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The University of California, Santa Cruz has a special collection called the Grateful Dead Archive to celebrate the print and visual culture of the band.

The keepers of the Grateful Dead's history

Felix Contreras

The Grateful Dead understood the importance of recording its legacy. A number of archivists and historians are dedicated to maintaining the band's immense collection of music and memorabilia.

How Midwest doldrums became a gift for Kevin Morby

Raina Douris, Miguel Perez

Morby's Little Wide Open is a love letter to a part of the country he finds endlessly inspiring.

"Love on Haight" is a store on Haight Street in San Francisco that carries a lot of Grateful Dead memorabilia and tie dye clothing as well as a large photo of Jerry Garcia.

How Deadheads became rock and roll's greatest renewable resource

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento

Even as the band has changed and reinvented itself, the Grateful Dead's fanbase has proven to be uniquely and consistently renewable — a cosmic inheritance passed down from one generation to the next, welcoming younger Deadheads with open arms.

Classical Stories From WSMR

13 new books in August will get you through the dog days of summer

Colin Dwyer

This month brings riveting novels about dogs, Hollywood stars, small towns and characters with bigger woes than just the sweltering summer heat and humidity.

Festivalgoers cheer for The Hip Abduction at All Good Now festival in June at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD.

For Deadheads across the country, the music never stops

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento

As soon as the weather warms up, fans of the Grateful Dead partake in an important summer tradition: gathering together to experience the band's music.

How long will the Grateful Dead's songs survive?

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento

The Grateful Dead endured an original run of 30 years, but its appeal has survived just as long in a world where the band no longer exists. The question now is not whether the music will continue, but how?

The Ripple Effect

Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, Felix Contreras

This summer marks a moment of transition in the Grateful Dead's long, strange trip: the first in many years where there is no clear center of the band's universe. Where do Deadheads go from here?

Classicist and translator Emily Wilson published a critical review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in the London Review of Books. Wilson has loved Greek myths since childhood and has translated both the Iliad and Odyssey. She has tattoos of a spear on one leg and a bow on the other — she says they represent Achilles and Odysseus.

Classical Stories From WSMR

'Odyssey' translator Emily Wilson says Nolan shouldn't have written the movie himself

Dave Davies

The renowned classics scholar caused a stir when her critical review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey went viral. Wilson explains her reaction to the film and why she's translating the poem again.

Glen Hansard, seen here performing in Washington, D.C. in 2016, led the Irish band The Frames and won an Oscar for the song "Falling Slowly" from the film Once.

Glen Hansard, Irish songwriter and 'Once' star, dies at 56

Stephen Thompson, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento

Glen Hansard, the Irish singer who won an Oscar for the musical movie Once and the led the bands The Frames and The Swell Season, died on Wednesday. He died following a motorcycle crash in Dublin.

Installation view of Machine Dreams: Rainforest, DATALAND, Los Angeles, Calif, June 20, 2026 – Jan. 31, 2027.

'Machines are collaborators' at this new museum of AI art

Chloe Veltman

"What is beyond reality?" asks artist Refik Anadol. His latest projects include Dataland, an immersive AI art museum in Los Angeles, and an installation at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.