The Colin McEnroe Show
Connecticut Public Radio
The Colin McEnroe Show is public radio’s most eclectic, eccentric weekday program. The best way to understand us is through the subjects we tackle: Neanderthals, tambourines, handshakes, the Iliad, snacks, ringtones, punk rock, Occam’s razor, Rasputin, houseflies, zippers. Are you sensing a pattern? If so, you should probably be in treatment. On Fridays, we try to stop thinking about what kind of ringtones Neanderthals would want to have and convene a panel called The Nose for an informal roundtable about the week in culture.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Feb 26, 2014 • 50min
Get the Popcorn. Take Your Seat. We're Talking Remakes
Remakes are easy. Money-makers are hard. We live in a sloshing sea of those movie remakes but it's rare for one of them to out gross the original. An exception, oddly enough, was the remake of "Clash of the Titans," which significantly outperformed its 80s predecessor. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 25, 2014 • 49min
Women Speak Out on the State of Sports
Four women join us to talk about sports, mostly football. Two of them are sports journalists. A third is a journalist specializing in legal issues, and a fourth is a scientist and engineer.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 24, 2014 • 49min
The Scramble Talks TV, Drones, and Big Changes in Sports
There's something exciting about a critic who challenges your perceptions in a compelling way. I love the movie American Hustle but when I read Willa Paskin's take-down of it in Slate, she really got me thinking. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 21, 2014 • 49min
The Nose Wipes Its Eyes, Blames the Fame, and Explores the Radio Dial
Last Sunday, we took a road trip into New York City, but before we left, I read Beth Boyle Machlan's New York Times essay about the joys she sometimes gets driving with her kids, and surrendering their collective eardrums to the serendipities of commercial radio. She learns some of their songs, they learn some of hers... Everybody gives up some of the fierce control we all maintain these days over what we call our "playlists."Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 20, 2014 • 49min
A Conversation With Ingrid Newkirk, Co-Founder of PETA
The debate over animal rights is as old as Voltaire, as old as Aristotle. But as you'll hear today, it turned some kind of modern corner in 1975 with the publication of "Animal Liberation: Towards an End to Man's Inhumanity to Animals" by the Australian philosopher, Peter Singer. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 19, 2014 • 50min
Connecticut in the Civil War
Here's a little bit of Civil War history that seems to have started here in Connecticut. It was in this month of February in 1860 that Cassius Clay, a Kentucky planter turned anti-slavery crusader spoke in Hartford not far from where we're doing this show today. He was accompanied by a torch-bearing honor guard in capes and caps. The Hartford Courant called these young men "wide-awakes." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 18, 2014 • 49min
The Scramble "Likes" Douglas Rushkoff
We're starting out today with a segment about "Generation-Like," the media term media theorist Douglas Rushkoff uses for the generation of Millennials who live huge chunks of their lives on social media where they subsist on a form of metered approval. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 14, 2014 • 42min
The Nose Questions God and Atheists; Judging the Morality of Athletes
I was still digesting some of the lessons of the play "Freud's Last Session" -- a 90 minute conversation between Freud and C.S. Lewis -- when I stumbled upon Adam Gopnik's New Yorker essay about rise of polemical atheism -- that is atheism that takes an openly contemptuous tone toward faith. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 13, 2014 • 42min
Pondering Modern Love
It's hard to improve on the poet, Rilke, who wrote, "Love consists of this, that two solitudes meet, protect, and greet each other." But did Rilke have to deal with Angry Birds and Snap Chat? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 12, 2014 • 50min
Living With Multiple Sclerosis
The actresses Teri Garr and Annette Funicello, the television hosts Montel Williams and Neil Cavuto, the writer Joan Didion, Ann Romney, the wife of the presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the comedian Richard Pryor. These are some of the people that you quote-unquote know that have, or in Pryor's case had, Multiple Sclerosis.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
