Category: News

Last night’s episode of Raw was a historic one, but not in a good way.

The episode, which featured a WWE Championship match contract signing, Andrade vs. Apollo Crews, and the return of Jinder Mahal, drew an average of 1.82 million viewers over its three-hour run time, according to Showbuzz Daily. Raw’s viewership has been under two million for the past few weeks of empty Performance Center shows, but this was a notably low number. 411Mania points out that this was Raw’s smallest live cable audience for a non-holiday episode ever. It’s also the second smallest in the program’s history, only beaten, so to speak, by the Christmas Eve 2018 episode, which drew 1.78 million viewers.

However, the first two hours of Raw were still the second and third highest rated hours of programming on cable last night, while the third hour came in seventh. Shows on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC had up to millions of more viewers, but WWE beat everything but Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta among 18-49-year-olds. Raw’s highest-rated hour was rated 0.56 with that demographic and its lowest an 0.43. However, Raw was most watched by viewers over the age of fifty, with whom it was rated 0.92 for the first two hours and 0.82 for the third.

Millions of Americans across the country have already received their federal coronavirus stimulus payments or are currently expecting their paper checks to arrive through the mail in the next couple of weeks. However, a lot of people who know they qualify for the $1,200 check are growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that they’re still receiving the dreaded “Payment Status Unavailable” when they check the IRS’ Get My Payment website. With the IRS offering few answers as to why some are still encountering this message, the people still waiting on their aide are essentially being left in the dark as to when and how they’ll receive help.

Well, prepare to throw your keyboard at the wall because if you’re one of those people — and since you clicked on this article we’re willing to bet you are — it’s looking like the issue may be because you need to input your address in all caps.

The trick was shared over twitter by Los Angeles Times coronavirus reporter Jessica Roy who picked up the solution from a friend and was shocked to find that it actually worked. Since Roy’s tweet, other Twitter users have confirmed that using all caps worked for them.

The IRS’ Get My Payment website requires you to input your social security number, date of birth, zip code, and address, and while the site is pretty clear on what it expects in terms of address format, it doesn’t mention anything about retrying your address info in all caps. Our very own master of drinks Christoper Osburn tried the method less than an hour ago and was able to get through without a hitch.

In the event that this new trick doesn’t work for you and you’re still getting the “Payment Status Unavailable” message you can expect to receive an 8×11 letter from the IRS with the shrugging emoji.

Germany has earned praise for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country of 83 million has had 159,239 cases and 6,177 deaths. Compare that to the United States which has about four times the people but more than six times the cases and nine times the deaths.

Germany implemented aggressive social distancing measures at the onset of the outbreak and had a structural advantage over the U.S. Germany has a balanced budget that gave it the financial flexibility to help its citizens and businesses during the pandemic.

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The U.S. federal government was already in a mountain of debt and its healthcare system under-serves a large portion of the population.

“This is a crisis which, on the one hand, has probably hit the U.S. where it is most vulnerable, namely health care,” said Carsten Brzeski, ING bank’s chief Eurozone economist. “While at the same time it has hit the German economy where it’s the strongest.”

However, there is one area where Germany was caught flat-footed by the virus. It didn’t have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for its healthcare workers.

A group of doctors is protesting the lack of PPEs by posing naked in a campaign they call Blanke Bedenken, which roughly translates as “Bare Concerns.” They are also encouraging fellow healthcare workers to share their photos to help get the word out.

via Blanke Bedenken

“We are your GPs. To be able to treat you safely, we need protective gear. When we run out of the little we have, we look like this,” the organizers say in a statement on their website. “We are all vulnerable. Medical practices need more support from politics,” the Blanke Bedenken group added.

The funny photos show the doctors tastefully posing alongside toilet paper, out in the sunshine, and even examining a patient. “The nudity is a symbol of how vulnerable we are without protection,” Ruben Bernau, a doctor in the group, said according to The Guardian.

via Blanke Bedenken

One doctor said she was “trained to sew up wounds” and asked: “Why am I now having to sew my own face mask?”

The idea for the protest was inspired by a French doctor who posed naked to protest the lack of PPEs in his country. Alain Colombié posed naked with an armband that read “canon fodder” in French in a message directed at French President Emmanuel Macron.

via Facebook

A spokesperson from Germany’s federal ministry of health says the shortages are tied to the massive increase in worldwide demand. “Due to worldwide rapid rise of Covid-19 infection numbers the demand for medical supplies, such as gloves, breathing masks, protective clothing and ventilators, increased. This led to worldwide supply shortages,” they told CNN.

Healthcare workers have also reported several cases of supply theft at hospitals they believe may be tied to organized crime.

German authorities are working as fast as they can to ramp up production of PPEs and a recent shipment of 10 million masks from China should help ease the burden.

This article was originally published by The Conversation. You can read it here.

Consider, for a moment, the paper cut. It happens suddenly and entirely unexpectedly, usually just as you are finally getting somewhere on that task you had been putting off.

Recall your sense of relief to finish that thank-you note to your aunt for the lovely sweater she sent you three months prior when, at the crucial moment, your hands failed you in their familiar task and the paper’s edge slid past its restraints into the flesh.

Then pain – sharp, pure pain that bends your consciousness to the Only. Thing. That. Matters. Right. Now. There is sometimes a moment, between awareness and pain, when you bargain with fate, hoping that what just happened didn’t. But the hand is gone and the blood needs tending.

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Physically, paper cuts hurt as much as they do for a variety of reasons. They typically occur on parts of our bodies that are the most sensitive, such as the fingers, lips or tongue. The nerve networks of these body parts can discriminate with exceptional clarity and specificity, sensations of pressure, heat, cold and injury.

via Marco Verch / Flickr

Our brains even have specialized areas to receive signals coming from these parts in high definition. The exquisite sensing abilities that makes our fingers, lips and tongue so good at what they normally do, also makes injuries all the more painful.

These same highly sensitive areas are also parts we use all the time. Cuts on fingers, lips and the tongue tend to reopen throughout day dooming us to relive the pain again and again.

Finally, the depth of the wound is perfect for exposing and exciting the nerve fibers of the skin without damaging them the way a deeper, more destructive injury can severely damage the nerve fibers impairing their ability to communicate pain. With a paper cut, the nerve fibers are lit, and they are fully operational.

How to stop the ouch

As a family physician, I can recommend a few practical ways to minimize the discomfort of a paper cut. First, wash the cut as soon as you can with soap and water. This will reduce the chance of infection and help the wound heal quickly. Keep the wound clean, and if possible, for a few days cover it with a small bandage to cushion the wound and limit reopening.

While the physical effects of a paper cut are a real drag, I am fascinated by the mental and emotional response to the paper cut.

While both intentional self-injury (example: cutting) and major accidental injury (example: car accident with loss of limb or paralysis) have inspired important, ongoing research into their psychological effects, minor accidental injuries do not – and that is OK. There are more pressing issues in need of research than paper cuts.

But for a moment think back to the feelings you may have had about your paper cuts: surprise that the mundane act of licking an envelope could result in an injury (and so much blood!); shame that your body didn’t coordinate such a simple task (why does this always happen to me?); anger for hurting yourself (arrrgh!); anxiety that it will happen again (I still have 200 more envelopes to go!). Paper cuts are trivial, but they may invoke a complex emotional response.

Paper cuts remind us that no matter how many times we have performed even a simple task we are capable of accidentally hurting ourselves. If that makes us a little more sympathetic to our neighbor’s pains, and a little more humble, then maybe paper cuts do us some good too. Maybe.

With only a few wide-release movies scheduled to come out between now and August, not to mention all the indies that are going straight to VOD, it was obvious that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would have to shake things up for next year’s Oscars. The current rules require “that a film be shown in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County for a theatrical qualifying run of at least seven consecutive days,” but with theaters closed, possibly for months, the only movies eligible for an Oscar would be the ones that already came out. I like Jim Carrey as much as the next guy, but are we ready for Best Picture winner Sonic the Hedgehogs? Apparently not, because the Academy has announced rule changes for the 93rd Academy Awards.

“Until further notice, and for the 93rd Awards year only, films that had a previously planned theatrical release but are initially made available on a commercial streaming or VOD service may qualify in the Best Picture, general entry and specialty categories for the 93rd Academy Awards,” the Academy announced after a vote on Tuesday morning.

There are two provisions, though:

1. The film must be made available on the secure Academy Screening Room member-only streaming site within 60 days of the film’s streaming or VOD release.

2. The film must meet all other eligibility requirements.

In other words, Trolls World Tour can still win Best International Feature (not really, but they went on a WORLD tour, didn’t they?), while actual-contenders released digitally in lieu of a theatrical run, like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, are Oscar eligible. But speaking of the category formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film: for the first time, “all eligible Academy members will now be invited to participate in the preliminary round of voting,” while Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing have been combined into one category, Best Sound. You’ll still get it wrong on your ballet.

Remember when Parasite won Best Picture nine years ago? That was cool.

(Via the Academy)

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now. Also, there’s been a wild amount of new Apple TV+, Netflix, and HBO offerings over the past week, so here’s your chance to catch up as much as possible.

Beastie Boys Story (Apple TV+ film) — Both diehard and casual fans can dig director Spike Jonze’s intimate and personal story of the collaborative adventures of Mike Diamond, Adam Horovitz, and Adam Yauch. The pioneering trio’s hybrid documentary-live stage performance film is hilarious, sad, and something you won’t want to miss.

Never Have I Ever (Netflix series) — Mindy Kaling’s latest brainchild, a semi-autobiographical series that finds inspiration in her own Massachusetts adolescence, promises to put a “nerdy, extra thirsty” spin on this coming-of-age story.

Defending Jacob (Apple TV+ series) — Chris Evans leads a stellar cast in this familiar story with a few gripping twists. Think We Need To Talk About Kevin crossed with Primal Fear, with Evans supported by the likes of J.K. Simmons, Jaeden Martell, Betty Gabriel, Cherry Jones, and Michelle Dockery.

Bad Education (Saturday, HBO 8:00 p.m.) — True events inspired this exploration of the underbelly of elite public school malfeasance starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney. Embezzlement and corruption abounds through two solid leading performances.

Extraction (Netflix film) — The Russo Brothers teamed up again with Chris Hemsworth for this crime flick about a black-market mercenary on a deadly ride through the weapons-and-drug-trafficking underworld. Guns will be out, in more ways than one.

After Life: Season 2 (Netflix series) — The Ricky Gervais comedy-drama series returns for six new episodes with Tony still struggling over the loss of his wife. In the process, he attempts to become a better person, but shall he succeed? And will the local Am-Dram show work any mood-lifting magic?

Middleditch & Schwartz (Netflix series) — Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz’s two-man comedy show features in three new completely improvised Netflix comedy specials, including Dream Job, Law School Magic, and Parking Lot Wedding. Get ready for tales of an existential crisis, a robbery-gone-wrong, and a bit of magic.

Cooked with Cannabis (Netflix series) — Technically, this show dropped on 4/20, but considering how this year is going, it’s gotta still be 4/20 somewhere, right? Move your cannabis game past pot brownies and marijuana cookies while watching top chefs compete to get “baked” in more elaborate ways.

The Willoughbys (Netflix film) — This highly stylized animated film hails follows a group of four siblings who must adapt their old-fashioned ways to the modern world after being abandoned by their parents. The voice cast includes Ricky Gervais, Maya Rudolph, Will Forte, Martin Short, and Jane Krakowski.

The Flash (CW, 8:00 p.m.) — Barry examines his life with Iris while Eva plots a move.

D.C.’s Legends Of Tomorrow (CW, 9:00 p.m.) — Charlie realizes that something’s amiss with Sara while she recuperates, and the Loom search sends Constantine and Zari back to 1910.

For Life (ABC, 10:00 p.m.) — Safiya cranks up the heat on Foster while he’s attempting to fly under the radar before retirement, and Aaron’s digging into new information and running into trouble with Cassius.

The Last O.G. (TBS, 10:30 p.m.) — A quest for an old pair of Air Jordans leads Tray and his family across the city.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Stephen King, Jake Gyllenhaal, and M. Ward

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Ricky Gervais, Billy Porter, and The Lumineers

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Jim Parsons

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Thomas Middleditch, Ben Schwartz, and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Will Forte, Rep. Katie Porte

A Little Later With Lilly Singh — Jay Shetty, Humble The Poet

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah — Noah’s reporting live from his couch, and naturally, the subject of the night will be the ongoing pandemic and social distancing.

Fans of Parks and Recreation received an unexpected surprise last week when Amy Poehler announced during a Twitter video that the cast will be back for an upcoming Quarantine Reunion Special to support Feeding America, but apparently, that’s only the first of many surprises.

While talking to TV Line about the logistics of quickly reuniting the cast while everyone is social distancing, Parks and Rec showrunner Mike Schur made it clear that the show will feature an assortment of unexpected guests literally out of the gate.

“Part of the fun of [Parks and Rec] in general and of the special will be unexpected people who are part of this world popping up,” executive producer Mike Schur said in a Tuesday press conference. And while he won’t confirm or deny any rumored cameos, “There are probably half a dozen… familiar faces who pop up at one point or another” — including in the special’s opening seconds.

“The first face you see on camera will not be one of the 10 main cast members,” Schur teased. “And that sets the tone for the show.”

According to Schur, including Rashida Jones’ character Ann Perkins was a particularly tricky situation because, as fans will remember, she is a nurse, which immediately raised questions about why she wouldn’t be on the “front lines” of the pandemic. To keep things upbeat, the show creators came up with a solution that Ann works in outpatient care now because, more than anything, Schur wants the special to be “optimistic” and really emphasize one of Leslie Knope’s most endearing qualities: Her sense of hope.

A Parks and Rec Reunion Special will air Thursday on NBC and feature cast members Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Adam Scott, Rob Lowe, Jim O’Heir and Retta. Proceeds from the event will go to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund, “which enables food banks to provide food and resources to the most vulnerable members of the community during this difficult time.”

(Via TVLine)

Maybe age really is just a number. When The Golden Girls debuted in September 1985, its four stars were, on average, not quite 60 years old, but they were considered “senior citizens.”

Thirty-five years later, the fashions, the technology (or lack of it) and some of the attitudes may seem outdated, but in the most important ways The Golden Girls has hardly aged a day.

Thanks to syndication, cable and now streaming, there has hardly been a day when TV viewers couldn’t visit Dorothy Zbornak, Rose Nylund, Blanche Devereaux and Sophia Petrillo at 6151 Richmond Street in Miami (don’t Google Map it – it’s a made-up address). From 1985 to 1992, The Golden Girls was a Saturday-night fixture on NBC, so much so that it never budged from its 9 p.m. time slot throughout its seven seasons on the air.

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The bawdy, sassy, unabashedly straightforward – and frequently silly – quartet of past-middle-aged women never lacked an audience, but their popularity seems to have only increased in last decade. The series was always a staple of basic cable, first on Lifetime and then on the Hallmark Channel, but became a GIF-tastic, memetic pop-culture phenomenon thanks to streaming; today, you can watch any episode of The Golden Girls anytime you want on Hulu.

The perpetual appeal of The Golden Girls isn’t hard to fathom: The women are aware that they’re societal cast-offs, unwanted in a culture that demands conformity and propriety, and they’ve come to realize that it gives them an advantage – they don’t need to worry about what the rest of the world thinks, either.

Their tropes are equally perfect. Dorothy is intelligent, irritable and world-weary; Rose is open-hearted, optimistic and daft; Blanche is self-centered, sexual but kind; Dorothy’s mother Sophia is wise and wise-cracking. And while they might not matter to the world that turned its back on them, they mean the world to each other – an attitude that has long appealed to middle-aged gay men, who took solace in the silliness during the AIDS crisis and now often see themselves reflected in the “girls,” who found a way to create their own safe community, filled with friendship.

But gay men were just the start – The Golden Girls has fans of every demographic type, and is constantly being discovered. For those looking to binge through the distinctively delightful series during these stay-at-home days, it’s possible to watch it from the start, including the weirdly awkward series pilot. Then again, The Golden Girls was of a different era of television, when each season had nearly two dozen episodes. To help you break through the pastel-hued, wicker-filled clutter, here’s a look at five of the very best episodes of this inimitable, groundbreaking series, all of which are available to watch on Hulu:

• “Big Daddy’s Little Lady” (Season 2, Episode 6) – One of the funniest of all Golden Girls episodes finds Blanche surprised by genteel Southern “Big Daddy,” who announces he’s getting married to a much younger woman. McClanahan’s reactions are priceless, but the episode’s secondary story is what makes the episode. Dorothy and Rose enter a song-writing contest, and find that they aren’t quite Rodgers and Hammerstein – though their lyrics are certainly unforgettable.
• “In a Bed of Rose’s” (Season 1, Episode 15) – Sex is one of The Golden Girls‘ favorite subjects, and here it’s the setup for a story that takes some surprising twists in 23 minutes. Unusually, this episode doesn’t have a “B”-story – Rose’s predicament is the focus, and Betty White received one of her three Emmys (in addition to two she won for “Mary Tyler Moore”) for this episode, which manages to balance perfectly timed comedy with some genuine pathos, courtesy of character actress Patricia Morrill.
• “Isn’t it Romantic” (Season 2, Episode 5) – Never seen The Golden Girls and looking for the best place to start? Here it is: Everything you need to know about each of the characters is perfectly encapsulated in this sweet and wildly funny story about Dorothy’s friend Jean (Lois Nettleton) coming to visit. The catch? Jean is lesbian, and she develops a crush on Rose. When it originally aired in 1986, it may have seemed a little daring. Today, it’s just hilarious.
• “An Illegitimate Concern” (Season 5, Episode 18) – Merely by virtue of having one of the best Dorothy-Rose “newspaper gags” alone (preceded by a perfectly delivered joke about the Seven Dwarfs), this one makes the cut as one of the best episodes. It’s a Blanche-centric story – her mysterious admirer turns out to have a much more unexpected motive – but every one of the actresses gets a chance to shine in this consistently funny episode, the first written by prolific TV writer-producer Marc Cherry.
• “The Case of the Libertine Belle” (Season 7, Episode 2) – This lark of an episode finds the girls taking part in a murder-mystery weekend as part of a scheme of Blanche’s to land a job she covets. The episode is fun on its own, with some great one-liners, but it’s doubly fun to watch such well-honed characters playing roles in a different kind of story. It points to the beauty of The Golden Girls as a whole – by the show’s seventh season, each character was so perfectly defined that they could be put into almost any situation and still keep viewers gloriously entertained … for more than three decades.

No one would choose to be synonymous with a pandemic. Such a label makes them a pin in history representative of an acceleration point, a shorthand of when things got serious. Rudy Gobert, running his hands all over the phones and recorders on the table in front of him, not seeing in that final press conference that the window for levity had shut, became such a shorthand. And because Gobert, seated on a podium in his uniform at work, is a representative of a much larger entity, in the blink of an eye under the collectively furrowed brow of those watching, the NBA grew just as instantly intertwined with a global pandemic.

In the slow-motion minutes and fever dream cadence after Gobert’s failed prank, there was a rare glimpse into the real-time response of a company weighing its options. Snippets of information were coming out of the sports media in Chesapeake Energy Arena: OKC players being waved away from the emptied visitors bench by panicky referees, both teams sequestered in locker rooms, and with every backward shot Rumble the Bison attempted from half court to a crowd teetering between confusion and alarm, there was a growing impatience from those watching from outside, piecing it all together, to call the game.

That same night in Sacramento, with the Thunder-Jazz game yet to be officially postponed, Kings players took the floor. Within a few minutes, it became clear that New Orleans players would not be joining them. News leaked out of Oklahoma City that a Jazz player had tested positive for COVID-19 earlier that day. Courtney Kirkland, set to officiate in Sacramento, had worked the Utah-Toronto game two nights prior. Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry told officials his team would not play, and players and staff quickly returned to their hotel.

With both games postponed, there was growing concern over what was actually happening and how initially widespread things were within the league. All 30 NBA teams could be linked together in the week preceding March 11, well within the incubation period of the virus, not to mention the staff and media — like those who were stuck inside OKC’s arena as reports began to suggest that the infected player in question was Gobert, whose fresh fingerprints were all over the recorders and phones in their hands and pockets — surrounding each team.

While hindsight softens the impact of some, the league’s missteps in those first few hours came fast. The league didn’t postpone the March 11 games or the season despite the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic earlier that same day and its China office having already been closed, its colleagues there under the same lockdowns that would soon hit the United States, both stick out. The league knew Gobert had been tested and still assumed the game could continue as they awaited results. Sixty percent of Oklahoma’s available tests for the virus were rushed to test players and staffers despite the fact that it was not yet clear how many tests were available within each state and when they could be replenished. People like media, arena staffers, and other team personnel were left exposed and scared, and the onus was placed on them to figure things out for themselves in the lurch.

But as rapid in succession as those mistakes were, the league righted itself quickly by realizing that, like it or not, it had arrived in the eye of the pandemic making landfall in the U.S. The NBA suspending its season outright in the days that followed forced both other pro-leagues to follow suit and individuals who still viewed COVID-19 as a distant threat to sit up and pay attention. It is strange, but it is not a stretch to say that Gobert and the NBA were arbiters of the pandemic, mitigating its impacts and proactively responding before the government did.

“We’ve certainly never been through anything like this,” the NBA’s President of Social Responsibility and Player Programs, Kathy Behrens, says over the phone from her home in New York, “but we have been through other situations, unfortunately, that have required us to figure out the right ways to connect with our fans, connect and support our communities, and make sure that our employees and players and teams were all safe and doing all they could to stay together, whatever the crisis might be.”

In her twenty-year tenure with the league, those crises have ranged from natural disasters to terrorist attacks, but never a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, which Behrens says “requires a different way of thinking and a different way of responding.”

As unprecedented of a situation as it was for the league to be involved in, the NBA’s organized response came together within eight days — sooner if you count its first public health PSAs and the independent efforts of its players to subsidize lost wages of arena workers — due to the launch of NBA Together. The program took some of its framework from ongoing league initiatives, like NBA Cares and Jr. NBA, but its focus was far more targeted on public health messaging.

These were commercials with players and alumni, urging hand washing and social distancing long before similar missives were coming from municipal or federal government. They soon evolved to include encouragement to stop the spread of false information as much as the coronavirus. But as statewide stay at home mandates caught up, Behrens recalls, “I think when we all went into the shelter at home protocol, we realized that there was going to be more to our work.”

It is rare for an emergency to affect so many at once worldwide, but this unwanted, alarming commonality was the unifier for the league’s immediate response.

“As you look around the world, we have so many communities impacted by this virus, and so what could we do to deliver those public safety messages?” Behrens asks. “What could we do to supply support to the front line healthcare workers and other essential personnel, first responders? What could we do to stay connected to people, and communicate and use whatever means were at our disposal? Usually we have our games to do that, but we don’t have those right now.”

Unfortunately, the league had firsthand resources when it came to the real-time education it could offer its audience on the coronavirus. Gobert and Donovan Mitchel were two of the first high-profile cases confirmed in the U.S., with Marcus Smart, Kevin Durant, Christian Wood, and unnamed individuals within other franchises following. The entire Raptors roster and staff went into Canada’s federally-mandated 14-day self-quarantine given their contact with Gobert and the Jazz. Almost all of the players who were publicly confirmed as testing positive offered PSAs and Q+A sessions on their social media for fans, sharing reports on their health and science-based information on COVID-19, all while urging viewers to stay in and stay safe.

There were also lessons that the league was taking from its China offices.

“We have close to 200 people who work in the NBA China offices,” Behrens says, “and so we understood what they were going through as soon as things really started to get out of control. As we started to see the spread of the virus, we really focused in those early days on the public health messaging, and those have evolved certainly.”

In many ways, the pandemic has put us on a collective course. Those with jobs that supported remote work quickly fell into a new routine. Kids stayed home from school and most of the world’s population followed some form of lockdown measure, as frontline workers remained some the only people to maintain “normal” routines, but faced challenges that were anything but. When developing its offerings, the NBA took all this into account.

Its 2K Tournament gave fans the chance to engage with players real-time, for prolonged stretches, while extended initiatives like Jr. NBA at Home promoted physical and mental health through exercises that could be done in small, enclosed spaces with little to no equipment, led by NBA and WNBA players, coaches, and alumni. First designed for kids who couldn’t play in leagues or at school, these drills expanded to include anyone, with varying degrees of skill and difficulty. A HORSE tournament followed, offering a form of gameplay, albeit adjusted for remote and technical constraints, in the broadcast slot where games once sat. The league was able to take these varied offerings and schedule full days of programming. While keeping its audience entertained and informed, it was also keeping them home and safe, because in some states where fans were watching, COVID-19 had arrived but was not yet rampant.

Behrens is intuitively cognizant of this balance, trying to offer entertainment that also could use their platform to push best practices and raise money for relief efforts. And it’s all coming through platforms that the league and its fans have utilized to a degree, but not to this extent. Behrens acknowledges that they are “learning every day” when it comes to what works and what is less successful in reaching a captive, but remote audience.

“TikTok is not necessarily the best place to do public services messages,” Behrens says with a learned, knowing laugh, “but it’s a great place to let people have some fun and release some of that nervousness.” Instagram and Twitter have proven to be good avenues for engagement, especially in giving their audience accessibility to medical professionals, like former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, to answer questions related to COVID-19 where misinformation has been rampant. “We’re just constantly trying to evolve,” Behrens says.

This evolution has most recently shifted to highlight disproportionate infection and fatality rates amongst those most vulnerable, like black and hispanic communities, where the NBA has significant reach. Utilizing its longstanding partnerships with organizations like the National Urban League and the NAACP, as well as local, community-based organizations, the league is keen on ramping up its health and economic messaging, spotlighting issues of social awareness through its most prolific voices. Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were two of the first who featured as advocates.

“And that affects both the criminal justice system as well as those who are historically marginalized, and how do we both raise awareness but also take action to support those communities? That’s something we’re very focused on.” Behrens says. “This virus has hit the black community in really significant and profound ways. We can’t ignore that.”

Aside from its ongoing financial contributions (the league has raised over $78 million internally so far to support in relief efforts and frontline response to COVID-19), some of the most profound and affecting resources the NBA has are its players. With huge, organic platforms and reach most are already familiar in using, players were also the first to be touched by COVID-19, if not directly, then in the small circle that they make up. It was natural for player-led initiatives to accompany those the league was rolling out. Kevin Love brought his concerns around isolation and mental health forward and helped to shape the mandate of NBA Together. Steph Curry’s interviewed with Dr. Anthony Fauci, a few days after Donald Trump sidelined him during his daily press briefing, and brought the first plain language conversation around coronavirus concerns to many.

Behrens stresses that “it takes a village” in terms of the logistical organization of the league’s efforts thus far, but that “players bring it to life.”

“Their voices, the power of the platform they have, the commitment they have to want to engage in this way, and the support from them has just been incredible,” Behrens says. “I think that’s one big benefit we’ve had. NBA players have historically, and by historically I mean the last number of years that social media has been so prevalent, they have always embraced that way to connect with their fans and now they see it as even more important.”

There’s a snowball effect to this as well, with 58 million video views across the league’s social platforms, 40 unique PSAs, individual teams starting up their own together programs focused on the unique needs of their markets, and players coming forward everyday with new ideas.

“There are some guys who keep saying, ‘Oh, I have another idea!’ And so we’re taking as many of those ideas and trying to turn them into program elements as we can,” Behrens says. “I think they realize both individually and collectively that they can have a tremendous impact and that they can help people. That’s something that they are committed to. I love that it’s NBA players, it’s WNBA players, it’s coaches, it’s legends, it’s team executives. This is everybody.”

As widespread as the pandemic has grown, saturating every media outlet, there are many who, either inundated with conflicting news or simply overwhelmed by its steady proliferation, would rather hear from voices associated with something separate from its psychic weight. Figures of respite, like players, are able to translate the closeness and gravity of the virus without the associative anxiety of the news. The NBA understands acutely this direct line to its audience because it has relied on it, albeit as a marketing tool, for years.

This collective, unified voice has stood out where other communication has been fractured. While coming from many different people and their inherent personalities, it has still managed to hit on the notes the national political response is missing. When asked whether that collective tone has helped to deliver a strong, science-based, and compassionate message, Behrens said simply, “That gives us a chance to think about who we are, what we believe, what we care about, [and] to try and communicate that in a way that it shows the compassion and empathy that’s needed as people are unfortunately losing loved ones, are scared, are fearful for their friends and family, are fearful for their livelihood. So making sure that we lead with our heart is important.”

Part of the reason why the NBA’s initial messaging was so ahead of what was being shared by a lagging U.S. government was readily utilizing what had been captured by their colleagues abroad. “We were able to understand from them how some of the cadence of communication would go, what some of those public safety messages were going to be, the social distancing terms that are now a part of our daily lives. It was more trying to get a sense of what was happening there and what the impact was,” Behrens says, but admits there was more they could have taken to heart. “I think even though we were having those conversations, it’s safe to say I don’t think anybody thought it was going to be to the extent we are now living and operating under. So it helped us, but I don’t want to overstate it. There’s still a lot more we could have learned, and are still learning every day.”

That spirit of cooperation has been largely absent from the American federal administration, with information and resource sharing either scarce, rationed along partisan lines, or devolving into infighting when the president’s accountability is questioned. Ego is sabotaging relief efforts and unrelated policies, like attacking immigration, are being used as smoke screens to deflect blame. The NBA is a large, for-profit corporation primarily concerned with entertainment, which can make it seem even more bleak that it is one of the strongest leaders with ostensibly unselfish motives that has emerged in this crisis. Moreover, that it learned from its early lapses and instead of retreating to shed any associations with the virus, appears to have genuinely stepped up to reframe its efforts toward public service.

“This isn’t a program that we developed and put on the shelf,” Behrens says, “I think you asked the question before, did we launch it and keep adding to it, and that’s certainly true. And unfortunately I think it’s something that we’re going to be dealing with for a while. Even though we may move on from this phase, there are going to be additional phases of this pandemic that are going to require more support, more philanthropic support, more community engagement. So we know there’s going to be work to do.”

It should not be up to any private corporation to provide basic, reliable, unified information on public health and safety in a pandemic, nor should people need to rely upon the philanthropic efforts of corporations in lieu of social programs and meaningful financial support in crisis from their elected government. But when the president is making bizarre, dangerous inferences in daily press conferences, justifying his ignorance as a joke while confirmed positive cases in the U.S. surpass one million, this is the reality.

Learning from this seems something that is still far-off, as its tragic fallout is ticking away in present time, but the blueprints that are being established now will be useful to countries not yet as afflicted or in the inevitable future waves of COVID-19 to come. This is as true for healthcare and government infrastructure as it is for entertainment bodies like the NBA.

“In terms of other lessons that we’ve learned, I know we’re all taking notes about things we would like to have done differently, things we could’ve thought about differently but were probably just not ready to tackle that area yet because there’s still so much in front of us that we’ve gotta resolve,” Behrens says. “There’ll be a ton of learnings from here. For everybody. For every country, for every local government, state government, business, you know, what did we learn here so that we can prevent it from happening again.”

The forward motion from here will be in fits and starts. Perhaps the only comforting part of such a global, uncertain future is that it’s shared. No country will proceed smoothly, without regression, disruption, and occasional full-stops. In the U.S., cities, states, and municipalities are still providing different guidelines on lockdown orders, public safety and the future of their economies. “There’s no switch to flip to get everything back at the same time,” Behrens says.

Given there’s no unified plan for states to come out of lockdown and no guidance from the federal government on how or when, the league has another opportunity in front of it. With its announcement that teams may soon start opening facilities in markets where lockdowns are loosening, it will once again be an early COVID-19 model for other businesses, even governments, in what a return to work will look like. If things ease too quickly, then the care the NBA has taken since early March would be made insincere by negligent optics or worse, a resurgence in cases among players or team staff. Teams will need full autonomy to decide whether it is worth the risk or the complicated logistics, and when, at any point, to pull back.

When asked what the next steps are for the league, Behrens gets sidetracked by the difficulties so many communities are facing.

“Healthcare workers, ensuring they have the PPE that they need,” Behrens says. “There’s still such a major issue around food insecurity, especially for kids who are not in school who rely on school meals. For communities that are hard-hit by this pandemic, food insecurity is a big issue. I think the next phase is really going be about the economic issues, and what that means for small businesses and what that means for people whose,” here she stops, pauses for a long beat to catch up and recalibrate, like someone who hasn’t — and really hasn’t — had a break, “livelihoods, have been so impacted.”

Unprecedented has been a word closely associated with the COVID-19 pandemic since its onset, sometimes in the human toll it has taken or its impact on the economy, and one that came up several times in my conversation with Behrens. But there is something striking, immediately arresting, in the way she uses it. “That’s what I meant before too about unprecedented, I think every day we’re learning something new, and in some ways every day we learn less, or know less, about what’s going to happen next.”

It is excruciating to consider that we could be moving backwards, even more to think we are regressing where we’ve already lost so much to learn. But perhaps the most progressive thing, a silver lining we can take even if it has emerged from as unanticipated a source as basketball and its corporate body, is to be honest and compassionate about our failings, and use them as a framework to move forward.

Though the current pandemic has caused a reduction in the number of new Jeopardy episodes aired, there is still enough content to stay entertained. The show is mainly about testing one’s own trivia knowledge against savvy contestants, but it’s always a great pleasure when a question is widely far from being correct. That’s exactly what happened in last night’s episode when a contestant came close yet immensely far from having the correct question about a Zulu warrior.

Posed by host Alex Trebek, an answer tested contestants knowledge about the Zulu. “Here, as on each September 24, Zulus celebrate a holiday that was named in honor of this warrior leader of the early 1800s,” Trebek said. The contestant Sarah accidentally referred to the legendary ten-time Grammy-winning singer when she responded with, “Who is Chaka Khan?” The contestant Matt then answered correctly (“Who is Shaka Zulu?”) and Sarah looked immediately remorseful as she realized how wrong her response was. While she was wrong about that particular question, Sarah actually went on to win the entire round.

This isn’t the first time a Jeopardy answer about a musician went viral. Recently, a clue about Lizzo had Trebek reciting a tone-deaf version of her hit song “Truth Hurts.” Before that, Trebek took a shot at doing an impression of Lil Jon’s signature catchphrase.

Watch a clip of the botched Jeopardy question above.

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