FRESH AIR The individuals who participated in the first Inquisition 800 years ago kept detailed records of their activities. Vast archival collections at the Vatican, in France and in Spain contain accounts of torture victims’ cries, descriptions of funeral pyres and even meticulous financial records about the price of torture equipment. “[There are] expense accounts [for things] like how much did the rope cost to tie the hands of the person you burnt at the stake,” says writer Cullen Murphy. “The people who were doing interrogations were meticulous.” Murphy’s new book God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the […]
THE CHINA SYNDROME: Why Every Time You Buy An iPhone The Middle Class Dies A Little More
NEW YORK TIMES: Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google. However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays. Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction […]
MILESTONE: Rock Town Hall Turns Five
What’s that? What’s Rock Town Hall? Then watch this, ya dumb bunny!
RIP: Joe Paterno, Nittany Lion King, Dead At 85
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Joe Paterno, who racked up more wins than anyone else in major college football but was fired from Penn State amid a child sex abuse scandal has died. He was 85. His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death. Paterno’s son Scott announced Nov. 18 that his father was being treated for lung cancer, which was diagnosed in mid-November during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. The storied career of “JoePa” included 409 wins in 46 seasons and two national championships. But his reputation for success with honor was shattered when a former assistant […]
MUST SEE TV: American Beauty
Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo. Stunning HD time-lapse sequence of Yosemite National Park — easily one of the most awe-inspiring, jaw-droppingly beautiful places on Earth — set to m83’s “Outro.”
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR Brad Pitt is aware that his portrayal of a baseball-team manager in the new film Moneyball is somewhat different from his previous roles. After all, the actor has played a Nazi-hunter, a vampire, a cowboy hitchhiker, a detective on the trail of a serial killer, the Greek warrior Achilles, a terrorist, an assassin and the outlaw Jesse James. He has ridden on horseback and dodged both flying glass and flying fists for physical roles in movies like Troy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Fight Club. Pitt began his own acting career in 1987, with roles on TV shows […]
NPR FOR THE DEF: Terry Gross On Colbert!
Just announced that Fresh Air’s Terry Gross will be on The Colbert Report on Wednesday January 25th! PREVIOUSLY: NPR FOR THE DEAF: Hey! That’s MY Name! RELATED: Q&A With A Man Called Francis RELATED: Q&A With A Man Called Francis, Part 2
THE MAN FROM MAN MAN: Q&A w/ Honus Honus
BY BRYAN BIERMAN In a parked car on some Saturday, summer of 2004, I fumbled through the radio stations, finally landing on WKDU, and this crazy noise they were playing. When I got home, I emailed the DJs to find the name of that ‘gypsy Tom Waits circus punk’ (or probably something similar to that—I was 15 and had just bought Swordfishtrombones, so I’m sure I wanted to show that off). I couldn’t get the music out of my head for days, but I didn’t know what it was. “The band’s called Man Man,” they finally wrote back, “they’re local.” […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Free Bradley Manning
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY Never before has a supposedly sophisticated military establishment demonstrated such spitefully infantile behavior over a wholly contrived crisis brought on by its own colossally bungling incompetence. You guessed it. I’m talking about that back-in-the-news stupendously-exaggerated-harm-to-national-security Bradley Manning/Wikileaks saga the Pentagon is so determined to prove itself the fool over. No matter the number of embarrassing government-negative exposés, or the considerable public pressure being brought on Bradley’s behalf, the matter continues to prove itself a blatant travesty the injustice of which is exceeded only by the inability and/or unwillingness of its brass-laden pursuers to display so much as a smidgen of contrition or even canine-level […]
HALLELUJAH: A New Leonard Cohen Album!
[Artwork by LiezIS] THE GUARDIAN: By that reckoning, Cohen has been far more of a success than he could have predicted. There have been reversals of fortune along the way but 40 years later he enters an ornate room in Paris’s fabled Crillon Hotel to a warm breeze of applause. Looking like a grandfatherly mobster, he doffs his hat and smiles graciously, just as he did every night of the 2008-10 world tour that represented a miraculous creative revival. The prickly, saturnine, dangerously funny character witnessed in Bird on a Wire has found a measure of calm and, as he […]
TONITE: ‘Let’s Get High’
Who loves the sun? Bad Weather California. Three songs on their new album—“Stand In My Sunshine,” “Big Yellow Ball,” “Let It Shine,”—revolve around it (get it!?). Oh, also, the album is called Sunkissed. So it’s probably no surprise that all the elements of a good Beach Boys record are here—vocals harmonies, shimmering guitars, bouncy organ, psychedelic drugs. But the band doesn’t just peddle their own rehashed version of ‘60s sunshine pop; they’re too weird for that. Instead they mix in voice modulators, drum machines, feedback loops, and anything else you got, then take another sharp left with 30-second blasts of […]
RIP: Etta James, Legendary R&B Hellcat, Dead At 73
NEW YORK TIMES: Etta James, whose powerful, versatile and emotionally direct voice could enliven the raunchiest blues as well as the subtlest love songs, most indelibly in her signature hit, “At Last,” died Friday morning in Riverside, Calif. She was 73. Ms. James was not easy to pigeonhole. She is most often referred to as a rhythm and blues singer, and that is how she made her name in the 1950s with records like “Good Rockin’ Daddy.” She is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. She was also comfortable, and convincing, […]