The Colin McEnroe Show

It's been a week of ending things, really. Keeping Up with the Kardashians is ending after 20 seasons. Diana Rigg -- Emma Peel on The Avengers and Lady Olenna on Game of Thrones, among many other things -- died at 82. And, of course, people are trying to end the whole world with their gender reveal parties. And then there's I'm Thinking of Ending Things. It's Charlie Kaufman's first movie for Netflix, and it stars Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley. It's based on Iain Reid's novel of the same name, which makes it the first movie Kaufman's ever directed not from his own original screenplay. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Plymouth police closing in on Buddy, the beefalo who has been on the run since escaping from a local slaughter house ESPN Scraps Hank Williams Jr. From "MNF" Open 'Saturday Night Live' Promotes Ego Nwodim To Main Cast Member For Season 46 Ryan Reynolds Brings Rick Moranis Out of Retirement for Mint Mobile Commercial Fender has sold more guitars in 2020 than any other year in its historyGibson, Taylor, Martin and others also report pandemic sales booms, with new users turning to the guitar as "six-string therapy" Film Academy Sets Inclusion Requirements for Oscars, Will Take Full Effect in 2024 Kirstie Alley slams new Oscars inclusion rules: 'This is a disgrace to artists everywhere' 'Tenet' Will Play at a Southern California Drive-In Despite Indoor Theaters Being Closed, Ignoring WB's Previous Mandate Kate Winslet, Unfiltered: "Because Life Is F--king Short"The Oscar winner, whose powerful love story Ammonite debuts at the Toronto Film Festival this week, knows the industry can do better -- and that she can too: "What the f--k was I doing working with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski?" Why Disney's new 'Mulan' is a scandal GUESTS: Rebecca Castellani - Handles social media marketing and event planning for Quiet Corner Communications David Edelstein - America's Greatest Living Film Critic Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show. TAGS: Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the wake of resistance to Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice in cities like Portland, Oregon; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and others, we decided to take a look at race relations in the small towns and suburbs of Connecticut. What we found was disturbing.  In some ways, the show feels inadequate. I wish we could have included more of the many people who have experienced racist behavior in our small towns of Connecticut. We won't get to talk to a woman from Farmington who received a threatening note at her home for hanging a Black Lives Matter banner, a student from Killingly who experienced racial bullying, a young BLM organizer in Durham, or a woman angry that Confederate flags are still sold at the Durham fair. I know about these. Most incidents never make the news. This hour, what’s it like to be black and living in a small town or suburb in Connecticut? How do we begin to change the structures that keep racism alive?  GUESTS:  Gary Greenberg is a psychotherapist, the author of The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmasking of Psychiatry, and the first selectman of Scotland, Connecticut Drew John Ladd is a blogger, activist, and the author of Wolfsong, Beloved Leah Ralls is the president of the Windham/Willimantic NAACP and a social worker for Connecticut’s Division of Public Defender Services Al Robinson is a blogger, activist, and the publisher of My Left Nutmeg Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracking, rewinding, ejecting, collecting -- VHS broke ground in home entertainment like never before. The culture of VHS and its enormous best friend, the VCR, were kings of consumer media for decades. Despite the last VCR and VHS being manufactured just four years ago, videotapes are still consumed, collected, and in some cases, sold(!) across the country. But why? With streaming service giants like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney, giving us on-demand content with the push of a button and with Blu-ray and 4K players displaying movies and TV shows at crystal clear resolutions, videotapes offer a simple, analog experience that will just not go away. This hour, a look inside the impact, history, and legacy of VHS. Plus: the video store! It was the place to get your VHS rental and consume the content you couldn't get anywhere else. A look at life owning and working at a video store. GUESTS: Caetlin Benson-Allott - Distinguished Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Georgetown University and the author of Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens Video Spectatorship From VHS to File Sharing Sam Hatch - Co-host of The Culture Dogs on Sunday nights on WWUH Hank Paper - The former owner of Best Video in Hamden, Conn., and a professor of Film, Television, and Media Arts at Quinnipiac University Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, Jonathan McNicol, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired May 16, 2019.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In November, 2016, we did a show about all the problems presented by, well, a-holes. And so it seems only logical to expand our scope a bit and do a show about all the problems presented by, well, a hole. For instance: How many holes are there in a straw? Did you say one? Okay, cool. Then how many holes are there in a sock? (A relatively new sock, I mean.) You said one again, right? But how can both of those things be true at the same time? Or, put another way: What happens to the hole in the donut as you eat the donut around it? This gets into mereology, the theory of parthood relations -- for our purposes, the parts and wholes of holes and the wholes the holes are parts of. Your head hurts a little, right? And then there's trypophobia, an irrational fear of clusters of holes and cracks. And finally: We've just found a black hole right in our cosmic backyard. GUESTS: Chrissie Giles - A science writer and the global health editor at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Marina Koren - Staff writer at The Atlantic Achille Varzi - Professor of philosophy at Columbia University and the coauthor of Holes and Other Superficialities Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired May 12, 2020.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Carole Baskin is going to appear on Dancing with the Stars. And with that, I've typed the least surprising opening sentence in the history of Nose posts. And: When Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure came out in 1989, Alex Winter (Bill) was 23 and Keanu Reeves (Ted) was 24. Winter and Reeves are now 55 and 56, respectively, but that seems to be no reason not to put out a third Bill & Ted movie, 29 years after the second one. Bill & Ted Face the Music is now available on all your video-on-demand platforms. And speaking of sequels to classic 1980s teen movies, the first two seasons of Cobra Kai have moved from YouTube to Netflix (who will produce a third season) and they've found a new audience. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Do Your Bowels Suddenly Spring to Life in Bookstores? You're Not Alone -- and the Japanese Even Have a Term for It: Mariko Aoki Parents of young 'Black Panther' fans struggle with telling children of actor's death Twitter says Chadwick Boseman's final post is the most liked tweet everIt's a bittersweet achievement. Brad Pitt's girlfriend reportedly is married but in an 'open' relationship Andrew Lloyd Webber dropped a 'Phantom of the WAPera' Cardi B remix and we regret to inform you music is cancelled John Oliver throws sludge back at Danbury officials, demands sewage plant be named in his honor Mariah Carey Just Addressed Her "Uncomfortable" Resurfaced Interview On "The Ellen DeGeneres Show""I wasn't ready to tell anyone." How Pop Music's Teenage Dream EndedA decade ago, Katy Perry's sound was ubiquitous. Today, it's niche. How did a genre defined by popularity become unpopular? 'I Like to Move It' DJ, Erick Morillo, Dead at 49 WFSB Cleans House -- But At What Cost? Alarmed pilot tells LAX tower: 'We just passed a guy in a jet pack'; FBI now investigating Robert Pattinson Has COVID-19, Halting The Batman ProductionVanity Fair has learned the star came down with the virus just days after shooting resumed. How a Praying Mantis Says 'Boo!'A study of startle displays hints at why provoked creatures have such a wide range of reactions. GUESTS: Helder Mira - Multimedia producer at Trinity College and a Cinestudio board member Carolyn Paine - An actress, comedian, and dancer; she is founder, director, and choreographer of CONNetic Dance Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hillary Clinton has spent a lot of time in the spotlight. We know her as a First Lady, a U.S. Senator from New York, President Obama's Secretary of State, a candidate in the 2016 presidential election, and as the wife of former President Bill Clinton.  Yet most everything we know about Hillary as an individual separate from Bill has been filtered through the media, through President Trump's Twitter feed, and through the many conspiracy theories linked to her name.  But after all the years of Hillary at Bill's side and after her loss in the 2016 election, didn't you wonder how Hillary Clinton's life might have been different if she never married Bill? Would she have broken the "glass ceiling" if she hadn't been married to Bill? We talk to a writer who imagined Hillary's life without Bill.  GUEST:   Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of a collection of short stories, You Think It, I’ll Say It, as well as six novels, including Prep and Eligible. Her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and NPR’s This American Life, among others. Her new novel is Rodham. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2001: A Space Odyssey. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. A Clockwork Orange. The Shining. Full Metal Jacket. Spartacus. Eyes Wide Shut. This hour, a careful consideration of the filmmaker Steven Spielberg called "the best in history": Stanley Kubrick. GUESTS: James Hanley - Co-founder of Cinestudio at Trinity College David Mikics - Author of Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker Lila Shapiro - Senior reporter at New York magazine and Vulture, where she published "What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times" Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Officials in the Trump Administration last week videotaped both a naturalization ceremony held at the White House and an HUD official's interview with four New York City tenants on housing conditions. They then  played selected parts from each video at the Republican National Convention without the knowledge of the participants.  The CDC updated testing guidelines last week to say that people who have been exposed to the virus but who don’t have symptoms or underlying risk factors, don't necessarily need to be tested. After public health officials complained that asymptomatic carriers are more likely to spread the virus, we learned that the recommendations came from the White House Coronavirus Task Force.   Today, politics and Covid.  Guests: Saskia Popescu is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Arizona (@SaskiaPopescu) Gail Collins is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and the author of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present and most recently, No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History (@gailcollins) Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Placebo treatments have been making people feel better for a long time. They've been working since long before Franz Mesmer was run out of 18th-century Vienna for "mesmerizing" a young pianist into regaining her eyesight, after all hope for a medical cure had been lost.   Doctors have long dismissed the placebo effect as inferior to conventional medical treatments that sometimes fail where placebo works well, including in surgical procedures like arthroscopy, a popular procedure that relieves the pain of arthritic knees.  The placebo effect is triggered not by a magic pill, but through a combination of expectation, hope, and the strength of the doctor-patient relationship. Placebo is real; it's on the rise in America, and technology is allowing researchers to link placebo with physiological and psychological changes and genetic predisposition that could change the way we treat illness. GUESTS: Gary Greenberg - Psychotherapist and the author of The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmasking of Psychiatry Ted Kaptchuk - Professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Director, Program of Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital   Bruce Moseley - Orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, former team physician to the Houston Rockets, first to perform placebo surgery Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, the NBA, the WBNA, MLB, MLS, tennis, and eventually the NHL all postponed games and matches in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And: A Tweet listing the "Top 7 Warning Signs In a Man's Bookshelf" -- including "Too Much Hemingway," you see -- caused a bit of a fuss on the Twitter. And finally: Atlantics is the directorial debut of actress and writer Mati Diop. It premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it was the first movie directed by a Black woman ever to compete at the festival. It won the Grand Prix. It is available to stream on Netflix, and The Guardian wrote about it this week in their "My Streaming Gem" column. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: Justin Townes Earle, Americana Singer-Songwriter, Dead at 38Nashville native, known for his mix of old-timey roots music and modern folk-rock, was the son of Steve Earle Riley Gale, Power Trip Vocalist, Dead At 34One of metal's true rising stars has left us too early Danbury Mayor Names Sewage Plant After John Oliver Following 'Last Week Tonight's Story On Jury Selection In Connecticut Jerry Seinfeld: So You Think New York Is 'Dead'(It's not.) The Batman: is Robert Pattinson set to play the superhero as an emo?In the latest film version of the vigilante's adventures, Batman/Bruce Wayne unexpectedly brings back the eyeliner and My Chemical Romance fringe of early 00s youth culture Fans Already Solved The Riddler's Cryptic Puzzle In 'The Batman' TeaserThe bigger question is why Batman doesn't just check the internet. How the Criterion Collection Crops Out African-American DirectorsThe prestigious line is coveted by cinephiles and taught in film schools. The company's president blames his "blind spots" for largely shutting out Black Americans. 'Tenet' May Not Be Playing at Your Local Drive-In Theater 'Drunk History' Canceled After Six Seasons at Comedy Central Bleacher Report Shuttering B/R Mag Long-form Storytelling Unit Chris Evans Responds To Backlash Over That Ted Cruz PhotoThe "Avengers" actor explained things on "The Daily Show." Live Comedy Is Back in New York! But Outdoors. Is This a Good Thing?The club Stand Up NY is staging 40 shows a week across the city. Performing in parks raises the stakes for comedians and audiences alike. Steven Soderbergh Reedited Three of His Movies in Quarantine While Producing 'Bill and Ted Face the Music'The filmmaker discussed how he's been spending quarantine, exploring safety guidelines for film productions, and why he helped get a long-dormant sequel finally get made. GUESTS: Jim Chapdelaine - An Emmy-winning musician, producer, composer, and recording engineer, and a patient advocate for people with rare cancers Taneisha Duggan - Producing associate at TheaterWorks Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.