As Lady Gaga kicked off her twice-delayed The Chromatica Ball tour this week, trouble brewed from the stage wings. Days before the start of the 18-city world tour — Gaga’s first since 2017’s Joanne — five of her longtime backup dancers took to social media one after the other to …
Read More »Trump Wanted to Take Back Jan. 7 Speech Admitting Biden Would Be President
The day after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, then-President Trump released a video finally, reluctantly agreeing to a transfer of power to the “new” Biden administration. As soon as two days after the release of the White House video, however, Donald Trump wanted a mulligan. A person with direct knowledge …
Read More »Republicans Took a Woman's Right to Choose. Now They're Threatening Her Right to Travel
The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act. The law would have protected the ability to travel from states where abortion is banned to states where it remains legal to receive care. Senate Republicans, led by James Lankford of Oklahoma, have already blocked the …
Read More »What Does Harry Styles Smell Like? Lizzo Did the Sniffing
Lizzo probably knows that most of us will likely never get a whiff of Harry Styles‘ scent — though we’ll keep dreaming — so she did us a favor and revealed his signature scent. In an ask-me-anything segment with Elle UK, the “About Damn Time” singer shared some very specific …
Read More »Exclusive: Fake Accounts Fueled the 'Snyder Cut' Online Army
Zack Snyder was becoming increasingly agitated. Over the course of several weeks in the spring of 2020, the director repeatedly demanded that the names of two producers – Geoff Johns and Jon Berg – be removed from his upcoming re-cut of Justice League, the DC superhero movie that had tanked …
Read More »London Is Burning. Are We Ready to Listen to Climate Scientists Yet?
“It just hit 40 C at Heathrow,” Friederike Otto, a 39 year-old climate scientist at Imperial College London who studies extreme heat, emailed me from her home in the Southwark borough. 40 degrees Celsius is 104 degrees Fahrenheit — the hottest temperature ever measured in the U.K. All around London, …
Read More »Trump Tells Team He Needs to Be President Again to Save Himself from Criminal Probes
When Donald Trump formally declares his 2024 candidacy, he won’t just be running for another term in the White House. He’ll be running away from legal troubles, possible criminal charges, and even the specter of prison time. In recent months, Trump has made clear to associates that the legal protections …
Read More »The Cult of Eddie Munson, The Metal Side of 'Stranger Things,' and the Real 1980s Satanic Panic
The unforgettable Stranger Things scene where fan-favorite metalhead Eddie Munson (played by Doja Cat crush Joseph Quinn) protects his friends from bat-monsters by grabbing his B.C. Rich guitar, cranking his amp, and playing “Master of Puppets” nudged aneight-and-half-minute long, 36-year-old Metallica song into the top 40 for the first time …
Read More »How a Fake Anonymous Diary Helped Launch the 1980s Satanic Panic
In 1971, the YA book Go Ask Alice hit shelves and almost immediately set off a firestorm. Purportedly the real-life diary of a straitlaced teen girl who lost her life to drugs, it was an instant hit, touted by critics across the country as a must-read for parents and teenagers …
Read More »'We Will Kill Them Again': As Russia Advances, Ukrainians Dig In
KYIV—Leaning back from the picnic table, Den drowns his cigarette in a murky cup of water cut from the bottom of a plastic bottle and grimaces as I press him on what he and his fellow volunteers did with suspected Russian soldiers they captured during the opening days of the …
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