Arts

Columns

Elephant Yoga? A Jumbo Guide to Boston’s Yoga Spots: Down Under School of Yoga

By Fiona Hinrichsen | October 2

Founded by Justine Wiltshire Cohen in 2004 in a church basement in Newton Highlands, the Down Under School of Yoga stands as one of Boston’s most esteemed yoga studios. Cohen’s yoga journey began at a very young age. Her parents, both journalists, worked with the Dalai Lama’s community in India, teaching English to Tibetan monks. Cohen’s own teaching career has now spanned over two decades. Notably, while working in Washington, D.C., as an international human rights lawyer, she combined her passion for law and classical yoga to become the yoga teacher to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

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Columns

An Everyday Art Tour: Monument to progress

By Sophie Herron | October 1

Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, said: “Bridges are a monument to progress.” Such is the case of the recently completed William Fenton ‘Bill’ Russell Bridge, named after the Celtics player and civil rights activist, which honors Boston’s past changemakers while innovating for its future. The bridge was designed by Miguel Rosales, a Boston-based architect and president of the architecture firm Rosales+ Partners. Rosales has designed some of the most well-known bridges in the country, including the Zakim and Charlestown Bridges in Boston, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in DC and the Puente Centenario Bridge across the Panama Canal. Born to a middle-class family in Guatemala, Rosales earned an architecture degree from University Francisco Marroquín before continuing his studies at MIT, earning a Masters of Science in Architecture Studies. Rosales credits his education in architecture, urban planning and engineering for his unique designs saying, “I think I combined all of those disciplines into one person, and I think that makes me special and be able to do the work I do.”

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Arts

‘No Other Choice’ is a mesmerizingly ruthless rendering of capitalism in the modern era

By Noah Goldstein | September 30

The job hunt is never easy. In today’s world of LinkedIn connections, coffee chats and endless interviews, the search for work can drive even a modest family man to madness — or worse. At least that’s the opinion of Park Chan-wook, the visionary behind “Oldboy” (2003) and “The Handmaiden” (2016), whose latest work, “No Other Choice” (2025), proves to be a hysterical, scathing portrait of modern capitalism.

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Arts

Geese’s ‘Getting Killed’ is a sacred mess

By Sam Stearns | September 30

To understand why Geese’s new record “Getting Killed” — released Friday via Partisan Records — sounds the way it does, you must understand what came before.

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Arts

‘The Hills of California’ is a tortured and beautiful dream

By Spring LaRose | September 25

A play is isolated from reality, forever fixed in its own little pocket of space and time. “The Hills of California” is distinctly aware of this fact, presenting the house the story unfolds in as both a sanctuary and a prison, where dreams are expressed and reminisced on but never able to come to fruition. 

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Arts

What creatives can learn from kintsugi

By Lea Epstein | September 25

In our dining halls, plates are merely vessels of utility. Students stack them high with Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center fries or Fresh at Carmichael Dining Center pancakes, slam them down on plastic trays beside their friends, and later let them rattle down a conveyor belt to be stripped of ketchup stains and congealed maple syrup residue by custodial staff. For those living off campus, Amazon boxes or Target bags deliver inexpensive, replaceable dishware, valued for durability. Beauty here is an afterthought, or not a thought at all — a convenience that disappears into the dishwasher before a 9 a.m. class.

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Arts

The death of the 22-episode season

By Annika Pillai | September 24

For decades, American television followed a rigid formula: around 22-episode seasons running from September to May. But in the past decade, this model has nearly disappeared. In its place are shorter runs of six to ten episodes, as well as one-off limited series that feel more like long films than open-ended serials. What changed?

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Arts

‘Frankenstein’ reanimated, yet not fully alive

By Noah Goldstein | September 23

There comes a point in many directors’ careers when making a sprawling passion project seems to be the natural progression. For Francis Ford Coppola, it was the tumultuous “Megalopolis.” For Steven Spielberg, it was the autobiographical “The Fabelmans.” And now, for three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro, that career-defining victory lap arrives with “Frankenstein” (2025). The most recent entry into a canon of adaptations that ranges from James Whale’s 1931 original to Mel Brooks’ 1974 comedic spin, Del Toro’s version is a sturdy yet relatively risk-averse take on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel.

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Arts

What does it mean to grow up?

By Yash Chaddha | September 22

What does it mean to ‘grow up?’ As a college student, this seems like an essential and painfully pressing question that no one knows how to answer. Does it mean becoming self-sufficient without the support of your parents? Does it mean actualizing a career out of a degree you worked tirelessly to obtain? Is there a marker for it — some event or moment that lets you know you have finally crossed the threshold into the next chapter of your life? Is there even an answer to the question? That’s where Benito Skinner, Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold come in.

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Arts

How slime tutorials opened Broadway to a new generation of theater kids

By Lea Epstein | September 18

In many a school auditorium, a theater kid could be spotted sitting cross-legged with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, surrounded by peers who had just belted their way through the entire Hamilton soundtrack. Between bites, they sipped water to preserve their voices, already preparing for the next reprise.

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Arts

Depop made sustainable shopping consumerist

By Annika Pillai | September 18

Depop was once imagined as the future of sustainable fashion. When it was founded in 2011, the resale platform offered itself as an antidote to fast fashion: a community marketplace where clothes that were already in circulation could be given a second life. Its design looked more like Instagram than eBay, and that was the point. Shopping on Depop felt less like scrolling through dusty thrift store racks in a Goodwill or Savers and more like browsing someone’s curated Pinterest board. For a generation raised primarily on social media, it offered a way to shop that felt authentic, personal and, most importantly, socially conscious.

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Columns

Elephant Yoga? A Jumbo Guide to Boston’s Yoga Spots: CorePower

By Fiona Hinrichsen | September 18

If you’ve walked around Boston, you’ve probably seen a CorePower Yoga studio. But what exactly is CorePower Yoga? Beyond being an intense workout that combines strength, flexibility and mindfulness, CorePower is a vibrant community of passionate ‘yogis’ across the country and right here in Boston.

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Arts

‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ traces families and the limits of intimacy

By Noah Goldstein | September 16

Jim Jarmusch has built a prolific career on observing the smallest details. “It’s a lot more exhausting to be looking at Cate Blanchett’s eyelid or Tom Waits’ gestures than to have 15 zombies come out of a grave,” the beat-poet-turned-director remarked at a press conference after his film “Father Mother Sister Brother” unexpectedly won the Golden Lion, the highest prize at the Venice International Film Festival.

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Arts

Can food be apolitical?

By Annika Pillai | September 12

“Let them eat cake.”Historians doubt Marie Antoinette ever uttered those famous words. In the original French phrase — “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” — “la brioche” doesn’t translate directly to “cake” as we know it today, but rather to brioche, a rich, eggy bread. Still, the meaning remains the same: When told that peasants had no bread, the queen supposedly suggested they eat a more luxurious kind. Whether she actually said it matters less than the sentiment it expresses — a willful blindness to inequality while indulging in luxury.

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Arts

Heavy Metal: Cameron Winter’s nonsecular, raucous, dissident, challenging debut

By Sam Stearns | September 10

Throughout the nearly 45 stumbling minutes of music, Winter moans, groans and grumbles. Heart-wrenching melodies dance from his meager voice— like your shy, too-sober friend on a dark karaoke stage. There are low baritone dirges and wavering falsettos that sometimes crack with bursts of strange emotion.

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Arts

‘The Smashing Machine’ reimagines the role of a fighter

By Noah Goldstein | September 8

Powered by a Dwayne Johnson performance that overcomes an uneven script, “The Smashing Machine” delivers a compelling character study overall.

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Arts

Why Frye boots are everywhere again and what they reveal about modern America

By Fiona Hinrichsen | September 8

Across Depop, Frye boots are selling for hundreds of dollars.How can these vintage boots be so expensive and why are they all over your feed?

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Arts

Water from Your Eyes’ ‘It’s a Beautiful Place’ is a warm, stereophonic embrace from newer indie pop outfit

By Ethan Essner | September 4

If you’re looking for the indie genre to be the shapeshifting jewel it was in the ’90s, look no further than the creatives emerging in the 2020s. These past decades functioned as a period of resurgence and re-amplification of some of the most prominent acts of the past. Nirvana and other noise rock groups (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam) piloted punchy guitar tones and lyrically scatterbrained ideas, resulting in abstractions as opposed to the previous, more obvious concept albums. This style seems to be back in fashion with more stitching to the bright, colorful tapestry of what was so widely sought after in the ’90s.

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Arts

Amanda Knox: The cost of reclaiming your narrative

By Annika Pillai | September 4

When Monica Lewinsky reintroduced herself to the public nearly two decades after the public reveal of her affair with former President Bill Clinton, she did so on her own terms. In essays and a TED Talk, she positioned herself not as the tabloid caricature of the ‘90s, but as an early casualty of online shaming. She called herself “patient zero,” staking a claim to her narrative.

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Arts

From Vivekananda to vinyasa: The evolution of yoga in Boston

By Fiona Hinrichsen | September 2

Today, yoga is a billion-dollar industry in the Western world, but its roots and journey to Boston are deeply complex, shaped by many influential figures from India who helped introduce yoga to the West.

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