The Colin McEnroe Show

Through the lens of time, the anti-disco backlash looks a little ugly. What was disco, really? It started as an underground dance movement propelled by blacks, gays, and Puerto Ricans. It was a liberating and hedonistic music of the oppressed, and people from those groups gathered and mixed in the early downtown clubs. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for pr...

Home birthing? Doulas? Midwives? Hypnobirthing? Prenatal massage? Today, we’re talking about alternative birthing. Fifty years ago, it was pretty simple: you went to the hospital, they knocked you out, and you had your baby — while dad smoked a cigar in the waiting room. Or if no hospital was nearby, you gave birth at home and hoped a savvy neighborhood lady could to help out. In later years, the...

Let me tell you, in the bluntest possible manner, why we're doing a show with Ivor Hugh today. Last year, I had the idea of doing a show that would have been a gathering of some of the voices from the era when radio was king. One of the names in my head was Ivor's. The other one was my friend and former colleague Arnold Dean. Arnold started in radio within a year of  Ivor; and, like almost ev...

You know who needs this show today? Me. I'm having a musically starved summer, at least in terms of modern recorded music. I've made it out to some live shows, but I really have no idea what's being released these days. I can sum up my relation to music his summer in the following way: I was going to order the new Laura Marling CD, but I didn't. That's it. Meanwhile to force myself to do bicycle t...

John Lennon said they were the greatest comedy team since the Marx Brothers. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're not a hobbit or a college professor, smoking a pipe is a differentiator.   It's a signal to the world that your tastes run in a slightly unusual direction. The character played by Chion Wolf's brother Michael Gladis in the early seasons of Mad Men was one of those people. Always looking for a way to be different. Hence the ever present pipe.  Support the show: http://www.w...

Today, hear a live, in-studio performance by and conversation with the Punch Brothers, before their performance at Jorgensen Theater at UConn, Storrs. They are a five-piece band enjoying an explosion of critical esteem and new popularity over the past few years. Its leader, Chris Thile, just won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and has been working with giants from other genres, including cellist, Yo-Yo...

There are more than 800 miles of Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails in Connecticut. Today we're doing our show from one of them.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The problem with invasive species is, of course, that they compete for resources with local species, and sometime they're a lot better at it. and sometimes they just incidentally wipe something out.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

[Featured on the Audio to the left: A one-hour conversation and performance with and by Sobule in which she sings "Jetpack" and "Heroes" and some rarities.] Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's just a dance, right? Actually, maybe that's the last thing the prom is. Maybe the photo is even more important, because it freezes you. It's your chance, as high school trickles away, to say "This is who I am. This will be who I was." We've been looking at prom photos by Mary Ellen Mark, who will be on our show today, and they're striking in the range of emotional states they convey. We see j...

There are a lot of made-up languages with big fans. You may have heard of Na'vi from the movie Avatar , or Elvish from Lord of the Rings . Among fans, many of these languages have found a home on the web, where they continue to be developed and studied. At the same time, thousands of real languages around the world are facing extinction. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio....

Thirty-four states use the death penalty. Sixteen do not. Connecticut does, but most of its neighboring states -- New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont -- do not. New Hampshire does, but the state has had no executions since 1939 and currently possesses no means of executing anyone. Only recently did the ranks of its death row swell to one. Support the show: http://w...