Posted inArts & Entertainment

Review: Black Box Theatre’s ‘The Lion in Winter’ weaves a tapestry of family drama, medieval intrigue and humor

The Black Box Theatre of Moline, Illinois, as the name implies, is a simple theater space. That didn’t hold back its recent production of The Lion in Winter, which closed the company’s 2025 season with a slow-burning play that uses the intimacy of its space to ratchet up the intensity of its production of James […]

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Woodbury County inmate facing a year of detention sues Homeland Security

A Woodbury County jail inmate is suing the federal government, alleging she’s being unlawfully detained by ICE and faces a year of confinement while being denied her due process rights. The case is one of hundreds of similar lawsuits filed around that nation against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and […]

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‘The American people must have more than a choice between evils’: Iowan Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s vice president, was an ag innovator and fierce antifascist

“The Cornfield Prophet” Henry A . Wallace, known for his pioneering work in agriculture, was a progressive statesman who championed the “Century of the Common Man.” A heartbeat away from the presidency for four years as FDR’s vice president, his supporters viewed him as the torchbearer for the New Deal, while opponents dismissed him as […]

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The infamous Epstein birthday book includes a cringeworthy Iowa anecdote from 1988

In some cases, the truism “there’s always an Iowa connection” becomes a threat. The Jeffrey Epstein “birthday book,” revealed this summer, is one such case.  Amid 238 pages of fawning, friendly and conspiratorial birthday messages to the billionaire rapist and child trafficker written by his rich, powerful cohorts and gathered by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 […]

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Before he became Tom Tomorrow, political cartoonist Dan Perkins was a Zephyr employee making zines in Iowa City

This Modern World, the long-running, award-winning satirical comic that Dan Perkins publishes under the pen name Tom Tomorrow, came to life in Iowa City during the mid-’80s. Perkins first began sketching the strip while working at a downtown copy shop, though his passion for cartooning developed much earlier when his parents first moved to Iowa […]

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Review: A cozy costume party inside a fever dream, Dada Prom brought surreal fun and funds to Public Space One

On a cold, snowy Saturday night in Iowa City, around 150 costumed art-lovers gathered at the historic Close House mansion for Public Space One’s Dada Prom. Despite the total snow accumulation topping off at around five inches, PS1 announced that the fourth annual fundraiser was the “most successful Dada Prom by far.” Dada Prom also […]

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Coe College awarded $1.3 million grant to lead physics research collab with UI, Caltech, CERN and others

Coe College will lead universities in Iowa and across the U.S. in research of “high-level physics” with the aid of a seven-figure federal grant. The Cedar Rapids university announced Thursday in a news release that it received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics to lead collaborative […]

Posted inStatewide

Historians, unions and legislators fight against the clock to save the Centennial Building and its archive

The sign on the door of the State Historical Society of Iowa’s Centennial Building, where the society’s Iowa City research facility has been located since 1956, let visitors on Wednesday know there were only a few days left to access its remarkable archival collections or even the building itself. The Centennial Building has been open […]

Posted inArts & Entertainment

Review: Iowa Stage Theatre Company, no stranger to ‘A Christmas Carol,’ incorporates songs, humor and a message from the Present

A Christmas Carol is a familiar tale. Familiar not just to the average English speaker, it is a tale that should be especially familiar to audiences of the Iowa Stage Theater Company (ISTC). Over the years, ISTC has made an annual production of A Christmas Carol a tradition, often repeating actors and crew year to […]

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