FRESH AIR Journalist Barry Estabrook knows how to enjoy a juicy heritage pork chop. He’ll also be the first to tell you what intelligent, sensitive creatures pigs are. “I had no idea how smart they were until I got in the research,” Estabrook tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. Estabrook is the author of Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat, out May 4. The book emerged from the author’s desire to “I set out on the premise that if you’re going to eat an animal, maybe you owed it to yourself to find out as much as you […]

  GOOGLE: In 1880, the Pittsburgh Dispatch published an article titled “What Girls Are Good For.” In dismissive terms, the column’s author wrote that women shouldn’t be allowed to work because their place was at home. Days later, a pseudonymous rebuttal appeared in the paper. The response, by a 16-year-old girl whose real name was Elizabeth Jane Cochran, argued how important it was for women to be independent and self-reliant. Within a decade, the author of that response would become known worldwide as Nellie Bly: a hard-hitting young journalist who went undercover at a lunatic asylum and traveled around the […]

  EDITOR’S NOTE: In honor of the re-activated Replacements playing the Festival Pier on Saturday, we’re re-running Mats Week. Look for Replacements lore and legend all week on a Phawker near you! Gorman Bechard, director of Color Me Obsessed, the recent documentary about the Replacements, may actually be the most obsessed Mats fan. “I personally feel they are the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band of all time, bar none,” he has said in an interview. “They are Gods to me. They are what I believe in.” Subtitled “the potentially true story of the last best band,” Color Me Obsessed is […]

  TIME: The bullets National Guardsmen fired into a group of student demonstrators at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, were meant to deescalate a situation spiraling out of control. Instead, they inspired a host of demonstrations on campuses across the U.S., and left four students dead, one permanently paralyzed and another eight wounded. The events on that spring day were several days in the making—several years, really, taking into account the growing discontent among American students about the war in Vietnam. The week before the confrontation, President Nixon had announced that U.S. combat forces were launching a campaign […]

  Krafwerk plays the Electric Factory on October 2nd. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 am. Here’s the official press release:   Upon their return to North America this September and October for a special  12 city  run of  their Multimedia 3-D CONCERTS, electro pioneers  KRAFTWERK will be stopping in Philadelphia, PA on October 2 at the Electric Factory.  Tickets go on sale this Friday, May 8 at 10:00 am. Bringing together music and performance art, KRAFTWERK 3-D CONCERTS are a true  “Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art.” On their first turn through the U.S. last year, they got rave reviews: […]

  This extract is from David Buckley’s excellent Kraftwerk biography Publikation (Omnibus) 3.5 ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Those Who Can Hear It Coming’* It wasn’t just young would-be musicians who were listening either. The old guard were listening too. In 1975, modern music’s most important icon, David Bowie, was listening hard to Kraftwerk. Receiving an endorsement from Bowie, at the time the most innovative and critically lauded rock star on the planet, was a big deal. It’s hard now to imagine how influential David Bowie was in the seventies and early eighties. Far and away the most sought after interviewee by […]

#PhillyIsBaltimore, City Hall, 6:06 pm, Thursday by NOAH SYLVESTRY

  NEW YORK TIMES: Filed among the more than 20 million items that comprise the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art is a treasure trove for those who are interested in the personal lives of the most famous figures in modern and contemporary art: thousands of relaxed, everyday snapshots of Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Alexander Calder and many more. A forthcoming book by Merry A. Foresta, “Artists Unframed” ($25, Princeton Architectural Press), collects a charming selection of these photos, depicting artists on vacation, at parties, in photo booths, with their dogs. Many — including shots of Jackson Pollock posing with […]

#PhillyIsBaltimore protesters curse the statue — and the brutally racist legacy — of Frank Rizzo last night. [via PHILLY MAG] PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY: In the spring of 1969, four activists from the Philadelphia chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were arrested for plotting to blow up the Liberty Bell after the police found bomb-making materials in the refrigerator of a West Philly apartment. According to the police, the planned destruction of the Liberty Bell was part of a larger plot hatched by a network of student radicals to destroy national landmarks across the country. ? The shocking news […]

PREVIOUSLY: Why There’s A Riot Goin’ On THE ATLANTIC: Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city’s publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city’s police still have no idea what happened. I suspect this is not because the mayor and police commissioner are bad people, but because the state of Maryland prioritizes the protection of police officers […]

Directed by Daniel Kaufman, the video, part one in a two part series, takes place 50 years in the future, as a group of five elderly Rentals haphazardly go out in search for new, younger bodies to transfer their spirits. Or as bandleader, Matt Sharp told Noisey, “It’s a simple science fiction tale about the quest for eternal life. Imagine if Cocoon starred Gary Numan and Grimes instead of Wilford Brimley and Steve Guttenberg.” PREVIOUSLY: The Rentals play Union Transfer tonight in support of their fuggin’ excellent new album, Lost In Alphaville. The Rentals are for all intents and purposes […]