Douglas McLennan
Still Leaving Voice Mails? Here’s The New Phone Etiquette
Just because someone is calling you out of the blue does not mean you have to pick up. - Washington Post
Why Hollywood’s European Connection Is Growing
We’ve always been an international industry, but the pandemic has really illuminated that fact in some ways, both in physical production, as well as...
Inside The British Museum Scandal
It is not just the losses that are so damaging but also the way the museum has dealt with the issue since antiques dealer...
The Current Research On Music As Medicine
Recent research shows that more active engagement with music can be a boon for our mental and even physical health... The scientists behind these...
Spotify Is Testing AI-Generated Podcast Translations In The Podcasters’ Voices
The Spotify-developed tool uses OpenAI’s recently released voice-generation technology to match the original speaker’s style. That, according to Spotify, results in a “more authentic listening...
Our Education System Was Created In Industrial Times. We Need An Upgrade
Such systems, sculpted for an industrial society, falter in the face of a postindustrial, information economy. Schools were built for a world before the...
FTC: Time To Hold Amazon Accountable
Lina Khan made her reputation with a very different idea: What if pleasing the customer was not enough? Low prices, she argued in a 95-page examination...
Attacking Orchestras’ Audience Problem
"We say we need new audiences, but the reality is we're really churning through the new audiences we do get." In the arts...
How Sondheim’s Last (Incomplete) Musical Made It To The Stage
How did a show that Team Sondheim suggested was incomplete at the time of his death get to a point where it was ready...
The Great Organs Of Texas
Both Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas have long and notable histories of training organists who’ve gone on to major church,...
My Books Were Used To Train AI. So What?
Perhaps chopping prose into tokens is not how I would like to be read. But then, who am I to say what my work...
Frank Lloyd Wright Designed Only One Theatre. It’s Fallen Into Disrepair
The building represents Wright’s decades-long fascination with a concept he called the “New Theatre.” It involved eschewing the traditional setup, with a proscenium stage—in...
In Early America, Settlers Had To Make Up A Lot Of Words
Much of the landscape of North America was new to the English, so many early word inventions applied to the natural world. Often these...
State Of The Publishing Industry
In addition to rising costs, topics discussed at the daylong conference included the renewed postpandemic threat of work moving off-shore, sustainability concerns, the shift...
Portland’s Artist Repertory Theatre Pauses – Audiences Down 20-50 Percent
“So when people attend, they engage, they connect and then they give. So when the audience isn’t coming back, isn’t seeing the shows, then...
Group Files Suit To Stop Construction Of New Memphis Art Museum
That piece of land is referred to as "the promenade." According to the descendants of Memphis founders, who are referred to as the "heirs"...
Semyon Bychkov On Authenticity In Music
“I think the greatest challenge for us as interpreters today is to find authenticity of spirit in the music we interpret, and that's a...
Poof! Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Folds. But Why?
“Before the pandemic, we had 8,000 subscribers. As of today, we have 2,000 subscribers. That’s a huge difference.” - Waterloo Record
Survey: Australian Arts Participation Study Released
Many of the results show consistency with the last survey in 2019: 97% of Australians engage with the arts, 84% acknowledge positive impacts of...
A Crisis At UK Universities
While U.S. universities charge ever higher tuition in an arms race for the best facilities and research, leading to a soaring student debt crisis, U.K. universities...
A Plan To Reconstruct San Francisco’s Davies Hall
"A plan is being formulated to reconstruct Davies and some of its environment (such as the large outdoor parking lot on Franklin Street), including reducing...
An AI Finished My Story. The Story Went Viral. It Was Really Good. Does...
When the essay, called “Ghosts,” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021, it quickly went viral. I started hearing from others who had lost...
Why Do Public Intellectuals So Often Talk Down To Their Audiences?
If the academic humanities too often address only siloed experts, then pop philosophy too often addresses an audience of imagined idiots. - Yale Review
A Long Tradition Of Mis-Thinking Intelligence
Insights from western literature and myth point to the ethical problem at the core of human intelligence. How we understand the role of humans’...
Who’s Propping Up TV Networks: Boomers
The median age of viewers at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox has ballooned in recent years. That has left executives looking for ways to...