It’s been about two years since Season 2 of HBO’s seedy corporate melodrama Industry aired. The series finally returns for a third season on Sunday, but, if you barely remember a thing about where we left off, you’re likely suffering from what I call hiatus brain.

Industry, with its cavalcade of ruthless investment bankers and ever-shifting alliances, absolutely warrants a refresher before jumping back in. Let’s get into it.

Where we left off

The show’s premise is simple: In Season 1, a class of young recent grads were thrown into the cutthroat, coke-strewn world of fictional investment bank Pierpoint & Co. in London. Some have fared better than others – one of them literally died from a combination of energy drinks and stimulant pills in the pilot episode – but all of their souls were ultimately compromised as they vied for permanent positions within the firm.

Season 2 took place in the immediate aftermath of the global COVID-19 shutdown, with Pierpoint and its clients re-emerging to seize on all the economic vulnerabilities created in the pandemic’s wake. Looming over the return to work were rumors that the company’s New York and London sales teams might be consolidated; everyone was on edge.

Harper (Myha’la Herrold), the crafty and amorally reckless trader who’s been called a “narcissist” to her face on more than one occasion, spent last season wooing a new client, hedge fund manager Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass). She also strategized a plan with her boss and mentor Eric (Ken Leung) to convince Pierpoint management to keep them on amid the layoffs, while throwing two of their colleagues, Rishi and Dan, under the bus.

While dealing with Jesse, Harper did what she does best, which is to say she played huge, ethically dubious moves that both impressed and mortified Eric. However, his tolerance for Harper’s increasingly risky gambles eventually wore thin when, in the season finale, she passed an insider trading tip about the possibility of a huge corporate merger on to Jesse – who then used the info to make a ton of money on both sides of a trade. Worried about the legal bind she put herself and Pierpoint in, Eric blindsided Harper by revealing her long-held secret to management: that she faked her transcripts and never graduated from college. (He didn’t mention anything to them about the insider trading, though.) “I’m doing this for you,” he told her. She was fired, and Rishi got to stay on at the company.

Yas (Marisa Abela) and Celeste (Katrine De Candole) in Season 2.

Simon Ridgway/HBO

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Simon Ridgway/HBO

Yasmin (Marisa Abela) struck up a professional and personal relationship with Celeste (Katrine De Candole), one of Pierpoint’s private wealth managers. We were also introduced to Yas’ dad Charles (Adam Levy), a sleazy and well-connected business mogul/playboy with whom she has a strained relationship. She and Celeste worked to move Charles’ financial assets to Pierpoint, but the whole thing quickly fell apart: Yasmin became aware that the family’s wealth was significantly drained because Charles paid off a number of women with whom he had affairs in exchange for signing NDAs. Eventually, she suggested they stop dealing with Charles and other people like him, but Celeste shrugged it off, much to Yasmin’s horror. In the finale, Celeste cut her loose from the account.

Yasmine also lambasted Charles in the middle of a restaurant, accusing him of “grooming” her teenaged nanny years ago. She told him she wanted “nothing more to do with [him],” but as Charles harshly reminded her, she’s been financially beholden to him in every possible way her entire life. Later that evening, she returned to her lavish flat to find the locks changed.

Meanwhile, struggling salesman Robert (Harry Lawtey) took on a new client, Nicole Craig (Sarah Parish). After a meeting over dinner, she made a sexual advance on him, and they began an uncomfortable ongoing affair, with Nicole manipulating his relative inexperience and junior status at the firm. Eventually, Robert found out that Nicole’s predation of Pierpoint staffers like him is a pattern and open secret – she’d attempted the same with Harper (as seen in Season 1). Robert was distraught and tried to sever ties with her, but by the season’s end, when she bailed him out of jail after he was arrested for drug possession, he’d resigned himself to their old ways.

Who’s out and who’s in for Season 3

At the end of the first season, Gus (David Jonsson), the urbane Eton and Oxford grad, wasn’t hired at Pierpoint, though he was still in the mix in Season 2. At first, he got a gig as a tutor for Jesse Bloom’s son; then he was hired to work for a member of Parliament. Through the latter gig, he gained that crucial intel he passed along to Harper, knowing exactly what she’d do with it. Jesse’s rogue act turned out well for Gus’ boss, who got promoted to secretary of health, but like Harper, Gus’ skirting of ethics ultimately got him fired. (Although as we’ve seen again and again, no bad deed goes punished for long – or at all – within the finance world; he quickly secured a new job with Jesse.) Gus won’t return for Season 3 – Jonsson’s been busy doing some other big things lately – but the fallout from his actions reverberates all throughout these upcoming episodes.

Robert (Harry Lawtey) and Henry Muck (Kit Harington) in Season 3.

Simon Ridgway/HBO

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Simon Ridgway/HBO

And in an environment full of old-school finance bro stereotypes – abrasive, vulgar, and ever coked up – sales associate Rishi (Sagar Radia) was one of the worst of their kind. After hanging around the background in Season 1, he became more integral to the Industry narrative in Season 2. He (very) briefly hooked up with Harper in a bar bathroom on the eve of his wedding, and survived the chopping block at Pierpoint once Eric decided to turn Harper in to HR. In the forthcoming third season, he’ll take on an even bigger role as Pierpoint faces a pivotal moment in its history.

Also: Harper and Yas’ frenemy dynamic goes into overdrive, and a new absurdly wealthy and arrogant white dude enters the scene in the form of Henry Muck (Kit Harington), a green tech CEO. More than anything, be prepared for Season 3 to be the most dramatic and stress-inducing yet.

Can artificial intelligence make a tastier chocolate chip cookie recipe than a human being?

At the risk of upsetting millions of grandmothers everywhere, we set out to find an answer.

We recruited Dan Souza, chief content officer for America’s Test Kitchen, for our experiment. He matched the Test Kitchen’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe against recipes from two AI programs, ChatGPT and DishGen.

Why chocolate chip cookies?

“Cookies, when you make small changes to ingredients, we find that you get some pretty massive differences,” Souza told Morning Edition’s A Martinez. So, it’s kind of a fun one to use as a litmus test for how successful a recipe development could be.”

How did the experiment work?

Souza asked each AI program to come up with a chocolate chip cookie recipe. The results were nearly identical. Souza said there’s a good reason for that.

“What it gave me was a pretty traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe. If you look on the back of Toll House [chocolate chip] morsels, which is where most chocolate chip cookie recipes kind of originate, it was a pretty good mimic to that. You have your classic ingredients, you have your flour, you’ve got white sugar and a little bit of brown sugar, a couple of eggs,” Souza said. “What you find with these engines is they’re pulling from all over the place and so you get sort of an average output, and it looked like a really average cookie to me.”

One of these cookies is different from the other. The one on the left was created from a recipe generated by ChatGPT. The cookie on the right came from a recipe app called DishGen.

‎/America’s Test Kitchen

Advertisement

hide caption

toggle caption

‎/America’s Test Kitchen

Advertisement

Souza said both of the programs were fairly straightforward. He typed in prompts of what he was looking for and the results popped up quickly.

DishGen had a “modify” button if, for example, you wanted to change the recipe to make the cookies chewier. But there were some frustrations, as well.

“The craziest thing is I would do the search — I did it multiple times on different days — and I actually got completely different recipes. So, the same prompt but I had a different recipe, which I found like totally infuriating. If I had something that I liked and I wanted to make it again, I couldn’t.”

The taste test

In our view, the cookies from ChatGPT and DishGen were pretty good but a little boring. A variation on the ChatGPT recipe that was intended to make the cookies more chewy actually made them too chewy.

The Test Kitchen’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe lived up to its name. The cookies were crunchy on the edges and chewy in the middle. They had a nutty flavor with a hint of toffee.

Souza said the Test Kitchen recipe has many innovations that the AI engines could not pick up on.

“It’s seemingly simple, but there’s a lot going on there,” Souza said. “One of the things we’ve done is we browned the butter, which does two things. It adds tons of rich, nutty flavor. But liquefying the butter also means that you get a denser cookie, which eats chewier. So, it’s really, really valuable.”

Souza said the AI recipes have a lot of potential, but that the technology is not quite there yet.

“It’s missing the people part of it. So, if you’re tasting a chocolate chip cookie recipe that your mom has made forever, there’s a big emotional pull there. And that actually influences how you taste something. You know, we eat with our eyes, but we also eat with all of our emotions and kind of everything that we bring into the picture. You’re never going to get that from an AI.”

Reena Advani edited the radio version of this story. Obed Manuel edited the digital.

Five hundred feet outside the Lahaina burn zone, the tourists receive their leis.

As the torches of the Old Lahaina Luau flicker, bartenders mix mai tais and hula dancers get ready. After dinner, dancer and emcee Niki Rickard gathers the performers in a circle and asks the audience for “a moment of silence … to acknowledge all we have lost.”

A year after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, which killed at least 102 people and leveled 2,200 structures, this is what passes for business as usual in West Maui. Though 98% of the island carries no visible signs of the fire, most of the city of Lahaina was leveled and remains behind roadblocks as crews begin the transition from cleanup to reconstruction.

In the first two weeks after the fire, most of the city’s 12,700 residents moved into hotels, with FEMA footing many bills. Since then, amid ferocious debate about the island housing shortage and how to rebuild, most fire survivors have moved to longer-term housing or left the island. Many are back at work now, tending to tourists.

This tangle of mourning, recovery and tourism has many travelers wondering if it’s possible or respectful to spend a vacation on Maui now.

The answer is yes, according to every resident, worker and visitor I asked in three days on the island. But tourism lags about 25% behind pre-fire levels, and the situation can seem as layered as a Maui onion. While the average hotel room rents for more than $500 per night, residents scramble for housing and equilibrium.

It’s easy to spend a week on the island in full vacation mode without setting foot in Lahaina. Conversely, the island’s recovery campaign includes a variety of “voluntourism” options (detailed below) for those who want to dedicate half a day or more to pitching in.

But some curious visitors fall between those extremes. Tourism workers say this can lead to hard feelings, especially when visitors try to photograph damage or ask intrusively about lost homes and loved ones. That’s when many Mauians turn away, get angry or post signs at the end of their block reading, “Locals still grieving. Show Respect. No tourists.”

“Be sensitive,” said Siobhan Wilson, co-owner of the Maui Butterfly Farm in Olowalu. “Don’t go up and ask people, ‘What did you see and what happened?’ If people want to talk, they will.”

“Come with aloha. Leave with aloha,” said longtime resident George Pali, sitting at a Wahikuli Wayside Park picnic table near some long-term tents. “You guys [in California] have wildfires all the time, right? So you have some idea.”

Here’s an update for anyone considering travel to Maui, including reasons why you might or might not want to include a stop in Lahaina.

What’s open in Lahaina, and what’s gone

Most of Front Street, Lahaina’s commercial backbone, is no more. Little remains to remind a visitor that this was the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom in the early 19th century under King Kamehameha II. But the flames didn’t claim everything.

At the north end of the street, a handful of restaurants and a dive shop were left largely intact, including the Old Lahaina Luau, despite its thatched roofs. It reopened in March and attracts up to 350 guests nightly, many of them happy to be adding dollars to the diminished local economy.

The Old Lahaina Luau reopened in March. The luau features dinner and an hourlong performance, including hula dancers, on the waterfront in West Maui.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

When Niki Rickard takes the microphone before those luau audiences, she doesn’t mention her own story. But it’s a potent one, and it hints at the experiences of many survivors.

Both of her parents are longtime employees of the luau, which started in 1986. Beginning about age 4, Rickard dreamed of dancing there, then landed a job doing just that. Now 30, she also handles sales and emcee duties, summarizing the island’s history of migration, colonization, whaling, plantations and resilience in diplomatically measured tones.

Last August, she had just returned from maternity leave when the fire broke out.

Neither Rickard, her husband or their daughter was injured, but their home burned.

“My daughter was 3 months old,” Rickard said in an interview.

Niki Rickard, a dancer, emcee and sales agent for the Old Lahaina Luau.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Advertisement

Since the fire, Rickard has been among the thousands of residents dealing with temporary housing, an island-wide child-care shortage and plenty of government and insurance red tape.

“A lot of people in the community are not so happy with the government,” she said carefully.

The luau’s director of public and cultural relations, Kawika Freitas, also acknowledged “a lot of negative feelings” from those who believe the island reopened to tourism too soon. But people need work, Freitas said, and the luau employs about 160 people.

On the same block, the Mala Ocean Tavern reopened in February. Aloha Mixed Plate and Star Noodle (siblings of the luau under the same owner) reopened in March and Aug. 1, respectively. Honu Oceanside is to follow in late summer or fall.

Many more reopenings are expected in the coming weeks and months, giving visitors more reasons to stop and perhaps spend. Meanwhile, because of Maui’s layout, many others will be driving through on their way north.

Parasailers soar off the Ka’anapali coast near Lahaina, the slopes of West Maui rising in the background.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

The drive along Lahaina Bypass highway

The August fire, which began near downed utility poles amid drought conditions and gusting winds, blackened 6,721 acres in Lahaina and the up-country area near Kula. It didn’t reach Maui’s east coast (which includes the famed road to Hana) or the southwest coast (which includes the city of Kihei and the Wailea resort area) or the northern coast (which includes Kahului airport).

Nor did flames get to the west coast hotels and condos that begin with Ka’anapali, just a mile north of Lahaina.

But to reach those resorts, visitors do drive the Lahaina Bypass highway. Just before the highway passes over Lahainaluna Road, those visitors see a sobering roadside shrine on their right — scores of crosses and photos, strewn with leis. (Having been warned that many residents see the memorial as a place for victims’ families and survivors only, I didn’t approach on foot.)

A cautionary sign hangs near a residential neighborhood in Lahaina, Maui, where cleanup and reconstruction continue.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Roadside screens are decorated with artwork in Lahaina.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

In the next mile, as drivers transition from the highway to Keawe Street and Honapiilani Highway, several signs thank first responders, exhort the community to be strong and call for tourists to show respect. Only a few charred ruins are visible from the road. Six-foot-high roadside screens shield many properties from view.

Visitors won’t see Waiola Church, Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, the historic Baldwin Home or popular restaurants like Kimo’s, Fleetwood’s on Front Street or Cheeseburger in Paradise, all burned. The city’s iconic banyan tree, damaged but recuperating, remains off-limits.

FEMA reports that by July 31, cleanup crews had cleared 319,000 tons of fire debris, nearly 34 tons of asbestos and 3,000 fire-damaged cars, with 47 rebuilding permits issued by Maui County.

On Saturday, utility company Hawaiian Electric, the state of Hawaii and five other defendants announced a $4-billion settlement agreement with fire victims, pending court approval. Total damages have been estimated at $5.5 billion or more.

One Maui resident, asking to be unnamed, told me he’d just finished a six-month job in the burn zone, wearing a Tyvek suit and respirator, waiting for blessings before stepping onto home sites, scraping ash and asbestos, finding class rings, guns, jewels and puddles of melted aluminum.

Yet just north of Lahaina, a visitor reenters the Maui seen on postcards and screensavers.

What West Maui’s resorts look like and what they cost

In the morning, catamarans glide up to the beach, kids line up for surf lessons, and golfers head to the courses at Kapalua. At day’s end, legions gather to watch the sunset as daredevils leap from the Black Rock Beach boulders to the sea.

Though the Royal Lahaina and Outrigger resorts in Ka’anapali housed many fire survivors as recently as early July, state and federal officials say the vast majority have moved on to intermediate or permanent housing.

A custom paint job on an outrigger canoe on the Ka’anapali coast. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

A surfing class in Ka’anapali. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Advertisement

A catamaran waits near Black Rock Beach, Ka’anapali, West Maui.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

In June, Hawaii’s state tourism statistics show, visitor arrivals to Maui were down 21.8% from the year before, with spending down 27.1%.

The average Maui County hotel rate that month: $554 per night, down 10.5% from the year before, with a third of rooms empty.

The average vacation rental cost less — $401 per night, with a 44% vacancy rate. But that may soon change. Maui Mayor Richard Bissen has proposed converting 7,000 condo units from short-term use to long-term within three years, creating more housing for residents.

“We’ve been coming here for years, and I have never seen the [Ka’anapali] walkway so clear,” said Russ Hill of Santa Clarita, who has a West Maui timeshare.

A moment later, he strapped into a parasailing rig, zoomed 500 feet above Ka’anapali Beach and saw exactly what he wanted to see: island slopes under clear blue skies, a line of hotels along the beach, a few leaping dolphins and no reminders of the fire except the boat captain’s “Maui Strong” T-shirt.

How visitors become volunteers

Napili Noho, an emergency service hub in Napili Park, stands about three miles north of Ka’anapali. It didn’t exist before the fire. Now it often gets 200 guests in a day.

They browse a free store stocked with food, shoes and hygiene items, sit for meals (prepared with help from other charities) or step into the lomi lomi tent, where masseurs and chiropractors give free treatments.

The Napili Noho emergency resource hub, created after last year’s fire, offers food and household items for those in need. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Volunteer Tom Fox, visiting from California, works at Napili Noho. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Most days, at least one short-term volunteer visitor shows up, having signed up online. On the Tuesday I arrived it was Tom Fox, 81, a semiretired real estate agent from Pleasanton.

For years, Fox and his wife have been visiting West Maui to play golf and lie low. They were at their Napili condo when the fire struck and wound up inviting their housekeepers to stay in the condo for several weeks.

Now the housekeepers have moved on, Fox said, and he’s found that he’s not as good as his wife is at keeping busy.

“So I found out about this place and came on down,” Fox said. The day before, he’d bought Mason jars for storing cooking oil. Now he was labeling them for community members who might speak English, Hawaiian, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Tongan or Samoan.

Around him, other workers were breaking down bulk packages of salt, soap and other goods, including another volunteer from off-island, a 38-year-old man who goes by the name Savage.

“I was supposed to be here five days,” he told me.

Until last August, Savage said, he was working as a health-focused life coach in Las Vegas. After the Maui disaster, he joined an island-bound group of volunteers from his church.

A volunteer who goes by the name Savage tends to supplies at the Napili Noho hub.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Once he arrived, Savage, who said he has Dakota Sioux heritage and is an Air Force combat veteran, found that “this was very familiar to me.”

Eleven months after arriving, Savage moves from task to task in his flip-flops, walkie-talkie in hand, four days a week, helping displaced residents feed families and cope with makeshift living situations. He’ll be here “until I’m at peace that it’s time to move on.”

The key, Savage said, is offering comfort without giving advice or trying to counsel anyone. That might mean “asking aunties for cooking recipes,” he said. “Just talking story. Our community may not need to shop as much as they need distractions from life. They might not know where they’re going to be next week.”

Black Rock Beach, Ka’anapali, West Maui.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

If you go

What to eat
Old Lahaina Luau, 1251 Front St., Lahaina; (808) 667-1998. Lavish dinner al fresco with open bar, followed by an hourlong show with hula, drumming and chanting. Adult admission: $230.37, including gratuity.

Aloha Mixed Plate, 1251 Front St., Lahaina; (808) 661-3322. Patio restaurant (moved down the street since the fire) offering breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Chow Funn noodle bowl (ground pork, bean sprouts, green onions; $15) makes a tasty lunch.

Mala Ocean Tavern,1307 Front St., Lahaina; (808) 667-9394. Brunch and dinner. Perhaps the most elegant restaurant you’ll find with a tin roof and walls. Website includes a link for donations to staff. The signature cocktail is a Makai Tai ($18). Dinner main dishes $28-$61.

Ulu Kitchen, Westin Ka’anapali, 2365 Ka’anapali Pkwy., Lahaina; (808) 868-0081. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on the beach in Ka’anapali. Main dishes $28-$69.

Where to stay
Outrigger Kaanapali Beach Resort, 2525 Ka’anapali Pkwy., Lahaina; (808) 661-0111. A three-star hotel on a coastline of mostly four-star resorts, its location impeccable, with a whale-shaped pool. Rates start at about $370, plus a $35 daily resort fee.

The Outrigger Ka’anapali Beach Resort, in West Maui, is one of many hotels that housed displaced residents after the Lahaina wildfire.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Advertisement

Things to note
In the high country at the south end of Maui, Haleakala National Park’s popular Crater Road and summit area have been closed periodically because of nearby brushfires. Check the park website before planning a visit.

To volunteer on Maui, don’t rely on last-minute suggestions from your hotel’s concierge or activities desk. Make a plan in advance. Mauinuistrong.info includes many volunteering options, as does the website of the Hawaiian Tourism Authority. Malama Kula operates in the up-country area. Napili Noho runs the emergency services hub in Napili Park. Maui Cultural Lands runs programs to protect cultural resources, plant native vegetation and battle invasive species, with volunteer workdays every Saturday in the Honokowai Valley above Ka’anapali. Similar work happens Wednesdays and Thursdays at Kipuka Olowalu, south of Lahaina.

The Lahaina Cannery and Lahaina Gateway malls are open, and more Lahaina businesses are reopening every month. This website tracks reopenings.