The Colin McEnroe Show

Religious scholar Elaine Pagels, trusted the Gospel of Thomas to get her through the almost unbearably painful years after the death of her six-year-old son -- born with a congenital heart defect -- followed one year later by the unexpected death of her husband. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elvis left two legacies. Musically, he pulled several American musical traditions out of the shadows, braided them together, and made them mainstream. Personally, he created a far darker template for the way a musical celebrity could be devoured by the very fame he avidly sought.Recorded live in front of an audience -- and with a band! -- as part of Colin's Freshly Squeezed series at Watkinson School, an hour about the artist who defined the birth of rock and roll and was the genre's first superstar.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To do a show about local stand-up comedy, we figured we should probably do a show of local stand-up comedy.So we went to a comedy club, put on a comedy show, and then did a talk show about the comedy show we'd just done.This hour: some of said comedy show plus most of said talk show -- and we're fairly confident it'll make more sense when you hear it than it probably just did reading about it.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Colin's away this week, but The Nose must go on! Or maybe "must" isn't quite right, but in this particular case, The Nose is going on -- with excellent guest hosts: The Arts Paper's Lucy Gellman and the New Haven Independent's Tom Breen.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mimes have been gesticulating their way into our hearts (or nightmares) for a lot longer than you may think. While it may have been the legendary Marcel Marceau who popularized the mime, people have been communicating through movement since the very beginning.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're doing a show on supermarkets today - from a supermarket!Most Americans still buy most of their food from a supermarket. While farmer's markets and specialty stores offer organic and local alternatives, large-scale supermarkets still offer more convenience, the lowest prices and a seemingly endless variety of choices. Their big wide aisles with neatly stacked and eye-catching packaged products are hard to resist. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who would have thought that a book on grammar would be #5 on Amazon's best-seller list? (Should that be "whom" would have thought? Should I write out the number five? Should it be "bestseller?" Ugh. I can't remember if the exclamation goes inside or outside the quotation mark in the sentence I just asked myself.)Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do you make a 100-meter telescope that folds down to three meters so you can tuck it inside a space vehicle? How do you make a heart stent that folds out inside the human body? In each case, researchers have turned to masters of origami, the thousand-year-old art of paper folding.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Darko Tresnjak has been artistic director at Hartford Stage Company since 2011. During his tenure here, he's won a Tony. He's had multiple productions make the leap to Broadway. His Anastasia has multiple tours touring internationally.And this season is his last season in Hartford.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wilhelm Reich was a once-promising psychoanalyst and scientist under the guidance of Freud in pre-World War II Europe. He promoted the "sexual revolution" to support his belief that sexual repression was linked to the bodily and societal ills of neurosis and fascism.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.