The Colin McEnroe Show

Graduation season is upon us. Your niece is finishing high school. Your neighbor's son is graduating from Tulane. Your boss just got her second Master's. How did it get to be that the obvious gift for all of these people is... a Dr. Seuss book? And then: Vulture, this week, published a click-bait listicle ranking all the HBO shows ever. The Nose took the bait and clicked. And... Six Feet Under didn't make the top ten? Girls isn't in the top 25? John from Cincinnati made the top 30? Did anybody even understand that show? And speaking of shows, George Clooney and Grant Heslov's new Hulu miniseries is a four-and-a-half-hour, six-episode adaption of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Is that what the world needed right now?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Laszlo Ratesic is a nineteen-year veteran of the Speculative Service. He lives in the Golden State, the only place left in what was once America. Laszlo's job is to bring the worst criminals to justice, those who tell lies. In his new novel, Ben Winters creates a world which might sound Eden-esque in our era of misinformation.  It's getting more difficult to distinguish real from fake news, AI-assisted technology allows a bad actor to splice celebrity heads onto the faces of actors in a pornographic video, and major news organizations need to keep track of how often America's president lies.  Yet, we should be careful what we wish for. Philosophers like Derrida have long questioned the nature of truth; can there be one truth? If so, whose truth is it? While few of us want to return to the pre-internet days when everyone got their news from Walter Cronkite, we need to understand how to recognize when information is false and how it is spread. It's too easy to blame ignorance or a willful repudiation of the truth for the spread of misinformation. It's a lot more about who we trust.  For those who fear a Golden State could be our future, there's hope on the horizon if we're willing to pay attention. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From his rapid-fire stand-up comedy riffs to his breakout role in Mork & Mindy and his Academy Award-winning performance in Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams was a singularly innovative and beloved entertainer. Dave Itzkoff's new biography is Robin. And 10 years after his death, a look back at the work of George Carlin.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No Country for Old Men. Fargo. The Big Lebowski. Raising Arizona. O Brother, Where Art Thou? Miller's Crossing. Over the past 35 years, Joel and Ethan Coen have reliably been among the most recognizable voices in moviemaking. Their latest, the anthology western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, hit Netflix last fall. This hour: a Noseish look at the work of the Coen brothers. GUESTS: Tom Breen - Film critic and the host of WNHH radio's Deep Focus Skip Lievsay - Sound editor, mixer, and designer for film and television; he won the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing for Gravity, and he's done the sound on every Coen brothers picture Adam Nayman - The author of The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Eugene Amatruda, and Betsy Kaplan contributed to this show, which originally aired November 21, 2018.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seriously: a show about towels. There's the history of towels, towels in Christianity, Terrible Towels, Towel Day. Oh, and there are actual towels too. Because when has a bad idea ever stopped us before? GUESTS: Marcel Danesi - The author of Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics John Dankosky - Executive editor of the New England News Collaborative; host of The Wheelhouse and NEXT on WNPR Mike Pesca - Host of the daily Slate podcast The Gist Jackie Reeve - Bed and bath writer for Wirecutter; her blog about quilting and crafting and cooking and traveling and things is The Orange Room Jem Roberts - Comedy historian and the author of The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Carlos Mejia, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired, in a different form, on December 6, 2018.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The American criminal justice system has become less 'just' over recent decades and prosecutors bear much of the responsibility. The tough-on-crime culture of the 1980's and 90's shifted power away from judges and juries and toward prosecutors who embraced their new power to wield mandatory sentencing laws to rack up the convictions demanded by the constituents who elected them.  The problem is they never let go of that power or the culture that rewards it, even as crime rates have plummeted to historic lows that are almost 50% below their peak in the 1990's. They continue use sentencing to extract plea bargains from almost 95% of the people who come before them, even without evidence of guilt. Some impose draconian bail and probation conditions monitored by for-profit companies that extract a premium.  Others run modern day debtors' prisons, jailing people for misdemeanor crimes like shoplifting because they can't afford bail.   Yet, there's cause for hope. A new breed of DA's are using prison as a last resort, focusing instead on "diversion" programs that offer a second chance instead of long prison sentences that research shows make worse criminals.   Is it time to rethink who belongs in prison? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Barbie Millicent Roberts -- yes, that's her name -- turns 60 we, as a plastic loving nation, celebrate! For six decades the impossibly proportioned fashion doll has been delighting children and adults around the world. But the road to 60 hasn't always been easy. Critiqued by feminists, diversity advocates, and even child psychologists for her role in perpetuating harmful sterotypes, eating disorders, and body dysmorphic syndrome among young women, Barbie may be just as controversial as she is iconic. In recent years, however, Mattel has made some long overdue changes. The new Barbies are more diverse in their career choices, body shapes, and ethnicities than ever before, and her new ad campaigns focus heavily on issues of women's empowerment and equality. But the question remains: Is it too little, too late for Mattel or are these changes enough to see Barbie into her seventies? We speak with expert guests about the good, the bad and the ugly side of Barbie, as well as about the doll's creator, Ruth Handler. And in case you were wondering, we may even get to Ken along the way!Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For everyone who watched Sunday's series finale of Game of Thrones, perhaps a better show to get a handle on what's happening inside America is Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. People aren't going around greeting their neighbors with "Blessed by the fruit." But there's an argument to be made that news headlines from the past week are eerily similar to the fictional transpirings that gave way to Handmaid's Republic of Gilead. Today, we consider Alabama's new ultra-conservative abortion law, President Trump's desire for barriers along the Mexico border to be painted black with spikes, and the ousting of administration officials opposed to a White House plan to conduct mass raids of migrants in 10 major U.S. cities, among other recent events. Is comparing them to Handmaid's make-believe dangerously unhinged? Or is it right to be concerned that we may be heading down a potentially Margaret Atwoodian path? We'll take your calls. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been a rough week for the famous. Last Saturday, Peggy Lipton died at age 72. On Monday, Doris Day died at 97. Then on Tuesday, it was Tim Conway at 85. And yesterday, I. M. Pei died aged 102. And the week's gone kind of the same way for TV shows too. On Sunday, Veep finished its seven-year run on HBO. Last night, The Big Bang Theory aired its 279th and final episode. And Game of Thrones's series finale is set to air this coming Sunday.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 three 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 and (soon) 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 simpler, analog experience that will just not go away. Today, a look inside the impact, history, and legacy of VHS. Plus, video stores! 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.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.