The Colin McEnroe Show

Amidst the increasing concern over a nuclear armed North Korea, it's easy to forget the nearly 25 million citizens who live there. Their stories, while not matters of national security,  do reveal valuable insights into the secretive nation they call home.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

FBI Director James B. Comey wrote in a Friday memo to Congressional leaders that "the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation" of Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server. The memo sparked a firestorm that rages hotter by the day, resisting all attempts to contain its damage. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leonard Cohen's 14th studio album, You Want It Darker, dropped last Friday. Coupled with a new David Remnick profile of Cohen in The New Yorker, the reviews have been pretty gushing. The Nose's take isn't quite as one-note.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ira Glass -- host of This American Life, creator of Serial, professional dancer -- used our show as his prime example in "a principled defense of fun on public radio." And then he called the kind of failure that we aim for many days of each week "where you'll find the future."We want to know more about all that stuff.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Al Capone told everyone who asked him what he did for a living that he was a "property owner and taxpayer in Chicago." He was really a powerful multimillionaire in 1920's Chicago who made money from the illegal sale of alcohol during Prohibition and the vices that usually accompanied it: gambling and prostitution.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everybody loves a bulldozer. In fact, we all grew up loving bulldozers, didn't we? From Benny the Bulldozer to Katy and her big snow, from all the Tonka toys to all the die cast model Caterpillars, the bulldozer is more of an icon in American popular culture than we maybe realize.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Against Everything is a book about self-improvement. Before you tune out, I ask you to challenge your notion of 'self-improvement.' Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's just by happenstance that we ran into three short films this week that are both remarkable and newly available online. One of them is really something, and because of that, you have to figure, it won this year's Oscar for Best Live Action Short. One of them is merely clever and well done. And the last is an animated short that will utterly defy your expectations of an animated short.And the best part is: You can watch all three of them in just 27 minutes.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met in Las Vegas last night for their third and final debate before the November 8 election. "I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now...I'll keep you in suspense. Okay?" This was Donald Trump's response to Chris Wallace asking if he would honor the outcome of the election. His answer is unprecedented in the history of American politics. His answer dismisses the privilege Americans enjoy by the seemingly benign transfer of power that occurs with each presidential election. Stop for a moment and think about the violence in countries where people die to vote or where their vote doesn't matter because a leader won't step down. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of you reading this are familiar with the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder because you watched the popular "Little House on the Prairie" television show that ran from 1974-1983.But the television show came long after Laura Ingalls Wilder began sharing the story of her family's journey through the open frontier. She shared her memories in a series of beloved Little House books that spanned a life of pioneering both before and after the government declared the frontier closed. She speaks in simple and intimate prose of everyday life that fascinated millions of young readers who wanted to live like Laura. Fans today still want to believe in the absolute truth of every word. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump spent the recent days creating an alternate reality filled with 'global conspiracies' against him he claims are led by Hillary Clinton and the global elite. This is in response to several women who came forward last week to accuse Donald Trump of sexually harassing and/or assaulting them after a 2005 tape was released on which Trump was bragging about how easy it was for him to "grab" women as he pleased. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

History and literature are filled with their antics. From the Renaissance's Triboulet to Shakespeare's Feste from "Twelfth Night," jesters and fools have delighted us for centuries with their subversive humor and quick wit. But while comedy was their brand, there existed hardships for these characters as well.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We've never sent a Nose panel to a play before. So this week, we figured we'd try it out. So we've all gone to see Steve Martin's world premiere at the Long Wharf in New Haven: Meteor Shower.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I wasn't sure anyone would show up for a live, on-stage discussion about this year's election. I mean, no one's starving for content about this. We're all bombarded. But show up, they did! We got about 200 people and packed the amphitheater, and I think that says something about our  basic human need to be together as bodies, talking and relating in a very humanly embodied way, especially in these troubling days. I should tell you that we taped this right before the hot mic incident and all that followed. It was a more innocent time. But everything we said still holds.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If Anthony Bourdain and Wes Anderson were to ever collaborate, chances are they'd end up creating something like Atlas Obscura. The founders of the website -- dedicated to strange, forgotten and hidden wonders around the world -- are now out with a new book featuring 700 of their most spectacular examples.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The job of the media is to inform voters on views and behaviors that relay how a political candidate will behave once elected to office. Fair and honest treatment does not necessarily lead to equal coverage. In the case of Donald Trump, it can lead to asymmetrical coverage of a candidate whose behavior appears to undermine the standards of democratic discourse. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everyone was wondering how Donald Trump would handle the 2005 tape of him talking with Billy Bush about sexually-assaulting women because "you can do anything" when you're a star. Republican support wavered this weekend under the strength of the video, with many Republicans in Congress calling for Trump to relinquish his spot at the top of the GOP ticket.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HBO's new 10-episode western sci-fi thriller remake of the 1973 movie "Westworld" took an awfully long time and a big old pile of money to see the light of day. But it looks like it might've been worth it.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Neonaticide is a hard concept for most of us to wrap our heads around. Yet, the CDC estimates that "a baby born in the United States is ten times more likely to be killed during its first day than at any other time of life. And for the first week, a baby's killer is likely to be its mother."Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the more than six years that it's been on the air, we've never taken The Colin McEnroe Show to the Peabody Museum before. (Crazy, right?) And: In the more than six years that it's been on the air, we've never done a Colin McEnroe Show about dinosaurs before. (Crazy! Right!?)Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marie Antoinette's breasts were believed to inspire the design of the shallow French champagne coupes we see on the shelves of the local Pottery Barn. Mae West noted in her 1959 memoir, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, that she regularly rubbed cocoa butter on her breasts and spritzed them with cold water.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump's horrible, terrible week got worse after the New York Times released three pages of Trump's 1995 tax return this weekend. They show he lost nearly $916 million in a year when the economy was thriving. But, that's another story. He may have used legal loopholes in the tax code to make more money off his loss and avoid paying federal income taxes for the next 18 years. Did he? He won't tell. But, he did note at last week's debate that he would be smart if he did. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everybody hates cargo shorts. Except the people who don't. And more than that, everybody keeps talking about whether or not they hate cargo shorts. It's even come up on our show in the past.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So here's what happened. Lucy Nalpathanchil got a pitch from some PR person about covering David Ortiz's retirement at the end of this baseball season. And she forwarded it to Colin and me and said it sounded like our kind of show.And Colin (a Red Sox fan) said that I (a Yankees fan) "would [expletive] hate that." And he's right. I would [expletive] hate that.And so here we are doing that show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three guests, Peter Sagal of WWDTM, Maria Konnikova of The New Yorker, and Robert Evans of Cracked, take you on a tour of vice. They talk everything from casual sex to marijuana to greed and ostentation to coffee to beer to pornography. Peter and Colin also discuss what the next declared vice will be. Possibly sitting.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Free will, individual responsibility, and the pursuit of happiness: Fundamental tenets of, wait for it... Satanism. While the word conjures up images of fire and brimstone, the truth is a bit more complicated. So why does a religion which celebrates so much what Americans profess to hold dear get such a bad rap?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, we mourn the loss of 24-year-old Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez, who died in a boat accident over the weekend. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The biggest surprise about Oliver Stone's Snowden is probably how controversial it isn't. Which isn't to say that it isn't somewhat controversial -- anything about Edward Snowden is bound to be somewhat controversial. But for an Oliver Stone conspiracy thriller, The Nose finds Snowden to be pretty tame.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Colin's out today, and Julia Pistell returns as guest host. We devote the hour to two interesting guys and their interesting jobs.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The modern circus has been thrilling audiences for over 250 years, but as times have changed, so has the circus. What began as little more than an equestrian performance has come to include clowns, trapeze artists and even lion tamers.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

H.M. is one of the most important and studied human research subjects of all time. He revolutionized what we know about memory today because of the amnesia he developed after a lobotomy in 1953 to treat the severe epilepsy he developed after a head injury sustained earlier in life. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How we make decisions is a thread that runs through today's Scramble.First, Donald Trump called a press conference in his new Trump International Hotel in D.C. this past Friday to announce, "President Obama was born in the United States. Period.” He was late to the press conference and used it to promote both a new lie about Hillary Clinton and his new hotel - which ‘coincidentally’ opened last week. How did certain media organizations choose to cover this non-news event instead of say, Hillary Clinton addressing the Black Women’s Agenda Symposium, where she was talking about the economic challenges faced by women of color. Will this episode of "sewer dwelling” prompt the media to re-examine the role and privilege of a free press?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Normally by Friday morning we've got the first one or two topics for The Nose ironed out, and we maybe spend some time hashing out what the third and fourth might be.Not this week.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Colin has a "pet" raccoon that visits his porch. The raccoon will press her tiny paw up against the outstretched palm of Colin's significant other, which rests on the indoor side of the glass. Eventually, the raccoon gets a bit of food because "she" is too cute to resist. The pleased raccoon now visits on a regular basis. Colin fears this cannot end well.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction emerged in the '70s and '80s with books like Neuromancer and movies like Blade Runner set in the early 21st century in a world full of high tech and lowlifes, in a society divided and unequal, dominated by mega corporations, where the lines between actual reality and virtual reality have started to blur.Sound familiar?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is still a debate about whether women belong in combat. It's been more than a year since Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered all branches of the military in 2015 to allow women on to the front lines of combat and generations since women silently fought alongside men in the Civil War.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have both been criticized in recent weeks for activities related to their respective foundations. Clinton is accused of using her position as a way to give special treatment to foundation donors. Trump used foundation money to support the re-election of Florida Attorny General Pam Biondi to allegedly stop her from investigating Trump University. As it turns out, Trump has been using his foundation for things that have nothing to do with philanthropy. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Barbra Streisand's new album dropped two weeks ago. It's an album of duets with . . . actors. Babs and her famous friends sing . . . show tunes. To my mind, that's the makings of a pretty huge disaster (or even a completely ignored disaster). Instead, Streisand's Encore: Movie Friends Sing Broadway is the number one album in the country.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At 8:30 pm on Thursday, September 8, 1966, NBC aired the premiere of a new series called "Star Trek". The episode was "The Man Trap." The star date was 1513.1, in case you're interested in that kind of thing.I am not interested in that kind of thing.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Horror films have been scaring audiences for over a hundred years. And in all that time, some things have never changed: Year after year, the collective fears of society have been reflected in gruesome detail on the big screen and women -- usually blond women -- scream bloody murder as their knife-wielding killers approach.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The presidential debates are scheduled to begin this month with the first scheduled for September 26 at Hofstra University in Long Island. Donald Trump announced this weekend that yes, he would participate -now that he approves of the moderators chosen to referee the debates. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The participants are average citizens: school teachers, waiters, pharmacists, perhaps even your neighbor. By day they work and pay their bills, but when they return home, things change. These elite individuals go to work forecasting the outcomes of global events (sometimes years into the future), all at the direction of a little-known government intelligence agency called IARPA.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bill Murray has been involved with some of our favorite movies of all time: Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Moonrise Kingdom, and so many more. He doesn't like managers or agents and rumor has it, once agreed to play Garfield because he thought it was a Coen Brothers film.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A transcript of this show is available here.It's hard to think about language as being endangered or replaceable. But as our culture and means of communication evolve, certain languages find their utility in decline. Braille and sign language are in just such a predicament.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In an era awash in the rollout of brand new gadgets, gizmos, fashions, and fads, it's easy to think of obsolescence as part of the natural order -- remember popped lapels, pay phones and laserdisc players? But the idea that an object should quickly fall from favor, lose functionality, and find itself in a landfill somewhere is quite new -- and it didn't come about by accident.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're losing about 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice every week, the Great Barrier Reef - which dates back to the start of civilization - is rapidly dying, fires from heat and dryness are burning in Canada and California, and recent floods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana killed thirteen people and damaged the homes of 40,000 and counting. And let's not forget that our last three summers have been the hottest on record - EVER.  Is it time for America to mobilize our collective force into halting climate change with the same collective force we used to halt Hitler in World War II? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a four-year gestation period, and more than a year's worth of delays, Frank Ocean's second studio album dropped last weekend. There are two different versions of the album: a physical version that was only available in pop-up shops in four cities last Saturday and the currently iTunes-exclusive digital version. The album is called Blonde, but the cover says "Blond." And there's a separate, different video album, Endless, that was released last Friday. It's all very complicated. The Nose gets into it.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For most of time, microbes ruled the planet alone. Microbes have been around for billions of years - long before people ever began to inhabit the earth.  Am I giving you a good picture of how small humans are in this grander view of life? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Matt Iannazzo was a baseball star at Norwalk High School, pitching them to an FCIAC title in 2007. At the University of Pittsburgh, he was an All-Conference pitcher. Out of college, Iannazzo signed with the Chicago Cubs and played two seasons near the bottom of their organization. Now he pitches for the Bridgeport Bluefish in the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump canceled his big speech on immigration scheduled for Thursday. It could have something to do with the comments he made to his new Hispanic advisory council suggesting he'd like to find a more "humane" approach to dealing with the undocumented immigrants he has - up to now - wanted to deport. Up to now, his supporters have been loyal despite policy pronouncements contrary to their views. Immigration may be the one area they won't tolerate a back-pedal. We talk about this and more news in politics.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.