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‘When I first interviewed a criminal...we talked about The Godfather.’ Dr. Felia Allum knows a bit more about the Italian mafia than most of us. She’s a senior lecturer in Italian and Politics, with a specialism in women and organised crime, and in her role as an academic she has extensively interviewed ex-criminals, law enforcement, and anti-mafia prosecutors for years, which makes her a pretty incredible authority on the topic -- and is also how she ended up screening a mini film-festival all about it.

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Last Saturday Sam and I were driving north on Route 63, past rocky woods, old cemeteries, and horse farms.  There’s also the Greater New Haven JCC, which I’d joined a couple of weeks earlier, after taking a fitness class I liked. A police car, siren blaring, zoomed by. A short while later we saw police and emergency vehicles swarmed around the exposed undercarriage of a car flipped onto its side, resting against a tree.

The In the Money Media Network, founded by Jonathon Kinchen and Peter Thomas Fornatale, is a collection of podcasts and other content about horse racing. The network itself is an outgrowth of the award-winning, In the Money Players’ Podcast  The newsletter is an extension of the podcast network. Sent weekly, on Fridays, our intention is for the newsletter to become a hub for horse racing content from the ITM team and our partners.

During banned book week earlier this month, Elizabeth Held of wrote a piece that prompted me to go looking for lists of them. One book jumped out at me for two reasons. It was by Maurice Sendak, the brilliant writer and illustrator who gave us Where the Wild Things Are — and it had the word “Kitchen” in the title. So I had to get it. The reason for the ban: nudity.

In an unfamiliar city it is rarely a good sign when your burly African-American taxi driver says: “I wouldn’t be driving you in this neighbourhood if it was dark.” We are in Memphis, the most violent city in America. There were 397 homicides here last year in a population two-thirds t… ncG1vNJzZmismJq3orPGsquhoaOpuaZ60q6ZrKyRmLhvr86mZqlnnKTDpnnAp5tmoJGlvaq6xKyqZqGeYsGpsYypnLCrXaSz

Kelce versus Kelce. Brother versus brother. The Cleveland Heights family’s connections have been covered from nearly every angle in the two weeks leading up to Super Bowl LVII. Except one. As Jason and Travis Kelce were growing up on Coleridge Avenue in Cleveland Heights during their formative years, only one regional sewer district served the wastewater treatment and stormwater management needs of the eventual Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs stars.

In May, there was a narrative running in the Entertainment trades that the box office has been dismal this summer. Movies that were once thought to be box office winners like The Fall Guy or Furiosa, ended up disappointing when it came to box office receipts. The quality of the movies? It’s been great. Having seen many of the Summer releases thus far, I can’t say I’m disappointed in the quality of these movies.

Apparently there’s some consternation floating about regarding kids coming across “new adult” or adult (primarily romance) fiction via TikTok and being lured in by the cartoon-ish pastel covers, only to be exposed to stories with R-rated sexual content. It’s hard to know how real this is, but if you’re curious, there’s a recent article in The Guardianabout the phenomenon. I experienced firsthand what these books are like when I read Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker in order to see what’s doing with the “hockey romance” genre, and I can understand, based on the packaging, why someone might think the book’s interior contents are somewhat tame.