Month: March 2017

In 1969, Fred Rogers went before the Senate to plead for a $20 million grant for public broadcasting, which had been proposed by President Johnson but was in danger of being sliced in half by Richard Nixon. Here’s what happened:

Josh Schwartz—who had never run a TV show before—was only 26 years old when he brought the idea of a nighttime teen soap to Fox, making him the youngest showrunner in the history of network television. Fox picked up the pilot and ordered an unprecedented 27 episodes for the first season (the final season had only 16).

The O.C. premiered on August 5, 2003, early enough in the season that a lot of competing shows were still in reruns. It followed the lives of a group of affluent teens (and their parents) living in Newport Beach, California. But unlike predecessors like Melrose Place and Beverly Hills, 90210, The O.C. focused more on character than plot, and featured characters who were outsiders, such as Ryan Atwood, played by Ben McKenzie. The show was also self-aware in its humor.

The O.C. ran for four seasons until Fox canceled it after a low-rated third season, which ended in 2006 with the producers killing off one of its main characters. On February 22, 2007—just over 10 years ago—the series took its final bow.

Years later, The O.C. is remembered for leading to a slate of California-based reality shows (like Laguna Beach and The Real Housewives of Orange County) and other meta nighttime soaps (like Desperate Housewives), the creation of Chrismmukah, and for the show’s killer soundtrack, which helped launch indie rock music into the mainstream. Here are 14 sunny facts about the series.

1. THE PRODUCERS USED A TROJAN HORSE TECHNIQUE TO CONVINCE FOX TO DO THE SHOW.

Josh Schwartz told The New York Times that he was a fan of canceled-too-soon shows like Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, and My So-Called Life. “You can’t tell a network that’s what you want to make because they’ll just say, ‘Those shows lasted 15 episodes and they’re off the air and we don’t want them.’ But if instead you go to Fox and say, ‘This is your new 90210’—that’s something they can get excited about.”

Schwartz and fellow executive producer Stephanie Savage pitched Fox the concept of a juvenile delinquent from Chino (Ryan Atwood) infiltrating the glamour of Orange County’s gated communities. “And really what we hoped we had were these characters that were a little bit funnier and more soulful and different and specific than the kinds you usually see in that genre,” Schwartz explained. “They would be the soldiers inside our Trojan horse.”

2. INITIALLY, FOX WAS CONCERNED ABOUT SETH COHEN’S PERSONALITY.

Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) wasn’t as hunky as Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie), which concerned the network because “this was a character that might hue too closely to the Freaks and Geeks/Undeclared world of shorter-lived teen soaps, or teen shows,” Schwartz told TIME. “Then Fox had their eye on it, and I was always told, ‘If Ryan is the Luke Perry, then who is the Jason Priestley?’ I was like, ‘Welp, we’re not doing 90210.'” But Seth’s sardonic nerdiness ended up becoming a cultural touchstone for the show. “So that went away when we cast Adam Brody, who came in and was really funny and charming, but the network also felt like would be someone who girls would find appealing,” Schwartz said. “But that was a big risk at the time.”

3. THE SHOW’S TITLE CAME FROM SCHWARTZ’S COLLEGE DAYS.

Schwartz grew up in Rhode Island but attended college at the University of Southern California. “When I was in college, all these kids from Orange County, they’d be like, ‘I’m from the O.C.,’ as if they are from the L.B.C. [Long Beach County] and it was the ‘hood. And I always found that very funny even if it was unintentional on their part,” he told HitFix.

As Luke Ward (Chris Carmack) beat up Ryan, Karate Kid-style, at a bonfire on the beach during the pilot, he uttered the now-famous catchphrase, “Welcome to The O.C., bitch.” Schwartz had no idea the line would endure. “I started hearing stories from friends who were working as day traders on the floor in New York and when they would close a sale they’d be like, ‘Welcome to the O.C., bitch!’ And throw the money at each other.”

4. THE PRODUCERS WORRIED “CALIFORNIA” WAS TOO POPULAR TO USE AS A THEME SONG.

Schwartz told HitFix he thought everybody already knew the Phantom Planet song “California,” which became the show’s theme song. “It had already been on the radio. And so we thought, ‘We can’t use that song, it’s already out there,’” he said. They decided to edit the song into a “sizzle reel,” something they had to show the network before they finished the pilot. “And what we found was nobody really knew the song,” Schwartz said. “Everybody’s like, ‘What’s that song? That song is incredible.’ And we realized that just because me and [producer] Steph [Savage] and some of the writers had known that song, that song didn’t really get played that much outside of L.A. and KROQ or whatever at the time. So we’re like, ‘Okay, people don’t really know that song.’”

5. THE MUSIC BECAME ITS OWN CHARACTER.

“I always viewed it as wanting the music to feel like an extension of the emotional lives of the characters, which I guess sounds kind of pretentious,” Schwartz told TIME. “When I was sitting down to write the pilot, there was this Joseph Arthur song that plays at the end of the pilot, and when I heard that song, it was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is how I want the end of the show to feel.’ That it was less about the place and more about how our characters were feeling.” He said the music they licensed just happened to be the kind of bands and artists the cast and crew were listening to at the time, which was indie rock. “It was cheaper to license, so that was a happy accident.”

Music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas had a process for getting music on the show. “I would send out weekly [compilation CDs] with any music that I felt was in the world, which then we discussed at length,” Patsavas told MTV. “If someone responded to a certain band, I’d send Josh or Stephanie or one of the editors more music. Then, I’d pitch for scenes and moments. How are we telling the story? How do these bands and songs and lyrics support the drama?” Eventually, the show started promoting music from bigger bands like U2 and Coldplay.

6. THE CREATOR OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT WANTED THE CAST TO MAKE A CAMEO ON HIS SHOW.

The O.C. premiered a few months before Arrested Development, which is also set in Orange County and also aired on Fox. One of the comedy series’ running jokes is that a character will say “The O.C.” and Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) will correct them and say, “Don’t call it that.”

Schwartz told HitFix that Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, “asked if our actors could come on his show to play themselves as the stars of The O.C. I was worried that was one layer of meta too many, so I said no.”

7. THE SEASON 2 FINALE LED TO AN ICONIC SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE PARODY.

Spoiler alert: Season two ends with a rough and tumble fight between Ryan and his brother, Trey (played by Logan Marshall-Green). It looks as if Trey will kill his brother, so Marissa intervenes. She grabs Trey’s gun and shoots and kills Trey to protect Ryan. As the events unfurl, Imogen Heap’s melancholic “Hide and Seek” plays over the scene. Almost two years after the episode aired, SNL’s Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis, and guest host Shia LaBeouf took turns shooting each other in the digital short. The parody currently has more YouTube views than the finale clip.

8. SANDY COHEN WAS THE ANCHOR OF THE SHOW.

Besides highlighting the lives of teens, Schwartz also wanted to use the moral and wise Sandy Cohen (played by Peter Gallagher) to project what a good father looked like. “One of the things very early on that we realized was that the biggest wish fulfillment aspect of the show wasn’t the big houses and it wasn’t the cool cars or clothes,” Schwartz told HitFix. “It was this idea of the Cohen family and having Sandy as a father. There were so many kids out there that would love to have been adopted by a family like the Cohens, and would love to have a father figure in their life like Sandy.”

9. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MARISSA AND ALEX MADE EXECUTIVES UNCOMFORTABLE.

During the second season, Marissa dates bisexual Alex (Olivia Wilde), who runs the local music venue The Bait Shop. The “Nipplegate” Janet Jackson Super Bowl had recently occurred, which led to network conservatism. “We had a whole episode where every kiss between them was cut out, just so I could get one kiss in ‘The Rainy Day Women‘ episode,” Schwartz told ESPN. “I was literally on the phone with Broadcast Standards and Practices bartering for kisses. It was a battle, and the powers that be are part of a big corporation, and were going in front of congress at the time. Every network was. So, I understand they are all good people who were under a lot of pressure. But they wanted that story wrapped up as fast as humanly possible and Alex moving on out of The O.C.” The network got their wish—Wilde left the show mid-season. “But Olivia is a superstar,” Schwartz said. “She was great in the part. I would have her back on the show in a heartbeat.”

10. THE O.C. MADE DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE FAMOUS.

The Seattle-based indie band gained notoriety when Seth Cohen kept talking about how much he loved the band. A few of the band’s songs popped up on the show, too. In April 2005, the band appeared as themselves and performed at The Bait Shop. “If anything, it was really a point of self-awareness for us,” the band’s bassist, Nick Harmer, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “We were like, ‘You mean, there’s some credibility that the character gets for saying our band name? It’s not a laughing point? They’re not making fun of us?’” A few months later, their major-label debut, Plans, was released and ended up going platinum and being nominated for a Grammy.

11. TATE DONOVAN SAID SOME OF THE YOUNG CAST MEMBERS WERE “DIFFICULT.”

In an interview with Vulture for the show’s 10th anniversary, Tate Donovan—who played Marissa’s father, Jimmy, and directed some episodes—said that, “By the time I started to direct, the kids on the show had developed a really bad attitude. They just didn’t want to be doing the show anymore. It was pretty tough; they were very tough to work with. The adults were all fantastic, total pros. But you know how it is with young actors—and I know because I was one of them once. When you achieve a certain amount of success, you want to be doing something else. I mean, one of them turned to me and said, ‘This show is ruining my film career,’ and he had never done a film before. You just can’t help but sort of think that your life and your career are going to go straight up, up, up. So they were very difficult.”

12. TURKEY ADAPTED THE O.C. INTO A SHOW.

In 2013, Turkey created a version of The O.C. for Star TV called Med Cezir (The Tide). Like the American version, it featured attractive teens and their attractive parents ensnared in weekly melodrama. 

13. THE PRODUCERS BANNED THE CHARACTERS FROM SMOKING.

In the pilot, Marissa and Ryan meet-cute in his driveway. Ryan is smoking a cigarette when Marissa saunters over to him and asks for one. “That is the last time any characters, or at least teenage characters, smoke a cigarette on broadcast television,” Schwartz told MTV. “It was such a battle to get that scene to stay in the show. We had to make sure that at the end of the scene, when Sandy comes down the driveway and breaks them up, he says, ‘No smoking in my house!’ And they put out the cigarette. That was it; you could never smoke again.”

14. TATE DONOVAN AGREES: JIMMY COOPER IS A TERRIBLE FATHER.

Donovan played the father of Marissa and Kaitlin Cooper. He divorces their mom, Julie, and becomes both an absentee and negligent father. Entertainment Weekly named Jimmy as one of TV’s worst dads, a sentiment Donovan agreed with. “We were shooting the show, and it starts to air, and my sister, who is the mother of three teenagers, calls me up and goes, ‘You know, you’re the worst dad of all time. You’re such a terrible father I can’t believe it.’ And I go, ‘Really? I am?’” Donovan told Vulture. “And so I go up to Josh [Schwartz] and Stephanie [Savage] and say, ‘I’m a really bad dad,’ and they’re like, ‘No, you’re not, you’re a great dad!’ I was not a great dad. I was letting my kid do whatever she wants. I left her drunk on the steps. What kind of parents don’t notice their daughter is drunk and passed out? I kept telling them I was a bad father and they said, ‘No, no.’ Ten years later I’m on this list [of bad TV dads] and I feel vindicated.”

All images courtesy of The O.C./Facebook.

Since it premiered in 1969, characters hailing from various backgrounds have called Sesame Street home. Now, the iconic children’s series is launching a program to promote diversity behind the scenes as well. This summer, a group of rising writers from underrepresented demographics will be invited to participate in a writing fellowship at the Sesame Street offices in New York City.

The Sesame Street Writers’ Room will consist of six three-hour-long weeknight sessions during the months of June and July. In the meetings, seven to 10 writers will learn the ins and outs of creating children’s media, receive mentoring from industry professionals and Sesame Street alumni, and complete at least one script of their own. Two students may receive additional guidance and the chance to work on more projects after the program ends.

The main goal of the fellowship is to elevate talent from communities that are sometimes harder to spot on television. “As a company that advocates diversity,” the website explains, “we recognize the importance of representation both on and off-screen, so that children of all backgrounds can see themselves in the content they consume.”

If this opportunity sounds like a good fit for you, you have until March 31 to submit your resume, script sample, personal statement, and other information about yourself. All applicants must be age 21 or older, and resumes with extensive media writing experience (such as writing several episodes for a network or cable show) won’t be eligible.

Although Starbucks is a Seattle-based coffee chain in the United States, it’s grown globally since it opened its first stores outside of North America in Japan in 1996. With more than 23,000 locations all over the world, Starbucks has to cater to local and cultural tastes overseas. Here are 11 bizarre international Starbucks menu items from around the world.

1. AUSSIE BEEF PIE

Starbucks Australia serves up traditional Aussie Beef Pie made with a savory pie crust and quality minced beef. It also comes with tomato sauce for dipping. The coffee chain also offers Yo-Yo Biscuits, which are shortbread cookies with a butter vanilla cream filling and powdered sugar. 

2. RED BEAN GREEN TEA FRAPPUCCINO

The Red Bean Green Tea Frappuccino is one of the most popular blended drinks at Starbucks in China and Pacific Asia locations. It’s basically a Green Tea Frappuccino with sweetened whole red beans scooped on top. Starbucks has featured the Red Bean Green Tea Frappuccino every summer since 2012, and it can even be paired with a matching muffin.

It’s Munchin’ Time! Munch on Starbucks’ Hojicha+Tea Jelly & Red Bean+Green Tea Frappuccino® at Glorietta 4, 5 & 6750 pic.twitter.com/rFvmarkb

— Glorietta (@iloveglorietta) September 10, 2012

3. RED BEAN CREAM FRAPPUCCINO

The Red Bean Cream Frappuccino is a seasonal blended drink available at Starbucks in South Korea. It’s made from sweetened condensed milk and Starbucks Frappuccino Roast blended together with ice. The beverage is later topped off with crunchy granola and red bean paste.

4. BUTTERMILK PANCAKES

You can get breakfast with an “American twist” at Starbucks in the United Kingdom. The coffee chain offers two lightly toasted buttermilk pancakes served with your choice of very berry compote or maple honey sauce toppings. Interestingly, Starbucks in the U.S. doesn’t serve pancakes at all. So much for that American twist.

Visit @StarbucksUK Victoria Square tomorrow to celebrate #PancakeDay. Receive free toppings with the purchase of Starbucks pancakes! pic.twitter.com/hacFYNtsFb

— Victoria Square (@Victoria_Square) February 27, 2017

5. HOJICHA FRAPPUCCINO WITH EARL GREY JELLY

While most other green teas from around the world are simply steamed, hojicha is a Japanese green tea that is roasted over charcoal in a porcelain pot. This process gives hojicha its unique color and toasty, creamy taste. Hojicha is poured over Earl Grey tea jelly and blended together with Frappuccino Roast, milk, and ice. Introduced as a seasonal blended beverage in 2012, Hojicha Frappuccino with Earl Grey Jelly is only available at Starbucks in Japan, along with the Chocolate Brownie Matcha Green Tea Frappuccino and Tiramisu Frappuccino.

6. GRILLED PINEAPPLE & CHICKEN TURKISH BREAD

Starbucks Hong Kong offers grilled pineapple and chicken breast with Teriyaki sauce, mozzarella cheese, and caramelized onions served on Turkish bread.

7. MAPLE MACCHIATO

The Maple Macchiato is made with steamed milk, sweet vanilla syrup, and espresso. It’s topped with a criss-cross drizzle of “real Canadian Maple Syrup found from the Beauce-Appalache region of Quebec.” It’s only available at Starbucks in Canada, but some people from the U.S. are willing to make the trip up North for the Maple Macchiato.

8. DULCE DE LECHE GRANIZADO FRAPPUCCINO

Starbucks Argentina blends Dulce de Leche sauce and Frappuccino Roast with chocolate chips, milk, and ice to make a Granizado, which is a treat similar to a snow cone. It’s then topped with whipped cream and a caramel drizzle.

9. THREE MUSHROOM AND EMMENTAL CHEESE ON A VEGAN ROLL

Wake up to a portobello and shiitake mushroom breakfast sandwich at Starbucks in the Philippines. It’s served on a vegan multigrain roll, but also includes emmental cheese, which is confusing and definitely not vegan. Starbucks Philippines also offers a Spam, jalapeño, egg, and cheddar breakfast sandwich served on a rye roll or bagel.

10. ALGARROBINA FRAPPUCCINO

Introduced to Starbucks Peru in 2011, the Algarrobina Frappuccino features chocolate chips, Frappuccino Roast, Mocha, milk, ice, and algarrobina syrup, which is a local delicacy made from prosopis nigra or black carob tree. It’s an acquired taste that is described as bitter instead of sweet.

¡Viva el Perú y sus sabores! #CaféPerú #ColecciónPerú #AlgarrobinaFrappuccino #AlgarrobinaLatte pic.twitter.com/NaoYy9EwSo

— Starbucks Perú (@starbucksperu) June 23, 2015

11. CHRISTMAS PANETTONE LATTE

Nobody really likes fruitcake in the West, but it’s a very popular treat in the East. During the holiday season, Starbucks rolls out the Christmas Panettone Latte in various countries in the South Pacific, such as New Zealand, Singapore, China, and the Philippines. Inspired by traditional Italian fruitcake, Christmas Panettone Latte combines notes of Italian Christmas sauce with espresso and steamed milk, topped with whipped cream and mixed dried apples, oranges, and cranberries. It’s described as having bread and butter flavors mixed with coffee.

Christmas Panettone Latte, anyone? Starbucks unveils new Christmas drinks, full holiday menu https://t.co/NFA7CNQwkc pic.twitter.com/TqRniqLf5l

— Rappler (@rapplerdotcom) October 24, 2015

Most people would agree that Nerf Blasters aren’t a threat to anyone’s safety; it’s hard to imagine the soft, foam darts cutting through a tin can, for example. (It’s a relevant example, we promise.) But maniac YouTuber Giaco Whatever decided to do the impossible and make foam darts deadly. Setting aside the gentle Nerf gun, he created a dart blaster that generates 400 PSI of pressure (the same amount of pressure you might find 870 feet underwater). The incredible force is enough to rocket a squishy dart through a Red Bull can and nearly slice it in half. Needless to say, you should not give this gun to a six-year-old.

[h/t SPLOID]

Primary image courtesy of YouTube.

The Incredible Legacy of Susan La Flesche, the First Native American to Earn a Medical Degree. She faced racism outside her tribe, and misogyny inside it.
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Why are these turkeys circling a dead cat? It looks like some weird funeral rite.
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How to stay safe on public Wi-Fi. A few tweaks to your habits will help.
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The Curse of the Bahia Emerald. The 752-pound stone currently has no rightful owner.
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Pheasant Island Is Sometimes In France, Sometimes In Spain. The island has been changing hands regularly for over 300 years.
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The Tragedy of Newcomb Mott, Who Thought He Could Walk Into Soviet Russia. He just wanted his passport stamped, but he never got out.
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Why you should never read a parenting book. They all have ways of making you feel like a failure.
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8 Classic Internet Links You Should Know. They come back around every now and then.

When it’s not looting archaeological sites, ISIS is destroying them—and often doing both. The terror group has obliterated numerous ancient treasures, including the Temple of Baalshamin at Palmyra (in Syria) and the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud (Iraq). In 2014, after invading territories in northern Iraq, the group demolished Mosul’s Nabi Yunus shrine, where the biblical prophet Jonah (or Yunus, as he’s known in the Koran) was thought to be buried.

Now, archaeologists have made a surprising discovery beneath the shrine’s wreckage. As The Telegraph reports, a pristine ancient palace located beneath it has been made accessible through tunnels dug by ISIS. Iraqi archaeologist Layla Salih uncovered a marble slab from the passageways inscribed with cuneiform referring to King Esarhaddon of the Assyrian Empire. That would make the artifact nearly 2700 years old.

At its peak from the seventh to ninth centuries BCE, the empire ruled the region from what is now Egypt through southern Turkey. Construction on the palace began during the reign of Sennacherib (681–669 BCE). The area around the structure was partly excavated in 1852 and again in the 1950s, but until now the palace had remained undiscovered. In addition to the cuneiform tablet, archaeologists found a stone sculpture of a demi-goddess. ISIS built the tunnels to pillage the site, and they likely looted hundred of items like pottery and small artifacts before they were forced to flee the area by Iraqi troops.

Musul’da DAEŞ’in yıktığı ‘Nebi Yunus Türbesi’nin altından M.Ö.600 yılından kalma bir saray çıktı! Bu arada, bilinen ilk şehir ‘Uruk’tur. pic.twitter.com/EakrmjAoyx

— ÇapaMag (@CapaMag) March 2, 2017

 
With support from international organizations like the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, local archaeologists are now racing to excavate and document the palace before the unreliable tunnels collapse and bury it one again.

[h/t The Telegraph]

We tend to think of our brains as one big organ inside our skulls, but it’s actually comprised of many, small structures that make it possible for us to walk, talk, think, and feel. Of these, one of the more well-known structures, the amygdala, has been found to play a hugely important role in many social and emotional processes—influencing everything from health to addiction.

Mental_floss spoke to ;Rahul Jandial, a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles, California, and Brandon Brock, a staff clinician at the Cerebrum Health Centers Brain Initiative Group in Texas, about this fascinating part of the brain.

1. IT’S NOT REALLY ONE STRUCTURE …

One of the more well-known structures, the amygdala is located within the depths of the anterior-inferior temporal lobe. The almond-shaped region is part of the limbic system and is actually a paired structure, with parts in each temporal lobe, according to Jandial.

He says you can survive with only one of the two: “How do I know? I can surgically remove one as part of a brain surgery called selective amygdalohippocampectomy.” In fact, in studies where rats, monkeys, or rabbits have their amygdala removed, the animals live normal lives except for one notable new development: They don’t feel fear.

2. … BECAUSE THE AMYGDALA IS YOUR BRAIN’S FEAR FACTORY.

Your fear of snakes and scary movies is in large part due to the function of your amygdala, which “responds before frontal lobes weigh in,” Jandial says. It’s part of your instinctive brain and serves as your “emotional thermostat.” He adds, “It’s not in charge of just fear, but all deep and visceral emotions—one of those ancient brain regions that can defy the frontal lobe request.”

According to a 2007 study in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, “amygdala activity may represent the generation of emotional experience itself, and/or it may reflect sundry aspects of emotional information processing correlated with emotional experience.”

3. THE AMYGDALA ALSO HAS A TRUE MIND-BODY CONNECTION.

And yet the amygdala has purposes beyond fear. It has been shown to assist in emotional learning, “whereby cues acquire significance through association with rewarding or aversive events,” according to a paper in Current Opinion Neurobiology. More recent research, the authors write, suggest that the amygdala regulates additional cognitive processes, such as memory or attention.

With its ability to interpret sensory stimuli in the world and translate them into physical reactions, the amygdala, as a research paper in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience suggests, “may thus represent embodied attention—the crucial link between central (mental) and peripheral (bodily) resources.”

4. DAMAGE TO THE AMYGDALA CAN LEAVE YOU HORNY AND HUNGRY.

An injured amygdala can leave a person “super hungry, sexually aroused, and fixated with putting things in their mouth,” says Jandial. In other cases, it can lead to a reduced fear of risks, and thus an increase in risky behavior. Researchers found that adult monkeys who were given amygdalectomies “showed more pro-social cues and less avoidance behaviors toward other (healthy) monkeys.” In one extreme case, damage to the amygdala shut down one woman’s ability to feel fear altogether.

5. IT ALSO PLAYS A ROLE IN PAIN.

Fibromyalgia is a disease characterized by “widespread musculoskeletal pain with diffuse tenderness at multiple tender points,” as a study in Clinical Neuroscience describes. Brock says that changes in the amygdala’s volume and function play a role in both fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndromes. This appears to be a consequence of the amygdala becoming hypervigilant and oversensitized to internal sensations of pain or trauma, according to a study in Explore. “This results in exhaustion of the neuro-endocrine and immune systems and chronic physical and mental exhaustion, as well as many secondary symptoms and ongoing complications.”

6. THE AMYGDALA IS KEY TO UNDERSTANDING ADDICTION.

Addiction is considered a brain disease by the medical community rather than a lack of willpower or a character defect. According to a study in Brain Research, a common addiction cycle comprises three stages—“preoccupation/anticipation, binge/intoxication, and withdrawal/negative affect—in which impulsivity often dominates at the early stages and compulsivity dominates at terminal stages.” The amygdala becomes recruited in the final withdrawal stage, where it sends stress signals to the body, driving a person to crave more of their substance.

7. DESPITE ADVANCES IN BRAIN-IMAGING TECHNOLOGY, IT’S STILL DIFFICULT TO STUDY.

Though we know much more about the amygdala since it was first discovered in the 1930s in monkeys, there’s still much to learn. Because of the amygdala’s deep brain location and its entanglement with other neighboring brain structures, it’s difficult to find “exact ways to monitor its function, output and all regions that it has a synaptic influence on. Time and further scientific research will hopefully unveil that,” Brock explains.

The new Peeps Oreos are making a splash in an unexpected way. The pink creme filling is turning diners’ poop a vibrant hue, as BuzzFeed has sniffed out, which may not be the Easter surprise Peeps lovers were looking for.

The promotional sandwich cookies are dyed with a bright pink food coloring (Red Number 3, according to BuzzFeed) that is sure to leave your tongue looking like a Pepto-Bismol ad for some hours, according to a number of people who have posted on social media about the phenomenon. In a review, the Junk Food Guy wrote that the cookie dyed his saliva. He explained: “This is the type of food dye where an hour later, when I went to brush my teeth, IT TURNED MY TOOTHBRUSH PINK.”

A lot of foods (especially brightly dyed candies) will dye your mouth for a little while after you eat. But this stuff really does last:

My roommate ate a whole pack of oreo Peeps and left a pink stain in the toilet.

— ElleLeven (@Barbeydahl) February 23, 2017

If you eat enough of them, that pink dye will run straight through you and possibly require you to scrub out your toilet. An anonymous mental_floss Oreo tester describes the color as “the kind of pink that if, say, your poop were to turn that color, you’d think you were hemorrhaging internally and had three minutes to live.” You probably don’t even have to eat the whole package.

Which is almost a reason in itself to try the super-sweet Oreos. Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, at least no more than any other junk food. Anyone who’s eaten too many beets is familiar with the ability of even normal foods to make your stool look terrifying. A few vivid cookies will just turn your body into a temporary science experiment. Just how long did it take the dye to work its way through your system?

Plus, Charmin is there to clean up your mess. Feel free to document your results—just maybe don’t send them to us.

We hear that #pinkpoop is now a thing. If it hits, don’t worry, no one will hear a peep from us. https://t.co/MFKV7qby0p

— Charmin (@Charmin) March 2, 2017

[h/t BuzzFeed]