Nate Haduch

Eight years ago, the Broadway composer Jason Robert Brown cast a young singer and actress named Ariana Grande in his musical 13. And earlier this year, Grande brought in Brown to work with her on a new song. That song, which Grande called "Jason's Song," appeared as a bonus track on some editions of her … More »

Wilco just released their new album Schmilco, and frontman Jeff Tweedy also just gamely participated in a Late Show With Stephen Colbert bit about how all of Wilco's album titles are trash. Tweedy, of course, has been a regular guest on Colbert's show since the Colbert Report days. And last night, Wilco served … More »

We are mere weeks away from the release of 22, A Million, the third Bon Iver album, and we've only heard a few of its songs -- 22 (OVER S∞∞N),” “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⊠ ⊠," "33 'GOD'." And last night, Justin Vernon and … More »

Returning CBB champs Tatiana Maslany and Kristian Bruun of Orphan Black join Scott to chat about the times they broke their foot, the process of crying on camera, and exclusive monologues that will appear on their show. Then, Janice Cramps stops by to tell us all about her new pregnancy. Finally, children’s entertainer Big Chunky Bubbles makes his way into the studio for the first time to tell us about how he’s trying to branch out of entertaining children.This episode is sponsored by HBO’s High Maintenance, Jack Threads, Leesa, and Legal Zoom.

As I remarked last year, the Smoky Mountains website has the best fall foliage map in the business. The map covers the entire US and comes with a slider that lets you check the status weekend by weekend throughout the fall. Looks like the foliage will peak near Sept 30th in VT and Oct 14th in NYC and in the Smoky Mountains.

Tags: maps   USA

Brooklyn-based noise rockers the Men put out an album a year in the span between their 2010 debut and 2014's Tomorrow's Hits. After taking last year off (though members Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi did put out an LP as Dream Police), they're back with a new album called Devil Music. Tomorrow's Hits … More »

Parquet Courts will host a unique event NEAR Ridgewood, Queens on the heels of their most recent album, Human Performance. The event will take place 12/10 at the borough's Knockdown Center, and it will be hosted by the very, very funny comedian Joe Pera. X_____X, Flasher, and more will be using the huge space … More »

Ariana Grande is one of Jimmy Fallon's best Tonight Show guests because when she participates in one of Fallon's goofy skits, they tend to be more enjoyable than your average goofy Fallon skit. She did another one last night, playing a sort of guessing game during a lengthy interview segment that also touched on Stevie … More »

The euphoric Virginia sing-rapper D.R.A.M. is on one hell of a run right now; his Lil Yachty collab "Broccoli" was a legit song-of-the-summer contender. And today, he's come out with a new one called "Cash Machine." It's fucking great. The song is built around a big, funky piano loop from producer Ricky "Wallpaper" Reed, … More »

Rihanna, who is very good at being a weird famous person, spent her Sunday walking around Manhattan alone, throwing food to pigeons while wearing a gigantic red fur cape that looks like a heart. According to The Daily Mail, that fox fur cape comes from Saint Laurent, and it retails for $15,500. She also … More »

New York State police are seeking help identifying someone who damaged part of a sand sculpture at the New York State Fair in the likeness of Justin Bieber. Police believe the sculpture was vandalized Thursday evening in the Center Of Progress building in Syracuse. Though they have a partial description of the person responsible, they … More »

You know exactly what’s coming but you still laugh your ass off.

Tags: Ian Curtis   video

Back in March, Kanye West took a tour of the IKEA factory and was impressed by what the utilitarian Swedish furniture maker had to offer. In a new interview with BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac that aired earlier this week, Kanye had some more words to say about the company that included a … More »

The show must go on, and that's what it did when Steve Harwell apparently left Smash Mouth's headlining set at the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival last night before the band played its biggest hits. Harwell reportedly left the stage after collapsing and was taken away in an ambulance as the rest of the band was More »

The scientific rumor mill is saying that astronomers in Chile have discovered an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting the star nearest Earth, Alpha Proxima, a mere 4.25 light years away. As they say, "huge if true".

The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates have been discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed to be "Earth-like" (i.e. terrestrial). And of these, some 216 planets have been shown to be both terrestrial and located within their parent star's habitable zone (aka. "Goldilocks zone").

But in what may prove to be the most exciting find to date, the German weekly Der Spiegel announced recently that astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, just 4.25 light-years away. Yes, in what is an apparent trifecta, this newly-discovered exoplanet is Earth-like, orbits within its sun's habitable zone, and is within our reach. But is this too good to be true?

If you read the article, there's cause for skepticism but an official announcement is coming next week so we'll know for sure one way or the other.

The other cool thing? If there is a planet there, plans are already underway to build a project to get probes to nearby Alpha Centuri in 20 years, Project Starshot:

In the last decade and a half, rapid technological advances have opened up the possibility of light-powered space travel at a significant fraction of light speed. This involves a ground-based light beamer pushing ultra-light nanocrafts - miniature space probes attached to lightsails - to speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour. Such a system would allow a flyby mission to reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years from launch, and beam home images of possible planets, as well as other scientific data such as analysis of magnetic fields.

Perhaps they can redirect their target slightly?

Update: It appears as if the rumors were true. Phil Plait writing at Slate:

The planet, called Proxima Centauri b or just Proxima b (exoplanets are given their star's name plus a lower case letter in order of discovery, starting with "b"), orbits Proxima every 11.2 days. It has a mass of no less than 1.3 times the Earth's, so if it's rock and metal like Earth it's only a bit bigger. It's a mere 7.3 million kilometers from the star-a lot closer than Earth's distance from the Sun of 150 million kilometers!-but Proxima is so faint and cool it receives about two-thirds the amount of light and heat the Earth does. That means that it's in Proxima's habitable zone: It's possible (more or less) that liquid water could exist on its surface.

That's coooool.

Tags: astronomy   Phil Plait   science   space

Comedy Central’s Roast of Rob Lowe taped over the weekend, and after news broke that the dais would include Ann Coulter as a roaster, it didn’t take much for the event to essentially turn into an Ann Coulter roast. Aside from SNL’s Pete Davidson calling Coulter a “racist cunt,” here are some of the insults […]

The editors of BBC Culture polled 177 film critics from around the world about the best films made since 2000 and compiled the results into this list. The top film? David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Here's the top 20:

20. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
19. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
18. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
17. Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro, 2006)
16. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)
15. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
14. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
13. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
12. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
11. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)
10. No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
9. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)
8. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Edward Yang, 2000)
7. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
5. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
4. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
3. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
2. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

Eternal Sunshine, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Zodiac seem too high on the list but I'm not sure what I would move up instead. It'll be interesting to see how the consensus changes as these films age. Also, I've seen exactly half of the films on the full list...time to get watching.

Tags: best of   lists   movies

Outkast's ATLiens turns 20 this weekend, an anniversary we accidentally celebrated one week early. In a new interview with Spin commemorating two decades of ATLiens, Big Boi also revealed that he's planning a collaborative EP with longtime associate Killer Mike: … More »

Around the time Bon Iver were debuting their new album at Eaux Claires tonight, the band released details on that album along with extended versions of its first two songs. The LP is called 22, A Million (which explains the "22 Days" mural that went up in Brooklyn this week), and the tracks … More »

It's been a week, and still no Frank Ocean. A lot of fans gave up entirely, others have reached peak levels of ennui. Michael conducted an investigation on Reddit to show us all just how dire the situation's become: … More »

mountebank: any charlatan or quack.

Next month, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, the Lonely Island's comedy about music-business excesses, comes out on DVD. And with it: Deleted scenes! As with so many recent comedy movies, the deleted scenes promise to be some of the best parts in the movie. Case in point: The scene below, in which Andy Samberg, … More »

Everyone’s favorite heartfelt, hilarious stoner comedy — hit web series High Maintenance — is heading to HBO soon, and its got a new trailer that’ll get you even more excited about it. The highly anticipated new season of High Maintenance premieres on HBO Friday, September 16 at 11pm ET. Starting September 1, all of the show’s previous episodes […]

When a member of a popular New York City improv troupe gets cast on a hit TV show, the rest of the group — all best friends — start to realize that not everyone is going to make it after all. From the director of Sleepwalk With Me and the creator of This American Life […]