title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The day before the tournament, fighting broke out between local youths and England fans in Marseille; police dispersed the local youths with tear gas. On 10 June, English fans at Marseille clashed with police. Six English fans were later arrested and sentenced to prison. On 11 June, violent clashes erupted in the streets of the same city before and after the Group B match between England and Russia that ended in a 1–1 draw. One English fan was reported to be critically ill in the hospital while dozens of others were injured in the clashes. On 14 June, the Russian team were given a suspended disqualification, fined €150,000, and warned that future violence would result in their removal from the cup. Additionally, 50 Russian fans were deported. The English team was also warned about disqualification, but was not formally charged. Violence between English and Russian fans arose again in Lille, where a total of 36 fans were arrested, and 16 people were hospitalised.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: Late in the Group D match between the Czech Republic and Croatia, flares were thrown onto the pitch from where Croatia supporters were massed. The match was paused for several minutes while they were cleared up. There was also fighting in the Croatia supporters' area. Later that same day, there was violence involving Turkish fans after Turkey's defeat by Spain. As a result of these incidents and earlier crowd troubles after the countries' first matches, UEFA launched official procedures against the Croatian and Turkish football federations. The Croatian federation was fined €100,000 for the incidents.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The football pitches at French stadiums were criticised during the group stage for their poor quality. France coach Didier Deschamps was especially critical. UEFA tournament director Martin Kallen blamed heavy rain for damaged turf, though the press speculated that non-football events may have also been a contributor.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The pitch at Lille received particular attention with players slipping continuously and with groundsmen forced at halftime to try to repair the cut up pitch. Despite UEFA applying numerous methods to rectify the problems, such as a ban on pre-match training on the pitch, use of fertilisers, seeding, mowing, light therapy, drying and playing with the roof closed to avoid rain, it was decided that the pitch at Lille had to be entirely replaced following the Italy–Republic of Ireland group match on 22 June. The new pitch was replaced with Dutch grass and was ready before the last sixteen match between Germany and Slovakia on 26 June. UEFA also stated that repair work was also required at the St Denis and Marseille pitches. This was the second time that a Euro championship pitch needed to be re-laid mid-tournament. The first time was the St. Jakob-Park in Basel during Euro 2008.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: UEFA's Leeds-based consultant Richard Hayden had come under criticism as it was reported he ordered local groundsmen to re-lay three pitches (Lille, Nice, and Marseille) with Slovak grass, provided by an Austrian company for an estimated €600,000 (£460,000). On 22 June it was reported that France's grass association officials had blamed Hayden for continued problems with the pitches, citing "it is amazing that it is only these pitches that have problems today". The Austrian manufacture of the turf, Richter, responded to the French grass association officials by saying "the turf for the stadiums in Lille and Marseille was delivered in top condition" and that "the turf placement and further care were handled by French companies and no one other than the French grounds-people had control over the grounds condition". In a statement, UEFA rejected the criticism against Hayden as baseless and stated they were satisfied with his work.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: Before the final match started, the stadium was invaded by Silver Y moths, which caused some irritation to the players, staff and coaches. The reason this occurred is because the workers at the stadium left the lights switched on the day before the match which attracted huge swaths of insects. The players and coaches of each team during the warm-up tried swatting the moths, and ground staff used brushes to clean moths from the walls, ground and other places. One moth was infamously captured flying on and around Cristiano Ronaldo's face when he was sitting on the pitch after being injured during the match.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The UEFA Euro 2016 video game was released by Konami as a free DLC on "Pro Evolution Soccer 2016". The DLC was available for existing "Pro Evolution Soccer 2016" members on 24 March 2016 for major platforms (PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows). The game was released physically and digitally on 21 April for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 users.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The official logo was unveiled on 26 June 2013, during a ceremony at the Pavillon Cambon Capucines in Paris. Conceived by Portuguese agency Brandia Central, which also created the visual identity for the previous European Championship, the design is based on the theme "Celebrating the art of football". The logo depicts the Henri Delaunay Trophy with the blue, white and red colours of the French flag, surrounded by a mixture of shapes and lines representing different artistic movements and football elements.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: On 17 October 2013, UEFA announced the official slogan of the tournament: "Le Rendez-Vous". Asked about its meaning, Jacques Lambert, chairman of the Euro 2016 organising committee, told that the slogan "is much more than a reminder of dates (...) and venues". He further explained that "UEFA is sending out an invitation to football fans throughout the world and to lovers of major events, an invitation to meet up and share the emotions of an elite-level tournament".


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: For the first time in the tournament's history, two official match balls were used. The Adidas Beau Jeu, used for the group stage, was unveiled on 12 November 2015 by former France player Zinedine Zidane. During the tournament, the Adidas Fracas was introduced as the exclusive match ball for the knockout rounds.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The official mascot of the tournament, "Super Victor", was unveiled on 18 November 2014. He is a child superhero in the kit of the France national football team, with a red cape at the back, to echo the colours of the flag of France. The cape, boots and ball are claimed to be the child's superpowers. The mascot first appeared during the match between France and Sweden at the Stade Vélodrome, Marseille on 18 November 2014. The name of the mascot was revealed on 30 November 2014 after receiving about 50,000 votes from the public on the official UEFA website, beating the other nominated names of "Driblou" and "Goalix". It is based on the idea of victory and references the boy's super powers that he gained when he found the magic cape, boots and ball.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The name of the mascot is the same as the name of a sex toy. UEFA said that this 'coincidence' was not their responsibility because the name was selected by fan voting.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The competition's official opening song was "This One's for You" by David Guetta featuring Zara Larsson, and the official closing song was "Free Your Mind" by Maya Lavelle. It was reported that David Guetta sought one million fans to add their voices to the official anthem via a website.


title: UEFA Euro 2016

text: The International Broadcast Centre (IBC) is located at the Paris expo Porte de Versailles in Paris' 15th arrondissement.


title: Sam Harris

text: Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris came to prominence for his criticism of religion, and Islam in particular, and is known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris's first book, "The End of Faith" (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and remained on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for 33 weeks. Harris has since written six additional books: "Letter to a Christian Nation" in 2006, "The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values" in 2010, the long-form essay "Lying" in 2011, the short book "Free Will" in 2012, "" in 2014, and (with British writer Maajid Nawaz) "Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue" in 2015. Harris's work has been translated into over 20 languages.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris has debated with many prominent figures on the topics of God or religion, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Rick Warren, Andrew Sullivan, Reza Aslan, David Wolpe, Deepak Chopra, Ben Shapiro, and Jean Houston. Since September 2013, Harris has hosted the "Making Sense" podcast (originally titled "Waking Up"), which has a large listenership. In September 2018, Harris released a meditation app, "Waking Up with Sam Harris". He was one of the original core members of the so-called "intellectual dark web", although Harris has stated that he does not identify as a part of that group.


title: Sam Harris

text: Critics have argued that Harris' writings are Islamophobic. Harris and his supporters, however, reject this characterization, adding that such a labeling is an attempt to silence criticism.


title: Sam Harris

text: Samuel Benjamin Harris was born in Los Angeles, California, on April 9, 1967. He is the son of actor Berkeley Harris, who appeared mainly in Western films, and TV writer and producer Susan Harris (née Spivak), who created "Soap" and "The Golden Girls", among other series. His father, born in North Carolina, came from a Quaker background, and his mother is Jewish but not religious. He was raised by his mother following his parents' divorce when he was aged two. Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular and that his parents rarely discussed religion, though he also stated that he was not raised as an atheist.


title: Sam Harris

text: While his original major was in English, Harris became interested in philosophical questions while at Stanford University after an experience with MDMA. The experience interested him in the idea he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs. Leaving Stanford in his second year, a quarter after his psychoactive experience, he visited India and Nepal, where he studied meditation with teachers of Buddhist and Hindu religions, including Dilgo Khyentse. Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000. Harris began writing his first book, "The End of Faith", immediately after the September 11 attacks.


title: Sam Harris

text: He received a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. His thesis was titled "The Moral Landscape: How Science Could Determine Human Values". His advisor was Mark S. Cohen.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris's writing focuses on philosophy, neuroscience, and criticism of religion. He came to prominence for his criticism of religion (Islam in particular) and he is described as one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. He has written for publications such as "The New York Times", the "Los Angeles Times", "Economist", London "Times", "The Boston Globe", and "The Atlantic". Five of Harris's books have been "New York Times" bestsellers, and his writing has been translated into over 20 languages. "The End of Faith" (2004) remained on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for 33 weeks.


title: Sam Harris

text: In 2007, Harris engaged in a lengthy debate with conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan on the Internet forum "Beliefnet". In April 2007, Harris debated with evangelical pastor Rick Warren for "Newsweek" magazine. Harris debated with Rabbi David Wolpe in 2007. In 2010, Harris joined Michael Shermer to debate with Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston on the future of God in a debate hosted by "ABC News Nightline". Harris debated with Christian philosopher William Lane Craig in April 2011 on whether there can be an objective morality without God. In June and July 2018, he met with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson for a series of debates on religion, particularly the relationship between religious values and scientific fact in defining truth. Harris has debated with the scholar Reza Aslan.


title: Sam Harris

text: In September 2013, Harris began releasing the "Waking Up" podcast (since re-titled "Making Sense"). Episodes vary in length but often last over two hours. Releases do not follow a regular schedule.


title: Sam Harris

text: In September 2018, Harris released a meditation course app, "Waking Up with Sam Harris". The app provides daily meditations; long guided meditations; daily "Moments" (brief meditations and reminders); conversations with thought leaders in psychology, meditation, philosophy, psychedelics, and other disciplines; a selection of lessons on various topics, such as "Mind & Emotion", "Free Will", and "Doing Good"; and more. Users of the app are introduced several types of meditation, such as mindfulness meditation, vipassanā-style meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and Dzogchen.


title: Sam Harris

text: In September 2020, Harris announced his commitment to donate a least 10% of Waking Up's profits to highly effective charities, thus becoming the first company to sign the Giving What We Can pledge for companies. The pledge was done retroactively, taking into account the profits since the day the app launched 2 years previously.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris is a critic of religion, and is a leading figure in the New Atheist movement. Harris is particularly opposed to what he refers to as dogmatic belief, and says that "Pretending to know things one doesn't know is a betrayal of science – and yet it is the lifeblood of religion." While purportedly opposed to religion in general and the belief systems of them, Harris believes that all religions are not created equal. Often invoking Jainism to contrast Islam as a whole, Harris highlights the difference in the specific doctrine and scripture as the main indicator of a religion's value, or lack thereof.


title: Sam Harris

text: In 2006, Harris described Islam as "all fringe and no center," and wrote in "The End of Faith" that "the doctrine of Islam [...] represents a unique danger to all of us", arguing that the war on terror is really a war against Islam. In 2014, Harris said he considers Islam to be "especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse", as it involves what Harris considers to be "bad ideas, held for bad reasons, leading to bad behavior." In 2015 Harris and secular Islamic activist Maajid Nawaz cowrote " Islam and the Future of Tolerance". In this book, Harris argues that the word Islamophobia is a "pernicious meme", a label which prevents discussion about the threat of Islam. Harris has been described in 2020 by Jonathan Matusitz, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, as "a champion of the counter-jihad left".


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris is critical of the Christian right in politics in the United States, blaming them for the political focus on "pseudo-problems like gay marriage". He is also critical of liberal Christianityas represented, for instance, by the theology of Paul Tillichwhich he argues claims to base its beliefs on the Bible despite actually being influenced by secular modernity. He further states that in so doing liberal Christianity provides rhetorical cover to fundamentalists.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris holds that there is "nothing irrational about seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many religions. Compassion, awe, devotion, and feelings of oneness are surely among the most valuable experiences a person can have."


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris rejects the dichotomy between spirituality and rationality, favoring a middle path that preserves spirituality and science but does not involve religion. He writes that spirituality should be understood in light of scientific disciplines like neuroscience and psychology. Science, he contends, can show how to maximize human well-being, but may fail to answer certain questions about the nature of being, answers to some of which he says are discoverable directly through our experience. His conception of spirituality does not involve a belief in any god.


title: Sam Harris

text: In "" (2014), Harris describes his experience with Dzogchen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, and recommends it to his readers. He writes that the purpose of spirituality (as he defines it – he concedes that the term's uses are diverse and sometimes indefensible) is to become aware that our sense of self is illusory, and says this realization brings both happiness and insight into the nature of consciousness, mirroring core Buddhist beliefs. This process of realization, he argues, is based on experience and is not contingent on faith. Harris especially recommends the "headless" meditation technique as written about by Douglas Harding.


title: Sam Harris

text: In "The Moral Landscape", Harris argues that science can answer moral problems and aid human well-being.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris says that the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent. Harris writes in "Free Will" that neuroscience "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet."


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris describes himself as a liberal, is a registered Democrat and has never voted Republican in presidential elections. He supports raising taxes on the wealthy, decriminalizing drugs and legalizing same-sex marriage. In an op-ed for the "Los Angeles Times", Harris said that he supported most of the criticism against Bush administration's war in Iraq, and all criticism of fiscal policy and the administration's treatment of science. Harris also said that liberalism has grown "dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world" when it comes to threats allegedly posed by Islamic fundamentalism. Harris owns guns, and wrote in 2015 that he understood people's hostility towards gun culture in the United States and the political influence of the National Rifle Association, but argued that there is a rational case for gun ownership.


title: Sam Harris

text: During the 2016 United States presidential election, Harris supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party presidential primaries against Bernie Sanders, and despite calling her "a terribly flawed candidate for the presidency," he favored her in the general election and came out strongly in opposition to Donald Trump's candidacy. Harris has criticized Trump for lying, stating in 2018 that Trump "has assaulted truth more than anyone in human history."


title: Sam Harris

text: During the 2020 United States presidential election, Harris supported Andrew Yang in the Democratic primaries. Harris also introduced Yang to podcaster Joe Rogan.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris has discussed existential risk from artificial general intelligence in depth. He has given a TED talk on the topic, arguing it will be a major threat in the future and criticizing the paucity of human interest on the subject. He argues the dangers from artificial intelligence (AI) follow from three premises: that intelligence is the result of physical information processing, that humans will continue innovation in AI, and that humans are nowhere near the maximum possible extent of intelligence. Harris states that even if superintelligent AI is five to ten decades away, the scale of its implications for human civilization warrants discussion of the issue in the present.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris was once a member of the intellectual dark web, a group that opposes political correctness and identity politics. "New York Times" journalist Bari Weiss described the group as "a collection of iconoclastic thinkers, academic renegades and media personalities who are having a rolling conversation – on podcasts, YouTube and Twitter, and in sold-out auditoriums – that sound unlike anything else happening, at least publicly, in the culture right now." In November 2020, Harris stated that he does not identify as a part of that group. Other members of the group include Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, and Jordan Peterson. In 2021 Harris said on his podcast that he had left the intellectual dark web and said he turned in "my imaginary membership card to this imaginary organization".


title: Sam Harris

text: In April 2017, Harris hosted the social scientist Charles Murray on his podcast, discussing topics including the heritability of IQ and race and intelligence. Harris stated the invitation was out of indignation at a violent protest against Murray at Middlebury College the month before and not out of particular interest in the material at hand. The podcast episode garnered significant criticism, most notably from "Vox" and "Slate". In the Vox article, scientists including Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard E. Nisbett accused Harris of participating in “pseudoscientific racialist speculation” and peddling “junk science”. Harris and Murray were defended by conservative commentators Andrew Sullivan and Kyle Smith. Harris and "Vox" editor-at-large Ezra Klein later discussed the affair in a podcast interview in which Klein accused Harris of "thinking tribally".


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris has been accused of Islamophobia by journalist Glenn Greenwald and linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky. Greenwald characterized some of Harris's statements as Islamophobic, such as: "the people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists," and "[t]he only future devout Muslims can envisage – as Muslims – is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed." After Harris and Chomsky exchanged a series of emails on terrorism and U.S. foreign policy in 2015, Chomsky said Harris had not prepared adequately for the exchange and that this revealed his work as unserious. Kyle Schmidlin also wrote in "Salon" that he considered Chomsky the winner of the exchange because Harris's arguments relied excessively on thought experiments with little application to the real world. In a 2016 interview with "Al Jazeera English" "UpFront", Chomsky further criticized Harris, saying he "specializes in hysterical, slanderous charges against people he doesn't like."


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris has countered that his views on this and other topics are frequently misrepresented by "unethical critics" who "deliberately" regard his words out of context. He has also criticized the validity of the term "Islamophobia." "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences, but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people," he wrote following a disagreement with actor Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show "Real Time with Bill Maher". Affleck had described Harris's and host Bill Maher's views on Muslims as "gross" and "racist," and Harris's statement that "Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas" as an "ugly thing to say." Affleck also compared Harris's and Maher's rhetoric to that of people who use antisemitic canards or define African-Americans in terms of intraracial crime. Several conservative American media pundits in turn criticized Affleck and praised Harris and Maher for broaching the topic, saying that discussing it had become taboo.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris's dialogue on Islam with Maajid Nawaz received a combination of positive reviews and mixed reviews. Irshad Manji wrote: "Their back-and-forth clarifies multiple confusions that plague the public conversation about Islam." Of Harris specifically, she said "[he] is right that liberals must end their silence about the religious motives behind much Islamist terror. At the same time, he ought to call out another double standard that feeds the liberal reflex to excuse Islamists: Atheists do not make nearly enough noise about hatred toward Muslims."


title: Sam Harris

text: Hamid Dabashi, a professor at Columbia University accused Sam Harris of being a "new atheist crusader" having never studied Islam thoroughly and having no special insight into any Muslim community on earth. He further accused Harris of engaging in such language to justify Western imperialism in the Muslim world. An article published in "The Guardian" accused Harris, along with Milo Yiannopoulos of influencing young white men into becoming racists and anti-Muslim bigots.


title: Sam Harris

text: Chris Hedges accused Harris of "advancing neoconservative agendas", of advocating a nuclear first strike policy on Muslims, if an Islamist regime ever obtained nuclear weapons, and quoting from "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" by Harris that "in such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own."


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris's first two books, in which he lays out his criticisms of religion, received negative reviews from Christian scholars. From secular sources, the books received a mixture of negative reviews and positive reviews. In his review of "The End of Faith", American historian Alexander Saxton criticized what he called Harris's "vitriolic and "selective" polemic against Islam," (emphasis in original) which he said "obscure[s] the obvious reality that the invasion of Iraq and the War against Terror are driven by religious irrationalities, cultivated and conceded to, at high policy levels in the U.S., and which are at least comparable to the irrationality of Islamic crusaders and Jihadists." By contrast, Stephanie Merritt wrote of the same book that Harris's "central argument in "The End of Faith" is sound: religion is the only area of human knowledge in which it is still acceptable to hold beliefs dating from antiquity and a modern society should subject those beliefs to the same principles that govern scientific, medical or geographical inquiry – particularly if they are inherently hostile to those with different ideas." Harris's first book, "The End of Faith" (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris's next two books, which discuss philosophical issues relating to ethics and free will, received several negative academic reviews. In his review of "The Moral Landscape", neuroscientist Kenan Malik criticized Harris for not engaging adequately with philosophical literature: "Imagine a sociologist who wrote about evolutionary theory without discussing the work of Darwin, Fisher, Mayr, Hamilton, Trivers or Dawkins on the grounds that he did not come to his conclusions by reading about biology and because discussing concepts such as 'adaptation', 'speciation', 'homology', 'phylogenetics' or 'kin selection' would 'increase the amount of boredom in the universe'. How seriously would we, and should we, take his argument?" Philosopher Daniel Dennett argued that Harris's book "Free Will" successfully refuted the common understanding of free will, but that he failed to respond adequately to the compatibilist understanding of free will. Dennett said the book was valuable because it expressed the views of many eminent scientists, but that it nonetheless contained a "veritable museum of mistakes" and that "Harris and others need to do their homework if they want to engage with the best thought on the topic." On the other hand, "The Moral Landscape" received a largely positive review from psychologists James Diller and Andrew Nuzzolilli. Additionally, "Free Will" received a mixed academic review from philosopher Paul Pardi, who acknowledged that while it suffers from some conceptual confusions and that the core argument is a bit too 'breezy', it serves as a "good primer on key ideas in physicalist theories of freedom and the will".


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris's book on spirituality and meditation received mainly positive reviews as well as some mixed reviews. It was praised by Frank Bruni, for example, who described it as "so entirely of this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number of Americans who are willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave, or a truth that makes sense to them, in organized religion."


title: Sam Harris

text: "Hatewatch" staff at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) wrote that members of the "skeptics" movement, of which Harris is "one of the most public faces," help to "channel people into the alt-right." Bari Weiss wrote the SPLC had misrepresented Harris's views.


title: Sam Harris

text: In 2018, Robert Wright, a visiting professor of science and religion at Union Theological Seminary, published an article in "Wired" criticizing Harris, whom he described as "annoying" and "deluded". Wright wrote that Harris, despite claiming to be a champion of rationality, ignored his own cognitive biases and engaged in faulty and inconsistent arguments in his book "The End of Faith". He wrote that "the famous proponent of New Atheism is on a crusade against tribalism but seems oblivious to his own version of it." Wright wrote that these biases are rooted in natural selection and impact everyone, but that they can be mitigated when acknowledged.


title: Sam Harris

text: The UK "Business Insider" included Harris's podcast in their list of "8 podcasts that will change how you think about human behavior" in 2017, and "PC Magazine" included it in their list of "The Best Podcasts of 2018." In January 2020, Max Sanderson included Harris's podcast as a "Producer pick" in a "podcasts of the week" section for "The Guardian". The "Waking Up" podcast won the 2017 Webby Award for "People's Voice" in the category "Science & Education" under "Podcasts & Digital Audio".


title: Sam Harris

text: Harris was included on a list of the "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People 2019" in the "Watkins Review", a publication of Watkins Books, a London esoterica bookshop.


title: Sam Harris

text: In 2004, he married Annaka Gorton, an author and editor of nonfiction and scientific books after engaging in a common interest about the nature of consciousness. They have two daughters and live in Los Angeles.


title: Sam Harris

text: In September 2020, Harris became a member of Giving What We Can, an effective altruism organization whose members pledge to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities, both as an individual and as a company with Waking Up.


title: Othello

text: Othello (full title: The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare, probably in 1603, set in the contemporary Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–1573) fought for the control of the Island of Cyprus, a possession of the Venetian Republic since 1489. The port city of Famagusta finally fell to the Ottomans in 1571 after a protracted siege. The story revolves around two characters, Othello and Iago. Othello is a Moorish military commander who was serving as a general of the Venetian army in defence of Cyprus against invasion by Ottoman Turks. He has recently married Desdemona, a beautiful and wealthy Venetian lady much younger than himself, against the wishes of her father. Iago is Othello's malevolent ensign, who maliciously stokes his master's jealousy until the usually stoic Moor kills his beloved wife in a fit of blind rage. Due to its enduring themes of passion, jealousy, and race, "Othello" is still topical and popular and is widely performed, with numerous adaptations.


title: Othello

text: Roderigo, a wealthy and dissolute gentleman, complains to his friend Iago, an ensign, that Iago has not told him about the recent secret marriage between Desdemona, the daughter of Brabantio, a senator, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. Roderigo is upset because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father, Brabantio, for her hand in marriage.


title: Othello

text: Iago hates Othello for promoting a younger man named Cassio above him, whom Iago considers a less capable soldier than himself. Iago tells Roderigo that he plans to exploit Othello for his own advantage and convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughter's elopement. Meanwhile, Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him that Brabantio is coming for him.


title: Othello

text: Brabantio, provoked by Roderigo, is enraged and seeks to confront Othello, but he finds Othello's residence full of the Duke of Venice's guards, who prevent violence. News has arrived in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus, and Othello is therefore summoned to advise the senators. Brabantio has no option but to accompany Othello to the Duke's residence, where he accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft.


title: Othello

text: Othello defends himself before the Duke of Venice, Brabantio's kinsmen Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators. Othello explains that, while he was invited to Brabantio's home, Desdemona became enamoured of him for the sad and compelling stories he told of his life before Venice, not because of any witchcraft. The senate is satisfied once Desdemona confirms that she loves Othello, but Brabantio leaves, saying that Desdemona will betray Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee" (Act I, Sc 3). Iago, still in the room, takes note of Brabantio's remark. By order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago, and Iago's wife, Emilia, as Desdemona's attendant.


title: Othello

text: The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration and leaves to consummate his marriage with Desdemona. In his absence, Iago gets Cassio drunk, and then persuades Roderigo to draw Cassio into a fight. Montano tries to calm down an angry and drunk Cassio. This leads to them fighting one another and Montano being injured. Othello arrives and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank. Cassio, distraught, is then persuaded by Iago to ask Desdemona to persuade her husband to reinstate him. She succeeds in doing so.


title: Othello

text: Iago persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona's relationship. When Desdemona drops a handkerchief (the first gift given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello appears and, then being convinced by Iago of his wife's unfaithfulness with his captain, vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago his lieutenant.


title: Othello

text: Iago plants the handkerchief in Cassio's lodgings, then tells Othello to watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him. Iago goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca, a local courtesan, but whispers her name so quietly that Othello believes the two men are talking about Desdemona. Later, Bianca accuses Cassio of giving her a second-hand gift which he had received from another lover. Othello sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the handkerchief from Desdemona.


title: Othello

text: Enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and tells Iago to kill Cassio. Othello proceeds to make Desdemona's life miserable and strikes her in front of visiting Venetian nobles. Meanwhile, Roderigo complains that he has received no results from Iago in return for his money and efforts to win Desdemona, but Iago convinces him to kill Cassio.


title: Othello

text: Roderigo unsuccessfully attacks Cassio in the street after Cassio leaves Bianca's lodgings, as Cassio wounds Roderigo. During the scuffle, Iago comes from behind Cassio and badly cuts his leg. In the darkness, Iago manages to hide his identity, and when Lodovico and Gratiano hear Cassio's cries for help, Iago joins them. When Cassio identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago secretly stabs Roderigo to death to stop him from revealing the plot. Iago then accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio.


title: Othello

text: Othello confronts a sleeping Desdemona. She denies being unfaithful, but he smothers her. Emilia arrives, and Desdemona defends her husband before dying, and Othello accuses Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls for help. The former governor Montano arrives with Gratiano and Iago. When Othello mentions the handkerchief as proof, Emilia realizes what Iago has done, and she exposes him. Othello, belatedly realising Desdemona's innocence, stabs Iago (but not fatally), saying that Iago is a devil, but not before the latter stabs Emilia to death in the scuffle.


title: Othello

text: Iago refuses to explain his motives, vowing to remain silent from that moment on. Lodovico apprehends both Iago and Othello for the murders of Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona, but Othello commits suicide. Lodovico appoints Cassio as Othello's successor and exhorts him to punish Iago justly. He then denounces Iago for his actions and leaves to tell the others what has happened.


title: Othello

text: "Othello" is an adaptation of the Italian writer Cinthio's tale ("A Moorish Captain") from his (1565), a collection of one hundred tales in the style of Boccaccio's "Decameron". No English translation of Cinthio was available in Shakespeare's lifetime, and verbal echoes in "Othello" are closer to the Italian original than to 1584 French translation. Cinthio's tale may have been based on an actual incident occurring in Venice about 1508. It also resembles an incident described in the earlier tale of "The Three Apples", one of the stories narrated in the "One Thousand and One Nights" ("Arabian Nights"). Desdemona is the only named character in Cinthio's tale, with his few other characters identified only as the "Moor", the "Squadron Leader", the "Ensign", and the "Ensign's Wife" (corresponding to the play's Othello, Cassio, Iago, and Emilia). Cinthio drew a moral (which he placed in the mouth of Desdemona) that it is unwise for European women to marry the temperamental men of other nations. Cinthio's tale has been described as a "partly racist warning" about the dangers of miscegenation.


title: Othello

text: While Shakespeare closely followed Cinthio's tale in composing "Othello", he departed from it in some details. Brabantio, Roderigo, and several minor characters are not found in Cinthio, for example, and Shakespeare's Emilia takes part in the handkerchief mischief while her counterpart in Cinthio does not. Unlike in "Othello", in Cinthio, the "Ensign" (the play's Iago) lusts after Desdemona and is spurred to revenge when she rejects him. Shakespeare's opening scenes are unique to his tragedy, as is the tender scene between Emilia and Desdemona as the lady prepares for bed. Shakespeare's most striking departure from Cinthio is the manner of his heroine's death. In Shakespeare, Othello initially smothers Desdemona, then finishes the task in some unspecified way (saying "So, so"), whereas in Cinthio, the "Moor" commissions the "Ensign" to bludgeon his wife to death with a sand-filled stocking. Cinthio describes each gruesome blow, and, when the lady is dead, the "Ensign" and the "Moor" place her lifeless body upon her bed, smash her skull, and cause the cracked ceiling above the bed to collapse upon her, giving the impression its falling rafters caused her death. In Cinthio, the two murderers escape detection. The "Moor" then misses Desdemona greatly, and comes to loathe the sight of the "Ensign". He demotes him, and refuses to have him in his company. The "Ensign" then seeks revenge by disclosing to the "Squadron Leader" the "Moor's" involvement in Desdemona's death. The two depart Cyprus for Venice, and denounce the "Moor" to the Venetian Seigniory; he is arrested, taken to Venice, and tortured. He refuses to admit his guilt and is condemned to exile. Desdemona's relatives eventually find and kill him. The "Ensign", however, continues to escape detection in Desdemona's death, but engages in other crimes while in Venice. He is arrested and dies after being tortured. Cinthio's "Ensign's Wife" (the play's Emilia), survives her husband's death to tell her story.


title: Othello

text: Cinthio's "Moor" is the model for Shakespeare's Othello, but some researchers believe the poet also took inspiration from the several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England "circa" 1600.


title: Othello

text: Another possible source was the "Description of Africa" by Leo Africanus. The book was an enormous success in Europe, and was translated into many other languages, remaining a definitive reference work for decades (and to some degree, centuries) afterwards. An English translation by John Pory appeared in 1600 under the title "A Geographical Historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke and Italian by Iohn Leo a More..." in which form Shakespeare may have seen it and reworked hints in creating the character of Othello.


title: Othello

text: While supplying the source of the plot, the book offered nothing of the sense of place of Venice or Cyprus. For knowledge of this, Shakespeare may have used Gasparo Contarini's "The Commonwealth and Government of Venice", in Lewes Lewkenor's 1599 translation.


title: Othello

text: The earliest mention of the play is found in a 1604 Revels Office account, which records that on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar ... the Kings Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinghouse at Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis". The work is attributed to "Shaxberd". The Revels account was first printed by Peter Cunningham in 1842, and, while its authenticity was once challenged, is now regarded as genuine (as authenticated by A. E. Stamp in 1930). Based on its style, the play is usually dated 1603 or 1604, but arguments have been made for dates as early as 1601 or 1602.


title: Othello

text: The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 6 October 1621, by Thomas Walkley, and was first published in quarto format by him in 1622:


title: Othello

text: One year later, the play was included among the plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays. However, the version in the Folio is rather different in length, and in wording: as the editors of the Folger edition explain: "The Folio play has about 160 lines that do not appear in the Quarto. Some of these cluster together in quite extensive passages. The Folio also lacks a scattering of about a dozen lines or part-lines that are to be found in the Quarto. These two versions also differ from each other in their readings of numerous words." Scholars differ in their explanation of these differences, and no consensus has emerged. Kerrigan suggests that the 1623 Folio version of "Othello" and a number of other plays may have been cleaned up relative to the Quarto to conform with the 1606 Act to Restrain Abuses, which made it an offence "in any Stage-play, Interlude, Shew, Maygame, or Pageant, iestingly [jestingly], and prophanely [to] speake, or vse the holy Name of God, or of Christ Iesus, or of the holy Ghost, or of the Trinitie". This is not incompatible with the suggestion that the Quarto is based on an early version of the play, whilst the Folio represents Shakespeare's revised version. It may also be that the Quarto was cut in the printing house to meet a fixed number of pages. Most modern editions are based on the longer Folio version, but often incorporate Quarto readings of words when the Folio text appears to be in error. Quartos were also published in 1630, 1655, 1681, 1695, 1699 and 1705.


title: Othello

text: Although characters described as "Moors" appear in two other Shakespeare plays ("Titus Andronicus" and "The Merchant of Venice"), such characters were a rarity in contemporary theatre, and it was unknown for them to take centre stage.


title: Othello

text: There is no consensus over Othello's ethnic origin. In Elizabethan discourse, the word "black" could suggest various concepts that extended beyond the physical colour of skin, including a wide range of negative connotations. E. A. J. Honigmann, the editor of an Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous. "Renaissance representations of the Moor were vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. As critics have established, the term 'Moor' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with terms such as 'African', 'Somali', 'Ethiopian', 'Negro', 'Arab', 'Berber', and even 'Indian' to designate a figure from Africa (or beyond)." Various uses of the word "black" (for example, "Haply for I am black") are insufficient evidence for any accurate racial classification, Honigmann argues, since "black" could simply mean "swarthy" to Elizabethans.


title: Othello

text: Othello is referred to as a "Barbary horse" (1.1.113) and a "lascivious Moor" (1.1.127). In 3.3 he denounces Desdemona's supposed sin as being "black as mine own face". Desdemona's physical whiteness is otherwise presented in opposition to Othello's dark skin: 5.2 "that whiter skin of hers than snow". Iago tells Brabantio that "an old black ram / is tupping your white ewe" (1.1.88). When Iago uses the word "Barbary" or "Barbarian" to refer to Othello, he seemingly refers to the Barbary coast inhabited by Berbers. Roderigo calls Othello "the thicklips", which seems to refer to Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally.


title: Othello

text: However, Jyotsna Singh wrote that the opposition of Brabantio to Desdemona marrying Othelloa respected and honoured generalcannot make sense except in racial terms, citing the scene where Brabantio accuses Othello of using witchcraft to make his daughter fall in love with him, saying it is "unnatural" for Desdemona to desire Othello's "sooty bosom". Singh argued that, since people with dark complexions are common in the Mediterranean area, a Venetian senator like Brabantio being opposed to Desdemona marrying Othello for merely being swarthy makes no sense, and that the character of Othello was intended to be black.


title: Othello

text: Michael Neill, editor of an Oxford edition, notes that the earliest critical references to Othello's colour (Thomas Rymer's 1693 critique of the play, and the 1709 engraving in Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare) assume him to be Sub-Saharan, while the earliest known North African interpretation was not until Edmund Kean's production of 1814. Honigmann discusses the view that Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish ambassador of the Arab sultan of Barbary (Morocco) to Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, was one inspiration for Othello. He stayed with his retinue in London for several months and occasioned much discussion. While Shakespeare's play was written only a few years afterwards, Honigmann questions the view that ben Messaoud himself was a significant influence on it.


title: Othello

text: Othello was frequently performed as an Arab Moor during the 19th century. He was first played by a black man on the London stage in 1833 by the most important of the nineteenth-century Othellos, the African American Ira Aldridge who had been forced to leave his home country to make his career. Regardless of what Shakespeare intended by calling Othello a "Moor" – whether he meant that Othello was a Muslim or a black man or both – in the 19th century and much of the 20th century, many critics tended to see the tragedy in racial terms, seeing interracial marriages as "aberrations" that could end badly. Given this view of "Othello", the play became especially controversial in apartheid-era South Africa where interracial marriages were banned and performances of "Othello" were discouraged.


title: Othello

text: The first major screen production casting a black actor as Othello did not come until 1995, with Laurence Fishburne opposite Kenneth Branagh's Iago. In the past, Othello would often have been portrayed by a white actor in dark makeup or in a black mask: more recent actors who chose to 'black up' include Ralph Richardson (1937); Orson Welles (1952); Sergei Bondarchuk (1955); John Gielgud (1961); Laurence Olivier (1964); and Anthony Hopkins (1981). Ground-breaking black American actor Paul Robeson played the role in three different productions between 1930 and 1959. The casting of the role comes with a political subtext. Patrick Stewart played the role alongside an otherwise all-black cast in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's 1997 staging of the play and Thomas Thieme, also white, played Othello in a 2007 Munich Kammerspiele staging at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford. Michael Gambon also took the role in 1980 and 1991; their performances were critically acclaimed. Carlo Rota, of Mediterranean (British Italian) heritage, played the character on Canadian television in 2008.


title: Othello

text: The race of the title role is often seen as Shakespeare's way of isolating the character, culturally as well as visually, from the Venetian nobles and officers, and the isolation may seem more genuine when a black actor takes the role. But questions of race may not boil down to a simple decision of casting a single role. In 1979, Keith Fowler's production of "Othello" mixed the races throughout the company. Produced by the American Revels Company at the Empire Theater (renamed the November Theater in 2011) in Richmond, Virginia, this production starred African American actor Clayton Corbin in the title role, with Henry K. Bal, a Hawaiian actor of mixed ethnicity, playing Iago. Othello's army was composed of both black and white mercenaries. Iago's wife, Emilia was played by the popular black actress Marie Goodman Hunter. The 2016 production at the New York Theatre Workshop, directed by Sam Gold, also effectively used a mixed-race cast, starring English actors David Oyelowo as Othello and Daniel Craig as Iago. Desdemona was played by American actress Rachel Brosnahan, Cassio was played by Finn Wittrock, and Emilia was played by Marsha Stephanie Blake.


title: Othello

text: A vital component of the Protestant Reformation was the establishment among the general public of the importance of "pious, controlled behaviour". As such, "undesirable" qualities such as cruelty, treachery, jealousy and libidinousness were seen as qualities possessed by "the other". The assumed characteristics of Moors or "the other", were both instigated and popularised by Renaissance dramas of the time; for example, the treacherous behaviour of the Moors in George Peele's "The Battle of Alcazar" (1588).


title: Othello

text: The title "Moor" implies a religious "other" of North African or Middle Eastern descent. Though the actual racial definition of the term is murky, the implications are religious as well as racial. Many critics have noted references to demonic possession throughout the play, especially in relation to Othello's seizure, a phenomenon often associated with possession in the popular consciousness of the day. Thomas M. Vozar, in a 2012 article in "Philosophy and Literature", suggests that the epileptic seizure relates to the mind–body problem and the existence of the soul.


title: Othello

text: There have been many differing views on the character of Othello over the years. A.C. Bradley calls Othello the "most romantic of all of Shakespeare's heroes" (by "hero" Bradley means protagonist) and "the greatest poet of them all". On the other hand, F. R. Leavis describes Othello as "egotistical". There are those who also take a less critical approach to the character of Othello such as William Hazlitt, who said: "the nature of the Moor is noble ... but his blood is of the most inflammable kind". Conversely, many scholars have seen Iago as the anti-hero of the piece. W. H. Auden, for example, observed that "any consideration of [the play] must be primarily occupied, not with its official hero, but with its villain".


title: Othello

text: "Othello" possesses an unusually detailed performance record. The first certainly known performance occurred on 1 November 1604, at Whitehall Palace in London, being mentioned in a Revels account on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar", 1604, when "the Kings Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinge house at Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis". The play is there attributed to "Shaxberd". Subsequent performances took place on Monday, 30 April 1610 at the Globe Theatre, and at Oxford in September 1610. On 22 November 1629, and on 6 May 1635, it played at the Blackfriars Theatre. "Othello" was also one of the twenty plays performed by the King's Men during the winter of 1612, in celebration of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine.


title: Othello

text: At the start of the Restoration era, on 11 October 1660, Samuel Pepys saw the play at the Cockpit Theatre. Nicholas Burt played the lead, with Charles Hart as Cassio; Walter Clun won fame for his Iago. Soon after, on 8 December 1660, Thomas Killigrew's new King's Company acted the play at their Vere Street theatre, with Margaret Hughes as Desdemona – probably the first time a professional actress appeared on a public stage in England.


title: Othello

text: It may be one index of the play's power that "Othello" was one of the very few Shakespeare plays that was never adapted and changed during the Restoration and the eighteenth century.


title: Othello

text: As Shakespeare regained popularity among nineteenth-century French Romantics, poet, playwright, and novelist Alfred de Vigny created a French translation of "Othello", titled "Le More de Venise", which premiered at the Comédie-Française on 24 October 1829.


title: Othello

text: Famous nineteenth-century Othellos included Ira Aldridge, Edmund Kean, Edwin Forrest, and Tommaso Salvini, and outstanding Iagos were Edwin Booth and Henry Irving.


title: Othello

text: The most notable American production may be Margaret Webster's 1943 staging starring Paul Robeson as Othello and José Ferrer as Iago. This production was the first ever in America to feature a black actor playing Othello with an otherwise all-white cast (there had been all-black productions of the play before). It ran for 296 performances, almost twice as long as any other Shakespeare play ever produced on Broadway. Although it was never filmed, it was the first lengthy performance of a Shakespeare play released on records, first on a multi-record 78 RPM set and then on a 3-LP one. Robeson had first played the role in London in 1930 in a cast that included Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona and Ralph Richardson as Roderigo, and would return to it in 1959 at Stratford-upon-Avon with co-stars Mary Ure, Sam Wanamaker and Vanessa Redgrave. The critics had mixed reactions to the "flashy" 1959 production which included mid-western accents and rock-and roll drumbeats but gave Robeson primarily good reviews. W. A. Darlington of "The Daily Telegraph" ranked Robeson's Othello as the best he had ever seen while the "Daily Express", which had for years before published consistently scathing articles about Robeson for his leftist views, praised his "strong and stately" performance (though in turn suggested it was a "triumph of presence not acting").


title: Othello

text: Actors have alternated the roles of Iago and Othello in productions to stir audience interest since the nineteenth century. Two of the most notable examples of this role swap were William Charles Macready and Samuel Phelps at Drury Lane (1837) and Richard Burton and John Neville at The Old Vic (1955). When Edwin Booth's tour of England in 1880 was not well attended, Henry Irving invited Booth to alternate the roles of Othello and Iago with him in London. The stunt renewed interest in Booth's tour. James O'Neill also alternated the roles of Othello and Iago with Booth.


title: Othello

text: The American actor William Marshall performed the title role in at least six productions. His Othello was called by Harold Hobson of the "Sunday Times" "the best Othello of our time", continuing:


title: Othello

text: Marshall also played Othello in a jazz musical version, "Catch My Soul", with Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago, in Los Angeles in 1968. His Othello was captured on record in 1964 with Jay Robinson as Iago and on video in 1981 with Ron Moody as Iago. The 1982 Broadway staging starred James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer as Iago, who became the only actor to receive a Tony Award nomination for a performance in the play.


title: Othello

text: When Laurence Olivier gave his acclaimed performance of Othello at the Royal National Theatre in 1964, he had developed a case of stage fright that was so profound that when he was alone onstage, Frank Finlay (who was playing Iago) would have to stand offstage where Olivier could see him to settle his nerves. This performance was recorded complete on LP, and filmed by popular demand in 1965 (according to a biography of Olivier, tickets for the stage production were notoriously hard to get). The film version still holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for acting ever given to a Shakespeare film – Olivier, Finlay, Maggie Smith (as Desdemona) and Joyce Redman (as Emilia, Iago's wife) were all nominated for Academy Awards. Olivier was among the last white actors to be greatly acclaimed as Othello, although the role continued to be played by such performers as Donald Sinden at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979–1980, Paul Scofield at the Royal National Theatre in 1980, Anthony Hopkins in the "BBC Television Shakespeare" production (1981), and Michael Gambon in a stage production at Scarborough directed by Alan Ayckbourn in 1990. Gambon had been in Olivier's earlier production. In an interview Gambon commented "I wasn't even the second gentleman in that. I didn't have any lines at all. I was at the back like that, standing for an hour. [It's] what I used to do – I had a metal helmet, I had an earplug, and we used to listen to "The Archers". No one knew. All the line used to listen to "The Archers". And then I went and played Othello myself at Birmingham Rep I was 27. Olivier sent me a telegram on the first night. He said, 'Copy me.' He said, 'Do what I used to do.' Olivier used to lower his voice for Othello so I did mine. He used to paint the big negro lips on. You couldn't do it today, you'd get shot. He had the complete negro face. And the hips. I did all that. I copied him exactly. Except I had a pony tail. I played him as an Arab. I stuck a pony tail on with a bell on the end of it. I thought that would be nice. Every time I moved my hair went wild." British blacking up for Othello ended with Gambon in 1990; however the Royal Shakespeare Company did not run the play at all on the main Stratford stage until 1999, when Ray Fearon became the first black British actor to take the part, the first black man to play Othello with the RSC since Robeson.


title: Othello

text: In 1997, Patrick Stewart took the role of Othello with the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington, D.C.) in a race-bending performance, in a "photo negative" production of a white "Othello" with an otherwise all-black cast. Stewart had wanted to play the title role since the age of 14, so he and director Jude Kelly inverted the play so Othello became a comment on a white man entering a black society. The interpretation of the role is broadening, with theatre companies casting Othello as a woman or inverting the gender of the whole cast to explore gender questions in Shakespeare's text. Companies have also chosen to share the role between several actors during a performance.


title: Othello

text: Canadian playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald's 1988 award-winning play "Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)" is a revision of "Othello" and "Romeo and Juliet" in which an academic deciphers a cryptic manuscript she believes to be the original source for the tragedies, and is transported into the plays themselves.


title: Othello

text: In 2006, famed Bollywood producer, Vishal Bharadwaj produced the blockbuster Hindi movie "Omkara", an adaption of "Othello".


title: Othello

text: In 2007, "Othello" opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London on 4 December 2007, directed by Michael Grandage, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello, Ewan McGregor as Iago, Tom Hiddleston as Cassio, Kelly Reilly as Desdemona and Michelle Fairley as Emilia. Ejiofor, Hiddleston and Fairley all received nominations for Laurence Olivier Awards, with Ejiofor winning.


title: Othello

text: In 2009, stand-up comedian Lenny Henry played Othello, produced by Northern Broadsides in collaboration with West Yorkshire Playhouse.


title: Othello

text: In summer 2013, the Royal National Theatre produced the play with Adrian Lester in the title role and Rory Kinnear as Iago. Lester and Kinnear shared Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor and Kinnear won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor.


title: Othello

text: In September 2013, a Tamil adaptation titled "Othello, the Fall of a Warrior" was directed and produced in Singapore by Subramanian Ganesh.


title: Othello

text: In March 2016 the historian Onyeka produced a play entitled "Young Othello", a fictional take on Othello's young life before the events of Shakespeare's play.


title: Othello

text: In June 2016, baritone and actor David Serero played the title role in a Moroccan adaptation featuring Judeo-Arabic songs and Verdi's opera version in New York.


title: Othello

text: In the fall of 2016, David Oyelowo starred and Daniel Craig appeared in a modern production of Othello at the New York Theatre Workshop Off-Broadway.


title: Othello

text: In 2017, Ben Naylor directed the play for the Pop-up Globe in Auckland, New Zealand, with Māori actor Te Kohe Tuhaka in the title role, Jasmine Blackborow as Desdemona and Haakon Smestad as Iago. The production transferred to Melbourne, Australia with another Maori actor, Regan Taylor, taking over the title role.


title: Othello

text: Othello as a literary character has appeared in many representations within popular culture over several centuries. There also have been over a dozen film adaptations of "Othello" including All Night Long, The Boss, Carnival, A Double Life, Jarum Halus, Omkara and Souli.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Adam Daniel Kinzinger (; born February 27, 1978) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for . The district covers eastern Rockford, most of Rockford's suburbs, and a swath of exurban territory around Chicago. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is also a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was first elected to Congress in 2010 from the 11th district. His district was largely merged with the 16th after the 2010 census, and Kinzinger transferred to the 16th after defeating its incumbent, Don Manzullo, in the Republican primary. After President Donald Trump was defeated in the 2020 presidential election, Kinzinger became known for his vocal opposition to Trump's claims of voter fraud and attempts to overturn the results. Kinzinger was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment, and one of only two Republicans to vote to create a select committee to investigate the 2021 United States Capitol attack, to which he was subsequently appointed.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On October 29, 2021, Kinzinger announced that he would not seek reelection to Congress in 2022, after redistricting placed him and another Republican incumbent in the same district.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was born on February 27, 1978, in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Betty Jo, an elementary school teacher, and Rus Kinzinger, a CEO of faith-based organizations. After spending part of his youth in Jacksonville, Florida, he was primarily raised in Bloomington, Illinois. He graduated from Normal Community West High School in 1996 and earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Illinois State University in 2000.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In 1998, while a student at Illinois State, Kinzinger ran for election as a county board member in McLean County. He won, defeating an incumbent, and at age 20 was one of the youngest county board members in McLean County history, Kinzinger remained on the board until resigning in 2003.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger worked as an intern for former U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald shortly after his graduation from Illinois State, as part of a program offered there.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger resigned from the McLean County Board in 2003 to join the United States Air Force. He was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in November 2003 and later awarded his pilot wings. Kinzinger was initially a KC-135 Stratotanker pilot and flew missions in South America, Guam, Iraq and Afghanistan. He later switched to flying the RC-26 surveillance aircraft and was stationed in Iraq twice.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger has served in the Air Force Special Operations Command, Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Wisconsin Air National Guard and was progressively promoted to his current rank of Lieutenant Colonel. As part of his continued service with the Air National Guard, Kinzinger was deployed to the Mexico–United States border in February 2019 as part of efforts to maintain border security.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger met Republican U.S. Representatives Mike Pence, Mark Kirk, and Peter Roskam in January 2009 to discuss a possible run for Congress. He decided to run in Illinois's 11th congressional district, held by Debbie Halvorson. He started campaigning full-time in May 2009, when he returned home from his 3rd tour in Iraq. He was endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Kinzinger won the five-candidate Republican primary on February 2, 2010, with 64% of the vote.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: He was endorsed by the "Chicago Tribune" and the "Chicago Sun-Times" in the general election. Kinzinger defeated Halvorson 57–43% on November 2, 2010.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: During his first term, Kinzinger represented a district that stretched from the outer southern suburbs of Chicago to Bloomington/Normal.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: After redistricting, Kinzinger's district was eliminated. Much of its eastern portion, including Kinzinger's home in Channahon, near Joliet, was merged with the Rockford-based 16th District, represented by fellow Republican Don Manzullo, a 67-year-old politician first elected in 1992. Before redistricting, Kinzinger had represented 31% of the newly apportioned district, while Manzullo had represented at least 44% of it. In the March Republican primary, Kinzinger defeated Manzullo, 56–44%. In the general election, Kinzinger defeated Democrat Wanda Rohl, 62–38%.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Eric Cantor helped Kinzinger, who was a rising Republican star, topple Manzullo in the Illinois primary.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was targeted by the Club for Growth in 2014. In the Republican primary, he faced David Hale, a nurse and founder of the Rockford Tea Party. Kinzinger won with 78% of the vote.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger won the March 2016 Republican primary with 100% of the vote. No candidates filed for the Democratic primary for his seat and no Democrat ran in the election; Kinzinger won the election with 99.9% of the vote.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger announced publicly that he would not support GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump on August 3, 2016. "I'm an American before I'm a Republican," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, adding, "I'm a Republican because I believe that Republicanism is the best way to defend the United States of America... [Trump] throws all of these Republican principles on their head." Kinzinger noted, however, that he also would not support Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and was mulling other options.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger introduced the U.S. House version of the bipartisan bill Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act. The United States Senate version was written in March 2016 by Senators Chris Murphy and Rob Portman. After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, worries grew that Russian propaganda spread and organized by the Russian government swayed the outcome of the election, and members of Congress took action to safeguard the national security of the United States by advancing legislation to monitor incoming propaganda from external threats. On November 30, 2016, legislators approved a measure within the National Defense Authorization Act to ask the U.S. State Department to take action against foreign propaganda through an interagency panel. The legislation authorized funding of $160 million over a two-year period. The initiative was developed through the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger defeated Democratic challenger Sara Dady with 59.1% of the vote. After the 2018 midterm elections, which saw all the Republican congressmen representing the Chicago area defeated, he was left as the only Republican representing a significant part of northern Illinois in Congress.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In 2010 Kinzinger signed a pledge sponsored by Americans for Prosperity promising to vote against any global warming legislation that would raise taxes.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger sponsored the Veteran Emergency Medical Technician Support Act of 2013. The legislation, which would make it easier for veterans with emergency medical technician training in the military to get civilian licenses to perform the same job outside of the military, passed the House of Representatives by a voice vote but was not voted upon by the Senate.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On June 5, 2014, Kinzinger introduced a bill (H.R. 4801; 113th Congress) which would require the United States Secretary of Energy to prepare a report on the effects that thermal insulation has on both energy consumption and systems for providing potable water in . Kinzinger argued that "with the federal government being the single largest consumer of energy in the country, doing our best to maximize the potential savings from improved insulation systems is a commonsense step I think everybody can agree on."


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger is a member of both the Republican Study Committee and the Republican Main Street Partnership.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was ranked as the 40th most bipartisan member of the House during the 114th United States Congress (and the third most bipartisan member of the House from Illinois) in the Bipartisan Index created by The Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy, which ranks members of Congress by their degree of bipartisanship (by measuring how often each member's bills attract co-sponsors from the opposite party and each member co-sponsors bills by members of the opposite party).


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger voted for the 2017 Republican health care legislation, which would have repealed major parts of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kinzinger faced criticism from some Asian American leaders for blaming China for the pandemic at a time that anti-Asian hate crimes and coronavirus-related discrimination were rising. Kinzinger authored and retweeted many tweets singling out China for blame. One such tweet was "Daily reminder: You are in your homes because #Chinahidthevirus."


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: According to Jeremy W. Peters, Kinzinger had an uneasy feeling on the day of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and asked his wife not to attend the joint session to officially certify the election. He also told his office staff not to come to work that day and took his .380 caliber Ruger LCP to the Capitol and to the Rayburn House Office Building. Just after 2:18 p.m., Kinzinger received an email from the Capitol Police telling him to stay away from windows, close and lock doors, remain quiet, and silence all electronics. At this point Kinzinger barricaded the doors of his office and took out his gun.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On February 4, 2021, Kinzinger joined 10 other Republican House members voting with all voting Democrats to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her House Education and Labor Committee and House Budget Committee assignments in response to controversial political statements she had made.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In March 2021, Kinzinger was one of eight Republicans to join the House majority in passing the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On April 9, 2021, Kinzinger called for Matt Gaetz to resign while he was being investigated on sex trafficking charges.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On May 19, 2021, Kinzinger and 34 other Republican House members in the 117th Congress voted to create a National Commission to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Complex, intended to probe the U.S. Capitol attack. They joined all 217 Democrats present to vote to establish such a body. After the Senate failed to support the national bipartisan commission due to a Republican filibuster, Kinzinger remained committed to the concept.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On July 1, 2021, Kinzinger voiced disdain about sanctions threatened by Republican leadership against Republican lawmakers who would participate in a House committee to investigate the Capitol attack. On July 25, he accepted Speaker Pelosi's appointment of him to the House Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: During a September 5, 2021, interview on CNN's "State of the Union", Kinzinger said his party "desperately needs to tell the truth", that if the party pushes lies and conspiracy theories, it does not deserve to win Congressional majorities in the 2022 elections, that if they were "going to be in charge and pushing conspiracy, pushing division, and pushing lies, then the Republican Party should not have the majority", and that it "is a pretty scary place to go in this world if we start using our power as a way to get the outcome that we want" in elections.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On November 5, 2021, Kinzinger was one of 13 House Republicans to break with their party and vote with a majority of Democrats for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On July 1, 2021, Kinzinger voiced disdain about sanctions threatened by Republican leadership against Republican lawmakers who would participate in a House committee to investigate the Capitol attack. After McCarthy rescinded his recommendations, Pelosi announced on July 25 that she had appointed Kinzinger to the committee. Kinzinger was one of the ten House Republicans who voted for Trump's second impeachment. As a member of the committee investigating the January 6 attack and related issues, Kinzinger oversaw its fifth public hearing on June 23, 2022, serving as the lead questioner of witnesses. The hearing featured testimony from former Department of Justice officials describing how Trump tried to enlist them in his fight to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Kinzinger also co-led the eighth hearing with Representative Elaine Luria.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On February 4, 2022, the Republican National Committee called the events of January 6, 2021, a "legitimate political discourse" and overwhelmingly voted by voice vote to censure Kinzinger, along with Representative Liz Cheney, for taking part in the House investigation of the Capitol assault.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In his farewell address to Congress on December 15, 2022, Kinzinger warned his colleagues of the influence of conspiracy theories and falsehoods on politics, as well as threats to democracy in America and rising authoritarianism and factionalism. He criticized the Republican Party, saying:


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Where Republicans once believed that limited government meant lower taxes and more autonomy, today limited government means inciting violence against government officials.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Following the tragic Oklahoma City bombing, former President George H. W. Bush publicly refuted those who used fear to gain support. In stark contrast, our leaders today belittle, and in some cases justify, attacks on the U.S. Capitol as "legitimate political discourse". The once great party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Reagan has turned its back on the ideals of liberty and self-governance. Instead, it has embraced lies and deceit.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: The Republican Party used to believe in a big tent, which welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Now we shelter the ignorant, the racists, who only stoke anger and hatred to those that are different than us.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Our constituents voted us in based on our beliefs, but we cannot use our faith as a sword and a shield while ignoring the fact we are all children of God, that we are all Americans.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: To my Democratic colleagues, you too must bear the burden of our failures. Many of you have asked me, "Where are all the good Republicans?" Over the past two years, Democratic leadership had the opportunity to stand above the fray. Instead, they poured millions of dollars into the campaigns of MAGA Republicans, the same candidates President Biden called a national security threat, to ensure these good Republicans do not make it out of their respective primaries. This is no longer politics as usual; this is not a game. If you keep stoking the fire, you can’t point the fingers when our great experiment goes up in flames.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger is in favor of allowing concealed carry of firearms across state lines where concealed carry is legal.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On March 11, 2021, Kinzinger was one of eight Republican representatives who voted to pass the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On May 29, 2022, Kinzinger announced that he was "open to" an assault weapons ban following the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 22 people.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger has a 94% lifetime rating from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business-oriented group, and a 49% lifetime rating from the Club for Growth, a conservative group, which advocates for tax cuts, lower spending, deregulation, and free trade.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Although many House Republicans previously supported elements of the America COMPETES Act of 2022, Kinzinger was the only minority member to vote for the bill, after their House leadership urged a "No" vote, holding that the bill was too weak on China.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On Twitter, Kinzinger praised Donald Trump's decision to kill Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Force, the third most powerful person in Iran. Reacting to news of the assassination, Kinzinger tweeted, "Mess with the bull, get the horns. If true, nice call, @realdonaldtrump." He continued tweeting, writing, "killed a man responsible for thousands of deaths in #Syria and elsewhere, including Americans. Let's see how long the #blameAmerica left takes to make him a poor victim."


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger voted for the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 which authorizes DHS to nearly double the available H-2B visas for the remainder of FY 2020.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger voted for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (H.R. 1158), which effectively prohibits ICE from cooperating with Health and Human Services to detain or remove illegal alien sponsors of unaccompanied alien children (UACs).


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger opposes late-term abortion and the use of federal funds for abortion or health coverage that funds abortion.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was one of three Republicans to vote for H.R. 8297: Ensuring Access to Abortion Act of 2022.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger voted for H.R. 8373: The Right to Contraception Act. This bill was designed to protect access to contraceptives and health care providers' ability to provide contraceptives and information related to contraception. The bill would also fund Planned Parenthood.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger has a "C−" rating from NORML for his voting history regarding cannabis-related causes. He supported veterans having access to medical marijuana if recommended by their Veterans Health Administration doctor if medical marijuana is legal in their states of residence. He opposed a bill to remove marijuana from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled Substances Act.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: As of 2021, Kinzinger has an 11% rating from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ rights advocacy group.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In 2015, Kinzinger was one of 60 Republicans voting to uphold President Barack Obama's 2014 executive order banning federal contractors from making hiring decisions that discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In 2016, Kinzinger was one of 43 Republicans to vote for the Maloney Amendment to H.R. 5055, which would prohibit the use of funds for government contractors who discriminate against LGBT employees.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On February 24, 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene hung a sign outside of her office reading "There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE 'Trust The Science!'" in response to Representative Marie Newman, whose office is directly across from hers and who put a transgender flag outside her office in support of the Equality Act. Kinzinger quote-tweeted Greene and said, "This is sad and I’m sorry this happened. Rep. Newmans [sic] daughter is transgender, and this video and tweet represents the hate and fame driven politics of self-promotion at all evil costs. This garbage must end, in order to #RestoreOurGOP".


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In 2021, Kinzinger was one of 21 House Republicans to sponsor the Fairness for All Act, the Republican alternative to the Equality Act. The bill would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and protect the free exercise of religion.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In 2022, Kinzinger was one of six Republicans to vote in favor of the Global Respect Act, which imposes sanctions on foreign persons responsible for violations of internationally recognized human rights against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) individuals, and for other purposes.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On July 19, 2022, Kinzinger and 46 other Republican representatives voted for the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify the right to same-sex marriage in federal law. Kinzinger did not vote on its final passage on December 8, 2022.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger voted in line with President Donald Trump about 90% of the time and voted against Trump's first impeachment, but he subsequently became a critic of Trump and made headlines as a rare Republican officeholder willing to criticize him. In summer 2020, Kinzinger denounced QAnon and other baseless conspiracy theories that gained currency among Republican voters. After the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, Kinzinger denounced Trump's claims that the election was stolen and criticized Trump's attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In December 2020, after Trump repeated his claims of fraud on Twitter, Kinzinger tweeted that it was time for Trump to delete his Twitter account. He also criticized the Texas Republican Party and called for the firing of its chairman, Allen West, when the party floated the idea of secession, after the Supreme Court rejected "Texas v. Pennsylvania", a bid by the state of Texas to overturn the presidential election outcome.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On January 7, 2021, the day after the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent pro-Trump mob, Kinzinger became the first Republican member of the House to call for Trump's removal from office via the 25th Amendment. In a video message, he said that Trump had "abdicated his duty to protect the American people and the people's house" and that Trump's behavior made clear that he had become "unmoored" from both his duties as president and "reality itself." Kinzinger urged Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, saying that Trump was "unfit" and "unwell." Five days later, he announced that he would vote in favor of Trump's second impeachment, saying there was "no doubt" that Trump "broke his oath of office and incited this insurrection." Kinzinger also accused Trump of using the power of his office to launch a direct attack on Congress. He asked, "If these actions–the Article II branch inciting a deadly insurrection against the Article I branch–are not worthy of impeachment, then what is an impeachable offense?" On January 13, he joined nine other Republicans in voting for impeachment. In response, some Republicans vowed to support a primary challenge to Kinzinger. Kinzinger received a letter from 11 members of his family asserting he had joined "the devil's army" for publicly turning against Trump. Kinzinger said the family members suffer from "brainwashing" from conservative churches that led them astray.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On May 19, 2021, Kinzinger was one of 35 Republicans to join all Democrats in voting to approve legislation to establish the formation of a January 6 commission to investigate the storming of the U.S. Capitol. He was also one of two Republicans to join all Democrats in voting for a January 6 House select committee, along with Liz Cheney. Kinzinger's involvement with the January 6 proceedings resulted in his staff receiving threats against his family and colleagues.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In a November 14, 2021, interview with "Rolling Stone", Kinzinger said he regretted voting against Trump's first impeachment: "If I went back in time, I would vote for the first impeachment." In the interview, he also called Tucker Carlson a "manipulative son of a bitch".


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger and Elaine Luria were selected to lead the questioning in the eighth televised hearing of the January 6 Committee, on July 21, 2022.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On August 16, 2022, during an interview on MSNBC, Kinzinger claimed that some people have equated Trump with Jesus Christ, saying, "And you have people today that, literally, I think in their heart—they may not say it, but they equate Donald Trump with the person of Jesus Christ." He added, "And to them, if you even come out against this 'amazing man Donald Trump,' which, obviously quite flawed, you are coming out against Jesus, against their Christian values".


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: In early 2021, a few weeks after the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Kinzinger launched the Country First PAC, as a means to reform the Republican Party and distance itself from far-right conspiracies, including QAnon. In the first quarter of 2021, the PAC raised over $1.1 million to fight Trump's growing influence over the Republican Party.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: On October 21, 2021, Kinzinger was one of nine House Republicans to vote to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: The Wisconsin Red Cross named Kinzinger its 2006 "Hero of the Year" for wrestling a knife-wielding man to the ground and disarming him. The man had cut the throat of a woman on a street in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Recalling the event in an interview, Kinzinger said, "The whole time it was, to me, kind of a done deal that I was going to get stabbed in the process, but I knew that this wasn't something I could wake up to ... every day with that memory that I watched her die." The woman survived. For this act Kinzinger also received the United States Air Force Airman's Medal and the National Guard's Valley Forge Cross for Heroism.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was ranked 5th on "The Hill"s 2011 annual "50 Most Beautiful People" list, which ranks anyone who regularly works on Capitol Hill.


title: Adam Kinzinger

text: Kinzinger was engaged to Air Force Captain Riki Meyers, a fellow pilot, in 2011; they broke their engagement in 2012. Kinzinger became engaged to Sofia Boza-Holman, a former aide to John Boehner and aide to Vice President Mike Pence, in June 2019. They married on February 16, 2020. Their son, Christian Adam Kinzinger, was born in January 2022.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning in supporting roles.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: The film is set in rural Mississippi during the 1930s, and it follows three escaped convicts searching for hidden treasure while a police officer relentlessly pursues them. Its story is a modern satire loosely based on Homer's epic Greek poem the "Odyssey" that incorporates social features of the American South. Some examples of this include Sirens, a Cyclops, and even the main characters name, "Ulysses" is the Roman name for "Odysseus". The title of the film is a reference to the Preston Sturges 1941 film "Sullivan's Travels", in which the protagonist is a director who wants to film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", a fictitious book about the Great Depression.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: Much of the music used in the film is period folk music. The movie was one of the first to extensively use digital color correction to give the film an autumnal sepia-tinted look. It was released by Buena Vista Pictures (through Touchstone Pictures) in North America, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Universal Pictures released it in other countries. The film was met with a positive critical reception, and the soundtrack won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002. The country and folk musicians who were dubbed into the film include John Hartford, Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Ralph Stanley, Chris Sharp, Patty Loveless, and others. They joined to perform the music from the film in the "Down from the Mountain" concert tour, which was filmed for consumer consumption via TV and DVD.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: Three convicts, Pete, Delmar, and Ulysses Everett McGill, escape from a chain gang and set out to retrieve a treasure Everett claims to have buried, before the area is flooded to make a lake. The three get a lift from a blind man driving a handcar on a railway. He tells them they will find a fortune, but not the one they seek. The trio make their way to the house of Wash, Pete's cousin. They sleep in the barn, but Wash reports them to Sheriff Cooley, who, along with his men, torches the barn. Wash's son helps them escape.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: They pick up Tommy Johnson, a young black man who claims he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play guitar (a legend told about blues musician Robert Johnson). In need of money, the four stop at a radio broadcast tower where they record a song as the Soggy Bottom Boys. That night, the trio part ways with Tommy after their car is discovered by the police. Unbeknownst to them, the recording becomes a major hit.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: Near a river, the group encounters three women washing clothes and singing. The women drug them with corn whiskey and they lose consciousness. Upon waking, Delmar finds Pete's clothes lying next to him, empty except for a toad. Delmar is convinced the women were sirens who transformed Pete into the toad. Later, one-eyed Bible salesman Big Dan invites them for a picnic lunch, then mugs them and kills the toad.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: On their way to Everett's home town, Everett and Delmar see Pete working on a chain gang. Upon arriving Everett confronts his wife Penny, who changed her last name and told his daughters he was dead, and gets into a fight with her suitor Vernon. Later that night, they sneak into Pete's holding cell and free him. As it turns out, the women had dragged Pete away and turned him in to the authorities for the bounty. Under torture, Pete gave away the treasure's location to the police. Everett then confesses that there is no treasure; he fabricated the story to convince Delmar and Pete to escape with him in order to stop his wife from getting married. Pete, who only had two weeks left on his original sentence and will likely face fifty more years for escaping, is enraged.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: The trio stumble upon a rally of the Ku Klux Klan, who are planning to hang Tommy. The trio disguise themselves as Klansmen and move to rescue Tommy. However, Big Dan, a Klan member, reveals their identities. Chaos ensues, and the Grand Wizard reveals himself as Homer Stokes, a candidate in the upcoming gubernatorial election. The trio rush Tommy away and cut the supports of a large burning cross, incinerating Big Dan.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: Everett convinces Pete, Delmar, and Tommy to help him win his wife back. They sneak into a Stokes campaign gala dinner she is attending, disguised as musicians. The group begins a performance of their radio hit. The crowd recognizes the song and goes wild. Homer recognizes them as the group who humiliated his mob. When he demands the group be arrested and reveals his white supremacist views, the crowd runs him out of town on a rail. Pappy O'Daniel, the incumbent candidate, seizes the opportunity, endorses the Soggy Bottom Boys and grants them full pardons. Penny agrees to marry Everett with the condition that he find her original ring.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: The next morning, the group sets out to retrieve the ring, which is at a cabin in the valley which Everett had earlier claimed was the location of his treasure. The police, having learned of the place from Pete, arrest the group. Dismissing their claims of having received pardons, Sheriff Cooley orders them hanged. As Everett prays to God, the valley is flooded and they are saved. Tommy finds the ring in a desk that floats by, and they return to town. However, when Everett presents the ring to Penny, it turns out it was her aunt's ring. She declares that she will not marry him with that ring, but only her wedding ring which is still lost.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: Gillian Welch and Dan Tyminski also appear as a record store customer and a mandolinist, respectively. Del Pentacost, JR Horne, and Brian Reddy appear as members of Pappy O’Daniel’s staff. Ed Gale appears as Homer Stokes’ ceremonial “little man.” Three members of the Fairfield Four (Isaac Freeman, Wilson Waters Jr, and Robert Hamlett) cameo as gravediggers. The Cox Family and The Whites appear as fictionalized versions of themselves.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: The idea of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" arose spontaneously. Work on the script began in December 1997, long before the start of production, and was at least half-written by May 1998. Despite the fact that Ethan Coen described the "Odyssey" as "one of my favorite storyline schemes", neither of the brothers had read the epic, and they were only familiar with its content through adaptations and numerous references to the "Odyssey" in popular culture. According to the brothers, Tim Blake Nelson (who has a degree in classics from Brown University) was the only person on the set who had read the "Odyssey".


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: The title of the film is a reference to the 1941 Preston Sturges film "Sullivan's Travels", in which the protagonist (a director) wants to direct a film about the Great Depression called "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" that will be a "commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, and the problems that confront the average man". Lacking any experience in this area, the director sets out on a journey to experience the human suffering of the average man but is sabotaged by his anxious studio. The film has some similarity in tone to Sturges's film, including scenes with prison gangs and a black church choir. The prisoners at the picture show scene is also a direct homage to a nearly identical scene in Sturges's film.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: Joel Coen revealed in a 2000 interview that he traveled to Phoenix to offer the lead role to Clooney. Clooney agreed to do the role immediately, without reading the script. He stated that he liked even the Coens' least successful films. Clooney did not immediately understand his character and sent the script to his uncle Jack, who lived in Kentucky, asking him to read the entire script into a tape recorder. Unknown to Clooney, in his recording, Jack, a devout Baptist, omitted all instances of the words "damn" and "hell" from the Coens' script, which only became known to Clooney after the directors pointed this out to him during shooting.


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: This was the fourth film of the brothers in which John Turturro has starred. Other actors in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" who had worked previously with the Coens include John Goodman (three films), Holly Hunter (two), Charles Durning (two) and Michael Badalucco (one).


title: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

text: The Coens used digital color correction to give the film a sepia-tinted look. Joel stated this was because the actual set was "greener than Ireland". Cinematographer Roger Deakins said, "Ethan and Joel favored a dry, dusty Delta look with golden sunsets. They wanted it to look like an old hand-tinted picture, with the intensity of colors dictated by the scene and natural skin tones that were all shades of the rainbow." Initially the crew tried to perform the color correction using a physical process, however after several tries with various chemical processes proved unsatisfactory, it became necessary to perform the process digitally.