Culture — older stories

Before every concert, the oboe plays a single note and the whole orchestra tunes to it. The reasons involve three centuries of tradition and real disagreement about the instrument's physics.

Same title, same author, same words inside; the cover is a different story. Here's why American and British editions of the same book rarely look alike.

Laugh tracks nearly vanished from network TV by 2016 -- then broadcast comedy quietly brought them back, and the psychology behind why they still work is stranger than the format itself.

The gap between a hardcover release and its paperback isn't random. It's a pricing strategy, and some bestsellers have made readers wait years.

Vinyl just logged its 19th straight year of U.S. sales growth, RIAA data shows, even though digital audio wins on nearly every measurable spec. The real explanation has little to do with sound.

From The Abandons to Terminator Zero, Netflix's newest crop of one-season cancellations traces back to how streamers pay for hits, and how they measure them.

Netflix raised prices for the second time in just over a year in March 2026, days after walking away from an $82.7 billion Warner Bros. Discovery bid. It's part of a wider pattern across every major streamer.

AMC spent a century of flat movie pricing and then broke it, charging more for in-demand films and, briefly, for better seats. Here's how the industry's experiment actually went.

Tickets do not vanish because 20,000 people were faster than you. Most of them were never offered, and software took a large share of what was left.

One data set says buyers who wait until the day of the show pay a third less than average. Another says day-of fire sales are mostly a myth. Reconciling them is the whole answer.

The face price is never the price. A practical guide to why concert fees balloon at checkout, and the handful of moves that actually shrink them.

A Green Day ticket that hit A$500 mid-queue, an Oasis onsale that rose by hundreds of pounds - dynamic pricing turned buying a concert ticket into a live auction. Here's how it works and why it persists.

No bridesmaids, a comedian at the altar and a couture gown: the pop star and the NFL tight end made it official in Manhattan.

Seven years on, Madonna's sequel to her 2005 classic reunites her with Stuart Price, and reckons with grief between the beats.

DC's reboot lands Friday with a respectable number that still may not win the weekend. The math around it tells the more interesting story.

Madonna says a falling out with Universal Pictures over budget sank the self-directed biopic that was set to star Julia Garner, after years of scripts and casting.

Across nearly six decades he turned unknowns into stars and stars into institutions, from Janis Joplin to Whitney Houston to Alicia Keys.

Pixar's fifth outing set a franchise record and the year's biggest debut, but the rebound it is fueling rests almost entirely on familiar IP.

Woody and Buzz haven't lost a step: the fifth “Toy Story” posted the year's biggest opening and the largest start in the franchise's history.

The Obama Presidential Center opened to the public on Juneteenth after a star-studded Jackson Park dedication where the former president made democracy, not nostalgia, his theme.