Conan O’Brien had some pretty epically hilarious “Late Night” guests over the years. But much like gently kneaded dough half an hour into forming, one guest has risen above all others.
That guest is Steven Kaplan, the history professor, author and bread expert, who will tell you exactly how baking and consuming bread is akin to … ahem … a sensual experience. Kaplan originally appeared on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” to promote his book “Good Bread Is Back” back in February 2007, but the video still goes viral to this very day.
Just what makes Kaplan’s interview so legendary? For one thing, he’s a master with zingers, dishing out amazing off-the-cuff one liners like “it’s got no theology, so a Catholic shouldn’t be worried about it,” that even caught O’Brien off guard. “This guy is casually funnier than most comedians,” one person remarked in the comments.
Another noted, “If this isn’t one of the most impressive segments I’ve ever seen. The natural comedic talent of the bread guy, Conan’s ability to feed off of the bread guys jokes and energy, the way they compliment each other, and the fact this comes off as unscripted and completely genuine comedy. I wasn’t expecting this.”
But really, it’s Kaplan’s carb-induced passion (in the most literal sense of the word) that makes it all completely next level. “It’s pretty much like a sexual act,” he tells a bug-eyed O’Brien, before—I kid you not—stroking, fondling AND caressing various loaves. The words “inseminate,” “swells” and “mount” may or may not have been used.
Check it out below. Warning: you’ll laugh, sure. But you’ll also never look at a loaf the same way again…
Things really kick off when Kaplan splits the bread open and thrusts his face in to get a “surging of a geyser of aromas.” No words can really do it justice, but suffice it to say … it certainly brings up an evocative image.
O’Brien, who can barely contain himself, quips at the end that “if this segment airs tonight, I’ll be very, very surprised.”
But air it did, and now Kaplan sharing his unbridled love of bread is widely regarded by O’Brien fans as his single greatest interview.
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project.
Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia.
Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:
Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Photo credit: via The White House/Wikimedia Commons and The Earthy Jay / Pexels – Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and a woman with a nose ring.
Online culture has had an incredible effect on fashion trends. It used to take a trend about 20 years to complete a cycle: introduction, rise, peak, decline, and obsolescence. However, in recent years, this cycle has been sped up incredibly due to several factors. Trends can be quickly introduced and adopted due to social media, online shopping and quick turnaround through fast-fashion distribution. The speed of adaptation also means they can fizzle out just as fast.
This means a fashion trends we’d usually see stick around for years can come and go in months. It’s an expensive pill to swallow for anyone trying to keep up with the latest (Gen Z, we’re looking at you), but it’s a blessing for those of us who have a problem with some of today’s polarizing looks.
The bad news is you may not like broccoli cuts. The good news is that they will be gone and forgotten before you know it.
A great conversation recently broke out on Reddit, where commenters weighed in on all the fashion trends they couldn’t wait to go away.
It seems that some of the most controversial styles are the work of Gen Z. Whether it’s the nose ring that looks like it belongs on a bell cow or big pillowy eyelashes, Gen Z has championed some looks that will probably look a little silly in a few years.
Here are 15 fashion trends currently “in” that people are already over.
The trends people are already over
1. Suits with shorts
“Took my cousin to prom and saw at least 30 dudes wearing a suit with shorts.”
This one is extremely hard for millennials and Gen Xers to wrap their heads around, but it is oh-too-real. It seems to be a natural evolution of the “suit with sneakers” look.
2. Anti-aging tweens
“Children (I’ve mostly seen around ages 9-13) going to Sephora for anti-aging serums and makeup. You all can hardly go to the park by yourselves, yet you’re plastered in expensive creams and makeup like you’re 20+.”
“This one really bothers me. It’s pretty dark, honestly, and the parents who allow this are weird as hell.”
The New Yorker says tweens are imitating influencers and popular “get ready with me” videos on social media.
3. Limp Biz-kids
“I’m a high school teacher and a surprising number of the boys dress like it’s 2000 and they’ve got Limp Bizkit’s ‘Nookie’ on repeat. There’s one kid that looks like he’s from 1977. Puka shells, feathered hair, big, open collars. I like that kid.”
4. Botox
“Excessive Botox in young people. I’m so tired of everyone having a frozen face. It’s not pretty. It’s just weird.”
“I swear there was a coordinated effort by some industry to convince girls in their 20s that they need to start Botox now because it’s preventative. That’s the reason given when I ask these early 20s girls why they use it. “It prevents future wrinkles” like there was a peer-reviewed study showing it does or something.”
Patricia Wexler, MD, of Wexler Dermatology in Manhattan, told Vogue that getting preventative Botox injections at a young age can lead to more wrinkles. “If you do too much Botox on your forehead for many, many years, the muscles will get weaker and flatter,” Wexler says. This means that surrounding muscles do more work when you make facial expressions. “If one stops using their forehead muscles, they may start squinting using their nose and have wrinkles along the side of their nose,” she continued.
5. Teen boys with alpaca hair
“I used to work reception at a salon and it was always fricken hilarious when these kids would come in to get a perm. They’d come sulking in behind their mommies, sit for 2 hours with curlers and stinky perm solution in their hair looking like cats being forced to take a bath, then prance out thinking they were the shit with their new poodle cuts lol.”
“Some of them are definitely embracing their natural curls, which is awesome! But a good chunk of them, especially the preppy ones with rich parents, are getting straight up 80s style perms. It’s great.”
Patrick Mahomes helped popularize this one, though he cut his signature curls in early 2025 — which may say something about where the trend is headed. Jake Paul, unfortunately, is still on board.
6. Laminated brows
“Eyebrows that are brushed upwards. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. I can’t see anything else when looking at someone who has that style brows. I just don’t know why people like it.”
“Almost every eyebrow trend ends up looking kinda silly. Let’s just all work with the eyebrows we have. Sure, clean it up a lil bit if you feel like it.”
In the 2000s, we had spiky hair. Now, we have spiky eyebrows. But don’t worry, it won’t last.
Woman gets work done on her eyebrows. Photo credit Canva
7. Over-the-top fake eyelashes
“The ridiculous false eyelashes. I get it. I’ve got no problem with the ones that at least have a semblance of being natural. But the uber thick ones that look more like fur are just…pointless. Someone I deal with at work wears them. And it’s so weird, because most of the time she dresses down in sweatshirts, jeans, sneakers, etc. And doesn’t pay much attention to her hair. But she’s got those stupid wooly caterpillar eyelashes in. They just call attention to how un put together the rest of her is. I know that everyone should just dress for themselves, but it’s just weird.”
8. Barrel jeans
“The barrel jeans have got to go. They’re the ugliest effing things I’ve ever seen. And people keep lying to these women about how they’re flattering and I’m like no! You look bowlegged!”
For years jeans got tighter and lower until they reached an inevitable breaking point. High-waisted jeans were a sign of the pendulum swinging back in the other direction, and now young peoples’ jeans look like inflated balloons.
9. ’80s moustaches
“Weird ’80s moustaches, I’ve seen good looking guys made to look like Ned Flanders. Ages them instantly, which I guess is the plan, but ages them past 20s to married with kids approaching teenage years.”
The number of young men with mullets and moustaches is absolutely staggering these days.
The ones that have been around way too long
10. Crocs
“I thought they were hideous when they first came out almost twenty years ago, and they’ve never gone away.”
“We always made fun of them and then suddenly everyone was wearing them. I don’t get it!”
How did Crocs go from the bargain bins to becoming one of the top footwear brands in the U.S.? The big reason is that comfort became more important during the pandemic than aesthetics. They were also quite a statement for people who wanted to rebel against traditional beauty standards. Add celebrity endorsements from Justin Bieber and Post Malone and Crocs came back in a big way.
11. Long nails
“Super long acrylic nails, they seem really impractical.”
“Especially the pointed ones that all the Hollywood people wear like claws. You look trashy and high maintenance.”
“Patriot clothing and beards. Grunt style, nine line… all these fools dressing like they’re special forces, their entire identity tied to 1776. It’s embarrassing.”
If I never see a t-shirt of an American flag with an assault rifle superimposed on top, it will be too soon.
13. Hair parted in the middle
“Middle parts. You need an almost symmetrical face to be able to pull it off, which is pretty rare. Side parts all the way.”
“Middle parts look so harsh and unflattering on everyone. Side parts are a million times better.”
It was cool when Shawn Hunter and Jonathan Taylor Thomas did it. Let’s leave this one in the ’90s.
14. Nose rings
“That nose ring in the middle. Just doesn’t look good to me. You do you. But just think it doesn’t look good very often.”
“They always make me think of cattle.”
15. Political clothes
“Political attire as someone’s entire main wardrobe, no matter the side of the spectrum. You got more personality than that!”
“I have a bro-in-law who wears American flag t-shirts almost exclusively. He must have hundreds of them. And not the tasteful kind with like a little flag on the sleeve or chest. I’m talking about the most garish kind. The kind with a gigantic waving US flag along with a menacing bald eagle flying dramatically over snow-capped peaks. We like America too, Dan, but can you try to wear at least a polo to Grandma’s funeral?”
Fashion trends may come and go faster than ever, but some of these looks can’t go fast enough. And Reddit will always be sure to let everyone know it.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
Jodie Foster has won two Oscars, been famous since she was 12, and has been working in the industry since she was barely 3. By her own account, all of that success had started to do something to her she didn’t like.
The cappuccino that changed everything
She described the moment of recognition in a January 2026 interview with Variety, timed to the release of her new film “A Private Life.” It came down to a cappuccino.
“I asked someone for a cappuccino?” she recalled, with what Variety described as barely restrained horror. “I did what? I thought I knew what I was talking about and ranted on for 45 minutes? I didn’t send that person a condolence letter when their mom died? I wasn’t at their wedding? I disappeared for four months and expected everybody to be my friend when I came back?”
Foster, now 63, said she feared she was becoming what she called “a creature of Hollywood,” a politer way of putting something less polite. Famous since her breakout in “Taxi Driver” at 12 and a two-time Best Actress winner before she was 30, for “The Accused” in 1988 and “The Silence of the Lambs” in 1991, she’d spent decades in an environment that tells you your needs come first. The cappuccino moment was when she realized she’d started to believe it.
The science behind her self-awareness
That discomfort is backed by research. Columbia University psychologist Adam Galinsky has studied the relationship between power and empathy, finding that people who feel powerful are demonstrably less able to read others’ emotional states accurately. In one experiment, participants who’d been primed to feel powerful made significantly more errors identifying emotions in facial expressions than those who hadn’t. Power, it turns out, reduces emotional sensitivity, not because powerful people are inherently worse, but because the environment trains them to stop paying attention.
Foster paid attention when she noticed it happening to her, and she stepped back. She told NPR in a separate interview that she wanted to make movies she loved and give everything to her performances without getting caught up in celebrity culture, and that meant keeping her personal life tightly guarded. “I wanted to give everything of myself on screen, and I wanted to survive intact by having a life and not handing that life over to the media,” she said.
Hollywood on her terms
She has since returned to work, including “A Private Life,” which premiered at Cannes and opened in January 2026. She told Variety she believes it may be the best work of her career, and the secret, she said, is that she’s never worked less hard in terms of energy output. “I just do what I think, and then I drink a coffee.”
Photo credit: via Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels and Ethan Brooke/Pexels – A woman is shocked to learn that her name means something totally different in Australia.
When people move abroad, it’s normal to experience serious culture shock. Culture shock is a feeling of being disoriented or confused by a different way of life and set of norms than you’re used to. You’d think moving from America to another English speaking country wouldn’t be so jarring, but you might actually be surprised at how different things can really be even when the bulk of the language and customs overlap nicely.
Devyn Hales, 22, from California, recently moved to Sydney, Australia, on a one-year working visa and quickly found out that she had a lot to learn about her new home.
The first thing that made her feel out of place? Believe it or not, her name. It wasn’t going to work Down Under. It all started when a group of men made fun of her on St. Patrick’s Day.
Why her name became a problem the moment she landed
After she introduced herself as Devyn, the men laughed at her. “They burst out laughing, and when I asked them why, they told me devon is processed lunch meat,” she told The Daily Mail. It’s similar to baloney, so I introduce myself as Dev now,” she said in a viral TikTok video with over 1.7 million views.
For those who have never been to Australia, Devon is a processed meat product usually cut into slices and served on sandwiches. It is usually made up of pork, basic spices, and a binder. Devon is affordable because people buy it in bulk and it’s often fed to children. Australians also enjoy eating it fried, like spam. It is also known by other names such as fritz, circle meat, Berlina and polony, depending on where one lives on the continent. It’s like in America, where people refer to cola as pop, soda, or Coke, depending on where they live in the country.
So, one can easily see why a young woman wouldn’t want to refer to herself as a processed meat product that can be likened to baloney or spam.
“Wow, love that for us,” another woman named Devyn wrote in the comments. “Tell me the name thing isn’t true,” a woman called Devon added.
For Devyn, it could have been worse, as her name was easily shortened to Dev. She could have been named Sheila, which is a slang term for women or girls that also carries slightly derogatory undertones.
Besides changing her name, Dev shared some other differences between living in Australia and her home country.
“So everyone wears slides. I feel like I’m the only one with ‘thongs’—flip-flops—that have the little thing in the middle of your big toe. Everyone wears slides,” she said. “Everyone wears shorts that go down to your knees and that’s a big thing here.”
Dev also noted that there are a lot of guys in Australia named Lachlan, Felix and Jack. (Oliver, Noah, and Henry have topped the charts in recent years, with Leo and William also consistently near the top.)
She was also thrown off by the sound of the plentiful magpies in Australia. According to Dev, they sound a lot like crying children with throat infections. “The birds threw me off,” she said before making an impression that many people in the comments thought was close to perfect.
“The birds is so spot on,” a user named Jess wrote. “The birds, I will truly never get used to it,” Marissa added.
One issue that many Americans face when moving to Australia is that it is more expensive than the United States. However, many Americans who move to Australia love the work-life balance. Brooke Laven, a brand strategist in the fitness industry who moved there from the U.S., says that Aussies have the “perfect work-life balance” and that they are “hard-working” but “know where to draw the line.”
Despite the initial cultural shocks, Devyn is embracing her new life in Australia with a positive outlook. In a follow-up video, she mentions she hasn’t even had many run-ins with Australia’s infamous and dangerous creatures like giant spiders and man-eating sharks. There are other perks to living there, as well.
“The coffee is a lot better in Australia, too,” she added with a smile, inspiring others to see the bright side of cultural differences.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
This article originally appeared 7 months ago. It has been updated.
Before Jewel sold 30 million albums and earned four Grammy nominations, she was sleeping in her car in San Diego. She hadn’t chosen the situation romantically — she’d been fired after refusing her boss’s sexual advances, lost her paycheck, and couldn’t make rent. Then the car was stolen, leaving her fully homeless. She was 19.
It was in the middle of all of this that the music industry came looking for her.
Jewel had found a coffee shop that was going out of business and struck a deal with the owner: she’d bring people in, and she’d keep the door money. She started playing five-hour sets of original material on Thursday nights. Four people became twelve, became twenty, became fifty. A bootleg recording ended up on the radio. Record labels started showing up.
A bidding war broke out. The biggest offer on the table included a $1 million signing bonus.
She said no.
Before making that decision, she did something practical and slightly remarkable: she went to the library and read a book about the music business. What she learned changed everything. “I learned that you owe that money back,” she explained in an interview on ABC’s No Limits with Rebecca Jarvis. “If my record wasn’t successful within a year, I would have been dropped. I would have ended up homeless again. I would have had to make a record that was guaranteed to be a hit, which I didn’t know how to do. I was a folk singer at the height of grunge.”
In other words: the million dollars wasn’t a gift. It was a loan with conditions attached, and the conditions were essentially designed for her to fail.
She recently revisited the decision in a conversation with entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie, posted March 30. In it she described the guiding principle she had formed for herself, even without words for it at the time. “I made myself a promise that my number one job in life would be to learn. I called it being a ‘happy whole human,’ not a human full of holes.” She wanted to be an artist more than she wanted to be famous — and she’d learned enough about the industry to know those weren’t the same thing.
“Do I want to be famous and rich, or do I want to be an artist?” she told ABC. “I used that as my road map.”
Instead of taking the advance, she negotiated a deal structured around the back end — one that gave her room to build a fan base slowly and stay true to her music. Her debut album, Pieces of You, came out in 1995. It eventually sold more than 12 million copies in the United States alone.
She has since become a bestselling author, a producer, and an advocate for mental health and emotional resilience. Her motto, which she’s repeated across decades of interviews: “Hardwood grows slowly.”
“If you can emotionally connect with a human being and cause them to emotionally invest with you, you have something,” she said. “Then you just have to go about it the old-fashioned way.”
There are just so many ways for important information held on your phone to be swiped—from subscription based apps that secretly send private customer data to Facebook to fake accounts that get your friends to invest in some kind of fake crypto.
And of course—this is more than a modern day inconvenience. It poses real threats to democracy and global human rights, which is why so many are calling for more regulations and safeguards. Of course, as with most regulations, change isn’t coming fast. Which isn’t good news, considering how rapidly technology evolves.
However, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Ronan Farrow has an incredibly simple tip for preventing our phones from being hacked: Turn them off more often.
Why Ronan Farrow says we should all be ‘freaking out’
While appearing on the Daily Show to promote his new documentary, Surveilled, Farrow told host Desi Lydic that we as a society should be “freaking out” more about the lack of government restraints about spyware technology, saying that it could turn the country “into an Orwellian surveillance state,” affecting anyone who uses a device, essentially—not just political dissidents.
But, as Farrow noted, turning your phone off and on every day is an easy way to protect yourself, since most current forms of spyware “will be foiled by a reboot.” And even if you aren’t, say, a journalist or a political activist (i.e. common targets for malware), you’re thwarting apps from monitoring your activity or collecting your data. And better still, you’re making it more difficult for hackers to steal information from your phone. Privacy protection aside, it’s a great way of just keeping your device healthy. Basically, it seems like the age-old solution for virtually all tech issues still holds up.
More easy steps you can take right now
Remembering to turn it off…that’s a different challenge altogether. Photo credit: Canva
There are a few other things worth turning off now and then, such as bluetooth and location devices when you’re not using them, according to the NSA. In addition, Farrow also suggested keeping devices updated, and perhaps most important of all, actually writing to your representative about the issue.
However, when it comes to wrapping devices in tinfoil as a makeshift Faraday cage…that might not be the best use of one’s aluminum.
“Experts vary on exactly how effective that approach is,” Farrow told Lydic, just before quipping, “we need better policies. Not just better tinfoil.”
The documentary that started it all
Expanding on Farrow’s 2022 New Yorker investagative exposé on the notorious spyware Pegasus, Surveilled, which is available to stream on Max, delves into the multibillion-dollar industry of commercial spyware and its potential threats, making it evidently clear that this is not an issue for the elite few, or one to ignore until the future.
On a (slightly) brighter note, Farrow debuted another new work in 2025, this time a true crime investigative podcast, titled Not a Very Good Murderer, which he himself narrates. Find it on Audible.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
There are some things you just don’t say. You don’t yell out “bomb!” on an airplane, make jokes about carrying weapons while going through security, or, as Michael Scott from The Office knows, loudly proclaim that a boat you’re currently on is sinking.
Those are all pretty obvious examples, but sometimes etiquette and decorum are a little more subtle. If you’re not experienced in the ways of the venue you’re in, you might not know all the unspoken rules. And you might find out the hard way. Cruise ships, for example, have their own very specific set of rules and regulations that guests should abide by.
On December 10, 2023, Royal Caribbean’s Serenade to the Seas set sail on the Ultimate World Cruise—a 274-day global trek that visited 11 world wonders and over 60 countries.
This incredible trip covered the Americas, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Mediterranean and Europe with a ticket price that ranged from $53,999 to $117,599 per passenger.
With such a unique and incredible offering, it’s understandable that Royal Caribbean wanted to invite plenty of influencers to help them get the word out.
The TikToker who accidentally broke the biggest rule at sea
“So here’s [what] I’ve learned about cruising since I’ve spent 18 nights on this floating retirement home with a Cheesecake Factory attached. First, number one, you’re not supposed to talk about the Titanic,” he says in the clip.
Titanic! It’s the ultimate taboo when you’re on a giant ship traversing the ocean. Even after all these years, it’s still too soon to make even lighthearted comparisons or jokes.
“Who knew that? I didn’t,” Sebastian said. “I brought it up to an entire room of people having lunch that our ship is only 100 feet longer than the Titanic – when I tell you that utensils dropped. Waiters gasped. It’s dead silent.”
The room went completely silent
Sebastian was flabbergasted. “It wasn’t in the… handbook,” he joked. “Not that I read the handbook, clearly.”
After the unexpected reaction, his cruise friend told him, “You’re not allowed to talk about the Titanic.” It makes sense.
Who wants to be reminded of the tragedy that killed around 1,500 people while sinking one of the most impressive engineering feats of the era? More experienced cruisers chimed in that they were familiar with the unique piece of etiquette.
“When I went on a cruise, my mom told me saying Titanic was equivalent to screaming ‘bomb’ at an airport,” Mikayla wrote in the comments.
“It’s like saying Macbeth in a theatre, it’s an unspoken rule” another commenter added.
“I’m sorry you’re telling me you had a Harry Potter like experience saying Voldemort at Hogwarts but it was the titanic on a modern day cruise I’m cryingggg” joked another.
Later in the video covering little known cruise facts, Sebastian admits he was surprised to learn that cruise ships have godmothers and that the pools are filled with seawater.
So, did he end up staying for all 274 days?
In an update from June of 2024, Sebastian explains that he only stayed on the cruise for 18 nights. He was not booked to stay throughout the entire voyage, and for him, that was a relief.
He initially jokes that he was kicked off the boat for saving a penguin that had jumped aboard. But in the end, he admits he was more than happy to deboard early.
“I walked off that ship not a happy man,” he said, saying the ship was overstimulating and stressful. In another video, he films as the ship navigates the Drake Passage, one of the most notoriously dangerous and choppy stretches of water in the world. It looks stressful indeed, to say the least.
Cruising isn’t for everyone, let alone for 274 days straight! But now Sebastian knows the golden rule for his next cruise.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, “How did they come up with that idea?” The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don’t always know where their ideas come from, so It’s a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s often not what you would expect!
If you’ve watched Wicked and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.
The many iterations of Wicked
The hit movie Wicked is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West written by Gregory Maguire. It says a lot about how powerful the story is that it has succeeded in so many different mediums and continued to find new audiences that connect with it.
While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origins of the two witches from “The Wizard of Oz”—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda’s friendship popped into his head.
The moment of inspiration that started it all
Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter’s farm in Cumbria, England (Potter was an author and illustrator who created Peter Rabbit) and thinking about “The Wizard of Oz,” which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.
“I thought ‘alright, what do we know about ‘The Wizard of Oz’ from our memories,’” he said. “We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…
“There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [The Wicked Witch] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, ‘I might have known you’d be behind this, Glinda!’ This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda’s first name? They have known each other. Maybe they’ve known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together.”
Sometimes it’s the crazy idea that works the best
Maguire must have thought the idea of Glinda and The Wicked Witch attending college together was absurd at the time. What a kooky idea! But he pursued it nonetheless and, well, the rest is history.
In “Wicked,” Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it’s the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.
“I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: ‘Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?’ I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad,”he said.
“I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times,” he continued. “But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye.”
What the story is really about
Authors and artists, and their ideas, help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and “Wicked” is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we’re seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.
The second Wicked film, For Good, hit theaters in November 2025 and is now streaming on Peacock.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
You know that feeling toward the end of a great vacation when you stop and think: I wish I could stay here forever. It might be an all-inclusive resort, a secluded beach, or a fun-filled cruise on the high seas that you just don’t want to leave. Of course, for most people, it’s a fantasy. You can’t just quit your job and live a permanent vacation. But what if you could?
Giving it all up and retiring to live on a cruise ship at 32 seems like a lifestyle choice only available to the ultra-wealthy. However, two financially savvy retired school teachers from Tennessee have managed to do just that, spending under $10,000 for the first eight months at sea.
Falling in love with cruises
Monica Brzoska, 32, and Jorell Conley, 36, met in 2015 while teaching in Memphis, Tennessee. The following year, they booked a week-long cruise to Mexico, Belize, and Grand Cayman. After that, they were hooked on cruising together.
Eight years later, in March 2023, they booked a week-long Caribbean cruise and had the time of their lives. When it was over, instead of returning home to Memphis, they had a wild idea: Why not continue to book consecutive cruises? So, they did just that.
Monica was inspired to start living the life she always wanted after her father fell ill and her mother told her: “Don’t wait for retirement. Follow your dreams.”
The couple crunched the numbers and found that if they chose the cheapest cabins and used the deals and promotions they’d received from Carnival Cruises, they could book the first 8 months for just under $10,000.
That’s not per month. That’s the total, coming out to around $1250 per month. Not a bad deal whatsoever. Plus, the more cruises they book, the more perks and deals they get.
“It sounds mad, but the numbers made sense. Accommodation, food and entertainment would be included – we’d only need spending money,” Brzoska “And because we’d been on so many Carnival cruises, we’d earned access to some amazing offers.”
Hopping from ship to ship isn’t difficult for the couple because many disembark from the same ports. But they sometimes have to fly when they can’t walk to the next ocean liner.
Cruising toward retirement
The couple then quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and started a new life on the high seas. They rent out their 3-bedroom home in Memphis to maintain steady cash flow. The average 3-bedroom home in the area rents somewhere between $1200 to $1900 a month.
Over the first year of their new life, the couple completed 36 consecutive cruises.
They have already visited countless destinations across the globe, but they can’t choose a favorite. “For a cultural experience, we loved Japan,” Brzoska told a Carnival Cruise director on Instagram. The couple also loved Greece for its “history” and Iceland because it was the “closest to being on Mars.”
More recently, they’ve spent time in Amsterdam, the UK, Germany, Belgium, and more. What an amazing adventure.
One of the most incredible benefits of living on a cruise ship is that so many things are taken care of for you. The couple never has to cook any meals, do any laundry, or drive. Every night, there is something to do, whether it’s checking out a comedy show or enjoying drinks and dancing in the nightclub. Plus, there are always new friends to meet on board with every new cruise.
Plus, on cruises, just about all the costs are covered, so you rarely have to open your wallet. It’s a stress-free, all-inclusive lifestyle. Brzoska says that when you remove the everyday stresses from life, it’s great for your marriage. “Without the daily stresses of life, we rarely argued, but always told each other if we needed space or more time together,” she said.
They are not the only ones
Brzoska and Conley were one of the first high-profile couples to get attention, followers, and media coverage for the permanent cruising lifestyle, but they’re definitely not the only ones. It’s an especially popular choice for retired adults and seniors, who find it cheaper and way more fun than living in a retirement community or nursing home. It’s also a great choice for people who can work remotely and flexibly, or who own their own digital-nomad-friendly businesses.
The couple also makes sure to have one date night a week, during which they dress up and have a nice meal together.
The couple has been cruising full-time for more than two years, logging 106+ cruises and visiting over 45 countries as of this and counting. Absolutely unreal.
Most people may be unable to give it all up and live their lives hopping from ocean liner to ocean liner. But there’s a great lesson in the story of Brzoska and Conley: You never know how much time you have left, so don’t wait for retirement to live the life of your dreams.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
