National Public Radio

A Seattle Farmer Is Feeding Weed to His Pigs

High prices have lead many farmers across the country to look for cheaper feed sources. Now NPR reports that a Seattle butcher stumbled on an alternative that's doubled as a very successful marketing ploy. William von Schneidau is feeding weed to his pigs. Now everyone's out to get some of his bac ... More >>

Strong Mayor: Mike Rawlings Loses the Game but Wins the Crowd at Literacy Center Benefit

Damn. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings got me last night. I resisted, but he got me. Anyway, I finally found the answer to a question that has long nagged me. When he does that affable dumb jock routine? Yeah. He's about to take you for a whirlwind visit to the cleaners. My wife was already falling out ... More >>

Grammar Nerds, Unite!

CNN and CBS Both Off the Hook in Defamation Lawsuit Over That Nonexistent Mass Grave

A couple weeks back, we gave you an update on the unlucky Liberty County couple still trying to sue the self-proclaimed psychic who wrongly told police they had a huge mass grave filled with tiny dead children on their property. Presley "Rhonda" Gridley, who the couple alleges is the psychic in que ... More >>

Our Exquisite Culture

Americans Declare Wine Independance: We Now Drink More Vino Than The French.

Great news America. We win. A story printed earlier this year notes U.S. residents now make up the largest wine market in the world, consuming 13 percent of all that's produced globally. That's ahead of both France and Italy, which have historically been the biggest winos in the global market. What ... More >>

Three Things The 2013 mtvU Woodie Awards Results Can Tell Us About Pop Music Right Now

The 2013 mtvU Woodie Awards were handed out on Thursday, March 13, and though it was happening right in Austin I'll forgive you for not noticing. In any case I'm not sure how you can have an awards show at SXSW without handing out a prize for Least Essential Social Media App To Receive Venture Capit ... More >>

DFW Airport is Getting Nap Rooms Next Month

Soon, travelers stranded at DFW Airport be forced to pretzel themselves on uncomfortable seats or sneak away to an isolated corner of carpet for a few minutes of shuteye. That's because the airport is getting nap rooms. The rooms -- more accurately, a nap hotel -- are planned by Minute Suites, a c ... More >>

Defending the Solo Diner

Valentine's Day is getting closer, and while those who have a special someone are certainly sweating dinner reservations, flowers and other finishing touches for what is supposed to be no less than a perfect evening, those who are single get to kick up their heels and enjoy a night they can devote e ... More >>

NPR Claims Pig Rectum Is a Suitable Substitute for Calamari -- In a Pinch

If you happened to listen to NPR this weekend you might have stumbled on an interesting food story on This American Life. The episode opens with a detailed examination of pork bung, which has been breaded and fried and served as calamari to unsuspecting diners. This can't be possible, right? Turns ... More >>

TCU Researchers Say Thieves Have Hearts, Are More Likely to Steal from Lawbreakers

A while back, Patrick Kinkade, the chair of TCU's criminal justice department, drove a filthy Ford Explorer to several full-service car washes in Fort Worth. Each time, he left behind a large amount of loose change in plain view. Often, about a third of the time, some of the money would be missing. ... More >>

A Dallas Photographer Went Inside DISD's Closed Schools And Took Some Awesome Pictures

This summer, Dallas photographer Allison V. Smith was given carte blanche to wander through the halls of nine of the 11 schools trustees voted to close earlier in the year. The result is a series of vaguely nostalgic, strangely touching photos that you'll find after the jump. "Living in Dallas, whe ... More >>

Lyda Hill's Giving $1 Million to Public Radio, and KERA Isn't Even Going To Send Her a Coffee Mug

You might not expect the granddaughter of H.L. Hunt, the oil magnate who inspired Larry Hagman's character on Dallas, to be particularly fond of public radio. But as it turns out, Lyda Hill is very fond indeed of her local NPR affiliate, KERA. The station announced today that Hill's foundation is w ... More >>

Five of This Week's Top Show Announcements: Buke and Gase, Deftones, This Will Destroy You and More

Buke and Gase Saturday, October 6, at City Tavern, $7/$10 An NPR favorite, Brooklyn duo Buke and Gase will be folkin' it up with Fox and the Bird and Roberto Moreno this weekend. All I'm going to say is that there will be handmade ukulele instruments involved. 'Nough said.

Did He Just Say He Butchers Animals in Hotel Bathrooms?

OK, did any of you just hear that? Kris Boyd, host of Think on NPR, just had hunter, writer and host of MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel, Steven Rinella, on her show during the 1 o'clock hour to discuss his new book Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter. I didn't catch the e ... More >>

Death Wish? Drink This.

The best part of waking up is heart palpitations and hearing colors, right? It is according to a recent NPR discussion about a brand of coffee from upstate New York called Death Wish. Yes, Death Wish. Surely the drink du jour of every touring Norwegian black metal band (there's one called Thorns!), ... More >>

Why Every Album You Love Should Be Ripped Apart By a 19-Year-Old

Recently, over at NPR, a 19-year-old intern was tasked with reviewing Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, an album he had ostensibly never heard or had little knowledge of. He reviewed it, didn't really like it, and was subsequently annihilated in the comments section. It ... More >>

Simply the Vest: Paula Poundstone

The Meat Industry is Still Trying to Get Over the Pink Slime Thing. It's Not Going Well.

Meatingplace is a trade publication for, you guessed it, the meat industry. NPR reported last week that the magazine's most recent cover screamed in bright pink "SLIMED," followed by the subhead "What the hell happened." In her article, April Fulton at NPR outlined what four editors of Meatingplace ... More >>

Mark Cuban Tackles America's Student Loan Bubble, Then Roots for It to Burst

In addition to sports team ownership and a sideline in media impresario-ness, Mark Cuban is quite the blogger: dishing out advice to the Occupy movement, fulminating about patent law, apologizing for some casual homophobia. And a few days ago, he aired his views on the small matter of student loan d ... More >>

Preview: Khaira Arby at Kessler Theater

Thursday, April 26, at the Kessler Theater

NPR Voice Diane Rehm Speaks Out on Parkinson's

The Worst Moments from SXSW 2012

The last few days, our indefatigable music critic staff has been regaling you with stories of the best from SXSW 2012. In the midst of these discoveries, we've been culling another list: the worst shit. The acts that ranged from huge bore-fests, to down-right lame. Below, you'll find their submissio ... More >>

The Balls Keep Rolling

Back in December, we pointed out a podcast posted on NPR, which declared meatballs the next big trend. At that time meatballs were taking New York City by storm, and a standalone ball shop had taken root in D.C.'s Chinatown. Then in January, The New York Times reviewed a place called Parm. Pete Well ... More >>

Great Service Can Mask Flawed Food, But It Doesn't Work the Other Way

A few weeks ago I tuned into an NPR broadcast out of DC. The Kojo Nnamdi show featured local journalists, and they discussed the state of dining in the nation's capital. Tom Sietsema, food critic for the Washington Post, made reference to a survey that determined diners were more inclined to return ... More >>

Thanks to Drought, Houston's Drinking More of Dallas's Wastewater Than Ever Before

Click to enlarge a map of the Trinity River Basin, courtesy the U.S. Geological Survey ​StateImpact Texas is a National Public Radio-KUT Austin-KUHF Houston joint dedicated to environmental issues. This morning, reporter Dave Fehling out of Houston looked at the water coming out of his tap and won ... More >>

Balls: They're What's for Dinner

Flickr​If you consider yourself a lover of good food, you ought to check out NPR's Food Podcast. Every Thursday they drop 30 minutes highly digestible food news , and while some of it's a little campy, it's mostly quite good. Last week's podcast featured the next great food trend: meatballs. ... More >>

Dallas News Publisher Jim Moroney Talks to UT Students, Profs About the Future of His Paper

On Thursday, Jim Moroney paid a visit to Austin, where he told an audience of University of Texas journalism students and professors: Only The Major Metropolitan Newspaper can preserve, protect and defend democracy ... or something like that. The Dallas Morning News's publisher spoke of rapidly shri ... More >>

We'd Love to Buy a Vowell

Eat Up While You Can, Texas

Worry: It's what's for dinner.

Ben & Jerry's New "Schweddy Balls" Flavor Gives New Meaning to Ice Cream Social

Ben & Jerry's​Our favorite hippie ice cream makers from Vermont might have lost their minds, but they have not lost their sense of humor. Today they announced their new flavor: "Schweddy Balls." According to B&J's, the Saturday Night Live inspired dessert has "vanilla ice cream with a hint o ... More >>

News and Notes: Seryn Gets More Paste Love, Will Johnson Gets NPR'd and Much, Much More

Stand up and take a bow, Seryn.​Got a whole grab-bag of local music notes to pass along today, but none is bigger than this: Yesterday, Paste announced its list of the year's best albums so far, and coming in at No. 4 on their list was Denton's Own Seryn's album, This Is Where We Are. The baroque ... More >>

John Vanderslice, Daniel Hart

Monday, May 23, at Dan's Silverleaf

Homegrown Food Remedies: Another Reason to Love Big Pharma

Butter: Lousy for burns and doesn't prevent STDs, or so we've heard.​I am suspicious of at-home remedies. I don't believe in a cure until a stranger in a white coat feels up my glands and then prescribes it to me, in the form of an innocuous-looking pill, a potentially addicting spray or a vil ... More >>

The Six Best Fleet Foxes Concert Videos on YouTube

YoutubeSweet fancy moses, listen to those harmonies.​Fresh off climbing Billboard's charts -- and, y'know, selling a planet-size chunk of records -- Fleet Foxes will be stopping by Dallas tomorrow night. Like you didn't already know. But here's something you might not be aware of: Tonight at 8:30 ... More >>

2011 Barefoot at the Belmont Series Includes Rhett Miller, Jason Isbell, Mike Doughty

​Not sure when it started being specifically "KXT 91.7's annual summer concert series," as the National Public Radio-backed music-centric station KKXT-91.7 is so proudly calling it today on its website, but, hey, here we are, heading into another summer, and, as has been the case for a few years n ... More >>

NPR's Streaming The New True Widow Disc... So, You Should Probably Go and Listen To It.

The artwork for the new True Widow album.​A couple weeks back, you may recall, Eric Grubbs caught up with local "stonegaze" trio True Widow to talk shop and to talk a long, hard look at the band's sophomore album, the obnoxiously titled As High As the Highest Heavens and From the Center to the Cir ... More >>

Don't Shoot! We Know You're Conservative, Tom.

Tom Leppert: Drill, Baby, Drill!

​Yesterday we covered Dallas Mayor-turned-U.S. Senate candidate Tom Leppert's position on National Public Radio. This afternoon, on the Facebook, I got this note from Not Mayor Tom:Excited to launch our new petition calling on President Obama to stop our dependence on foreign oil, boost natural ga ... More >>

Tom Leppert Among Republicans Urging Congress to Withdraw NPR's Funding

Who knew Leppert was so savvy with hashtags?​A couple hours after U.S. Senate candidate Tom Leppert tweeted what you see above, we contacted Leppert spokesman Shawn McCoy to find out why the former mayor supports eliminating public funding for National Public Radio. He said he'd talk to him an ... More >>

A Comic Pounding

Leppert Talks Taxis on National Public Radio

Patrick MichelsOne abandoned cab getting a tow from Love Field Monday evening​Way back back on Monday, Patrick was at Love Field watching Dallas Police arrest cabbies who'd abandoned their rides in front of the airport, while I spoke with Mayor Tom about how the escalating protest -- which, earlie ... More >>

Wherein FOX ID's Mayor Tom as "R-Texas"

​That $202-million figure seen in the screengrab above comes from PricewaterhouseCoopers's much-debated Super Bowl guesstimate released a few days ago -- though, as you'll note in Mayor Tom's interview with FOX Business Channel, he pushes that number up to, oh, 'round $600 million-ish. Which is wh ... More >>

Want To Be KXT's Music Director? Because They're Hiring, If You're Sick of Hearing The Songs Already Played On Classic Rock Stations.

​Just a little more than a year after its head-scratching launch, KKXT-91.7 FM KXT, the music-centric offshoot of local National Public Radio affiliate KERA-90.1 FM, remains something of a beguiling beast.In theory, it's great. In practice, it sometimes is, too. Just having a station that will pla ... More >>

Q&A Giveaway: No Age Drummer and Lead Vocalist Dean Spunt Talks Never Fitting In, Earning Rave Reviews and Tossing Out Takes

How the hell does a DIY, eff-it-all-if-it's-not-art duo birthed out of Los Angeles' famed DIY-venue The Smell come to grips with the pressure of following up a critically successful debut album on Sup Pop? Well, according to lead vocalist and drummer Dean Spunt, if the band's No Age, then it records ... More >>

It's Em-Effing Cookie-Baking Time: Chocolate Chip Bacon Cookies

Alice LaussadeChocolate chip cookies with bacon? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. (He suffers from angina.)​It's the holidays. A time filled with magic and wonder -- a time when wishes are granted. A time when getting completely blackout drunk is socially acceptable and everyone's nice t ... More >>

Tell Me More, Mayor Tom

Sam Merten​A Friend of Unfair Park alerts us: Mayor Tom Leppert is on today's episode of National Public Radio's Tell Me More, along with Utah Governor Gary Herbert. The subject: How Utah and Dallas are leading the economic recovery, per that Brookings Institution report to which we directed y ... More >>

Erykah Badu and Sarah Jaffe Land On Some Early Year-End Best Album Lists

Sarah Jaffe's had a big year, in case you didn't know.​It's officially December, which means 2010 is almost over, which means it's time for the overzealous music critics of the world to rush out their year-end best music lists, even though, hey, the year isn't over and there are still albums comin ... More >>

Knee-Jerk Snap Judgment: KXT

​OK, so KERA's musical youth been on the air for, what, 60 minutes? First song played: Santana's "She's Not There" (probably a little too classic-rock for a new-station kick-off, you ask me), followed by Monsters of Folk, Ingrid Michaelson, Telegraph Canyon and ... well, look, the playlist is here ... More >>