I had the privilege of interviewing the legendary filmmaker and musician John Carpenter for GQ a few years ago around his last proper album with his son Cody and his godson Daniel Davies, Lost Themes III: Alive After Death from 2021. John is an extremely economical and surprising interview subject, which is certainly part of why I wanted to have him on the newsletter again ahead of his new record, Lost Themes IV: Noir, which is out this week. I've quite enjoyed his music and score work over the last several years, and it was very fun to get such an impressive and iconic figure on the phone again to throw around a laundry list of subjects. At one point, he put the phone down for a minute to explain to someone how to install the toilet, which I found extremely endearing—and hopefully you'll feel the same about this interview.

Steve Tamari said he was “body slammed and crushed” and then dragged across campus

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will move to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, The Associated Press has learned, a historic shift to generations of American drug policy that could have wide ripple effects across the country. The proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use. The agency’s move, confirmed to the AP on Tuesday by five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive regulatory review, clears the last significant regulatory hurdle before the agency’s biggest policy change in more than 50 years can take effect. Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public comment period and a review by an administrative judge, the agency would eventually publish the final rule.

Andy Hines writes on how profit incentive, prestige-seeking, and student repression intersect at elite U.S. universities. Despite institutions' public commitments to free expression, willingness to quash protests can in fact be a selling point.

On Tuesday morning, a spokesperson for Montreal police said that "no crime is being committed" at the encampment and the situation is a civil matter. The spokesperson said officers will continue to monitor the demonstration and are ready to enforce a court injunction if it is granted.

The internet has been scouring the archives for an unidentified song called "Everyone Knows That." They found it in an unexpected place this weekend.

Pity was the first emotion Richard Gadd felt when he clapped eyes on the woman who would become his stalker. He was a struggling stand-up comic working behind the bar at a pub in London.

Sherman Hemsley, the actor who played George Jefferson, was known to be a huge fan of prog rock, especially Gentle Giant, Nektar and Gong. Hemsley collaborated with Yes’s Jon Anderson on a funk-rock opera about the “spiritual qualities of the number 7” (never produced). Hemsley also did an interpretive dance tothe Gentle Giant song “Proclamation” onDinah Shore’s 70s talkshow, that was apparently somewhat confusing for her. But the best story, I mean the best story of all time, is the one told by Gong’s Daevid Allen about his encounter with the beloved 70’s sitcom star.Here is Allen’s verbatim tale as related toMitch Myers (and originally published in Magnet magazine): “It was 1978 or 1979, and Sherman Hemsley kept ringing me up. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap because we didn’t have television in Spain (where I was living). He called me from Hollywood saying, ‘I’m one of...

The organization has abandoned some of the people it exists to protect.

Protesters arrested in city’s historic French Quarter as witnesses allege officers used ‘indiscriminate’ force to clear protest

You have probably forgotten about the guy who worked at National Public Radio and got so upset because of how woke it was that he wrote a furious post about it for Bari Weiss's newsletter, which I believe is called That's Such A Good Point, Sir. This is entirely for the best. That story wasn't really built to last, and not only because a man in his 50s realizing that he feels increasingly out of step with younger coworkers is not something that would ordinarily be considered "a story" on the merits. Sometimes these things hit, and sometimes they don't, and the industrial process through which the grim grousings of mediocre conservatives are laundered into dispatches from the bloody front of a culture war depends more than anything on inputs. The raw material from which that stuff is refined—various defective human instincts; a high baseline level of politicized bad faith and elite panic; the unremarkable and unreflective people most susceptible to all that—is abundant and of low value. This is a volume business.

Finance professor accused of killing cop boyfriend is being ‘framed’ in cover-up, her defence attorneys say

Paramount CEO Bob Bakish's ouster comes a day after David Ellison's Skydance Media sweetened its offer for Shari Redstone's National Amusements, with money earmarked for Paramount's Class B shareholders.

The longtime State Department official and Iran-Contra player on Israel’s war in Gaza and his own record in Latin America.

Both Mayor Charles Burkett and Chief Henry Doce believe that the officer involved could have been more empathetic to the distressed supermodel.

Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across the state – and unhoused people allege poor treatment

"Just a prank, bro" excuse.

A Catholic group has defrocked an AI-generated priest chatbot after it stirred controversy among the faithful.

“I’m hearing from credible sources who know what’s going on in the courtroom, and what I’m hearing is that – take it for what it’s worth – but that Donald Trump is actually farting in the courtroom and that it’s very stinky around him,” Meiselas said. “It’s a putrid odor in the courtroom and Trump’s lawyers are like repulsed by the scent and the smell.”

The threat, we are told here this weekend, is existential, biological, epoch-defining. Economies will fail, civilizations will fall, and it will all happen because people aren’t having enough babies.