15 Magic Tricks You Didn’t Know You Could Do

From an actual copy of the Declaration of Independence to a brooch that once may have belonged to Russian royalty, these items might make you think twice about driving past a yard sale again. In this article, which was adapted from The List Show on YouTube, we explore 20 pretty amazing yard sale finds.

1. A Photo of Billy the Kid

A potentially valuable photo of Billy the Kid was once bought at a flea market for $10. In 2011, Frank Abrams of North Carolina picked up the picture, which featured five men in wild west gear, because he thought it looked interesting and odd. He hung it up in the spare bedroom he rented out on Airbnb. Later, while watching a documentary about the outlaw Billy the Kid, Abrams decided to take a second look at the men in his photograph. He identified one of them as a known associate, and later adversary, of Billy the Kid—and believed that another man in the photo was the Kid himself. While not everyone agrees that the photo is of the Kid, other pictures of the outlaw have been valued at millions of dollars. So Abrams decided to move his photo from the spare bedroom into a safety deposit box.

2. Unpublished Photos of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield

Keystone Features/Getty Images

In 1980, Anton Fury of New Jersey bought an envelope of photo negatives for $2 at a garage sale. When he took a closer look, he realized he'd bought around 30 unpublished photos of Marilyn Monroe as well as 70 of actress Jayne Mansfield. Not much has been heard about the photos since, so it's unclear if Fury cashed in on his find.

3. Photographs Supposedly by Ansel Adams

Rick Norsigian bought a couple boxes of glass negatives at a garage sale in Fresno, California, for $45. He stashed them under his pool table for a couple of years. When he finally pulled them out, he noticed a similarity between the snaps of Yosemite and San Francisco, California, and Ansel Adams's photographs. Norsigian gathered a team of experts, who declared the negatives to be the work of the famous photographer and worth $200 million. One expert, however, later changed his mind and said the photos were actually taken by lesser-known photographer named Earl Brooks.

The debate over who took the photos rages on, but at least one thing has been settled legally: Norsigian was allowed to sell the prints, but he had to give them a disclaimer, and was not allowed to use the Adams name.

4. A Supposedly Original Andy Warhol Sketch

Susan Greenwood, Liaison Agency/Getty Images

A man once claimed he bought an original Andy Warhol sketch at a garage sale in Las Vegas for $5. The piece depicted singer Rudy Vallee and it was thought that Warhol drew it when he was about 10 years old. The Royal West of England Academy in Bristol put it on display in 2012.

A Warhol piece like that would be worth millions—but art experts and Warhol's family aren't convinced that it's authentic. Warhol's brother noted, "It had no characteristics of his drawing style whatsoever and the signature was vastly unlike his real signature."

5. A Velvet Underground Demo

Andy Warhol managed The Velvet Underground in 1966 when they recorded a demo to send to labels. In the early 2000s, record collector Warren Hill came across one such demo at a Manhattan street sale and bought it for $0.75 cents. The record contains six tracks that eventually appeared on the album "The Velvet Underground and Nico," while three went unreleased. Hill sold the demo for about $25,000.

6. A Custom Bike Built for Tour de France winner Floyd Landis

Bryn Lennon//Getty Images Sport

In 2008, a custom bicycle built for Tour de France winner Floyd Landis—who was stripped of his title in 2007—was carried off a truck by wind. The bike was worth about $8000, unbeknownst to the person who found, then sold, it at his garage sale. They thought it looked like a bike with flat tires and broken pedals (which were actually just clip-in pedals). So Greg Estes was able to buy it for $5. He later discovered its worth and once even jokingly attempted to sell it for $6000 at his own yard sale. But the owners actually wanted the bike back, so he probably didn't get that much cash for it.

7. A table built by furniture maker John Seymour and Son

iStock.com/JannHuizenga

At some point in the 1960s, Claire Wiegand-Beckmann saw a moldy table at a garage sale that she thought would be perfect for her new house. The asking price was $30, but she only had $25 on her, and she got the table. Thirty years later she brought it on Antiques Roadshow, where it was identified as being one of six made by Boston furniture maker John Seymour and Son, whose pieces you can also see at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It would sell at auction for $541,500.

8. A Painting Called "Preparation to Escape to Egypt"

Photo courtesy of Ketterer Kunst GmbH & Co.

In 2007, a student bought a pullout couch for $215 at a flea market in Berlin. Inside it, there was an Italian painting from the early 17th century, titled "Preparation to Escape to Egypt." The artist couldn't be determined, but that didn't matter: The painting was auctioned off for $27,630.

9. A Painting by Francois Quesnel

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Similarly, a professor bought a 16th-century oil painting at a garage sale in Indiana in the late 1980s. It caught his eye because the subject looked like a character in a show he liked, which was the British sitcom Are You Being Served? He kept it in storage until 2011 when an appraiser estimated that it might be worth up to $6000. The appraiser believed it could be the work of Francois Quesnel, who worked for the de Medici family and has a portrait hanging in the Louvre.

10. A Portrait by Anthony Van Dyck

A Catholic priest once purchased a gold frame at an antique shop for £400 (about $498). But it was the portrait inside the frame that ended up being the true find. It was by Anthony Van Dyck, a famous 17th century painter who worked under King Charles I. According to experts, this particular painting was likely a sketch leading up to him creating his more famous work The Magistrates of Brussels, which was sadly destroyed by the French at the end of the 17th century.

11. The Art Boards For the First Avengers Comic Book

Marvel Studios

A family in Texas once unknowingly bought art boards for the first Avengers comic book because their 12-year-old daughter spotted them as something she'd like to color. They were worth about $48,000, but they had been reported missing, so the family returned them.

12. A Piece of Pottery From the Northern Song Dynasty

Photo courtesy of Sotheby's New York

In 2013, a bowl bought at a garage sale for $3 that had been sitting in a New York living room sold for $2.2 million at an auction. It turned out the family had bought an 11th century piece of pottery from the Northern Song Dynasty and plopped it on their mantle for a few years.

13. An Authentic Bronze Egyptian Cat Statue

Mohamed El-Shahed /AFP/Getty Images

A bronze Egyptian cat from around 700 to 500 BCE was picked up at a house clearance and eventually sold for £52,000 (about $64,676) in 2015. The owners of the bronze cat were on the cusp throwing the object away, but thankfully did not. Then an expert from the British Museum verified it as authentic.

14. A Brooch That May Have Belonged to Russian Royalty

Stephen Digges/Getty Images

In 2011, Thea Jourdan wrote an article about her yard sale find. She spent about £20 (about $25) on a brooch at an antique shop. Her daughter often wore it while playing dress up. But when Jourdan had her engagement ring looked at by a jeweler for insurance purposes, the jeweler noticed the brooch. It had potentially belonged to Russian royalty in the 19th century, and it sold for £32,450 ($40,360).

15. Vince Lombardi's Sweater

U.S. Military Academy/Getty Images Sport

Vince Lombardi is arguably football royalty: He won two Super Bowls coaching the Green Bay Packers. And while watching a documentary about Lombardi in 2014, Sean McEvoy of Tennessee noticed a sweater that looked familiar. He had bought Lombardi's sweater at Goodwill for $0.58 earlier in the year. It ended up selling for $43,020.

16. An Augusta National Green Jacket

Andrew Redington/Getty Images Sport

Another rare item of clothing in the world of sports is the Augusta National green jacket, which is given to the winner of the Masters Tournament in golf. Members of the Augusta National club get jackets too, but only the Masters Champion can wear their jacket outside the club, but only for one year. Then, in 1994, a golf fan found one at a thrift shop in Toronto that the club did verify was real. In 2017, it sold at an auction for about $139,000. No word on whether the buyer is allowed to wear it, though.

17. A Watch From the James Bond Film Thunderball

Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images News

In 2013, a watch from the James Bond movie Thunderball sold for £103,875 (about $129,197). It had been purchased for £25 (about $31) at a car boot sale, which is basically a British flea market involving car trunks. It was a one-of-a-kind piece, created for the film.

18. A 1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge Cartridge

Jjhendricks at English Wikipedia, Wikimedia//CC BY-SA 3.0

In 2006, Rob Walters went to a garage sale and bought a 1991 Nintendo Campus Challenge cartridge. This was a cartridge specifically created for Nintendo competitions, and it contained three games: Super Mario Bros. 3, PinBot, and Dr. Mario. It should have been destroyed in 1991 but for some reason, it wasn't. Walters eventually sold it for $14,000.

19. The Declaration of Independence

In 1989, a man bought a torn painting of a countryside for its frame at a flea market in Pennsylvania for $4. He discarded the picture and found a folded up Declaration of Independence—which was one of an estimated 200 original copies from 1776. Of those originals, only 26 remain. In 1991, the man sold his historic find for $2.42 million.

20. Another Copy of the Declaration of Independence

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 2007, a copy of the Declaration from the 1820s sold for almost half a million dollars after a man bought it at a Tennessee thrift shop for about $2.50. He'd happened upon one of the 200 copies commissioned by John Quincy Adams.

Mathematician John Horton Conway, a ‘magical genius’ known for inventing the ‘Game of Life,’ dies at age 82

John Horton Conway, a legendary mathematician who stood out for his love of games and for bringing mathematics to the masses, died on Saturday, April 11, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, from complications related to COVID-19. He was 82.

Known for his unbounded curiosity and enthusiasm for subjects far beyond mathematics, Conway was a beloved figure in the hallways of Princeton's mathematics building and at the Small World coffee shop on Nassau Street, where he engaged with students, faculty and mathematical hobbyists with equal interest.

Conway, who joined the faculty in 1987, was the John von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics and a professor of mathematics until 2013 when he transferred to emeritus status.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

"John Conway was an amazing mathematician, game wizard, polymath and storyteller who left an indelible mark on everyone he encountered — colleagues, students and beyond — inspiring the popular imagination just as he unraveled some of the deepest mathematical mysteries," said Igor Rodnianski, professor of mathematics and chair of the Department of Mathematics. "His childlike curiosity was perfectly complemented by his scientific originality and the depth of his thinking. It is a great loss for us and for the entire mathematical world."

Over his long career, Conway made significant contributions to mathematics in the fields of group theory, number theory, algebra, geometric topology, theoretical physics, combinatorial game theory and geometry.

"He was like a butterfly going from one thing to another, always with magical qualities to the results," said Simon Kochen, professor of mathematics, emeritus, a former chair of the department, and a close collaborator and friend.

Kochen went on to say that Conway was a "magical genius," defined as a person who is not merely smarter than most people but whose mind works in highly advanced and unfathomable ways. The term was coined by the late mathematician Mark Kac to describe the physicist Richard Feynman.

One of Conway's most well-known accomplishments was the Game of Life, which he conceived in the 1970s to describe how life can evolve from an initial state. The concept builds on ideas that trace back to John von Neumann, a pioneer of early computing, in the 1940s. Conway's game involves a two-dimensional grid in which each square cell interacts with its neighbors according to a set of rules. Over time, these simple interactions give rise to complexity.

The game was introduced in an October 1970 issue of Scientific American's mathematical games column, whose creator, the late Martin Gardner, was friends with Conway. Conway continued his interest in "recreational mathematics" by inventing numerous games and puzzles. At Princeton, he often carried in his pockets props such as ropes, pennies, cards, dice, models and sometimes a Slinky to intrigue and entertain students and others.

Manjul Bhargava, who was advised by Conway during his first year as a graduate student at Princeton and who is now Princeton's Brandon Fradd, Class of 1983, Professor of Mathematics, said that Conway's love for games and magic tricks as a way to teach mathematical concepts inspired Bhargava's own approach.

"I learned very quickly that playing games and working on mathematics were closely intertwined activities for him, if not actually the same activity," Bhargava said. "His attitude resonated with and affirmed my own thoughts about math as play, though he took this attitude far beyond what I ever expected from a Princeton math professor, and I loved it."

Conway's genius led to many discoveries and accomplishments far deeper and more fundamental than the Game of Life, according to Peter Doyle, a longtime friend and collaborator, and a professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College. "People invariably describe Conway as the inventor of the Game of Life," Doyle said. "That's like describing Bob Dylan as the author of 'Blowin' in the Wind.'''

The achievement for which Conway himself was most proud, according to Kochen, was his invention of a new system of numbers, the surreal numbers. This continuum of numbers includes not only real numbers such as integers, fractions and irrational numbers such as pi, but also the infinitesimal and infinite numbers.

Later, with Kochen, Conway developed and proved the Free Will Theorem in 2004 to explain principles of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that dictates the behaviors of atoms and other elementary particles. It states that if an experimenter can freely choose what to measure in a particular experiment, then elementary particles can also freely choose their spins in order to make the measurements consistent with physical law.

The Free Will Theorem gained attention for its implication that if humans have free will, then elementary particles — like atoms and electrons — also possess free will.

Conway's numerous honors include the London Mathematical Society's Berwick Prize and Pólya Prize, Northwestern University's Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, and the American Mathematical Society's Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition. Conway is a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Conway was born in Liverpool, England, on December 26, 1937. He received his B.A. from Cambridge University in 1959 and his Ph.D. from the same institution in 1964. He was a faculty member at Cambridge until he came to Princeton.

David Gabai, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of Mathematics and former chair of the department, remarked, "John Conway was a beloved faculty member of the department, always very friendly and ready to chat with anyone. People would come from far away to talk to him."

Conway's regular office was filled to overflowing with books and colorful toy models, built from paper and wood to illustrate mathematical concepts, so he typically could be found sitting in one of the small nooks across from the common room in Fine Hall, Gabai added. There, Conway would talk to students and colleagues, or be engrossed in writing at the adjacent blackboard or with a pen and pad of paper.

Peter Sarnak, Princeton's Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics, recalled those days.

"An extrovert by nature, John liked to be at the center of mathematical discussions and he enjoyed thinking and inventing on the spot," Sarnak said. "To this end he gave up his regular office in the Princeton mathematics department and moved into the big common room where he could always be found holding court on the latest (often his!) mathematical development or invention. On days of little mathematical news he would be challenging others to mathematical games or puzzles and now that I think of it, I can't recall any instance where he did not win.

"The mathematical world has lost a very special person but we are much richer for all that he gave us."

Conway made numerous advances in many areas of mathematics. In group theory, he worked on the classification of finite simple groups and discovered the Conway groups, and was the primary author of the ATLAS of Finite Groups in 1986. With Simon Norton at Cambridge in 1979, he conceived of the complex of conjectures named "Monstrous Moonshine." He also investigated lattices in higher dimensions, and with Neil Sloane at Bell Labs authored Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups in 1988.

In number theory, Conway proved as a graduate student the conjecture by Cambridge's Edward Waring that every integer could be written as the sum of 37 numbers, each raised to the fifth power. In 1993 at Princeton, he proved with former student William Schneeberger, that if an integral positive definite quadratic form with integer matrix represents all positive integers up to 15, then it represents all positive integers.

Working with quaternions, he invented the system of icosians in algebra. He was the author of several books and monographs, including "On Quaternions and Octonions" in 2003, with former student Derek Smith, now a professor at Lafayette College, "The Sensual (Quadratic) Form" in 1997 with former student Francis Fung, and "Regular Algebra and Finite Machines" in 1971.

In geometric topology, Conway made contributions to knot theory and a variant now called the Alexander-Conway polynomial. He further developed tangle theory and invented a system of notation for tabulating knots, now known as Conway notation, while extending the knot tables to 11 crossings.

"He was really without exaggeration a genius, absolutely" said Joseph Kohn, professor of mathematics, emeritus, and a former chair of the department. "He knew so many things and he was interested in all aspects of mathematics and science. He was an enthusiastic teacher; he liked to share his knowledge and discuss things. He was very playful, and always ready to have a game, many of which he invented himself."

Kohn related a time when Conway had committed to giving a large public lecture and on the way to the lecture, asked his companions what topic he should cover. Upon deciding on the topic in the car, Conway successfully gave the lecture without any additional preparation.

Conway combined playfulness with a mastery of esoteric information, several who knew him commented.

"Once he shook my hand and informed me that I was four handshakes away from Napoleon, the chain being me, John Conway, Bertrand Russell, Lord John Russell and Napoleon," Gabai said.

Conway's wife, Diana, first met Conway in 1996 in a coffee shop on Witherspoon Street in Princeton where they were both regular morning customers. The two discovered that they shared a love of games and became friends. At the time, Diana worked at the University bookstore and though not a mathematician, enjoyed math and later became an accountant. They married in 2001.

"John was the most fascinating human being I've ever met," said Diana Conway. "He was not only interested in math, he was interested in everything."

Diana Conway described John Conway's willingness to talk to anyone interested in mathematics, whether another university professor or a hobbyist with an interesting theory or discovery.

"There were always strange characters showing up at our house, joining us for dinner, or sitting with John out in the back garden," said Diana Conway. "He would get buckets and buckets of fan mail."

Conway's passion for teaching extended not just to University undergraduates but also to high school and middle school students at regional math camps held during summers at universities around the country. Diana and their young son Gareth would accompany him.

Conway is survived by Diana Conway and son Gareth. He is also survived by sons Alex and Oliver from his second marriage to wife Larissa; and daughters Susie, Rosie, Ellie and Annie from his first marriage to wife Eileen Howe. He is also survived by three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

View or share comments on a blog intended to honor Conway's life and legacy.

DSP Spreadsheet: FIR Filtering

There's an old saying: Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. I'm guilty of this in a big way — I was never much on classroom learning. But if I build something or write some code, I'm more likely to understand how it works and why.

Circuit simulation and software workbooks like Matlab and Jupyter are great for being able to build things without a lot of overhead. But these all have some learning curve and often use clever tricks, abstractions, or library calls to obscure what's really happening. Sometimes it is easier to build something in a spreadsheet. In fact, I often do little circuit design spreadsheets or even digital design because it forces me to create a mathematical model which, in turn, helps me understand what's really going on.

In this article I'm going to use Google Sheets — although you could do the same tricks in just about any spreadsheet — to generate some data and apply a finite impulse response (FIR) filter to it. Of course, if you had a spreadsheet of data from an instrument, this same technique would work, too.

This is the first of a series about developing intuition and understanding of signal processing using — mostly — spreadsheets. You probably won't get a lot of practical use out of this — although if you were logging data from a sensor into a spreadsheet and wanted to filter the readings, this might be your go-to technique. By necessity, we need to learn a bit about generating signals mathematically, but since that's fairly easy, I'm going to put off the details for a future installment. However, for just about any signal processing job we want to do we'll need filters. There are several kinds of filters we can have and this post is about the FIR filter.

About FIR

FIR stands for finite impulse response and it is a type of digital filter that might seem like magic. There are plenty of ways to explain it, but here's the thing: making one is dead simple. The idea is to take a bunch of weights, multiply your data by the weights, and then sum it up. The weights are known as taps and they are just numbers. The more taps you have, the better filter you can make.

As a stupid example, suppose you had data and you had 3 taps of values: 1.1, -0.035, 0.336. These values are stored in an array called TAPS and are used along with another array called DATA. To run the calculation you skip over the first two time points (this calculation must have three data points) and start calculating with the third value:

FILTERED[2]=DATA[2]*TAPS[0]+DATA[1]*TAPS[1]+DATA[0]*TAPS[2]

That's it. Instant filter. There are two things, though. One is, a real filter is going to have a lot more taps. That's easy enough. The other thing is where do we get the value of the taps?

Turns out that's an article all by itself. However, there's a simple practical answer: ask the computer to solve it for us. There are plenty of programs that can compute taps and at least one neat web site called t-filter.

The Easy Way to Compute Taps

Let's work out a silly example by hand. Open the t-filter web site and move to the bottom of the screen. The first thing to pick is the sampling frequency. Enter 2000 here. I'm going to keep the sampling rate low to make our spreadsheets more manageable.

You can add passbands or stopbands to the table at the bottom left, but instead, just pick "Low Pass" from the "predefined" dropdown. The page might ask your permission to continue. You'll wind up with a stock low pass filter that has unity gain at up to 400 Hz and allows 5dB of ripple. There's also a stopband of 500 Hz to 1000 Hz. Since the sample rate is 2 kHz, it doesn't make sense to go past half of that. The "desired #taps" box should already say "minimum" and that's almost always what you want unless you are trying to hit a lesser number of taps.

Change the 400 Hz "to" frequency to 100 Hz and press the big red button marked "DESIGN FILTER." You'll see seven numbers to the right along with a graph of the filter response. At the bottom, you'll see that it took 7 taps and the actual ripple figures achieved.

Note the area between 100 Hz and 500 Hz is the "transition band." The filter doesn't have to meet any goals in that area. The narrower that transition band is, the more taps you are going to need, in general. For example, if you set a passband of 0 to 100 Hz and a stopband from 110 Hz to 1000 Hz, you'll get 203 taps (and a long run time, too).

In addition to the taps, you can look at some example code for the filter implementation and the impulse response by using the tabs near the top.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Spreadsheet

If you click the "Source Code" tab on t-filter you get C code but that's not what we are looking for this time. However,  we can easily map the calculations in a spreadsheet. I cooked up a spreadsheet on Google Sheets. The sample rate is over in cell J1. The first three rows let you set up to three sine waves that will mix together. You can set the frequency in column B, the amplitude in column F and the phase in column H. If you don't want a particular frequency you can set its amplitude to zero.

In the spreadsheet, you'll find two graphs (you might need to scroll right if you're on a small monitor). The first chart shows the three signals — at least the first bits of them.

The second graph shows the sum of the three signals and the filtered output from column G. That data computes from the signal in column E and the taps in column F. You can copy and paste right from the t-filter site to column F. Using the INDIRECT function, the sheet is smart enough to compute the right value no matter how many taps you have. Here's how that works (this is a random row from column G):

=IF(ROW()<$J$3,"",SUMPRODUCT(INDIRECT($K$3),INDIRECT("E" & ((ROW()+1)-$J$2 & ":E" & ROW()))))

The cell $J$3 is the first row that can have a valid output, so if we are earlier than that, the answer is nothing. This lets us get enough history to do the entire computation with all the taps.

However, if this cell is a live one, we get the indirect reference in $K$3. This is a reference to the filter taps and changes dynamically depending on what you paste in. The formula for K3 is simple: ="F5:F" & (J2+4)

J2 is the tap count (using the COUNT function) and the four is just a fixed offset since F5 is the first tap. There are no dollar signs on J2 here because I assume you won't duplicate this formula, although they wouldn't hurt. In the earlier formula, though, we don't want the spreadsheet to adjust J2 relative to the new locations, so the dollar signs are needed there.

The same indirect trick computes the range in column E for the signal input. It starts at the oldest sample and runs to the current one, again using the length in J2. Once you have the two ranges set (the taps and the raw data) a simple call to SUMPRODUCT does all the math. That's it. It really is that easy. The only hard part was accommodating the varying number of taps.

I added a few tabs that have taps for different filters: high pass, low pass, and bandpass. With the default signals (400 Hz, 150 Hz, and 30 Hz) you should be able to filter each one out successfully.

Catching a Wave

The wave generation part of the spreadsheet relies on the well-known formula: y=A(t)*Sin(ωt+Φ) that will be the topic of the next post.

In this formula, y is the output, t is the time, A(t) is the amplitude at time t (a constant, in our case), ω is the frequency in radians/second (the frequency in Hz times 2*π), and Φ is the phase in radians.

If you ever wanted to see what aliasing does when you try to output a signal higher than twice the sampling rate, here's your chance. Try entering 2000 Hz in cell B1 and then change the phase to a few different values.

You would think you could export the spreadsheet to Excel, and you can — sort of. The graphs are a bit uglier, but even worse, the INDIRECT function chokes on column G in Excel 2007 and Excel Online. After a half hour, I figured out that sometimes (but only sometimes) using ROW() inside the INDIRECT call was causing a problem, but I finally gave up.

By the way, if you are more interested in why this kind of digital filtering works, you could do worse than to read this very intuitive paper from [Lavry Engineering]. If you prefer your filtering old school, check out our Don't Fear the Filter features, along with [Bil's] take on a universal analog filter.

Next spreadsheet up? Inside signal generation. Stay tuned.

The silliest string-theory alternative yet draws inspiration from video games

Noted physicist, computer scientist, and mathematician Stephen Wolfram recently stunned the science community at-large after announcing he’d pretty much figured out how the universe works.

Wolfram’s a household name in the science community. He’s responsible for Wolfram Alpha, the search engine that AskJeeves wished it was, and the creation of a math-based programming language called Wolfram Language used to power the popular Mathematica system and, now, the creation of the Wolfram Physics Project. His contributions go back to his formative years where, by age 14, he’d written three books on the subject of physics.

It’s important to understand that Wolfram’s considered a respected scientific mind because his new theory, which is represented as simply “A Class of Models with the Potential to Represent Fundamental Physics,” come straight out of left field with a pretty wacky approach.

Read: Our universe may be part of a giant quantum computer

Now, of course, “wacky” is a relevant term when it comes to physics. Wofram’s attempting to do what Einstein and Stephen Hawking have tried before him: create an explanation for the universe that makes sense. To this end, physicists and other scientists have come up with theories that range from multiple worlds (as in, more than one universe) to “we’re all living in a computer simulation” (which just begs the question, what’s the universe that the computer is in made of?). So calling a physics theory “wacky” implies an entirely different level of weirdness.

Let’s start at the beginning. According to a blog post from Wolfram, he had a sort-of “eureka” moment a few months back that gave him insight into the inner workings of the universe. The post begins with the ominous phrase “I never expected this.”

Then Wolfram’s fervor immediately paints the picture of a scientist in semi-“mad” mode:

It’s unexpected, surprisingâ€"and for me incredibly exciting. To be fair, at some level I’ve been working towards this for nearly 50 years. But it’s just in the last few months that it’s finally come together. And it’s much more wonderful, and beautiful, than I’d ever imagined.

In many ways it’s the ultimate question in natural science: How does our universe work? Is there a fundamental theory? An incredible amount has been figured out about physics over the past few hundred years. But even with everything that’s been doneâ€"and it’s very impressiveâ€"we still, after all this time, don’t have a truly fundamental theory of physics.

This all adds up. We do have quantum mechanics, but despite being a very, very successful theory it doesn’t quite explain everything. Then there’s string theory, which has taken a bit of a beating in recent years. So yeah, maybe we do need a new kind of physics.

What makes Wolfram‘s theory different is that, well, it’s not really a theory. It’s more like the frame-work of a theory. It seems like he’s just saying the universe is made of a 3D mesh with enough point-to-point lines added in to create a physical topography. In other words, it feels like Wolfram‘s proposing that the universe works exactly like a 3D computer model.

This seems like just the kind of thing someone who specializes in creating computer languages would say. Much like how Einstein and Hawking, scientists who specialized in nuclear and astrophysics, decided that gravity and black holes were the key to understanding the universe’s true nature.

Mathematicians tend to think the universe is made of math and physicists tend to think it’s made of tiny stuff that keeps getting tinier the closer you look.

Wolfram describes the basics of his new concept as thus:

In the early 1980s, when I started studying the computational universe of simple programs, I made what was for me a very surprising and important discovery: that even when the underlying rules for a system are extremely simple, the behavior of the system as a whole can be essentially arbitrarily rich and complex.

What he then proposes is that everything in the universe can be explained by imagining it all as a series of interconnected points. He explains the topography and physical structure of the universe as a series of unfolding events that follow precise mathematical rules. This seemingly allows Wolfram to explain the concept of “time,” which Einstein side-steps by combining it with space, as a sort of backdoor math modifier to rationalize expansion.

Per the blog post:

So what then is time? In effect it’s much as we experience it: the inexorable process of things happening and leading to other things. But in our models it’s something much more precise: it’s the progressive application of rules, that continually modify the abstract structure that defines the contents of the universe.

Wolfram‘s offering a set of math-based rules that he believes could eventually become the foundation for a unified theory of everything. But there’s a catch: he’s asking for the science community at large to help him prove it. Like many big theories â€" especially those that come along to challenge quantum mechanics or string-theory â€" this one has all the answers, but it hasn’t worked out which questions make them relevant quite yet.

Perhaps the biggest criticism of Wolfram‘s work is that it’s a bit dense. The technical explanation alone weighs in at over 400 pages. It’s going to take a few months for all of his ideas to see peer-review. That makes it a bit odd that he’s already publishing a book, running a project website, and soliciting partnerships to move the work forward. What’s the rush? The universe will still need explaining after everyone’s had a glance at the paper.

At the end of the day, one has to wonder how much chance a unified theory of the universe that cribs from both the arcade gaming era and Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis has against M-theory, relativity, or other long-standing remedies.

Still, a rising tide lifts all vessels and Wolfram‘s current passion is bound to yield some interesting mathematical results.

Are you a physicist or physics enthusiast? Let me know what you think about Wolfram‘s new project on Twitter @mrgreene1977.

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A Map of Human History, Hidden in DNA

QUANTA MAGAZINE: What got you thinking about genetic diversity as a computational problem?

JOHN NOVEMBRE: For me, the path starts pretty far back. In high school, I was a bit of a computer programming nerd. But in my classes, I was learning about the genetic code, which was completely mesmerizing. Then in college, I got a chance to do a summer research internship at Stanford, where I heard a talk by a student who had interned in Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s lab. What they do â€" what they’ve become famous for â€" is to look at variations in human genes, how they’re distributed across the globe, and what they can tell us about human history. That was fascinating to me.

I went back to my home campus, and I found a lab working on the population genetics of Quercus gambelii, the Gambel oak. I learned just how difficult a lot of the analysis tools were to use, and how much math and computation is involved in analyzing genetic data. All of a sudden I realized, “Wait a minute. Here’s this thing I really love â€" programming â€" so why don’t I combine these two passions?” My day-to-day activity became tinkering with computers, but my larger end is something that intellectually fascinates me, which is understanding genetic variation and how it changes through time.

Early in your career, you made waves by uncovering deficiencies in a common statistical tool known as principal component analysis (PCA). How did this discovery further your work in genetics?

What PCA does is, it takes an individual’s genetic data and boils it down to just a few numbers. In learning about how this method works â€" its strengths and its weaknesses â€" I understood that the patterns it produces could reflect spatial structure in population data.

I was hoping to get access to genetic data from a region of the world where there’s dense sampling, so that I could see what variation looks like at a continuous scale, where populations kind of blend into one another. And it turned out I was very lucky in that I got invited to join a collaboration with Carlos Bustamante, [then] at Cornell, to analyze one of the largest collections of [genomic data] being applied to human populations. The full data set was 3,192 European individuals. A large fraction of the sample had answered an ancestry questionnaire to say where their grandparents came from, and based on that, we saw we had samples from roughly 37 different origins across Europe.

So what did you learn?

When we applied PCA, right away we saw this major pattern: There was a striking resemblance between where individuals are located in genetic space and their geography â€" where their grandparents came from. That’s really remarkable given how closely related human individuals are. Most geneticists wouldn’t have thought you could tease apart very fine-scale structure within continental scales.

How fine-scale are we talking about?

Let’s say I took an individual and hid their geographic location and then tried to put them back on a map. How well could I do? When we did this, we could often get within a few hundred kilometers. Even when we looked at German-speaking Swiss versus French-speaking Swiss versus Italian-speaking Swiss, we could see shifts in the genetic distribution.

I’m surprised that my grandparents’ geographic coordinates could have such a notable effect on my genetics, given how often humans migrate. How do you explain this influence?

This is something I want to stress: The effect on your genetics is actually incredibly small. It’s just that we’re looking at so many locations in the genome that we can pick up very small effects. This is the magic of big data: Very subtle patterns become detectable. So it’s not that where your grandparents live has a huge impact on your genetics. It’s actually a very, very minor effect. But when you have hundreds of thousands of measurements, you can start to pick out that an individual seems to come from one location versus another.

What are your thoughts on the ethics of commercial ancestry tests?

I advise for Ancestry.com â€" their DNA branch â€" so I’m very sensitive to the challenges of communicating results. On the one hand, projects like our genetic map of Europe show the tremendous potential and power of these tools for learning about ancestry. But then there’s also the immense complexity of it: What does it really mean to talk about where an individual is from? We can talk about where our parents and our grandparents are from, or we can go very far back into the past when we all came from Africa. And we can have different ideas about origin, in terms of geographic location versus some kind of cultural or ethnic population.

I’d say we’re still in the early days of really nailing this problem of using genetic data from today to interpret the past. We’re still facing the complexity of real biological systems and populations, which resist some of our attempts to use very simple models of history.

In what ways has your work influenced how you think about race?

It’s very clear that genetics research has a difficult and dark history. But it’s been exciting to be part of a new generation doing this kind of work in a time when diversity is much more appreciated and understood and valued â€" and when we have the data to make it even more clear just how poorly conceived racial worldviews have been.

Are you thinking of a particular example?

A very powerful one for me was being part of some of the first teams to look at genome-wide data taken from multiple human populations. You can sort the genome by what regions vary the most across human populations and then ask, “OK, what genes are near those locations, and what do we know about them?”

If you do this exercise, you will see, at the very extreme top of the list, variants that are involved in skin pigmentation, in eye color, in hair color. So it’s an empirical fact that the things we use to see differences in each other are outliers in the human genome. Your average set of genes in the human genome is much more similar globally.

You analyzed the first whole-genome sequences of three gray wolf species and compared them to the genomes of three dog species. What did you discover?

That was a big surprise. We were thinking we might find that all three of the dog lineages are most closely related to one of the three wolf lineages. They might all be related to the Israeli wolf, for instance, because maybe dogs were domesticated in the Middle East. Or maybe there were two domestications of dogs, and the dingo would be related to the Chinese wolf while the basenji was related to the Croatian wolf.

But what we saw was that the three dogs were most closely related to each other but not embedded within the genealogy of the three wolves. Our hypothesis is that there was a wolf lineage that dogs were domesticated from that has since gone extinct. The story’s gotten incredibly complicated, and I think the final chapter’s not written yet.

Are you a dog person?

Not particularly, no. I would say my motivation was primarily to try to solve this larger challenge for the whole field, which is: How do we use DNA sequences today as a record of the past? You can swap out the species names for me, and it’s still interesting. It’s still a fun problem.

How has your approach to analyzing genetic data evolved over time?

There’s been increasing movement in my work toward data visualization. Your eye can actually process a large amount of information and interpret complex patterns. With the right visualization tools, you gain a more direct and intuitive understanding of the major features of the data and how they reflect biological processes.

Cocktails, Math & Machine Learning: The Fascinating Journey Of Kaggle Master Arthur Llau

For this week's ML practitioner's series, Analytics India Magazine got in touch with Arthur Llau. Arthur is a Kaggle master, who is currently ranked in the top 100 on the global leaderboard that hosts more than 1,30,000 participants. He is a mathematician from heart, who happened to run into machine learning. We bring to our readers Arthur Llau's fascinating journey into the world of data science.

Early Days

A lifelong Parisian, Arthur Llau has a dual masters degree in Theoretical Mathematics (Probability) and in Statistics & Machine Learning from Sorbonne University campus of Université Pierre & Marie Curie. As part of his thesis, he worked on neural style transfer, a relatively new field.

At college, Arthur worked as a barman while he scribbled math problems on the side. Though a mathematician from heart, Arthur's tryst with machine learning only began when one of his friends introduced him to computer vision and the statistical aspect of machine learning. Mixing drinks, and tussling with mathematics and machine learning is how he spent most of his student days. 

Today, he competes with machine learning experts from across the globe on the grandest stage—Kaggle.

Currently, Arthur is a Senior Data Scientist at Flowlity, an innovative startup that deals with optimization & synchronization of supply chain management. As a senior data scientist, Arthur works on-demand-sales forecasting, inventory level optimization, safety-stock recommendation, and also with graphs for supply chain synchronization. 

He also teaches Data Science applications to industrial problems at the Sorbonne Universités.

As a mathematician, it was a hard job at first, then a passion.

Even with a background in mathematics and statistics, Arthur still found the transition to machine learning quite challenging. The most challenging part, admits Arthur, was to understand how to apply theoretical methods to real-world problems. 

When we inquired Arthur on why we see a lot of Europeans in Kaggle and the machine learning field in general, he untangled this mystery by nonchalantly revisiting the history of Europe, especially his country France. He reminded us of great mathematicians taking the examples of Poisson and Gallois.

Mathematics is a vital part of French culture and history. There has always been a big love story between maths and French people. 

The culture of inculcating mathematics is valid till this day and it becomes almost natural to turn towards domains such as machine learning.

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He also reminded us that there was no secret to his machine learning mastery. All he did was read, learn, practice and repeat.

Life As A Kaggler

His initial interest in machine learning competitions was sparked when one of his professors tasked him to participate in a contest that had a problem statement framed by the prestigious Institut Henri Poincaré and a big company; a Kaggle-like a contest, in which Arthur ended up winning two of them, outperforming professional data scientists. He wanted to continue this momentum at a higher level and what can be better than Kaggle!

So far, Arthur has participated in more than 80 competitions of which he has won two gold, 12 silver and 14 bronze medals. Though he is top 100 at the global level, he still considers there is a long way to go to the top.

It takes a lot of time, a lot of reading, imagination and obstinacy. 

For beginners, Arthur recommends exploring the data and finding what is not evident. "…and don't hesitate to try classic methods. Trial and error is a great motto," confided Arthur.

Insisting on the importance of data exploration, Arthur doubled down on implementing the metrics right, performing a couple of validation schemes, setting up a baseline and sticking to it.

What I learn in Kaggle, I apply it sometimes in my work, and this is important for me to do my job very well.

When asked about how significant Kaggle was for his career, Arthur heaped praise on its community and the variety of contests that he gets to participate in. Not only that, but he firmly believes that Kaggle experience adds a great deal to his learning curve, and that, learning is still his primary goal.

Tools & Tricks Of A Master

Arthur Llau revealed that he had spent around 4-8 hours per day for over a month for the contests that fetched him gold. Arthur believes that being a top Kaggler is a full-time job. Talking about the resources required for a typical competition, Arthur says that a basic laptop would sometimes suffice. However, sometimes he rents some GPU in Google cloud platform with Kaggle vouchers, depending on the competition.

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With regard to languages, Arthur prefers Python and sometimes C++ for doing operational research tasks. And, when it comes to algorithms, Arthur expressed his delight for boosting methods, such as xgboost, catboost and lightgbm.

He switches between Keras and PyTorch framework while using a handful of very useful libraries like albumentations for image augmentation, eli5 and lofo for feature selection, and Missingno and seaborn for visualization; Imblearn, when imbalanced data. For parameters optimization, Arthur prefers Optuna and skopt for the Bayesian module.

Here is what Arthur's toolkit looks like:

Hardware: MBPro(2019, 16GB, i7) or i7,32GB + 1070Ti or GCP.

Language: Python and C++

Framework: Keras and Pytorch

Augmentation library: albumentations

Feature selection library: eli5 and lofo

Visualization: Missingno and seaborn

Imbalanced data: imblearn

Parameter optimization: Optuna and skopt

The availability of many libraries and frameworks has made the job of a data scientist easy. Deep learning algorithms could now be called by writing a single line of code on Python. Even complex mathematical operations are wrapped up as libraries. 

The democratization of ML has drawn in a lot of people, and somewhere down the line, few people have started falling prey to vanity metrics such as leaderboard rankings and are venturing into malpractices. 

Especially in Kaggle, Arthur laments that cheating can happen in many forms. In the kernel part, he explains, there is a lot of copycat kernel (EDA/ensembling) just craving for points/medals. 

There are a lot of multiple account users as well who leak information across, and there have been instances where an entire class of students (~20 ppl) using more or less the same solution and winning a medal in a particular competition. 

When asked how to identify these mal practitioners, "Make an ML model," quipped Arthur. 

That said, he holds the Kaggle community in high regards, and he has made a lot of friends over the years. While he will continue to experiment with Kaggle contests, he hopes that there will be original challenges like the 2018 trackML challenge.

Closing Thoughts

Arthur predicts reinforcement learning to be a big thing going forward, but he is a bit sceptical as there is still a long way to go in getting basic predictions right, like in sales or doing object recognition.

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When asked about the overwhelming hype around AI, Arthur quipped that it is not artificial intelligence, it is artificial stupidity, quoting famous researcher Youshua Bengio. 

It is stupid to think that doing only MOOC and using autoML can tackle all kind of problems.

AutoML is excellent at solving basic tasks with good performances, continued Arthur, but it cannot be used to solve complex problems. The problem of AutoML is also the blackbox effect, which can lead to explainability issues in front of customers. 

Reiterating on the importance of practice for beginners, Arthur advises one to look at Kaggle as a playground rather than a battlefield, and to experiment a lot. He was also positive about the fact that aspirants can land a data science job with Kaggle in their portfolio, if combined with consistent practice.

However, he also warns of the dangers of inflating Kaggle success, as there is a vast difference in problem-solving at the industry level. 

The data we typically get in the field is not as clean as in Kaggle. You can't have magic or leaks or funny tricks in data science problems at work; you need to find other good methods.

A significant difference, observes Arthur, is information extraction needed for the job; also, there is a lot more discussion with field experts to make a good modelization of the problem which is not required in Kaggle.

Understanding any algorithm will eventually boil down to math mostly, and Arthur insists on having a good grasp of fundamentals. A student for life, Arthur admits that he has been fortunate enough to have exceptional teachers throughout his student life who have helped him become what he is today. 

That said, a great book is equal to many excellent teachers – if not exceptional – and Arthur recommends everyone to read the following books, which he considers to be classics : 

« The Elements of Statistical Learning » by Tibshirani, Hastie and Friedman

« Pattern Recognition » by Bishop and 

« ML: A probabilistic perspective » by Murphy

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‘Better Call Saul’ Season Finale Truth And Lies: Look Who Else Is Breaking Bad

Better Call Saul is a show with range. Some characters like Jimmy/Saul lie constantly, others like Mike tell the truth to a fault. With that in mind, our coverage this season will be structured as a collection of true and false statements about each episode. Welcome to Better Call Saul Truth And Lies.

TRUTH — We've been emphasizing the wrong word

A few seasons back, once it became clear that Kim Wexler was going to be both an important ongoing character in this universe and an important ongoing part of Jimmy McGill's life, a lot of us started doing some uncomfortable math. "If Kim is such a big deal here," we'd think, "and she's not present or even mentioned in Breaking Bad, then what exactly happens between now and then to cause that change?" Or, to put it in a more panicky, accurate way: What happened to Kim?

It turns out we might have been emphasizing the wrong word in that last sentence. It might not be so much "What happened to Kim?" — with the implication being that some outside force caused her to disappear from Jimmy's life — as it is "What happened to Kim?" Maybe this was never a situation where Kim Wexler ends up being a victim of circumstance, a person who things happened to, a person whose options are limited to "die or flee New Mexico in heartbreak." Maybe all of this actually unlocked something in Kim that was there all along. Maybe, despite her protests and scowling in the early stages of Jimmy's transformation into Saul Goodman, deep down, she… likes it.

Maybe Kim Wexler breaks bad, too?

I fully cop to the fact that I did not see this coming, at least not in this way. Last week should have been a tip-off, though, the way she shredded Lalo and sent him packing when Jimmy couldn't get a convincing word out of his mouth. Kim really leaped into action there in a way that seemed natural. She's always been good at it, dating back to her tequila-gridding days as Gisele St. Clair. She's been better than Jimmy at times, too. The difference might have been as simple as Kim having a governor on her motor put in place by the expectations of polite society.

Well, it looks like something knocked that governor loose. Watch her face when she was talking to Jimmy about ruining Howard's life with falsified claims of mismanaging client funds, a substantial step up from Jimmy's "bowling ball through the windshield" revenge. Watch her eyes light up as she talks about that Sandpiper money. Watch her do the same finger guns Jimmy did at the end of last season when he crossed over to the dark side.

AMC

AMC

Her path was even similar. They both left HHM, they both got folded into a big firm and focused on one big client (Mesa Verde, Sandpiper), and they both had the realization that they'd rather be in it for themselves as criminal defense lawyers. Kim might even end up being more diabolical in her journey because she has the innocent cover of pro bono work, whereas everyone knows Jimmy is all flash and sleaze. I could be taking this too far. I think I just made her a supervillain.

The truth is that there still is an anvil hovering over her head. This doesn't change any of that. Kim Wexler does not show up in Breaking Bad. She exits Jimmy's life in some way, probably sooner than later. What this episode teeters toward is a version of that story where that exit is not a result of something Jimmy did, but instead of her own future shady behavior. It's a lot to consider. We should have considered it already. Kim Wexler was never a damsel in distress. She might very well be her own danger.

LIE — Jimmy has it all under control

AMC

He sure does not!

A big part of this is still him dealing with the PTSD of that gunfight. A similarly large part has to do with Lalo showing up at his door and his — apparently mistaken! — belief that he needs to protect Kim from harm. However the math of it all works out, my dude is spiraling right now, showing up at Mike's house in a breathless panic and trying to plan an entire day of pampering to convince Kim to stay in the hotel. He's scared, a lot, in a very real way, and the discovery that Lalo Salamanca did not in fact die in Mexico will not help that feeling at all.

We know it won't last. We'll see him later on in that strip mall full of bluster and bravado, hair combed to perfection and neon dress shirt pressed perfectly wrinkle-free. This might all be one of the foundational experiences that gets him from here to there. But it's still strange to see, especially with the roles flipped, where Jimmy was preaching skittish caution and Kim was charging ahead recklessly. It makes me kind of sad this show is a prequel, really, because now I'd like to see Jimmy and Kim as a shenanigans-performing husband-wife defense team for a period of decades. I feel like Kim could have handled Walter White.

Screw it. Let's alter history and do it. It would be fun.

TRUTH — Lalo went full-on Kevin McCallister

AMC

Two of my favorite things:

Movies and television shows where a character is forced to defend his home from invaders using a series of booby traps and gizmos, kind of like an adult Home Alone, with examples including Skyfall and Hobbs & Shaw and The Martian, if we want to make the leap to a situation where the role of the Wet Bandits is played by the harsh and unforgiving cosmos

Lalo Salamanca

And so, yes, of course, I loved watching him thwart Gus Fring's assassins with hot oil and secret tunnels. It was just classic Lalo, improvisation crossed with startling athleticism. Lalo has the same problem Kim and Nacho have — I'm sorry to keep harping on it, it's unavoidable — where we know they're not around a few years down the line. We know Gus is around, too. Lalo does not win this war. I am very glad this was not his time, though. I need as much Lalo as I can get.

It is almost unreasonable how good a character Lalo is. To pull this off after five seasons of this show and the full run of Breaking Bad, to just up and introduce someone this charming and evil and perfect, is basically showing off. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are doing a Globetrotter routine right in front of our faces, fancy dribbling and confetti buckets and all of it. I have no choice but to respect it.

LIE — Nacho is doing a great job of getting out of the game

AMC

Buddyyyyyyy.

All Nacho wants to do is run from New Mexico with his father and keep them both safe. He only has a few small problems: his dad won't leave; Gus won't let him out and is threatening his father just to drive that home; Lalo brought him to Don Eladio with the intent of having him step up in the cartel; and now Lalo seems to (correctly!)suspect him of working with Gus to stage an assassination that resulted in the deaths of people close to him.

Nacho is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock and the hard place both have guns. One of them has a terrific mustache. This analogy is falling apart. I think the point stands.

TRUTH — I love Don Eladio

AMC

As far as I can tell, Don Eladio spends all day having pool parties and drinking tequila and accepting exotic sports cars with piles of cash in the trunk, which is located in the front of the car and is therefore called a "frunk," by him, to his great delight. I realized as I watched this episode that I have never not been very excited to see him. It angers me in a surprising way that Gus takes him and (presumably) Lalo off the board eventually.

Eh, screw it. If we're already letting Kim live as Jimmy's rascal law partner, let's let Lalo and Don Eladio defeat Gus, too. Let's pretend. Or at least pitch a Don Eladio prequel. We can age Steven Bauer down with that Irishman CGI. The budget will be like $25 million per episode. I'll start passing the hat now.

LIE — It is a terrific time to be Howard Hamlin

AMC

Every character on this show has grown and/or changed since season one. That's not exactly shocking because, like, that's how storytelling is supposed to work. Jimmy is becoming Saul, Mike is working with Gus, Kim… well, we discussed that earlier. But let's not overlook the borderline hilarious arc that Howard Hamlin has been riding.

The man was the closest thing the show had to a Big Bad in the beginning. He was the antagonist that pushed and drove Jimmy. He was formidable and powerful and not some buster to be clowned on. Cut to four-plus seasons later and he is getting clowned on all day. There was the bowling ball and the hookers, of course, and then when he told Kim about it all, when he tried to "warn" her, she laughed right in his very tan face. He must be so confused all the time about what happened to his life. It's delightful.

And it might be getting worse, now that Kim is pitching an even more malicious fate for him. This whole series could end with him broken into a million pieces and sleeping on a park bench. I'd love to sit in on one of his therapy sessions to see how he feels about it all.

TRUTH — There is no greater decadence than a midnight cheeseburger

AMC

This was the coup de grace of Jimmy's plan to stay in and pamper themselves while hiding from Lalo in the hotel and, I must say, it would have swayed me. There are some situations where a midnight cheeseburger is sad and troubling, I'll grant you that. But in the right circumstances, if you're treating yourself after a hard day or capping off a great night, a midnight cheeseburger is as decadent as it gets. The grease and indulgence of it all, my god.

You might not feel great about it in the morning, both because of the lack of sleep and the congealing mess ravaging your insides, but that's a problem for later. You do not concern yourself with the future while eating a midnight cheeseburger. A midnight cheeseburger is about the moment, this moment, right now. There are no regrets allowed while eating a midnight cheeseburger, unless you forget to order fries with it. You wouldn't do that, though. You know this is a decadent treat. This is not your first rodeo.

LIE — This show stinks!

AMC

This is not the time for the debate about whether Better Call Saul will end up being better than Breaking Bad. There is a time for that, maybe later this summer when we're all sweaty and irritable and bored. We can yell and call each other names and really get after it. It'll be fun. But right now, today, this is about celebrating an incredible season of television. How good was this? All of it, too, from beginning to end. The way this world has grown and expanded and gotten more dangerous step-by-meticulous-step, never rushing, making the journey from mailroom failbro to cartel-adjacent lawyer seem perfectly logical. It's basically a magic trick. And it keeps getting better.

I joke about all the other spinoffs and prequels I want after this show ends (Gus in Chile, Don Eladio's rise, Mike in high school), but I'm only barely joking. It's been such a treat to watch this universe open up. If they can do this — again, all of this — with the comic relief character from a heartbreaking show about drug dealing and personal loss, I mean, why stop there? Keep expanding it. Go full Marvel. Tell me a series of interconnected stories about this fictional world until the sun grows and grows and swallows our real-world whole, incinerating plants and animals and buildings alike and bringing an end to the experiment we call Earth.

Or, uh, maybe just one more. For now. Better Call Saul is a good show. That's what I'm trying to say.

The Jordan VHS Collection

Like any red-blooded member of the sports-starved citizenry, Don Sperling eagerly awaited the arrival of The Last Dance, the 10-part documentary series about the final season of Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls dynasty, airing on ESPN over the next few weeks.

Sperling is the Ken Burns of basketball videos. During his tenure as an executive producer at NBA Entertainment, from 1983 to 1998, he was involved in the making of some 130 home video titles, from Dazzling Dunks and Basketball Bloopers to NBA Jam Session. Because his time at the league's production arm happened to coincide with the rise of Jordan and the Bulls, no other single filmmaker has committed as much screen time to MJ and his dynasty.

To prepare for the Last Dance experience, Sperling recently blew the dust off a couple of Jordan-centric titles from his vast filmography: Come Fly With Me (1989) and Air Time (1993), each a classic entry in the NBA Entertainment canon. "I hadn't seen them in ages! I thought I would look back and say, 'Meh.' But, you know, they're still pretty good," says Sperling, who's now vice president and executive producer of entertainment for the New York Giants.

"The league back then was like Hollywood. You had high drama, you had huge personalities, you had the Bulls versus the Pistons, good versus evil. We had all this right in front of us!" he says. "Before the internet and social media, NBA Entertainment home videos, and later NBA Inside Stuff, were among the fans' only windows to the players. We were behind the scenes, we were at Jordan's house—we provided the access. Whereas now, every day, there's access to players through Twitter and Instagram."

Access to the NBA and its players was exactly what I craved as a Bulls-crazed kid growing up in rural Illinois during the '80s and '90s. When I was 8 years old, my subscription to Sports Illustrated came with a free gift: Untouchabulls, the Sperling-produced story of the Bulls' second championship. Soon, my friends and I were wearing out VCRs watching all of NBAE's Bulls and Jordan titles, rewinding choice highlights to study a Jordan dunk or a Scottie Pippen pass that we would then mimic on the driveway. Of course, we weren't the only kids forging strangely intimate relationships with NBA Entertainment VHS tapes. "Kobe Bryant once told me in the mid-'90s that, while living in Italy as a child, he would watch all of my Jordan and Bulls videos hundreds and hundreds of times," Sperling says. "That's how he began emulating Michael."

Early NBAE videos borrow from the work of NFL Films, which forged a distinctive style through the use of orchestral music, slow motion, and close-ups (a football spiraling through the air, linemen expelling breath in the cold), as well as absurdly florid writing overstuffed with martial metaphors. NBAE kept a similar voice-of-God style of narration (sometimes hiring the same talent as NFL Films), but Sperling and his collaborators preferred rapid cuts that showed off basketball's exciting pace. Instead of French horn flourishes, NBAE scored videos with synthesizer-laden library music (a.k.a. stock music), tunes from adult contemporary composers (Yanni, John Tesh), and singles from R&B acts (Michael Jackson, Full Force). (A YouTube user has done yeoman's work in compiling playlists of NBAE soundtracks.)

The X's and O's of basketball are of little concern in NBAE videos. It is a genre rooted almost entirely in emotion, its narratives driven by dramatic swings of fortune. When Jordan's Bulls meet Magic Johnson's Lakers in the 1991 Finals in Learning to Fly, for instance, the teams are depicted as nothing less than gods fighting on Mount Olympus as the fate of all mankind hangs in the balance. The prose is sometimes comically purple. A game is a "battle," a playoff series is "war." Defense and offense are "weapons." Accurate 3-point shooting is a "devastating long-range barrage." Victors leave their opponents "trampled in their wake."

The sharp-edged perspective apparent in the best of ESPN's 30 for 30 series is not the stuff of NBA Entertainment videos, which straddle the fence between journalism and boosterism. (NBAE is, after all, essentially the league's propaganda arm.) Athletes such as Jordan are heroes to be worshiped. "We protected Michael, there's no doubt," Sperling says. "Calling him the golden goose is understating it, but Michael was important to the league. Plus, it was personal: He took care of us, we took care of him. We were friends. We admired him. I was a fan. I mean, how could I not be? And anyway, there were plenty of people out there trying to find the underbelly."

In anticipation of The Last Dance, I recently revisited NBA Entertainment's archive of Jordan and Bulls videos. Michael Jordan's Playground, Learning to Fly, Three-Peat—repetition had branded the content of these tapes upon my brain. Yet all these years later, they still have the power to trigger goosebumps. If the steady drip of 10 hours of His Airness on ESPN doesn't give you a proper fix, consult this guide to 12 additional hours of highlights, interviews, turgid lines of narration, boundless examples of MJ's self-regard, incidents of Bad Boys villainy, and some supremely odd celebrity cameos.

Higher Ground: Chicago Bulls 1987-88 Season (1988)

Michael Jordan has often said that, facing adversity late in his career, he found strength thinking not of the banners he helped hoist but the six seasons of defeat he had endured before winning his first NBA championship. This video finds the Bulls, under head coach Doug Collins, squarely in the midst of their ascent from a one-man show to a cohesive unit able to compete with the league's elite teams. General manager Jerry Krause wins executive of the year that season, chiefly for acquiring Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant in the same draft to round out MJ's supporting cast. The pair of baby-faced rookies endure hazing by Charles Oakley, who is soon traded to New York for Bill Cartwright, the final piece of the championship puzzle. Meanwhile, Jordan, his killer instinct still developing, exhibits a lightness rarely seen in later seasons. "This is a winner," the young gambler says, showing the camera his poker hand in an airport terminal during a road trip. "I 'm gonna get rich! I'm gettin' $30 million! We just lost to the Boston Celtics, but guess what? I'm winnnnning!"

Overheated narration: "Stirring within the Bulls was a new emotion: a thirst to consume everything on their playoff menu."

Jordan on Jordan: "The basket looks like Lake Michigan. Whatever you throw up there is going to go in."

Killer quote: Bulls assistant Johnny Bach memorably describes Oakley as "the kind of guy that if you went into a bar and saw him there, you'd want to buy him a drink, just so if something started, he'd know who you were."

Best villain: Pugilistic Detroit power forward Rick Mahorn, who ignites a bench-clearing brawl during a midseason Pistons-Bulls game, mixing it up with Oakley and much of the Bulls' coaching staff. A close second: John Paxson's mustache.

Celebrity cameo: Jack Nicholson, Oscar-winning Lakers mascot, caught inhaling some high-calorie stadium food while slumming it at a Bulls-Clippers game.

Fun fact: Because the Bulls of this era fly commercial on road trips, each player humbly carries his uniform with him in case of lost checked luggage.

Michael Jordan: Come Fly With Me (1989)

"Hi, my name is Michael Jordan," says MJ, kicking off this NBA Entertainment classic like Alistair Cooke introducing Masterpiece Theatre. "I want you to take a trip with me to learn the secrets that I have known for many years: that man was truly destined to fly." (Yeah, sure, Mike, whatever you say.) No secret is made of the fact that this is a big, wet kiss from the league to its highly marketable star, who the narrator calls "the world's most breathtaking athlete." If there's a thesis to be found in this portrait of a basketball deity, it's this: that the guy grinning from the Wheaties box has actual dimension. On the court, he isn't merely a prolific scorer and showboating dunker, he's also a defensive workhorse; off the court, he's not just a famous, filthy-rich star, he's also a down-to-earth humanitarian with all-American roots. All the applesauce about flight—sample intertitle: "To fly: to move through the air by using wings"—i s an excuse for beaucoup Jordan highlights that, fortunately, speak for themselves.

Overheated narration: "Michael's airborne ballet is very much about dreams, dreams of unearthly grace. Of unrestrained freedom. Of majestic power. Dreams of flight. For Michael and his fans, basketball is a way of sharing the fantasy, like a small group of aerial voyagers. Michael evokes images of the stratosphere, the visions which dreams are made of."

Jordan on Jordan: "People ask me, do you really believe you can fly? I said, 'Yeah, for a little while. It may be a split second, but it's flying.'"

Killer quote: "The guy, literally, is embarrassing the league," Pistons coach Chuck Daly says in his smoker's rasp. "He's that good."

Best villain: Jordan's broken left foot, which sidelined him for 64 games in the 1985-86 season.

Celebrity cameo: PGA pro Peter Jacobsen, who says of hitting the links with Jordan, "It's probably the only time that he keeps his tongue in his mouth, other than when he's wagging it telling me how good he is. Other than that, I just really enjoy taking money from him."

Fun fact: One of Jordan's teachers bursts into laughter at the memory that she once advised her young student to pursue math, "because that's where the money was."

Michael Jordan's Playground (1990)

Formally more ambitious than the typical NBA Entertainment entry, Playground interweaves highlights and talking heads with a fictional narrative about a teen named Walt (Tyrin Turner, who would later star in Menace II Society) trying to make his high school basketball team. That story line indulges a false premise that's long been part of the Jordan origin myth: that he was "cut" from his high school team. The truth is that while Jordan didn't make Laney High's varsity roster as a sophomore, he starred that season on the JV team. Walt shoots hoops and swears off going out for the team the following year. Suddenly, à la Shoeless Joe in Field of Dreams, Jordan appears on the playground to dispense encouragement ("competing is not just a test of who's bigger or stronger" and yadda, yadda, yadda). Of course, it's all just window dressing for MJ footage and interviews with Magic Johnson, Clyde Drexler, Danny Ainge, Kevin Johnson, and Karl Malone, all of w hom say glowing things about Jordan. He would go on to return the favor in the most savage way possible—by denying each of them in a Finals series.

Overheated narration: [Mystical pan flute music] "This is where it all begins. The one kid alone on the playground. This is where you fall in love with the game. This is where the fantasy begins."

Jordan on Jordan: "I don't know whether I fly or not, but I do know that when I'm up in the air, sometimes I feel that I don't ever have to come down."

Killer quote: "If you can defense [sic] Jordan," says Dennis Rodman, "you can defense anything in the league—anything in the world!"

Best villain: If we're being honest, our hero Walt is undersized, has no handles, demonstrates what Bobby Knight might call a piss-poor attitude, and gets straight-up bodied in the tryout. He deserves to be cut.

Celebrity cameo: R&B group Full Force with Lisa Lisa, whose music video for a jaunty tune called "Anything Is Possible" features Jordan lip-synching and shambling through choreography.

Fun fact: Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) directed Playground, his second credit.

Learning to Fly: The World Champion Chicago Bulls' Rise to Glory (1991)

The most rewatchable of the dynasty's championship videos opens on a sunrise over the gleaming skyline of Chicago—the dawning of a new era of basketball. The theme of the Bulls' 1990-91 season, in which they won a then-franchise-record 61 games, is dispelling the notion that they are merely the Michael Jordan Show. After getting outmuscled by the Pistons for two consecutive years in the conference finals, Michael, Scottie, and Horace finally make it over the hump, sweeping the Bad Boys, prompting Detroit's sour procession to the locker room as the final seconds tick off the clock. The sonorous baritone of longtime NFL Films narrator Jeff Kaye lends the proceedings gravitas, particularly the Magic-versus-Michael Finals, which maintains the feel of an epic clash of the titans even as the Bulls down the Lakers in five. For a generation weaned on NBA Entertainment, the titular Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song (released five days after the Bulls' championship victory) will forever spark thoughts of champagne-soaked locker room celebrations.

Overheated narration: "As Michael Jordan soared, so too did the battered hopes of Chicago fans. Chicago had found a hero to deliver them from the NBA's depths. But to mount an assault against basketball's elite, he would need reinforcements."

Jordan on Jordan: "People ask me, can I fly or do I like to fly. Well, I think, as a team, we have shown people that we can fly."

Killer quote: "They would have to accept the beating that we was giving them," says Pippen of the pleasure of trouncing the Pistons.

Best villain: The Pistons' Bill Laimbeer, whose face mask only enhances his diabolism.

Celebrity cameo: Lakers fan Don Johnson—Crockett!—looking worried courtside at the Great Western Forum.

Fun fact: Jordan wears a Malcolm X cap in his interview; he contributed funding to Spike Lee's 1992 biopic of the black nationalist leader.

Untouchabulls: The Chicago Bulls' 2nd Championship Season (1992)

How will the reigning champs respond to opponents trying to knock off their crown? For one, by winning 67 games in the regular season. Jordan being Jordan, he becomes obsessed with defending his team's position as king of the hill, with proving to the world that the first title wasn't a fluke. Having vanquished the Pistons the previous season, the Bulls now face what will shape up to be one of their great rivals of the '90s: the New York Knicks, whose malevolence is underscored by potent narration from ubiquitous movie-trailer voice-over actor Hal Douglas (Die Hard, The Silence of the Lambs, Goodfellas). In the conference semifinals, Patrick Ewing and his fellow bruisers push the Bulls to the brink—one of only three Game 7s Jordan ever faced. That series feels more monumental here than even the eventual Bulls-Blazers Finals. In the opener at Chicago Stadium, the famed "Shrug Game," Jordan hits six 3-pointers in the first half, a feat that seems quaint by th e standards of today's 3-centric NBA. The video is punctuated by Michael Jackson's music video for "Jam," featuring Jordan teaching Jackson to play basketball and Jackson, in turn, schooling Jordan on the moonwalk.

Overheated narration: "Fortified by their unity, the Bulls decisively took control of the contest. Closing out the series, Chicago gratefully put this unexpectedly grueling test of their championship mettle behind them."

Jordan on Jordan: "I started running for that 3-point line," Jordan says of his performance in the Shrug Game. "I felt a great rhythm. It felt like a free throw, really, from that distance."

Killer quote: "Last year was a honeymoon. It was a kiss of a beloved, almost," Phil Jackson says. "This year has been an odyssey, a journey filled with travail and pitfalls ..."

Best villain: Xavier McDaniel, who talks trash to Pippen in Game 7 of the conference semifinals, stirring Jordan to get in the X-Man's face—and, well, you don't need to be a lip-reader to understand MJ. The message is clear: "Fuck you."

Celebrity cameo: Film critic Gene Siskel glumly presenting the courtside camera with his famous thumb.

Michael Jordan: Air Time (1993)

Among NBA Entertainment's Jordan-centric titles, Air Time feels like an actual work of sports journalism, rather than a piece of pure puffery. In a relatively candid interview, Jordan answers questions about some difficult subjects: Magic Johnson's HIV diagnosis and retirement, sportswriter Sam Smith's shit-stirring tell-all book The Jordan Rules, the NBA's investigation into MJ's gambling on golf with a reputed cocaine dealer, his budding friendship during the '92 Olympics with "ugly American" Charles Barkley. He openly chafes at his own celebrity, and the attendant media glare: "Everything, every move, every shot is in the spotlight," he says. "I'm a target now." He expresses weariness with his position in the culture as a role model and smiling corporate pitchman: "I tried to live like everyone wanted me to live—the purest of all people," he says. "There's no such thing." He loses his temper: "I was in a rage," he recalls of fouling out in a '92 triple-overtime loss to the Jazz. "You should've seen me in the locker room. I kicked chairs in. I broke the blackboard." In other words, Jordan is human. And for the first time, he wants us to know it.

Jordan on Jordan: "If I have any problems away from the basketball court, if I'm out there playing, I got a solution for that. It's like my psychologist or whatever. And if you ever take that away from me, I wouldn't know what to do."

Killer quote: Doug Collins, the Bulls' coach from 1986 to 1989, says the play call that led to "the Shot" against the Cavaliers in 1989 was simply, "Get the ball to Michael, everyone else get the fuck out of the way."

Fun fact: Jordan can throw a football 65 yards, a feat of strength he proves to Ahmad Rashad during an interview in MJ's backyard.

Three-Peat: The Chicago Bulls' Historic Third Championship Season (1993)

In the years preceding the '92-93 season, the Lakers and Pistons each had been in position to win a third consecutive championship—and failed. Jordan now has the opportunity to accomplish a feat that Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas never would. Or as NBA Entertainment screenwriter Larry Weitzman turgidly put it, "The 1993 season was the culmination of a three-year odyssey and a personal journey to their place in history." The Bulls sweep through the first two rounds of the playoffs. In the conference semifinals, MJ completes his torching of the Cavaliers' Gerald "the Jordan Stopper" Wilkins with a buzzer-beater to end the series. But in the conference finals the Bulls run headlong into the Knicks, who force Jordan and Pippen to climb out of a 2-0 hole. The filmmakers assiduously avoid the big off-court drama: Jordan gambling in Atlantic City on the eve of Game 2. The six-game series boasts at least one all-time great play: clinging to a one-point lead in t he waning seconds of Game 5, the Bulls make a critical defensive stand in the paint against Charles Smith, a moment immortalized in Marv Albert's classic call: "Smith stripped ... Smith stopped ... Smith stopped again!" The other classic of this Bulls postseason: John Paxson burying his version of "the Shot" in Game 6 of the Finals to vanquish Barkley's formidable Suns. Watching the clip today, you can almost forget what a mess Pax would eventually make of the front office during his tenure as a team executive.

Overheated narration: "But while the Suns took center stage, the Bulls glided into the series like a shark—silent and ready to attack."

Jordan on Jordan: "I wanted to prove to [the Cavaliers] that no matter what you do, what changes you make, I'm going to overcome that challenge."

Killer quote: "For us to win a third championship is not even worth talking about at this time," the Zen Master, Phil Jackson, says before the season's home opener. "It's a journey that begins with a single step, this thousand-mile journey. We've got to remember that each game is that step that you take along the way."

Best villain: Knicks ruffian John Starks, who says he approaches playoff games against Chicago as "all-out war," replacing Laimbeer as the face of pure evil in the minds of Bulls fans.

Fun fact: The 1990-91 to 1992-93 Bulls become only the third team in NBA history to win three championships in succession. The other two: the Minneapolis Lakers (1951-52 to 1953-54) and the Boston Celtics (who won eight consecutive titles from 1958-59 to 1965-66).

Unstop-A-Bulls: The Chicago Bulls 1995-96 Championship Season (1996)

The murder of James Jordan. The first retirement. The 18-month baseball caprice. The "I'm back" fax. The no. 45 jersey. The loss to Orlando. It all leads to this miraculous season, in which Jordan and the new-look Bulls not only climb the mountain once again, but somehow find a higher peak, winning a then-record 72 games. Glaringly, the filmmakers don't delve into the tension around the potentially volatile addition of Rodman. Instead the viewer gets GM Krause explaining that Jordan and Pippen told him, "If you and Phil think it's the right thing to do ..." The Worm, we are told, "epitomized the meaning of team player," but that season he also becomes a sensation in Chicago rivaling MJ. His ever-changing hair color, his wedding dress stunt, his head-butting a referee—none of it gets covered here. "72-and-10 don't mean a thing without a ring," the Bulls' Bill Wennington says. That remains the rationale for those who insist this Bulls team is superior to the 2015-16 Warriors, who went 73-9 before losing to LeBron's Cavs in the Finals.

Overheated narration: "Seattle tried desperately to mount a comeback, but the Bulls countered with a one-man explosion that was enough to lower the Sonics' boom."

Jordan on Jordan: "I've always been known as a player who could finish off a team," Jordan says of losing to the Magic in the '95 conference semifinals. "Here I was in one of those moments, but I let the team down."

Killer quote: "Come on, I'll give you a jump shot right here. I'll give you a jump shot. Shoot it," Jordan says, teasing a Washington Bullets player, who passes on the opportunity. "Oh, you don't want it?"

Best villain: Future disgraced referee Tim Donaghy, who is shown shaking hands with Jordan before a game early in the season.

Celebrity cameo: Oprah Winfrey cheering on the Bulls during the playoffs from her courtside perch; Jordan waving bye-bye to Spike Lee during the conference semifinals series against the Knicks.

Michael Jordan: Above and Beyond (1996)

Though the material in Above and Beyond (narrated by ER's Eriq La Salle) spans Jordan's life and career, the video's dramatic center is its star discussing the impact of his father's murder. "It was a very difficult moment for me," says Jordan, his eyes tearing up. "Somehow I just kept my head high and thought about all the things he used to tell me: 'Turn a negative into a positive.' And here I was dealing with him in that way." Why did Jordan walk away from basketball after a third championship to pursue baseball? The long bus rides and the game's relatively slow pace allowed him the space to mourn his dad. "Where baseball was different," he says, "it gave me an opportunity to revisit all those moments that I had with my father and with some of those situations that never occurred to me and I never thought about [while playing] the game of basketball."

Overheated narration: "Erasing any doubts that he would reassert his dominance, Michael tortured opponents with a barrage of scoring."

Jordan on Jordan: "I guess it made me at peace with myself," Jordan says of his short-lived baseball career. "So it was a therapeutic experience for me. And I needed it. I think if I hadn't have done it, there's no way I would've been able to come back to the game of basketball. I would probably have a tough time mentally dealing with a lot of things."

Killer quote: "It felt like someone was closing a coffin," Jordan says of attending his retirement celebration at the new United Center, when all he is thinking about is returning to basketball.

Best villain: Horace Grant, triumphantly hoisted onto the shoulders of his teammates after the Magic defeat his former team in the conference semifinals.

Celebrity cameo: Bill Clinton, who jokes at a press conference, "The economy has produced 6.1 million jobs since I became president. And if Michael Jordan goes back to the Bulls it'll be 6,100,001 new jobs."

Fun fact: During the filming of Space Jam in '95, Warner Bros. constructs on the studio lot "the Jordan Dome," a basketball court that allows MJ to continue working out. He plays pickup games with a rotating group that includes Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Reggie Miller, and Shaquille O'Neal.

Chicago Bulls 1996-97 NBA Championship Season (1997)

Sandwiched between the shining return to glory and the bittersweet Last Dance, 1996-97 tends to be the forgotten middle child of Bulls championship runs. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that after a record-setting 72 wins the previous year, Chicago got off to a franchise-best start with 12 consecutive victories. They would ultimately win 69 games, portrayed here as something of a disappointment, with the Bulls losing three of their last four games. NBAE once again whitewashes that season's Rodman-related theatrics, including his kicking a cameraman in the groin during a game. The tension doesn't really ratchet up until the Bulls-Jazz series is tied 2-2, leading to Jordan's famed "Flu Game." Stricken with a stomach virus, MJ guts out one of the most unforgettable performances in NBA history, scoring 38 and leading the Bulls to a critical victory. The bench, from Toni Kukoc to Jud Buechler, overachieved that season, and fittingly it is not Jordan but Stev e Kerr hitting the go-ahead shot in the final seconds to seal the fifth championship.

Overheated narration: "With their unique blend of talent and teamwork, the Bulls were stampeding their way through the season—and having fun doing it."

Jordan on Jordan: "I got into that zone," Jordan says after scoring 55 against the Washington Bullets in Game 2 of the opening round of the playoffs. "And I couldn't get out. I apologized to [Bulls assistant] Tex [Winter] after the game: 'Sorry about the triangle [offense], Tex. I kind of forgot about the triangle.' Once I got into that mode, I just couldn't turn it off."

Killer quote: "Phil told Michael, 'I want you to take the last shot.' And Michael said, 'I don't feel real comfortable in these situations, so maybe we ought to go in another direction,'" Kerr joked at the Bulls' championship celebration in Chicago's Grant Park, recalling the huddle that led to his game-winning shot in the Finals. "And then Scottie came in and said, 'Michael said in his commercial that he's been asked to do this 26 times and failed ... so why don't we go to Steve?' So I thought to myself, 'Well, I guess I've got to bail Michael out again. But I've been carrying him all year, so what's one more time?'"

Best villain: The Heat's Alonzo Mourning, for elbowing Pippen in Game 1 of the conference finals, leaving Scottie with an ugly knot on his forehead.

Celebrity cameo: Bill Clinton, who phones the Bulls in the locker room to congratulate them on the championship. Jordan can be overheard telling the president, "Tell Chelsea congratulations and I hope she enjoys college."

Fun fact: Jordan made NBA history during All-Star Weekend that season, becoming the first player to record a triple-double in the game.

Unforgettabulls: The 6th NBA Championship Season of the Chicago Bulls (1998)

Centered largely on the final championship quest of the '90s Bulls, this is the closest video document we've had to The Last Dance. The season starts inauspiciously, as Pippen makes a late decision to have surgery on his ailing left foot, sidelining him for the first 35 games. That leaves Jordan to babysit Rodman—a source of significant tension that goes unexplored here. The Bulls hold at 24-11 upon Pippen's return, charging onward to 62 wins. In the conference finals, Miller's Pacers take the Bulls to a Game 7 for only the third time in Jordan's career. From the Finals rematch against the Jazz, everyone remembers Jordan's series-clinching last shot in a Bulls uniform, but the camera captures a quieter moment that follows, as the star and his beloved coach embrace. "MJ! Oh, my God, that was beautiful. What a finish," Jackson says. "I had faith," Jordan replies. "I had faith."

Jordan on Jordan: "I never make promises. I don't even promise to my wife," Jordan insists after losing Game 6 of the conference finals to the Pacers. "But we will win Game 7."

Killer quote: "Michael Jordan, after the game, I told him I'm proud of him," the Nets' Jayson Williams tells the press after the Bulls eliminate his team from the playoffs. "On and off the court, I think he's one of the most amazing men I've ever met in my life, besides my father, Bill Cosby, [and] Danny Aiello."

Best villain: Former Bulls guard B.J. Armstrong glares at the Chicago bench after his Charlotte Hornets deal Jordan and Co. their first playoff loss that season in Game 2 of the conference semifinals. That prompts MJ to remark later, once the Bulls have thoroughly trounced the Hornets, "I think B.J. kind of forgot about us, what drives us. We utilized the energy that he used at the end of Game 2 to our advantage. We're good at that. He woke us up."

Celebrity cameo: Harold Ramis—Egon!—on the sideline looking concerned as the Nets take the Bulls to overtime in Game 1 of the opening round of the playoffs.

Fun fact: The Bulls set a record for the largest margin of victory in NBA Finals history, beating the Jazz 96-54 in Game 3. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan, looking at the box score during the postgame press conference, exclaims, "This is actually the score? ... It seemed like they scored 196!"

Michael Jordan to the Max (2000)

While NBA Entertainment crews almost always shot on video, high-resolution IMAX cameras are instead used to capture the Bulls with striking clarity during the playoffs and Finals of their Last Dance season. Narrated by Laurence Fishburne, this Jordan career retrospective interlaces that HD postseason footage with archival clips, photos, and new interviews. Jordan tries to offer a bit more insight into his exceptional talent and temperament: "I tend to be calm, things tend to slow down," he says of high-pressure moments. "As I go into situations that people don't know the outcome, I've already experienced them, just playing tricks with myself. ... Once I began to understand that, I became a master of the game of basketball."

Overheated narration: "For fans who had watched him since his days as a Carolina schoolboy, what emerged now was not just the skill but the willpower."

Jordan on Jordan: "Ten years from now, 20 years from now, what I would want people to say—and it's simple—that if Michael Jordan was still playing the game of basketball, he would dominate."

Killer quote: Jordan says Jackson's lessons in meditation "gave me an understanding about life in a whole different frame. His teaching, the understanding of Zen Buddhism is how you view yourself to deal with the realities of life surrounding you and somehow be able to correlate that to a simple game of basketball."

Celebrity cameo: Bill Murray, sizing up Jordan in geologic time, says, "Out of the 50,000 top athletes since prehistoric times—brontosauruses and pterodactyls included—he's right there."

Jake Malooley is a writer and editor based in Chicago.