after hours party to LeBron having the insanely clean room that’s always got candles going. It’s terrific insight from Dudley, who also laid out some of the extravagant purchases he’s seen from players to make their rooms feel like home, including mattresses and LeBron buying a whole wine fridge for his room.

I also can’t stop imagining LeBron and AD going full dril and spending a ludicrous amount on candles each week.

Latif Nasser is well aware that a global pandemic makes a weird time to drop his new Netflix series Connected — a show in which he takes several connecting flights per episode and attempts to illustrate how we’re all inextricably linked to one another. But while Connected feels tonally discordant with the panic and angst of COVID, there’s a strange comfort in being reminded that even though the call to socially distance has changed our way of life, our connections to one another and our planet endure.

Over the course of six episodes, Nasser — the acclaimed Radiolab researcher, podcaster, and science historian — guides us through single-topic episodes that cover everything from nukes to poop. Using humor and wit to tease out larger topics, the true draw of Connected is how it opens up rabbit holes and then invites viewers to dive ever deeper. Something changes in you when you learn how the secrets to a healthy future lay in the poop of the past, or just how much good has come out of the invention of the nuclear bomb. Each episode is informative, funny, and makes a worthy watch for anyone who wants to get absolutely tripped out on science.

We spoke with Nasser over the phone the day after Connected‘s Netflix premiere.

***

Radiolab sits pretty comfortably in the audio medium, what advantages do you have entering a visual medium for Connected and what are you having the most fun with personally?

It’s a totally bizarre jump from radio to TV, there are so many parts of the documentary making toolkit that I know and I use all the time, and there are so many other parts for the visuals that I was just so dumb about. It’s been this great learning experience.

Hopefully, there are some tricks and narrative moves we use all the time on Radiolab that I’ve been able to sort of smuggle into tv.

It was the most fun to be able to play with the graphics team that I worked with. They are just so inspired, people who are touched with a gift. To commission them like “Okay, what I need is a graphic that is like the Beijing National Stadium and the Hoover Dam but smooshed together, because that’s the amount of dust that goes into the Amazon —“ or “I need a spherical theater that represents weather forecasting that’s going on in a supercomputer but its actually an orchestra” I would have these very very specific requests for them and they would come back with these dazzling beautiful gems, just cranking them out. I was so lucky to have them.

It’s one thing to explain something complicated on the radio where you don’t have a visual component, but to be able to use visuals and have a team of people that are excited and inspired and churning out these gorgeous graphics, makes the show worth watching for their graphics alone!

In addition to being a historian of science, I’ve read that you’re also a theater kid. How does that interest in theater influence the way in which you tell stories?

That’s what I studied as an undergrad and I still think that so many of those techniques and tools from playwriting have taught me that everything has to have a beginning, middle, and end. There has to be an inciting incident, there need to be obstacles, and tension, we need to have a main character, that character needs to go on a journey. I still do all of that stuff, obviously, I’m not playwriting science — in that I fact check everything — but the techniques, the dramatic structure, and dramaturgy of it.

I approach it like this: whether you’re telling true stories or whether you’re telling fictional stories, people take them the same way, they want the same things, they crave that plot and character development. Using those dramatic techniques is sort of a natural fit in the documentary world, I feel.

How do you decide which topics to explore from episode to episode? With names like “Surveillance,” “Dust,” “Poop,” it feels like an episode can be about anything and everything, but you still managed to filter it down into a tight six.

I think that’s part of the fun of TV, there are an infinite amount of options here, which is alluring and paralyzing. A few of the things I thought about when trying to get it down to the tight six, is that I wanted a nice spread. “Poop” was sort of a natural thing, that’s just a thing that I’m always interested in and will always seek out stories about. Benford’s Law was a thing that kept coming up while I was researching other stuff then it almost became like a dare, “Could you really make a 45-minute episode about a mathematical observation, it feels like there is no way to do that.” Okay yeah, we’re going to do that!

I wanted a climate change-y episode to think about, so “Clouds” kind of covers that and felt like a satisfying way to touch on that. Overall, I wanted a really nice spread to feel like we were touching all kinds of different science, sort of just to try out. It feels like a new car, you want to test out the premise of the show, you want to road test it, does it work with this kind of thing? Can I use it to talk about surveillance which is a different thing than dust?

It’s a really fun premise, such a liberating premise, almost too liberating. But it’s guided by my own excitement and curiosity and I think it led me to very different and very strange places.

That’s kind of the charm of the show, each topic is a rabbit hole that pulls you in. Let’s take “Poop” for example, I was hesitant to watch that episode, but once you learn one thing it kind of compounds into another in a fascinating way. What things have you discovered that completely blew your mind in a way you didn’t expect?

The dust story, to get a little bit personal. It was supposed to be about dust but what it ended up being was an episode about life and death and it became weirdly personal. While this was shooting I lost a friend of mine, and what was supposed to be about dust, then ended up being this meditation on life and death that was truly shocking. It’s supposed to be over here and dead and just sitting here, but its not. It moves and it fertilizes and it pollinates and it does some bad and scary stuff too.

But just the idea that things that are dead have these afterlives that are going on all around us. It was emotionally shocking for me to tell this story at a time when I had lost my friend and I was very sad about it. Revisiting this story over and over, to have to shoot it and talk to people about it and edit it, it was sort of a weird but cathartic experience.

Do you think technology and advancement will always be a double-edged sword? I think about the episode on surveillance. The way Tinder had 800 pages on Judith was chilling, but that same technology can also lead to a world where pigs and other animals are more ethically farmed, which is an important change. It’s always this give and take.

You know, that’s the story of the history of science. You can’t predict and things end up being way better or way worse than you could’ve ever imagined. That’s everything, that’s all around us. Tupperware was made from gas mask technology in World War 2, everything around us is products of this double-edged sword. We have to marvel at that. What a world we live in where all this is possible, so much is possible for the big and the bad.

First, it opens your eyes, but then it makes you realize you’re so much more responsible for the world around us and the way we use all of these things.

Given the title of the show and this new era of social distancing, how do continue to stay connected while living through this unprecedented time where we have to be disconnected from one another for our own safety?

Yeah, it’s a funny moment right? It feels like an especially strange moment to release a show out in the world that is about those connections, dwelling on those connections. It’s me taking these connected flights all over the world to report these stories, and it’s coming out to this world that’s kind of shut down. My family is in Canada, we’re shut down. We’re all shutdown in our homes, there is this profound irony, but it makes me think, “we think these things are shut down, but we’re kidding ourselves.”

There are these connections, they exist. No matter what we do the world is going to be this connected place, it’s going to surprise us the ways in which it is. For COVID that’s a scary thing because there is a danger there, but I do think that hopefully, the idea of this show is to say “Look, the world isn’t just connected in the way you think it is, it’s connected in all these other ways too”

“Connected” Is Available To Stream Now On Netflix.