The Colin McEnroe Show

About 2000 years ago the Chinese came up with something really great: paper! Paper has allowed us to share ideas around the globe, record important historical events, build on our past success, create art, architecture, literature, music and more that may live on long on after we're gone.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shakespeare was famous for his off-color puns, yet much of their cleverness has been lost to the  evolution of our English language.In Shakespeare's English, the word "nothing" was pronounced as "no-ting," which at that time was a euphemism for um, a female lady part. In modern parlance, that would translate to Much Ado About... (female lady part.) Much is lost between Elizabethan times and today. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Things burn: Our environments, resources, and all forms of monument to self. And since the beginning, so too has our imagination. The inspiration humans have drawn from fire throughout the millennia is as impressive as it is immeasurable. Why fire occupies such an elemental place in the creative wellsprings of our consciousness is certainly a debate to had.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has hit a cultural nerve in America. The sustained anger outstrips our response to the killing of 43 other journalists in 2018, Saudi Arabia's jailing of these dissidents, or the U.S.-supported Saudi invasion of Yemen that has created a humanitarian crisis that is affecting millions of people and getting worse.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Louis C.K.'s surprise return to a comedy club stage in late August was widely covered and discussed. His subsequent performances have maybe sparked less internet conversation, but they're just as confounding. This week, the owner of one club where C.K. has been performing has made a couple media appearances to explain his thinking about the whole thing.And: Damian Chazelle is the director behind the three-time Academy Award-winner Whiplash and the six-time Academy Award-winner La La Land. His new movie, First Man, stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know all the reasons Trump won, right?Economic anxiety. Racial anxiety. The forgotten working class. The forgotten rustbelt...But what if the real cause were something much simpler and much more pervasive: our popular culture.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Common wisdom says that once you walk downstairs to the place where the sizes of candidates’ body parts are fodder for discussion, where one presidential nominee calls another “such a nasty woman” in a debate, where middle-finger salutes at the working press become commonplace at presidential rallies, you never go back up those stairs.On the eve of a midterm, we want to talk about whether that’s true and whether the 2018 political ecosystem caught the coarseness virus from 2016. And how do we get back up those stairs? How do we bleed some of the anger and vulgarity out of our political discourse?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever been to the opera? I know, you think it's stuffy and formal and only for rich, white people of a certain age. You're wrong. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Despite Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and attempts by hackers to infiltrate voter-registration databases in Illinois, Arizona and several other states in the summer of 2016, little has been done to better secure America's network of electronic voting systems.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We now have no fewer than four big screen versions of A Star Is Born.There's the 1937 original, the Judy Garland/James Mason remake, the Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson remake... and now's there's the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper remake, which is directed by Cooper, and which might just take the fall movie season by storm.This hour: a Noseish (but not quite actually The Nose) look at the phenomenon of A Star Is Born.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.