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Microdosing is gaining popularity with a new breed of health-seekers.These self-experimenters take a very small amount of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD to try to reduce anxiety, stress and depression.Some claim the practice gives them access to joy, creativity and connection they cannot get otherwise.This is not a full-blown acid trip – or even close. If you see visions, it is not a microdose.People who microdose do not do it every day. Instead, they take tiny doses intermittently, on a schedule or when they feel it could be beneficial.A microdoser harvests a psilocybe cubensis mushroom to make into powder for consumption. Photo: APOne small study suggests any psychological benefits come from users’ expectations – the placebo effect. But the science is still new and research is ongoing....

Lead cast: Kim Hye-ja, Son Suk-ku, Han Ji-minLatest Nielsen rating: 6.1 per centIn the fantasy romance Heavenly Ever After, Korean screen icon Kim Hye-ja (Mother) plays a woman who reunites with her husband in the afterlife – but with a catch.This is the latest series from veteran writer Lee Nam-kyu, who recently drew acclaim for the mental-health-focused Netflix series Daily Dose of Sunshine.Heavenly Ever After is pitched somewhere between the British classic A Matter of Life and Death and the more recent US television comedy The Good Place – both of which also imagine administrative snafus in the afterlife – but with a heavy side of K-drama schmaltz.

“It’s alive! It’s alive!”That quote from the 1931 film adaptation of Frankenstein ushered in an era of classic monster films for the production company Universal Pictures. Now, almost 100 years later, it is helping Universal herald a new era of theme parks in the US state of Florida.Opening on May 22, Universal Epic Universe is the third theme park at the Universal Orlando Resort – fourth if you count Universal Volcano Bay water park – and the first major traditional park to open in the state since 1999’s Universal Islands of Adventure.Located about 5 miles (8km) southeast of the existing Universal resort, the new complex includes Epic Universe, as well as three hotels. There is plenty of expansion space for future additions.In a media preview, five of Epic Universe’s fantastic worlds – Ce...

American film composer Aaron Zigman’s musical drama Émigré, about Jewish refugees in Shanghai in the late 1930s, will make its Hong Kong debut in an updated version that its composer says will “complete” an emotional journey that began in 2019.That was the year prominent Chinese conductor Yu Long invited Zigman, who is classically trained, and lyricists Mark Campbell and Brock Walsh to take part in the Émigré project, a joint commission by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.Zigman is known for writing the music for more than 60 Hollywood films – including the 2004 box office hit The Notebook and the 2008 film version of Sex and the City – and for writing and arranging popular albums for musical legends such as Quincy Jones, Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner.It took...

From French people discovering Taobao to Russian tourists in China, here are five stories you may have missed over the weekend.

Baron Guy Ullens, the Belgian businessman and philanthropist known for his pioneering contemporary art centre in Beijing and a violent family tragedy two years ago, died on April 19 at the age of 90.Ullens was born in San Francisco into an aristocratic Belgian family, and spent his early years moving from one country to another because of his father’s career as a diplomat. After graduating with a law degree from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven [now KU Leuven] in Belgium, and an MBA from Stanford University in the US, he joined his family’s sugar refinery business Raffinerie Tirlemontoise and orchestrated its 1989 sale to Germany’s Südzucker.In 1999, as head of investment company Artal Group, he acquired majority control of Weight Watchers International through what Forbes described as “...

French fries are apparently crunchier, salmon juicier and roasted broccoli even crispier when cooked with a fast, fat-free air fryer. Amateur chefs love the versatile gadgets that do not cause smells in the kitchen.“A hot-air fryer is a kitchen appliance in which food can be deep-fried, grilled, baked and cooked using hot air,” says Steffi Sinzenich, who runs a food blog.“Food becomes particularly crispy and hardly any oil is needed. Things like French fries or breaded dishes are lower in fat and healthier.“The circulating hot air means that food is cooked evenly and usually faster than in an oven.”Air fryers have a closed oven, so there is no smell of fat in the kitchen. That is why many like making burgers and meatballs in an air fryer.Most appliances have fixed programmes with preset te...

You may have noticed people talking about the viral “12-3-30” workout on social media, or seen the workouts for yourself at the gym – just look for the people walking at a very high incline on the treadmills.The workout, created by social media influencer Lauren Giraldo, has received a lot of attention for its simplicity and results. It involves walking for 30 minutes on a treadmill at a 3mph (4.8km/h) pace at a 12 per cent incline.“I’m not a runner, and running on the treadmill was not working for me,” Giraldo told Today magazine.“I started playing around with the settings, and at the time, my gym’s treadmill had 12 incline as the max. The three miles per hour felt right, like walking, and my grandma had always told me that 30 minutes of exercise a day was all you needed. That’s how the c...

In March, around 4,000 music lovers from Hong Kong attended a one-night-only concert by Andrea Bocelli, a legendary tenor once dubbed the “Voice of God” by singer Celine Dion.That the concert on March 29 was in Macau was an inconvenience they were willing to overlook.According to the organiser and resort Galaxy Macau, Hong Kong visitors made up around 40 per cent of the audience at the sell-out show at the Galaxy Arena. Many of them, like music critic Edison Hung Sze-hang, were happy to make the two-hour round trip for it.“Local classical music lovers are travelling more for shows since so many big names are going to nearby cities like Macau, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and not coming to Hong Kong,” Hung says.Andrea Bocelli performs at the Galaxy Arena in Macau on March 29, 2025. Photo: Luca R...

Growing up in the 1990s in Oakland, in the US state of California, director Ryan Coogler was fuelled by his city’s magnetic hip-hop scene and artists such as Digital Underground, 2Pac and E-40.But it was Bay Area heavy metal legends Metallica who helped provide a structure for his new movie Sinners, the director says over a Zoom call from Chicago.Starring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role as Smoke and Stack, twin brothers in Mississippi in the early 1930s, the movie takes on the history of blues music and mixes it with a supernatural story about a pack of bloodthirsty vampires.Coogler says he had Metallica on his mind when he was laying out the story’s rhythms and beats.“I wanted the movie to have the simplicity – and simultaneously, the profound nature – of a Delta blues song. But I wanted...