The Colin McEnroe Show

Imagine a day without adjunct faculty. Many colleges and universities would effectively shut down.  Somewhere between 70-75% of the academic workforce in higher education is not tenured or on track for tenure. Most of those people fall into the category of adjunct.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of interconnected things were happening in the 1990s, an oncologist and hematologist  named Mitchell Gaynor discovered trough 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.

Led by Harry Potter , the last 20 years have unleashed a new wave of enthusiasm for the fantasy side  of magic. But, we've also seen an undeniable re-engagement with stage magic. In 2006 alone, there were two movies about magicians, " The  Prestige " and " The Illusionist ."  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Monday. That means our show is The Scramble, where we make a lot of decisions on a last minute basis. We asked our super guest, Marc Tracy of The New Republic, to pick three topics about which Colin would quickly get up to speed.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was a fertile week for topics, but here at The Nose, we've boiled them down to four. First, the decision by NBC to capitalize on its live Sound of Music ratings hit with a revival of the live TV Peter Pan. No cast has been announced yet, so that allows us to do some "dreamcasting. " Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Dallas Buyer's Club" covers a lot of the same ground as an Oscar-nominated documentary about AIDS from last year, "How To Survive A Plague." Each film covers the time from mid-to-late 1980s when the disease struck, when there was no accepted or effective medical treatment, when the patients themselves had to push for better research and faster tracks to bring drugs to market. Support th...

Scientists say that the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk , Russia this past February was a rare event, unlikely to happen more than every 100 -200 years. But a recent paper in the scientific journal Nature said the earth should expect and plan to get hit by Chelyabinsk-sized asteroids more often-- maybe every decade or two. This news sparked a flurry of talk about what that means for u...

Through no act of overarching planning, all three of our segments today will deal directly, or otherwise, with sports. In our first segment, we talk with Linda Holmes from the NPR culture blog, Monkey See . We also   delve into the controversy over a recent New York Times column by former executive editor, Bill Keller .  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/lis...

I spent one night in the company of James Carville and Mary Matalin, in the course of being their onstage moderator at the Bushnell. My lasting impression was that these were two people whose primary loyalty was to each other. To an unusual degree, when there was down time, they wanted to be alone, together, door closed. I don't know how they sort out their extreme political differences, but I thi...

The Nose panel went to the movies this week to see the critically-acclaimed Spike Jonze film, "Her,"  about a future world in which it's not unusual for a man to fall in love with his artificially-intelligent operating system.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. But, why is comedy so hard, especially on the stage, and what makes something funny? The premise for a famously funny plot could easily sound like a tragedy.  An out of work actor is so desperate for employment that he dresses up like a woman and then falls in love with a beautiful co-star whom he deceives and betrays on several levels. That doesn't sound that h...

You may think that composting all your kitchen waste sounds like a good idea, but you probably don't realize how many things really can be composted, what services are available if you can't get yourself organized to do it, and if you do have a compost pile, which animals visit it at night, and for what purpose? This hour, a heap of information about compost! Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/...

When I first started writing about politics in Connecticut, I can honestly say that there were many more Republicans who excited my admiration than there were Democrats. It was 1979, the wave of interesting new progressive Democrats was coming, including that Bill Curry guy you hear so much about, but the entrenched Democratic leadership was anything but progressive. It was calcified, blinkered, a...

Today is Monday. That's when we do the show on the fly. We call it The Scramble and one of the twists we're trying is the reverse of ordinary public radio guest booking. Usually, we start with a topic and try to find the best possible guests. But, for one segment of The Scramble each week, we pick a guest we want to talk to and then ask him or her what the topic should be. The idea is to pick an i...

Governor Chris Christie's administration is under fire for ordering  lane closures  that blocked access to the George Washington Bridge for four days last September, indulging in an egomaniacal fantasy of vengeance against a political foe who refused to recognize the Christie administration's self-professed superiority. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/list...

My two favorite film critics, A.O. Scott and David Edelstein, appear on the show today, and we've got a longer list of topics than we can possibly get to. I'm interested in the way a lot of the recent hit movies take little bites of our recent past: "Inside Llewyn Davis" tackles 1961. "American Hustle" bestrides the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. "The Wolf of Wall Street" started with th...

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 identical twin president one day, carbon-copy twins live lives that the rest of us cannot fathom. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many years, Ralph Nader has pushed the idea of an American Museum of Tort History which would be located somewhere in Connecticut, probably Winsted. The exhibits would concern tort cases from all over the U.S. but you have to think the Hartford Civic Center roof collapse would merit a special diorama. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...

Today on The Scramble we lead off with some reporting that will be featured this week on a PBS' "Frontline" story, To Catch a Trader.  It's the story of a federal probe into insider trading and the specific role of Connecticut's Steve Cohen, and his SAC hedge fund.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Nose, we'll talk about this relatively insignificant bit of Rush Limbaugh peevishness,  and the degree to which each of us thinks he or she has (informally speaking) patented something: a word, a phrase, a style we've made our own. Also, Adam Platt's decision to dispense with the fiction that he, as a restaurant critic, is anonymous.  It's not exactly the same as claiming to...

Wandering the vast labyrinth of useless information, you might encounter some people having a debate about the last person who knew everything. This is a great, and also pretty hopeless debate, because it requires a judgment about what all the useful information in the world might have been and who was capable of knowing it.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/lis...

There are a lot of people who, for understandable reasons, would like the story of the Sandy Hook shootings to fade away. But, of course it never will. It's part of our molecular structure, especially here in Connecticut.  This hour, we touch on some of the questions answered  by the release of the state's so called final report on the murders. We also talk about some of the questions th...

The Nose panelists explore the hidden mysteries of the Coen Brothers' new film, Inside Llewyn Davis , based  on the early folk movement of 1960's Greenwich Village and one of its early pioneers, Dave Van Ronk.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You loved jazz in college, but these days, do you really have time to follow it? Maybe I'm only talking about myself. The jazz scene I loved so much in my early twenties begins to recede unless I make an affirmative effort to go charging toward it. So at this time of year, every year, we consult with jazz savants and musicians and ask them about the best music they heard all year. Support the show...

There are some holiday songs that should banned. I'm sorry, Burl Ives, but there's really no reason for anybody to have to hear "Holly Jolly Christmas" ever again. And Little Drummer Boy? There's almost no way to describe the sinking feeling that tune gives me. Except, well, to call it a sinking feeling. On the other hand, I don't mind Mariah Carey singing "All I Want for Christmas Is You," b...