The Colin McEnroe Show

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 2030 B.C., somebody brought cucumbers from India to the Tigris Valley, and they said, "We can pickle that!" And so it began, from the first stirrings of civilization, to modern-day Brooklyn artisan pickles: we've found ourselves up to our eyes in brine, looking for the next object we can pickle.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While visitors watching the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, enjoy spectacular feats of athletic ability from the world's most accomplished athletes, those in Russia's LGBT community anticipate laws that punish Russians for even suggesting that it's okay to be gay, let alone live openly as a gay adult.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While tying together all the stories for today's session of the Nose, I keep hearing (in my mind) Charlie Seen say, "Winning!" We have a lot of stories about how people who try to win, often by following the logic of a game out to its extremes.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The first secret society, according to Theodore Ziolkowski, a Princeton-based scholar on the literature of cults and conspiracies, "consisted of Eve and the serpent and then it just kept going," Ziokowski writes.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In February of 1964, the Beatles appeared not once, but on three consecutive Sunday nights on "The Ed Sullivan Show," attracting what was the the largest audience in television history, and still might be the largest percentage of all possible viewers. To some of us, the whole thing is still kind of exciting 50 years later. But why?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last fall, the New York City Opera -- what Mayor LaGuardia called "the People's Opera" -- declared bankruptcy. This is/was the opera that introduced Americans to Placido Domingo and Beverly Sills.  Make what you will of the fact that the bankruptcy announcement coincided with the presentation of a new opera about Anna Nicole Smith.This is either a problem very specific to the New York Opera, or part of a virus that has been taking down opera companies all over the U.S. and maybe all over the world. In Italy, where opera receives much more public and government support, one fourth of all major opera companies were in a version of bankruptcy as of 2008.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Sunday, two people named Dylan made news. So much so that you had to be careful on Twitter. If you tweeted "Dylan sold out" about Bob Dylan's Super Bowl commercials, you might offend people who thought you meant Dylan Farrow who broke 20 years of silence to talk about her memory of childhood molestation by Woody Allen. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the Nose, we'll discuss one of those eruptions that happen in the digital world -- a frenzy of discussion and expressions of outrage over an essay on the site xojane, by a writer who tried to describe her reactions, as a skinny white woman, to the way she thought a heavyset back woman was reacting to her in yoga class.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine a day without adjunct faculty. Many colleges and universities would effectively shut down.  Somewhere between 70-75% of the academic workforce in higher education is not tenured or on track for tenure. Most of those people fall into the category of adjunct. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of interconnected things were happening in the 1990s, an oncologist and hematologist  named Mitchell Gaynor discovered trough a Tibetan monk, the so-called singing bowls and began incorporating them into the guided meditation and breathing work he did with his patients. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Led by Harry Potter, the last 20 years have unleashed a new wave of enthusiasm for the fantasy side  of magic. But, we've also seen an undeniable re-engagement with stage magic. In 2006 alone, there were two movies about magicians, "The  Prestige" and "The Illusionist." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's Monday. That means our show is The Scramble, where we make a lot of decisions on a last minute basis. We asked our super guest, Marc Tracy of The New Republic, to pick three topics about which Colin would quickly get up to speed. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was a fertile week for topics, but here at The Nose, we've boiled them down to four.First, the decision by NBC to capitalize on its live Sound of Music ratings hit with a revival of the live TV Peter Pan. No cast has been announced yet, so that allows us to do some "dreamcasting. "Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Dallas Buyer's Club" covers a lot of the same ground as an Oscar-nominated documentary about AIDS from last year, "How To Survive A Plague." Each film covers the time from mid-to-late 1980s when the disease struck, when there was no accepted or effective medical treatment, when the patients themselves had to push for better research and faster tracks to bring drugs to market. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scientists say that the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia this past February was a rare event, unlikely to happen more than every 100 -200 years. But a recent paper in the scientific journal Nature said the earth should expect and plan to get hit by Chelyabinsk-sized asteroids more often-- maybe every decade or two.This news sparked a flurry of talk about what that means for us on earth. How vulnerable are we and are we doing enough to detect and deflect asteroids?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Through no act of overarching planning, all three of our segments today will deal directly, or otherwise, with sports.In our first segment, we talk with Linda Holmes from the NPR culture blog, Monkey See. We also delve into the controversy over a recent New York Times column by former executive editor, Bill Keller. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I spent one night in the company of James Carville and Mary Matalin, in the course of being their onstage moderator at the Bushnell. My lasting impression was that these were two people whose primary loyalty was to each other. To an unusual degree, when there was down time, they wanted to be alone, together, door closed. I don't know how they sort out their extreme political differences, but I think the answer lies somewhere in what I just said.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Nose panel went to the movies this week to see the critically-acclaimed Spike Jonze film, "Her," about a future world in which it's not unusual for a man to fall in love with his artificially-intelligent operating system. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dying is easy, comedy is hard. But, why is comedy so hard, especially on the stage, and what makes something funny?The premise for a famously funny plot could easily sound like a tragedy.  An out of work actor is so desperate for employment that he dresses up like a woman and then falls in love with a beautiful co-star whom he deceives and betrays on several levels. That doesn't sound that hilarious. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may think that composting all your kitchen waste sounds like a good idea, but you probably don't realize how many things really can be composted, what services are available if you can't get yourself organized to do it, and if you do have a compost pile, which animals visit it at night, and for what purpose?This hour, a heap of information about compost!Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I first started writing about politics in Connecticut, I can honestly say that there were many more Republicans who excited my admiration than there were Democrats. It was 1979, the wave of interesting new progressive Democrats was coming, including that Bill Curry guy you hear so much about, but the entrenched Democratic leadership was anything but progressive. It was calcified, blinkered, and in too many cases, dirty. They'd had too much power for too long. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today is Monday. That's when we do the show on the fly. We call it The Scramble and one of the twists we're trying is the reverse of ordinary public radio guest booking. Usually, we start with a topic and try to find the best possible guests. But, for one segment of The Scramble each week, we pick a guest we want to talk to and then ask him or her what the topic should be. The idea is to pick an interesting person and then find out what's on that person's mind right now. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Governor Chris Christie's administration is under fire for ordering  lane closures  that blocked access to the George Washington Bridge for four days last September, indulging in an egomaniacal fantasy of vengeance against a political foe who refused to recognize the Christie administration's self-professed superiority.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My two favorite film critics, A.O. Scott and David Edelstein, appear on the show today, and we've got a longer list of topics than we can possibly get to. I'm interested in the way a lot of the recent hit movies take little bites of our recent past: "Inside Llewyn Davis" tackles 1961. "American Hustle" bestrides the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. "The Wolf of Wall Street" started with the Crash of '87 and pans forward into the 1990s. Suddenly, for Baby Boomers, the stretch of our living memory is a series of period pieces and costume dramas.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Identical twins are just like us - and then they're not! From Ann Landers and Dear Abbey, from the Castro brothers, one of whom might be our first identical twin president one day, carbon-copy twins live lives that the rest of us cannot fathom.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many years, Ralph Nader has pushed the idea of an American Museum of Tort History which would be located somewhere in Connecticut, probably Winsted. The exhibits would concern tort cases from all over the U.S. but you have to think the Hartford Civic Center roof collapse would merit a special diorama.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Scramble we lead off with some reporting that will be featured this week on a PBS' "Frontline" story, To Catch a Trader. It's the story of a federal probe into insider trading and the specific role of Connecticut's Steve Cohen, and his SAC hedge fund. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Nose, we'll talk about this relatively insignificant bit of Rush Limbaugh peevishness, and the degree to which each of us thinks he or she has (informally speaking) patented something: a word, a phrase, a style we've made our own.Also, Adam Platt's decision to dispense with the fiction that he, as a restaurant critic, is anonymous. It's not exactly the same as claiming to create, but Platt is talking about the anxiety of influence in a different way. How can one do "pure" work? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wandering the vast labyrinth of useless information, you might encounter some people having a debate about the last person who knew everything. This is a great, and also pretty hopeless debate, because it requires a judgment about what all the useful information in the world might have been and who was capable of knowing it. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are a lot of people who, for understandable reasons, would like the story of the Sandy Hook shootings to fade away. But, of course it never will. It's part of our molecular structure, especially here in Connecticut. This hour, we touch on some of the questions answered  by the release of the state's so called final report on the murders. We also talk about some of the questions that haven't been answered and the peculiar, to some of us, reluctance by the state to release this report. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Nose panelists explore the hidden mysteries of the Coen Brothers' new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, based  on the early folk movement of 1960's Greenwich Village and one of its early pioneers, Dave Van Ronk. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You loved jazz in college, but these days, do you really have time to follow it? Maybe I'm only talking about myself. The jazz scene I loved so much in my early twenties begins to recede unless I make an affirmative effort to go charging toward it. So at this time of year, every year, we consult with jazz savants and musicians and ask them about the best music they heard all year.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are some holiday songs that should banned. I'm sorry, Burl Ives, but there's really no reason for anybody to have to hear "Holly Jolly Christmas" ever again.And Little Drummer Boy? There's almost no way to describe the sinking feeling that tune gives me. Except, well, to call it a sinking feeling. On the other hand, I don't mind Mariah Carey singing "All I Want for Christmas Is You," but my producers are pretty much coming though the glass of the control booth at me for saying that.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A couple of weeks ago, we did a whole show about blood pressure only to have an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association blow a lot of the current thinking about blood pressure right out of the water. We talk to UConn's hypertension expert, Dr. Billy White, about new guidelines saying people over 60 may not need to keep their blood pressure as low as previously thought. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here are the topics for The Nose today -- and this week we had to throw out a lot of perfectly good ones because there were so many:We pretty much have to tackle the controversy around Duck Dynasty. One of the real life characters in the reality TV show gave an interview in which he aired his strong religious views, which included multiple denunciations of homosexuality as a sin.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Behold! The unique dilemma of the pig: There is nothing that smart that tastes that good. Is it true they're as smart as dogs? Why do some religions require people abstain from eating pork? What's it like raising pigs, and what parts of the pig are overlooked when it comes to eating them?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you read magazines and live on the North half of the East Coast there is a good chance that you believe that The New Yorker is the ne plus ultra of magazine writing and if you believe that there's a good chance you run around using phrases like ne plus ultra.With The New Yorker's Olympian status goes a certain preciousness One of the reasons there's nothing else quite like The New Yorker is The New Yorker deeply believes that to be true and communicates it to us in subtle ways. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Francis Bacon triptych, "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" sells for $142.4 million.Jeff Koons work sells for $58.4 million, making it the most expensive art by a living artist to sell at auction.Is any art really worth this much or do a few wealthy investors artificially drive up the market to divert the rest of us from the reality of overall declining sales. If art is not worth as much as certain vested interests want us to believe, how do we determine the real worth of art?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is the Monday Scramble, the show we assemble on very short notice to challenge ourselves and keep things fresh.Two film icons died over the weekend, Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine. Attention gravitated to O'Toole because of his larger than life roles and his larger than life off-screen behavior. We'll be talking about O'Toole with one of his co-stars and with a director but we didn't want to ignore Fontaine, famous for her Oscar-winning role and for her decades-long feud with her sister, Olivia DeHaviland. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a two-week hiatus, The Nose, our weekly cultural panel, is back on with discussions of a controversial New York Times essay about who does housework, a contemplation of smarm versus snark, a nod to all the messiness around Nelson Mandela's funeral, and some second-guessing of Time's Person of the Year, Pope Francis or Ed Snowden.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we're talking about the afterlife of characters from classic Christmas stories. What happened, in later years, to Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" or Susan Walker from "Miracle of 34th Street" or Charlie Brown or Clara from "The Nutcracker?"Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I suppose you could say that today's show is about a fairly obvious truth--singing with other people feels good. But, it's a little bit more complicated than that. When you go to a church and pick up a hymnal and sing what everybody else sings, it feels okay. And, a fairly complex set of activities takes place in your brain, and that's nice, but it pales in comparison to really singing with others. That is, getting together with other people and rehearsing and working toward a truly successful blend of voices.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.