How The Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum Is Helping The Public Understand Pandemics

“Ebola was not a pandemic, but it created a panic rarely seen in the U.S. It was on the heels of the Ebola mania that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History developed Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World, a major exhibition proposed by Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease physician on the frontlines of the epidemic in West Africa. His idea came with the recognition that the public needed a better understanding of how outbreaks of unknown (or unfamiliar) infectious diseases start and spread.” – Smithsonian Magazine

NPR Is Turning 50 – Here’s How It Happened

In 1971, there were 88 member stations and a total staff of 65; now NPR’s total staff is 862, with 390 in news and 17 overseas bureaus, and the network has 1,008 member and affiliated stations.  The total weekly audience for NPR stations is 37 million; 27 million for NPR programs. Ninety-nine million consume NPR content from some platform in a month. NPR is the leading publisher of podcasts and reaches 23.7 million listeners monthly with its offerings. – Current

How One Expert Discovered The Creative Freedom Of Early Music

“I finally realized it felt more creative to be doing what I was doing in early music because there was so much that we hadn’t figured out; there was so much that was not in the scores. And just because you can’t make up all the notes doesn’t mean you can’t make up most of them. I played continuo, where you’ve got a bass line and you make it up. And I liked that.” – Van

Twenty Years Of ‘The Laramie Project’

By now the documentary theatre piece about the murder of Matthew Shepard has been performed thousands of times by professionals, amateurs, and students; an estimated 10 million people have seen it live in 13 languages and 20 countries, and another 20 million have seen the HBO adaptation; arguably, The Laramie Project even helped change federal law. Journalist John Moore looks back at how the play developed and spread. – American Theatre

Head Writer Of ‘The Laramie Project’ Looks Back 20 Years To The Play’s Creation

Leigh Fondakowski: “When we arrived in Denver, the play was not yet finished. It had only two acts then. … Moments were shifting, and the order of scenes kept changing all through previews. … The actors would be running offstage doing their costume quick-changes and looking at the poster boards to know which scene came next.” – American Theatre

The Rise Of ‘Relaxed Performances’

“What does make a theatre feel like home? Negotiating mobile phones, sweet wrappers and chatty Kathys is a well-documented headache for theatre staff and spectators alike. The academic Kirsty Sedgman … notes: ‘We may say we want audiences to feel at home in the theatre, but we are still not willing to go so far as to let them act like they are at home.’ So can you make everyone feel at home?” – The Guardian