In June of 2015, a pair of hobbyists carrying metal detectors came upon a hoard of extremely rare gold coins and jewelry, in astonishingly good condition, that came from the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and had almost certainly been buried by the marauding Vikings who plundered it. Great Britain has fair but strict laws governing the discovery of ancient treasure — laws that these gentlemen had skirted when they stumbled on the hoard and flouted after they found it. As Rebecca Mead reports, the men came to a predictably bad end, but much of the treasure is still missing. – The New Yorker
Author: Matthew Westphal
What Alex Trebek Achieved Is More Amazing Than We Realize
“It’s easy to forget to appreciate the freak ubiquity of Jeopardy! One of the most popular, longest-running television shows of all time is a trivia gantlet that, by design, casts bookish obsessives. … It’s a miracle that the show is so exciting to watch. This is due almost entirely to Trebek. … He led one of our last wholesome routines — a celebration of facts, from the arcane to the accessible — with a kind of tangible enthusiasm. … [And] one got the sense that Trebek wanted the contestants to thrive.” – The New Yorker
Despite The Pandemic, Steppenwolf Is Building An Entire New Theater
“In March of last year, Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre officially announced its campus expansion: a new $54 million theater-in-the-round. Back then, theaters still staged live shows and cared not for streaming video. Zoom was a comic-book term.” Chris Jones goes on a hard-hat tour of the building-in-progress and talks with artistic director Anna D. Shapiro about the company’s multimillion-dollar bet that, soon, the show will go on like it did before. – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Aileen Passloff, An Institution Of New York Dance, Dead At 89
“A former member of the Judson Dance Theater, the experimental 1960s collective that led to postmodern dance, … [her] career as a dancer, choreographer and broadly influential teacher spanned [decades of] ballet, modern dance and postmodern dance.” – The New York Times
The Collapse Of Quibi: An Inside View
“While employees were trying to figure out how to get people to sign up and actually watch a series, creatives working on the shows were wondering why anyone would voluntarily spend $5 a month to watch anything on Quibi at all.” (And they all found out about the company’s end in the press, not from executives.) – The Verge
Isaac Newton’s ‘Principia’ Wasn’t Just A Scientific Landmark, It Was Surprisingly Widely Read When It Was New
“Historians have discovered that the first, limited edition of the seemingly incomprehensible book in fact achieved a surprisingly wide distribution throughout the educated world. An earlier census of the [1687] book, published in 1953, identified 189 copies worldwide. But a new survey by two scholars has found nearly 200 more — 386 copies in all, including ones far beyond England.” – The New York Times
Alec Baldwin Pulls His Podcast From WNYC, Alleging Interference With Woody Allen Interview
Baldwin launched his popular interview show, Here’s the Thing, at New York Public Radio (WNYC) in 2011 and is moving it to iHeartRadio as of January. He says that station management insisted that, for an interview with Allen that aired in June, Baldwin ask the director about Dylan Farrow’s accusation of child sexual abuse. “Once WNYC said, ‘We won’t air the interview unless you ask these questions’ and forced that editorial content on me like that, I knew I was out of there.” – Billboard
What Can The Arts Expect From The Biden Presidency?
An improvement, for starters: Biden is not going to submit a budget (let alone four of them in a row) eliminating the NEA and NEH. Reporter Eileen Kinsella spoke to several experts about where things stand now and where they’re likely to go with respect to tax law and the arts, federal cultural funding, tariffs and trade, and (of course) the pandemic. – Artnet
Stagehand Falls To Death In Mothballed Broadway Theater
“The 54-year-old man fell from [a] narrow, raised platform [with a ladder] alongside the stage around 8:45 a.m. while performing routine maintenance, the police said. … [He] was an employee of the Shubert Organization, which operates the Winter Garden Theater, and was not affiliated with Beetlejuice, the last show to play there.” – The New York Times
Highway Tunnel Under Stonehenge Approved
“The two-mile-long tunnel and its approaches are part of a $2.2 billion package to upgrade the narrow A303 highway that runs startlingly close to the iconic stone circle and has long been notorious for traffic jams and long delays. The approval came despite strong objections from an alliance of archaeologists, environmentalists, and modern-day druids.” – National Geographic