More Legal Drama Over Mockingbird’s New Version

First, the new version sued the old; now it's reversed. "At stake is not only who will profit, long-term, from stage versions of the...

Native American Languages Are In Deep Danger

No surprise, after decades of concerted campaigns to destroy the tribes and their languages. But there's a plan: "The Biden administration announced an effort...

Astra Magazine’s Short Life Shows The Precariousness Of Literary Journals

"Astra Magazine, Spiegelman said, was 'both unusual and exciting, a glamorous and subversive literary project, a breath of fresh air and hope.' And then...

The Long Friendship And Intertwined Careers Of Tilda Swinton And Joanna Hogg

Friends since they met as 10 and 11-year-olds at prep school in 1971, the actor and writer-director "have just in the last few years...

The Best Library Instagram In The United States And Perhaps The World

Who knew this was a contest? And yet, the Milwaukee Public Library is clearly winning. - LitHub

Kanye West’s Massive Reddit Page Turns Into A Holocaust Awareness Campaign

There's also a fair amount of Taylor Swift fandom, but "these posts from fans essentially serve as a denouncement of West’s praise of Hitler...

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, ‘Ranuchy’ And Feminist Underground Comics Artist, Has Died At 74

Kominsky-Crumb "was known for work that was not only autobiographical but often bracingly sexual — focusing on her insecurities — and explicit." - Los...

Can The Academy Forgive Will Smith, At Least As An Actor?

Doesn't seem super likely. But: "If there’s a Best Actor race worth trying to sneak into, it’s this one, and Smith has been careful...

What It’s Like To Play Princess Di And Then Come Out As Nonbinary

Emma Corrin: "It’s hard to be discovering something in yourself at the same time you’re navigating an industry that demands a lot of you."...

Found: A Recording Of 18-Year-Old Stephen Sondheim’s College Musical

It's called Phinney's Rainbow, and Sondheim was a sophomore in college when he wrote and mounted it in 1948. "It's the stuff of legend...

Playwright Lynn Nottage Has Been Running A Theatrical Marathon All Year

The writer of Sweat and the most-produced play of this year, Clyde's, had three productions in New York this year. She says, "The mindfulness...

How Two Norwegian Students Accidentally Created TikTok’s Favorite Sounds

Twenty years ago, high school students Thomas S. Nilsen and Steffen Ojala Soderholm created "nightcore." But it didn't take off until TikTok kicked into...

New Theory: Children Made Stone-Age Owl-Like Carvings

"Archaeologists have previously suggested that they were symbols of goddesses that were placed on deceased people as a burial offering. It is debated whether...

The True Cost Of A Twitter Implosion

"There are whole nations whose political discourse occurs mainly on Twitter. The amount of reputational and social wealth that stands to be lost if Twitter collapses...

Ukraine Detains Eight People Over Banksy Theft

According to Kyiv's governor, "'The image is in good condition and in the hands of the authorities.' Other works in the area thought also...

How A Sync Made A 1985 Song A Hit In 2022

Instead, it took a lot of planning and some carefully waged campaigns. "While syncs have previously boosted older singles, they’ve never generated this level...

On Writing Memoir-ish Fiction And Reader Complaints About Not Enough Sex

Elif Batuman "expects from any book, her own included, nothing less than a real-time experiment in how we should think and live." - Paris...

Why Isn’t Season 5 Of ‘The Crown’ Damaging Charles?

Well, let's be honest: He just (finally) became king. Britain is not having the popular series' narrative anymore. (Also ... he's played by Dominic...

Mourning Los Espookys

Maybe HBO wasn't quite ready for a show that is creators couldn't even describe. "Imagine 'Scooby-Doo' as written by Jorge Luis Borges and directed by Pedro Almodóvar and...

The Rise Of Celebrity Broadway Producers

The presence of famous folks in the credits for Broadway productions isn’t exactly new, but it does seem to be proliferating. - The Stage

How Cover Songs Work On The Brain

The cover plays an important role in our contemporary understanding of music, so it is worth thinking about what exactly a cover is. - Psyche

It’s Getting Much Harder To Define What A City Is

The question of where to draw the line between what is and what is not a city—not to mention where one ends and another...

Canada’s National Broadcaster Rebrands

It’s a CBC mandate to find creators they haven’t spoken with before and to encourage those stories to be told through a variety of...

This Year Was A Huge Breakthrough For Artificial Intelligence

This year, we’ve seen a flurry of AI products that seem to do precisely what the Oxford researchers considered nearly impossible: mimic creativity. Language-learning...

Are Our Brains Quantum Computers?

Even though we have a good understanding of where consciousness originates — essentially via neurons sending signals to each other — scientists still aren't...