Category: Viral

The NBA’s restart in Orlando will begin Thursday night with a pair of games on TNT, as the Utah Jazz take on the New Orleans Pelicans in the early game (6:30 p.m. ET) and the Lakers and Clippers have a showdown in the 9 p.m. nightcap. From there, all 22 teams in the bubble will play eight games that will determine seeding for the postseason, with teams at the bottom fighting for the 8-seed and a possible play-in series in both conferences, while others already locked into the playoffs will be jockeying for seeding and matchups.

It is going to be fascinating how teams, particularly those that get locked into seeding early on (or, in the case of some teams at the bottom, are quickly eliminated from contention), approach the remainder of their games. For many, there is reason to play all the way through at full effort to ensure they get a more favorable matchup, but at the very top of both conferences, it’s possible the top three or four seeds could get locked in with games still to play.

As such, projecting the amount of effort from those teams will be tricky. If you think you have a handle on how teams will perform in the eight-game restart, BetOnline.ag has win total over-unders available to bet on. My initial reaction was, “wow, this is probably a terrible idea to bet on,” but after seeing the Brooklyn Nets total set at 2.5, I suddenly found myself interested in the Under.

Here are the full 22 team win total bets available:

Boston Celtics: 5.5
L.A. Clippers: 5.5
L.A. Lakers: 5.5
Milwaukee Bucks: 5.5
Philadelphia 76ers: 5
Dallas Mavericks: 4.5
Denver Nuggets: 4.5
Houston Rockets: 4.5
New Orleans Pelicans: 4.5
Toronto Raptors: 4.5
Miami Heat: 4
OKC Thunder: 4
Orlando Magic: 4
Utah Jazz: 4
Indiana Pacers: 3.5
Memphis Grizzlies: 3.5
Portland Trail Blazers: 3.5
Sacramento Kings: 3.5
Brooklyn Nets: 2.5
Phoenix Suns: 2.5
San Antonio Spurs: 2.5
Washington Wizards: 1.5

Obviously so much of this hinges on the team schedules, but the four teams at the top come as little surprise — same with those at the bottom. Also of note, of the teams battling for the ninth spot in the West, the Pelicans are given the highest win total at 4.5, while the Blazers and Kings (and Grizzlies) all sit at 3.5, which fits with them having the best odds of making the play-in game in the West.

Karl Urban might be a permanent fixture in the Star Trek fandom thanks to his portrayal of Dr. James “Bones” McCoy in the latest batch of films, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t have a little fun in a galaxy far, far away.

While promoting the upcoming second season of The Boys, Urban revealed to Digital Spy that he has a secret cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that not even hardcore fans knew about until now. But don’t feel bad if you didn’t spot Urban while watching the conclusion to The Skywalker Saga. Just like Daniel Craig’s cameo in The Force Awakens, Urban was buried under Stormtroopers, and there’s no way to know it’s him. The actor was more concerned with having some fun on set with director J.J. Abrams than being credited for his work, but he let fans know where to find his helmeted performance.

According to Urban, he’s in the scene when Kylo Ren reunites with the Knights of Ren and brings them aboard his command ship, and you can tell which trooper is Urban because he actually has a speaking part. “What is in the cut is my voice saying ‘Knights of Ren’ as Kylo Ren walks down a hallway past two stormtroopers. I am one of those stormtroopers,” he told Digital Spy.

Of course, Urban isn’t the first of Abrams’ Star Trek crew to appear in the new Star Wars films. That distinction goes to Simon Pegg, who played junk trader Unkar Plutt in The Force Awakens. Coincidentally, Pegg also stars on The Boys. However, Pegg’s character will not be returning for the second season, which will focus on Urban’s Billy Butcher mysteriously disappearing from the team. That absence will be the source of tension amongst The Boys when Butcher returns to the war on the “Supes” as if nothing happened.

(Via Digital Spy)

The United States is in the midst of two cataclysmic events that have had a massive impact on the Black community. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has already killed over 150,000 Americans, has disproportionately affected Black people who are dying at the rate of two to three times higher than their share of the population.

At the same time, America has been coming to grips with deep-seeded racial inequality after the death of George Floyd in March.

Both issues will require bold political solutions, so it’s more important than ever for Black people to be represented in positions of power.

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The good news is that this year, a record number of Black women filed to run for Congress and 60 of those candidates still have a chance to be elected, either because they’ve won their primaries or they haven’t been held yet.

Some of these candidates will surely be added to the 23 Black women who currently serve in Congress, itself a record number.

via Wikimedia Commons

Pam Keith, a Navy veteran running in the Democratic primary for a Florida congressional seat, believes the number of Black women in Congress has been growing because people have become more familiar with seeing them in office.

She told Reuters that “people are becoming more comfortable with seeing different kinds of people in Congress. You don’t know what it looks like to have powerful Black women in Congress until you see powerful Black women in Congress.”

According to a new report by Reuters, “Between 2018 and 2019, Black women saw the largest gain in representation at the state legislative level since 1994. In 2019, a record number of Black women serve in state legislative office.”

While the report is encouraging there is still more work to be done. Reuters also reports that Black women are 7.6% of the American population but less than 5% of the total elected to statewide executive offices, state legislatures, and Congress. Less than 2% of all statewide elected officials are Black women and none have ever been elected governor.

via Wikimedia Commons

There is also a huge chasm between Black women’s representation across the political divide. Of the 23 women who serve n Congress, including 22 representatives and one Senator, all of them are Democrats.

The only Black Republican woman to serve in Congress, Mia Love, was defeated in her bid for re-election to the U.S. House in 2018.

Despite the fact that Black women are underrepresented in government, it doesn’t mean they aren’t major participants in the political process. Black women make up the highest participation rate of any group that voted in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

Black women have no trouble getting to the polls, so it’s wonderful to see that more of them have the opportunity to vote for someone who shares their background. Let’s hope this trend continues until Black women are equally represented at all levels of government.

“We need to have more people, average, everyday American citizens who are there fighting for average, everyday American citizens,” Kimberly Walker, a veteran and former corrections officer from Florida running for Congress, told Reuters.

Now that Zion Williamson has cleared quarantine protocol after departing for a short while to tend to a personal matter, he’s a game-time decision for the Pelicans’ seeding game opener on Thursday against Utah. While Williamson understands that the team’s patience about his long-term health, he’s ready to play.

When asked by Rachel Nichols of ESPN about his status after a practice in the Bubble, Williamson said, “if you know me, I want to hoop.”

“Me and my team are going to look for what’s best for me, for my future, being safe,” Williamson said, before adding, “I’m never going to change, I’m going to want to hoop, it’s as simple as that.”

Williamson also acknowledged that “the NBA isn’t something you can just jump straight into,” but he still feels ready. There is no pain or discomfort, it’s just a matter of making absolutely sure he can handle NBA action by Thursday night.

The Pelicans, of course, also played things slowly with Williamson’s recovery from a torn right meniscus. That process meant he only played 19 games before the NBA pressed pause in March, so his sense of urgency to get onto the court and finish off the playoff run that New Orleans has been eyeing up since the spring is understandable.

Though we’ve only seen 565 minutes of Zion Williamson on an NBA court, he is already the sun around which the Pelicans — and to a lesser degree the NBA — orbits. No matter where you stand on the debate over whether the 22-team field for the NBA’s Orlando restart was only that big so that Williamson and the Pels could join, it’s clear New Orleans is one of the most intriguing teams in the league already.

They were also one of its most competitive heading into the hiatus. The Pelicans are 11-9 since Williamson’s return (he missed one victory) and had the league’s seventh-best net rating over that stretch. Their sugary schedule and obvious momentum made them one of the leading contenders to pass up the wounded Grizzlies back in March. They likely won’t be able to vault Memphis entirely now, but they are well set to meet the Grizzlies in a best-of-three play-in series in Orlando. But everything, as has been the case since Williamson descended upon the Big Easy, depends on the 2019 No. 1 overall pick, who is a gametime decision for their opener against Utah after being out of the bubble for eight days to attend to a family emergency.

ROSTER

Nickeil Alexander-Walker
Lonzo Ball
Zylan Cheatham (two-way)
Derrick Favors
Josh Gray (two-way)
Josh Hart
Jaxson Hayes
Jrue Holiday
Brandon Ingram
Frank Jackson
Nicolo Melli
E’Twaun Moore
Jahlil Okafor
JJ Redick
Sindarius Thornwell
Kenrich Williams
Zion Williamson

SCHEDULE

Thursday, July 30 — 6:30 p.m. ET — vs. Utah Jazz
Saturday, Aug. 1 — 6 p.m. ET — vs. Los Angeles Clippers
Monday, Aug. 3 — 6:30 p.m. ET — vs. Memphis Grizzlies
Thursday, Aug. 6 — 1:30 p.m. ET — vs. Sacramento Kings
Friday, Aug. 7 — 8 p.m. ET — vs. Washington Wizards
Sunday, Aug. 9 — 3 p.m. ET — vs. San Antonio Spurs
Tuesday, Aug. 11 — 9 p.m. ET — vs. Sacramento Kings
Thursday, Aug. 13 — Time TBD — vs. Orlando Magic

STANDINGS

1. Los Angeles Lakers: 49-14
2. Los Angeles Clippers: 44-20 (5.5 GB)
3. Denver Nuggets: 43-22 (7)
4. Utah Jazz: 41-23 (8.5)
5. Oklahoma City Thunder: 40-24 (9.5)
6. Houston Rockets: 40-24 (9.5)
7. Dallas Mavericks: 40-27 (11)
8. Memphis Grizzlies: 32-33 (18)
9. Portland Trail Blazers: 29-37 (21.5)
10. New Orleans Pelicans: 28-36 (21.5)
10. Sacramento Kings: 28-36 (21.5)
11. San Antonio Spurs: 27-36 (22)
12. Phoenix Suns: 26-39 (24)

WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

It sounds crazy to say this about a team that had the top overall pick in the draft just a year ago, but the Pelicans want to make the playoffs pretty badly. It’s worth considering what has to happen for them to get there, for those not yet acquainted with the rules.

First off, in order to make up for the fact that the NBA could only fit eight seeding games into the schedule, the league created a system by which any team that came within four games of the eighth seed in the standings could get still into the playoffs (set off the Zion conspiracy alarms again). The ninth-seeded team then has to win two straight matchups against the eighth seed in order to take their spot. To determine who will get that ninth spot considering the jumble at the bottom of the West, the league decided to jump straight to winning percentage rather than the mess of tiebreakers it typically uses, since a team like Portland has played two more games than most of the rest of the conference. If teams are still tied, the NBA will default to its usual tiebreakers, with head-to-head record being chief among them. Because New Orleans swept Portland in four regular-season matchups, their main focus in this regard should be taking at least one of two seeding games from the Kings.

If this sounds like a web of confusion, that’s because it is, but you can just sit back and enjoy the Pelicans’ lightning fast, explosive offense rather than tabulating it all in a spreadsheet.

X-FACTOR

Brandon Ingram: The Pelicans’ three best lineups all had Ingram in them, but over the course of the season, Williamson was far more of a bellwether for New Orleans’ success than the All-Star. With both players on the court, the Pels outscored opponents by more than 12 points per 100 possessions. With Ingram and no Williamson, that dropped to minus-3. A lot of that had to do with Ingram himself. Despite improvements as a spot-up three-point shooter, Ingram’s true shooting percentage falls from an elite 60 percent mark with Williamson on the bench to 55.5 percent when Williamson is on the floor.

As Kevin O’Connor noted at The Ringer, Ingram took more pull-up shots when he shared the court with his fellow superstar. One solution O’Connor proposed is to actually deploy Williamson more often as a playmaker, which would remove him from the paint and open up the floor even more. And even with so many guards already on the roster, it’s clear these two need to be involved in half-court action together more than they are if the Pelicans want to get the version of Ingram who kept them from bottoming out in the winter. They will need both young stars at their peaks to make the playoffs and push the Lakers in the first round.

BIGGEST ON-COURT QUESTION

Can the defense improve, particularly with Zion on the floor? The good news on this front is that Williamson took daily tests while out of the bubble, allowing him a shorter, four-day quarantine period, which let him return to practice Tuesday night. He practiced again on Wednesday, but his status is a “game-time decision” for the opener per Alvin Gentry.

Once he does return and is back to his regular minutes load, his defense will be a major point of interest. Like many rookies, even those who were game-changing defenders in college, he’s had a sharp learning curve. The reads aren’t as easy, even if his athleticism is still elite on an NBA court. And the reality is many of the lineups New Orleans throws out just aren’t great defensive units, with guys like Redick, Melli and Hayes getting minutes. It’s not necessarily a problem for the near-term, as no one really expects a deep playoff run from New Orleans in 2020, but lost in the hype about Williamson’s return in the winter was that he struggled mightily on that end. Assuming he’s available, it would be nice to see some improvements to finish out his rookie season.

As the summer season hurtles towards its close, we’re finally being reintroduced to the world of layers. The change couldn’t come fast enough. We don’t know if it’s the global pandemic (everything is the global pandemic), but we’re ready for this season and frankly, this entire year, to come to an end.

It’s crazy to think we’ve still got a full five months to go before we hit 2021. Which also means we still have five full months of fire drops to come. There’s a silver lining for you.

While we have a pretty good idea of what’s coming down the pipe, it’s the surprises that have us the most excited about the coming months. Whatever the rest of the year brings, we can say with some confidence that we’ll all be walking into 2021 in style, with fresh threads and new kicks never seen by our friend groups. Our only hope is we don’t have to wait too much longer until we can link up with the people we haven’t seen since February and show off our gear.

Now, let’s dive into all the best sneaker and apparel releases of the week.

KITH x ASICS GEL-Lyte III Tokyo Trio

ASICS has linked up with KITH’s Ronnie Fieg for the brand’s best release of the year in the GEL-Lyte III Tokyo Trio pack. Taking inspiration from Tokyo and the blossoming relationship between ASICS and Fieg, this trio pack features high-quality construction with uppers composed of premium leather and suede paneling, dressed in three distinctive colorways dubbed 252.1, Yoshino Rose, and Super Gold.

The collaboration was originally meant to tie into the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games prior to the pandemic and retains some of that triumphant vibe, even though we’re living in a very different world than the designs were intended for.

The Kith x ASICS GEL-Lyte III Tokyo Trio pack is out now for a retail price of $180. Pick up a pair exclusively at the KITH webstore or aftermarket sites like StockX.

Nike Air Max 1 Anniversary Pack

The Nike Air Max 1 is hands down one of Nike’s greatest sneaker silhouettes. This week, Asphalt Gold and Sneakersnstuff are re-releasing two of the silhouette’s best colorways. Dropping in both Hunter Green and Anniversary Orange, the Nike Air Max 1 Anniversary Pack is a testament to the power of the Air Max 1 design. It’s simple, minimal, and refined — truly one of Tinker Hatfield’s best in a career filled with legendary designs.

The Nike Air Max 1 Anniversary Pack I set to drop on July 30th for a retail price of $140. Pick up a pair through Sneakersnstuff or Asphalt Gold.

J. Cole x PUMA RS-Dreamer

The first sneaker collaboration between PUMA and J. Cole, the RS-Dreamer features performance-based cushioning from PUMA’s RS line, with a responsive feel designed to give you the type of feedback you need to level up your court performance. That’s our favorite thing about the RS-Dreamer, it’s a performance sneaker first but still manages to carry a dope design with it that looks just as good off-court as it does on.

The J. Cole PUMA RS-Dreamer is set to drop on July 31st for a retail price of $125. Pick up a pair through Foot Locker.

Adidas ZX 2K 4D Triple Black

Like the Triple White, there are few colorways more eye-catching than Adidas’ Triple Black, and now the ZK 2K 4D is getting the Triple Black treatment. The grey accents here really add a lot of dimensionality to the design, which recalls the Adidas UltraBOOST on steroids. The Adidas 4D line is tech-focused and performance-based usually fetching prices in the $400 range, but for whatever reason Adidas decided to keep this one much more accessible at $200.

We’ll take it!

The Adidas ZX 2K 4D in Triple Black is set to drop on July 31st for a retail price of $200. Pick up a pair through the Adidas UK webstore.

Stüssy x Nike Air Zoom Kukini

One of Nike’s newest silhouettes, the Air Zoom Kukini, gets the Stüssy treatment with this laid back cloud-resembling simple White colorway that exudes Stüssy’s casual daydream aesthetic. Designed specifically to be easily slipped on and off, the Kukini features a wild caged design with distinct Zoom Airbags and an ultra-breathable semi-sheer upper.

The Stüssy x Nike Air Zoom Kukini is set to drop on July 30th for a retail price of $170. Pick up a pair through the Nike SNKRS app.

BAPE Empire Strikes Back 40th Anniversary Collection

BAPE is celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the best Star Wars film, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in a playful collection that retranslates the film’s iconography in the cartoonish BAPE style, including some crossover with BAPE’s own Baby Milo. The all t-shirt collection features a camo-helmet Darth Vader, a Chewbacca, C-3P0, and R2-D2 shirt, as well as a Boba Fett and Darth Vader shirt featuring Baby Milo in carbonite, all featuring Japanese script.

The highlight of the collection features an original 80s Empire Strikes Back movie poster within the BAPE star logo cutout.

The BAPE x Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back t-shirt collection is set to drop on August 1st. Shop the collection at the BAPE webstore.

Anti Social Social Club FW 2020 Collection

Anti Social Social Club is all set up to launch their Fall Winter 2020 collection on August 1st. We warned you last week that by the end of the month we’d start to see the Fall and Winter collections slowly start to surface and we couldn’t be more excited to enter a new season. Don’t get us wrong, we love summer fashion, but this summer hasn’t exactly been one worth remembering, and since we’re kicking it cozy more and more these days, we’re pretty psyched to layer up.

The collection consists of basic streetwear essentials like hoodies, and sweats, as well as jackets and graphic t-shirts, all dressed in vibrant colors that seem to play against the fall season’s more earthy and moody tones. Leave it to Anti Social Social Club to go left while everyone else is going right, but that’s what we love about the brand

Shop and explore the full Anti Social Social Club Fall Winter 2020 collection on the Anti Social Social Club website beginning on August 1st.

Supreme Barbour Spring 2020 Restock

A restock of Supreme and Barbour’s Spring 2020 collection, this week brings a second chance to cop the collection of mostly lightweight waxed cotton goods that include a field jacket, camp and crusher hat, and fanny pack that will have you all geared up for the coming Fall-Winter season. Each piece in the collection comes in your choice of leopard print, pure black, or bright traffic cone orange.

The Supreme Barbour Spring 2020 Restock is set to drop On July 30th. Shop the collection at Barbour’s online store.

The hip-hop world received some bad news today: Malik B (real name Malik Abdul Baset), a former member of The Roots, passed away at 47 years old. The news was confirmed by former CBS News correspondent (and Malik’s cousin) Don Champion.

Not long after the news was made public, Black Thought (aka Tariq Trotter) shared a powerful statement on Instagram. Posting an old photo of Malik, himself, and Questlove, he wrote:

“We made a name and carved a lane together where there was none. We ressurected a city from the ashes, put it on our backs and called it Illadelph. In friendly competition with you from day one, I always felt as if I possessed only a mere fraction of your true gift and potential. Your steel sharpened my steel as I watched you create cadences from the ether and set them free into the universe to become poetic law, making the English language your b*tch. I always wanted to change you, to somehow sophisticate your outlook and make you see that there were far more options than the streets, only to realize that you and the streets were one… and there was no way to separate a man from his true self. My beloved brother M-illitant. I can only hope to have made you as proud as you made me. The world just lost a real one. May Allah pardon you, forgive your sins and grant you the highest level of paradise.”

The Roots also shared a photo of Malik and wrote, “We regretfully inform you of the passing of our beloved brother and long time Roots member Malik Abdul Baset. May he be remembered for his devotion to Islam and innovation as one of the most gifted MCs of all time. We ask that you please respect his family in our time of mourning.”

Malik joined The Roots in time to appear on their 1993 debut album Organix. He went on on to appear on Do You Want More?!!!??!, Illadelph Halflife, and Things Fall Apart. He left the group before they released 2002’s Phrenology.

Find Black Thought’s and The Roots’ posts below.

Sarah Paulson and Ryan Murphy‘s upcoming project for Netflix just got a release date and a whole slew of first look photos.

Starring Paulson in the title role, Ratched acts as a prequel series to the 1975 classic film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Next. In doing so, it examines the early days of the character first made famous by actress Louise Fletcher. The limited series’s first season has been wrapped for almost a year now, just waiting for a release date, which is coming up very soon. Ratched will officially hit Netflix on September 18.

As for tackling the origin story to a cinematic classic, Paulson told The Hollywood Reporter back in October that Murphy hooked her on the project with the following pitch: “Lady, do you want to have some like Walter White shit happen?” From there, she was on board:

“What I found really interesting is that people prescribe such villainy to her and the truth of the matter is that she really was a product of her time. Part of the conceit of the movie is that you fall in love with all the men and their friendship, but you never want the killjoy coming in to say, ‘We have to follow the rules.’ But she was, in her way, trying to offer them help, just with devastating consequences.”

You can get your first look at Ratched in the photos below.

Here’s a look at the official poster:

And, finally, here’s the official synopsis:

From Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, RATCHED is a suspenseful drama series that tells the origin story of asylum nurse Mildred Ratched. In 1947, Mildred arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. On a clandestine mission, Mildred presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she begins to infiltrate the mental health care system and those within it, Mildred’s stylish exterior belies a growing darkness that has long been smoldering within, revealing that true monsters are made, not born.

Ratched debuts September 18 on Netflix.

UK duo Disclosure is gearing up for their anticipated record Energy, which is due out later this summer. The group began teasing a comeback in February when they released a new song each day for five days, comprising the EP Ecstacy. After sharing a particularly violent video with Aminé and Slowthai, Disclosure return with a more tranquil number.

Disclosure shared a video to their track “Douha” which features vocals by Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, a song they originally teased during a Boiler Room DJ set in April. Directed by Mahaneela, Disclosure’s “Douha” visual was filmed three countries using nine different locations with three separate local film crews. With the help of the team, the scenic visual captures rural areas and cityscapes in Como, Italy, Johannesburg, South Africa, and New York City.

About the filming process, Mahaneela said: “Right now, all over the world, we’re going through an incredibly strange time. I wanted to make something that was visually beautiful, but also felt symbolic of what we’re all going through. People feel more isolated than ever and I wanted to create something joyful that really shows the power music and movement has and the connectivity it brings.”

Watch Disclosure’s “Douha” video above.

Energy is out 8/28 via Capitol. Pre-order it here.

Conversations around travel are shifting rapidly. As social justice movements push our society to evolve, the colonial and exploitive aspects of the travel experience are being highlighted and called out. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has underscored both the interconnectivity of humans and the fragility of many of our systems. Plus it’s grounded us for the foreseeable future — make wanderlust-inspiring TV, when done well, all the more vital.

This is the backdrop for last week’s release of Rogue Trip on Disney+. The show stars longtime war reporter Bob Woodruff, who was injured in Iraq in 2006, and his son Mack, a talented young photographer. The premise is simple and representative of the generational conversations happening around travel right now — Bob wanted to show Mack the world he’d reported on and wash away any longheld stigmas about those nations. Mack wanted to have the sort of adventure he’d grown up hearing from his dad about.

To film Rogue Trip, the duo visited Colombia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and Ukraine in an attempt to re-evaluate media-driven perceptions of the places Bob had worked as a reporter. Also to eat, dance, and connect with locals — time-honored entries in the travel TV playbook. The result is a show that balances sweeping vistas and unique foodways with self-reflection set against a father/son backdrop. And while some of the heavier questions currently plaguing the travel world aren’t wrestled with here, the desire to find commonality in the human experience, especially in places that have long been stigmatized, feels deeply significant.

On the eve of Rogue Trip’s six-episode launch on Disney+, I spoke with Mack and Bob Woodruff about their experience of traveling together, how they approached the show, and the storied legacy of Anthony Bourdain.

I’m excited about this show and I think it’s a really interesting conversation to be having right now. What was the genesis around saying, “Okay, we have this opportunity to do a travel show — what we want to do is to take on places that, through the media, have become places Americans seem to have a certain level of xenophobia about, or have maybe been misportrayed, or portrayed as one-note”?

Mack: My dad has been in the media for more than 30 years, so he knows that this problem exists, and it’s something that he’s, I think, struggled with at times during his career of saying, “I’m in this beautiful place of Pakistan or Afghanistan, and all I’m doing is talking about the war that’s here. And while that’s incredibly important, no country can be defined by one thing.” So an opportunity presented itself, and I think the show was actually initially supposed to be with just you, dad, and then Disney+ came around. And I’ve been a photographer and a videographer for a while and Disney+ obviously has a very family-friendly audience. So we wanted to make a family travel show. I said, “yes!” faster than you could possibly even imagine.

I’ve been in travel media for a long time and I’ve seen how destinations get kind of stigmatized. What was the impulse to say like, “Oh, this is the story that needs to have a generational aspect?” Because I think that’s really cool. One of the things we’re seeing so much in society right now is that some of these generational learnings are handed down and they’re wrong, and they get carried out. So there was very much this aspect of the show for me, that is like, “I’m rethinking how we think things and handing new messages down.” What was the thought process behind that, or the decision-making behind that for you?

Bob: All of these years of traveling to places, there’s always… You can’t cover everything. You can’t see everything, so it’s hard to get a really good sense of the depth of the country. It’s not that simplistic. So you’re never going to be able to be successful summarizing a country and a culture, you know?

You can never accomplish it. What I do know is that a lot of times, I’ve always covered one side — a crisis, a war, starvation, environmental collapse. These kinds of sad elements, generally, is what makes news. But I have not been able to cover much the other elements that are not news, because they’re ongoing and they’ve always been the case in history. In this one, we wanted to create a little bit more of a balance for me and Mack, who sees the good and the bad, and just to tell the world that it’s hard to find the most amazing place because there are, as you said, almost propaganda around them.

We’ve done war reporting in the past, and though we’ve not done the other extreme side, you do see like the foreign ministry propaganda videos. Either one, a little piece of both balances out.

That balance lands you in a more authentic, realistic spot.

Mack: And I think your point about generations and why that is an important part of this show. I think my dad is almost 60 and I’m almost 30. And those two generations, for us, grew up in different Americas. And for the people that we were talking to in these countries, their country, when the older generation was young, looks different than the country that younger generation is growing up in. And in America, we kind of know what that looks like, but we didn’t know what that looked like in these countries.

In Pakistan, a lot of the young kids don’t necessarily have memories of what a war-torn or Taliban-occupied country looks like. And in Columbia, some of the younger generations doesn’t know what it means to live in a Columbia that’s a bit torn up from drug trafficking. So I was able to relate a little bit better with the younger generation and my dad a little bit more the older generation, but it’s important to tell both of those stories because every country is evolving and every generation, even after my generation, is different than mine. That’s a good conversation to be having.

Travel for me has always been so kinetic. Did you find that your travel styles and the way that you wanted to see things diverged or was there a lot of similarity and overlap there? Is that something that was in conflict on the road? I imagine that as much as you can reflect on it all now and go, “Wow, what a special trip,” were there things that were in conflict on the road?

Mack: Oh yeah. As our cameraman on the first episode, Keith Luzinski said, “All these trips are going to have a high dose of type two fun.” And type two fun from what he explained to me basically means during the time that you’re there, it’s not really that enjoyable, but it’s always incredibly enjoyable to look back on. So while we’re sitting out in these, we’re in a canoe for eight hours and we’re getting sunburned to a crisp, that’s not fun in itself — but it’s really fun to sit here and talk to you about it.

It’s cool to see it on TV, would I eat that bug in Columbia again, right now? Not particularly interested in it, but it’s great that I did it and I’m happy I did it.

In terms of our traveling style, my dad’s been doing this professionally for so long. So he knows, and he’s gravitated towards character stories and he understands that you can’t go to a country and just shoot the beautiful mountains and the crystal clear lakes and the foliage. You have to get some real down-to-earth human elements that allow the audience to relate. And I didn’t have that natural instinct when I got there, because I’ve been a photographer. And so I would just… things would attract my eye and I would want to go and show them. So my dad kind of had to reel me back and say, “Hey, this is like, that is incredibly beautiful. And we will have time for that. But first we got to talk to this guy and this girl and this kid about their experiences here and what makes this place so special to them, and then we can go and explore it a bit more.” That was something that I learned from him pretty quickly.

I like that. I would say that’s the reflective-versus-kinetic thing of a father and son that I was trying to get at. That was well put. Bob, did you have a different impression of that?

Bob: I just really think that, listen, these are beautiful places and I’ve been to them before when there’s huge, gigantic breaking news. And I think it’d be a real challenge to do a travel story in places like this that would really interest people unless it’s got some different perspective. And one of them is, I’ve got someone with me who can tell the story, who’s grown up in very different decades. Because I think we always assume when we’re old that everything we saw 30 years ago is probably going to be pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago. But I remember growing up and my father had no real idea what the personalities within certain countries were. I had to go to them.

I was addicted to traveling early on, I think partly because I did not feel like I was getting the true stories out of countries. And I think Mack and I have different ideas of what a country is before we go there based on our generations. So I think it was great to have a more balanced report that has come from two different perspectives.

Who were the people and what were the conversations across the history of travel TV that you both looked at and said, “Okay, these are touchstones or these are people doing it right. Or these are things we want to avoid.”?

Mack: I think if I had a nickel for every time my dad or someone on the crew brought up Bourdain, I’d be a pretty rich man. I think everyone, awe of what that guy did, in a lot of ways blazed the trail for maybe what my dad and I did together on the show. In terms of what other travel programs I consumed, I think, I mean, I gravitated a lot towards the Planet Earth stuff, and I’m a huge documentary fan. So 180 Degrees South, and those stories of incredible adventures are some stuff that I’ve always loved. But we really did set out to make something different. I think the father-son thing has been done before, but never on a travel show that looks like this, especially not with a foreign correspondent that’s been to war-torn countries a lot. So I don’t know if I answered your question fully, but…

You did! Bob, what were your touchstones?

Bob: I think I would just say that food has been an amazing entry point because people can relate to it. People can relate to food, so you can tell serious stories and bring real news to people. Someone like John Oliver, he’s able to use humor to tell stories and bring people to do it. I think sometimes, for me as a war correspondent to go back to a country I’ve been to before, it’s not going to be as easy to get people pay attention, but to have my son there, a guy with a perspective and also with reporting skills of his own, I think it seemed to open things up. I was able to, for me to learn a lot more and younger audiences have someone they can relate to.

Mack: I think that as much as Bourdain was a chef and his love for food was very contagious, his show wasn’t really a food show. They just use food as a way of helping to tell a story about a specific place. So I think we’re using the father and son thing as our version of Anthony Bourdain’s food — we were there to tell a story about a country, we used our relationship as father and son as the way that people can hopefully relate to that sense. Everyone eats food and a lot of people have kids of their own. So I guess that was one of our goals.

One of the things from travel TV that has been slowly rejected for 10 or so years now, and is now getting more quickly rejected, is this fine line between kind of “othering” cultures versus celebrating them, right? Where you go and you taste a food and you go, I think 20 years ago it was like, “Ewww, that’s strange!” And now it’s like, “Okay, this is different to me.”

How do you walk that balance between saying, “Hey, this is exciting and new and not in my lived experience,” but at the same time, “I’m not going to act like something is generally bizarre or weird because there are millions of people whose lived experience it is representative of”?

Mack: I think not bringing your value judgments to the table is important for that situation. I mean, we didn’t do a lot of exotic food tasting stuff, but we did find ourselves in pretty uncomfortable situations a lot. That was the goal of the show. But I wouldn’t say we ever cast value on that or felt like we were superior in any way, because we were American and our cultures are better than yours. That was not how we approached it at all, and my dad has certainly imprinted that on me at a young age that you can go to a really, really dangerous country, and if you act the right way, you’ll be totally fine. Or you can go to a really safe, perceived safe country and act in the complete wrong way and find yourself in dangerous situations. So it’s all about not imposing your values on someone else.

Bob, do you want to speak to that too? I think that’s an interesting one for both of you.

Bob: We didn’t really set out a plan of how to act or how do we approach our own decisions or how we accept or reject something that was introduced to us. I don’t think we had this as a plan of how to act. It was purely what our natural instincts were. I think that’s really what we ended up using. I don’t know what’s right or wrong and you watch it, you’ll see, if is a good or a bad way of treating differences in culture or something brand new to us from a new culture. But I think we have just pretty much… We played ourselves, we didn’t really… It was really much more news reporting in many ways. We were out there… We were not acting out a show. So I’m not sure there’s a lot that we can say other than that.

Anything you guys looked for as you traveled? Certain communities that you wanted to tap into? Mack, you surf, don’t you — did you find surfers on the road?

Mack: I am a half-decent surfer. I wouldn’t say I’m a surfer, but I’m on my way. For me, I had this idea in my head that I was going to try to play soccer with as many kids in the country that we went to as possible. So I actually packed, kind of in retrospect, was a silly decision, but I brought nine deflated soccer balls in my suitcase with the hopes of pumping them up on the street and getting a little game going with kids. It never quite manifested itself in the ways that I had daydreamed about, but I was able to give a few soccer balls away and make a couple of kids happy.

I do find that I’m always awestruck by how kids, no matter where you are, are really, they’re just the exact same kids that you were when you were growing up in the sense of they’re very full of wonder and curiosity, and they don’t have social norms deeply ingrained in them yet. And they don’t feel weird about pointing at me and saying, “Why is your skin a different color?” Or, “Why do you look that way?” Or, “What’s that big camera in your hand?” They just are incredibly curious, and I gravitated towards that a lot.

“Rogue Trip” is streaming on Disney+.