Angela Bassett’s legacy at Yale is being carried forward by her son, Slater Vance ’28, who has revived the university’s first Black student theater group. Bassett co-founded the Heritage Theater Ensemble in 1979, creating a space for Black students to tell stories and explore theater from their own perspectives. After the group’s activities eventually went quiet, Vance and fellow student Chin Onwu brought it back in 2026 under a new name, the Heritage Production Company, with a broader mission that includes both theater and film. The revived organization aims to give students opportunities to create, perform and produce work while continuing the original group’s emphasis on Black voices and storytelling. Vance’s involvement makes the revival especially significant because he is building on an artistic institution his mother helped establish nearly five decades ago. The new company plans to provide a creative community for students interested in the entertainment industry and create productions that reflect a wider range of Black experiences.

Researchers at UNSW Sydney investigated why some people with schizophrenia experience auditory verbal hallucinations, commonly described as “hearing voices.” Their findings suggest that the brain’s system for monitoring self-generated speech may not work normally in people who experience these hallucinations. Normally, when a person internally “speaks” or thinks in words, the brain predicts the sounds associated with that inner speech and recognizes them as coming from oneself. The study suggests that when this prediction and self-monitoring process is disrupted, internally generated speech may be perceived as if it came from an outside source. The researchers used EEG brain recordings to examine how participants processed speech and their own internally generated language. The results provide evidence for a connection between altered brain responses to self-generated speech and the experience of hearing voices. However, the research does not prove that schizophrenia is simply caused by one neurological “glitch.” Schizophrenia is a complex disorder involving multiple biological, psychological and environmental factors, and the study focuses specifically on a possible mechanism behind auditory hallucinations rather than explaining the entire condition.

Instagram has introduced a new AI-powered Pixel effect for Stories that allows users to pixelate people in their photos, giving them a way to hide someone’s identity while still posting the moment. The feature is particularly suited to the increasingly common “soft launch” of a relationship, where someone hints that they have a new partner without officially revealing who they are. Instead of showing a partner’s face, users can now deliberately pixelate it while leaving other details—such as their body, clothing, or the setting—visible. The article explains that soft-launching relationships has become a popular social-media habit, with people using cropped photos, hands, silhouettes, or partial views to suggest a romance while maintaining some privacy. Tinder data cited by the report found that 26% of 18- to 34-year-olds preferred to soft-launch a new partner, compared with 8% who preferred an immediate full reveal. Matchmaker Susan Trombetti also said keeping a new relationship relatively private can make sense before it becomes serious, although she personally criticized completely pixelating a partner and suggested simply waiting to post them instead.