Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 78

Americans are becoming more socially isolated, but they’re not feeling lonelier

Getty/Martin Dimitrov

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Are Americans becoming lonelier?

On May 1, NPR reported on a survey about loneliness conducted by Cigna, a large health insurance company. Cigna asked over 20,000 American adults if they agreed with statements like “People are around me but not with me” and “No one really knows me well.” The survey found that younger Americans were lonelier than older Americans.

But while doing research for my upcoming book on empathy and social relationships, I found that the story is a bit more complicated than this.

How to study loneliness

The Cigna study is far too limited to tell us why young people appear to be lonelier. Is it because younger people are in a normal lonelier life stage before finding a partner and having children? Or is it because there have been generational increases in loneliness? The only way scientists could know if there have been generational changes would be to compare young people today to young people in earlier times.

The Cigna survey used the UCLA Loneliness Scale, one of the best available measures of loneliness. But just because a survey has 20,000 respondents doesn’t mean it’s high quality. Who were the respondents? Did they reflect the general U.S. population in terms of age, gender and other factors? Without more details about the survey methods, it’s hard to know how to interpret it.

Thankfully, some peer-reviewed studies have examined changes over time in loneliness and social isolation. Loneliness is the subjective feeling of social disconnection. Social isolation is more objective. It includes living alone, having very few social ties, not having people to confide in, and not spending time with others very often.

Although lonely people are sometimes more socially isolated, this is not always the case. It’s possible to feel lonely, even when surrounded by people. And it’s possible to have a few friends, enjoying deep connections with them along with times of solitude.

Research finds that loneliness and social isolation are equally bad for health. On average, people who report being lonely have a 26 percent increased risk of death compared to those who are not lonely. Those who live alone have a 32 percent increased risk of death, and those who are socially isolated have a 29 percent increased risk of death.

Loneliness over time

One study tracked changes in over 13,000 college students from 1978 to 2009. The researchers found that millennials actually reported less loneliness than people born earlier.

But since the study was on college students, the researchers wondered whether they would find these results in a more general American population. So, they tracked changes over time in a nationally representative sample of over 385,000 students high school students between 1991 to 2012.

In order to measure loneliness, participants were asked whether they agreed with statements that indicated loneliness, like “I often feel left out of things” and “I often wish I had more good friends.” Statements like “There is always someone I can turn to if I need help” and “I usually have a few friends around I can get together with” measured social isolation.

As in the first study, the researchers found students reported declines in loneliness over time. However, they actually found increases over time in social isolation.

This corresponds with nationally representative government data showing that the percentage of people in the U.S. who live alone nearly doubled from 7.6 percent in 1967 to 14.3 percent in 2017.

Americans also seem to have fewer confidantes. The average number of people that Americans say they can talk to about important things declined from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.

Experiencing isolation

Taken together, this published research finds that young people in the U.S. may be more socially isolated in recent years, but are paradoxically becoming less lonely. There doesn’t appear to be an epidemic of loneliness, but perhaps there is one of social isolation.

It’s possible that socially isolated people are turning to social media to treat their feelings of loneliness. This could make them feel less lonely in the short run, but these connections can be more about quantity than quality. They aren’t necessarily the people Americans get together with in person or turn to when we need help. And people often use social media when they are actually alone in a room on a screen.

In my view, future research should try to better understand why there are different trends in loneliness versus isolation. But, since both are equally bad for our health, it’s important to nurture our connections with others – both online and off.

Sara Konrath, Assistant Professor of Philanthropic Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

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Kansas makes it illegal for police to have sex with detainees

Getty/LPETTET

Kansas just passed a new law that bans cops from being able to have sex with people they pull over or detain.

The new law prohibits sex "during the course of a traffic stop, a custodial interrogation, an interview in connection with an investigation, or while the law enforcement officer has such person detained,” according to The Kansas City Star.

The law was passed by members of the House Judiciary Committee, and signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer.

According to the report, various state policymakers in Kansas were surprised it was not already illegal.  Oddly, Kansas was one of 33 states where “consensual” sex between a police officer and a person in custody was not a crime.

It sounds like a no-brainer, but there is a good reason that the law was passed when it was — and why it's a necessary measure that every state should pass.

State Representative Cindy Holscher, who introduced the bill, pointed to multiple affidavits that alleged that detective Roger Golubski had a long history of coercing sex from black women in Kansas City. According to the The Kansas City Star, he allegedly threatened to arrest them if they did not consent.

This story is one of many that display how some police use their power to sexually exploit victims.

Another story, as reported by BuzzFeed, recounts when a teenager named Anna was raped by two on-duty cops in Brooklyn. She was handcuffed after driving around with friends one night. The officers let her friends go, but took her into the van and took turns raping her. The officers did not arrest her, but instead, they dropped her off a quarter-mile from the police station. She borrowed a cell phone from a stranger to call her friend. When she went to the hospital after with her mother, DNA from her rape kit confirmed the presence of semen from detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall.

Yet New York law made it easier for the cops to claim the sex was consensual. Only after a protracted legal battle were the cops charged with rape and resigned from the force.

That BuzzFeed report drew national attention to the issue of how cops sometimes sexually manipulate and even rape their charges.

The new Kansas law, as obvious as it appears to be, is a step in the right direction regarding legal solutions to combating sexual assault and violence.

The pardoning of consensual sex was indeed a legal loophole, allowing police officers to justify an imbalance in power. When someone is at the mercy of a police officer, consent is thrown out the door.

Yet there is, and always will be, a power imbalance between a police officer and a detainee. One can argue even if the law criminalizes consensual sex between the two, it won’t necessarily prevent sexual assault or rape — but at the very least, it makes justice more likely in the event that such a horrific act occurs.

How one invasive plant can change a rainforest

AP/Achmad Ibrahim

This article originally appeared on Massive.

Around the year 1917, a small, fast-growing tree called Bellucia pentamera was imported from its native habitat in South America to Indonesia’s renowned Bogor Botanical Garden. Back then, this island nation was still a Dutch colony, and the Dutch reaped scientific and economic advances from their skilled cultivation of exotic plants, including Bellucia. This tree, known in South America as the mountain apple (manzana de montana), produces edible fruits that were used by at least one Amazonian indigenous group to combat parasite infections.

But the early 20th-century Dutch hunger for mountain apple, and their laissez-faire attitude toward moving plant species around the globe, has had more serious ramifications than anyone predicted in 1917. Not only has Bellucia now persisted for over a century in its adopted Asian environment, it’s flourishing. Thanks to its small seeds, which can be transported among Indonesia’s 17,000 islands by birds and bats, Bellucia has made the nearly 500-mile journey from its original Bogor planting site to Gunung Palung National Park on the Indonesian side of Borneo.

A perfect storm of factors has enabled this tree to invade Gunung Palung, home to some of the last large tracts of lowland rainforest in Southeast Asia. The national park is a little-known jewel tucked away in the western part of Borneo and harbors seven types of rainforest. Dozens of charismatic and imperiled wildlife species dwell in these diverse jungles. Critically endangered Bornean orangutans roam the park searching for fruit. Sunda pangolins ply the forest floor below them while helmeted hornbills soar through the canopy. Bornean white-handed gibbons and proboscis monkeys leap from enormous strangler figs to old-growth Dipterocarp trees.

But human hands have also left their mark in Gunung Palung. Logging pressure in the park was particularly intense between 2000 and 2002. The selective removal of the biggest, most valuable trees left large gaps in the forest canopy, creating patches on the forest floor with much higher light availability and hotter temperatures than their shaded surroundings. In a previous study published in 2017, a group of scientists found that Bellucia dominated these logged areas of Gunung Palung. Not only could the species withstand the hot sun, but it appeared to out-compete even the native light-loving rainforest species. What, they wondered, made Bellucia so successful in logged areas?

Now, the same scientists, led by PhD student Christopher Dillis of the University of California — Davis, appear to have the answer. For their new paper, published in April in the journal Biotropica, they collected data on the presence or absence of flowers and fruit, as well as the number of ripe fruits, on each Bellucia tree in their Gunung Palung study site over a 13-month period. Another of the study’s authors, Andrew Marshall of the University of Michigan, had collected similar data for 200 genera of native rainforest trees between October 2007 and April 2013, so the researchers were able to compare the fruiting frequency (meaning, the proportion of trees producing fruit in any given month) of Bellucia to the native trees.

They may not appear like particularly contentious places, but rainforests are vegetative battlefields. Trees fiercely compete with each other for space, light, water, and nutrients. One way that ecologists think about such competition is termed the “lottery model.”

Fruits and seeds are the currency of success in a lottery model. If I were trying to win the lottery, one strategy might be for me to buy as many tickets as I can to maximize my changes of winning. Similarly, the more seeds and fruits that a species (like Bellucia) produces relative to its competitors, the greater its probability of persisting in the forest.

Dillis and his team found that, on average, 56 percent of the Bellucia trees in Gunung Palung National Park produced fruit each month. Just 4 percent of the other rainforest trees did. Even the most frequently-fruiting native genus was far less prolific than Bellucia, with only 25 percent of its trees fruiting each month.

Those were striking results, but another question from Dillis’ 2017 research remained unanswered: why did logging open the door for Bellucia to invade Gunung Palung? Canopy gaps are a ubiquitous and well-studied feature of rainforests. They commonly occur when tall trees die and fall to the forest floor. Because they are so common, it seemed strange that Bellucia was drawn to logged areas in particular instead of canopy gaps in general.

It turns out that Bellucia trees growing in gaps created by logging produced more fruits than Bellucia growing in natural canopy gaps. The mechanism behind this is not known, but one possibility is that the intense light availability in logging gaps allows Bellucia seedlings and trees to manufacture large leaves, which translates into increased rates of photosynthesis and more energy available to the tree. It can then allocate this surplus of energy to growth and reproduction, gaining a competitive advantage over native species. Dillis and colleagues observed that in areas where the canopy layer was formed entirely of Bellucia trees, there were virtually no other species present in the understory. They have not yet explored how pervasive this phenomenon is in Gunung Palung. If it does occur frequently and at large scales, it would decrease the plant community diversity in the park, a worrisome scenario given that biodiversity is the key to healthy ecosystems.

What all of this means for the future of Gunung Palung’s tropical rainforest remains unclear. I spent two years leading rainforest and orangutan conservation efforts in the Gunung Palung landscape for the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program, and my experience provides some clues.

Selective logging in Gunung Palung has decreased since the early 2000s, but it continues. Even at the Cabang Panti Research Station, 7.5-mile hike from the nearest village, the harsh buzz of chainsaws occasionally haunts the forest. It’s jarring. Juxtaposed against the lush backdrop of tall canopy trees and wildlife, the sound can be downright depressing. However, occasionally the forestry rangers would confiscate chainsaws from people living near Gunung Palung and arrest timber traffickers, and the natural soundscape of the forest would return. And these days, the illegal logging of the biggest and most valuable rainforest trees for the timber industry is by no means the biggest threat to lowland rainforests of western Borneo — it’s now been dethroned by large-scale oil palm agriculture, which is itself a complicated conservation issue.

The good news is that unlike other invasive species, it appears that Bellucia cannot run rampant through the jungle without logging gaps. So if logging continues to decrease (or at the very least, does not increase again), then Bellucia populations should follow suit. In the meantime, as Dillis and co-authors note, more research is needed into the effects of Bellucia on the native tree community to understand which plant species are suffering the most.

Current knowledge of Bellucia ecology can also help inform management strategies within Gunung Palung. For example, scientists in Sumatra’s Harapan rainforest, which has also been invaded by Bellucia, have found that removing some of the invasive trees has spurred natural forest regrowth. Testing this method at Gunung Palung may be a key to ensuring that the park’s lowland tropical forests remain intact and its wildlife persists far into the future.

A hangover pill? Tests on drunk mice show promise

Getty/Mixmike

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

“Civilization begins with distillation,” said William Faulkner, a writer and drinker. Although our thirst for alcohol dates back to the Stone Age, nobody has figured out a good way to deal with the ensuing hangover after getting drunk.

As a chemical engineering professor and wine enthusiast, I felt I needed to find a solution. As frivolous as this project may sound, it has serious implications. Between 8 and 10 percent of emergency room visits in America are due to acute alcohol poisoning. Alcohol is the leading risk factor for premature deaths and disability among people aged 15-49 and its abuse leads to serious health problems, including cardiovascular and liver cancer. Despite these sobering facts, current treatments for alcohol overdose largely rely on the body’s own enzymes to break down this drug.

I decided to design an antidote that could help people enjoy wine or cocktails or beer without a hangover, and at the same time create a lifesaving therapy to treat intoxication and overdose victims in the ER. I chose to create capsules filled with natural enzymes usually found in liver cells to help the body process the alcohol faster.

Together with professor Cheng Ji, an expert in liver diseases from Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and my graduate student Duo Xu, we developed an antidote and tested it in mice.

Inspired by the body’s approach for breaking down alcohol, we chose three natural enzymes that convert alcohol into harmless molecules that are then excreted. That might sound simple, because these enzymes were not new, but the tricky part was to figure out a safe, effective way to deliver them to the liver.

To protect the enzymes, we wrapped each of them in a shell, using a material the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had already approved for pills. We then injected these nanocapsules into the veins of drunk mice where they hurtled through the circulatory system, eventually arriving in the liver where they entered the cells and served as mini–reactors to digest alcohol.

We showed that in inebriated mice (which fall asleep much faster than drunk humans), the treatment decreased the blood alcohol level by 45 percent in just four hours compared to mice that didn’t receive any. Meanwhile, the blood concentration of acetaldehyde — a highly toxic compound that is carcinogenic, causes headaches and vomiting, makes people blush after drinking, and is produced during the normal alcohol metabolism — remained extremely low. The animals given the drug woke from their alcohol-induced slumber faster than their untreated counterparts — something all college students would appreciate.

The ability to efficiently break down alcohol quickly should help patients wake up earlier and prevent alcohol poisoning. It should also protect their liver from alcohol–associated stress and damage.

We are currently completing tests to ensure that our nanocapsules are safe and don’t trigger unexpected or dangerous side effects. If our treatments prove effective in animals, we could begin human clinical trials in as early as one year.

This sort of antidote won’t stop people from going too far when consuming alcohol, but it could help them recover quicker. In the meantime, we plan on drinking responsibly, and hope that you do too.

Yunfeng Lu, Professor Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles

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White Yale graduate student called police on peer for napping in a common room

f11photo via Shutterstock

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

A black graduate student at Yale spent more than 15 minutes being interrogated on her own campus because a white classmate reported her to campus police for napping in a common room.

Lolade Siyonbola’s name was misspelled in the school's system,  leading to the lengthy interrogation.

“I deserve to be here; I paid tuition like everybody else; I am not going to justify my existence here,” Siyonbola told one of the officers. “I am not going to be harassed.”

The white student who reported Siyonbola is said to have called the police months prior when she witnessed a black friend of Siyonbola lost in the building.

“I have every right to call the police,” the unnamed student said as she filmed Siyonbola in the most recent incident, who was also filming her.

The Yale Police Department said it was "following protocol" in responding to the white student's call on Siyonbola.

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“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” lives! NBC revives the beloved comedy after Fox cancellation

FOX/John P. Fleenor

UPDATED: Hours after this story was published, news broke that NBC had swooped in to save "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" from oblivion. A 13-episode sixth season will happen. Fans and critics rejoice! 

May means many things to us: the rapturous warmth of spring, a riot of flowers blooming under azure skies, the joy of renewal and the agony of cancellation. Those last two mostly refer to television viewers keeping an eye on the official release of fall programming schedules, happening next week in New York as part of the annual industry ritual known as the Upfronts.

Mainly the Upfronts are dog-and-pony shows for advertisers, giving them the opportunity to purchase airtime for television commercials well ahead of the fall schedule’s debut. Essentially it’s Madison Avenue’s version of high-stakes betting.

The only reason they matter to the average viewer is that they reveal to us which current series will return for another season and which are being tossed into the void. These days networks spare us the torturous wait and release their lists of survivors early.

And every year, without fail, some of this bad news leads to a loud bellowing and gnashing of teeth over the injustice of it all. Thursday, such an outcry rang out at the news that Fox’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” a series that serves as a potent antidepressant to many a TV critic, has been cancelled.

Maybe. Keep reading.

Fox also pulled the plug on “Last Man on Earth” and “The Mick,” also very funny shows. But the (possibly temporary?) demise of “Nine-Nine” is a real boot to the undercarriage, especially now. Few ensemble comedies are as quick and consistently entertaining as this show, whether on broadcast or cable.

Even fewer broadcast series in general, sitcom or drama, are as casually yet intentionally inclusive. Throughout the series episodes have dealt with sexism, interdepartmental politics, and bias based on race or sexual orientation, addressing these topics as part of the cases and the humor that goes along with working in the 99th Precinct of the New York Police Department.

Along the way “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” has matured into something more than a workplace half-hour. These days, in a very real way, “Nine-Nine” is a show about a family.

Originally conceived by Dan Goor and Mike Schur as a vehicle for Andy Samberg’s Jake Peralta, “Nine-Nine” soon exhibited its strength as a comedy that plays to every actor’s strength. Andre Braugher’s unflappable Captain Ray Holt, a man as serious about refinement and dignified behavior as he is about crime fighting, is a stupendous foil to Peralta.

But then, so are Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), office admin Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti) and Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews).

Although team members spent time in jail, on the lam and in witness protection as part of various story arcs, they always focused on keeping everyone together.

And as the characters grew more distinctly weird and the writers harmonized their quirks with crisp, surefooted editing techniques, “Nine-Nine” evolved into one of the shiniest well-oiled pieces of comedic machinery on broadcast.

It feels too early to be penning an obituary for this show. At the same time, killing “Nine-Nine” kind of goes along with the tenor of the current era, where everything that’s kind and decent and lovable must burn, burn! Why shouldn’t that apply to a comedy about kind, decent, lovable cops? Why not, indeed.

Granted, the broadcast TV business doesn’t run on sweetness and charity; viewership is its petrol (another purpose the Upfronts serves is to remind us of this salient fact). And the easiest explanation as to why Fox is pulling the plug on this veteran player is that not enough of us were watching it live.

The current season is averaging just under 2 million viewers an episode, placing it in the same realm of popularity as “The Last Man on Earth,” “The Mick” and “New Girl,” whose series finale was announced last year. These days live and live-plus-three-day ratings averages aren’t the only determinants of whether a network keeps a series.

But — and here’s where those other important factors come into play — Universal Television owns “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” not Fox. This explains why “New Girl” kept being renewed long after its popularity faded — 20th Century Fox Television owns that series and can continue profiting from it long after it is out of production.

Fox’s ownership of “Last Man” and “The Mick” didn’t save those series, however, which hints at other possible reasons for this wholesale purging of the network’s sitcom line-up.

Remember that 20th Century Fox Television is now on the precipice of becoming something totally different following the Fox-Disney merger, and what it will look like as a broadcaster is anyone’s guess. One general certainty about the entertainment industry is that success leads others to give chase, and the greatest strides forward this season have been in the comedy area.

The most recent weekly ratings showed four comedies within the uppermost ranks of the Nielsen charts — more in the top 10, in fact, than scripted dramas. All of those are multi-camera comedies, including the revival of “Roseanne.”

Indeed, the shocking popularity of Roseanne Barr’s reboot reportedly led to an industry-wide evaluation of what’s been missing in the TV landscape. That’s what happens when more than 18 million viewers show up for the return of a long-dead comedy. Not even the reboot of “Will & Grace” attracted those numbers for its return, although the 10.2 million who tuned in certainly made NBC very happy (ratings for “Roseanne” have since floated down to a reasonable 10 million viewers, still healthier than “Will & Grace's” 5.5 million season-to-date average; both have been renewed).

The larger takeaway here is that “Roseanne” proves that it’s possible for comedies besides those juggernauts created by Chuck Lorre to attract sizable audiences. For many years, the common thinking was that networks needed to settle for smaller returns from their half-hours. This reasoning allowed low-rated comedies such as "30 Rock," "Parks and Recreation" and "The Office" to cheat death time and again and win armloads of Emmys and Golden Globes in the bargain. Supporting quality and originality was more important that chasing ratings, the logic went; besides, the subjective nature of comedy and the fracturing of the TV audience meant expecting lower levels of attention.

"Roseanne" definitively dissolves that theory. It is proof that the genre itself isn’t the problem — it’s what producers are doing with it, and who they’re targeting.

Looping back to the cancellation of “Nine-Nine” and Fox’s other half-hours, here's a little more salt in our wounds: Among the sitcoms joining Fox's 2018-2019 lineup is a revival of Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing.” When ABC cancelled Allen’s series in May 2017, conservatives raised their own ruckus over that injustice — understandable, given the fact that it ranked as ABC's second-most-watched comedy behind "Modern Family" at the time.

“Last Man Standing” never raked in “Roseanne”-level ratings, mind you. However, its final episode garnered around six million viewers — more than thrice the number of viewers for the most recent episode of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” And for whatever reason Fox could package it as its version of a working-class comedy, even though Allen’s character is a senior executive for an outdoor sporting goods chain.

Shall we return to notions of hope? Late on Thursday, only hours after the terrible “Nine-Nine” news was unleashed, came a Hollywood Reporter story that its producers had fielded calls from TBS, Hulu and Netflix, each expressing interest in continuing the show. Two million viewers may not be enough for broadcast TV, but for a streaming service or basic cable, it might work just fine.

Part of the reason these outlets were moved to pounce is because of the wailing — not just from critics but the likes of the Backstreet Boys, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Hamill.

RENEW BROOKLYN NINE NINE

I ONLY WATCH LIKE 4 THINGS

THIS IS ONE OF THE THINGS#RenewB99

— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) May 10, 2018

Oh NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

How filmmakers the Duplass Brothers got some space in their “insane and beautiful co-dependence”

AP/Chris Pizzello

Mark and Jay Duplass — first recognized in the film industry for their talents on a smaller scale creating, directing, producing, writing and acting in independent films — are now the force behind much bigger projects like Netflix’s “Wild Wild Country” and “Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist.”

The duo’s new memoir, “Like Brothers,” explores the pitfalls and advantages of collaborating closely with friends and family, which they’ve been doing for 40 years ever since they started toying around with a 1980s video camera together in the New Orleans suburb where they grew up.

Originally created as a guide for young, aspiring filmmakers, the book is actually much more than that — it’s a lesson in how to run a family business, how to resolve disagreements and how to learn to let your creative partner go a bit and pursue individual work.

Mark Duplass sat down in Salon's studio recently to talk about the book and their film and TV work, how he and his brother have evolved as a duo since their early 20s and where they go from here.

With your brother Jay Duplass, you wrote this book called "Like Brothers," which is about your creative partnership, but he’s not here right now.

No.

What’s up with that?

Well, he’s dead.

That’s not true.

It’s okay. No, Jay is still alive, everybody. I think the fact that Jay is not here is a good jumping-off point for what this book is about, because I think that . . . we grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans with no connections to any industry, no real understanding that movies were made by people. Once we decided we wanted to make movies, I think what happened is we linked arms and we started climbing that mountain together. We developed quite an insane and beautiful co-dependence and it worked for us for many years. Honestly, the level of soulmates that we were, through our teens and our 20s is . . . it was some of the happiest and the most incredible times of my life.

Then we had to get married and have children, just to create some space inside of that co-dependence, which was the trickiest part of our relationship and something that we’re still dealing with today.

The essence of this book is really about learning how to be soulmates with space, and occasionally come to a Salon interview without your older brother and not have a panic attack while you’re there.

Is that working right now; is it OK?

I’ve got a lot of Klonopin pumping through my system right now.

Excellent, good, good.

I’m doing all right.

That’s good. Those of you who know Mark and Jay's work, the Duplass Brothers' work, whether it’s in film or TV, the book is probably going to speak to you. I say this with love, Mark, but it works very similar to some of your other craft, in the sense that you guys are simultaneously taking your creative work very seriously and making fun of yourselves at the same time, right?

Yes, that’s fair.

You're risking becoming ridiculous in the eyes of the audience.

Not really risking. I think we are. I think we’re saying that that’s OK too. I appreciate you being gentle about it. We haven’t spoken in awhile, but let’s call it what it is.

No, it’s ridiculous the way that we love each other, the way that we go head-to-head at times, the way that we want to be each other’s everything and can’t. I think some people look at it [like] oh, that’s really so sweet, the way that these brothers are, and some people say, do North American dudes really speak to each other with that much therapy-speak?

The answer for us is yes, for whatever reason. I don’t know why. I think that when we started writing this book we asked ourselves that question that we ask ourselves before we embark on anything right now, which is, “All of you have 500 movies and TV shows in your Netflix queue and a 100 books you want to read, so why the hell should we make this thing, what’s going to be useful about it?” I think the one thing we came up with, at least for us, was that nobody that we know of has as much experience with long-term collaboration.

Jay and I have been doing this for 40 years. I mean we have just been side-by-side forever. We have been through everything you can imagine. At the end of the day I think that, for us, offering something that is at once the real beauty of having each other, in those tough moments, then the real stifling nature of not finding time to individuate, and how that has been really rough on us in a lot of ways -- it felt like something unique we could serve up.

Salon Talks with Mark Duplass
Watch our full conversation:

I think that’s all right on. One of the things about this book that struck me as I was reading it was that I knew it would be funny. You guys are usually pretty funny. Most of the time intentionally.

Most of the time. If you’ve seen some of our earlier movies they’re actually our funniest films; we’re just not prepared to have people laugh at them, which is a problem.

No, you guys are funny. I wasn’t really expecting to have been reading it and being like, “Oh, that’s really pretty good advice,” but some of the stuff that you talk about when you talk about the difficulties of collaborating with somebody, especially somebody you know really well, and how you get past that -- I thought it was very useful, probably, in a lot of different contexts.

It doesn’t have to be you're making a movie, people who started a business together, whatever. The way guys resolve difficulties, resolve disagreements. I love that stuff. Talk about that a little bit.

It’s interesting. We really didn’t plan on that being as much a part of the book. I think when we started approaching this book we thought, “This is going to be really good for young aspiring filmmakers. We can show them how we came from nothing.” And then we thought, “Maybe it will just expand beyond filmmakers too, anyone in a start-up mentality.” But because we are who we are and we can’t help talking about our feelings, their developments almost sort of . . . I don’t want to say [it's a] "self-help book," but a little bit of a how-to guide of intense collaboration. How to validate the feelings of the person you’re working with, how to stand up for yourself enough, but also give enough so that you can move the ship forward.

And it was actually really interesting, the more we talked about it, and we realized something. I think one of the keys to our successful collaboration is that when I’m in an argument with Jay it doesn’t look like any other argument I’ve ever been in. It is usually us trying to navigate a situation. I can tell that Jay has 50 percent of his focus on what his own interests are, but he equally has 50 percent on my own interests and he wants me to win too. It’s been really interesting.

Crazy enough, we’ve had people kind of talk to us how it’s a lot like a marriage in a lot of ways. People who don’t have a tight sibling relationship, they’ve looked at this book and said, “Oh, I think that this is how you make all those relationships work to a certain degree.”

How did your relationship with Jay affect when the two of you started to have romantic relationships [and] serious girlfriends?

It was awful. Honestly, I mean I feel horrible for the girls we dated in high school and college who —

Do you need to make some phone calls to make amends?

Yes, we’re working on it; we’re going to send them a signed copy of the book. Because I think what happened is we didn’t know. We were emotionally immature. The things that Jay and I would share were just downright betrayals of the trust we had with other people that we were in intimate relationships with. We didn’t understand that that was not healthy. We didn’t understand being each other’s everything, almost like twins, was not going to be sustainable through romantic relationships. Through becoming husband, fathers, all those things. Ultimately, those early relationships of ours were unsuccessful, and even our friendships, they only got so far, because the sense that everybody has around us was, “Well, you’re only going to get so far with Mark or Jay because they have each other.”

And that kind of sucks in some regards, for not only those [with whom] we’re trying to develop other intimate relationships, but for us.

When did you start to notice that it was emotionally limiting for you?

It was more in our 20s, once we started to grow up a little bit and then really meeting the women that we were eventually were going to marry and realizing, “Oh shit, this is not going to work, the way we are, we're going to have to create space.” Then it begs the question, which Jay and I talk about all the time, it’s like, “How do we become ex-soulmates yet still be intimate?”

We were talking about this on the plane on the way over here. We were once each other’s everything. I mean we would write songs during the day, we would make a little movie at night, and we would go out at two in the morning and run three miles together, we would cook breakfast in the morning. Our parents were just kind of like, “Who are these two? Where did this come from?

And to learn how to make space in that and yet still be intimate is a lot like . . . not that it sounds productive, but it’s like trying to be an alcoholic who only wants to have two drinks. And you have to relearn that. It’s very difficult in our partnership and it’s something that requires a lot of care, and there have been a lot of tears.

I don’t know. I think that you and I have talked a lot over the years and in interviews, we do 15 minutes or 20 minutes. We always end up over-glorifying our bond. [Jay and I] always end up giving the sense that it’s easier than it is, and that’s what part of this book was, is the long overdue answer to the question, “How do you guys work together without killing each other?” An hour-long interview has not been enough. I think 320 pages are still not enough, but we’re scratching it.

One of the things that's interesting to me about your career is the way that your brother and you have stayed on parallel courses but also moved apart. You’ve done so many things together — TV shows and movies. Over the years you have started to branch [out], because both of you have acting careers now, which are almost totally different, right?

Yes, they’re wildly different.

How did that work out?

I started acting in things first. I had it great for awhile: I was the male in a 1930s Southern marriage where I had my wife waiting for me at home and I had affairs whenever I wanted, and nobody gave me shit about it. Then Jay went off and did —

That’s a metaphor, right?

That’s a metaphor. Then when Jay went to do "Transparent" I really found myself kind of threatened by a lot of the connections he was developing with everyone on the "Transparent" set and how much he loved it and, “I was so happy for you, don’t leave me, because I love you too. Have fun but not too much fun.” It’s literally those kinds of feelings we have and they’re crazy.

The truth of the matter is that level of individuation where we can be exactly who we want to be in that moment not in front of each other, because I know Jay so well. If he wants to step out and be a little different at a party he can’t do that around me because he knows I’m looking at him thinking, “Bullshit, that’s not you.” I can’t do that in front of him. Every now and then it’s good for us to be away from each other in that regard, but it’s strange. When I show up to a party by myself the first question I get is, "How’s it going; where’s Jay?” He gets the same thing.

Of course, we want to have our cake and eat it too. We love our togetherness, but the separateness has been nice.

Yes, it must have been a little surprising to see him in an acting role, which kind of had been your thing. Did you have that moment where you had to be like, “Oh, he’s actually good.”

There’s so many moments. There’s the petty moment of like, “That’s my zone bro,” and like, “Don’t get up in my stuff because I’m the actor. I want the attention.”

I really didn’t have a problem accepting him as an actor because I figured he would be good at it.

I think a lot of the real challenge for me, again, was watching Jay for the first time be truly happy in a creative relationship that had nothing to do with me.

And was that in "Transparent?" 

That was in "Transparent."

I was always the guy, when we show up to parties together, people would — inevitably, their eyes would kind of turn towards me a little bit.

Because they’d seen you in movies?

Because they’d seen me in "The League" and they wanted to talk about "The League." Then we would go to a party and everybody wants to talk to Jay about "Transparent," and also the levels of conversation they wanted to have about "Transparent" are so much more beautiful and interesting than they would have had about "The League." It’s kind of like, “Eh, eh.”

I think once we just learn to accept that we’re kind of petty about this shit sometimes, and like, “It’s OK can we talk about it?” That kind of helps us transcend and keep it on the level.

I believe you and I met on the sidewalk in Austin outside a South By Southwest screening of "The Puffy Chair," all the way back to official — 

1914.

Right before "Birth of a Nation" came out.

I was thinking about the funky DIY scene of that period. I wonder how much of that shaped how you guys ran your career later? Because one of the things that’s really striking about you guys is you’ve devoted a lot of your careers to nurturing other people’s work. You have produced or otherwise helped out with things that you did not direct, that were not your artistic projects, right?

Definitely.

Has that always been an important part of this?

No, not at all. Honestly, it happened completely serendipitously. We were the first people in our group of friends to start making money, honestly. Our friends started coming to us and saying, “Can I have $5,000 to finish my movie?” And we were like, “Of course,” because we had survival skills. Then we would do what we normally do, which is we would watch their cuts and we would help them get into Sundance. Someone looked us and was like, “Oh, you guys are producers now,” and we’re like, “Really?”

Then it started to feel really good and really right, and not just from an altruistic perspective of, “If we can help these people we should,” but selfishly speaking, I’m 41 now and Jay’s 45. If you look at the Way Brothers [who made] the "Wild, Wild Country" series for us, they’re collectively 12 years younger than us. Being around them and feeling the energy of who they are and the way they remind us of ourselves at that time and their level of inspiration and how hard they work, it kind of juices us back up and keeps us young.

As we have created space for ourselves in our duo of collaboration, it has allowed for us to collaborate with people like Sean Baker on "Tangerine," and really expand the scope in the kinds of stories we can tell. So it’s not all stories about male intimacy, which is the first five movies we made.

That does seem to be true. I was thinking specifically of "Tangerine," because I don’t think it’s unfair to say that’s not really a movie you guys could have made, right?

I don’t think so. We’re not experts at that, that’s not what we do well.

And it was famously shot on the iPhone. It was a combination of a really amazing story with amazing characters and many technological breakthroughs.

Yes, and to your point, it came from the ethic of "The Puffy Chair." Sean Baker, who made that movie, had made three wonderful indie films before that, but he couldn’t get the money to make ["Tangerine"]. And so, having made the money we have made off of things like "The League," Shawn came to us and said, “I have this idea,” and we just said, “OK, we’ll just cut him a $100,000 check and let him go.”

Honestly, we watched two cuts of the movie and helped advise on a couple of things and helped with some sales. That movie is Sean Baker. Just using our platform, we protected him and gave him full creative control. The more I can do that at this moment . . . we’re leaning way into that, and that feels really good right now.

Obviously, he went from strength to strength, having moved on to "The Florida Project" after that, which is  — does he still take your calls, is that still going to work?

He doesn’t know who I am anymore, but it’s OK. Have you read that book "The Giving Tree?" It was about me and Sean Baker. That’s fine.

It's not dark, that’s not the right word, but there are some moments of sadness in [your] book, though, right?

Yes, I think that’s fair. I hear you kind of struggling to describe it a little bit.

What’s the word?

I think it’s fair because I don’t have the word. There’s a melancholy to it, because I think that when we . . . if I’m being totally honest, when we started to write this book I really thought that we were going to make a treatise or a manifesto on the truly glorious nature of our collaboration. In the middle of writing this book HBO canceled "Togetherness" on us and kind of broke our hearts and made us question for the first time, “Well shit, do we have to stay together the whole step of the way? What would it be like if we got a little bit of space?” And we started opening that up, and that’s when some of the glory of the space started to hit us, but also some of the heartbreak of that.

I think what you feel in this book is this yes, it is a wonderful testament to two brothers who are able to come from nowhere through their unique bond, but at the same time that time is over now and we’ve had to learn how to let that go and become something new that allows individual space. There is some heartbreak there in the middle of that glorification.

Honestly, I think that’s one of the things that kind of saves the book from the moments where it could feel like it could be too sunshiney. I think this has often been true in your creative work. That you guys feel the moment when it’s necessary to go for something deeper, or you try to.

I like that.

You might not a hundred percent get there, nobody does.

I’ll take that. That makes me feel good.

Two really important questions before we close. There is a working list in here of your 10 favorite movies. I’m not going to give too much of it away because I want readers of the book to work out what is exasperating, or wonderful, or both, about your list. Which one of you is the president of the Kenneth Lonergan Fan Club, though?

Jay is 100 percent the president of that club. I am a willing VP. I am right there. It is Jay’s deep love of "Margaret." That really makes him —

That’s such a striking movie to be on that list.

It is.

Because a lot of the others are really famous and popular films.

I know, and no one saw "Margaret." It’s one of the great tragedies.

It was an attempt to make the great post-9/11 New York movie and nobody saw it.

Nobody saw it. That was at a time when you made a good movie everyone saw it. Now with everything you can make great movies and no one sees them and no one cares because this is where we’re at. Jay is definitely the president there and then the intense love of the maybe more obscure documentaries tends to come a little bit more from my side.

Did that impulse drive you guys towards the project with "Wild, Wild Country," which is amazing?

Absolutely, we have been fans of documentaries for years.

We’ve been scared to make them because we know that they often take seven to 10 years and destroy you, and if you’re successful as a documentarian it means you’ve only lost a little bit of money.

The good news is that our good friend Josh Bron, who we wrote about in this book, he’s kind of the king of documentary sales. He knew that we were fans of the Way Brothers' first movie "The Batter Bastards of Baseball," which, if you like "Wild, Wild Country" watch it, it’s on Netflix. He brought the project to us and it was such a perfect marriage, because when we made our movie "Jeff Who Lives at Home" we hadn’t really made that much studio stuff. Jason Reitman was coming off of "Juno." He just swooped down and protected us with his power and gave us full creative control. We will never forget that. We can now, to a certain degree, do that for other filmmakers.

That’s incredible, that’s amazing.

I’m not going to take credit for "Wild, Wild Country." It's so good because it’s those boys who made that movie. We just put our arms around them and said, “Come move into our office. We will protect you financially, creatively and give you the scope to do what you do. If you fall on the sword and fail it’s your own fault.” And they didn’t.

Tell us a little bit in closing about -- for Mark, for Jay, for the Duplass Brothers -- what are you guys working on right now, separately or together?

We have a documentary series called "Evil Genius" that’s coming out on Friday, May 11 — really excited about it. It’s about the famous pizza bombings scenario in Erie in 2003 where a guy walked into bank with a collar bomb around his neck and a cane gun, and he claimed that he had been set up for it. We finally get to tell that story, which is really exciting. We have a four-movie deal with Netflix where we make a bunch of original films. I just shot one as a two-hander with me and Ray Romano, who I have been in love with for years.

That sounds fascinating.

That’s another deep dive into male intimacy, which is something we know about. And we’ve got a new season of "Room 104" that we’re working on, getting ready for the fall.

 

John Kelly on undocumented immigrants: “They don’t integrate well, they don’t have skills”

Getty/Win McNamee

Chief of Staff John Kelly revealed a lot during his interview with NPR's John Burnett airing on Morning Edition. Indeed, a transcript of the interview on NPR comes with a warning that the content “contains language some may find offensive.” Kelly, who revealed that he spends a “huge amount of time” with President Donald Trump, didn’t hold back offensive and insensitive remarks when it came to subjects like immigration and undocumented immigrants.

“I believe you said that they needed to get off their lazy asses and register,” Burnett said to Kelly, referring to a comment Kelly made regarding to undocumented immigrants who didn’t register for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program.

“I believe that's a quote,” Kelly confirmed. “But for whatever reason they didn't get off their butts. The fact is that this president said, ‘throw them in there so,’ we get 1.8 million. That was earthshaking enough. And then a path to citizenship. I thought based on all of the rhetoric I was getting from the particularly the Democrats on the Hill both sides of the aisle both sides of the hill that they, I mean that was Nevada and they you know they tap that around and tossed it around."

On the topic of immigration, Burnett asked Kelly if he thinks Temporary Protected Status (TPS) should be cancelled for immigrants of all countries.

“I think we should fold all of the TPS people that have been here for a considerable period of time and find a way for them to be [on] a path to citizenship,” he said. “Use the Haitians as an example.”

“A path to citizenship rather than sent home?” Burnett inquired.

“Yeah. Well, they were there in a legal status under TPS, that's a big deal,” Kelly said. “They're under legal status.”

Kelly continued to tell Burnett to look at “Central Americans,” who have been in the U.S. for over 20 years, as an example.

“I mean if you really start looking at them and saying, ‘OK you know you've been here 20 years. What have you done with your life?’ Well, I've met an American guy and I have three children and I've worked and gotten a degree or I'm a brick mason or something like that,” Kelly said. “That's what I think we should do — for the ones that have been here for shorter periods of time, the whatever it was that gave them TPS status in the first place. If that is solved back in their home countries they should go home.”

On the defensive, Kelly clarified that he does not think that those who move to the United States illegally are “bad people.”

“They're not criminals,” he said. “They're not MS-13. Some of them are not. But they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society.”

He added not speaking English is a “big thing.”

“They don't integrate well, they don't have skills,” he added. “They're not bad people.”

Kelly said the “law is the law,” and that “a big name of the game is deterrence.”

Burnett commented that families being separated from each other at the border—likely when a mother gets arrested—is a probably a big deterrent, to which Kelly agreed.

“Even though people say that's cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children?” Burnett asked.

“I wouldn't put it quite that way,” Kelly said. “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”

Appropriately, Kelly’s insensitivity resulted in backlash from some lawmakers.

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., issued a statement calling Kelly’s “bigoted comments” a slap in the face to “the generations of people who have come from foreign lands to contribute to the richness of our nation."

“It is sad that we have to continue to remind the administration that immigrants founded this country,” Lujan Grisham stated. “Some arrived penniless and without an education but worked to find ways to prosper, revitalize communities and give back to the nation they love.”

U.S. scrambles to apologize after TSA forced a Canadian politician to remove his turban

AP/Ted S. Warren

Navdeep Bains, Canada's Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, had a difficult time getting through airport security during an April 2017 visit to the U.S. — all because of his turban.

The Sikh Canadian diplomat recounted his story in an interview with the Canadian online newspaper La Presse, which is published in French. According to his account, Bains was on his way back to Toronto from a two-day trip where he met with Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder.

Bains passed through the metal detector but because he was wearing a turban, he was asked to go through additional security.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration passed regulations in 2007 to allow Sikh men to keep their turbans on at airports. However, additional security measures might include a swab test.

"But the agent was having trouble running the machine. And all of a sudden, the machine emitted a warning sound, which was caused by an unknown element. The officer then stated that he needed to do additional searches. He then asked me to remove my turban. I asked him why I had to remove my turban when the metal detector gantry had worked well, " Bains told La Presse.

"I told him it was the machine that was not working well. I asked him to repeat the sampling test again. And if there is a problem, we can consider other options because I think it's an intrusion into my private life. I will never be asked to take off my clothes. It's the same thing. It's a piece of linen,” he added.

At this point Bains still had not revealed his diplomatic passport.

"But I never told them who I was, because I wanted to know how things would go for people who are not ministers or lawmakers," he explained.

The situation only escalated from there, unfortunately.

Once he arrived at his boarding gate, a security officer approached him at the gate and told him he had to return to the security checks.

"A security guard came to get me to say that I had to go back to security checks. I asked him what was happening. He told me that the security protocol had not been followed. He said to me, ‘Therefore, you must take off your turban.’ I politely replied that I did not represent a security threat and that I had passed all security checks. He then asked for my name and identification. I reluctantly handed him my diplomatic passport,” Bains explained in the interview released on Friday.

Once the agents realized his identity, they made calls, according to the interview, and finally gave him clearance to leave. In a statement to CNN, Bains explained: “wearing the turban is considered one of the most dutiful acts for a person of the faith.”

“I am proud to represent my community,” he added. “Unfortunately these types of incidents do occur from time to time to minorities in particular. But it should never become the norm. I will continue to promote diversity and inclusion across the country as our government has done since we took office."

Since the report, TSA has issued an apology to Bains. In a statement to CNN, TSA spokesman Michael McCarthy said they “regret the screening experience.”

"We regret the screening experience did not meet the expectations of Mr. Bains," McCarthy said. "Upon review of airport closed-circuit video, we determined that the officer conducting the screening did not follow standard operating procedures and therefore received additional training."

“All persons wearing head coverings may be subject to additional security screening, which may include an officer-conducted or self-conducted pat-down,” he added. “TSA does this to ensure that prohibited items or weapons are not concealed beneath any type of clothing and brought onto an aircraft. This policy covers all headwear and is not directed at any one particular item or group."

Some lawmakers are taking action to propose solutions to America’s racial profiling problem.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced a bill this week that would require border patrol and immigration enforcement agents to document every instance when they stop, search, or interrogate people on buses and trains.

Now you can view thousands of Russian-linked Facebook ads

democrats-intelligence.house.gov

More details regarding Russian-linked Facebook propaganda, crafted to create political discord during the 2016 presidential election, have been made public by a House of Representatives committee. Earlier today, House Intelligence Committee Democrats released thousands of social media ads from 2015 to 2017 that were created by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian-linked entity in question.

The social media ads paid for by the Internet Research Agency comprise a telling medley of political positions and culture war salvos. From liberal Facebook posts supporting Black Lives Matter and LGBT causes, to ads luring conservatives to "like" a Facebook page called “Being Patriotic,” the ads confirm the long-speculated intentions of the Internet Research Agency: to further divide an already bifurcated country.

The ads released, which can be viewed here, include images of each ad and metadata — such as ad impressions, ad clicks, ad spend, and ad creation date, which were compiled by Facebook.

NBC News analyzed the ads and concluded that Facebook likely received an estimated $100,000 from the the Russian organization, for ads that were viewed over 33 million times. In the Senate hearing in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 126 million people on Facebook viewed content by Russian-linked campaigns.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg said in his testimony.

In February, thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian entities, including the Internet Research Agency, were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

"The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general," Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in the announcement.

The alleged activities conducted the Internet Research Agency began as early as 2014; the organization reportedly registered as a Russian entity in 2013. The details of the indictment alleged those indicted organized in-person rallies and created trending hashtags like the #Hillary4Prison.

The goal of the defendants, according to the document, was to “sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

“Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ('Trump Campaign') and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” the document reads.

The ads released on Thursday indeed corroborate that notion.