Moves Magazine 2021 Power Issue

lifes t y le for ci t y women POWER WOMEN 2021

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REMEMBER THE NIGHT It Makes Us Human LOVE POTION NO 9 Just a Chemical Formula Blame it on The Wine Sophie Jones’ Diary QUANTUM QUESTIONS What a Surprise

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contents

departments 018

cheers speakeasies

020 contributors the makers 022 bitch letters to the editor 026 dish sisters in lore 036 profile mason gooding 040 rewind kids in america 056 rockstar meal kits 094 dish sophie jones’ diary 106

profile alex hassell

Alexandra Shipp photography by Michael Muller

contents

features 030 feature what’s love got to do with it?

034 feature the guardian of all things 048 cover story alexandra shipp 060 feature quantum questions 065 power women 2021 the honorees 098 cover story glen powell

Glen Powell photography by Randall Slavin

THE BEAUTY OF PINOT

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mamoonah ellison PUBLISHER

richard ellison

EDITOR IN CHIEF

nicky black

ART DIRECTOR

phil rowe, assoc. editor pete barrett, ass. production editor elle green event content editor marie butler asst. editor sarah joan roston editorial asst. emmy best graphics editorial chesley turner, bill smyth, madeleine hollis, zoë stagg, charlotte nunes, yasmin yaqub, julia sindoni features liz watson, dora oliver, elsie cleveland art department carolina alzate, richard peters sarah jeffries pr & events evelyn galarza, monty reynolds admin office managers susan north, jessica mcginley office assistants anna johns, jo bell, jen parke web & tech support katherine kohanowski video production fabienne riccoboni photography tony gale, travis w keyes, nathan heyward,maksim axelrod sales marty ann robertson YES Sales Consultants, L.L.C. contributors: Tony Gale, Patrick Fraser, Storm Santos, Dennys Ilic, Jonny Marlow Karrie Porter, Evan Duning, Chelsea Claydon, Emily Assiran, Bo Poulsen,Travis Keyes, Anna Shagalov, Kristin Herrera, Ryan Hall, Brooklin Rosenstock, David Edwards, Stewart, Chris Shanahan, Shanna Fisher, Dean Burnett, Paul Bloom, Nancy Isenberg, Carol Anderson, Timothy Snyder, Tomass, Laura Mareno, Matt Dunston, Jennifer Rocholl, Matt Monath, Emily Barnes, Orlando Behar, Paster, Ejaz, Callan Stokes, , David Sheff, Peter Gurney, Willam Davis, Chesley Turner, Celia Vargas, Zoe Stagg, Nathan Heyward, Sophia Fox-Sowell, Kyle Valenta, Melissa Farley, Andrew Roth, Jeff Maksym, Paul Bloom, special thanks: sisley, monika borja, US Army, US Air Force, Mary Kay Vrba, Sarah Lee, Halstead, Arnold Robinson, Megan Mattson, Netflix, Aflac, Brian Meier, Corcoran, Rogers and Cowan, Paula Bissonette, Discovery Channel, Kasey Kitchen, David Dormann, Marla Farrell, Maria Candida, Dan Pearce, Pandora Weldon, Zach Rosenfield, Bryna Rifkin & Narrative team, Claire Timmons, NEON, Melody Korenbrot, Chris Mazzilli, Ashley Sloan, Splashlight, Harold Widden, Danielle Dinten, Fiskars, Michelle Caspers, Landsend, Think Dutchess, D’Arcy Brito, Sophie Taleghani, Michelle Richards, Katie Feldman, Turner Networks, Audrey Adlam, Discovery Networks, Stan Rosenfield, WW Norton, Harper Collins, Eve Sadoff,Studio 60, Electric Pony Studios, Shelter PR, Platinum Properties, Lisa Cera, Penguin Books, Sonia Lee, The Wall Group, Tracey Mattingly, Robin Bouchet Benet, Tyler Albright, Rosemary Mercedes, Mia Santiago, Delaney D’Amore, Jillian @ Exclusive Artists, Mindy Saad, Wendy Iles, Criterion Group, Weiss Artists, The Wall Group, Giant Artists, David Stanwell, Solo Artists, The Rex Agency, Bective, Magnet Agency, Exclusive Artists, Artmix Beauty, Starworks Artists,Stephanie Gonzalez, Warner Bros Pictures, Next Models Paris , Uncle Tom Cobberly, WWRD, Crabtree & Evelyn, Sunset Marquis Kiki Heitkotter, Diane Da Silva, Ariel Tunnell

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The prohibition of the 1920’s notoriously spawned a cultural movement that has now become one of the most

cheers

Leading a new wave of unrestrained decadence and debauchery. It’s estimated that in New York City alone, there were between 20,000 and 100,000 speakeasies enough

,

for any crowd to find their niche: fans of live music could swing by The Cotton Club any night and find one of the most popular live shows around, featuring class acts like Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, or, for those with more literary interests, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were only a train ride away at Chumleys.

Though the obvious catalyst for this was the simple act of banning alcohol in the U.S., it was also a largely political and cultural statement.

The world was divided into those who agreed with the prohibition laws and those who didn’t, bringing those in each group closer together but further apart from those on the other side. Disarray was heavy in the air of the 1920’s, but the chaos turned into a profitable venture both fiscally and socially.

It’s no big surprise that the idea of the speakeasy has come back with a flourish since the beginning of the pandemic. There are, of course, the classic (and totally legal) New York speakeasies that exist as a simple nod to the past: Angel’s Share, found through a backdoor in a Japanese restaurant, or the telephone booth bar PDT. But the interesting part of speakeasies is not simply that they have a funky entrance—it’s the adrenaline of being in a place where you are not meant to be. And during this time of political and social turmoil, it’s no wonder that New York City has

become, once more, a hotbed for the lawless, adrenaline inducing speakeasy of the past.

Of course, compared to the thousands of clubs that existed in the past, the new world of underground clubs falls pitifully short. But, while New York’s new handful of secret bars may not reach the roaring heights of the Twenties, this doesn’t mean that they didn’t make an impact on the diminishing social scene of the city. New Yorkers could once more mingle and drink and dance, living the life that many of them moved to New York for in the first place. The decision to go out in the midst of a stayhome order is controversial to say the least, leading to a pretty big split between those who considered these events to be morale-boosting for city citizens, and those who simply saw the existence of secret bars as an unnecessary risk.

In the past, these establishments brought people of different political and social ideals together, allowing those of different socioeconomic backgrounds to socialize in a way that they hadn’t before. Though this era is seen as mostly a time of indulgence and reckless amusement, it also made an impact on political and social norms that would ripple throughout the rest of history. Could the same be said for the speakeasies of the pandemic?

Recent years have polarized society in a way that hasn’t been rivaled in decades. Unfortunately, the small communities created through the support of local bars were not entirely on opposite sides of the political spectrum, making it a bit of a stretch to say that these wild nights were anything but just that. For the

romanticized eras in history. New York City was at the forefront of this up and coming nightlife scene,

By Madeleine Hollis

most part, like-minded people were brought together out of a similar desire for collective expression in a world that had kept them apart for so long. These communities, though perhaps not a binding force in a demarcated world, did grow into their own kinds of social factions. The bars themselves became an oasis for those who no longer minded the consequences they may face, opting to place personal gratification above negative outcomes.

It’s difficult to say whether these bars were willing to risk fines and permanent shutdowns for financial reasons or simply to act as a refuge for a discontent world.

Multiple bars during this time lost liquor licenses or were forced to permanently close their doors as a result of disorderly conduct.

The famously rowdy House of Yes faced this consequence, losing their liquor license after law enforcement realized that they were serving alcohol without the addition of food. This was one of the lesser punishments, and the club has since reopened with full privileges.

One of the bigger raids happened at a warehouse-turned-club in Queens, resulting in a slew of misdemeanors for the nearly 150 occupants. This club was a true blue speakeasy, a tightly kept secret to all but those who knew just where to look. The entrance was blocked and the club did not hold a certification of occupancy, seemingly pointing to the idea that the doors were opened for the sole purpose of providing entertainment during the pandemic.

In the same weekend, a TriBeCa club was raided and found to be guilty of illegal activity ranging from serving minors to operating, once again, without a liquor license.

These were just a few of the bars that were shut down during the pandemic but there were many more that operated under such secrecy that they were never found out by law enforcement. As winter began to

fade, “underground parties” started to pop up all over the city, gaining traction by word of mouth alone. Some of these parties were held in already popular clubs, making it difficult to understand how law enforcement wasn’t aware of their illegal early comebacks. It wasn’t unusual to walk down a Brooklyn street late at night on a weekend and see a suspiciously long line forming in front of an unmarked door, raising the question of whether police were aware of the parties and choosing to ignore them or if they were truly oblivious.

Already established bars and clubs were not, of course, the sole providers for a good time.

The supply of already popular locations could not keep up with the demand of patrons, prompting New York residents to take matters into their own hands.

House parties became an integral part of the New York speakeasy scene, far surpassing what house parties have been known for in the past. This was not your average casual hangout between friends and acquaintances, but an entirely real club experience.

Those who’d been regulars in the club scene pre-pandemic sought to recreate the experience in the realest way possible, going so far as to rent out empty two story apartments and fill the rooms with makeshift bars and dancefloors. Bartenders and DJ’s were hired under the table to entertain from dusk til dawn, although the parties were known to last far past lunchtime. It wasn’t uncommon for music to suddenly be shut off and rooms to go entirely silent at the suggestion of a curious cop on the sidewalk.

Things have changed since the city has begun to reopen, and the real speakeasies have once again fallen away in favor of legal bars sporting faux storefronts.

But there’s still much to learn from the past couple of years, namely that New Yorkers can and will find a way to show off their outfits by dancing on tables no matter the consequence.

O

contributors

t r i b tO rs

TONY GALE is an award wining NYC based photographer, in addition to working with Moves he shoots for a variety of editorial, corporate and advertising clients. He is a Sony Artisan of Imagery, a Manfrotto Ambassador, an X-Rite Coloratti and the APA National President. For fun and work he travels and has been to all 50 states and all over the world.

LUZ GALLARDO is a Los Angeles native that has lived in San Francisco, Mexico and New York. She has traveled the country and world documenting musicians. The last several years her work has crossed over into celebrity portraiture and advertising.

Her education in both Photography and Latin American studies helped form her unique vision.

ZOË STAGG is a long term Moves contributor and a trusted source for cover profiles (Jessica Chastain being one of her favorites). Her writing style is timeless. Her piece on Alexandra

Randall Slavin

Shipp In this issue is a fine example.

was working a dead end job in a local gas station when he wandered into a local photography studio and struck up a friendship with the owner. He took the young Mr. Slavin under his wing and taught him some photography basics and then promptly fired him a few months later. Faced with nowhere else to turn he put one foot in front of the other and kept going.

He has never looked back.

His work has appeared in GQ, Esquire, Rolling Stone and many others.

In her spare time, Zoë travels and trains for triathlons. She also serves

MICHAEL MULLER.After more than two decades of living, traveling and working in Los Angeles, New York and Paris, , Michael once again calls Los Angeles his home. Michael is happily married with 3 daughters, 2 dogs and a couple cats.

Michael’s unique; signature style speaks for itself. His passion for the art and commerce of photography can easily be felt by simply looking at his pictures.

“When people view my work, I simply want to evoke emotion, and let the viewer feel they are in fact ALIVE”

in the US Army as a Broadcast Journalist and radio DJ.

CREATE YOUR FUTURE FORWARD THINKERS WANTED. SAIC is a vibrant, global team of innovative thinkers and passionate problem solvers.

We believe diversity and inclusion are key to the success of every mission. Together, we work to overcome the world’s toughest challenges and confidently move towards a future that empowers everyone.

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bitch

“... A friendly bit of PA for all those people who seem not to understand how hours of operation work: THEY’RE NOT SUGGESTIONS. This place opens at 8am on Sunday. EIGHT....”

strangers: iced cappuccinos do not exist, either.

You’ve heard it here first, folks! An iced cappuccino is, more or less, an iced latte—yet again.

My Body Is Just A Filter: Coffee In, Sarcasm Out Pet peeves, am I right? Nearly everyone has them. As a barista, however, my pet peeves are a tad bit unconventional. You may not understand why the following things annoy me, unless you one day take a stroll in my espresso stained sneakers. However, with that being said, I will do my best to articulate my aggravation.

So, to all of the people who are not baristas: Stop ordering caramel macchiatos “upside down,” for the love of baby Christ in his wooden cradle. This drink request makes about as much sense as the instructions for putting together kit furniture. That is to say that this drink request makes little to no sense whatsoever.

Sorry, IKEA. I still like your lamps.

For those of you who do not know, a latte is made by pulling espresso shots and pouring them into the bottom of a cup, either to be topped with steamed milk or cold milk, depending on whether or not you want the beverage hot or iced. On the flip side, a macchiato is made by pulling the espresso shots after the milk has already been poured, later adding them to the top of the beverage. Seems simple, right? It is!

Herein lies the difference between a latte and a cappuccino: the milk inside of a cappuccino is steamed for a longer time period, in order to achieve a larger quantity of foam. Cappuccinos are also often topped with cinnamon or cocoa powder, which is simply fabulous, but that is besides the point. In terms of ingredients, they are basically the same drink, save for the way in which they are prepared.

A cappuccino in all of its toasty, foamy glory cannot merely be reduced to an iced beverage.

That foamy glory is what defines the drink—the warm drink, mind you. Not cold. If you think you would like an iced cappuccino, then you would probably enjoy an iced latte—also known as the proper drink to be ordering, in this scenario.

Are we sensing a pattern here? I sure am.

So, my lovely ladies and germs, what have we learned today?

“When in doubt, order a latte.” Someone wise, probably.

Sincerely, A tired barista.

Bee, Writer, Hell’s Kitchen

Until you come thwarting into a coffeehouse, of course, asking to have your caramel macchiato made “upside down.”

Rich, Troublemaker, Midtown

The Early WORM Catches The BIRD...

A friendly bit of PA for all those people who seem not to understand how hours of operation work: THEY’RE NOT SUGGESTIONS. This place opens at 8am on Sunday. EIGHT. I don’t care, Mr. Member, if you unfailingly stand in front of these doors at 7:30am every week. I’m here early so that I can set up the gym to receive its members; not so that you can come in for an extra half an hour that we don’t owe you, because WE’RE NOT OPEN. Do you come in anyway? Oh, yes, you’re in practically on my heels, sighing heavily like I’ve inconvenienced you by letting you in before the gym is actually open. We go through this routine every Sunday. You don’t get to play beleaguered paying member should I show up at 7:45 instead of 7:30—I’M STILL NOT LATE AND WE’RE STILL NOT OPEN. And you CERTAINLY don’t get to stand over me whining about unacceptability should I manage to get in before you and lock the doors behind me so people can’t waltz in when they feel like it. We open at 8, fuckers, and consider yourself lucky that I open the doors five minutes before.

Eloise, PhD student, Upper West Side

So, my darling reader—can you have your macchiato made upside down?

The answer is “No!” Absolutely not. Literally never in life can you have a macchiato of any kind made “upside down,” unless you stand on your head and make the executive decision to then spill it all over the floor while holding it within your ungrateful little hands. So please stop asking us baristas to make them this way. What you actually want is a latte, which I and my fellow coworkers will gladly provide to you with a smile.

Another thing, before I waltz away to make more not-actually-macchiatos for sleepy eyed

the hell down like it’s just them that needs to make it on. I can’t help but passively push/ nudge them on the shoulders to put some pep in their step. Like, c’mon!

“I’m on a whisky diet. I’ve lost three days already.” Tommy Cooper Wake Up For Chrissakes!!!

When the subway is standing with its doors open, don’t just think about yourself making it in just in time—most of the time there’s a few people behind you trying to make it in, too. I can’t stand when a person running in front of you (you running behind them) makes it just to the doors of the subway, and then slows

There are levels of drunk, and they go in this order: Sober, Buzzed, Tipsy, Drunk, Wasted.

You can reach a certain level or you can be in between levels. But the border lines are clear, like the border between the United States and every other country in the world. On low key bar nights, normally people fall between Buzzed and tipsy. Occasionally, they might find themselves on the Tipsy side of Drunk. On more amped

“... As New Yorkers, we put up with a lot. But one thing we absolutely will NOT abide by, nor should we have to, is humming or singing on public transit....”

evenings, the majority of the outfit crash land between Drunk and Wasted. Completely understandable. Completely acceptable. As long as you can behave like a mature adult and take care of yourself without relying on a friend to rehydrate you, hold back your hair, or find you when you’re missing, get as shwaysted as you want.

But when it gets to the point when you need my help just standing up, go the fuck home. You had a good night, sleep it off. I’m no one’s babysitter. How can I expect to have a good time if I’m worried about your sloppy ass. Sloppy drunk is a look that no one can pull off. No matter how high on the hotness scale you are, sloppiness instantly knocks you down to hot mess.

Over the weekend, I met a girl, beautiful girl, who could not hold her liquor to save her life.

Lightweight doesn’t even begin to describe her lack of tolerance. Perfect example of a time to call it quits. This girl gets so wasted that her motor skills noticeably impaired. We’re bar hopping, and she didn’t feel like waiting in line for the bar bathroom, and decided to use the porta potty.

Ugh, just that name, disgusting invention. Might as well just call it, camping. I’m waiting for her outside, and all of a sudden hear her scream, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NOOOOOOOO!!!!”

She comes out seconds later. Turns out she forgot her cell phone was in her back pocket. It fell in the hole in the ground. She tried to retrieve it, but that phone is and will always be forever unclean. I thought she must have fallen in by the pitiful desperation of her voice.

my eyes. A couple came into the restaurant I work at, or a wannabe couple. I think it was their

first date. I could sense the awkwardly cute ten sion between them. You know, still trying to play it cool while simultaneously projecting feelings of interest and genuine curiosity towards the other person. It was quite adorable, until something unsettling happened. As I was seating them a cozy romantic table, I noticed something off about the woman. In particular her face. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I could tell that something was wrong. But instead of lingering like an idiot, I bid them “Bon Appetit,” and got back to work. But throughout the course of their dinner, I made a point to walk past their table and do a casual glance at the woman’s facial features.

She was pretty, a solid 7.5. But I couldn’t discern what made her a little less than an 8. As I seated another table with a child carrying a rubber ducky, it dawned on me. The woman had PSCF: Permanent Snapchat Face. She was intentionally making the duck face, pushing her lips out to make them appear fuller and more voluptuous than they really are...THE ENTIRE DATE! While that’s impressive, who’s that desperate does that?!?! There’s no way you can keep up that facade.

That probably would have been better.

Don’t get me wrong, women lie all the time, not verbally, rather the image we project into society.

Cosmetics, high heels, push up bras, they’re all enablers. And while those are subtle adjustments we use to alter our body, they’re also material. We can put them on, take them off, even throw them at people when they piss us off. But consciously pursing your lips to impress a guy is a new low. If you believe you have to physically alter your facial structure to capture a guy’s attention, you need to seriously evaluate your life.

Andrew, Yacht Master, Brooklyn

Maxine, Server, East Village

Silence is Golden...Duck Tape is Silver.

Keep Humming For The Birds

Last night, I witnessed an Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat phenomenon unfold right before

This is New York City. When we all moved here, we mentally signed an unspoken contract that

laid out the daily obstacles we would face in the city. There will always be lines at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. Times Square is reserved for tourists, cartoon characters, and the Naked Cowboy. And finally, you will frequently become irrationally angry at slow walkers, loud neighbors, and screaming children who mildly disrupt your current quality of life to the point of near suicide, homicide, or combination of the two.

As New Yorkers, we put up with a lot. But one thing we absolutely will NOT abide by, nor should we have to, is humming or singing on public transit. I don’t care if you have headphones in your ears. I don’t care if the whole damn train has headphones in their ears. You don’t sing on the subway. Save that for the shower, dancing in your bedroom, or when you’re doing karaoke. If you have your headphones in, you’re going to sing louder; because we subconsciously need to hear the sound of our own voice when we speak. But that does not mean that everyone else in the general vicinity of you needs to hear your gibberish. So shut the fuck up, and let me travel in peace.

Jason, Actor, Bed Stuy Ladies, Ladies, Please!

There is a woman at my job, let’s call her Fern.

Fern is my superior, not necessarily my boss, but within the same rank. No matter what I am doing, she has the uncanny knack to put me down for something. At first I thought it was just me, but then I saw how she behaved toward my female co-workers as well and it confirmed my suspicions.

She doesn’t like women. She’s subconsciously threatened by the presence of other vaginas in the room. It’s like she feels backed into a corner and therefore always needs to come out swinging, asserting her dominance in the room so no one can even come close. It’s beyond rude. It’s further than condescending, it’s borderline harassment and verbal abuse. If I wasn’t so broke, I’d quit my job.

Then I’d kick her ass.

Marjorie, admin, Jersey City

dish

Sophie Jones’ Diary

It was the wine. Those damn fermented grapes should come with a warning label.

SLIPPERY WHEN WET. IF CONSUMED IN LARGE QUANTITIES, MISTAKES WILL BE MADE. Mistakes may include:

• Berating bartenders

• Laughing uncontrollably while insisting that your mouth isn’t

sticky and your lips your teeth aren’t stained red

• Making out with total strangers

• Making out with a not-so-total stranger but totally-off-limits person

• Possibly in a cab

• Possibly on the way back to his apartment

• Definitely where his fiancée also lives—she’s a lovely person. I really dig her sense of style; she’s even given me one of her sweaters and offered me a job.

• Feeling guilty in the morning for something that was at least 50% your fault

Okay, maybe not that whole section, but the first few at least. It happened last weekend actually. See Kieran—Kieran is arrogant, he’s an asshole and a womanizer. I know this because we’re co-workers. I hope Penelope knows this, because they’re engaged. Yes engaged, as in to be married.

Anyways! Kieran and Penelope are on their way to the legal kind of binding American marriage where someone could file for divorce on the grounds of infidelity and take everything their spouse ever worked for and win.

But Kieran’s not married yet. Married by association, a promise to promise to be faithful to that person forever, a layover on a connecting flight to marriage, which is a plane that goes down in flames far too often.

Kieran is also incredibly handsome, impeccably well-dressed—custom tailored suits, designer shoes, and thinks of me as his little sister—or so I thought. We have a great working relationship and he’s always bugging me to go out with him after work. I finally said yes. I figured he’s fun and easy going and buying all the wine.

Kieran’s a sommelier—drinking wine is his job.

Drinking wine is not my job. It’s my hobby and I’m an amateur. He’s drinking me under the table, against the wall on a street corner, on my ass and into a taxi. Luckily the night ended with him getting out of the cab at his apartment, whispering, “I’ll see you at work,” and kissed me on the cheek.

I woke up with a splitting headache to a text from him saying, “Have a great day.” Like wishing me a pleasant afternoon will negate the fact that what we very drunkenly but completely consciously did less than 24 hours ago was wrong and I can’t say anything because it may ruin their marriage and probably cost me my job.

But what do I know? I’m a rookie when it comes to infidelity. Kieran is a veteran. I learned a few things that night:

• Kieran cheats on Penelope.

• Kieran cheated on Penelope with me (once.)

• Kieran regularly cheats on Penelope with people who are not me (a lot).

• Kieran thinks that this incident has little to no affect on our working relationship and in

fact makes us better friends.

• He asked me to be his dog’s godmother and wants to give me the keys to his apartment so I

can watch it while they’re gone.

• He also asked me to bartend at their wedding—they as in he and his fiancée.

• Kieran has some nerve.

• Never be alone with Kieran again.

• Don’t be friends with someone who doesn’t understand what “engaged” means.

• Don’t pound wine unless running out on a check or using the alcohol to spit in someone’s face.

• Wine hangovers are the worst.

I saw Penelope a few days later. I played it cool—made witty banter like my life depended on it. I don’t think she knows. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at me like she suspected something had happened but was only holding her tongue so as not to make a scene. After she left, Kieran came up to me and said, “You’re a lot cooler than I thought you were.”

I dismissed myself, disgusted by his comment, what had happened a few days ago, and what I knew was sure as hell not going to happen again.

It’s not my fault, I blame the wine.

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What’s Love Got To Do With It? We may just be a collection of chemicals, but taking reality for all it’s worth doesn’t always mean we sacrifice the story... just the fantasy.

by Kerrie Yang

For as long as we have been able to form coherent thoughts, we have contemplated the nature of love.

Perhaps one of the most famous and most referential philosophical thoughts on love comes from Plato’s Symposium: “Each of us, when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the tally-half of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.” For the idealistic (or the naïve), this becomes a search for the soulmate. For those who are a bit more pragmatic, the part of us that separated when Zeus split us in two is simply an unexpectedly suitable partner.

Regardless of one’s perspective on the ‘soul mate,’ countless books,

epic poems, sonnets, songs and essays have been written on the spiritual nature of love. On the flip side, we are equally fascinated by the neurology of love, and that which can be explained by the realism of science. Given all the research that has been done to break down the chemical components of romantic love, we can find ourselves wondering if that bond between two people is really just a high, produced by a cocktail of dopamine and oxytocin.

Biology tells us, in the first phases of infatuation—the heady rush, the lust, the passion—are produced by a catecholamine neurotransmitter called dopamine. When examined at

the chemical level, those lit-up pathways in the brain tell the body to produce energy, elation, and obsession.

Chemistry is responsible for those first few months of surrendering reason to adrenaline. It’s no surprise that cocaine is also a dopamine transporter; the early stages of love can be quite similar to that of cocaine addiction, and the falloff—the heartbreak—is devastating.

When we have enough infatuationinduced dopamine running through our system, the adrenaline causing the exultant air of joie de vivre, the feeling becomes addictive. When it doesn’t reach its natural stage of leveling off, when the supply of dopamine is suddenly cut off, the effect

can be likened to chills that verge on hypothermia. Serotonin levels are affected and the body suddenly produces far fewer of those chemicals than it was when we first fell in love.

The result is depression compounded by lovesickness—withdrawal of the most unbearable sort. Dopamine and its adrenaline rush are often the catalysts of many love stories.

From the moment we are able to see, listen, touch, think, we are saturated with stories of romantic love.

As children, we are introduced to the idea through Disney-approved fairy tales and as we get older, we graduate to the classics and their contemporaries. It is also clear that the most popular love stories—the fairy tales, Shakespearean comedies, and poorly written ‘tween romances—end with ‘happily ever after.’

These are the stories about dopamine and ‘love at first sight.’ When Cinderella saw Prince Charming from across the room, they weren’t establishing some sort of spiritual connection; they experienced high dosages of lust coupled with infatuation. Studies have shown that the body cannot continually produce dopamine. At some point, that rush for adventure and passion either dies out completely or paves the way for a calmer and more permanent love chemical: oxytocin.

The problem with writing or singing about the kind of love associated with oxytocin is that it is often perceived as ‘boring.’ Hypothetically speaking, let’s say Romeo and Juliet survive Shakespeare’s play, would their love still be as eternal? In all likelihood, they will grow tired of each other; we can’t maintain relationships on physical attraction and the thrill of the taboo. Let’s assume that they don’t split up, that they, like the Disney movies we know so well, live happily ever after. Happily ever after means accepting the end of the dopamine high and adjusting to the more subdued happiness produced by oxytocin. So why is it that the most marketable version of romantic love is the most temporary stage of romantic love? The answer is simple: ‘Happily ever after’ doesn’t always make for as good a story.

The allure of adventure and of unending passion with the one we love is unrealistic and is a fault that is oft criticized by writers whose themes tend to veer closer to realism and

post-modernism than romanticism.

Though people have always extolled the thrills of love, just as many have commented on the folly. If there is anything substantial to be gleaned from the unsettling number of ‘How to find your Mr. Darcy’ books on the shelves, it is our growing compulsion to replicate these narrative arcs in our individual lives. After all, whether it is dramatic, humorous, light, or traumatic, who doesn’t enjoy a good story? Literary delusion has its appeal, but to indulge in this kind of duplicity is dangerous. Emma Bovary’s grotesque end is one worth mentioning; Emma dies with a gaping mouthful of ink because she eschews reality and attempts to live out the fantasies of ink and paper. And as Humbert Humbert so painfully realizes at the end of his confession, loving Lolita—loving a construction—is merely a “refuge of art”, an imagined romance contained within the space of the unreal and fantastical.

To expect a relationship that is sustained by dopamine alone is akin to literary delusion; if we refuse to accept the exchange of dopamine for oxytocin, we reject reality. And if we think about it, reality can be far more compelling than an illusion.

When we forget the vulgarity of reality, we cheat ourselves of experiencing an equally satisfying side of humanity. Beyond the veneer of cheesy professions and tales of star-crossed love, there are far more compelling layers of very human grit. As the wise know, there is something to be said about the trial of being completely vulnerable and living the everyday with another person—an uncontrollable variable. The human body is not equipped to continually produce such high quantities of dopamine, but it is perfectly able to supply us with a steady stream of oxytocin. We trade one drug for another, and though it doesn’t have the same heart-racing effect, it can produce a far more ‘real’ type of joy.

Henry Miller best describes living in his memoir, Tropic of Cancer: “Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy...

Lust, crime, holiness: the lives of my adored ones, the failures of my adored ones, the words they left behind them, the words they left unfinished; the good they dragged after them and the evil, the sorrow, the discord, the rancor, the strife they created. But above all, the ecstasy. ”That which produces joy for one

person may not necessarily work for another, but Miller’s words are beautiful in that they capture what it means to live as opposed to simply existing. We live as saints, we live as sinners, we suffer for our actions and the actions of others, we revel in the success of our loved ones, and we love all the same in all the shit and misery of failure. Love in the reality of life comes with the requisite misery and the mundane, and regardless of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and whatever chemical our neurotransmitters release, in order to yield ecstasy we must take it in its entirety.

Conversely, and a bit ironically, the Greek idylls also present a surprising perspective that favors not the dopamine rush but its oxytocin complement. The word “idyll,” itself refers to paradise, heaven, the Garden of Eden. Eden isn’t an ongoing adventure, and in its pastoral reproductions, paradise can be understood as monotonous. In fact, paradise is often seen as more circular than linear; every day is more or less the same, but the everyday is bliss. Of course, the Garden of Eden is a myth, but so is Plato’s notion of halves wandering the earth, seeking the one who makes them whole.

In the end, we are given a choice between pursuing the myth or the reality. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera gives us Tomas who wonders, “What happens if he...later meets the one who was meant for him, the other part of himself? Whom is he to prefer?

The woman from the bulrush basket or the woman from Plato’s myth?”

We are faced with choice: love and ecstasy as Miller describes it to us or the mythical soulmate. For Tomas, he “knows that time and again he will abandon the house of his happiness, time and again abandon his paradise and the woman from his dream and betray the “Es muss sein!” of his love to go off with Tereza, the woman born of six laughable fortuities.”

Perhaps this is the drama of oxytocin, learning that we must choose between pursuing mythical adventures or the joy, and sometimes the boredom, of loving another person—another lump of half-complete, unpolished, unfinished narratives. We may just be a collection of chemicals, but taking reality for all its worth doesn’t always mean we sacrifice the story, just the fantasy.

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Dear Ms Dondra Ritzenthaler, 2021 Moves Power Women nomination

Moves Magazine advocates for women’s rights, social fairne Power Women Gala, now in its 18th year, is our year-end cel these aims and make a difference. An example and role mod nominees lead by example, are accommodating and flexible principle; always determined but always aware of circumstan

With a renewed hope for a great 2021 and that last year's diffi to find our Power Women 2021. The selection process how with more and more women answering the call, recognizing achieving positions of power and influence. Your dedication impact both within your chosen field and in the broader con great pleasure in offering you a nomination as a Power Wom exclusive list of strong, savvy, exceptional women.

Photography By Yo Nikki

In our exciting past years are such strong personalities as Ch US Congresswoman Deborah Wasserman Shultz, internatio Kerry Washington, Susan Sarandon, Ashley Judd, The Enoug super-models Iman and Christie Brinkley, and best selling au Stern Show’s Robin Quivers, Cablevision CEO, Kristin Dolan We have been pleased to honor fashion icon Betsey Johnso Goodman, NPR president Vivian Schiller, The Woodhull Insti Women’s Prison Executive Georgia K. Lerner, Allison Page, P executives from many Fortune 500 companies including Ap Northrop Grumman, IBM, Aflac, Xerox, Travelers, Viacom, M New Balance, Amex and Morgan Stanley.

women’s rights, social fairness and equal opportunity.

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All

animals, even microscopic onecelled creatures, have memory. But about one million years ago, our hominid ancestors experienced something extraordinary that would play a critical role in turning them into modern human beings: they created a second, artificial, form of memory that existed outside their skulls that could exist outside their presence, even their existence.

Now, those two forms of memory are again about to converge and become one—and the implications to humanity may be as profound as those from that initial schism.

This transformation, as profound as any in human history, began with a creature called Homo Egaster. H. Egaster was an impressive character. Literally: the males stood over six feet tall, with the kind of brow we associate with the much later Neanderthals. H. Egaster was also among the most accomplished hominids in our family tree. For example, he discovered fire. He also led mankind out of Africa for the first time. But Egaster’s greatest achievement was one over which he had little control: he learned to talk, and to do that he first learned how to listen.

These new skills, as profound as any in human history, were the product of three seemingly minor evolutionary changes. The first was a widening of the cervical vertebrae in the throat, which realigned the larynx and tongue and enabled Egaster to introduce unprecedented complexity in the sounds he could make. The second was a new configuration of the middle and outer ear that allowed Ergaster to hear sounds, especially vowels, that other apes still struggle to hear.

Finally, and most important, Egaster began to develop a thin new layer of nerve cells, the cerebral cortex—wadded up, they filled all of the folds of the brain, stretched out they made a sheet about the size of a Hermès scarf—that allowed for the powerful processing of this new verbal data.

Unfortunately, Homo Egaster’s brain wasn’t big enough to take full advantage of these new tools, so while he likely did invent human speech (fire, exploration and speech—not a bad legacy) it could not have progressed far. Rather, the task of inventing language would fall to his successor, H. Heidelbergensis. Heidelberg Man is one of the most impressive hominids of all (ourselves included). Standing as tall as seven feet (the average Heidelberg Woman was well over six feet), Heidelberg Man was the first true toolmaker; he buried his dead; and appears to have invented both clothing and adornment— all suggesting a creature with a strong sense of self, of life and death, of the cosmos, and most important for our purposes, language.

The Guardian of All Things

By Michael S. Malone Why is language so important? Four reasons. First, it enables one to convey information over large distances, even beyond line of sight, a skill that is vitally important in travel and hunting. Second, it acts as a social glue, further tying together members of the family or tribe into larger social structures. Third, it creates metaphor, the bundling together of two diverse ideas into a something new and thus an addition to knowledge.

Fourth and most important, it allows knowledge to be conveyed through time, from one generation to the next, thus accumulating human intellectual capital. The human oral tradition begins here; the acquired wisdom of one generation doesn’t die with that generation.

Evolving alongside language was a gestural tradition, much of it related to hunting. Even today, modern hunters like the Bushmen of the Kalihari, so as not to spook prey, will organize themselves with a combination of hand gestures and images drawn with a stick or finger in the dirt. At some point in human history—we used to think with early Homo Sapiens (Cro-Magnon Man), but now perhaps late Neanderthals—those two traditions merged.

The picture became the representation of the spoken word. Painted deep in caves, these pictograms became the language of ritual and religion; the keeper of those images, and the leader of the rites surrounding them, was the shaman or priest—the first separate class in human society and the beginning of the division of labor that led to modern society. Just as important, those images, whether painted on a wall or etched into bone or rock gave mankind the first medium of memory into the indefinite future and not be dependent upon the survival of human intermediaries.

It is probably not a coincidence that it was during this same period that what we think of as human consciousness, that great divider between humans and animals likely first appeared. Certainly we thought before language, but language enabled us to think in ways, and about ideas, that no living thing on Earth had ever thought before.

Writing had begun, and with it the split between ‘human’ and ‘artificial’ memory had begun as well.

From this point—between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago—on, human and artificial memory take on wildly divergent paths, yet still remain tethered to each other by their need to operate through living beings. The human brain spends the next Millennia exploring its capabilities and limitations.

Its facility is made manifest through art and literature, religion, commerce, politics and science—its first efflorescence, about 5,000 years ago during the Bronze Age, is one of mankind’s greatest achievements... one that can be read in the first epics, the Pentateuch of the Bible, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Mahabharata, the Iliad, and earliest of them all, Gilgamesh, itself the story of the creation of human civilization. At one point, each of these epics were part of the oral tradition, their thousands of lines evidence of the power of human memory, and the need to safeguard them outside the heads of a few poets and minstrels an important force in the creation of national languages.

Memory - which ironically is popularly portrayed by the elephant - is what really sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Not learning by rote or repitition so as to become an instinct over time, but as a concious, intellectual point of reference in our decision making process that leads to better longterm planning and advancement for the species.

By the time of the Roman Republic, the power of human memory was being pushed to limits rarely reached before or since. On a daily basis in this bureaucratized state, scribes and priests carried around massive amounts of record data and rituals. But it was the orators, spurred by treatises like Rhetorica ad Herennium and those by the greatest practitioner of all, Cicero (it was he who called memory ‘the guardian of all things’), learned to use mnemonic devices and other tricks to memorize speeches that could run for hours or hold in their heads vast documents. This tradition, all-but alien to us now, survived almost to the twentieth century as both feats of memory and the mysterious syncretic tradition of mystics, numerologists, kabbalists, alchemists, the likes of Giordano Bruno and Renaissance ‘memory theater.’ By comparison, the history of artificial memory is the story of technological innovation as it was applied in daily life.

Whereas spoken language has largely evolved through the collision of different cultures—and more recently, the need to develop new words to describe new ideas or phenomena—written language has mostly been changed by its medium and application. In Sumer where modern writing is generally considered to have been invented, wet clay was the most common medium on which to write, first as counting marks on jars used for commerce, and eventually on clay tablets. As everyone knows, writing in mud is difficult, so the Sumerians used reed styluses to impress straight indentations in the clay—cuneiform. Happily, when those tablets dried in the sun, they became hard and durable; unhappily, they also cracked or melted in rain. On the other hand, if they happened to be in a library that burned down, they were fired rock hard and could last centuries—which is why we have Gilgamesh.

And human memory? The 20th century saw the greatest advances in our understanding of the brain in Millennia. Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, psychoactic drug research, saw enormous advances in brain science in the first decades of the century. Then, thanks largely to the miniaturization and data acquisition made possible by the new digital devices and the large volume memory storage they demanded, research into how the brain worked took off. That revolution continues to this day. Meanwhile, thanks to Moore’s Law, the pace of innovation in the digital world has raced even faster, and at an exponential pace. The computer that sent a man to the moon is now dwarfed by the cell phone in your pocket. Add to this the Internet, which puts all of the world’s memories at the fingertips of every living person and suddenly the two tracks of human and artificial memory seem to be converging after all these centuries at a shocking— some would say alarming—rate. Today, we have accumulated, addressed and stored many times more of mankind’s memories than ever before.

We are poised on the brink of a Great Convergence. But as our magnetic memories begin to fade and with our billions of microprocessors at risk of erasure from some unpredictable, but likely, Carrington Event of the sun —we have to ask ourselves if we are so busy looking to the future that we have forgotten our duty to the past to safely preserve the present.l

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Mason Gooding A young actor who looks like he’s set to come out of the New Year’s starting gate at a pace... and not look back.

By Moonah Ellison Photography by David Higgs

Mason Gooding is feeling good. Wait, that was too easy, but definitely true nonetheless. The actor, who’s dad Cuba Gooding, Jr. won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in 1996’s Jerry Maguire, is set to make 2022 his own, with a bevy of projects that are a sure-fire bet to make Gooding a household name. He’s got the latest installment of Scream in January, the Amazon romantic comedy I Want You Back with Jenny Slate and Charlie Day in February, the just-wrapped indie Pools opposite Odessa A’zion, Michael Vlarmis and Ariel Winter as well as HBO Max/New Line’s Moonshot with Cole Sprouse and Lana Condor.

Season 3 of Hulu’s Love, Victor is also calling him back and will return next year.

Moves sat down with Gooding to discuss his new projects, spotting a good narrative in a script, and chatting about horror films over Zoom.

Moonah Ellison: So let’s kick it off. Tell me how you kind of processed your family saying 18 is the time you can actually kick off your acting career? What does that feel like coming from a family that is so articulate in everything that they do? How did you deal with that?

Mason Gooding: She’s done her homework ladies and gentlemen. To say I’m appreciative of both my mother and my father’s perspective and making me wait until I was mentally, physically, and emotionally ready for the trials and tribulations of entertainment—or Hollywood in general—would be an understatement. I feel like asking a child to embody and emulate the emotions and experiences of someone else prior to even knowing who they are personally as a feat that I think most

adults have trouble doing. That being said, though I can’t say with any sort of assertiveness that I am entirely aware of who I am, I do know what attracted me most to acting as an art form and as a vocation is that I can learn different walks of life, different experiences, and different lifestyles and embody them and do a character in a work of art and hopefully people will enjoy it and take something from it. Or maybe not you know you take some, you take the good, to take the bad, and hope for the best.

ME: But obviously you wanted to do it because when you hit 18, I think the fact that your parents actually had the strength to kind of say okay go figure out your life first, don’t make this your first passion just because it’s a family tradition. Right?

MG: Right. It’s funny I’ve always loved performing, I was a very obnoxious child, and when it came to time to ask that question of pursuing acting or going to college, I remember being told by my father, ‘I don’t know if it’s necessarily lucrative to go to college and study acting when most of acting is human experiences’ and for that reason I decided it might make sense to go to school for something tailor-made to service my passion which is acting, but not necessarily embedded in what acting is.

So I went to school for writing and I couldn’t be more appreciative of the education I got from New York University. I can spot a good piece of literature as well as a good script and allow myself sort of to look from within and see where I fit in. See where the statement in the narrative is being made and how I agree with it and then kind of inform how I approach a character or a piece of art.

ME: I’d like to expand on that. You just talked on something there that I really find fascinating to hear. What is the narrative that you tend

to look for when you’re looking for that perfect piece of art that you want to go after?

MG: I feel like so long as the work says something and it says it boldly and it says it eloquently, I’m happy to at least consider what format the art speaks to me. For example, I love a good think piece on the human condition. I love when we’re navigating the psyche of human beings and how tragedy or excitement or positive stimulus affects their way of life and if you can make a profound statement on that, that maybe hasn’t been made before, I love it.

ME: Let’s talk about some of the things you’ve got coming out. Share some of the things that are happening right now in your journey.

MG: First and foremost we have Scream 5 coming out January 14 which I couldn’t be more excited about. Then in February, we have a movie penned by dear friends and visionaries Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger who also did our show Love, Victor [Hulu].

This movie is called I Want You Back starring Jenny Slate and Charlie Day and it’s incredible.

Shortly thereafter, I have a movie coming out called Moonshot and then sometime after that I did a movie in Chicago with Tyler Alverez, Odessa A’zion, Ariel Winter, Francesco

Noel, and that movie is called Pools.

ME: Let’s go back to Scream. You touched on that and I know you can’t say very much about it.

MG: I met with Tyler [director Gillett] and Chad [producer Villella]. We chatted about horror films for two hours on Zoom, it was in the middle of the pandemic, and we talked about all things Scream, all things horror in general. I’d say it was about a week and a half before I heard anything, but I was in my apartment, playing video games, and I got a phone call and they were like hey so the screen meeting went well. And I was like oh I thought so too. So well in fact they would like to work with you.

ME: You also touched on music playing a big part in your world. Tell me a little bit about that? Is that something that is personal? Are you actually developing something musically?

MG: I didn’t have many friends growing up and a lot of times I would sit by myself and listen to music and generate situations or scenarios that made me feel comfortable socially. Especially if I have a crush on someone I tend to just listen to music and think about them for hours on end. I have two favorite artists, I know I’m cheating, Sam Cooke is and his music has infected me in such a visceral and lasting way... The other one is The 1975 with front man Matty Healy who I might be in love with.

I think he’s an incredible artist who isn’t necessarily afraid to share his opinions.

ME: Have you always wanted to be an actor and if you had to take another vocation in another dream job and what would it be?

MG: For the longest time I really wanted to be a camp counselor. I love kids. I want kids more than anything. And to be able to have like a cabin of kids and walk them through hikes was like a dream of mine. And that kind of morphed into this new passion and love: I would really love to be a history teacher. My life has changed irrevocably for the best due to certain teachers in my life. I love teachers and what they do, good ones obviously, and I love history as well. I could talk your ear off about fun history facts but we don’t

have time for that. We’ll get some coffee at some point.

ME: I cannot obviously leave this interview without touching on your dad and your relationship and his role and how do you find that you deal with that?

MG: I would likely not be as passionate about acting and art if not for my father who himself predicated a lot of his relationships on true artistry. He wouldn’t surround himself with people who didn’t take him or his art seriously because he felt that and being in groups that further your own understanding of the world as it exists and art itself, mainly filmmaking, he felt it a waste of time. And for me I think something I learned is that you should really only work with and surround yourself with people who are as passionate about telling a good story or creating positive or negatively moving art so that you can either learn something from them or grow as an artist yourself. In terms of navigating him and his version of celebrity and how that’s morphed over the years I talk to him.

photography David Higgs styling Wilford Lenov @ celestine agency grooming Tasha Reiko Brown @ the wall group

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Jay Z has been regarded as one of the most influential hiphop legends (and general music icons) since his debut in the 90’s.

He garnered respect immediately with his first album, Reasonable Doubt, but his eye for talent has taken him to an entirely new level of influence. During his span as CEO of Def Jam Records, Jay Z signed such icons as Kanye West and Rihanna, just to name a few.

His talent for business did not stop with the record company.

In the past two decades, Jay Z has started multiple multimillion dollar companies, including RocaWear and Tidal, the latter of which he sold recently for 300 million dollars.

Music P O W E R P L AY E R S

Rihanna

After being signed by Jay Z, Rihanna’s career took off at record speed. Within the first three years of her career, she’d recorded multiple No. 1 singles and won a grammy for Best Rap Performance.

She spent the next few years focusing on music and then moved into making a reputation for herself in the business world, starting with her partnership with Puma. In 2017, Rihanna launched her beauty line, Fenty, which was an instant success and is now valued at around 2.8 billion dollars. With the release of both her Fenty beauty and lingerie lines, Rihanna has ascended into the upper echelon of self-made billionaires.

Taylor Swift is one of the

Beyoncé has been long considered the queen bee (or Queen Bey, as fans would call her) of pop music.

Since her rise to fame, Beyoncé has formed partnerships with a handful of well known brands of all kinds, ranging from L’Oriel to Pepsi. Beyoncé was also one of the owners of the streaming service Tidal, alongside Jay Z and Kanye West. It’s estimated that between touring and releasing music, Beyoncé makes a salary of around 81 million dollars a year. She may not yet be of billionaire status but it’s clear that she’s created an empire that is just as vast and impactful as her more business-focused counterparts.

few artists on this list whose financial empire stems solely from music. With no big business ventures to speak of, Taylor has made her way into the leagues of the wealthiest musicians of our time simply by the merit of talent and hard work. Her record breaking 2018 Reputation stadium tour was the highest grossing North American tour of all time, earning nearly 300 million dollars in just six months. The singersongwriter has an impressive list of accomplishments, having been on the Time’s list of 100 Most Influential People for three separate years and breaking records once more by being the youngest woman ever to be included in the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list.

Lady Gaga In just the last decade, Lady Gaga has made more of an impression on the world than some artists make in a lifetime. The beginning of her career was marked by a clear desire to express herself in a unique, and sometimes controversial (looking at you meat dress), way. This creativity spawned a huge respect from fans who looked to Gaga as an inspiration of freedom in self identity, gaining her a spot in the 2010 Time magazine Top 100 Most Influential People list. Gaga has used this influence to start multiple ethically focused non-profits, such as the pro mental health and anti-bullying Born This Way Foundation, as well as vegan cosmetics brand, Haus Laboratories.

P. Diddy is one of the most prolific entrepreneurial artists in the game right now. Even before his career as a rapper started, Diddy already had a foot in the music world, helping to establish the career of Mary J. Blige while interning at Uptown Records. After this success, the rapper started his own label, Bad Boy Records, which has now signed household names like Mariah Carey and up and coming rockstar MGK. His multiple business ventures, including a clothing line called Sean Jean and a line of restaurants by the name of Justin’s, earned him a spot on the 2002 Forbes list of Top 40 Entrepreneurs Under 40.

Justin Bieber With an abrupt and memorable beginning to his career, Justin Bieber went from being a Canadian pre-teen to the “prince of pop” almost overnight. He is now one of the world’s best selling musical artists, making the list of top ten highest

Ariana Grande ’s career is one of the most tragic and hopeful stories in music right now. After going through a particularly traumatizing couple of years in 2017-2018, what with the Manchester arena bombing and the death of her close friend and ex Max Miller, Ariana has come back with an awe inspiring dedication to her fans and her craft. Despite the hardships she has endured over the past few years, Grande continues to focus her energy on building a legacy for fans of all ages to look up to. Between music releases, tours, and brand partnerships, Ariana Grande has become one of the highest paid, and also most highly respected, female pop artists in the world.

paid celebrities under 30 for six years in the 2010’s. Bieber’s most successful entrepreneurial undertaking would be his fragrances, which he released four of between 2011 and 2014. Most of his success, however, comes simply from being adored by teen pop fans worldwide.

WHAT WILL YOU CREATE? THE HIGHEST STANDARDS IN

VIDEO PHOTO STUDIO EVENTS

ONLY AT S P L A S H L I G H T. C O M

The Wolf of Wall Street Famous for its glorification of the corrupt and morally black lifestyle of the wealthy, The Wolf of Wall Street enticed viewers by giving a rich portrayal of the high life. Power hungry Jordan Belfort, based on the real life criminal, performs countless acts of greed, showcasing a world of hedonism that most only daydream about.

Scorsese’s portrayal of opulence and excess has long been talked about as a dream of sorts, even with the consequences they lead to. Drug-fueled binges and cheating spouses are not seen as repercussions, but as amusing anecdotes of the truly free man. The story itself is a magnetic trainwreck, a can’t-look-away fall from glory, but audiences still look up to these powerhouse characters as the ultimate fantasy of power and ambition.

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Molly’s Game Aaron Sorkin’s phenomenal directorial debut and Jessica Chastain’s enigmatic performance perfectly showcases both the tragedy and empowerment displayed by Molly’s character. Her explanation of the events that led to her rise and fall, told through the purpose of an FBI investigation, gives us an intriguing look into the exclusive world of high-stakes poker, where only the Crème de la Crème of celebrities, artists, and business tycoons are welcome. Molly is seen as being a mostly moral character, which only makes the message more clear. Power can consume even the best among us.

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TV

The Iron Lady

House of Cards has become one of the most exemplary critiques of modern U.S. politics, a classic tale of corruption and governmental greed with the added drama of a revenge story. The main character and antihero, Francis Underwood, climbs the ranks of the white house with the help of his equally morally grey wife in order to overthrow his enemies at the top.

Both characters are brilliantly dastardly in their attempts at revenge, scheming with such cleverness that it feels as though one is watching a master strategist work his way to checkmate.

The tension grows as the show goes on, showcasing a power struggle that is at once so subtle and manipulative that sometimes you may have to watch an episode twice to understand just how sharp it was.

Succession is a starkly amusing satirical illustration of a money-hungry family doing whatever it takes to hold on to their piece of the capitalist pie. With characters so selfishly predatorial that it becomes almost tragic, this show gives audiences all that it could want out of a semi-soapy cesspool of human greed.

The plot follows a family that has spent their entire lives with a golden spoon hanging from their mouths, surrounded by wealth garnered by a family owned media conglomerate. The father decides to step down in his role as leader of the company, thus beginning the cut throat competition of who will take his place.

This chaotic clambering makes the show into a darkly comedic drama that will make audiences appreciate their own regular lives.

Meryl Streep’s brilliant performance illuminates the personal history of Margeret Thatcher within the political context of 1970’s and 1980’s Britain. While Streep’s execution was met with rave reviews, the film itself has been critically confused, with many viewers desiring more focus on Thatcher’s politics and less on her marital and personal problems. The male characters in the film are selfsatisfied and ignorant when it comes to policy, and the success of a woman evidently causes some amount of ego distress for most of them. It’s clear that the driving force behind the biopic was the creators wish to show what happens behind closed doors when anyone, and especially a woman, rises to power.

Billions is an almost portrait of the monstrous cut-throat world of billionaires and their misconduct.

Featuring characters that could be described as carnivorous in their relentless journey to the top, Billions feels like a real, unguarded peek into what it takes to achieve true power.

What sets the show apart from others like it is the creators honesty regarding the immorality of the antiheroes that act as both the protagonists and villains. There is little sympathy to be found here, and little is asked for, even by the characters themselves.

This is a show that blatantly exposes the manipulative and devilish fantasy of wealth to those who have not achieved it.

The Crown The British royal family has long been a source of curiosity and speculation, undoubtedly because their status has given them the rare opportunity of untouchable secrecy. In The Crown, this privacy is stripped away in favor of a tellall on the personal turmoils and dramas that the royal family has faced since the 1940’s. The show itself seems conflicted on the morality of the power that the monarchy holds, jumping between sympathy for the characters lack of freedom and criticism of their unending pride and privilege. We often see members of the family in moments of humility, desperate to unchain themselves from the life that was decided for them. As far as portrayals of power go, this is one that mostly hinges on the recognition of humanity in even the most out of touch of our society..

Boardwalk Empire This lavish period drama reveals the lives of 1920’s gangsters with the impeccable attention to detail necessary to form a complex and fascinating mob story. Scorcese paints his character’s with both charm and an underlying seediness—all the makings of a great mob boss. Set at the beginning of the prohibition, the tale follows the mafia ringleaders in charge of running the illegal liquor trade, giving fun nods to real life gangsters and events throughout. It’s a fantastically comprehensive exhibition of both the glitzy, rich 1920’s lifestyle and its sleazy criminal underbelly.

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Alexandra

Shipp

HOLLYWOOD’S 21ST CENTURY “OOMPH GIRL”

BY ZOE STAGG

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL MULLER

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lexandra Shipp has perfect timing. In the height of a world primed for more movie musicals due in no small part to the Hamilton hype, a chameleon with crushing pipes is everything. The actress is known for her flawless portrayals of Aaliyah and Ice Cube’s wife, Kimberly Woodruff, in Straight Outta Compton, and is set to bring another real-life character to screens in Tick, Tick…Boom. She’s in the right place, at the right time—and that’s how she’s always lived her life. “I wouldn't change any of the things I’ve done because I think that it put me in the position I am today. I think of the successes that I've had and the mistakes that I've made and the people that I've come into contact with, and I think that my higher power put all of those people, places, things in my path to make me who I am right now.” She’s been making music since she was 12, writing songs, playing guitar and the piano, and built her craft in Arizona before leaving for LA at 17. Now in the stride of her career, racking up giant roles like “Storm” in X-Men, she’s surprisingly centered. “When I think about regret, I don't necessarily think about the things that I would change. I think about the things that I wish I would have embraced more, whether that was success, happiness, or pain, leaning into those emotions and really allowing yourself to feel them only builds that much more character for me.”

I

n real life, her hair is a halo of dark honey curls, pulling off the elusive curly bang, effortlessly. Her Instagram is full of bold fashion choices, snippets of singing, and revelations about who she really is. In June, she came out publicly with a string of rainbow hearts and a heartfelt message. “Today I’m happy in ways I don’t think my kid self could imagine. I get to be exactly who I want to be EVERY FUCKING DAY and it feels incredible!!

It’s never too late to be you.” Reflecting on it a few months later she says, “For me, it always felt like it was nobody's business. And then I was seeing someone and they were like, ‘Well, you know, I think it would mean a lot to young kids and your audience to know this fact about you and to be able to see someone representing the LGBTQ community working their butts off and having success in this industry.’” Though she’d been out to her close circle, the thought nudged her to put away the fear and show who she really is. “When I finally found those words in a public standpoint and a public moment, it really felt like it was just a great time to do it. I wasn't trying to make some sort of political stance. I wasn't trying to affect some crazy amount of social change by doing it.

It just felt like it was the piece of myself that I was ready and willing to share with people.” The experience, she says, has been lovely and humbling. “I don't think that I would have had that opportunity five years ago. I don't think I would have had the same experience. So, I feel really blessed to have had that this time.”

“...I knew it was Lin so I put some sauce on it... I went for it ...if anything, I was going to leave him with a taste of something...”

T

iming was also on her side, as an actress and singer, and also a huge fan—of RENT, of Lin-Manuel Miranda— to star in his directorial debut of the film adaptation of Tick, Tick…Boom. She got to see him play his famous role in Hamilton on Broadway, breaking into a giant grin at the memory. When she got the chance to audition for him, it was a dream come true. “I was just so excited that it was Lin! Personally, I am not your typical musical theatre singer. I have, as you would say, a Dream Girls vibe to the way that I sing, so I was really nervous. But at the same time, just, like, enthralled with the idea that I could take one of these songs and make them mine.” Auditioning for the guy who turned mid-1700s history into a rap opera, opens up some possibilities. “I knew it was Lin. So, I was like, let me put some sauce on it.” Even now, the memory of that performance lives in her body and comes out in her telling of it—and that’s all anyone will ever see of it. “I watched it back, and I was like, no one will ever see this. It is just a little embarrassing. I'm not gonna lie. But I went for it. And I was like, if anything, I'm going to leave him with a taste of something.”

T

he taste, was just enough. Paired with co-star Andrew Garfield to test over Skype, despite the platform, the chemistry was instantly electric. “I was just so blown away by him as an actor that when we finished, I could tell

that Lin was, like, a little choked up, and I was like, ‘Okay, that's awesome.’ The fact that I was able to do that in this moment through a computer makes me feel really good. And if I don't get the job, I'm really proud of that audition.” She landed the role of Susan, a modern dancer working through an injury and the girlfriend of Jonathan Larson’s character. Despite her Renaissance collection of talents, Alexandra didn’t consider herself a dancer. Getting there, was step one. “Whenever I tackle a character, I think about their body. I think about how they walk and talk and how they stand and how they speak to people.

And there are so many different mannerisms that people hold in their body that make them individual. Everyone not only has a thumbprint, but also just a special way of being themselves.

And I really love finding that within my characters.”

H

itting New York in January of 2020, she started with a dance coach six hours a day, and just when she was finding her rhythm… life and art collided. Tick, Tick…Boom, a musical with the frailty of creation set against the HIV/AIDS pandemic, hit COVID. Production paused, and resumed and wrapped in the fall. With a world premiere at the American Film Institute Fest, it’s available for streaming in wide release on Netflix.

D

espite the parallel drawing the story of a 1990 health crisis to one in 2020, while a lot has changed in 40 years, there’s still more to do. “There is still a wage gap. There is still sexism. There is still incredible racism, especially in my country right now. And I know that it is affecting the entire world. But what I can speak on is of my own experiences. And as a black woman in America, there is a lot that needs to be done not only for women, but also for people of color. But right now we're talking about it. And we're having these conversations. And I think that that's the most important and beautiful part.” A lot of that has to do with speaking up—whether in art, or Instagram posts, the conversation is what’s important. “If we come together and we have these conversations and we work out our own problems and indifferences, we can then take that to the outside world and say, ‘This is how you speak to me. This is how you treat me. This is what I want. This is what I deserve. And this is how you're going to give it to me.’ And with those five things, we have managed to curate an insane amount of social change in the last couple of years.”

O

ne of the outlets we have to draw us closer together and allow those conversations, is a double-edged… web? While the internet and social media allow discourse, there’s no guarantee it’s civil, or even true. “We have so much information out there. It is very scary how much misinformation we have out there. It is very scary how easy it is for everyone to fall under that. A lot of the time, the information that's out there online is not the real actual information. Those numbers are not real. And we're seeing how hurtful that can be. We see that with our elections. We see that when it comes to the information being spread about this virus and this pandemic, we see it all the time, and it's

really scary because we don't know what to read and what to believe.” It makes it even more important that we can go to primary sources, and they are telling the truth. “We have to be able to elect politicians that we trust, and that's why voting is so huge right now.”

I

“...As we’re creating that empathy, we’re creating that

understanding.

We’re building on that love... which I think is something that has been really hard for human beings...”

t’s more than just the filtered and curated, ‘I woke up this way’ theater of the ‘Gram, fake reality can be harmful.

“Social media, it is not real, in my opinion. Online is not real. Standing in front with a sign? That's real. Marching on Congress? That's real. These are actual, real things that we could do, spending money, making sure that these grassroots nonprofit organizations can actually truly make a difference, in order to help and create compassion and build understanding. And that's a huge passion for me.”

She has causes she supports, and truth and education for social change are at the heart it. “There are so many really great organizations out there that really just strike a chord with me because I can relate to them. That could be me. Had I been born in a different country, my life would have been different in that way. I really am proud to be an American because I understand the freedom, and the hope that this Constitution was written,” She pauses wryly, “Don't get me wrong. It was not written for me, but I'm going to take advantage of it.”

B

ut it’s not all bad, a place for free expression and a platform to connect with people all over the world can be valuable. “I do believe in community, and I have found so much community in my social media. Don't get me wrong.

I love being able to share information and talk about these things with people. But human touch, human vibration, sharing that within a room that is real. And with social media, you've got a faceless, nameless troll on your timeline all the time. And they're not real, because I promise you, if they met you in real life, they wouldn't act like that.” The trick is sussing out true from troll, and spending more time IRL than not. “What is real and what is true is what is right in front of us. And it's the people that we talk to. It's the people that we choose to listen to to educate us. It's these people. It's outside, breeze, trees to me. That's what's real. But information, social media, it is all a curve. I'm still trying to navigate it. And I'm a millennial, right? So, we'll see how the world turns.

I hope it's easier for our babies.” It’s a matter of time, and making the most of it while we’re here. “Our kids, our descendants, the people we choose to raise, they are going to grow up in a world that actually communicates with itself.

A

nd I think that that is so imperative for our human race to evolve as we're creating that empathy, we're creating that understanding. We're building on that love. We're able to share it and spread it respectfully, and we're able to accept it as well, which I think is something that has been really hard for human beings.”

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Meal Kits - saving 0ur lives ... or ruining them?

Cooking dinner, especially as protrayed in their ads, is supposed to be a fun and creative experiment where those involved add their ten cents of ingredients over a glass of wine.

Cooking by numbers seems to dehumanize this process. Just sayin.’

By Madeleine Hollis In the last few decades, and especially in the last year, Americans have seen a rapid transformation in the way that we handle and consume food. The most transparent example of this would be the rise of fast food conglomerates, and the nearly immediate way in which the creation of restaurants like McDonald’s and Burger King affected both our health and general lifestyles. The consequences of fast food have been studied time and time again, with very few positive conclusions. The consistent consumption of processed foods has been shown to increase the likelihood of all kinds of noncommunicable diseases, ranging from cardiovascular disease to cancer. These things are widely recognized. But what research has been done on the similarly quick—yet less processed—trend of prepackaged meal kits?

The concept of the meal kit has been around for over a decade now, beginning in 2007 with the Swedish company Middagsfrid, which has since become a multibillion dollar enterprise. The company was originally created to operate in a way that would focus on nutritional value with the added ease of delivery. In fact, the menus are created weekly under the guidance of a licensed nutritionist. The business also works with local entrepreneurs to source a majority of the food being sent out.

The idea didn’t spread fully to the U.S. until around 2012, with the founding of companies like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron. These subscription-based delivery services include fresh ingredients that are portioned based on customer choice, coming in serving sizes of either 2 or 4. Some menu items come with pre-chopped herbs or alreadymade sauces, but for the most part this is a do-it-yourself cooking experience. All in all, this is a service that is held up by the offer of convenience to a busy society.

Meal kits picked up when Covid hit, as restaurants became nearly obsolete and grocery stores became a nightmarish horror story setting. With people unable or unwilling to leave the house, all delivery services seemed to boom nearly overnight. It was the perfect answer to a difficult situation. What began as a somewhat niche app used only by those who had extra cash to spend on a somewhat luxurious service, quickly evolved into a truly useful and necessary part of life. The question then is whether or not this will continue long after the effects of the pandemic have washed away.

It’s not exactly news that Americans appreciate convenience. When listening to what other countries think of us, it’s clear that we’re known for a dependence on excess and immediate satisfaction. This isn’t a personal fault, but that of the society we’ve grown up in. “Time is money” has basically become the national slogan. This has definitely impacted the choices that people make for their health, and against it, with many opting to quickly swerve into the drive thru instead of taking the time to cook a family meal.

It’s not that it’s unreasonable—after working eight hours a day, it’s understandable that some don’t want to trade one chore for another. But how does this “time is money” lifestyle affect us personally and as a society?

Mental health is one of the most important repercussions of living a life where we trade money for comfort, especially in regards to our dietary choices. Studies have shown that a poor diet is not just met with physical consequences, but with a severe risk of mental distress, going so far sometimes as to cause lasting psychiatric issues.

Research published in the Nutritional Neuroscience journal showed that increasing intake of fruits and decreasing intake of carbohydrates reduced signs of anxiety and depression in young adults. A lack of important nutrients can also lead to dementia and stroke, if the unhealthy diet continues for too long.

For meal kits, this is actually pretty good news. Each service offers a choice of what the customer is looking to gain from their experience on the app: are you looking to lose weight? Make generally healthier choices? Make time-saving meals for big families? All options are there for the picking. There are even entire menus dedicated to specific dietary restrictions, such as a keto and vegan section. In this way, meal preparation kits cannot be compared to the fast food of the past. One of the main focuses of the industry is to help Americans eat cleaner, without the hassle and stress of trying to figure out how to do it on their own.

Lack of activity is another leading cause of otherwise avoidable mental illness. A study done by the British Nutrition Foundation shows that lack of physical exertion may lead to depression, dementia, general anxiety.

This is one thing that the meal kit does not have going for it. By devaluing the existence of grocery stores and individual shopping, we are choosing a world in which we no longer have to put effort into our daily activity.

Business owners know that there is a large portion of the community that will pay any fee for the opportunity to stay home.

Another reason for the recent appreciation of delivered lunchboxes is likely the fact that a large part of the younger population never quite learned to cook themselves.

Growing up in a world of instant ramen and Hot pockets has weakened the culinary skills of multiple generations.

With apps like Blue Plate, there is no prior knowledge needed to create a home cooked meal. A recipe comes inside each package, along with a step-by-step guide on how to prepare and cook your meal. The apps are a useful teaching tool, especially for those with specific needs who are not quite sure which ingredients to use or how to correctly utilize them.

There are many factors to consider when deciding how to prepare your next home meal. Meal kits are certainly not without their pros, such as reducing waste, encouraging the use of fresh ingredients, and being an inexpensive way to save time while still learning a skill. But the long lasting consequences of forming a society that is even more dependent than before on simplicity may go on to negatively affect future generations. The importance lies in the way that we use the meal kits, whether they are being pandered to our supposed idleness or not. If we are able to use the apps as tools for learning, instead of tools to lean against, they may just end up being a pretty useful source.

WHY CELEBRITY CRUISES IS THE NATURAL CHOICE IN THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS Celebrity Cruises® invites you to discover a corner of the world so awe-inspiring, it’s like you’ve left the planet completely. An archipelago time forgot—the breathtaking Galapagos Islands.

These islands rose from the ocean floor through volcanic activity and have never been connected to the mainland. As a result, many of the creatures you’ll meet here can’t be found anywhere else, like marine iguanas, Galapagos giant tortoises, and blue-footed boobies. These colorful locals have no fear of humans, so you’ll be surprised how up close and personal you can get.

Few places in the world remain this pristine, and Celebrity doesn’t want you to miss a thing. So they have a team of certified naturalists to guide you on your journey and give you authentic guided experiences. Every day, you’ll have your choice of excursions, and of course, they’re all included.

A visit to the Galapagos Islands is nothing short of life-changing, so it deserves the choice of three equally extraordinary ships.

Celebrity Flora® is the first luxury yacht designed specifically for the Galapagos, with an outward-facing design that creates a closer connection with the natural wonders around you, along with stunning, all-suites accommodations. Celebrity Xpedition® is the ship that set the standard for all-inclusive Galapagos vacations. For the most intimate way to explore the Galapagos, the 16-guest Celebrity Xploration® will make you feel like you have the islands all to yourselves. Whichever ship you choose, everything you’ll need is included—shore excursions, drinks, locally sourced cuisine from menus crafted by a Michelin-starred chef, and more.

Celebrity is also committed to preserving the Galapagos Islands for future generations. Its fleet marks an evolutionary leap in sustainability, with state-of-the-art advancements, and Celebrity’s guests have planted more than 50,000 scalesia trees in partnership with Galapagos National Park. These are just a couple ways Celebrity makes its mark by leaving less of a footprint.

To discover why a Galapagos vacation with Celebrity Cruises is a must for every world traveler, call 1-888-283-6879, contact your travel advisor, or visit celebrity.com.

Clockwise from top: Galapagos giant tortoise, Bartolomé Island, Celebrity Flora Penthouse Suite, Galapagos Glamping experience

©2021 Celebrity Cruises Inc. Ships’ registry: Malta and Ecuador.

ISN’T IT TIME?

FOR A GALAPAGOS JOURNEY FILLED WITH WONDER. Be wildly spoiled in the unspoiled Galapagos Islands on Celebrity Flora®, the first all-suites luxury mega yacht designed for this one-ofkind destination. Unwind in the most stunning suites in the islands, complete with Personal Suite Attendants so you never have to lift a finger. Discover unforgettable experiences, like Galapagos Glamping, where you can dine and sleep under the stars. Embark on eye-opening daily excursions guided by certified naturalists. With everything you need included—right down to your snorkeling gear—you can just relax and enjoy one of the world’s most awe-inspiring places.

Journey safe. Journey wonderFULLSM.

CELEBRITY.COM | CONTACT YOUR TRAVEL ADVISOR | CALL 1-888-283-6879

Due to evolving health protocols, imagery and messaging may not accurately re lect onboard and destination experiences, offerings, features, or itineraries. These may not be available during your voyage, may vary by ship and destination, and may be subject to change without notice. ©2021 Celebrity Cruises Inc. Ships’ registry: Malta and Ecuador.

feature

Quantum Questions

By Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw

It appears that the more we understand about the elemental nature of the world, the simpler it looks. We will, in due course, explain what these basic rules are and how the tiny building blocks conspire to form the world. But, lest we get too dazzled by the underlying simplicity of the Universe, a word of caution is in order: although the basic rules of the game are simple, their consequences are not necessarily easy to calculate. Our everyday experience of the world is dominated by the relationships between vast collections of many trillions of atoms, and to try to derive the behaviour of plants and people from first principles would be folly. Admitting this does not diminish the point—all phenomena really are underpinned by the quantum physics of tiny particles.

Consider the world around you. You are holding a book made of paper, the crushed pulp of a tree. Trees are machines able to take a supply of atoms and molecules, break them down and rearrange them into cooperating colonies composed of many trillions of individual parts.

They do this using a molecule known as chlorophyll, composed of over a hundred carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms twisted into an intricate shape with a few magnesium and nitrogen atoms bolted on. This assembly of particles is able to capture the light that has travelled the 93 million miles from our star, a nuclear furnace the volume of a million earths, and transfer that energy into the heart of cells, where it is used to build molecules from carbon-dioxide and water, giving out life-enriching oxygen as it does so. It’s these molecular chains that form the superstructure of trees and all living things, and the paper in your book.

You can read the book and understand the words because you have eyes that can convert the scattered light from the pages into electrical impulses that are interpreted by your brain, the most complex structure we know of in the Universe. We have discovered that all these things are nothing

more than assemblies of atoms, and that the wide variety of atoms are constructed using only three particles: electrons, protons and neutrons. We have also discovered that the protons and neutrons are themselves made up of smaller entities called quirks, and that is where things stop, as far as we can tell today. Underpinning all of this is quantum theory.

The picture of the Universe we inhabit, as revealed by modern physics, is therefore one of underlying simplicity; elegant phenomena dance away out of sight and the diversity of the macroscopic world emerges. This is perhaps the crowning achievement of modern science; the reduction of the tremendous complexity of the world, human beings included, to a description of behaviour of just a handful of tiny subatomic particles and the four forces that act between them. The best descriptions we have of three of the forces, the strong and weak nuclear forces that operate deep within the atomic nucleus and the electromagnetic force that glues atoms and molecules together, are provided by quantum theory. Only gravity, the weakest but perhaps most familiar of the four, does not at present have a satisfactory quantum description.

Quantum theory does, admittedly, have something of a reputation for weirdness, and there have been reams of drivel penned in its name.

Cats can be both alive and dead; particles can be in two places at once; Heisenberg says everything is uncertain.

These things are all true, but the conclusion so often drawn—that since something strange is afoot in the microworld, we are steeped in mystery—is most definitely not.

Extrasensory perception, mystical healing,

vibrating bracelets to protect us from radiation and who-knows-what-else are regularly smuggled into the pantheon of the possible under the cover of the word ‘quantum’. This is nonsense born from a lack of clarity of thought, wishful thinking, genuine or mischievous misunderstanding, or some unfortunate combination of all of the above. Quantum theory describes the world with precision, using mathematical laws as concrete as anything proposed

by Newton or Galileo. That’s why we can compute the magnetic response of an electron with such exquisite accuracy.

Quantum theory provides a description of Nature that, as we shall discover, has immense predictive and explanatory power, spanning a vast range of phenomena from silicon chips to stars.

Our goal in writing this book is to demystify quantum theory; a theoretical framework that has proved famously confusing, even to its early practitioners. Our approach will be to adopt a modern perspective, with the benefit of a century of hindsight and theoretical developments. To set the scene, however, we would like to begin our journey at the turn of the twentieth century, and survey some of the problems that led physicists to take such a radical departure from what had gone before.

Quantum theory was precipitated, as is often the case in science, by the discovery of natural phenomena that could not be explained by the scientific paradigms of the time. For quantum theory these were many and varied. A cascade of inexplicable results caused excitement and confusion, and catalysed a period of experimental and theoretical innovation that truly deserves to be accorded that most clichéd label: a golden age. The names of the protagonists are etched into the consciousness of every student of physics and dominate undergraduate lecture courses even today: Rutherford, Bohr, Planck, Einstein, Pauli, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac. There will probably never again be a time in history where so many names become associated with scientific greatness in the pursuit of a single goal; a new theory of the atoms and forces that make up the physical world. In 1924, looking back on the early decades of quantum theory, Ernest Rutherford, the New-Zealand-born physicist who discovered the atomic nucleus in Manchester, wrote: ‘The year 1896 … marked

Not everyone is interested in subatomic physics; not everyone can face the complete reversal of their world where up is down and in is out; not everyone can live their everyday lives in the knowledge that it all might be illusionary. But everyone should try. Not least ‘cos it’s fun! the beginning of what has been aptly termed the heroic age of Physical Science. Never before in the history of physics has there been witnessed such a period of intense activity when discoveries of fundamental importance have followed one another with such bewildering rapidity.’

But before we travel to nineteenth-century Paris and the birth of quantum theory, what of the word ‘quantum’ itself? The term entered physics in 1900, through the work of Max Planck. Planck was concerned with finding a theoretical description of the radiation emitted by hot objects—the so-called ‘black body radiation’— apparently because he was commissioned to do so by an electric lighting company: the doors to the Universe have occasionally been opened by the prosaic. We will discuss Planck’s great insight in more detail later in the book but, for the purposes of this brief introduction, suffice to say he found that he could only explain the properties of black body radiation if he assumed that light is emitted in little packets of energy, which he called ‘quanta’.

The word itself means ‘packets’ or ‘discrete’.

Initially, he thought that this was purely a mathematical trick, but subsequent work in 1905 by Albert Einstein on a phenomenon called the photoelectric effect gave further support to the quantum hypothesis.

These results were suggestive, because little packets of energy might be taken to be synonymous with particles.

The idea that light consists of a stream of little bullets had a long and illustrious history dating back to the birth of modern physics and Isaac Newton. But Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell appeared to have comprehensively banished any lingering doubts in 1864 in a series of papers that Albert Einstein later described as ‘the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.’ Maxwell showed that light is an electromagnetic wave, surging through space, so the idea of light as a wave had an immaculate and, it seemed, unimpeachable pedigree. Yet, in a series of experiments from 1923 to 1925 conducted at Washington University in Saint Louis, Arthur Compton and his co-workers succeeded in bouncing the quanta of light off electrons. Both behaved rather like billiard balls, providing clear evidence that Planck’s theoretical conjecture had a firm grounding in the real world. In 1926, the light quanta were christened ‘photons’. The evidence was incontrovertible—light behaves both as a wave and as a particle. That signalled the end for classical physics, and the end of the beginning for quantum theory.

Excerpt from The Quantum Universe (And Why Anything That an Happen, Does

by Jeff Forshaw and Brian Cox 2012 Published by Da Capo Press, The Perseus Books Group

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YOUR HISTORY WILL BUILD OUR FUTURE

Power Women

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Empowered Women...

Empower Women

Allen Senior Vice President HENNESSY U.S. LVMH

“Put your money where your mouth is and invest. It’s not enough to say you support gender equality if your payroll or your gender breakdown of employees, or the marketing and advertising of your product/ services, don’t reflect that commitment.”

moves power women

“It’s not just about having a position for a woman so you can check off your list. This actually impacts your business bottom line.”

Segall Anchor, Producer 60 MINUTES+, CBS

R o

Hood President & CEO, Custom Critical FedEx

“A Power Woman is someone who is authentic and intentionally creates a pathway for others.

Authenticity is important because you should always show up and be yourself even when it gets hard to do so. It is important as a leader to be courageous and bold enough to create a path for others that is smoother for those who follow you.”

e K e ll Carter y Fashion Director BLOOMINGDALE’S

“This is a huge societal problem and issue [asking salary requirements in job interviews], and I am heartened that many companies are moving away from this practice. But as it stands right now, we as women still need to continue to be our own best advocates. Know your worth and ask for more.”

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S r d Lopez VP, GM, CMO MICROSOFT

“I always tell people new business is never easy, but because you are creating new business models and forging new relationships, there’s no playbook.”

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M

l Corning

SMSGT, Senior Training Consultant, United States Air Force Recruiting U.S. AIR FORCE

“... accepting and empowering other women. Taking their hand and lifting them up. Those are what I feel are the most important qualities for a Power Woman.”

e n H l e Aboah CEO URBAN ZEN

“To support and increase the presence of women in high level positions will require a shift from commitment to action. With that in mind, companies should give more women the opportunities to cultivate the skills necessary for such a role.”

Molly Langenstein

CEO CHICO’S FAS, INC.

“You do not have to have all the answers ... you just need to ask all the right questions.”

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Do dr

Ritzenthaler

SVP Sales & TSS CELEBRITY CRUISES

“... as women, we have to be resilient. We are managing work and home and kids, and we get our balls thrown to us all the time. We’ve got to be resilient in managing all of those things and keep on shining through it.“

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ristin K Campbell General Counsel & Chief ESG Officer HILTON WORLDWIDE

“The data on this is clear, the more diversity on boards and at executive levels, the better the bottom line. Encouraging women to lead in these roles is not the challenge. Rather it is the cadre or two below the executive level where we need to increase engagement and development as this is where we see women tend to give up the pursuit...”

T

cZhen ey

CEO ZIPCAR

“... diversity is good for the business, it’s good for shareholders, it’s good for investors, it’s good for corporate culture... ”

Ka e t Johnson President MICROSOFT U.S.

“Gender equality has to be a top priority for any leader today, with explicit and intentional action to support progress. Therefore, I prioritize gender equality as a major part of any diversity and inclusion plan I am working on. When I look at any workforce data, I always ask to see it segmented in all identities, including gender.”

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L Krueger Executive Vice President and Presiden, U.S. THE AES CORPORATION

“Women have to really leverage their network. And so they have those relationships, expand their network, leverage that information and keep those connections. Because I think especially as you move and grow in your careers, it’s really important to be able to all be candid, whether it’s male or female, pick up the phone, interact and keep that network alive...”

a n A Isabelle Actor, singer, musician, producer WEST SIDE STORY

“... education is the base of humanity... everything is about being prepared...”

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Power Women CREDITS New York photography Tony Gale styling Jorge Morales, Hope Misterek, Joao Pedro, Michelle Ten makeup Emmanuel Ramirez, Sisley Paris, Tamara Delbridge hair Patrick Kyle, Sisley Paris, Matthew Yates locations Michaelangelo Hotel production Jenay Alejandro (production) Miami photography Rodrigo Varela makeup Marco Russi Los Angeles photography Luz Gallardo styling Kassidy Nagy hair & makeup Natasha Greissing Special Thanks Christie’s International Real Estate

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Hilton congratulates Kristin Campbell for being named a New York Moves 2021 Power Woman Hilton is committed to creating an inclusive workplace and a culture driven by our Team Members’ unique viewpoints and diverse backgrounds and experiences. Leaders like Kristin Campbell set the standard on what it means to support #WomenAtHilton in developing meaningful careers.

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dish

Sisters in Lore

By Sophia Fox-Sowell

She sleeps. Tenderly she dreams, snoring softly as nightmares creep…

....the fog rolled in slowly, white clouds of damp mist covering the salty sea. All around the ship a pale ghost gently rested on the water. It made Kaori’s skin tingle to think what might be lurking beneath its depths. She tore her eyes away before her curiosity threw her overboard.

Besides the blinding fog, it was a warm evening, only the ocean breeze chilled the air on deck. The wind was blowing Kaori east, towards Phoenicia and her next target. Prince Satori Damasku, heir to the Phoenician Empire and the cruelest man west of Persia. They say he worked his slaves to death, simply because he had the money to replace them. But under his armor, it was whispered that the prince had a weakness for beautiful women.

Like all men with power, it made him feel strong to submit droves of women in his bedchambers. But Kaori, not so easily.

She was not nearly the youngest siren. But her reputation as the Temptress of Titus earned her prestige and invitations around the world from high born nobles, even royal families.

She rarely accepted, making her so mysterious to those who only heard the rumors of her beauty. There were few who did behold but most men who gazed upon her face did not live to kiss and tell.

Master Troisi found her during the siege of Troy.

It was well after dusk before Kaori was awoken by the shattering of pottery, and the clatter of swords in the streets…

Mikala awoke suddenly, disoriented from the vividness of her dream, which seemed more like a glimpse into her past life. What was my name? Kaori? No, that’s impossible.

My name’s Mikala. Mikala, from Mikonos.

Lingerie littered his palace sized bedroom—not in piles, more like clues. Luckily, she wasn’t wearing much to begin with…Mikala came in on the train late last night, wearing only a trench coat, high heels, and Agent Provocateur. She thought she’d surprise Stefan with a little kink.

You see, Victoria’s secret isn’t so difficult to decipher. She’s insecure, and needs extra padding to make her look and feel like she believes a woman is supposed to. Frederick’s of Hollywood is just that, a concept that rules the cultural world. Agent Provocateur is strictly stealth, a sex appeal so obvious, you’d never notice that it wasn’t custom made. And Tiffany’s will always be the elite because of its classically seductive silhouette.

Crafting excellence is like sex—confidence is key.

There are no cameras allowed in the bedroom. Her bodyguard does a sweep for all recording devices, weapons and drugs before she enters the apartment. The last two she brings with her upon her clients’ request (with an extra fee and built in security deposit carefully concealed in the contract.) If the coast is clear, she stays for the agreed upon time, no less than 12 hours and no more than 24.

Like the lingerie she wears, Mikala is an agent of sorts. Functioning Wall Street drones mechanically programmed for monotony, but glitch every now and again from precipitous damage (crying while viciously masturbating in the privacy of their office). You know the type, the ones, suave on the surface but with the mental tip of their financial empire just barely afloat. Mikala prevents their short circuits by rewiring their hardware. She knows the password to unlock their inhibitions.

She doesn’t have regulars. That would ruin her mystery.

But Stefan hasn’t been her client for a few months now… well, she’s stopped charging him, anyways.

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cover story

GL EN L L E W O P

Who wouldn’t want to be Glen Powell today?

By Moonah Ellison Photography by Randall Slavin

Glen Powell is a straight shooter. A Texas boy in fact, Austin. Just talking to him and hearing his voice speak from the heart, I can tell he’s not the type of person to make things up.

Not possible. But I have to say I’m the lucky one here because I know Powell is going to break millions of hearts when he finally ties the knot.

But for now, we’ll concentrate on his latest project, Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise megafilm, Top Gun. Powell will star alongside Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer. For Powell, it’s personal. The release date has been set for May 27th, 2022.

“Top Gun has been one of three seminal movies that made me want to be an actor. And Tom Cruise is the guy that I looked at as that’s who I want to be. And so knowing that Top Gun was coming down the pipeline, I was preparing and over-preparing. I went and lived with a bunch of pilots, I went to Edwards Air Force Base. I went to Miramar. I was like a full fighter pilot by the time I auditioned for Tom Cruise and did the test with them. And the test was to play Bradley Bradshaw, who is Goose’s son [Goose was played by Anthony Edwards in the original film]. And it was me, and it was Miles Teller, and it was Nicholas Hoult. And essentially I auditioned and we really laid it all on the field and I felt so good after it. I got calls from the casting director saying it looks like it’s going in my direction.”

“... I love this job and I understand it’s just a business and when you get a role it just happens. It’s not personal and nobody’s trying to hurt you... ”

Then he got the call he didn’t get it. Went to Miles Teller. “I love this job and I understand it’s just a business and when you get a role it just happens. It’s not personal and nobody’s trying to hurt you. But this one felt like a drum roll my entire life, this is the movie I wanted to make since I was a kid. Since I saw it when I was 10 years old. And so and that’s when I became an actor literally. I saw this movie when I was 10. And I became an actor and I wanted to be in acting classes when I was 10. So this one felt particularly personal and my favorite holiday is basically July 4. I’m very a patriotic dude. I come from a patriotic family and I basically spent that July 4 in a fetal position. And I’ll never forget it, I couldn’t even muster myself up off the ground. And that’s never happened to me before.”

As soon as he made peace with it, Powell started tweeting, saying that he was going to “take down all the Tom Cruise posters off my walls. Maybe I’ll just keep a couple. Fine, the posters are staying.” A lot of people thought that was really funny and a week later he got a call while at a friend’s wedding in Napa, an unknown number, and it was Tom Cruise.

“He’s like, ‘Hey man it’s Tom, are you around?

I just wanna talk to you about what you did in the room. It was unbelievable. It was such a

hard decision to make. You are fantastic and I want to find something to do together. Find something to build together.’ He’s just such a good guy for making this call. No one does that. It’s what makes Tom Cruise so special as a person.”

Still smarting, Powell then had one of the most Hollywood moments of his entire life.

He was in a development meeting with Ron Howard, sitting there talking about a script he wrote. And then he gets a call from Jerry Bruckheimer and three missed calls. He walked outside and Bruckheimer tells him Tom would love to talk to him.

So he drives to that meeting straight over to go meet Tom. Powell walks into the room and Tom’s in a room full of Navy top brass of the Navy, going over the test footage of the interior cockpit of what all the actors are going to get to do in Top Gun. Cruise winds up talking to him about how he approaches roles, how he approaches movies, how Powell views movies, his career. Powell was getting a masterclass in acting. A few days later on the day that Mission Impossible Fallout came out, he was walking into the theater to see the Cruise film when he got a call from Cruise himself and writer Chris Macquarie. “I was like ‘I’m actually walking into your movie right now can I call you in a couple hours?’

And they were like ‘Absolutely. That’s a better use of your time.’” They talk about a new character and what became his character, Hangman. “I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live because it’s like me sort of being on the losing side of something and then sort of having kind of this amazing second resurrection of sorts and getting to kind of develop this role with all these guys who are my heros. So that’s how I got the role and yeah it’s a wild story.

“It’s not an easy movie to make. It’s a movie with a lot of expectations and everybody wants different things from the movie,” insists Powell. “It’s a tone that sometimes doesn’t really translate to this decade. And you know the question of does anybody under 30 even care? But then you look at the pilots that impact this movie made on their lives, and these are guys that are protecting our country right now, and that’s pretty damn cool. That we get to be you know in the midst of these guys when you would normally just kind of fill a place with warm bodies, we’re getting to fill it with real life heros that we are trying to emulate. Which was kind of awesome.”

Powell is no stranger to taking flight. You’ve seen Powell before as John Glenn in Hidden Figures with Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janell Monáe, the 2017 film about three African-American women at NASA who were the brilliant minds behind launching astronaut Glenn into orbit. It’s also worth noting that Powell has his pilot’s license and as soon as he got it he texted Cruise and the next day received a stunt driving course in the mail as the next “dangerous” thing to do.

Next up on Powell’s plate is a movie with Jonathan Majors (The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Lovecraft Country) called Devotion. The story is set in 1950 after World War II and told during the Korean War, a white pilot played by Powell and a black pilot (Majors)

“...then you look at the pilots and the impact this movie made on their lives, and these are guys that are protecting our country right now, and that’s pretty damn cool...” who is the first African-American Navy aviator. “It’s sort of this unconventional friendship that ended up leading them to becoming the most famous aviator duo in the Korean War. Talks about the definition of what being a wingman is. And it’s weirdly oddly so topical. It sort of culminates in this you know moment where Jesse Brown [Majors] ended up getting shot down 40 miles into North Korea and my character had to save him.”

Glen Powell, straight shooter. I told you he’s not the type of person to make things up. It’s just not possible. As for love, he has a very romantic aspect of what that is and what that means through an example: his own family.

“I have a great mom and dad and a lot of big family who have chosen the right partners so it’s really a great example. I do. And all the different chapters in life that you have to navigate with someone. I definitely don’t take it lightly. I think maybe sometimes to a paralyzing degree, I want to do it once.”

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Alex

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Alex Hassell is not the easiest person to research. Which is strange considering how many projects he’s been a part of and how many full-tilt productions are set to explode globally. When we first spoke he had just gotten back to London after filming in New Zealand, a stay that kept him away for 14 months, the longest time he’s ever been away from home. But with upcoming roles in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth opposite Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington, and having just wrapped the new series on Netflix, Cowboy Bebop, Alex Hassell will be looking at longer stays that keep him away from home.

Hassell From the live-action Cowboy Bebop series to Joel Coen’s take on Macbeth, the stars are aligning nicely for Alex Hassell.

By Nikki Moss Photography by DWGH Photography

Cowboy Bebop hits Netflix on November 17 and it’s a live-action series of the late-90’s Japanese science fiction neo-noir anime television series. One would say it has a huge following. One could also say it’s a rabid fanbase. I checked the trailer out and at the time of this writing it has over two million hits. I was like holy crap, there must be such a junkie following. Although it’s a live-action of the anime series, the 2021 version will have lots of CG elements. Hassell will star opposite John Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda and play the role of Vicious.

You’ve seen Hassell before so his face is not foreign. Hassell most recently can be seen playing the role of Translucent in The Boys, the dark comedy for Amazon Prime, created

by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. He also starred in Suburbicon with Matt Damon, Oscar Isaac, and Julianne Moore and directed

by George Clooney; the film was written by Ethan and Joel Coen, hence the Coen connection. Hassell also starred opposite Chris Evans and Sir Ben Kingsley in Red Sea Diving Resort, which is currently streaming on Netflix. He played the leading role of Johannes in the BBC One adaptation of The Miniaturist opposite award-winning actor Anya TaylorJoy (The Queen’s Gambit) which aired on BBC 1. He has also starred in the second series of Genius, which told the story of Picasso played by Antonio Banderas and can be seen on the National Geographic Channel.

The Bebop series is thought largely as a space Western, interested in exploring American ideas and tropes harkening back to classic Western films and kung fu martial arts films. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they sort of knock around the dialogue the way they are in the face of grave danger,

bursting out with their guns. That is very much the tone in terms of the kind of comedy and camaraderie of the characters of the bounty hunters.

“It has a wonderful nostalgic flair and right through the show it is built on nostalgia,” says Hassell. “It’s fast, quippy, lots of editing, lots of bright colors and imagination on the screen. Hopefully that blend will appeal to the masses because what is so cool about the show is that it’s a real cult. I somehow think it will appeal to a great number of people because it catches a lot of themes and tones.”

Hassell’s love for acting initially began when he was 12 and went to see a local amateur musical. He had no inkling that he wanted to be an actor, yet came out of that show absolutely sure that acting was what he wanted to do. Without any questions. At 12.

Hassell trained and grew up doing amateur musicals and theaters and dancing and singing, getting into Shakespeare. He then went to drama school in London which is a theater-based training and then did a bit of TV and films but mainly lots of theater. But he had to study and assumed the more he learned the more he would absorb. He spent 2 1/2 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company on stage and rehearsing every day.

That love of theater resulted in Hassell cofounding the Factory Theatre Company in 2009, starting with Hamlet and then The Seagull. “I think as a younger actor—or for any actor unless you’re incredibly lucky very early on and then continue to be incredibly lucky— you have great periods of downtime. And then to begin again (unless you’re exceptionally lucky), you’re often doing a “cough and a spit” in something. Or you’re doing a few scenes or something or you’re doing an ad or whatever and then how many months later you’re doing another two lines and something and I found it incredibly difficult to learn and to grow.

“So I wanted the opportunity to just work all the time. Maybe not work and get paid but pay into my own craft and engage with it and learn as much as possible. And at the same time a lot of my friends around me that I thought were exceptionally talented and much more talented than myself also were not getting the opportunities that they deserved. I felt that I wasn’t getting the op-

“I felt that I wasn’t getting the opportunities that I deserved at that time.” portunities that I deserved at that time.”

So Hassell and some friends decided to get together and set something up whereby every Wednesday night they’d just get a group of actors together, invite all of their friends and they can invite their best friends that they know, and will get together and will work on something really really difficult to learn. Hamlet was the first play. “So basically it came out of that and then we just kept playing and playing and playing. What we don’t wanna do is spend our time raising money. We want to spend our time acting and doing the work.”

Hassell and his friends would turn up on other people’s film sets or a music venue or in a park or in someone’s flat. They played hundreds of different places in the end. The casting would completely change, they’d all learn a bunch of different parts and use that as the real foundation. “And it just became this massive underground hit. It became this kind of thing that because we would release the information like a club or something, we release information on a Monday and they’d come see it on a Sunday and people would queue around the block. It was nuts.

Covid has put a damper on a number of filming schedules. During his filming in New Zealand, Hassell took the opportunity during Covid to reflect and re-calibrate and look at one’s life in life choices and use of time.

“I definitely tried to take that opportunity to see what it was like not to work constantly and not to constantly be trying to sort of move forward,” Hassell insists. “And it’s been really quite profound actually as it has been for many people and I think the forest time

in New Zealand changed me in that respect and I’m interested to see now getting back to work and getting back to London will affect my life moving forward in terms of work and in terms of everything really.

“I think these sorts of experiences heighten strands of everybody’s personalities I suppose. How you deal with it, and how you value it, and that definitely can be surprising and I think the reserves have been absolutely amazed at the emotional reserves of resilience that people have had in general, globally, but speaking more of my friends and family, especially those with kids. How they have managed to cope and keep their heads above water like on top of that look after each other and their children and indeed in many instances it seems have really sort of flourished as a family; forced to kind of work out how to live together in a way that is enriching for everyone. Which is no mean feat.”

After Bebop comes The Tragedy of Macbeth

by Coen. Getting that role was a stroke of luck for Hassell: turning an injury to Bebop lead John Cho into a starring role. Around two years ago Cho ruptured an ACL and they shut down production. Hassell told his agents he’d be coming home and they immediately started phoning casting directors and locked on Macbeth. They sent him the script and he read it on the plane and made the audition tape the next day and got the part. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival in September and closed the London Film Festival in October. Alex is Scottish nobleman Ross and importantly, Macduff’s cousin.

“It was an amazing stroke of fortune. John [Cho] is fine. His leg is fine. He is completely fine and I’ve now thanked him for the fact that that happened, but it’s amazing. I ended up in LA and we did rehearsals for about two or three weeks. Getting to see them [McDormand, Washington, director Coen] and being part of the collaborating process was an amazing gift. And they’re both obviously, it goes without saying, exceptionally fine, intelligent, empathetic, detailed, passionate actors. And it was amazing to be part of the group grappling with this stuff. And also having directed Macbeth and knowing Macbeth and having a history with Shakespeare, being able to kind of get on the floor with everyone and hash [out] and jump in together about what was going on was just a privilege from start to finish.”

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“INDEED, I TREMBLE FOR MY COUNTRY WHEN I REFLECT THAT GOD IS JUST.”*

IMAGE BY GUSTAVE DORÉ : ‘CHARON HERDS THE SINNERS ONTO HIS BOAT’

One of the most puzzling aspects of all things religious – and there are enough of them to choose from – is the belief that without a celestial dictator to give us moral guidance, we are lost. And this direction comes from a cruel, selfish, thoughtless, vindictive deity. Some example.

gion, in combination with scientific racism, did have a place in building racial tensions in colonial Australia and… see how frustrating and elliptical this argument is?)

But no matter how “apples and oranges” the US and Denmark may be, there may be something behind the pro-secular argument in regards to overall social health, and not only for policy issues like stem-cell research and rampant adolescent gonorrhea rates. Let’s do a crude breakdown of prosocial behaviors and say that it basically amounts to charity, working cooperatively with like-minded individuals or neighbors, and concern for the plight of strangers or people unlike ourselves. The last point can be included in the umbrella category of “tolerance,” which is, in the end, the most glaring line of demarcation between secular and non-secular nations. It is also the cheapest to realize and the hardest to change.

by Christiana Solano Thomas Jefferson (an advocate of secularism) wrote these words in reference to slavery, the cardinal American sin. Apparently, it was something of a moral burden to him. However, he wasn’t burdened enough to free his own slaves. And there, in a nutshell, we have the ongoing prismatic paradoxes between God and justice, nations under God and Godless nations, moral conscious and self-gain, modernization and traditionalism, and so on and so on…

It took Europe a while to change. Europe’s deviation from religion had its impetus in a violent continental history of religious wars. By the French Revolution, France had been dealing with religious wars as long as anyone could remember, and their now-famous (or infamous) brand of laicism is a result of a complete distaste of their own violent religious histories. Ideally, La Terreur should never happen in the US, though with recent deviations in our concept of American values, it looks as though we may get some sort of (less violent) game-changing fission.

The attributes of pro-social justice are nearly impossible to self-install. In a sense, it is remarkable that human beings are able to enact any large democracy at all. In his writings on “The Puzzle of Prosociality,” behavioral scientist Herbert Gintis remarks that humans are the only species to exhibit extensive cooperation even when they are not genetically related. Gintis attributes this to a number of factors including socially internalized norms, several types of biological and cultural transmissions, and an economic balance between self-interested and generous behaviors.

It is difficult to boil the world’s most “just” and happy societies to a few bullet point attributes, though a UK Guardian article “Godless Societies More Benevolent” by Nick Cohen picks one issue of prominence. Religion’s place in society has always been under question as possibly deleterious, though the recent publicity of Church crimes and surge of US intolerance (highlighted by the LGBTQ rights issues and rampant nationwide “Islamophobia”), puts the religion question at the forefront.

The following story will sound something like the usual political antidote, the kind of story a politician might pull out of his hat to emphasize an agenda, but it’s a perfect example of Gintis’ third point about one of the major components in the formation of prosocial behaviors: the reciprocity factor. The biggest blockade non-secular nations face, I believe, is that religion has simply convinced too many people that all good things in their life stem from the divine. If over 80 percent of Alabamans believe that all good things they have come from God and all goodness within them is God-given, then how are we to expect them to leave all that behind?

I was once in a South African airport waiting for a flight when a middle-aged American man sat next to me and asked where I had been. I told him Lesotho and Zimbabwe, and he began asking me if I knew where he could purchase a lot of Zimbabwean farmland (apparently he hadn’t heard of the dictator Robert Mugabe), and I told him that no, it was probably not a good idea to purchase land in Zimbabwe. I asked him what he was doing in South Africa. Charity work, he said, and proceeded to tell me about the hundreds of rudimentary African residents of Limpopo and how they all marveled at his benevolent whiteness and Christianity… or something like that. He said that it was his reconnection with God and Jesus that made him rethink his life and become generous.

Would the perennially polled “happy” countries like Switzerland and Iceland see their scores fall if they were as religious as the United States? Is there truth to the statement that becoming a more “Godless” society would aid the implementation of civil liberties and benevolence?

An article by Gregory S. Paul in the Journal of Religion and Science states rather bluntly: “The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.” He goes on to point out that the United States is a rarity in that it rates both highly religious and highly prosperous. The US has always been something of a statistical anomaly due to its size and geography and demographics. It’s not exactly productive to compare the US to Iceland, for example, because while Iceland is a tolerant and happy, most of their residents are genetically related.

In addition, openness to atheism and secularism also does not indicate immediate tolerance. Australia, for example, was a leader in a Gallup generosity poll and elected an atheist Prime Minister. This is attractive on the surface level, but Australia has also faced notoriously slow improvements in attitudes towards diversity, most recently demonstrated by the anti-Middle Eastern Cronulla riots. That’s a half-point against the “religion is evil” argument. (I say half-point because reli-

*

No matter how ridiculous he was (and obviously not all religiously-driven donators are ridiculous), can we knock the few contributions he made? Money is money, and help is help. But this inherently self-interested quest for higher spirituality in benevolence is perhaps why it doesn’t work on a state level. There is a different definition of benevolence and sometimes even tolerance when one acts with God in mind or has been told to do so one’s entire life. Acts of charity and justice are, if done in the name of God, filtered through God’s relationship with the charitable individual, which ends up being something of a one-on-one relationship. Religion isn’t the root of all evil. It just doesn’t function very well when it comes to national policies.

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WEEK ENDER ® FAIRFIELD Seize the moment with the Weekender® Fairfield. Classic minimalist cool with an easy-to-switch, slip-thru band so you can customize your look at a moment’s notice.

W e A r I t W e L l ®.

yOu kNoW tHiS wIlL nEvEr hApPeN aGaIn.

INDIGLO night-light ®

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