Taylor Swift, Chris Hemsworth on Drums, and the TV That Actually Deserves Your Time
Aliens, AI boyfriends, scandal at BamaRush: the world is chaos, but here’s what to watch this weekend.
🚨 BIG NEWS
Kentucky Man Wakes Up During Organ Harvesting
Because America is a haunted house and we live in it. He says he has PTSD now. Ya, I bet he does.
Osprey Drops Fish, Starts Wildfire, Wipes Out Power
The fish was still smoking when they found it.
Woman Gets Engaged to AI Boyfriend After 5 Months
Girl… even with a robot, that’s too soon.
📺 TV WORTH WATCHING
It’s slim pickings out there, but a few standouts:
Alien: Earth (FX/Hulu)
Chest-bursting aliens, face-huggers, and also billionaires competing for AI dominance and immortality. So, basically 2025.
Limitless: Live Better Now (Hulu/Disney+)
Chris Hemsworth is back as a human guinea pig to explore ways people can live better for longer. In the first season, he found out he carries 2 copies of a gene that significantly increases his chance for Alzheimer’s. This season Chris is back with 3 new experiments including learning to play drums for Ed Sheeran. Dr. Peter Attia, the doctor from the show, wrote the forever bestselling Outlive. (I did an explainer of the book and his philosophy here.)
Speaking of extreme ways to treat your body.
Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser (Netflix)
Contestants and Producers reveal the damaging reality behind the scenes of the show. No Jillian Michaels interview, but Bob Harper spills. Incidentally, he says she didn’t even call him when he almost died of a heart attack.
Plus, the shows I told you about a few weeks ago: Hunting Wives and Untamed are still all the rage if you haven’t watched those yet.
Still Watching
🚢 Below Deck The deck hand definitely had sex that guest in front of everyone including her husband, right? We can all agree on this.
🌊The Summer I Turned Pretty Belly, girl, COME ON. Get it together.
💃🏼 RHOM When I watch this show now I just think about all the overtime Lisa’s lateness incurs.
🌺 Chief of War I never knew the story of Hawaii. It’s pretty fascinating.
🎬MOVIES WORTH WATCHING
The Monkey (Hulu)
Stephen King story with an indie vibe.
🎧 PODCASTS WORTH LISTENING TO
Obviously the big story of the week is that Taylor Swift announced her new album on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce’s football podcast, New Heights, which is now the biggest podcast episode in America with over 15 million views. The part where she talked about her masters is worth listening to.
🦄 Unicorn Girl
From the creator of Scamanda, another too-crazy-to-be-true story about an influencer who was a CEO, nurse, mom, and anti-trafficking advocate. Spoiler: she was not all of those things.
📚 BOOKS WORTH READING
You Are Here by David Nicholls
Two loners. One epic ten-day hike across the English countryside. Perfect for fans of One Day and emotional slow burns. The vibes are funny, tender, healing. The book version of a warm hug—but you have a blister on your heel.
🕳 RABBIT HOLES
The biggest rabbit hole of the week though was Kendra’s TikTok tale of falling in love with her psychiatrist and the Chatbot who was giving her advice. It’s up to Part 25 right now so here’s an explainer.
The internet has coined a new term: Outsidey
#BamaRush has descended into chaos. Izzie was dropped by Zeta even though Kylan is a sitting sister! Kylan said she’s taking a step back from posting and rush!
Renee Rapp, Natalie Portman, Bowen Yang they’ve all been "Sally’d" on stage by the singer Role Model.
💸 Smoke and Mirrors
Another entrepreneur who exaggerated, self-promoted, and spiraled straight into a federal probe.
This teacher decodes bad Chinese tattoos. It’s hilarious.
A celebration of things on the web people make for themselves or for the hell of it. There are some cute things.
🍔 FOOD WORTH EATING
When TikTok asked what the equivalent of flowers was for men the response was: banana bread
Chuck E. Cheese got arrested for credit card fraud
The woman who killed her in-laws with Beef Wellington had previously tried to kill her husband with pasta sauce and curry. I hope she comes out with a cookbook.
There’s new Pizza flavored Kraft Mac and Cheese
Pamela Anderson’s Pickles from Flamingo Estate. The secret to her Pickles is an award winning recipe passed down by her great-aunt Vie with Rose, Dill, Mustard, and Garlic
Shania Twain went from Canadian McDonald’s employee to Icon status with her seasoned own fries and Strawberry Pie
And a big week for me and my kitchen. A giant package arrived filled with Cravings goodies. A lot of people are out there talking about how good the sauces are, one is on the menu at LA’s favorite restaurant Jon & Vinny’s, but I want to point out this new pasta shape which has the bite of rigatoni, and the surface area of Cascatelli. It is perfect. Thank you, Cravings!
✅ EXTREMELY HELPFUL TIP OF THE WEEK
How to open pill packets. I hate these things,
🔚AND FINALLY:….
How I write this every week
👋 BEFORE YOU GO
Thanks for reading Extremely Helpful.
Go be your weird, brilliant, curious self this weekend. There’s only a few summer weekends left.
Love you, mean it.
So many things I want to comment on in this post!!
- "The deck hand definitely had sex that guest in front of everyone including her husband, right? We can all agree on this." -> Yes that's not the type of things you just make up while drunk. He totally slipped it in!
- The organ harvesting story will haunt me forever 😨. What the hell.
- Everyone from the producer and staff interviewed on Fit for TV felt like they did not see anything wrong with the show. From what I read Jillian is an even worse piece of s**t so it says a lot about the show...