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All the major entertainment venues opening in metro Phoenix
The year has had major entertainment openings already, including the Arizona Boardwalk Big Wheel and Harkins Theatres 4D experience with more to come.
First Drive: The Bentley Continental Supersports Has Hit the Gym
It’s less powerful than its hybrid siblings, but rear-wheel drive and a diet make this the most exciting Continental so far.
Wellsburg Health Care Center and Red Cross host Community House blood drive in Follansbee
WTOV NBC 9 provides local news, weather forecasts, notices of events and items of interest in the community, sports and entertainment programming for Steubenville and nearby towns and communities in the Ohio Valley area including, in Ohio Steubenville, St. Clairsville, Wintersville, Cadiz, Bellaire, Toronto, Martins Ferry, Barnesville, Shadyside, Bridgeport, and Mingo Junction and in West Virginia Wheeling, Weirton, Moundsville, New Martinsville, and Wellsburg.
Celebrating Gregg Allman at the Wheeler
Wednesday event combines live music, film screening, panel
A Grip on Sports: A couple things of note today? The NFL can't get here quickly enough. And it wasn't a great weekend for the local college football teams
A GRIP ON SPORTS • As far back as I can remember, Sundays have been lazy days. The calm after Saturday’s storms. The deep breath before Monday’s hamster wheel rolls again. A day for quiet contemplation of whatever higher power guides you. Until kickoff.
“2003 Patriots Performance”: Fans React as Bill Belichick Pulls Off an Upset Against TCU in Overseas Classic
Bill Belichick’s second season at North Carolina could not have started any better. The Tar Heels opened their 2026 season with a 15-10 victory over TCU, giving the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach one of the biggest wins of his brief college tenure so far.
For at least 1 week, Bill Belichick has quieted the noise at UNC — and even cracked a smile
The Tar Heels played tough defense, didn't kill themselves with huge mistakes or penalties and generally made life tough for TCU. Sounds a lot like a Belichick-coached team, doesn't it?
What does UNC Tar Heels week zero win mean for Bill Belichick?
UNC opened Bill Belichick’s second season with a 15-10 upset of TCU in Dublin, giving the Tar Heels an early boost after a turbulent offseason in Chapel Hill.
North Carolina opens Belichick's second season with 15-10 win over TCU
Belichick, who won six Super Bowls as an NFL head coach, was 4-8 in his college debut with the Tar Heels last year.
Royals at Guardians, August 29 live discussion
Danny Drips’ training wheels have come off
Arts & Entertainment Agenda, Aug. 28 to Sept. 3
DanceAspen’s ‘Crescendo,’ Aug 28 DanceAspen’s “Crescendo” will take the stage 7:30 to 9 p.m. Aug. 28 at the Wheeler Opera House, 320 E. Hyman Ave., the second night of its two-night run. It’s an evening...
How to get North Carolina students to love science and math? Ask a NASA astronaut.
NASA astronaut and Artemis II Mission Specialist Christina Koch was honored Wednesday with the Order of the Tar Heel, the highest award bestowed by the North Carolina Commissioner of Labor. Koch, a Jacksonville native and N.C. State University graduate, became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit, and with her crew broke the record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled in space.
Patriots Legend Bill Belichick Ripped by Paul Finebaum, Given Warning
As an NFL coach, Bill Belichick is arguably the greatest to ever step on the field. He has eight Super Bowls, including six as the head coach of the New England Patriots. However, he’s in college with the North Carolina Tar Heels right now, where he’s been a bit of a bust.Belichick went to UNC […] The post Patriots Legend Bill Belichick Ripped by Paul Finebaum, Given Warning appeared first on HEAVY.
‘Uncharacteristic' Wheeler searches for answers as Phillies' win streak ends
Zack Wheeler’s late-season concern grew in Seattle, where he allowed eight runs as the Phillies’ nine-game win streak ended.
DanceAspen’s time to fly
Weekend performances at the Wheeler offer a look at the present and future of the company
Phillies News: Nestor Cortes, Zack Wheeler, Derek Hill
A reprieve before the Cardinals come to town
River Valley Health Fund, CFOV award $139,000 in grants to local organizations
WTOV NBC 9 provides local news, weather forecasts, notices of events and items of interest in the community, sports and entertainment programming for Steubenville and nearby towns and communities in the Ohio Valley area including, in Ohio Steubenville, St. Clairsville, Wintersville, Cadiz, Bellaire, Toronto, Martins Ferry, Barnesville, Shadyside, Bridgeport, and Mingo Junction and in West Virginia Wheeling, Weirton, Moundsville, New Martinsville, and Wellsburg.
UNC basketball coach Michael Malone describes chaotic start with Tar Heels
During a podcast appearance, UNC basketball coach Michael Malone breaks down his chaotic start with the Tar Heels.
Valley North transmission lines on Inside West Virginia Politics
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WOWK) – On this week’s episode of Inside West Virginia Politics, our guests join Rick Johnson to discuss Valley North, home programs, Wheeling events and TANF. In Segment 1, we t…
University Place to become ‘entertainment district,’ allow alcohol on property
As University Place in Chapel Hill continues its redevelopment, the mall is preparing to launch an “entertainment district” that will allow customers to order alcoholic drinks to go and walk around the property. An entertainment district is a state-governed drinking area, whereas a social district is created by a local government with an ordinance, Aaron...
University Place to become ‘entertainment district’, allow alcohol on property
As University Place in Chapel Hill continues its redevelopment, the mall is preparing to launch an “entertainment district” that will allow customers to order alcoholic drinks to go and walk around the property. An entertainment district is a state-governed drinking area, whereas a social district is created by a local government with an ordinance, Aaron...
The UNC Sports Week Ahead: August 17-23
Here’s all the Tar Heel action happening over the next seven days.
Scientists Uncover a Surprising New Route for Stonehenge’s Most Mysterious Stone
Stonehenge’s Altar Stone may have traveled south through a combination of glacial transport and deliberate human movement. Stonehenge was assembled from stones weighing between 2 and 25 tons, an astonishing construction effort for people living before the wheel was invented. Yet the puzzle extends beyond how such massive rocks were raised. Many of the stones
McVay to hand over play calling duties on Saturday
Nate Scheelhaase will call plays in a preseason game for the second time in as many years
Entertainment venue Great Big Game Show opening at Short Pump Town Center
It's the first Richmond-area location for the Nashville-based chain of entertainment venues that offer a live game show experience with studio rooms outfitted with buzzers, a spinning prize wheel, podiums and other trappings of TV game shows.
Mental health experts share tips to ease students’ back-to-school anxiety
WTOV NBC 9 provides local news, weather forecasts, notices of events and items of interest in the community, sports and entertainment programming for Steubenville and nearby towns and communities in the Ohio Valley area including, in Ohio Steubenville, St. Clairsville, Wintersville, Cadiz, Bellaire, Toronto, Martins Ferry, Barnesville, Shadyside, Bridgeport, and Mingo Junction and in West Virginia Wheeling, Weirton, Moundsville, New Martinsville, and Wellsburg.
Sinclair Launches Pittsburgh Sports Tonight Live Weeknight Sports Show Premieres August 31 Across Pittsburgh, Johnstown/Altoona and Wheeling/Steubenville
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — August 11, 2026 — Sinclair today announced the launch of Pittsburgh Sports Tonight, a new live, locally produced sports program premiering Monday, August 31. Airing weeknights from 7:00–7:30 p.m. ET, the 30-minute program will deliver comprehensive regional sports coverage across Sinclair's three-station television network serving Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and Northern West...
I Made This: ‘Strouse Entertainment: Starting a Business from a Wheelchair’
Recent Full Sail University Digital Cinematography graduate Van Eisenhour created a mini-documentary in class that earned a spot at Wellsboro Film Festival.
Saber's newest game trailer takes a shot at Gearbox's CEO, if you look closely
The first hint that something might be up with the recent debut trailer for Saber Interactive’s Rideshare Stimulator is an unusual choice of words—aside from that second one in the game’s title. “Don’t take your passengers too seriously,” the trailer’s narrator says, as he describes this upcoming game. It a car game about the gig work of driving eccentric people to their destinations, a riff on Crazy Taxi. And then, he says: “When I think I’ve met the randiest of passengers, someone even stranger gets in.” “Randiest”? That suggests “randy,” which usually means having strong sexual desire. Yet none of the oddball backseat occupants featured in the trailer seem particularly lustful. One is an old man who considers his grandson a failure, another shares the theory that birds might control traffic lights, another says he’s banned from an aquarium. A little later, there’s a license plate, shown 63 seconds into the trailer, on the front of an SUV: USB DRV It’s a Texas plate. The symbol between those letters is a cog wheel. If you know, you know. That’s a reference to Texas-based Borderlands game development studio Gearbox Software (their logo features a cog wheel). More specifically, it’s a reference to Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, who in 2018 found himself explaining the nature of video he’d saved on a USB drive that was found at a Medieval Times restaurant before being returned to the studio: “It was ‘barely legal’ porn. This girl’s handle was ‘Only 18.’” The “girl” in the video had committed a solo sex act that Pitchford, an avid practitioner of magic, found remarkable. “I realized, this is not a sex worker…This is a fucking magician.” Back then, the USB drive was central to competing lawsuits against Gearbox by the studio’s former lawyer and by Gearbox against him. A settlement in late 2019 “exonerated” Pitchford, per the Hollywood Reporter. The USB story has resurfaced at times, now in a trailer from a company that not long ago was corporate brethren with Gearbox. Saber vs. Gearbox The head of Saber told Game File that the reference is payback. “The dig is because Randy took shots at Embracer in Borderlands 4,” Saber CEO Matt Karch told me when I asked him about the license plate. “Without Embracer, Randy is performing magic tricks at birthday parties for a living.” Having interviewed Karch during a cross-country flight in late 2024, I can confirm that Karch was unimpressed with Pitchford during their time both working in the Embracer group. I’d approached him not out of surprise that there was animosity but that it was manifesting publicly now. Gearbox was founded in 1999, worked on a port of Halo early on, and developed hit series such as the loot-based sci-fi shooter Borderlands before it was purchased by The Embracer Group in early 2021 for $363 million (with a possible earn-out of over $1 billion, if certain targets were hit by 2027). Saber was founded in 2001, worked on a remaster of Halo early on, had a big hit with zombie shooter World War Z and was purchased by Embracer in early 2020 for $150 million, with a potential earn-out of up to $375 million. For a few years, the Embracer group was a voracious acquirer of game studios. Then, as investment dried up, it choked. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber to an investment company controlled by Saber CEO Matt Karch, and it sold Gearbox in an all-stock deal to long-time Borderlands publisher Take Two Interactive. Other studios were shut down. Hundreds of developers were laid off. Gearbox didn’t say much about their Embracer experience, nothing too direct, at least. In the summer 2024, Pitchford told reporter and occasional Game File contributor Nicole Carpenter that Borderlands 4’s story was in some way thematically connected to Gearbox’s experience at Embracer: “There’s this cultural and emotional shift in me, personally, and at the studio. What does it mean to trade some autonomy for organization?” When Borderlands 4 came out, there was something stranger: the matter of “Embracer’s Bluff,” a location in the game featuring an AI-powered toilet and a large trash dump, according to a detailed Kotaku account of the place. Gearbox never commented on it; Take Two never got back to me about it when I asked them last year. By contrast, since Saber exited Embracer, Karch has been one of Embracer’s biggest defenders, casting their management as well-meaning and supportive despite the layoffs and studio closures that resulted from their excessive expansion. Like others, Saber’s Karch saw Embracer’s as a shot. With Rideshare Stimulator’s trailer, he’s returned fire. “It’s amazing to me how fast people forget those who went above and beyond for them,” Karch told Game File. A rep for Gearbox did not comment by press time. Game File is a reader-supported publication. Your backing makes my reporting—including any coverage of trailer-based beefs—possible. Good news! I’m currently running Game File’s first big sale of 2026. You can get a one-year subscription for 23% off. Click here to take advantage of the limited-time offer. And thank you for your support! Item 2: In brief… 🚫 Wal-Mart has laid off the staff of Restart, a games media outlet launched in 2024, Aftermath reports. 🟥 A GTA VI preview is on the way, at last, via an “extended look” that will premiere, unusually, on Netflix at 3pm ET on August 27, then officially go live elsewhere six hours later. Last week, Game File noted that Take Two label Rockstar Games is overdue for showing off GTA VI, based on the timing of the initial hands-off previews of GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2. During a call with investors, Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said pre-orders for GTA VI were “unprecedented and astonishing,” but added the company can’t predict how many of those pre-orders represent bonus sales vs. sales that otherwise would have been made at launch. During the same call, Zelnick was noticeably bullish on the future of playing games over streaming cloud connections (predicting wider adoption in three or so years). He sounded unbothered by Sony’s plans to stop making discs for new games (he said the business is 90% digital already and predicted that there could still be limited edition physical editions of games “in the same way there’s still vinyl in the recorded music business.”) 👀 Take Two wrote off $43 million in their spring quarter after deciding “not to proceed with further development of an unannounced title in its pipeline from a third-party developer.” 🤔 Some rare age-demographics from a big publisher: Capcom recently told investors that “users in their 20s account for approximately half of the users of both Pragamata and Resident Evil Requiem.” Item 3: The week ahead Tuesday, August 11 Game releases: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (Switch 2; already out for PC, PS5, Xbox) continues the Bethesda strategy of putting Elder Scrolls games on everything; Royalty Free-For-All is a Smash Bros.-style fighting game featuring public domain characters such as Mother Goose brawling with Oliver Twist in a stage based on the original Little Shop of Horrors movie. Wednesday, August 12 Game release: Pro Jank Footy (PC, console) is an arcade-style Australian Rules Football game with increasingly ridiculous rules, the more you play (I enjoyed the Steam demo) Thursday, August 13 Game release: Super Mario Sunshine (Switch 2, originally released in 2002 on the GameCube) is released for Switch 2’s Nintendo Switch Online service. This game is the black sheep of 3D Mario games. It’s the successor to the breakthrough Super Mario 64 and the rare Mario game built around a single (vacation resort) theme. Mario’s got a water-spraying backpack, a Yoshi pal and a lot of blue coins to collect.
Two wheels: A business and a way of life
Josh Berntsen rides his bicycle to work, rain or shine. This seems fitting for The Cycle Sanctuary’s owner, a man whose life has revolved around spinning wheels.
Amanda Knox says new comedy show honors murdered roommate Meredith Kercher, as Kercher’s sister slams it
Amanda Knox has answered critics of her new comedy show. Here’s what the wrongly convicted woman says about ‘Cartwheel.’
Wheeling Athletics Welcomes Six More Fall Sports Friday as Fall Camp Continues
Wheeling, W. Va. – After welcoming in the Wheeling Football team a week ago, the Fall Sports Report Day schedule continued for the Wheeling University Athletics Department on Friday. Six more sports joined the fray, with Volleyball, Women's Soccer, Men's Soccer, Men's & Women's Cross Country, and Men's Rugby all reporting for fall camp. In total, the department has welcomed seven of the 10 fall sports back to campus, with the 2026-2027 athletics season sitting just 20 days away.
Concerts, cookoff among free entertainment at 2026 Colorado fair
While there are ticketed acts for the 2026 Colorado State Fair, there's also plenty of free entertainment so families can avoid breaking the bank.
Newsom heading to Michigan to boost Democrats on heels of El-Sayed win
The trip will also allow Newsom to build support in a critical swing state as he gears up for a possible presidential run in 2028.
Tesla’s Latest Update Will Help When Your Model 3 or Y Gets Stuck in Dirt or Snow
A redesigned traction-control system allows more wheelspin when a Model 3 or Model Y gets bogged down in loose terrain.
NASCAR: Sponsor Hints at Jimmie Johnson Reunion In 2027
Jimmie Johnson will strap into a NASCAR Cup Series car for one final race in 2027. The season-opening Daytona 500 is set to be the finale of the seven-time Cup Series champion’s decorated career behind the wheel.During the TNT pre-race broadcast last week at Indianapolis, it was revealed that Johnson will sport his famed No. […] The post NASCAR: Sponsor Hints at Jimmie Johnson Reunion In 2027 appeared first on HEAVY.
‘The Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel’: Democratic socialists are strategizing for their biggest moment yet
DSA has taken a strategic approach to grow its power within the Democratic Party, picking off two House incumbents already this year and potentially a third on Tuesday in Michigan. As the group’s summit in Chicago made clear, its members see this as only the beginning of a fight against both Republicans and Democrats alike.
What we learned as Phillies beat rain, Orioles on heels of trade deadline
The Phillies beat the rain and Orioles in Baltimore, with Bryan De La Cruz, Zack Wheeler and Justin Crawford offering encouraging signs.
Why the NCAA is fighting back against a U.S. District Court's ruling
On the heels of Friday's stunning development that saw a U.S. District Court judge in Colorado grant blanket eligibility for 2022 grads, NCAA fights back
Back-to-School Skate with Wheelz Entertainment gathers school supplies at Grossingers
Wheelz Entertainment is a pop-up skating organization based in Bloomington that rose to fill the need for skating in the Twin Cities.
Zack Wheeler knows deadline uncertainty better than most: ‘an anxious time'
Zack Wheeler has been traded, nearly moved and left in deadline limbo. Those experiences shaped how he views this time of year.
An Interview with Planetary Politics Director at New America Heela Rasool-Ayub
Heela Rasool-Ayub is director of the Planetary Politics initiative at New America. Before joining us for “Can the Energy Crisis Finally Unite Us?,” co-presented by Thomas Mann House and Zócalo Public Square in partnership with ASU Global Futures Laboratory and the Palisadian-Post, she joined us for a chat about economist Joseph Stiglitz, Afghan food, and the highlands of Ethiopia.
Bradbury Science Museum Brings Hands-On Activities To Rural Students Through Annual Summer Science On Wheels Program
A student from San Juan Elementary School dissects owl pellets as part of the anatomy and physiology unit. Courtesy/LANL Students at James H. Rodriguez Elementary School work on plastic straw rocket launchers. Courtesy/LANL LANL News: In June, the Bradbury Science Museum’s education team hit the road as part of the annual Summer Science on Wheels […]
Have questions about Penn State sports? Submit them here for our monthly mailbag
This month’s mailbag comes on the heels of Penn State football’s fall camp starting and amid ongoing consternation over Penn State men’s basketball’s finances.
Best of Fort Worth 2026: Nightlife & Entertainment
No matter the time of day — or night — Cowtown is filled to the brim with ways to keep you entertained. Here are some of our readers and editors faves from the past year.
Bill Belichick reveals 'adjustments' made with Michael Lombardi out
Bill Belichick admitted that the UNC football program has had to make adjustments with Michael Lombardi on paid leave.
Sen Darline Graham drops campaign video on heels of brother's funeral services amid tight primary timeline
Sen. Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, dropped a campaign video as she runs for U.S. Senate with President Donald Trump's endorsement.
HRS: Watch “WAVY Science Lab” with Jeremy Wheeler on WAVY+
Get the details on “WAVY Science Lab” with Jeremy Wheeler on WAVY+.
Entertainment this week: Skate the Lake, Bee Gees Tribute and more
Thursday, July 30 History Talk Photography of Nome’s Gold Rush from 1900 to1905 – 4:30-6 p.m., Gatekeeper’s Museum, 130 W Lake Blvd. On the heels of the Sierra Nevada and Yukon Gold Rushes, the beaches...
HRS: Watch "WAVY Science Lab" with Jeremy Wheeler on WAVY+
Hampton Roads Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina News, Weather, Traffic and Sports.
Why Americans are leasing fewer cars
Vehicle leasing has declined in the United States in recent years, curbing what has long been a preferred route to new wheels for many car shoppers.
Business journalism studies took her to the White House | UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
The story by UNC Hussman alumni Brennan Doherty ’19 and video by John Roberts ’16 (M.A.) was originally published on unc.edu. This story is part of a four-part series on Carolina alumni working in Washington, D.C. Soon after her 2015 graduation from UNC-Chapel Hill, Megan Cassella was an intern for the Reuters news agency, eagerly awaiting and prepping for a special assignment. “Every now and then they needed an intern to run over to the White House last minute,” Cassella said. “You have to send your information the night before, so I started proactively sending my information to the White House every single night to be able to go the next day if they ever needed an intern.” Since then, she’s made many return trips to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in a career that’s included roles at Reuters, Politico, Barron’s and now CNBC, where she works as an on-air Washington correspondent. A longtime newswriter, Cassella made the move to TV in 2024, appearing on broadcasts multiple times daily to report on the biggest political and business stories. But the keys to doing a good job — knowing how to research, asking insightful questions, building relationships and explaining complex topics to a broad audience — remain the same. Did you know: Outside of the state of North Carolina, the Washington region is home to the largest concentration of Tar Heel alumni in the country. Cassella’s time as a Tar Heel was crucial in sharpening those skills, both in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and through roles at student-run publications like The Daily Tar Heel. She excelled in Carolina’s business journalism program with former professor Chris Roush, which led to an internship at The Charlotte Observer and helped Cassella find her journalistic niche. A data journalism course with Associate Professor Ryan Thornburg taught her how to find stories in numbers, and former professor Paul O’Connor’s reporting class took Cassella to the North Carolina Capitol weekly, where she gained invaluable experience interviewing politicians. “Those hands-on experiences that Carolina gave me really kept my interest and have really benefited me since I’ve been up here in D.C.,” said Cassella. “I have UNC to thank for the fact that I even went into business journalism in the first place.” Megan Cassella ’15 “You’ve got to thrive on adrenaline in this job. You’ve got to do well with last-minute changes, with running by the seat of your pants.” Megan Cassella ’15 ‘There’s nothing else like it’ In recent months, Cassella has reported live from the G7 Summit in Geneva, covered the latest developments in the U.S.-Iran war and followed changes to trade policy, including tariffs. “Anything in this realm that influences Wall Street, I’ll be covering,” Cassella said. Her working hours are long and variable. After waking up, Cassella immediately checks her phone to see what news broke overnight. By 8:15 a.m., she usually learns which newscasts she’ll be on, and then she heads to the newsroom, White House or wherever her assignment is. “We want you in the 9 a.m. show and the 11, and then the 3 o’clock show wants you, too,” Cassella said, referring to a hypothetical day. If Cassella gets an exclusive or major news breaks, she might be told, “We want that on TV right now.” Within five minutes, she’d be expected to get to the camera, figure out what to say and deliver the news to a live audience. “It’s exciting. It’s nerve-wracking,” Cassella said. “But there’s nothing else like it.” A well-rounded education Cassella grew up in Maryland, the youngest of four kids. Her oldest brother, Brian Cassella ’05, attended Carolina, became a photojournalist and recently won a Pulitzer Prize. She remembers visiting campus as a young child and loving it. “I just always wanted to go,” she said, and that desire grew when she, like her brother, gravitated toward journalism. But it wasn’t just the journalism school that drew Cassella to Carolina. “It was also the whole liberal arts curriculum,” she said. “Even though I always wanted to be a journalist, I got to college, and I sort of felt I had to think about other things. I had to explore my options and see if that’s what I really wanted.” Did you know: In April UNC-Chapel Hill opened its Carolina in the Capital office in Washington. She combined her journalism schooling with a global studies major and a history minor. That broad range of academic experiences in Chapel Hill molded her, preparing Cassella for a career that’s taken her to the highest levels of political journalism and inside the Oval Office. “When you sit back and remember you’re actually sitting inside the White House and asking questions of the president, it’s a cool feeling,” Cassella said. “No matter who is in office, no matter what administration or party, it’s a privilege to be there.” Megan Cassella on… Being a Tar Heel in Washington: I run into Tar Heels all the time. My husband’s a Tar Heel. We actually met here in Washington, not at Carolina, even though we were the same class. Probably most of our friends are still Tar Heels. Even up here in D.C., we all get together for games and March Madness. And through work, there’s Tar Heels all over the place. It’s often used as a connection. Favorite Franklin Street spot: When we go back, our first stop is always IP3. That’s more my husband’s doing than mine. In college, I was a huge Spanky’s fan. Felt like it was a classic spot. May it rest in peace. Advice to journalism students: Reps, reps, reps! Nothing beats the experience you’ll gain by simply starting to do the work — asking the questions, reporting and writing the stories, doing the TV hits. When you can, go places in person. Talk to more people than you think you’ll need. Read as much as you can, from different sources and on different topics. If you’re not sure how to start your story, that usually means you need more reporting. When you’re not sure, ask.
The Science Behind the AI Panic Is Shakier Than You Think
A column by Sascha Lobo Is AI making us dumb? So asked DER SPIEGEL on its cover a while ago. After a few weeks of recovery and a therapeutic intervention with the help of my AI, I feel able to respond. That’s a bit unfair, of course; the article itself is more nuanced than the loud cover, the image of a schoolkid with dull prompt questions, or the subtitle: “AI is conquering the schools, and educators fear a disaster.” The short answer to “Is AI making us dumb?” is: no. The long answer is more interesting, and even carries a preliminary glimmer of the spectacular. Unfortunately, it requires a detour into the sphere of artificial intelligence, into the mogul-field terrain of technology assessment, the attention economy, and the destructive virus of cultural pessimism. Along with narrowing the scope to AI’s effects on education and work rather than on intelligence. Because the honest version of the question would be: Does AI help us learn and work, or not? Generative AI, which set off the still-ongoing hype with ChatGPT, has only existed in relevant distribution since late 2022, early 2023. For a technology-driven transformation of people and society, that is extremely short. For that reason alone, research is still in its infancy. And technology assessment is not a fast discipline anyway. Prominent voices from Elizabeth Eisenstein to RAND to Tom Wheeler say we still cannot conclusively judge the consequences of the printing press. Its invention is a mere 580 years back, and some scholars would rather not circulate assessments that might have to be retracted in two or three hundred years. We’re Going Through Growing Pains A phenomenon that already caused upheaval in social media research makes serious assessment of AI’s consequences even harder: the “moving target” problem of LLM-ology, as the linguist Sean Trott called it in 2025. AI develops so quickly and so unpredictably that researchers often end up studying snapshots of the past. There are concepts, from morphological analysis to anticipatory governance, for keeping research, planning, and regulation halfway meaningful anyway. But even with those, universally valid statements are rare. DER SPIEGEL - The German View is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe We should therefore treat findings about the interplay between humans and AI as far more procedural and situational. Unfortunately, this challenge comes at the worst possible time. We are going through growing pains: AI’s everyday impact has grown very large very fast, and with it the longing for guidance. Annoyingly, the body of solid knowledge has not exploded along with it. Experts cannot be moved to broad consensus on even banal statements about AI. Sascha Lobo, born in 1975, is an author and strategy consultant focusing on the internet and digital technologies. Together with Jule Lobo, he explores the debates of the day in the podcast “Feel the News – Was Deutschland bewegt” (”What Moves Germany”). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says software developers are dying out. Bill Gates considers coders one of only three professions that will survive the AI tsunami. Top tech economists find virtually irrefutable arguments both for and against an AI bubble. The same naturally applies to the structurally youth-hostile debate over whether AI is good or bad for young people. The gap between the demand for insight and the supply of solid knowledge creates an orientation vacuum. This vacuum of AI cluelessness is filled, as the attention economy described by Georg Franck in 1998 would have it, with half-knowledge (funnily enough, often AI-generated), marketing, and self-marketing. After all, infinite money is at stake, along with academia’s best current shot at global fame. But this iridescent froth of interpretation operates more by the algorithmic principles of the digital public sphere than by seriously earned insight. That is why dramatized, fear-feeding claims about AI are so promising. It tempts parts of academia into distorted drivel, and parts of the media then sensationalize the published drivel once more. Was the Research Aimed at a Desired Result? How badly this can influence academia and public perception is demonstrated by one of the most-discussed studies on AI’s effects: “Your Brain on ChatGPT.” The MIT study by Nataliya Kosmyna also gets plenty of space in the SPIEGEL cover story. What was measured and interpreted: lower brain activity in people who write with AI assistance, compared to people who only google or write without any tools. As is common with preprints, the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and it contains substantial weaknesses that experts have sharply criticized. The first round had 54 participants in three groups, the second only 18, who reportedly also came from MIT’s own orbit. There was no preregistration (committing in advance to what you want to find out with which data). In their analysis, Stanković et al. even discovered an opposite effect that the study does not further explain. Some measurement data has not (yet) been published. And the EEG analysis method used is considered too imprecise to support such far-reaching conclusions. The biggest criticism, though, is the suspicion of an activism-driven study. In an interview with Time, lead author Kosmyna said she published the study immediately, rather than after full peer review, because she feared politicians might otherwise decide to put ChatGPT in kindergartens. She considers that absolutely harmful. It is legitimate to hold such a view. It just seems unscientific to approach a study with it, and then to design the setup so that the chance of a fitting desired result remains as high as possible. Ideologies Collide It is not easy to separate genuine AI insights from studies that trivialize and weaken well-founded AI criticism. The same goes for the opposing, AI-enthusiastic narratives, because the pro-AI side works against it with billions in resources. Ideologies collide, fed by egos, PR strategies, moral posturing, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Doomsday marketing makes the search even harder: AI companies can profit from warnings about the dangers of AI, whether through the notoriety of apocalypse narratives or because, in some target groups, danger translates into power. Some seemingly negative findings are therefore quite welcome in the AI industry. If you try to get at the findings presumably less influenced by interest groups, the picture in education seems relatively clear: AI can improve educational outcomes when the right AI is used the right way, namely pedagogically. Simply dumping an AI chatbot into a classroom, by contrast, accomplishes little. Huge surprise. But something else is also obvious: whether they are allowed to or not, kids use AI for school, which is why the controlled integration of AI tools into education is, in the medium term, entirely without alternative. In the world of work, the landscape of findings is more complex and requires more differentiation. A series of serious studies points to an AI effect that suits neither the alarmists, regulation fetishists, and AI opponents, nor the trillion-dollar corporations with their armada of paid scientists, PR professionals, and ecosystems: working with AI helps the inexperienced (at least for now) considerably more than it helps the pros, in certain fields of work, and provided they know how to use it correctly. Missing Domain Knowledge Among the experienced, the professionals, and the high flyers, by contrast, despite frequent time savings, partially negative effects and new problems are emerging. Take the jagged frontier problem: AI solves task A brilliantly and fails completely at task B, even though both look similar even to professionals. Or the verification-cost problem, in which AI’s greater productivity gets eaten up by the enormous effort of checking its output. Or the illusion of competence, because AI makes new domains seem easily penetrable, until you painfully discover that deep domain knowledge is missing. Taken as a whole, the effects of working with AI do lean positive. But the promise that AI works as a turbocharger for everyone and boosts practically everything simply refuses to materialize. The AI magic the world has been feeling since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022 has so far barely shown up in most companies’ numbers. The consulting firm McKinsey has coined a term for this, the “gen AI paradox,” and believes that work processes and corporate structures would have to be rebuilt quite fundamentally to realize AI’s benefits at scale. Reuters just reported that only 3.3 percent of Microsoft’s customers have subscribed to the AI package Copilot. That may be down to the product; in other areas we continue to see soaring successes and new AI triumphs. But after the first quarter of 2026, disillusionment is the word for all too many AI projects at traditional companies: because the promised revolution of AI agents has so far failed to arrive or been postponed, and because of the leveling effect that many of the studies cited here suggest. Against Inequality The societal effects, on the other hand, appear rather encouraging. Many previous technologies operated on the Matthew principle, named for the Gospel verse about giving to those who already have: they tended to reward the more competent and more privileged. AI, however, seems more often to have an equalizing effect once a threshold of access and education is crossed. Some anecdotal insights point in this direction, for example, how an unemployed man in Leipzig successfully defended himself in court in 2025 against fraud accusations from Germany’s federal employment agency — without a lawyer, armed only with ChatGPT. The AI made mistakes and cited invented court rulings, but in the end the man walked away unpunished. And a key capability of artificial intelligence is its capacity to learn: set up correctly and fed with data, it can keep getting better. It is a question of time, or more precisely of AI innovations and training data, until even free AI chatbots write better legal briefs than law graduates with perfect exam scores. Whether that will make anyone dumb is something the world’s press will surely inform us of in due time. Subscribe Leave a comment
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