So much weird news lately.
Mutant ‘Super Pig’ Population Spirals Out Of Control In Fukushima Nuclear Fallout Zone. Oppenham
Having A Great Ass May Be The Secret To Healthier Aging. The fountain of youth was in your butt this whole time.
(As previously discussed, my doctor told me to do 100 squats a day which I do in increments throughout the day by habit stacking it with things like brushing my teeth. That’s my extremely helpful tip.)
Not Alive, but Not Dead. Disembodied Human Brains Are Used For Drug Testing Apparently the brain seeking zombies are us,
Those pedestrian crossing buttons don’t do anything. They’re called placebo buttons.
A biotech company hatched 26 chicks from artificial eggs. Could the breakthrough help save endangered species or create real life Jurassic Park? Could also help with the egg prices but nobody asked me.
A judge banned Kars4Kids from using their jingle in California, citing misleading advertising. The jingle itself remains undefeated though. It deserves a Grammy.
A New Giant Dinosaur Species was Discovered in Thailand. It’s like a more giant Brontosaurus.
The co-founder of e.l.f. Cosmetics has renounced his fortune and become a Catholic priest. Talk about a rebrand.
A new study found that enjoying the arts has the same anti-aging effect as a weekly workout. Where is Huberman on this? Where is Bryan Johnson? Conspicuously absent.
In related news, Thousands of teens took over the Met. They are dressed. They are giving. They are getting the anti-aging benefits and they don’t even need them.
And Gen Z is dressing like Mark Rothko paintings. Big rectangle energy.
This Lake Kills Things With Its Burps. Carbon dioxide builds up at the bottom and periodically erupts in a wave that suffocates everything nearby.
Caveman Dentistry. They were drilling teeth 14,000 years ago with no anesthesia and apparently doing fine. I cannot get through a deep cleaning without asking for the gas.
Isa Briones aka Dr. Santos from The Pitt had to ask fans to stop yelling things at her during her Broadway show. Free idea: Broadway Urgent Care where the nurses sing like at Johnny Rockets.
and a creature called the carnivorous death ball sponge. The ocean is like Australia. Everything in it, even if it’s cute, fluffy, or whimsical, is trying to kill you. The death ball sponge at least has the decency to say so upfront.
That’s a wrap on Emmy bait, the eligibility deadline is Sunday. The prestige dramas have packed up their screeners and gone home, and we are now entering the season of reality television, beach reads, and watching Love Island six nights a week like it’s a part-time job.
Four Seasons S2 (Netflix)
The friends (Fey, Will Forte, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver) are still going on vacation together, even in the aftermath of losing Steve Carrell. Expect laughs. Expect tears. Expect both at the same time.
Deli Boys S2 (Hulu)
I am once again asking you to watch Deli Boys. It’s about two deeply unqualified brothers who discover their father was secretly running a criminal empire and now have to take over. Think The Sopranos if everyone involved was wildly underprepared. Season 2 has Fred Armisen, Andrew Rannells and Kumail Nanjiani. What’s not to like?
The Yogurt Shop Murders (HBOMax)
The documentary from last summer covered the 1991 murders of four teenage girls at an Austin yogurt shop. Four men were convicted, their convictions overturned, and just this week those men were awarded $35 million from the city of Austin. But something else crazy happened, 4 months after the original episodes aired, DNA linked the case to a known serial killer so they came back and made a new episode walking through how it was solved.
The Boroughs (Netflix)
If you liked Stranger Things but wished the kids were septuagenarians. Alfred Molina moves into a retirement community in the New Mexico desert where he was supposed to live with his recently deceased wife. He falls in with a group of neighbors like Bill Pullman, Geena Davis, and Alfre Woodard and everything is lovely until the creepy monsters start stealing people’s lifeforce. Produced by the Duffer Brothers. Creature effects by ILM. Giant heart.
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed (Apple)
Apple TV loves suburban people in danger. This is a divorced woman trying to win back custody of her kid who gets embroiled in a sex/murder/blackmail scheme. Luckily she works as a fact checker (does this job even exist anymore?) so she launches her own investigation
Spider-Noir (Prime Video)
Nicolas Cage plays a middle-aged Spider-Man operating as a hardboiled detective in 1930s Manhattan, and you can watch the whole thing in either black and white or a heightened Technicolor color mode. It’s fun in the way that Dick Tracy and The Rocketeer were fun, which is a vibe I did not know I was missing.
Calabasas Confidential (Netflix)
Imagine Laguna Beach, but everyone has a content strategy. If you’ve ever had the experience of going back to your childhood home and regressing to an earlier, worse version of yourself, or have wondered what it’s like to grow up a rich kid in LA, this is for you. You can kind of see them getting their sea legs and looking to their producers, but Dylan is a reality show unicorn. A hot, rich kid cowboy f*ckboy. One thing these kids get right: if I lived like this I wouldn’t leave my parents house in Calabasas either. For you Bravo watchers, there is a Brandi Glanville moment where she talks to her son and his friend about how she knew he wasn’t a virgin anymore and Larsa’s son talking about how her being in the spotlight and dating affects him.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Netflix)
The based-on-a-novel series about a teen true-crime obsessive who can’t stop inserting herself into active murder investigations is back. The first season was a lot of fun, this one picks right up.
World War II With Tom Hanks (History Channel)
Just call me an old man, because I am fully all in on this 20-part series.
IF YOU ONLY WATCH ONE
The chatter is not calming down. JLo is in the mix now, and they’ve announced season 2 will be about Dean and Allie so the phenomenon is not going to end anytime soon.
FINALES
Hacks Everyone agrees this finale was perfect.
The Boys Nobody agrees on this finale.
Euphoria We’ll find out where we land on Sunday.
As everyone has heard by now, Survivor’s live finale included an on-air flub from Jeff Probst that gave away a big spoiler. And THIS IS WHY I will use this moment to once again pitch the Television Academy, via this newsletter and by any other means available to me, that the hosting Emmy categories need to be split into LIVE and TAPED. They’re just different jobs. Live hosting is HARD and requires you to be an air traffic controller, while taped hosting is about personality, and how you impact the overall vibe of the show. It is the difference between technical skate and artistic skate in the Olympics. It’s why diving has difficulty rankings that affect your overall score. Are you guys sick of me talking about this yet?
STILL WATCHING
Summer House Reunion (Bravo/Peacock)
Watching the fall out of the West and Amanda scandal
In The City (Bravo/Peacock)
Watching the run up to the West and Amanda scandal
Obsession
This is the movie everyone is talking about. A lonely guy uses a supernatural toy to make his childhood crush fall in love with him. Things go badly. Then worse. Then much, much worse. On paper, it sounds like a goofy horror premise. In practice, it’s one of the smartest horror movies I’ve seen in years. Beneath all the blood and screaming, it’s really about entitlement, obsession, and the difference between wanting someone and wanting to possess them. It’s currently the best-reviewed wide-release movie of the year and has already made $82 million at the box office.
Backrooms
For those of us who didn’t spend the pandemic watching internet horror videos, The Backrooms started with a single image posted online in 2019. It showed an empty office space with yellow walls, stained carpet, fluorescent lighting, and the overwhelming feeling that something was wrong. The caption suggested that if you accidentally “noclip” out of reality, like a video game character passing through a wall, you end up here: an endless maze of abandoned rooms stretching for hundreds of millions of square miles.
The internet then did what the internet does best and turned one creepy image into an entire mythology. People created maps, monsters, levels, rules, survival guides, and thousands of videos expanding the lore. Some levels look like abandoned malls. Others resemble infinite hotel hallways, empty schools, office buildings, suburban neighborhoods, arcades, swimming pools, or airports. Every area feels familiar enough to recognize but wrong enough to make your skin crawl.
Part of why it works is that almost everyone has experienced a Backrooms moment in real life. Walking through a deserted office on a weekend. Getting lost in the hallway of a hotel. Finding yourself alone in a mall after closing. Being in a place designed for people and suddenly realizing there aren’t any. It’s a very specific kind of existential dread.
They say every generation gets the horror movie it deserves. Apparently, for Gen Z it’s about being trapped forever in a depressing office building.
STREAMING
Office Romance (Netflix)
Brett Goldstein, Roy from Ted Lasso, wrote this movie specifically for Jennifer Lopez and said if she wouldn’t do it, it wouldn’t happen. That’s more romantic than most romantic comedies. Thankfully, the movie is charming too. Jennifer Lopez plays a high-powered executive who falls for a colleague played by Goldstein. If you like old-school movie star rom-coms, this delivers exactly what you want.
The Crash( Netflix)
3 young people crash into a wall at high speed. 2 die, and the driver lives. Was it a horrible accident or did she do it on purpose? I have to admit I decided she did it 2 minutes in but this has caused a lot of chatter online.
Send Help (Hulu)
Imagine if Rachel McAdams got stranded on an island with her terrible boss. Part survival thriller, part workplace revenge fantasy. So fun.
The AI Doc (Peacock)
This documentary sits in a fascinating place somewhere between a warning label and a recruitment video. Depending on your existing feelings about artificial intelligence, you’ll either finish it thinking we’re all doomed or that we’re living through the most exciting technological revolution in history. Possibly both.
Only Fantasy An investigative podcast about OnlyFans, hosted by journalist Leon Neyfakh and comedian and creator Gracie Canaan. It covers the platform’s multi-billion dollar economy and the psychological and financial realities on both sides of the creator-subscriber relationship, and their spouses. It’s well reported and genuinely interesting.
Also, while we’re here: OnlyFans is just the model now. Half the internet economy is now some version of: “Would you like to pay a monthly fee for access to me?” Substack is OnlyFans. YouTube and Instagram rolling out subscriptions is OnlyFans. Mr. Beast building a premium channel is OnlyFans. Premium podcasts are OnlyFans. Everything is OnlyFans. We are all on OnlyFans. Goodnight.
I did some summer book selects for The Material Review
This is going to be the longest possible summer. Memorial Day landed on May 25th and Labor Day falls on September 7th, which is the earliest and latest either holiday can fall. That’s not summer in the equinox sense, but in the vibes sense, which is the one that counts so we are looking at 105 consecutive days of sunscreen, bad decisions, and people posting photos of spritzes.
Which means it’s officially time to begin arguing about Song of the Summer. Here are the Spotify predictions.
These are some candidates right now.
If Love Island USA does not use this song in the opening episode next week, I will eat my phone.
God help me, this thing is catchy. I’ve had exactly 2 lines of it stuck in my head for a week and a half. That’s either a sign of great songwriting or psychological warfare.
She’s remarkably good at writing songs that sound like the exact conversation your friend has after two glasses of wine and a bad text message. Every lyric feels specific enough to be real and universal enough to make half the population think she wrote it for them.
Tame Impala and Jennie Remix of Dracula
Every summer needs at least one song that makes you feel cooler than you actually are. This is that song.
From one of the Dream Academy girls, and it has a very catchy hook. Her fellow rejected Academy girl Adela also has a banger called “KB Bitch” and frankly the eliminated girls are eating.
Drake released three albums. Three. At once. Everyone needs an editor but Janice STFU is summer song eligible.
Another candidate, Ella Langley won Female Artist of the Year at the ACMs and gave a nice speech. Have you seen the video for Choosing Texas with Luke Grimes, aka Kayce from Yellowstone?
Bulgaria won Eurovision with “Bangaranga” by DARA. The contest has given us ABBA’s Waterloo, launched international stars like Celine Dion, and annually reminds us that subtlety is overrated had the biggest winning margin in the contest’s history. The juries and the public agreed, which hasn’t happened since 2017. Eurovisions is always best in show in live directing.
We have a second 2026 World Cup anthem. Dai Dai Following the let’s say mixed reception of the Jelly Roll song, we have another 2026 FIFA World Cup anthem as of last week, and like Kylian Mbappé says in the video ” Shakira we are ready”
TIK TALK
The Puerto Rico Song. A Pittsburgh guy named Bill Stiteler (@saxboybilly18) wrote the lyrics after a trip to Puerto Rico, fed them into AI music generator Suno with a prompt he refuses to share (”you gotta pay me for that, that’s the secret sauce”), and ended up with the catchiest song about tourism since “New York, New York.” It’s been used in over 46,000 TikTok posts, with Luke Combs, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Hyland, and O-Town all doing dances to it. When asked about his musical credentials, Stiteler told TMZ “I’m not a musician, baby. I’m a slob. I don’t claim this to be music.” And yet here we are. The whole plane clapped when we landed.
A 24-year-old realized she never learned to jump. Her coworkers tried to teach her. It went viral. It’s very pure.
What it feels like to live next to a data center. It’s like living with tinnitis on the outside of your head.
ARTICLES
Rich Lady Turns Out To Be Rich. This very viral piece about Belle Burden and her book Strangers, specifically the revelation that she’s significantly wealthier than she portrayed because when her stepmother dies she and her brother split the remainder of a trust, has become quite the talking point online. But it doesn’t change the main takeaway of the book, which is that she was betrayed by someone she thought she knew, that the man in her life expected half of what she had while having her sign a prenup that left her with nothing of his, and that women need to know what’s happening in their own finances within a marriage. That part stands regardless of the trust fund(s).
The Quiet Grief of Adult Friendships The worst breakups I’ve had were not romantic. The friendships that ended are the ones that lingered. This piece gets it exactly right.
The Sad Wives of AI A good companion piece to the OnlyFans podcast from the podcast section.
Best Out of 5 A longtime beauty writer on how most health trends are actually not good for you, including IV drips and peptides.
How To Win At Jeopardy. Exactly what it says.
The Very American, Very Intense World Of High School Debate. The New Yorker went deep on this and I have not stopped thinking about it as Pitch Perfect for arguments since.
The Life And Times Of An American Tween. Also from the New Yorker. Sobering, but also kind of seems fun? The tweens are okay, I think.
YOUR FEED IS FAKE This is the article everyone is talking about. Joe Lim ran a company called Floodify that at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social media accounts posting 50,000 videos a day across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X. He estimates 90% of what you see online is advertising in disguise. Companies hire clippers to flood feeds on behalf of clients, individual influencers or big organizations, and none of it needs to be disclosed, thanks to a federal regulation loophole that relaxes transparency standards on ads that don’t sell tangible products. Everything you’re watching on the feeds could potentially be an ad programmed to make someone a Discourse Topic and/or Zeitgeist Definer, made famous thanks to paid spammers instead of organic attention. Love Island, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Geese, all beneficiaries of well-spent money. When clips of something are flooding your feed, ask yourself who paid for that, and get ready to be flooded with Love Island edits come next week. But who’s making them? The next time something feels inescapable online, ask yourself a simple question:
Did everyone suddenly become obsessed with this?
Or did someone pay to make it look that way?
Here’s a good ICYMI podcast episode with the author
The biggest food news of the week is Gwyneth’s turkey meatballs. Specifically: her suggestion on the Today show that if you want to avoid dairy, you can dice up arugula and put it in instead of parmesan. “It sounds weird,” she says to a visibly stunned Savannah Guthrie, “but it kind of adds a nice texture to it, and it’s delicious.” The internet promptly lost its mind. Here’s my hot take as someone who has inherited two of her cookbooks, makes her recipes semi-regularly, and eats Goop Kitchen at least once a week: she’s not wrong. It’s not dairy. It’s not a substitute for dairy. But it works in the meatball and these meatballs are good.
The best breakfast food in each state. A helpful list for your summer travels. Do not leave without eating the thing.
Dot cakes. They originated at a bakery called The Dot Cake, sold at Butterfield Market on the Upper East Side, and went viral on TikTok the last few weeks. You can make them at home pretty easily. Here’s a 4th of July version. Will you like it? Depends. Do you enjoy eating a spoonful of non-pareil sprinkles? If so, you’ll love ‘em.
The Manhattan Has Been Rebranded As A Boy Martini. I don’t know when martinis became a girl thing when they are famously James Bond’s drink of choice.
Rotten candy Wish there were NERDS clusters that were good for you? These have half the sugar and 12 grams of fiber. You’re welcome.
The Fruit bucket ice cream I saw on tiktok is certifiably delicious. Try your local Asian grocery.
RIP Schlitz. Schlitz Premium, the Milwaukee-born lager that was once the most popular beer in the world, brewed its final 80-barrel batch. A limited release of 16-ounce four-packs goes on sale June 27, available only at the brewery in Wisconsin, only in person, only while they last. Pour one out for your ex-hipster now cool-dad homies.
This “Hot Dogs or Legs?” Weinerschnitzel bathing suit
Next week: the race for summer drink 2026. Stay tuned.
Do you want to sleep like an angel? Want a guest room people say feels like a luxury resort? Try this $70 mattress pad.
My friend told me about this light up water bottle and now I get reminders to stay hydrated throughout the day and drinking water is a party.
It’s going to be jelly shoe summer. I love these little chloe mules because they look like little kid dress up shoes. Or Cinderella’s shoes. Here’s a cheaper option. A more practical jelly shoe option. And if you like these Gucci fisherman style ones, try J.Crew.
The Bad Bunny Zara collection is colorful and cute
Essentials x MLB collection The Yankees pinstripe pants are chic even if you’re not a Yankees fan
Next week: non-plastic summer shoe options the cool people are wearing and summer beauty must-haves.
We’ve Been Lied To About Jellyfish Stings. Do not pee on it. Peeing on it makes it worse. I know. I know. Instead: rinse with salt water, apply vinegar, ice it, then take an antihistamine or ibuprofen. The more you know, and hopefully you never need to know.
And now, a tip for anyone who has ever wanted to sell a reality or unscripted TV show. Based on my DMs, that is a lot of you. Here’s a shortcut that isn’t “self-finance, post, and hope it goes viral.”
Universal Television has a lab where you can submit ideas directly. No agent required. No industry experience required. If you think you and your friends could be the next Mormon Wives, your family are the next McBees, or you have an original concept for a game show or the next Survivor, this is your window.
Real talk though: you will not get a “created by” credit, because those basically don’t exist in unscripted unless it’s a foreign format or grandfathered in like Simon Cowell. Universal will own it completely, produce it, and make all the real money. You could spend a year on it and it may never go anywhere. These are the very real and very sh*tty possibilities.
That said, by end of summer you could have a show in development at a major studio. By next year, your first EP credit and a new career in television. Submissions close June 14th. Good luck!
Me, Having the best time of my life
My favorite part of doing this, genuinely, not the part where I watch six hours of television and call it research, has been you. The emails, the DMs, the “you have to cover this,” the “actually you got that wrong,” the people who found a show I mentioned and came back three weeks later to tell me it ruined their life in the best way. Keep all of that coming.
The internet is increasingly dominated by algorithms deciding what we should watch, read, buy, listen to, and think about (as you read above.)
Extremely Helpful is basically my attempt to do the opposite.
Every week I sort through an absurd amount of television, books, podcasts, news, trends, products, internet nonsense, and genuinely useful things so you don’t have to.
If you found something in here that made you laugh, made you add something to your watch list, made you text a friend, or made you feel slightly more informed about the world than you did ten minutes ago, that’s the goal.
If you know someone who is terminally curious, chronically online, and always looking for the next thing to watch, read, buy, or talk about, send this to them.
They’re probably one of us.
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