Audiences return to Symphony Hall Thursday for the first time since the pandemic hit. And the Boston Symphony Orchestra's season opener is also the first for Gail Samuel, the organization's first female president and CEO, since she started her new job.

There's hope that with upcoming elections, there will be an increase in Asian American representation in Massachusetts politics.

Asian Americans have long been underrepresented in politics — in Massachusetts and across the country. Now that could be starting to change, with Asian Americans seeking some of the most prominent positions in the state: Wu for mayor and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz for governor.

The Manomet banding lab in Plymouth bands around 2,500 new birds each year, helping answer pressing questions about habitat loss, ecological shifts and climate change.

Big universities across the country, including the University of Massachusetts, are trying to expand their online presence amid the pandemic.

Judges across Massachusetts will have to weigh whether state education officials had the right to mandate mask-wearing in all public school buildings this fall. Parents seeking to overturn the mandate have filed at least six suits.

Families and advocates of formerly institutionalized patients dealing with mental illness and disabilities are pushing the state to reckon with the abuses many patients endured.

For many years, people with disabilities and mental illness in Massachusetts were locked away in state institutions to be kept separate from the rest of society.

Now some advocates and families are supporting a commission to reckon with the way patients were treated and the abuses they endured.

"Car Talk" launched as a local show on WBUR in 1977, with brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi behind the microphones. Now, the show will be released twice a week as a podcast, starting on Oct. 1. WBUR's Cityspace also will host an event on Nov. 4 celebrating the show's broadcast success.

Blending sound, science and art, L’Huillier's work asks audiences to clear their minds, unlearn their conditioning, and get back to the basics. “How do we form parts, how do we inhabit with and in this universe?”