At just 41 years old, NASCAR legend Kyle Busch died after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, causing fatal complications. In Busch’s case, reports indicate he initially believed he was dealing with a sinus infection or cold before the illness worsened into bacterial pneumonia, which later triggered sepsis. The husband and father of two’s untimely death has put a spotlight on sepsis, a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s response to an infection begins damaging its own tissues and organs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.7 million adults in the United States develop sepsis each year, and at least 350,000 die during hospitalization or are discharged to hospice. Typically, older adults, young children, and immunocompromised individuals are at greater risk of developing sepsis. However, it can also occur in otherwise healthy people, particularly when infections are left untreated or quickly worsen. To help people recognize potential warning signs of sepsis, Sepsis Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the condition, developed the acronym TIME. The acronym stands for Temperature — higher or lower than normal; Infection — signs or symptoms of an infection; Mental decline — confusion, sleepiness, or difficulty waking up; and Extremely ill — severe pain, shortness of breath, or feeling like you might die. The organization urges people to watch for a combination of these symptoms and seek immediate medical care as soon as possible, since prompt treatment can improve outcomes significantly. Sepsis Alliance Health experts also stress that proper treatment of infections is critical to reducing sepsis risk. Sepsis Alliance encourages people to closely monitor infections and follow treatment plans exactly as directed by their doctor. In particular, people recovering from surgery, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, or other bacterial illnesses are advised to pay close attention to their symptoms. Regarding the use of antibiotics, these should be taken exactly as directed. Doses should not be skipped and patients should complete the full course of medication even if symptoms begin to improve. Stopping antibiotics too early can allow bacteria to survive, potentially causing an infection to return or worsen. Sepsis Alliance also advises against using leftover antibiotics or taking medication prescribed for someone else, warning that improper antibiotic use can delay effective treatment and contribute to antibiotic resistance. The organization further recommends seeking medical attention if an infection is not improving, symptoms suddenly worsen, or warning signs of sepsis — like confusion, difficulty breathing, extreme pain, or a feeling that something is seriously wrong — begin to appear. Although sepsis is a serious medical emergency, experts say greater public awareness, timely treatment, and proper infection care can help save lives. Related: Legendary NASCAR Driver Kyle Busch Dead At 41

Veteran producer Jeremy Latcham admits he helped make movie comedies an endangered species. “I was at Marvel for 14 years, and I think that the superhero movie ate comedy,” Latcham tells The Daily Wire. Films like “Iron Man,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “The Avengers,” all made under his watch, delivered humor, irreverence, action, and “big popcorn thrills.” The box office subsequently exploded, and “we forgot about just regular people.” Now, Latcham is bringing a comedian who personifies that sentiment to the big screen. Stand-up superstar Nate Bargatze makes his feature film debut with the family comedy “The Breadwinner.” The squeaky-clean comic stars as a husband and father who suddenly finds himself in way over his head caring for his three daughters when his wife (Mandy Moore) lands a big deal on “Shark Tank.” Now, Nate’s befuddled Dad must do the laundry, juggle school drop-offs, and more. Think “Mr. Mom” for the 21st century, based on the comedian’s wildly popular stand-up shtick. Latcham was familiar with Bargatze’s brand of clean comedy, but he didn’t realize how far his star had risen until the pandemic. Suddenly, fellow parents were sharing plans to see the Christian comic again and again, no matter how far the venue might be. “Something’s going on with this guy,” he says. That’s an understatement. Last year, Bargatze’s stand-up shows grossed $77.5 million. That’s nearly 50 percent more than Sebastian Maniscalco, his closest competition. He’s even discussing a Nateland theme park attraction. He routinely sells out arenas nationwide, all without a single swear or political talking point. His 2024 hosting gig on “Saturday Night Live” delivered one of the show’s most popular sketches — the “Washington’s Dream” sketch has more than 30 million views to date. Latcham couldn’t wait to work with him. “I want to make his first movie … introducing him to the screen is so critical,” the producer says. As luck would have it, Bargatze had pitched an idea to Sony about how to bring his Everyman persona to theaters. “’The Breadwinner’ pays homage to his stand-up and the jokes you’ve seen and loved, what would they look like writ large on the screen,” he says. Some comedians are inherently physical on stage, like Jim Carrey or Maniscalco. Bargatze doesn’t follow that blueprint. His act is more cerebral, with smaller, knowing gestures befitting his aw-shucks demeanor. Movie comedies, by comparison, demand a bigger palette. That meant Latcham watched Bargatze’s evolution up close during the production process. One sequence finds the comedian tumbling down the stairs after losing a fight with the laundry. The production had to film “pickup” reaction shots later in the shoot. “You could see the growth as an actor as he figured out how the lensing works, how the camera works,” Latcham says, adding Bargatze often did stand-up gigs on weekends while working on “The Breadwinner” from Monday through Friday. “He realized how the cinematic gear was different than the stand-up gear,” he says. Latcham left the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to tell more down-to-earth stories. That decision was personal, but he thinks the zeitgeist is now on his side. “We’re at a tipping point when the idea of a regular person is appealing again to audiences,” he says. “We love superheroes but … there’s something equally if not more rewarding to see something you recognize in your life a little bit more.” The year’s biggest live-action hit follows a high school teacher tasked with saving humanity, “Project Hail Mary.” Superhero films have struggled of late, a problem he connects to too many TV shows and not enough high-quality yarns. “When ‘Iron Man’ came out it was a big hit because it was novel,” he says, but it’s too early to pen the genre’s obituary. “I would never ever write [superhero movies] off. It’s a beloved genre … and the new ‘Spider-Man’ movie [“Brand New Day,” opening July 31] might be the best movie Marvel has made.” “The good ones will continue to over index and the bad ones will get punished by the audience,” he adds. Latcham’s prolific resume includes more than MCU smashes. He produced the vibrant “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (2023) as well as “Bad Times at the El Royale” (2018). Now, he has to navigate not just a stand-up superstar’s screen debut but an industry grappling with the AI revolution. Latcham isn’t frightened by the technology. He has faith in his fellow storytellers to wield it properly. “I think it has to be looked at as a tool set that can transform the stories you can tell and who can tell them,” he says. “There’s gonna be work flows that fold AI into a traditional actor driven, artist driven work flow that’s gonna just double what we can do.” And, yes, we’ll likely see a crush of what’s often dubbed “AI Slop” before artists get a handle on what it can deliver. And that means more than crazy car crashes and alien invasions. “Once the price of spectacle is zero, then it really comes down to storytelling, compelling characters, compelling themes, heart and humor spectacle in that order,” he says. “If you lead with heart, you end up with something great.” For now, he’s happy to bring an analog comedy to theaters. For him, it’s more than overdue. “As a father of a 10-year-old, she’s never been to a movie like this in a theater like this before,” he says. “It’s wild. I’m ready to make a lot more of them.” *** Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic, and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. He’s also the host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto. 

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Vladimir Lenin quoted Karl Marx as saying, “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” When the modern oppressed looked deep inside themselves, much as the Ghostbusters did, they tried to do good and instead failed, choosing theater kids rather than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And if there’s one thing theater kids are going to do, it’s theater, which sometimes involves making films. “I Love Boosters” is such a film, one described by “The Daily Show’s” Jordan Klepper as “’Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’ if it were directed by Karl Marx with a bunch of Molly in the background.” It plunges you into a surreal world centered on a group of boosters (people who steal clothes and resell them at a price significantly lower than retail) and their leader’s infatuation with fashion designer Christie Smith (Demi Moore).  The Velvet Gang, as the group of boosters is known, regularly steals massive amounts of clothing from Smith’s stores. Then, the gang’s leader Corvette (Keke Palmer) along with henchwomen Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige) sell the wares in apartments redesigned as shops and on the street, helping the less successful among us stay fashion forward. In that way, they’re like the Robin Hoods of haute couture, or at least that’s what the message seems to be.  What I have just described boasts a 92% average from film critics on Rotten Tomatoes, though it only scores a 72% average with the actual audience. That’s impressive for a movie that leaves most people saying “huh?” when you tell them you went to see “I Love Boosters.” It’s so disjointed that even people who wanted to see it can barely get it out of C- territory. (As verified reviewer Ben wrote, “No idea what I just watched. A waste of time. I should have walked out of the movie and stared at a puddle of water instead, would have been more entertaining.”) When your anti-capitalist/pro-communist film is only hitting with the bourgeoisie and not the proletariat, well, congratulations, I suppose, because that’s usually the target audience for communism. Though the bourgeoisie in “I Love Boosters” solely consists of billionaire Smith, with everyone else being part of the proletariat, except for a group of people who wear literal skin suits and a demon who sucks the souls from people in a manner that I will not be describing here. Suffice it to say, though, that the literal demon is a good guy, somehow.  There’s also Jianhu (Poppy Liu), a rival booster from a Chinese sweatshop where Smith’s clothing is made, though she’s not trying to sell fast fashion to the victims of the Chinese Communist regime, but instead lobbies for better pay and labor practices inside the sweatshop. This, of course, is also a very American communist bourgeoisie approach to Chinese atrocities, except actually they tend to lobby for continued atrocities. Not that the pro-communist leanings of the movie are any more obvious while watching it than they would be while staring at a puddle of water.  Mostly, it’s just a film that centers on Corvette’s anger with Smith, who refers to the Velvet Gang as “low class, urban b*tches,” which, okay? I’m not a communist, so perhaps I’m missing something, but theft isn’t something I associate with the middle or upper classes.  If I were a communist, though, I could argue that the Velvet Gang members are merely victims of the capitalist system of oppression that prevents them from rising up into the ranks of the professional managerial class and stealing from the proletariat, and also that “urban” is just thinly veiled racism. (Fair, just don’t ask the modern communists why identity politics is actually bad for the cause, comrade.)  Also, Corvette is aggrieved because she failed to become a famous fashion designer, mostly because she’s afraid to give it a shot, other than posting some designs on Instagram, one of which Smith may have stolen. This is the most unintentional and hilariously revealing insight into the modern American theater kid’s envious rage against capitalism that the film offers, and would strike a blow to its premise if theater kids had any conception of irony.  In any case, Corvette continues along, planning one final giant heist with her fellow gang members plus Jianhu, who has a teleporter/deconstructor/accelerator machine (don’t ask). They succeed. Chinese factory workers go on strike, win their concessions from the Chinese Communist Party, and get improved pay and working conditions in their sweatshop instead of being murdered for going against the paramount leader. This inspires global protests, the theater kids’ primary mode of communication. Presumably, there’s a glorious uprising that happens sometime after the movie ends.  There may have been a post-credits Easter egg detailing the final five-year plan, but I wouldn’t know, as I didn’t stay for the full credits to roll. Granted, I am not the target audience for “I Love Boosters.” Critics are known for loving hot garbage, so they get a pass, but there are four- and five-star audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. There is praise for the anti-capitalist message. Several reviews mention love for the cast. Some people seem to genuinely love the rollicking, disjointed, confusing “plot.” That’s fine. We’re a pluralist country, and I used to pretend to like “Eraserhead.” I’m not totally innocent here.  But as an anti-capitalist commentary, does it work? This is where I am sad to report that yes, it does, at least partly, and not in its intended way. Because if this is the type of art that capitalists, albeit the faux communist flavor of capitalists, are funding, then it may be time to eviscerate the bourgeoisie theater kids and bring forth a glorious uprising of whatever class it is that would rather stare into a puddle of water. *** Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** I’m not a tough movie critic, and it’s not that I don’t have taste. But just because I can appreciate “Marty Supreme” doesn’t mean I won’t laugh at the latest formulaic romcom that rolled off the streaming conveyor belt. Just as a hot dog is better at a ballgame than a plate of steak tartare, you wouldn’t want to watch “Schindler’s List” on an airplane. I say all this so that you really believe me when I say that “Ladies First” is the worst movie ever made. Netflix’s latest feature film stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Damien Sachs, an unbelievably misogynistic ad executive who finds himself in a gender-bent world where Alex Fox (Rosamund Pike), the long-suffering single mother who quit rather than suffer under Damien’s chauvinism, is his boss. In fact, in this alternate universe, women hold all the power, and men are the second sex! Get it? It’s funny because of sexism. Except, here’s the thing: The movie isn’t funny at all. Nor is it an effective or incisive commentary on the state of gender equality. And I’m not saying that because I disagree with the arguments the movie is trying to make. I’m saying that because it’s a poorly written, overacted lump of tropes that feels bloated at only 93 minutes. In “Ladies First,” every man is either a villainous lothario or a beer-swilling, ball-scratching manchild who sits around lazily while their wives and mothers do all the work. The women, meanwhile, are all smiling through the stress as they cook, clean, work, parent, and try to have it all. This may read like the upshot of any movie made in the last 30 years starring Vince Vaughn, but it’s so much worse. Consider the explosive scene that precedes Damien’s universe jump, wherein Alex — recently promoted to junior creative director to placate a client who demanded more diversity — sits through a pitch meeting on how to get more women to drink Guinness. Here’s some of the dialogue: “You know St. Pauli Girl, right?” “Heil Titler!” “Right, so we create our own: Guinness Girl. But she’s so much hotter. And they make out!” “And then she and the St. Pauli girl have a pub fight, and there’s Guinness, and there’s foam —” “And they’re ripping each other’s clothes off!” I mean, come on. It’s not just that the writing is too ham-fisted to be either funny or biting, though it is. The real problem is that this is so unbelievable that it’s guaranteed to kill any interest in the ultimate plot twist. There are undoubtedly sexist ad execs in the world, but not even Don Draper would think to pitch women on a product with a campaign that amounts to “hurr durr boobies lol.” The idea that an ad executive in 2026 would have such a dumb idea strains credulity about as much as a multiverse designed to punish chauvinism. Things only get worse as we enter the women-run world, where instead of being confronted with boss babes and gender equality, we get a literal swap: here, women are crass and vulgar, and men are sensitive and effeminate. Without context, the limp-wristed affectation of all the men in this film would certainly be seen as a gay joke, and the women belching with their hands down their pants just comes across as odd. In case you missed the gender swap, they’ll remind you every scene in throwaway gags as subtle as dynamite. The books in Damien’s apartment are “Harriet Potter” and “The Lady of the Rings”; Victoria’s Secret sells testicle bras; there’s even a throwaway bit about a man’s “time of the week,” which is left mostly unexplained. These moments, which could otherwise be the source of the movie’s biggest punchlines, fall entirely flat because they don’t make any sense. This is especially clear when it comes to the alternate universe women, who behave just as horribly as men in the real world. This is where the already tenuous movie falls completely apart. Rather than become an advocate for gender equality in the alternate universe, Damien accepts the matriarchy and becomes a himbo: he dresses provocatively, undergoes cosmetic procedures, and sleeps with his boss, who goads him into bed with the promise of a promotion. What sets Damien free from his strange new reality is not accepting women as equals, but undergoing a humiliation ritual in which he is feminized and belittled. The most bizarre scene in the alternate world comes when Damien repeats the aforementioned board meeting. This time, it’s Alex who makes penis jokes and pitches the world’s worst campaign to get men interested in Guinness while his cries fall on deaf ears. But while Alex cried sexism and quit, Damien started trying to crawl his way back to power. That is an unintentionally hilarious take on the differences between men and women. This is the film’s ultimate failure: It has no sexual politics, or, to the extent that it does, they are so muddled that they make no sense. Of course, movies don’t always have to make grand points, but a movie like “Ladies First” clearly has one in mind. Failing to stick the landing on something as simple as “gender equality good” is just plain embarrassing. In fact, if you really start thinking about “Ladies First,” you may find yourself coming up the other end of the horseshoe. The movie’s logic holds that there are certain traits and behaviors inherent to each sex, and that there are only two sexes. One of those sexes is naturally dominant, and its dominance seems tied to the fact that it is less emotional and more prone to action. We’re obviously supposed to watch “Ladies First” and think “wow, gender roles are really messed up!” But it’s hard not to walk away from the film thinking, “Well, sure, in that world it makes sense that women are in charge!” By creating a society more patriarchal than reality and then immediately inverting it, “Ladies First” makes strict gender roles seem more, not less, reasonable. But it’s important to note, ultimately, that none of this matters. By even drawing out these contradictions, I have spent more time thinking about “Ladies First” than it deserves. If you want an actually funny take on the film’s central trope, watch this one episode of “The Mindy Project” and use the other 71 minutes to do something productive. But if you want to spend 93 minutes bored out of your mind, regretting your decisions, and occasionally throwing up your hands in disbelief — just go to the DMV.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** When I walked out of the IVF clinic for the last time, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had done everything a patient is supposed to do. For over a decade, I had lived what most people would call a low-tox life. I avoided polyester, BPA, and the endocrine disruptors hiding in everyday products. I paid attention to what I put in and on my body because I believe that our health is shaped by the small daily choices most people never think about. So when my husband and I struggled to conceive, I assumed I would walk into a fertility clinic, get answers, and find a path forward. I tracked my cycles. I sat through the hormone panels, the hysterosalpingogram, the saline infusion sonogram, the genetic testing, the semen analysis, the ultrasounds. Every test came back normal. And at the end of it, a doctor I had met for less than 30 minutes told me my diagnosis was “unexplained infertility” and that the next step was IVF due to my age: 31. That was it. There was no other path offered. No further investigation. No specialist to consult. No suggestion that maybe, just maybe, “unexplained” didn’t mean there was nothing wrong, but that no one had looked hard enough to find it. When you are told IVF is your only path to motherhood, you do not weigh it as one option among many. You weigh it against childlessness. That is not informed consent. That is a cornered decision. Women across this country are walking into IVF cycles not because they have chosen it freely from a range of options, but because they have been handed an illusion that this is the only door left. The grief of that is hard to describe. You inject yourself with hormones you do not fully understand, you mortgage your savings, you absorb the physical toll, and underneath it all is a quiet voice asking whether anyone has actually tried to understand your body. For many women, the answer is no. @healthillie Wild ride #ivf #infertility ♬ original sound – Live Healthillie Restorative reproductive medicine fell into my lap. I did not find it because I was a smarter patient or a better advocate. I found it because I got lucky, and that should not be how women find answers about their own bodies. Think about what is being asked of women in my position. We are expected, with no medical training, to somehow know that our doctors haven’t looked thoroughly enough. We are expected to advocate for tests we have never heard of, request referrals to specialists no one has mentioned, and second-guess the experts we are paying to guide us. How is a patient supposed to know what “extensive enough” looks like? That burden should not be ours to carry. But it is. When I finally sat down with an RRM doctor, the consult lasted over an hour. He went through my history, my cycles, my labs, my surgeries, and patterns in my family. By the end of that conversation, he was recommending a diagnostic laparoscopy. I was scared. I was also genuinely confused. I had no symptoms. No debilitating periods. No pelvic pain. No outward signs that something was wrong. Every standard screen I had been given had come back unremarkable, and now a doctor I had just met was telling me he believed there was something to find and that the only way to know for sure was surgery. I said yes. And what they found inside of me was something very different than what I had been told. One of my fallopian tubes was, in fact, blocked — not open, as my IVF clinic’s hysterosalpingogram had indicated. I had stage 1 endometriosis, an inflammation of the uterine lining. I had a cyst blocking my cervix. And I had fibroids covering my uterus. This was the body my IVF clinic was prepared to transfer embryos into. I believe healthy embryos, the product of an extraordinarily expensive and physically grueling process, would have died inside of me, not because the technology failed, but because of medical neglect. No one looked closely enough to find what was actually wrong with me first. Here is what I want every woman reading this to understand. The standard pathway in mainstream fertility care often looks like this: You get a basic workup, and if nothing obvious turns up, you are routed toward IVF. There is very little in between. And the women who do get a diagnosis — PMOS, endometriosis — are largely funneled toward the same destination. Sometimes a few rounds of intrauterine insemination are offered first, often because insurance requires it before covering IVF, not because IUI is the most appropriate next step. The diagnosis changes. The recommendation rarely does. PMOS patients face significantly elevated risk during ovarian stimulation. A 2021 study published in “Frontiers in Endocrinology” followed nearly 2,700 women with PMOS undergoing IVF and found that roughly 25% developed ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (a complication that ranges from uncomfortable to genuinely dangerous, sometimes requiring hospitalization). The rate in the general IVF population is around 5%. Yet PMOS patients are rarely referred to specialists who treat the underlying drivers of their condition first, steps that could change what treatment they need at all, or make IVF safer if they do choose it. Endometriosis is associated with lower IVF success rates, and the most effective treatment for the disease itself is excision surgery performed by a skilled endometriosis surgeon. Yet rather than being referred for treatment of the underlying disease, women are often told to suppress it hormonally in preparation for transfer. Suppression is not treatment. It manages the disease for the cycle; it does not address it. These are not fringe conditions. They affect millions of women, and the standard pathway treats them as obstacles to bypass on the way to IVF, rather than as conditions deserving dedicated care. I am telling my story because women deserve to know there are real, evidence-based diagnostic and treatment steps between an infertility diagnosis and an IVF cycle. We deserve more than 30-minute consultations for lifelong decisions. We deserve doctors who investigate before they intervene. We deserve to know that “unexplained” sometimes just means “not yet examined.” Most of all, we deserve choice, not the illusion of it. We cannot explore our options if we are never given any. I had to find that out the hard way. I am writing this so the next woman doesn’t have to. *** Iliriana Balaj is the founder of Live Healthillie, the author of “Yummy Colors,” and an integrative nutrition coach. She has dedicated her life to founding a low-tox marketplace sourcing the cleanest brands and advocating for people creating a healthier life for themselves by education and informed consent.