The Colin McEnroe Show

Social structures, in almost all cases, are defined by some form of hierarchy. Whether in academics, sports, religion, business, or politics, there's usually someone at the top and others whose goal it is to get there. But while it's easy to think that we've designed our world to be this way, the truth may be that we had no choice. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/li...

As our culture continues to progress, one elephant in the room that seems to be growing harder to ignore is our views on human sexuality. The traditional model of two mutually exclusive gender identities, male and female, is becoming increasingly outdated as we hear about people in our communities and around the world who fall somewhere in between the two (or outside the boxes entirely). Despite t...

If you listen to public radio, you probably know her name. If you don’t listen to public radio, then you probably know her name from the massively popular Serial podcast . Julie Snyder is the senior producer of This American Life and she’s the co-creator of that show’s spinoff podcast, which told the story of Hae Min Lee's murder in 1999 and the conviction of her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed. Support t...

David Letterman reinvented television . He's irreplaceable . He was a comedic revolution . According to President Obama, Letterman is " a part of all of us ." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hartford is one of the poorest cities in America. While there is lots to love about this city, like the fact that poor minorities are not subject to the police brutality seen in Baltimore and Ferguson, people of color who live in Hartford and who also happen to be poor share the same high levels of unemployment and urban decay seen in those cities.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donat...

A lot of interconnected things were happening in the 1990s, an oncologist and hematologist  named Mitchell Gaynor discovered through a Tibetan monk, the so-called singing bowls and began incorporating them into the guided meditation and breathing work he did with his patients. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are many kinds of nudism - or naturism. There are people who just like doing stuff while not wearing clothes. And there are those who believe there are hygiene benefits. And people who link nudism with various utopian movements that break down barriers among people. And there are people who believe in de-stigmatizing the parts of the human anatomy ordinarily covered by a bathing. The wa...

The discussion about race and police started long before the recent events in Baltimore, Ferguson, Staten Island, and many other communities. Last year, former Major League Baseball player and current ESPN analyst Doug Glanville was questioned by West Hartford police in his own Hartford driveway while shoveling snow. That led to his widely distributed and discussed piece, "I Was Racially Profiled...

This hour on the nose: Sports!  Did you know it’s a mistake to include content that makes light of domestic violence? Damn, why didn’t  WE know about it here at the Cleveland basketball office place ? Like eight or nine of us watched the video and we thought it was totally fine, but now we can  kind of  see what people object to. Also... Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/do...

Think back to a time you felt wronged by someone. Does the memory of the injury still make you upset or cause you stress?  Considering the amount of minor and major trauma we sustain throughout our lives, we are given surprisingly little information about how to process these unpleasant experiences to help minimize long-term negative effects. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See o...

So, you think it's easy to write a Broadway song? I say not so fast.  The four aspiring writing teams that attended Goodspeed's Festival of New Musicals this past January say it's plenty hard. They spend a lot of time kicking around ideas, most of which never see the light of day. But, really, they have no choice. "If you can do anything else, you do do anything else," says Marcy Heisler, one...

We all know that the days of punching our clock for exactly forty hours is over. One of the alternatives that has risen in its place is what's called the "gig economy": Americans are casting off the traditional full-time job to freelance, moonlight, and temp their way to financial success. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When was the last time you enjoyed a sugary soft drink? If it's been a while, it may be because health movements have begun to turn consumers away from sodas. But the sugar content in juices, iced teas, and energy drinks is also very high. It begs the question: why are some connoisseurs now trying to break only their soda habits, and what makes others remain dedicated to their favorite carbonated...

Which side are you on? In the mammoth PEN Awards kerfuffle , that is. Table captains have walked out  over the award being given to the survivors from Charlie Hebdo. And now 145 writers, including six table captains and such notables as Junot Díaz, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Eric Bogosian and Michael Cunningham, have signed a letter protesting the award to Hebdo. As LBJ  appar...

Mark Twain has many literary sites; yet Henry James has none. You can visit Edith Wharton's house but not Shirley Jackson's. You can walk where Wallace Stevens walked but you can't buy a ticket to go through his front door. And can you believe there's no single museum devoted to all American writers-- yet? New England is about to get two great new writers’ museums: The Dr. Seuss museum in Springfi...

University of Kentucky Biology professor James Krupa is frustrated with the resistance of his non-biology students to accept the theory of evolution as established fact,   despite what he calls an "avalanche of evidence" supporting its validity. Krupa says that evolution is the foundation of our science, and just as we accept germ theory, cell theory, quantum theory, and even game theory...

Once upon a time Nancy Butler lived in the Beltway and used her MBA to secure a high paying job with a defense contractor.  But Butler had considered herself a devout Christian since the age of 9, and something about a job with a company that made torpedoes started to bother her. So she left and embarked on a journey that included mission work in Asia and enrollment at Yale Divinity School. S...

Former general and CIA director David Petraeus will not go to jail for leaking classified information to his biographer and mistress. Last week, he was sentenced to two years probation and a fine. Meanwhile, other leakers without the stars or stature are spending years behind bars. There are other discrepancies in military justice too. This hour, we talk to journalist Peter Maass from  The In...

One of the unwritten rulers of a weekly culture show like The Nose is that, if you're willing to "go low," as they say, you could probably alternate between Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck every week. They're both wonderfully talented, but they're also kind of useful idiots, reliably causing some kind of spectacle we can go after. And they used to be a couple. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org...

There was a time when almost everyone wore a watch. There was a time when almost everyone had a mechanical clock in their home. There was a time when almost no one had any kind of timepiece at all. There was also a time when pretty much everyone had a VCR that blinked 12:00 AM twenty-four hours a day. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We like to think of health care as an exact science: established guidelines, uniform practices, rigorously tested treatments vetted through extensive lab trials. Unfortunately this was neither the case  in the early days of medicine, nor is it the case today. It's shame that nearly 2500 years after the writing of Hippocrates' famous oath we'd still be wrestling with the ethics of best practic...

Ficre Ghebreyesus and Elizabeth Alexander were born two months apart in 1962, he in Eritrea, she in Harlem. They didn’t meet until 1996. He was an artist and a chef at a New Haven Eritrean restaurant he owned with his brothers. She was a poet and professor. She had been teaching at the University of Chicago, where she had also met a senior lecturer named Barack Obama. She married Ghebreyesus. She...

Patriots' Day is a time for celebration in Boston and across the nation. The biggest event held on this day every year is the Boston Marathon, which has turned it into a day for remembrance as well. The second race since the 2013 bombings is underway and this hour, we check-in with a public radio reporter at the finish line. Also, the UConn Foundation has been under increased scrutiny both in the...

We don't usually talk politics  on The Nose, but that's OK, because Hillary Clinton isn't really talking politics (much) yet either.  Instead, she's just trying to, you know, hang out with all 235 million voting age Americans at once. How does one do that? That's the kind of thing that interests the Nose.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for...

Forty-five years ago, the attention of the nation and much of the world swung toward New Haven, where the murder trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins had made the city a magnet for Black Panther outrage and pushed New Haven to the brink of anarchy. It's an amazing story with a cast of characters that includes not only the Panthers, but future black leaders like Kurt Schmoke, a Yale student who...