National Public Radio

Soul Food Junkies Explores The Dangers of a Loving Cuisine

Filmmaker Byron Hurt was last seen on PBS' Independent Lens Series in 2007 with his documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, an unflinching look at masculinity, misogyny, and homophobia in the rap world. Hurt now returns to public television with Soul Food Junkies, in which he tackles the broad ... More >>

Great Insight

No Place Like Om

A Little Bit of (Almost) Everything

AT&T, Time Warner Cable Whine About Google Perks

Back through the foggy mists of time, in 1996, America's telecommunications giants agreed to deploy high-speed broadband Internet service in exchange for all the breaks they got from the Telecommunications Act that passed that year. They proceeded to basically ignore their promises. The United State ... More >>

Facebook's Ads Are Terrible, and Always Will Be

Every day for the past week or so, upon signing into Facebook, I've been greeted by a cross-eyed baby trying to lure me into taking part in a get-rich-quick scheme having to do with Forex trading. (Word to the wise, if you see an advertisement with the word "Forex" in it, it's almost certainly some ... More >>

The Return of the Winklevii

People tend to look down upon the Winklevoss twins for all sorts of reasons: Mainly, because they're greedy, overprivileged, entitled weenies who kept pursuing Mark Zuckerberg in court even after accepting a gigantic settlement for their somewhat tenuous claim that they were in large part responsibl ... More >>

There Are No Conservatives Worth Following on Social Media

"Follow liberally," exhorts Liz Heron. "You never know who will lead you to discover something unique or important." This is one of "The Rules of Social Media" that Fast Company thinks we all should adhere to. Heron, who runs social media for the Wall Street Journal, doesn't mean "liberally" in a p ... More >>

Yes, We Can Blame Facebook and its CFO for Stock Debacle

It's easy, and to a large degree proper, to blame the people who bought into Facebook's dog of an IPO for their own losses. It was no secret that the company's prospects were highly uncertain. But that doesn't mean that others can't be blamed as well, or that investors are the only ones hurt by the ... More >>

Caveman Will Play Its Very First Big Festival Performance at Outside Lands

Caveman's first Outside Lands set -- Sunday, 2:50 p.m. at the Panhandle stage -- has arguably been inevitable. Sure, maybe it hasn't always felt that way for the band. Last year, the members of Caveman sweated out festival favorite status at CMJ 2011. They put the time and effort in to self-release ... More >>

Here's How Easy it is for a Hacker to Wreck Your Life.

Mat Honan of Wired is a better man than me. In exchange for his promise not to prosecute, he got the hacker who ruined his digital life to talk to him. If it were me, I might have left my need to know the details of the attack, along with my inherent desire to tell a good story, to one side so that ... More >>

S.F.'s Justin Martin on Remixing Goldie, His 'Tough and Tender' Sound, and Dirtybird in the Park

With the release of his first full-length album, Ghettos and Gardens, and the accompanying world tour (his first -- with stops in Ibiza and London), Dirtybird's Justin Martin is having quite the year. Warmly received by critics, Ghettos and Gardens has garnered accolades from high-profile outlets s ... More >>

The Internet Red Scare

Congressman Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty organization sounds like it's worried that Commies, or maybe Russian-style state capitalists, are plotting to take over the Internet. In a manifesto issued last week, the group warns that "the road to tyranny is being paved by a collectivist-Industrial com ... More >>

Turns Out, The Porn Industry Is as Sleazy as The Music Business

When you read a description like "Las Vegas attorney ... who represents a major adult film company," it's a safe bet that the fellow being described probably isn't fighting poverty or working on a human-rights campaign. And in this case, that bet would be the right one. Marc Randazza has been busil ... More >>

'Men Invented the Internet,' New York Times flatly declares

It was the thud heard 'round the world: The opening sentence of a story about sexism in Silicon Valley anchoring the front page of the New York Times' Sunday business section. "Men Invented the Internet," declared David Streitfeld, and it was impossible not to do a double-take, even if you didn't kn ... More >>

Facebook's Swoon a Symptom of Wall Street's Sickness

Facebook's newly issued shares lost 11 percent of their value on Monday, their first full day of public trading after Friday's snafu-filled IPO. That's a loss of $11.5 billion. Tuesday, the fall continued, taking the stock down another 3 percent. Too many shares were issued at too high a price by an ... More >>

Deconstructing a Family Tragedy

The Internet Kills Babies

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read in the past week. Given that I've been reading a lot about Congress and Mitt Romney, that's really saying something. The argument, by Andrew Keen, basically (and despite Keen's ass-covering caveats) blames the Internet for Anders Behring Breivik's murder ... More >>

Center for Copyright Information: An Anti-piracy Measure That Makes Sense

About seven years ago, I read something online about a then-recent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Overcome with the desire to watch the episode for myself, but without a subscription to HBO, I fired up LimeWire, the now-defunct file-sharing software, and quickly found the episode I wanted. An hou ... More >>

Vegan Eggs, Ethical Meat, and a Cupcake ATM!

​Hey guys! March 20th was Meatout. I refrained from eating meat. Best holiday ever.  ​The UN's World Water Day was this week too! Second coolest holiday of the week. Since this year's theme was food security, people actually talked about how meat is a nightmare for water conservation! It's ... More >>

The Adaptability Shuffle

WikiLeaks' Data Dump: Let's Hold Off on Pronouncing It a Dud

​If the widespread derision of WikiLeaks' latest document drop is any indication, the struggling organization might be nearing the end of its useful life. Still, the stolen e-mails it started publishing on Sunday night so far seem more interesting in general than the trove of diplomatic cables it ... More >>

Listen Whitey!: Music Historian Pat Thomas Explores the Sounds of Black Power

By J POET Most people know that songs like "We Shall Overcome," "Blowin' in the Wind," and "We Shall Not Be Moved" were important parts of the soundtrack of the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the '60s. The Black Power movement also used music to inspire and motivate people. Longtime Bay Are ... More >>

Copyright Owners Continue to Tilt at Windmills

​Given the intensity of the debates over digital piracy, you'd almost think that if one side or the other were to "win," the question would be decided: If critics of copyright holders were victorious, piracy would run rampant and the media industry would be brought to its knees; if the copyright o ... More >>

News Sites Can't Rely on Advertising

​I'm not about to pretend that I know how to solve the economic dilemma that the news business finds itself in. I've been studying the matter, and writing about it off and on, for 16 years, and, like everyone, I really don't know. Maybe it will be nonprofits. Maybe paywalls. Maybe micropayments wi ... More >>

No Tickets? Nine Ways You Can Still Get Into Burning Man 2012

Whatever else history might say of the Burning Man Ticket Fiasco of 2012, it offers the community that puts on the festival one more brute lesson in market economics. For attendees at the longtime countercultural arts festival held annually in the desert near Reno, news that four-fifths of the ticke ... More >>

Megaupload Bust Highlights Absurdity of SOPA/PIPA

​Last week, just as two ill-conceived anti-piracy bills were disintegrating in Congress in the face of a massive online protest, the FBI, with help from foreign governments, was busting Megaupload, one of the biggest sources of pirated digital goods. The timing was interesting, though the feds s ... More >>

TSA Clarification: You Can Take Some Kinds of Cupcakes on Planes

​Thanks to NPR, SFoodie now knows what to pack the next time we plan to drive straight from Kingdom Cake to SFO. On its blog, the federal Transportation Security Agency has just issued some clarifying rules about what kind of cupcakes you can take on a plane. The agency has come under criticism a ... More >>

MySpace Says It's Bringing TV to the Web -- But It Isn't

​Specific Media, now the owners of MySpace, took Justin Timberlake on stage with them Monday night at the Consumer Electronic Show, and with a lot of fanfare, they announced ... essentially nothing. The purported big news is that MySpace is revolutionizing television by bringing it to the Web an ... More >>

There's a Reason We Think Lard Is Unhealthy: Marketing

​Lard wasn't always considered artery-clogging gunk or the rebel chef's fat of choice. A century ago, rendered pig fat was just what American cooks used -- for frying, cakes, biscuits, and hundreds of other dishes. Yet by the time most of us were born, lard was off the table. Poisonous, even. Over ... More >>

You Ate a Ton of Food Last Year

​Yeah, that's what most of us have been saying to ourselves over the past few weeks, but it's true, according to the USDA. NPR's food correspondant, Allison Aubrey, looked over the agency's food consumption data and reported some of the numbers she found: 185 pounds of meat, 31 pounds of chee ... More >>

Facebook's Cheesy Ads: Do They Make it Worth $100 Billion?

​A couple of weeks ago, Business Insider, the puerile gossip 'n' lies site run by disgraced, bubble-era Internet-stock analyst Henry Blodget, informed us that a "source close to Facebook employees" said in an e-mail to the site that the company would go public within weeks. The article's author, N ... More >>

Groupon's Big Bowl of Problems

​Groupon, it appears, means to get rich or die tryin'. On Friday, it updated a regulatory filing indicating that it is scaling back its IPO plans. Less than five months ago, when it first filed, the company said it planned to raise about $750 million. Now that's been reduced to $540 million. The e ... More >>

The Girl Scouts' New Locavore Badge: What You Have to Do to Earn It

The Girl Scouts' Locavore badge.​Last week, NPR reported that the Girl Scouts of the USA had just revised its badges for the first time in 20 years. The update included introducing a new "Locavore" badge for senior scouts ages 14-16. But what do the scouts have to do to earn it? A fair amount of ... More >>

Sonic.net: The Li'l ISP that Stood up to the Feds

​I way overpay for my monthly Internet service. There are a bunch of reasons: Sonic.net, my ISP, has great customer service. It almost never goes down. The website is simple and user-friendly. It updates it quickly with service info. When you call them, they talk to you like you're a fellow human, ... More >>

S.F. MusicTech Summit: Will People Still Pay for Songs in Five Years?

From left, J Sider of RootMusic, Jack Conte of Pomplamoose, Lincoln Parish of Cage the Elephant, and cellist Zoe Keating​ After spending all day at the S.F. MusicTech Summit, I'm sitting at my laptop, listening to an MP3 -- and not posting about it on any of a handful of social networks. Al ... More >>

Jerome Williams Was Called "Jeremy" By Giants Teammates -- For Two Years

It turns out Jerome Williams pronounces his name like everyone else named Jerome. That's news to the Giants.​You haven't arrived until you end up as an answer to a trivia question -- and, hopefully, not one akin to "this was the man who fell into the gorilla enclosure at the zoo and was passed amo ... More >>

Google Thumbs Nose at Antitrust Regulators

​You can't say Google doesn't have balls. Despite increasingly heavy antitrust scrutiny by the federal government, the Internet behemoth is charging ahead with a deal that brings all kinds of potential for cornering a market. It will pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a leading maker of hand ... More >>

Netflix Saga: Fight for Your Right to Cheap Video Rentals

​Americans have collectively developed a keen sense of entitlement. That's why so many of us think we have a "right" to undeserved pay raises, undeserved good grades in school, free software, free music, low-priced gasoline; that we have a "right" to act like jackasses in traffic or in Internet co ... More >>

How Much Should We Believe in Activia? How Much Do You Throw in the Tip Jar?

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. Food as Medicine. The New York Times ran a great article yesterday about the increase in foods marketing themselves for their health benefits. The FDA, finding some of these claims ... More >>

Country Star Eric Church Hates Your Hip-Hop Hat and Sagging Jeans

On occasion, All Shook Down gives a listen to the music that is to real America what brine is to a cucumber. This is one of those occasions. Eric Church, "Homeboy" There's a fine bit of bullshit in Jay-Z's Decoded, that tony slab of image-sprucing book art in which the man who once bragg ... More >>

Facebook Paying People to Watch Ads Won't Work

Caitlinator/Flickr​I'm frankly amazed that in all the coverage of Facebook's plan to pay users to watch ads, nobody -- as far as I can tell -- has mentioned the several companies that tried to do something similar during the (original) dot-com boom, and failed spectacularly. The most famous of th ... More >>

Help S.F. Singer Meklit Hadero Bring Her Music to Ethiopia Next Month

Meklit Hadero​ Ethiopian born, S.F.-based jazz singer Meklit Hadero is planning a big trip to Ethiopia next month to perform for the people of her native country. It's her second such visit, after Hadero designed a similar journey in 2009. Hadero will perform for free in two places in Ethiopia ... More >>

Apple Sued for Privacy Invasion -- Again

What does he know about you?​The number of iPad and iPhone users that claim Apple has passed around their private information is growing by the day.In December, two separate groups of iPad and iPhone users sued Apple, Inc., claiming the company had created apps that distributed personal informatio ... More >>

Stream Julianna Barwick's Looping, Swooping New Album

Okay, Cupid​Last night at the Bottom of the Hill, curtain-haired Smith Westerns singer Cullen Omori introduced the band's third number with an exhortation to "fuck your girlfriend to this song." Well-meant though it may have been, this advice was logistically baffling (where were we, Dolores Park? ... More >>

BG and MB off the DL at WTF; Not NPR

So, What Exactly Is A "Supergroup"? Some (Not Entirely Serious) Definitions

Mister Heavenly​The news today out of indieville is that Sub Pop has signed Mister Heavenly, a new group featuring Nick Diamonds from Islands, Honus Honus from Man Man, and Joe Plummer from Modest Mouse. (Can we pause for a second to ponder what a mischievous mindfuck this outfit will be? Have you ... More >>

Say My Name, Say My Name

Deconstructing a Family Tragedy

Will Payne Was Hungry for Radio Food Talk, So He Created Sound Bites

FacebookPayne: Feeding the unmet appetite.​These days, radio is a medium often relegated to background noise -- buzzing through the kitchen, perhaps, as you prepare dinner. That's why it's so nice of Will Payne of Pirate Cat Radio to host Sound Bites, a fine, filling radio show about food you ... More >>