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Bring Back the Laugh Track
Right now, I'm imagining your laughter. Stephen Colbert had meant that as a joke when he addressed the comment to the camera in a mostly-empty studio, during the brief period when late night TV taped in their normal venues but without live audiences, before the quarantine ax fell completely. The comment, delivered as a sort of punchline after a skit about the closure of Broadway, earned chuckles from those within earshot: Late Show technicians, the house band, maybe even a few writers who'd strayed into the theater. But watching it again today, Colbert's delivery feels a little sharper, a little less funny, a little more desperate.
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Scientists Have Discovered Why We Love Darth Vader
Star Wars has brought us some of the most iconic villains of all time. It’s so much fun to watch Emperor Palpatine’s scheming and Darth Vader’s brutality. But why do we enjoy bad guys so much? Science says we like them because we resemble them. There is a lot to like about Star Wars villains. First, there are the catchy personal theme songs of the big players. And unlike today’s gritty nuanced bad guys, Star Wars baddies seem to be having a lot of fun. Once they embrace the dark side of the force, the Sith and the imperial military commanders who serve them are gleeful. Their delight is palpable as they blow up planets and crush the resistance.
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All the Things We Have to Mourn Now
As of this writing, the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 50,000 people in the United States and more than 200,000 people worldwide. These deaths’ inevitable companion is grief, but the turmoil of the pandemic is altering and interrupting the normal course of mourning. People are experiencing many different kinds of loss simultaneously—some of them unique to or changed by this moment in history. Because of the risk of viral transmission, many people are dying apart from their loved ones, and many others are mourning apart from theirs.
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Job Interviews Are Broken. There’s a Way to Fix Them.
APS Member/Author: Adam Grant Within the first few minutes of the interview, I knew the candidate was a bad fit for a sales position. His résumé had tipped me off: He was a math major and built robots in his spare time. Now we were sitting face-to-face in my office, but he hardly made any eye contact. When I told my boss I wasn’t going to hire him because of that, she said, “You know this is a phone sales job, right?” For decades, managers have bet on the wrong people — and rejected the right ones. The Kansas City Star once rejected an application from a cartoonist named Walt Disney. Record labels said no thanks to the Beatles, Madonna, U2, Kanye and Ed Sheeran.
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How to Stay Optimistic When Everything Seems Wrong
With the endless stream of urgent news pushing the boundaries of our mental health, it seems laughable to suggest optimism right now. Maybe you’re worried about losing your job, losing your home or losing a loved one. Maybe you already have. Maybe you’re worried about your own health, and maybe you feel helpless or doomed. Whatever it is, optimism feels like a luxury that few of us can afford. But at its core, optimism doesn’t require you to sweep those anxious, negative feelings under the rug. It’s not about smiling when you don’t feel like it. Optimism is simply being hopeful about the future, even when the present feels wholly negative.
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Over 30 Percent of Americans Have Witnessed COVID-19 Bias Against Asians, Poll Says
More than 30 percent of Americans have witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new Ipsos survey conducted for the Center for Public Integrity. Sixty percent of Asian Americans, who made up about 6 percent of the survey’s respondents, told Ipsos they've seen the same behavior. The poll, released Tuesday, comes as advocacy groups and researchers report an alarming rise in anti-Asian discrimination. Stop AAPI Hate, an effort to track these cases, reported about 1,500 instances of harassment against Asian Americans in a one-month period since mid-March.
