Amy Schneider, reigning queen of Jeopardy!, just added another title to her name: second-longest winner in the game show’s history since it lifted the cap on consecutive wins in 2003.

In case you’re not in her fan club yet, here’s a quick recap: Amy Schneider is an engineering manager from Dayton, Ohio, shattering glass ceilings everywhere she goes. She’s the first woman contestant to win over $1 million, the most successful woman, and the most successful openly trans person to ever compete on Jeopardy! 

Her winning streak began on November 11, 2021. And then on Monday, January 24, Schneider won her 39th game in a row. With this win, she surpassed Yale PhD student Matt Amodio’s 2021 38-game streak. This win brings her second only to current host Ken Jennings, who holds a 74-game streak from 2004. In a tweet from the Jeopardy! account following her win, Schneider said it was “comforting” to have Jennings on stage with her, as he’s the only one who knows the position that she’s in.

“It still feels unreal,” Schneider said in the Twitter video. “Knowing that I had this chance, I was definitely thinking about it. Then Ken said it, and I thought, ‘All right, I just accomplished this huge thing,’ and it was pretty great.”

Coming up later for Schneider is the Tournament of Champions. She is the first openly trans contestant to qualify, and she’ll be going up against Amodio, whose title she just earned. 

“There was a time when I was like ‘I might be going up against Matt,’ and I was worried about it and I still kind of am, but I’m excited to have the opportunity,” Schneider said of the match-up. To Amodio, she says in her statement, “It was a real pleasure watching you and it’s really going to be an honor playing against you and it’s gonna be a tight competition.”

Any person with a limited imagination—a dad, a date, almost any man–can tell you that following celebrity news is stupid, even sinister. It’s rotting our brains; it’s causing societal decay! Pinballing between condescension and contempt, they’ll make sure you understand: If you follow celebrity news, you lack substance.

“Let us have our pop culture gossip and we’ll leave you your fantasy football league,” laughs Emily, who built a following of 200,000 people in two months on TikTok under the handle It’sBecomeAWholeThing with frank, funny videos analyzing celebrity news. For Emily, who has a day job working for a charity, celebrity culture is a form of escapism. But her videos play less like gossip vlogs and more like the work of an NPR pundit crossed with a true-crime enthusiast and a dirtbag podcaster. She is part of a growing group of creators who decode blind items, analyze paparazzi shots, cross-reference timelines, and note tiny details, like the agency credit on a photograph. For many people, the allure of celebrity is the fantasy. But for a growing group, the fun part of celebrity is figuring out which part is fake.

Examples of Emily’s TikToks: Footage of celeb couples taking adorable coffee walks, shot at close enough range to see that the coffee cups are empty and bone dry. In another video, she tabulates every branded Instagram post a certain celebrity couple did in the lead-up to their lavish wedding. The branded posts are funny at first, and then outlandish, and then suddenly, it’s clear how much financial interest there was in a wedding that looked to the public like a pure celebration of love. 

“It’s really important we’re seeing a rise of people who are analyzing these things and deconstructing these things,” says Jordan, another creator, under the handle JordanMaryAdele, who says she puts two-to-three hours of research into each of her minute-long videos analyzing celebrities. “It’s naive to say it doesn’t matter, because it does—we’ve made it matter.”

These creators are not fans or stans, trolls or haters. They are, as Emily jokes, a “grassroots” movement: think Instagram’s Deuxmoi, think YouTubers like Intelexual Media and Mina Le, think the three (yes, three) popular podcasts that analyze celebrity memoirs (Celebrity Memoir Book Club, Celebrity Book Club, and Celebrity Book Club, of course!) They all offer the bluntness of the Perez Hilton blogger era without the abject cruelty. These creators and their audiences are the people who watched Britney Spears raised up, hunted down, tossed aside, and eventually, set free. They witnessed decades of Monica Lewinsky jokes give way to Lewinsky producing her own prestige TV show, and saw Paris Hilton go from consummate party girl to releasing a documentary on childhood trauma. This is an audience who learned to distinguish between reality and reality TV. They saw the unmasking of violent men—many of them celebrities—during the #MeToo movement. They migrated from LiveJournal to Tumblr to Snapchat to Instagram to TikTok. 

We’re all aware that Taylor Swift writes her own music, right? I mean, she’s one of the most influential songwriters of our generation—if not all time—thanks to albums like Folklore, Evermore, Red, etc…not to mention songs she’s written for other artists. Even Swift’s naysayers often use her songwriting as a critique by complaining that most of her music is written about her exes (a seriously misogynistic claim that is not even worth responding to).

Well, apparently there is someone who didn’t know that Swift is the mind behind all of her music, including the tracks written in collaboration with other artists like producer Jack Antonoff—and the “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)” singer wasn’t having any of it. 

In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, British musician Damon Albarn denounced Swift as a songwriter, saying, “She doesn’t write her own songs.” When the interviewer pointed out that does, in fact, write and co-write her music, he doubled down. 

“That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing,” he said. “I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes. Doesn’t mean that the outcome can’t be really great.”

He continued, “A really interesting songwriter is Billie Eilish and her brother. I’m more attracted to that than to Taylor Swift. It’s just darker—less endlessly upbeat. Way more minor and odd. I think she’s exceptional.” Quick follow-up question for Albarn: If Eilish writes her music with her brother, wouldn’t that be considered co-writing? Anyway…

Unfortunately for the Blur frontman, who currently has 327.9K followers on Twitter, Swift caught wind of his statements—and so did her 89.8M Twitter fans. “@DamonAlbarn I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this,” Swift replied to a tweet by the LA Times. “I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.”

Her response didn’t end there. In a second tweet, she added, “PS I wrote this tweet all by myself in case you were wondering.”

Of course, Swift fans were quick to swarm to their favorite artist’s defense, many pointing out that she wrote her third album Speak Now without any collaborators because she was sick of comments like the one from Albarn.

Evan Rachel Wood is opening up about more traumatic abuse she says she suffered at the hands of Brian Warner, a.k.a. Marilyn Manson.

Wood was entangled with Warner from 2006-2010, starting when she was just 18 years old and he was 36. Though the actor testified to congress in 2018 about her experiences with emotional, physical, and sexual abuse by a romantic partner, Woods did not publicly name Warner as her abuser until February 2021. (Manson has denied the allegations.)

“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, also known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” she wrote in a statement. After she spoke out, four other women accused the singer of physical abuse and sexual assault. “He started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years. I was brainwashed and manipulated into submission. I am done living in fear of retaliation, slander, or blackmail. I am here to expose this dangerous man and call out the many industries that have enabled him, before he ruins any more lives. I stand with the many victims who will no longer be silent.” 

Now, in a new documentary, Evan Rachel Wood detailed Warner’s alleged “first crime” against her during the filming of his 2007 music video “Heart-Shaped Glasses.” In part one of Phoenix Rising, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, the Westworld actor said that she was “essentially raped on-camera” by Warner when she was 19 years old. 

“It’s nothing like I thought it was going to be,” Wood said in the documentary, per People. “We’re doing things that were not what was pitched to me. … We had discussed a simulated sex scene, but once the cameras were rolling, he started penetrating me for real. I had never agreed to that. I’m a professional actress, I’ve been doing this my whole life; I’ve never been on a set that unprofessional in my life up until this day.”

That’s so cool. She’s an icon, no doubt.

Christine [Baranski], Cynthia [Nixon], Carrie [Coon], Kelli [O’Hara]—they were all so generous with their wisdom and knowledge. And they’re also fun and goofy. They really made this show come down from our ears. And Jeanne Tripplehorn. Everyone. They were so generous in their spirits.

I can’t help but think how ironic it is that Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald star together in The Good Fight, and then Christine and Meryl Streep played best friends in Mamma Mia!, and now Meryl’s daughter, Louisa Jacobson, plays Christine’s niece in The Gilded Age. 

Definitely does feel like kismet a little. Christine and Cynthia [Nixon] apparently worked together when Cynthia was in college and Christine was pregnant with her first child. It’s really special in that way. Christine is the most benevolent matriarch of the set, and I got to hear her humming sometimes between setups. It’s all so priceless that I feel like I’m sure I’ll tell my grandkids about it.

What’s one of the biggest lessons you’ve learned as an actor?

There’s a maturity now where I’m like, “I want to be well in the midst of all of the success, and I’m not really willing to compromise my wellbeing.” Speaking to being well, I found out that I got the role of Peggy around the time I had to take a week off from Hamilton. I was really sick, and I’m such a recovering perfectionist. And then I got the call that I got this role. It felt like a [sign] from the universe that you can take care of yourself and blessings will still come to you. It’s not about working yourself into the ground. I think Oprah calls them God winks, like, “Yeah, you’re on the right track. Stay in this type of mindset because you’re not going to lose any opportunities by not treating yourself like a work horse.”

Was there either a TV show or a movie that you were obsessed with growing up, or one that had a big impact on you?

Brandy and Whitney in Cinderella. [Laughs] You can see how I got the whole, “I want to play aristocratic women. If Whitney did it, I can do it.”

Is there a TV show or movie that you’ve seen recently that inspires you?  

I really loved I May Destroy You. I really loved The Forty-Year-Old Version, and I really loved this documentary I just watched on HBO called Eyes On The Prize: Hallowed Ground, which is a look at what a Black liberation movement looks like now in the 21st century. It is so inspiring. So many of my activist superheroes were profiled in it, and I loved it.

That is great to know. Meanwhile, when you’re on set, do you have any superstitions that you can’t let go of when you’re filming?