The Colin McEnroe Show

A couple of weeks ago, we did a whole show about blood pressure only to have an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association blow a lot of the current thinking about blood pressure right out of the water. We talk to UConn's hypertension expert, Dr. Billy White, about new  guidelines  saying people over 60 may not need to keep their blood pressure as low as pr...

Here are the topics for The Nose today -- and this week we had to throw out a lot of perfectly good ones because there were so many: We pretty much have to tackle the controversy around Duck Dynasty. One of the real life characters in the reality TV show gave an interview in which he aired his strong religious views, which included multiple denunciations of homosexuality as a sin. Support the show...

Behold! The unique dilemma of the pig: There is nothing that smart that tastes that good. Is it true they're as smart as dogs? Why do some religions require people abstain from eating pork? What's it like raising pigs, and what parts of the pig are overlooked when it comes to eating them? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you read magazines and live on the North half of the East Coast there is a good chance that you believe that The New Yorker is the ne plus ultra of magazine writing and if you believe that there's a good chance you run around using phrases like ne plus ultra. With The New Yorker's Olympian status goes a certain preciousness One of the reasons there's nothing else quite like The New Yorker is Th...

A Francis Bacon triptych, "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" sells for $142.4 million. Jeff Koons work sells for $58.4 million, making it the most expensive art by a living artist to sell at auction. Is any art really worth this much or do a few wealthy investors artificially drive up the market to divert the rest of us from the reality of overall declining sales. If art is not worth as much as certa...

This is the Monday Scramble, the show we assemble on very short notice to challenge ourselves and keep things fresh. Two film icons died over the weekend, Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine. Attention gravitated to O'Toole because of his larger than life roles and his larger than life off-screen behavior. We'll be talking about O'Toole with one of his co-stars and with a director but we didn't want t...

After a two-week hiatus, The Nose, our weekly cultural panel, is back on with discussions of a controversial New York Times essay about who does housework , a contemplation of smarm versus snark , a nod to all the messiness around Nelson Mandela's funeral, and some second-guessing of Time's Person of the Year, Pope Francis or Ed Snowden. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio....

Today we're talking about the afterlife of characters from classic Christmas stories. What happened, in later years, to Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" or Susan Walker from "Miracle of 34th Street" or Charlie Brown or Clara from "The Nutcracker?" Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I suppose you could say that today's show is about a fairly obvious truth--singing with other people feels good.  But, it's a little bit more complicated than that. When you go to a church and pick up a hymnal and sing what everybody else sings, it feels okay. And, a fairly complex set of activities takes place in your brain, and that's nice, but it pales in comparison to really singing with...

The Connecticut town of Trumbull, and especially its thespian society, has become a familiar name in the theater world, but maybe for the wrong reasons. When the high school principal decided to cancel the thespian society's production of "Rent," the story went national. It has bubbled along for weeks and as of today, we may have news about a compromise that would allow it to be staged. Meanwhile,...

"Reality TV" is perhaps the biggest misnomer in the entertainment industry today. A better name would probably be "scripted unscripted television." It's not catchy, but at least it's accurate. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Monkees were the first group to exhibit all or most of the qualities we now associate with the term "boy band." They were assembled through auditions. They had a set of visual styles imposed on them. They were incredibly popular with tween-aged girls. They were plagued by the accusation that there was less to them than meets the eye. That last accusation was false, by the way. Support the show...

Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, but the first man to urinate there was Buzz Aldrin, just a little ahead of Neil. The two astronauts relieved themselves into bags within their suits, then removed those bags and left them on the lunar surface. When you gotta go, you gotta go. It was time to go.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener...

Long before we knew how the cardiovascular worked, ancient doctors may have recognized what we call hypertension. It seemed like maybe there was too much blood, so they treated it with leeches.  Even today, high blood pressure is a little bit mysterious. The way it's typically measured may be the wrong way. And, it's not caused by one single factor so no single drug treats all the things that...

There aren't that many jokes in the US Constitution. Either that, or there are too many, and they're all on us. Comedian Colin Quinn says most of you have never even read it. Who's gonna read something four pages long in this day and age? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Metro-North has had a tough year. Yesterday's derailment in the Bronx follows the May derailment in Bridgeport that injured more than 70 people, the death of a rail worker repairing tracks in West Haven one week later, the July derailment of a freight train that occurred about 1,700 feet from Sunday's derailment, and a nearly two-week power outage in September that severely disrupted rail traffic....

Norman Rockwell. It's the day before Thanksgiving. Who else are we gonna talk about? Deborah Solomon (the same one who invented the "Questions for" format in the New York Times magazine) will spend the whole show talking about her new comprehensive biography of Rockwell. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here in the West, Zen Buddhism is often where you go when you've concluded the religion you grew up with is marred by venality, hypocrisy, misogyny, patriarchal structure, and an insufficient commitment to peace and love.  Buddhism seems to have less hierarchy and more commitment to pure enlightenment and oneness. So, what do Buddhists do when Buddhism falls down on the job? Support the...

Why should sex feel bad? It shouldn't, and Bill Gates is offering $100,000 to the inventor of a condom that puts the pleasure back in sex. And, it isn't just about pleasure. Scientists at the University of Manchester's National Graphene Institute say a "redesigned condom that overcomes inconvenience, fumbling, or perceived loss of pleasure would be a powerful weapon in the fight against poverty."...

Today, on The Nose, well we can't entirely ignore the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, but the subject is so vast we can only break off one little part. We're going to focus on an essay by Adam Gopnik and published in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago. Gopnik probes the question of exactly what changed as a result of the crime and its murky aftermath.  Support the show: http:...

Are there countries where harmonica players are BIG stars? Why don't more women play it? How many different musical styles can you squeeze out of one of these things? Guests include a lot of the pros: Howard Levy, Don DeStefano and Chris DePino whose odd career arc has taken him from railroad conductor to chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party to professional harmonica player. Also, Wolfie g...

Why do we visit historical sites? Commentator Mike Pesca wants to talk  about the value of seeing a place, especially one like Dallas' Dealey Plaza about which arguments have raged for decades. Mike says there's a difference between watching a NOVA special and walking through the place with your own eyes open. Paul Bass, from the New Haven Independent, will bring us up to speed on three stori...

Here's the plan for The Nose today. We'll begin with a widely discussed column by Richard Cohen of The Washington Post who took an odd detour from a discussion of Chris Christie's national electoral profile and suggested that conventionally-minded people have to repress a gag reflex when confronted with the sight of an inter-racial couple, specifically the new first family of New York City. ...

In 1965, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram , spread stamped and addressed but un-mailed letters around public locations in New Haven. Most of the letters were picked up and mailed by strangers who could not possibly derive any material reward for doing the right thing. The strangers also lived out their values based on the address. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.co...

B.F. Skinner thought pigeons were so smart they could be used to guide missiles during WWII. He proposed a system in which pigeons would essentially pilot the missile. Skinner said pigeons could be trained to peck at a screen to adjust the trajectory of a missile toward its target. Project pigeon was funded but never used. It's one of the many reasons I could talk about pigeons all day.  Supp...