The Colin McEnroe Show

The Prodigy Paradox

17 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In a society which rewards brains over brawn, who better than a prodigy to place your bets on? The answer may surprise you.  Bobby Fischer w...

Eating 69 Hot Dogs in Ten Minutes is a Piece of Cake

16 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Competitive eating has grown far beyond the popular event at local fairs where winners won blue ribbons for eating the most pies.Today, it's a global ...

Germany: Who Are You Now?

15 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Two snapshots: The first from the publication American Bazaar, right after the German World Cup win. "In the city of Leipzig, a solitary car scuttled ...

Death, Sex, and Money with Anna Sale

14 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

I'm excited about today's Scramble. WNYC podcaster Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex & Money, is our superguest, which means she gets to pick thr...

Emojis Make The Nose :)

11 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

It's time for our cultural roundtable, The Nose! Insert smiling cat face with heart-shaped eyes. With 250 new emoji coming to a phone near you, we thi...

70 Years Later, the Hartford Circus Fire Still Burns

10 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

On July 6, 1944, a circus tent in the North End of Hartford caught fire. The tent covered three blocks. It was gone in six minutes. Roughly 170 p...

Phoniness: From Resume Fraud to Fake Identities

08 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe Holden Caulfield was onto something when he ranted about "phoniness." This June, Michael Sharpe  resigned as CEO of FUSE, a Hartford-based ...

Philippe Petit's "Perfect Crime"

08 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Philippe Petit made his walk between the towers of the World Trade Center 40 years ago. He stayed up on that wire for 45 minutes, made 8 passes betwee...

It's Not Easy to Find a Good Comedy at the Movies These Days

07 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

I'm pretty sure that in the summer of 1992, somebody tried to tell me about Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't get it, and there weren't that many...

The Nose Got Blown Off By an Errant Roman Candle

03 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This hour, we lead off with a quick discussion of a term floated on Fox News this week. "Beyonce voters," according to one commentator, are singl...

This Trailer Show is Rated G for Great

02 Jul 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...

Can Technology Save the World?

01 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Let's take the most dire problem facing humankind: Climate change has so many negative implications it would take all day to list them. Meanwhile, the...

The Scramble: Court Contradictions and Conservative Consternation

30 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

It's that time of year when nine people who were never elected decide all manner of questions about how we live. Monday marked the last round of Supre...

The Nose Bit First

27 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This week on The Nose, our culture roundtable, we'll tackle "Columbusing," the act of believing that something never existed before you discovered it....

The Evolution of Game Shows

26 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

What's become of game shows in America? Since their television debut in 1938 we've seen everything from microwave ovens to million dollar payouts awar...

Pickleball, Tai Chi, and World Extreme Pencil Fighting? Exploring Sports on the Rise

24 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in America, and for one good reason: that 77-million-person wave of boomers headed into their 60s and ...

The Scramble Is Proud of June Thomas

23 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday, we do The Scramble. And on the Scramble, we always start with a SuperGuest, which means that in defiance of public radio logic, we pick the...

The Nose Is Live From the Yale Writers' Conference

20 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Jeff VanderMeer is one of the hottest writers in the science fiction and fantasy genre. MG Lord is a humorist and recovering political cartoonist who ...

A Salute to Banjos!

19 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe you think of the banjo as primarily a bluegrass instrument, but try not to forget that prior to about 1830, it was played pretty much exclusivel...

Pencils: What's the Point?

18 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Why pencils? Here's an answer from PencilRevolution.com, one of the many pencil blogs and websites we uncovered while prepping for this show: "The fir...

The CMS at the International Festival of (Pancakes) and Arts and Ideas, 2014

17 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

New Haven's International Festival of Arts and Ideas is back! The theme of this year's festival is "Transformation and Tradition," and runs from this ...

The Scramble: Henry Alford on Garrison Keillor, Cash Frenzies, and Reworking the Reservation

16 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Henry Alford is a very funny writer. I've been laughing at his writing since about 1990, when he erupted in Spy Magazine, with hilarious speculative p...

The Nose: Hillary vs. Terry and Opera vs. Robots

13 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

It has been a strange week for mixing gay right, media, and politics. Texas Governor Rick Perry surprised a San Francisco audience when he said, "I ma...

The Lure of Letters

12 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Tab Hunter and Joyce DeWitt, Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels, Samantha Bee and Jason Jones from "The Daily Sh...

Young Black Men Pay a Hefty Price

11 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

President Obama announced a five-year, $200 million initiative to help young black men succeed. It's called "My Brother's Keeper," and aims ...

Oh, Canada! How'd You Get So Funny?

10 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

David Steinberg, Martin Short, Mort Sahl, Rick Moranis, Lorne Michaels, Jim Carrey, John Candy, Kids in the Hall, Samantha Bee, Jason Jones, Howie Man...

The Scramble: Freakonomics, Tony Awards, and Rock Cats in Hartford

09 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Freakonomics god Stephen Dubner is our SuperGuest for today's Scramble, and he talks about how to think more rationally and creatively, the upside of ...

The Nose Talks About... Nevermind, It Takes Too Long

06 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Today on The Nose, we begin with an essay, "Faking Cultural Literacy." Writer Karl Taro Greenfeld said, "It's never been so easy to pretend to know so...

Jerry Adler and Richard Kline Let The Sunshine In

05 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Klein and Jerry Adler are veteran actors and directors on stage, television, and film. You might know Klein as Dallas on Three's Company, and ...

Digging Deep Into Connecticut's Underground History

04 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Connecticut's history is well documented throughout Connecticut museums and historic villages, but there's much more  that we have yet to discove...

Connecticut Is the Land of Plenty, for Some

03 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

If you're like me, you'll have a lot of thoughts about food today but they won't be about how to get some. It will be about what you want for lunch an...

The Scramble: Liberal Arts, Carbon Emissions and Of Course, Jeopardy!

02 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Is college worth it? The news about higher education is mostly bad. Student loan debt is now $1 trillion and climbing. Underpaid, demoralized, an...

Live From the 2014 Berkshire International Film Festival

30 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Why go to a film festival? Because you might see the guy who plays Jaime Lannister on "Game of Thrones" in a Norwegian film also starting Juliette Bin...

Every Day I Write the Book: Luanne Rice and David Handler

29 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Luanne Rice has written 31 novels, five of which have been made into movies or mini-series. Her work has been featured in playhouses across the countr...

Geek Is Chic: How Comic Con Became a Pop Culture Phenomenon

28 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

People who attend Comic Con and Star Trek conventions -- or nerds in general -- used to be the butt of jokes, including a famous "Saturday Night Live"...

A Conversation With Joe Muto On FOX Holes, Gawker, and Media Machines

27 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

On any given day, it's pretty easy to find all the ways in which modern media has substituted politicization for truth and/or serious reflection. Toda...

The "World's Strongest Librarian" On Tourette Syndrome, Weightlifting, and Mormonism

26 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Josh Hanagarne isn't necessarily funny. He was born with Tourette Syndrome, a poorly understood neuropsychiatric disorder which inflicts ...

The Nose is Wary of Marrying Harry

23 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Can the culture of one nation ever understand that of another? Critics say Fox's newest reality show in which 12 witless contestants believe their in ...

Meteorologists Talk Climate Change

22 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

When President Obama introduced the National Climate Assessment a couple of weeks ago, he asked eight special people to help him. They were national a...

Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth

21 May 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...

Filling You In On the World of Taxidermy

20 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Taxidermy stops time. Creatures are born, they live they die, they decay into dust. But taxidermy catches the wolf or the woodpecker in the middle of ...

Bob Garfield is Off the Media and On The Scramble

19 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Bob Garfield, host of WNYC's On The Media, kicks off this edition of The Scramble. Something tells us The New York Times' Jill Abramson saga isn't ove...

The Nose Is Looking to Hire Jill Abramson

16 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You'd think that the New York Times, after covering so many sackings, would know how to fire its own editor without having it become one of the bigges...

If You Give a Kid a Book They Want, They'll Read It

14 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The first children's room in a public library may have been in Hartford, Connecticut. The head librarian here, Caroline Hewins was an early advoc...

Navigating Our World: Maps to GPS

13 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

When friends say they're going to Paris I make them promise to get a Plan de Paris,  which is a pocket-sized book of little maps and one big...

NPR's Eric Deggans on the Changing Face of Television

12 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

We start today's show with Eric Deggans, NPR's first full-time TV critic. Eric and I have talked before about the issue of diversity in late night com...

The Nose Tangos With Monica Lewinsky

09 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You may have forgotten Monica Lewinsky, but she has not forgotten you. She's back with a Vanity Fair interview that re-ignites the whole debate about ...

What's The Best Job For Your Personality?

08 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You probably wonder sometimes if you chose. Growing up, I was pretty sure I'd be a novelist and sometimes even now I wonder why I'm not. Why am I not ...

The Murder of Joseph Smith

07 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is the religious version of recession food. Since the end of the Civil War, the Mormon membership num...

A Tribute to Black and White

06 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

We crave color. Think of the Spring trip you make to the park, that has beautiful tulips or multicolored roses in the Summer. Think of the enormous tr...

The Scramble: David Folkenflik, Smart Guns, and Bearden

05 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This hour on The Scramble our superguest is David Folkenflik. I don't have to tell you who David Folkenflik is, do I? I mean, you're public radio list...

The Nose Leaves Connecticut to Get Over Donald Sterling

02 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This hour on The Nose, we lead off with a Gallup poll in which Connecticut ranked second, just a tick behind Illinois, as one of the states people are...

Will Connecticut Be the Next Gig City?

01 May 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Okay, here's a borrowed analogy. My grandmother talked about the light bill to refer to what you call the electricity bill. And, that's because she li...

The Anatomy of a Villain

30 Apr 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 ...

There's More to Bees Than Just a Stinger

29 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

For people with really bad arthritis the idea of intentionally suffering bee stings is an easier sell than it is with the rest of humankind. Sometimes...

Salon.com's Editor-in-Chief Scrambles With Colin McEnroe

28 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

We cover a lot of ground on this hour's Scramble. We begin with the editor of Salon.com in a conversation about a story that dominated ...

The Nose Has a Master's Degree in Being Caught On Tape

25 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

This was a week when Connecticut professors got rambunctious, when pine tar was discovered in places it shouldn't have been, and when President Obama ...

The Eastern Hemlock is Dying

24 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You have to trust us. Because I realize that a show about the Eastern Hemlock doesn't sound that sexy. In fact, we've done tree shows in the past...

The Scramble: Fact-Checking, the "Rape Scene" and the NYT Op-Ed Page

23 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The more I read about The Dallas Buyers Club, the less I like it, which is too bad because I really like that movie.First, I read the that film's port...

Pondering Modern Love

22 Apr 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...

How Do We Get Back to the Field of Dreams?

21 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Is there a connection between what happens in youth sports and the locker room bullying of Richie Incognito or the steroid-spattered reputations of Al...

The Agony and Utility of Ecstasy

18 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

"Molly" is the nickname for MDMA, or ecstasy. It's short for "molecule," meaning you're getting the "real thing," chemically speaking. Except you almo...

Forty Years, in Search of a Zipless F---

16 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The zipless f---- was more than a f----. It was a platonic ideal. Zipless, because when you came together, zippers fell away like rose petals. Underwe...

The Boston Marathon Bombing and the Road to Resilience

14 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Consider America from 1985 to 2000. You wouldn't say nothing happened in those 15 years but America was a fairly calm place to be most of the time.No...

The Scramble: Mad Men, Blood Moons, and Racism

14 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Our SuperGuest on today's Scramble is Jen Doll, who has three topics that she wants to discuss:The first is the return of "Mad Men," a show in its fin...

The Nose Replaces Colbert, Marries Jesus, and Has No Love For the Gov

11 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists say the papyrus that mentions a wife of Jesus is not a forgery. Stephen Colbert will take over when Letterman leaves. I'm not saying the tw...

We've Only Just Begun: Carpenters Remembered

10 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

If you are a person of a certain age, you probably remember the moment when you were first seized by Karen Carpenter's voice. For me, it was getting i...

Thomas Moore on "A Religion of One's Own"

09 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Thomas Moore was, for 13 years, a Servite monk. In 1992, he burst onto the national scene with "Care of the Soul", which combined the psychotherapeuti...

Does Spite Advance Survival of a Species?

08 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Spite is everywhere. It's as fresh as today's sports headlines as UConn readies to play Notre Dame for the women's basketball championship. Fighting I...

The Scramble Peeps Veep With Frank Rich

07 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Today on the Scramble, we get to spend some time with Frank Rich. Frank wears a lot of hats these days as both editor-at-large at New York Magazine an...

The Nose Enjoys Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos on the Rocks

04 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The original Carl Sagan "Cosmos" was at least  partly a response to the Cold War. Its message: "We're such little specks, can we embrace our comm...

The Race for the Higgs Boson

02 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists made an announcement on July 4, 2012 to little fanfare outside the world of scholarly physicists that ended a 50-year search to explain the...

Celebrating the Ninth Annual Trinity Hip Hop Festival

02 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

When I say "hip hop," do you think about an art form the exalts bling, consumption, excess, decadence, and vulgarity? What about all the other hip hop...

April Fool's! Exploring Pranks and Practical Jokes

01 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

I'll be honest: I hate April Fools' Day, and I'm not a big fan of practical jokes. I hate it the way that some people hate Valentine's Day or New Year...

The Scramble Meets Charla Nash, Talks Politics With David Plotz

31 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The Scramble, our Monday episode, is a wrap-up of the weekend's news, and a look at the week ahead. This hour, we have a conversation with Charla Nash...

The Nose Travels to the Grand Budapest Hotel

28 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

A hilariously fussy hotel manager with a taste for the high life is wrenched from his gay surroundings by the specter of war and a false murder charg...

What It's Like to (Try to) Make Cartoons for The New Yorker

27 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

I'll tell you one of the big thrills of my writing career: I was a contributing editor to Mirabella Magazine in the 80's. I'd written an essay about g...

Secrets of the Sea

26 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

   I get way too much of my information from movies and  this year large container ships played a role in two major films.The firs...

Hearing Voices

25 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Teresa of Avila very unambiguously reported hearing voices. She's a saint. John Forbes Nash heard voices. He won a Nobel prize. Robert Schumann heard ...

The Scramble: Intelligence Gathering, the History of Missing Airplanes, and the Book of Mormon

24 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Today on The Scramble, we'll talk about a system run by the Navy that keeps track of, among other things, parking tickets and field information cards ...

WARNING: The Nose May Contain Trigger Warnings

21 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

here are the topics for the Nose today:Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Comics, From Niche to Mainstream

20 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Once upon a time, comic books were a niche for kids and nerds. Now they are mainstream culture. "The Avengers" is the number three all-time worldwide ...

A Salute to Irish Music with Martin Hayes

19 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The musician Christy Moore said Ireland could never have the equivalent of a folk revival because it never let its traditions lapse. And that's very t...

March Madness 2014

18 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Where is Wofford College? What is a shock of wheat, and what does it have to do with Wichita State's scary mascot? For that matter, what's a Chanticle...

The Scramble on Agunuah, Vaccinations, and More

17 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Oppenheimer writes about religion and a whole bunch of other things. Today, he'll be talking about the difficulty Orthodox Jewish women...

The Nose Lurks Behind the Backdrop of "Between Two Ferns"

14 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

President Obama has consistently refused to be a panelist on The Nose, but his appearance this week on "Between Two Ferns" with Zach Galifianakis...

Hartford Was the Typewriter Capital of the Country

11 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In the second season of the Netflix series, House of Cards, the protagonist Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, pulls out an old family typewrite...

The Scramble: Losing at Jeopardy, Finding Lost Dogs, and Winning Back Lost Freedom of Information

10 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Amanda Hess is one of our favorite social critics. She writes for Slate and lately, well always, she's thinking about the depiction of women in mass m...

The Nose Explores True Entertainment and "Normcore"

07 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Can great television be as satisfying as great literature? On today's Nose, we'll apply that question to HBO's True Detective. Support the show: ...

The Psychology and Sociology of Coming Out of the Closet

06 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In the space of a lifetime, the status of gay and lesbian people in the United States and Western Europe has been transformed. So to watch a play like...

Raising the Minimum Wage

05 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Minimum wage in Connecticut is higher than the federal minimum, $8.70 an hour instead of $7.25. In fact, the federal minimum is so ridiculously low th...

It's Grammar Day! Is My Exclamation Point Wrong?

04 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

It's National Grammar Day, a time to take stock of the current status of the English language, and possibly get into bitter fights.I'm old school. I'm...

The Scramble: Are A.J. Jacobs, Lupita Nyong'o, and John Rowland Related?

03 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Today on The Scramble, one of our favorite writers, A.J. Jacobs takes us deep inside the world of modern ancestry research where websites are all &nbs...

The Nose Predicts High Drama at the Academy Awards

28 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

We have a question: Where does Adam Sandler watch the Oscars? Does he sit there with all the people who are actually up for awards, or is he home alon...

Broccoli is Best!

26 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Somehow, kale has become trendy in the last few years, although its moment in the sun seems to be almost over. How did a thing like that happen? Would...

Get the Popcorn. Take Your Seat. We're Talking Remakes

26 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Remakes are easy. Money-makers are hard. We live in a sloshing sea of those movie remakes but it's rare for one of them to out gross the original. An ...

Women Speak Out on the State of Sports

25 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Four women join us to talk about sports, mostly football. Two of them are sports journalists. A third is a journalist specializing in legal issues, an...

The Scramble Talks TV, Drones, and Big Changes in Sports

24 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

There's something exciting about a critic who challenges your perceptions in a compelling way. I love the movie American Hustle but when I read Willa ...

The Nose Wipes Its Eyes, Blames the Fame, and Explores the Radio Dial

21 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Last Sunday, we took a road trip into New York City, but before we left, I read Beth Boyle Machlan's New York Times essay about the joys she sometimes...

A Conversation With Ingrid Newkirk, Co-Founder of PETA

20 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The debate over animal rights is as old as Voltaire, as old as Aristotle. But as you'll hear today, it turned some kind of modern corner in 1975 with ...