A crucial component of the storyteller’s craft is placing actions and details in a specific order. For most stories, this is pretty straightforward: start at the beginning, then tell the events in the order they …

There are inherent tensions between how we are documented and how we view ourselves. We can hear this any time we listen to our own voices in an audio recording. Is that what I really …

“It’s just a shame you missed out on rock ’n’ roll,” a 1973 Lester Bangs tells an emerging music writer he’s taken under his wing, “It’s over. You got here just in time for the …

What does society feel about unmarried people over the age 45? For most of our nation’s history, the majority of the population has been married, so the democratic question has typically been: how do married …

Few modes of travel better exemplify the aphorism, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” than a train ride. America’s interstate rail system is neither faster nor cheaper than air travel, and if you take …

The German satire Die Hose, by Carl Sternheim, depicts the aftermath of a Dusseldorf hullabaloo surrounding a lady’s undergarments having fallen down, in public. Predictably, some men are scandalized by the perceived immorality of it. …

“Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday,” the verse goes, “I know what it means / To walk along the lonely street of dreams.” "Lonely street of dreams" is hardly great poetry, and it’s …

Over the past century plus, a number of bright minds have interpreted Wizard of Oz through the lens of late 19th-century politics, suggesting Frank L. Baum’s 1900 book (along with its subsequent stage and film …

The Old Globe Theatre should probably be called the Old Globe Theatres. Three different venues make up the complex, two of them indoor. It’s the outdoor stage, the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, that hosts the …