Latest news with #TheBigInterview
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber On Building A Better Social Ecosystem
Wired Senior Writer Katie Knibbs interviews Bluesky CEO Jay Graber about the burgeoning social platform and its future. Director: Justin Wolfson Director of Photography: Mark Simon Editor: Richard Trammell; Louis Lalire Host: Kate Knibbs Guest: Jay Graber Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen Associate Producer: Brandon White Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Camera Operator: Howard Shack Sound Mixer: Jim Sander Production Assistant: Dexter Shack Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo Assistant Editor: Fynn Lithgow - Bluesky's for everyone. When we think that over time the broader public conversation needs to be on an open protocol, which is what we're built on. - I'm Wired senior writer Kate Nibs. Today I sat down with Bluesky, CEO Jay Graber. We discuss how influencers are joining the platform, Bluesky's relationship with news media and whether she would welcome President Trump to Bluesky. This is "The Big Interview." [upbeat music] Jay, thank you so much for joining me today. - Thank you. Thanks for having me. - So last time we talked in December, I believe Bluesky had just surpassed 24, 25 million users. Where are you today? - 34.6 million users. - What milestones are you hoping to hit by the end of 2025? - There's a lot of new features that we're launching and we're excited to expand a lot. I think getting in some of the things we've been talking about for a long time. Like communities. - Or what does that look like? - Yeah, communities is a way that people are already using feeds. A lot of people don't realize that Bluesky is a bit like Reddit and Twitter at the same time because you can build feeds that are essentially communities like the science feed is run by scientists, moderated by scientists and has its own rules. And so this is something that you can do, but you have to go outside the app to do it right now. And so we've talked to people who are running these feeds and they would like better tooling for making these into communities in the app. And so that's the big idea, which is essentially just making it easier to create and run a custom feed, which is an interface you can install into the app that's like your own timeline and run that like a community of your own. - When you say you have to go outside of the app, what does that mean? - There's third party services that have built feed builders services like Sky Feeds or Grays. They let you create feeds without knowing how to code and you can say, I want this list of people to contribute to my feed. You can post into it with this hashtag or this emoji and then you run it essentially like it's a service that you're providing other people, other people can install it, subscribe to it, pin it to the homepage of their app. - Any timeline for when this is coming? - Well, you asked about the end of the year, so I think that's the, the most concrete timeline we can give at the moment. - And I know that you recently rolled out video as a feature, which we're very excited about. I think a lot of people already conceptualize Bluesky as sort of a X competitor, but now are you gunning for TikTok too? - We are, as you know, built on an open protocol and so other apps are starting to fill in these open spaces. There is an app called Skylight that has just gotten 150,000 users and this is more of a straight TikTok alternative. It lets you post short form videos, you know, edit them in app, create them. There's these other apps springing up now on the same protocol like Skylight, like flashes for photos that do different things. And the great thing about this being an open protocol means that you can move from Bluesky over to Skylight Social and keep your followers. So they go with you across these applications. - So when you say they go with me, if I'm going to port my followers over or even just join these new apps, how would I do that? Like do I actually go into the app store and download something new or how does it work? - Yeah, you download Skylight from the app store and then you log in with your Bluesky username if you wanna link them together. If you don't want to link them, you can create a new account, but if you link them, you have the same number of followers and the photos or videos that you post to Skylight will also show up in Bluesky or vice versa. And like over time the apps can decide is everything going to, you know, be shared across or is there gonna be some stuff that's separate? But right now it's sort of just a shared data layer where you can have people seeing your videos on Bluesky, even if they're posted on Skylight. - And so does the Bluesky team have anything to do with the development of Skylight or is it totally separate? - It's totally separate. - Do you know know who developed it at all? Like what are your relationships like with the people who are developing different apps on the protocol? - There was recently a conference called the Atmosphere Conference. We call the atmosphere the broader ecosystem of applications around the AT protocol, which is the layer Bluesky is built on. And we met a lot of folks there who are building even apps we didn't know were being built. So there's private messengers being built, new forms of moderation tools. There's a lot of ones out there that are innovating on new forms of social built on this shared layer because they can immediately tap into the Bluesky user base and just add features on rather than having to start from zero. So that's the benefit to developers of building in an open ecosystem. You don't have to start from zero each time you start over and now you have 34.6 million users to tap into. - So I know there's Bluesky the app and then it's built on this app protocol and that's how all of these people are developing these new cool video and photo apps and everything. So the teams are separate. As the CEO of Bluesky, like if one of the video apps were to go mega viral and surpass Bluesky wildly, et cetera, would that help you or would it just sort of be a wash for you? - It would help us because these are shared backends if you recall. So that means that all those videos would be being able to be viewed on Bluesky too. It'd probably change the way that people could interact over on Bluesky because all this content would be coming in from another application, just like all the content created on Bluesky can be borrowed over there. We can borrow from the other apps as well. And then it means that, you know, if they're building on our services over time, one of the pathways to monetization we've mentioned is developer services. So building out infrastructure for new apps to get started. Sort of like a fire base for social, if you will, where you get new apps off the ground and then you know, provide infrastructure to them. - So I've noticed that there has been sort of an influx of big creators onto Bluesky, but right now there's no direct way for creators to monetize their work on Bluesky in the way that there is on say YouTube. Are you working on ways to change that? - Yeah, one things that we've seen is that we're not giving creators money but we're giving them really great traffic and that can convert to money because if you are a YouTube creator or you have a Patreon and you're posting your Patreon link, one big thing is we don't down rank links and so you're getting higher link traffic on Bluesky, even with a smaller follower count. This is true of small creators and even news organizations have been reporting this difference in engagement and click-through numbers. We've heard from large news organizations that Bluesky is giving better click-throughs and subscription rates and so this converts to money once you get people onto your site. So I think this is one of the big benefits we're leaning into right now is just giving people that direct traffic, that direct relationship with their audience and giving them the ability to monetize however they want. Down the road we might introduce other mechanisms, but right now it's just about being the best platform to serve creators needs in terms of giving them attention, giving them engagement and giving them the ability to move with their followers right? So as I mentioned before, if you're a video creator and you do some content on Bluesky to build up a following and then you download Skylight and you start posting different kinds of content over there, you can have that follow graph just go with you and start building on it. So it's cumulative rather than also as a creator starting from scratch each app you move to. - I love that as someone who's jumped from app to app in the past, that sounds very helpful. And when you were talking about traffic for traditional news organizations, I know that traditionally the news media and social media have had sort of an antagonistic relationship. Like it's been obviously a huge driver of traffic for news outlets, but then they're sort of beholden to people like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk and what they wanna do to the news. Do you have a broader vision for how you want Bluesky to interact with like the information ecosystem or the news media? - Yeah, we want to create a more direct relationship again and be the place where we make those relationships happen. And so rather than being the single feed that all user attention passes through where small algorithm changes can affect how much traffic a news organization is getting, we want to give direct traffic to news orgs and even let them do things like build their own feeds or link their domain directly as their username, clicking that just clicks you directly through to your site. You can also right now create verified news feeds. Some people have been building these in the community and so users can just scroll through all the news articles being posted. This means that you're getting direct traffic because you're not depending on the algorithm, which might be at any given moment showing more or less news to a given user. If the users are interested they can just subscribe to a newsfeed and see all the articles being published on Bluesky in one place. - So recently there's been a pretty noticeable influx of bigger name celebrities on the app, including some of the biggest names in democratic politics like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just joined for instance. Are you doing anything to court the celebrities or really famous influencers? - We're doing some community outreach. We've had a very community driven growth strategy and so we're seeing a lot of growth in sectors with maybe not as big celebrities, but a lot of traction in areas like you know, sports media. For example, Mina Kimes, a sports reporter came on and she created a starter pack which got a lot of follows very quickly because when you create starter packs, which are essentially lists of accounts that bundle together everyone in a given field, when new people come on through that link, they're following all of them at once. So that's been a way that communities have been onboarding outside of, you know, politics or like even large celebrities, we have game devs, we have sports, we have science. Lots of these different interests are kind of starting with people building custom starter packs and then bringing on folks directly into their community. - Some of these bigger name people who are joining, you know, they do tend to be liberal politicians when they're politicians. I'm wondering, would you welcome President Trump if he was debating joining Bluesky? - Yeah, Bluesky's for everyone, you know, and we think that over time the broader public conversation needs to be on an open protocol, which is what we're built on because that lets people choose their own moderation preferences. It lets people choose their own feed preferences and things can evolve without it being a binary choice, which is like everyone has to adhere to this set of moderation rules or that one you can have customization both within the app and outside of it. Right now, you know, it's people who feel that there's more direct benefits to being on here if you are a creator or somebody who wants to have a direct relationship with your audience. But over time the benefit of this protocol based approach I think will extend to all sorts of social media users. - So right now we're in this moment where free speech is under threat and free speech on the internet is under threat. I'm wondering how you envision Bluesky's relationship to speech, including political speech and what your obligations are to your users and I guess to the internet at large. - I think building on an open protocol like we've done is the most enduring foundation for speech because what we're doing is creating a digital commons of user data where you really get to control your own identity and your data. And then we're building, you know, infrastructure that I hope stays around for a really long time because Bluesky, the app is just one site where speech can happen and all these other apps are showing that you can have an ecosystem of a lot of different applications. This is like the web itself. Early on we had AOL and accessing the internet happen through AOL and if the AOL web portal wasn't showing you something, it would be a lot harder to find and then more unopinionated browsers came along and these just linked you out to the broader internet and now anyone can put up a blog and host their own views online. And then there's larger websites if you want to, you know, be on Substack or Medium, but you can either self-host or choose one of these, this is the kind of ecosystem we're building, anyone can self-host. And then the question of, you know, freedom of speech not reach is made very tangible because then the sites like the sort of mediums of the world that host a lot of blogs get to choose their moderation rules, but if individuals are unhappy with that, they can start a new site or host their own blog. - For people who might not be familiar with the phrase freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. Could you explain it? - Yeah, this was a principle that old Twitter talked about early on and when we were spinning out of Twitter, I never worked for Twitter, but we opened up this new design space around Bluesky, which was how do we embed that into a protocol layer? So the freedom of speech is embedded in the protocol. Anyone can do the equivalent of standing up a new blog and then the sites like Bluesky, which are the applications, get to decide, you know, how are we going to prioritize reach, you know, we do have a default algorithm but you can choose any other algorithm you want. And so we don't necessarily show everything in the algorithm or the default service, but if you want to find something elsewhere, you can go elsewhere in the ecosystem to find it. That means that you have the pathways that the apps are deciding what is going to be most accessible and then if you want to change the rules you can build another thing and that's guarantee of freedom of speech is being always able to build your own thing or find your own space that serves you the most. - So as you're scaling up, I know that you hired additional moderators to tackle some of the necessary moderation challenges like CSAM. How challenging is it as as you're scaling up to sort of balance offering this level of customization with just the sort of basic things you need to do as a social network for everyone? Like you know, keep pornography off for example? - Yeah, I mean we're running a foundational moderation service, so we get to choose the rules within the Bluesky app and like I said, you can fork off do your own thing, but within the parameters of Bluesky we're setting what the rules are and so we employ moderation team to do this. We face some of the same challenges as centralized social apps because to run a centralized moderation team you're doing a lot of the same kinds of work. And so I would say it's, it's very similar at the base layer and then we have this extra options that we've layered on top for users to choose their own spaces. And in some cases that means that users are able to resolve things more locally. So for example, within the feeds that run a bit like communities, you can moderate things, resolve things locally, but still it's a broader Bluesky application has its own set of rules. - How many countries are you operating in right now or do you have users everywhere? - We have a lot of users in different countries. Some of the biggest are the US of course, Japan, Brazil, and various countries in the EU. - Are there unique challenges in certain locations and if so, what are they? - Each place has their own regulatory guidelines and you know, we try to be in compliance and that's part of being a global company is just learning to operate in different places. I think over the long run there will be applications just like Skylight is targeted towards video, maybe there's applications targeted towards different markets. Early on we saw several Japanese users build Japan focused applications before we had gotten internationalization into the app. So you know, different languages depending on where you're based, people built their own apps to do that. So that's an example of how you can customize things to your own local market. - Speaking of local markets, we're in Seattle, which is where you are based, but is Bluesky currently remote forward workspace? How are you guys set up? - We're a fully remote team and part of the reason for this is we wanted to hire people who care deeply about the mission and are really aligned in what we're doing. Have some of the experience in social, have experience in open protocols and that combination is rare and hard to find. So if we tried to hire all in one city, we wouldn't be getting the best people out there. But as it is, we've hired from several different countries all over the United States because there's people all over that are interested in the vision of what we're building. - And what brought you to Seattle originally? - I moved here during the pandemic. I was previously in San Francisco and it's a really nice city. I mean the nature, the water, the mountains, it's a place where nature is really accessible and I really like that. - And I understand that you have a background in crypto. I know that the largest investor in Bluesky is a venture capital firm that sort of specializes in crypto investing. Does Bluesky have more in common with a crypto startup than one might like originally suspect? - Well the term Web3 got very associated with cryptocurrency, so it's not a good word to use for what we're doing anymore because there isn't a blockchain or a cryptocurrency involved. But if you wanna think about Web3 as evolving the social Web2 version forward, that kind of is what we're doing. We're evolving forward social media that was based in centralized companies into something that is open and distributed and that was some of the goals underlying the Web3 movement that had a lot of blockchains involved. We just didn't build on that technical foundation of a blockchain because we didn't need it. You can achieve a lot of the same things using open web principles and more Web 1.0 kinds of technology, which is, for example, our identity system let's you use a domain name as your username so you can be like as your username. That's just a web 1.0 technology brought into a social media sphere. And so I think our investors really saw that vision and they're also excited about building out the broader dev ecosystem, which is something we really wanted alignment on. We want investors who care about seeing this entire world of social media come to life, not just one application Bluesky succeeding. - Yeah. What would building out the dev ecosystem look like? - It's starting to happen. So the Atmosphere Conference, which I mentioned was started and run by the community. We heard about it partway through and sponsored it, but they found other sponsors as well. And it's something that's taking off sort of as a movement of people to reclaim social and Bluesky and the Open Protocol is a great place to do a lot of this building. People are getting in and starting to build different applications, starting to propose new ways the protocol could be evolved. Private data for example, is not something that we have in Bluesky at the moment as part of the protocol, but people are proposing new ways to do private data for their applications that they're building. And so moving forward the app protocol, I don't think all the development will just be within the Bluesky company. It'll be other people building their own applications and then modifying the protocol and suggesting changes that meet the needs of what they're trying to do. - And when you say the Bluesky company, like would you be the CEO of all of this or just the platform? - I am just the CEO of Bluesky Social. So we have built out the app protocol and we maintain the Bluesky application. So we'll always maintain the Bluesky app, but the app protocol is going to take on a life of its own. Pieces of it are going to be standardized, pieces of it are going to be stewarded by the community and it's going to evolve in different directions as the new people who are getting involved shape it. - Right now you do have some investor money. Is your stance on advertising still the same? Where are you with subscriptions? Basically this is me asking you how are you planning to make money? - Yeah, subscriptions are actually coming soon as well. So that got delayed for a few months last year doing our growth spurt, but we're re-approaching how we're gonna do them and I think the next steps down the road are also to look into what kind of marketplaces can we build that span some of these different applications. There's other apps in the ecosystem that are experimenting with say, you know, placing sponsored posts in feeds and things like that. I've mentioned before, I think ads eventually in some form work their way into an attention economy, but we're not gonna do ads the way traditional social apps did because we don't have a single feed and the traditional ad model is usually getting everyone to spend as much time engaged on a single feed as possible and then putting ads in there. Since we have lots of different feeds. Even if we did that, you could switch away and use a different feed because this one has too many ads. And so it kind of constrains the open model of what we've done, constraints what we can do. We'll just let people experiment and see what comes out of it. - Some people watching this video might not be super familiar with Bluesky. What do you want people to know about this platform? - I'd want them to know this is a choose your own adventure game so you can get in there and customize the experience as much as you want. And if you're not finding what you want within the Bluesky app, there might be another app out there that is still part of the Bluesky at protocol ecosystem that will give you what you want. Like if it's you know, videos or images or maybe a different kind of feed experience, like let's say the Discover Feed isn't giving you what you want, you can install a different one and find the stuff you want and if you can't find it, you can build it. And so the options are really endless. I think it takes some time to get in there and really set things up the way that you like it, but then once you do, it's a great place to be because you don't get this level of control anywhere else. - I mean you've kind of sold me on becoming an app developer for this protocol. I might be making a career pivot soon, so thank you. - Yeah, I think there's lots of technical folks who watch, you know, Wired interviews as well and I would just love for them to know that this is an open field to build on. This is like early social era where you can build anything on fully open APIs. - Well thank you again for joining us. - Thank you. [cameras snapping] [upbeat music]
CNBC
07-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Figma introduces 'vibe-coding' AI software design feature
From left, Steven Levy, Wired editor at large, and Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, speak onstage at Wired's The Big Interview event in San Francisco on Dec. 3, 2024. Design software startup Figma on Wednesday debuted an artificial intelligence feature to automate the process of building websites and applications. The new feature, called Figma Make, is the company's response to the rise of "vibe-coding" tools, which turn a short written description into the source code necessary for a website. Google and Microsoft have both touted their own "vibe-coding" tools this year. OpenAI has also entered the space, holding acquisition talks with one startup in the space, Windsurf, and reaching out to another called Cursor on multiple occasions, CNBC reported. The move might draw additional business to Figma, which confidentially filed for an initial public offering last month. Many of today's "vibe-coding" products offer a free tier for light use before requesting payment. Figma Make will only be available to those with full seats that start at $16 per person per month when purchased annually. The company is beta-testing the feature with those users. People with premium subscriptions likely work for companies that store font sizes, color combinations and other design assets in Figma. Over time, the new feature will be able to create designs that adhere to those design systems. Figma's new tool relies on Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet AI model. For those who don't want to start from scratch, Figma Make can alternatively accept Figma design files as an input and generate code that approximates them. Third-party products such as Vercel's v0 and StackBlitz's offer similar capability but can't inherit existing design systems. Like many other "vibe-coding" programs, Figma Make presents a chat box to ask for and receive adjustments of drafts it comes up with. But sometimes a simple fix such as a font change is all that's necessary. Drop-down menus for specific elements allow for quick alterations, meaning that there's no need to consult the AI model again and wait for a response. Customers who received early access to Figma Make got it to craft video games, a note-taking app and a personalized calendar, a spokesperson said. That doesn't mean there's no place for designers inside companies with the advent of AI. "The more time has gone on, the more that I'm confident in a designer's role — and believe that it's going to be one of the critical roles in bulding software in the future," Dylan Field, Figma's co-founder and CEO, said in conversation recently with Garry Tan, president and CEO of Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator. Also on Wednesday, Figma said it was beginning to test Figma Sites, another feature that requires full seats. It can convert designs into working websites. Support for AI code generation will follow in the next few weeks, Figma said. WATCH: The rise of AI 'vibe coding'
WIRED
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Yuval Noah Harari Sees the Future of Humanity, AI, and Information
In this edition of The Big Interview: Renowned historian, philosopher, and futurist Yuval Noah Harari talks with WIRED Japan Editor-in-Chief Matsushima Michiaki about the nexus of artificial intelligence, information, and the human experience.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Murillo – the most watchable centre-back in modern football
It was coming to the end of the night and, as the television cameras panned towards the dugout, a fire was smouldering behind Murillo's eyes. He had wanted to play. He had wanted to make his debut and demonstrate why, at the highest level of the sport, so many observers believe he could be an ideal wearer of Brazil's colours. Advertisement But the signal never came. Brazil used seven substitutes in their 2-1 defeat of Colombia and Murillo, still uncapped, was not among them. Maybe he will get his chance when they face Argentina in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. Or maybe he will have to wait until the next set of World Cup qualifiers in June. All that can really be said with certainty, if you have been following his progress with Nottingham Forest, is that there are all sorts of reasons to believe that, when he does get his chance, the fans of Selecao will quickly learn to embrace him. Let's face it, Murillo Santiago Costa dos Santos is not your ordinary centre-back. Players in that position are not usually described in match reports as 'thrilling' or 'audacious'. As a fan, you would not ordinarily want the ball at the centre-back's feet. With Murillo, however, there is always that surge of excitement that something brilliant and unorthodox might happen. He might go on a run. He might see a pass that nobody else has seen, then play it with laser precision. He might, if the mood takes him, charm down the birds from the eaves of the stadium. More than anything, the 22-year-old from Sao Paulo — the state with Pele, Kaka, Neymar, Cafu, Roberto Carlos and many others on its production line — seems absolutely committed to the popular theory that the people of his country have a responsibility to produce some of the most uplifting passages of play ever seen on a football field. James Lawton, the distinguished sports writer, once observed that Brazil's record haul of five World Cups was 'no more than the most basic evidence that their game will always be, in its brilliance and willingness to take risks, quite separate from the aspirations of every rival'. And that, in a nutshell, is how Murillo plays: flicks and feints, beautifully skimmed passes, a level of skill way beyond what is usually expected for a player in his position and, at the heart of everything, the innate self-belief that will be essential if he is to become one of the sport's genuine A-listers. Advertisement 'My goal is to achieve something that nobody has ever done,' Murillo said recently on Sky Sports' The Big Interview. 'There is a quote that says, 'If someone does something, I'll do it too. And if nobody has, I'll be the first to do it'. I try to leave my mark wherever I go.' This includes his first few weeks in English football when, on only his second appearance for Forest, he swerved and slalomed through a maze of Crystal Palace players in an apparent attempt to join David Beckham, Tony Yeboah and Dalian Atkinson among the scorers of Selhurst Park's greatest-ever goals. 'It's John Barnes here, jinking through the middle,' was Alan Smith's verdict on co-commentary duties for Sky. 'This is a centre-half we're looking at — but he is Brazilian, isn't he?' "It's John Barnes here jinking through the middle!" A silky solo run from Murillo but just couldn't find the finish! 😲 Those surging runs have become a common sight for regular Forest-watchers as part of the showreel that earned Murillo the club's player-of-the-year award last season and makes him a realistic contender to do the same again this year. Perhaps you remember the game at Tottenham Hotspur when he found himself in the left-back position and, Murillo being Murillo, decided to try a shot from a distance — 72.6 yards — further out than any player has ever scored in the Premier League. His shot caught the Spurs goalkeeper, Guglielmo Vicario, off his line, only to drop a yard or so wide of the post. But so did Pele's attempt (from considerably closer) against Czechoslovakia in the 1970 World Cup and that never stopped people eulogising about it for the next half a century. Who dares take on that kind of shot? Or, rather, how many players in Murillo's position would ever have the wit and gumption to try to pull it off? Murillo was 🤏 this close 🤏 to scoring the longest Premier League goal ever recorded by an outfield player…His incredible attempt for @NFFC against Spurs was from 72.6 yards out! None of this would matter greatly if Murillo did not fully comprehend that the priority for a centre-back is to keep out the opposition. But here's the thing: he has also proven himself to be an elite performer on that front, too. He has it all: speed, balance, timing, anticipation and the crucial ability for any defender to read danger and know exactly what to do about it. Advertisement Yes, there are occasional moments when he commits himself too early to a tackle. He is decent in the air at 6ft (184cm), without being exceptional, and it helps immeasurably that he has the towering presence of Nikola Milenkovic, a 6ft 4in Serbia international, alongside him, with his buzz cut, bulging biceps and a look in his eyes that tells opponents: Do Not Disturb. For the most part, however, Murillo fully justifies the modern reincarnation of the 'You'll never beat Des Walker' song that used to be heard at Forest matches in the 1980s and 1990s whenever the England international accelerated through the gears to nip the ball off an opposition player. Murillo's name has been attached to that song since his first few months in Nottingham and one game in particular when West Ham United were the opposition at the City Ground. Michail Antonio broke away on the left wing with a clear, diagonal run towards goal. Antonio was quick, but Murillo was quicker. His speed of thought was rapid, too. And this kid, lest it be forgotten, was still a rookie, signed from Corinthians after only 27 games with the Brazilian club. Antonio had years of experience and know-how in his favour. But Murillo got back, held him up and then took the ball off his opponent with a standing tackle that was so clean, so exquisitely timed and perfect in every way, you half-expected Antonio to join in the applause himself. Since then, some of the finest strikers in the Premier League have encountered the same. It happened to Joao Pedro in a game against Brighton & Hove Albion, running clear only for Murillo to appear out of nowhere with a perfectly timed tackle. Or think back to the 1-1 draw against Liverpool in January when Luis Diaz ran free on a counter-attack and, again, Murillo popped up to save his team. At Forest, the crowd love him for his skill, his boyish grin, his inexplicable XXXXL shorts (nobody in professional football surely wears them bigger) and the precious magic that saw him, in a recent FA Cup tie against Ipswich Town, perform a swivelling, penalty-area dragback and, in turn, being hailed by ITV's Seb Hutchinson as 'the most watchable centre-half around'. Mostly, the crowd at Forest love him for the fact that, despite everything, he is still theirs. Chelsea have tried to sign him. Atletico Madrid were sniffing. All the big hitters have been looking and, in those circumstances, Forest fans know from bitter experience what usually happens: the player leaves for greater adventures elsewhere. Advertisement Now, though, Murillo is part of a team that have been enjoying the view from third place in the Premier League since December and, with nine games to go, remain on course to pull off one of the more remarkable Champions League qualifications. Murillo had been identified this time last year as the player who would most likely have to be sold for Forest to avoid another charge, and points deduction, for breaching Premier League spending rules. Instead, Forest navigated a way through the accounts by flogging Orel Mangala and Moussa Niakhate to Lyon for a combined £50million ($65m at current rates) and arranging an even more spectacular deal with Newcastle United that valued a third-choice goalkeeper, Odysseas Vlachodimos, at around £20million. Murillo remained in Nottingham, signed a new four-and-a-half-year contract in January and can probably feel a little aggrieved that he has not already become the first player in their 160-year history to play for Brazil. Murillo 🇧🇷🔥#ITVFootball | #EmiratesFACup Sometimes, in football, there is a tendency to over-romanticise Brazilian football as exotic and otherworldly and, as the author David Goldblatt wrote in Futebol Nation, the fact that 'very few Brazilian phrases have entered the global lingua franca like O Jojo Bonito' — 'the beautiful game'. It is not always like that. Brazilians can kick and clog and spite and swindle as well as any South American (or European) team. It is not all about free-flowing football, fancy tricks and dazzling footwork. 'There's no beautiful game any more,' Luiz Felipe Scolari said in 2001 as their national team manager. 'You are not going to see the Brazil of '58, '62 or '70.' Yet Murillo, born a year after Scolari uttered those words, remains defiantly committed to his understanding of the meaning of Brazilian football. He played futsal until the age of 16, honing his skills in small-sided matches. After watching one of his heroes, Ronaldo, score a wonder goal, he decided that Corinthians were the team for him (he had initially been a fan of Sao Paulo). When Murillo arrived in Nottingham in August 2023, the deal cost just over £10million and Forest's manager at the time, Steve Cooper, warned him it might take three months before he was ready to handle the physical demands of the Premier League. Murillo listened, took it in and nodded. Inside, though, he was boiling up. 'Three months?' he thought. 'No way I'm waiting three months.' He hired a personal trainer and was in the starting line-up within four weeks. From that day onwards, he has been an automatic starter. With Brazil, however, the centre-half positions are occupied by two more experienced players, both also from Sao Paulo. Marquinhos, of Paris Saint-Germain, fills one position and the other — the left-sided role that Murillo plays for Forest — is taken up by Arsenal's Gabriel, a very different type of player. Advertisement Their latest World Cup qualifier ended happily but it was only a deflected goal from Vinicius Junior, nine minutes into stoppage time, that spared the players an entirely different kind of crowd reaction inside Brasilia's Mane Garrincha stadium. This is not a vintage Brazil team, or even close. And Murillo? His time will come. He will just have to be patient — and so will all those people who see the fun he brings to a football field, his silky touches and his eye for the spectacular and would like to imagine that a player with these gifts could help Brazil rediscover some of the old joys.
USA Today
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Luke Combs shares why his form of OCD is a 'particularly wicked' mental health condition
Luke Combs shares why his form of OCD is a 'particularly wicked' mental health condition Show Caption Hide Caption Luke Combs wins Single of the Year at the 2023 CMA Awards Luke Combs wins Single of the Year at the 2023 CMA Awards Luke Combs said he recently experienced one of the most intense anxiety flare-ups in the past few years due to a rare mental illness. The 35-year-old country star has previously discussed his lifelong struggle with purely obsessional OCD, a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder that he called "particularly wicked." While many people associate OCD with a compulsive need to flicker lights, Combs said in a recent 60 Minutes interview that there's no outward manifestation or visible behavior but rather a debilitating anxiety. "The craziness of the particular disorder that I have, it's the way to get out of it," Combs told interviewer Adam Hegarty in the video posted last month. "Like, it doesn't matter what the thoughts even are. You giving any credence to what the thoughts are is irrelevant and only fuels you having more of them." The "When It Rains It Pours" singer said when experiencing a flare-up, he would fixate on a thought for 45 seconds of every minute for weeks. The fixations would s range from intrusively violent thoughts or ideas of religion to self-reflective questions like who is he as a person. But over time, Combs said he has learned how to better navigate his OCD by accepting the thoughts circling his mind. "It held me back so many times in my life where you're trying to accomplish something, you're doing really great, and then you have a flare-up, and it just like ruins your whole life for six months," he said. "When it happens now, I'm not afraid of it because I'm not like, 'What if I'm like this forever?' I know I'm not going to be like this forever now." What is OCD? Obsessive-compulsive disorder, more commonly known as OCD, is a mental health disorder that causes people to obsess over thoughts or fears that can be unwanted, intrusive, and irrational. The disorder causes people to engage in repetitive behaviors that are difficult to break and cause distress. Juanita Guerra, a New York clinical psychologist practicing meditation, previously told USA TODAY that the disorder can trap someone in "a vicious cycle of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors." "It's hard to describe the mindset that's going on in the OCD. So it's like, whenever you're having one of those situations come up, you truly – whatever it may be – you think the worst possible situation's going to come of it," Guerra said. "It could be the most unrealistic, crazy, unimaginable thing." When did Combs first experience OCD and anxiety? Combs first experienced anxiety from his OCD when he was in middle school, the North Carolina native said in a 2021 episode of AXS TV's "The Big Interview." "I know when you see people that have OCD you think of them like messing with the blinds or straightening the carpet," Combs said. "Essentially my version of fixing the blinds or straightening the carpet is kind of thoughts that I play over and over in my head." "For example ... it'll be something about my health," he said. "Like I'll be worried that I'm about to have a heart attack or a stroke and it becomes this very obsessive thing that you can never have an answer to. That's kind of the awful part of it. You have to teach yourself to be comfortable with the fact you'll never get an answer." Contributing: David Oliver and Gary Dinges, USA TODAY
