age

“Just let me go tell her you’re here.”

Former Matinee idol Buddy Rogers bounded by the winding staircase to the third floor of his Beverly Hills mansion and called to his wife of 37 years: “Mary, darling. You have a visitor, pet.”

There were murmurs upstairs. Then Rogers walked slowly down the white steps to his visitor beneath the portrait of Mary Pickford in the spacious living room.

He shrugged and shook his head. “Mrs. Rogers would like to see you, darling, but she’s in the shower, dear.”

The scene is usually the same whenever anyone calls on the admired queen of the silent films. She is either sleeping or in the shower, always “unavailable.”

Classic stories from the Los Angeles Times’ 143-year archive

Hundreds have been party guests of Buddy Rogers at fabled Pickfair in the last decade, but none has ever seen Miss Pickford. Even her stepson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., doesn’t see her when he spends an occasional week in the guest cottage.

One of her last interviews was in 1965—to an English silent film historian who has tried many times to see or phone her. But she is unavailable.

Mary Pickford, who will be 80 in April, is upstairs in her bedroom in a self-imposed seclusion that has lasted nearly two decades.

She was the first real movie star, a pioneer of the movie colony, coming to Hollywood when it was no more than a country village. She was America’s Sweetheart of the early 20th century—famous for her golden Mary-Jane curls, dimpled chin and simple charm. They called her Goldilocks.

Rogers—tanned, athletic and manicured at 68—shook his head affectionately. “She just doesn’t go out. But she’s doing great, darling. I took her out for a drive last week, but she said it made her nervous and she wanted to go home.”

Pickfair, 1974, is a museum—once called the “White House of Hollywood”—where U.S. Presidents, foreign heads of state, financiers and famous authors paid court to Miss Pickford.

Contemporary accounts of those gleaming parties come so vividly to mind while in the mansion that one can almost hear music and laughter, faint and incessant, from the garden and the cars going up and down the heart-shaped drive.

In the old days, guests at Pickfair could ride horses through the mountains to the Pacific Ocean and pass only one house along the way.

But time and progress have taken their toll on Pickfair. Only five of the original 15 acres remain. Five $150,000 homes were built on what used to be her vegetable garden.

A china set that Napoleon gave Josephine in 1807 is locked inside a glass cabinet. The mansion property and artistic contents are valued at $2 million.

The big rooms and high hallways are full of Frederic Remington paintings, early 18th-century antiques from Europe, Chippendale chairs and mirrors and Victorian tables. A sterling silver urn, given to Miss Pickford by the queen of Siam, is also in a glass case.

Film awards—including the first Oscar for the best performance by an actress in sound—are scattered around.

In almost every room as portraits of Miss Pickford staring down from the walls—at stages of her life from 18 to 59.

Rogers points out every detail eagerly. “Look here, darling.”

He leads the visitor into the small “Rodin Room,” named after Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), father of modern sculpture. There are his rare sketches of nude dancing women, which Miss Pickford bought almost half a century ago.

Ultimately, Rogers confided, the visitor would get her audience with Miss Pickford after all —after a fashion.

He dialed his wife on a house phone on a small table.

Mary Pickford in lace gown, ca. 1930

(Bettmann / Bettmann Archive)

“Yes, darling, she’s here,” he said. “She’s a young one, dear.”

He handed over the phone. “Mrs. Rogers wants to talk to you, sweet. She’s so happy you’re hear, darling.”

Gusty Santa Ana winds slapped hard against Pickfair, howling loudly, rattling closed windows.

“Boy! If I were outside right now I’d feel like hen caught in a tornado,” Miss Pickford laughed. It was fresh and spontaneous laughter.

It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each syllable were an arrangement of notes that would never be played again. Her voice was sad and lovely and grandmotherly, but with bright things in it.

“I just hopped out of the tub,” Miss Pickford said. “I’d come down and chat with you but my hair isn’t fixed. I’m afraid I’d have to get all dressed up for you.”

She said she enjoys the privacy and rest long denied her after all the busy years in the public eye as one of the world’s wealthiest and most beautiful women.

“Yes, I miss my career, certainly,” Miss Pickford said. “But I feel I’ve earned this rest. I used to work from 6 in the morning until midnight—the actress by day, the producer by night! Ut was a struggle. I never had time to myself.

“This is the first time in my life without constantly being interrupted.”

She did not specify what has intruded on her solitude for the last decade or more, but said she now goes nowhere—not to movies, nor to shows, nor out to dinner, nor even shopping. “I’ve chosen this way of life for myself,” she said. “I like my privacy.”

She said she reads mysteries and newspapers, dictates, looks out of her bedroom windows at Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, listens to records and watches television.

“I’m reading all about the devil,” Miss Pickford confessed. “I think all this exorcism business is a hoax. Buddy says the movie is scary and I don’t like to be scared.”

Rogers sat slumped in a nearby armchair watching, amused.

Miss Pickford is aware she is different from other silent stars who have kept busy and still earn honors on stage and screen despite their ages.

(Lilliam Gish, a close friend of 75, often appears in comedies as a little old lady. Gloria Swanson, the same age, is on Broadway and TV. Marlene Dietrich still does her famous songs at nightclubs and theaters at 74.

(Mae West, 83, likes to stay public and recently judged a UCLA kissing contest. And Helen Hayes is starring in a new, prime-time TV series called Snoop Sisters. She’s 73).

It’s been so long since I met the public,” she said. “People are so nervous these days. I don’t think people would have the patience to listen to me…

“I played little girls, you know. Actresses can’t go on and on forever doing that type of role. I can’t imagine Jack Benny being 80, can you? And yet he’s kicking around all the time on TV. Women can’t get away with that like men can.

Pickford disappeared from public view for more than a decade not long after this photo was taken of her at her Pickfair Estate in 1963.

(Los Angeles Times)

“Although I often dream I am before the cameras again. The other night, I imagined myself in a long shot and wondered if I should not redo my hair for it…”

She paused, then said musingly, “I have several pretty house dresses. I could throw one on and come down and talk to you… but I’m too lazy.”

Damn…

Some who have not seen Miss Pickford for years guess that time has not been kind to her. But her business manager, Matty Kemp, 64, describes her as having the “beautiful skin of a baby.” She’s 5-foot-1 and very slim.

“She keeps her hair blonde and has that same winsome smile that everyone remembers,” Kemp said. “You can’t detect a wrinkle on her face.”

Two favorite friends of Miss Pickford are Miss Gish and Mildred Loew (producer Adolph Zukor’s daughter). They visit Miss Pickford once a year when they are in town.

Miss Pickford has not viewed her films for 25 years. They have been shown only twice in the United States since they were locked up in vaults at Bekins and Producers Film Center in Hollywood in 1933.

There they have sat, deteriorating with time. Miss Pickford wanted it that way. She is one of the few stars who owns and controls her films.

Just recently she was persuaded not to order her films burned at her death. She had not wanted to be compared with today’s actresses.

“I always thought of myself as an entertainer for my own generation,” she explained. “That was all that counted. It was Lillian Gish who convinced me that the films belong to the public and that I had no right to destroy them.”

So the Mary Pickford Foundation, run by Kemp, has spent about $260,000 to preserve and restore the films. (Some foreign countries have copies of her movies and show them at special screenings).

Some will be shown this month at film festivals honoring Miss Pickford throughout Europe. Her managers want to test the reaction of other countries before they consider showing them in the United States.

She wants to attend the Paris tribute.

“I’m longing to see Paris again. I got my warmest reception there long ago. I wonder if their reactions to me would be the same. Did you know that I can speak straight French for a half an hour?”

If she goes, it will be her first public appearance since 1965, when she visited Europe.

In the early 1970s, England and France had film tributes for Miss Pickford. There were parades in London and Paris and thousands of people lined the streets to get a glimpse of her. They shouted for her autograph and locks of her hair.

But Miss Pickford was not there. At the last minute, she stayed at Pickfair. Rogers went alone and waved to the crowds for her.

She still misses producer D.W. Griffith.

“No one came close to him,” she said. “He mastered the close-up, the fade-out. No one ever called him David because everyone had the greatest respect for him. He was always Mr. Griffith.”

Miss Pickford also spoke fo Douglas Fairbanks Sr., her second husband. They were considered the world’s most romantic couple.

In films, Fairbanks was the dashing hero who could dispose of 20 adversaries in a running fight. According to Miss Pickford, he was exuberant and often did handstands or leapt over sofas to amuse friends.

“Because he had never outgrown a small boy’s penchant for showing off, he was rarely referred to as Douglas or Mr. Fairbanks,” she said. “It was always Doug.”

She sighed and her voice became sad.

“I got word that my beloved cameraman Charles Rosher died in Portugal. He was a master, too.”

Another pause.

“He once said, ‘I’m not going to shoot this film because there’s a shadow on Miss Pickford’s face.’ I said, ‘Charlie, what does it matter?’ But he insisted. He was so loyal. I don’t know where to send word to his wife.”Miss Pickford said she was appalled by Watergate.

“I can’t see any individuals destroying this country,” she said, vehemently. “The United States is supposed to be the leader of the world and some punks are letting it go to the ashcan. We obviously need some housecleaning.”

(She was a big contributor to President Nixon’s reelection campaign, according to Kemp. During World War I, she also sold $48 million worth of Liberty Bonds for the United States.

(The government wanted her to make war propaganda films then, but she would make only humorous ones. One showed her riding a horse down San Fancisco’s Market St., her golden curls flying in the breeze, leading the 143rd Field Artillery shipward to France.)

Of today’s stars, Miss Pickford said she is most impressed with Katherine Hepburn and Liza Minelli.

But her favorite remains Shirley Temple. “Oh, she was the cutest baby,” she said. “She had more talent than anyone. Too bad she had to retire, but she left us with a lot of beautiful memories.”

She added that there were no actors she was particularly fond of. “Nope. None since Gable,” she said.

There was another deep sigh. Rogers seized on the silence to draw the conversation to a close. “She’s doing great, darling, but I don’t want to tire her out,” he said.

Miss Pickford’s voice started to trail away.

“It was nice talking to you,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you someday…”

At a major United Nations conference focused on international criminal law, world experts came together to raise a powerful warning: children are facing growing threats in the digital world. The 34th Session of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) brought attention to how modern technologies, while often beneficial, are also being used to harm and exploit the most vulnerable members of society—our children.

The International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES), an organization in special consultative status with the UN (EcoSoc) that works on international policy issues, shared its recent findings during the session. Their presentation focused on how online platforms, digital tools, and artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly being used by criminals to target and exploit minors around the world. The institute’s “Global Mini Study on Technology and Abuse,” postulated and supervised by its mission head, Prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic, highlighted how widespread and serious this issue has become.

According to IFIMES, digital child exploitation is not just a distant or rare problem. It is happening now, in real-time, on the same apps and platforms that children use for learning, playing, and socializing. From social media and messaging apps to online games and video platforms, digital spaces have become hunting grounds for people who wish to do harm.

Having all this in mind, the institute decided to conduct its own global, interdisciplinary, cross-sectional, and multi-spatial program on ‘Understanding AI and Robotics.’ With the consortium of its global partners and under the supervision of Philipe Reinisch, Dr. Ing. (SR4.0 CEO), IFIMES starts its first 8-week course on 22 May. 

A Worrying Trend

The Global Mini Study presented by IFIMES shows how technology is playing a double role in today’s world. On one hand, it unites both individuals and communities, supports education, and provides endless opportunities to learn. On the other hand, it can be used in harmful ways—especially when it comes to children and those most vulnerable.

The study compiled research from many parts of the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and diaspora communities. It found that criminals are using advanced digital tools to reach and recruit children. One of the most disturbing developments is the use of AI-generated images and videos, also known as “deepfakes.” These can make it look like a child is involved in something they were never a part of and have become a tactic to scare, control, and exploit children into doing things against their will.

Encrypted messaging apps and hidden online communities—sometimes called the “dark web”—are also being used to carry out these crimes in secret. This makes it harder for law enforcement and child protection agencies to track and stop the abuse.

Why It Matters:

During the UN session, IFIMES highlighted astonishing estimates that 55 million people are trafficked each year worldwide. While trafficking is not a new phenomenon, the internet has added new ways for it to expand and develop. While children from all backgrounds are at risk, those who are already vulnerable—such as kids who have been displaced by war, natural disasters, or poverty—face even greater danger. Without strong social supports, digital literacy, or parental guidance, they can become easy targets and increasingly vulnerable.

These crimes are not just happening in hidden corners of the internet. They are taking place in the everyday digital lives of millions of children, often without the knowledge of parents, teachers, or caregivers. Predators can strike through something as common as a chat message or a friend request.

Gaps in Protection

Although there are international agreements in place—such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—IFIMES argues that real-world protections still lack proper checks and balances. Many countries have signed important treaties that say they will protect children, but implementation often falls short.

Some countries have well-elaborated legislation and also its enforcement to keep minors safe online, but others lack the resources or political will to enforce these protections. In many cases, laws are outdated and don’t consider newer technologies like generative AI, encrypted messaging, or the borderless nature of these crimes. This leaves children exposed and governments playing catch-up.

Four Key Global Challenges

IFIMES identified four major trends that explain why digital child exploitation is such a growing problem:

1. Technology as a Double-Edged Sword: The same tools that help educate and connect children are also being used to harm them. Algorithms that keep people engaged can also expose them to traffickers looking to enact harm.
2. Legal and Policy Gaps: Despite efforts, many legal systems are not ready to handle the complexity of online crimes. International cooperation is limited, and the international community lacks proper checks and balances to monitor, evaluate, and protect children from exploitation online.
3. Vulnerable Children at Greater Risk: Children who are displaced by war or disasters often lack adult supervision or stable environments. Without access to safety nets or digital education, they become easy targets online.
4. Need for Global Partnerships: Governments cannot solve this issue alone. IFIMES stresses the need for collaboration among tech companies, schools, civil society, and international organizations to create safer online environments.

What Needs to Be Done

To respond to these challenges, IFIMES Director Prof. Zijad Becirovic is calling for stronger global cooperation and new ideas to better protect everyone (particularly minors) in the digital world. The organization recommends

• Clear Rules for Data Use: Children’s personal data must be handled carefully. Governments and companies should follow rules about how they collect and use this information.
• Holding Platforms Accountable: Social media and major tech companies should take responsibility for what happens on their platforms. There must be accountability for gaps in protection.
• AI That Respects Children’s Rights: As AI becomes more common, it’s important to set rules and regulations that protect children from misuse, such as fake images and online threats.
• Cross-Sector Collaboration: Solutions should involve everyone and be horizontal—from government agencies and police to tech developers, teachers, parents, and youth themselves. Long-lasting solutions will come from a global response.

A Call for Urgent Action

“This is a global emergency,” said Jenna Ellis, IFIMES Information Officer, speaking on behalf of the institute’s director, Prof. Zijad Becirovic. “We must take immediate steps to make the digital world safer for children. This means new laws, better education, stronger partnerships, and a shared sense of responsibility.”

The session at the UN ended with a clear message: online child exploitation is not just a legal issue; it’s a moral and generational issue, and it is everyone’s responsibility to find a solution. Children everywhere deserve to be safe—not just in their homes and schools in the digital spaces they use every day, and we must commit to monitoring, evaluation, and capacity building at all levels. The global response must be uniform and supported by all sectors and states—public, private, individual, or corporate. Collaboration is not an option when it comes to finding universal and lasting solutions.

IFIMES is committed to sharing its findings with countries and organizations around the world and is offering support to any group that wants to act. The institute hopes that this global effort will grow into a powerful movement that protects children and ensures that technology becomes a force for good—not harm—and is there to support all sectors and individuals involved in resolution along the way.

WASHINGTON — The revelation that former President Biden has advanced prostate cancer generated more questions than answers on Monday, prompting debate among experts in the oncology community over the likely progression of his disease and resurfacing concerns in Washington over his decision last year to run for reelection.

Biden’s private office said Sunday afternoon that he had been diagnosed earlier in the week with an “aggressive form” of the cancer that had already spread to his bones, after urinary symptoms led to the discovery of a nodule on his prostate.

But it was not made clear whether Biden, 82, had been testing his prostate-specific antigens, known as PSA levels, during his presidency — and if so whether those results had indicated an elevated risk of cancer while he was still in office or during his campaign for reelection.

Biden’s diagnosis comes at a difficult time for the former president, as scrutiny grows over his decision to run for a second term last year — and whether it cost the Democrats the White House. Biden ultimately dropped out of the race after a devastating debate performance with Donald Trump laid bare widespread concerns over his age and health, leaving his successor on the Democratic ticket — Vice President Kamala Harris — little time to run her own campaign.

A book set to publish this week titled “Original Sin,” by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, details efforts by Biden’s aides to shield the effects of his aging from the public and the press. The cancer diagnosis only intensified scrutiny over Biden’s health and questions as to whether he and his team were honest about it with the public.

“I think those conversations are going to happen,” said David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Obama.

President Trump, asked about Biden’s diagnosis during an Oval Office event Monday, said it was “a very, very sad situation” and that he felt “badly about it.”

But he also questioned why the cancer wasn’t caught earlier, and why the public wasn’t notified earlier, tying the situation to questions he has long raised about Biden’s mental fitness to serve as president.

PSA tests are not typically recommended for men over 70 due to the risk of false positive results or of associated treatments causing more harm than good to older patients, who are more likely to die of other causes first.

But annual physicals for sitting presidents — especially of Biden’s age — are more comprehensive than those for private citizens. And a failure to test for elevated PSA levels could have missed the progression of the disease.

A letter from Biden’s White House physician from February of last year made no mention of PSA testing, unlike the most recent letter detailing the results of Trump’s latest physical, which references a normal measurement. Biden’s current aides did not respond to requests for comment on whether his office would further detail his diagnostic testing history.

Even if his doctors had tested for PSA levels at the time, results may not have picked up an aggressive form of the cancer, experts said.

Some specialists in the field said it was possible, if rare, for Biden’s cancer to emerge and spread since his last physical in the White House. Roughly 10% of patients who are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer are found with an advanced form of the disease that has metastasized to other parts of the body.

Dr. Mark Litwin, the chair of UCLA Urology, said it is in the nature of aggressive prostate cancers to grow quickly. “So it is likely that this tumor began more recently,” he said.

Litwin said he does not doubt that Biden would have been screened for elevated PSA levels. But, he said, he could be among those patients whose cancers do not produce elevated PSA levels or whose more aggressive cancers rapidly grow and metastasize within a matter of months.

“The fact that he has metastatic disease at diagnosis, to me, as an expert in the area and as a clinician taking care of guys with prostate cancer all the time, just says that he is unfortunate,” Litwin said.

Litwin and other experts in prostate cancer from USC, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Cedars-Sinai and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute all told The Times that Biden’s diagnosis — at least based on publicly available information — was not incredibly unusual, and similar to diagnoses received by older American men all the time.

They said he and his doctors absolutely would have discussed testing his PSA levels, given his high level of care as president. But they also said it would have been well within medical best practices for him to decide with those doctors to stop getting tested given his age.

Dr. Howard Sandler, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai, said he sees three potential explanations for Biden’s diagnosis.

One is that Biden and his doctors made a decision “to not screen any longer, which would be well within the standard of care” given Biden’s age, he said.

A second is that Biden’s was tested, and his PSA level “was elevated, maybe not dramatically but a little bit elevated, but they said, ‘Well, we’re not gonna really investigate it,’” again because of Biden’s age, Sandler said.

The third, which Sandler said was “less likely,” is that Biden’s PSA was checked “and was fine, but he ended up with an aggressive prostate cancer that doesn’t produce much PSA” and so wasn’t captured.

Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist serving as vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and a former health policy official in the Biden administration, told MSNBC that Biden has likely had cancer for “more than several years.”

“He did not develop it in the last 100, 200 days. He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency, in 2021,” Emanuel said.

But Litwin, who said he is a friend of Emanuel’s, said most men in their 70s or 80s have some kind of prostate cancer, even if it is just “smoldering along” — there but not particularly aggressive or quickly spreading — and unlikely to be the cause of their death.

He said Biden may well have had some similar form of cancer in his prostate for a long time, but that he did not believe that the aggressive form that has metastasized would have been around for as long as Emanuel seemed to suggest.

Departing Rome aboard Air Force Two, Vice President JD Vance told reporters he was sending his best wishes to the former president, but expressed concern that his recent diagnosis underscored concerns over Biden’s condition that dogged his presidency.

“Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” Vance said. “I don’t think that he was in good enough health. In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him.”

Trump’s medical team has also faced questions of transparency.

When Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 during his first term, at the height of the pandemic, he was closer to death than his White House acknowledged at the time. And his doctors and aides regularly use superlatives to describe the health of the 78-year-old president, with Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, referring to him as “perfect” on Monday.

“Cancer touches us all,” Biden posted on social media alongside a photo with his wife, Jill Biden, in his first remarks on his diagnosis.

“Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” he added. “Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”

The NBA draft combine concludes this weekend, and the draft is next month. However, before I dive into what kind of player the Los Angeles Lakers should pursue, I need to remind you of three significant economic shifts.

The first began in 1994 when Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson asked the Milwaukee Bucks for a $100-million contract after the team made him the No. 1 pick. Robinson eventually signed a 10-year, $68-million contract (the richest ever for a rookie), but the following year the league said goodbye to open-ended contracts for rookies. Today rookie deals are four years max.

Next, in 2006, the NBA changed eligibility rules requiring players to be at least 19 or one year removed from high school before entering the draft. This was because of the glut of high school phenoms who turned into pro duds.

And finally, in July 2021, the NCAA’s “name, image, likeness” policy went into effect. That means any senior in this year’s draft is part of the first full class of ball players who could monetize their entire college playing career.

All of which affects the answer to the pressing question: What kind of player should the Lakers pursue in next month’s draft?

The kind who had access to excess on a college campus for four years and proved they can handle the temptations that money and fame can bring. The kind that already had opportunities to make emotional or childish mistakes on the court or perhaps in a social media post and learned from them. The kind of player who didn’t get a real senior year in high school but made the best out of the cards they were dealt. Resiliency isn’t something that can be measured at the combine, which is ironic because without it, all the measurable qualities add up to nothing.

The league’s economic shifts made a “high ceiling” — meaning a lot of potential, but not a proven track record — the most sought-after quality in the NBA draft. As a result, players who can legally drink fell out of favor with scouts.

Consider, Michael Jordan was drafted in 1984 at the age of 21. At the time he was a relative youngster: The average age in the draft was 22.3. Before the eligibility rule change, Kobe Bryant was drafted at 17, and the average age had dipped to 22. When Lebron James was 18 in 2003, the average was 21.5. Last year the average was down to 20.

How has this affected the college game? In 2012, Kentucky won the NCAA title with a roster that was about 19.7 years old. In 2021, Baylor University won with players who averaged 22.3 in age.

While the Lakers roster is in desperate need of a big man — something that was made painfully clear in this year’s first-round playoffs loss — they likely won’t find the next Shaq with their No. 55 pick. But they could find the next Austin Reaves, who went undrafted as a 23-year-old senior in 2021.

That’s not to say youth isn’t a good thing. Only that with the advancement of technology and nutrition, “youth” has been greatly extended for professional athletes. Players in their late 20s are likely to still be in their prime performance years, not aging out. And LeBron James and the NHL’s Alex Ovechkin aren’t the only 40-year-old world-class examples to point to. Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn came out of retirement last fall and at 40 placed second in an event in March. What was considered old for an athlete when Jordan was drafted is not applicable today.

My hope is the Lakers comb through the entire NCAA spectrum and draft a 24-year-old college graduate who has NIL money in the bank and a good head on his shoulders. Critics of NIL complain that the new system makes it hard to build a good college program because players are constantly chasing money and have no team loyalty. I say it’s better to learn the lessons that can come from that while on a college campus than in the higher-stakes world of pro sports.

Back in the day, talented but raw college players felt pressured to earn money and would enter the league too early. Sometimes it was to protect their prospects of being drafted based on potential, before they had enough of a record that they would be judged on their accomplishments instead. Now, in the era of NIL cash and transferring among colleges, a promising 18-year-old can make a case to finish his degree before trying to go pro — maturing as a player, a student and a businessman without giving up his dream of being in the NBA.

No doubt the Lakers need a big man.

If they hold on to the pick, they should be sure to draft a grown-up as well.

@LZGranderson

On a spring afternoon in 2005, the members of OK Go dressed up in tacky suits, gathered in front of a video camera and awkwardly danced their way into history.

The band’s DIY single-shot clip for its song “A Million Ways” — in which the brainy rock quartet moves through three and a half minutes of intricate choreography on the patio behind singer Damian Kulash’s Los Angeles home — became one of music’s first viral videos, racking up millions of downloads (remember those?) and helping to establish a new way for acts to connect with fans as the internet began to supplant MTV and Top 40 radio.

OK Go doubled down on the approach in 2006 with its video for “Here It Goes Again,” another bare-bones production that had the musicians dancing on eight synchronized treadmills, then went on to make increasingly elaborate clips featuring a Rube Goldberg machine, a zero-gravity plane flight and a pack of adorable dogs.

“As soon as the treadmill thing happened, it was like: Holy s—, we’re pop culture now,” Kulash said the other day of “Here It Goes Again,” which won a Grammy Award for best music video and has been viewed more than 67 million times on YouTube.

Twenty years after “A Million Ways,” the mechanics of cultural connection have transformed again thanks to social media and TikTok, where what you encounter as you scroll is guided by the invisible hand of data analysis.

Said OK Go bassist Tim Nordwind with grinning understatement: “The algorithm has become a bit more powerful.”

“Not a big fan of the algorithm as an arbiter of art,” Kulash added. “It’s sad to see optimization in a space that was once the Wild West.”

Yet OK Go is still at it: Last month the group released its latest one-shot video for the song “Love,” for which Kulash and his co-directors installed dozens of mirrors on powerful robotic arms inside an old Budapest train station to create a kind of kaleidoscopic obstacle course.

The band’s methods have grown more sophisticated since “A Million Ways,” and these days it seeks out corporate sponsors to help bring Kulash’s visions to life. But an adventuresome — and touchingly personal — spirit remains key to its work.

“What I love about the ‘Love’ video is the humans in the room,” Kulash said as he and Nordwind sat outside a Burbank rehearsal studio where OK Go was preparing for a tour scheduled to stop Friday and Saturday at L.A.’s Bellwether. (The group’s other members are guitarist Andy Ross and drummer Dan Konopka.) “The robots are only there,” the singer added, “to move the mirrors so that we can experience that magical thing — so simple and beautiful — of two mirrors making infinity.”

A wistful psych-pop jam inspired by Kulash’s becoming a father to twins — his wife, author and filmmaker Kristin Gore, is a daughter of former Vice President Al Gore — “Love” comes from OK Go’s new album, “And the Adjacent Possible,” its first LP since 2014. It’s a characteristically eclectic set that also includes a strutting funk-rock tune featuring Ben Harper, a glammy rave-up co-written by Shudder to Think’s Craig Wedren and a woozy existentialist’s ballad about discovering there’s no “no deus ex machina working away in the wings.” (That last one’s called “This Is How It Ends.”)

“We’re old people who listen to sad ballads,” said Kulash, who’ll turn 50 in October. “That’s what happens when you become an old person, right?”

Wedren, who’s known Kulash since the latter was a teenage Shudder to Think fan in their shared hometown of Washington, D.C., said that “part of the beauty of OK Go is that they’re so musically omnivorous — that all these things that wouldn’t seem to go together always end up sounding like OK Go.” In Wedren’s view, the band “doesn’t get enough credit for how exploratory they are as musicians — maybe because of the genius of the videos.”

If that’s the case, Kulash doesn’t seem especially to mind. He knew nearly two decades ago that the viral success of the treadmill video — which the band recreated onstage at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards between performances by Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé — threatened to make OK Go “a one-hit wonder whose one hit was an exercise equipment stunt,” as the singer put it. “Or it could be the opening to an opportunity to do more and weirder things.”

Among the weird things the group ended up doing: the 2014 clip for “I Won’t Let You Down,” in which the members ride around a parking lot in Japan on personal mobility devices under the eye of a camera on a drone.

“I remember hearing that Radiohead didn’t play ‘Creep’ for 10 or 15 years because they were too cool for that,” he said. “Had we taken the path of being too cool for treadmills and homemade videos, I can look back and say —”

“We’d have had a much quieter career,” Nordwind chimed in.

There’s a way of looking at OK Go’s emphasis on visuals that depicts the band as a harbinger of an era when “musician” is just another word for “content creator.”

“It’s weird to think about a life in the vertical as opposed to the horizontal,” Nordwind said with a laugh, referring to the respective orientations of videos on TikTok and YouTube.

“What’s difficult about social media is the question of volume — the volume and quality balance is off to me,” Kulash said.

Creators, he means, are expected to churn out content like little one-person factories.

“Day after day,” Nordwind said. “We like to take our time.”

“Also: When I fall in love with a song, I want to hear that song over and over again,” Kulash said. “I will listen to ‘Purple Rain’ until I die. Do people go back and search someone’s feed to replay the TikTok they first fell in love with?

“The relationship that I think people have to their favorite YouTube star or TikToker,” he added, “feels much more like a relationship to celebrity than it does a relationship to art.”

OK Go at its rehearsal studio in Burbank.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

For Kulash, who made his feature debut as a director (alongside his wife) with 2023’s “The Beanie Bubble,” the pursuit of art is bound up in ideas of effort and limitation, which is why AI doesn’t interest him as a filmmaking tool.

“When everything is possible, nothing is special,” he said. “The reason we shoot our videos in a single shot is not purely for the filmmaking heroics. It’s because that’s the only way to prove to people: This is real — we did the thing.”

OK Go’s dedication to costly and time-consuming practical effects has led to partnerships with a number of deep-pocketed brands, beginning with State Farm, which spent a reported $150,000 to finance the band’s 2010 “This Too Shall Pass” video with the Rube Goldberg machine. (Meta sponsored the “Love” video and in return got a prominent spot in the clip for its Ray-Ban smart glasses.)

Kulash said that kind of product placement was “scary as s—” back in the late 2000s, when the fear of being perceived as sellouts haunted every rock band.

“Now, of course, it’s like a badge of honor,” he added, among influencers eager to flaunt their corporate ties.

To explain his position on the matter, the singer — whose band walked away from its deal with Capitol Records in 2010 to start its own label, Paracadute — tried out an extended metaphor: “On the other side of the planet, tectonic plates are moving and the hot magma of corporate money is coming out of the ground. That’s why the MTV Awards exist, that’s why the Grammys exist, that’s why everything you think of as a celebration of high art exists. It’s all advertising dollars, every last bit of it. You’re protected by these continents of middle-people, which let you feel like you’re marking art. But if you can manage to be one of those microbes at the bottom of the sea that gets its energy directly from the thermal vents of the hot magma money, then you get to make something other people don’t.” He laughed.

“There’s no record label in the world that would ever be like, ‘Hey, why don’t you go to Budapest for three weeks and spend a ridiculous amount of money to make this music video at a time when there’s not even a music video channel anymore?’

“But brands know that’s worthwhile, and we know that’s worthwhile,” he said. “You just have to make sure you don’t get burned by the magma.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2025-26 revised budget proposal reneges on his signature policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low-income undocumented immigrants as costs exceed expectations and the state anticipates challenging economic times ahead.

Newsom’s office said the governor’s spending plan, which will be released late Wednesday morning, calls for requiring all undocumented adults to pay $100 monthly premiums to receive Medi-Cal coverage and for blocking all new adult applications to the program as of Jan. 1.

The cost share will reduce the financial burden on the state and could lower the total number of people enrolled in the healthcare program if some immigrants cannot afford the new premiums. Freezing enrollment may prevent the price tag of the program from continuing to balloon after more people signed up for coverage than the state anticipated.

The governor’s office said the changes will save a combined $5.4 billion through 2028-29, but did not detail the cost savings in the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1.

Newsom is expected Wednesday to project a deficit for California in the fiscal year ahead, which includes higher than expected Medi-Cal costs, and more significant shortfall estimates in the following years. In the current budget year, the governor and lawmakers approved a $2.8-billion appropriation and took out a separate $3.4-billion loan just to pay for extra expenses for Medi-Cal through June.

The rising costs have drawn criticism from Republicans and added pressure on Democrats to consider scaling back coverage for immigrants. A recent poll found strong support among California voters for offering free healthcare to undocumented children. Just over half of voters supported providing the healthcare to eligible immigrants 50 years old or above, and a plurality — 49% — favored providing the coverage to adults between the ages of 18 and 49.

Medi-Cal, the California offshoot of the federal Medicaid program, provides healthcare coverage to eligible low-income residents. After the Republican Congress this year passed a budget blueprint that includes billions of dollars in spending reductions, fears also persist that cuts to federal Medicaid funding may be looming.

California became the first state in the nation to offer healthcare to all income-eligible immigrants one year ago after the expansion was approved by Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature.

Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed a bill in 2015 that offered Medi-Cal coverage to all children younger than 19.

Newsom grew the Medi-Cal coverage pool to include all income-eligible immigrants in California under a multiyear expansion by age categories that began in 2020 and concluded in 2024.

California’s new budget shortfall comes in addition to $27.3 billion in financial remedies, including $16.1 billion in cuts and a $7.1-billion withdrawal from the state’s rainy day fund, that lawmakers and the governor already agreed to make in 2025-26.

The deficit marks the third year in a row that Newsom and lawmakers have been forced to reduce spending after dedicating more money to programs than the state has available to spend. Poor projections, the high price tag of Democratic policy promises and a reluctance to make long-term sweeping cuts have added to the deficit at a time when the governor regularly touts California’s place as the fourth-largest economy in the world.

On Tuesday afternoon, Newsom’s office said President Trump’s tariff policies have also hurt California’s financial standing and projected that the state will lose out on $16 billion in revenue from January 2025 through June 2026 because of the levies on imported goods and the effect of economic uncertainty on the stock market.

There’s a new interactive exhibit opening on Thursday at the California Science Center across the street from the Coliseum that will provide Disneyland-like sports entertainment for all ages, and it’s free.

Using censors, cameras and 21st century technology, “Game On!” takes up 17,000 square feet formally occupied by the Space Shuttle Endeavor exhibit. It allows visitors to learn about science, sports and movement. You get to actively participate by hitting a softball against pitcher Rachel Garcia, take batting practice instructions from Freddie Freeman and kick a soccer ball into a goal while learning from Alyssa and Gisele Thompson. All are mentors.

Yet there’s so much more. You get to try swimming strokes, skateboarding, snowboarding, cycling. There’s climbing, yoga, dancing and challenging your senses during an exhibit that tests your quickness trying to block a hockey puck. There’s a basketball exhibit where you shoot a ball toward the basket and learn if your form is good or not.

One of the murals at the new interactive sports exhibition at California Science Center.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

“There’s something for everybody,” said Renata Simril, president and CEO of the LA84 Foundation that helped provide funding along with the Dodgers Foundation and Walter Family Foundation.

She’s not embellishing. Parents, children, adults, teenagers — they’re all going to be smiling. Don’t be surprised if nearby USC students discover a new place to enjoy an hour break for fun and laughter from studying by walking over to the exhibition hall when it opens at 10 a.m.

The California Science Center new interactive sports exhibit — “Game On!” — opens on Thursday. It’s free.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

It’s supposed to be open through the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, but don’t be surprised if popularity creates momentum to keep it around longer.

“It’s really cool,” said Garcia, a former UCLA All-American softball pitcher who appears on a screen showing off her 60 mph pitch as a participant swings a real bat trying to hit an imaginary ball as a light trail moves down a rail toward the batter. “I think it’s phenomenal. It’s going to get a lot of kids engaged.”

Garcia even tried to hit against herself. “I missed the first time,” she said.

The batting cage where Freeman is providing hitting advice has a real soft ball and bat. It will be popular for all ages.

The rock climbing exhibit still has not been completed, but participants will wear a harness as they climb toward the ceiling.

While kids will be the most enthusiastic, a dinner recently held at the facility that had adults dressed in tuxedos and dresses resulted in them trying out the exhibits and acting like teenagers again.

Using science to teach lessons could provide inspiration for non-sports visitors. There’s sound effects throughout and most important, pushing a button doesn’t just mean you watch and listen. It means you get to participate, whether hitting a baseball or softball, trying to make a free throw, trying to swim or skateboard.

Don’t be surprised when word gets out how fun this exhibition creates. There will be lines. The only question will it be kids lining up or adults?

WASHINGTON — A small nodule was found in the prostate of former President Biden during a routine physical exam, a spokesperson said Tuesday.

A short statement said the finding “necessitated further evaluation,” but it was not clear whether that had already taken place or the outcome of the examination.

The detection of nodules in the prostate generally requires a further exam by a urologist to rule out prostate cancer. These kinds of abnormal growths can be caused by cancer or by less serious conditions, including inflammation or an enlarged prostate.

Biden is 82. His age and concerns about his health were cited by Democratic leaders who pressed him to abandon his reelection bid in 2024 following a disastrous debate performance last June.

But as recently as last week, Biden rejected concerns about his age, saying the broader party didn’t buy into that, and instead blaming the Democratic leadership and “significant contributors.”

President Trump repeatedly raised questions about Biden’s physical and mental capacity during the campaign.

In February 2023, Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer. And in November 2021, he had a polyp removed from his colon that was a benign, but potentially pre-cancerous lesion.