Arts

Arts

What Reddit’s ‘snark’ pages can tell us about the fate of journalism

By Annika Pillai | November 13

In May, The New York Times ran a story about a young influencer with Stage 4 cancer who’d become the fixation of a Reddit ‘snark’ community. The subreddit’s members didn’t believe she was sick. They combed through her Instagram posts and created timelines tracking her hospital visits and medical details. They called it research. When the Times confirmed her diagnosis with her doctor and reached out to Reddit for a comment on its inaction, the platform banned the forum. By then, though, its members had already produced something that looked unsettlingly like journalism.

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Arts

‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ delivers next to nothing, nowhere

By Jaden Gardiola | November 12

The most unfortunate thing about “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is that the film, fundamentally, does everything right. The plot is trackable, director Scott Cooper doesn’t make any jaw-dropping choices and stars Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong turn in strong performances as the titular rock star and his manager, respectively. What results is a product that is thoroughly predictable, unimaginative and set firmly in simplicity.

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Columns

An everyday art tour: An edible art form

By Sophie Herron | November 12

For pastry chefs Richard Akers-Barrows and Maura Kilpatrick, baking is about imagination.

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Arts

Why Tufts students shouldn’t miss the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s $35 pass

By Makens Joseph | November 10

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is where your next live music adventure can come to life, and it is only about a 40-minute trip from Tufts to Symphony Hall. Many of us are not very familiar with the classical music scene because it is not typically presented as an activity worth attending, but I would advise you to give it a chance. 

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Arts

Printmaking’s global legacy: Preserving Asian traditions and their influence on modern art

By Fiona Hinrichsen | November 7

Printmaking dates back to the Tang Dynasty in China, where it was primarily used for Buddhist texts and illustrations. It then spread widely throughout Asia, notably reaching Japan in the seventh century. Traditionally, Japanese printmakers used mokuhanga, a woodblock printing technique — “moku” meaning wood and “hanga” meaning print. In mokuhanga, a traditional bamboo hand tool called a baren is used to press the ink onto the paper.

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Arts

Bad Bunny is leading a new kind of American revolution

By Noah Goldstein | November 6

It’s fitting that the last lyric of Bad Bunny’s record-breaking 2025 album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” is “¡Viva!” — or in English, “Long live!” It’s the resounding final exclamation of “LA MuDANZA,” a track that begins as an intimate ballad — a retelling of the tender love story from global superstar Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio of his parents — and then, in a heartbeat, erupts into a raucous, full-throated anthem. Piano, bass, congas, bongos and horns collide, igniting a sound that, as with the 16 tracks before it, channels the soul of Puerto Rico and its people.

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Columns

High Fidelity: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, 50 years on

By Kasra Salehi | November 6

Almost exactly 50 years ago, Bob Dylan embarked on the first leg of his now-famous Rolling Thunder Revue tour. What commenced was perhaps the most thrilling live collection of songs Dylan would ever produce. The autumn leg of this tour, spanning the northeastern United States and Canada, became forever immortalized through the live album released in 2002, which featured 22 performances from the first leg of the tour. The album serves as a testament to Dylan’s decades-long commitment to reinventing himself and his material and stands alone as a pinnacle of both Dylan’s career and rock music at large.

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Arts

‘Lizard Boy’ upholds and reimagines the hero’s story

By Spring LaRose | November 5

The Roberts Studio Theatre feels like an underground rock club. The stage is set minimally, with panels of graffiti, black boxes, a piano and other musical instruments lit by hazy, colorful lights. The audience is still murmuring when the three characters that make up the cast of “Lizard Boy” casually walk onstage to tune their various instruments. It’s as if a concert is about to start, rather than a musical. The opening display is very intentionally alternative. “Lizard Boy” is a story about an outsider, and the show itself is situated on the boundaries between sci-fi and myth, and between the quirky and the cliché.

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Arts

How social media is shaping political discourse

By Bhavana Etikela | November 4

In the 2024 presidential debate between former President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, it became clear that political discourse in America had fully merged with internet culture. Within minutes of the debate’s broadcast, TikTok and X were flooded with short clips. Biden’s frail voice and empty-eyed stare sparked jokes about him needing “a cough drop,” an energy drink or even Adderall, with one user quipping, “They accidentally injected Biden with ketamine instead of adrenaline.” Memes compared his expressions to a dog caught misbehaving or someone seeing ghosts.

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Arts

Artist Bianca Broxton returns to Medford to remember Belinda Sutton, an enslaved woman, for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution

By Isadora Alexis | November 4

Sitting in a mildly cramped, dimly lit room, I, along with several other guests from the Medford area, waited with bated breath for School of the Museum of Fine Arts alum Bianca Broxton’s performance. A hush quickly spread throughout the room as Broxton entered dressed in a floor-length gown, white stockings, a white veil covering her face and a white headwrap on her head.

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Arts

‘Palaver’ is a stunning portrait of a relationship on the verge of collapse

By Claire LeCates | November 3

Despite his choice of title, Bryan Washington certainly isn’t palavering in his third standalone novel. The book delivers 336 pages of routine moments conveyed with great momentum. From Jamaica through Houston and Toronto, all the way to Tokyo, “Palaver” gently leads readers through moments that may seem inconsequential individually, but ultimately comprise all the life-altering decisions and important relationships that define us.

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Arts

Through the Looking Glass: What The Good Place tells us about the government shutdown

By Olivia Bye | October 31

No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum or how you feel about politics, I think we can all agree on one thing: this is certainly not “The Good Place.”

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Columns

Elephant Yoga? A Jumbo Guide to Boston’s Yoga Spots: Is goat and puppy yoga fur real yoga?

By Fiona Hinrichsen | October 31

Yoga, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “a system of physical postures, breathing techniques, and sometimes meditation derived from Yoga but often practiced independently especially in Western cultures to promote physical and emotional well-being.”

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Columns

An everyday art tour: A living collection

By Sophie Herron | October 29

The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University spans 281 acres with a collection of more than 16,000 plants. Rodney Eason, director of horticulture and landscape at the arboretum, can recognize these plants by sight and tell their stories by heart.

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Arts

The politics behind country music’s comeback

By Claire LeCates | October 28

Lately, country music has felt somewhat inescapable. Songs from Morgan Wallen’s new album hold multiple spots on the Billboard Hot 100 while echoes of a country twang have made their way into Sabrina Carpenter’s recent music. Country’s spreading influence is visible in Beyoncé’s Texan homecoming, Noah Kahan’s seemingly overnight fame or the success of Shaboozey’s hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” In a 2023 study on popular U.S. radio content, songs falling into the genre of country composed 41% (second highest to the grouped category of rock, alternative and indie) of music on the radio. That’s a percentage even higher than pop. 

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Arts

The Louvre heist and the strange new era of museum crime

By Annika Pillai | October 27

In many ways, the dramatic raid looked like a movie. But what it revealed is less cinematic and more consequential: the shape of museum crime is shifting.

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Arts

A cappella at Tufts hits all the right notes

By Grace Lee | October 23

Over 60 years ago, the Beelzebubs and Jackson Jills set the stage for a cappella excellence at Tufts; today, that tradition has expanded into a thriving community of 10 different groups. All with distinct styles and identities, they can be overwhelming to keep track of, so here’s your guide to all the a cappella groups here at Tufts.

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Arts

R.F. Kuang visits Tufts, discusses fear, form and fairytales

By Annika Pillai | October 23

On Oct. 10, author R. F. Kuang joined the Tufts community for a discussion on writing, identity and the questions that shape her fiction. Hosted by the Asian American Center, the event drew a full audience to Distler Performance Hall, where students eagerly awaited with notebooks and copies of “Babel” and her other works in hand. Over the course of an hour, Kuang spoke warmly about her craft, academia and the delicate balance between critique and care.

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Columns

High Fidelity: Clipse returns home triumphant on ‘Let God Sort Em Out’ tour

By Kasra Salehi | October 23

Pusha T and Malice are on top of the world, and they know it.

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Arts

Has social media marketing gone too far?

By Annika Pillai | October 22

When Amazon Prime Video compared a fan’s engagement ring to Belly’s from “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” the reaction was immediate and sharp. This incident is not just a mistake. It reflects a deeper tension in modern brand marketing.

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