Latest news with #TheWildWest
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Americas' producers on NBC's ambitious docuseries, Earth's most varied landscapes, and ‘absolute joy' working with Tom Hanks
Five years. 180 expeditions. One supercontinent. NBC's The Americas takes viewers on an epic journey from pole to pole, unveiling Earth's most dazzling landscapes, jaw-dropping wildlife, and never-before-seen phenomena — with a little help from Tom Hanks and Hans Zimmer. Buckle up, this is not your ordinary nature doc! The unprecedented scale and ambition delivers remarkable world firsts: new species, new intimate courtship, dramatic deep sea hunting and some of nature's strangest stories. Each hourlong episode features a different iconic location across the Americas: 'The Atlantic Coast,' 'Mexico,' 'The Wild West,' 'The Amazon,' 'The Frozen North,' 'The Gulf Coast,' 'The Andes,' 'The Caribbean,' 'The West Coast' and 'Patagonia.' More from GoldDerby Everything to know about 'Toy Story 5': the Pixar franchise returns June 2026 with new themes and familiar faces 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' First look at JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette in 'American Love Story,' 'A Minecraft Movie' sets streaming premiere date, and more of today's top stories Executive producer Mike Gunton and editor Holly Spearing recently spoke to Gold Derby about their most ambitious project yet and collaborating with a legendary pair of two-time Oscar winners. Gold Derby: The Americas was five years in the making with over 180 expeditions, land and sea. So how do you even begin to conceptualize this sort of ambitious series? Mike Gunton: The word ambitious, I think, is the key word, because that was the goal, to do something that had the same level of ambition as something like a Planet Earth 2, which is a series I had just been working on. Is there anything on the planet that could match that in scale and ambition and that hadn't been done before? I scratched my head quite a lot, thought about Africa, maybe a few other places, and then thought, "No, there isn't anywhere." But then I thought, "Well, hold on a minute. North America's been looked at, maybe, South America. But what about thinking about them together?" As far as animals are concerned, and as far as nature is concerned, it is all joined together. It's a kind of a supercontinent. So I thought, "Well, maybe somebody must've done that," and then looked around and they hadn't. It doesn't have lions and it doesn't have elephants, but that's about it. In fact, it does have some kind of lion — it has mountain lions. It has all the biggest, the longest, the most impressive natural phenomena you can imagine. So it just had to be done. You've both worked on so many nature documentaries and series in your careers, what separates this from what you've done previously? Holly Spearing: Well, I think the scale is a big part of it. Ten episodes and covering an entire supercontinent that actually has its head up in one pole and its feet down in another pole — that is absolutely massive. It does really set it apart from anything I think either of us have done before. Gunton: Also, doing a project for this audience was a really interesting challenge because. ... We work for the BBC and so we make programs for British audiences. They do, of course, get shown around the world and they do get shown in America. But to make a series that directly speaks to an American audience on a national level is something I've never done. Nobody's ever done it to be absolutely honest with you. The opportunity of doing that was a very big part of why we wanted to do it. Did each location have an independent film crew? Were they taking place simultaneously, or how do you work that out logistically for these 10 episodes? Spearing: It was massively ambitious to cover the area, all the different seasons, all the different animal behaviors. And of course, yes, some of them were happening all at once. So the series is broken down into its 10 different episodes, and those teams work on their shoots, so it was a huge logistical exercise. It was 180 separate shoots, and these are expeditions. They're not just driving up to a location and getting out of a vehicle. Some of them are scaling up a mountain. They're going to one of the most remote islands off the end of South America where you actually have to take a medic with you because it would take so long to get to facilities that you'd need if anything happened. These were really ambitious shoots. And of course, we were covering different habitats from underwater to scaling up trees, deserts, all of those things that we had to face and encounter. But our crews, I have to say, are absolute masters at this. They're experienced and they did an absolutely outstanding job. Gunton: Holly's like a military commander. This is like a military operation. You have got so many resources to deploy because it's not just personnel, it's the most extraordinary variety of equipment, as you hinted at: ships, and we're not talking about little boats, we're talking about massive, really huge boats, helicopters, airplanes, submersibles, and cave divers. There's a sequence there — which I think is probably the bravest thing I've ever seen — where two guys go through those underground caves in Florida. There's no escape. If anything goes wrong, you've got nowhere to go. That's an insanely dangerous thing to do. And all of this has to not just be coordinated in terms of logistics but also has to be made safe. How has technology changed how you approach these topics throughout the years? Gunton: Over the years, we've started to use drone technology a bit more. But what was very fortunate with this series is that the stars aligned and and drone technology has improved – they're smaller. The camera quality was better. The pilots were not necessarily better, but more exposed to shooting in nature. The cameras have to move slowly, they have to get close to the animals, but very, very carefully. And also, the recruitment of real natural history experts at the controls of those drones was just a perfect marriage. We were able to get cameras to places that four or five years ago, we wouldn't have even attempted. Spearing: I think ultimately, what we're trying to do with this new technology is immerse ourselves in the world of the animals so we can see these locations through their eyes, and as Mike says, get really close to them. We think we had about 35 different camera rigs throughout the whole series just to cover all the different environments from underwater to filming things the size of a grain of rice. We talked about drones, but there are crew members within feet of wolves, bears, pumas. Is there anything that feels like it's too dangerous? Spearing: Well, really interesting you mentioned the puma story because our camera operator, John Shire, had actually built a relationship with this particular individual puma over many years. In fact, he filmed her as a cub and many people believe that she still recognizes him by scent. Many of our camera operators are absolute experts on animal behavior as well, and they have to be. They're constantly reading cues from the animals and working with that because they're looking for the behavior that we want to capture. You mentioned Tom Hanks, who narrates the series. How did he become involved? Gunton: When I first pitched this to NBC I didn't mention a narrator. But I did actually write in my notebook at the time, "Ooh, Tom Hanks would be the right person to do this." I didn't think about that for another two or three years. When we finally mentioned him they responded "Oh, yeah, of course. There's only a list of one. It has to be Tom Hanks." Luckily, he had been aware of the series. So I went out to LA, sat down in this little viewing theater with a rough cut of one of the episodes and showed it to him. It was quite nerve-wracking. You're sitting next to a two-time Oscar winner. About a minute into it, he went, "Oh, God," and then turned around to the guy who was running things and said, "Guys, have you seen this? This is insane!" And from then I just thought, "We're sold. He's got this. He absolutely knows what we're doing." He was an absolute joy. He is what you hope your heroes will be — the loveliest man you could imagine; smart, funny, and added so much value to it. Spearing: He was so collaborative to work with as well and just wanted to do the very best he could. He is a filmmaker after all, and he was also incredibly interested in how we got the shots. He loved all the stories from behind the scenes and the cameras. And then finally, one of the more maybe unsung heroes of a docuseries like this is the music. You have the great Hans Zimmer composing music, how did that come about? Spearing: He wrote an extraordinary theme for The Americas, which I think then set the style for all the other music that followed behind it for the individual sequences. Mike is a long-time collaborator with Hans. Gunton: When we've done panels or or live screenings, people put up their hands and say, "We love the music." I think he and his team just got it dead right; not too much. It was incredibly evocative and deeply enriched the drama while also capturing the essence of the locations. One of the key aspects of this series was not just telling stories about life and animals but placing them within their environments — highlighting the personality and unique signature of where they lived. That was the foundation. It was like a "super safari." If we could take you on the most extraordinary journey across the Americas, where would we stop, what would we show you, and what makes those places special? A crucial role of the music was to evoke that sense of wonder, and I think he accomplished that superbly. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. The Americas is streaming on Peacock. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh admit they 'never had the audacity to realize' a show like 'Deli Boys' was possible From 'Housewives' overload to the 'shadiest queens' alliance: The dish on 'The Traitors' Season 4 lineup Leslie Bibb breaks down her aha moments filming 'The White Lotus': 'Kate suddenly got jealous' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Deep-Sea Mining: The Battle Over Earth's Last Frontier
The Wild West is alive and well — it just moved underwater. As nations and companies race to stake their claim in the deep sea, industry is moving faster than regulation can keep up. This year, the fight over deep-sea mining hit a critical turning point. In March, global negotiations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA) took center stage, only to be followed by a shocking move from The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian firm, which is attempting to sidestep international law altogether. So, what is deep-sea mining, why is it such a big topic, and what does this mean for the planet's future? Here's everything you need to know. As demand for electric vehicle battery minerals like cobalt and nickel rises, the seafloor offers a potential source — potato-shaped rocks rich in these essential metals. Companies like TMC argue that harvesting them is less destructive than land mining and that it's urgent for the renewable energy transition. But the reality isn't so simple. Unlike land ecosystems, deep-sea habitats could take millennia to recover — if they ever do. Scientists warn of the deep sea's potential role in climate regulation, oxygen production, and biodiversity. Mining the seabed could cause irreversible damage to fragile ecosystems we're only beginning to understand. Even if deep-sea mining started today, it would take decades to compete with land supply. Meanwhile, battery technology is already moving away from cobalt and nickel and toward alternatives like lithium iron phosphate, which don't use deep-sea metals. With better recycling and continued innovation, we may never even need deep-sea mining. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1994 to regulate international waters and ensure that the seabed is managed as the 'common heritage of humankind.' The ISA comprises 169 member countries, but the U.S. never ratified UNCLOS and therefore doesn't recognize the ISA's authority (this will be important later). For years, TMC has been pressuring the ISA to draw up deep-sea regulations so they can start mining, but the rules are still incomplete. How can we draft regulations for an ecosystem we know so little about? Frustrated and losing investors, TMC took to a more aggressive tactic, announcing it would apply for a license to mine in June 2025, with or without regulations. If successful, this could open the doors to large-scale industrialization of the deep sea. At the March 2025 ISA meeting in Jamaica, negotiations were shifting toward a more science-driven, precautionary approach. But as opposition to mining grew, a desperate TMC announced plans to apply for an exploitation license in the U.S., taking advantage of outdated mining laws. These laws — written before UNCLOS and the ISA even existed — ignore international governance and decades of science. This move shocked the world. By bypassing the ISA, TMC is disregarding international law, setting the stage for a 'Wild West' approach to ocean exploitation. Rumors are circulating that President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order to open U.S. waters to deep-sea mining as well. The fear is that other major powers, like China and Russia, will follow suit, further undermining international governance. Because the U.S. is not a member of the ISA, it can legally issue a mining license to TMC under its own laws, regardless of what the ISA decides. However, this doesn't mean the fight is lost. The rest of the world can still ban deep-sea mining. Other countries, consumers, and corporations can reject deep-sea minerals, making it difficult for TMC to find buyers. Pacific nations can make mining a logistical nightmare, refusing to let vessels refuel or dock. The goal now is to make mining the deep sea so unprofitable that it collapses under its own weight before it even begins. SeaLegacy has teamed up with Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA), supporting their campaign for a global moratorium on deep-sea mining and ensuring that young people — those who will inherit the consequences of today's decisions — are heard in the halls of power. Eugénia Barroca, SOA's regional representative for Europe and Lusophony, attended the ISA meeting in March. She recounted her eye-opening experience: 'While deep-sea mining poses an irreversible threat to marine ecosystems, concerns are growing that industry interests could be placed above science and equity.' But despite pressure from TMC to move forward, global resistance is building. More nations are advocating for a precautionary pause or moratorium. 'It has been encouraging to see a strong coalition of states standing up for the ocean,' Eugénia said. 'Meanwhile, youth and civil society continue to play a vital role in safeguarding our planet's last untouched frontier.' The next ISA meeting in July 2025 will be pivotal in determining how the world reacts to TMC's disregard for international law. SeaLegacy will be attending with SOA, standing up for the future of our oceans. This isn't just about deep-sea mining — it's about whether a handful of billionaires get to dictate the planet's in the loop by following us and SOA on Instagram for real-time updates. If you'd like to learn more, sign up for SOA's free course on deep-sea mining and watch the Deep Rising documentary! Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier co-founded SeaLegacy in 2014. SeaLegacy's mission is to inspire people to fall in love with the ocean, amplify a network of changemakers around the world, and catalyze hands-on diplomacy through hopeful, world-class visual storytelling. For more updates on their meaningful work, learn more about SeaLegacy, and subscribe to Ripple Effect, Katie Couric Media's sustainability newsletter. The post Deep-Sea Mining: The Battle Over Earth's Last Frontier appeared first on Katie Couric Media.
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
11-year-old making her way to Carnegie Hall
DUNMORE, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — It is not just anyone who can say they played at New York City's Carnegie Hall, but an 11-year-old Dunmore girl is about to add her name to the list. Her journey to perform at the acclaimed venue has been years in the making. The arts are everything for Reilly Urbina. She acts, sings, and plays the piano. Eagle Scout dedicating time to uplift others In fact, the sixth-grade straight 'A' student at Dunmore Elementary Center has been playing ever since she began taking piano lessons when she was five years old. 'I just started playing a bunch of random notes and I'm just like 'Oh, I can really play this.' I'm pretty good at this so I worked harder so that I could get into harder songs,' said exclaimed Reilly. Reilly's mom says she knew that her daughter had a knack for music at a very young age. 'When Reilly was two, she came out singing. She wasn't even talking yet, right. She wasn't even, like, saying sentences. She was obsessed with Broadway music. I mean, she was singing 'Rent' at age three,' said Katie Urbina, Reilly's Mom. Reilly's singing became known quickly throughout the Dunmore community. 'My math teacher in 5th grade asked me if I could sing at one of the events so I'm like yeah, sure. And they heard me sing. Almost everyone cried,' said Reilly. She had the honor of singing the national anthem at a recent Dunmore Girl's High School basketball game. Another honor awaits Reilly, a piano performance in New York City. 'So I'm really glad that hard work paid off to get into Carnegie,' said Reilly. She performed the song, 'The Wild West' by Timothy Brown at her formal audition in January and was accepted to play at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in March. It took dedication and hard work to make the cut. 'I had to go to practice once a week, like, every time. And then we'd usually play about two phrases like per note,' explained Reilly. Whether she's playing for personal enjoyment, or performing for a crowd, Reilly is proof that having passion, persistence, and talent can pay off. 'She is so enthusiastic about doing things other than what she should be doing right. So, doing good in school and being kind and being a good person in society so all these extra things are just extra gifts,' said Katie Urbina. Reilly will play Carnegie Hall in March. Looking to the future, she would like to be a pediatrician or perhaps an actress when she grows up. Here's to you, Reilly. If you have a kid you think should be featured on Heres To You Kid!, send in a nomination online. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
16-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
The Power Struggle Over a College Athlete's Medical Well-Being
Early in the 2014 football season, a Nike representative entered the Penn State athletic trainer's office and confronted the football team's two doctors and head trainer. The representative ran down a list of players, including the star quarterback, whose socks and shoes had recently been taped over to help stabilize previous injuries. The tape covered the Nike swoosh, and the representative wanted it stopped, court testimony showed. Soon, the coach, James Franklin, began to interfere, requiring the trainer to provide a list of players who needed their ankles taped over their shoes, along with an explanation. The episode was just one instance that troubled Scott Lynch, the head team doctor, who had begun to feel that in the face of pressure from the coach and administrators, he was the only line of defense for the athletes. He complained to supervisors about the coach's meddling with medical decisions. Ultimately, Dr. Lynch was removed from his position. Then he sued. Last year a Pennsylvania jury awarded Dr. Lynch $5.25 million in damages for wrongful termination. The trial offered a rare glimpse into how a high-profile college football team handled decisions around injuries — and revealed the pressure on trainers and doctors to greenlight students to get back on the field, despite reservations. 'College sports are broken, and I think they're beyond repair,' Dr. Lynch said in an interview. 'There's way too much money that's getting in the way of people making good decisions. Nobody's protecting the athletes.' College sports will even more closely resemble professional leagues later this year if the terms of an antitrust lawsuit settlement are approved, compelling schools to pay athletes. But unlike college athletes, professionals are represented by labor unions and have more autonomy over their medical decisions. The examples from Dr. Lynch's lawsuit date between 2015 to 2019. But there are signs that concerns still exist at Penn State and beyond. In 2022, Penn State football players themselves expressed concern around medical care, but their attempt to organize — including a request for a third-party representative on medical decisions — was opposed by the school and the Big Ten Conference and went nowhere. In October, a Louisiana State player sued the school, saying that a coach had told him he could lose his starting spot after having complained of headaches. He was diagnosed weeks later with a brain tumor. The family of a Bucknell player who died during a workout last summer says the school has not been forthcoming about what happened to their son. In a statement, L.S.U. said its health care contractor provides exceptional medical care for its athletes, but otherwise declined to comment. Bucknell said in a statement that it plans to share more information with the player's family once it is further along in its investigation. 'The Wild West' A 2019 survey by the National Athletic Trainers' Association hinted at the scope of the problem: Nearly one-fourth of the 1,800 respondents said that they did not have medical autonomy, and more than one-third said that coaches had influence on the hiring and firing of medical staff. Nearly one in five reported a coach playing an athlete who had not been medically cleared. A year before Dr. Lynch was removed at Penn State, Moira Novak was ousted as the director of athletic medicine at the University of Minnesota; she says she was viewed as an obstacle to winning when she reported what she had viewed as unethical — or illegal — behavior. 'College athletics is the Wild West when it comes to medical services,' Ms. Novak said in an interview. 'I'm sure there's some that do a decent job. But if I had a son or daughter who was a college athlete, I'd make sure they know they have to be their own advocate.' Penn State said in a statement that it was 'extremely disappointed' in the jury's verdict. The statement added that athletes participate only with the independent approval of the athletic department's medical team and that Mr. Franklin did not influence athletes' medical care. 'Throughout James Franklin's tenure, he has worked tirelessly to build a program focused on the well-being of student-athletes,' the statement said. Defense attorneys portrayed Mr. Franklin's questioning of medical decisions as the routine seeking of information. Mr. Franklin, who has seven seasons remaining on a 10-year, $85 million contract, declined an interview request through an athletic department spokeswoman, and he is not a party in the lawsuit. The coach and Penn State were dropped as defendants because of a missed filing deadline, a ruling Dr. Lynch is appealing. His former employer, Hershey Medical Center, which is owned by Penn State University Health, and his former supervisor, Dr. Kevin Black, are appealing the verdict. But the judge in the case, Andrew Dowling, wrote a recent opinion urging that the appeal by the defendants be denied because they had 'prioritized their interest of protecting the Penn State Football team and Mr. Franklin rather than the health, safety and welfare of the football players.' During the trial, the jury heard nearly a dozen stories, many corroborated, from Dr. Lynch about what he saw firsthand as the head orthopedic surgeon for the Penn State athletic department and football team doctor. The jury heard that Mr. Franklin had pressured Dr. Lynch to allow the former star running back Saquon Barkley, who had missed the previous game with a sprained ankle, to return without passing recovery protocols; urged Dr. Lynch to withhold information from a player with a knee injury so that he might return quickly; and suggested hanging a sign in the trainer's room that read 'the lazy, overweight, unmotivated and injured football player look the same.' When Mr. Franklin yelled at him, ignored him or hung up on him, Dr. Lynch held his ground — until he was removed from his job in 2019. Dr. Black told him the reason was because he was not a full-time resident of State College, Pa., but Dr. Lynch owned a condominium downtown. He did not have full operating privileges at Mount Nittany Medical Center in State College but did at Hershey Medical Center, a renowned hospital with specialists who were rare at Mount Nittany. Rob Windsor, a former defensive lineman who finished his career at Penn State and played briefly in the N.F.L., testified that during his senior season in 2019 a new head trainer, whose predecessor had been forced out, had ignored his repeated requests to meet with Dr. Lynch to discuss a knee injury. 'You had a doctor and a trainer that were standing up for the athletes, and they got rid of them both,' said Mr. Windsor, who like several others who testified said they felt conflicted about speaking out against Penn State because of their affinity for the school. 'Put up or shut up, or leave' The N.C.A.A. was founded in 1906 at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt after a surge of deaths among college football players the previous season. The association's guiding principle: keep athletes safe. More than a century later, as college athletics became a billion-dollar business, the N.C.A.A. attempted to rein in coaches and athletic directors who were interfering with medical care. In 2017, the association made a policy change, requiring team doctors and trainers to have 'unchallengable autonomous authority.' This included keeping athletic directors and coaches out of hiring and firing decisions. The N.C.A.A. amended its bylaws last year to require schools to conduct an annual review of these policies. 'The failure is, there are no reporting mechanisms and there's no enforcement,' Brant Berkstresser, the chair of the N.A.T.A.'s council on intercollegiate athletics, said. 'A standard without a consequence is not a standard.' The N.C.A.A. has never punished a school for interfering with medical autonomy, according to the association's infractions database. An N.C.A.A. spokeswoman declined to comment. Ms. Novak, who worked from 1998 to 2017 at the University of Minnesota, said she encountered a culture averse to her efforts to protect athletes. In a memorandum to the university's Board of Regents in 2018, obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Novak detailed alleged abuses that included a coach urging an athlete who had dizziness and blurred vision following a car crash to withhold that information. The medical team became aware of it only when the athlete was hospitalized after collapsing. The University of Minnesota said in a statement that return-to-play decisions are made by medical staff and the athlete, that coaches and administrators are not involved. Ms. Novak considered a lawsuit, but she reached a settlement with the university. When she was pushed out, 'it was a very strong message to the remaining staff: Put up or shut up, or leave,' she said. Dr. Lynch's case took five years to go to trial, survived repeated attempts to dismiss and was narrowed to exclude Mr. Franklin; Sandy Barbour, the athletic director at the time; and Penn State. Also disallowed was the university's internal investigation, which was conducted by the athletics integrity officer at the time, Robert A. Boland, in collaboration with the university's general counsel. This permitted Penn State to shield the report's findings from scrutiny by asserting attorney-client privilege. The 15-page report, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, questions Penn State's rationale for removing Dr. Lynch but makes no conclusions. The jury returned a verdict in a little over two hours, on Dr. Lynch's 63rd birthday. He hopes the outcome prompts reforms that prioritize athletes' health. Steven Marino, Dr. Lynch's attorney, was not so sanguine. 'It was a devastating finding of fact, but I don't think it's enough to effect change,' Mr. Marino said. 'It should have been a $50 million judgment. This is just going to be the cost of doing business.'
