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A spoon-bending mentalist takes on the Gaspee affair

History Dept.
Plaques and parades are nice, but the real story of the HMS Gaspee — the British customs schooner looted and burned off the coast of Rhode Island in the run-up to the Revolutionary War — is not rated "G."

By: PHILIP EIL | May 23, 2012

The whistleblower in the ‘American Taliban’ case returns to Brown

Truthtelling
John Walker Lindh, better known as the American Taliban, was in US custody in Afghanistan in December 2001. And counter-terrorism prosecutor John DePue had a question: could he be interrogated without a lawyer present?

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 23, 2012

A future less dour

Looking Ahead
Neal Stephenson's novels have been called everything from science fiction to postcyberpunk.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 23, 2012

OBEY THE GIANT debuts

Film Dept.
A black Lincoln Town Car drives through the darkened streets of Providence.

By: PHILIP EIL | May 16, 2012

Photos, sound, and teen pregnancy rendered human

Art Dept.
Thirty-five black-and-white photographs ring the exhibition space at TSETSE Gallery on Empire Street in downtown Providence. Here a man with a bushy goatee sitting on a motorcycle, there a woman covering her face with her hair.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 09, 2012

When the hipster label hurts

Religious Studies
Don't call it a "cool church," pastor Andrew Mook says.

By: PHILIP EIL | May 09, 2012

The launch of PVD Pudding Pops

Sweets.
Valeria Khislavsky woke up in the middle of the night last summer with an idea: she was going to sell pudding. It was a mysterious vision, she says. She didn't have any particular attachment to pudding as a child; she isn't obsessed with pudding pop pitchman Bill Cosby. But it was, in a way, perfectly logical.

By: PHILIP EIL | May 15, 2012

On politics, the media, and Providence’s ‘hidden gem’

Week In Review
It was quite the week in local news and here at Chez Phoenix .

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 02, 2012

Revolution: Silent film at the library

At the Movies
Last I checked in with Dave Dvorchak — Providence Community Library office manager, film geek, Renaissance Man — he had found a long-forgotten cache of 16-millimeter movies owned by a defunct consortium of Rhode Island libraries.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 25, 2012

As May Day approaches, a local labor movement at a crossroads

Protest Dept.
May Day, the international workers day, is just around the corner. But organized labor, here in Rhode Island, is not in a particularly celebratory mood.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 25, 2012

Get back in the groove

Vinylution
For the casual music fan, the record store might seem an anachronism in the age of the iPod. And in a way, it is. That's no small part of the charm.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 20, 2012

Concert tickets: how the public got scalped

Marketplace
As the founder of jambands.com, the author of The Phishing Manual: Compendium to the Music of Phish (1996), and an editor of Relix magazine, Dean Budnick knows how live music works.

By: PHILIP EIL | April 18, 2012

Robert Ballard on discovering – and preserving – the Titanic

Under the Sea
Robert Ballard, the charismatic professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, has had an illustrious career as a marine explorer. But he is best known for discovering the Titanic on September 1, 1985.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 11, 2012

Can Cicilline’s apology clear the decks?

Mea Culpa
This week, Providence mayor-turned-Congressman David Cicilline appeared on WPRI-TV to apologize.

By: DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 11, 2012

Coffee with Brown University’s Puzzlemaster

Games
In September of 2010, the New York Times published a week's worth of crossword puzzles created by Brown University students

By: PHILIP EIL | April 11, 2012

ULTRA takes in the Pauly D Project

Nightclubbing
It was just after 10:30 at the ULTRA nightclub in Providence last Thursday night and general manager Garry Williams was sitting in the office, watching one of the club's former bouncers, "Big Jerry" Gialanella, on television say, "You got the fog goin'. You got the music bumpin'. The lights are strobin'."

By: PHILIP EIL | April 04, 2012