In comedy circles, Amy Schumer is the girl with the most cake these days. Given her hard-won red carpet ubiquity — between Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer, her big-hit sketch comedy show now on apparent hiatus after four seasons, Trainwreck, the 2015 hit comedy film she wrote and starred in, and her Chris Rock-directed 2015 HBO comedy special Live At The Apollo, and all the attendant rounds of transcontinental interviews and talking head commentary, social media hand-wringing and blogospheric pearl-clutching that accompany such affairs — there’s no real need to explain who Amy Schumer is to anyone who hasn’t been […]
WORTH REPEATING: Chasing The Ghosts Of LBJ
NEW YORKER: I am constantly being asked why it takes me so long to finish my books. Well, it’s the research that takes the time—the research and whatever it is in me that makes the research take so very much longer than I had planned. I’m currently working on the fifth and final book in “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” about the nineteen-sixties. I am also planning to write a full-scale memoir, describing in some detail my experiences in researching and writing my books about Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson—my experiences in learning about these two men and their methods […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: You may be shocked by what’s living in your home — the bacteria, the fungi, viruses, parasites and insects. Probably many more organisms than you imagined.”Every surface; every bit of air; every bit of water in your home is alive,” says Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “The average house has thousands of species.” Dunn started out studying microorganisms and insects in rain forests, but his focus gradually shifted toward backyards and houses. “I eventually found myself in homes with the realization that a lot of what I’d done in […]
INCOMING: Massacre At Duffy’s Cut Book Signing
BY JONATHAN VALANIA There is an old saying that goes: under every mile of railroad track is a dead Irishman. Locally speaking this is almost literally true. Back in the 19th Century, the Main Line was built on the blood, sweat and tears of Irish Catholic immigrants, who back then commanded about as much respect as Mexican migrant workers command today. Out near Malvern, under mile 59 of what was then the Pennsylvania Railroad and is today SEPTA’s R-5 line, beneath a stretch of track known as Duffy’s Cut, lies the bodies of 57 Irish railroad workers. What killed […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Since the 2010 election, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting. Alabama now requires a photo ID to cast a ballot. Other states, like Ohio and Georgia, have enacted “use-it-or-lose” laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a proscribed period of time. Mother Jones journalist Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot, says that many of the restrictions are part of a broader Republican strategy to tighten access to the ballot — an effort that was bolstered in 2013 by the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR: Musician and writer Leonard Cohen died in 2016, leaving behind many unpublished poems and lyrics. His son Adam Cohen discusses The Flame, a collection of some of Leonard’s final works. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Everybody knows that 2016 was a cruel and unusual year. Intolerably cruel. Everybody knows that war is over and everybody knows the good guys lost. So I am only half-kidding when I ask: How can we possibly be expected to endure the abominable presidency of Donald Trump without David Bowie, Prince or Princess Leia? But I’m dead serious when I say we can’t do this without […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
FRESH AIR: These are highly charged times for politics reporters. Just ask Greg Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist who has broken a number of stories related to the Trump administration’s ties to Russia. Miller says that he’s been “trolled a lot” because of his work. But after revealing that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Russian officials prior to Trump’s inauguration, Miller experienced something new: notes from grateful readers. “Weird things happen that had never happened to me as a reporter,” Miller says. “Several of us started getting cards, actual letters in the mail, […]
WORTH REPEATING: ‘I Believe Anita Hill’
[Illustrations by ALEX FINE] EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on December 7th, 2011. We are re-posting it now, for obvious reasons. BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of her reading at the Free Library to promote her 2011 book Reimagining Equality: Stories Of Race, Gender And Finding A Home, we were afforded the opportunity to speak with Anita Hill, professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University. Discussed: The fantasia of a Post-Racial America; the mendacity, narcissism and hypocrisy of Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain; the right wing’s racializing the blame for the 2008 financial crisis; how […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Veteran journalist Bob Woodward has written about every U.S. president since Richard Nixon — nine in total. But in all his years covering politics, he has never encountered a president like President Trump. Woodward’s latest work, Fear: Trump In The White House, paints a portrait of Trump as uninformed and mercurial. The book describes moments when staff members joined together to purposefully block what they believe are the president’s most dangerous impulses — sometimes by surreptitiously removing papers from the president’s desk. “There were drafts of a proposal to get out of the Paris climate accord that were […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Today we join people throughout America on both sides of the political aisle in remembering Senator John McCain. His memorial service will be held at the National Cathedral next Saturday, one week after his death from brain cancer at the age of 81. We’re going to listen to an interview I recorded with him in 2000 after his best-selling memoir Faith Of Our Fathers was published in paperback. But we’ll start with the interview I recorded with him in 2005 after the publication of his book “Character Is Destiny.” This was five years after he’d lost the Republican […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
AMAZON: Siren Song is the autobiography of legendary music biz talent scout/label executive Seymour Stein, the founder of Sire Records and spotter of rock talent from the Ramones to Madonna. Since the late fifties, he’s been wherever it’s happening: Billboard, Tin Pan Alley, The British Invasion, CBGB, Studio 54, Danceteria, the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, the CD crash. Along that winding path, he discovered and broke out a skyline full of stars: Madonna, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode, Madonna, The Smiths, The Cure, Ice-T, Lou Reed, Seal, and many others. Brimming with hilarious scenes and character portraits, […]
EXCERPT: The Man The Angels Killed At Altamont
EDITOR’S NOTE: Forty-eight years ago, on December 6, 1969, 18 year old Meredith Hunter was killed by the Hell’s Angels at the foot of the stage while the Rolling Stones played a free concert at Altamont Speedway for an audience of 300,000 people. The following excerpt from Saul Austerlitz’s forthcoming book, Just A Shot Away: Peace, Love and Tragedy With The Rolling Stones At Altamont describes in graphic detail that awful moment in the dying light of the 1960s. ROLLING STONE: The Rolling Stones finally appeared, and for a brief moment, a sense of relief spread through the speedway. The […]
BOOKS: Fear & Loathing In Trumplandia
THE NATION: It has been 50 years since Hunter S. Thompson published the definitive book on motorcycle guys: Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. It grew out of a piece first published in The Nation one year earlier. My grandfather, Carey McWilliams, editor of the magazine from 1955 to 1975, commissioned the piece from Thompson—it was the gonzo journalist’s first big break, and the beginning of a friendship between the two men that would last until my grandfather died in 1980. Because of that family connection, I had long known that Hell’s Angels […]
