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    In ‘Extrapolations,’ Scott Z. Burns Dramatizes Some Inconvenient Truths

    Years ago, when Scott Z. Burns was doing some uncredited script work on Steven Soderbergh’s escapist heist movie “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004), Burns made the mistake of cracking a joke about the popcorn movie they were making. Soderbergh quickly set him straight.Movies and TV shows are a transaction, Soderbergh told him. Filmmakers and showrunners tell viewers a story, and viewers give that story their time.“He told me that is a transaction that we, as storytellers, can’t afford to be cynical about,” Burns said in a recent video call. In other words, entertainment is the storyteller’s mandate.The lesson came in handy as Burns was writing, producing and directing multiple episodes of “Extrapolations,” the new limited series he created for Apple TV+, which debuts on Friday. The series, which features a large, illustrious cast — top names include Edward Norton and Meryl Streep — conjures eight hours of drama, science fiction and some occasional comedy from the subject of global warming. As subjects go, it’s a tough sell; the series could easily have come across like an urgent plea to eat your vegetables.But not if he could make it at least a little bit fun.“I don’t believe I’m going to move people or change their attitude about anything unless first I entertain them” said Burns, best known for writing the research-heavy Soderbergh movies “Contagion,” “Side Effects” and “The Informant!” (and for writing and directing the 2019 political thriller “The Report”). “That, to me, is the fun part of the job: creating entertainment that maybe sticks with somebody.”Make no mistake, it was a challenge. Telling multiple, sometimes interlocking stories that cover the years 2037 to 2070, “Extrapolations” is hugely ambitious, exploring climate change from religious, political, economic, technological and social perspectives. Each episode (with the exception of one two-parter) leaps ahead several years as the climate crisis worsens, traversing the globe from Alaska to India, much of it shot overseas. Fires rage, cities flood and famines spread but life continues, including all of the myopia, power-grabbing and need for deeper meaning that has always characterized human history.Mia Maestro and Edward Norton in a scene from Episode 4 of “Extrapolations.” The series follows multiple, often interlocking stories that track the future of climate change.Apple TV+Matthew Rhys (far left, with Heather Graham and, center and far right, Alexander Sokovikov and Noel Arthur), praised Burns’s ability to “view the world from many different perspectives.”Apple TV+It’s a series full of big ideas. But that is typical for Burns, said Matthew Rhys, who stars and has been friends with him for several years. (He also played a small but important role in “The Report.”“He is forever posing the questions that would never even cross my stratosphere,” Rhys said in a video call. “He has this expanse to his thinking and to his questioning, and also this enormous humanity and incredible sensitivity.”Born and raised just outside Minneapolis, Burns studied English literature at the University of Minnesota and originally wanted to be a journalist. His father worked in advertising, and Burns followed in his footsteps. He soon discovered that he was good at writing television commercials, which is how he met the actor and director Peter Berg. Berg was interested in directing ads in between his film and television projects. They became friends, and Berg hired Burns to write for the series “Wonderland” (2000), a drama set in a psychiatric facility modeled on Bellevue Hospital.The series lasted only one season, but the experience taught Burns two things about himself: He had a talent for writing screenplays, and he loved doing research. He would spend hours at Bellevue, immersing himself in the atmosphere and the history.“I think that’s where I became persuaded that research really is the solution to writer’s block,” he said. “That if you just continue to dig into your subject matter, it’s eventually going to reveal some cool story to you.”Kate Winslet and Larry Clark in a scene from the heavily researched Steven Soderbergh film “Contagion” (2011), which Burns wrote. Claudette Barius/Warner Bros.He takes a hands-on approach to gathering information and context, engaging experts and throwing himself into his subjects. For “Contagion,” that meant global pandemics (the film was released in 2011, nearly a decade before the Covid-19 outbreak). For “Side Effects” (2013), it was the world of antidepressants. In writing “Extrapolations” Burns consulted with the climate change experts Elizabeth Kolbert and Bill McKibben.He is also open to perspectives that diverge from his own. “I know that one of the reasons he brought me on is that he and I don’t see the world the same way,” Dorothy Fortenberry, an executive producer of “Extrapolations,” said in a video call. “We have very different lives and lifestyles. He’s agnostic, and I’m religious. We’re not a matched set, and I think he appreciated that.”Burns traces his environmental awakening to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, in which some 11 million gallons of crude oil were spilled into Prince William Sound, Alaska. Burns took a leave from his advertising job to help clean otters affected by the spill. He soon realized that the otter center where he worked was part of a carefully planned strategy to rehabilitate Exxon’s image.“I think what I took from that was that a story, like a place that had been built to clean otters, wasn’t maybe what it looked like,” Burns said. “That was a big thing for me. I came back and I changed my relationship to advertising so I could do more work in the environmental space.”Years later, he jumped at an opportunity to work on Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” joining as a producer.Al Gore, pictured in a scene from “An Inconvenient Truth.” He applauded Burns’s willingness to apply his storytelling skills to the subject of global warming. Eric Lee/Paramount ClassicsThe film, which won an Oscar for best documentary, turned an Al Gore slide show into a visually compelling and morally persuasive argument for heeding the dire signs of global warming. Viewed widely as an important moment in raising public awareness of climate change, it even spawned a sequel, 2017’s “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” with Burns as an executive producer.Gore, who has remained friends with Burns, was particularly impressed with how Burns handled the episodes of “Extrapolations” that are set in the distant future, and his ability to turn real-world crisis into compelling narrative.“The farther into the future you extrapolate, the more difficult it is to find the most accurate projection of what might happen,” Gore said by phone. “But I think that he’s really done a terrific job.”“There is kind of a cottage industry of books about how storytelling is the way we all best absorb information, so the importance of highly skilled storytellers has grown,” Gore added. “It’s great that Scott has applied that skill to this challenge.”Compared to the “Inconvenient Truth” films, the flashy, effects-heavy “Extrapolations” feels like “Ocean’s Twelve,” with a similarly star-studded cast. It includes Marion Cotillard and Forest Whitaker, who play a married couple living a contentious, futuristic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” existence; Sienna Miller, who plays a pregnant marine biologist wondering what the future holds for her unborn child; David Schwimmer, who plays a slippery lawyer willing to grease some wheels to preserve the temple where his family worships; and Kit Harington, who plays a powerful tech mogul lording over all he sees, Elon Musk style.It makes for a lot of intellectual and artistic juggling. To that end, Rhys, who plays a craven casino mogul trying to make a fast buck in Alaska, praised Burns’s ability to “view the world from many different perspectives and approach them all with equal empathy.”Daveed Diggs, who plays a rabbi in a rapidly flooding Miami, was drawn to the scope of “Extrapolations.” “I just thought it was a really big swing,” he said, “and I like things that are big swings.” Apple TV+That enormous scope was a specific draw for Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton,” “Blindspotting”), who plays a rabbi trying to balance faith, social obligation and the reality of rapidly rising Miami sea levels in two early episodes.“I just thought it was a really big swing, and I like things that are big swings,” he said in a video call. “I wasn’t sure how it was all going to work, but the world building was so smart to me. It is trying to create something that allows us to discuss the reality of climate change in the same way that we discuss other elements of popular culture.”“Extrapolations” also fits neatly into a running Burns theme: The world is a scary place, and humans have devised all manner of ways to screw it up. But they also have the capability to fix it, and this gives him hope.“People who know me would probably say I tend to be a little darker and drier than a lot of other humans,” he said. “But I know that we have all of the solutions to all of these problems. I also recognize that the amount of change that we have to engage in is massive, and human beings don’t tend to change very rapidly.”Perhaps his latest endeavor can help push things along. And maybe even provide some entertainment along the way. More

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    Review: Nicholas Hytner’s ‘Guys and Dolls’ Finds New Depths

    Nicholas Hytner’s heartbreaking ambulatory staging, at the Bridge Theater in London, finds new depths in the classic Broadway musical.“Guys and Dolls” is surely one of the most beloved Broadway musicals in London, where it resurfaces every decade or so to beguile audiences with its treasurable humor and wit. The difference this time, in Nicholas Hytner’s joyous new production, which opened Tuesday at the Bridge Theater, is that the show courses with a degree of feeling not always found in this story of two male “no-goodniks” and the women who love them. That warmth transforms Frank Loesser’s 1950 classic into something as touching as it is tuneful: You leave humming, and with a full heart.This first-ever musical at the Bridge theater, which opened in 2017, is also Hytner’s first London musical in 30 years. And like his last one, “Carousel,” this “Guys and Dolls” is sure to be a smash hit.Many will know the story, adapted from Damon Runyon: The nightclub singer Miss Adelaide (Marisha Wallace) wants to make a husband of her fiancé of 14 years, Nathan Detroit (Daniel Mays). Similarly domestic thoughts come to obsess the prim Sister Sarah (Celinde Schoenmaker), who falls hard for the smooth-talking gambler, Sky Masterson (Andrew Richardson).Celinde Schoenmaker, left, as Sister Sarah, and Marisha Wallace, as Miss Adelaide.Manuel HarlanAt the Bridge, 400 or so playgoers per performance have the opportunity to follow these characters’ paths to the altar, quite literally. The seats have been removed from the orchestra level and the action unfolds across hydraulic platforms that rise up from beneath the stage floor. Those who would prefer not to spend nearly three hours on their feet can occupy tiered seating that encircles the auditorium.Hytner has tried this immersive approach before, with Shakespeare, and the concept turns out equally well-suited to this self-described “musical fable of Broadway,” with its inimitable book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. The designer Bunny Christie offers the neon-filled landscape of a bygone Times Square, and crew members dressed as police officers are there to keep spectators out of the way of the flexible sets, and the performers.Yet proximity to the cast would mean nothing if the actors didn’t deliver. And it’s here that Hytner really scores, fielding a company of players — including several newcomers to musical theater — that mines the twin love affairs on view for all their emotional heft. They sing splendidly, and break your heart, too.I’ve not seen a “Guys and Dolls” that gives its central quartet such equal weight. It’s tempting to think of Sister Sarah in the shadow of the audience-grabbing Miss Adelaide, the singer — and stripper — who has been pretending for years to her unseen mother that she and Nathan are married.But Schoenmaker’s golden-voiced Sarah suggests a devil-fearing member of the Save-a-Soul Mission Band whose resolve looks ready to crack in the face of the right guy — which Sky turns out to be. Making his professional theater debut in that role, the dusky-voiced Richardson is a real find.As Miss Adelaide, Wallace avoids caricature, coupling robust comedy with the sense of an aching heart and bringing her roof-raising vocals to her character’s famously adenoidal “Lament.” But you also sense the mounting annoyance she feels toward the rapscallion Nathan, who won’t be easily weaned from rolling dice and shooting craps.Andrew Richardson, as Sky Masterson, and Schoenmaker.Manuel HarlanAdelaide and her dancers from the Hot Box stop the show with the second-act “Take Back Your Mink,” which the choreographers Arlene Phillips and James Cousins turn into a dizzying striptease. Yet you feel this Adelaide laying bare a depth of affection for Nathan that makes something momentous of their climactic duet, “Sue Me.” Mays, a TV and film name irresistibly cast as Nathan, brings a sure voice and even surer comic timing to the role, which he plays as a streetwise commitment-phobe who is essentially a softie.The score, orchestrated by Charlie Rosen, sounds great as performed by a 14-piece swing band perched above the action, lending a party feel to the proceedings, in which the audience joins a conga line with the cast (on the night I attended, at least).The ensemble numbers come roaring to life, with Cedric Neal’s sweet-faced Nicely-Nicely Johnson leading “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” to three encores. He is surveyed from above by the band leader, Tom Brady, who surveys the tidal pull of the song in mock-disapproval; after all, we can’t be there all night.But the evening is nowhere more affecting than in the plaintive solo number, “More I Cannot Wish You,” in which the kindly Arvide Abernathy (Anthony O’Donnell) wishes his granddaughter, Sarah, the experience of love that she has denied herself. There’s nothing I could wish more for theatergoers than to experience this “Guys and Dolls” for themselves.Guys and DollsThrough Sept. 2 at the Bridge Theater, in London; bridgetheater.co.uk. More

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    Jimmy Kimmel Says Trump Can’t Blame Mike Pence for Jan. 6

    Pence could be blamed for a lot of things, Kimmel said, but not the attack on the Capitol: “They tried to hang him on Jan. 6.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Passing the BlameAt a public appearance in Iowa over the weekend, former President Donald Trump blamed former Vice President Mike Pence for Jan. 6.“Listen, Mike Pence can be blamed for a lot of things, like shampooing with white-out, but he didn’t cause Jan. 6,” Jimmy Kimmel said. “They tried to hang him on Jan. 6.”“Trump said since Pence refused to help him overturn the election, he, ‘in many ways deserves blame for what happened at the Capitol,’ which is the presidential equivalent of, ‘If the teller had just put the money in the bag, everybody would have made it home safe.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He said if Mike Pence hadn’t refused to overturn the election, ‘you wouldn’t have had Jan. 6 as we call it.’ Yeah, right. That’s what the calendar calls it, too.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I have to say, I can’t wait to see Pence debating Donald Trump. It’s going to be like Elmo versus Cocaine Bear.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (I Created a Monster Edition)“Meanwhile, ahead of his speech in Iowa, Trump said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is ‘probably’ his biggest rival for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump said his only other rivals are the Justice Department and high cholesterol.” — JIMMY FALLON“The former president also went after his chief 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he claimed is in the national spotlight only because of the former president’s 2018 endorsement, saying, ‘If it weren’t for me, Ron DeSanctimonious would right now probably be working at a law firm or maybe a Pizza Hut.’ Or, if he was really ambitious, a combination law firm-Pizza Hut.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The former president also explained his new nickname for DeSantis, saying, ‘I use the word Ron DeSanctimonious or Ron DeSanctus, it’s just a shorter version.’ Yes, because all nicknames need a nickname.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingThe rapper Bad Bunny joined James Corden for a round of Carpool Karaoke on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightVice President Kamala Harris will sit down with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutMelanie Lynskey’s character in “Yellowjackets” is as comfortable skinning a rabbit as she is defrosting a roast.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey stars in two of TV’s current hit thrillers: “Yellowjackets” and “The Last of Us.” More

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    Eboni K. Williams and Her ‘Harlem Jewel Box’

    The broadcaster and author’s brief to her designer was simple: ‘Imagine if Josephine Baker lived in Harlem today. That’s what I want this apartment to look like.’When Eboni K. Williams moved to New York from Los Angeles in 2014, to take a job as a correspondent at CBS News, she knew exactly where she was going to live.“No disrespect to any other borough or any other part of the city, but being a Black woman from the South, it had to be Harlem U.S.A.,” said Ms. Williams, 39, a native of Charlotte, N.C. “It was important for me to walk out my door every day and feel the spirit and energy of the ancestors who lived there — James Baldwin and Malcolm X and Lorraine Hansberry and Josephine Baker.”Ms. Williams, a lawyer, writer and broadcaster (Fox News, WABC Radio and REVOLT and GRIO cable networks), who is probably best known as the first Black cast member of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” landed at Riverton Square, a large rental development near the F.D.R. Drive, between 135th and 138th Streets.“Looking at it, you would think it was a housing project, but it has a real legacy. Baldwin lived there, and so did David Dinkins,” said Ms. Williams, referring to the former mayor of New York. “If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for me.”But life is complicated, and love sometimes requires a change of address. From 2019 to 2021, Ms. Williams, the author of the recently published “Bet on Black: The Good News About Being Black in America Today” and the host of the podcast “Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams,” found herself in TriBeCa, in a three-bedroom sublet at the Four Seasons Private Residences, with her fiancé, a financier. They have since ended their relationship.Eboni K. Williams, an author, lawyer and TV, radio and podcast host, lives in a one-bedroom condo in Harlem with her tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Carey James.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesEboni K. Williams, 39Occupation: Lawyer, journalist, authorHarlem on my mind: “It meant something to me, as a Black woman, to land in a neighborhood that has meant so much to Black people.”“I’m glad I had that experience,” Ms. Williams said. “Because as gorgeous as the unit was, when I went to buy a place coming out of the lease, I had learned what was really important to me.”For starters, that meant an apartment that was a little more down-to-earth, literally. “We were on the 67th floor, which was not my jam,” she said. “I have a fear of heights.”An open kitchen was also a must. “That was a $7 million apartment, and it had a galley kitchen,” she said. “I love to cook, so I hated the galley kitchen.”And also: Who needs a dining table? “I never used it,” she said. “I ate in front of the TV.”But having three bedrooms was nice. It allowed for a dedicated office, and she realized she “needed a separate work space.”“Oh, honey, aesthetics are very important to me,” Ms. Williams said. “I know what I want my house to look like.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAnd she will not soon forget the abundance of storage space at the Four Seasons. “That place introduced me to California Closets,” Ms. Williams said, referring to the company that creates custom organizing systems. “I had them do every closet in my new apartment.”About that new apartment: Ms. Williams went into contract two and a half years ago, based on the model unit, in a building under construction in central Harlem — one bedroom, floor-to-ceiling windows, nine-foot ceilings, high-end finishes — and moved in last June after many delays, with her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Carey James (named for her grandfather).“It was the only place I looked at. I’m very decisive in that way,” she said.“I’m a girl from the South, and I’m a pageant queen, and the finishes were very important to me,” Ms. Williams continued. “It was important for me to have Carrara marble countertops. It was important for me to have the beautiful white-oak herringbone floors throughout. I’m allergic to carpet. Not really, but you know what I mean.”Ms. Williams’s brief to her interior designer, Ty Larkins, was simple and to the point: “Imagine if Josephine Baker lived in Harlem today. That’s what I want this apartment to look like. I want it to be a Harlem jewel box.”Bunches of flowers add pops of color. (Ms. Williams is partial to pink.)Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIn something of a nod to Ms. Baker’s adopted city, Paris, a 19th-century French mirror leans against the wall in the living room. A French desk of the same vintage anchors the work space. Baccarat candlesticks catch the light on the coffee table.Ms. Baker sometimes performed in head-to-toe pink. For her part, Ms. Williams used to be “pink, pink, pink, pink, like a 12-year-old lives here,” she said. But she has learned moderation. True, the two velvet accent chairs in front of the tall windows in the living room are dusty rose, the side chair has pink-and-gray stripes, and the grasscloth on the walls is a very pale blush, “but there are also some masculine elements,” she said, pointing to the oversized chocolate-brown tufted sofa.If you want to get invited back, don’t touch the earth-toned Hermès blanket that’s neatly folded over an arm of the sofa. “It’s just for show,” she said.Although Ms. Williams chose her apartment quickly and surely — and although her determination to plant roots in Harlem was unswerving — it was an emotionally complicated business.“I was going to buy a million-dollar condo somewhere in New York,” she said. “But because people are paying that and more in my building, it’s displacing many of those who have called Harlem home for years. That’s the truth. It’s like any privilege — what do I do with that privilege? To me, it’s about preserving the culture that came before me, so it still lives beyond me. The moment you walk through the door, there is this explosion of Black-centeredness and Black celebration.”The canopy bed adds a touch of Hollywood glamour.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBusts of the journalist Ida B. Wells and the abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are on display in the cozy alcove Ms. Williams uses as her office. The bathroom walls are papered with designer Sheila Bridge’s pattern Harlem Toile de Jouy, which trades France’s classic pastoral motifs for those reflecting an African-American heritage.On one wall of the living room is a print depicting the stowage of a ship carrying enslaved Africans. Almost directly opposite is a painting by the Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai featuring a Black woman in front of a line of microphones. “This is about the amplification of the struggle and liberation,” Ms. Williams said.“This place,” she added, “is dripping with Black identity. That’s me. Literally. It’s my name: Eboni.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. More

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    Laverne Cox on a Year as the Red Carpet Host of ‘Live From E!’

    LOS ANGELES — Don’t get her wrong. Laverne Cox loves Joan Rivers.“Joan is for me the originator of everything,” Ms. Cox said. The comedian, who died in 2014, was the first host of “Live From the Red Carpet,” now called “Live From E!,” and perhaps the best-known red carpet commentator in history.Ms. Rivers could bite with the strength of a diamond-collared toy poodle, drawing blood that only sometimes splashed back on her. She’d scream and curse and fire off jokes about celebrities’ bodies and outfits. There was scorched earth all over the trails she blazed.“But I’m not Joan, there’s only one Joan, and the times are very different, too,” said Ms. Cox, 50, wrestling with whether she wanted to use the phrase “political correctness,” or if that was too dated. “It would be a tricky time for Joan.”Ms. Cox, the current star of E!’s red carpet show, doesn’t bite like that. She considers herself a nerd, particularly when it comes to the craft of acting — casually citing Chekhov in conversation, and once reciting a Macbeth monologue on air, egged on by Denzel Washington, while producers urged her to wrap it up.She skews more “fan girl” (her words) than “Fashion Police,” the former E! talk show with segments including “starlet or streetwalker.” Ms. Cox did make appearances as both a “Fashion Police” guest and subject. Giuliana Rancic, who preceded Ms. Cox as the network’s red carpet host, once praised her during a Screen Actors Guild Awards recap. “I love Laverne Cox,” she said, “and I don’t want to say anything bad.” Then she called her dress “hideous.”Generally, the red carpet no longer nurtures this kind of discourse. There has been a shift, over the last decade, from seeing famous people as wealthy elites deserving of mockery to just-like-us humans deserving of compassion. E! hiring Ms. Cox, whose first show as host was in December 2021, seems to be part of this shift.Laverne Cox at a “Live From E!” rehearsal on the champagne carpet, before Sunday’s Academy Awards. Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“We were looking for a fresh voice and fresh perspective, particularly somebody who could be both a Hollywood insider and a fan,” said Cassandra Tryon, the senior vice president for live events for NBCUniversal television and streaming (NBCUniversal owns E!). “It’s like moving from a journalistic interview to a host of a party, and everybody wants to talk to the host.”The strategy, according to the network, has been working. While awards shows have struggled with viewership, the Grammy Awards’ live carpet telecast in February drew about 1.1 million viewers — the most for any E! program since 2020 (surpassing a season premiere episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”).“It is a craft too, by the way, to be a host,” Ms. Tryon said, sitting in a room at the Hollywood Roosevelt, where the courtyard becomes an E! set during the Oscars. It was the eve of what she called the network’s Super Bowl.Oh, the humanity.“I feel nervous,” Ms. Cox said toward the end of rehearsals late Saturday afternoon. Outside of the Dolby Theatre, plastic still covered the champagne-colored carpet and mummified a jumbo Oscars statue facing the E! cameras.She had spent five hours on Friday reviewing and reworking questions for the nominees and presenters. There was a thick stack of cue cards for every name — some confirmed to stop and speak to Ms. Cox on the carpet, others more wishful. (“We always prep Cate” — Blanchett, that is — “and she never stops,” Ms. Cox bemoaned to her producers.) A card could have four questions, but once cameras start rolling, only one or two may make it to air.During rehearsal, she not only read her scripted lines, but she also practiced asking questions to stand-in actors playing Colin Farrell, Lady Gaga and more. Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesThe Oscars carpet is a particularly overstuffed carpet; E! doesn’t get a platform here, unlike at some other ceremonies. Which means there is a steady torrent of people — attendees, staff, photographers, publicists, assistants — jostling behind Ms. Cox as she works.Her interviews must be quick, to maximize the number of high-profile guests featured during E!’s three-hour broadcast, which jumps between Ms. Cox’s carpet interviews and a group of commentators at the Hollywood Roosevelt, or stationed on a nearby rooftop.Ms. Cox has an earpiece and at least two people cuing her on-site: a stage manager and a supervising producer named Sam Bellikoff, the creator of the cue cards and master of pronunciations (“Ana de Armas,” “Banshees of Inisherin”), who sometimes sits at Ms. Cox’s feet, tapping her leg. (One piece of E! interviewing wisdom imparted by Ms. Tryon: Skip asking people how they’re feeling, since everyone asks that, and the answers are often generic.)In explaining what she’s trying to accomplish as a host, Ms. Cox pointed to a Grammys interview with Machine Gun Kelly, in which he admitted to lacking “self-love,” in the context of losing awards. Ms. Cox told him: “Ultimately, there’s nothing outside of us that can make us love ourselves more. It has to come from inside.”That moment epitomized her desire to “create space for people to come and be themselves,” she said. “It can be frivolous. It can be silly.” She has no problem screaming as if she’s about to faint, casually asking her co-hosts for “tea” or referring to her interview subjects as just “girl.”“But it can also be deep,” she said. “What does it mean to be human?”“Thank you for sharing that,” Ms. Cox told Machine Gun Kelly at the Grammys in February, after he spoke about his need for validation.E!She interviewed Questlove, who won best documentary feature in 2022, at the Academy Awards on Sunday. E!Speaking to Questlove on Sunday about his next documentary — about Sly and the Family Stone and mental health in the Black community — Ms. Cox cited the phrase “post-traumatic slave syndrome,” coined by Joy DeGruy. “Where was the mental health after emancipation?” Ms. Cox said. Later in the show, she asked the director Sarah Polley about Rooney Mara’s use of a fart machine on the set of “Women Talking.” She whips between nuance and nuttiness.“In doing this job, I feel like the public has gotten to see a different side of me,” said Ms. Cox, who is best known for her role on “Orange Is the New Black,” which was on Netflix from 2013 to 2019, and earned her four Emmy nominations and two SAG ensemble acting awards. “It’s been a different way for me, hopefully, to highlight people’s humanity. As an artist, we’re arbiters of empathy and humanity. And I think it’s possible as a red-carpet host to also do that.”Yet it’s harder to do that in 60-second increments, in the heat of a celebrity battle zone, dodging Molotov cocktails of opulence and Ozempic.Speaking by phone on Monday, Ms. Cox said she felt “off” during the previous night’s broadcast, during which she completed 31 interviews (according to E!). She had some trouble breathing comfortably after choosing a particularly tight corset to wear with her Vera Wang gown (“ethereal Blade Runner,” she called the sea-foam-and-black look), and she noticed the Oscars guests seemed more weary, compared with their excitement at the start of the awards season.Ms. Cox between interviews (she did 31 of them) on Sunday.Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesMs. Cox is handed cue cards with questions printed on them from a large alphabetized stack.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“I think I was frustrated with wanting to have deeper interactions and having so little time,” she said. “I’m always looking for connection. I’m always looking for something that feels authentic and unexpected.“There’s never enough time.”‘What story are you telling us with this look tonight?’If there’s one thing alone that will define Ms. Cox’s tenure as a red carpet host, it’s the way she has retooled the question “Who are you wearing tonight?”Backlash to that question began to swell in 2015, when celebrities including Reese Witherspoon drew attention to a campaign called #AskHerMore. After the #MeToo movement took off in late 2017, there was a call for interviewers, including Ms. Rancic and Ryan Seacrest on E!, to ask more substantive questions too.Yet Ms. Cox, a fashion enthusiast — she wore a vintage Mugler suit to her rehearsal Saturday — had no intention of eliminating the discussion of fashion. After she took over the hosting job, she asked attendees: “What story are you trying to tell with your look tonight?”The quality of answers vary. Sometimes they’re funny or thoughtful, and sometimes, as Austin Butler said of his Saint Laurent suit on Sunday night: “I don’t know what story I’m telling you. I just thought it was a beautiful tuxedo.” That’s fine with Ms. Cox, too. “The question for me is just an invitation to think differently about what we put on our backs,” she said.It is a question that has been applauded by the Representation Project, the organization behind the #AskHerMore campaign: “The way that she is approaching questions about fashion is a layer I’ve never seen on the red carpet,” said Caroline Heldman, the executive director. Ms. Heldman added that there is still work to be done. The Representation Project tracked four hours of red carpet coverage on Sunday night — two on ABC and two on E! — and found that women were still twice as likely as men to be asked about what they were wearing.A hair and makeup touch-up on the red carpet. Ms. Cox had “never worn anything like this Vera Wang dress before,” she said. “It’s good to take risks.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesBut the question is also rooted in Ms. Cox’s experience as a transgender woman. “My own relationship to fashion has always been an attempt to communicate to the world who I am,” she said. “Pre-transition, there was someone inside that was not reflected on the outside.”Generally, though, Ms. Cox said she appreciates that her identity and activism aren’t at the forefront of her hosting role: “What I do love about my job at E! is that, particularly as a host, I’m openly trans, but it’s not about me being trans.”Last month, at the Grammys, Ms. Cox was approached by Dylan Mulvaney, a TikTok creator who has been documenting her own transition, and who wanted to make a video with Ms. Cox. In the clip, Ms. Cox cautioned Ms. Mulvaney to “make sure you keep things to yourself — everything cannot be the public.”It was classic advice from Ms. Cox, who considers herself a private person. She referred to “having a cry” recently over not spending much time with her boyfriend, though when she was pressed for more details, she said she was “trying to keep him off the radar.”Ms. Tryon said E! considers Ms. Cox’s activism “as a plus” that gives her “a unique connection to celebrities.” That connection is the priority, Ms. Tryon said, along with “how to make it fun and light and safe for Laverne’s guests.”Ms. Cox said the only hesitation she had before taking the hosting job was whether it would make people in the industry, and in the public more widely, “forget that I’m also an actor,” she said. She is less worried about that now. Next week, she’ll travel to Georgia to begin work on a sitcom produced by Norman Lear. Her contract with E! runs through the end of 2023.But her appreciation for acting is not something that many in her E! audience — those watching the long hours of rapid interviews — are likely to forget. Often her questions and comments touch on the preparation and physicality and history of acting. She once got a note from her producers that said the audience didn’t like these craft questions, she said. It didn’t stop her.“I’m an actress,” she said. “I’m obsessed with craft.” More

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    ‘How to Defend Yourself’ Review: The Murkiness of Consent, and Friendship

    In Liliana Padilla’s play at New York Theater Workshop, college students find empowerment and life lessons in a DIY self-defense class.If an attacker grabs you by the wrist, dip your elbow, turn your hand palm-up, twist and use leverage against the person’s thumb to extract yourself. If the attacker is straddling you, buck your hips, grab an arm and flip the person over.Though North Gym Room 2, with its drab walls and paltry set of yoga mats, aerobic steppers and stability balls, doesn’t look like much, at least the self-defense moves being taught there are legit.Because in Liliana Padilla’s “How to Defend Yourself” (winner of the 2019 Yale Drama Series Prize), none of the undergrads in the class really know what to do. They are still reeling from a peer’s beating and rape by two frat guys.The play, directed by Padilla, Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul, opens a few minutes before the first session of a DIY self-defense class presented by Brandi (Talia Ryder) and Kara (Sarah Marie Rodriguez), sorority sisters of the victim, who has been hospitalized since the attack.Diana (Gabriela Ortega) and Mojdeh (Ariana Mahallati) arrive first. Diana, who is loud, tough and gun-obsessed, hopes to unleash her inner Tyler Durden in a real-world fight club; her friend Mojdeh is more concerned with how they’ll get into Brandi and Kara’s sorority. And there’s also Mojdeh’s upcoming date with James Preston, an Adonis of the college’s senior class. Nikki (Amaya Braganza), formerly known as Nicollette (“It’s a new thing,” she says meekly), creeps in late, shyly sliding her body into the room. Brandi, a practitioner of various martial arts, leads the group, including Kara, and, later, two well-meaning frat boys, Andy (Sebastian Delascasas) and Eggo (Jayson Lee), who also participate in the consent exercises and counter drills.The shots and blocks traded in the class are always martial but not always physical; rifts within the group are exposed during disagreements about how and when to safely express one’s sexuality with a partner and how to act in situations where the rules of consent seem to be a bit hairier. Diana worries about how Mojdeh, so desperate to lose her virginity, will fare in her dating life. Eggo and Andy fumble through an uncomfortable conversation about what one of them witnessed on the night of the assault. Brandi and Kara cruelly blame each other for what happened.But as the play progresses, almost exclusively in these defense classes, it feels as if the playwright is struggling to figure out where, and with whom, she should set the play’s highest stakes. At first it seems as if “How to Defend Yourself” will focus on Diana and Mojdeh, that their evolving relationship to their own bodies in this class will illuminate their friendship with each other, and vice versa. Then it seems perhaps we’ll land with Brandi and explore the origins of her own trauma.Ortega, left, and Mahallati as friends whose motivations for joining the class go beyond learning self-defense.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFor as much as the play aims to engage the audience in a fly-on-the-wall view of a group of people — several of whom are meeting for the first time, developing and changing in relation to one another in this contained space — it still neglects to provide the necessary context to make the pre-existing relationships and the character arcs feel real. Likewise, there are occasional throwaway plot twists, like that worn-out trope of a surprise same-sex kiss between friends, that detract from the show’s more novel reflections.There’s Nikki’s newfound courageousness, sparked by a few defense drills. Andy’s abstract theories on sex and, later, his stunned realization that he looks like, the kind of predator his peers are learning to defend against. Group conversations about what sexual autonomy looks like if what a woman finds most pleasurable is relinquishing her control; what control looks like; to what extent many young women and men define their relationship to sex by their relationship to shame.Like the script, the direction occasionally taps into what makes these characters unique. A handful of perfectly timed, expertly revealing line reads can be heartbreaking, hilarious and vicious. “Can you lick my forearm?” Eggo asks during a consent exercise, with Lee, hilariously unpredictable, as the awkward sexual reject.Ryder has a tough task with Brandi, trying to convey the vulnerability behind the character’s bravado and stilted dialogue, but she can also be downright scary when Brandi’s edge comes out. When Diana quips, that it’s just a class, Brandi retorts, too sharply: “Does that make you feel safe?” Among the standouts are Ortega as the wild Diana; Braganza, shrinking and ducking out of sight as Nikki; and Rodriquez, whose Kara is volatile yet wounded. But too often their characters are forced to fade away from the main action.The show’s stylistic breaks from reality — brief interludes of choreographed fighting or dance, like one character’s beautifully articulated dance to Beyoncé’s “Formation” — also bring color and vitality to the play but could be woven through more consistently. (The exciting technicolor-style switches from sickly, stuttering fluorescents to raging club neons are by Stacey Derosier, and the bumping sound design, including a playlist of Rihanna and the Weeknd, by Mikhail Fiksel.)“How to Defend Yourself” rushes through a random patchwork ending that allows the production to show off some fancy stagecraft but doesn’t provide a satisfying narrative conclusion.Before their first class begins, Diana, in the midst of hyperbolic ramblings, says they’re in a “fiction of safety.” She could be talking about the United States, or the town they live in, or the college campus, or even North Gym Room 2, where they shadowbox hypothetical rapists and kidnappers. Either way, I’ve felt that “fiction of safety” too — sometimes when I elbowed and kneed mats in taekwondo, when I’ve aimed punches at my reflection in the boxing gym — that, despite my having a black belt and solid stable of jabs and crosses, there are still limits to the autonomy I have over my own body. So is safety really just a fiction?And if so, how do you defend against a lie?How to Defend YourselfThrough April 2 at the New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    ‘The Coast Starlight’ Review: Strangers on a Train

    Keith Bunin’s gentle, rueful play at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater settles down among six passengers traveling from Los Angeles to Seattle.A northbound trip on the Coast Starlight, a gleaming Amtrak sleeper, lasts about 35 hours. The train leaves Los Angeles in mid morning and delivers its passengers to Seattle late the next day. By contrast, “The Coast Starlight,” Keith Bunin’s play at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, fills just a fraction of that time. A gentle, rueful play, directed with a steady and sympathetic hand by Tyne Rafaeli, it settles down among six passengers sharing a single coach. Narrow, nimble, self-contained, the ride it offers is as smooth as it is wistful. Because Bunin (“The Credeaux Canvas,” “The Busy World Is Hushed”) knows that any trip involves leaving something or someone behind.The narrative engine of “The Coast Starlight” is powered by T.J. (a jittery, ingenuous Will Harrison). T.J.’s journey is the most urgent and his secret, which he reveals a few minutes in, weighs the heaviest. The other characters suffer less insistent goads. Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) is going to visit her boyfriend, Noah (Rhys Coiro) to check in on his mother. Liz (Mia Barron, in a brazen, audacious performance that earns midshow applause) has fled a couples’ retreat. Ed (Jon Norman Schneider) is en route to his next meeting. Anna (Michelle Wilson) is returning to her family after performing a final obligation for her brother. They are strangers when they enter and strangers when they leave. Much of the play is written in the past conditional — “If I had told you,” “If I had known” — illuminating Bunin’s interest in the care that might have been tendered, the humanity that might have been shown if only the characters had been brave and vulnerable enough to reveal themselves to one another.The play moves between realism and symbolism as easily — depending on the quality of some train tracks, more easily — than a passenger might walk from one carriage to another, though the focus remains on the interior. It is largely a memory play (somewhat in the mode of Tennessee Williams or Brian Friel), so the characters frequently slip free of sequential time to comment on what they might have said and done and been. Sometimes they speak directly to the audience, at other times to imagined versions of each other, at other times in ordinary dialogue, though even these sequences have a delicate, dreamlike quality.The actors, half of whom have been with the play since its La Jolla Playhouse debut in 2019, assume their characters fluently and with deep feeling. The distinct energies and voices merge together, forming a finely calibrated ensemble. And Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, both practical and suggestive of the expanse of the Pacific beyond the train’s windows, Lap Chi Chu’s lighting and Daniel Kluger’s sound also work in concert, giving the impression of movement even when Rafaeli is wise enough to let the performers stay still.Not that they stay still for long. These are people with fidgety legs and restless hearts, most of whom are trying to figure out how they got here in the first place and where they might go next. At one point, T.J. voices an ambition that the characters share: “There’s got to be a better way to love people. A way that isn’t either a trick or a lie.”“The Coast Starlight” shows that kind of love, too. Even as Bunin deals in hypotheticals and relational failures, he also shows these people really, actually caring for each other. Liz pays for a round of drinks. Anna offers T.J. her sleeping car. T.J. talks a drunken Ed down. Jane gives T.J. a drawing. Yes, the play often strikes a melancholy tone, but its wheels also send up sparks of generosity and in Liz’s monologue, sharp humor. So let it do what any train should, which is to move you.The Coast StarlightThrough April 16 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    Ann Napolitano’s New Novel, “Hello Beautiful,” Is the 100th Pick of Oprah’s Book Club

    Ann Napolitano toiled in obscurity for years. Novels went unpublished; agents turned her down. She found recognition with “Dear Edward.” Then came the call: “Hello Beautiful” was the 100th pick for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Maybe it was fate, maybe it was the meddling of a higher power with a wicked sense of humor. Either way, Ann Napolitano was taking out the garbage when Oprah Winfrey called to tell her that her novel, “Hello Beautiful,” is the 100th selection for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.Napolitano was so afraid of losing the connection that she stood stock-still in the tiny vestibule of her Park Slope apartment building, clutching her bag of trash, for the duration of the 27-minute call.To be clear, we’re talking about Oprah’s Book Club — the O.G. reading group, trusty launching pad to the best-seller list and sourdough starter for dozens of iterations, celebrity sponsored and otherwise. Yes, Booktok is nipping at Winfrey’s heels, especially where young readers are concerned, but her endorsement is still a golden ticket.In the 26 years since Oprah’s Book Club announced “The Deep End of the Ocean” as its inaugural pick, the literary world has adjusted to the internet, electronic readers, smartphones and social media. Imprints closed, publishing houses consolidated, bookstores sprouted coffee shops and stopped selling CDs — and, through it all, the club established itself as a force, burnishing the careers of Wally Lamb, Cheryl Strayed, Lalita Tademy, Uwen Akpam, Isabel Wilkerson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, to name a few.Its machinations are still shrouded in mystery. Boxes of anointed books arrive at stores the day before a title’s publication date, to reduce the risk that customers will catch a glimpse of the club’s signature seal on a cover. Authors, agents and publishers are asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.“Hello Beautiful,” Napolitano’s fourth novel, came out Tuesday from The Dial Press and Winfrey announced it as her 100th book club selection on “CBS Mornings.” Only now, almost five months after Napolitano’s conversation with Winfrey, can the author share the news with her sons, who are 13 and 15.So how did “Hello Beautiful” land on Winfrey’s radar? And what was it like for Napolitano to get the nod? The short answers are simple and obvious (It’s a great book! She was thrilled!), but the expanded versions prove the equalizing power of a good story.Sitting in front of a lush Hawaii hillside that looked like a fake Zoom background but definitely wasn’t, Winfrey talked about the challenge of finding her 100th pick. The symbolic weight of it was on her mind. She wanted to find a book that would engage “every different sector of the population,” one she could recommend from an “authentically enthusiastic space.”“I went through many, many, many books, reading two and three at a time,” Winfrey said, projecting her familiar voice over the sound of rowdy bird song.“We’re separated from the world by our own edges,” Charlie Padavano says to one of his daughters in “Hello Beautiful.” He continues, “We’re all interconnected, and when you see that, you see how beautiful life is.”“I continue to choose what I love,” said Winfrey, pictured here with Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of “The Water Dancer,” her 81st pick. “I continue to be motivated by what touches my own spirit, what I think is going to allow people to sense a vulnerability in the characters, in whatever the narrative is, that opens the aperture for greater possibility for people.”Michele Crowe/CBS via Getty ImagesNone of the candidates had the universal appeal Winfrey was looking for.The vast majority of prospective titles go through a vetting process after publishers and agents present them to the book club, but “Hello Beautiful” took an unusual path. Winfrey’s friend, Richard Lovett, co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, mentioned that Michelle Weiner, the co-head of CAA’s books department, had a novel she thought Winfrey would be interested in.“Every time somebody suggests that, it’s never true. It’s never something I actually want to read,” Winfrey said. “I was like, OK, send it to me.”She devoured “Hello Beautiful” on a rainy day in front of her fireplace, curled up with a blanket and her dog. She said, “I was like 30 pages in and said, OK, this is the book. You cannot read it without being opened. It just opens you in ways you didn’t know were closed.”The novel follows four sisters — Julia, Sylvie, Cecilia and Emeline Padavano — through decades of love, loss and (major) secret keeping. One falls in love with another’s ex-husband and the fallout is as complicated as you’d expect; somehow Napolitano persuades you to leave judgment at the door. The prevailing message is about the indomitability of family.“Not since Jo and Meg and Amy and Beth have we seen sisters like this, with this kind of connection, and written so vividly that you feel like you’re in that home,” Winfrey said. “You’re experiencing life with them. I am telling you, the ending? I mourned. What an extraordinary writer Ann is.”“It financially changed our lives,” Napolitano said of the sale of “Dear Edward” in a heated auction. “We bought a bed. That was the only thing we bought. My husband and I needed a new bed; my bed was from my parents’ house. I was 46 years old.”Elinor Carucci for The New York TimesThe iconic talk show host isn’t your average bookworm, but when she starts talking about what it’s like to fall in love with a novel —“Something starts whispering to me,” Winfrey said, “and I want to know more and I want to know more and I want to know more.” — it’s hard to tell the difference.“What I’m always trying to do is allow people to be lifted by the story somehow, and to see themselves — the people they know, their life — and come away feeling more connected,” Winfrey said. “Ann is one of those authors who’s able to do that without wearing it on her sleeve, without putting it out there in such a way that you feel preached to.”Napolitano’s third book, “Dear Edward,” was a best seller, a Read With Jenna pick and the basis for an 10-episode Apple TV + series starring Connie Britton. The book has sold nearly 400,000 copies.But until “Dear Edward” sold in a 10-imprint auction in 2018, Napolitano’s career was rife with rejection and disappointment. She wrote two novels that never sold. Her father was so concerned about her prospects that he paid for a full-day career test that flagged her potential as a park ranger.Napolitano struggled with depression. After being turned down by 80 agents, she signed with one who, sadly, died a few years later. She juggled a series of jobs — teaching, editing, corporate and educational writing, working as a personal assistant for Sting and Trudie Styler — while carving out short windows of time for her novel in progress. She couldn’t afford child care. At one point, Napolitano and her husband, Dan Wilde, had no health insurance. Her second published book, “A Good Hard Look,” (2011) took seven years to write, and “Dear Edward” (2020) took eight.“I’ve always had low expectations,” Napolitano said during an interview in a conference room at Random House. “Everything went so slowly or badly that all I wanted was a chance to do it again. I have to keep writing. I wasn’t ever counting on success.”Getting the call from Winfrey was, she said, “one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me in my life. I felt like I went into full menopause because my whole body system was just adrenalized and it was so crazy.”Napolitano was both tickled and horrified that, while she was reeling from the news, Winfrey launched into a series of questions about her writing process: “In that moment I was like, This is mean! That Oprah Winfrey thinks she can call you and expect you to have an intelligent conversation with her with no warning!”Napolitano started working on “Hello Beautiful” during the early days of the pandemic lockdown. “I was trying to find connection and love, and I needed that house with those loud sisters,” she said. “It really did feel like I needed this book.”Elinor Carucci for The New York TimesShe remembered how, at the end of their phone call, Winfrey said, “Writers are my rock stars and you’re a rock star.” Still shaky with disbelief, Napolitano unloaded her trash and walked a block to feed the meter in a two-hour parking lot. It was Oct. 20, 2022, the eve of her 51st birthday, the kind of crisp afternoon that lights Brooklyn like a movie set.Napolitano’s agent, Julie Barer, and her editor, Whitney Frick, had already heard from Winfrey’s team and were waiting for Napolitano to get the news. “I was running to my kids’ school and Julie texted me and said, ‘She called Ann!’ And I knew exactly what that meant,” said Frick, who is vice president, editor in chief at The Dial Press. “It’s really fun when good things happen for good people.”Barer, who is a partner at The Book Group, said,“Ann is extremely humble and hardworking. She’s no drama. She has an enormous heart and a tremendous capacity for compassion, and I think she brings that to her writing — about the messiness of relationships, and about forgiveness and empathy. It’s not like she’s Pollyanna; she’s not saying it’s all going to be great. Just that it’s going to be OK, and we’re in it together.”The three of them celebrated with a three-way chat. Then Napolitano finally went home and told her husband — who never second-guessed her writing career, even during lean times — why it had taken her so long to dispose of the garbage.“Ann walked in wearing a coat and said, ‘Oprah Winfrey just called me on my phone,’” Wilde recalled in an email. “Her eyes were wide with adrenaline, a contrast from her default steadiness. The first thought that came to mind was ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”He’d seen how “Hello Beautiful” had overtaken Napolitano. Writing “Dear Edward,” she’d said, had been like entering a separate world, happily, then leaving when she felt like it. The Padavano sisters took a different approach: they occupied Napolitano, demanding attention, bringing their saints, their coffee and their chaos.“It was a very intense experience,” Napolitano said. “The story raced out of me. It was like holding onto the fender of a car, being banged across town.”Napolitano started “Hello Beautiful” in April 2020, the loneliest chapter of the pandemic, a time of fear and isolation. It was also the month her father died.“We weren’t able to see him when he was dying and we weren’t able to gather, like so many people,” Napolitano said. “I was trying to find connection and love, and I needed that house with those loud sisters. It really did feel like I needed this book.”Winfrey echoed a version of the same sentiment. “I felt less alone because of books during that period of being isolated,” she said, describing how, “as a girl growing up in Mississippi and Milwaukee, all the times I felt so removed and not valued, it was books — “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” in particular — that made me feel that I was connected to the world.”She went on, “And so, in the beginning was the word. The power of the word to help transform our own emotions and our own belief in what’s possible for us? I don’t think anything transcends that.”Audio produced by More