The Colin McEnroe Show

Kim Kardashian and other celebrities "froze" their Facebook and Instagram accounts for one day this week "to protest the spread of hate speech and misinformation on those platforms." Meanwhile, Kardashian's husband had the strange sort of week that we've maybe grown to expect from him, but seemingly with more public peeing in it than we're maybe used to. And: Cuties (Mignonnes in the original French) is the feature film debut of Senegalese-French writer and director Maïmouna Doucouré. The movie's release on Netflix has been controversial, to say the least. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: New promenade at West Hartford park to be named after Parks & Rec character Leslie Knope Life on Venus? Astronomers See a Signal in Its CloudsThe detection of a gas in the planet's atmosphere could turn scientists' gaze to a planet long overlooked in the search for extraterrestrial life. His Girl Friday redefined the screwball comedy at 240 words per minute John Boyega Drops Jo Malone Ambassador Title After Brand Removes 'Star Wars' Actor From China Ad 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' mansion is added to Airbnb -- for just $30 Jason Momoa Slams Warner Bros. Amid 'Justice League' Investigation: 'This S--- Has to Stop' Movie Theaters That Opened For Tenet Are Now Worse Off Than BeforeThings aren't looking too good for the movie theaters that are currently open, even with the release of Christopher Nolan's Tenet. Ethan Hawke Directing Documentary About Paul Newman And Joanne Woodward CBS All Access to Rebrand as Paramount Plus Early Next Year'Godfather'-inspired drama 'The Offer' and reboot of 'The Game' among new original series in works Stanley Crouch, combative writer, intellectual and authority on jazz, dies at 74 'Colourful, vibrant, sensual!' Stars on Jimi Hendrix, 50 years goneIn awe of everything from his raunchiness to his skill with sheer volume, members of Pixies, Yes, Parliament-Funkadelic, Thin Lizzy and more celebrate the guitar god, who died 50 years ago today 'I Don’t Want to Be an Oracle.' Baseball Writer Roger Angell at 100.Talking extra innings -- and a milestone birthday -- with the celebrated chronicler of the summer game 7 movies to celebrate Bill Murray's 70th birthday Bus passenger uses live snake as a face mask GUESTS: Theresa Cramer - A writer and the editor of E Content Magazine Rich Hollant - Principal at CO:LAB, founder of Free Center, and commissioner on cultural affairs for the city of Hartford 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.

We produced our first show on masks in the spring of 2020. It was when most of us were isolated at home to sidestep the life-threatening illness we've come to call "COVID." The show was about how rapidly masks had become a statement of political identity. The intensity of the mask battles has begun to calm as we've acclimated to the pervasiveness of masks in our lives. Like them or not, they're here to stay, and they've begun to leave a lasting imprint on our culture. This hour, we take a longer view of how these objects that cover half of our faces have changed the way we perceive ourselves and interact with others -- and what they might look like in the future. GUESTS: Kim Adrian is the author of Sock, The 27th Letter of the Alphabet, and, most recently, Dear Knausgaard Henry Alford is a humorist, journalist, and author; his most recent book is And Then We Danced: A Voyage Into the Groove Mollie Ruben is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maine Elizabeth Segran is a senior staff writer at Fast Company and the author of The Rocket Years: How Your Twenties Launch the Rest of Your Life 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.

Bob Woodward is 77 years old. He's in his 50th year at The Washington Post. And he just yesterday published his 20th book. Rage is Woodward's second book about the Trump presidency. Two years ago, on the day after the first one came out, we did a show about it. So we've gotten that band mostly back together again, and we've spent the last 30 or so hours cramming. This hour, a look at Rage as a chronicling of our current history and as a publishing phenomenon. GUESTS: David Adams - Reviews editor at Publishers Weekly Susan Campbell - A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author, most recently, of Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood Jacques Lamarre - A playwright and the director of client services at Buzz Engine 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.

Black Americans are more likely to be infected from COVID-19, be incarcerated, live in poverty, and/or be killed by the police than white Americans. It took a pandemic and the killing of George Floyd to crystallize those facts. Historian and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb looks at race, policing, and the difficulty of holding police departments accountable in Frontline's "Policing the Police 2020," a documentary that will air on CPTV on Tuesday, Sept. 15. It follows Cobb's 2016 Frontline, "Policing the Police." On another front: Trump administration officials have been interfering since (at least) August with the data that are included in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports." These reports are used to help doctors and researchers understand how COVID-19 is spreading and who is at risk. Up to now, scientists wrote the reports without political interference. This is the latest attempt by the Trump administration to censor information intended to protect us. GUESTS: Jennifer Nuzzo is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; she is the lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins Testing Insights Initiative (@JenniferNuzzo) Jelani Cobb is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a professor of journalism in Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism; his most recent book is The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress (@jelani9) 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.

It's been a week of ending things, really. Keeping Up with the Kardashians is ending after 20 seasons. Diana Rigg -- Emma Peel on The Avengers and Lady Olenna on Game of Thrones, among many other things -- died at 82. And, of course, people are trying to end the whole world with their gender reveal parties. And then there's I'm Thinking of Ending Things. It's Charlie Kaufman's first movie for Netflix, and it stars Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley. It's based on Iain Reid's novel of the same name, which makes it the first movie Kaufman's ever directed not from his own original screenplay. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Plymouth police closing in on Buddy, the beefalo who has been on the run since escaping from a local slaughter house ESPN Scraps Hank Williams Jr. From "MNF" Open 'Saturday Night Live' Promotes Ego Nwodim To Main Cast Member For Season 46 Ryan Reynolds Brings Rick Moranis Out of Retirement for Mint Mobile Commercial Fender has sold more guitars in 2020 than any other year in its historyGibson, Taylor, Martin and others also report pandemic sales booms, with new users turning to the guitar as "six-string therapy" Film Academy Sets Inclusion Requirements for Oscars, Will Take Full Effect in 2024 Kirstie Alley slams new Oscars inclusion rules: 'This is a disgrace to artists everywhere' 'Tenet' Will Play at a Southern California Drive-In Despite Indoor Theaters Being Closed, Ignoring WB's Previous Mandate Kate Winslet, Unfiltered: "Because Life Is F--king Short"The Oscar winner, whose powerful love story Ammonite debuts at the Toronto Film Festival this week, knows the industry can do better -- and that she can too: "What the f--k was I doing working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski?" Why Disney's new 'Mulan' is a scandal GUESTS: Rebecca Castellani - Handles social media marketing and event planning for Quiet Corner Communications David Edelstein - America's Greatest Living Film Critic Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show. TAGS: Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the wake of resistance to Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice in cities like Portland, Oregon; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and others, we decided to take a look at race relations in the small towns and suburbs of Connecticut. What we found was disturbing.  In some ways, the show feels inadequate. I wish we could have included more of the many people who have experienced racist behavior in our small towns of Connecticut. We won't get to talk to a woman from Farmington who received a threatening note at her home for hanging a Black Lives Matter banner, a student from Killingly who experienced racial bullying, a young BLM organizer in Durham, or a woman angry that Confederate flags are still sold at the Durham fair. I know about these. Most incidents never make the news. This hour, what’s it like to be black and living in a small town or suburb in Connecticut? How do we begin to change the structures that keep racism alive?  GUESTS:  Gary Greenberg is a psychotherapist, the author of The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmasking of Psychiatry, and the first selectman of Scotland, Connecticut Drew John Ladd is a blogger, activist, and the author of Wolfsong, Beloved Leah Ralls is the president of the Windham/Willimantic NAACP and a social worker for Connecticut’s Division of Public Defender Services Al Robinson is a blogger, activist, and the publisher of My Left Nutmeg 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.

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 four years ago, videotapes are still consumed, collected, and in some cases, sold(!) across the country. But why? With streaming service giants like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney, giving us on-demand content with the push of a button and with Blu-ray and 4K players displaying movies and TV shows at crystal clear resolutions, videotapes offer a simple, analog experience that will just not go away. This hour, a look inside the impact, history, and legacy of VHS. Plus: the video store! It was the place to get your VHS rental and consume the content you couldn't get anywhere else. A look at life owning and working at a video store. GUESTS: Caetlin Benson-Allott - Distinguished Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Georgetown University and the author of Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens Video Spectatorship From VHS to File Sharing Sam Hatch - Co-host of The Culture Dogs on Sunday nights on WWUH Hank Paper - The former owner of Best Video in Hamden, Conn., and a professor of Film, Television, and Media Arts at Quinnipiac University Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, Jonathan McNicol, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired May 16, 2019.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In November, 2016, we did a show about all the problems presented by, well, a-holes. And so it seems only logical to expand our scope a bit and do a show about all the problems presented by, well, a hole. For instance: How many holes are there in a straw? Did you say one? Okay, cool. Then how many holes are there in a sock? (A relatively new sock, I mean.) You said one again, right? But how can both of those things be true at the same time? Or, put another way: What happens to the hole in the donut as you eat the donut around it? This gets into mereology, the theory of parthood relations -- for our purposes, the parts and wholes of holes and the wholes the holes are parts of. Your head hurts a little, right? And then there's trypophobia, an irrational fear of clusters of holes and cracks. And finally: We've just found a black hole right in our cosmic backyard. GUESTS: Chrissie Giles - A science writer and the global health editor at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Marina Koren - Staff writer at The Atlantic Achille Varzi - Professor of philosophy at Columbia University and the coauthor of Holes and Other Superficialities Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired May 12, 2020.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Carole Baskin is going to appear on Dancing with the Stars. And with that, I've typed the least surprising opening sentence in the history of Nose posts. And: When Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure came out in 1989, Alex Winter (Bill) was 23 and Keanu Reeves (Ted) was 24. Winter and Reeves are now 55 and 56, respectively, but that seems to be no reason not to put out a third Bill & Ted movie, 29 years after the second one. Bill & Ted Face the Music is now available on all your video-on-demand platforms. And speaking of sequels to classic 1980s teen movies, the first two seasons of Cobra Kai have moved from YouTube to Netflix (who will produce a third season) and they've found a new audience. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Do Your Bowels Suddenly Spring to Life in Bookstores? You're Not Alone -- and the Japanese Even Have a Term for It: Mariko Aoki Parents of young 'Black Panther' fans struggle with telling children of actor's death Twitter says Chadwick Boseman's final post is the most liked tweet everIt's a bittersweet achievement. Brad Pitt's girlfriend reportedly is married but in an 'open' relationship Andrew Lloyd Webber dropped a 'Phantom of the WAPera' Cardi B remix and we regret to inform you music is cancelled John Oliver throws sludge back at Danbury officials, demands sewage plant be named in his honor Mariah Carey Just Addressed Her "Uncomfortable" Resurfaced Interview On "The Ellen DeGeneres Show""I wasn't ready to tell anyone." How Pop Music's Teenage Dream EndedA decade ago, Katy Perry's sound was ubiquitous. Today, it's niche. How did a genre defined by popularity become unpopular? 'I Like to Move It' DJ, Erick Morillo, Dead at 49 WFSB Cleans House -- But At What Cost? Alarmed pilot tells LAX tower: 'We just passed a guy in a jet pack'; FBI now investigating Robert Pattinson Has COVID-19, Halting The Batman ProductionVanity Fair has learned the star came down with the virus just days after shooting resumed. How a Praying Mantis Says 'Boo!'A study of startle displays hints at why provoked creatures have such a wide range of reactions. GUESTS: Helder Mira - Multimedia producer at Trinity College and a Cinestudio board member Carolyn Paine - An actress, comedian, and dancer; she is founder, director, and choreographer of CONNetic Dance 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.

Hillary Clinton has spent a lot of time in the spotlight. We know her as a First Lady, a U.S. Senator from New York, President Obama's Secretary of State, a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, and as the wife of former President Bill Clinton.  Yet most everything we know about Hillary as an individual separate from Bill has been filtered through the media, through President Trump's Twitter feed, and through the many conspiracy theories linked to her name.  But after all the years of Hillary at Bill's side and after her loss in the 2016 election, didn't you wonder how Hillary Clinton's life might have been different if she never married Bill? Would she have broken the "glass ceiling" if she hadn't been married to Bill? We talk to a writer who imagined Hillary's life without Bill.  GUEST:   Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of a collection of short stories, You Think It, I’ll Say It, as well as six novels, including Prep and Eligible. Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and NPR’s This American Life, among others. Her new novel is Rodham. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.