The Colin McEnroe Show
Episodes
Elizabeth McGovern's Sadie and the Hotheads, and Winterpills
08 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Casting is an underrated art. There used to be an Academy Award for it, and there probably still should be. We honor actors, but not the people who pi...
The Scramble: Journalism Gone Awry, and Northern Racism
08 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Scramble reacts to new developments in the University of Virginia case of alleged sexual assault and Rolling Stone’s concern about some its repo...
The Nose Is Obsessed!
05 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We. Are. Obsessed. When you watch the news, scroll through Facebook, check in on Twitter, everybody always seems to be talking about the same things: ...
Inflammation Can Kill You
04 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I got interested in this topic last year when the Yale Medical School got a $10 million Blavatnik grant for more work in the specific area of Im...
Why We'll Always Need New Books
03 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks contrasted E.L. James, who wrote "50 Shades of Grey," with Haruki Murakami, a m...
The Plight of the Composeress
02 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, female composers have often found themselves overshadowed by their male counterparts. Take Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Anna Magdalena Bac...
The Scramble: Athletes Who Don't Stick To Sports; Wally Lamb Enters TV; and Twitter Philosphy
01 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
First and foremost, we're really sorry about the Wally Lamb cell phone connection. Do not adjust your radio (or streaming device).It's the usual three...
Would You Survive a Life-Threatening Disaster?
26 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
John Aldridge, a 45-year old lobster fisherman from Long Island, flew off the back of his boat when a plastic handle supporting a box hook snappe...
Discovering Deliciousness!
25 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Food is so personal. You put it in your mouth. You probably even have very specific ways of putting it in your mouth.One of our guests today, Dan Pash...
The Scramble: Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer Prepare You for a Long Car Trip
24 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the Monday Scramble, we're all about helping you survive the holidays. Let's say you've got a long -- maybe eight hours! -- drive ahead of you...
The Nose: Cosby, Nichols, Peter Pan and Family
21 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You've probably heard, seen and read a lot about Bill Cosby this week, but I think today's Nose panel tears into the topic in some interesting wa...
You're a Yellow-Bellied Coward!
20 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We're talking about cowardice today and it makes me think of two people - Hector and Dr. Bones McCoy.We claim to despise cowardice and to exalt braver...
Bring Back the Beaver!
19 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we take a deeper look at the beaver. Beavers are sophisticated eco-engineers, one of few animals capable of broadening biodiversity and cu...
On Your Marks, Get Set, Math!
18 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In high school the math teacher who broke my spirit was also the head football coach. When he handed back your tests he called out the position you'd ...
The Scramble Got Stuck In a Wormhole
17 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Let's play a game. I'm going to name five things and you tell me what they are - "An Unnecessary Woman," "All the Light We Cannot See," "Redeployment,...
From Lovelace to Jobs: Talking Innovation with Walter Isaacson
14 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We live in amazing times. But where did all this stuff come from? And by stuff, I mean computers and the internet, and all the amazing platforms like ...
The Psychopath Show
13 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You know lots of sociopaths right?It could be anyone from your ex-spouse to the guy who cut you off on your drive to work today. It's a term we t...
A Conversation with Kara Sundlun on "Finding Dad: From 'Love Child' to Daughter"
12 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you know the name Kara Sundlun, you probably associate it with an especially sunny form of T.V. journalism. She co-hosts the show, Better Connectic...
The Impulse Society
12 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
One of the biggest American myths is limitlessness. You'd think by now we'd understand our own limitations but the American myth - and you can hear it...
Is America Still Awash in a Sea of Twee?
11 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This is one of those shows where you may start by saying, "huh?" But with any luck, 30 minutes from now, you'll start to say, "Oh!" I got i...
Go Ahead And Talk To Yourself. You're Not Crazy!
06 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Do you talk to yourself? Is it a silent inter-narrative or do you talk aloud? What form of address to you use to yourself?When I'm mad at myself I som...
What's Next for Republicans?
05 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There are so many plots and subplots emanating from yesterday. Republicans had a good night around the country. They extended their control in the U.S...
Is Social Studies to Blame for Voter Apathy?
04 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since 1778 when Thomas Jefferson, revising the laws of Virginia, wrote something called a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, there...
The Scramble: Automation, Visconti, Movie Cinemas
03 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
First up on the Scramble today, writer and thinker Nicholas Carr, whose new book, "The Glass Cage" is about our blind surrender to automatio...
The Nose Tricks AND Treats
31 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Here are the three stories going up the Nose today.In August Shoshana Roberts took a walk through the streets of New York City followed by a hidden ca...
Achieving Immortality: How Science Seeks To End Aging
30 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The dream to live forever has captivated mankind since the beginning. We see this in religion, literature, art, and present day pop-culture in a ...
Third-Party Candidates Get a Say
29 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
According to the latest Q-poll, a lot of Connecticut voters don’t like any of the candidates running in the upcoming gubernatorial election. But, th...
Connecticut Grown Tobacco
28 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Shade tobacco came to Connecticut in 1900 from the island of Sumatra, which was beginning to dominate the world of cigar wrappers. The leaf had a ligh...
The Scramble is Scandalous
27 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Scandal is a theme today. One of our guests today is Anne Helen Petersen, who left academia to write full-time about celebrities and television a...
The Nose Didn't Get a Nose Job... Yet
24 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
"The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like ...
A Salute to Hamlet
23 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever I see a production of Hamlet, I am newly floored by its impact on language, no matter how many times you tell yourself that a lot of our spok...
Hangings in America: The Past and Present of The Noose
22 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
From Nathan Hale to John Brown to lynchings to executions of accused witches, the hangman's noose has played a grim role in American history.While its...
Connecticut's Nasty Campaign Ads
21 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You know campaign commercials, those things you fast-forward through whenever you can. Despite your best efforts, you've probably seen more of them th...
We're Scrambling to Insert Our DNA Into MRSA
20 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Okay, I'm warning you. You're going to have to adjust the band on your thinking cap. Christian Bok, our first guest, is an experimental poet with some...
The Nose: Against Football, Petty Debates, and Frozen Eggs
17 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Here on The Nose today, we're at least potentially talking about high-tech employers who offer egg freezing as a benefit for female employees, a propo...
Pssst...We Need To Talk About Sanitation
16 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Our show today is a long-planned look at human waste. In other words... Poop. It has taken on a slightly more somber cast now that Connecticut is moni...
Live From Watkinson: The Perils of Teaching and Learning
15 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If I had my way, we would do this whole show without the "E" word. That's "education." Somehow, the "E" word has come to symbolize, for me at least, d...
The Threat of a Post-Antibiotic Era
14 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The notion of drug-resistant bacteria has gone from an exotic problem to a common one. If you have even a medium-sized circle of acquaintances you pro...
Pondering Modern Love
13 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It's hard to improve on the poet, Rilke, who wrote, "Love consists of this, that two solitudes meet, protect, and greet each other." But did Rilke hav...
Ready, Set... NOSE!
10 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Why do opposing political candidates so often wind up disliking each other? I get that there are forces in motion against one another, but does that h...
Deliberating Political Debates
09 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The notion of a political debate embedded in a campaign for office is a younger idea than you might think. It became codified as a result of a 1960 de...
Kids Today Are SO Spoiled!
08 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Kids today are so spoiled! Alfie Kohn says politicians, academics, and the media spend a lot of time instilling in parents the fear that they're ...
Let's Lavish a Little Love on Language
07 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A few times a year we like to do shows about words and language.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy in...
An Interview With Steven Pinker
07 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Why should we care about writing when texting is quicker and easier to bypass inflexible grammar rules that perplex even the most seasoned writers? Mi...
The Scramble: Staying Single, and Genius Grants
06 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Talk to any demographer. Marriage is in irreversible decline. According to Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of ...
The Nose: Slasher Films by Principals, "Post-Racial America," and Bummer TV
03 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
One way to think of this is, a middle school principal should not be making blood-spattered slasher films. Another way is, it's kind of amazing that e...
Consciousness and the Soul
02 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It has been nearly 400 years since Descartes wrote his famous declaration “Cogito ergo sum”, or, more commonly “I am thinking, therefore I exist...
This Trailer Show is Rated G for Great
01 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, we talk about movie trailers. Maybe you wonder what a movie critic thinks of them. Actually, critics don't see as many as you do becau...
Dancin' in the Moonlight: Connecticut Dance Halls
30 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, we talk about two Connecticut dance halls, each springing from the vision of two very different men who took their respective dance halls d...
Warning: The Scramble Will Automatically Download to Your iTunes
29 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We're back today after a one-week hiatus. Ben Nadaff-Hafrey is also back, this time as our Scramble SuperGuest.We start today with a convers...
Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth
26 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Science writer Carl Zimmer names the Dodo and the Great Auk, the Thylacine and the Chinese River Dolphin, the Passenger Pigeon and the Imperial W...
The Anatomy of a Villain
25 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of weeks ago, I was sick with the April flu, lying in bed in a New York apartment, and trying to distract myself by watching one of the film ...
A Tribute to Twins!
24 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Identical twins are just like us - and then they're not! From Ann Landers and Dear Abbey, from the Castro brothers, one of whom might be our first ide...
Please Don't Take My Stuffed Animal Away!
23 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Take a few seconds to reminisce about your childhood "best friend." Maybe it was a boy, a girl, an imaginary friend, or perhaps a stuffed toy. This st...
Evolving Damnation: The American History of Hell
22 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you were dreaming up a new religion, maybe you wouldn't include the idea of hell. But in traditional forms of Christianity, even as they evolve, he...
The Nose Is Fading, fadin, fad, fa, f...
19 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Getting ready for The Nose, we're all poring over stories about regional preferences for "uh" versus "um," about the new Miss America's performan...
Open Wide, This Won't Hurt a Bit: The Discovery of Anesthesia
18 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Living in Hartford almost all my life I've known for years the story of Horace Wells. At least, I know the story I know, which is that Wells was a Har...
Harriet Jones's Rockin' Scottish Independence Eve Special
17 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the eve of a vote that could trigger independence after 307 years, Scotland has become a hot topic in the media. What would happen if the vote swin...
Gig-ecticut Is Coming
16 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The number one lesson with infrastructure is build more than you think you need. If you don't, you spend forever catching up. In Connecticut, this is ...
The Scramble on the Middle East, Child Abuse Laws, and The Roosevelts on PBS
15 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On Sunday, the New York Times ran an article full of President Obama's behind-the scenes reflections and conversations about ISIS and the Middle East....
The Nose Refuses to Grow Up
12 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
"Comic book movies, family-friendly animated adventures, tales of adolescent heroism, and comedies of arrested development do not only make up the com...
America's Love-Hate Relationship with Football
11 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I root for the Green Bay Packers...and not casually. As I speak, there's a Green Bay Packers mug nearby, on weekends I wear a Packers cap and use Pack...
JFK Conspiracy Theories: American As Apple Pie
10 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The JFK assassination is like the Maine coastline: craggy, uneven, full of serration, points, inlands, islands, amenable to endless exploration and qu...
Beyond Conjunction Junction: A Conversation with Bob Dorough
09 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You're about to meet a very special guy. There's a good chance you already know him, if you were in the generational cohort whose lives were enriched ...
An Interview With Sir Tom Stoppard
08 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Life is full of peculiar ironies and thus, Tom Stoppard, quite possibly the most most dizzyingly proficient writer of the English tongue did not grow ...
Sumptuous Silence
05 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine having no capacity for language acquisition. Imagine developing a language with grammars that are completely independent from the spoken ...
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: From Comics to CGI
04 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Let me begin with a confession. I'm part of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle valley. I was too old for them when they made their debut in the mid-1...
Surviving a Suicide
03 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If things had gone according to his plan, Kevin Hines would have been dead for the last 14 years and therefore, not appearing on today's show. In...
The Scramble: What's Wrong with Connecticut Besides John Rowland
02 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today's Scramble leads off with Annie Lowrey, who tackles a subject that's been dominating a lot of conversations around here lately. What's the ...
The Nose Walks Out on Its Own Show
29 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What would Aristotle say about knees and seat backs? There's a device you can buy that makes it impossible for the person sitting in front of you on a...
The Vibrations All Around Us
28 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You live in an invisible ocean of vibrations caused by the sounds around you. On this show, an almost-creepy experiment shows how the physical changes...
Sex and Intimacy When You're Fat
27 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
According to statistics, one in every three Americans is obese and two of every three are overweight.While we know that extra fat may set us up for he...
Out With the Windmills: Miniature Golf Goes Pro
26 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Mini-golf was created for children but today's children are less and less interested in playing because of video games. Nintendo Wii for example, make...
The Scramble: Social Media News Reporting, the Primary Process, and the Emmy Awards
25 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Coddington from the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin joins us to talk about how events like Ferguson are reported on soc...
The Nose Faked Its Own Wedding to Avoid Death
22 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Presidents and their vacations are a chronic paradox. The job is way too hard and pressure-laden to do without occasional breaks. The job is also so i...
The Compumanities: Technology's Foray into the Arts
21 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Poetry, prose, sculpture, painting and music composition: Humanity's final frontiers beyond which no computer will ever go... right? Perhaps not. As t...
Happy 25th, Seinfeld!
20 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Pop culture is ephemeral.People eventually lose interest in music and television shows once a new fad surfaces and piques their interests. Not so for ...
Cupcakes, Cronuts, and the Future of Food Trends
19 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Here's my theory just in case I don't get a chance to say it during the show: I think food has become more like sports. People kind of root for things...
The Unfolding Evolution of Origami
18 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How do you make a 100 meter telescope that folds down to 3 meters so you can tuck it inside a space vehicle? How do you make a heart stent that folds ...
The Nose is Fatigued with Goodbyes, Comments, and Challenges
15 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It has been a busy week in culture. There were the deaths of Lauren Bacall and Robin Williams, and the latter death brought up questions about how peo...
The Psychopath Show
14 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You know lots of sociopaths right?It could be anyone from your ex-spouse to the guy who cut you off on your drive to work today. It's a term we t...
Ugh! I Can't Remember My Password!
13 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time you opened your first email account and picked out a password. You probably don't know what it was now but let's assume you weren't t...
Living Small and Smart: The Tiny House Movement
12 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I live in a small house on a street of big houses. And when I say big, some of the houses on my street are 7,000 and 8,000 square feet. A big house si...
The Scramble: Working Less, Misandry, and Violence in Auto Racing
11 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We cover a lot of the ground on The Scramble this hour. We starting with Maria Konnikova, a New Yorker writer, who’s going to lead me through a conv...
The Nose Remembers Its Boyhood
08 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Watching Richard Linklater's "Boyhood", you keep waiting for the car crash, or the random act of violence that puts one of the characters into Intensi...
A Salute to Accordions!
07 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Here are some songs from your life, "Backstreet Girl" by the Rolling Stones, "Joey" by Bob Dylan, "Road to Nowhere" by the Talking Heads, "Boy In The ...
Memories of Watergate
06 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 40 years since former President Richard Nixon resigned the presidency over Watergate. But, the story of Watergate is almost impossible to te...
Why Imagination Matters in Childhood
05 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
What happens in our early childhood has a lot to do with how we develop as humans. Dr. Paul Harris researches the role the imagination plays in helpin...
The Scramble: Diversity, Death, and Relatability
04 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There are ways today in which our topics are interconnected. Actress and writer Mellini Kantayya, wants to talk about the issues of diversity in ...
The Nose of the '90s Is Alive in Hartford
01 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Can you ever make sense of a whole decade? That's what the National Geographic Channel tries to do with its three-part documentary on the '90s. So we ...
Handwriting Is So Yesterday
31 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The death of handwriting could be viewed as the end of a tyranny. Especially for those of us who were unable to learn penmanship. That includes me. I’...
Evolving Damnation: The American History of Hell
30 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you were dreaming up a new religion, maybe you wouldn't include the idea of hell. But in traditional forms of Christianity, even as they evolve, he...
Mid-Summer Music Merriment!
29 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Avett Brothers are riding the crest of the modern Americana music wave. John Hall, after a stint in Congress, is back leading Orleans and singing ...
The Scramble: How to Be a Guest on a Talk Show with David Rees
28 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This hour's Scramble starts fun and gradually grows darker. We begin with David Rees, host of a television show in which he layers expertise onto simp...
The Nose is Getting Weird (Al)
25 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Breathes there a man with soul so dead that he has never written a song parody?Everybody does right? They get passed around on the schoolyard from the...
Please Don't Take My Stuffed Animal Away!
24 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Take a few seconds to reminisce about your childhood "best friend." Maybe it was a boy, a girl, an imaginary friend, or perhaps a stuffed toy. This st...
Songs of the Summer: 2014
22 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The song of the summer is not always pretty, but there always is one, and unless something is done quickly, this year's will be "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea...
Are Middle Initials a Thing of the Past?
22 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine two people. One of them is named Betsy Kaplan, the other, Betsy F.P.R. Academic studies suggest people, on average, would infer a higher intel...
The Scramble: Who Will Take the Kids?
21 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I was reading a story about some refugees who cabled the President asking for asylum. The President never responded. The federal government had decide...
The Nose Ran Off The Tracks
18 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We've never done this before but last night the three Nose panelists and I gathered at my house so we could all watch Snowpiercer, a sci-fi summer ac...