President Trump’s first rally since the coronavirus took hold in the U.S. provided an unsurprising disaster of a speech, but the sparse crowd in attendance after the campaign touted ticket requests of over a million was a stunning surprise that sent Trump allies scurrying for excuses. Trump’s embarrassing speech on …
Read More »Trump's Social Media Executive Order Is a Confession of His Ignorance
With more than 100,000 Americans now dead from the coronavirus, President Trump has spent this week doing what he does best — ignoring the crisis and instead railing against invented demons. This week’s demon is Twitter, the social media platform that the president normally uses to his great advantage, peddling …
Read More »With Its Joe Rogan Deal, Spotify Is Moving Closer to Podcast Supremacy
Spotify shook up the podcast world on Tuesday when popular and polarizing podcaster Joe Rogan announced his show “The Joe Rogan Experience” would become a Spotify exclusive this September. But it wasn’t a total surprise — the news further bolstered Spotify’s high-profile podcasting moves from the past year and a …
Read More »Kent State Shootings: A Lot of People Were Crying, and the Guard Walked Away
This story was originally published in the June 11th, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone. KENT, Ohio — Just down the street from P. G. Sellman’s Tire & Appliance Store and Gas Station, close to the Cuyahoga River, the striped gate of a railroad crossing has lowered slowly, with dignity, until …
Read More »How JPMorgan Chase Became the Doomsday Bank
Bankers like numbers. Numbers tell the story. No emotion gets in the way. So let’s look at the numbers: Over the past three years — that is, in the years after the world came together in Paris to try to slow climate change — JPMorgan Chase lent $196 billion to …
Read More »Scenes from the Democratic Meltdown in Iowa
There was panic on the streets of Des Moines, Iowa, as Democrats wondered: Could life ever be sane again? Even before the state bungled the results of its all important caucus vote, internecine beef within the Democratic party was beginning to boil. The night before the caucus clusterfuck, while the …
Read More »Empty Spaces: 'The Wall' Artist Gerald Scarfe on Selling His Pink Floyd Archive
Kurt Cobain’s rattyMTV Unplugged sweater recently sold at auction for more than $340,000. It’s a jaw-dropping haul for a music-adjacent item… until you consider that “The Scream,” a painting by artist and political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and the focal point of Pink Floyd‘s The Wall marketing campaign, previously sold for …
Read More »Trump Unleashes Twitter Tirade Bashing Fox News
President Trump’s relationship with Fox News isn’t as rosy as it was in their halcyon days of six months ago. Whether it’s bashing hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacAllum for the job they did moderating a town hall with Bernie Sanders, or slamming legal correspondent “Judge” Andrew Napolitano for discussing …
Read More »Weezer's Blue Album: 10 Things You Didn't Know
Twenty-five years ago, Rivers Cuomo was attending community college when his band Weezer released their self-titled debut. “I brought it to class and said, ‘Look everybody,’” he recalled in 1995. “They were all like, ‘Yeah, cool, whatever.’” The music world would show significantly more interest than his classmates. Arriving on …
Read More »Billy Joel on Turning 70, Donald Trump and Why He Writes Music Just For Himself Now
Billy Joel hasn’t released an album of new pop songs since 1993, but that hasn’t stopped him from selling out Madison Square Garden every month for the past five years and packing baseball stadiums across the country each summer. “I’ve gone onstage and said, ‘I don’t have anything new for …
Read More »