Sylvester Stallone Interview – New York Times

In the book you seem to suggest that both your parents saw your arrival as having ruined their ambitions in some way. You wrote, “Can you really make people proud who never wanted you in the first place?” And when you were very little, you were sent to go live in a boardinghouse, and your parents only visited you once a month. How did you understand that as a kid?
…
You keep using the word “tough.” But I don’t hear tough. I hear messed up.
You know, you’re right. I’m using “tough” as a masculine banner for something much more perverse and weird.

And dark. And dark.

Sylvester Stallone Hid His Struggles for Decades. Now He’s Coming Clean.

From Amazon:
The Steps: A Memoir

A gritty, inspiring, heart-wrenching memoir by the Academy Award-winning legend and icon Sylvester Stallone, about his unlikely path to stardom and the creation of the greatest underdog story ever told.

This American Life – Fan Data and Insights

I was first introduced to This American Life about a decade ago, right after the podcast, then a relatively novel media format, got sensationalized by the true crime show Serial. Only later did I find out about the shared DNA between the two shows. Life comes full circle.

Over the past thirty years, since Ira Glass started This American Life, the show has grown from a personal passion project (formerly called Your Radio Playhouse) discussing the everyday lives of ordinary Americans into one that touches millions of listeners, covering major events across the globe and making a real impact on the people its team cares about.

As the show approaches its 900th episode, every one of which I’ve listened to at least once and many more than that, I decided to dissect it and find the recipe for what makes it such a fascinating show to me and millions of others: what it talks about week over week, who has been telling these stories, what makes them so immersive to listen to, and all the real-life impact it has made. Let’s go.

https://milesmeters.com/pieces/this-american-life/

I used 3 weeks to gather data, analyze, and build a site dissecting ~900 episodes of This American Life over 30 years. As a die-hard fan of the show, some insights are as expected (e.g., themes, contributors), but some are genuinely surprising (e.g., songs & artists).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThisAmericanLife/comments/1wk1scu/900_episodes_over_30_years_data_insights_of_this/

Breathe (2 AM) – Anna Nalick


@HabsoluteDog
This video is so early 2000s and I’m so here for it it’s insane. God I miss those days.

@sklishumanbusybeing
2026, anyone?

@thejanglezclan
“Life is like an hourglass glued to the table” is an underrated powerful lyric.

Nalick’s first single from her Wreck of the Day album was “Breathe (2 AM)“, which peaked at No. 45 U.S. and went 3× Platinum on the Billboard Hot 100, and went huge on Adult Contemporary and Adult Top 40. It was heavily played on AAA and Hot AC stations across the U.S., along with light airplay on Pop stations, and Nalick became one of 2005’s biggest newcomers. Her video for the track got very heavy airplay on VH1 and some MTV airplay as well. At the time of the writing[when?], Wreck of the Day has sold over 615,000 copies with a gold certification from the RIAA, and a No. 20 peak on the Billboard 200. In New Zealand, Wreck of the Day reached the Top 15 albums on the Top 40 Albums Chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Nalick

70 Up – Final Installment of Up Film Series

In 1964, Canadian director Paul Almond filmed a group of 14 British schoolchildren aged seven years-old for a documentary called “Seven Up!” examining the lives of kids across class divides. Seven years later, the children were filmed again, this time by British director Michael Apted, for “14 Up.” Apted went on to revisit them every seven years, charting their progress, resulting in a further seven films, each equally spaced seven years apart. The result has become one of the most remarkable and original longitudinal documentary series in the world.

Apted, who died in 2019, did not live to see the final two-part instalment, “70 Up,” the first of which airs Tuesday evening in the U.K. on ITV (a U.S. broadcast hasn’t yet been finalized). The baton was handed to “Amy” director Asif Kapadia, who documents 12 of the surviving septuagenarians as they reflect on their lives (two of the original cohort, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, died during the course of the series).

https://variety.com/2026/tv/global/70-up-definitive-longitudinal-documentary-1236854131/

SEE ALSO:
https://edhawkes.com/2021/01/10/michael-apted-interview-fresh-air/
https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/1whmgwr/70_up_review_a_deeply_moving_conclusion_for_the/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)

Literary Criticism in Tlön

In literary practices the idea of a single subject is also all-powerful. It is uncommon for books to be signed. The concept of plagiarism does not exist: it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. The critics often invent authors: they select two dissimilar works—the Tao Te Ching and the 1001 Nights, say—attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres…

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Labyrinths
Jorge Luis Borges

Mushrooms and the Hallucination of Little People

For almost a century, researchers have heard independent reports from Papua New Guinea, China, and the Philippines, of a mushroom with a strange hallucinogenic property. Almost everyone who tries it sees the same thing: scores of tiny people, under a foot tall, that look like little elves or fairies in colorful clothes.

Biologist Colin Domnauer devoted his PhD to figuring out why this is happening. He joins Flora to report his findings.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/mushroom-hallucinations-tiny-people/

Now, three completely independent cultures have reported the same specific type of hallucination, and two cases are attributed to the same DNA-verified mushroom species. That indicates that these bizarre psychological effects aren’t cultural manifestations or coincidences— they must have a shared underlying chemical and neurological basis.

What makes the hallucinations so unusual?
People pretty much always report seeing dozens or hundreds of little people, about 3 to 30 centimeters tall, in incredible detail, like they’re actually there. About 90% of people describe them as little elves or clowns or other fairy-like figures dressed in colorful clothes.

What’s fascinating is they interact with the physical world using the laws of physics that govern us. They’re not walking through walls or anything. They’re falling off the edge of tables, walking around objects.

https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/scientists-identify-mushroom-behind-tiny-people-hallucinations/