How ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart’ Went From Public Enemy to TV Star

Marvel has revealed that a black woman will portray the comics’ next Iron-Man. While the character, named Riri Williams in her out-of-costume life, won’t fight crime under the Iron-Man moniker, she will soon be donning Tony Stark’s metal suits as soon as Marvel wraps up their current Civil War II…

Olympian Oscar Pistorius Sentenced to Six Years in Prison for Murder
Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee sprinter to compete at both the Paralympics and the Olympics, was sentenced to six years in prison for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp. The sentence was announced by a South African judge on Wednesday, CNN reports.  Pistorius, 29, shot and killed Steenkamp at his…

Word of Life ‘Cult’ Defendant Found Not Guilty of Murder
Defendant Sarah Ferguson was found not guilty of second-degree murder yesterday, bringing an end to a week-long bench trial in upstate New York for the October 2015 beating death of her half-brother, Lucas Leonard. Judge Michael Dwyer did find her guilty, however, of first-degree manslaughter, two counts of first-degree assault…

‘Sex Object’ Author Talks Penises, Trauma and Everyday Sexism
When Internet trolls tell Jessica Valenti to “Get back in the kitchen and make me dinner” or threaten to shoot her for writing about feminism, their messages are automatically filtered into an e-mail folder labeled “Assholes.” But in Valenti’s experience, attempting to discard real-life confrontations with sexism like an unsavory…

The Pot Law That Could Be ‘Deal-Breaker for the Drug War’
Last week California’s pot legalization initiative, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, qualified for the ballot in November, setting the stage for a vote that will have ramifications far beyond California’s borders. There are several reasons why if the AUMA passes, it will make California the heaviest domino to fall in…

‘Serial’ Creator on Adnan Syed’s New Trial: ‘It Was A Long Shot’
Serial creator Sarah Koenig was relieved at the news that Adnan Syed, the subject of her wildly popular podcast, would be retried on charges that he murdered his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999. In a post on the podcast’s website, Koenig wrote that she happened to be on Skype with Executive…

Off the Beaten Path – Nashvile
Though it’s long been known as the capital of country music, Nashville is far more than just the “Home of the Grand Ole Opry.” These days, the state capital of Tennessee is also home to a wide variety of non-musical industries, inspiringForbes to proclaim it the U.S.A.’s 4th Best City…

‘True Blood’ Broadway Musical in the Works
A Broadway musical based on the hit HBO vampire series True Blood is in development, The New York Post reports. The theatrical adaptation is being workshopped under director Pam MacKinnon, who won a Tony Award in 2013 for directing the revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Author Elizabeth Scott — best known for…

Can New York Be Saved in the Era of Global Warming?
It’s a bright spring day in New York, with sunlight dancing on the East River and robins singing Broadway tunes. I’m walking along the sea wall on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with Daniel Zarrilli, 41, the head of New York’s Office of Resilience and Recovery – basically Mayor…

‘Serial’ Subject Adnan Syed: 4 Key Pieces of Evidence, Explained
Yesterday, Adnan Syed, whose conviction and life sentence for the murder of his high-school girlfriend was the focus of the first season of the hit podcast Serial, got the news he had been waiting to hear for over 16 years – Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Martin P. Welch, who presided over…

Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’ Drum Kit to Be Sold At Auction
The drum kit that contributed a cheerful backbeat to a version of the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” will be auctioned off on Thursday in California by Nate D. Sanders Auctions, according to Reuters. Bidding for the kit will begin at $150,000. “This is a piece of rock history,” auction house manager Michael Kirk…

FBI Adds 10th Woman to ‘Most Wanted’ List: Meet Them All
While there might not be too many real-life Thelma and Louises, every once in a while, a woman is considered dangerous enough to make the FBI’s official list of 10 Most Wanted fugitives. This week, accused murderer Shanika S. Minor became the 509th person – yet only the 10th woman – to be added to…

‘Serial’ Subject Adnan Syed Gets New Trial
Adnan Syed, the subject of the hit This American Life spin-off podcast Serial, will be retried on charges that he murdered his ex-girlfriend, Woodlawn High School student Hae Min Lee, in 1999. Syed, whose case was scrutinized by Serial host/producer radio producer Sarah Koenig, was convicted of first degree murder, kidnapping, false imprisonment and robbery in…

Orlando Releases Police Logs From Night of Pulse Shooting
The City of Orlando made police logs from the night of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub – including transcripts from hundreds of calls to 911 – available to the public on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. The documents show that a 911 caller first reported the shooting around 2:03 a.m. Then…

See Lucius, Lizzo and Activists Talk Conflict-Free Sourcing
A panel discussion titled “Changing the World One Purchase at a Time” at this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which was led by Rolling Stone’s Mark Binelli, bought together activists and musicians to tackle some big issues. An engaged group of festivalgoers gathered to listen. Annie Callaway, who is the advocacy…

See Papadioso, Comedian Sean Patton Talk Advocacy and Art
A Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival panel discussion this year tackled how people can turn their passions into advocacy. Rolling Stone contributing editor Mark Binelli moderated the conversation, which attracted a crowd of interested festivalgoers. Comedian Sean Patton addressed the importance of creative people, no matter what discipline they’re working in,…

Weezer Honor NASA Mission With New Song ‘I Love The USA’
In August 2011, NASA launched an unmanned probe named Juno towards Jupiter. Juno is scheduled to enter the planet’s orbit on July 4th, and the excitement around this achievement inspired a pair of new tunes from Weezer and Trent Reznor. Weezer announced the arrival of “I Love The USA” with an enthusiastic tweet on Wednesday…

Hear Bruce Springsteen Read New ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ Foreword
Bruce Springsteen has written and read his own foreword to a new audiobook edition of Born on the Fourth of July, Ron Kovic’s gripping anti–Vietnam War memoir which served as the basis for the Oscar-winning movie of the same name. The book details Kovic’s entering of the Vietnam War as a fierce, pro-war patriot…

Gun Shop Raffles AR-15 to Raise Money for Orlando Shooting Victims
A gun store outside of Chicago has set up a raffle to raise money for victims of the recent mass shooting in Orlando, The Chicago Tribune reports. The prize? An AR-15 rifle, much like the one that Omar Mateen used to kill 49 people at the Pulse nightclub earlier this month. Though…

Watch the Beatles’ Hypnotic ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ Video
George Harrison’s elegant Beatles ballad “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” comes to life in a new video created by Apple Corps Ltd. and Cirque du Soleil. The hypnotic clip is based on a 10th anniversary re-staging of “Gently Weeps” for LOVE, Cirque du Soleil’s theatrical production at Las Vegas’ Mirage Hotel & Casino.  The…

Can Taylor Swift Sue Kanye West Over ‘Famous’ Video?
On Saturday, the video for Kanye West’s “Famous” whipped up the typical amount of online outrage thanks to its use of nude mock-ups of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Donald Trump and other famous figures. After some blowback, the rap superstar tweeted simply and defiantly: “Can somebody sue me already #I’ll wait.” Ignoring…

How Apple Hopes to Win the Streaming War
Drake’s “Hotline Bling” video, Taylor Swift’s tour movie and the Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” have something in common: They’ve all been funded by Apple. The world’s most valuable company has thrown its immense resources into making music videos, concert documentaries and documentaries and, above all, scoring album exclusives. The tech behemoth’s…

‘Game of Thrones’ Finale Draws Record Audience
The final episode of the sixth season of Game Of Thrones drew 8.9 million viewers on Sunday night, Nielsen reports (via The New York Times). This represents a new record for the show. The previous high water mark for viewership was held by the finale of the fifth season, which drew…

‘Titanfall 2’: Everything We Know About Blockbuster Sci-Fi Game Sequel
A sequel is coming to 2014’s smash sci-fi shooter Titanfall – the game that sped up multiplayer battles everywhere and revealed the chaotic awesomeness of free-running “pilots” commanding 20-foot-tall robots known as “Titans” – and this time it’ll have what players have long demanded: a single-player mode. And unlike the first Titanfall, Titanfall…

Kit Harington Talks Falling Asleep During ‘Game of Thrones’ Scene
The sixth season of Game of Thrones rumbled to a close on Sunday. After dying and being brought to life, Kit Harington’s Jon Snow ended the season on a high note: a roomful of warriors embraced him as the new “King in the North.” According to a new interview with W,…

Pink Pistols: LGBT Gun Owners Unite in Arming Gay Community
“I totally smoked that punk!” I thought to myself, after pulling off a few well-placed rounds – 30 or so – in the target’s chest, plus a few more in his head. I felt good, and not just for my excellent aim. Guns have never appealed to me, and I’ve had…

‘Watch Dogs 2’: Inside Game Daring to Take on San Francisco Tech Boom
Depending on who you are and what your job is, San Francisco is either the LED-lit city upon the hill, or an insanely expensive, increasingly stratified near-dystopia. It’s also home to a lot of the video game industry – so maybe it’s inevitable that the city would once again become…

Watch John Oliver’s Hilarious, Shocking Olympic Doping Report
With the Rio Olympic Games around the corner, John Oliver warned that viewers should prepare for the usual glut of cheesy athlete profiles, or “inspiration porn.” But as Russia’s recent doping scandal proves, the Olympics also have a dark side, a theme Oliver explored in an exhaustive Last Week Tonight report. Russia’s state-facilitated…

Watch Nikki Glaser Explain Why Low Self-Esteem Is Comedic Gold
Stand-up comedian Nikki Glaser returned to television this year with Comedy Central’s Not Safe With Nikki Glaser. With a rotating panel of comedians, the host and executive producer discusses all things sex- and dating-related. Glaser discusses her attraction to comedy and life leading up to comedy in our video series…

Siegfried & Roy to Tell Life Story in Upcoming Biopic
Siegfried & Roy, the German magicians who conquered Las Vegas before an infamous onstage tiger attack in 2003 ended their popular run, will be the subject of a new biopic from director Philipp Stolzl (The Physician). The entertainers, Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Uwe Horn, have signed a deal to executive…

5 Hilarious WTF Courtroom Moments
By now, you’ve no doubt read the hilariously outrageous, if somewhat homophobic, courtroom exchange between an accused murderer and the Georgia judge who refused his request for a new public defender. In the course of 10 minutes, defendant Denver Allen’s profanity-laden insults towards “Fuckman-Ass” Judge Bryant Durham devolved from bold declarations about…

Aziz Ansari Slams Donald Trump’s ‘Xenophobic Rhetoric’ in Scathing Op-Ed
Aziz Ansari has penned a scathing op-ed slamming Donald Trump’s “xenophobic rhetoric” throughout the mogul’s presidential campaign and especially in the aftermath of the tragic Orlando shooting. “Today, with the presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and others like him spewing hate speech, prejudice is reaching new levels,” Ansari wrote for the New…

Donkey-Dick Defendant Court Transcript: 10 Greatest Lines
“If you’re not going to suck my dick, sir, I don’t want to be here,” the inmate says to the court. “OK. I’ve enjoyed this,” the judge responds. Thus concluded murder suspect Denver Fenton Allen’s actual, real-life pre-trial hearing in a Georgia courtroom last week, which was brought to the public’s…

How the ‘Warcraft’ Movie Failed
The makers of the Warcraft movie did everything right. They tapped a video game universe with an immense collection of lore and backstories as source material. Director Duncan Jones had indie cred, a commercial and critical hit in Source Code, and a verifiable history of love for the games he was…

Authorities: No Evidence Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen Was Gay
Two weeks into the investigation into the tragic Orlando shooting that killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub, FBI investigators have been unable to uncover persuasive evidence corroborating reports that the shooter, Omar Mateen, previously frequented the club, used gay dating apps or pursued gay relationships, The Associated Press reports citing…

New York Hoarder Found With 400-Animal ‘Amazon Jungle’
Calling it “Operation Noah’s Ark” may be a bit of a stretch, but the number of animals living in Gary Gruber’s house still amounted to what Gary Rogers, spokesman for the Nassau County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, called one of the biggest animal seizings in the…

‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek’ Lead Next Wave in Virtual Reality
When it comes to virtual reality, things like visual fidelity and screen resolution matter only so much. It’s all about the immersion factor – the way a well-wrought VR experience rings effortlessly true to our reptile brains. At E3 this year, game critics bailed out during demos of Everest’s high,…

Michael Jackson Estate Blasts ‘False’ Pornography Report
After Radar Online published documents this week suggesting that Michael Jackson kept a collection of pornography at his Neverland Ranch, the singer’s estate issued a statement calling the disclosure “sleazy internet click bait.” Radar Online’s report claims that Jackson was in possession of magazines and videos that contained images of nude children…

Inside Kentucky’s Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
Last April I spent two days at the Knob Creek Gun Range in Kentucky for their twice-yearly Machine Gun Shoot. I’m Swiss, and have made the U.S. my project to photograph for a few years, so I felt that this needed to be seen and experienced.    America has a relationship with…

Why Did an Ex-Amish Family Sell Their 14-Year-Old Daughter?
Last Thursday, officers from the Lower Southampton Police Department in Bucks County, Penn., were called to do a welfare check on a home on Old Street Road in the working-class township of Feasterville, less than 20 miles north of Philadelphia. Child services had received a tip from a neighbor who…

How ‘Quake’ Changed Video Games Forever
Quake, the first-person shooter from id Software, turns 20 years old on June 22nd, 2016. It’s widely regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time, having pioneered a number of conventions that we now take for granted. A successor to the studio’s hit series Doom, it…

From ‘OITNB’ to ‘Lady Dynamite’: TV’s Mental Health Revolution
In most episodes, Netflix’s women-in-prison Orange Is the New Black plays like a series of deftly observed short stories, exposing how the females locked in Litchfield Penitentiary lived on the outside and landed themselves in the clink. And in the recently dropped new season, showrunner Jenji Kohan devotes one of…

Nintendo is Changing: The New ‘Zelda’ Proves It
Nintendo president and chief operating officer Reggie Fils-Aimé is not the only imposing figure at the company’s E3 booth this year. On each side of its high white walls, a 30-foot tall Link towers above the ever-expanding line. Some have waited more than three hours to get hands on with virtually the…

J.K. Rowling, Brian Eno Argue Against ‘Brexit’ From European Union
With British citizens voting on whether to “Leave” or “Remain” in the European Union in the coming days, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and electronic music pioneer Brian Eno are among those who have penned arguments against the “Brexit.” “As this country has entered what will come to be seen as…

10 Things You Need to Know About Zika
Zika is full of surprises. The mosquito-borne virus has captured international attention since the outbreak in Brazil early in 2015, and is now active in 60 countries around the world. In the seven decades that we’ve known about Zika, it has always appeared to be relatively harmless, no more alarming…

‘Cheers’ National Theater Tour to Debut in Boston
Cheers Live on Stage, an adaptation of the classic Eighties/Nineties sitcom, will appropriately launch its national tour in Boston this September. The comedy adaptation is built around memorable moments from the acclaimed show’s first season, The Associated Press reports.  Writer Erik Forrest Jackson adapted the theater version after binge-watching all 22 Season…

How BioWare Plans to Keep ‘Mass Effect: Andromeda’ True to Its Roots
Mass Effect: Andromeda was technically present at E3, but mainly just in spirit. There were a few notable beats in the trailer that debuted at EA’s press conference – we caught a glimpse of the new ship, were treated to the latest in cutting-edge smile technology, and even briefly met…

Led Zeppelin Urge Judge to Halt ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Trial
Attorneys representing Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and Warner Music have requested U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner to halt proceedings in Led Zeppelin’s ongoing copyright infringement trial, Billboard reports.  The defendants argue that plaintiff Michael Skidmore’s lawyer Francis Malofiy failed to establish burden of proof during three days of testimony. “Although the parties’ pre-trial filings…

10 Best Things We Saw at E3 2016
This year saw the annual video game show known as E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) morph into a hybrid experience that attracted 50,000 video game publishers, developers, analysts, and journalists inside the halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center — with an additional 20,000 fans outside at LA Live — from…

Social Media Superfandom and the Murder of Christina Grimmie