Okay, so here’s the set-up: three guys who love bluegrass music. Except they’re not just three guys who love bluegrass, they’re three guys from New Jersey, not the first place you think of when you think of bluegrass. Except they’re not just three guys from New Jersey who love bluegrass, they’re three brothers. Except they’re not just three brothers from New Jersey who love bluegrass, they’re three brothers all under the age of fifteen. And there you have it: Brothers Jonny, Robbie and Tommy Mizzone are “The Sleepy Man Banjo Boys,” a trio of virtuoso bluegrass musicians who in just five minutes will share two songs and in...

While I knew that Abraham Lincoln is credited with establishing Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday, I didn’t know it had previously been the custom of presidents and governors and others to declare “a day of Thanksgiving” on a regularly occasional basis. (That is, they did this regularly, but according to no set calendar.) So in addition to the thanksgiving celebration of the pilgrims we know so well, George Washington twice declared days of national thanksgiving (in 1789 and 1795). John Adams and James Madison did the same on several occasions (though Jefferson never did). While often these days of thanksgiving were declared to...

Ever wonder whether your assumptions about the world are accurate? Swedish statistician Hans Rosling is a wizard with data. Really. He uses stats about ecomonic power, health, child mortality, life expectancy and more to tell a story. Actually, to tell a number of stories about the world – the world and how it has changed over the last fifty years and how it might change in the future. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be surprised at some of the changes in recent decades and the causes of the those changes. At the very least, your picture of the world will be both more complex and more accurate. It’s a 19-minute talk that not only...

The day after any national election is usually one of powerful and diverse emotions – celebration and relief on one side, disappointment and grief on another – and never more so than after an election as grueling and at times divisive as this one. Yet amid these divergent and conflicting emotions, I find myself filled with a sense of gratitude and grace that has little to do with the election results themselves but rather springs from several elements of the day, elements that while viewed perhaps as peripheral by many seem to me to be at the very core of who and what we are as a people. Here are the ones that immediately come to...

Some things are just better when shared. Like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter evening. Or a movie, couch, and blanket on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Or music, well, just about anytime. In fact, there are few things that bring people together more quickly or deeply than a shared piece of music. The challenge in this day and age, however, is that so few people feel competent to do more than listen. With a generation of budget cuts stripping our schools of music programs, and with a cultural obsession over pop star performances, most people rarely if ever have the chance to actually make music. Where once we were producers of music,...