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Who had YG and Tyga getting fully made-up as The Kardashians on their 2022 bingo card? Nobody? Ok. Well, it’s officially a thing as this looks to be the motif for the vieo for YG’s new song, “Run,” which is dropping on Friday, June 24 at midnight. In a teaser clip for the video posted by YG to his Instagram feed, the pair have gone full White Chicks and it’s well, pretty ridiculous.

The pair sit in the cleanest convertible Ferrari you’ve ever seen as “Run” starts to play on the radio. YG is in the driver seat rocking a blonde wig, presumably indicating that he is Khloé Kardashian, while Tyga rides shotgun in black hair with big sunglasses a la Kim. Tyga… err, Kim fixes their hair, while YG/Khloé dances to the tune and says, ““Calabasas forever!,” referencing where the Kardashian’s family home is located. Tyga — who seems really into the cosplay — then looks in the vanity mirror to touch-up his make-up and lipstick, before giving the camera a “blue steel” look.

The pair must have no doubt spent literal hours in a makeup chair to become the Kardashians and it’s unexpected to say the least. “Run” is also set to feature Bia and 21 Savage, and drops Friday at midnight. There’s no word yet on whether it will be included on YG’s upcoming album, Pray For Me, but the clip above certainly does it’s job: piquing curiosity for the full video this Friday.

As the Stranger Things gang gears up for its season four finale, the Duffer Brothers are hyping up the final two episodes with so much energy, the expectations are almost too high. Fans have been warned that the finale will be dark and potentially deadly, but the creators are also promising some emotional performances by some of the principal cast.

In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, Millie Bobby Brown and Matthew Modine, who play Eleven and her papa/government guardian with sketchy intentions, confirm that the season is not only physically draining, but emotionally overwhelming as well. “I do a lot of physical and emotional stuff in the show, and when my heart rate goes up, my body thinks that it’s going through something,” Brown says after Modine explained that he had to warn her to take it easy. “So we have to really take care of our bodies and give them that healing that they need.”

Despite the intensity of the set, The Duffer Brothers add that they were “blown away” by both Modine and Brown’s performances in the final two episodes. “They have some scenes together [in Volume 2] that are, I think, the best acting either of them have ever done,” Matt Duffer says. The expectations keep rising!

Modine also hinted at an “emotional” scene between Eleven and Papa, which resulted in the Duffers stepping in to give a “really specific direction” during the scene. The pair even came up with their own “blinking” system while filming to check in on each other during tough scenes. Seems like that telepathic connection also made its way off-screen!

It’s not clear where Papa and Eleven will end up post-finale, but if the Duffer brothers have done one thing right, it’s to make sure fans are prepared for the absolute worst. At least we will get more Kate Bush.

(Via Tudum)

Last Summer, before Elon Musk set his sights on buying Twitter, he told the world he intended to make humanoid robots. Called “Tesla Bot,” the creations would stand under six feet tall, weigh 125 pounds and deadlift 150 pounds. And like all predictions Musk has made in recent years, well, it’s best not to hold your breath about any of those particulars.

Still, Musk has very much insisted that the humanoid androids are, indeed, in production. And this week he actually said a prototype is well on the way. According to the New York Post, Tesla’s next AI Day may feature a working prototype of the creation the company showed off during last year’s event. Well, kind of. If you recall, the “prototype” was actually just a skinny person in a robot costume that moved jerkily and then started dancing.

Still, Musk had tweeted that things are quickly moving from robot costume to robot prototype, and in an interview he reiterated that a working prototype is very close to reality:

During an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk said that the company is “tracking” toward a working prototype.

“Well, I hope that we will have an interesting prototype to show people,” he said.

“We have a very talented team at Tesla that I’m working with closely to have a prototype humanoid robot ready by the end of September.

“And I think we are tracking to that point.”

“Tracking to that point” of a working robot is certainly a far cry from having a working robot that can help build cars and walk around carrying 45 pounds like a real live boy. But it’s a bold claim, indeed, added to a list of bold claims Musk has made in recent years. Which is why many people were, to say the least, skeptical about the timeline offered here.

If we do get a prototype this fall, though, people are certainly expecting something a bit different than promised.

Can’t wait for September!

With James Corden announcing in April that he will be leaving The Late Late Show in 2023, the talk show host is pulling out all the stops in his final season. For a slate of episodes filmed in the UK that will air next week, guests on the show include Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Ed Sheeran, and President Joe Biden (as Variety notes). The shows will be broadcast from London’s Freemason’s Hall and these aren’t just your typical “sit down and chat” type of appearances for the illustrious guests.

For his “Take A Break” segment, Corden is going to fill in as an assistant of sorts to Biden, Lizzo is set to do a new “Carpool Karaoke” segment, and hilarity will surely ensue. Other guests on the upcoming slate of episodes include Star Wars actor John Boyega, singers Sam Smith and Alanis Morissette, Thor’s Tessa Thompson, David Harbour from Stranger Things, and Vin freakin’ Diesel.

It’s all set to air from Tuesday, June 28th to Friday, July 1st in its normal 12:37 a.m. timeslot on CBS (or on the Sky Comedy channel if you find yourself in the UK).

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

The word “joy” gets thrown around a lot when Trevion Williams talks. It’s probably not a huge surprise to those who have watched him at Purdue, as Williams, a projected second-round selection in the 2022 NBA Draft, boasts one of the more unique games of any big man to come into the league in recent years. When he’s not on the floor, he’s standing on the sideline, expressive as anyone in the country in an effort to be, as he tells Dime, “our number one cheerleader on the bench.”

Still, anyone who has ever had a conversation with another person has run into the situation I found myself in while Williams and I spoke over Zoom last week. Similar words and themes — joy, happiness, positivity, etc. — popped up several times within the first minute or so of our conversation, which made me ask about Williams’ efforts to experience joy in every situation.

“It definitely has a lot to do with my personality,” Williams says. “I’m a pass-first guy, so anytime I can get other guys involved, I’ll do so. I thrive off seeing other guys succeed and I’m always the guy that put others before myself, and I think it has a lot to do with how I was raised and how I was brought up. My family, my mom most importantly, has always taught me to be unselfish. And I think that translates over, on and off the court, just me as a person.”

Family is another thing that comes up over and over again. At every opportunity, Williams stresses the role that his loved ones played in shaping who he is today.

He was told over and over again that he had special gifts, that he was unlike everyone else. His parents hammered home the importance of not being one-dimensional, while his support system provided him with endless, unconditional love. From a young age, Williams’ uncle Ty stressed that his dreams would change the family, and that the things that he would go on to achieve would have a bigger impact than what anyone else would achieve.

In 2015, Ty lost his life to gun violence in Chicago. Williams, who was born and raised in the city, felt that these sorts of senseless acts of violence pushed him away from the Windy City. Every summer, Williams would spend time with one of his uncles, and after Ty passed away, he traveled to Michigan to visit his uncle Curtis, the principal at the Henry Ford Academy School for Creative Studies in Detroit.

At the time, Williams and his mother, Shawndra Lewis, were living with his grandmother. He remembers calling her and saying he felt safe at the school, and it would give him the chance to grow as a basketball player, student, and person. Williams would end up transferring, and while he went to school, Shawndra held jobs in Chicago and Detroit, driving back and forth between the two cities every week.

“Basically going from check-to-check, trying to provide and help my uncle Curtis out with me,” Williams says. “That speaks volumes to how she is as a person, she wanted me to follow my dreams, so did my uncles and everybody else in my family, they wanted me to be successful with this. They always told me growing up, you’re meant for this lifestyle, and were gonna do everything in their power to make sure I was okay.”

Williams didn’t want to go to the kind of high school powerhouse that churns out high-level recruits. To him, as long as he could play basketball — even if it was at a smaller art school that had students from sixth to 12th grade roaming the hall every day — he was going to be happy. The success on the court was always going to come, with Williams averaging more than 20 points and 20 rebounds a game as a junior and senior while earning a 4-star distinction. When it came time to pick a college, Williams fell in love with the family environment that Matt Painter fosters at Purdue, which had the bonus of being a little more than two hours away from his loved ones in Chicago.

As a talented big man who struggled with his weight — he arrived in West Lafayette weighing 325 pounds — Williams struck up “a really good relationship” during the recruiting process with the late Caleb Swanigan, who passed away shortly after Trevion and I spoke. Williams saw the way that the Boilermakers were able to transform him into an NBA Draft pick and one of the most uniquely skilled big men in the country.

“A lot of the recruiting process for me with Purdue pertained to Biggie, his process and becoming a player that he was, and then just watching what they did with him, and reading about him, and doing research, and all this stuff,” Williams says. “He’s told me about his struggles, and I found similarities within myself. I had some of those same struggles — growing up, I was always talented, but always had that weight that held me back from being such a special player, which I feel like I’ve grown to be. But I could have been even better if I didn’t have those struggles, but you appreciate things like that.

He had a huge impact on my decision. Like I said, watching what they did with him, watching what they did with his body, his process, his journey on making it to the NBA when he had people tell him that he wasn’t good enough, how was he going to fit. That’s kind of where those similarities come in, that’s what drives me every day, people telling me what I can’t do, because I’m more than capable of doing things if I work on it, if I put time into it.”

Williams put the time into getting his body right and thrived. He appeared in all but two games as a true freshman, and in each of his final three years, Williams was asked to shoulder one of the heaviest workloads in the sport. Per KenPom, Williams was 38th in the country in percentage of possessions used as a sophomore, second as a junior, and 11th as a senior. When he was on the floor, Painter and co. trusted him to serve as the hub for the the Boilermaker offense.

“Adjusting to Purdue’s system was fairly easy,” Williams says, “they threw the ball in, and I knew I was going to touch it.”

It paid off his junior year, when Williams earned first-team All-Big Ten honors. He started all but two games in which he appeared, tested the NBA Draft waters, and decided to come back. And then, as a senior and someone who established himself as one of the best players in the country, Williams was asked to come off the bench.

While it’s not an easy pill to swallow, Williams understood that the needs of the team were the most important thing, and found a way to use this unique situation as a form of motivation en route to a third-team All-Conference selection, getting named the Big Ten’s Sixth Man of the Year, and playing a major role in the Boilermakers making it to the Sweet 16.

“Having that mindset of always trying to figure it out, man, it’s helped me so much,” he says. “Obviously, it was tough, because you always have questions about why things are the way they are. I just trusted myself, coach making that transition forced me to open up as a person, it’s forced me to be more vocal, not be that quiet guy anymore, just forced me to be that cheerleader on the bench, standing next to coach, we’re down 10 and we need some positivity and some energy, I’m that guy. So I figured out other ways, and man, it’s been a blessing to have gone through what I’ve been through.”

The fact that he’s on the verge of getting to the NBA, he says, hasn’t hit him yet. Williams is wired to block out noise, focus on what he has to do during the pre-draft process, and trust that the thing that will happen is what is meant to happen. He’s filling that time in hotel rooms across the country, in cities he has never visited before like Charlotte and Los Angeles, by making music — Williams grew up in the church and has “been in choir pretty much my whole life.” He views singing as a way to achieve peace when he’s away from the hardwood.

When he does step on the floor, Williams wants to find joy in being the best player he can be.

“What’s your work,” he asks, “if you can’t have fun with it? I would tell my teammates in college, high school, whatever team I was a part of, anytime I spoke up, they tell you I say, just have fun,” he says. “That’s what it’s about, man, being a part of a team, building a brotherhood, just going through, knowing that guys next to you want success just as bad as you do. It’s a great feeling. It’s about just being a part of something for me.”

NBA teams have told him in the pre-draft process in each of the last two years that they want to see him become more comfortable shooting the ball, and while he agrees that he has room to improve and is spending time in the gym working on this, Williams believes he is better than he was a year ago.

They are, however, enamored with his ability to pass the ball. From the time he was in high school, he’s always preferred making the game-winning pass as opposed to hitting the game-winning shot. It goes back to his upbringing, where the importance of putting others before himself was instilled in him from a young age. As a result, Williams says, his first objective when he gets the ball is to look for the open guy before he tries to score. If you’ve made it this far into this piece, you will not be surprised which specific word he used to describe what he feels when his passing leads to a teammate scoring.

“I’ve always just found joy in seeing other guys succeed,” Williams says. “It plays a huge part in my personality, it’s not about me, and so I try to get other people involved as much as I can, and I really thrive off of it. I sound like a broken record, but, man, I guess I really enjoy seeing other guys succeed, because it helps me succeed. Just knowing that I put guys in that position, I’m able to impact somebody. It does a lot for me.”

We’ll learn on Thursday night what basketball has in store for Williams. But one thing is for sure: Wherever he ends up, he’ll do whatever he can to bring his infectious sense of joy to anyone and everyone around him.

Maggie Rogers received some good news recently: Her recent single “That’s Where I Am” has jumped to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated June 25. That makes it her third song to top that particular ranking, following “Alaska” in 2016 and “Burning” in 2019. Despite that, Rogers is discouraged with the state of the alternative radio charts, specifically as it pertains to female representation on them.

This afternoon, Rogers tweeted, “idk how this is even still at all surprising to me, but my managers just sent me the top 50 chart for alternative radio and there’s…8 women ? like i know we’re having a 90s revival, but we still can’t do any better than that ??” She added in another tweet, “the other diversity stats are also just eeeeeeeeeeeesh.”

Meanwhile, Rogers, who is about a month away from releasing her new album Surrender, recently spoke with Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson about making the LP, saying, “I started it in Maine and it really felt like going back to making music the way I made it when I was a kid. I was in my childhood bedroom, making music in a little studio I set up over my parents’ garage.”

Rogers is also fresh off of announcing tour dates and graduating from Harvard Divinity School.

Ivanka Trump‘s testimony to the January 6 committee that she knew her father lost the 2020 election put her in hot water with the former president. However, new information has come to light that may lend credence to the theory that Ivanka committed perjury during her deposition.

As reported earlier in the week, documentary filmmaker Alex Holder had unprecedented access to Donald Trump’s campaign and the final weeks of his presidency, which came as a complete surprise to Trump’s inner circle. CNN aired the first footage on Thursday morning, and now, The New York Times is reporting that it has seen footage that features Ivanka Trump backing her father’s pursuit of proving the 2020 election.

The footage was filmed on December 10, 2020, nine days after then-Attorney-General Bill Barr declared there was no evidence of voter fraud. In her January 6 committee deposition, Ivanka said she was persuaded by Barr’s remarks and accepted that the election wasn’t stolen. However, the documentary footage shows her supporting Trump’s “Stop the Steal” efforts.

Via The New York Times:

“I think that, as the president has said, every single vote needs to be counted and needs to be heard, and he campaigned for the voiceless,” Ms. Trump replied. “And I think a lot of Americans feel very, very disenfranchised right now, and really, question the sanctity of our elections, and that’s not right, it’s not acceptable.”

She went on, “And he has to take on this fight. Look, you fight for what you love the most and he loves this country and he loves this country’s people, and he wants to make sure that their voice is, is heard and not muted.”

Ivanka closed out her remarks by saying her father “will continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted and that’s what he should do.” Again, that doesn’t sound like someone who has accepted that the election wasn’t stolen, so it will be interesting to see what, if any, response this new footage garners from the House committee.

(Via The New York Times)

Saving the life of one small animal among the billions upon billions of living things on Earth may not seem significant in the big picture, but when that one small animal’s life is in your hands, it means the world.

Yassin Elmahgoub is a medical student from Egypt who recently shared the journey of a tiny baby parrot he rescued. The parrot, who he named Mumble, was born with birth defects and wasn’t able to stand or walk. With the help of a parrot behavior consultant, Elmahgoub hand-fed Mumble, nursed him to good health and helped him develop mobility.

In a TikTok video that’s been viewed more than 8 million times, Elmahgoub shared Mumble’s journey from his earliest days until he was finally able to walk on his own.

“I bottle fed him and started his treatment,” Elmahgoub wrote. “It took days and hours of support and physiotherapy but our team could do it.”

Do it they did. But even better than seeing Mumble take his first steps is seeing Elmahgoub’s reaction to it. Watch:

@yassinelmahgoub

This is the best thing that happened to me in a while. All it takes is one person to save a life. @Sara Haytham couldn’t do it without u #fyp #hope #rescue #bird #positivity #medicine #medicalstudent #arabs #egypt #cairo #viral

The persistence and gentle patience of nursing Mumble paid off, and Elmahgoub’s celebration is joy personified. People are absolutely loving it.

“I love animals..but the pure joy on that guy’s face is simply beautiful,” wrote one commenter.

“This is one of the best and heartwarming things I’ve seen in a while, thank you so much for this,” wrote another.

“Oh I was not prepared for those tears!” wrote another “What joy this sweet bird has brought him, SO sweet!”

Elmahgoub has shared updates on Mumble’s progress since sharing the viral video. Check out this follow-up video culminating with Mumble at Day 60 in all of his beautiful blue glory.

@yassinelmahgoub

Growth takes time. For those asking about how mumble is doing now here you go. #fyp #foryou #positive #positivity #rescue #bird #rescuebird #medicine #medicalstudent #medical #arabs #egypt #cairo #viral

Mumble has not only learned to stand and walk, but he has learned to fly as well. Just amazing.

@yassinelmahgoub

And it was all yellow #fyp #foryou #postive #postivity #postiveenergy #rescue #rescuebird #medicine #medicalstudent #medical #arabs #egypt #cairo #viral

Congrats to Mumble and kudos to Yassin Elmahgoub for caring so much and sharing this happy journey to mobility with us. Imagine what a beautiful world we could create if we all took such good care of living things, including one another.

You can follow Elmahgoub and Mumble’s ongoing story on TikTok and Instagram.

Debate over legal access to abortion has long been a part of social and political discourse, but increasing state-level restrictions and a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that threatens to overturn five decades of legal precedent have propelled abortion directly into the spotlight once again.

While we’re accustomed to seeing religious arguments against abortion from Christian organizations, a synagogue in Florida is flipping the script, making the argument that banning abortion actually violates Jewish religious liberty.

In a lawsuit against the Florida government, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor of Boynton Beach says that the state’s pending abortion law, which prohibits abortion after 15 weeks with few exceptions, violates the Jewish teaching that abortion “is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman.” Citing the constitutional right to freedom of religion, the lawsuit states that the act “prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.”

Wow.

The Florida 15-week abortion ban only grants exceptions if the mother’s life is at risk, if she is at risk of “irreversible physical impairment” or if the fetus is found to have a fatal abnormality. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or human trafficking.

If Jewish law stipulates that access to abortion is required not only for a woman’s physical well-being but also her mental well-being, then laws that criminalize such access are violating religious freedom, Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor contends.

Advocating for abortion access is not the religious argument we usually hear, but it is on equal footing with religious arguments against it. (It’s worth pointing out that Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida abortion act into law not at his office, but rather at a church.)

u201cFor Jews who can become pregnant, access to abortion services is a religious *requirement*, and has been for thousands of years. Surprised? Let’s dig into some of the texts ud83euddf5 1/u201d

— Rabbi Daniel Bogard (@Rabbi Daniel Bogard)
1651629252

The synagogue’s lawsuit raises the question of which religion takes precedence when it comes to legislation. It also highlights the difference between “This is against my religion, therefore no one can do it” and “This is part of my religious tradition, therefore I legally have a right to access it.” The former really has no place in U.S. law, as it violates the traditional separation of church and state, and the latter is a prime example of the purpose of the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

Part of what makes legislating abortion so messy is that the questions at the heart of the debate are actually largely religious in nature. What is the true nature of human life and when does life begin? At what point is a zygote, an embryo, a fetus considered a full human being with the same rights as the rest of us? What is the relationship between a human (or potential human) in the womb and the person whose body is building it? What responsibilities does the person who is building it have toward that life, and what responsibility does society and/or the government have in holding the human accountable for those responsibilities?

These are all legitimate questions that don’t have easy, straightforward answers, no matter how simplistic and undernuanced people try to make them. They may be simple questions for some people to answer individually, but collectively? No. We all make those determinations based on different criteria, different beliefs, different values and different understandings of the nature of life. There is no way for “we the people” as a whole to answer those questions definitively.

u201cAll of which is to say: laws that limit or criminalize abortion aren’t just violations of the human rights of every person who can become pregnant, but are also infringements on the religious liberty of every American Jew, and an imposition of governmental Christianity on us all.u201d

— Rabbi Daniel Bogard (@Rabbi Daniel Bogard)
1651629252

And the implications of those questions extend far beyond the abortion debate. The Cleveland Clinic states that one-third to a half of pregnancies end in miscarriage before a person even knows they’re pregnant. For those who believe that life begins at conception or fertilization, should every death in the womb be considered a tragedy? Should we mourn the loss of lives we carried that we never even knew existed?

There are the slippery slopes that stem from those questions as well. Some religious people may see a miscarriage as God’s will, but what if it was caused by something a woman did? What if a miscarriage occurred because of an action taken of her own free will? Is she culpable for that loss using the same logic we use to criminalize abortion? At what point do we start policing women’s behaviors—what she eats or drinks, what medications she takes, whether she’s around smokers, and so on—at all times in order to protect a life she may potentially be carrying? We’re already seeing women being jailed for miscarriages. How far will we go with it?

What about things like child support payments and government benefits? Why we do not expect child support to be paid from the moment a pregnancy is detected? Why do we not give Social Security numbers to Americans in the womb? Why can we not claim a child on our taxes until they are born? If there is genuinely no difference between a life being grown inside a uterus at 12 or 15 or 20 weeks and a life outside a uterus, why does the law treat them differently?

How do we begin to answer these questions when the heart of them always circles back to individual beliefs?

The synagogue’s religious freedom argument is compelling for sure, but the bottom line is we shouldn’t be legislating on something based on religious beliefs in the first place. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” That’s literally the opening line of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Banning abortion is, in effect, establishing a particular religious belief as law and prohibiting the free exercise of religion for an entire group of people.

At a basic level, abortion is 1) a medical event that entails far too many individual factors that are not the business of the government to judge, and 2) a choice that is determined to be valid or invalid, right or wrong, based largely on individual religious beliefs. Both of those realities are reason enough for legislators, who are neither medical professionals nor religious leaders, to stay out of people’s uteruses and leave these incredibly personal medical and religious decisions to the individual.

Fear of flying—aerophobia, in technical terms—is an extremely common phobia, affecting around 25 million adults in the U.S. alone. Some people grit their teeth and white-knuckle their way through their fear, while others find themselves unable to get on an airplane at all because of it.

Such a fear is understandable, really. Hurtling through the sky at 500 miles per hour, tens of thousands of feet above the Earth’s surface, isn’t exactly the way humans were designed to get from place to place. (We may have evolved with the brain power and ingenuity to make it happen, but that doesn’t mean we automatically go along for the ride without our sense of self-preservation kicking in.)

One of the triggers for people with aerophobia is turbulence—the occasional shaking and pitching of an aircraft when it hits certain conditions in the atmosphere. Even people who are comfortable flying can find turbulence disconcerting sometimes, especially when it creates a sudden dropping sensation. Turbulence is normal, but it doesn’t feel normal when you’re sitting in a chair 30,000 feet from solid ground. It feels chaotic and out of control.

Anna Paul, a popular TikTok star from Australia, has shared a helpful visual for people freaked out by turbulence in a video that has more than 19 million views.

Paul explains that a pilot shared the analogy of a plane flying through the air being like an object suspended in jello. There’s pressure on all sides, so even if the jello is shaken—and the object shaken along with it—the pressure suspends the object.

In other words, a plane is not going to suddenly drop down out of the sky due to turbulence, in the same way that an object won’t drop out of the middle of a bowl of jello.

Watch:

@anna..paull

Fear of flying tip ✈️❤️

The jello analogy is also used by aerophobia experts. Therapist Les Posen specializes in flying phobias, and he shows his clients a model airplane suspended in raspberry jello to illustrate the fact that turbulence won’t cause a plane to drop out of the sky. He even goes a step farther by having clients smell the jello, and then advises them to eat some raspberry candy or juice on the plane to remind themselves of the analogy, using their senses to calm their nerves.

At the end of her video, Paul said there’s never been a plane crash from turbulence, but that’s not quite true. In 1966, a flight (BOAC 911) coming out of Tokyo broke apart in midair due to unexpected severe turbulence. However, that was a very long time ago. Monitoring of meteorological conditions has greatly advanced since then, as have the designs of modern aircraft and the skill of pilots, so experts will tell you that turbulence is not something to worry about.

If imagining air pressure as jello doesn’t really work for you, it may be helpful to have a visual of what turbulence actually is. For that, Captain Stuart Walker, who has been flying for 30 years, explains the four main types of turbulence, what causes them and what pilots do to avoid them or reduce their impact. He also explains what passengers can do to minimize their chances of feeling turbulence on a flight, such as sitting over the wings or toward the front of the plane and flying earlier in the day when temperatures are not as likely to cause air disturbances.

Whether you prefer hospital-food-based analogies or no-nonsense, scientific explanations, the bottom line is that turbulence feels far scarier than it actually is. A shaking plane is not going to drop from the sky, modern aircraft can withstand a great deal of movement midair and pilots are highly trained to handle turbulence.

And remember: Commercial airline travel really is the safest way to get to where you’re going, statistically speaking. So next time you fly, kick back, relax and imagine you’re suspended in jello, knowing you’re in capable hands when the turbulence starts.