Nation Sep 04 Billie Jean King on athlete activism: ‘Our job is to lead’ Billie Jean King, one of the most renowned and beloved athletes of our time, made her mark on the court as the top women’s tennis player in the world. Off the court, she continues her advocacy for equality. King joins…
Arts Aug 24 In rural Oregon, regional theater sparks a creative revival A remote area of the Pacific Northwest might not sound like a top theater destination. But as Jeffrey Brown reports, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has sparked a wave of creative and economic growth in rural Ashland. One of the country’s…
Health Aug 14 A festering opioid crisis, worn-out families and ‘so much pain to process’ In “Dopesick,” journalist and author Beth Macy takes readers to the front lines of the opioid epidemic in Roanoke, Virginia, and other nearby communities, telling the story of grieving families, exhausted medical workers and convicted heroin dealers. Jeffrey Brown reports…
Arts Aug 10 In a world full of surveillance, artist Trevor Paglen stares back When artist Trevor Paglen looks up at the night sky, there's beauty and wonder, but also a planet completely transformed by humans into a "landscape of surveillance." His new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, “Sites Unseen,” offers a…
Arts Aug 07 Long-lost Hemingway story captures Paris liberation In August 1944, Paris was liberated from Nazi occupiers, and embedded with the soldiers was a giant of American literature. More than a decade later, Ernest Hemingway captured the mood and the moment in a short story that bears the…
Arts Aug 03 ‘Eighth Grade’ captures our need to connect Following a week in the life of a middle schooler, the new film "Eighth Grade" sets the familiar fumblings of adolescence against the constant glare of a glowing screen or Snapchat filter. Jeffrey Brown takes a look at why it’s…
Nation Aug 01 Unearthing Sally Hemings’ legacy at Monticello Visitors have long come to Monticello to see and admire Thomas Jefferson's mansion, but a new silhouette and exhibition bring a largely hidden life into the open. No portrait exists of Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who had a decades-long…
Arts Jul 27 The wisdom of hip-hop gets respect in a new museum exhibit At the Oakland Museum of California, a new exhibit traces decades of history of hip-hop, an industry and culture that's both mainstream and underground, global but rooted in the local. Jeffrey Brown reports.
Arts Jul 26 ‘Writing out of a loneliness,’ novelist explores the range of native experiences Tommy Orange's acclaimed debut novel "There There" explores through a dozen characters what it means to be Native American in an urban setting. Jeffrey Brown reports.
Arts Jul 23 This new and ‘old’ artist offers a self-portrait in starting over At 64, Princeton University professor Nell Irvin Painter became a painter. Moving away from the confines of historical research to embrace the freedoms of visual art, Painter confronts her own internal struggles in a new book, "Old in Art School:…