Stories

How Small Arts Organizations Do Fundraisers Without Fancy Gala Soirées

In Houston, smaller groups who can’t afford the big upfront costs of galas get quite inventive with their benefit events. - Houstonia Magazine

Gertrude Stein’s Language Experiments Were Considered Difficult. But Let’s Reconsider

“Devotees of her cult professed to find her restoring a pristine freshness and rhythm to language. Medical authorities compared her effusions to the rantings of the insane.” - BookForum

American Education Is In A Desperate State. It Is Failing Its Students

We are now seeing what the lost decade in American education has wrought. By some measures, American students have regressed to a level not seen in 25 years or more. - The Atlantic

AI Has Been Trained With What’s Online. Not All Knowledge Is Online

These systems may appear neutral, but they are far from it. The most popular models privilege dominant epistemologies (typically Western and institutional) while marginalising alternative ways of knowing, especially those encoded in oral traditions, embodied practice and the languages considered ‘low-resource’ in the computing world. - Aeon

Toby Talbot, Who Helped Create America’s Art-House Cinema Circuit, Is Dead At 96

“(She and her husband, Dan,) through their distribution company, New Yorker Films, and such prominent Manhattan theaters as … Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, were a prolific force behind the transformation of movies in the 1960s and ‘70s from popular entertainment to an art form regarded with the seriousness of literature or painting.” - AP

Broadway Musicians Authorize Strike

The musicians' most recent contract expired August 31, 2025. Since then, the union has been trying to achieve a new contract that includes increased wages, increased healthcare contributions, and employment and income security. - Playbill

Was L’Affaire Jimmy Kimmel A Lesson For The Importance Of Late Night TV?

Amid all the headlines about falling ratings, production cutbacks and monetary losses, it's easy to forget that late-night TV programs have historically occupied a singular space in pop culture that viewers couldn't easily find anywhere else. - NPR

The Museum Specially Built For The Benin Bronzes Has Nothing But Clay Replicas. Why Aren’t The Restituted Sculptures There?

“About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years. … Their public display inside the $25m state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin … was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.” An uplifting story — the reality is messier. - The Guardian

Marc Maron Talks About The End Of His Podcast, One Of The Most Influential In The Medium’s History

“There’s a part of me that feels a responsibility to these listeners. I get all kinds of emails, stuff that I would never have expected, from people who I helped to get sober, who I helped pull off the ledge of depression. ... They live in my head.” - The New York Times

I Survived The Bombing Of Ukraine’s Largest Book Festival

Fiona Benson, an editor of Exeter University’s Ukrainian Wartime Poetry Project, was invited to BookForum in Lviv by Arthur Dron’, a poet and war hero. On the second day, a siren sounded, everyone went down into a bomb shelter, and Russian missiles struck. - The Guardian

Easter Islanders Always Said Their Moai Statues Walked To Their Places. New Research Says It’s Probably True.

That’s not to say, mind you, that the moai walked by themselves. A new paper published by two archaeologists lays out, through observation and experiment, how the Rapa Nui people likely rigged up the moai and walked them from the quarry to their platforms. - Artnet

Public Radio Cuts Could Have A Disastrous Effect On Classical Music In America

Roughly 96% of the classical music on terrestrial radio in the U.S. is broadcast on public radio stations — and those stations often have crucial symbiotic relationships with the classical music scenes in their listening areas. Michael Andor Brodeur considers what’s at stake. - The Washington Post (MSN)

What Are The Issues Behind The Threatened Broadway Strike?

The Broadway League, which represents Broadway producers and landlords, is currently in tense negotiations with two different unions: Actors’ Equity (performers and stage managers) and AFM Local 802 (musicians). Here’s an explainer covering what’s at issue and what could happen if an actual strike is called. - TheaterMania

Unpublished Jack Kerouac Story Discovered In Mafia Boss’s Papers

“The two-page typewritten manuscript signed by Kerouac in green ink is titled ‘The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing’ and is dated 15 April 1957, five months before … On the Road was published. It was discovered last year during the disposal of items owned by (mafia don) Paul Castellano." - The Guardian

How AI Could Change The Way We Listen To Music

As AI becomes more embedded in music creation, the challenge is balancing its legitimate creative use with the ethical and economic pressures it introduces. Disclosure is essential not just for accountability, but to give listeners transparent and user-friendly choices in the artists they support. - The Conversation

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