What would New Orleans be like without music? A New Orleans with only silence instead of street performers, live music clubs, marching bands, jazz funerals, Mardi Gras Indians and restaurants. Wow.

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“We used to use our culture to understand cancer. Now we use cancer to understand our culture.” (From NPR interview of Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of ...

This week, my reading ranges from moral collapse and sandwich classification to the existential crises of aging politicians and whether silence is truly golden. In a world that shouts its preferences ...