October 21, 2026: Learned impacts

The Springfield Symphony Orchestra begins its 26-27 season this weekend, and with it a search for a new Music director, a position that’s laid empty for a number of years. Their second candidate takes the podium for this concert: Maestra Deanna Tham. We learn about her perspective while SSO President Heather Caisse Roberts expounds on the important local connections of orchestras. Plus we let you know how you can meet both of them in person tonight, Oct 21st! There’s also the legacy of the American experiment, and the ways that has influenced ideas of freedom and democracy on a global scale. Clark University professor Ousmane Power-Greene has just returned from discussing American history at a conference in Italy, so we talk about that reach, and some of the ways we are academically reaching folx on our own shores and showing them the important place humanities have in our daily life, for which he’s even recently won an award.   And since language will always have impact, word nerd Emily Brewster wants us to sound as hip as possible, so it’s time to check in with what’s up and coming in hot phrase-ery in their slang dictionary.