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"content": "\u003cp>The last time Robin Williams had a leading role in a film was in 2009, a year when, apart from the Razzie-nominated \u003cem>Old Dogs\u003c/em>, he starred in the \u003cem>World’s Greatest Dad\u003c/em>. Bobcat Goldthwait’s film, about a dad who finds his son dead in the bathroom and turns him into a posthumous celebrity by writing him a moving fake suicide note and online diary, turned an innocuous plot into delightfully dark satire. Five years later, Williams is back to play another superlative in \u003cem>The Angriest Man in Brooklyn\u003c/em>, but the result is an example of how to take a promising premise and reduce it to tedium, making it safe rather than inventive, complacent rather than subversive, and worst of all dull rather than funny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Williams’ fuming Brooklynite is named Henry Altmann, and we first meet him on the way to a doctor’s appointment, where Dr. Sharon Gill (Mila Kunis) informs him that he has a large brain aneurysm. When Henry hounds her to reveal how long that gives him to live, Sharon throws out an arbitrary number: 90 minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, Henry begins a journey to reconcile with everyone who he has driven away with his irate personality, which he developed after his son’s death two years earlier. He visits his brother (Peter Dinklage), wife (Melissa Leo), and other son (Hamish Linklater), each of whom rebuffs his offer of reconciliation before hearing about his brain aneurysm from Sharon, who is only a few steps behind in pursuit of Henry, trying to take back her prognosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Angriest Man\u003c/em>, adapted by Daniel Taplitz from a 1997 Israeli film, marks not only Williams’ return to a leading role, but also the first film in over a decade from director Phil Alden Robinson (\u003cem>Field of Dreams, Sneakers\u003c/em>). Last time Robinson made a movie, in 2002 (when he directed \u003cem>The Sum Of All Fears\u003c/em>), Williams was beginning his forays into darker material with \u003cem>One Hour Photo\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Insomnia\u003c/em>. Those two movies, along with more audacious comedies like \u003cem>World’s Greatest Dad\u003c/em>, pushed Williams beyond the family-friendly roles he focused on in the ’90s. Gone was the inspirational high school teacher, replaced by a series of restrained and unsettling performances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3k65MlDCA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if \u003cem>Angriest Man\u003c/em> hopes to split the difference between the dark and the light—to lead, in this case, a coarse and unhinged Williams to a heart-warming ending—its balance breaks early in the process. Henry’s temper never registers as anything more than exasperation, constrained as it is by wooden dialogue that includes a distracting habit of beginning rants, much like Foghorn Leghorn, with the looping phrase, “What the hell, I’m asking you what the hell!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The script fails to capitalize on Williams’ potentially manic energy, but it has no trouble crafting speeches and flashbacks that add mawkish fluff where liveliness is needed. The film’s most egregious fault is that it gives Henry 90 minutes to live but hardly anything to do with that time. Predictably enough, he decides to have sex one final time with his wife, only to discover that she’s been carrying on an affair with their neighbor. In the film’s most wasted opportunity, Henry tries to host a going-away party of sorts for himself, but only one person shows up: his high school friend, Bix, played by Richard Kind, the only member of the film’s rich supporting cast (even Louis C.K. shows up) who manages to shove some personality into his role.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people, upon learning they only had 90 minutes to live, would probably go into a panic and seek out family, just as Henry does. But following those cues offers the most facile kind of realism and unlocks the inspirational, warm and fuzzy version of Robin Williams that is his least interesting iteration. Considering its outlandish premise, what the film lacks are any outlandish scenes—or, if not outlandish, then at least ones in the realm of the creative. As it stands, \u003cem>The Angriest Man in Brooklyn\u003c/em>‘s overstated title is the first and only step it takes in that direction. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+%27Angriest%27+Robin+Williams+Sadly+Becomes+The+Inspirational+One&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But if \u003cem>Angriest Man\u003c/em> hopes to split the difference between the dark and the light—to lead, in this case, a coarse and unhinged Williams to a heart-warming ending—its balance breaks early in the process. Henry’s temper never registers as anything more than exasperation, constrained as it is by wooden dialogue that includes a distracting habit of beginning rants, much like Foghorn Leghorn, with the looping phrase, “What the hell, I’m asking you what the hell!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The script fails to capitalize on Williams’ potentially manic energy, but it has no trouble crafting speeches and flashbacks that add mawkish fluff where liveliness is needed. The film’s most egregious fault is that it gives Henry 90 minutes to live but hardly anything to do with that time. Predictably enough, he decides to have sex one final time with his wife, only to discover that she’s been carrying on an affair with their neighbor. In the film’s most wasted opportunity, Henry tries to host a going-away party of sorts for himself, but only one person shows up: his high school friend, Bix, played by Richard Kind, the only member of the film’s rich supporting cast (even Louis C.K. shows up) who manages to shove some personality into his role.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people, upon learning they only had 90 minutes to live, would probably go into a panic and seek out family, just as Henry does. But following those cues offers the most facile kind of realism and unlocks the inspirational, warm and fuzzy version of Robin Williams that is his least interesting iteration. Considering its outlandish premise, what the film lacks are any outlandish scenes—or, if not outlandish, then at least ones in the realm of the creative. As it stands, \u003cem>The Angriest Man in Brooklyn\u003c/em>‘s overstated title is the first and only step it takes in that direction. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+%27Angriest%27+Robin+Williams+Sadly+Becomes+The+Inspirational+One&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>No fewer than three comedies about finding love in midlife open this week, all of them shiny with major stars. Is it time to stop whining about the dearth of romantic comedy for mature audiences? Only if you prefer quantity to quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I haven’t seen \u003cem>Blended,\u003c/em> a Warner Bros. picture featuring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore (talk about milestones, Gertie’s turning 40!) as failed blind-daters marooned in a recreation park with their respective kids. Leaving aside the fact that Sandler is a terrible fit with family fare (he was magnificently dark and dangerous in \u003cem>Punch-Drunk Love\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Grown Ups 2\u003c/em>), any movie that isn’t \u003cem>Neighbors \u003c/em>but boasts a song titled “You Suck” has to give prior pause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MuWt2X59fo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Love Punch,\u003c/em> an overbearingly chipper caper from director Joel Hopkins, shoots for vintage screwball and misses for lack of wit. The plot is topical and mostly to be expected: A divorced couple repairs to France to recover lost pensions from horrid corporate fat cats and — following the usual recriminatory flimflam — rediscovers one another against scenic backdrops. Spark renewal ensues obediently after much falling about and some of the lamest banter I’ve heard since \u003cem>Sex and the City 2\u003c/em>. The movie is only worth your time if you like looking at Emma Thompson (who’s never looked English-rosier) and Pierce Brosnan (aging enviably as the rangy and craggy invariably do) putting in the best teamwork they can muster. Unfortunately, chemistry-wise, they appear to be playing brother and sister.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3NsHnVGQPo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To its credit, \u003cem>Words and Pictures\u003c/em> gets that there’s no need to dispatch skittish lovers to exotic climes in the service of a satisfying midlife romance. In fact, you can pretty much jettison plot, if only because by that stage in life almost everyone is lugging enough emotional baggage to fill a whole archive of verbal swordplay. The action in most middle years is inner life and halting connections, which require a script incisive enough to get at the back and forth and to and fro of two people sidling up to love while backing away from the hurt they see barreling toward them \u003cem>again\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, you can have too much chat if the repartee is not up to snuff. The movie, which is set in a moderately posh Connecticut high school, is at least half an hour too long. The windy script, by former teacher Gerald Dipego, feels more like hard-working ping-pong than an escalating, sexy flirtation between two scarred arty types. It doesn’t help that, ludicrously, they’re facing off over which has more power, literature or fine art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>British actor Clive Owen is miscast as tweedy Eng. Lit. teacher Jack Marcus. His American accent keeps slipping, and he’s too much the recessive hunk to play a once-acclaimed poet who never shuts up so as to drown the voices in his boozed-up head, the ones that tell him he’s a failure and possibly a cheat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Where on earth do movies get their teachers from? Jack addresses his students as “droids,” inveighs against their use of social media and lack of critical skills, and brooks no alternative to his own fairly middlebrow tastes, which run to Updike and Ian McEwan. In the real world, where fee-hungry schools now cater to rather than instruct their pupils, his disdain would earn him a rap over the knuckles from the Dean. Here the Dean (a refreshingly cast Navid Negahban, who plays a terrorist on \u003cem>Homeland\u003c/em>) is displeased because Jack is neglecting the groundbreaking literary mag he founded at the school. He’s not too happy about the frequent benders, either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHrVw-cDmU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So far, so familiar. Enter Juliette Binoche, though, and \u003cem>Words and Pictures\u003c/em> wakes right up. Binoche has a face made for woe, which has gotten her into a trap playing beautiful, glum women to whom terrible things happen. And a bad thing has happened to Dina DeSanto, an abstract painter whose worsening rheumatoid arthritis has thrust her into teaching art at the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, she enters into a transparently pre-coital war of words with Jack. Ludicrous as it is, Binoche’s gusto (her own paintings are featured as Dina’s work in progress) and her filthy bark of a laugh more than make up for Jack letting off recurrent steam with a double Scotch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Words and Pictures\u003c/em> is no more than a middling offering from Australian director Fred Schepisi’s long and uneven oeuvre, which includes \u003cem>The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, A Cry in the Dark, Six Degrees of Separation\u003c/em> and an underappreciated little gem,\u003cem> Last Orders\u003c/em>. But it’s worth seeing for Binoche’s Dina, a woman who hangs onto her principles and her appetite for life even when it shows her careless disrespect. I’m not sure what she sees in Jack, but it’s no stretch to guess what he sees in her. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Love+Blooms+In+Midlife%2C+But+Halfheartedly&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>No fewer than three comedies about finding love in midlife open this week, all of them shiny with major stars. Is it time to stop whining about the dearth of romantic comedy for mature audiences? Only if you prefer quantity to quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I haven’t seen \u003cem>Blended,\u003c/em> a Warner Bros. picture featuring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore (talk about milestones, Gertie’s turning 40!) as failed blind-daters marooned in a recreation park with their respective kids. Leaving aside the fact that Sandler is a terrible fit with family fare (he was magnificently dark and dangerous in \u003cem>Punch-Drunk Love\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Grown Ups 2\u003c/em>), any movie that isn’t \u003cem>Neighbors \u003c/em>but boasts a song titled “You Suck” has to give prior pause.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/8MuWt2X59fo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/8MuWt2X59fo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Love Punch,\u003c/em> an overbearingly chipper caper from director Joel Hopkins, shoots for vintage screwball and misses for lack of wit. The plot is topical and mostly to be expected: A divorced couple repairs to France to recover lost pensions from horrid corporate fat cats and — following the usual recriminatory flimflam — rediscovers one another against scenic backdrops. Spark renewal ensues obediently after much falling about and some of the lamest banter I’ve heard since \u003cem>Sex and the City 2\u003c/em>. The movie is only worth your time if you like looking at Emma Thompson (who’s never looked English-rosier) and Pierce Brosnan (aging enviably as the rangy and craggy invariably do) putting in the best teamwork they can muster. Unfortunately, chemistry-wise, they appear to be playing brother and sister.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/m3NsHnVGQPo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/m3NsHnVGQPo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To its credit, \u003cem>Words and Pictures\u003c/em> gets that there’s no need to dispatch skittish lovers to exotic climes in the service of a satisfying midlife romance. In fact, you can pretty much jettison plot, if only because by that stage in life almost everyone is lugging enough emotional baggage to fill a whole archive of verbal swordplay. The action in most middle years is inner life and halting connections, which require a script incisive enough to get at the back and forth and to and fro of two people sidling up to love while backing away from the hurt they see barreling toward them \u003cem>again\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, you can have too much chat if the repartee is not up to snuff. The movie, which is set in a moderately posh Connecticut high school, is at least half an hour too long. The windy script, by former teacher Gerald Dipego, feels more like hard-working ping-pong than an escalating, sexy flirtation between two scarred arty types. It doesn’t help that, ludicrously, they’re facing off over which has more power, literature or fine art.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>British actor Clive Owen is miscast as tweedy Eng. Lit. teacher Jack Marcus. His American accent keeps slipping, and he’s too much the recessive hunk to play a once-acclaimed poet who never shuts up so as to drown the voices in his boozed-up head, the ones that tell him he’s a failure and possibly a cheat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Where on earth do movies get their teachers from? Jack addresses his students as “droids,” inveighs against their use of social media and lack of critical skills, and brooks no alternative to his own fairly middlebrow tastes, which run to Updike and Ian McEwan. In the real world, where fee-hungry schools now cater to rather than instruct their pupils, his disdain would earn him a rap over the knuckles from the Dean. Here the Dean (a refreshingly cast Navid Negahban, who plays a terrorist on \u003cem>Homeland\u003c/em>) is displeased because Jack is neglecting the groundbreaking literary mag he founded at the school. He’s not too happy about the frequent benders, either.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/EkHrVw-cDmU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/EkHrVw-cDmU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>So far, so familiar. Enter Juliette Binoche, though, and \u003cem>Words and Pictures\u003c/em> wakes right up. Binoche has a face made for woe, which has gotten her into a trap playing beautiful, glum women to whom terrible things happen. And a bad thing has happened to Dina DeSanto, an abstract painter whose worsening rheumatoid arthritis has thrust her into teaching art at the school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, she enters into a transparently pre-coital war of words with Jack. Ludicrous as it is, Binoche’s gusto (her own paintings are featured as Dina’s work in progress) and her filthy bark of a laugh more than make up for Jack letting off recurrent steam with a double Scotch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Words and Pictures\u003c/em> is no more than a middling offering from Australian director Fred Schepisi’s long and uneven oeuvre, which includes \u003cem>The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, A Cry in the Dark, Six Degrees of Separation\u003c/em> and an underappreciated little gem,\u003cem> Last Orders\u003c/em>. But it’s worth seeing for Binoche’s Dina, a woman who hangs onto her principles and her appetite for life even when it shows her careless disrespect. I’m not sure what she sees in Jack, but it’s no stretch to guess what he sees in her. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Love+Blooms+In+Midlife%2C+But+Halfheartedly&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Norman Rockwell Painting 'The Rookie' Sells for $22.5 Million",
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"content": "\u003cp>Norman Rockwell’s \u003cem>The Rookie\u003c/em> has sold for $22.5 million at auction Thursday. The 1957 painting of baseball players in a locker room was sold by Christie’s auction house — heady heights for a work that first appeared on a magazine that sold for 15 cents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update at 12:50 p.m. The Final Price\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the “hammer price” of the Rockwell painting was $20 million, Christie’s says the painting’s final price is $22,565,000, reflecting a buyer’s premium. We’ve updated this post to reflect the auction house’s final calculation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Our original post continues:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136544\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 911px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb.jpg\" alt=\"Norman Rockwell's The Rookie, seen here on display in 2005, sold at auction for $22.5 million Thursday.\" width=\"911\" height=\"921\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136544\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb.jpg 911w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-400x404.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-296x300.jpg 296w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 911px) 100vw, 911px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Norman Rockwell’s \u003cem>The Rookie,\u003c/em> seen here on display in 2005, sold at auction for $22.5 million Thursday. \u003ccite>(Chitose Suzuki/AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An image of the painting — its full title is \u003cem>The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room)\u003c/em> —\u003cem> \u003c/em>originally appeared on the cover of \u003cem>The Saturday Evening Post\u003c/em>. The last time it was sold was in 1986, for $600,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Rookie\u003c/em> features real big-league ballplayers and a lanky high school student, Sherman “Scottie” Safford, who’s now 75.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rockwell paid me $60 for each posing session,” Safford, who now lives in Rochester, N.Y., tells \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_25807327/norman-rockwell-rsquo-s-lsquo-rookie-rsquo-reflects\">The Berkshire Eagle\u003c/a>. “I wish I had kept those checks; they might be worth more than that now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, Safford and former Boston Red Sox pitcher Frank Sullivan, the only two men who posed for the painting who are alive today, visited Boston’s Fenway Park to see the framed work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the \u003cem>Eagle\u003c/em> reports, it was the first time the pair had ever met. Safford and the Red Sox players were photographed separately to give Rockwell images to work from as he created the locker-room scene. (You can check out the reference photos used for the painting at the \u003ca href=\"http://collection.nrm.org/search.do?db=object&page=1&keyword=rookie+red+sox&view=lightbox\">Norman Rockwell Museum website\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s some background on how the painting came about, from Christie’s:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“Rockwell conceived this cover at least 9 months in advance of its publication date on March 2\u003csup>nd\u003c/sup>, 1957, just in time for the start of spring training for the Red Sox. Over the summer of 1956, he convinced team management to send four players from the starting lineup up to Rockwell’s hometown, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, deep in Red Sox country. Pitcher Frank Sullivan, right fielder Jackie Jensen, catcher Sammy White all posed for the painting. Williams was either unable or unwilling to make the trip and Rockwell captured his likeness from his trading card, and other photographs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts had predicted \u003cem>The Rookie\u003c/em> would sell for $20 million to $30 million. The record price for a Rockwell painting was set back in December, when “\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/04/248790682/norman-rockwells-saying-grace-sells-for-46-million-at-auction\">Saying Grace\u003c/a>,” a work depicting a scene in a restaurant, was auctioned for $46 million. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Norman+Rockwell+Painting+%27The+Rookie%27+Sells+For+%2422.5+Million&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Norman Rockwell’s \u003cem>The Rookie\u003c/em> has sold for $22.5 million at auction Thursday. The 1957 painting of baseball players in a locker room was sold by Christie’s auction house — heady heights for a work that first appeared on a magazine that sold for 15 cents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Update at 12:50 p.m. The Final Price\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the “hammer price” of the Rockwell painting was $20 million, Christie’s says the painting’s final price is $22,565,000, reflecting a buyer’s premium. We’ve updated this post to reflect the auction house’s final calculation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Our original post continues:\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136544\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 911px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb.jpg\" alt=\"Norman Rockwell's The Rookie, seen here on display in 2005, sold at auction for $22.5 million Thursday.\" width=\"911\" height=\"921\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10136544\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb.jpg 911w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-400x404.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-296x300.jpg 296w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-32x32.jpg 32w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-64x64.jpg 64w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-96x96.jpg 96w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-128x128.jpg 128w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/rookie_frame_custom-d0c2abe05140bae81bdb5d31bd104f79da3061bb-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 911px) 100vw, 911px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Norman Rockwell’s \u003cem>The Rookie,\u003c/em> seen here on display in 2005, sold at auction for $22.5 million Thursday. \u003ccite>(Chitose Suzuki/AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An image of the painting — its full title is \u003cem>The Rookie (Red Sox Locker Room)\u003c/em> —\u003cem> \u003c/em>originally appeared on the cover of \u003cem>The Saturday Evening Post\u003c/em>. The last time it was sold was in 1986, for $600,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Rookie\u003c/em> features real big-league ballplayers and a lanky high school student, Sherman “Scottie” Safford, who’s now 75.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Rockwell paid me $60 for each posing session,” Safford, who now lives in Rochester, N.Y., tells \u003ca href=\"http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_25807327/norman-rockwell-rsquo-s-lsquo-rookie-rsquo-reflects\">The Berkshire Eagle\u003c/a>. “I wish I had kept those checks; they might be worth more than that now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this month, Safford and former Boston Red Sox pitcher Frank Sullivan, the only two men who posed for the painting who are alive today, visited Boston’s Fenway Park to see the framed work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the \u003cem>Eagle\u003c/em> reports, it was the first time the pair had ever met. Safford and the Red Sox players were photographed separately to give Rockwell images to work from as he created the locker-room scene. (You can check out the reference photos used for the painting at the \u003ca href=\"http://collection.nrm.org/search.do?db=object&page=1&keyword=rookie+red+sox&view=lightbox\">Norman Rockwell Museum website\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s some background on how the painting came about, from Christie’s:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“Rockwell conceived this cover at least 9 months in advance of its publication date on March 2\u003csup>nd\u003c/sup>, 1957, just in time for the start of spring training for the Red Sox. Over the summer of 1956, he convinced team management to send four players from the starting lineup up to Rockwell’s hometown, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, deep in Red Sox country. Pitcher Frank Sullivan, right fielder Jackie Jensen, catcher Sammy White all posed for the painting. Williams was either unable or unwilling to make the trip and Rockwell captured his likeness from his trading card, and other photographs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Experts had predicted \u003cem>The Rookie\u003c/em> would sell for $20 million to $30 million. The record price for a Rockwell painting was set back in December, when “\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/04/248790682/norman-rockwells-saying-grace-sells-for-46-million-at-auction\">Saying Grace\u003c/a>,” a work depicting a scene in a restaurant, was auctioned for $46 million. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Norman+Rockwell+Painting+%27The+Rookie%27+Sells+For+%2422.5+Million&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Jack White's 'Lazaretto': the All Songs Interview",
"headTitle": "Jack White’s ‘Lazaretto’: the All Songs Interview | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There’s a stunning new album from \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/17089122/jack-white\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jack White \u003c/a>on the way. \u003cem>Lazaretto\u003c/em>, out June 10, is his second “solo” record, though the talented musicians who made up the male and female backing bands for \u003cem>Blunderbuss\u003c/em>, his first album under his own name, have returned. This time around, the men and women are often part of the same band.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jack White has been a passionate and gritty guitar player since he was a teenager, and with \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15189638/the-white-stripes\">The White Stripes\u003c/a> he excelled at making music that was bold and brash. But in his many projects, both as a musician and as the mind behind the Nashville label Third Man Records, he’s demonstrated a love for a range of American styles, and found ways to bring music from the hills and from the distant past into the here and now. On \u003cem>Lazaretto\u003c/em>, he puts those influences on full view: old-time fiddle, honky-tonk piano, wailing electronics and his own shimmering guitar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I spoke with Jack White last week, I was in Philadelphia and he was in Nashville, in rehearsals with his band to \u003ca href=\"http://jackwhiteiii.com/tour-dates/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tour the new record this summer\u003c/a>. We talked about the composition process behind the new album — including how he crushed writer’s block with a little help from his 19-year-old self — as well as the nature of fate and coincidence, and why he rarely writes anything down. When he first sat down he told me his next stop was the studio, to record a B-side for an upcoming single.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You can \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=313991548&m=314279020&live=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hear or download the audio of this interview, with samples of new music\u003c/a>, at the “Listen” link on this page, or read an edited version below.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When you first go into the studio to record a song, do you go in with other folks? Do you go in alone?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My band’s in town. We’re rehearsing to go play shows. But today we’re taking a break and we’re just going to record things today. Sometimes you just have to get caught up. When you start playing together and rehearsing, you come up with ideas, and then at some point you have to take a day [and say], “Huh, I want to record a few things because I keep thinking of new ideas now that we’ve been playing music all day long every day.” You take a break and record. I think it’s good for me to capture some of that stuff before I forget about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yeah, I was going to say: Are you good at remembering? How do you remember?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Best thing for me to do is to play it on a different instrument. If I’m writing something on a guitar, and [I think], “Oh, I really like that,” I’ll go over and play it on the piano, and for some reason my brain will remember that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oh, that’s really interesting.\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>It’s sort of the equivalent of just writing it down, maybe — there’s some muscle memory or something connected.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve never been good at writing things down. I don’t know, I just always lose the paper or I don’t know what it is. I don’t keep a book with me. I don’t like to carry anything with me. I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t like to carry a wallet with me if I can help it. I just don’t like having things in my hands like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What about the idea of “rough recording” all that you do and then going back? Is that just too much weight, too much baggage?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, the problem with my personality is that I’m the kind of guy, like if I took a roll of film and it got developed and came back, I would take out the two photos that are good and I throw away all the rest. I don’t like bad photos being there when there’s one good one that’s so great. You know, you should take that one out and frame it, and throw the rest of them away so nobody else will find them. And of course, this is — don’t ever do that in front of a female. They’ll just come run, screaming, diving, “Why?!” Girls can’t stand that for some reason, I don’t know why. Guys are like, “Well, whatever, set them on fire. Who cares?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I can think of a couple of pack rat guys.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In particular if it’s photographs, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oh, I see. A different connection, yeah. It’s not just a matter of items.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoarding, yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I’ve been really enjoying the record. I can tell you had fun making it. I hear it in the voice, I can hear it in the playing; it feels nicely inspired. I’m gonna play the first thing I heard on it; here’s a little “High Ball Stepper.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Actually, I’m even going to stop it right away — because you must tell me what’s going on, like the first 12 seconds of this song.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRbnAxrS3EM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We had a day off in touring, and I wanted to get some stuff on tape. This was an idea I had had before we started playing in the studio — I gave this steel guitar player, Maggie Björklund, a “backwards pedal” that takes whatever you put into it and plays it backwards. I thought, “Well, what happens if you play steel guitar into a backwards pedal like that?” She was messing around with it, and by the time she had done that, Lillie Mae was tuning up …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lillie Mae [Rische], the fiddler.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, she played the fiddle, and she made some sound effect while she was tuning up, and it sounded something like \u003cem>[makes screeching sound]. \u003c/em>That thing you’re hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oh!\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was playing a guitar, and I kept thinking of that little phrase. So I asked her and Ruby [Amanfu], the vocalist, to make that sound effect together while we were playing this song, and so it became something very grandiose, very fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is an instrumental track. Did you imagine ever putting words to it?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, I thought — because [of] this effect, maybe people don’t even know what’s making that sound — that will be our vocals for the song and we don’t need to write any. And then I thought later on, “Maybe it’s not powerful enough.” And I started to think of different ideas for vocals. But then every time I’d play it for someone, I’d say, “Here’s this song, I’m going to put some vocals on it, I think.” And they would say, “Oh my God, that’s my favorite thing of the things you played me.” They already liked it. And I said, “Well, if you like it already, I’m not going to try to fix it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You’ve always been such a lover of words, and there are really good lyrics on this record. I remember once, somebody telling me a story — maybe it was you, I can’t remember — you used to work as an upholsterer, listening to NPR, and would write notes and stuff them in the couches and chairs.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. That’s right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But I’m also told on this record that you found a series of old writings of your own. Tell me about that.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new problem with these songs is that I recorded the music and I didn’t write vocal parts or lyrics for some of them for maybe seven or eight months, so I was in a real bind. I’d become disconnected with the music. [It was hard] to start thinking about what stories make sense and what characters can be involved in this; I was so far away from them. I had never been in this position before, because I had never worked on an album this long before. So I was getting very frustrated with the idea of, “Oh my God, I can’t imagine sitting down and trying to sing to this song, because now it’s someone else’s song. I have to pretend it’s someone else’s, and I have to cover this song, and collaborate with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had found these scribble writings or whatever, from when I was 19. I had these one-act plays and whatever they were, poems. They weren’t very good. They were just sort of by a person without any experience in life, but with a lot of fire inside of me — I couldn’t wait to break out of the house and get something done, go somewhere, see something. And I’d thought, like the photographs I told you about before, I think I’m just going to throw away all of these and keep one or two of them that were interesting. And then I thought, before I do that, why don’t I pull some of these characters out, some of these names, some of these sentences, and work with them? And I did. And it became a way to collaborate with my younger self. That’s how I’ll do these vocals on these songs: I’m going to collaborate with a 19-year-old version of me, which is half my age. I have experience now. What would I be telling myself how to do? If I could go back and say, “No, \u003cem>this \u003c/em>is how you write a song. This is how you work with metaphors. Try it like this.” So that became the way I got out of that bind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First of all, how the hell do you throw these away? (\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>) I know it’s like the photographs, but I’m gonna be the one there screaming, “How do you take writings that you do when you’re a kid and just toss them?” I don’t even comprehend it.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, it’s better to not see them. I mean, it’s just — I’ve always been that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But what if you did that when you were 20? Then you wouldn’t have had these.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To throw them \u003cem>all\u003c/em> away would be a bad idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Okay.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to take what makes the most sense — what’s the beautiful aspect of it? Take that out, and the rest can, you know, be set on fire, because they’ll ruin the one good thing. That’s why I think bad photographs in an envelope ruin the one beautiful photograph. Because when you see the beautiful one, and people want to keep digging through the other photos, and say, “Oh, maybe there’s one that’s better.” No, there’s not one that’s better, there’s just this one, and you know how it goes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for example, right now: If you found a bag of Jimi Hendrix photos, you’re gonna print every single one of them, because it’s a bag of photos of Jimi Hendrix. When are you going to see this again? You’re not going to take out the one good one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>That’s right, I’m not burning them.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’re going to print all of them, and probably have an art show and sell each one of them, you know? (\u003cem>Laughs\u003c/em>) But I’m sure he would like, “Oh, my God, there’s \u003cem>one \u003c/em>good one in there and that’s it.” So that’s the funny thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It’s a really hard discipline. Back to the idea of reconnecting with yourself when you were 19. What did you see in your writings that you did like? What was it about yourself then that you thought something was there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lust for life, but with no experience. It’s a different place to be in. Now, I start to write, and I think about these characters and where they could go. I think, “Oh, this person would do that.” But the harsh reality is, when that person gets to the end of that tunnel, there’s nothing there. Whereas when I was writing when I was 19, I thought, “Oh, no, when you get to the end of that tunnel, something beautiful and romantic might happen there, and it goes to another level.” And now, it’s hard. I have to talk myself out of the harsh reality that, over the years, your romance becomes tempered by realism. And you have to figure out a balance of keeping outlook on life positive, but knowing in the back of your head that there could be a bad ending to this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wow. It reminds me of this Richard Thompson song, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRwc_1sILkQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The End Of The Rainbow\u003c/a>.” He sings this song to his newborn, “There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow / There’s nothing to grow up for anymore.” And it’s like, “Oh my God, how can you sing that song to a child?”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Anyway, on another note, let me play “Lazaretto.” [\u003cem>Track begins with lyrics in English and Spanish.\u003c/em>] I fail at Spanish all the time, but it’s something about working and wood. What’s the Spanish there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0LtfUvJs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a rhyme about the braggadocio of some hip-hop lyrics — the bragging about oneself in hip-hop music. The character who’s singing this song is bragging about himself, but he’s actually bragging about real things he’s actually accomplished and real things that he actually does, not imaginary things or things he would like to do. Because sometimes you see people who, they sing from the heart, but they haven’t done anything, you know? And their lives are not very interesting or whatever. So this character in this song actually has worked very hard in his life and he’s done some interesting things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can’t sing a lyric like “I work hard.” You can’t get away with saying it. So I had to change it to Spanish: “\u003cem>Yo trabajo duro\u003c/em>.” “I work hard, like in wood and plaster.” There’s sort of a triple meaning, that wood and plaster are hard surfaces — as in a painter who “works in oils.” It’s sort of bad Spanish, because you wouldn’t say \u003cem>como\u003c/em> [to mean] “as in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This song takes a dark turn, talking about being quarantined on the Isle of Man — “trying to escape any way that I can,” I think is the rhyme. I wanted to talk about what a Lazaretto is. “They threw me down into a Lazaretto … bored rotten.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the only thing I that I really put in the album of my own personality. There’s a song called “That Black Bat Licorice,” where I talk about being confined, a prisoner in a hospital. That really is me, personally. My sort of fantasy that I have is, I wish that some other forces, some powers that be, would push me into this scenario for a month and lock me somewhere, instead of me doing it to myself all the time. I’m always imposing restrictions on myself. And so I guess my fantasy is, it would be so nice to be in a quarantine hospital, but not to die from it — just to know that I had to stay here for two months and I can’t do anything else. That’s why I named the album \u003cem>Lazaretto\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So a lazaretto is a place where they took people who, for some reason, a disease or …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a word for \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Lazaretto\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a quarantine hospital\u003c/a>, or a quarantine island, or something like that. It’s a beautiful-sounding word, too, “lazaretto” — coming from Lazarus, I guess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What was funny is, I had that lyric, “Making models of people I used to know / Out of coffee and cotton.” And to me, that was revolving around maybe two or three meanings. I was drinking so much coffee, and I’m resting on these cotton sheets and pillows, and I’m smothering my face in cotton all day long. But at the same time, I’m also taking the coffee grounds and creating little sculptures out of them. These are the few materials that I have in the room together that, if you just give me a couple of slivers of wood and some metal shavings, I will be forced to create something in this room, under this condition. But someone sent me this beautiful thing that someone had found in an interview, that one of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">West Memphis Three\u003c/a> — those people that got put into jail unjustly — in jail, he was making drawings with Q-tips and coffee grounds. I couldn’t believe it, man! You’d say, “Oh that’s where you got that idea.” Well, I’m not gonna argue with you now. I’d never heard of that, but that’s an unbelievable coincidence. I couldn’t believe that. That’s one of the biggest coincidences I’ve ever had in my life. I really like that lyric now, even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you make of coincidences? I deal with this a lot — wondering about fate, and where is fate, is there fate, do things happen for a reason, or do you just put two things together and make a purpose from them?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the most beautiful and scientifically the most sad thing about that topic, is that, when I was younger, I had heard about synchronicity, when things are happening at the same time: You went to someone’s house and they were watching the same TV show you were just talking about in the car. I had this unbelievable thing happen; this will be my maybe second favorite coincidence. I was in line at a drive-through coffee place in Detroit. This was, like, 10 years ago. And I was telling somebody in line while I was paying for coffee, “You know that in World War II, they couldn’t make pennies out of copper? They had to make them out of steel or aluminum.” I think they’re called steel pennies, but I don’t think they’re actually steel — they’re made out of zinc or aluminum or something like that. But they weren’t copper. And someone was telling me, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Twenty-four hours later in that exact same line again, my morning ritual, getting coffee in this drive-through with the same person sitting next to me, and I’m given change. I’m given a steel penny from 1942. I was like, “C’mon, there’s just no way.” I haven’t been given one of these as change in 10 years or something. So, unbelievable coincidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I read this article a couple years ago about how, scientifically, our brain, we have to create patterns. We look for patterns of similarity all the time; we’re trying to find things that are similar so that our brain can make sense of them. And that, shockingly, is the seed of a lot of romantic ideas for a lot of people on a day-to-day basis, even for a lot of artists, you know? That it was meant to be. Actually, it’s our brain focusing on patterns, trying to discover patterns all the time. It’s a little bit sad to say that, so I hate even saying that out loud because it kind of kills a lot of romance about things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It does, but when those moments happen, it’s really difficult to let go of the romance of it.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, I think we shouldn’t. We got nothing else to talk about. (\u003cem>Laughs\u003c/em>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So you’d rather someone take you for a month and put you on that island. What would be the difference of you doing that, and someone making you do that?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, you can’t really do it, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>That’s it.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whenever I had a lot of problems going on, and they’re piling up on each other, I used to think, or say out loud to someone, “Well, God, I wish at least my leg was broken. At least then I’d know what the problem was.” You could say, “Okay, well, my leg’s broken, I can’t walk. I have to wait six weeks now.” Done. But all the other kinds of problems in life, they can be vague, and they’re unsolvable, and you can’t get your head around them. And they’re imposed by these ridiculous things. Not problems you want to have. They’re not good problems. So that’s why I guess that fantasy comes from me wanting to be in the Marine Corps or in prison or something. Something where someone else told me that I have to be in this spot and can’t leave. That would be a nice thing for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You do get an astonishing amount of stuff done.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s self-imposed though. It’s self-imposed, that’s the difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There are many beautiful things that happen in the song “Temporary Ground,” and I want to know who helped with that — both the fiddle and then that harmony.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s Lillie Mae Rische, who just exemplifies freedom to me in every way possible. And the first lyric is, “On a floating lily island” — again, sort of an accidental coincidence. I had read in \u003cem>National Geographic\u003c/em> about these giant Queen Victoria lily pads that could hold up to a hundred pounds, so a person could actually float on a lily pad, which seems like an \u003cem>Alice in Wonderland\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Through the Looking Glass \u003c/em>kind of idea. So coincidentally, two ideas about freedom, and the word “lily” together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And she’s also the singer?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, she sings on there too. She didn’t at first, but I really wanted to get her voice on there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When you work on a song like this, would you sit with Lillie Mae in a room and make it? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I did this one with the whole band, and then we asked her if she would sing on it later on, after I had put vocals down. She just really, for some reason, exemplifies freedom in all ways to me. She grew up in a band. She was on stage when she was three years old and traveling with her family band, playing music on different stages and fairs and folk festivals and things like that, and she still sort of lives that way. It just seems like she breathes music all day long, and that seems like total freedom to me. She was very inspiring to me for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there something on this record that you’d like me to play?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know. It’s so funny, [what] you’re playing to me, I’m only hearing the left channel where I’m at. It’s great to listen to these songs again with just one side of it, because I’m hearing things I haven’t heard in a long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I can’t tell why that would be. Could we just one quick second ask the engineer …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>No, it’s okay! Let’s keep it. “Want and Able” is interesting, since we’ve got this left channel thing going. I wrote this with these two characters in mind, almost like they would be names, like “Pancho and Lefty”: “Juan” and “Abel,” but “Want and Able.” But by the time it had gotten finished, it felt like I almost should go approach like a gay rights organization or something like that. It feels like something that could be used as a theme for an idea about fighting against something else. And these two characters are talking to each other, and they aren’t able to do what they naturally already want to do, or need to do. Outside forces are not allowing it. And these two characters are telling each other how they either have the chance to fight it or that they’re unable to fight. I think the left channel has a low vocal and piano, and the right channel is a high vocal and guitar. And they’re completely separate from each other, so that if you just turn the knob either direction, you either hear one or the other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[\u003cem>Sound of crows plays at start of song\u003c/em>] There’s a needle drop, but I didn’t quite hear it there. Let me just start it again, ’cause I didn’t have the volume up. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those crows are coming from these old hunting records that I found. I found a portable record player from the ’50s that you’d take out when you go hunting, and these are records that you’d play to get crows to come around. There was a death cry of a crow, and a crow and a raven [or] a crow and something else fighting each other. So those are two different old records played at the wrong speed — they’re played very slowed down, like 33 [RPM] when they’re supposed to be 45’s or something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> Do you get to sit around, by yourself, and just play songs? To either a room of no one, or to kids?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I play songs to my kids quite often, to see what they react to, you know? I like to play music [I] recorded in the car to them, too, because they don’t lie. They tell you immediately if something is good or not. And that’s a great place to be. If they react to something, that really tells me I’m on the right path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Can you tell what it is that engages them? They’re how old now?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re 8 and 6 now. No, there’s nothing in particular. I never know what they’re gonna like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you remember the last thing you played for them that they did like?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They don’t know the names of things. They just tell me, “Oh, I like the song that says this.” Or, “The song that has the piano on it at the beginning.” That’s what they say, and it’s pretty funny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I wonder about people who, they started playing music because they \u003cem>couldn’t not\u003c/em> play music. That had to be you, right? You had to make music.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, but I also thought I’d never be able to do it. No one ever said, “You know, if you keep doing this, you’ll be able to make records, and you’ll be able to go on tour.” That was never told to me when I was a teenager. I just always assumed there was no chance in hell of me ever doing anything with it. I always played music because I loved it. And I would play till 4 in the morning. I just loved it to death. My whole bedroom had nothing to do with anything but music, and a little bit of upholstery. That’s about it. [laughter] That was it. I was shocked when we finally did make a record. I think the first White Stripes 45 was the first record I made, and I think I held onto that record for a week. Matter of fact, I put it in the bathroom, so that every time I was in there, I could pick it up and look at it. I was just so shocked. It wasn’t glory. It was just shock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So you would do that until 4 in the morning. Do you find yourself doing that now, where it’s not project-based, just sitting and playing?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have to sort of wake yourself up. Like, if I see a guitar, I go to pick it up, and sometimes now, I’m 38, and I’m like, “Damn, the \u003cem>guitar\u003c/em> again?” Somebody hand me an accordion or something.” So sometimes you get into that kind of mode. And a lot of times over the years, I’ve thought, “Okay, well, I’ll play a guitar, ’cause I guess that’s what people want me to do. I’d rather be playing xylophone or something on this song.” But you do what you have to do, you make concessions, and you pick your battles about how it’s going to be presented. Obviously, if I went out and read these lyrics out loud, holding a piece of paper on a microphone with no music, that’s not going to have the kind of appeal it would have if I had this kind of drum beat, and this kind of melody to back it up. I need those tricks to get you to pay attention to it. I’m fine with doing it; I’ll do whatever tricks are necessary in my job, to share something with somebody else. It’s just sort of picking those battles of, which ones do you want to use that will be the most effective, and that I’ll get something out of too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I think it’s a good thing to think about for anybody who’s new to playing music, that taking chances and not getting into one set way of doing things is always good. But I’ll say to you, and you must know this, that there’s so many things happening on this record. Sometimes it sounds like I’m listening to a jazz record, and sometimes it sounds like there’s a little honky-tonk to it. And I like the way that they all fall into place.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s great to hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You dedicate this record to a couple of people. One of them is Florence Green; another is “Amazing Grace” Hopper.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, Florence Green, she was the last surviving participant of World War I. I wrote her name down to think about her as a possible character for one of the songs on the record. I can’t remember if I actually applied that to somebody or not; it was so fast. I write down very little, as I was saying before — but sometimes I’ll say, “Oh, okay, I can’t play that on the piano and remember that name. I’ve got to actually write down that person’s name.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyhow, these were people that came up when I was thinking about characters. And they had incredible lives, but incredible lives in strange ways. One of them’s sort of an anarchist, or fighter for freedom. Grace Hopper was an amazing scientist and mathematician for the Navy. I was dedicating the record, and I thought, “These names are still here. I’m going to dedicate it to them.” The album starts off with “Three Women,” and I guess it ends with three women. It just made sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Beautiful. Thanks for your time.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s great to talk about all these [characters], and great to hear just the left channel, so I can go back and think about things in rehearsal in a different way now. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Jack+White%27s+%27Lazaretto%27%3A+The+All+Songs+Interview&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s a stunning new album from \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/17089122/jack-white\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jack White \u003c/a>on the way. \u003cem>Lazaretto\u003c/em>, out June 10, is his second “solo” record, though the talented musicians who made up the male and female backing bands for \u003cem>Blunderbuss\u003c/em>, his first album under his own name, have returned. This time around, the men and women are often part of the same band.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jack White has been a passionate and gritty guitar player since he was a teenager, and with \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/artists/15189638/the-white-stripes\">The White Stripes\u003c/a> he excelled at making music that was bold and brash. But in his many projects, both as a musician and as the mind behind the Nashville label Third Man Records, he’s demonstrated a love for a range of American styles, and found ways to bring music from the hills and from the distant past into the here and now. On \u003cem>Lazaretto\u003c/em>, he puts those influences on full view: old-time fiddle, honky-tonk piano, wailing electronics and his own shimmering guitar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I spoke with Jack White last week, I was in Philadelphia and he was in Nashville, in rehearsals with his band to \u003ca href=\"http://jackwhiteiii.com/tour-dates/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">tour the new record this summer\u003c/a>. We talked about the composition process behind the new album — including how he crushed writer’s block with a little help from his 19-year-old self — as well as the nature of fate and coincidence, and why he rarely writes anything down. When he first sat down he told me his next stop was the studio, to record a B-side for an upcoming single.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You can \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=313991548&m=314279020&live=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hear or download the audio of this interview, with samples of new music\u003c/a>, at the “Listen” link on this page, or read an edited version below.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When you first go into the studio to record a song, do you go in with other folks? Do you go in alone?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My band’s in town. We’re rehearsing to go play shows. But today we’re taking a break and we’re just going to record things today. Sometimes you just have to get caught up. When you start playing together and rehearsing, you come up with ideas, and then at some point you have to take a day [and say], “Huh, I want to record a few things because I keep thinking of new ideas now that we’ve been playing music all day long every day.” You take a break and record. I think it’s good for me to capture some of that stuff before I forget about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Yeah, I was going to say: Are you good at remembering? How do you remember?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Best thing for me to do is to play it on a different instrument. If I’m writing something on a guitar, and [I think], “Oh, I really like that,” I’ll go over and play it on the piano, and for some reason my brain will remember that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oh, that’s really interesting.\u003c/strong> \u003cstrong>It’s sort of the equivalent of just writing it down, maybe — there’s some muscle memory or something connected.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve never been good at writing things down. I don’t know, I just always lose the paper or I don’t know what it is. I don’t keep a book with me. I don’t like to carry anything with me. I don’t have a cell phone. I don’t like to carry a wallet with me if I can help it. I just don’t like having things in my hands like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What about the idea of “rough recording” all that you do and then going back? Is that just too much weight, too much baggage?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, the problem with my personality is that I’m the kind of guy, like if I took a roll of film and it got developed and came back, I would take out the two photos that are good and I throw away all the rest. I don’t like bad photos being there when there’s one good one that’s so great. You know, you should take that one out and frame it, and throw the rest of them away so nobody else will find them. And of course, this is — don’t ever do that in front of a female. They’ll just come run, screaming, diving, “Why?!” Girls can’t stand that for some reason, I don’t know why. Guys are like, “Well, whatever, set them on fire. Who cares?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I can think of a couple of pack rat guys.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In particular if it’s photographs, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oh, I see. A different connection, yeah. It’s not just a matter of items.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoarding, yeah.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I’ve been really enjoying the record. I can tell you had fun making it. I hear it in the voice, I can hear it in the playing; it feels nicely inspired. I’m gonna play the first thing I heard on it; here’s a little “High Ball Stepper.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Actually, I’m even going to stop it right away — because you must tell me what’s going on, like the first 12 seconds of this song.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/sRbnAxrS3EM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/sRbnAxrS3EM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>We had a day off in touring, and I wanted to get some stuff on tape. This was an idea I had had before we started playing in the studio — I gave this steel guitar player, Maggie Björklund, a “backwards pedal” that takes whatever you put into it and plays it backwards. I thought, “Well, what happens if you play steel guitar into a backwards pedal like that?” She was messing around with it, and by the time she had done that, Lillie Mae was tuning up …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lillie Mae [Rische], the fiddler.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, she played the fiddle, and she made some sound effect while she was tuning up, and it sounded something like \u003cem>[makes screeching sound]. \u003c/em>That thing you’re hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Oh!\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was playing a guitar, and I kept thinking of that little phrase. So I asked her and Ruby [Amanfu], the vocalist, to make that sound effect together while we were playing this song, and so it became something very grandiose, very fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This is an instrumental track. Did you imagine ever putting words to it?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, I thought — because [of] this effect, maybe people don’t even know what’s making that sound — that will be our vocals for the song and we don’t need to write any. And then I thought later on, “Maybe it’s not powerful enough.” And I started to think of different ideas for vocals. But then every time I’d play it for someone, I’d say, “Here’s this song, I’m going to put some vocals on it, I think.” And they would say, “Oh my God, that’s my favorite thing of the things you played me.” They already liked it. And I said, “Well, if you like it already, I’m not going to try to fix it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You’ve always been such a lover of words, and there are really good lyrics on this record. I remember once, somebody telling me a story — maybe it was you, I can’t remember — you used to work as an upholsterer, listening to NPR, and would write notes and stuff them in the couches and chairs.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. That’s right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But I’m also told on this record that you found a series of old writings of your own. Tell me about that.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new problem with these songs is that I recorded the music and I didn’t write vocal parts or lyrics for some of them for maybe seven or eight months, so I was in a real bind. I’d become disconnected with the music. [It was hard] to start thinking about what stories make sense and what characters can be involved in this; I was so far away from them. I had never been in this position before, because I had never worked on an album this long before. So I was getting very frustrated with the idea of, “Oh my God, I can’t imagine sitting down and trying to sing to this song, because now it’s someone else’s song. I have to pretend it’s someone else’s, and I have to cover this song, and collaborate with them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I had found these scribble writings or whatever, from when I was 19. I had these one-act plays and whatever they were, poems. They weren’t very good. They were just sort of by a person without any experience in life, but with a lot of fire inside of me — I couldn’t wait to break out of the house and get something done, go somewhere, see something. And I’d thought, like the photographs I told you about before, I think I’m just going to throw away all of these and keep one or two of them that were interesting. And then I thought, before I do that, why don’t I pull some of these characters out, some of these names, some of these sentences, and work with them? And I did. And it became a way to collaborate with my younger self. That’s how I’ll do these vocals on these songs: I’m going to collaborate with a 19-year-old version of me, which is half my age. I have experience now. What would I be telling myself how to do? If I could go back and say, “No, \u003cem>this \u003c/em>is how you write a song. This is how you work with metaphors. Try it like this.” So that became the way I got out of that bind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First of all, how the hell do you throw these away? (\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>) I know it’s like the photographs, but I’m gonna be the one there screaming, “How do you take writings that you do when you’re a kid and just toss them?” I don’t even comprehend it.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, it’s better to not see them. I mean, it’s just — I’ve always been that way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But what if you did that when you were 20? Then you wouldn’t have had these.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To throw them \u003cem>all\u003c/em> away would be a bad idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Okay.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But to take what makes the most sense — what’s the beautiful aspect of it? Take that out, and the rest can, you know, be set on fire, because they’ll ruin the one good thing. That’s why I think bad photographs in an envelope ruin the one beautiful photograph. Because when you see the beautiful one, and people want to keep digging through the other photos, and say, “Oh, maybe there’s one that’s better.” No, there’s not one that’s better, there’s just this one, and you know how it goes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Take, for example, right now: If you found a bag of Jimi Hendrix photos, you’re gonna print every single one of them, because it’s a bag of photos of Jimi Hendrix. When are you going to see this again? You’re not going to take out the one good one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>That’s right, I’m not burning them.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’re going to print all of them, and probably have an art show and sell each one of them, you know? (\u003cem>Laughs\u003c/em>) But I’m sure he would like, “Oh, my God, there’s \u003cem>one \u003c/em>good one in there and that’s it.” So that’s the funny thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It’s a really hard discipline. Back to the idea of reconnecting with yourself when you were 19. What did you see in your writings that you did like? What was it about yourself then that you thought something was there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lust for life, but with no experience. It’s a different place to be in. Now, I start to write, and I think about these characters and where they could go. I think, “Oh, this person would do that.” But the harsh reality is, when that person gets to the end of that tunnel, there’s nothing there. Whereas when I was writing when I was 19, I thought, “Oh, no, when you get to the end of that tunnel, something beautiful and romantic might happen there, and it goes to another level.” And now, it’s hard. I have to talk myself out of the harsh reality that, over the years, your romance becomes tempered by realism. And you have to figure out a balance of keeping outlook on life positive, but knowing in the back of your head that there could be a bad ending to this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Wow. It reminds me of this Richard Thompson song, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRwc_1sILkQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The End Of The Rainbow\u003c/a>.” He sings this song to his newborn, “There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow / There’s nothing to grow up for anymore.” And it’s like, “Oh my God, how can you sing that song to a child?”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Anyway, on another note, let me play “Lazaretto.” [\u003cem>Track begins with lyrics in English and Spanish.\u003c/em>] I fail at Spanish all the time, but it’s something about working and wood. What’s the Spanish there?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/cYF0LtfUvJs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/cYF0LtfUvJs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>This was a rhyme about the braggadocio of some hip-hop lyrics — the bragging about oneself in hip-hop music. The character who’s singing this song is bragging about himself, but he’s actually bragging about real things he’s actually accomplished and real things that he actually does, not imaginary things or things he would like to do. Because sometimes you see people who, they sing from the heart, but they haven’t done anything, you know? And their lives are not very interesting or whatever. So this character in this song actually has worked very hard in his life and he’s done some interesting things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can’t sing a lyric like “I work hard.” You can’t get away with saying it. So I had to change it to Spanish: “\u003cem>Yo trabajo duro\u003c/em>.” “I work hard, like in wood and plaster.” There’s sort of a triple meaning, that wood and plaster are hard surfaces — as in a painter who “works in oils.” It’s sort of bad Spanish, because you wouldn’t say \u003cem>como\u003c/em> [to mean] “as in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>This song takes a dark turn, talking about being quarantined on the Isle of Man — “trying to escape any way that I can,” I think is the rhyme. I wanted to talk about what a Lazaretto is. “They threw me down into a Lazaretto … bored rotten.”\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the only thing I that I really put in the album of my own personality. There’s a song called “That Black Bat Licorice,” where I talk about being confined, a prisoner in a hospital. That really is me, personally. My sort of fantasy that I have is, I wish that some other forces, some powers that be, would push me into this scenario for a month and lock me somewhere, instead of me doing it to myself all the time. I’m always imposing restrictions on myself. And so I guess my fantasy is, it would be so nice to be in a quarantine hospital, but not to die from it — just to know that I had to stay here for two months and I can’t do anything else. That’s why I named the album \u003cem>Lazaretto\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So a lazaretto is a place where they took people who, for some reason, a disease or …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a word for \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Lazaretto\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a quarantine hospital\u003c/a>, or a quarantine island, or something like that. It’s a beautiful-sounding word, too, “lazaretto” — coming from Lazarus, I guess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What was funny is, I had that lyric, “Making models of people I used to know / Out of coffee and cotton.” And to me, that was revolving around maybe two or three meanings. I was drinking so much coffee, and I’m resting on these cotton sheets and pillows, and I’m smothering my face in cotton all day long. But at the same time, I’m also taking the coffee grounds and creating little sculptures out of them. These are the few materials that I have in the room together that, if you just give me a couple of slivers of wood and some metal shavings, I will be forced to create something in this room, under this condition. But someone sent me this beautiful thing that someone had found in an interview, that one of the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">West Memphis Three\u003c/a> — those people that got put into jail unjustly — in jail, he was making drawings with Q-tips and coffee grounds. I couldn’t believe it, man! You’d say, “Oh that’s where you got that idea.” Well, I’m not gonna argue with you now. I’d never heard of that, but that’s an unbelievable coincidence. I couldn’t believe that. That’s one of the biggest coincidences I’ve ever had in my life. I really like that lyric now, even more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you make of coincidences? I deal with this a lot — wondering about fate, and where is fate, is there fate, do things happen for a reason, or do you just put two things together and make a purpose from them?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the most beautiful and scientifically the most sad thing about that topic, is that, when I was younger, I had heard about synchronicity, when things are happening at the same time: You went to someone’s house and they were watching the same TV show you were just talking about in the car. I had this unbelievable thing happen; this will be my maybe second favorite coincidence. I was in line at a drive-through coffee place in Detroit. This was, like, 10 years ago. And I was telling somebody in line while I was paying for coffee, “You know that in World War II, they couldn’t make pennies out of copper? They had to make them out of steel or aluminum.” I think they’re called steel pennies, but I don’t think they’re actually steel — they’re made out of zinc or aluminum or something like that. But they weren’t copper. And someone was telling me, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Twenty-four hours later in that exact same line again, my morning ritual, getting coffee in this drive-through with the same person sitting next to me, and I’m given change. I’m given a steel penny from 1942. I was like, “C’mon, there’s just no way.” I haven’t been given one of these as change in 10 years or something. So, unbelievable coincidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I read this article a couple years ago about how, scientifically, our brain, we have to create patterns. We look for patterns of similarity all the time; we’re trying to find things that are similar so that our brain can make sense of them. And that, shockingly, is the seed of a lot of romantic ideas for a lot of people on a day-to-day basis, even for a lot of artists, you know? That it was meant to be. Actually, it’s our brain focusing on patterns, trying to discover patterns all the time. It’s a little bit sad to say that, so I hate even saying that out loud because it kind of kills a lot of romance about things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It does, but when those moments happen, it’s really difficult to let go of the romance of it.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, I think we shouldn’t. We got nothing else to talk about. (\u003cem>Laughs\u003c/em>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So you’d rather someone take you for a month and put you on that island. What would be the difference of you doing that, and someone making you do that?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, you can’t really do it, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>That’s it.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whenever I had a lot of problems going on, and they’re piling up on each other, I used to think, or say out loud to someone, “Well, God, I wish at least my leg was broken. At least then I’d know what the problem was.” You could say, “Okay, well, my leg’s broken, I can’t walk. I have to wait six weeks now.” Done. But all the other kinds of problems in life, they can be vague, and they’re unsolvable, and you can’t get your head around them. And they’re imposed by these ridiculous things. Not problems you want to have. They’re not good problems. So that’s why I guess that fantasy comes from me wanting to be in the Marine Corps or in prison or something. Something where someone else told me that I have to be in this spot and can’t leave. That would be a nice thing for me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You do get an astonishing amount of stuff done.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s self-imposed though. It’s self-imposed, that’s the difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There are many beautiful things that happen in the song “Temporary Ground,” and I want to know who helped with that — both the fiddle and then that harmony.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s Lillie Mae Rische, who just exemplifies freedom to me in every way possible. And the first lyric is, “On a floating lily island” — again, sort of an accidental coincidence. I had read in \u003cem>National Geographic\u003c/em> about these giant Queen Victoria lily pads that could hold up to a hundred pounds, so a person could actually float on a lily pad, which seems like an \u003cem>Alice in Wonderland\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Through the Looking Glass \u003c/em>kind of idea. So coincidentally, two ideas about freedom, and the word “lily” together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>And she’s also the singer?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, she sings on there too. She didn’t at first, but I really wanted to get her voice on there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When you work on a song like this, would you sit with Lillie Mae in a room and make it? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I did this one with the whole band, and then we asked her if she would sing on it later on, after I had put vocals down. She just really, for some reason, exemplifies freedom in all ways to me. She grew up in a band. She was on stage when she was three years old and traveling with her family band, playing music on different stages and fairs and folk festivals and things like that, and she still sort of lives that way. It just seems like she breathes music all day long, and that seems like total freedom to me. She was very inspiring to me for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there something on this record that you’d like me to play?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know. It’s so funny, [what] you’re playing to me, I’m only hearing the left channel where I’m at. It’s great to listen to these songs again with just one side of it, because I’m hearing things I haven’t heard in a long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I can’t tell why that would be. Could we just one quick second ask the engineer …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>No, it’s okay! Let’s keep it. “Want and Able” is interesting, since we’ve got this left channel thing going. I wrote this with these two characters in mind, almost like they would be names, like “Pancho and Lefty”: “Juan” and “Abel,” but “Want and Able.” But by the time it had gotten finished, it felt like I almost should go approach like a gay rights organization or something like that. It feels like something that could be used as a theme for an idea about fighting against something else. And these two characters are talking to each other, and they aren’t able to do what they naturally already want to do, or need to do. Outside forces are not allowing it. And these two characters are telling each other how they either have the chance to fight it or that they’re unable to fight. I think the left channel has a low vocal and piano, and the right channel is a high vocal and guitar. And they’re completely separate from each other, so that if you just turn the knob either direction, you either hear one or the other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[\u003cem>Sound of crows plays at start of song\u003c/em>] There’s a needle drop, but I didn’t quite hear it there. Let me just start it again, ’cause I didn’t have the volume up. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those crows are coming from these old hunting records that I found. I found a portable record player from the ’50s that you’d take out when you go hunting, and these are records that you’d play to get crows to come around. There was a death cry of a crow, and a crow and a raven [or] a crow and something else fighting each other. So those are two different old records played at the wrong speed — they’re played very slowed down, like 33 [RPM] when they’re supposed to be 45’s or something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003cstrong> Do you get to sit around, by yourself, and just play songs? To either a room of no one, or to kids?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I play songs to my kids quite often, to see what they react to, you know? I like to play music [I] recorded in the car to them, too, because they don’t lie. They tell you immediately if something is good or not. And that’s a great place to be. If they react to something, that really tells me I’m on the right path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Can you tell what it is that engages them? They’re how old now?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re 8 and 6 now. No, there’s nothing in particular. I never know what they’re gonna like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you remember the last thing you played for them that they did like?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They don’t know the names of things. They just tell me, “Oh, I like the song that says this.” Or, “The song that has the piano on it at the beginning.” That’s what they say, and it’s pretty funny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I wonder about people who, they started playing music because they \u003cem>couldn’t not\u003c/em> play music. That had to be you, right? You had to make music.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, but I also thought I’d never be able to do it. No one ever said, “You know, if you keep doing this, you’ll be able to make records, and you’ll be able to go on tour.” That was never told to me when I was a teenager. I just always assumed there was no chance in hell of me ever doing anything with it. I always played music because I loved it. And I would play till 4 in the morning. I just loved it to death. My whole bedroom had nothing to do with anything but music, and a little bit of upholstery. That’s about it. [laughter] That was it. I was shocked when we finally did make a record. I think the first White Stripes 45 was the first record I made, and I think I held onto that record for a week. Matter of fact, I put it in the bathroom, so that every time I was in there, I could pick it up and look at it. I was just so shocked. It wasn’t glory. It was just shock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So you would do that until 4 in the morning. Do you find yourself doing that now, where it’s not project-based, just sitting and playing?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You have to sort of wake yourself up. Like, if I see a guitar, I go to pick it up, and sometimes now, I’m 38, and I’m like, “Damn, the \u003cem>guitar\u003c/em> again?” Somebody hand me an accordion or something.” So sometimes you get into that kind of mode. And a lot of times over the years, I’ve thought, “Okay, well, I’ll play a guitar, ’cause I guess that’s what people want me to do. I’d rather be playing xylophone or something on this song.” But you do what you have to do, you make concessions, and you pick your battles about how it’s going to be presented. Obviously, if I went out and read these lyrics out loud, holding a piece of paper on a microphone with no music, that’s not going to have the kind of appeal it would have if I had this kind of drum beat, and this kind of melody to back it up. I need those tricks to get you to pay attention to it. I’m fine with doing it; I’ll do whatever tricks are necessary in my job, to share something with somebody else. It’s just sort of picking those battles of, which ones do you want to use that will be the most effective, and that I’ll get something out of too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I think it’s a good thing to think about for anybody who’s new to playing music, that taking chances and not getting into one set way of doing things is always good. But I’ll say to you, and you must know this, that there’s so many things happening on this record. Sometimes it sounds like I’m listening to a jazz record, and sometimes it sounds like there’s a little honky-tonk to it. And I like the way that they all fall into place.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s great to hear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You dedicate this record to a couple of people. One of them is Florence Green; another is “Amazing Grace” Hopper.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah, Florence Green, she was the last surviving participant of World War I. I wrote her name down to think about her as a possible character for one of the songs on the record. I can’t remember if I actually applied that to somebody or not; it was so fast. I write down very little, as I was saying before — but sometimes I’ll say, “Oh, okay, I can’t play that on the piano and remember that name. I’ve got to actually write down that person’s name.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyhow, these were people that came up when I was thinking about characters. And they had incredible lives, but incredible lives in strange ways. One of them’s sort of an anarchist, or fighter for freedom. Grace Hopper was an amazing scientist and mathematician for the Navy. I was dedicating the record, and I thought, “These names are still here. I’m going to dedicate it to them.” The album starts off with “Three Women,” and I guess it ends with three women. It just made sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Beautiful. Thanks for your time.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s great to talk about all these [characters], and great to hear just the left channel, so I can go back and think about things in rehearsal in a different way now. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Jack+White%27s+%27Lazaretto%27%3A+The+All+Songs+Interview&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Led Zeppelin Sued over 'Stairway to Heaven' Guitar Line",
"headTitle": "Led Zeppelin Sued over ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Guitar Line | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Did a band from Los Angeles get ripped off by Led Zeppelin? That’s the claim in a new lawsuit by representatives of the band Spirit, which played some dates with the British rock legends in their early days in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story is a familiar one: A band plays a bit of music that sounds a lot like another song; a debate ensues. But in this case, the band is Led Zeppelin, and the song is “Stairway to Heaven,” a megahit so popular it’s been ubiquitous in bars and on the radio for decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The similarity of the meditative guitar-picking in both 1971’s “Stairway to Heaven” and 1968’s “Taurus,” an instrumental track on Spirit’s self-titled album, has been discussed by music fans for years. Now a lawsuit over the songs’ similarities has sent the debate toward a court date.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can listen to the Spirit song and see for yourself what you think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJUdnTKlP1E\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-vs-dot-spirits-taurus-a-reckoning\">Bloomberg Businessweek\u003c/a> reports, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of the trust of Spirit guitarist Randy California, who died in 1997. The band’s original bassist is also involved in the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea behind this is to make sure that Randy California is given a writing credit on ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ” says attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy. “It’s been a long time coming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorney also acknowledges there’s a great deal of money at stake. From Bloomberg Businessweek:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“Stairway\u003c/em>‘s stature—financially, culturally, and musically—is towering. By 2008, when \u003cem>Conde Nast Portfolio \u003c/em>magazine published an estimate that included royalties and record sales, the song had earned at least $562 million.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>That number is out of date — and it’s poised to rise higher, as Led Zeppelin is set to release new versions of its albums this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>News of the lawsuit has prompted a lively comment session over at \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-targeted-for-plagiarism-20140519\">Rolling Stone\u003c/a>, where readers are debating the ability to copyright chord progressions and chords.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Randy California didn’t often speak about the similarity between the two songs. By many accounts, he was an easygoing sort who didn’t let it bother him. But he did comment on it in an interview with \u003cem>Listener\u003c/em> magazine that was recently \u003ca href=\"http://turnmeondeadman.com/led-zeppelin-plagiarism-stairway-to-heaven/\">quoted by the site Turn Me On, Dead Man\u003c/a>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“Well, if you listen to the two songs, you can make your own judgment. It’s an exact… I’d say it was a rip-off. And the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said, ‘Thank you,’ never said, ‘Can we pay you some money for it?’ It’s kind of a sore point with me. Maybe some day their conscience will make them do something about it. I don’t know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>As that story noted, Led Zeppelin had likely heard the song on its first American tour, when it opened up for Spirit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writing about the 40th anniversary of “Stairway To Heaven” in 2011, NPR’s Ann Powers noted that elements of it “may or may not” have been borrowed from the Spirit song. But she also noted, “nobody but Zep could have molded those chord progressions into such a masterpiece of excess.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stories about artistic influence are often circuitous — and to prove it, we bring you a paragraph from music critic Will Shade, written in 2001 for \u003ca href=\"http://www.furious.com/perfect/yardbirds2.html\">Perfect Sound Forever\u003c/a>. He laid out several instances in which Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has been alleged to have lifted the work of others, before touching on the “Taurus” question:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“But it is that holiest of Holy Grails, ‘Stairway To Heaven,’ that will shock the faithful. On one of Led Zeppelin’s early tours, they had opened for the California art-rock group, Spirit. In the liner notes to the reissue of Spirit’s 1968 eponymous debut, the band’s guitarist Randy California mentions the fact that Jimmy Page took special interest in an original entitled ‘Taurus.’ There is no doubt that Page appropriated the opening guitar lines note for note on ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ Further, the chord progression in ‘Stairway To Heaven’ is incredibly similar to a song by the Chocolate Watch Band, ‘And She’s Lonely.’ The Yardbirds played with the Chocolate Watch Band during Page’s tenure. It would be quite ironic if he did indeed lift the chords from the Chocolate Watch Band. The Chocolate Watch Band, to those in the know, were the ultimate Yardbirds clone. Wouldn’t it be fitting that a former Yardbirds guitarist ripped off something from a band that based an entire career around sounding like that famed quintet?”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Led+Zeppelin+Sued+Over+%27Stairway+To+Heaven%27+Guitar+Line&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As \u003ca href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-15/led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-vs-dot-spirits-taurus-a-reckoning\">Bloomberg Businessweek\u003c/a> reports, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of the trust of Spirit guitarist Randy California, who died in 1997. The band’s original bassist is also involved in the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea behind this is to make sure that Randy California is given a writing credit on ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ” says attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy. “It’s been a long time coming.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The attorney also acknowledges there’s a great deal of money at stake. From Bloomberg Businessweek:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>“Stairway\u003c/em>‘s stature—financially, culturally, and musically—is towering. By 2008, when \u003cem>Conde Nast Portfolio \u003c/em>magazine published an estimate that included royalties and record sales, the song had earned at least $562 million.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>That number is out of date — and it’s poised to rise higher, as Led Zeppelin is set to release new versions of its albums this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>News of the lawsuit has prompted a lively comment session over at \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/led-zeppelins-stairway-to-heaven-targeted-for-plagiarism-20140519\">Rolling Stone\u003c/a>, where readers are debating the ability to copyright chord progressions and chords.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Randy California didn’t often speak about the similarity between the two songs. By many accounts, he was an easygoing sort who didn’t let it bother him. But he did comment on it in an interview with \u003cem>Listener\u003c/em> magazine that was recently \u003ca href=\"http://turnmeondeadman.com/led-zeppelin-plagiarism-stairway-to-heaven/\">quoted by the site Turn Me On, Dead Man\u003c/a>:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“Well, if you listen to the two songs, you can make your own judgment. It’s an exact… I’d say it was a rip-off. And the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said, ‘Thank you,’ never said, ‘Can we pay you some money for it?’ It’s kind of a sore point with me. Maybe some day their conscience will make them do something about it. I don’t know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>As that story noted, Led Zeppelin had likely heard the song on its first American tour, when it opened up for Spirit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writing about the 40th anniversary of “Stairway To Heaven” in 2011, NPR’s Ann Powers noted that elements of it “may or may not” have been borrowed from the Spirit song. But she also noted, “nobody but Zep could have molded those chord progressions into such a masterpiece of excess.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stories about artistic influence are often circuitous — and to prove it, we bring you a paragraph from music critic Will Shade, written in 2001 for \u003ca href=\"http://www.furious.com/perfect/yardbirds2.html\">Perfect Sound Forever\u003c/a>. He laid out several instances in which Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has been alleged to have lifted the work of others, before touching on the “Taurus” question:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\n\u003cp>“But it is that holiest of Holy Grails, ‘Stairway To Heaven,’ that will shock the faithful. On one of Led Zeppelin’s early tours, they had opened for the California art-rock group, Spirit. In the liner notes to the reissue of Spirit’s 1968 eponymous debut, the band’s guitarist Randy California mentions the fact that Jimmy Page took special interest in an original entitled ‘Taurus.’ There is no doubt that Page appropriated the opening guitar lines note for note on ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ Further, the chord progression in ‘Stairway To Heaven’ is incredibly similar to a song by the Chocolate Watch Band, ‘And She’s Lonely.’ The Yardbirds played with the Chocolate Watch Band during Page’s tenure. It would be quite ironic if he did indeed lift the chords from the Chocolate Watch Band. The Chocolate Watch Band, to those in the know, were the ultimate Yardbirds clone. Wouldn’t it be fitting that a former Yardbirds guitarist ripped off something from a band that based an entire career around sounding like that famed quintet?”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Led+Zeppelin+Sued+Over+%27Stairway+To+Heaven%27+Guitar+Line&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Gather round, children, and I will tell you of a dark time. A cruel time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a time when reality dating shows were even worse than they are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little remains of what was once a rich tapestry of such programming, if by “rich” you mean “smelly” and by “tapestry” you mean “garbage heap.” Back in the day, \u003cem>Joe Millionaire\u003c/em> featured a poor guy posing as a rich guy. \u003cem>Married By America \u003c/em>resulted in nobody getting married. Monica Lewinsky hosted a show called \u003cem>Mr. Personality\u003c/em> where the guys wore masks. \u003cem>Average Joe\u003c/em> ended with a climactic twist where the woman confessed the terrible secret that she had once dated Fabio. (True story. \u003cem>True story\u003c/em>.) \u003cem>Love Cruise\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Temptation Island \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Paradise Hotel \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Eden Something Something\u003c/em> all gave people opportunities to walk around in bikinis and dream the ultimate dream: of one day being able to get into a sweaty nightclub populated by other reality-show refugees on a Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gradually, like a surging tide of fetid water with rotted fish floating in it, this particular fad slowly faded. All that was left of this era, the single gleaming salmon judged marginally safe to eat, was \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>franchise, which totters along drunkenly, both figuratively and literally, as its participants engage in a sort of premarital trial by combat in which the prize is a bland and/or terrible person delivered to you, caked in makeup, on a silver tray made of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with summer approaching, Fox has decided to revisit that terrible old time, much as one might decide to become a historical reenactor specializing in plagues of locusts, with \u003cem>I Wanna Marry ‘Harry,’ \u003c/em>a show that posits that women stupid enough to believe that Prince Harry is trying to find a wife on a Fox reality show are nevertheless interesting enough to treat as humans rather than props. We are told that he is just Matt, an average guy, but the women are led to believe he is Prince Harry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should be said first that \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is, above all else, patently and ferociously fake — an accusation often leveled against reality television of all kinds despite being deserved to varying degrees. There are, after all, \u003cem>Bachelor \u003c/em>couples who got married and had kids. That show is, let’s say, 70 percent fake. \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is about 112 percent fake, with the extra 12 percent coming from the fake butler who’s been piled on top of the fake dating — just like Joe Millionaire’s butler was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consider the very idea that 12 real human women who, in many cases, profess an affinity for Prince Harry could “believe” this story. Could “believe,” that is, that a member of a royal family that is historically so private that the very idea of their wearing underpants would probably get you thrown out of the country if you mentioned it in print would suddenly decide to find a romantic partner by asking Fox to go round up some models and actresses and model-actresses. (Plus a couple of special education teachers and other brains-y types who are probably there to be disapproving of everyone else.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that while royal spouses are probably vetted with a vigor normally reserved for Supreme Court nominees, the family (gazillion-dollar industry that it is) was willing to substitute bikini strutting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that people who prefer not to be seen in public acknowledging they have a nose, let alone picking it, would send a young fellow who could under not implausible circumstances \u003cem>become king \u003c/em>off to rub elbows and other parts with a bunch of fame-seeking Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaze upon these women, and you will realize that even these women — \u003cem>even these women \u003c/em>— cannot possibly believe such a thing. They can only be in on the joke. \u003cem>Only\u003c/em>. No, this is not even the bent and massaged reality of \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em>; it is pure fantasy. And the fantasy is not romance, as the show might have you believe. The fantasy is comeuppance for vain, beautiful, terrible, greedy women. Oh, sure, Matt may wind up picking one of them and confessing he’s not a royal, and she may say, “Oh, that’s okay!” and leap into his arms. But the real fantasy here lies in week after week watching as woman after woman reveals herself to be a grubbing, grasping, infantile harpy for wanting what the show is dangling in front of her, as well as a moron for believing it’s the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Believe it or not, there were bad old days of reality dating shows, and this is what they were like. Fake, cheap, witless and mean, in a way that makes \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>look like \u003cem>Anna Karenina\u003c/em>. This is woman-hating television for women, times 10, turned up to eleven, with a side of fries. Summer will provide opportunity after opportunity to enjoy frivolity made with substantially less malice than this, not to mention frivolity that doesn’t immediately create the sense that Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” is about to come on the radio. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Be+Wary+And+Bury+The+Very+Scary+%27I+Wanna+Marry+Harry%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Gather round, children, and I will tell you of a dark time. A cruel time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a time when reality dating shows were even worse than they are now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little remains of what was once a rich tapestry of such programming, if by “rich” you mean “smelly” and by “tapestry” you mean “garbage heap.” Back in the day, \u003cem>Joe Millionaire\u003c/em> featured a poor guy posing as a rich guy. \u003cem>Married By America \u003c/em>resulted in nobody getting married. Monica Lewinsky hosted a show called \u003cem>Mr. Personality\u003c/em> where the guys wore masks. \u003cem>Average Joe\u003c/em> ended with a climactic twist where the woman confessed the terrible secret that she had once dated Fabio. (True story. \u003cem>True story\u003c/em>.) \u003cem>Love Cruise\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Temptation Island \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Paradise Hotel \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Eden Something Something\u003c/em> all gave people opportunities to walk around in bikinis and dream the ultimate dream: of one day being able to get into a sweaty nightclub populated by other reality-show refugees on a Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gradually, like a surging tide of fetid water with rotted fish floating in it, this particular fad slowly faded. All that was left of this era, the single gleaming salmon judged marginally safe to eat, was \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>franchise, which totters along drunkenly, both figuratively and literally, as its participants engage in a sort of premarital trial by combat in which the prize is a bland and/or terrible person delivered to you, caked in makeup, on a silver tray made of the internet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with summer approaching, Fox has decided to revisit that terrible old time, much as one might decide to become a historical reenactor specializing in plagues of locusts, with \u003cem>I Wanna Marry ‘Harry,’ \u003c/em>a show that posits that women stupid enough to believe that Prince Harry is trying to find a wife on a Fox reality show are nevertheless interesting enough to treat as humans rather than props. We are told that he is just Matt, an average guy, but the women are led to believe he is Prince Harry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It should be said first that \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is, above all else, patently and ferociously fake — an accusation often leveled against reality television of all kinds despite being deserved to varying degrees. There are, after all, \u003cem>Bachelor \u003c/em>couples who got married and had kids. That show is, let’s say, 70 percent fake. \u003cem>I Wanna Marry Harry \u003c/em>is about 112 percent fake, with the extra 12 percent coming from the fake butler who’s been piled on top of the fake dating — just like Joe Millionaire’s butler was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consider the very idea that 12 real human women who, in many cases, profess an affinity for Prince Harry could “believe” this story. Could “believe,” that is, that a member of a royal family that is historically so private that the very idea of their wearing underpants would probably get you thrown out of the country if you mentioned it in print would suddenly decide to find a romantic partner by asking Fox to go round up some models and actresses and model-actresses. (Plus a couple of special education teachers and other brains-y types who are probably there to be disapproving of everyone else.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that while royal spouses are probably vetted with a vigor normally reserved for Supreme Court nominees, the family (gazillion-dollar industry that it is) was willing to substitute bikini strutting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Could “believe” that people who prefer not to be seen in public acknowledging they have a nose, let alone picking it, would send a young fellow who could under not implausible circumstances \u003cem>become king \u003c/em>off to rub elbows and other parts with a bunch of fame-seeking Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gaze upon these women, and you will realize that even these women — \u003cem>even these women \u003c/em>— cannot possibly believe such a thing. They can only be in on the joke. \u003cem>Only\u003c/em>. No, this is not even the bent and massaged reality of \u003cem>The Bachelor\u003c/em>; it is pure fantasy. And the fantasy is not romance, as the show might have you believe. The fantasy is comeuppance for vain, beautiful, terrible, greedy women. Oh, sure, Matt may wind up picking one of them and confessing he’s not a royal, and she may say, “Oh, that’s okay!” and leap into his arms. But the real fantasy here lies in week after week watching as woman after woman reveals herself to be a grubbing, grasping, infantile harpy for wanting what the show is dangling in front of her, as well as a moron for believing it’s the truth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Believe it or not, there were bad old days of reality dating shows, and this is what they were like. Fake, cheap, witless and mean, in a way that makes \u003cem>The Bachelor \u003c/em>look like \u003cem>Anna Karenina\u003c/em>. This is woman-hating television for women, times 10, turned up to eleven, with a side of fries. Summer will provide opportunity after opportunity to enjoy frivolity made with substantially less malice than this, not to mention frivolity that doesn’t immediately create the sense that Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” is about to come on the radio. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Be+Wary+And+Bury+The+Very+Scary+%27I+Wanna+Marry+Harry%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "Louis C.K. on his ‘Louie’ Hiatus: ‘I Wanted the Show to Feel New Again’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Louis C.K. is now commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest comics of his generation. His celebrated FX series, \u003cem>Louie,\u003c/em> started its fourth season a couple weeks ago, after a 19-month hiatus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. created, writes, directs and stars in the series as a standup comic named Louie, who, like Louis C.K., is the divorced father of two young girls and shares custody with their mother. Last year, Louis C.K. also had prominent roles in two films: Woody Allen’s \u003cem>Blue Jasmine\u003c/em> and David O. Russell’s \u003cem>American Hustle\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. joins \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em>‘s Terry Gross to discuss raising his daughters as a divorced dad and facing tough audiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview Highlights\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the indefinite hiatus he took between Seasons 3 and 4 of \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wanted the show to feel new again. I felt like I did three seasons that were all one spurt, and that felt good and I wanted to forget the show, so I took time to forget about it. I aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months. I went on tour and did standup and did other work. I acted in some movies. … Then after about only really a month off, like vacation, I started to think about the show again and think about the first episode being like a pilot again. That’s the way I approached this season: do a show that’s brand new, even though I’m bringing back characters. I tried to start from scratch. I spent way more time writing the show than I ever have before, thinking of the stories and plotting them out. I spent a year doing the season; instead, usually I spend about six months or less from the beginning of the writing to the end of the writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the troubled women that his character dates in the show\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sort of became a trend after a couple of seasons. What’s fun to do with this guy on the show is just put stuff in front of him that he can’t resist: Here’s a beautiful woman and she doesn’t seem like a good choice for you, but there you go. I think I’m trying to beat something into his head. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like showing a guy deal with bad choices. To me the show wouldn’t be very interesting if I was confronted with all very well balanced women, and then we go and have coffee and everything works out well and maybe we kiss and that’s the end of the episode. That’s not that funny to me. I’ve been playing that game over and over again for a while because it’s still fun for me; that’s why I’m still telling that story of the messed-up woman. It certainly doesn’t represent to me that that’s what women are like. To me it’s funny when people want a show to be an ideal of this-is-what-we-all-feel-is-the-best-version-of-a-woman and –a-man. I’m looking for weaknesses on both sides — it’s fun. But this season, I sort of try to fall in love for real and have a more real relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the uncomfortable topics of his standup routine \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The areas I’m going into are touchy. Maybe there’s a God; maybe there isn’t. Is God divorced? Did God kill his wife? You feel a little sweat on the back of your neck when you get there, but if you stay there for a second, you can find something joyful and funny in it. And it’s such a great thing to go to a scary place and laugh. I mean, what’s better than that? …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just couldn’t help straying into these areas. It’s a little [mischievous]. I just want to go over there and see if there’s anything there. That’s just always been my nature. … I’m also not afraid of it. I’m not afraid if I go somewhere and I upset everybody. I’ve been there. I guess I was in trouble a lot when I was a kid, so I got used to it. When you’re never in trouble, you can never go to places like that. … I know I can survive everybody being pissed off at me. So when I started going onstage, I realized if I talk about this stuff I might upset people in the room, but it’s worth it because maybe there’s something there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On building his onstage confidence\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There really isn’t a situation onstage that I feel like I won’t know how to handle. There’s some that I know that I can’t overcome. There are things where I’m like, “This crowd is just not gonna like me,” but I also have a plan for that. You have to stay cool. You can’t let them change your plan. … I have that confidence onstage. I know even if I don’t open well, it’ll be OK; even if I lose them, I’ll get them back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I was first starting in New York, they had prom shows where they’d fill the audience with kids that were just at their prom and they’re all drunk on limousine booze and as soon as you get onstage, they start yelling at you, before they decide if they like you or not. They boo you when you hit the stage. I used to eat prom shows for dinner. I used to book as many prom shows as I could. First of all, they paid twice as much money — it’s the only time comedy clubs are compassionate to comedians. … But I’ve been onstage with people yelling and booing and throwing stuff at me and I’ve hung in there. I know how to handle that, so nothing scares me now onstage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being divorced with two children\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a version of divorced life where you’re partners and you’re both taking care of the kids, the kids are spending equal time with each parent, and there’s balance and there’s harmony between the parents because they’re not married in a bad marriage anymore. If you do it right, it’s a much better life for the kids. I was determined to make sure that my kids still felt me in their lives after divorce. And then I was astonished to find out that they wanted to be with me all the time, that this was positive for them. … And also that motivated me to make a good life for myself so that the kids would have a good home when they came to my place. And their mom is a good co-parent; we’re good partners together, we’re friends and we’ve both I think done a pretty good job of letting the kids feel like they have everything. They have a mom and they have a dad who get along and who are both there for them. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Louis+C.K.+On+His+%27Louie%27+Hiatus%3A+%27I+Wanted+The+Show+To+Feel+New+Again%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The comic tells \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em> that after Season 3, he \"aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months.\" Then he got back to work. \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em> is now in its fourth season.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Louis C.K. is now commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest comics of his generation. His celebrated FX series, \u003cem>Louie,\u003c/em> started its fourth season a couple weeks ago, after a 19-month hiatus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. created, writes, directs and stars in the series as a standup comic named Louie, who, like Louis C.K., is the divorced father of two young girls and shares custody with their mother. Last year, Louis C.K. also had prominent roles in two films: Woody Allen’s \u003cem>Blue Jasmine\u003c/em> and David O. Russell’s \u003cem>American Hustle\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Louis C.K. joins \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em>‘s Terry Gross to discuss raising his daughters as a divorced dad and facing tough audiences.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>\u003cstrong>Interview Highlights\u003c/strong>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the indefinite hiatus he took between Seasons 3 and 4 of \u003cem>Louie\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wanted the show to feel new again. I felt like I did three seasons that were all one spurt, and that felt good and I wanted to forget the show, so I took time to forget about it. I aggressively forgot the show existed for a few months. I went on tour and did standup and did other work. I acted in some movies. … Then after about only really a month off, like vacation, I started to think about the show again and think about the first episode being like a pilot again. That’s the way I approached this season: do a show that’s brand new, even though I’m bringing back characters. I tried to start from scratch. I spent way more time writing the show than I ever have before, thinking of the stories and plotting them out. I spent a year doing the season; instead, usually I spend about six months or less from the beginning of the writing to the end of the writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the troubled women that his character dates in the show\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It sort of became a trend after a couple of seasons. What’s fun to do with this guy on the show is just put stuff in front of him that he can’t resist: Here’s a beautiful woman and she doesn’t seem like a good choice for you, but there you go. I think I’m trying to beat something into his head. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like showing a guy deal with bad choices. To me the show wouldn’t be very interesting if I was confronted with all very well balanced women, and then we go and have coffee and everything works out well and maybe we kiss and that’s the end of the episode. That’s not that funny to me. I’ve been playing that game over and over again for a while because it’s still fun for me; that’s why I’m still telling that story of the messed-up woman. It certainly doesn’t represent to me that that’s what women are like. To me it’s funny when people want a show to be an ideal of this-is-what-we-all-feel-is-the-best-version-of-a-woman and –a-man. I’m looking for weaknesses on both sides — it’s fun. But this season, I sort of try to fall in love for real and have a more real relationship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the uncomfortable topics of his standup routine \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The areas I’m going into are touchy. Maybe there’s a God; maybe there isn’t. Is God divorced? Did God kill his wife? You feel a little sweat on the back of your neck when you get there, but if you stay there for a second, you can find something joyful and funny in it. And it’s such a great thing to go to a scary place and laugh. I mean, what’s better than that? …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I just couldn’t help straying into these areas. It’s a little [mischievous]. I just want to go over there and see if there’s anything there. That’s just always been my nature. … I’m also not afraid of it. I’m not afraid if I go somewhere and I upset everybody. I’ve been there. I guess I was in trouble a lot when I was a kid, so I got used to it. When you’re never in trouble, you can never go to places like that. … I know I can survive everybody being pissed off at me. So when I started going onstage, I realized if I talk about this stuff I might upset people in the room, but it’s worth it because maybe there’s something there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On building his onstage confidence\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There really isn’t a situation onstage that I feel like I won’t know how to handle. There’s some that I know that I can’t overcome. There are things where I’m like, “This crowd is just not gonna like me,” but I also have a plan for that. You have to stay cool. You can’t let them change your plan. … I have that confidence onstage. I know even if I don’t open well, it’ll be OK; even if I lose them, I’ll get them back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I was first starting in New York, they had prom shows where they’d fill the audience with kids that were just at their prom and they’re all drunk on limousine booze and as soon as you get onstage, they start yelling at you, before they decide if they like you or not. They boo you when you hit the stage. I used to eat prom shows for dinner. I used to book as many prom shows as I could. First of all, they paid twice as much money — it’s the only time comedy clubs are compassionate to comedians. … But I’ve been onstage with people yelling and booing and throwing stuff at me and I’ve hung in there. I know how to handle that, so nothing scares me now onstage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being divorced with two children\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a version of divorced life where you’re partners and you’re both taking care of the kids, the kids are spending equal time with each parent, and there’s balance and there’s harmony between the parents because they’re not married in a bad marriage anymore. If you do it right, it’s a much better life for the kids. I was determined to make sure that my kids still felt me in their lives after divorce. And then I was astonished to find out that they wanted to be with me all the time, that this was positive for them. … And also that motivated me to make a good life for myself so that the kids would have a good home when they came to my place. And their mom is a good co-parent; we’re good partners together, we’re friends and we’ve both I think done a pretty good job of letting the kids feel like they have everything. They have a mom and they have a dad who get along and who are both there for them. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Louis+C.K.+On+His+%27Louie%27+Hiatus%3A+%27I+Wanted+The+Show+To+Feel+New+Again%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "fed-up-portrays-obese-kids-as-victims-in-a-sugar-coated-world",
"title": "'Fed Up' Portrays Obese Kids as Victims in a Sugar-Coated World",
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"headTitle": "‘Fed Up’ Portrays Obese Kids as Victims in a Sugar-Coated World | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Just who’s to blame for the childhood obesity epidemic? Over the years, the finger has been pointed at parents, video games, Happy Meals and the hamburgers in the school cafeteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new documentary, \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em>, alleges it all boils down to a simple substance most of us consume every day: sugar. The pushers of “the new tobacco,” according to the film, are the food industry and our own government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With a mix of dramatic music, scary soundbites and powerful images of kids injecting insulin into their chubby tummies, \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em> argues that the children are not to blame. For the rising number of overweight and obese kids, the mantra of “eat less, move more” is an impossible goal. They simply can’t circumvent the onslaught of marketing that has made them into junk-food junkies, the film says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What if our whole approach to this epidemic has been dead wrong?” the film’s narrator, TV journalist Katie Couric, says in the film’s opening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoping to do for childhood obesity what \u003cem>An Inconvenient Truth\u003c/em> did for climate change, \u003ca href=\"http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fed Up\u003c/a> takes on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign and Big Food: Coca Cola, Nestle, Kraft and Kellogg, to name a few. Laurie David, who produced the Oscar-winning \u003cem>An Inconvenient Truth\u003c/em>, is executive producer along with Couric; \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3253001/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stephanie Soechtig\u003c/a> is the director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film sometimes resorts to hyperbole to describe the obesity epidemic and its related health costs, but the message is backed up with sobering statistics and the history of the policies that got us here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-the-us-childhood-obesity-is-a-heavy-burden/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Childhood obesity rates\u003c/a> have grown exponentially in the past 30 years. And they’ve tracked with the huge increase in sugar added to packaged food to make it “hyper-palatable,” as one scientist says, during the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/03/28/295332576/why-we-got-fatter-during-the-fat-free-food-boom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">low-fat craze\u003c/a> of the 1980s and 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the while, the food and beverage lobby spent millions winning political battle after political battle to defend their place in the market, as Reuters \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-usa-foodlobby-idUSBRE83Q0ED20120427\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported\u003c/a> in 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film features scientist-doctors like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/28/173170149/sugars-role-in-rise-of-diabetes-gets-clearer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Lustig\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/04/15/301473319/wheres-the-whole-grain-in-most-of-our-wheat-bread\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David Ludwig\u003c/a>, and real food advocates like Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and Mark Bittman. Couric also takes Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to task, as well as former President Bill Clinton, for failing to combat the problem during his administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the film’s true stars are several overweight children who are trying — and failing — to lose weight. It’s heartbreaking to watch as the kids tape private video diaries of their struggles, with fears of death and tears of frustration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want people to know that childhood obesity isn’t as simple as TV and press make it seem … and even Mrs. Obama,” says a tearful Maggie Valentine, a 12-year-old girl who weighs more than 200 pounds. “No matter how hard you try, it’s always going to be an ongoing battle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The food industry, which got a lashing from the film \u003cem>Food, Inc.\u003c/em>, is already fighting the message of\u003cem> Fed Up\u003c/em>, despite its still limited release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136356\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a-400x300.jpg\" alt=\"A list of individuals and organizations who declined to be interviewed by the filmmakers of Fed Up.\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-10136356\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a.jpg 724w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A list of individuals and organizations who declined to be interviewed by the filmmakers of Fed Up. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Radius TWC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The loudest cry is coming from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which has launched a website called \u003ca href=\"http://fedupfacts.com/\">Fed Up Facts\u003c/a> that mimics the plate-and-menu graphics of the documentary’s website. It claims, among other things, that childhood obesity rates have dropped by as much as 43 percent, and obesity rates overall have plateaued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokeswoman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which is also the lead in \u003ca href=\"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/content/bill-bar-gmo-labeling-unveiled#.U3TkNyg3PZg\">fighting state’s GMO labeling\u003c/a> efforts, did not respond to The Salt’s request for comment on the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.foodintegrity.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Center for Food Integrity\u003c/a>, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that gets funding from dairy, soybean, poultry and pork producers and companies like ConAgra, Monsanto and Tyson, is also preparing to battle the message of \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em>. The group’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.cfiengage.com/archive/post/documentary-fed-up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">talking points and social media tips\u003c/a> urge farmers to engage in what it calls “values-based discussions about today’s food system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Terry Fleck, executive director of the Center for Food Integrity, tells The Salt that the film errs in singling out sugar as the culprit in childhood obesity. And many companies like Nestle and General Mills are already reducing sugar in products like breakfast cereals, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obesity is this reality that we are consuming more calories than we are burning off, and that’s easy to do in our society,” Fleck says. “The reality is we are a society that’s busy. We want convenience foods. We drive everywhere. We don’t walk like others in other cultures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Michele Simon\u003c/a>, a public health lawyer who appears in \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em>, says it’s becoming increasingly common for companies to create “front groups” to try to help shape the public discourse. She \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/front_groups_final_84531.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">names\u003c/a> the Center for Food Integrity as one such group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s going on here is that the food industry has a credibility problem,” Simon says. “So they funnel their money into these front groups that can look like they’re doing this with the sheen of credibility — and sometimes even scientists — that are bringing the industry messages into the public discourse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public discourse, Simon says, is finally questioning whether individuals are to blame when it comes to childhood obesity\u003cem>. Fed Up\u003c/em> will help that conversation, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film concludes with a list of the 20 companies, industry groups and politicians who refused to talk to the producers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Peggy Lowe is a reporter for \u003ca href=\"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/\">Harvest Public Media\u003c/a>. \u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Fed+Up%27+Portrays+Obese+Kids+As+Victims+In+A+Sugar-Coated+World&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Just who’s to blame for the childhood obesity epidemic? Over the years, the finger has been pointed at parents, video games, Happy Meals and the hamburgers in the school cafeteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new documentary, \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em>, alleges it all boils down to a simple substance most of us consume every day: sugar. The pushers of “the new tobacco,” according to the film, are the food industry and our own government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With a mix of dramatic music, scary soundbites and powerful images of kids injecting insulin into their chubby tummies, \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em> argues that the children are not to blame. For the rising number of overweight and obese kids, the mantra of “eat less, move more” is an impossible goal. They simply can’t circumvent the onslaught of marketing that has made them into junk-food junkies, the film says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What if our whole approach to this epidemic has been dead wrong?” the film’s narrator, TV journalist Katie Couric, says in the film’s opening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hoping to do for childhood obesity what \u003cem>An Inconvenient Truth\u003c/em> did for climate change, \u003ca href=\"http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fed Up\u003c/a> takes on the U.S. Department of Agriculture, first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign and Big Food: Coca Cola, Nestle, Kraft and Kellogg, to name a few. Laurie David, who produced the Oscar-winning \u003cem>An Inconvenient Truth\u003c/em>, is executive producer along with Couric; \u003ca href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3253001/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stephanie Soechtig\u003c/a> is the director.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film sometimes resorts to hyperbole to describe the obesity epidemic and its related health costs, but the message is backed up with sobering statistics and the history of the policies that got us here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-the-us-childhood-obesity-is-a-heavy-burden/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Childhood obesity rates\u003c/a> have grown exponentially in the past 30 years. And they’ve tracked with the huge increase in sugar added to packaged food to make it “hyper-palatable,” as one scientist says, during the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/03/28/295332576/why-we-got-fatter-during-the-fat-free-food-boom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">low-fat craze\u003c/a> of the 1980s and 1990s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the while, the food and beverage lobby spent millions winning political battle after political battle to defend their place in the market, as Reuters \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-usa-foodlobby-idUSBRE83Q0ED20120427\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reported\u003c/a> in 2012.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film features scientist-doctors like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/28/173170149/sugars-role-in-rise-of-diabetes-gets-clearer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Lustig\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/04/15/301473319/wheres-the-whole-grain-in-most-of-our-wheat-bread\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David Ludwig\u003c/a>, and real food advocates like Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and Mark Bittman. Couric also takes Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to task, as well as former President Bill Clinton, for failing to combat the problem during his administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the film’s true stars are several overweight children who are trying — and failing — to lose weight. It’s heartbreaking to watch as the kids tape private video diaries of their struggles, with fears of death and tears of frustration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want people to know that childhood obesity isn’t as simple as TV and press make it seem … and even Mrs. Obama,” says a tearful Maggie Valentine, a 12-year-old girl who weighs more than 200 pounds. “No matter how hard you try, it’s always going to be an ongoing battle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The food industry, which got a lashing from the film \u003cem>Food, Inc.\u003c/em>, is already fighting the message of\u003cem> Fed Up\u003c/em>, despite its still limited release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136356\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a-400x300.jpg\" alt=\"A list of individuals and organizations who declined to be interviewed by the filmmakers of Fed Up.\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-10136356\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/fed-up-2-21d68d916c3da23b9edd062562a3223359a6781a.jpg 724w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A list of individuals and organizations who declined to be interviewed by the filmmakers of Fed Up. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Radius TWC)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The loudest cry is coming from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which has launched a website called \u003ca href=\"http://fedupfacts.com/\">Fed Up Facts\u003c/a> that mimics the plate-and-menu graphics of the documentary’s website. It claims, among other things, that childhood obesity rates have dropped by as much as 43 percent, and obesity rates overall have plateaued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spokeswoman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which is also the lead in \u003ca href=\"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/content/bill-bar-gmo-labeling-unveiled#.U3TkNyg3PZg\">fighting state’s GMO labeling\u003c/a> efforts, did not respond to The Salt’s request for comment on the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"http://www.foodintegrity.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Center for Food Integrity\u003c/a>, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that gets funding from dairy, soybean, poultry and pork producers and companies like ConAgra, Monsanto and Tyson, is also preparing to battle the message of \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em>. The group’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.cfiengage.com/archive/post/documentary-fed-up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">talking points and social media tips\u003c/a> urge farmers to engage in what it calls “values-based discussions about today’s food system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Terry Fleck, executive director of the Center for Food Integrity, tells The Salt that the film errs in singling out sugar as the culprit in childhood obesity. And many companies like Nestle and General Mills are already reducing sugar in products like breakfast cereals, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Obesity is this reality that we are consuming more calories than we are burning off, and that’s easy to do in our society,” Fleck says. “The reality is we are a society that’s busy. We want convenience foods. We drive everywhere. We don’t walk like others in other cultures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Michele Simon\u003c/a>, a public health lawyer who appears in \u003cem>Fed Up\u003c/em>, says it’s becoming increasingly common for companies to create “front groups” to try to help shape the public discourse. She \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/front_groups_final_84531.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">names\u003c/a> the Center for Food Integrity as one such group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s going on here is that the food industry has a credibility problem,” Simon says. “So they funnel their money into these front groups that can look like they’re doing this with the sheen of credibility — and sometimes even scientists — that are bringing the industry messages into the public discourse.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The public discourse, Simon says, is finally questioning whether individuals are to blame when it comes to childhood obesity\u003cem>. Fed Up\u003c/em> will help that conversation, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film concludes with a list of the 20 companies, industry groups and politicians who refused to talk to the producers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Peggy Lowe is a reporter for \u003ca href=\"http://harvestpublicmedia.org/\">Harvest Public Media\u003c/a>. \u003c/em> \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Fed+Up%27+Portrays+Obese+Kids+As+Victims+In+A+Sugar-Coated+World&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Gordon Willis, the cinematographer behind such classic 1970s films as \u003cem>Annie Hall\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Klute\u003c/em>, \u003cem>All the President’s Men\u003c/em> and the \u003cem>Godfather\u003c/em> series, died on Sunday. He was 82.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One cinematographer had established a kind of noir color look, rich in brown, amber and shadow, that was a vital force in the noir movies made in Hollywood in the 1970s,” film historian David Thomson wrote of Willis in his \u003cem>New Biographical Dictionary of Film\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Willis won an honorary Academy Award in 2009, but never took home the prize for best cinematography. He was nominated twice, for \u003cem>The Godfather Part III\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Zelig\u003c/em>, but not for the earlier works that had established him as a giant among his peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a while, I really didn’t know what to do with that movie,” he said of the original \u003cem>Godfather\u003c/em> in a 2002 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120386781\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interview\u003c/a> on NPR’s \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em>. “I finally decided this should have this brassy, yellow look to it. Don’t ask me why. It just felt right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The New York native got his start working in makeup. He worked on documentaries for a motion picture unit as part of his Air Force service during the Korean War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He shot a total of eight films for Woody Allen and was dubbed the “Prince of Darkness” by fellow cinematographer Conrad Hall for his use of shadows. (Think of the scene in Allen’s \u003cem>Manhattan\u003c/em> where he and Diane Keaton duck out of the rain into the American Museum of Natural History, or the garage scenes in \u003cem>All the President’s Men\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s an artist,” Allen \u003ca href=\"http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20086223,00.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told\u003c/a> \u003cem>People\u003c/em> in 1983. “He’s got a great sense of humor. He taught me a lot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Willis’ last film was \u003cem>The Devil’s Own\u003c/em> in 1997, directed by Alan J. Pakula.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I got tired of trying to get actors out of trailers, and standing in the rain,” Willis said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Gordon+Willis%2C+Cinematographer+Who+Gave+Woody+Allen+Films+Their+Look%2C+Dies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Gordon Willis, the cinematographer behind such classic 1970s films as \u003cem>Annie Hall\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Klute\u003c/em>, \u003cem>All the President’s Men\u003c/em> and the \u003cem>Godfather\u003c/em> series, died on Sunday. He was 82.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One cinematographer had established a kind of noir color look, rich in brown, amber and shadow, that was a vital force in the noir movies made in Hollywood in the 1970s,” film historian David Thomson wrote of Willis in his \u003cem>New Biographical Dictionary of Film\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Willis won an honorary Academy Award in 2009, but never took home the prize for best cinematography. He was nominated twice, for \u003cem>The Godfather Part III\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Zelig\u003c/em>, but not for the earlier works that had established him as a giant among his peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For a while, I really didn’t know what to do with that movie,” he said of the original \u003cem>Godfather\u003c/em> in a 2002 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120386781\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interview\u003c/a> on NPR’s \u003cem>Fresh Air\u003c/em>. “I finally decided this should have this brassy, yellow look to it. Don’t ask me why. It just felt right.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The New York native got his start working in makeup. He worked on documentaries for a motion picture unit as part of his Air Force service during the Korean War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He shot a total of eight films for Woody Allen and was dubbed the “Prince of Darkness” by fellow cinematographer Conrad Hall for his use of shadows. (Think of the scene in Allen’s \u003cem>Manhattan\u003c/em> where he and Diane Keaton duck out of the rain into the American Museum of Natural History, or the garage scenes in \u003cem>All the President’s Men\u003c/em>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s an artist,” Allen \u003ca href=\"http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20086223,00.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">told\u003c/a> \u003cem>People\u003c/em> in 1983. “He’s got a great sense of humor. He taught me a lot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Willis’ last film was \u003cem>The Devil’s Own\u003c/em> in 1997, directed by Alan J. Pakula.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I got tired of trying to get actors out of trailers, and standing in the rain,” Willis said. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Gordon+Willis%2C+Cinematographer+Who+Gave+Woody+Allen+Films+Their+Look%2C+Dies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Artist Kara Walker Draws Us into Bitter History with Something Sweet",
"headTitle": "Artist Kara Walker Draws Us into Bitter History with Something Sweet | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Kara Walker was barely out of art school when she won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, in 1997. Back then, her early work shocked audiences in part because her murals looked so charming from a distance. Black paper shadow portraits of colonial figures seemed to dance on white gallery walls; but lean in and you’d find your nose pressed up against images of slavery’s horrors — mammies, masters, lynchings and sexual violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, Walker is used to filling a room. But this spring she was asked to fill a warehouse — the abandoned Domino Sugar factory in New York. It’s about to be leveled to make way for condos and offices, but before it goes, Walker was asked to use this cavernous, urban ruin for something special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walker took me on a tour of the show a day before it opened. The factory is covered in sugar — it almost looks like insulation or burnt cotton candy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a little bit sticky in some areas …” she says. “There’s sugar caked up in the rafters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136272\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10136272\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-1440x1079.jpg\" alt='Visitors wait in line for the Kara Walker exhibit on May 10, opening day. The show was housed in a former Domino Sugar refinery. Inside, visitors described the building as \"cathedral-like\" and \"creepy,\" and said it smelled like a bakery' width=\"640\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-1440x1079.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-400x299.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Visitors wait in line for the Kara Walker exhibit on May 10, opening day. The show was housed in a former Domino Sugar refinery. Inside, visitors described the building as “cathedral-like” and “creepy,” and said it smelled like a bakery \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I was so busy trying not to get molasses on my shoes that when I turn the corner, I’m stunned. There in the middle of this dark hall is a bright, white sphinx. The effect is the opposite of those white walled galleries; a dark space and a towering white sculpture made of — what else? — sugar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we’re seeing, for lack of a better term, is the head of a woman who has very African, black features,” Walker explains. “She sits somewhere in between the kind of mammy figure of old and something a little bit more recognizable — recognizably human. … [She has] very full lips; high cheek bones; eyes that have no eyes, [that] seem to be either looking out or closed; and a kerchief on her head. She’s positioned with her arms flat out across the ground and large breasts that are staring at you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walker has dreamed up a “subtlety” — that’s what sugar sculptures were called in medieval times. They were a luxury confectioners created for special occasions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand where all this is going, you need look no further than Walker’s teasingly long title for the show: “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I know, it’s a mouth full. But Walker has this wide smile and as she sweeps her hands around in broad gestures, white tides of sugar dust ripple at the edge of her feet — and she sells it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was very fun and childlike to, you know, have your hands in a bucket full of sugar, or a 50-pound bag of sugar, throwing it out onto the floor,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136274\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10136274\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-1440x1080.jpg\" alt=\"Walker's candy boy sculptures started melting fast in the non-climate-controlled factory, and the result looks a lot like blood\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-1440x1080.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Walker’s candy boy sculptures started melting fast in the non-climate-controlled factory, and the result looks a lot like blood \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She’s doing what she does best: drawing you in with something sweet, something almost charming, before you realize you’ve admired something disturbing. In this case, that’s the horror-riddled Caribbean slave trade that helped fuel the industrial gains of the 18th and 19th centuries; a slave trade built to profit from an insatiable Western market for refined sugar treats and rum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically, it was blood sugar” Walker says. “Like we talk about blood diamonds today, there were pamphlets saying this sugar has blood on its hands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She explains that to make the sugar, the cane had to be fed into large mills by hand. It was a dangerous process: Slaves lost hands, arms, limbs and lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been kind of back and forth with my reverence for sugar,” Walkers says. “Like, how we’re all kind of invested in its production without really realizing just what goes into it; how much chemistry goes into extracting whiteness from the sugar cane.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walker went down a rabbit hole of sugar history, at one point stumbling onto some black figurines online — the type of racial tchotchkes that turn up in a sea of mammy cookie jars. They were ceramic, brown-skinned boys carrying baskets. Those were the size of dolls, but Walker’s are 5 feet high, some made entirely of molasses-colored candy. Fifteen of them are posed throughout the factory floor, leading the way to her sugar sphinx.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The boys are cute and apple-cheeked, but they’re also kind of scary — some of the melted candy looks a lot like blood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136275\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10136275\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-1440x1079.jpg\" alt=\"The candy sculptures have been disintegrating so fast that Walker began throwing pieces of the broken boys into the baskets of the ones that are still standing.\" width=\"640\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-1440x1079.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-400x299.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The candy sculptures have been disintegrating so fast that Walker began throwing pieces of the broken boys into the baskets of the ones that are still standing. \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I knew that the candy ones wouldn’t last,” Walker says. “That was part of the point was that they were going to be in this non-climate-controlled space, slowly melting away and disintegrating. But what’s happened is we lost two of these guys in the last two days or so.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Losing those figures in service of the sugar is the slave trade in a nutshell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Also in a nutshell,” Walker says, “and maybe a little bit hammer-over-the-head, is that some of the pieces of the broken boys I threw into the baskets of the unbroken boys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OK, that’s not so subtle, but it’s also not unusual for Kara Walker. She’s dressed in a shiny oversized baseball jacket emblazoned with the gold face of King Tut on it. I ask her if at a certain point she worries about doing work that is seen as being \u003cem>just\u003c/em> about race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t really see it as just about race,” she says. “I mean, I think that my work is about trying to get a grasp on history. I mean, I guess it’s just kind of a trap, in a way, that I decided to set my foot into early on, which is the trap of race — to say that it’s about race when it’s kind of about this larger concern about being.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I tell her it’s almost impossible to talk about our history without talking about race. She replies: “There [are] scholarly conversations about race and then there’s the kind of meaty, unresolved, mucky blood lust of talking about race where I always feel like the conversation is inconclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inconclusive, but for artist Kara Walker, ongoing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136273\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10136273\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-1440x552.jpg\" alt=\"Kara Walker's <em>A Subtlety</em> stretches 75.5 feet long, 35.5 feet tall and 26 feet wide.\" width=\"800\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-1440x552.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-400x153.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-300x115.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kara Walker’s \u003cem>A Subtlety\u003c/em> stretches 75.5 feet long, 35.5 feet tall and 26 feet wide. \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Artist+Kara+Walker+Draws+Us+Into+Bitter+History+With+Something+Sweet&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Kara Walker was barely out of art school when she won a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, in 1997. Back then, her early work shocked audiences in part because her murals looked so charming from a distance. Black paper shadow portraits of colonial figures seemed to dance on white gallery walls; but lean in and you’d find your nose pressed up against images of slavery’s horrors — mammies, masters, lynchings and sexual violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other words, Walker is used to filling a room. But this spring she was asked to fill a warehouse — the abandoned Domino Sugar factory in New York. It’s about to be leveled to make way for condos and offices, but before it goes, Walker was asked to use this cavernous, urban ruin for something special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walker took me on a tour of the show a day before it opened. The factory is covered in sugar — it almost looks like insulation or burnt cotton candy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a little bit sticky in some areas …” she says. “There’s sugar caked up in the rafters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136272\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10136272\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-1440x1079.jpg\" alt='Visitors wait in line for the Kara Walker exhibit on May 10, opening day. The show was housed in a former Domino Sugar refinery. Inside, visitors described the building as \"cathedral-like\" and \"creepy,\" and said it smelled like a bakery' width=\"640\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-1440x1079.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-400x299.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164457-e474894fcf4b4667400e3dac15331d26936f5038-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Visitors wait in line for the Kara Walker exhibit on May 10, opening day. The show was housed in a former Domino Sugar refinery. Inside, visitors described the building as “cathedral-like” and “creepy,” and said it smelled like a bakery \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I was so busy trying not to get molasses on my shoes that when I turn the corner, I’m stunned. There in the middle of this dark hall is a bright, white sphinx. The effect is the opposite of those white walled galleries; a dark space and a towering white sculpture made of — what else? — sugar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we’re seeing, for lack of a better term, is the head of a woman who has very African, black features,” Walker explains. “She sits somewhere in between the kind of mammy figure of old and something a little bit more recognizable — recognizably human. … [She has] very full lips; high cheek bones; eyes that have no eyes, [that] seem to be either looking out or closed; and a kerchief on her head. She’s positioned with her arms flat out across the ground and large breasts that are staring at you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walker has dreamed up a “subtlety” — that’s what sugar sculptures were called in medieval times. They were a luxury confectioners created for special occasions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To understand where all this is going, you need look no further than Walker’s teasingly long title for the show: “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I know, it’s a mouth full. But Walker has this wide smile and as she sweeps her hands around in broad gestures, white tides of sugar dust ripple at the edge of her feet — and she sells it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was very fun and childlike to, you know, have your hands in a bucket full of sugar, or a 50-pound bag of sugar, throwing it out onto the floor,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136274\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10136274\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-1440x1080.jpg\" alt=\"Walker's candy boy sculptures started melting fast in the non-climate-controlled factory, and the result looks a lot like blood\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-1440x1080.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-400x300.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164441-b3c9e890250d13f3fc8a13b3014096b8793aaa07-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Walker’s candy boy sculptures started melting fast in the non-climate-controlled factory, and the result looks a lot like blood \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>She’s doing what she does best: drawing you in with something sweet, something almost charming, before you realize you’ve admired something disturbing. In this case, that’s the horror-riddled Caribbean slave trade that helped fuel the industrial gains of the 18th and 19th centuries; a slave trade built to profit from an insatiable Western market for refined sugar treats and rum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically, it was blood sugar” Walker says. “Like we talk about blood diamonds today, there were pamphlets saying this sugar has blood on its hands.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She explains that to make the sugar, the cane had to be fed into large mills by hand. It was a dangerous process: Slaves lost hands, arms, limbs and lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve been kind of back and forth with my reverence for sugar,” Walkers says. “Like, how we’re all kind of invested in its production without really realizing just what goes into it; how much chemistry goes into extracting whiteness from the sugar cane.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walker went down a rabbit hole of sugar history, at one point stumbling onto some black figurines online — the type of racial tchotchkes that turn up in a sea of mammy cookie jars. They were ceramic, brown-skinned boys carrying baskets. Those were the size of dolls, but Walker’s are 5 feet high, some made entirely of molasses-colored candy. Fifteen of them are posed throughout the factory floor, leading the way to her sugar sphinx.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The boys are cute and apple-cheeked, but they’re also kind of scary — some of the melted candy looks a lot like blood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136275\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10136275\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-1440x1079.jpg\" alt=\"The candy sculptures have been disintegrating so fast that Walker began throwing pieces of the broken boys into the baskets of the ones that are still standing.\" width=\"640\" height=\"479\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-1440x1079.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-400x299.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/489164445-67fc8ed75a3e4c29fea51aa47a2b4bcca391c626-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The candy sculptures have been disintegrating so fast that Walker began throwing pieces of the broken boys into the baskets of the ones that are still standing. \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I knew that the candy ones wouldn’t last,” Walker says. “That was part of the point was that they were going to be in this non-climate-controlled space, slowly melting away and disintegrating. But what’s happened is we lost two of these guys in the last two days or so.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Losing those figures in service of the sugar is the slave trade in a nutshell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Also in a nutshell,” Walker says, “and maybe a little bit hammer-over-the-head, is that some of the pieces of the broken boys I threw into the baskets of the unbroken boys.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OK, that’s not so subtle, but it’s also not unusual for Kara Walker. She’s dressed in a shiny oversized baseball jacket emblazoned with the gold face of King Tut on it. I ask her if at a certain point she worries about doing work that is seen as being \u003cem>just\u003c/em> about race.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t really see it as just about race,” she says. “I mean, I think that my work is about trying to get a grasp on history. I mean, I guess it’s just kind of a trap, in a way, that I decided to set my foot into early on, which is the trap of race — to say that it’s about race when it’s kind of about this larger concern about being.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I tell her it’s almost impossible to talk about our history without talking about race. She replies: “There [are] scholarly conversations about race and then there’s the kind of meaty, unresolved, mucky blood lust of talking about race where I always feel like the conversation is inconclusive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Inconclusive, but for artist Kara Walker, ongoing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10136273\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10136273\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-1440x552.jpg\" alt=\"Kara Walker's <em>A Subtlety</em> stretches 75.5 feet long, 35.5 feet tall and 26 feet wide.\" width=\"800\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-1440x552.jpg 1440w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-400x153.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/panorama1_lowsmall_enl-00c30c22c6f0e07d23f3799914f4e689c40f6201-300x115.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kara Walker’s \u003cem>A Subtlety\u003c/em> stretches 75.5 feet long, 35.5 feet tall and 26 feet wide. \u003ccite>(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Artist+Kara+Walker+Draws+Us+Into+Bitter+History+With+Something+Sweet&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Where does Don Draper’s formidable presence come from in \u003cem>Mad Men\u003c/em>? From his impeccable style, sure, and from his brooding good looks, of course, but also from his stillness. A few drug-induced exceptions aside, Don is as restrained in movement as he is in his speech. The combination gives him an irresistible, if unsettling, allure; in meetings, it’s his solid stare that holds your attention as much as his words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jon Hamm’s stillness playing Don in \u003cem>Mad Men\u003c/em> became particularly noticeable after I watched him in \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em>, which, among other things, lacks a noteworthy performance to ground an otherwise loosely-constructed film. Hamm doesn’t play Don in \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em>, of course, but he does play another salesman: the sports agent JB, who, after leaving a large agency to start his own business, is struggling to sign a big name athlete and pay his bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em> begins with a pitch from JB to a superstar NFL linebacker he hopes to represent. JB doesn’t quite offer the same satisfactions as Don, though. He’s something closer to Jerry Maguire in need of an editor, concluding his promise to secure countless riches with the supplication: “Will you let me help you do that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JB leads a hurried existence, rushing around LA in his Porsche convertible. Eventually he takes that energy to India, where, with the prospect of a billion new baseball fans on his mind, he hopes to save his career by converting Indian cricket bowlers into professional pitchers. To that end, he holds a contest called Million Dollar Arm, offering two finalists an opportunity to try out for the major leagues in the U.S. And when the winners, Rinku (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh (Madhur Mittal), return with JB to LA, one of the first English words they learn is the essence of JB’s way of life: Hustle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at Hamm’s previous roles, you can chart his range by whether his characters default to a smile or a stone-faced stare. If deadpan, he’s Don—assertive, composed, unflappable. With a smile—which, unlike most things about Hamm, is generally strained and awkward—he flips: now he’s goofy and approachable, characteristics he used to great effect on \u003cem>30 Rock\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either way, he has presence. In \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em>, he disappears. And he’s not the only one: Between director Craig Gillespie (\u003cem>Lars and the Real Girl\u003c/em>), writer Thomas McCarthy (\u003cem>The Station Agent\u003c/em>), and co-stars Bill Paxton, Alan Arkin, and Lake Bell (who is good enough to make you realize how wasteful her love-interest-as-motherly-sidekick role is), there’s a lot of potential talent subsumed here by plain studio-fare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003c/em>Whoever you want to blame, \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em> is a film that, like JB, is in a needless rush. This isn’t the hurry of a tense thriller. Instead, with time to kill, the film resembles a long car ride, with McCarthy and Gillespie producing the closest approximations to excitement possible so no one realizes they’re bored. The scenes in India stuff a series of montages in between jokes about animals roaming the streets and a brief, preposterous stop at the Taj Mahal. (A Disney movie isn’t where one ought to search for nuanced multiculturalism, of course, and here, at least, both sides are reduced to stereotypes: America is baseball, luxury, and cultural insensitivity; India is spicy food, crowded streets, and poverty.) In other moments, when a montage is too clearly out of the question, the film resorts to sudden leaps in time: Anything, that is, but a stop for breath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, Hamm is most affected—there’s a strain to his performance that suggests something about JB, perhaps, but also strips the character of any charisma. As a result, \u003cem>Million Dollar Man\u003c/em> may be the first hint that Hamm is unable to rise above mediocre material and demand our attention regardless (an essential feature of any leading Hollywood actor or actress). But before passing judgment, I’d like to see a film that lets him sit still and prove otherwise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Million+Dollar+Arm%27+Is+A+Sales+Pitch+In+Search+Of+Stillness&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Where does Don Draper’s formidable presence come from in \u003cem>Mad Men\u003c/em>? From his impeccable style, sure, and from his brooding good looks, of course, but also from his stillness. A few drug-induced exceptions aside, Don is as restrained in movement as he is in his speech. The combination gives him an irresistible, if unsettling, allure; in meetings, it’s his solid stare that holds your attention as much as his words.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jon Hamm’s stillness playing Don in \u003cem>Mad Men\u003c/em> became particularly noticeable after I watched him in \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em>, which, among other things, lacks a noteworthy performance to ground an otherwise loosely-constructed film. Hamm doesn’t play Don in \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em>, of course, but he does play another salesman: the sports agent JB, who, after leaving a large agency to start his own business, is struggling to sign a big name athlete and pay his bills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, \u003cem>Million Dollar Arm\u003c/em> begins with a pitch from JB to a superstar NFL linebacker he hopes to represent. JB doesn’t quite offer the same satisfactions as Don, though. He’s something closer to Jerry Maguire in need of an editor, concluding his promise to secure countless riches with the supplication: “Will you let me help you do that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JB leads a hurried existence, rushing around LA in his Porsche convertible. Eventually he takes that energy to India, where, with the prospect of a billion new baseball fans on his mind, he hopes to save his career by converting Indian cricket bowlers into professional pitchers. To that end, he holds a contest called Million Dollar Arm, offering two finalists an opportunity to try out for the major leagues in the U.S. And when the winners, Rinku (Suraj Sharma) and Dinesh (Madhur Mittal), return with JB to LA, one of the first English words they learn is the essence of JB’s way of life: Hustle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at Hamm’s previous roles, you can chart his range by whether his characters default to a smile or a stone-faced stare. If deadpan, he’s Don—assertive, composed, unflappable. With a smile—which, unlike most things about Hamm, is generally strained and awkward—he flips: now he’s goofy and approachable, characteristics he used to great effect on \u003cem>30 Rock\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
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