Why is there a car here covered in rubber duckies? And that street musician — the guy with the guitar and kazoo who sings about giving his cat a bath — why is he still at it after all these years? Good questions, both.

Well, they have the same answer: To make us smile.

These and 18 other standout sights and quirks of history leave us shaking our heads with amusement, saying, “only in Madison.”

Read the story here.

(Art Credit: James Heimer/Madison Magazine)

The opera may not be for the masses, but Fresco Opera wants to give everyone a chance to experience opera, if but once, and not necessarily where you might expect it.

Listen to the piece here.

Andrew Scoles insisted he had information about Brittany Zimmermann’s murder.

Recently unsealed documents show he was trying to reach a deal with the Dane County District Attorney to share it. Prosecutors appeared uninterested.

Now Scoles is dead.

Read the story here.

Brittany Zimmermann

A timeline exploring the life and career of Dessa, the shape-shifting philosopher-poet-songwriter who’s in Madison next Friday.

Read the story here.

(Photo credit: Bill Phelps)

Electro-pop artist Emilie Brandt opens up about being bisexual and bipolar in her latest album. The former Madisonian plays The Frequency on March 23.

Read the story here.

(Photo provided courtesy of the artist.)

A vision-aid device developed by a Middleton company helps profoundly blind patients “see” through electro-tactile stimulation to the tongue.

Six years ago, an attack left Andy Fabino blind. 

While visiting his family in Chicago, Fabino was beaten so severely that he was in a coma for fourteen days. In addition to leaving him physically debilitated, the beating damaged Fabino’s optical nerves beyond repair. He spent almost two months recuperating in the intensive care unit at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park, Illinois.

Fabino’s recovery was incredibly difficult. “I had to learn how to walk and how to use my hands and arms again,” he remembers. “And then, I had to deal with the fact that I was blind.”

Read the rest of the story here.

In my latest piece for the UW-Madison Center for Journalism Ethics, I spoke with social media editors from news agencies about the policy, procedure and importance of making corrections on Twitter.

Read the story here.