Week of April 24, 2024

From the editor’s desk

Our May print edition is arriving soon, so keep an eye out for it at your favorite convenience stores, restaurants and other locales over the next few days. Meanwhile, here’s what’s been happening in local books, business and ballet news—plus a new pick from film/TV guy Bob Grimm. 

Business scribe Matt Westfield has spent a fair amount of time experimenting with AI for research, and he’s found that its accuracy and relevance can be severely compromised. Enter Satchel and Shaine Hirsh, a brother-sister entrepreneur team from Reno. They’ve launched an AI startup called Forml, which looks like it should be able to solve some of those problems. 

Author Megan Edwards didn’t realize at first how tricky it can be to write a time-travel story. “If I did, I might not have tried it,” she told the RN&R‘s Frank X. Mullen. Fast forward several years, and her novel A Coin for the Ferryman—in which Julius Caesar travels to the late 1990s and ends up on a whirlwind adventure in Las Vegas—has earned the 2023 Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. 

“I sometimes feel like I am an actor in a Borat movie, but I was never given a script,” wrote our latest guest commenter, Douglas Reynolds, from Carson Valley. He’d really like to see a resurgence in critical thinking.

There’s big news in the performing arts world—Sierra Nevada Ballet, Sierra School of Performing Arts and other groups are teaming up to open the new Northern Nevada Performing Arts Collective this spring. It’ll be a space for collaborations, classes, rehearsals and performances. Jessica Santina got the details from SNB director Rosine Bena. 

Have you ever wondered how the wines at your local store got there? Who picks what wines are stocked—and which ones aren’t? Steve Noel, the RN&R‘s resident wine expert, takes a look at the state’s wine-distribution system—and talks to one of the main players, who hopes a consolidation of the state’s two top distributors may lead to more choices for local lovers of vino.

When a fan from Norway calls to compliment Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Conan flaunts his lavish HBO budget by, naturally, traveling to Norway to meet the guy. He also visits Ireland, Thailand and Argentina, keeping it awkward the whole way. The resulting show, Conan O’Brien Must Go, highlights the comedy genius at his best. You can catch it on Max.

The late Bill McGee wrote that working on a Washoe Valley divorce ranch in the late 1940s was “a job most cowboys would covet.” Sandra McGee, Bill’s wife, who co-authored his memoir The Divorce Seekers and released an updated, magazine-style version in 2023, will speak and sign books at the next Nevada Historical Society Writers’ Wednesday event in Reno on May 8.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor