In 2017, the genre-bending band Lake Street Dive went from a quartet to a quintet. The band members asked their newest musician, keyboardist Akie Bermiss, to come on board with a “marriage proposal.”

Poet Porsha Olayiwola uses Afrofuturism to look back at history. “It’s reimagining, it’s reconciling, it’s inserting magic in a way that feels like something might live forever,” she told NEXT . Olayiwola is the Boston poet laureate and a fellow with the Academy of American Poets. In 2019, she released her debut book of poetry, “i shimmer sometimes, too.” Olayiwola’s poem about actress and singer Dorothy Dandridge is an example of this Afrofuturistic lens. It’s titled “Dorothy Dips A Toe Into A

As I nurse a sore shoulder, I'm reminder of all the things I should be doing to keep my body in shape for gardening season. It's so easy this time of year to do too much. There's flowers to plant, shrubs to dig and move, compost and mulch to spread and bags of fertilizer to carry. I think I'm keeping myself is pretty good shape through winter, but garden chores work a whole other bunch of muscles.

A Department of Correction officer was terminated Tuesday for violating employee conduct and social media policies. DOC officials said Officer Anthony Marlak’s speech threatens the safety of staff and inmates who are Muslim. In the termination letter , DOC Warden Amonda Hannah wrote, “Your personal use of social media has undermined the public’s confidence in your ability to function in your position.” A DOC investigation at the Cheshire Correctional Institution found that Marlak reposted a meme

The year since George Floyd’s killing in police custody has wrought varying degrees of change to policing across the country. Here in Connecticut, for example, the hotly debated police accountability law is going on 10 months old. To talk about how the police accountability law is playing out in practice, Madison Police Chief Jack Drumm joined All Things Considered .

We are marking the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin in Minnesota. The yearlong fallout has often been referred to as a “racial reckoning.” Connecticut State Treasurer Shawn Wooden has been a facilitator of that reckoning -- particularly in corporate America. He joined All Things Considered to talk about the commitments corporate America has made to foster more inclusivity in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. Wooden also responds to a Hartford Courant

Last week the Biden administration ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to close a detention facility in Massachusetts that has held many people from Connecticut. When ICE arrests immigrants here, they’re sent out of state because ICE has no jail beds here.

The sale of Tribune newspapers to Alden Global Capital has been voted through by Tribune’s shareholders. That means the Hartford Courant is now owned by Alden, a hedge fund notorious for severely cutting staff levels at the newspapers it buys. Rebecca Lurye, chair of the Hartford Courant Guild, joined All Things Considered to talk through what’s next for her and her colleagues. She also tells what she knows about a report that the Tribune vote went in Alden’s favor because a major stockholder

The Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz will return to Bushnell Park this summer. The festival, which draws upwards of 50,000 people each year, was silenced in 2020 due to COVID safety precautions. Now, with the easing of restrictions, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said the festival and other arts and culture events are back this summer.

Legislation that will ban deceptive advertising practices by limited services pregnancy centers in Connecticut is on its way to the governor’s desk after House Democrats voted it through Wednesday. To discuss this -- and the coming abortion challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court -- I invited Liz Gustafson to All Things Considered . She is the state director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, or NARAL.