“According to Pew Research Center data, between 2019 and 2023, Black Protestant monthly church attendance fell from 61% to 46% — the largest decline among major U.S. religious groups. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend, and its impact is visible in the thinning choir stands.” - AP
“Hands not only guide the eye but are the body’s finishing touch. ... They also offer a way into how to look at a dancer — and a dance. A dance isn’t just about what you see. It’s what you internalize: emotionally, intellectually, sonically, spiritually. Those hands? They lead the way.” - The New York Times
“This year offers a ‘brigade of old gits’, as the actor Andy Linden says, some of them veterans such as Miriam Margolyes, who first performed there with Cambridge University Footlights in 1963, and others remarkably making their debuts in their 70s and 80s.” - The Guardian
“Now, after Congress took away $9.4 billion in previously allocated public media funding and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsequently announced it will shut down, the future of those stations … and tribal public media across the country is up in the air.” - Nieman Lab
His astounding social media fame has inspired a musical, Saturday Night Live skits, stand-up routines, academic inquiries into the regulation of health care algorithms and the psychosocial effects of chronic pain, and a counter-movement of outraged commentators scolding anyone who would make light of a murder. - The New York Times
The work on the monumental fresco behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel is intended to protect it from the effects of large-scale tourism. The Chapel attracts an average of 25,000 visitors a day, or roughly 6 million each year. - Artnet
“Stamberg, the first woman to anchor a national evening news program, hosted All Things Considered for 14 years before taking the helm of Weekend Edition Sunday and later serving as a Special Correspondent covering the arts. Along the way, she earned … nearly every major broadcasting award.” - Inside Radio
At the CheckOut, Access Contemporary Music “aims to put on two or three chamber concerts a week, mostly self-produced. There are incipient plans for a jazz night on Thursday and for cabaret shows to fill the void left when Davenport’s abruptly canceled all its cabarets in April.” - WBEZ (Chicago)
You might think of Google as a search company, but 80 percent of its quarter-trillion-dollar annual revenue comes from ads—both hosting them and placing them throughout the internet. And a big part of what makes Google the most profitable advertising company in the world is that it knows a lot about you. - LitHub
By making the announcement of honorees himself, Trump is taking on the role of producer/showman, elevating the attention to the show, which has aired on CBS since its origin yet is hardly a ratings blockbuster. - Deadline
“They're building production studios that stand toe-to-toe with Hollywood facilities and spending lavishly on higher-quality programming. Some of these stars, from MrBeast to Michelle Khare, also offer their content on more ‘traditional’ platforms. … As a result, the top digital creators are no longer outliers in the entertainment industry.” - TheWrap (MSN)
Seuss dominates so much of our imaginations around childhood. It may take another generation or two to reset our perspective so that Seuss isn’t synonymous with children’s literature. - LitHub
Scholars who feared speech might make them vulnerable to deportation, the government advised, reflect grandiosity and paranoia. Professors are smart, but they do not inhabit the real world. There is a kind of overheated imagination, the government’s lawyers suggested, that comes from living too much with concepts and ideas, rather than hard facts. - Chronicle of Higher Education
Early modern skeptics understood something we’re still grappling with today: Certain people are more vulnerable to believing extraordinary claims. They identified “melancholics,” people predisposed to anxiety and fantastical thinking, as particularly susceptible. - The Conversation
For 30 years the Twin Cities-based company has focused on the choreography of its founder and artistic director, Mathew Janczewski. Beginning this season, Arena is switching to a repertory model, keeping older works by Janczewski in its portfolio but adding new pieces by other choreographers. - The Minnesota Star Tribune (MSN)
