How Much Medieval European Literature Have We Lost?
A team of European researchers, using a method borrowed from biostatistics called the "unseen species model," has estimated that 90% of the literary manuscripts...
The Power Of Music To Drive TikTok Memes
Though TikTok didn’t invent the audio meme, its effortless interface may have perfected it, and the platform, which recently ended Google’s 15-year-long run as...
Paris Is Developing Something It’s Never Had Before: A Lively Comedy Club Scene
"American-style comedy clubs ... barely existed in France before the 21st century. ... At (several) venues ..., all opened within the past three years,...
Argentine Prosecutors Link Placido Domingo To Criminal Gang
Numerous broadcast channels in Latin America have been airing excerpts of audio recordings, obtained by wiretap, that include the voice of a man whom authorities claim...
The Cult Of Offense: We Are Not All Salman Rushdie, And Some Of Us...
"We have conceded moral authority to howling mobs, and the louder the howls, the more we have agreed that the howls were worth heeding....
Bollywood’s Blockbusters Are Having A Bad Time At The Box Office This Summer
In recent months, the marquee releases from the Hindi-language film industry in Mumbai have been earning much less than they cost to make. Why?...
The Magical Power Of House Dance
With its freestyle form and openness to incorporating almost any movement style — from tap to voguing to capoeira to jacking — house dance...
Explaining The Controversy Over The Painted Ancient Greek Statuary At The Met Museum
The argument is not about pristine whiteness or the purity of uncolored marble: scholars have known ancient Greek statuary was originally painted for over...
A Trans Cleveland Orchestra Staffer Is Suing Her Employers For Discrimination. The Issue? Health...
Rem Wransky had completed her transition when she became the orchestra's web developer in April 2021, but she developed some physically painful complications which,...
For Its New Artistic Leadership, Philadelphia Theatre Company Scores A 2-For-1 Deal
Co-artistic directors and spouses Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky are coming from Trinity Rep in Providence, where they were, respectively, associate artistic director and...
It Seems The Prized Galileo Manuscript At U.Mich Is A Forgery
"Now the staff of the Michigan library is considering ways to use the object to examine the methods and motivations behind forgeries, potentially making...
The Unexpurgated Darwin — Lost Notebooks Reveal His Thinking
For academics, the uncooked contents of the notebooks represent some of the liveliest writing in biology. “A lot of Darwin’s prose feels quite Victorian....
The Internet Has Become A Giant Whataboutism Chamber
Attention is finite, the record of how we spend it public, and it is easy enough to check if somebody who tweets every day...
Publishing’s Blockbuster Merger Trial Is Turning Out To Be Something Of A Circus
The spectacle has been curiously entertaining. Publishing executives have had to initiate federal employees into a dialect of “backlists,” “advance copies,” and “BookTok influencers.”...
Why Streaming Services Are Adding Ads
But ads are coming back because streamers have more info about our consumption habits than the cable companies or networks ever did, so the...
UK Literary Festivals Are Back. But…
“The mood music seemed that ‘leisure’ activities had to be jettisoned due to the already felt increased cost of fuel/food, and there was a...
The 1927 Scandal That Made Mae West’s Career
"Before West hit the big-screen, she was prosecuted for staging not one, but two scandalous plays. In this episode of Decoder Ring, we look...
Mounting Evidence? People Are Stopping Listening To Music
For the last few years, I have felt the inescapable disappearance of music from my friends’ lives. Even people with whom I have longstanding...
“Soylent Green”, Made 50 Years Ago, Is Set In 2022. Here’s Why It Got...
" Movies like Soylent Green abandon such messiness in favor of predictive certainty as they set out to shock people into action. ... And...
Seattle’s Arts After The Pandemic: Reckoning Or Opportunity?
In the ’80s and ’90s the arts were ascendant here, and Seattle was well regarded nationally as an up and coming arts town. Then...
Public Radio’s Efforts To Diversify Its Interviewees Are Working
"Journalists at NPR and Minnesota Public Radio say they are seeing the payoff from a heightened focus on tracking the diversity of their sources,...
Performers Were Among The Hardest Hit In The Pandemic. Recovery Is Slow
During the worst days of lockdown, some artists who couldn’t afford rent squatted in empty theaters to save money. Others left the art world...
Taking Standup Comedy Between Countries And Languages
Edinburgh Fringe comedians from Japan, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, Argentina, and Denmark talk to a reporter about establishing connections with a foreign audience, differing...
Carl Sagan’s Warning On The Dumbing Down Of America
“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, but especially a kind...
What Salman Rushdie Has Meant For The South Asian Diaspora
"Rushdie helped change how ... Europe and North America saw desis. He defied stereotypes and resisted all assumptions. He became, through no choice of...
