One Last Look at 2025, With Help from Ticket Stubs

My collection of ticket stubs is my memory keeper.

In a year with so much to look back on, they help me keep track of it all. I’ve saved almost all of them since I was a gregarious teenager moshing at punk shows in old houses in bad neighborhoods in Detroit. Now, it’s mostly operas, Broadway musicals, comedy shows, and concerts — with seats. It’s OK to get older and a little pickier about what qualifies as “quality entertainment.”

In 2025, there were plenty of quality ticket stubs added to the shoebox of keepsakes, even though the biggest event of them all didn’t require a ticket at all.

Detroit Opera’s Rinaldo is one of the best things I’ve seen presented on its stage, an opera in which a sick kid in a hospital turns a daydream into an epic tale of knights, adventure, and love. And there’s no doubt my trip to Stratford, Ontario, for its annual theater festival was one of my favorite weekends of the year. I’m still buzzing from how damn talented those kids in Annie were and from the company’s dark biker-gang rendition of Macbeth.

When it comes to comedy, I spent quite a few nights in stitches at Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle, one of the most storied comedy clubs in the country right here in our own backyard of Royal Oak. It was Jordan Jensen, however, who was my absolute favorite — a deeply dark stream-of-consciousness comic who turns her own family trauma into hilariously relatable humor. I highly recommend her Netflix special, Take Me with You, as one of the best of the year.

For concerts, it was the Masonic Temple Theatre that hosted my favorite shows of the year — because it sounds great, because of the staff there, and because of the bookings they brought in, from hip-hop duo Clipse (closing out their U.S. tour with a triumphant Detroit date) to former Portishead front woman Beth Gibbons and her incredible band to the tripped-out electronica of Darkside.

But the biggest memory this year wasn’t a ticketed event. It was an invitation to interview Jane Goodall at the Fisher Theatre before she spoke to a sold-out crowd later that night back in September. The beloved conservationist and ethologist (a specialist who studies animal behavior) was so warm, so charming, so larger-than-life at the age of 91. It was overwhelming to be near someone who had accomplished so much and given so much altruistically to a cause larger than herself. And she was kind and hilarious, patiently instructing me how to do a “pant hoot,” a form of communication among chimps, which she knew how to imitate quite well after spending decades studying the primates in the wild in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. Confession: I was so bad at it that Goodall laughed and waved me off after my second try.

In a time of doubt and worry around the world, Goodall was calm and gracious with her time and suggested others embody the same characteristics. “Go to your community and what you care about,” Goodall told me during our interview. “Get involved. If you want to make a difference, you can in your community. It’ll make you feel good. It’ll inspire other people.”

Less than a month after we spoke, Goodall died at the age of 91. It became one of the most treasured moments of my journalistic career to spend just a little time with her and to feel that energy she gave to the world up close. It’s a moment in 2025 that I’ll never forget. And proof that some of the best experiences are ticket-free. But I’m going to keep saving my stubs anyway.

To listen to (and read) my conversation with Jane Goodall, search “Jane Goodall WDET.”

This story originally appeared in the December 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.