  In November 2000, Norm Macdonald was just a question away from winning one million dollars for charity as a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. At the time, the cultural juggernaut of a game show was dominating ABC's primetime schedule, and Macdonald was one of the first chosen to be a part of a celebrity edition that year. To most viewers that night, he was the amusing guy who had recently been fired from Saturday Night Live after a polarizing turn as host of Weekend Update.   A quick primer on single malt scotch: "Single malt" means that the whisky comes from one distillery and is made from 100 percent malted barley. So Glenfiddich 12, for example, may be a blend of a few hundred barrels, but all of them come from the Glenfiddich distillery, and the 12-year age statement refers to the youngest whisky in the mix. There are five or six different whisky regions in Scotland, depending on who you ask, each with its own character—Lowlands, Speyside, Highlands, Campbeltown, Islay, and (sometimes) Islands. While Islay is known for using peat in the malting process, which gives its whisky that smoky flavor, the majority of scotch is not smoky at all. (Peat is measured in ppm, or parts per million; the higher the ppm, the smokier the whisky will be.) Legally, a small amount of caramel coloring can be used for color consistency in single malts. Some people are staunchly against this, believing it affects the character of the whisky, while others argue that it makes no noticeable difference. Regardless, the distilleries that don't use coloring at all will proudly and loudly let this be known. There are so many to choose from (over 130 and counting), but here are 12 of the best single malt scotch distilleries making whisky right now.
 With all due respect to Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, and Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali stands as the greatest American athlete of the 20th Century, which makes a natural fit for Ken Burns and his ever-expanding canon of American history. There has always been room for sports at Florentine Films. There's the stellar 2005 two-parter, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, which, come to think of it, works an ideal prelude to the Ali series. Jackie Robinson, the moral center of Burns's Baseball series, also merited his own 4-hour biography in 2016. Sarah Burns, and her husband, David McMahon (the two made the riveting Central Park Five as well), co-directed the Robinson doc with Ken, and that same creative team is behind the new 4-part, 8-hour series, Muhammad Ali, premiering on Sunday, September 19th.  The best of Netflix's slate of docs provide crucial perspectives on our weird world. They can inspire even the most true-crime-wary to dip their toe into the murder-mystery waters, or explore important issues that require your attention. The subjects are so widespread and influential that they have even reignited interest—and made developments—in some of the most high profile and criminal and murder cases of the last few decades. With over 36,000 hours of content on Netflix to choose from, it can be hard to decide what to dive into it. Is it a Seaspiracy or a sports doc kind of night? To help you out, we've narrowed down the best documentaries, no matter if you're looking to expand your mind or your true crime trivia knowledge.
 Sometimes, when you know how the story ends, it's all you can think about—the single moment when everyone cheers, smiles and hugs all around, or everything comes crashing down. It's the ending that looms over Netflix's documentary on Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher, which debuted this Wednesday. The film, co-directed by Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns, Vanessa Nöcker, and Michael Wech, is about as faithful as you can get, tracking the German racer's journey from go-karting as a kid to dominating his sport in the '90s and '00s. That said, while watching the nearly two-hour-long film, you'll likely find yourself holding your breath for the triumphant ending—when Schumacher brings Ferrari back to greatness, winning his last title in 2004—and the near-fatal one, which, frankly, might have been why you tuned into the documentary in the first place.  Just one short month ago, Claire McNear released a story that changed the course of Jeopardy! history. On August 18, McNear, a staff writer at The Ringer, published a bombshell report about Mike Richards, Jeopardy!'s executive producer and newly anointed permanent host. In her story, McNear unearthed an old podcast hosted by Richards, in which he repeatedly used offensive and discriminatory language; she also exposed the myriad conflicts of interest at Jeopardy! that allowed him to self-deal as both the showrunner and a candidate for permanent host. Two days after McNear's report set Jeopardy! Nation ablaze, Richards was out as permanent host; less than two weeks after the report was published, he parted ways with the show entirely.
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Sunday, September 19, 2021
Remembering Norm Macdonald’s Heart
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