For over 30 years, silent films were a major attraction at theaters. The movies relied on visual storytelling techniques and live musical accompaniment rather than dialogue. But in the 1920s “talkies” were born, making silent films obsolete for the average movie-goer. Despite that, the techniques that shaped the genre inspired the work of talkie films since that time.

The Senate Theater aims to honor that history by bringing the silent film era experience to Detroit.

Dennis Scott, a long-time theatre organist and composer joined the show alongside historian and organist John Lauter. Scott will compose for a screening of the silent film “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” live at the Senate Theatre. He will also host a hands-on workshop for anyone interested in learning how to play the organ. 

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For over a century, women have been playing baseball. Some of the earliest teams can be traced back to the 1890s. For a brief period during World War II, women played in their own league.

It was called the All American Girls Professional Baseball League and was depicted in the 1992 film “A League of Their Own.” That league lasted 11 years.

Since then, all other attempts to start one have fallen short. Will the new women’s league expected to start this summer last?  

Leslie Heaphy, President of the International Women’s Baseball center and Associate Professor of history at Kent State University, joined the show to discuss  the past, present, and future of women’s baseball.  

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Romance books have been growing in popularity over the last few years. Now bookstores are following suit.

Carolyn Haering opened Mon Coeur, a romance bookstore, in Canton, Michigan just last year. The name means “my heart” in French.

Haering says she started the store because she believes the genre allows her to escape into a fun and typically happy story. She joined to discuss her store and recommend books about love.

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Since late last year, “Heated Rivalry”—a series about two male hockey players who fall in love— has taken the country by storm. 

The show’s stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, have made appearances at major events across North America. But before the “Heated Rivalry” story charmed the audience on screen, it seduced its readers as the second book in author Rachel Reid’s “Game Changers” series. 

Now the story represents the cultural moment we are in now: Romance novels exploded in popularity after the pandemic and LGBTQ+ romance stories are becoming more prevalent. To encapsulate the moment, we want to spotlight the queer love stories that came before it.

Queer love stories are not new, and “Heated Rivalry” scratches the surface of the plethora of stories that have been and continue to be written about LGBTQ+ romance.

Erin Bell, the director of the Writing Center at the University of Detroit Mercy and a researcher of women’s writing and literature, joined to help us pull back the layers of non-traditional love stories. 

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Khary Mason is a multidisciplinary artist from Detroit who has spent much of his life living in a state of cognitive dissonance.

For over 20 years, Mason worked as a member of the Detroit Police Department and eventually became a detective for the city’s homicide unit.

Looking back six years after leaving the department, he considers those training years a form of indoctrination and sees the work of “protecting and serving” communities as a means of controlling them. 

He illustrates these reflections in his new exhibition “Friendly Fire: Scenes of Service, Searching for Safety.” It is on display now at Irwin House Detroit through March 15. Mason joined the program to discuss his journey into service and why he chose to get out. 

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It was medals galore for the U.S. winter Olympic teams. American athletes across many sports brought home 33 medals, which is the second-highest total of any country. Women secured 21 of those medals.

These athletes dedicate their lives to perfecting their craft for a shot at securing a medal.

We reflect on the 2026 Winter Olympics while we look toward Women’s History Month and highlight the hard work and dedication these women athletes displayed in Italy these last couple of weeks.

Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, joined the show to reflect on the accomplishments of the women on Team USA.

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In the 2010s, the effort to uplift people with bigger bodies shifted online. The Body Positivity Movement expanded its reach with the advent of social media and trendy hashtags. However, that momentum appears to be slowing with the growing popularity of weight loss medications. 

GLP-1 agonists are FDA approved weight loss medications that were approved in 2014 to treat patients who suffer from obesity. Nowadays, the drug is in high demand. The percentage of U.S. adults who use it doubled from 2024 to 2025. At the same time, obesity rates in the U.S have been declining since 2022.  Could this be the end of the body positivity movement of this era? What does embracing weight loss drugs say about the shifting standards of beauty in the U.S?

Randy Seeley is the director of the Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Michigan. He is also a paid consultant to pharmaceutical companies Lilly and Novo which manufacture drugs like Zepbound, Mounjaro and Ozempic. He joined the program to explain how GLP-1s are being used for both health and vanity.

Then Kendrin Sonneville, an associate professor and Chair of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Michigan joined to talk about how GLP-1 medications are changing the way we view bigger bodies. 

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For practicing Catholics, today is the last day to indulge in some of your favorite snacks and treats before lent—and a Paczki might be the sweetest snack of all.

Fat Tuesday or Paczki day has become a staple celebration in metro Detroit since Polish immigrants first migrated here in the 1910s. Michigan is home to over 740,000 Polish Americans. Only New York and Illinois have more.

Most Polish immigrants originally lived in the city of Hamtramck, but after the Dodge Main factory in closed, many moved to suburban cities like Warren and Sterling Heights.

George Kurzatkowski is a board member of the American Polish Cultural Center in Troy. He joined the program to discuss Polish culture and history, and the meaning behind Paczki day. 

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The Negro Leagues are widely credited with revolutionizing baseball. 

The aggressive, scrappy, base-stealing style of play was an attraction for fans of all backgrounds. The league’s founder, Rube Foster, was largely responsible for introducing that mentality and bringing the league to its early success. After Foster passed in 1930, the league continued to innovate for nearly two decades. During that time, the league pioneered night games, fielded some of sports greatest players and broke the color barrier. 

Bob Kendrick, the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, joined the show and details the Negro league’s lasting legacy in baseball, in sports and in American culture.

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Research shows that people who frequently socialize are more likely to participate in politics — to vote, attend meetings, and financially contribute to a cause.

So what does it actually take to get people out into the world and enjoy each other’s company? What are the barriers, and what breaks those barriers down?

Ian Solomon is an artist, journalist, and organizer. He’s the founder of Amplify Outside, which works to get Black Michiganders into outdoor spaces. Ian also hosts the PBS series “Ian Outside” on Great Lakes Now and recently joined Planet Detroit as its outdoors reporter. He joins the program to discuss what it looks like to build community power.

Rube Foster was a pioneer in American baseball. His efforts in the early 20th century to organize Black baseball teams sparked professional Negro Leagues. The league’s style of play, the players, and the business model would go on to arguably alter the course of U.S. history. 

Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, joined the show. He describes how Foster’s grit and business savvy tactics turned a fractured era in baseball into a lasting pillar of America’s favorite pastime.

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It’s a tough journey to become a professional athlete nowadays, especially for Hockey players, so athletes pursue training programs at a pretty early age to maximize their potential. Plymouth, Michigan has a premiere facility.

The city is home to the USA Hockey National Team Development Program. Over the years, players who train there have gone on to represent the U.S. in the Men’s World Championships, the Four Nations Face-off, and the Olympic games. Several alums are suiting up to play in this winter Olympics in Italy this year.

Assistant Executive Director for the development program, Scott Monaghan, joined the show to explain the work it takes to develop young hockey players.

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As conversations about climate change continue to evolve, the College for Creative Studies (CCS) is being proactive about the role its students will eventually play.

The art and design college has been developing the next generation of creative professionals for over a century. Graduates go on to work in transportation, film and animation, athletic apparel, and more. Throughout the winter season, CCS is holding a series of conversations that interrogates how artists and designers build a future that is more sustainable. CCS president, Donald Tuski, joined the show to explain why they are encouraging more sustainable and innovative designs.

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Since 1941 the Wayne State University Press has published over two-thousand titles that explore a number of topics from literature, to history to politics. Senior Director Stephanie Williams joined the program to discuss its offerings this season.

Notable titles

Repoliticizing the Word Through Poetry and Preaching: Early Black Christian Women’s Lives Matter  by April C.E. Langley

Weaving together the legacies of early Black Christian women, author April C. E. Langley explores how faith, poetics, and spirituality have shaped Black activism in the United States. Langley provides a dynamic close reading of the speeches, letters, poems, and sermons of three foremothers of modern Black women’s social justice movements—Phillis Wheatley, Maria W. Stewart, and Jarena Lee—and highlights the resistance strategies emerging from their use of religion as a means for imagination and potential liberation.

Dispatches from the Avant-Garage by Rebecca Kosick

Rebecca Kosick chronicles the rise, work, and legacy of the Alternative Press, a grassroots art and poetry publishing initiative founded in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. Operated by Ken and Ann Mikolowski out of their home, The Alternative Press published original countercultural artwork and poetry by nationally renowned artists, including Alice Notley, and Robert Creeley, and Detroit-based powerhouse artists, such as Jim Gustafson, and Donna Brook.

Kosick’s research reanimates the Alternative Press’s unconventional publications with more than one hundred full-color images, while illuminating the national impact their avant-garde interventions had at the intersection of politics, art, and life in the twentieth century.

Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall by Dudley Randall, edited by Melba Boyd

Dudley Randall was one of the foremost voices in African American literature during the twentieth century, best known for his poetry and his work as the editor and publisher of Broadside Press in Detroit. While he published six books of poetry during his life, much of his work is currently out of print or fragmented among numerous anthologies. Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall brings together his most popular poems with his lesser-known short stories, first published in The Negro Digest during the 1960s, and several of his essays, which profoundly influenced the direction and attitude of the Black Arts movement.

By the Waters of Paradise: An American Story of Racism and Rupture in a Jewish Family by Clare Kinberg

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Detroit and art go hand-in-hand. The arts are held in the same regard as the automotive industry as one of the city’s great exports. But unlike the auto and manufacturing industries, the work can be a lot less stable, the recognition can be less visible, and the pay can be inconsistent. 

So what does an artist in metro Detroit striving to make a life here do? What supports exist and is it enough? Artists Sydney James and Halima Cassells join the program to discuss.

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The stories of Detroit in the 70’s and 80’s are ubiquitous. Residents went through tough times, economic downturn, violence and white flight. But a collection of stories about a girl coming of age in the city offers a different perspective of the time.

“The Patron Saint of Lost Girls” is a coming of age novel that follows Mary as she navigates girlhood amid difficult times for Detroit. Maureen Aitken, the author of the book, joined the show to discuss how girls have difficult experiences  early on that shape who they become. 

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Playwright August Wilson is often referred to as “theatre’s poet of Black America.” He’s known for his series of ten plays called the Century Cycle, where each play takes place in a decade during the 20th Century. 

Over the last few years, The Detroit Repertory Theatre has been producing Wilson’s plays in chronological order. Now through March 15th the group is performing “The Piano Lesson” which occurs in the 1930s. In this story family ties are tested when a pair of siblings disagree on what to do with a piano that holds significant value to their family.

Actors T. Pharoah Muhammad and Delanti Hall and Artistic Director Leah Smith join the program to discuss the play’s main themes and their artistic approach to the work.

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Halfway through the 2025-2026 NBA season, the Pistons look like a strong contender in the Eastern Conference. The team has only 10 losses through 42 games, which is the second best record in the league.

This sort of performance rivals the championship days of the early 2000s.

Omari Sankofa II, the Pistons beat writer for the Detroit Free Press and co-host of the Pistons Pulse podcast, joined the show to explain what’s fueling the team’s success and outline the keys to sustaining it through the rest of the season. 

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Artist Andre Barker is a Detroit born and bred painter. Since graduating from Wayne State University and Columbia College Chicago, he spends his time schooling the next generation of artists as a professor.

In Barker’s latest exhibition, he responds to the social and political pressures that make daily life difficult for Black Americans. He illustrates simple acts like existing and rest as mechanisms to find peace and power amid those struggles through his portraits of Black life in Detroit.

Barker’s exhibition entitled “Rest Is” is currently on display at M Contemporary Art gallery in Ferndale through Feb. 14.

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