This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
🌤️Cloudy morning, sunny afternoon, with highs in the 60s. Sunset is at 7:12 p.m.
Three things to do this weekend from Jared Bowen, host of GBH’s The Culture Show:
The Tony-winning musical “The Outsiders” is at the Citizens Opera House through April 12. You might know the story from S. E. Hinton’s novel or Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of the same name: Ponyboy, 14, “will climb and climb and climb until he can move out of the wrong side of the tracks,” Bowen said. “This is a show that is original, it’s raw, it’s physical and primordial and with a phenomenal ending.”
Next: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has a look at the life of its founder with the exhibition “Picturing Isabella.” “We see Isabella Stewart Gardner over photographs, from a young woman happily holding her young son on her lap to the woman who tried, it seems, to create a mystique around her, how she would turn away from the camera, how she will keep her face veiled so that there was this growing mystery about the woman behind the palace,” Bowen said.
And finally: the book “Men I Hate,” a memoir in essays by Lynette D’Amico. The author, Bowen said, “was at an age where she basically thought she could coast as a woman who had come into her own, who had come out as a lesbian. She thought she knew the rest of her life —” and then her spouse came out as a trans man. D’Amico wrote “very raw, very interior, very explosive essays,” exploring the transition and what questions it brought up for D’Amico. “It is a perspective we’ve rarely seen in literature, and it is captivating,” Bowen said.
Four Things to Know
1. Lawmakers in the Massachusetts Senate are considering using $10 million to offer free tuition to medical students at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester if they promise to practice family medicine in the state for at least five years after graduating.
Primary care doctors usually get paid less than doctors in other specialties, and that means many medical students go on to work in other fields. Just 5% of students from this year’s graduating class — eight people — plan to go into family medicine, said Dr. Diane McKee, chair of the UMass Chan Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.
2. State senators are also weighing whether to give $3.5 million to the state’s Affirming Health Care Trust Fund. With transgender people’s health care under attack from the Trump administration, the fund could use the money to cover treatment costs, help medical providers to continue delivering gender-affirming care and more. Lawmakers are especially concerned about transgender minors on Medicaid, whose insurance could soon stop covering their care.
“We believe strongly that decisions about health care, and what health [care] people are receiving: that should be up to their doctor. To patients. To their families,” said state Sen. Julian Cyr. “This should not be something the government is trying to overreach or interfere in.”
3. After the Trump administration announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi will step down, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said “Bondi will be remembered for blocking the release of the Epstein files, weaponizing the DOJ to go after Trump’s political opponents and handing out merger approvals as political favors. Good riddance.”
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell called for a successor that is “independent and accountable,” and said Bondi “put the president’s political agenda over the rule of law.”
4. Local soccer fans are doing the math on how much it will cost to attend a World Cup match in Foxborough this June and July — and it’s not cheap. Tickets are generally $600 to $3,000, though FIFA has released a limited number of $60 tickets available through the teams. The MBTA has not yet released prices for trains from Boston to the stadium — where the station was recently revamped to be fully accessible) —but The Athletic reported fares could reach $75 per person.
“For a family of four for a day out, you’re talking thousands of dollars just to get there, watch a game of soccer and have a bite and a beer,” said Boston resident John O’Hara, who is planning on going to one game. “So, lunacy. In theory [it’s] for a game of soccer, but they’re taking advantage of people’s passion, so it’s a real shame.”
Can’t put your phone down? Here’s why you should try, according to one local researcher
If you’ve been trying to spend less time scrolling endlessly on your phone, here are a few things to keep in mind according to Dr. Michael Rich. He’s Boston Children’s Hospital’s founding director of the Digital Wellness Lab and of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders.
“Billions of dollars are being spent to capture and hold [our attention],” Rich told GBH’s Morning Edition. “And our attention to each other is much more valuable and much more sustaining than our attention to the latest TikTok.”
Recognize that it’s probably impossible to completely cut out all screens. They’re part of our lives, he said. “The goal here is not abstinence — we can’t live without it really — but self-regulation.” He suggested trying to use them with a purpose; for learning or communicating with loved ones, and then planning other activities that don’t involve screens like a walk in nature.
There’s also the growing industry of companies selling devices and apps meant to help people stay away from their phones. Those tools can be useful, Rich said, if they’re used thoughtfully.
“It’s sort of like nicotine patches or nicotine gum for quitting smoking. It only works if you have a purposeful approach to it and are using it to achieve an end, he said.
And try to embrace boredom, though it may be uncomfortable and take some time.
“Boredom is actually the crucible of creativity and imagination,” Rich said, “because it not only gives us mind space, but that mind space is a little uncomfortable. So we fill it with our imagination, with our what-ifs.”
You can hear more of his thoughts here — and then log off.
Dig deeper:
-How outlawing flavored tobacco saved Massachusetts $70 million in health care costs
-Doulas aren’t covered by most private insurers. That could soon change in Mass.
-Should you add gratitude to your wellness routine?
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