Selena Gomez wants to tear down the stigmas surrounding mental health, so she teamed with her mother, Mandy Teefy, and Newsette co-founder Daniella Pierson to launch WonderMind, a new platform to do just that.
Speaking to Entrepreneur, the trio said they were inspired to create WonderMind after discussing if more can be done to normalize conversations about mental health and sharing a mutual concern that the numerous wellness startups and apps were muddying the waters.
WonderMind launches in February 2022 and will offer podcasts, interviews, a daily newsletter, articles, resources and a variety of other content. The media company will also invite guests, such as therapists and celebrities, to share their stories and discuss mental health.
Selena, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and speaks openly about her struggles with depression and anxiety, believes people need more online safe havens that combat the shame and stigma about mental health.
“We wanted to create something outside the box that gets into the dirt of what could really help people,” noted Mandy, who was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
The trio says WonderMind will adopt a more approachable and comfortable tone, similar to that of entertainment and lifestyle content. The plan is to eventually expand into other forms of media, such as books, TV shows and movies.
“Mental health is something that is very close to my heart, “Selena shared on Instagram when announcing her new venture. “It is so important to have places where people can come together and understand that they’re not alone in their mental fitness journey.”
Alice in Chains‘ Jerry Cantrell is playing a special solo acoustic concert Thursday night at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. In the likely event you can’t attend the sold-out show, you’ll still be able to watch it for yourself.
The unplugged performance, which will feature acoustic renditions of songs off Cantrell’s new solo album, Brighten, will be available to watch starting December 1 via the streaming platform Moment House.
The show will also feature Cantrell telling stories behind the music, as well as a Q&A session.
Brighten, Cantrell’s first solo outing in 19 years, was released in October. Cantrell will launch a full, electric tour in support of the record in March 2022.
In 2019, Matt Nathanson scored a hit with “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” a cover of U2‘s well-known take on the holiday favorite by Darlene Love. Now the “Come On Get Higher” singer has turned his love of U2 into a whole tribute album.
Thirty years ago today, U2’s album Achtung Baby was released, and Matt has now released Achtung Matty, in which he covers every song on the Irish band’s groundbreaking album, from “One” to “Mysterious Ways.“
“today is the 30th anniversary of the release of my favorite record of all time, u2’s Achtung Baby,” Matt writes in a statement, “i still remember EVERYTHING about the night it came out…standing in line outside [the] record [store], waiting for them to open the doors for the midnight sale, hearing the songs for the first time – playing loud over the in-store stereo…studying the pictures, poring over the lyrics…i was 18, three months into college, 3000 miles away from home… and constantly changing.”
“my friend and i stayed up all night listening to it. over and over. it felt less like a record and more like a film. like submerging completely in a different world,” Matt continues. “it still feels like that. a band at the peak of their power. i can’t think of a better example of a group of VERY human beings achieving something so otherworldy. mortals touching greatness… is there anything better?!”
He adds that he recorded the album in “an attempt to get further inside the songs that i love so much.”
Matt will hold a two-night live-stream holiday show on December 16 and 17, performing holiday favorites, hits and songs from Achtung Matty. Visit mattnathanson.com for tickets.
After Barnes & Noble booksellers from around the U.S. nominated their top books of 2021, eight titles — among them The Lyrics — were picked for consideration by a selection committee that included the company’s CEO, James Daunt. The booksellers then voted and chose The Lyrics as Book of the Year.
“The Lyrics is an extraordinary book. It is stunningly beautiful and a masterpiece of book design,” says Daunt in a statement. “Paul McCartney has fashioned, through the explorations of his songs with the poet Paul Muldoon, a fascinating insight into his life and creative genius.”
In response to the prize, McCartney writes, “I’m beyond honored to receive this recognition. My team and I are extremely proud of The Lyrics and it means so much to us that you all like it as much as we do. Thank you to all the amazing team at Barnes & Noble in helping to launch the book.”
McCartney will be taking part in a conversation with Daunt about The Lyrics that will be streamed on Barnes & Noble’s official YouTube channel tonight at 7 p.m. ET.
As previously reported, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present profiles 154 songs that McCartney wrote throughout his career, along with featuring his commentary about each tune. The two-volume work also features handwritten lyric sheets, rare personal photos, drawings and rough drafts of songs.
Chris Young has been announced as the headlining act for the inaugural T-Mobile SEC Championship Concert, a show that’ll take place the day before next month’s SEC Championship Game.
“Anyone who knows me, knows I pretty much live and breathe football,” Chris says. “I am beyond pumped to team up with T-Mobile and the SEC to headline the concert before the SEC Championship Game! Let’s GO!!”
Joining him on the bill will be Mitchell Tenpenny and newcomer Kameron Marlowe. The event will take place at Atlanta’s Georgia International Plaza, which is just outside Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Fans unable to attend in person can still catch the fun, as the show will broadcast on the singer’s YouTube and Facebook channels.
The fun begins on December 3 at 5:30 p.m. EST, with Chris set to take the stage at 7 p.m. It’ll be free and open to the public.
Chris is still riding the high of his latest chart-topper, “Famous Friends,” which is a duet with Kane Brown. That hit single is also the title track of Chris’ newest album.
The Grateful Dead in 1984; Larry Hulst/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The long, strange trip of The Grateful Dead just got a little bit stranger with the news that Martin Scorsese has signed on to direct an as-yet-untitled biopic about the legendary jam band that will star Jonah Hill as the group’s late frontman, Jerry Garcia.
Sources tell Deadline that Hill is co-producing the project through his Strong Baby production company, and that surviving Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and Garcia’s daughter, Trixie Garcia, are serving as executive producers.
The film’s script is being written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski — whose credits include American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon and The People vs. Larry Flynt — along with Rick Yorn of LBI Entertainment.
The movie won’t be the first Grateful Dead-themed project that Scorsese has worked on. He also was an executive producer on the 2017 documentary Long Strange Trip that focused on the band’s history. Scorsese and Hill also previously worked together on Martin’s 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street.
Hill reacted to the news of the Grateful Dead biopic by posted a screenshot of the Deadline article on his Instagram page, along with praying hands and skull emojis.
Star and producer Lily Collins returns as the titular character in the new second-season trailer for Netflix’s Emily in Paris.
This time around, she’s “looking for amour…and coming in haute,” according to the new footage of the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated series. There’s break-up sex, fashion, and, of course, travelogue-worthy shots of the City of Lights.
The streaming service says, “Now more entrenched in her life in Paris, Emily’s getting better at navigating the city but still struggling with the idiosyncrasies of French life. After stumbling into a love triangle with her neighbor and her first real French friend, Emily is determined to focus on her work — which is getting more complicated by the day.”
Complicating her life further, is “a fellow expat” who “both infuriates and intrigues her.”
“You need to decide what you want, and not what’s gonna make everyone else happy!” advises Emily’s bestie, Mindy Chen, played by Ashley Park — and by the looks of things, it looks like Emily is taking her advice.
See how it all shakes out when the entire sophomore season of Emily in Paris drops December 22 on Netflix.
(WASHINGTON) — Two Iranian nationals have been charged in a disinformation campaign meant to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, including by threatening physical violence if registered Democrats failed to switch their affiliation and vote for then-President Donald Trump.
Seyyed Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian obtained confidential information about American voters from at least one state election website, sent those people threatening emails and gained access to a news network’s computer system that would have allowed them to disseminate false claims about the election, according to the indictment.
ABC News reported in October 2020 Iran and Russia had obtained voter information.
“As alleged, Kazemi and Kashian were part of a coordinated conspiracy in which Iranian hackers sought to undermine faith and confidence in the U.S. Presidential elections,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams.
The indictment did not name the state infiltrated, but Florida law enforcement and the FBI previously had said they were investigating the threatening emails sent to registered voters.
The Iranians, both of whom are believed to be in Iran and out of reach of U.S. law enforcement, claimed to be a group of Proud Boys volunteers, according to the indictment. They allegedly sent Facebook messages and emails to Republican officials that claimed Democrats were going to exploit vulnerabilities in voter registration websites. They also allegedly sent registered Democrats messages that threatened physical injury if they did not change their affiliation and vote for President Trump, the indictment said.
“We are in possession of all your information (email, address, telephone … everything). You are currently registered as a Democrat and we know this because we have gained access into the entire voting infrastructure. You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you. Change your party affiliation to Republican to let us know you received our message and will comply. We will know which candidate you voted for,” the indictment quoted the emails as saying.
There was no evidence the campaign successfully convinced any voter to actually change their registration, according to a Justice Department official.
“State-sponsored actors, including Iranian groups, have engaged in covert and deceptive activities to disseminate disinformation through websites and social media designed to undermine Americans’ faith in U.S. elections,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Thursday. The U.S. government took decisive and disruptive action against those seeking to interfere with the sanctity of our elections, including the FBI warning the public of the attempts ahead of the 2020 elections.”
The day after the election, the Iranians tried to use stolen credentials to hack their way into an unnamed American media company’s computer networks, the indictment said. The company alerted the FBI, which stopped them from altering any content or disseminating false claims, according to a Justice Department official.
Prosecutors described Kazemi and Kashian as experienced computer hackers who worked as contractors for an Iran-based company formerly known as Eeleyanet Gostar, which the U.S. believes is linked to the Iranian government.
In conjunction with the Dept. of Justice, the U.S. Treasury has also sanctioned the Iranian company and six of its employees, who it said were involved in this disinformation campaign to influence the 2020 U.S. elections.
The firm, now known as Emennet Pasargad, was previously sanctioned under its former name by the Trump administration for supporting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its electronic warfare wing.
Kazemi and Kashian were employees at Emennet and actually “executed cyber-enabled operations,” according to the Treasury. Four other Iranians serve on Emennet’s board of directors and are being sanctioned for their role at the firm.
“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen said.
(OKLAHOMA CITY) — After spending the past 20 years fighting for his life on death row, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted Julius Jones’ sentence to life without the possibility of parole the day Jones was scheduled to be executed.
“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’ sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Stitt said in a statement released Thursday.
Last week, a federal appeals court rejected Jones’ final appeal, which meant the decision to spare his life lay only with Stitt, who could have accepted the parole board’s recommendation to grant Jones clemency. Jones’ execution date was slated for Nov. 18.
In September, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended Stitt commute Jones’ sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Stitt said at the time he was waiting for a clemency hearing to make a decision.
Nearly two months later, on Nov. 1, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted to recommend clemency for Jones in a 3-1 favor.
“Nightline” spoke to Jones’ family in September following the parole board’s recommendation to commute Jones’ death sentence. Jones’ mother, Madeline Davis-Jones, said the parole board’s decision had given the family hope in the eleventh hour.
Antoinette Jones said in September that her brother was calm when he heard the parole board’s recommendation.
“He said, ‘I’m good. I’ll be even better when I get out and I can hug y’all and we can start helping change the world,'” Antoinette Jones said.
Julius Jones was 19 years old when he was arrested for the 1999 murder of Oklahoma businessman Paul Howell, and sentenced to death in 2002. What followed were decades of public scrutiny and relentless work from his legal team.
Jones, 41, has spent most of his life behind bars. Before he was in prison, friends and teachers knew him as a champion high school basketball player who attended the University of Oklahoma on an academic scholarship.
That all changed in 1999 when Howell, 45, was shot in his family’s driveway after a car-jacking in the wealthy suburb of Edmond, Oklahoma.
Howell’s GMC Suburban went missing and his sister, Megan Tobey, was the only eyewitness.
“Megan Tobey described the shooter as a young Black man wearing a red bandana, a white shirt and a stocking cap or skullcap. She was not able to identify the shooter’s face because it was covered,” Bass told ABC News in 2018.
Two days after Howell was killed, police found his Suburban parked in a grocery store parking lot. They learned later that a man named Ladell King had been offering to sell the car.
King named Chris Jordan and Julius Jones to investigators and said the two men had asked him to help them sell the stolen Suburban.
“Ladell was interviewed by the lead detectives in this case. He told the police that on the night of the crime, a guy named Chris Jordan comes to his apartment. A few minutes later, according to Ladell King, Julius Jones drives up,” attorney Dale Baich told ABC News in 2018.
King accused Jordan of being the driver and claimed that he and Jones were looking for Suburbans to steal, but it was Jones who shot Howell.
“Both Ladell King and Christopher Jordan were directing police’s attention to the home of Julius Jones’ parents as a place that would have incriminating items of evidence,” Bass said.
Investigators found a gun wrapped in a red bandana in the crawl space of Jones’ family home. The next day, Jones was arrested for capital murder.
Jones’ attorneys say the evidence police found could have been planted by Jordan. They say Jordan had stayed at Jones’ house the night after the murder, but Jordan denied those claims during the trial.
In the years since, Jones’ defense team has argued that racial bias and missteps from his then-public defense team played a role.
Jones’ team submitted files to the parole board that they said proved his innocence, including affidavits and taped video interviews with inmates who had served time in prison with Jordan. They said they allegedly heard Jordan confess to Howell’s murder.
In a statement to ABC News in September, Jordan’s attorney, Billy Bock, said: “Chris Jordan maintains his position that his role in the death of Paul Howell was as an accomplice to Julius Jones. Mr. Jordan testified truthfully in the jury trial of Mr. Jones and denies ‘confessing’ to anyone.”
Jordan served 15 years in prison before he was released.
In 2020, Jones’ story was thrown back into the spotlight when unlikely legal ally Kim Kardashian drew public attention to his case. Kardashian, who is studying to take California’s bar exam, has been vocal on the issue of the death penalty and prison reform and has campaigned to free a number of men and women who were incarcerated.
“Kim Kardashian, I felt like may be one of my sorority sisters … she was down to earth,” Davis-Jones said.
Antoinette Jones said Kardashian put in the effort to help her brother.
“She sat down and she broke down my brother’s case. That means that she actually did the work,” Jones said. “She did the work to go back and check certain things, to point out certain things.”
“The fact that she told me that she was able to go see my brother, it was almost like she took a piece of him and brought it to us and then we could feel like he was there with us,” Jones added.
Although Britney Spears was released from her controversial 13-year conservatorship, Madonna is still on the war path. A source close to the singer claims Madge wants to make everyone who wronged Britney pay for what they did.
The source told Page Six, “Madonna has always had a soft spot for Britney and couldn’t sit idly by when she felt that there were clear injustices going on.”
The “Hung Up” singer has kept “in touch with Britney” during her legal battle and now “is waging war” against those who controlled the singer’s finances and life decisions for over a decade.
“She is hellbent on righting the wrongs that Britney had to endure. She has offered to help in any way that she can and is not afraid to speak up or intervene if needed,” the insider claims.
Neither Britney nor Madonna have commented on the report.
Last week, Judge Brenda J. Penny terminated Britney’s conservatorship “in its entirety, effective immediately.”
