Author: rb809rb

‘Owning Manhattan’ Star Ryan Serhant Links With AI Startup HeyGen to Generate Social Media Avatar for Content (EXCLUSIVE)

Ryan Serhant, the star realtor captured in Netflix’s “Owning Manhattan,” claims his company produces about 2,200 social posts a month. It’s a hefty amount for a man who oversees a sprawling real estate empire across 19 U.S. regions, an in-house production studio that employs roughly 100 people and millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

Producing so much content, however, is a tough ask for someone trying to do their day job: managing a brokerage. Enter AI.

Serhant has partnered with HeyGen, a company that lets users create personalized AI avatars, to build a new social media presence featuring an AI persona modeled after his likeness. The avatar will appear across Instagram, TikTok and X under the handle @HeySerhant, an extension of his main presence that will share lessons learned from decades in real estate.

“I’ve accumulated years of lessons that I don’t always have time to turn into content,” he tells Variety. “I do my best, but I don’t always have time anymore. As I run the businesses and I still sell and we still do the TV shows, this gives us a way to make more of that accessible to the people that want to watch it.”

Serhant’s decision follows a wave of high-profile figures opting to license their images to AI companies, allowing for new forms of content featuring their likeness while potentially creating a new revenue stream for those who opt in. “The View” host Sunny Hostin licensed her image to the AI studio Fountain 0 to appear in movies based on her books, while Higgsfield paid a coterie of streaming and sports stars to use their likenesses in a recent AI-generated film.

The relationship with HeyGen came about “organically,” Serhant says, after witnessing the types of content the company was creating. His content arm — of the 100 people, roughly 30 are based with Serhant in New York — has tried to figure out ways to balance building content around the broker’s image as he’s traveling the country for showings.

“I get very, very interested in how we can add accelerant to what we do and how to scale the one asset that is really, really hard to scale, which is ourselves,” he says. “It’s an age-old problem: If you have a brand built around a face, if you have a brand built around a voice, how do you scale that?”

“With his HeyGen avatar, his audience can now hear from him every day without Ryan having to be on camera every day,” Andrew Mok, HeyGen’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “We believe in a future where everyone can scale their presence — sharing what they know and showing up wherever their audience is, without being limited by their own time.”

What the @HeySerhant account won’t produce is some of the personalized content Serhant is known for, including “day in the life of a CEO” videos and clips featuring his daughter Zena. “The connection to me and my brand and my life, and people along the ride on my journey — none of that changes,” he says. “This is in addition to, which is awesome and highly helpful.”

The account will produce at least one video a day for at least 12 months (though Serhant expects the arrangement to extend well beyond that), with Serhant and members of his team working on each one to make sure they accurately reflect his sentiments and image. Those videos will exclusively feature the avatar, though Serhant expects clips to pop up where his actual persona will engage with it.

“Ny wife always told me, ‘You just need to replicate yourself, you’re the only one who can understand what you say,” he jokes. “Well, look, guess what? Welcome to the future.”

October 8, 2026
Former executioner reveals harrowing reality behind what it was like to carry out firing squad execution

A man who was once tasked with taking the life of a death row inmate described it as just ‘another day at the office’.

The former executioner, who remained anonymous, was a part of the five-strong firing squad who put child killer John Albert Taylor to death three decades ago.

He revealed his motivations for volunteering for the macabre job, described what unfolded in the execution chamber and explained how he felt in the aftermath in a sobering interview.

Taylor, 36, faced the ultimate punishment in January 1996 after being found guilty of the rape and murder of 11-year-old Charla King in Utah.

He was given the death sentence for his horrific crime and spent seven years at Utah State Prison before facing his fate.

The 36-year-old child killer said he opted for the controversial method to ‘inconvenience’ the state of Utah (Utah State Department of Corrections)

The murderer penned a letter in 1992 explaining why he opted for the firing squad to end his life, according to Deseret News, while insisting he was innocent.

“To be strapped to a table and injected full of drugs leaves me with a feeling of helplessness; because I am innocent of the crime for which I was convicted of,” Taylor wrote.

“Anyway, if my execution is carried out, it will be a murder. Granted, it may be legally sanctioned, but, nonetheless, murder it will be, and the firing squad is my way of showing that point; and because of the cost and the inconvenience it will cause the state because they are not really prepared for an execution by firing squad.”

After eating pizza and sipping Coke with a relative, Taylor was taken into the execution chamber at the Utah prison, where five marksmen were waiting for him.

‘Anti-climatic’

His victim’s mother, Sherron King, sobbed and said of him being put to death: “It broke my heart to know that another human being had to die…I know what his mom’s going through.

“So many people had to die in this. But I know we can’t allow him to live; it just hurts so much.”

One of the men firing the fatal shots at Taylor had a lost less emotion about the execution – dubbing it ‘anti-climatic’ and ‘another day at the office’.

In an interview with CNN that took place 14 years after Taylor’s death, he dispelled some misconceptions around what facing the firing squad is like.

The unidentified executioner, who at the time was still a law enforcement officer in Utah, said that the process was quick, proficient and professional rather than the bloodbaths often depicted in movies.

One of Taylor’s executioners shared a matter-of-fact account of the process (Utah State Department of Corrections)

He showed CNN photos of Taylor’s autopsy, with one depicting how the murderer’s heart had been obliterated into three pieces, but barely flinched at the graphic photograph.

“It was anti-climactic,” he said. “Another day at the office. I’ve shot squirrels I’ve felt worse about.”

The former executioner volunteered to participate in taking the death row inmate’s life and said of his motivation to do so: “How often does this come along? [Delivering] 100 percent justice.

“There’s just some people we need to kick off the planet.” He said he would not mind doing it again, either, adding: “I haven’t lost three seconds of sleep over it. It’s true justice.”

The man explained he psyched himself up for the job by reciting the words ‘don’t f**k this up’ to himself.

What the rest of the firing squad said

Along with four other gunmen, he was given a month to prepare for Taylor’s execution. The firing squad practiced their shooting skills in the execution chamber.

One of the guns was loaded with ‘ineffective’ rounds rather than live ones, although as this produced the same recoil, no one was aware of who had the dud gun.

The fivesome fired simultaneously, with the ex-executioner explaining that Utah officials ‘don’t want to hear five shots’, but instead one in unison.

One of his colleagues who also took part in Taylor’s execution told the Salt Lake Tribune it was, in their eyes, an ‘assignment’, adding: “Nothing more than getting an order to do something like kicking in a door to serve a warrant.”

Another described it as ‘returning a defective product to the manufacture’, although there was one who wasn’t as steely.

An executioners view through a canvas screen that shielded the firing squad during an execution in Utah in 1977

A third member of the firing squad admitted that he had ‘issues about shooting a guy strapped in a seat’, who was ‘helpless’.

“But the state had ordered us to do this and we had a job to do,” he added. “I don’t regret doing it, but I would never do it again.”

Death by firing squad is still an execution method that is on the table in five US states – South Carolina, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that President Donald Trump has approved the execution of former US Army major Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad.

It will mark the first military execution since April 1961. Hasan killed 13 soldiers and left another 30 injured after opening fire at the Texas military base, Fort Hood, in November 2009.

October 8, 2026
NEAR Protocol Hits Top 20 on First-Ever Post-Quantum Asset Launch

The connecting link was the $NEAR Intents architecture: the Confidential Intents feature enabled direct and confidential swaps of QTC for more than 180 assets across 30 different blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, in a single click directly from wallets, bypassing vulnerable traditional bridges.

$NEAR token rose for two straight months while everyone was watching Bitcoin

This historic launch capped a broad-based $NEAR uptrend that had been developing over the past two months. According to weekly TradingView charts, the asset had been steadily breaking out of a prolonged accumulation phase around $1.50–$1.80 since late August.

Weekly price chart showing $NEAR Protocol’s breakout and entry into the top 20 cryptocurrencies, Source: TradingView

Beyond the quantum catalyst, the long-term rally was driven by a combination of fundamental factors: integration with Robinhood Crypto Chain, which simplified operations with the USDG stablecoin and Ethereum, as well as capital inflows from institutional funds, including Digital Commodities, diversifying their portfolios toward AI infrastructure and Chain Abstraction technologies.

For $NEAR Protocol itself, which already supports quantum-safe account signatures on mainnet and plans to upgrade its consensus by the end of 2027, the QTC integration became a practical demonstration of the network’s readiness for the next generation of technology, cementing the project’s position in the top tier of the crypto market.

October 8, 2026
Anthropic Launches Haiku 5.5: Its Cheapest and Fastest Claude Model Yet
In brief

Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100,000 tokens, down from $1 and $5 for Haiku 4.5.

Haiku 5.5 scored 72.4% on the OSWorld 2.1 offline subset and 39.2% on Terminal-Bench 4.0, ahead of OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna on both but well behind Sonnet 5.5’s 70.6% on the coding test.

Anthropic also halved Sonnet 5.5’s cache-read price to $0.10 per million tokens and is adding monthly API credits for Max and Team subscribers this week.
Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 on Wednesday, calling it the cheapest, fastest and most capable small model it has made. It targets high-volume chores such as summarizing documents and querying databases, plus speed-sensitive jobs like live customer support and operating a web browser for the user.

Developers who plug Claude into their own products pay $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100,000 tokens. Tokens are the small chunks of text, roughly three-quarters of a word, that AI models read and write—and they’re what big AI companies bill by. That matches the rate OpenAI set for GPT-6 Luna, its rival small model, when it launched on September 22.

Myriad: How high will Nvidia go? Click to make your prediction.

Haiku 4.5 charged $1 and $5, so the new rate is 90% lower, while prompts above 100,000 tokens get a 50% cut. Since about 90% of requests to the old model fell under that line, and Haiku 5.5 splits text into slightly more tokens, Anthropic puts the average saving near 75%.

Customer-support chats and long-email summaries are the jobs Anthropic built Haiku for. So essentially repetitive, easy, non creative tasks are the best fit for this model.

That said, benchmarks show this is not a dumb model by any means. For example, on OSWorld 2.1, a test of whether an AI can operate a real computer through long, multi-step tasks, scored as a partial-credit percentage, Haiku 5.5 beats OpenAI’s GPT Luna scoring 72.4% success rate vs 48.9%.

Terminal-Bench 4.0 hands AI agents professional tasks to finish by typing commands on their own, and scores the share completed correctly on the first attempt. Haiku 5.5 landed at 39.2%, against 16.4% for OpenAI’s Luna and 0% for Haiku 4.5

For comparison, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 5.5 scored 70.6%.

We tried the model on a simple logic question and it was extremely fast to respond, almost instantly. It also gave the wrong answer, which is not what you want from a model, so be careful about blindly trusting it.

On GDPval-AA v2.1, which rates models on real professional work across 44 occupations using an Elo scale, the head-to-head rating system borrowed from chess, Haiku 5.5 scored 1620. Luna got 1437 and Haiku 4.5 got 735.

This is also the first Haiku model with an adjustable effort setting, a dial that lets users trade cost for smarter answers. Anthropic also halved Sonnet 5.5’s cache-read price to $0.10 per million tokens, the discounted rate for text a model has already processed.

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Haiku 5.5 comes 15 days after Opus 5.5 on September 22 and nine days after Sonnet 5.5 on September 28, the last of the three Claude 5.5 models Anthropic had promised. Opus 5.5 was the first release since CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging the industry to slow gains in AI capabilities.

Haiku 5.5 is available now on the Claude website, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure under the name claude-haiku-5-5. Anthropic is also rolling out monthly API credits this week: $100 for subscribers on the Max 5x plan, $200 for Max 20x, and up to $500, pooled across users, for Team plans.

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October 8, 2026
Bitcoin and ether holders urged to enter ‘bunker mode’ against possible AI attacks

That would theoretically put a large share of crypto within reach. Millions of bitcoin sit in addresses whose public keys are already visible onchain, as CoinDesk has previously reported. On Ethereum, any account that has ever sent a transaction has revealed its key, and the stablecoins and tokenized funds issued on the network are controlled through that signature system as well.

No practical attack on bitcoin or Ethereum’s wallet keys has been demonstrated, and none appeared in the research reviewed by CoinDesk.

AI already a crypto threat

The warning followed OpenAI’s release on Tuesday of 722 mathematical manuscripts produced by an unreleased model tested on approximately 4,000 research problems. Some findings have computer-checkable proofs, while others remain unverified and could contain errors, the company said.

The manuscripts came from the model OpenAI said last month had solved the Navier–Stokes problem, one of seven Millennium Prize challenges in mathematics. Each result used, on average, computing power equal to roughly three hours of ChatGPT Pro reasoning, the company said.

Within a day, an outside researcher reran the computer check on one result, a new limit on how fast computers can multiply large grids of numbers, a question mathematicians have worked on since 1969, and found it held.

October 8, 2026
Xbox Sets New Division for Film and TV, Consumer Products and Experiences Led by ‘Minecraft’ Studio Chief Kayleen Walters
Xbox is launching a new division that will house its film and television, consumer products, strategic partnerships and live experiences businesses.

Named XP (a play on “experience points” in gamer lingo), the entertainment division will be led by Kayleen Walters, the current president of Xbox’s “Minecraft” studio Mojang and executive producer of “A Minecraft Movie,” who will now shift into the role of president of XP.

Per Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, at XP, Walters will lead a team focused on building out entertainment and experiences based on Xbox’s video game franchises, including “Minecraft,” “Call of Duty,” “Fallout,” “Warcraft,” “Gears of War,” “Candy Crush,” “Diablo,” “Forza,” “The Elder Scrolls” and “Halo.”

According to Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball, the new vision “brings together capabilities that have existed across various teams at Xbox for years and aligns them behind a shared mission: helping our franchises reach more people, create deeper connections with players and new fans, and unlock new opportunities for these fandoms to grow around the world.”

As outlined by Ball in a memo to staff Thursday, XP’s four investment areas include:
XBOX PICTURES: Bringing our worlds and characters to new audiences through film, television, and other forms of linear storytelling.

XBOX PRODUCTS: Creating products that are authentic to the fandom that allow fans to celebrate and express the franchises they love.

XBOX PLACES: Bringing communities together through live events, immersive experiences, attractions, broadcasts, and destinations.

XBOX PARTNERSHIPS: Working with creators, brands, and communities to develop new experiences, sponsorships, and brand partnerships.
“XP was created from a simple but powerful belief: the world’s most beloved gaming franchises have an opportunity to reach people far beyond the boundaries of the game itself. Fans don’t just play our franchises,” Walters said in a memo Thursday. “They watch them, wear them, attend them, celebrate them, and connect with them in countless ways. XP brings together the teams responsible for helping Xbox franchises show up in the world in bigger, more meaningful ways.”

A 13 year veteran of Lucasfilm, Walters helped grow and relaunch one of the most influential franchises in history. During her time at Mojang, “Minecraft” has grown from 350 million units sold to over 425 million and Warner Bros.’ “A Minecraft Movie” had the biggest opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation and hit No. 1 at the domestic box offices. On the heels of that success, Walters’ team at Mojang secured a deal for the first of several planned Minecraft theme parks.

As Walters moves into her new role as president of Xbox’s XP division, Sharma has named Meta alum Maria Angelidou-Smith as Walters successor as CEO of “Minecraft” studio Mojang. Angelidou-Smith most recently served as chief product officer at Reddit.

“Minecraft is one of the largest communities in entertainment,” Sharma said. “Hundreds of millions of people play, build, create, teach, watch, mod, run servers, and build businesses around ‘Minecraft.’ The community doesn’t just consume the product. It helps shape what the product becomes. That was central to our search. Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply. We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization come together.”

Along with Xbox’s TV and film adaptations like “A Minecraft Movie” and Amazon’s “Fallout” TV series, and upcoming projects including the “Diablo” animated series, the “Call of Duty” movie in the works at Paramount, and the film and TV rights for Hideo Kojima’s next game, “Physint,” Sharma says Xbox is focused on expanding its entertainment business beyond the capabilities of a traditional Hollywood studio into off-screen entertainment.

Xbox recently hosted an expanded version of BlizzCon (a longtime Blizzard Entertainment fan convention), marking the return of that event after three years off, and launched a WWE takeover themed around new game “Gears of War: E-Day.”

See below for Sharma’s full memo announcing the XP division to Xbox staff, which was published on the Xbox Wire Thursday.

Team,

At Town Hall on Tuesday, I talked about the four Cs and the choices we are making to put them into practice. You’ve seen a lot of our work on Core and Content. Today I want to share two leadership appointments supporting Creator and Connection. Kayleen Walters will transition from her role as President of Mojang to President of XP, a new XBOX division focused on how people experience our franchises beyond the games themselves, and Maria Angelidou-Smith will join XBOX as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft.

Kayleen has spent her career building entertainment franchises. Before XBOX, she spent 13 years at Lucasfilm helping guide Star Wars across films, products, and partnerships. At Minecraft, she helped grow consumer products into a multibillion-dollar business with more than 250 licensees and was Executive Producer of A Minecraft Movie, the biggest film in the U.S. last year and a top-five release worldwide. She is also a producer of the sequel.

XP is a play on “Experience Points” and formalizes four investment areas for us: XBOX PICTURES for film and television adaptations; XBOX PRODUCTS for licensing and merchandise; XBOX PARTNERSHIPS for sponsors and brand partners; and XBOX PLACES for our marquee broadcast and in-person events, theme parks, and other location-based experiences. Our franchises can mean more to people than the time they spend playing them, and Kayleen knows how to build those experiences with the industry without losing what made people care about the franchise in the first place.

Kayleen’s move also gave us time to think carefully about what Mojang needs in its next leader.

Minecraft is one of the largest communities in entertainment. Hundreds of millions of people play, build, create, teach, watch, mod, run servers, and build businesses around Minecraft. The community doesn’t just consume the product. It helps shape what the product becomes. That was central to our search. Mojang already has an exceptional game development team that knows Minecraft and its players deeply. We wanted someone who has built products for communities at enormous scale, who is deeply technical, and who understands how creators, product, technology and monetization come together.

Maria brings a rare combination of those experiences. She spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups used by more than 1.8 billion people each month, as well as Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization. She later led product and technology at Personio and served as Chief Product Officer at Reddit, another of the world’s largest community platforms. She has built products used by billions of people and led product and engineering organizations through significant growth and change.

She will bring that experience to Mojang while learning from the people who know Minecraft best. Her first order of business is for her to learn from the teams and communities that make Minecraft so special.

I’ll be in Stockholm next week to spend time with the team and talk through the transition in person. Maria starts Monday, October 19, at the Bear Creek office.

Please join me in congratulating Kayleen and welcoming Maria to XBOX!

Asha
October 8, 2026
Bitcoin mined for pennies in 2010 moves after 16 years, now worth $8.5 million

There is precedent for much larger holdings reaching the market. Galaxy confirmed in July 2025 that it sold more than 80,000 $BTC for an early investor as part of an estate-planning strategy. Wednesday’s transfer is far smaller, and its records do not establish a sale.

100 bitcoin mined for pennies in 2010 moves after 16 years. (Shaurya Malwa/CoinDesk)

Old coins, active address

The alert prompted questions online because the address had spent other bitcoin between 2011 and 2018.

Bitcoin records incoming payments separately, allowing a wallet to spend one payment while leaving another untouched. Those unspent payments are called UTXOs. An address can therefore remain active while some of its coins sit still for years, as happened here.

The address spent 200 $BTC across two transactions in August 2015, another 100 $BTC in December 2017 and 249 $BTC in March 2018. The separate 100.02 $BTC payment from July 2010 remained unspent throughout.

“This address has been somewhat active in the past, but these specific coins have not moved since 2010. We track the coins,” Galaxy Research said on X.

CoinDesk traced that payment directly to two mining rewards created in July 2010, one worth 50 $BTC and the other 50.02 $BTC, including fees. Miners, the computers competing to add transactions to Bitcoin, received 50 newly created coins per block at the time.

October 8, 2026
What Does Amazon Know About You? How to Check Your Own Account

Amazon data can tell a lot about you, especially if you regularly use its shopping, streaming, or other services. Launched back in May, the About You page details what Amazon thinks it has learned about you through your habits, and a recent viral post showed some odd assumptions.

In a post on Threads, Amazon user Megan Montgomery found the section in the app said they had “flat buttocks,” along with other, more typical shopping habits. Montgomery isn’t sure where the detail came from, but another user suggested it may have been ripped from a product review posted on Amazon.

The original post went viral, with many other users beginning to dig into what Amazon thinks about them.

The section often shows knowledge such as which devices you own, where you live, how many people are in your home, what pets you have, and what you buy regularly. The same user had a section that said they “prepared for a Bluey-themed 2nd birthday celebration.”

Other users posting to social media shared facts from their own profiles, such as “systematically expanding tool collection,” “prefers high-performance computer components,” and “reads fantasy romance novels extensively.”

What Does Amazon Know About You?

To check what Amazon has learned about you, you’ll need to have used its services regularly. One account that PCMag uses only intermittently for shopping returned zero results, as it hasn’t learned enough about the user.

Head to the desktop version of Amazon, click Account, and look for the section titled Ordering and shopping preferences > Your Shopping preferences. At the bottom of the page is a section called Manage your information that should list multiple entries.

Recommended by Our Editors

The mobile app makes it even easier to find: go to Account > Shopping preferences > About you, and you’ll find the full list there.

This data isn’t new for Amazon, but sharing it directly with buyers is a refreshing strategy for the online retailer. Amazon first launched the feature in May to help users edit their personal information and improve the retailer’s recommendations.

About Our Expert

October 8, 2026
Did Megan Rapinoe call for Jason Kelce’s firing?

Claim:

Retired professional U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe called for Super Bowl champion and ESPN analyst Jason Kelce’s firing after he said the Washington Commanders’ former team name on TV.

Rating:

A claim that retired professional U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe called for Super Bowl champion and ESPN analyst Jason Kelce’s firing began circulating online this week.

Snopes readers searched for references to Rapinoe and Kelce on this website, which led us to consult search engines DuckDuckGo and Google for basic details about why the two names were making the rounds together. We located a popular Facebook post (archived) that appeared on the Empire Sports Facebook page on Oct. 5, reading in part:

MEGAN RAPINOE: Calls for Jason Kelce to be FIRED..

Megan Rapinoe criticized Jason Kelce after he used Washington’s former team name during a live broadcast.

“I know Jason Kelce said that racist name on purpose to create division. He should be fired immediately.”

— Megan Rapinoe

The comments under Empire Sports’ post indicated some people believed Rapinoe truly called for Kelce’s firing.

Other users shared the rumor on Facebook (archived) and Threads (archived), though the original Empire Sports Facebook post earned far more likes, comments and shares than other examples.

In sum, while it’s true Kelce mentioned the old Washington Redskins’ team name during a TV broadcast, Rapinoe did not call for his firing.

The Empire Sports page displays a disclaimer acknowledging it publishes fabricated content of a parodical and satirical nature, reading, “Delivering the Finest of Sports Parodies / Satire / Updates / Insider News & much MORE.” In other words, Empire Sports does not publish authentic news reports.

The aforementioned searches of DuckDuckGo and Google located no news media outlets credibly reporting Rapinoe said any such things about Kelce. Rapinoe’s active Instagram page also did not feature any content about him.

Snopes emailed representatives for Rapinoe and Kelce to ask if either wished to address the popular made-up story. The Empire Sports page didn’t display a Messenger button or any other contact methods.

Purveyors of misinformation and fabricated stories — whether labeled as parody and satire or not — have long wielded Rapinoe’s name and image as politically-fueled engagement bait, whether for social media posts or website traffic, sometimes thinly disguised as satire. Part of the reason for the firestorm of controversy in this instance stems from U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about Rapinoe, and vice versa.

What Kelce said

On Oct. 4, Kelce served as an analyst during the ESPN-owned NFL Network TV broadcast of the Indianapolis Colts’ 30-13 victory over the Washington Commanders, which took place in London.

A video from that broadcast shows Kelce apologizing to the Washington Commanders after he used the team’s former name. In the clip, Kelce breaks down the Commanders’ defensive coverage, saying, “The Redskins right now are doing a great job of not only staying tight but making the play when the ball is in the receiver’s hand and keeping it short of the sticks.”

Announcer Dave Pasch laughs, telling Kelce he accidentally said Redskins, to which Kelce responds, “Oh my gosh! I almost made it out.” Pasch then says he, Kelce and former Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner, also working as an analyst, all had a “gentleman’s bet” regarding who would slip up first. Kelce replies, “Well, sorry Washington.”

Snopes has debunked similar pieces of media before, including past satire-labeled rumors suggesting Rapinoe was leaving the U.S. due to a “massive red wave,” going bankrupt and was banned from the Olympic sports.

Sources

@awfulannouncing. “Jason Kelce Slips up When Referring to the Washington Commanders.” X, 4 Oct. 2026, https://x.com/awfulannouncing/status/2106779876548288747.

ESPN News Services. “Regulators OK ESPN’s Deal for NFL Network, RedZone Rights from NFL.” ESPN, 31 Jan. 2026, https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/47793895/regulators-ok-espn-purchase-nfl-network-redzone-rights-nfl-equity-stake.

“Kurt Warner.” Pro Football Hall of Fame, https://www.profootballhof.com/players/kurt-warner.

Mangan, Dan. “Trump Says World Cup Soccer Star Megan Rapinoe ‘should Never Disrespect Our Country’ after She Scoffs at Idea of White House Visit.” CNBC, 26 June 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/trump-criticizes-world-cup-star-megan-rapinoe.html.

O’Kane, Caitlin. “Megan Rapinoe Says She’s Never Going to the White House — Unless She’s Inaugurated.” CBS News, 29 July 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/megan-rapinoe-says-shes-never-going-to-the-white-house-unless-shes-inaugurated/.

“Tea Time as Jonathan Taylor Runs for 2 TDs and Colts Beat Commanders 30-13 in London.” ESPN, The Associated Press, 4 Oct. 2026, https://www.espn.com/nfl/recap/_/gameId/401872965.

“U.S. Women’s National Team Legend Megan Rapinoe Announces Retirement From Professional Soccer At End Of 2023 NWSL Season | U.S. Soccer Official Website.” U.S. Soccer, 8 July 2023, https://ussoccer.com/stories/2023/07/us-womens-national-team-legend-megan-rapinoe-will-retire-at-end-of-2023-nwsl-season.

October 8, 2026
In New Book, Joe Biden’s National Security Aide Brett McGurk Describes Jeffrey Katzenberg & Steven Spielberg Advising POTUS On Major Gaza Speech

Brett McGurk‘s new book Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages offers an insider account of the diplomatic rollercoaster to secure a ceasefire and hostage release in the war in Gaza.

The book, published this week, also offers a glimpse at White House messaging about the conflict, including two figures the president turned to in delivering a key speech: Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.

McGurk, who served as deputy assistant for national security affairs to Biden, wrote of the scene as they prepared the president for his address on May 31, 2024. While Katzenberg and Spielberg’s role have been reported before, McGurk gave a first-hand account in the room, for a speech focused on a proposal to end the fighting and to secure a release of the hostages.

By that point, the Gaza conflict had created divisions within the Democratic coalition, protests at college campuses and presidential appearances and concerns over its impact on the November elections. There was pressure from the campaign for the president to make an address on the crisis, per McGurk.

McGurk wrote of the rehearsal, “In the Map Room, Biden peered at two screens behind me. ‘Jeffrey, Steven, welcome,’ he said. I turned around to see Jeffery Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg on Zoom. They greeted Biden warmly, Spielberg saying this was the speech they wanted to hear.

“It was a reminder that while I saw this speech as a policy address with a functional aim, it had a political purpose, too,” McGurk wrote.

He added, “The speech was timed for Friday night in Israel, when much of the country shuts down, allowing time for us to shape its reception there and around the world. Notably, we did not inform Netanyahu that we were making the speech until shortly before Biden delivered it, as we knew the address would lock Netanyahu into the terms of the deal now on the table.

“Biden said he was ready.

“Katzenberg advised, ‘Remember, slow Joe, let the audience hear every word.’

“Biden smiled, ‘Slow Joe? Don’t let Jill hear that.’

“He read through the draft, pausing at times to ask questions about the text, which we addressed with rewrites.”

McGurk wrote that he found Biden “fully engaged, leaning forward on the podium.”

He wrote, “The moguls told him he looked strong, and he did. There was no sign of the Biden we’d all see on a debate stage with Trump only four weeks later.”

The latter was a reference to Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump. What followed were weeks of calls on Biden to drop out, coming from some elected Democrats and prominent donors, until he exited the race on July 19. Katzenberg had played a prominent role as a top adviser to Biden’s re-election campaign.

While the Biden speech focused on a peace proposal, as it turned out, it would take until the next year, a week before Trump returned to office, for a ceasefire agreement to be reached.

October 8, 2026