Millennials are obsessing over a show about a group of twenty-somethings living their lives and making mistakes in New York City. No, it isn’t Girls, Broad City – in fact you've probably have seen an episode of this show...or two...or maybe two hundred. Today, the surprise resurgence of Friends.
And from low-brow sitcoms to high-brow performance - at nearly 20 epic hours, Wagner's Ring Cycle is rarely staged outside of the world's premiere opera houses. We'll hear about one man's mission to condense the masterpiece for local audiences.
Listen to the full show.
Why Millennials Like 'Friends'
The '90s sitcom Friends ended twelve years ago - and it's still a hit! Netflix has put the whole series up for instant streaming, and written commentary about the show is still being passed around online. The weird thing about the resurgence of Friends is the demographic - young Millennials, many of whom never watched the show while it was originally airing in the '90s and early aughts.
Adam Sternbergh is an author, and writes for the Verge and New York magazine - where you'll find his recent article "Why Do So Many 20-Somethings Want to Stream a 20-Year-Old Sitcom About a Bunch of 20-Somethings Sitting Around In a Coffee Shop?"
Drawing From Nightlife
We're mashing up the low-brow/high-brow on the show today, and this piece falls perfectly in between. Tom Dodson reports on a very unusual life-drawing class focused on life after sunset.
You can listen to this story again at PRX.org.
The Ring Cycle, Abbreviated
Enormous...heroic...epic. Clocking in at nearly 20-hours, Wagner's Ring Cycle is an ambitious undertaking typically staged only by the world's largest opera companies and houses and seen only by those willing to travel and sit for the equivalent of two plus work days.
Well, diehard and would-be Wagner fans living locally will have a chance to catch the spectacle live...or, at least the essential parts. Symphony New Hampshire is performing Part 1 of The Essential Ring this Sunday at the Keefe Center for the Arts in Nashua.
Jonathan McPhee is music director for the New Hampshire Symphony, the Lexington Symphony and the Boston Ballet.
10-Minute Writer's Workshop: Diane Les Becquets
Diane Les Becquets cut her teeth as a young adult writer, but her most recent book, a dramatic thriller called Breaking Wild, ventures deep into adult territory and lands in the rugged backcountry of Colorado.
Les Becquets now lives in New Hampshire and is on the faculty of Southern New Hampshire University's MFA program. We steered her into a storage closet before her reading at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord to learn more about how she writes.
You can find more episodes of the 10-Minute Writer's Workshop here.
