Today's Stories

America’s First Late-Night Talk-Show Host Was A Woman

Faye Emerson was a Hollywood actress specializing in noir films; then she married FDR’s son, moved to New York and got into TV. From 1949-1951, she hosted a 15-minute program, The Faye Emerson Show, weeknights at 11:00 pm — becoming such a success that she was called “the First Lady of Television.” - Smithsonian Magazine

Colbert’s Late Night Replacement On CBS Pulls Small Ratings

According to The Daily Beast, even Colbert's YouTube channel is nearly outperforming Allen's show. Colbert's appearance on the public access TV show "Only in Monroe" drew 928,000 views on Colbert's YouTube, which doesn't include viewers who watched via other channels and platforms. - TV Insider

How Does A Choreographer Make Dance About Her Hometown Getting Ravaged By A Wildfire?

Alice Topp, a former principal dancer and choreographer-in-residence at the Australian Ballet, already had the idea of basing her first commission for Houston Ballet on the Finnish concept of sisu (stubbornly determined resilience). Then, this past January, came unhappy inspiration: bushfires struck her rural hometown 75 miles northwest of Melbourne. - Houston Chronicle (Yahoo!)

How Have The Great Pyramids Survived Millennia Of Earthquakes? By Design, Of Course

“The Great Pyramid behaves as a single, cohesive unit that naturally vibrates at a fundamental frequency of approximately 2.3 Hz. The frequency difference prevents the destructive phenomenon of resonance, the primary culprit behind the collapse of modern buildings, when a structure’s frequency matches the earthquakes vibrations.” - Artnet

Spotify Has Become A Huge Player In Audiobooks

Spotify announced that the total number of hours of audiobooks listened to on the service are up 60% year-over-year, with one million people having paid for Audiobooks+, an add-on launched last year that allows listeners to unlock additional hours of audiobooks on top of those already included with its premium service. - Publishers Weekly

Opera Is Being Reinvented In The Australian Outback

Song has always been a part of storytelling in our country. And perhaps, in remote towns, opera finally sheds the elitism that has followed it for decades. Out there, it becomes what it was always meant to be: a connection between people and place. - ArtsHub

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Margot Wellington, Campaigner Who Helped Save Grand Central Station From Wrecking Ball, Has Died At 91

“During her seven-year tenure (as executive director of the Municipal Art Society), she led pioneering campaigns to form historic landmark districts, renovate blighted blocks and rescue threatened edifices like Radio City Music Hall. … Saving Grand Central was her crowning achievement.” - The New York Times

Hollywood Largely Skipped Cannes This Year. Did Anyone Miss Them?

Whether you were a sales agent eyeing a leisurely buyer’s market or a freelance journalist picking up fewer interview commissions than usual, this felt like a low-key Cannes. - Variety

The Economics Of Late Night TV Are Moving To Streaming

Roughly 20% of lost late night dollars ends up going to YouTube, data insights company Guideline found last year, with 6% going to Amazon and another 6% going to Instagram and Facebook. - The Wrap (Yahoo)

The Special Kind Of Knowledge That Can’t Be Taught

It’s not the kind of knowledge that you gain from reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, nor is it the kind of knowledge that subjects report when they try to describe their experiences to others. It can’t be expressed in natural language – at least, not fully. - Psyche

Royal Shakespeare Company Gets An Extra £2 Million For Touring England

Arts Council England, the national funding body, gave the RSC £2 million for two large-scale Shakespeare tours in 2028 and 2030 to regional theatres in Blackpool, Norwich, Newcastle, Bradford-Leeds, Nottingham, Canterbury, Truro (Cornwall), and York. - British Theatre Guide

NYC Culture As Basic City Infrastructure

Right now, culture represents just 0.21% of the city’s budget, below its long-term average. Recent investments have been meaningful, including $75 million in last year’s budget. But $30 million of that funding remains for one-time support. That is not how essential infrastructure should be funded. - Hyperallergic

AI Is Homogenizing Our Writing And Our Thinking

Yes, we are standing to sound like LLMs in our writings. This may not be as bad if this was just restricted to how people write. This is now also impacting how people think! - 3 Quarks Daily

NPR Lays Off Journalists

NPR has laid off 10 journalists, including some veteran reporters, in an attempt to save money and reorganize the newsroom. It also is buying out at least 18 news staffers who voluntarily accepted offers to depart, according to three people with direct knowledge. - NPR

The Great Louvre Jewel Robbery Is Already A Book With A Movie Deal

The theft only happened last October; none of the indicted suspects have yet been tried. Yet a book by three investigative journalists, Main basse sur le Louvre (Heist at the Louvre), has just hit the shelves, and a feature based on it will be directed by Romain Gavras, son of Oscar-winner Costa-Gavras. - Artnet

NPR CEO Katherine Maher Thinks Maybe We Should Just Accept Federal Defunding Of Public Radio

“I don't think (we'll) see the Corporation for Public Broadcasting come back, and … I wouldn't necessarily advise that ... we advocate for (that), in part because I worry about it being a litmus test for every future Congress to tussle over whether it should or shouldn't be funded.” (podcast transcription) - Medill Local Media Initiative

Omaha To Get Its Own Dedicated Public Radio Station

“Nebraska Public Media (will) launch a new Omaha-focused station on June 15, expanding its statewide service with a dedicated FM signal designed specifically for listeners in Nebraska’s largest city. Nebraska Public Media Omaha will … feature a mix of NPR programming, local journalism and music programming tailored to Omaha audiences.” - Inside Radio

Florida Legislature Approves $20 Million In Arts Funding (Will DeSantis Veto It Again?)

“The Legislature wants the first $12.45 million ... to go to arts groups recommended by Secretary of State Cord Byrd. The remaining money would be held in reserve and a second list of leftover projects from the ranked list by the Florida Council on Arts and Culture would get the rest.” - Florida Politics

Libraries Plead With Big Five Publishers To Rethink E-Book Pricing

“Five public library organizations from the U.S. and Canada … (are urging) publishers to negotiate usage-based e-book lending models as well as perpetual-use options.” The director of one of the organizations warned that e-book costs have “become unsustainable, and for many small libraries, impossible.” - Publishers Weekly

Interlochen Will Demolish Lodge Once Named For Jeffrey Epstein

The Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Michigan summer-intensive camp and year-round boarding school — which Epstein attended as a teenager and where, as a donor, he later allegedly met at least two of his victims — will tear down the Green Lake Lodge (formerly known as Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge). - AP

By Topic

The Special Kind Of Knowledge That Can’t Be Taught

It’s not the kind of knowledge that you gain from reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, nor is it the kind of knowledge that subjects report when they try to describe their experiences to others. It can’t be expressed in natural language – at least, not fully. - Psyche

AI Is Homogenizing Our Writing And Our Thinking

Yes, we are standing to sound like LLMs in our writings. This may not be as bad if this was just restricted to how people write. This is now also impacting how people think! - 3 Quarks Daily

Eyewitness Memory Is Unreliable. Or Is It?

The science of memory has been shifting. A re-evaluation of real-world criminal cases and laboratory experiments suggests that an eyewitness’s confidence in a specific memory can be a strong indicator of the veracity of their account, at least in certain circumstances.  - Nature

You Couldn’t Design A More Anti-News Internet If You Tried

It’s like an invisible tax levied on our communities that we pay civically, cognitively and sometimes even literally, in the form of higher local bond prices due to more wasteful government spending. Increasingly, this invisible tax is being silently levied by Big Tech. - NiemanLab

Why Has The World Stopped Making Babies?

Some blame technology, particularly smartphones and social media. Others blame a kind of 21st-century weltschmerz—a sadness about the state of the world and our uncertain future in it. - The Atlantic

Gandhi And His Notion Of Micro- And Macro-Morality

Gandhi demonstrated that micro-morality is essential, but not good enough. We have to be morally good people used to looking inside and judging what we do before we do it, but also people who look seriously at the flawed systems that surround us and think about what we can do to oppose them. - 3 Quarks Daily

NYC Culture As Basic City Infrastructure

Right now, culture represents just 0.21% of the city’s budget, below its long-term average. Recent investments have been meaningful, including $75 million in last year’s budget. But $30 million of that funding remains for one-time support. That is not how essential infrastructure should be funded. - Hyperallergic

Florida Legislature Approves $20 Million In Arts Funding (Will DeSantis Veto It Again?)

“The Legislature wants the first $12.45 million ... to go to arts groups recommended by Secretary of State Cord Byrd. The remaining money would be held in reserve and a second list of leftover projects from the ranked list by the Florida Council on Arts and Culture would get the rest.” - Florida Politics

Interlochen Will Demolish Lodge Once Named For Jeffrey Epstein

The Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Michigan summer-intensive camp and year-round boarding school — which Epstein attended as a teenager and where, as a donor, he later allegedly met at least two of his victims — will tear down the Green Lake Lodge (formerly known as Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge). - AP

The Savannah Banana Phenomenon: What It’s Becoming

The Disney comparison is not necessarily a coincidence. Multiple players mention an overlap between Disney fandom (including Disney adults) and bananaball fandom, and Jesse Cole, founder of the Bananas, identifies Walt Disney as a key influence. - The Guardian

Heinz Endowments Changes Priorities In Its Arts Funding Grants

The Pittsburgh-based foundation is ending grants for one-time projects and for individual artists in favor of funding arts organizations and cultural infrastructure in the region. - WESA (Pittsburgh)

Colleges Are Hemorrhaging Student Enrollment. One Oregon College Hits The Wall

According to the plan released, “We are maintaining an infrastructure built for 30,000 students while currently serving 20,000.” Other options “have been exhausted” and “incrementalism” has failed, it says. - InsideHigherEd

Opera Is Being Reinvented In The Australian Outback

Song has always been a part of storytelling in our country. And perhaps, in remote towns, opera finally sheds the elitism that has followed it for decades. Out there, it becomes what it was always meant to be: a connection between people and place. - ArtsHub

Seattle Symphony Appoints New CEO

Jeremy Rothman, who for 18 seasons has been artistic administrator at the Philadelphia Orchestra, will begin in Seattle as of September 1. He succeeds Krishna Thiagarajan, who departed last year after a stormy tenure. - The Seattle Times

Miles Davis’ “Kind Of Blue” Is The Best-Selling Jazz Album Of All Time. He Thought It Was A Failure

When I tell people that I missed what I was trying to do on Kind of Blue, that I missed getting the exact sound of the African finger piano up in that sound, they just look at me like I’m crazy. - The Conversation

Spotify: Our AI Pivot Is Better Than Slop

Spotify’s chief executive has defended the company’s move into AI-generated music, claiming it offers users and creators a better alternative to piracy and unregulated AI slop. - The Guardian

Opera Australia Has Turned Its Troubled Finances Around

After posting an operating loss of $10.6 million (US$7.6 million) in 2024, the company — boosted by a 29% increase in ticket sales — posted a small net operating deficit and, after a contribution from the Opera Australia Capital Fund, broke even for 2025. - Limelight (Australia)

Since It Gave Up Government Funding, Finances At London’s Wigmore Hall Are Stronger Than Ever

The city's most respected chamber music venue has seen a 25% increase year-on-year in ticket sales since it left the funding portfolio of Arts Council England, artistic director John Gilhooly said. - The Stage

How Have The Great Pyramids Survived Millennia Of Earthquakes? By Design, Of Course

“The Great Pyramid behaves as a single, cohesive unit that naturally vibrates at a fundamental frequency of approximately 2.3 Hz. The frequency difference prevents the destructive phenomenon of resonance, the primary culprit behind the collapse of modern buildings, when a structure’s frequency matches the earthquakes vibrations.” - Artnet

The Great Louvre Jewel Robbery Is Already A Book With A Movie Deal

The theft only happened last October; none of the indicted suspects have yet been tried. Yet a book by three investigative journalists, Main basse sur le Louvre (Heist at the Louvre), has just hit the shelves, and a feature based on it will be directed by Romain Gavras, son of Oscar-winner Costa-Gavras. - Artnet

Spanish Government Demands Audit Of Reina Sofia Museum Collections

Spain’s government is turning up the pressure on the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía over longstanding problems tied to its collection inventory, with lawmakers threatening consequences that could ultimately cost museum director Manuel Segade his job. - ARTnews

A 2018 Fire Destroyed 80 Percent Of Brazil’s National Museum Collection. It’s Working To Rebuild

The fire on September 2, 2018, began with an electrical issue, but it spiraled out of control when the hydrants next to the building proved to be dry. According to a 160-page report, the museum had been chronically underfunded for years, and a whistleblower had warned of fire risk as early as 2004. - Smithsonian

The Heroic Effort To Rebuild Brazil’s National Museum, Almost Completely Destroyed In A Fire

“The news arrived (in September 2025) with both excitement and a pang of grief: The oldest national history museum in the Americas was slated to partially (and temporarily) reopen for the first time since a 2018 fire destroyed more than 16 million objects — 80 percent of its collections.” - Smithsonian Magazine

How The Big Art Auction Houses Engineered Their Roaring Comeback

“The houses leaned into spectacle — including a promotional video featuring Nicole Kidman dancing around a bronze Brancusi head — and prearranged deals … that reduced their risk. The result was a season with a few flashy records — and … a broader return to deliberate bidding, quality material and logical prices.” - The...

Spotify Has Become A Huge Player In Audiobooks

Spotify announced that the total number of hours of audiobooks listened to on the service are up 60% year-over-year, with one million people having paid for Audiobooks+, an add-on launched last year that allows listeners to unlock additional hours of audiobooks on top of those already included with its premium service. - Publishers Weekly

Libraries Plead With Big Five Publishers To Rethink E-Book Pricing

“Five public library organizations from the U.S. and Canada … (are urging) publishers to negotiate usage-based e-book lending models as well as perpetual-use options.” The director of one of the organizations warned that e-book costs have “become unsustainable, and for many small libraries, impossible.” - Publishers Weekly

Knoxville Reverses Its Ban Of Alex Haley’s “Roots” From School Libraries

“Knox County Schools Superintendent Jon Rysewyk said the district will return the (Pulitzer-winning) 1976 novel to school library shelves, walking back a decision that (led to) … weeks of community backlash, board member pressure, and statewide criticism.” - Tennessee Lookout

How The Cherokee Bible Reveals Differences Between European And Native American Worldviews

One can learn quite a bit by noticing which English words and phrases had no Cherokee equivalent — and in how translators chose to render those words and phrases in Cherokee. - The Conversation

Booktok Sells Tons Of Books. Its Reviews, Though…

While TikTok’s stunted critical language sells legions more books—even good ones—than the literary critics who dismiss the platform, as a doubtfully salable fiction writer I’m less interested in how a book goes viral than in what this costs the reader. - The Point

Behind Book Bans In The Digital Age

I think the library feels like a place where you can do something concrete. You can go to an actual library; you can pull books off the shelves. And I think maybe that’s behind this strange resurgence of book banning. - The Walrus

America’s First Late-Night Talk-Show Host Was A Woman

Faye Emerson was a Hollywood actress specializing in noir films; then she married FDR’s son, moved to New York and got into TV. From 1949-1951, she hosted a 15-minute program, The Faye Emerson Show, weeknights at 11:00 pm — becoming such a success that she was called “the First Lady of Television.” - Smithsonian...

Colbert’s Late Night Replacement On CBS Pulls Small Ratings

According to The Daily Beast, even Colbert's YouTube channel is nearly outperforming Allen's show. Colbert's appearance on the public access TV show "Only in Monroe" drew 928,000 views on Colbert's YouTube, which doesn't include viewers who watched via other channels and platforms. - TV Insider

Hollywood Largely Skipped Cannes This Year. Did Anyone Miss Them?

Whether you were a sales agent eyeing a leisurely buyer’s market or a freelance journalist picking up fewer interview commissions than usual, this felt like a low-key Cannes. - Variety

The Economics Of Late Night TV Are Moving To Streaming

Roughly 20% of lost late night dollars ends up going to YouTube, data insights company Guideline found last year, with 6% going to Amazon and another 6% going to Instagram and Facebook. - The Wrap (Yahoo)

NPR Lays Off Journalists

NPR has laid off 10 journalists, including some veteran reporters, in an attempt to save money and reorganize the newsroom. It also is buying out at least 18 news staffers who voluntarily accepted offers to depart, according to three people with direct knowledge. - NPR

NPR CEO Katherine Maher Thinks Maybe We Should Just Accept Federal Defunding Of Public Radio

“I don't think (we'll) see the Corporation for Public Broadcasting come back, and … I wouldn't necessarily advise that ... we advocate for (that), in part because I worry about it being a litmus test for every future Congress to tussle over whether it should or shouldn't be funded.” (podcast transcription) - Medill Local...

How Does A Choreographer Make Dance About Her Hometown Getting Ravaged By A Wildfire?

Alice Topp, a former principal dancer and choreographer-in-residence at the Australian Ballet, already had the idea of basing her first commission for Houston Ballet on the Finnish concept of sisu (stubbornly determined resilience). Then, this past January, came unhappy inspiration: bushfires struck her rural hometown 75 miles northwest of Melbourne. - Houston Chronicle (Yahoo!)

Facing Serious Cash Crunch, Sydney Dance Company Builds Up Its Teaching Offerings

Despite reaching new artistic heights, Australia’s leading contemporary dance troupe has posted four annual deficits in a row, totaling $5.2 million (US$3.7 million) and attributable mostly to the higher running costs of its revamped headquarters. Luckily, paying students are flocking to SDC’s new classes. - Australian Financial Review

What’s Missing From Dance Funding In The U.S.? Here’s What One Of The Leading Dance Funders Says.

Ashley Ferro-Murray of the Doris Duke Foundation: I’m interested in … funding resilient models for the future as well as legacy models that ... value the labor of the artist. One way the Doris Duke Foundation is doing this is by combining our grant-making capacity with other resources like marketing and communications. - Dance...

Dance As Competitive Sport Gets A League Of Its Own

What is the International Dance League? The N.B.A. of dance. The W.W.E. of dance. Formula 1 racing meets the TV show “America’s Best Dance Crew.” These are some of the analogies that came up in conversations with the league’s founders and participants. - The New York Times

The Robot Fight Clubs Of San Francisco Are Now Having Dance Wars

Yes, this is a thing. - The San Francisco Standard

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa: Why I Choreograph

“I choreograph because it is the only language in which I feel completely uninhibited. … Words remain fragile. They can be misinterpreted or fail to capture the depth of what we truly mean. Movement, however, transcends the invisible barriers that divide us — culture, borders, language, religion — and speaks directly to something instinctive.”...

Royal Shakespeare Company Gets An Extra £2 Million For Touring England

Arts Council England, the national funding body, gave the RSC £2 million for two large-scale Shakespeare tours in 2028 and 2030 to regional theatres in Blackpool, Norwich, Newcastle, Bradford-Leeds, Nottingham, Canterbury, Truro (Cornwall), and York. - British Theatre Guide

Behind The Scenes At Second City, Watching A New Show Get Made

“What people don’t know about the process is that when the old cast is done, on their final day, usually a Sunday, the new cast comes in on a Tuesday,” director Carisa Barreca says. “That night, the new cast has to put up a show — the old show.” - WBEZ (Chicago)

What It Costs These Days To Produce A Show In London’s West End

“Mounting a play in the West End now requires between £1 million and £2 million pounds in upfront investment, while staging a musical requires between £3 million and £10 million. This is before weekly costs" — £120,000 to £200,000 before royalties for a play and £300,000 to £400,000 for a musical. - WhatsOnStage (UK)

Wilma Theater In Philadelphia Ends Its Three-Artistic-Director Experiment

“The new and sole artistic director is Lindsay Smiling, who has been one of the company’s three co-artistic directors for the past three years; … the other two, Yury Urnov and Morgan Green, are moving on to other roles and pursuits.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

Theatre Should Be Celebrating Celebrities, Not Bemoaning Them

With our economy stagnant, this situation is not going to improve any time soon, and we need glamour and celebrity to boost sales, particularly in the subsidised sector. - The Telegraph (Yahoo)

Potential Strike On London’s West End After Actors Vote

An indicative ballot held by the performing arts union, Equity, was overwhelmingly backed by its membership: 98% voted yes to potential strikes. The result means the union now has the right to have a statutory ballot on taking industrial action. - The Guardian

Margot Wellington, Campaigner Who Helped Save Grand Central Station From Wrecking Ball, Has Died At 91

“During her seven-year tenure (as executive director of the Municipal Art Society), she led pioneering campaigns to form historic landmark districts, renovate blighted blocks and rescue threatened edifices like Radio City Music Hall. … Saving Grand Central was her crowning achievement.” - The New York Times

Sonny Rollins As Revolutionary Force

Some musicians evolve, others effect personal revolutions. Rollins is in the latter category, and his work bears the shuddering force of his drastic, self-imposed transitions. To hear Rollins in the late fifties is to hear the lion roar. - The New Yorker

Remembering Sonny Rollins

He was the last of the Mohicans1 — an essential piece of jazz’s midcentury-modern picture, the only surviving subject in Art Kane’s iconic yearbook photograph A Great Day in Harlem. But longevity is just one factor at play. - The Gig (Nate Chinen)

Jazz Pianist John Eaton, Evangelist For Great American Songbook, Has Died At 91

“Across a more-than-six-decade playing career, he recorded albums for the Chiaroscuro label, took requests from Nancy Reagan at the White House, delighted audiences at Wolf Trap and maintained a long-running association with the Smithsonian Institution, delivering song-filled lectures on American music that were broadcast around the country.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)

Barn At Oscar Hammerstein II’s Pennsylvania Farmstead Collapses In Storm

Highland Farm, just outside Doylestown in Bucks County, was where Hammerstein wrote the words for many of the musicals he created with Richard Rodgers. It is now the site of the Oscar Hammerstein Museum and Theatre Education Center, which plans to rebuild the barn as an exhibition space and education center. - PhillyVoice

Jazz Saxophone Great Sonny Rollins Has Died At 95

“From his days as a teen phenom to his more measured solo work and experimentation with free jazz, Rollins was revered for his improvisational skill. He was among the last living greats of the bebop era and — with John Coltrane and Charlie Parker — one of the most influential saxophonists of his time.”...

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Lead Event Technical Director: oversee technical operations, crew leadership, safety compliance, and client coordination; requires rigging, carpentry, audio, lighting expertise in fast-paced performing arts venue.

L.A. Phil’s Next Music Director: Daniel Harding

The 50-year-old British conductor and part-time Air France pilot is currently chief conductor at Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and has held similar positions at the Orchestre de Paris, Swedish Radio Symphony, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He begins his initial six-year term in 2027. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

San Francisco Symphony Didn’t Choose A Star Music Director. They Did Something Better.

Joshua Kosman: “In appointing Elim Chan as its next music director, the San Francisco Symphony has tapped the most inexperienced, unproven new artistic leader the organization has had in more than 40 years. The choice could not have been wiser or more opportune.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Ex-San Antonio Phil Conductor Launches New Orchestra For City

As the troubled San Antonio Philharmonic, which has canceled more concerts than it has played this year, appears to edge toward collapse, Jeffrey Kahane, who resigned as the Philharmonic’s music director in February, has announced the founding of a new orchestra and education initiative called Harmonium of Texas. - San Antonio Express-News

Turns Out Mark Rothko’s Paintings Are Perfect For The Age Of Social Media

“Across TikTok and Instagram, videos centred on Rothko’s work are accumulating hundreds of thousands of views. One creator has begun styling outfits inspired by individual Rothko canvases; another assigns Rothko works to personality archetypes.” - The Guardian (UK)

So, Does Peter Gelb Have ‘The Most Difficult Job’ In The World?

“Gelb, who is paid $1.2 million annually, oversees a $326 million budget. … Beyond the often caustic scrutiny of opera critics and patrons, Gelb must reckon with the demands of 3,000 full- and part-time employees, 15 labor unions and a 144-member board of directors.” - The New York Times

The Head Of France’s Biggest Film Producer Is Prepared To Bow To A Right-Wing Billionaire

“The open letter, published earlier this week to coincide with the opening of the Cannes film festival, was signed by more than 600 figures, including ... Juliette Binoche.” Now the head of Canal+ says the organization will no longer work with any of the signers. - The Guardian (UK)

Artists, Writers, And Musicians Experiencing Despair As Generative AI Collides With Art

“Musicians, artists and writers generally possess something AI does not, which is the lived human experience out of which they create. That experience includes the accidents, serendipities and epiphanies that shape our arts.” - KC Studio

What Will Win At The Tonys, And What Should Win

At least, according to The New York Times’s Helen Shaw. For instance: “When I think about the sheer old-fashioned ebullience of Cinco Paul’s Schmigadoon! — its compositional invention and depth of talent — I find myself hoping the voters will give it the laurel.” - The New York Times

For No Reason The Artist Or Anyone Else Knows, FIFA Destroys A Huge, Beloved Mural In Dallas

The massive whale mural is “'gone forever,’ Wyland told me, ... sounding at turns shattered and furious.” But why? Could be for some sports marketing, of course, since the men’s World Cup is coming soon. - Dallas Morning News

Our Feeds Are Products Of Stealth Marketing — And Thus, Mostly Fake

The head of one viral marketing firm says 90 percent of what we see online is advertising. And of course, “the point of this kind of marketing is that nobody is supposed to notice it. But lately, the machinery has started to show.” - Vulture

A Forgotten Medieval Book In Rome Was Hiding A Copy Of The World’s First Poem In English

“Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript, the earliest one was from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries earlier than that. And so it attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early 9th century.” - Seattle Times (AP)

How Tamara Rojo Is Remaking The San Francisco Ballet

“Ballet can be a pretty conservative artform, with many companies trundling out Swan Lakes, Nutcrackers, and Cinderellas year after year. Every now and again, though, someone like Rojo comes along and truly shakes things up – even if that has meant ruffling tutus in the process.” - NPR

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