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  • Survivors, lawmakers demand release of all Jeffrey Epstein files

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    Survivors, lawmakers demand release of all Jeffrey Epstein files

    Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse and a bipartisan group of lawmakers are pushing for a discharge petition, forcing a House floor vote to release nearly everything related to the case.

    Updated: 3:17 PM PDT Sep 3, 2025

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    Demanding transparency, truth and their own healing, survivors of sexual abuse, along with bipartisan lawmakers, called for the release of all documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. Survivors accuse Epstein of abusing and trafficking countless underage girls for decades before his death in a New York jail cell in 2019. Survivors, including some speaking out for the first time, joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers, pushing for a discharge petition that would force a House floor vote on releasing nearly everything related to the Epstein case. “I am no longer weak, I am no longer powerless and I am no longer alone,” Anouska De Georgiou, a survivor, said before reporters on Wednesday. “With your vote, neither will the next generation be.”On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released more than 30,000 pages on the case, which some say were heavily redacted and revealed too little new information. The petition’s supporters want all investigation files released, emphasizing that the issue should be non-partisan.”The American people deserve to see everything,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said. “When you sign this discharge petition, it should mean nothing should be off limits.””The FBI, the DOJ, and the CIA hold the truth. And the truth we are demanding come out,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said.But the petition is already facing some roadblocks. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., says he believes the House Oversight Committee should be responsible for carefully handling the documents, while President Trump dismissed the effort Wednesday, calling it “a Democrat hoax.”Related video below: Speaker Johnson on meeting with Epstein victimsSurvivors responded directly to President Trump’s dismissal, with one registered Republican calling on him to meet her at the Capitol to share her story and explain why the issue is not a hoax. Others pleaded that he recognize the abuse as real and humanize them.Lawmakers leading the petition are close to a House floor vote, needing only two more signatures to reach the required 218. So far, the petition includes all Democrats and at least a handful of Republicans, including Greene and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.Lawmakers emphasized the rare coalition of bipartisanship, signifying the growing issue. If the petition passes the House, it still needs to pass the Senate before heading to Trump’s desk.Regardless of the petition’s outcome, survivors are planning their own action for justice by compiling a list of those involved in Epstein’s network of abuse, though they did not specify if or when they would release it. In Wednesday’s press conference, the victims said they aim to hold the powerful accountable and help their healing, despite concerns about retaliation from Epstein’s circle.

    WASHINGTON —

    Demanding transparency, truth and their own healing, survivors of sexual abuse, along with bipartisan lawmakers, called for the release of all documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

    Survivors accuse Epstein of abusing and trafficking countless underage girls for decades before his death in a New York jail cell in 2019.

    Survivors, including some speaking out for the first time, joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers, pushing for a discharge petition that would force a House floor vote on releasing nearly everything related to the Epstein case.

    “I am no longer weak, I am no longer powerless and I am no longer alone,” Anouska De Georgiou, a survivor, said before reporters on Wednesday. “With your vote, neither will the next generation be.”

    On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released more than 30,000 pages on the case, which some say were heavily redacted and revealed too little new information. The petition’s supporters want all investigation files released, emphasizing that the issue should be non-partisan.

    “The American people deserve to see everything,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said. “When you sign this discharge petition, it should mean nothing should be off limits.”

    “The FBI, the DOJ, and the CIA hold the truth. And the truth we are demanding come out,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said.

    But the petition is already facing some roadblocks. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., says he believes the House Oversight Committee should be responsible for carefully handling the documents, while President Trump dismissed the effort Wednesday, calling it “a Democrat hoax.”

    Related video below: Speaker Johnson on meeting with Epstein victims

    Survivors responded directly to President Trump’s dismissal, with one registered Republican calling on him to meet her at the Capitol to share her story and explain why the issue is not a hoax. Others pleaded that he recognize the abuse as real and humanize them.

    Lawmakers leading the petition are close to a House floor vote, needing only two more signatures to reach the required 218. So far, the petition includes all Democrats and at least a handful of Republicans, including Greene and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.

    Lawmakers emphasized the rare coalition of bipartisanship, signifying the growing issue.

    If the petition passes the House, it still needs to pass the Senate before heading to Trump’s desk.

    Regardless of the petition’s outcome, survivors are planning their own action for justice by compiling a list of those involved in Epstein’s network of abuse, though they did not specify if or when they would release it. In Wednesday’s press conference, the victims said they aim to hold the powerful accountable and help their healing, despite concerns about retaliation from Epstein’s circle.

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  • Johnson faces escalating pressure as House GOP prepares for Epstein vote

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    On his first full day back in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson sat for hours in a closed-door interview with six women who say they were abused by the late Jeffrey Epstein.Johnson’s presence in the room on the first day of a frenetically busy September on Capitol Hill underscores how significant the issue of Epstein’s past crimes has become within the GOP.Within days, House Republicans are expected to take their first major floor votes on forcing President Donald Trump’s administration to release more records related to the case. And Johnson — like his members — is under intense pressure to meet the base’s demands for transparency without going against the wishes of the president, whose inner circle has attempted to quiet this summer’s political firestorm over Epstein.“The fact that Mike Johnson sat there for two and a half hours — we’re serious about this,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters after leaving the meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to do everything we can to make this right.”Johnson himself told reporters the testimonials he heard were “heartbreaking and infuriating” and said “there were tears in the room. There was outrage.”Five weeks ago, Johnson and his leadership team had hoped that sending lawmakers home early to their districts for their August recess would defuse tension around the issue. But the return of Congress to Washington showed that the pressure on GOP leaders has only continued to build.That pressure on Republicans will dramatically increase on Wednesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie and his Democratic counterpart in the effort, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, will hold a press conference in which some of Epstein’s survivors are expected to speak publicly for the first time.Massie and Khanna are leading a push to force the full House to vote on a resolution that would require Trump’s Justice Department to turn over all documents related to Epstein or his crimes. Under their maneuver, known as a discharge petition, Massie would need just five more Republicans to force the bill to the floor since every Democrat is expected to sign on.So far, two other Republicans have signaled they’ll support it: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Other Republicans who have supported the bill itself — including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Eli Crane of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee — were either noncommittal or suggested they would not support the discharge petition when asked by CNN on Tuesday.The House Oversight Committee has been leading an investigation into Epstein after some Republicans joined with Democrats to compel a subpoena to the Justice Department for records. The panel on Tuesday night released more than 33,000 pages related to the case – all of the subpoenaed documents the panel had obtained earlier this summer.But the public release of information has not stopped the push for more transparency that has ratcheted up the pressure on Johnson. Massie and Democrats said nearly all of those documents had already been made public as part of various court cases and that it did not alter their push for their own Epstein measure.As part of its investigation, the Oversight Committee hosted a meeting on Tuesday with several survivors who are planning to speak at Wednesday’s press conference. In that closed-door meeting, several of them shared chilling stories of abuse. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the lawmakers in the room who has spoken out about being raped at age 16, left the meeting in tears.Inside the room, one survivor said the women had been told by Epstein that they were disposable and threatened against coming forward, according to a person in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The women were told if they went to police that Epstein had powerful friends, that person said.If the bipartisan Epstein resolution does pass the House, its fate is unclear in the Senate. But it would be an extraordinary move by a GOP-controlled Congress to take against a president of its own party.To prevent such an escalation, Johnson and the White House are attempting to sell their GOP members on an alternative path. They have backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the Oversight Committee’s investigation. And Johnson stressed the importance of the work of that panel, in part by sitting in on one of the sessions himself.“I sat by him in our meeting and listened to his compassion for these survivors. I listened to his questions,” Greene said of Johnson as she left the meeting. “I’ve listened to some of his plans that he has going forward. I do think he’s doing a great job there.”Even so, Greene is one of the three Republicans so far willing to buck her leadership on the discharge petition. She said it was nothing against Johnson personally, but that she decided: “I just think we need to do everything we can to bring it out.”Inside the House GOP conference, some Republicans are privately dreading weeks of questions about the Epstein matter and would rather move onto issues like appropriations, tariffs or Russian sanctions, according to multiple lawmakers and senior aides. But many of those GOP lawmakers also realize that there is a small but vocal faction of their party that is deeply invested in getting more answers on Epstein and that they can’t be seen as dropping the issue.Democrats, meanwhile, are accusing Johnson of attempting to stonewall further investigations in Congress.Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters after the meeting that Johnson was advocating that the investigation should remain within the Oversight panel — rather than expanding the probe to include more committees.“In the room with six victims of sexual violence by Jeffrey Epstein, it was suggested by Democrats that this be investigated using the full force of every committee here in Congress. And the speaker ended by saying he didn’t think that was necessary. He’d like to just keep it in the Oversight Committee,” Stansbury said. “That is where the speaker actually chose to end this conversation.”Johnson, speaking after the Tuesday meeting, vowed “transparency” in releasing information to the public, and said that Trump shares the same perspective.“That’s his mindset. And he wants the American people to have information so they can draw their own conclusions. I’ve talked with him about this very subject myself.. He also, just as we do, is insistent that we protect the innocent victims, and that’s what this has been about,” he said.

    WASHINGTON —

    On his first full day back in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson sat for hours in a closed-door interview with six women who say they were abused by the late Jeffrey Epstein.

    Johnson’s presence in the room on the first day of a frenetically busy September on Capitol Hill underscores how significant the issue of Epstein’s past crimes has become within the GOP.

    Within days, House Republicans are expected to take their first major floor votes on forcing President Donald Trump’s administration to release more records related to the case. And Johnson — like his members — is under intense pressure to meet the base’s demands for transparency without going against the wishes of the president, whose inner circle has attempted to quiet this summer’s political firestorm over Epstein.

    “The fact that Mike Johnson sat there for two and a half hours — we’re serious about this,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters after leaving the meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to do everything we can to make this right.”

    Johnson himself told reporters the testimonials he heard were “heartbreaking and infuriating” and said “there were tears in the room. There was outrage.”

    Five weeks ago, Johnson and his leadership team had hoped that sending lawmakers home early to their districts for their August recess would defuse tension around the issue. But the return of Congress to Washington showed that the pressure on GOP leaders has only continued to build.

    That pressure on Republicans will dramatically increase on Wednesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie and his Democratic counterpart in the effort, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, will hold a press conference in which some of Epstein’s survivors are expected to speak publicly for the first time.

    Massie and Khanna are leading a push to force the full House to vote on a resolution that would require Trump’s Justice Department to turn over all documents related to Epstein or his crimes. Under their maneuver, known as a discharge petition, Massie would need just five more Republicans to force the bill to the floor since every Democrat is expected to sign on.

    So far, two other Republicans have signaled they’ll support it: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Other Republicans who have supported the bill itself — including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Eli Crane of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee — were either noncommittal or suggested they would not support the discharge petition when asked by CNN on Tuesday.

    The House Oversight Committee has been leading an investigation into Epstein after some Republicans joined with Democrats to compel a subpoena to the Justice Department for records. The panel on Tuesday night released more than 33,000 pages related to the case – all of the subpoenaed documents the panel had obtained earlier this summer.

    But the public release of information has not stopped the push for more transparency that has ratcheted up the pressure on Johnson. Massie and Democrats said nearly all of those documents had already been made public as part of various court cases and that it did not alter their push for their own Epstein measure.

    As part of its investigation, the Oversight Committee hosted a meeting on Tuesday with several survivors who are planning to speak at Wednesday’s press conference. In that closed-door meeting, several of them shared chilling stories of abuse. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the lawmakers in the room who has spoken out about being raped at age 16, left the meeting in tears.

    Inside the room, one survivor said the women had been told by Epstein that they were disposable and threatened against coming forward, according to a person in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The women were told if they went to police that Epstein had powerful friends, that person said.

    If the bipartisan Epstein resolution does pass the House, its fate is unclear in the Senate. But it would be an extraordinary move by a GOP-controlled Congress to take against a president of its own party.

    To prevent such an escalation, Johnson and the White House are attempting to sell their GOP members on an alternative path. They have backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the Oversight Committee’s investigation. And Johnson stressed the importance of the work of that panel, in part by sitting in on one of the sessions himself.

    “I sat by him in our meeting and listened to his compassion for these survivors. I listened to his questions,” Greene said of Johnson as she left the meeting. “I’ve listened to some of his plans that he has going forward. I do think he’s doing a great job there.”

    Even so, Greene is one of the three Republicans so far willing to buck her leadership on the discharge petition. She said it was nothing against Johnson personally, but that she decided: “I just think we need to do everything we can to bring it out.”

    Inside the House GOP conference, some Republicans are privately dreading weeks of questions about the Epstein matter and would rather move onto issues like appropriations, tariffs or Russian sanctions, according to multiple lawmakers and senior aides. But many of those GOP lawmakers also realize that there is a small but vocal faction of their party that is deeply invested in getting more answers on Epstein and that they can’t be seen as dropping the issue.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are accusing Johnson of attempting to stonewall further investigations in Congress.

    Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters after the meeting that Johnson was advocating that the investigation should remain within the Oversight panel — rather than expanding the probe to include more committees.

    “In the room with six victims of sexual violence by Jeffrey Epstein, it was suggested by Democrats that this be investigated using the full force of every committee here in Congress. And the speaker ended by saying he didn’t think that was necessary. He’d like to just keep it in the Oversight Committee,” Stansbury said. “That is where the speaker actually chose to end this conversation.”

    Johnson, speaking after the Tuesday meeting, vowed “transparency” in releasing information to the public, and said that Trump shares the same perspective.

    “That’s his mindset. And he wants the American people to have information so they can draw their own conclusions. I’ve talked with him about this very subject myself.. He also, just as we do, is insistent that we protect the innocent victims, and that’s what this has been about,” he said.

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  • ‘Survivor’ Season 47, Episode 8

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    On today’s episode, Tyson is joined by Ethan Zohn, Sole Survivor of Survivor: Africa, to chat about the eighth episode of Survivor 47! They chat about the return and new twists of the auction, the reveal of sneaky threats, and the benefits of long-term alliances.

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol
    Guest: Ethan Zohn
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

    Subscribe: Spotify / YouTube

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  • ‘You need to be prepared to die’: Wife of Florida man killed during standoff tells her story

    ‘You need to be prepared to die’: Wife of Florida man killed during standoff tells her story

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    The wife of a Port St. Lucie man, who was shot dead by police after threatening to blow up their house with her and their 6-year-old triplets inside, is now sharing her story.Amanda Fialho recounted to WPBF-25 News that on the afternoon of Sept. 28, her husband, Paul Simon Fialho, grabbed her and told her they needed to talk. “He had a blank look on his face,” Amanda Fialho said. “He told me, ‘You need to be prepared to die today because I’m prepared to die today.’”She described how he overturned the washer and dryer to barricade them in their converted garage and used zip ties to bind her hands, feet and neck. Her husband also gathered three propane tanks and gasoline.Police reports state that when officers entered the home, Paul Simon Fialho was holding a propane tank and a lighter. Upon his refusal to drop them, an officer was left with no choice but to disable the threat.”I turned, and there were cops with guns just two to four feet from my face,” Amanda Filaho said. “They told me to duck, and I did just as they shot him.”She said her husband was a good father, and Amanda believes it was the medication he was on that led to his drastic change in behavior. “I wanted to share my story to raise awareness about the dangers of some prescription drugs that caused the psychosis my husband suffered,” she said.Currently, she is attempting to return to her home but requires a contractor’s help to make it livable again for her and their five children. She hopes anyone who can help will reach out to her.”I have nothing,” Amanda Fialho said. “I didn’t ask for this, and I didn’t want this to happen. I’d do anything to change it, but I can’t.”She also mentioned that a GoFundMe account https://gofund.me/c3250b30 has been set up to assist her in rebuilding her life.

    The wife of a Port St. Lucie man, who was shot dead by police after threatening to blow up their house with her and their 6-year-old triplets inside, is now sharing her story.

    Amanda Fialho recounted to WPBF-25 News that on the afternoon of Sept. 28, her husband, Paul Simon Fialho, grabbed her and told her they needed to talk.

    “He had a blank look on his face,” Amanda Fialho said. “He told me, ‘You need to be prepared to die today because I’m prepared to die today.’”

    She described how he overturned the washer and dryer to barricade them in their converted garage and used zip ties to bind her hands, feet and neck.

    Her husband also gathered three propane tanks and gasoline.

    Police reports state that when officers entered the home, Paul Simon Fialho was holding a propane tank and a lighter. Upon his refusal to drop them, an officer was left with no choice but to disable the threat.

    “I turned, and there were cops with guns just two to four feet from my face,” Amanda Filaho said. “They told me to duck, and I did just as they shot him.”

    She said her husband was a good father, and Amanda believes it was the medication he was on that led to his drastic change in behavior.

    “I wanted to share my story to raise awareness about the dangers of some prescription drugs that caused the psychosis my husband suffered,” she said.

    Currently, she is attempting to return to her home but requires a contractor’s help to make it livable again for her and their five children. She hopes anyone who can help will reach out to her.

    “I have nothing,” Amanda Fialho said. “I didn’t ask for this, and I didn’t want this to happen. I’d do anything to change it, but I can’t.”

    She also mentioned that a GoFundMe account https://gofund.me/c3250b30 has been set up to assist her in rebuilding her life.

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  • Unbelievable facts

    Unbelievable facts

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    After being denied the use of Another One Bites the Dust for Rocky III, Sylvester Stallone contacted…

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  • Unbelievable facts

    Unbelievable facts

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    A hiker in Colorado scared off a mountain lion by singing opera at the top of her lungs. The…

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  • The Emmys Need a Reality Check

    The Emmys Need a Reality Check

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    Photo: Euan Cherry/Peacock

    When it comes to Emmy voters, they like what they like. The shows they picked last year are more often than not the shows they will pick this year. We all groaned at five consecutive years of Modern Family winning Outstanding Comedy and The Handmaid’s Tale raking in a dozen or more nominations long past its prime. But that kind of rut-digging reaches the point of parody when it comes to the reality-TV categories, where Emmy voters have been nominating the same shows for ten, 15, and even 20 years.

    This goes all the way back to 2003, when The Amazing Race won the very first Outstanding Reality Competition Emmy. Survivor and American Idol were the more popular shows, but The Amazing Race had a prestige sheen (world travel! Cinematography!), so it wasn’t a huge surprise when it won. What was a surprise was The Amazing Race going on to win the category for the first seven years of its existence, nine of the first ten, and ten in total. This continued long past the point where The Amazing Race was considered one of the premier reality-TV shows; past the early seasons of Project Runway (which has never won) and Top Chef (which won only once, in 2010). After The Amazing Race won all its Emmys, The Voice won three out of four years, followed by RuPaul’s Drag Race winning five out of the last six years.

    In the 21 years the Outstanding Reality Competition category has existed, only five shows have ever won, including a surprise victory for Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls in 2022. Moreover, only 17 shows have ever even been nominated. This category covers, per the Emmy rules, “programs that include a competitive element for a prize […] with produced contestant story elements and other reality-style competitive elements.” This excludes “unstructured reality” shows (basically anything on Bravo) as well as game shows like The Floor or “structured reality” shows like Shark Tank, which apparently doesn’t contain sufficient “story elements” to qualify. (Ask me to explain why Chopped is a Reality Competition while Shark Tank is a Structured Reality show, and I will curl up into a ball.) But even though Reality Competition only represents a fraction of the reality shows produced, five winners and 17 nominees in two decades is a shocking number. At least with Outstanding Variety Talk Series, the one where all the late-night shows get nominated, you understand there are only a handful of shows to choose from. Over the same span, there have been 52 shows nominated for Outstanding Drama and 54 nominated for Outstanding Comedy, and even with those categories eventually expanding to more nominees, that is a wild discrepancy.

    This kind of rubber-stamping shows up in a lot of the reality categories. Outstanding Host of a Reality Program has only had six winners since that category debuted in 2008 (RuPaul is currently on an eight-year streak). The Outstanding Structured Reality Program Emmy has gone to Netflix’s Queer Eye for the last six years in a row, and has nominated Antiques Road Show for 14 straight years, Shark Tank for 12 straight years, and Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives in seven of the last ten years. Meanwhile, the Emmys have wholesale ignored entire subgenres of reality; The Bachelor franchise has never been nominated for an Emmy in any of its iterations. The Challenge has been similarly blanked, and its parent series, no less groundbreaking a show as The Real World, was only ever nominated for one Emmy, back in 2000 for Outstanding Picture Editing in a Non-Fiction Program, which it lost to PBS’s American Experience documentary on New York City.

    Famously, just last year, Vanderpump Rules became the first show in the Real Housewives universe to receive Emmy nominations, for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program and Outstanding Editing (Unstructured Reality). This category — which has existed since 2014, when the Outstanding Reality Program category (i.e. everything that wasn’t a competition) was split into Structured and Unstructured — has been a hodgepodge of shows from Discovery (Deadliest Catch), A&E (Intervention and Born This Way), and recently Netflix (Selling Sunset, Cheer, Love on the Spectrum). It’s the one reality category where voters cycle in new nominees (last year it was Vanderpump and the winner, Welcome to Wrexham).

    So, what explains this uncommonly rigid voting pattern in Reality Competition? Part of it is that reality shows just keep going. If Game of Thrones had lasted 20 years, the Emmys might still be voting for it. But I’ve always wondered how much industry intransigence has to do with this. In the years after Survivor debuted, there was a pervasive sense of unease in Hollywood, as cheaper-to-make reality shows took up more space on network lineups and left less room for shows with writers and actors. Adding a Reality category to the Emmys felt like capitulation to the Fear Factor–watching hordes. Perhaps block voting for the same five shows every year was a way to keep most reality shows from getting extra shine. Of course, conspiratorial thinking like that requires a kind of coordination that only ever happens when Andrea Riseborough is involved. But at the very least, we can say that Emmy voters haven’t shown much interest in seeking out worthy reality shows beyond a narrow few.

    The narrow few that are expected to be nominated this year are the same ones that were nominated last year: RuPaul’s Drag Race, Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Voice, and Top Chef. You could make the case for The Nailed It Baking Challenge, since the original was nominated four times from 2019-2022. But just one year removed from the strikes, it’s hard to imagine voting for a show that canceled a season mid-stream amid union talks from its workers.

    There is one possible hope for a category shakeup in the form of Peacock’s The Traitors. The all-reality-stars second season was enough of a cultural flashpoint that Emmy voters might just pay attention. While the show is still tinkering with how to perfect gameplay, the character editing in season two was incredible: the Peter Pals alliance, Parvati shooting inscrutable glances across the room, every single Phaedra interjection. The challenges may not have been any better at influencing game play, but at least they involved slamming coffin lids in eliminated players’ faces and snatching up reality stars in Ewok-style tree nets.

    Season one was only nominated for Outstanding Casting for a Reality Program, which it won, indicating that voters are at least aware of and in favor of the show, opening the door to even more nominations this year. The shows The Traitors beat in that category, including Drag Race, Top Chef, and Queer Eye, are all bona fide Emmy favorites; considering how much reality TV success lies in casting, it’s a good bellwether category. And vibes-wise, it does feel like Alan Cumming crashing the Emmys red carpet in a turquoise tartan sash is inevitable. That’s the optimistic view; the pessimistic view is that one low-level award is all voters are willing to give to this show, and Emmy voters seem to have lost their Peacock password, having previously slighted shows like Girls5Eva and Mrs. Davis (and even under-rewarding Poker Face last year).

    A Traitors nomination, while welcome, would only change the Reality Competition lineup by 20 percent. For a category that’s become fossilized, that’s not nearly enough, which is why I’m proposing a radical solution: Clear the decks. Bar voters from selecting any show that’s previously been nominated. There are plenty of other reality shows out there, and if the Emmys are supposed to be about the year’s best television, they’re overlooking much of what’s new and good in one of TV’s major genres. If voters have latched onto Drag Race in its celebration of queerness and gender transgression, then honor what’s queer and transgressive in a show like The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. If the tried-and-true social strategy of Survivor has been worthy year-in and year-out, then The Traitors taking the paranoia of vote-out shows to maniacal new heights is worth supporting. If The Amazing Race is commendable for the production challenges inherent in a race around the world, wouldn’t the nervy innovations of a show like Alone be worth a nomination some time?

    If Emmy voters aren’t going to acknowledge the evolution of reality-TV competitions beyond their approved handful, then this is a broken category. But it doesn’t have to be. Realistically, we’re not going to see a complete overhaul of the reality TV categories, short of a rule that caps the number of consecutive years a show can get nominated. But I’m never going to quit hollering about it. And if the Academy wants to take some advice this year, we’ve got some suggestions at the ready.

    I’m sorry, is The Amazing Race delivering TV like Tom Hanks’s niece (by marriage! All the weirdness in the Hanks family tree falls under Rita’s branches) throwing an absolute hissyfit in the season premiere because she got eliminated? Is The Voice giving you Franklin (née Frankie) Jonas in sweater after enviable sweater? This has been the most cleverly conceived social-strategy show in many years, complicating classic alliance play with multiple threat levels (you want to get rid of the clever players who can guess your identity, but you might need them for help when you have no idea who the hell Donny Osmond’s kid is) and devising weekly games that allow both the players and the audience to put together clues. This is the best play-along-at-home show since we all decided to vote for Sanjaya that one year on American Idol.

    One good thing about the Emmys’ reality-TV stubbornness is that it never fell for the insincere “charms” of The Bachelor. But this spin-off of the show deserves to be the exception, if only for recognizing after two decades that love stories are more interesting among people who have actually lived life.

    Nobody thought this show was a good idea, and plenty of people remain chagrined that the original series’ anti-capitalist message got watered down with a spin-off. (Then there were all those reports of shivering, poorly cared-for contestants.) Caveats aside, though, Squid Game: The Challenge improbably edited a game that started with 456 players into a narrative that maintained compelling stakes, characters, and storylines, all while the original series’ sinisterly simplistic games weeded out the competition pitilessly.

    There’s room for more sweaty wilderness reality competitions beyond Survivor. The History Channel’s Alone, which continues to be the most genuinely perilous show on television, has been dropping survivalists in remote locations to forage, hunt, build shelters, starve, and outlast each other for almost a decade — and it’s only gotten better over time. Alone enters its eleventh season this summer, but the show’s grand innovations and contributions to the reality genre have been present from the very beginning: a storytelling framework that relies on competitors documenting themselves, a robust production infrastructure, and total commitment to the hardcore nature of its premise. Very few things in reality television are as unique as Alone; even fewer achieve its real highs.

    The reality-competition category has included shows that involve singing, dancing, cooking, and designing clothes. But not once has the Emmys recognized a program where people make shit out of glass. The time has come to change that with Blown Away, the only glass-blowing reality competition and also the only show that features terms like annealer and gloryhole on a regular basis. The artists on this series sweat — truly, literally — through every challenge, melting and manipulating glass until it looks like bubble gum, then molding it into magnificent sculptures. (Or watch it shatter in their grasp, an event that never gets less nerve-wracking despite the dozens of times it happens.) Blown Away is about the fragility and delicacy of creating art in a fast-paced, industrial environment that seems designed to break it before it can even be seen. Sounds pretty timely to me.

    The human body is capable of astonishing things, of effort and physicality and strength that is nearly incomprehensible. Such is the experience of watching Netflix’s Physical: 100, a South Korean reality competition that pits 100 extremely fit people against each other in a series of grueling individual and team challenges to determine whose body is the best. This premise seems a lot simpler than it is: As people of all kinds of backgrounds converge — professional athletes, military veterans, models, MMA fighters, firefighters — many competitors assume they’ll dominate based on how ripped they are or how sturdy or tall, and those expectations trickle down to viewers, too. Surely the most muscular will rise about the rest, given that so many cultures prize ab count over other aspects of fitness. But part of the delight of watching Physical: 100 is how often that assumption is undercut by the contestants’ varying degrees of success regardless of body type. Those subversions make the viewer wonder what, exactly, winning takes. Is it a particular kind of athletic ability? Willpower or determination or stubbornness? Physical: 100 is set up to make us obsess over finding that X-factor, and the cliffhanger-heavy episodic structure and clever editing amp up the drama. It’s a unique format that upends so much of what we’ve come to expect from physical-competition shows, and it deserves recognition for that.

    Jen Chaney, Roxana Hadadi, and Nicholas Quah contributed submissions.

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  • A Stabbing in Colts Neck

    A Stabbing in Colts Neck

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    A Stabbing in Colts Neck – CBS News


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    A woman outwits a young stranger who attacked her in her own home. What will it take to find him? “48 Hours” contributor Jim Axelrod reports.

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  • 25 years after Columbine, trauma shadows survivors of the school shooting

    25 years after Columbine, trauma shadows survivors of the school shooting

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    Hours after she escaped the Columbine High School shooting, 14-year-old Missy Mendo slept between her parents in bed, still wearing the shoes she had on when she fled her math class. She wanted to be ready to run.Related video above — Clarified: How do schools respond to gun incidents?Twenty-five years later, and with Mendo now a mother herself, the trauma from that horrific day remains close on her heels.It caught up to her when 60 people were shot dead in 2017 at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a city she had visited a lot while working in the casino industry. Then again, in 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed in Uvalde, Texas.Mendo had been filling out her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application when news of the elementary school shooting broke. She read a few lines of a news story about Uvalde, then put her head down and cried.”It felt like nothing changed,” she recalls thinking.In the quarter-century since two gunmen at Columbine shot and killed 12 fellow students and a teacher in suburban Denver — an attack that played out on live television and ushered in the modern era of school shootings — the traumas of that day have continued to shadow Mendo and others who were there.Some needed years to view themselves as Columbine survivors since they were not physically wounded. Yet things like fireworks could still trigger disturbing memories. The aftershocks — often unacknowledged in the years before mental health struggles were more widely recognized — led to some survivors suffering insomnia, dropping out of school, or disengaging from their spouses or families.Survivors and other members of the community plan to attend a candlelight vigil on the steps of the state’s capitol Friday night, the eve of the shooting’s anniversary.April is particularly hard for Mendo, 39, whose “brain turns to mashed potatoes” each year. She shows up at dentist appointments early, misplaces her keys, forgets to close the refrigerator door.She leans on therapy and the understanding of an expanding group of shooting survivors she has met through The Rebels Project, a support group founded by other Columbine survivors following a 2012 shooting when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in the nearby suburb of Aurora. Mendo started seeing a therapist after her child’s first birthday, at the urging of fellow survivor moms.After she broke down over Uvalde, Mendo, a single parent, said she talked to her mom, took a walk to get some fresh air, and then finished her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application.”Was I afraid of her going into the public school system? Absolutely,” Mendo said of her daughter. “I wanted her to have as normal of a life as possible.”Researchers who’ve studied the long-term effects of gun violence in schools have quantified protracted struggles among survivors, including long-term academic effects like absenteeism and reduced college enrollment, and lower earnings later in life.”Just counting lives lost is kind of an incorrect way to capture the full cost of these tragedies,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Health Policy.Mass killings have recurred with numbing frequency in the years since Columbine, with almost 600 attacks in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, since 2006, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.More than 80% of the 3,045 victims in those attacks were killed by a firearm.Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to school shootings that are often not mass-casualty events but still traumatic, Rossin-Slater said. The impacts can last a lifetime, she added, resulting in “kind of a persistent, reduced potential” for survivors.Those who were present at Columbine say the years since have given them time to learn more about what happened to them and how to cope with it.Heather Martin, now 42, was a Columbine senior in 1999. In college, she began crying during a fire drill, realizing later that a fire alarm had gone off for three hours when she and 60 other students hid in a barricaded office during the high school shooting. She couldn’t return to that class and was marked absent each time, and says she failed it after refusing to write a final paper on school violence, despite telling her professor of her experience at Columbine.It took 10 years for her to see herself as a survivor, after she was invited back with the rest of the class of 1999 for an anniversary event. She saw fellow classmates having similar struggles and almost immediately decided to go back to college to become a teacher.Martin, a co-founder of The Rebels Project, named after Columbine’s mascot, said 25 years has given her time to struggle and figure out how to work out of those struggles.”I just know myself so well now and know how I respond to things and what might activate me and how I can bounce back and be OK. And most importantly, I think I can recognize when I am not OK and when I do need to seek help,” she said.Kiki Leyba, a first-year teacher at Columbine in 1999, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder soon after the shooting. He felt a strong sense of commitment to return to the school, where he threw himself into his work. But he continued to have panic attacks.To help him cope, he had sleeping pills and some Xanax for anxiety, Leyba said. One therapist recommended chamomile tea.Things got harder for him after the 2002 graduation of Mendo’s class, the last cohort of students who lived through the shooting since they had been through so much together.By 2005, after years of not taking care of himself and suffering from lack of sleep, Leyba said he would often check out from family life, sleeping in on the weekends and turning into a “blob on the couch.” Finally, his wife Kallie enrolled him in a one-week trauma treatment program, arranging for him to take the time off from work without telling him.”Thankfully, that really gave me a kind of a foothold … to do the work to climb out of that,” said Leyba, who said breathing exercises, journaling, meditation and anti-depressants have helped him.Like Mendo and Martin, he has traveled around the country to work with survivors of shootings.”That worst day has transformed into something I can offer to others,” said Leyba, who is in Washington, D.C., this week meeting with officials about gun violence and promoting a new film about his trauma journey.Mendo still lives in the area, and her 5-year-old daughter attends school near Columbine. When her daughter’s school locked down last year as police swarmed the neighborhood during a hostage situation, Mendo recalled worrying things like: What if my child is in danger? What if there is another school shooting like Columbine?When Mendo picked up her daughter, she seemed a little scared, and she hugged her mom a little tighter. Mendo breathed deeply to stay calm, a technique she had learned in therapy, and put on a brave face.”If I was putting down some fear, she would pick it up,” she said. “I didn’t want that for her.”____Associated Press writer Mead Gruver contributed to this report.

    DENVER (AP) —

    Hours after she escaped the Columbine High School shooting, 14-year-old Missy Mendo slept between her parents in bed, still wearing the shoes she had on when she fled her math class. She wanted to be ready to run.

    Related video above — Clarified: How do schools respond to gun incidents?

    Twenty-five years later, and with Mendo now a mother herself, the trauma from that horrific day remains close on her heels.

    It caught up to her when 60 people were shot dead in 2017 at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a city she had visited a lot while working in the casino industry. Then again, in 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed in Uvalde, Texas.

    Mendo had been filling out her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application when news of the elementary school shooting broke. She read a few lines of a news story about Uvalde, then put her head down and cried.

    “It felt like nothing changed,” she recalls thinking.

    In the quarter-century since two gunmen at Columbine shot and killed 12 fellow students and a teacher in suburban Denver — an attack that played out on live television and ushered in the modern era of school shootings — the traumas of that day have continued to shadow Mendo and others who were there.

    Some needed years to view themselves as Columbine survivors since they were not physically wounded. Yet things like fireworks could still trigger disturbing memories. The aftershocks — often unacknowledged in the years before mental health struggles were more widely recognized — led to some survivors suffering insomnia, dropping out of school, or disengaging from their spouses or families.

    Survivors and other members of the community plan to attend a candlelight vigil on the steps of the state’s capitol Friday night, the eve of the shooting’s anniversary.

    April is particularly hard for Mendo, 39, whose “brain turns to mashed potatoes” each year. She shows up at dentist appointments early, misplaces her keys, forgets to close the refrigerator door.

    She leans on therapy and the understanding of an expanding group of shooting survivors she has met through The Rebels Project, a support group founded by other Columbine survivors following a 2012 shooting when a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in the nearby suburb of Aurora. Mendo started seeing a therapist after her child’s first birthday, at the urging of fellow survivor moms.

    After she broke down over Uvalde, Mendo, a single parent, said she talked to her mom, took a walk to get some fresh air, and then finished her daughter’s pre-kindergarten application.

    “Was I afraid of her going into the public school system? Absolutely,” Mendo said of her daughter. “I wanted her to have as normal of a life as possible.”

    Researchers who’ve studied the long-term effects of gun violence in schools have quantified protracted struggles among survivors, including long-term academic effects like absenteeism and reduced college enrollment, and lower earnings later in life.

    “Just counting lives lost is kind of an incorrect way to capture the full cost of these tragedies,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, an associate professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Department of Health Policy.

    Mass killings have recurred with numbing frequency in the years since Columbine, with almost 600 attacks in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, since 2006, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.

    More than 80% of the 3,045 victims in those attacks were killed by a firearm.

    Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of people have been exposed to school shootings that are often not mass-casualty events but still traumatic, Rossin-Slater said. The impacts can last a lifetime, she added, resulting in “kind of a persistent, reduced potential” for survivors.

    Those who were present at Columbine say the years since have given them time to learn more about what happened to them and how to cope with it.

    Heather Martin, now 42, was a Columbine senior in 1999. In college, she began crying during a fire drill, realizing later that a fire alarm had gone off for three hours when she and 60 other students hid in a barricaded office during the high school shooting. She couldn’t return to that class and was marked absent each time, and says she failed it after refusing to write a final paper on school violence, despite telling her professor of her experience at Columbine.

    It took 10 years for her to see herself as a survivor, after she was invited back with the rest of the class of 1999 for an anniversary event. She saw fellow classmates having similar struggles and almost immediately decided to go back to college to become a teacher.

    Martin, a co-founder of The Rebels Project, named after Columbine’s mascot, said 25 years has given her time to struggle and figure out how to work out of those struggles.

    “I just know myself so well now and know how I respond to things and what might activate me and how I can bounce back and be OK. And most importantly, I think I can recognize when I am not OK and when I do need to seek help,” she said.

    Kiki Leyba, a first-year teacher at Columbine in 1999, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder soon after the shooting. He felt a strong sense of commitment to return to the school, where he threw himself into his work. But he continued to have panic attacks.

    To help him cope, he had sleeping pills and some Xanax for anxiety, Leyba said. One therapist recommended chamomile tea.

    Things got harder for him after the 2002 graduation of Mendo’s class, the last cohort of students who lived through the shooting since they had been through so much together.

    By 2005, after years of not taking care of himself and suffering from lack of sleep, Leyba said he would often check out from family life, sleeping in on the weekends and turning into a “blob on the couch.” Finally, his wife Kallie enrolled him in a one-week trauma treatment program, arranging for him to take the time off from work without telling him.

    “Thankfully, that really gave me a kind of a foothold … to do the work to climb out of that,” said Leyba, who said breathing exercises, journaling, meditation and anti-depressants have helped him.

    Like Mendo and Martin, he has traveled around the country to work with survivors of shootings.

    “That worst day has transformed into something I can offer to others,” said Leyba, who is in Washington, D.C., this week meeting with officials about gun violence and promoting a new film about his trauma journey.

    Mendo still lives in the area, and her 5-year-old daughter attends school near Columbine. When her daughter’s school locked down last year as police swarmed the neighborhood during a hostage situation, Mendo recalled worrying things like: What if my child is in danger? What if there is another school shooting like Columbine?

    When Mendo picked up her daughter, she seemed a little scared, and she hugged her mom a little tighter. Mendo breathed deeply to stay calm, a technique she had learned in therapy, and put on a brave face.

    “If I was putting down some fear, she would pick it up,” she said. “I didn’t want that for her.”

    ____

    Associated Press writer Mead Gruver contributed to this report.

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  • ‘I’m gonna O.J. you’: How the Simpson case changed perceptions — and the law — on domestic violence

    ‘I’m gonna O.J. you’: How the Simpson case changed perceptions — and the law — on domestic violence

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    It wasn’t long after the televised spectacle of O.J. Simpson fleeing a phalanx of police cars in a slow-moving white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, that batterers across Los Angeles adopted a bone-chilling new threat.

    I’m gonna O.J. you.

    “We all heard it working with our clients,” said Gail Pincus, executive director of the Domestic Abuse Center in Los Angeles. “I heard it directly from the abusers. It was a form of intimidation, of silencing and getting compliance from their victims.”

    Abuse survivors, meanwhile, flooded rape and battery hotlines and shelters, telling advocates: I don’t want to be the next Nicole.

    The phone “was almost off the hook,” said Patti Giggans, executive director of Peace over Violence, then called the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women. “We were overloaded.”

    “People were reaching out for help; they wanted to know, ‘Could that be me? Could that happen to me?’” she said. “It was a revelation that somebody could die.”

    For the American public, the slayings of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman were practically inescapable in those days. An estimated 95 million people watched the Bronco chase on television. Some 150 million tuned in for the verdict in 1995, when Simpson was acquitted.

    The killings took place at a pivotal moment for domestic violence in California and the United States, catapulting what had long been considered a private problem into the public sphere.

    “That murder captivated people. You could not escape from it,” said author and abuse survivor Myriam Gurba, whose 2023 essay collection “Creep: Accusations and Confessions” explores gender violence.

    The case threw into stark reality a devastating truth — that domestic violence is uniquely deadly for women and girls. Between a third and half of all female homicide victims in the U.S. are killed by a current or former male partner, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

    That percentage that has held steady for decades, even as the overall number of killings has plunged, from about 23,000 homicides nationwide in 1994 to an estimated 18,000 in 2023.

    Few victims and even fewer lawmakers knew those statistics before Simpson‘s arrest. But the case got people talking.

    “That was a huge learning curve even within the movement,” said Erica Villa of Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence in San José.

    In the wake of Simpson’s death from cancer on Wednesday, many domestic violence survivors’ advocates recalled how much changed because of the case — and how much remains the same.

    ‘We need to push this now’

    Giggans was among the millions who watched the Bronco chase on live TV. But unlike most, she was watching with a plan.

    “I remember watching it, eating Haagen-Dazs ice cream in my living room in Mar Vista with about six other advocates for domestic violence prevention,” she said. “None of us could get enough of it at the time. But we had an ulterior motive because, for us, it was an educational opportunity. [Suddenly] the media cared what we had to say.”

    By then, national news outlets had already uncovered police reports and court records detailing Simpson’s abuse, including a no-contest plea to battery charges stemming from a bloody incident in 1989.

    News vans began camping around the block at the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women’s Hollywood Boulevard headquarters, queuing up for interviews. Overnight, advocates became sought-after stars on TV.

    “It was an amazingly consequential period,” Giggans said.

    It wasn’t merely that Simpson was a wealthy celebrity, or that he had fled police, or that he was arrested by the same law enforcement agency whose officers had been caught on camera beating Rodney King.

    “To a lot of people it was a case about race and mistreatment of Black residents by the LAPD, but to us it was the first time that a huge spotlight was focusing on domestic violence,” said Pincus of the Domestic Abuse Center.

    By 1994, California was beginning to enforce 1986 changes to its domestic violence laws, which required police to treat family assaults as they would public ones, and to keep records of calls where no arrests were made.

    “If you arrived at a scene and there’s a battery or attempted murder, you can’t just not do anything because it’s ‘a domestic,’” as police had done previously, Pincus said. “The other part of the law change said that every police department in the state had to have mandatory domestic violence training, and those protocols had to be established and made public.”

    At the same time, Democrats in Congress were working to pass the landmark Violence Against Women Act, which would bring millions of dollars for hotlines and shelters. It included the first federal law against battery, among other protections for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.

    After years of laboring in the shadows, advocates found themselves in the limelight. They were determined not to let the moment pass.

    “We would get on these national calls and say, ‘We need to push this now,’” Giggans said of VAWA. “We didn’t want it to be just a media moment; we wanted some benefit to come from this tragedy.”

    ‘People didn’t know anything’

    The Violence Against Women Act was signed into law on Sept. 13, 1994, almost three months after Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were found.

    But when Simpson’s nationally televised trial began in November, it showed just how little the public understood about domestic violence — and how far the law still had to go.

    “People didn’t know anything,” Giggans said. “It gave our movement an opportunity to be persistent and consistent in providing the education that we were struggling to provide … and for people to understand that no one deserves to be battered or abused or raped and that this is a serious social ill.”

    Even then, there was a gap between what the public was learning and what the jury was allowed to hear.

    Six months after Simpson was acquitted, California added Section 1109 to the Evidence Code, allowing uncharged conduct and other evidence of prior abuse to be shown to jurors in similar cases.

    The trial also shined a spotlight on DNA evidence, then a scientifically established but publicly suspect technology.

    “It was like mumbo-jumbo to the public at that point,” Pincus said.

    Today, DNA evidence is critical to many domestic violence prosecutions because it gets around the reliance upon “he-said, she-said” narratives that long hampered battery cases.

    Without DNA, “it came down to who jurors believed: the hysterical victim who jumped all over the place telling her story or refused to testify out of fear, and the abuser who was calm and seen as a nice guy,” Pincus said.

    With evidence handling under a microscope, advocates were able to push for reforms in how the LAPD managed rape kits, eventually leading to the creation of a new DNA crime lab.

    “The case really did spearhead legislation that started expanding resources,” said Carmen McDonald, executive director of the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice.

    Still, some say the changes are more surface-level than substantive.

    “These wonderful changes that were supposedly wrought by the mistakes made during that trial are not anything that I’ve benefited from, and they’re not anything any woman I know has benefited from,” said Gurba, the author and survivor. “If it’s prosecuted, most domestic violence is prosecuted as a misdemeanor. So the state sees our torture as a petty nuisance.”

    Now, she and other advocates fear gains made since the trial could soon be erased.

    ‘All that we built since O.J. can go away’

    California is poised to lose tens of millions in funding for domestic violence programs this year, a 43% cut that threatens critical infrastructure including emergency shelter, medical care and legal assistance to survivors, according to the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence.

    Programs for at-risk populations already are stretched thin under the existing budget, survivors and advocates say.

    “When I tried to enter a shelter when I was escaping domestic violence, I couldn’t get into one because they were all full,” Gurba said.

    Now, those already overburdened services could disappear.

    “It’s about to fall apart,” Giggans said. “All that we built since O.J. can go away.”

    Advocates fear the cuts could create a cascade effect across the state.

    “Domestic violence impacts every single community and population; it’s across every field,” McDonald said. “It’s immigration, it’s schools. The loss of funding impacts [other] services that are out there for folks who need help.”

    For example, data show domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness. According to a survey released last summer by the Urban Institute, nearly half of all unhoused women in Los Angeles have experienced domestic violence, and about a quarter fled their last residence because of it.

    For Gurba, the looming cuts are yet more evidence of how little has truly changed since the 1994 slayings.

    “I don’t think there was a revolution in how domestic violence survivors are treated thanks to that murder — that’s a myth,” she said. “The rhetoric may have changed, but the treatment is still the same behind closed doors.”

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    Sonja Sharp

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  • ‘Survivor’ Season 46, Episode 6

    ‘Survivor’ Season 46, Episode 6

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    Today, Tyson and Riley are joined again by Claire Rafson from Survivor 44 to recap the sixth, a.k.a. the “merge-atory,” episode of Season 46. They talk about the excitement of merging tribes, the strategy behind “naming names,” and the constant shifting of relationships from this season.

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Claire Rafson
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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    Tyson Apostol

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  • ‘Survivor’ Season 46, Episode 3

    ‘Survivor’ Season 46, Episode 3

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    Tyson and Riley are back to recap the third episode of Survivor 46. Today, they are joined by Lauren Harpe from Survivor 44 as they answer the question: “Do the Wackadoodles win Survivor?” Then, they go over the pros and cons of group idol hunts, discuss the possibility of producers creating a miracle for the contestants, and talk about the episode’s surprise ending.

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Lauren Harpe
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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    Tyson Apostol

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  • ‘Survivor’ Season 46, Episode 2

    ‘Survivor’ Season 46, Episode 2

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    Today, Tyson and Riley are joined by Victoria Baamonde from Survivor: Edge of Extinction to recap and discuss the second episode of Survivor 46. They recollect the day hunger affected them the most during their time on the island and figuring out how they were perceived on the show. Then they give their impressions of the return of Sassy Jeff and this episode’s tribal council, which went “off the rails.”

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Victoria Baamonde
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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  • Survivor Recap: Look What You Made Me Do

    Survivor Recap: Look What You Made Me Do

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    Survivor

    Scorpio Energy

    Season 46

    Episode 2

    Editor’s Rating

    2 stars

    Photo: Robert Voets/CBS

    I am so sick of Taylor Swift. Yes, I know this will ruin my social media mentions for the next seven decades, but, like Maya Rudolph in Bridesmaids, I can’t hold it in anymore. While it is not for me, I have nothing against her music. I have nothing against her personally, and I don’t even have anything against her private jet usage. I would begrudge no one their fandom, but the stranglehold she has on culture (again, good on you, Tay-Tay) means she’s inescapable. I try to read about politics, and there’s Taylor Swift. You go to art museums, and there’s Taylor Swift. Now I turn on my favorite reality television program (don’t tell RHONY), and there she is again. Why can’t I swing a handbag without hitting this wildly-talented billionaire?

    I’m talking about the contest between Ben and Charlie where they’re trying to see if Ben can name more Metallica songs than Charlie can Taylor Swift blind items about famous exes set to music. Charlie comes out on top because Ben says he refuses to stan the bad Metallica albums and record their names to memory. Leave it to a Swiftie to stan literally everything she does. No matter how mediocre the album might be, they’d never admit it. (Same goes for the Bey-hive, to be fair.)

    Maybe I was more upset about this than usual because the beginning of this episode was an absolute snooze. It was just a bunch of people sitting around, talking, not playing Survivor, and not being especially funny, charming, winning, annoying, terrible, or narcissistic. It was just people sitting around being fine. (Much like a Taylor Swift song.)

    The episode starts back at Yanu, who eliminated Jelinsky in the last episode. We see Bhanu meditating, Kenzie crying in a cool-ass cave, and everyone talking about how Bhanu or Jess has to be the next ones to go. This makes me immediately think that Yanu will lose the challenge, and they’re back at tribal council. Two hours later, we’re still having the same conversation about whether it’s Jess, Bhanu, or maybe Kenzie going home. We spent all this time in the dynamic glow of Jeff Probst’s dimples, and we haven’t moved one inch.

    Some of the chatting we get from the other tribes I didn’t mind so much. Over at Nami, everyone hates Venus and doesn’t trust her. We get her backstory about her family coming from Iran to Canada and how that shaped her into a badass. I don’t mind that backstory because it plays into the narrative we get throughout the episode. Compare that to when we visit Siga, and we hear that Ben never had any friends until he learned guitar. Okay, does he have a guitar in the jungle? No? Then why do we care? We don’t! It’s just to tee up this bit between him and Charlie that, in an earlier season, would only grace the obnoxious behind-the-scenes special they’d air halfway through the season. We did learn, however, that Ben cried after making fire, but he didn’t cry when he met Nicolas Cage. Okay, now I want that story. Why did he meet Nicolas Cage? Why did he think that would make him cry?

    That’s not the only unnecessary backstory. What about Nami’s Liz, who may or may not be a millionaire and who may or may not be a liar? She says she’s an “internet entrepreneur.” What does that mean? I’m thinking either an Etsy shop or OnlyFans. I did love Liz and Mo’s bonding moment on the sit-out benches, though.

    All the information about Venus, though, seems very pointed. She’s on the outs with everyone except Randen, who has decided he can’t trust anyone in his tribe, so he’s going to pair up with her because no one will expect it. Randen also finds a Beware Advantage and says, “Oh! It says “Beware” on it.” Yeah, dude. That’s how they come now. They all say that. It’s like saying, “Wow! This M&M has a letter printed on it.” Uhhhhhh, we know. That should have been Jess’s first clue that she didn’t get an actual idol. There’s no way they’re letting one of those just lie around without all sorts of conditions being attached to it.

    After Nami wins the challenge for the third time in a row (spoiler alert!), Venus comes back to camp and complains about how no one listens to her, and that got her foot run over in the challenge. No one seems sympathetic; no one seems to care. They go to the beach to take Liz’s “How to Make a Million Dollars from the Comfort of Your Love Seat” seminar that she usually gives in Comfort Inn ballrooms. Venus says that if her team keeps winning and takes her to the merge, she’s flipping on them at once. Oooooooh. Foreshadowing. This is the difference between Venus and Ben. The tribal dynamics that are alienating Venus will eventually come into play, and we’ll be glad we had this time together. I don’t think I ever want a Taylor Swift song title off again.

    We learn some good things at Siga that might be useful in the future. Charlie is positioning himself between the three girls and the two boys as a kind of swing vote. He’s enlisted Maria and her extra vote as his “ride or die.” They want to be the new Malcolm and Denise. That’s all good, but Malcolm’s game was built on being strong, handsome, likable, good at challenges, and very anti-Taylor Swift. He’s also a two-time loser. So, go ahead, Charlie. Try to be Malcolm, but maybe emulate someone who saw a $1 million check. (No, I don’t mean Liz.)

    We get to the challenge, and, man, there are more steps than in the Empire State Building. They have to get a machete, free some wheels, put the wheels on the cart, dig up two boxes, put the boxes on the cart, remove all the obstacles from the course, (audible inhale) drag the cart through the course, unpack the crates, and then solve a word puzzle that is an arch made of letters. It’s like a Reading Rainbow but without LeVar Burton.

    Everyone gets to the puzzle at about the same time, but it proves to be much more difficult than anyone anticipated, holding up 11 blocks while trying to spell P-E-R-S-I-S-T-E-N-C-E after not eating or sleeping for the past four days and also having to listen to Bhanu’s papaya farts which are definitely rocking the shelter all night long. It could be anyone’s game, but Nami, once again, proves that it is the powerhouse of the three and pulls out a victory. Things are close between Yanu and Siga, especially after Q takes charge of Yanu and just starts ordering people around because they can’t figure out what to do on their own. Finally, Siga gets their letters up, and everything that happened earlier at the orange and green tribes doesn’t matter because now we’re only an hour into this episode, and we’re just going to be stewing in purple until CSI starts. (Is that still on after Survivor?)

    Back at the tribe, it’s down to Bhanu or Jess, just as it said at the beginning. Just like the challenge, there are so many steps to how the tribe wants it to play out. Kenzie and Tiff make a fake immunity idol and hide it for Jess so she won’t play her shot in the dark. Then, when she can’t find it even though they lead her to it, Q has to give it to her and tells her she has to vote for who he says and gives Kenzie’s name. He’s mad because Jess told him that Kenzie was saying his name at the well. And then maybe it’s Bhanu, but we all know it’s really Jess. Which, fine, either way, just get this over with. How much longer until CSI is on?

    Kenzie and Tiff (one of my early favorites, both to win and as a character) are talking about how no one around them can play the game. They call it “remedial clown school,” which is hilarious, and I will be stealing it for future recaps. That’s the other thing that’s weird about this season. Jeff keeps drilling into our heads how these are all super fans who have been waiting all their lives to play this game. Then why are they so bad at it? Jelinsky kept quitting, Jess couldn’t seem to be able to find her buttcrack with two hands and a flashlight, and then Bhanu just crumbles at tribal council.

    Usually, when Jeff takes everyone to the pagoda, it’s my time to check out and crush some candy on my phone while waiting for the vote. Much like this long lead-up to the national election in November, everyone already knows how they’re voting. Let’s just skip the pretense, get down to beeswax, and save everyone a lot of time and grief. But not when Bhanu’s around. In the last episode, he basically told Jelinsky he was going home, and this time, he tells Jeff that there is an alliance of him, Q, Kenzie, and Tiff, meaning Jess is definitely going out.

    Q is like, “What the fuck?” but Bhanu says he’s only saying this because it’s his tribe; he won’t do this after the merge. Q makes the very valid point that if Jess thinks she’s going home, she could play a (fake) idol or her shot in the dark, and then Q ends up going home. This sort of playing is unsustainable and you can’t have this guy as an ally. He could just pop off and spill all of your plans because she’s so excited to be in his favorite TV show. He knows immediately he’s screwed up and then goes around and makes sure everyone is not voting for him. This guy really annoys me, and I don’t even have to smell the papaya farts. Please let him go home next week.

    Jeff reads the votes, and the first one is for Bhanu. He puts on his bag and gets ready to exit, so sure that he’s going to be eliminated. The rest, of course, are for Jess, and we just spent two hours going nowhere and learning little. I would argue that booting Bhanu was the smarter move. Neither of them seem to be especially good at challenges, and while Jess might be scatterbrained, she’d at least be so greatful that she’d be loyal until the end.

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    Brian Moylan

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  • The ‘Survivor’ Season 46 Premiere Is Here!

    The ‘Survivor’ Season 46 Premiere Is Here!

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    And … we’re back! Tyson and Riley are joined by Carolyn “Coco” Wiger from Season 44 to talk about their impression of the season premiere of Survivor Season 46. They begin the episode by describing how nicknames are created and what was correct with their preseason predictions. Then, they discuss the Season 46 alliances that they’d choose, Carolyn’s secret Reddit group, and their overall thoughts on the premiere.

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Carolyn Wiger
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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    Tyson Apostol

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  • ‘Survivor’ Season 46 Cast Analysis With Gordon Holmes!

    ‘Survivor’ Season 46 Cast Analysis With Gordon Holmes!

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    Tyson and Riley are back with the last offseason episode to prepare us for the upcoming season of Survivor! They are joined by Survivor journalist Gordon Holmes to analyze the new cast of Season 46. They give their first impressions of the cast, highlight the cast members that stood out, and give their predictions for the season.

    ‌Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Gordon Holmes
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

    Subscribe: Spotify

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    Tyson Apostol

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  • Game Changers, Part 3: A Chat With Carson!

    Game Changers, Part 3: A Chat With Carson!

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    Tyson and Riley are back with another offseason episode on the new-era “game changers.” Today, they are joined by Carson Garrett from Survivor 44! Together, they touch on Carson’s puzzle-making process, things he would have done differently during his season, and what they consider to be the most iconic puzzles.

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Carson Garrett
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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    Tyson Apostol

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  • ‘Survivor’ Season 46 Cast Revealed: Meet the Players

    ‘Survivor’ Season 46 Cast Revealed: Meet the Players

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    Kaitlin Simpson

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  • Game Changers, Part 2: A Chat With Gabler!

    Game Changers, Part 2: A Chat With Gabler!

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    Tyson and Riley are back with another offseason episode! For today’s new-era “game changer,” they are joined by Mike Gabler from Season 43. They expand on the season’s edit of Gabler’s ambiguous job, talk about the secret to making a good Survivor audition tape, and then discuss the reasoning behind Gabler’s decision to donate all of his winnings to charity.

    Hosts: Tyson Apostol and Riley McAtee
    Guest: Mike Gabler
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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    Tyson Apostol

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  • Reality TV Star-Turned State Legislator Withdraws Bill To Legalize Cousin Incest

    Reality TV Star-Turned State Legislator Withdraws Bill To Legalize Cousin Incest

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    This week, Survivor star turned Republican state legislator Nick Wilson introduced legislation that would have legalized sex between first cousins. The Kentucky lawmaker introduced House Bill 289 on Tuesday. After it came to the attention of many on social media, Wilson announced he’d made a mistake. He now says the language exempting first cousins was an oversight.

    Incest is illegal in 48 of the 50 states with age restrictions in Rhode Island and New Jersey. It is generally considered as taboo as child marriage and both are items that should be eradicated from contemporary pop culture.

    Wilson now claims that his bill was in error, that it contained typos he didn’t see at filing. Wilson rose to fame during his appearance on Survivor in 2018. He holds a law degree from the University of Alabama and previously worked as a public defender. 

    Wilson told the Guardian that his gaffe was “frustrating” and “embarrassing,” adding “Due to the subject matter of the legislation, it was obviously quite embarrassing, … It was also frustrating that it blew up so quickly, just because I was on a TV show five years ago.

    “I didn’t get a chance to fix the mistake – not even one day. I feel like most legislators would get that opportunity.”

    The 33-year-old legislator serves on several House committees, most notably the Family and Children standing committee. The lawmaker has only sponsored a handful of bills in his time in office. Wilson earned some national notoriety in March 2023 for a bill he didn’t sponsor but did support. His vote caused outrage in the LGBTQ community.

    This particular piece of 2023 legislation allowed teachers to continue to call students by their biological pronouns even if the student noted other preferences. This legislation also made it illegal to discuss gender identity in the classroom setting. Wilson was criticized by many for supporting this, including some of his former cast members on Survivor. 

    Wilson is part of a long tradition of actors and celebrities turned Republican politicians. Dr. Mehmet Oz, of Oprah Winfrey Show fame, ran for US Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022. And of course, America’s most famous celebrity turned conservative politician is The Apprentice star turned president, Donald Trump.

    (featured image: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

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    Kate Delany

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