The Colin McEnroe Show

Don't miss -- for the 5th year -- a very badly planned live New Year's Eve special featuring chaos muppet and music legend "Big Al" Anderson and the great Jim Chapdelaine!Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kurt Andersen's new book is Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. It's a 500-year history "of America jumping the shark." The idea, largely, is that our present post-fact, fake-news moment is... nothing new.This hour, we look back at the history. We look at our present -- which is to say, we look at our present president: "To describe [Trump] is practically to summarize this book," Andersen says in Fantasyland. And we wonder if there's any way to regain and retain reality in America.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump's election last November was the culmination of a venom-filled campaign that was nastier than almost any in recent memory. Mean-spirited comments fell just shy of the malicious rhetoric coming from Thomas Jefferson's presidential campaign in 1796. Jefferson's hatchet-man called John Adams a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, is a coming-of-age comedy/drama that stars Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Lucas Hedges. Oh, and it's currently at 99% on the Tomatometer. So here's the question: Can a movie that's at 99% on the Tomatometer really ever be anything other than a letdown?And then: Is the English translation of the Lord's Prayer actually a mistranslation? The Pope thinks it might be.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, etc. These are just the beginning of what experts believe will be a future filled with verbally interactive, digital and robotic assistants. And as we become more accustomed to interacting with machines, the machines are becoming more life-like.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Argus Pheasant is a lifelong bachelor. He mates with multiple females but has no further contact with his mates or the baby pheasants he sires. By human terms, not much of a feminist.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We tend not to think much about that pat of butter we put on our morning toast, including how the store-bought sweet cream butter we're eating likely pales in comparison to the rich, nutty flavor of  the cultured butter not found in many stores.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tom Ashbrook. John Hockenberry. Michael Oreskes. David Sweeney. Garrison Keillor. Tavis Smiley. Leonard Lopate and Jonathan Schwartz. Charlie Rose.There's no way around it: The sexual misconduct reckoning that's happening in media and politics and elsewhere has hit public television and radio particularly hard.This hour we wonder why, and we take your calls.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For once in our lives, it's actually kind of obvious what this week in pop culture has been all about.Star Wars's Episode VIII -- the ninth live-action Star Wars movie -- is out. The Last Jedi officially opens today, and it's projected to take in nearly half a billion dollars this weekend. The Nose stayed up late last night to catch a midnight showing. Or something like that.And this week saw what is quite possibly the world's first viral short story. The New Yorker's "Cat Person" happens to be about just the right topic at just the right cultural moment. Perhaps not surprisingly, some men are missing the point.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Alexis de Tocqueville toured America in the early 1830's to gather observations that he would later put on the pages of Democracy in America, he was impressed with the efficiency of our American Postal Service.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.