The Colin McEnroe Show

Don't miss -- for what might just be the seventh year we've done this (though it might also be some other number too) -- a very badly planned Christmas Eve special featuring chaos muppet and music legend "Big Al" Anderson, the great Jim Chapdelaine, and State Troubadour Nekita Waller! GUESTS: "Big Al" Anderson - Award-winning guitarist, singer, and songwriter known for his work in the band NRBQ, among a ton of other stuff Jim Chapdelaine - Emmy Award-winning musician, producer, composer, and recording engineer; patient advocate for people with rare cancers Nekita Waller - Connecticut's 17th State Troubadour Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Eugene Amatruda and Betsy Kaplan contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christianity Today, an evangelical Christian publication founded by Billy Graham in 1956, published an editorial Thursday by editor-in-chief Mark Galli, calling for President Trump to be removed from office.  This might sound shocking to the large number of evangelicals who steadfastly support the president despite behavior that has been at odds with Christian morality.  The response to the editorial was swift and divided, causing Christianity Today's website to crash shortly after Galli's editorial was published. Will Galli's words make a difference? Also this hour: Mayor Pete Buttigieg accused Elizabeth Warren of holding him to a purity test that she could not pass after she criticized him at Thursday's Democratic debate for holding a private fundraiser in a Silicon Valley wine cave. We look at the origins and use of the phrase "purity test."   Lastly, the darker underbelly of the origins of Christmas. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been over 100 years since the first cartoons were drawn by hand. Since then, the genre has delved into everything from sex and drugs to racial inequality and war crimes. Even the tamest, G-rated cartoons have often found ways of slipping in adult humor past the eyes of younger viewers. Cartoons have been the vehicle for government propaganda, social change, and political satire. Some have been boycotted and even banned for their content while others have been deemed masterpieces and praised by critics for their bold message and style. Today, cartoons continue to find ways of subverting the status quo in surprising (sometimes shocking) new ways. This hour, we speak with animators, animation experts, and historians about what makes cartoons so well suited for the exploration of, well, everything.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When this forum was originally scheduled, it was intended as a conversation about how our language is changing. Example, the idiom "woke" or "#woke" has a very keen set of meanings to one group and flies by another. I still want to do a little of that, but it’s also possibly more important to talk about the battle over basic meaning in the public square. I think it can be argued that: (a) some phrases are being accorded an almost incantatory power (e.g. the long-running debate over whether or when Obama would use the phrase “radical Islam”),(b) some words are used to define the political landscape despite the fact that they themselves elude definition (e.g. the way the word “elites” was used in 2016),(c) there’s a whole pile of isms – fascism, nativism, nationalism, exceptionalism , even terrorism – that currently pepper our national discourse without a common consensual understanding,(d) it seems at least possible that the events of the last two years have been grinding away like termites at the substructure of American language so that a phrase like "what’s happening last night in Sweden" – in addition to being out of tense – is no longer held to any particular meaning/standard and can be translated by its utterer into "what I saw last night on television about things that have been transpiring over a period of time in Sweden."Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fyre Festival, Theranos, Anna Delvey, the college admissions scandal... the list goes on. And whether explored on the news or as a book, podcast, documentary or feature film, consumers can't seem to get enough of this 'scamtent.' This hour, we'll talk about scams and scammers, and discuss why we as a culture can't seem to look away.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Voters in favor of Brexit handed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson an electoral victory on Thursday in a landslide not seen since Margaret Thatcher’s win in 1987. Conservatives won seats in British working-class districts that have been Labour strongholds for generations, giving Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party its biggest defeat since 1935. What can 2020 Democratic presidential candidates learn from this election?  Also this hour: President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday following Tuesday's anti-Semitic attack in a Jersey City kosher market that left six people dead, including the two shooters. The order sparked a firestorm online over fears that the order would bring up old debates about Jewish identity and squelch campus protests against Israeli political policy. We try to parse that out.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Nose is off this week (because, on any given day, it's entirely possible that our whole show will be off with all this impeachment nonsense going on), so David Edelstein joins Colin for the hour to talk about some of the best (and some of the worst) movies of the year. The Irishman, Diane, Once Upon at Time... in Hollywood, Uncut Gems, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Lighthouse, Ad Astra, Marriage Story, The Goldfinch, and Dolemite Is My Name all get mentioned. But which ones are the best, and which ones are the worst? And what about Toy Story 4? Colin's got it as his favorite movie of the year. (It's #2 on my list so far.) Edelstein's got a whole other take on the Disney/Pixar sequel. And speaking of Disney, there's some Marvel vs. movies talk here too. GUEST: David Edelstein - America's Greatest Living Film Critic Colin McEnroe contributed to this show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're preempted (again) today as the House Judiciary Committee debates its Articles of Impeachment. So, in lieu of a new episode of The Colin McEnroe Show, we thought you might enjoy this interview we did with Dave Eggers for our new, other show, Pardon Me (Another Damn Impeachment Show?). Pardon Me airs on Saturdays at noon on Connecticut Public Radio, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts. Dave Eggers is the author of six books for young readers, including The Wild Things; three works of nonfiction, including Zeitoun; twelve novels, including What Is the What, A Hologram for the King, and The Circle; and the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. He has written three screenplays, including Where the Wild Things Are with Spike Jonze. And he is the founder of McSweeney's. Eggers's latest is The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment, about which John Hodgman wrote, "It is difficult these days to portray the sheer, numbing, terrifying, unprecedented strangeness of what is happening in contemporary maritime life. One wants to say it mirrors politics?" This uncut interview is roughly twice as long as the version that ran in the debut episode of Pardon Me. It has been lightly edited for clarity but not for time or content. GUEST: Dave Eggers - The author of thirteen books; his latest is The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show. Email us your impeachment questions at pardonme@ctpublic.org. Pardon Me is a production of The Colin McEnroe Show on Connecticut Public Radio.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we speak with actor and human-rights activist George Takei, not about his role as Lieutenant Sulu on the original Star Trek, but about a far more troubling chapter in his life. In his new graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy, George writes in detail about his childhood spent in an internment camp for Japanese-American citizens. It's a vivid account of one of the darkest times in America’s history as well as a wake-up call to a country currently detaining tens of thousands of immigrants and their families.  Is there still time to learn from our past mistakes or have the politics of fear and division already caused us, as a nation, to repeat them? GUESTS: George Takei - Actor, Human-rights activist and spokesperson, as well as author of the New York Time's best-selling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Chion Wolf, and Jonathan McNicol contributed to this show, which originally aired on August 21, 2019.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We had intended to run the debut episode of our new other show, Pardon Me (Another Damn Impeachment Show?), in our hour today. But then the Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Trump. And so suddenly airing a show from last weekend seemed like a bad idea. So instead, we take to the airwaves with you as our only guest. Call in and let Colin know what you're thinking: 888-720-WNPR (888-720-9677). Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Eugene Amatruda, Robyn Doyon-Aitken, and Catie Talarski contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.