While it’s been a minute since the Desperate Housewives star lived on Wisteria Lane, she’s since found a new address IRL.
“I had my whole adult life here,” Eva told Marie Claire in November 2024 about leaving Los Angeles. “But even before [the pandemic], it was changing. The vibe was different. And then Covid happened, and it pushed it over the edge. Whether it’s the homelessness or the taxes, not that I want to s–t on California—it just feels like this chapter in my life is done now.”
“I’m privileged,” she continued. “I get to escape and go somewhere. Most Americans aren’t so lucky. They’re going to be stuck in this dystopian country, and my anxiety and sadness is for them.”
However, Eva noted her move wasn’t because of President Trump’s re-election.
“I didn’t leave because of the political environment,” the Flamin’ Hot director said on The View: Behind the Table podcast in November 2024. “I left because my work took me there since Land of Women—shooting six months in Catalonia, then four months in Mexico for Searching for Mexico, then back to Spain. Now I’ve been there for years. So I just don’t like that it’s politicized.”
Since moving, Eva has continued to stay busy, with recent projects including her roles in Only Murders in the Building and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip.
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Jessica Pegula‘s Australian Open campaign through the first three rounds had been built on unrivaled composure and smart tennis. On Monday, she added something else: a statement.
The world No. 6 didn’t just beat defending champion and close friend Madison Keys on Rod Laver Arena, she completely dismantled her game with intelligence and discipline, showing a level of tactical nous that feels every bit like a player who is ready to win a Grand Slam.
The 31-year-old advanced to the quarterfinals in Melbourne with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over 9th-seed Keys to extend her flawless run — and is still yet to drop a set all tournament.
This was already the most intriguing matchup of the day. It was set up as a clash between Keys’ explosive, powerful shot making versus Pegula’s efficiency. What unfolded was, well, that, but also something a bit more telling. It was a lesson in how to combat an opponent’s strengths with shape, variety and pressure.
“[I’m] happy with the way I was able to serve I think on some really big, key points, execute my strategy,” Pegula said after the match.
“I have been seeing, hitting, moving, I feel like very well this whole tournament, and to be able to keep that up against such a great player as Madi and defending champion was going to be a lot tougher of a task today, but I think I was still able to do that really well.”
From the opening games of the first set, Pegula’s intent was clear. She was always on the front foot, stepping forward on the Keys serve to break early, and had service games with impeccable placement to constantly force movement in her opponent, rather than allowing Keys to plant herself and get the upper-hand in points with aggressive returns.
Wide serves, angled groundstrokes, looping forehands, slices, and then a flat cross-court strike. Anything that prevented the 2025 winner from finding rhythm, Pegula did.
Keys still produced the spectacular, of course. There were big serves, and moments of brilliance, including several big backhand winners down the line that reminded everyone why her ceiling remains as high as anyone’s on tour — and Pegula that she’d need to stay consistent and not drop her level or the threat of a Keys comeback would always be on.
But the problem for Keys was her own consistency. Too often she ended the point with a winner, or Pegula’s variety and depth forced an error.
The numbers told the story in a really brutal way.
After 10 games, with Pegula holding a 6-3, 1-0 lead, Keys had hit 14 winners but also 20 unforced errors. Pegula? Five and five. By the end of the match, Keys finished with a whopping 26 winners but 28 unforced errors. Pegula? 12 and 13.
It was high-risk, powerful ball-striking tennis clashing against a high-IQ, steady game, and the latter is what prevailed.
The second set followed much the same pattern with Pegula holding a slight lead the whole way through. It was a physical edge, but also a psychological one. She continued to absorb the Keys serve, she wouldn’t blink, she forced the extra balls, hit the angles, and her execution under fourth-round pressure was immense.
Even on serve, where an argument could be made that Pegula may be slightly vulnerable, there was a clear contrast. Just one double fault compared to six.
“It was really important to focus on my serve,” Pegula said. “It was very tough on that one side serving into the sun. I lost that game. And I was kind of, like, you know what … she hit a couple good shots, whatever. Just don’t dwell on it that much.
“I needed to really stay focused. I think just keep my feet moving, keep my body weight going forward. Sometimes when you get a little nervous or playing really well, sometimes you kind of just relax, and it’s hard to do that against someone like Madi who can flip matches really quickly by hitting a couple of big forehands and winners, and all of a sudden she hits a couple good serves, and it’s already back to even.”
There was so much added interest in this contest. The two co-host “The Player’s Box” podcast and are close friends. It was the first women’s Australian Open match between top 10-seeded Americans since Serena Williams and Lindsay Davenport played in the 2005 final.
Pegula now moves into quarterfinals, playing incredibly efficient tennis that can unravel most rivals. No sets dropped. Only 17 games lost.
For years her consistency has been admired and rightly so, but the critics had often labeled her the great quarterfinal regular. Maybe that’s fair — she hadn’t broken through that stage of a Slam until 2024.
She arrived in Melbourne still chasing that major title and those same questions still lingered. When will she finally breakthrough? When will she finally claim the ultimate? Is she “too consistent”? Are there enough weapons? Is she great without being a champion?
For Pegula, it’s all just outside noise that she doesn’t think about.
“I felt like if I’m making quarters of a Slam, that’s pretty good,” she said. “So I never really understood the negativity towards it, or I guess just the headline of, you know, how does she get past the quarters?
“I mean, the fact that I’m putting myself in that many positions I feel like is a feat in itself. … [At the] US Open, I [made] finals, made semis, and that felt like normal. So to me it doesn’t really feel that much different. I think maybe even now I’m even more comfortable knowing that I’ve gotten further, it doesn’t feel, I don’t know, as big of a deal to be in the quarters.”
It’s performances like this, against the defending champion no less, that offer the best possible counter-argument. It’s performances like this that also suggest maybe that breakthrough isn’t coming, maybe it’s actually already in play. And maybe it’s time to shift the narratives.
Pegula’s task doesn’t get any easier: She’ll face No. 4 seed Amanda Anisimova in the quarterfinal. While Pegula is 3-0 against her, this will be the first time they’ve played at the Grand Slam level.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — American rock climber Alex Honnold ascended the Taipei 101 skyscraper on Sunday without any ropes or protective equipment.
Cheers erupted from a street-level crowd as he reached the top of the spire of the 1,667-foot tower about 90 minutes after he started. Wearing a red short-sleeved shirt, he waved his arms back and forth over his head.
“It was like, what a view, it’s incredible, what a beautiful day,” he said afterward. “It was very windy, so I was like, don’t fall off the spire. I was trying to balance nicely. But it was — what an incredible position, what a beautiful way to see Taipei.”
Honnold, known for his ropeless ascent up Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan, climbed up one corner of Taipei 101 using small L-shaped outcroppings as footholds. Periodically, he had to maneuver around and clamber up the sides of large ornamental structures that jut out from the tower, pulling himself up with his bare hands.
The building has 101 floors, with the hardest part being the 64 floors of the middle section — the “bamboo boxes” that give the building its signature look. Divided into eight, each segment has eight floors of steep, overhanging climbing followed by balconies, where he took short rests as he made his way upward.
Honnold’s free solo climb of the iconic building in Taiwan’s capital city was broadcast live on Netflix with a 10-second delay. The ascent, originally scheduled for Saturday, was delayed for 24 hours due to rain.
“When I was leaving the ground, you’re like, oh, it’s kind of intense, there’s so many people watching,” he said. “But then honestly, they’re all wishing me well. I mean basically it just makes the whole experience feel almost more festive, all these nice people are out supporting me and having a good time.”
The climb drew both excitement and concern over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast.
Honnold isn’t the first climber to ascend the skyscraper, but he is the first to do so without a rope. French rock climber Alain Robert scaled the building on Christmas Day in 2004 as part of the grand opening of what was then the world’s tallest building.
The Sony LinkBuds Clip are the company’s first clip earbuds. They follow the innovative donut-hole LinkBuds and LinkBuds Open and, like their predecessors, allow you to listen to music or podcasts, make phone calls, or be active outdoors while still maintaining awareness of your surroundings. The clip design has become more popular over the past couple of years, and while the LinkBuds Clip have a solid design and good sound, there’s nothing significant that sets them apart from competitors, especially at their $229.99 price.
Like other open earbuds, the LinkBuds Clip wrap around your ear helix like an ear cuff. The small spherical speaker enclosure is positioned just outside your ear canal and is connected by a flexible band to a larger capsule-shaped housing that rests on the outside. I like the look of the Clip buds, with their slightly glossy enclosures and selection of subdued color tones, including lavender, green, greige (a grayish beige), and black. Some might prefer a bolder, flashier look, but I like the green sample Sony provided. You can also mix and match five different case covers — black, green, blue, coral, and lavender — to customize them.
$230
The Good
Excellent call quality
Comfortable fit
Long battery life
Good sound for open earbuds
The Bad
More expensive than competitors
Missing some expected features
The Clip are intended to sit midway up your ear, but since everyone’s ears are different, there could be some adjustment to find the most comfortable spot for you (for me, it’s a little lower on my ear). Once you find the sweet spot, putting the earbuds on is quick and easy, although I found the fit a bit loose. The band isn’t as flexible as the one on the Shokz OpenDots One, which fit more securely around my ear. Instead, Sony includes silicone “cushions” that fit around the band. (Color-matching cushions come with the additional top case covers.) They gave me the secure fit I was looking for, and I was able to wear them for nearly an entire workday without discomfort. I even forgot I was wearing them at times, since they let in ambient sound. Those with larger ears might feel more of a pinch from them, even without the cushions attached.
The Clip earbuds fit around the ear’s helix, with the speaker sitting outside of the ear canal.
The highs and lows of the Clip’s sound performance
While I preferred the fit of the LinkBuds Clip with the cushions, using them affected the sound balance. The cushions caused the speakers to sit just a bit farther away from my ear canal, which resulted in less bass performance. And the Clip — and really every pair of open earbuds — are a bit light on thumping bass. There are three primary listening modes: standard, voice boost, and sound leakage reduction.
Standard mode sounds the most natural, with a clear midrange that doesn’t overpower the higher frequencies. Voice boost added a bit too much vocal presence that became oppressive over longer music listening sessions, but added good clarity for podcasts and news programs. The sound leakage reduction mode cuts out much of the high-end response, limiting potential disturbances to those around you, but it also makes the music sound muffled and dull. And there wasn’t a significant amount of leakage anyway, even in standard and voice boost modes.
The LinkBuds have a USB-C charging port, but do not support wireless charging.
There are some presets in Sony’s Sound Connect app, as well as a 10-band equalizer, if you want to boost or cut a specific frequency range. For some of my more rocking tracks — Soundgarden’s “Spoonman,” for instance — I pumped up the bass and low mids a bit. There’s also Sony’s DSEE, which improves the sound of compressed audio a little bit.
The LinkBuds Clip really shine when on calls. They have a new AI noise-reduction chip and bone-conduction sensor that allow them to focus on the wearer’s voice and isolate it from the noise around them. During multiple calls while walking down the busier streets in my Los Angeles neighborhood, my friends could easily hear me, while the traffic around me was suppressed. There were occasional moments where they commented about hearing a gust of wind or the sirens of a nearby police car, but they were fleeting. It was during those moments, though, that I had some trouble hearing them because of the Clip’s open design.
I was a bit surprised at some of what was missing with the LinkBuds Clip, especially for $230. While they have good battery life at nine hours per charge (and another 28 hours with the case), the case doesn’t have wireless charging. The earbuds support the standard SBC and AAC codecs, but Sony’s own high-res LDAC is missing. They also don’t have audio sharing, which is available on the WF-1000XM5 and can now be found for only $25 more than the Clip.
The touch controls can be finicky. You use multiple taps for different controls — two taps on the right side to pause and play, three taps for the next song, and four taps to raise the volume (or lower the volume on the left earbuds). But the spot to tap on the band has a small margin of error, so if my finger was off target at all, the taps wouldn’t register. It was even harder while jogging. I’d need to slow down to a fast walk to get better control.
The included clear silicone cushions provide a more secure fit for those with smaller ears.
The Clips get a sizable nine hours of battery life on a single charge.
You can set up scene-based listening in the Sound Connect app, which allows you to customize the earbuds’ functionality based on your activity or location. So you can have a specific playlist start when you start running, or when you arrive home, the app can switch to your favorite music streaming service. You can also have the app read out notifications in your ear. It’s an interesting feature if you have certain routines and invest in the time to set it up.
It makes sense that Sony came out with the Clip, especially since it helped popularize the open earbuds trend with the original LinkBuds. And the Clip are good earbuds that look cool, sound pretty good, and are comfortable. But for $230, there’s nothing that sets them apart from other recent open earbuds like the Shokz OpenDots One and EarFun Clip, both of which are cheaper. Once they come down in price or go on sale, they’ll be much more of an enticing purchase. But until then, unless you’re in love with the LinkBuds Clip look, it’s better to wait.
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
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1. After beginning her career as a pop star and having just one acting credit—a supporting role in The Princess Diaries—on her resume, Mandy Moore fought for the role of Jamie after reading the Nicholas Sparks novel and falling in love with the character and the story.
“I had such a visceral reaction to it that I remember not being able to read because I was almost hyperventilating while I was crying,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. “It was my first movie and I know people say it may be cliché and it’s a tearjerker or it’s cheesy, but for me, it’s the thing I’m most proud of.”
2. But someone else almost landed the lead role over Moore, according to Shane West, whose character Landon romanced the terminally ill teenager.
“There was someone else—who I’m not going to say right now—whose name was batted around for Mandy’s role,” West coyly told Entertainment Weekly. “I remember I wasn’t keen on that idea and thankfully it didn’t happen.”
3. While West wouldn’t divulge the other actress in contention, director Adam Shankman revealed she was another young singer.
“The studio had me looking atJessica Simpson,” he shared with Elle. “But I was driving up Laurel Canyon, I heard Mandy’s song ‘I Wanna Be With You,’ and I thought, who the hell is that little angel voice? I went to the Virgin record store, saw her face, and flipped out. I said, ‘That’s my girl.'”
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LUBBOCK, Texas — JT Toppin and No. 12 Texas Tech just keep proving their toughness.
Toppin had another double-double with 31 points and 12 rebounds as the Red Raiders beat No. 6 Houston90-86 on Saturday, when they outrebounded the Cougars and overcame a spectacular 42-point game by true freshman Kingston Flemings.
“They did an awesome, awesome job on the offensive boards,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “They did to us what we’ve made a living doing to other people.”
Texas Tech (16-4, 6-1 Big 12) finished with a 44-28 rebounding edge, including 21 offensive boards that led to 22 second-chance points.
“There were some haymakers being thrown in that game. I mean, I’m talking like every time a shot goes up, it was just literal fighting,” Tech coach Grant McCasland said. “I mean, it’s not an easy way to play.”
But it sure backs up McCasland’s prominent saying for the Red Raiders: “Toughest Team Wins.”
Tech has a five-game winning streak since a 69-65 loss at Houston on Jan. 6 and now has wins on consecutive Saturdays over higher-ranked teams that arrived in Lubbock with long winning streaks. The Cougars had an 11-game winning streak overall and had won a Big 12-record 16 consecutive true road games over the past two years.
BYU, then ranked 11th, had a 13-game winning streak before its 84-71 loss to Tech last weekend.
Houston (17-2, 5-1) ranked second nationally allowing only 60.1 points per game, but the Red Raiders led 55-49 at halftime Saturday. That was the most points the Cougars have given up in a half during Sampson’s 12 seasons, and it was only the third time a team scored 90 against them in regulation, according to ESPN Research. Memphis did it twice, in 2016 and 2018.
Flemings’ 42 points tied for the most ever by a Houston player against a Top 25 opponent, according to ESPN. He was also the first player to score 40 points for a Sampson-coached team since Brian Quinnett had 44 for Washington State in 1989.
“Kingston put us on his back and put us in position to win the game,” Sampson said. “We just didn’t do a very good job on the boards.”
There were eight lead changes and eight ties in the game that Houston led for 18: 41. Tech was in front 18:12, including the final 5:55 after Donovan Atwell hit a go-ahead 3, then added another 34 seconds later — both on assists from big man Toppin.
The Red Raiders are 11-0 at home this season and have won nine of their past 10 games — the loss being in Houston. Tech was the only Big 12 team to beat the Cougars last season, when the Cougars were conference champs and the national runner-up.
Toppin’s 44 career double-doubles are the second most for active players behind Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg (48). Toppin has 32 in 52 games with Tech since transferring from New Mexico after his freshman season.
“Just do what I do best, trying to play for my team,” Toppin said. “We just kept staying together. I love these guys.”
I’ll confess, with no shame whatsoever, that I really love ads. Artsy ones, funny ones, weird ones, emotional ones — TV commercials were my childhood TikTok before any of us were using terms like “short-form video.” But like most creative things in my life, AI is sucking the joy out of it. And it’s only going to suck harder this year.
Ads are mini-movies, posters, illustrations, and photoshoots with an underlying purpose: to burn whatever product they’re flogging into your brain as quickly as possible. It requires a great deal of creativity, and in some cases, a substantial production budget. And while the creative in me loves to see the fruits of that labor, it also makes ads the ideal testing ground for generative AI technology, as brands race to make content creation faster and cheaper. Many image and video generator models saw huge visual improvements last year, prompting more advertisers to adopt them in campaigns.
According to a Marketing Week study, more than half of 1,000 polled brand marketers used some variant of AI in their creative campaigns in 2025. Another study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) found that 90 percent of advertisers were using, or planning to use, generative AI for video ads in 2025, and projected that such tools would be used in 40 percent of all ads by 2026.
That’s why we’re increasingly seeing AI ads on TV, in magazines, and across social media. Some are upfront about using generative AI, such as Coca-Cola’s sloppy holiday ads, but many aren’t — leaving us to be suspicious of everything we see that appears slightly “off.” Sometimes, that can be humans who give off uncanny valley vibes, like the ads we’ve seen from McDonalds and DoorDash where the people look too polished and move in unnatural ways. Or perhaps CGI and visual effects that morph inconsistently in ways that would be weird for a VFX artist to do intentionally, like this ad for Original Source shower gel. Why does that man’s face keep changing? Why does it keep trying to turn him into a Memoji?
But while generation in commercials might seem obvious to some, clocking AI in the wild isn’t something most humans are good at yet. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) found that humans could only accurately identify AI-generated images, video, and audio 50 percent of the time, and that’s one of the higher success rates we’ve seen. Kantar, the market research company that helped to develop Coca-Cola’s AI holiday campaign in 2024, also found that most of its ad testers couldn’t tell it was AI-generated, despite the tell-tale visuals and clear on-screen AI disclosure.
“The vast majority of people didn’t notice the ad was AI-generated (we asked)”
“The people that matter most – Coca-Cola’s target audience – still enjoy it, feel good when they see it, and love the brand for it,” Kantar managing director Dom Boyd told Campaign. “Lots. In fact, Kantar’s [ad testing] shows that the vast majority of people didn’t notice the ad was AI-generated (we asked), and the execution is one of the highest-performing this year for short-term sales potential.”
Audience reactions to AI ads have been mixed, however. In a November 2025 Kantar study, consumers were discouraged by ads that featured obvious AI signals like “distracting or unnatural visuals,” but responded well to ads that used AI well enough to go largely undetected. The same study also found that people have stronger emotional reactions to AI-generated ads compared to those made without it — but the reactions in question were typically negative.
We see much of that negativity around obvious AI advertisements across forums and in the comments on social media platforms. There’s even an r/AiSlopAds subreddit community dedicated to publicly shaming examples of AI ads. There are several commonly mentioned reasons for this sentiment, including ethical and environmental concerns around generative AI, seeing its supposed cost-cutting and efficiency benefits as something that cheapens branding, and just thinking it looks unappealing.
Money (duh) is the obvious reason why more brands are increasingly ready to risk that negativity to explore generative AI. Sure, AI ads for prediction market platform Kalshi are scorned by Reddit users, but a particularly bonkers and confusing example that aired during a primetime 2025 NBA finals slot only cost $2,000 to make. It was created in just two days by one person using Google’s Veo 3 AI model. It’s not hard to see the appeal of that efficiency, and passionate hatred of an ad does indicate people found it memorable, even if it’s for the wrong reasons.
A memorable ad can become a company’s legacy. The famous “Just Do It” (1988) Nike slogan was created for the fitness company’s first major television campaign by Wieden and Kennedy, with relatable commercials that featured everyday people doing their workouts. UK readers may also recall the 1999 Guinness “Surfer” commercial (directed by Jonathan Glazer with the ABM BBDO ad agency), an internationally acclaimed masterpiece of advertising that took nine days to film in Hawaii, using pioneering visual effects to merge live-action, heavy-water surfing with CGI horses.
The production budgets for commercials aren’t frequently disclosed, but when made traditionally, they can cost a pretty penny. The media spend for Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” is estimated to be $10 million, which was smaller than many major ad campaigns that also aired in 2010. There’s also the iconic “1984” commercial directed by Ridley Scott to introduce the Apple Macintosh computer, which reportedly had a then-unprecedented production budget of $900,000, equivalent to $2.8 million in 2026.
These famous ads aren’t memorable for being crap. Coca-Cola says that its AI holiday commercials are successful, but they just replicated its iconic red truck campaign, something that already had decades of positive nostalgia through genuine human creativity and production efforts.
But while creating a successful campaign entirely through generative AI may be challenging now, it will become easier as tools and models continue to improve. The tech and media world is banking on it now that major brands like Nestlé, Mondelez, and Coca-Cola have already set a precedent. Google and Microsoft have produced ads using their own generative AI models, and Amazon is giving sellers tools to fill its site with AI ads. Meta is expected to roll out fully automated AI ads on its social platforms this year, and Nvidia is building tools that can serve up an infinite variety of custom personalized video ads.
“I don’t spend any time worrying about whether AI is going to take over for us as humans”
Even the marketers behind beloved, iconic ads are on board. ABM BBDO has launched its own AI platform, and Wieden and Kennedy is openly using AI in its production pipelines. “I think AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but it’s still a tool,” Wieden and Kennedy CEO Neal Arthur said in a LinkedIn News interview. “I think it allows us to scale more efficiently, but I don’t spend any time worrying about whether AI is going to take over for us as humans.”
Generative AI usage is expected to be so pervasive in advertising this year that early trends are already anticipating a resistance movement, one that aims to build loyalty with consumers who are seeking to avoid synthetic content.
“2026 will be the year of ‘things AI can’t do,’ or more truthfully, things AI can’t do (very well yet),” Thom Glover, founder of creative agency American Haiku, said in AdAge’s creativity predictions report. “Expect messy, hand-drawn, roughly textured or erratically collaged design, ideas that take pleasure in playing with the boundaries of what an ad is, and the return to the simple pleasures of 16mm film, analog recording, and ‘leaving in the mistakes.’”
Some brands have already joined this resistance. Aerie’s promise not to use AI in its ads was the clothing brand’s most popular Instagram post last year, and Polaroid advertised its Flip instant camera with bus posters that poked fun at the technology, one reading “AI can’t generate sand between your toes.”
“We are such an analog brand that basically gave us the permission: We can own that conversation,” Polaroid’s creative director Patricia Varella told Business Insider. “That layer of imperfection that makes us human and beautifully imperfect — something we think is important to remind people.”
Some generative AI tools can now mimic analog and retro medium styles rather effectively, which will make distinguishing them from human-made content even harder.
Many tools are catered to delivering content that looks too polished, however, creating an echo chamber in which everything starts to look the same without human-creativity to differentiate it. It’s also easier to spot mistakes in images and videos that strive for such perfection. Every unnatural hallucination and unexplained visual error implies that the project didn’t include any human creative professionals to identify or correct them. And advertisers are finding that they care less and less about creativity in their campaigns, with a recent study from IAB showing that cost efficiency, time savings, and scalability are being prioritized going forward.
With that in mind, I’m begging brands and marketing agencies to remember that a good ad doesn’t need to be expensive or challenging to produce by hand. One of the best commercials of all time was achieved by filming a bunch of dude yelling “WASSUUUUUP” at each other while drinking a Budweiser. That’s something that can only be manifested by delightful human weirdness.
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Jim Bob and Michelle’s fifth child, Jessa Duggar, was born Nov. 4, 1992.
Jessa met Ben through church and he began courting her in 2013—the old-fashioned approach to romance coming as a brand-new notion to a lot of viewers. The kids never talked about their romances pre-engagement, so Jim Bob explained to People, “Courting is getting to know each other in a group setting, both families spending time together and the couple setting goals together to determine if they are meant to marry. With dating, a couple will often pair off alone and that sometimes leads to a more physical relationship.”
Ben asked for Jessa’s hand and then proposed in August 2014—sealing the deal by holding her hand for the first time. They married on Nov. 1, 2014. Jessa was pregnant with their first child when 19 Kids and Counting was canceled and TLC subsequently aired a special about sexual abuse, featuring Jill and Jessa, to further educate viewers on the subject. The sisters would end up the stars of their own show, Jill and Jessa: Counting On, that winter; the show then evolved to become Counting On, featuring other Duggar siblings as well.
Meanwhile, Jessa and Ben welcomed son Spurgeon on Nov. 5, 2015, son Henry on Feb. 6, 2017, daughter Ivy Janeon May 28, 2019 and daughter Fern in July 2021. In February 2023, Jessa shared that she suffered a miscarriage over the 2022 holiday season. She gave birth to son George in December 2023.
