FRESH AIR: In the new Ken Burns PBS series on the history of country music, my guest, Doug Green, talks about the era of the singing cowboy as epitomized by the most popular one, Gene Autry. Cowboy lore, folk ballads, jazz, Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood are all ingredients of the music of the singing cowboys who were movie staples in the ’30s and ’40s and then on TV in the ’50s. A lot of the music has been forgotten, but Green wrote about its history in his book, Singing In The Saddle. And he performs the music with his […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Ghost Writer
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: When I was a sophomore in college, I took a creative-nonfiction workshop and met a girl who was everything I wasn’t. The point of the class was to learn to write your own story, but from the moment we met, I focused instead on helping her tell her own, first in notes after workshop, then later editing her Instagram captions and co-writing a book proposal she sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems obvious now, the way the story would end, but when I first met Caroline Calloway, all I saw was the beginning of […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr, Saudi lobbyists, foreign government officials are among the people who have booked rooms or ballrooms at Trump Hotels, raising serious ethical questions. We’re going to talk about Trump family businesses and related questions of conflict of interest with Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, who has been focusing on those issues. His reporting on Donald Trump’s personal charitable foundation revealed that Trump used the foundation for personal and political profit. That reporting led New York’s attorney general to sue the charity, Trump and his three oldest children, alleging persistent illegal conduct. […]
DRAMA: So Shines A Good Deed In A Weary World
Hamilton The Musical will be making 40 $10 tickets available via lottery for each Philly performance at the Forrest Theater (Aug. 27th-Nov. 17). Sign up HERE.
RIP: Gar Joseph, Legendary Daily News Editor
THE INQUIRER: The first few times Gar Joseph applied for a reporting job at the Philadelphia Daily News, the editors turned him down. On paper, he was a solid candidate, a whip-smart 30-something assistant metro editor at the Wilmington News Journal. But there was some disagreement over whether he was too buttoned-up for the tabloid, which proudly wore its irreverent heart on its sleeve. What was clear to the paper’s editors was that Mr. Joseph didn’t give up easily, even if the odds weren’t in his favor. He kept on telling them he belonged at the Daily News, as simple […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Rapist In Chief
NEW YORK MAGAZINE: The moment the dressing-room door is closed, he lunges at me, pushes me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and puts his mouth against my lips. I am so shocked I shove him back and start laughing again. He seizes both my arms and pushes me up against the wall a second time, and, as I become aware of how large he is, he holds me against the wall with his shoulder and jams his hand under my coat dress and pulls down my tights. I am astonished by what I’m about to write: I […]
Win Tix 2 Freakonomics Radio Live @ Kimmel Ctr
Photo by AUDREY BERNSTEIN Freakonomics Radio, one of the ten most popular podcasts in the country, is hosting a live show at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia on June 6th and we have a pair of tickets to give away to some lucky Phawker reader. What’s that you say? “What is this *makes sarcastic air quotes* freakin’ nomix thing you speak of?” Oh brother, where art thou?!? Time to get your freak on. Here’s a brief history of time as it applies to Freakonomics from their web site: It began when New York journalist and author Stephen J. Dubner [pictured] […]
MUST SEE TV: ‘Safety Glasses Off, Motherf*ckers!’
PREVIOUSLY: On Friday April 21st, 2017 Bill Nye — bow-tied science communicator, advocate for reason and critical thinking skills, wouldbe astronaut, bane of creationists and climate science denialists, not to mention superstitious kooks and cranks of every ideological stripe — returned to the small screen with Netflix’s Bill Nye Saves The World. To mark the auspicious return of reason and fact to American airwaves, we present this encore edition of our 2014 interview with Dr. Nye. DISCUSSED: Why he believes in evolution and you should too, Carl Sagan, marijuana, why he wouldn’t sign up for the one-way trip to colonize […]
I Went To A Star Wars Convention With My 10 Year Old Daughter & All We Got Was A Hella Good Time
BY JON SOLOMON & MAGGIE SOLOMON-SCHELLER Rushing straight from the airport into McCormick Place with my 10 year-old daughter for our weekend in Chicago at Star Wars Celebration, it was hard not to channel True Hero of the Rebellion Wedge Antilles in the cockpit of his X-Wing, gazing upon the Death Star for the first time: “Look at the size of that thing.” Tens of thousands of Star Wars fans from all over the planet gathered at the nation’s largest convention center from April 11th through the 15th for the 20th annual edition of this enormous event, a potentially overwhelming […]
UNNMASKED: Tucker Carlson’s Fake Populism
This is a pretty devastating unmasking of Tucker Carlson’s fake populist pose and how he employs it to keep the peasants at each other’s throats instead of storming the palaces of the rich elites who oppress and exploit them. Well done Vox.
MUST READ: One Nation, Under Fox, Divisible
THE NEW YORKER: In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message. But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to […]
DEACTIVISM: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Delete My Facebook Account (And I Feel Fine)
BY BILL HANGLEY JR. So Facebook turns fifteen this month. Big deal. I’m turning fifty, and here’s my gift to myself: Beat it, Facebook. As in, get lost, you creepy leeches. Make tracks. Go bark up somebody else’s tree. You’re not “social.” You’re chemical – a meticulously engineered subconscious compulsion. Ever see the opening credits to that Cartoon Network show, “Robot Chicken?” Where the mad scientist forces the helpless bird to watch a hundred blaring TV screens at once? That’s you, Facebook – only us chickens aren’t tied down. We just sit there, staring at your endless scroll, waiting for […]
