March for our lives 2018

Ten years ago, most people hadn’t even heard of a podcast. Now, they’re an integral part of the media landscape, and none more so than those about true crime . To rank the best, we polled true-crime aficionados about their favorite shows, then sifted through the top choices. Whether they cover a new case each episode or present a story over the course of a season, these picks each shaped the genre in their own way. Some are the results of deep investigative journalism; others are by amateur sleuths trying to help families find answers. Some focus on bringing publicity to cold cases in underrepresented communities, and some changed the way we think about crime storytelling altogether. Perhaps equally important, they’re all great listening, promising the kind of captivating intrigue that continues to draw generation after generation to true crime: tragedy, mystery, a search for answers, and always the hunger for justice. 25. CounterClock Fans of procedurals will bond with … [Read more...] about The 25 Best True-Crime Podcasts of All Time

Twenty years after their mass suicide made headlines across the world, Heaven’s Gate is still one of the most notorious cults of the 20th century – not to mention one of the most recognizable. In March 1997, America was shook by the strange story that included mass suicide, wild public-access-style videos, an obsession with U.F.O.s and, in true late-Nineties fashion, tracksuits and matching Nikes. They also had a new recruitment tool: the Internet. Heaven’s Gate has the distinction of being the first well-known American cult of the Internet era, using the new technology to share their beliefs with a wider audience and also to make a living. They derived a large portion of their income from designing web pages. Formed in the Seventies, they had become reclusive by the start of the 1990s and started attempting to recruit members online using the organizational name “Higher Source” for the website . Though the web would eventually become central in the organization, the … [Read more...] about Heaven’s Gate 20 Years Later: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

Ground-breaking France-based British theater director Peter Brook , who revolutionized 20th-century theater, has died at the age of 97-years-old in Paris. The director, who pioneered taking theater outside of traditional theatre houses, mounting productions in unexpected venues such as gymnasiums, abandoned factories and old gas works, was renowned for his experimental and out-of-the box approach to staging classic and new works alike. He was born in West London to parents of Lithuanian Jewish heritage on March 21, 1925. After attending Westminster School and Oxford, he put on his first production, Dr Faustus at the Torch Theatre in London in 1943. By his early 20s, he had been appointed director of production at the Royal Opera House, where he distinguished himself with an experimental production of Richard Strauss’s Salome featuring sets by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali. In the 1950s, he started working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, directing … [Read more...] about Revolutionary British Theater Director Peter Brook Dies In France aged 97

There was a time when psychedelics such as LSD, mushrooms, and mescaline were primarily relegated to those who were wild and weird enough to brave the legal and social throes imposed by the War on Drugs. But those days are ending — if they haven’t already slipped into the past. Today these substances are increasingly embraced for their therapeutic, spiritual, and recreational value, and journalist Michael Pollan has emerged as arguably the most prominent champion of their kaleidoscopic rewards. “It’s for spiritual experience,” he explained to Rolling Stone. “It’s for self-exploration. It’s for setting priorities. It’s for breaking habits. There are all these other ways people are using them. And we have this word ‘recreation’ that we think is negative, but we should go back and think — what is that? Well, re-creation is a very positive thing and people are using them to re-create themselves. And it seems to me that’s as legitimate as any other use.” At 67, and having … [Read more...] about The Never-Ending Psychedelic Trip of Michael Pollan

Backgrid The Playboy Mansion's face-lift is now in its 4th year, with expenses breaking the $1 mil mark, but to the naked eye ... it's hard to see where all that money's going. According to building permits, the property's had a bunch of work done since 2020 ... including a revision of the roof, adding detached living quarters, interior revision, an updated elevator, new fire sprinklers, underground generator, new lighting, fixing the basement foundation and removal of the spa area to install a new one. Backgrid Tons of permits have been filed, and the most up-to-date number we can see for all those renovations is $1.6 million. Backgrid Playboy Mansion Renovations So Far Costing Just Over $1 Million As we reported, the place had $1M in renovations as of 2020, so that's hardly a quantum leap over the course of 4 years. The fix-ups began back in 2019 when billionaire Daren Metropoulos started filing permits to renovate the … [Read more...] about Playboy Mansion Remodel Continues for 4th Year, Still Slow Going

Getty Adele says she was gutted by the criticism surrounding the cancelation of her Vegas residency, but still ... she has no regrets. Adele, you'll recall, announced back in January, just a day before her residency was supposed to open, that she was postponing it. At the time she seemed to say the problems were COVID and production-related , but stories surfaced that folks on the production team said she was impossible to please. @adele / Twitter Adele has now addressed it, telling the BBC , "I definitely felt everyone's disappointment and I was devastated and I was frightened about letting them down." She went on ... "I was a shell of a person for a couple of months. I just had to wait it out and just grieve it, I guess, just grieve the shows and get over the guilt, but it was brutal." Gallery Launch Gallery Getty But, then she held her ground, saying, "I thought I could pull it together and make it work and I couldn't, … [Read more...] about Adele Says She Was ‘Devastated’ After Postponing Las Vegas Residency

Deadline has confirmed local reports out of Italy that Legendary Entertainment ’s Dune : Part Two is pre-shooting in Altivole, Italy in the Veneto region as early as tomorrow for two days. Full-on production with a bulk of the cast returning is scheduled for July 21 in Budapest, Hungary, which is where the 2021 title also filmed. The shoot in Italy is reportedly taking place at the Carlo Scarpa designed Brion Tomb, a modernist looking area which looks ripe for the Dune universe. Scarpa designed the concrete structured area between 1968-78 comprised of a small chapel, a reflecting pool, an arcosolium, and gardens with Byzantine and Japanese accents. As we reported last week , Warner Bros . pushed the release date for the Denis Villeneuve directed sequel from Oct. 20, 2023 to the pre-Thanksgiving date of Nov. 17, 2023. Pic’s original cast of Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin are reprising their roles with new … [Read more...] about ‘Dune: Part Two’ Ramping Up Production This Month

Former president Donald Trump has endorsed some wacky candidates since leaving office, including Michigan’s Republican nominee for secretary of state, Kristina Karamo . In a podcast episode unearthed by CNN’s KFile , Karamo claimed that abortion is “child sacrifice” and a “satanic practice,” CNN revealed on Sunday. Karamo expressed her absurd beliefs about abortion on her podcast, It’s Solid Food. “ Abortion is really nothing new,” she said. “The child sacrifice is a very satanic practice, and that’s precisely what abortion is. And we need to see it as such.” Later, she called the medical procedure “the greatest crime of our nation’s history.” “When people in other cultures, when they engage in child sacrifice, they didn’t just sacrifice the child for the sake of bloodshed,” Karamo said during the episode. “They sacrificed the child ’cause they were hoping to get prosperity, and that’s precisely why people have abortion now. ‘Because I’m not ready. I don’t wanna have a … [Read more...] about ‘Child Sacrifice Is a Very Satanic Practice,’ Trump Endorsed Candidate Said of Abortion

On July 30th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) held hearings on Capitol Hill entitled “A Conversation on Race and Justice in America” in response to the intense national debate that has resulted from the killing of Trayvon Martin. Racial profiling – “a secret hiding in public,” according to panelist Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center – was discussed, as were Stand Your Ground laws. Less attention was paid to the perilous way the legal system treats some African-Americans who end up in it, especially those with neither the money nor the means to defend themselves. Consider Curtis Flowers. Today, he sits on Mississippi’s death row, where he has been for 16 years. Tried six times on the same murder charges – the only known person in American history to endure that fate – he has never hedged in proclaiming his innocence, even refusing plea bargains. “I’m not going to say I killed someone when I didn’t,” he said in 2010. “I would rather be executed … [Read more...] about For Curtis Flowers, Mississippi Is Still Burning

“I’m going straight to the White House,” John Kerry says. “I’m thrilled with where the campaign is right now.” Just 90 minutes earlier, on this warm afternoon in late September, he stood on an outdoor stage at the University of Pennsylvania campus in downtown Philadelphia and gazed out onto a sea of 20,000 supporters. The school had hosted only one other rally this big in recent memory – when Bill Clinton came through on his re-election tour in 1996. It’s heady stuff when a first-time presidential candidate draws crowds comparable in size to those of a popular sitting president. “I feel as if we have finally gotten the American people and the press simultaneously focused on the real issues,” he says. “Things I’ve been talking about for two years. George Bush has made catastrophic mistakes in Iraq, catastrophic mistakes in foreign policy. He’s shown bad judgment, made bad choices about how to proceed in a war on terror. I think he’s also out of touch with the American people on what … [Read more...] about Kerry Fights Back