The Colin McEnroe Show

With the New Britain Museum of American Art staging two concurrent exhibitions of Sol LeWitt’s prints, we listen back to our 2019 hour on the Hartford native, one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art. As an artist, LeWitt 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. GUESTS: David Areford - Associate professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts Boston and curator of Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints for the New Britain Museum of American Art Lary Bloom - The author of Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas Andrea Miller-Keller - Was the Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum from 1968 to 1998 Cary Smith - An artist who makes abstract paintings Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Cat Pastor, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired May 9, 2019.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In their new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel argue that “whatever you were doing during the pandemic and its stilted aftermath, it was not working from home,” but instead “doing your job from home.” This hour: Charlie Warzel joins us for a conversation about remote work, our relationship to work in general, and how to make work better for everyone. GUESTS: Charlie Warzel - Author of the newsletter Galaxy Brain and contributing writer at The Atlantic; his new book with Anne Helen Petersen is Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home  Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 18-year wait is nearly over, and the fourth Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections, is almost here. This hour, we look back at the original film and its continued influence across the culture with bullet time and red pills and the “woah” meme and so much more. We take the question of whether we’re living in a simulation much more seriously than we did when The Matrix came out. We’re much more attuned to the allegory for the trans experience that The Matrix might well have been. And The Matrix Resurrections is just the latest iteration of the ongoing #Keanussance, from Duke Caboom to Bill & Ted Face the Music to John Wick: Chapter 4 next year. GUESTS: River Donaghey - An associate editor at Vice, where he published the piece “Give Keanu Reeves Some Space, Everybody” David Sims - A staff writer at The Atlantic and the cohost of Blank Check with Griffin and David Emily VanDerWerff - The critic at large for Vox, where she published “How The Matrix universalized a trans experience — and helped me accept my own” Rizwan Virk - Executive director of Play Labs at M.I.T. and the author of The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are in a Video Game Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Cat Pastor, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired June 19, 2019.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve been doing these shows most weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. The last few times, we haven’t even started with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. And those shows have been fun. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour about anything at all. 888-720-9677. Or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, The Nose might mind if you come to the table without a washup. The 1970s are back. Again. For the nth time. But maybe it’s different this time? That said, the ’70s weren’t all that bad. And, the age-old question: Should movies have intermissions? And finally: The Power of the Dog is a Western written and directed by Jane Campion and based on the 1967 novel. It’s Campion’s first movie in 12 years, and it won the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the Venice Film Festival. The movie is an early Oscar favorite, with special notice going to performances by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Benedict Cumberbatch. The Power of the Dog is available to stream worldwide on Netflix. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Michael Nesmith, Monkees Singer-Songwriter, Dead at 78 “With Infinite Love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement Greg Tate, Groundbreaking Cultural Critic and Black Rock Coalition Co-Founder, Has Died Tate was a challenging and authoritative voice on everything from hip-hop to hardcore, and also made his own significant musical impact with projects like Burnt Sugar Robbie Shakespeare, ‘Wickedest Bass’ in Reggae, Dead at 68 Alongside his Riddim Twins counterpart Sly Dunbar, the bassist played with everyone from Black Uhuru to Bob Dylan across more than four decades Making of ‘Dune’: How Denis Villeneuve’s Sci-Fi Epic Is the Culmination of a Childhood Dream The filmmaker mined his boyhood obsession with Frank Herbert’s classic novel to create the big-screen adaptation he always wanted to see: “I said to myself, ‘I would love if I could make a movie for the teenager I was back then.’” Inside Wheel of Time, Amazon’s Huge Gamble on the Next Game of Thrones As legend has it, a few years back, Jeff Bezos demanded that his team at Amazon Studios create a fantasy epic that would put Game of Thrones to shame. Turns out, that kind of thing is even harder to do than it sounds. And more expensive than you can imagine. Inside the epic quest to bring Wheel of Time to life—and maybe change the face of global television forever. On “Succession,” Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke “I take him as seriously as I take my own life,” he says of his character, Kendall Roy. 2021 Is the Year of Adam Driver It’s a Great Time To Start a Show That Aired 10 Years Ago The key to happiness is embracing something at the absolute nadir of its cultural relevance We Still Love 30 Rock, but Its Foundation Is Shaky The author of a new book about Tina Fey’s magnum opus on celebrating 30 Rock’s triumphs without skirting over the troubling way it handled race. Longreads Best of 2021 Our year-end collection includes staff and community picks for the best essays, features, profiles, and investigations published in 2021. The 20 Best TV Shows of 2021 From dark social satires to quirky comedies, twisty superhero tales, uplifting sci-fi, and more, this year’s small-screen gems were bold, surprising, and 100 percent satisfying The Best Books of 2021 The 10 I most enjoyed this year. The Best Movies of 2021 It was a year of octogenarian high jinks, long yet revealing documentaries, and masters reasserting themselves The best movie trailers of 2021 Our list of the year’s best movie advertising campaigns includes Licorice Pizza, Last Night In Soho, and Titane Debt collectors can now text, email and DM you on social media Why Biopics Are Bad For Acting Why the Year’s Most Popular Song Never Went to No. 1 Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” is Billboard’s top song of 2021, even though it never topped the Hot 100. Stephen Sondheim Didn’t Just Change Musicals. He Changed Crosswords. The musical genius also helped introduce the U.S. to a tricky new kind of puzzle. A Charlie Brown Christmas’ soundtrack captures the holiday spirit by not defining it The classic special is one of the last perennial strongholds for two very American art forms: the comic strip and jazz An Exhaustive List of Directors Who Swear They Won’t Make a Superhero Movie There’s no more reliable way to elicit clicks and outrage in Hollywood. The Joy Of Hating Stuff For No Good Reason It’s okay, you don’t always need one The Rebrand Trend of 2021? Acting Your Age This year, heritage brands looked to their pasts to create visual identities for the multi-platform era Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever Saudi camel beauty pageant cracks down on cosmetic enhancements Oscar’s Penis Problem: Why Does the Academy Ignore Actors Doing Full Frontal? GUESTS: James Hanley - Co-founder of Cinestudio at Trinity College Tracy Wu Fastenberg - Development officer at Connecticut Children’s Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Cat Pastor, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Newsletters have become a great way for journalists and others to dive deep into less-covered topics and engage directly with their readers in ways not always possible in the mainstream media ecosystem. The platform Substack is making it easy for them. The subscription-based model offers writers more editorial control and the ability to offer free content and earn a sustainable salary at a time when public trust in media is low, local news is thinning and media content is often driven by social-media algorithms. We talk about email newsletters with people who write them and critique them. GUESTS: Heather Cox Richardson - Professor of history at Boston College; she writes the Letters from an American newsletter Gabe Fleisher - Student at Georgetown University and the author of the Wake Up To Politics newsletter Isaac Saul - A journalist and the author of the Tangle newsletter Ben Smith - Media columnist for The New York Times and the founder and former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired May 5, 2021.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve been doing these shows most weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. The last few times, we haven’t even started with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. And those shows have been fun. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour about anything at all. 888-720-9677. Or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former Senator Joe Lieberman believes the center of Congress is the best place from which to legislate. It’s the sweet spot for negotiation and compromise and making the deals that move the country forward. He thinks Congress would get more done if members would shift closer to the center and away from the fringe. But how do you bring legislators in today’s Congress together when they don’t all share one set of facts? And at what point does centrism become opportunism and the bridge-builder an appeaser? Are there compromises not worth making? Joe Lieberman joins us to talk about his 24 years as a “centrist” legislator and his complicated relationship with Connecticut voters. GUEST:   Joe Lieberman - Represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate for 24 years; he is currently the national co-chair of the political group No Labels, and his new book is The Centrist Solution: How We Made Government Work and Can Make It Work Again Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, we talk about an assortment of topics. First, the omicron variant has been found in at least 16 states. We’ll learn about the latest with COVID-19 and this new variant. Then, we’ll get tips for how to think critically. Finally, why cute cat videos have been used to spread misinformation online. GUESTS: Dr. Leana Wen - An emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University. She is a CNN medical analyst and contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Her new book is “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.” Joe Árvai - The Dana and David Dornsife Professor of Psychology and Director of The Wrigley Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. His recent article for The Conversation is “Aaron Rodgers dropped the ball on critical thinking -- with a little practice you can do better.” Davey Alba - A technology reporter for The New York Times whose recent article is “Those Cute Cats Online? They Help Spread Misinformation.” Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, The Nose was a frying pan. The Beatles: Get Back is a three-part Disney+ docuseries produced and directed by Peter Jackson. It’s made from material originally captured for a 1970 documentary of the making of Let It Be. Jackson has called it “a documentary about a documentary.” Originally conceived as a feature film, The Beatles: Get Back was ultimately released last weekend as three episodes totaling nearly eight hours. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Renowned fashion designer Virgil Abloh dies at 41 after a private battle with cancer Ex-Child Actor in ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ Shot and Killed Police said Jonshel Alexander and a man were shot inside a vehicle Saturday in New Orleans. Did Taylor Swift Just Make Billboard Chart History? She’s given The Beatles and Don McLean a 10-minute run for their money. ‘Home Alone’ House For Rent On Airbnb, Kevin Not Included Which Films Lead the Biggest Best-Picture Race in Years? With epics like “West Side Story” and biopics like “King Richard” in contention, Oscar voters have plenty of choices in a category that’s now set at 10 slots. The Best Movies of 2021 This year’s releases, augmented by movies postponed from last year, offer exceptional artistry amid the industry’s commercial difficulties. Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It) The 10 most outrageous moments from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia The A.V. Club breaks down some of the wildest moments of the FXX comedy, which kicks off its 15th season on December 1 The New Yorker: The Best Music of 2021 NPR: Best Music Of 2021 Adele convinces Spotify to remove the shuffle button from album pages: “our stories should be listened to as we intended” Streaming giant makes it less easy on you if you want to mess with an album’s running order Gen Z Pop Stars Made Their Mark in 2021. Beware, Millennial Forebears. Upstarts including Olivia Rodrigo, Lil Nas X, Chloe Bailey and the Kid Laroi grew up on the internet, admiring the artists who are now their contemporaries. More Like Spotify Wrecked (I Use Apple Music) Here’s to the worst day of the year M.L.B. Lockout: ‘We Understand It’s Bad for Our Business’ As the league and its players’ union settle in for a fight that the union called “unnecessary and provocative,” both sides went public to state their cases. How Leisure Time Became Work The rise of the attention economy has accelerated our habit of engaging with our hobbies in a data-driven way. The Package Is the Message American consumers can’t resist the lure of a well-designed container. Cancel Mel Gibson Why is Hollywood still hiring this raging anti-Semite? GUESTS: Steve Metcalf - Director emeritus of the University of Hartford’s Presidents’ College Irene Papoulis - Teaches writing at Trinity College Brian Slattery - Arts editor for the New Haven Independent and a producer at WNHH radio Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.