The Colin McEnroe Show

Darko Tresnjak has been artistic director at Hartford Stage Company since 2011. During his tenure here, he's won a Tony. He's had multiple productions make the leap to Broadway. His Anastasia has multiple tours touring internationally. And this season is his last season in Hartford. This hour: our exit interview with Darko Tresnjak. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/l...

The question of whether to allow a contested question about citizenship on the 2020 census is before the Supreme Court. How they decide may be altered by new and formerly secret files that show a long-standing relationship between the Republican Party and gerrymandering -- that includes an idea to add a citizenship question to the census to boost the voting power of "Republicans and non-Hispanic w...

Graduation season is upon us. Your niece is finishing high school. Your neighbor's son is graduating from Tulane. Your boss just got her second Master's. How did it get to be that the obvious gift for all of these people is... a Dr. Seuss book ? And then: Vulture, this week, published a click-bait listicle ranking all the HBO shows ever . The Nose took the bait and clicked. And... Six Feet Under d...

Laszlo Ratesic is a nineteen-year veteran of the Speculative Service. He lives in the Golden State, the only place left in what was once America. Laszlo's job is to bring the worst criminals to justice, those who tell lies. In his new novel, Ben Winters  creates a world  which might sound Eden-esque in our era of misinformation.  It's getting more difficult to distinguish real...

From his rapid-fire stand-up comedy riffs to his breakout role in Mork & Mindy and his Academy Award-winning performance in Good Will Hunting , Robin Williams was a singularly innovative and beloved entertainer. Dave Itzkoff's new biography is Robin . And 10 years after his death, a look back at the work of George Carlin. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener...

No Country for Old Men .  Fargo .  The Big Lebowski .  Raising Arizona .  O Brother, Where Art Thou?   Miller's Crossing . Over the past 35 years, Joel and Ethan Coen have reliably been among the most recognizable voices in moviemaking. Their latest, the anthology western  The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , hit Netflix last fall. This hour: a Noseish look at the work of t...

Seriously: a show about towels. There's  the history of towels ,  towels in Christianity ,  Terrible Towels ,  Towel Day . Oh, and there are  actual towels  too. Because when has a bad idea ever stopped us before? GUESTS: Marcel Danesi  - The author of  Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics John Dankosky  ...

The American criminal justice system has become less 'just' over recent decades and prosecutors bear much of the responsibility. The tough-on-crime culture of the 1980's and 90's shifted power away from judges and juries and toward prosecutors who embraced their new power to wield mandatory sentencing laws to rack up the convictions demanded by the constituents who elected them.  The problem...

As Barbie Millicent Roberts -- yes, that's her name -- turns 60 we, as a plastic loving nation, celebrate! For six decades the impossibly proportioned fashion doll has been delighting children and adults around the world. But the road to 60 hasn't always been easy. Critiqued by feminists, diversity advocates, and even child psychologists for her role in perpetuating harmful sterotypes, eating diso...

For everyone who watched Sunday's series finale of Game of Thrones , perhaps a better show to get a handle on what's happening inside America is Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale . People aren't going around greeting their neighbors with "Blessed by the fruit." But there's an argument to be made that news headlines from the past week are eerily similar to the fictional transpirings that gave way to Handm...

It's been a rough week for the famous. Last Saturday, Peggy Lipton died at age 72. On Monday, Doris Day died at 97. Then on Tuesday, it was Tim Conway at 85. And yesterday, I. M. Pei died aged 102. And the week's gone kind of the same way for TV shows too. On Sunday, Veep finished its seven-year run on HBO. Last night, The Big Bang Theory aired its 279th and final episode. And Game of Thrones 's s...

Tracking, rewinding, ejecting, collecting - VHS broke ground in home entertainment like never before. The culture of VHS and its enormous best friend, the VCR, were kings of consumer media for decades. Despite the last VCR and VHS being manufactured just three years ago , videotapes are still  consumed , collected , and in some cases,  sold (!) across the country. But why? With streaming...

The 18th century Parisian cafe was an incubator for the liberal tradition as it was before liberalism became a politically-loaded and dirty word. The cafe brought people together to exchange ideas, talk, connect, argue, debate, and learn about humanity, empathy, and humility outside the control of the state; a place where civil society trumped tribal impulse. We are a far more humane people today...

Religious scholar  Elaine Pagels , trusted the Gospel of Thomas to get her through the almost unbearably painful years after the death of her six-year-old son -- born with a congenital heart defect -- followed one year later by the unexpected death of her husband.  Thomas was one of many hidden texts discovered in a cave in Egypt in 1945, written around the time of Jesus but omitted from...

Listen at 1:00 pm.  President Trump is working to  block more than 20  separate Congressional investigations led by the Democratic-controlled House. Democrats say the Trump Administration has failed to respond to or comply with at least 79 requests for documents or other information. Are we in a Constitutional crisis, or not?  Also this hour: Two students lost their lives in re...

Father of the Bride is Vampire Weekend's fourth studio album, their first in nearly six years, and their first for a major label. It has been called a " masterpiece " and a " multi-layered dissertation on the world's ills ." It's also been called " mild " and " some of the worst ideas the band has ever put to tape ." The real question is, though: Is Vampire Weekend still cool? And then: Gorman Bec...

Hartford native Sol LeWitt was one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art. As an artist, he abandoned the long histories of painting and drawing and sculpture in favor of his Wall Drawings and Structures . And as an art figure, he abandoned the conventions of celebrity and resisted ever even having his picture taken. This hour, a look at Connecticut's own Sol LeWitt. Support the show: h...

Reality TV shows like the Discovery Channel's Doomsday Bunker s  and National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers  perpetuate a stereotype of "preppers" that omits the wide swath of people who engage in preparedness in a less extreme and more varied way. Talk of nuclear war , climate apocalypse , pandemic , economic instability , and the decline of democracy has led more people to thi...

Elvis left two legacies. Musically, he pulled several American musical traditions out of the shadows, braided them together, and made them mainstream. Personally, he created a far darker template for the way a musical celebrity could be devoured by the very fame he avidly sought. Recorded live in front of an audience -- and with a band! -- as part of Colin's Freshly Squeezed series at Watkinson Sc...

NPR has a new theme song. The new theme is much like the old theme with new embellishments created by a "sonic studio" instead of one artist and a "creative director" instead of a composer or arranger. After 40 years, is it time to update or do you miss the old song? Also this hour: Rachel Held Evans was a 37-year-old Christian evangelical writer with an ability to both challenge orthodoxy within...

Avengers: Endgame is the 22nd feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the fourth Avengers movie and the fourth MCU entry directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. It is the 10th film in the MCU's Phase Three and the last part of its Infinity Saga. I didn't understand very much of that stuff I just wrote, but I totally get this last bit: Avengers: Endgame may well be on its way to becoming th...

The concept of the early 20th century sideshow evokes images of bearded ladies, sword swallowers and exotic "others" exhibited as "freaks" before audiences both lured and repelled by what they saw. Crowds flocked to  Coney Island  sideshows where, for 10 cents, they could find solace that someone was worse off than they were during times of low life expectancy, high infant mortality, wor...

Who would have thought that a book on grammar would be #5 on Amazon's best-seller list? (Should that be "whom" would have thought? Should I write out the number five? Should it be "bestseller?" Ugh. I can't remember if the exclamation goes inside or outside the quotation mark in the sentence I just asked myself.) Benjamin Dreyer says we're all writers. Or, we can channel our best writers if we cho...

Dust is a fascinating substance. Our bodies are always shedding dust from our skin, hair, and nails, leaving little bits of DNA wherever we roam. Dust floats unseen through the air around us. It's light. It's hard to see unless it lands on a contrasting surface or crosses the path of a ray of sunshine. It can travel far and wide. Earth collects more than 100 tons of cosmic dust a day. A speck of i...

We want to hear from you. It's just Colin and your calls. Twenty Democratic presidential contenders are in the race for 2020. Are you suffering from choice overload?  Is electability your primary criteria? If so, it probably shouldn't be. Who we consider electable  usually leaves out women and minorities . Do we even know what makes someone  electable ?   You're not alone...