Holland detailed his circuitous journey to graduating from USC with a Ph.D. in molecular biology in 2017, which, of course, was interrupted by singing in a Platinum-selling punk rock band. He also shared a story about how working in the lab when he was a graduate student led to him coming up with the line “You gotta keep ’em separated” from the Offspring song “Come Out and Play.”
“I believe that there’s an intersection between art and science,” Holland said. “And that even in our scientific field we draw upon our creativity.”
You can watch a stream of the USC Keck School of Medicine 2022 commencement ceremony now via YouTube. Holland’s remarks begin around the 42:20 mark.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Several dogs are among the responders traveling to Texas Wednesday, one day after a gunman opened fire at an elementary school in the city of Uvalde, killing at least 19 children and two teachers.
The trained animals are all part of Lutheran Church Charities (LCC) K-9 Ministries, a K-9 unit that travels across the U.S. to provide comfort and support to people impacted by disasters such as mass shootings.
Eight of the group’s canines, all golden retrievers, will be dedicated to the Uvalde community. They range in age from 3 to 9, according to Lutheran Church Charities’ K-9 crisis response coordinator Bonnie Fear.
Canine responders Cubby and Devorah are traveling from Fort Collins, Colorado, while Miriam is being sent over from Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Abner, Elijah, Gabriel, Joy, and Triton are already in Texas and will head over to Uvalde from Austin, Houston, Plano and Wichita Falls.
The dogs will offer a unique form of support to anyone impacted by the Robb Elementary shooting, including children, adults, local residents and first responders.
“We are going to attend a mass vigil at the fairgrounds in Uvalde at 7 p.m. tonight,” Fear told “Good Morning America.” “We are also aware and have been directed to the civic center in Uvalde where school staff, teachers, families are gathering, and from there, we hope to connect with first responders, the school staff, families, any churches that request the dogs.”
Some of the dogs have responded to past school shootings as well.
“Cubby has been to all the mass shootings and crises with me since 2016,” Fear told GMA, including the Oxford High School shooting last November in Oxford, Michigan.
“We just see a lot of shock, crying, [people who are] distraught, especially coming in the day after a mass shooting,” Fear said. “People are not ready to process or listen or answer questions. So we just show up with the dogs.”
“We listen if they talk,” she added. “We’re silent. We let the dogs connect with people and they can express their feelings at that time and we’re not counselors, so we are just present, standing with them in their sorrow.”
Lutheran Church Charities’ president and CEO Tim Hetzner recalled to GMA one comfort dog visit that made a particularly lasting impression on him.
“I remember one situation in Sandy Hook, four days after the shooting,” Hetzner said, referring to the 2012 mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children and six adults dead. “We were at a community center and this couple was there with their young boy. … I had a dog named Howe at that time.”
“Howe looked up at the boy, got up, walked over to the boy, rolled into his legs and the boy came down on top of him. They just laid there. After about 10 minutes, the boy lifted up Howe’s ear and told him everything that happened in that classroom. Parents started crying because it was the first time the boy had talked in four days. First time and it was a dog.”
Hetzner said the charity has seen an increase in requests for comfort dogs in the last two years. The group’s K-9 unit has expanded from four dogs in 2008 to over 130 dogs in 27 states.
The dogs will be deployed in Uvalde until at least Monday and will be given ample breaks to recuperate in between working shifts, the group said.
Kevin Mazur/MG22/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue / Ernesto Distefano/Getty Images
Olivia Rodrigo did it again — she invited another major pop star to duet with her onstage during her SOUR World Tour. This time it was the legendary Alanis Morissette.
Olivia took over Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre on Tuesday night, where she and Alanis belted out a resounding rendition of “You Oughta Know.”
Fans captured video of the unexpected moment, which saw Alanis leading the audience into an impassioned singalong to her 1995 breakup anthem.
Olivia and Alanis have crossed paths before. Last year, they interviewed each other for Rolling Stone, where the “Ironic” singer promised Olivia that, in celebration of her first headlining tour, “I’ll send you a kit. A survive-on-the-road kit for the sensitive soul.”
Alanis revealed on The Kelly Clarkson Show earlier this month that a “survival” kit consists of “little tricks up our sleeve of what to bring to survive, for self-care. So for me, it’s about bringing the equivalent of my ‘blankie’ everywhere I go.”
Whether or not Alanis hand-delivered the package and what kind of goodies she stashed away especially for the young pop star is yet to be seen.
This isn’t the first time a pop rock legend has crashed Olivia’s stage. Previously, the Grammy winner had Avril Lavigne take over her show in Toronto to belt out “Complicated.”
Cole Swindell put a fun twist on heartache in the music video for his new song “Down to the Bar.” He enlisted his recent tour openers, Travis Denning and Ashley Cooke, to play its lead characters.
In the clip, Travis and Ashley are recent exes, and Ashley drops Travis off on Nashville’s honky tonk-filled Lower Broadway strip as she’s leaving him. There, Travis wanders into a bar — Luke Bryan’s 32 Bridge — and finds Cole Swindell, who plays a bartender serving up shots.
It’s only fitting that Cole enlisted these two opening acts, as they joined him on a tour that took its name from the song. “We just carried that good time over to this video and I hope fans can see how much fun that tour was for all of us,” Cole said in a statement.
Also making an appearance in the video is Hardy, who is Cole’s duet partner for “Down to the Bar.”
Hardy co-wrote “Down to the Bar,” too. In fact, Hardy lent his pen to several tracks on Stereotype, Cole’s latest album. He’s also a writer on the project’s chart-topping lead single, “Single Saturday Night,” and its title track.
Ye, aka Kanye West, and Gap have announced a brief pause in the launch of their Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collection, which was set to roll out Wednesday. The postponement comes in the wake of Tuesday’s Texas school shooting, in which 18-year-old Salvador Ramos opened fire at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, killing 19 children and two adults.
Instead, the new collection will release this Friday, May 27.
A statement posted to the collection’s website and Twitter page reads, “In light of the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, we are postponing the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga launch until Friday, May 27. As we pause, our hearts go out to the families and communities impacted.”
Ye debuted the new partnership in February at the time of his live performance experience of songs from Donda 2, which dropped exclusively on the rapper’s Stem Player on February 23.
A recent announcement about his upcoming single “True Love” with late rapper XXXTentacion, expected this Friday, hinted at a rerelease of Ye’s 11th studio album, Donda 2.
Francesco Castaldo/Archivio Francesco Castaldo/Mondadori via Getty Images
Rammstein has premiered the video for “Dicke Titten,” a track off the band’s new album, Zeit.
The clip finds the German metallers residing in an idyllic countryside, with frontman Till Lindemann playing a blind farmer. Of course, this being Rammstein, that idyllic countryside is filled with suggestive images and innuendo related to the English translation of the song’s title.
You can watch the “Dicke Titten” video streaming now on YouTube.
Zeit, the follow-up to Rammstein’s 2019 untitled effort, was released in April. Rammstein will launch a North American stadium tour in support of the album in August.
(SPOILERS AHEAD) This Is Us ended its six-season run on NBC Tuesday night with its series finale, aptly titled “Us.”
The finale answered questions, flashed between past and present, and centered around the funeral of the Pearson family’s matriarch, Rebecca. After it aired, the cast took to social media to make tribute to the show.
Mandy Moore, who portrayed Rebecca, posted a photo of the funeral’s program on Instagram, with a caption that highlighted one of her character’s defining quotes. “Take the risks. Make the big moves, even if they’re small moves. Forge ahead with your lives in any and every direction that moves you. I’m asking you to be fearless.”
The big three, aka Kate (Chrissy Metz), Kevin (Justin Hartley) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown), posted their own Instagram tributes. “Can’t believe today is here,” Metz wrote. Hartley echoed her sentiment, writing that he is “going to miss seeing these faces every day.” Brown was celebratory, accompanying his on-set photos with the caption, “One more time for the people in the back!!! BIG 3!!!”
Chris Sullivan, who played Kate’s ex-husband, Toby, took to Instagram to make an emotional tribute. “So many of the people and things we love will pass away and it is always an honor to be part of their story,” he wrote. “It has been a true honor to inhabit this character for six seasons and tell this story with these beautiful people. When we met these characters their lives were already well under way. After we leave them, their lives will continue on in our hearts, minds and imaginations.”
The Interrupters have premiered a new song called “Anything Was Better,” a track off the band’s upcoming album, In the Wild.
“This song is the story of my escape from not necessarily a location but from the pain and trauma of my upbringing,” says frontwoman Aimee Interrupter. “It’s also a story of hope and seeking refuge in the unknown. I said goodbye to everyone and everything I ever knew because in my mind anything was better than where I was from.”
You can listen to “Anything Was Better” now via digital outlets. An accompanying lyric video is streaming now on YouTube.
“Anything Was Better” is the second song to be released off In the Wild, following lead single “In the Mirror.” The album arrives in full on August 5.
The Interrupters will be supporting In the Wild on a co-headlining tour with Flogging Molly, which launches June 7 in Indianapolis.
Old Dominion is headed home to Nashville this weekend, where they’ll play the city’s Bridgestone Arena as part of Kenny Chesney’s 2022 Here and Now Tour.
But while they’re in town, the band is planning something special: a free pop-up show.
It’s not the first time in recent weeks the group has planned a small, free show for fans at the cities they visit on tour. Old Dominion threw a pop-up show in Atlanta last weekend; they’ve also hit small stages in St. Louis, Charlotte and Tampa.
“One night in our hometown just isn’t enough, so you know what we’ve gotta do …” the band wrote on social media, along with a video of frontman Matthew Ramsey dropping some details about what they’ve got planned.
Old Dominion’s Nashville pop-up show is set for Friday, and you can find the location details by heading to ODPopUp.com.
Bruno Mars brought an unforgettable gift to Ellen DeGeneres on the penultimate episode of her daytime talk show — a piña colada.
The Ellen DeGeneres Show is creeping closer to its series finale and on Wednesday Bruno was welcomed among the final round of esteemed guests. To help send off the beloved show, the “Uptown Funk” singer pieced together a tribute montage as a farewell gift.
“I don’t know if you know this but I direct all my music videos … But when it comes to editing, I always have to be with somebody, so I figured I’ll take this time during quarantine [to] get behind a computer and learn how to edit things — so you can save money,” he announced. “I edited something that’s kind of like a tribute to you and I worked real hard on it.”
He wanted to “give it as a gift” and, when the video started rolling, the montage jokingly focuses on Bruno’s time on the show throughout the years and not so much on their time together.
“That’s … so sweet,” Ellen sarcastically quipped at the end of the tribute video — but the jokes were far from over. Bruno then rushed over a framed picture of one of his past performances, which features him singing to Ellen, who’s been nearly cropped out of the photo.
Ellen said she will “cherish us together” and the two shared a hug.
