Anthony Bourdain Has Become the Future of Cable News, and He Couldn’t Care Less →

Rob Brunner:

Parts Unknown is the flagship of Bourdain's somewhat accidental empire. He also presides over two other current TV programs: the PBS docuseries The Mind of a Chef (which he both narrates and executive produces) and the Esquire Network travel show The Getaway. He's a mentor on ABC's reality competition The Taste (season 3 premieres in January), and he oversees an Ecco/HarperCollins imprint that has released four books since it kicked off in May 2013. He has written six food books of his own--including his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential--and several crime novels. Recently, and much to his surprise, he's even become a new face of CNN, which is currently being overhauled by former NBCUniversal president and CEO Jeff Zucker. His show could lead an industry-wide shift toward a more documentary-focused cable-news landscape.

For Bourdain, it has been a long evolution: from heroin-addicted chef to punk-rock-foodie author to global citizen on a mission to simply understand a bit about our world. It's a testament to Bourdain's work ethic and creative drive that after 14 years on television, he's still pushing to get better, go deeper, seek out complexity, avoid the obvious and conventional. At a time when he could simply coast, Bourdain seems as energized as ever.

But right now, at Tori Shin, he’s mostly just hungry.

I was a Bourdain groupie for a long, long time. I checked out towards the end of No Reservations, but after reading a few write-ups about Parts Unknown, I decided to give him another shot. I’m glad I did. I thought something about it felt different and this really great piece confirmed it. Make sure you read to the end to see what his future plans are.

Devon Still’s Pre-Cancer Surgery Pep Talk to His Four Year-Old Daughter →

There are plenty of non-shithead NFL players. Seems like Devon Still is one of them. And you know what? Kudos to the Bengals, too. The full story is here; the video, here.

Give ‘em hell, Leah.

‘But those are the words for the process…’

/via Howard Bryant

Children, Wake Up: a (ch)oral history of Arcade Fire’s ‘Funeral’ →

Anthony Mansuy:

Three months later, when back to Massachussets for a concert series organized in a period of full "hype", the Montreal-based make their entrance in Boston's Roxy, a larger, more welcoming hall. Nine hundred souls have their eyes directed towards the stage. Richard Reed Parry is still wearing his bike helmet, but it has now become a purely decorative object. As for the other members of the band, they seem much more conscious of what's at stake here : no stumbling, still a bit of struggling but much less. A few weeks before, David Byrne and David Bowie were flattering them. Then it was Bono. Then the rest of the world. That was the start of the Arcade Fire we would know ten years later : the world's most professional band, miles away from the daydreams, innocence and orchestrated chaos of Funeral, which will remain their best album forever. But there was a time when daydreams, innocence and chaos were the band's daily bread, an everyday life which gave Funeral its inner body. On the occasion of the album's tenth anniversary, we chatted with some members of the band, current or ancient, old friends, one-time and full-time associates, and others who, from a distance or close-up, contributed to the success of Funeral. They tell us about the genesis of Arcade Fire in Montreal, the recording of the album and the reaction of a band caught straight into the eye of the storm.

If you care at all about Arcade Fire, this sprawling piece is worth it for the pictures alone.

A Panel of Middle-Aged Dads Review Jeff Tweedy’s New Album →

Zach Schonfeld:

Several years ago—somewhere between 2007’s Sky Blue Sky and 2009’s Wilco (The Album), let’s say—Jeff Tweedy and his band Wilco faced a new charge. The music, breezy and comfortable and so far removed from the electronic squiggles of 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, still amply satisfied legions of the band’s followers. But among critics and some fans as well, it was attracting a new descriptor. It was being pegged as “dad rock.”

No one quite grasps what the term means, least of all the many dads I interviewed about it last Father’s Day. (Succinctly, one Urban Dictionary entry describes it as “music that Boomers would listen to and/or write themselves,” adding: “Inherently uncool.”) But no matter. Tweedy, ever unflappable, kept calm and publicly defended the label. And now he has embraced it anew, embodying dad rock as fully as any rock star has by literally recording an album with his son, 18-year-old drummer Spencer, as “Tweedy.”

Titled Sukierae, the result is out this week. Already, it has drawn the usual stock of jokes.

But the music—is it really so dad-friendly? I performed an experiment: I asked my dad to invite several of his fellow music-liking dad-friends over to the house, where I would hold a dad-themed listening party and see how the dad-rock focus group responded.

So, but, you know—what if you liked Wilco before you were a father? What then? God, I wish I hadn’t read this four days after turning 30.

iFixit’s iPhone 6 Plus Teardown →

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iFixit:

Over the years, we've seen the iPhone evolve—and grow. It began as just the iPhone. Soon it learned how to 3G, it gained an S (it would lose and gain this every other year), and it even learned to read fingerprints. Years of hard work and dedication have made the iPhone into what it is today, the iPhone 6 Plus. Join us live as we explore this gargantuan iPhone 6 Plus.

Every year, new iPhones are released, and every year, usually before said iPhones have even gone on sale in the United States, iFixit has begun their teardown of the phone. I always make it a point to scroll through this teardown as a way of forcing my caveman mind to try and grasp the sheer brilliance that is modern technology. Any time you feel inclined to wonder when we’ll see the future that the Jetsons promised, just open this link and remember that it’s already in your pocket.

Temple Grandin—An Anthropologist On Mars →

Oliver Sacks:

I phoned Temple from the Denver airport to reconfirm our meeting—it was conceivable, I thought, that she might be somewhat inflexible about arrangements, so time and place should be set as definitely as possible. It was an hour and a quarter’s drive to Fort Collins, Temple said, and she provided minute directions for finding her office at Colorado State University, where she is an assistant professor in the Animal Sciences Department. At one point, I missed a detail, and asked Temple to repeat it, and was startled when she repeated the entire directional litany—several minutes’ worth—in virtually the same words. It seemed as if the directions had to be given as they were held in Temple’s mind, entire—that they had fused into a fixed association or program, and could no longer be separated into their components. One instruction, however, had to be modified. She had told me at first that I should turn right onto College Street at a particular intersection marked by a Taco Bell restaurant. In her second set of directions, Temple added an aside here, said the Taco Bell had recently had a facelift and been housed in a fake cottage, and no longer looked in the least “bellish.” I was struck by the charming, whimsical adjective “bellish”—autistic people are often called humorless, unimaginative, and “bellish” was surely an original concoction, a spontaneous and delightful image.

I don’t know if it’s because I read this long piece from 1993 at 2am, but I found it incredibly insightful and a bit sad, as well as charming and, of course, fascinating. Basically, as I’m sure Sacks intended, the same as Grandin herself. The final 2/3rds of the piece is mostly about Grandin, but there’s also a fair amount of exposition on autism itself. Get this read (or added to Instapaper, at least) before The New Yorker’s paywall (potentially) goes back up.

Unlocking Every iPhone At Once →

/via @MntyDsi

Artificial Sweeteners Linked to Obesity Epidemic →

CBC News:

In Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature, researchers report that artificial sweeteners increase the blood sugar levels in both mice and humans by interfering with microbes in the gut. Increased blood sugar levels are an early indicator of Type 2 diabetes and metabolic disease.

The increase in consumption of artificial sweeteners coincides with the obesity and diabetes epidemics, Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his co-authors said.

"Our findings suggest that non-caloric artificial sweeteners may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic that they themselves were intended to fight."

No such thing as a free meal.

9to5Mac’s Top 20 iOS 8 Features →

Happy New iPhone(s) Day.