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August has an unsettling quality where things are both sticky and slowed down and then, toward the very end, sped up. (I do think August is the best month for poetry, though.) 

Our annual Fall Arts Issue is coming up in September. Do you have ideas for artists, projects, topics, or exhibits you think we should include? Send me an email! I’d love to hear from you. 

Thanks for reading the INDY! More below. 

“I love to make it clear how hard this was to do inside of prison. No one had done it before,” Ear Hustle co-host Nigel Poor says, pictured here with co-host Earlonne Woods. Read our interview here. Photo by Mario de Lopez 

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Ear Hustle, a podcast about the realities of life in prison, is on the road for its touring iteration, Big Ear Live!, and making a stop in Durham at the Carolina Theatre next week. Ahead of that stop, I spoke to co-hosts Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor about the podcast—how they went about making a podcast during the first couple of years, when Woods was still incarcerated, and how they set a vision and stuck to it. Super fascinating. Read here! 

Last week, I implored you to read Glenn McDonald’s writing about the movies and going to the movies. This week, he has a new column out, writing that the “winds of fortune are with us this month,” and there are plenty of good movies to choose from. Like Folktales: 

A third option this month for anyone looking to park their head somewhere else entirely: Folktales, an intriguing doc out of Norway, chronicles a high school program that pairs teens with sled dogs in a kind of Outward Bound wilderness curriculum. The kids have to rely on each other, and the dogs, just to survive the Arctic conditions. According to the educators, the idea is to counterprogram against phones and memes, and modern life itself by waking up the students’ Stone Age brains. 

The movie won a lot of hearts at Sundance (and our very own Full Frame Documentary Festival!) and combines several appealing elements: hopeful coming-of-age narratives, the healing power of nature, dictionary-definition counterculture initiatives, and good ideas out of northern Europe. Plus, of course, dogs.

Lena Geller visited a bee-themed Banh Mi spot that commits to its theme: Bee BanhMi. Trust you will not leave this piece not wanting a banh mi sandwich. Lena also wrote a piece about Switchyards, a co-working chain opening a location in Durham. If you are suspicious of the branding of lifestyle-meets-work spaces, I think you’ll like this piece. If you like co-working spaces, I still think you’ll like this piece. 

Here are some ideas of things to do this week, including the inaugural Triangle Native American Film Festival. 

Finally, I made a playlist of local summer tunes released this year (with one exception; a song released last summer….forgive me). Listen here. 

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The 2025 Sleepy Fest lineup (background on the festival here). Chapel Hill’s annual Festifall returns with two dates this season. This NC Rabbit Hole piece made me laugh. There’s an artist pop-up at NCMA this weekend. NC State LIVE! fall programming. A new spot from a celebrated restaurant group is coming to Raleigh Iron Works. I enjoyed this WUNC piece on the Triangle’s underground dance music scene. Also, the Uproar Festival of Public Art kicks off today! My Instagram is full of cool murals and sculptures now unveiled around Orange County. Revisit our story on the festival here.

Sometimes I feel like all the good free music programming is frontloaded to the beginning of the summer, but not so this year: in Durham, there’s a two-night new free concert series at Brightleaf Square, with three sets per night. Eat outside at one of the Brightleaf restaurants and pretend you’re in Europe. Duke Arts is also doing another September music series, this iteration programmed by the Hayti Heritage Center. Catch that series at the American Tobacco Campus. 

CenterFest returns for its 50th anniversary, September 20-21. August is also Black Business Month in Durham, and you can find a guide for where to shop here.

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Sarah Edwards is culture editor of the INDY, covering cultural institutions and the arts in the Triangle. She joined the staff in 2019 and assumed her current role in 2020.