The Colin McEnroe Show

Once again we start the week with a show that we planned on the fly based on stories that grabbed us over the weekend.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As my friend Alex Beam said today,  12 Years a Slave  has a way of taking things that were abstractions and making them real. It's one thing to talk about abolition, another to see the essential need for it. Even a figure like John Brown, says Alex, looks different when you see the true carnage of slavery. We're talking about this astonishing new Steve McQueen movie today on The Nos...

This show originally aired on July 2nd, 2013. When considering what show we wanted to re-run, we found this recent article from the New York Times, As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry . The debate is still being discussed and on this show, it gets heated! Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last month, the New York City Opera-- what Mayor LaGuardia called "the People's Opera" -- declared bankruptcy. This is/was the opera that introduced Americans to Placido Domingo and Beverly Sills.  Make what you will of the fact that the bankruptcy announcement coincided with the presentation of a new opera about Anna Nicole Smith. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.c...

Okay, this is sad. Like a lot of people, I have trouble achieving the deep focus needed to enjoy long fiction. And, like a lot of people, I have trouble finding time to read novels. Recently, I came up with a solution. I go to the gym, get on a recumbent bike, and I read while I pedal for an hour, so yes,  I kill two birds with one Robert Stone. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/dona...

This is one of our new Monday shows where right up to show time, I'm not 100% sure what we're talking about. I know for sure we'll discuss the time change you experienced over the weekend and the ever-swelling choir of voices suggesting that its harms outweigh its advantages, assuming there are any real advantages. I'm also dying to discuss the attempt by Saturday Night Live to address on this wee...

On today's Nose we're stuffed into the facade of the XL Center in Hartford on Trumbull Street. Come on over and join the live audience. We got interested in funeral Selfies , the practice more common than you might think among young people taking smart phone pictures of themselves at a funeral or memorial service.  You can well imagine our first reaction. Is there any basis on which this prac...

Ok, Ok, you're a super-rational public radio listener but you live in a place drenched in supernatural legend. In fact, historians like David Hall and David Hackett-Fischer have argued that the new world was imbued with notions of magic and superstition from Jumpstreet. One of the paradoxes of the Puritan migration was that even as they imported a belief system that rejected popish superstition in...

I've been writing a newspaper column for The Hartford Courant since 1982. For my first 15 years or so, I tended to write the column at The Hartford Courant. In the last ten years, I have written columns in the following places: a sports bar in San Francisco; a boat moving along the Rhine; the famous Brasserie Balzar in Paris; an outdoor clearing in the Yucatan jungle where, bizarrely, there w...

Salt! It's the only rock we eat! That gets us into some touchy territory. Some say that salt is a major factor for high blood pressure, and some say that it's more complicated than that. We can't NOT eat salt, but in the grand scheme of things, are we eating more now than ever, or way less? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do Lou Reed , President Taft , and this past weekend's violence in New Haven have in common? They're all part of our first episode of Mystery Surprise Monday Theater on today's Colin McEnroe Show , where we'll bring you up-to-the minute and interesting bits of cultural news, some from Connecticut, some much bigger. The news will be so new that we won't even know what we're going to air u...

On The Nose this week, a viral video  musical tribute to Chinese food triggers cries of racism, a father welcoming his fourth daughter into the world, and opens up a can of complicated thoughts about that. And we talk about the time we walked in the shoes of the opposite sex. Listen to our weekly culture panel live from New Haven on WNPR. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See...

The electrical grid has been described as the glass jaw of American industry . According to some reports, we’re just one solar flare or cyber-attack away from massive, cascading power failures . This has happened before. In 2012, a cascading power failure in India plunged around 680 million into darkness . And in 2011, some Connecticut residents found themselves without power for more than a week...

Today you're going to meet the new State Troubadour, Kristen Graves, and renew your acquaintance with three former troubadours. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's hard to believe that each one of us throws away over seven pounds of trash every day, adding up to about 102 tons over a lifetime. In part, that's because we're used to having our garbage whisked away while we sleep, waking to an empty barrel and a license to buy some more. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Almost every cure and treatment of diseases exists thanks to medical research on animals. Through animal research, we can understand the addictive nature of Oreos like in a study from Connecticut College recently, and Macaques are crucial for the development of AIDS vaccine strategies. We’ll find out why certain animals work best for certain studies, some big challenges in finding the healthiest c...

A popular video this week was a highlight reel of Stephen Colbert being unable to stay in character as a pompous, self-pleased right wing blowhard. Instead, Colbert is swept up in the hilarity of the material. One of his adorable tricks is to hide the lower half of his face behind something, allowing us to see only his laughing eyes. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/...

Watching the movie "Captain Phillips" -- in which Tom Hanks plays a commercial freighter captain kidnapped by Somali pirates -- I had a sense of deja vu. Movies like this are becoming a type. They're about the interaction between the U.S. and people who don't like us. In "Zero Dark 30" and "Captain Phillips," a crack Seal team shows up, so much better equipped and trained than our adversaries that...

It's probably an accident that there are so many ways to experience the story of Macbeth right now. We seem to be living in a moment where ambition has gone mad. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's become a cliché to say everything has a story, but in baseball, you could make the argument that everything really  does . Even the baseball itself is a story -- one of geography and symbolism -- an almost holy relic of American culture. Sportswriter Steve Rushin tells the story of these objects in his latest book,  The 34-Ton Bat . Support the show: http://www.wnpr.o...

Consumer activism is older than the nation. The colonists’ rejection of British imports started a tradition of voting with your knife, fork, teacup and credit card. But it’s complicated! Whole Foods isn’t perfect. And maybe you should reward Wal-Mart for at least trying to improve. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're in New Haven today, and The Nose, our weekly culture panel, wants to talk about the hazards of 3D movies and the increasingly competitive world of Halloween costumes. And because we're in New Haven, we'll turn our attention to a couple of prominent stories down here. One of them -- not for the squeamish -- is the Poopetrator , a laundry prankster who has created such a national stir tha...

I really meant to donate to the NPR fund drive. I just forgot. Well, actually I didn't. But still, I should have donated. I feel so guilty! Guilt is a funny thing. It's a pervasive emotion with the power to both motivate--and oppress. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the heart of a new Frontline documentary is a simple question - does playing football expose you to life-threatening brain damage? It's a question putting America's most popular sport on notice - raising concerns for moms, players' wives, and all of us who love football. Today we talk with Jim Gilmore, producer for Frontline's new documentary " A League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Cris...

With the November municipal elections approaching there have been some nasty battles involving alternative parties fighting their way onto the ballot. There’s something about local politics that leads to hand to hand combat. We’ll be looking at East Hampton, Middletown, Westport and any other town with a feisty third party. Leave your comments below, email us at colin@wnpr.org or tweet us @wnprcol...