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Dec 20, 2024 | 
newyorker.com | Adam Sacks
The Best Podcasts of 2024Despite industry turmoil, old and new shows continue to innovate, whether investigating Elon Musk, high-school mysteries, or our relationship to death itself.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
compactmag.com | Adam Sacks
The History Channel series Ancient Aliens, which will soon conclude its 20th season, pioneered an increasingly influential brand of pseudo-history, also on display in the recent Netflix production Ancient Apocalypse. Both shows gain their appeal simultaneously from the allure of hidden knowledge and the wish to escape from discomfiting truths.
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Jun 25, 2024 | 
fathomjournal.org | Kenneth Waltzer |Henry Srebrnik |Adam Sacks
Opened in 2024, the Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews is the largest branch of the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History. Adam J. Sacks suggests the ‘Litvak’ museum is an outstanding professional achievement but questions its failure to face the full truth of Lithuania’s wartime past and its tendency to ‘push too many shiny round Jewish pegs into modern-day ethnonationalist square holes’.
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Mar 29, 2024 | 
classicalmusicdaily.com | Adam Sacks
ADAM J SACKS reports from the Hong Kong Arts FestivalHong Kong's 52nd Arts Festival featured the Baltic Sea Philharmonic bringing austere Nordic winds to the sub-tropical breezes of the South China Seas. Of course the more jarring juxtaposition is their intentional heavy metal usurpation of the symphonic concert hall and its conventions. Their 14 March 2024 concert Bright and Black consisted of mostly short pieces by young composers with nary a pause to mark out the compositions distinctly.
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Jan 30, 2024 | 
newyorker.com | Adam Sacks
“And the Academy Award for Best Oscar Campaign goes to . . .”
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Aug 28, 2023 | 
znetwork.org | Adam Sacks
The romantics of theater in wartime have often gripped the imagination: from Susan Sontag’s production of Waiting for Godot in besieged Sarajevo, to the Freedom Theater in Jenin, or a recent Hamlet in Yemen. While these exceptional performances are widely lionized, left unsung is the heroically everyday theater that advances social consciousness and raises up its audience along with its art.
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Aug 27, 2023 | 
msn.com | Adam Sacks
Writers are striking to save film and TV from destruction by corporate giants. New Deal-era schemes like the Federal Theatre Project and the Group Theater offer a tantalizing glimpse of how entertainment could be run as a public good, not as a business. The romantics of theater in wartime have often gripped the imagination: from Susan Sontag’s production of Waiting for Godot in besieged Sarajevo, to the Freedom Theater in Jenin, or a recent Hamlet in Yemen.
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Aug 3, 2023 | 
classicalmusicdaily.com | Adam Sacks
ADAM J SACKS reports on two Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts at TanglewoodThe Boston Symphony Orchestra's Tanglewood 'Berkshire Day' on Sunday 23 July 2023 began with an infrequently heard 'Ballade in A minor'. This was the orchestra's first rendering of this piece by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a composer of mixed African and English ancestry, better known in his day than our own.
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Jul 10, 2023 | 
newyorker.com | Adam Sacks
“You there, boy, what new text-based social-media app is it today?”Cartoon by Adam Sacks
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Jul 10, 2023 | 
flipboard.com | Adam Sacks
25 Years Ago, One Band Dropped An Album You Either Loved Or Hated — But Never ForgotIt's been how long since you looked at me? It’s been twenty-five years since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side, and said you were angry. …
