The Colin McEnroe Show

It's an art form that came out of the chaos of World War One, when times were desperate, yet the art world was still celebrating still lifes, landscapes and nudes. In protest, artists began rebelling with politically aware ironic work, making bold, sometimes vicious points with their art. Times have changed, and Dada resurfaces periodically, like in the exhibition at the Pump House in Hartford.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Havenites reclaiming a beautiful park in their city got us thinking about urban parks in general. Frederick Law Olmsted is the undisputed father of American city parks, including Central Park itself. He came from Hartford, and he is buried here.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We first got interested in the people inside sports team mascots back in 2010 but that was before we knew about Kelly Frank. Kelly Frank has done time inside several major league mascot costumes and she's a very funny human being with a lot of stories to tell about the abuse heaped on mascots-- as you're about to discover. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Infinity is weird. It's neither even nor odd. It's not a number. Really, it's just a concept we use to summarize that which we can't understand.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You can read a lot into media depictions of minorities.Richard Pryor was  hilarious at it. One time he said he had just seen a movie called "Logan's Run." It was set in the future, and there were no black characters in it. "That means white folks ain't planning for us to be there," he said.Media critic Eric Deggans joins us today, and one of his major theses is that extremism and division make for a bad public discourse and great television. Big media, says Deggans, thrive on division and tension, whether it's on cable news shows or reality TV.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It just goes on and on. We're in New Haven today where the Yale Rep is getting ready to mount a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire," but there's already one playing in Dublin at the Gate. There probably hasn't been one year in the last 50 when there wasn't a significant staging of this play.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"This is worse than that time we did that Gilbert and Sullivan parody.” That was a Tina Fey line from 30 Rock, and it was a devastating punch at a similar show, Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60," in which a fictional late night comedy show attempted to wow its audience with a song about itself set to the music of "A Modern Major General." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's New York City primaries featured a an intern-groper, a Scrabble harasser, a hooker user and, of course, a Weiner tweeter. And guess what? All of them lost!   And a continent away, the Filner Headlocker got out of the mayor's office too.So does that mean that pervy politicians are experiencing a temporary lull? We talk about that  on The Nose, our weekly culture roundtable.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may eat out a lot, but do you really have tipping figured out?Or do you stress about whether you left the right amount?Would you be happier with an 18 percent service charge added on and no obligation to tip?These are the shifting restaurant rules we'll talk about today.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A roommate will  either get on your last nerve or change your life for the better. In my freshman year, I was assigned to live with two football players, one of whom dropped out at Christmas. I roomed with the other, Ken Jennings, for three years. He was African-American, from right outside D.C. and much more of a straight arrow than I was in those days. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You could argue that two trends are in a state of modern collision. Women are hitting puberty earlier than they used to, and their breasts are arriving in larger sizes.  There's a complex matrix of factors making this happen.Average bra size in the fifties was a B. A British bra manufacturer now makes an L cup. Meanwhile, we're watching an explosion in women's sports driven here in the U.S. at least partly by Title IX.Why are these two things on a collision course?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, asexuals seem like brothers and sisters from a distant solar system. Western societies are gradually growing accustomed -- with varying degrees of comfort -- to the initials in LGBT, but what about A? On our show today we explored the idea that some people have no sexual orientation -- not because of a hormonal deficiency or a position on the autism spectrum or some buried childhood sexual trauma -- but because they don't have a discernable sex drive.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Come on, you must be outraged about something! These are the headlines: "Rich Manhattan moms hire handicapped tour guides so kids can cut lines at Disney World." "Dave Chappelle's Hate-On For Hartford Called 'Sad,' 'Asinine.'" "No Exception For Newington Veteran Being Evicted For Smoking." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michael Bolton has reinvented himself many times. A few years ago, he cut off his trademark hair.  He put out an album of opera arias and another of American Songbook Standards. But probably his biggest challenge was dealing with his image as a romantic icon so permanently rooted in the dead center of the mainstream that poking fun at him became an easy way for people who really weren't all that cool to prove they were at least cool enough to reject Michael Bolton.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you seek parallels between J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon they're easy to find. Both were literary geniuses. Both were publicity-shunning recluses. Both men were psychosexually arrested by God knows what primal wound. Salinger seemed able to bond only with very young women and girls. Pynchon had a pattern -- somehow linked to inability to form normal alliances --  of hijacking the wives and partners of his friends.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thirteen years ago, I wrote an amusing but fairly ignorant op-ed piece for The New York Times triggered by watching a planetarium movie narrated by Tom Hanks. I wrote: "I miss the days of the anonymous, nobody-special narrator. Playing next door to Mr. Hanks at the museum was a Mount Everest Imax movie narrated by Liam Neeson. Take a cab to get there, and Isaac Hayes tells you to take your stuff when you get out, and don't forget your receipt." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Through the lens of time, the anti-disco backlash looks a little ugly. What was disco, really? It started as an underground dance movement propelled by blacks, gays, and Puerto Ricans. It was a liberating and hedonistic music of the oppressed, and people from those groups gathered and mixed in the early downtown clubs.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Home birthing? Doulas? Midwives? Hypnobirthing? Prenatal massage? Today, we’re talking about alternative birthing.Fifty years ago, it was pretty simple: you went to the hospital, they knocked you out, and you had your baby — while dad smoked a cigar in the waiting room. Or if no hospital was nearby, you gave birth at home and hoped a savvy neighborhood lady could to help out. In later years, the question became home birth versus hospital birth.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let me tell you, in the bluntest possible manner, why we're doing a show with Ivor Hugh today.Last year, I had the idea of doing a show that would have been a gathering of some of the voices from the era when radio was king. One of the names in my head was Ivor's. The other one was my friend and former colleague Arnold Dean. Arnold started in radio within a year of  Ivor; and, like almost everybody doing radio in the 1950s, both men then dabbled in the early days of television, because the early tv talent was radio talent.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know who needs this show today?Me.I'm having a musically starved summer, at least in terms of modern recorded music. I've made it out to some live shows, but I really have no idea what's being released these days.I can sum up my relation to music his summer in the following way: I was going to order the new Laura Marling CD, but I didn't. That's it. Meanwhile to force myself to do bicycle training runs every night, I've been playing an obscure 1978 Todd Rundgren song called "Determination." Sad, really.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Lennon said they were the greatest comedy team since the Marx Brothers.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're not a hobbit or a college professor, smoking a pipe is a differentiator.  It's a signal to the world that your tastes run in a slightly unusual direction. The character played by Chion Wolf's brother Michael Gladis in the early seasons of Mad Men was one of those people. Always looking for a way to be different. Hence the ever present pipe. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, hear a live, in-studio performance by and conversation with the Punch Brothers, before their performance at Jorgensen Theater at UConn, Storrs. They are a five-piece band enjoying an explosion of critical esteem and new popularity over the past few years. Its leader, Chris Thile, just won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and has been working with giants from other genres, including cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, and jazz great Brad Mehldau.See all the photos by Chion Wolf here.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are more than 800 miles of Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails in Connecticut. Today we're doing our show from one of them. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The problem with invasive species is, of course, that they compete for resources with local species, and sometime they're a lot better at it. and sometimes they just incidentally wipe something out. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

[Featured on the Audio to the left: A one-hour conversation and performance with and by Sobule in which she sings "Jetpack" and "Heroes" and some rarities.]Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's just a dance, right?Actually, maybe that's the last thing the prom is. Maybe the photo is even more important, because it freezes you. It's your chance, as high school trickles away, to say "This is who I am. This will be who I was."We've been looking at prom photos by Mary Ellen Mark, who will be on our show today, and they're striking in the range of emotional states they convey. We see joy, hesitation, confidence, detachment and some flat-out haunted looks.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are a lot of made-up languages with big fans. You may have heard of Na'vi from the movie Avatar, or Elvish from Lord of the Rings. Among fans, many of these languages have found a home on the web, where they continue to be developed and studied.At the same time, thousands of real languages around the world are facing extinction.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thirty-four states use the death penalty. Sixteen do not. Connecticut does, but most of its neighboring states -- New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont -- do not. New Hampshire does, but the state has had no executions since 1939 and currently possesses no means of executing anyone. Only recently did the ranks of its death row swell to one.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.