"It’s hard out there.” Bill Lawrence is talking about the TV business, but it applies nowadays to pretty much … everything. Lawrence is one of the main creative forces behind a slate of mega-popular TV shows that are neither “feel-good” nor “feel-bad” watches but derive their power simply from feeling itself. Feeling everything.
In Shrinking, currently heading toward its third-season finale on Apple TV, Jason Segel, Jessica Williams, and Harrison Ford are therapists trying to help people while struggling with their own troubles. Rooster, new on HBO, stars Steve Carell as a middle-aged writer trying to restart his life while teaching at a college. ABC’s Scrubs revival brought back Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, and Judy Reyes as the seasoned veterans at Sacred Heart. Then there’s Ted Lasso, the Jason Sudeikis coaching comedy that became an emotional lifeline during the pandemic years. His shows are as wide-ranging as the conversation we had about them. So we’ll just let Lawrence do what he does best: tell stories."
|
|
|
"This is probably something I should not tell you," Fiona Dourif warns me, mid-stride. She’s looking down at her phone, somewhere between incredulous and amused. "I should have been a little bit more of a diva and I wasn't," she says.
The 44-year-old actress is on a rare sabbatical from her stellar turn as Dr. Cassie McKay on The Pitt, and she's filling her time with a new role. (Variety revealed earlier today that she's starring in a suburban horror movie produced by Robert Downey Jr. titled A Head Full of Ghosts.) She can't tell me much about it just yet as we speak, but she jets from Los Angeles to Ireland tomorrow to begin filming. The one thing she can share, actually, is that she had to dye her hair for the role. I won't bury the lede: Someone turned Fiona Dourif's hair pink. Or maybe a bright red. Neon orange? Hard to tell, but you guessed it: Dourif is phoning in today from the aftermath of a color correction.
|
|
|
There are so many digital platforms through which we interact these days that it’s hardly surprising that we’ve nearly forgotten the most memorable way of all to communicate: with pen and paper. A CBS News poll conducted in 2021 found that less than a third of Americans had hand-written a single personal letter in the previous five years, while the National Literacy Trust last year revealed voluntary creative handwriting among school-age children declined a shocking 61 percent from 2010 to 2024. You don’t need statistics, however, to know that handwriting as a form of human expression is on the way out. All you have to do is look in your mailbox. Amidst all the bills and unwanted flyers, take out menus and daily shit, a handwritten letter is, increasingly, as rare as proverbial rocking horse poo.
There’s one way to remedy that: Start writing letters. Thank you notes, love letters, poems if you dare; give and ye shall receive. It’s a good habit to get into.
|
|
|
Americans are suddenly attuned to years of research showing that no amount of alcohol is safe, and younger generations especially are turning away from the stuff, according to the IWSR. Just 54 percent of Americans report drinking regularly, while roughly the same percentage believes even moderate drinking is bad for you. Gallup polling from 2025 shows that Americans consume, on average, 2.8 drinks per week, the lowest figure recorded in 30 years.
A question that would’ve seemed ridiculous just five years ago during the height of our booze-laden pandemic lockdown appears to be at the forefront these days: Is it time to quit alcohol for good?
|
|
|
The door opens, and I don’t always know who’s on the other side.
I’ll have exchanged a photograph or two. Maybe a few messages. But the woman standing in my hallway is, more often than not, a stranger. She’s nervous, curious, and has no idea, not really, what the next two or three hours are going to look like. Neither do I, which is precisely the point.
I’m 59 years old. I run an investment portfolio—finance, private equity, and a handful of restaurants scattered across Dallas—that took me the better part of three decades to build. My parents came to this country from Italy with almost nothing: my father with a trade, my mother with a stubbornness that I now recognize in myself whenever I look in the mirror. I put myself through school. I built something. By most measures, I have everything. Or I did, until the divorce made me reckon with what I’d been trading away to get it.
|
|
|
You first see Larry Bird’s jumper up close in December 1984 at the Omni pregame shootaround. Bigger, blonder than on TV, he drains shot after shot, swish after swish. You strain on tiptoes, age eight, and your father scoops you up and sets you on his shoulders and wraps his hands around your ankles. Not all swishes are equal. Some swush as if Bird has spotted a bull’s-eye within a bull’s-eye.
You live in Atlanta as Hawks fans, but your dad grew up south of Bird in New Albany, Indiana. He’d trained at various points to be a pastor, lawyer, and professor, but instead of a congregation, court, or classroom, he has you for an audience. Together, you share Larry Bird. Each morning, he recounts Bird’s box scores, and the digits spin through your school days. He tags tales of Bird with the refrain that Larry Bird was once a garbage man, lacing our official record with this article of faith. A god? Swish swish swush. A garbage man. With each shot Bird takes at the Omni, your dad squeezes your flesh hard enough to leave a mark.
|
|
|
|
