Category: 5. Entertainment

1. Le Mas de la Rose, Provence, France

The handsome stone farm buildings of this understated complex weave around an alluring swimming pool, shelving out from the shallows like a turquoise Riviera bay. With just nine rooms and three suites, this place feels intimate, and the chunky wood beams, cool farmhouse tiles and freestanding tubs give rooms a romantic lilt. The surroundings are just what you’d expect from a Provençal hideaway: olive groves, lavender trails and scented pines. You’ll find the hotel in Orgon, a 40-minute drive from pretty Avignon — a perfect jumping-off base for exploring Provence villages with a hire car.
Details Room-only doubles from £306 (mas-rose.com). Fly to Avignon

• Best affordable hotels in France

2. Nordelaia, Piedmont, Italy

We love a small but mighty hotel, and Nordelaia’s 12 rooms cover every shade of Italian style. Take the La Foresta suite, with polished wooden panelling, bright teal and mid-century details, or the Estate room, draped in lush four-poster fabrics in Medici-in-feel golds. Independently owned, adults-only and packed with character, it’s in the northern, foodie province of Piedmont in the small town of Cremolino (expect excellent cheeses and robust bottles of barolo) and has a beautiful hillside setting. Lounge by the infinity pool with its staggering views of the countryside, join morning yoga or indulge in a winery visit or cooking class arranged by the hotel team.
Details B&B doubles from £379 (nordelaia.com). Fly to Genoa

3. La Dehesa Don Pedro, Extremadura, Spain

Lovingly restored by its owners the Valenzuela family, this 19th-century farmhouse in the town of Monesterio overlooks mountains and pastures in agricultural Extremadura. Whitewashed and russet-tiled, it contains 16 rooms, a pool and mini-spa with sauna and whirlpool. While it may be tempting to spend every day surveying the panorama of the pool terrace (let’s ignore the fact that the gym has an equally wow-factor view), these guys are all about getting you out into the landscape: horse riding through the meadows, stargazing at night or visiting the farm to learn about the region’s culinary heritage.
Details B&B doubles from £170 (dehesadonpedro.com). Fly to Seville

4. Immerso Hotel, Ericeira, Portugal

In surfy Ericeira, a 40-minute drive north from Lisbon, this self-proclaimed “slow hotel” suggests you press pause on the grind with yoga sessions on the deck, spa treatments, rental bikes to pedal along the coast, and long dinners at its restaurant. It’s family friendly, but heavy on grown-up style: a photo-worthy pool deck backdropped by coastline, freestanding bathtubs in suites and freshly grilled sardines on the sunset-view veranda. Rooms have that effortlessly stylish Portuguese vibe: sand-coloured throws, white and pine, with flashes of mermaid-tail tiles in suites; and there’s an included shuttle down to Ericeira town. The nearest beach is just a few minutes’ drive away, with many more within day-trip distance.
Details B&B doubles from £367 (immerso.pt). Fly to Lisbon

• The most beautiful places in Portugal

5. Aquadulci, Chia, Sardinia

Rooms may be simple at this sultry coastal hotel outside the city of Cagliari, but you’re here for the verdant grounds — swaying palms, a briskly cool freeform pool, curtained double day beds and, crucially, less than a five-minute walk to the beach. This swathe of Sardinia’s southern coast, in the Baia de Chia area, is a honeypot of natural beauty: miles of protected, grassy sand dunes, flamingos balancing in glittering lagoons and unspoilt, cream-coloured beaches. Follow the boardwalk path from Aquadulci’s car park to the cooling shallows of Su Giudeu beach — a five-star dinner awaits you in its garden restaurant when you return.
Details B&B doubles from £380 (aquadulci.com). Fly to Cagliari

6. Perdue Hotel, Fethiye, Turkey

Another adults-only candidate, this rustic-chic Turkish bolt hole has just 17 palm-thatched safari tents tucked into a dramatic sliver of cliffside outside Fethiye. Emphatically unspoilt, the surroundings are all thick pine forest and dramatic boulders (you’ll be plunging into the Med from the rocks rather than a sandy beach, but the swimming is heaven). Peace and quiet is paramount here — you’ll hear the odd chillout tune wafting over from the sunset bar, but the spaced-out plateaus with loungers, plunge pool and nocturnal outdoor cinema are all about unwinding. Take the hotel boat along the coast for completely undisturbed swimming, or lunch out at the beach club nearby.
Details Room-only doubles from £466 (perdue.com.tr). Fly to Dalaman

7. Priesteregg, Leogang, Austria

If you’re seeking cooler pastures than the traditional Med this summer, consider Austria’s lakes and mountains. The Pinzgau region outside Salzburg sees highs between 20 and 25C in July and August — comfortable enough for view-tastic hikes around Priesteregg, an 18-chalet boutique resort (nearby are 250 miles of marked Alpine trails). Last year this “chalet village” opened the Seehütten, a trio of sweet wooden chalets with direct access to its spring-water bathing lake, and gorgeous views of the surrounding peaks. Book a massage, tuck into Austrian caviar or local kasnocken dumplings at the restaurant, or join outdoor yoga sessions surrounded by pines and peaks.
Details B&B doubles from £587 (priesteregg.at). Fly to Salzburg

8. Son Moli Country House, Es Pilari, Mallorca

For those who like to be at the cutting edge of things, try this 22-room farmhouse outside Palma, Mallorca, which opened in May. A ten-minute drive from Palma’s airport, it’s one of the speediest of this list to get to; but don’t be put off by the proximity to Magaluf — this is the sibling to Palma’s esteemed Can Bordoy hotel, with a tranquil swimming pool in manicured gardens, cushioned loungers beneath the trees and a terrace straight out of an ancient Balearic village. The farm-to-fork Mallorcan restaurant is one big draw here — while a tennis court, spacious room terraces and freshly squeezed orange juice from the estate’s trees all perk up your stay.
Details B&B doubles from £310 (sonmoli.com). Fly to Palma

• More great hotels in Mallorca

9. Anemi Hotel, Folegandros, Greece

An hour’s ferry from the far-busier Santorini, Folegandros has a more rugged feel, with traditional Cycladian villages, secluded beaches and mountainous hiking trails. The five-star Anemi is equally fuss-free but straight-from-a-magazine stylish, with a cluster of low-lying sugar-cube buildings with a tennis court, an outdoor gym, the island’s first spa and an outdoor saltwater infinity pool with zingy yellow parasols. The 44 rooms are minimalist and largely all-white, but for sparing splashes of the same yellow in a rug or bathroom wall. There’s a relaxed Greek restaurant serving just-caught seafood or you can visit the hotel’s 30-acre organic vineyard for tastings, yoga classes and sound healing.
Details B&B doubles from £244 (anemihotel.gr). Fly to Santorini

10. Palazzo Rainis, Novigrad, Croatia

Overlooking the Adriatic Sea and next to Novigrad’s glamorous marina, Palazzo Rainis is the former 19th-century home of a Venetian chemist converted into an elegant adults-only retreat. There are just 16 sophisticated rooms and suites, with chocolate-brown parquet flooring, bottle-green armchairs and an art deco flair. All have balconies or terraces and most have sea views. Guests waft between the spa with its Finnish sauna, the outdoor pool surrounded by gardens and the destination restaurant serving upscale Istrian dishes. There’s a pine-backed beach on the doorstep and the hotel can arrange sunset cruises along the coastline, truffle hunting trips, sea kayaking and wine tasting.
Details B&B doubles from £531 (palazzorainis.com). Fly to Pula

• Best places to visit in Croatia

Additional reporting by Siobhan Grogan

Editor’s note: “The Spoken Word” is shared by Derrick Porter each Sunday during the weekly Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square broadcast. This will be given Sunday, July 6, 2025. This week is No. 4,999 of the broadcast.

Recently I met a man who many years ago served as a pilot in the United States Navy. His unit was deployed and had been assigned an early morning mission. It was winter, and the freezing rain and biting wind made preflight preparations nearly unbearable. Still, being in command, the young pilot had no choice but to press on.

The crew launched into the storm, climbing blindly through the clouds using only their instruments for guidance. The aircraft rattled against the turbulence, with rain and hail hammering the fuselage like a relentless drumbeat.

With each takeoff, the pilots had a habit of using the plane’s high-frequency radio to search nearby stations for background music to accompany them as the plane ascended into the sky. As the young pilot scanned through the static, he suddenly heard something familiar — the unmistakable sound of the Tabernacle Choir from Salt Lake City, Utah, and its program, “Music & the Spoken Word.”

The pilot paused. The reception was poor — the words barely distinguishable through the crackling interference — but the feeling was immediate and undeniable, a tender reminder of home, faith and God’s presence.

Then, through the static, the voice of the narrator broke through, clear and distinctive: “My faithfulness to thee is as the dawn of a new day.” At that exact moment, the plane broke through the cloud cover and the cockpit was instantly flooded with brilliant sunlight. The storm, the darkness, the turbulence — everything that had surrounded the plane only moments before — was now below, hidden beneath a thick, rolling sea of clouds.

Above, the sky stretched endless and clear. Inside, something within the pilot soared. The message was unmistakable. He recorded: “God is faithful. No matter the storms that rage below, no matter the darkness that clouds our vision, His faithfulness is unwavering — as sure as the rising sun.”

He continued, “That morning in the cockpit was more than just an experience — it was … a personal grace-filled moment where I knew, beyond all doubt, that God’s faithfulness is as certain as the dawn of a new day.”

Yes, God’s faithfulness is as certain as the dawn. His faithfulness to us is something we can always count on.

As we celebrate the Fourth of July, we give thanks for God’s unfailing faithfulness to each of us and pray for His blessings upon this great land that we love.

Tuning in …

The “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast is available on KSL-TV, KSL News Radio 1160AM/102.7FM, KSL.com, BYUtv, BYUradio, Dish and DirecTV, SiriusXM (Ch. 143), tabernaclechoir.org, youtube.com/TheTabernacleChoir and Amazon Alexa (must enable skill). The program is aired live on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Mountain Time on these outlets. Look up broadcast information by state and city at musicandthespokenword.com/viewers-listeners/airing-schedules.

“Definitely did.”

So said Anna Camp when asked if she rewatched the Scream franchise after being cast in the upcoming and anticipated seventh installment. The film already has a release date on the calendar, set for Feb. 27, 2026, and Camp said it’s going to be “really thrilling” for audiences, much like the experience she had making it.

“I hadn’t seen the newest ones, but I remember the first one, which I’ve seen four times already,” Camp told The Hollywood Reporter while standing on the blue carpet at the Mediterrane Film Festival’s Golden Bee Awards in Malta on Sunday. “The other ones I had to really sit down and watch. It’s just fun. This one is going to be really great because it’s Sidney Prescott, an iconic character, and Neve Campbell, an iconic actress. It’s a coming home story for her. It’s returning to the original cast and the original format.”

Asked what she learned by watching Campbell work on the new installment, Camp said she noticed her instincts and natural communication with Kevin Williamson, who came back to write and direct Scream 7 after launching the successful franchise back in the day. “This character is so close to home [for her],” Camp explained. “Obviously, she’s grown up playing this role that she knows when the script is not right or if something doesn’t feel like what Sidney would say.”

Camp continued: “Kevin Williamson directed this one, and he’s the mastermind behind the entire story. To watch their dialogue together and their shorthand, I was like, ‘I want that. I want a relationship like that with the director.’”

Speaking of relationships, Camp came to Malta with her new girlfriend, Jade Whipkey, after debuting their relationship on the red carpet at the recent Bride Hard premiere.

“It’s been a little overwhelming, obviously,” Camp said in response to the swirl surrounding the relationship and their age gap. (Camp is 42 and Whipkey is 24.) “Coming out later in life with how old I am is one thing, and then coming out publicly and being kind of in the spotlight is a whole other thing. People are having [lots of chatter] about our age gap, so it’s been a lot to deal with and hold my own with, but it’s taught me that I should live authentically as myself. I’ve actually never been happier and there’s more overwhelming support than there is negative. It’s overwhelming but I just feel free and incredibly happy.”

Camp noted that she and Whipkey have been dating for nearly seven months, and their trip to Malta marked their first major vacation together. “We’ve been having the best time,” she said. Asked if she received any messages of support from surprising places, she revealed that an Olympic medalist reached out to say, “Don’t listen to any of the haters.”

“She said that she was in an age gap relationship, and she was on the younger side of it but that it was the most fulfilling relationship of her entire life. She said, ‘Don’t listen to any of that stuff.’ I was, like, ‘Thank you, I’ll take that.’”

On the work front, Camp said she’s eager to get back on stage and find a play or musical to star in, while she’s also getting ready for a number of films on her own. “I opted to book a while ago, and that’s in the middle of being written,” she said. “I have Scream 7 out in February, and I have a couple of little indie movies coming out, but I’m just kind of waiting for the right job while I’m producing about three scripts right now on my own. I’m not sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. I’m working and doing it on my own, which is really exciting.”

Ashley Tisdale has revealed the key to her successful marriage.

The actress, who tied the knot with Christopher French in 2014, finally spilled the secret to their marriage.

Ashley said, “No matter what in life, things change.”

“I think the biggest thing is to always just try to stay on the same page throughout that,” she added.

As per Ashley, the key to successful marriage is “communication.” She said, “Communication is key on everything. That’s a big one for us.”

Ashley Tisdale who shares Christopher French share two daughters: Jupiter, 4 and Emerson, 10 months old, said, “We definitely had a really good foundation of years to just learn about each other before having kids, which I think is so important because just kids change everything,”

“One of the things I noticed is that it brings out the flaws more in each other, the flaws that you’ve always known about your person. You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ But then when you have kids, it is, “Oh my God.” It bothers you more for some reason.”

“But then there’s some people I know that literally get married and have kids, and they’re really great, too. So, I don’t know. Everyone is different,” she said, adding that it’s a “good thing” that they found each other at the “right time.”

Katherine Heigl just revealed they had to set strict rules at home after calling their kids “little addicts” to their phones.

While having a conversation with PEOPLE magazine, the 46-year-old American actress and model said she and her singer-songwriter husband, Josh Kelly, were obliged to make some changes at home after observing that their three children were turning out to be “little addicts” with their mobile phones.

Reflecting on their strict rules, Heigl, who shares her daughters Naleigh, 16, and Adalaide, 13, and son Joshua, 8, with husband Kelly, stated, “We started back in September because grades were slipping.”

“We always said no phones at bedtime, but there was sneaking devices and staying up really late and not getting good sleep and being unbearably cranky the next day. And it was just like, this isn’t healthy,” she noted.

The Suits star went on to share that they did not let her, their eldest daughter, use a phone until she turned 12.

“I was going to try to wait until 16, and I realized it’s not possible. Not in the world we live in right now,” the mother of three admitted.

“She was just taking friends’ phones and they were letting her use their phones. And then I have no idea what she’s up to. And then if she wasn’t on at all, couldn’t participate in cafeteria conversation and didn’t have any idea what other kids were talking about. So I was like, ‘Okay, let’s find a balance,’” Katherine Heigl quipped.

“Said it’s good to be back, good to be back,” sang vocalist Liam Gallagher, improvising a bit as Oasis took to the stage Friday night in Cardiff, Wales with “Hello,” the opening track from the band’s 1995 sophomore studio effort (What’s the Story) Morning Glory.

It was the first Oasis performance in 16 years and the band – brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, who took to the stage hand in hand, guitarists Gem Archer and Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, bassist Andy Bell and drummer Joey Waronker – performed for about two hours in front of 62,000 as the “Oasis Live ‘25” reunion tour kicked off at a sold out Principality Stadium.

“It was momentous for me and I think for a lot of people,” said Daniel Boczarski, a fan who travelled from Chicago, Illinois to Wales for the event. “Especially culturally for the U.K. fans: to be there and see that they actually did pull this off after so many years was special,” he said. “I saw grown men crying tears of joy and teenagers taking selfies,” said Boczarski, illustrating the group’s cross-generational appeal. “It was just a good, fun time. And that’s what rock and roll should be about.”

Fans bounced along as Oasis dusted off “Acquiesce” second in the set, the B-side to the group’s first U.K. #1 “Some Might Say,” which the band offered up two songs later.

“Acquiesce” also appeared on the 1998 Oasis compilation The Masterplan and was recently released as an acoustic remix, the first single from the group’s forthcoming 30th anniversary reissue of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, due October 3, 2025 on CD or vinyl and for online streaming via Big Brother Recordings.

Christian Madden handled keyboards with Alastair White (trombone), Joe Auckland (trumpet) and Steve Hamilton (saxophone) chipping in on “Half the World Away.”

Fans from around the world made the voyage to Cardiff to capture a moment in music history many thought would never happen, a reunion which moves to America with a sold out appearance August 28 at Chicago’s Soldier Field before continuing abroad into late November.

“For my friends and I, it’s the trip of a lifetime. My friend Matt loves Oasis, so he couldn’t miss it,” said Michael Hurcomb a photographer by trade who will be attending the upcoming Oasis performance as a fan in London on July 25, the first of a five night run at Wembley Stadium, making the trip from Toronto in the Canadian province of Ontario. “My wife and I have never been to England and we were planning a group trip. So, when Oasis announced the tour we knew we had to go,” he said. “We had to be up at 3AM to try to get tickets for Ireland. I had four tickets in my cart but, at the last minute, Ticketmaster didn’t like that I had multiple tabs open and booted me out,” said Hurcomb, echoing the frustrations of fans globally with the ticketing giant during the initial on sale last October. “At 4AM, the England shows went on sale and I got a really low queue number for Wembley. So, I waited it out and got outstanding seats.”

Opening the encore with “The Masterplan,” Oasis called it a night on stage in Cardiff in epic fashion.

“Right you beautiful people,” said Liam, introducing Oasis’ closing rendition of “Champagne Supernova” following “Wonderwall.” “This is it!”

In a major legal setback for Bollywood star Saif Ali Khan, the Madhya Pradesh High Court has upheld the Indian government’s decision to declare his inherited family property in Bhopal as ‘enemy property’, putting a massive estate worth Rs 15,000 crore at risk of seizure.

The court’s decision comes nearly a decade after the Enemy Property Supervisory Department issued a notice in 2014, classifying the Pataudi family’s sprawling estates in Bhopal under the Enemy Property Act and ordering their confiscation. Though Saif Ali Khan managed to secure a stay order against the move in 2015, that protection has now been lifted.

Properties under contention include some of Bhopal’s most historic and lavish estates: Flagstaff House (where Saif spent much of his childhood), Noor Al-Sabah Palace, Darul Salam, Habibi’s Bungalow, Ahmedabad Palace, and the Kohifza estate, among others.

The High Court’s ruling also revives a complex inheritance dispute, sending the matter back to the trial court to decide whether only Sajida Sultan (Saif’s grandmother and daughter of the last Nawab of Bhopal, Hamidullah Khan) and her descendants are the rightful heirs, or if other heirs under Muslim Personal Law also have a claim. The trial court has been directed to deliver a decision within a year.

What is the Enemy Property Act?

The Enemy Property Act allows the Indian government to take possession of properties owned by individuals who migrated to Pakistan or China after Partition. In this case, the twist lies in the migration of Abida Sultan, Hamidullah Khan’s eldest daughter, to Pakistan in 1950. The Indian government argues that this migration makes the Bhopal estate “enemy property”, even though Sajida Sultan, the second daughter, stayed in India and married Nawab Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi—making Saif Ali Khan her direct descendant.

What’s Next?

The verdict puts Saif Ali Khan’s potential inheritance—estimated at over Rs 15,000 crore—on the line, and opens the door to a prolonged legal battle. Whether or not the Pataudi scion and his family will retain any part of their princely legacy now lies in the hands of the trial court, which must navigate a labyrinth of personal law, historical context, and geopolitical classification.

This royal inheritance dispute now threatens to become one of the most high-profile legal property battles in modern Indian history.

Not everyone believes AI spells the end for animators.

Pixar’s chief creative officer, Pete Docter, recently said on comedian Mike Birbiglia’s “Working It Out” podcast that he was unimpressed with AI so far, calling it “bland.”

“AI seems like it is the least impressive blah average of things,” he said.

AI is an anxiety-inducing topic in Hollywood. Critics of the technology are concerned that it could eliminate jobs across the entertainment industry. It was one of the reasons unionized writers went on strike for nearly five months in 2023. Those in support of integrating AI, on the other hand, like director James Cameron, believe it could make the filmmaking process more cost-effective.

From Docter’s perspective, while he said everyone is “troubled” by AI, he doesn’t think it will erase humans from the animated filmmaking process. Pixar’s 29th animated feature, “Elio,” hit theaters on June 20.

“If you look back in time, the number of hand-drawn animators that were really brilliant was in the dozens,” Docter said. “A very small number of people who could draw well enough. Understood the dynamic of movement. Character acting. Had the right sensibilities.”

Computers, he said, made animation more accessible, meaning people don’t have to be a “brilliant draft person” to be an animator. “I still have to have performance and timing, but one of the heavy lifts has been done by the computer,” he said.

Docter said AI, like computers, could alleviate some of the more cumbersome tasks associated with animation.

“I was wondering whether AI will continue to help us lift some of the heavy burdens that we have to carry as an animator and maybe put the focus more on the performance,” he said.

Representatives for Disney did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Since its start, “The Bear” has been lauded by restaurant workers for its realistic portrayal of kitchen chaos.

The show relays how frenetic back-of-house operations can get, often through the sensory overload created by the Emmy-winning sound team: shouting voices, objects slamming onto countertops, food sizzling on stovetops.

Most recently, Season 4 (released June 25) serves up some of that typical, immersive kitchen soundscape, except on a more mellowed level than usual. As Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and the rest of the staff try to push The Bear restaurant onto an upward trajectory, the sounds are less abrasive. “It’s still chaotic, but it’s less shouting and it’s more measured. There’s like a metronome, a beat to the whole thing,” Steve “Major” Giammaria, supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer, tells Variety.

Giammaria says Season 4 features “horizontal sounds,” like “simmering and bubbling and dishwashing.” Background noise is less in-your-face. “If they’re in the office, it’s Sugar and Richie talking about something in the office, it’s maybe not as chaotic outside the door as it would have been in Season 3 or especially Season Two during construction,” he says.

Compare that to Season 3’s “vertical sounds,” which is what Giammaria calls percussive noises such as “forks clinking, pots clanging.”

But this season still contains fast-paced montages that can elevate your blood pressure. Take, for example, the montage in the first episode when The Bear staff begin their attempt to speed up operations in order to keep their restaurant functioning as efficiently as possible — and financially above water.

“The structure of that comes from the picture department, because obviously, we have to follow the picture,” Giammaria says. “We have a conversation of like, ‘Okay, are we in hyperreal, stylized mode, or is somebody just setting down a cutting board?’”

The sound team has anxiety-heightening tricks. “Whether it’s some repetitive sound that starts speeding up, like some chopping or whatever. Just adding, adding, adding, adding,” Giammaria says. “Usually, with those scenes, there’s tensions building, building, building, and then something happens. A plate crashes, or whatever. So it’s all about tension and release there in terms of number of sounds, volume of sounds, abrasiveness of sounds.”

The Episode 1 montage progresses to a point when Marcus (Lionel Boyce) slides a tray across the counter, which pushes a plate over the edge — spiking viewers’ stress — until Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas) catches it.

The team also intensifies peripheral noise. “Everything’s getting louder. Everything’s getting more reverb, less reverb, just some sort of change that builds up over time that you don’t necessarily realize,” Giammaria says.

Of course, the dialogue is a huge part of the show since the characters come into frequent conflict with one another.

Production mixer Scott D. Smith captures those exchanges on set. “It’s pretty much about as chaotic as you see it on screen. We seldom rehearse. If we do rehearse, it’s more blocking rehearsals than it is dialogue. We almost never do a dialogue rehearsal, and if we do…they’re just running off the lines. It’s nowhere near the level that they’d actually be doing when we film,” Smith says.

Smith says that by Season 3, the team learned to anticipate actors’ patterns during these fraught scenes. “We know that that Ebon [Moss-Bachrach] might start out soft, but then get very loud. So we try to accommodate that,” he says. “The dialogue overlaps are not particularly challenging for us, but they’re really challenging for post,” he adds.

Those overlapping conversations go to dialogue editor Evan Benjamin to be cleaned up. “Scott records all this stuff beautifully, but you’re left with a ton of data. There’s a lot of microphones. Every actor has a microphone. There’s booms, there’s multiple booms,” Benjamin says.

The goal is to “make it sound like it was all shot with somebody’s phone all in one take,” Benjamin says. “Because it’s cut take to take to take, and because of what they’re doing and they’re shouting over each other, or the rhythm is so quick that it’s by its nature, when you get it, it’s very jagged sounding. And we’re trying to make it sound like it all happened at once.”

The sound team tries to avoid the actors having to re-record dialogue, according to Benjamin.

One of Giammaria’s favorite sound moments from this season doesn’t involve any loud clashes. In Episode 5, Carmy tries one of Marcus’s new desserts. It’s a delicate green pudding with some crispy textures on top, presented in a scalloped white bowl. And in a delightful reveal, Marcus uses a spoon to fracture the bowl, showing that it’s also edible.

Putting that scene together involved working with a foley team at Alchemy. Assistant sound editor Craig LoGiudice recorded the breaking of chocolate bars.

“There’s probably about 10 or 15 layers to just that simple crunch of that thing going through that first initial bite, and then when he cracks open the surprise of the bowl, that the bowl is edible too. Those are the kind of things I really like digging into because you want to make sure all those layers are specific,” Giammaria says.

“It sounds delicious,” he adds. “It sounds fancy.”

As sets are bustling and noisy places, the team typically isn’t able to incorporate actual cooking sounds from set into the sound design. At most, the on-set recorded material might be used for reference to check what something should sound like.

“What you’re actually hearing when you watch TV has nothing to do with what actually was recorded on set,” Benjamin says.

And it was a battle to get the kitchen set up exactly the way the sound team needed.

“Since that’s a working kitchen on set that they built with working stoves and everything, it was a big issue to try and actually make that functional and still get dialogue. A lot of discussions with the HVAC people, the studio, because they had to punch a hole in the top of the stage to exhaust it. A lot of effort went into that just so that we could try and get some usable dialogue hopefully during the scenes that they’re actually doing cooking in,” Smith says.

Even scenes with a lot of silence prove to be difficult for the artisans. “They’re paradoxically harder,” Benjamin says. He names an emotional discussion between Carmy and Donna toward the end of this season as an example: “It’s just a hard scene for some reason because they’re both moving around a lot, they’re both using props a lot.” There’s also a tense conversation with Carmy and Bob Odenkirk’s Uncle Lee. “Carmy has this gum wrapper thing that he can’t stop playing with,” Benjamin notes.

That’s a key process in itself: choosing which sounds to keep and get rid of. Each sound contains an “emotional valence,” Benjamin says. “Everything means something, and it might mean something that you don’t want,” he explains. “Each one of those decisions is a tiny decision, but I feel like when you add them all up, you’re changing the emotional content of a scene in one way or another.”

The precision that goes into creating the show’s atmosphere is likely why it’s able to get such a visceral reaction from people, including those who have worked in restaurants.

“I’ve had other people tell me that it’s just an unbelievably stressful environment and that the show captures it pretty perfectly,” Benjamin says.