If we’re taking sides in the Barbara Walters vs. Star Jones bitchfight, I’m with Starr, people.The backstory: In her tiresome new book, Barbara dishes on Starr’s weight-loss surgery, among other things. Inevitably asked for her comment, Jones put the smack down: “It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book,” Jones told Us. “It speaks to her true character.”SNAP! Called […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR W/ Guest Host DAVE DAVIES The United States is home to less than five percent of the world’s population — and almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Adam Liptak, national legal correspondent for The New York Times, says that’s one of the ways America’s legal system differs from those of other countries. Liptak’s recent series for The Times, “American Exception,” looks at the ways the American justice system is unique — including high incarceration rates, the awarding of punitive damages, felony murder liability for accomplices and commercial bail bondsmen. “Americans are locked up for crimes — from […]
HEAR YE: Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves
Now playing on Phawker Radio. Why? Because we loves us some you!
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded ground troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, has since been speaking out about the conduct of the Iraq war — especially about what he calls the Bush administration’s “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan.” His views take book form in Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, which also details his rise from an impoverished Texas childhood to become the Army’s highest-ranking Hispanic officer. When Sanchez relinquished command of group troops in Iraq to Gen. George Casey in 2004, investigations into torture at Abu Ghraib prison were being conducted. […]
TONITE: The Marshall Plan
As a young musician, Marshall Allen (b.1924) performed with pianist Art Simmons, Don Byas and James Moody before enrolling in the Paris Conservatory of Music. After relocating to Chicago, Allen became a pupil of Sun Ra, subsequently joining the his Arkestra in 1958 and leading Sun Ra’s formidable reed section for next 40 years (a role akin to the position Johnny Hodges held in the Duke Ellington Orchestra). Marshall, along with John Gilmore, June Tyson and James Jacson, lived, rehearsed, toured and recorded with Sun Ra almost exclusively for much of Ra’s musical career. As a member of the Arkestra, […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Al Gore, who galvanized public opinion with his advocacy on global warming, sees danger in another poisoned environment, this one metaphorical: In his book The Assault on Reason [CLICK TO READ EXCERPT], just published in paperback, he argues that what used to be called civil discourse is threatened by a combination of public apathy and political cynicism. In our infotainment-mad culture, Gore writes, the public attention span is short, the media are easily distracted, and a politics driven by fear and uninterested in facts has undermined the essential functions of democracy. “When evidence that any reasonable person can […]
FOURTH OF JULY: The Legend Of John
PHILLY.COM: The city announced at 11 this morning that Grammy-winner John Legend and Philadelphia’s own Boyz II Men will be the major marquee names during July’s Welcome America festivities. Legend will fulfill the title of his latest album — Live From Philadelphia — at the July Fourth concert on the Parkway. Fireworks will follow, of course — weather permitting. The soul singer used his real name, John Stephens, when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1990s. Boyz II Men will perform the following night, Saturday, July 5, before the pyrotechnics at Penn’s Landing. The […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Edgar Award-winning author Charles Ardai is founder of Hard Case Crime, a pulp-fiction publishing group that reprints classic crime stories as well as publishing new pulp. All Hard Case novels are published in mass-market paperback editions, much like the classic crime novels from the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, with cover art inspired by images from the genre’s heyday. Under the pseudonym Richard Aleas — an anagram of his own name — Ardai writes crime fiction, too: His novels Little Girl Lost and Songs of Innocence detail the exploits of private investigator John Blake. Blake is no hard-boiled, flint-eyed […]
LISTEN LIKE THIEVES: NIN Gives Away New Album
NIN.COM: As a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com. The music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options – all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits. For those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in July. details coming […]
Q&A: It’s Too Late To Fall In Love With Sharon Tate
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Meet Roza Frykowska, 26, a recent emigre from Lodz, Poland. She is a barista at Cafe Ole in Old City. She is also an up and coming photographer, and recently started shooting for Suicide Girls. All of that would make her interview-worthy in and of itself in our book, but wait, it gets better, or worse, actually. Roza’s grandfather, the filmmaker Wojtech Frykowski, came to America in the late ’60s to establish a career in Hollywood, at the behest of his dear friend, Roman Polanski. Wojtech and his then-girlfriend, Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, […]
NPR 4 THE DEF: Giving Public Radio Edge Since 2006
FRESH AIR Author Junot Diaz won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Set in both the United States and the Dominican Republic, the novel explores the complexities of living in two cultures at once, with prose that frequently mixes Spanish and English. Diaz previously published Drown, a collection of short stories about a growing up in the Dominican Republic and New Jersey. He struggled with writer’s block following that debut; writing and publishing Oscar Wao took 11 years. Diaz is a professor of creative writing at MIT. ALSO, rock historian […]