The Colin McEnroe Show

It's tax season. How did this quintessentially frustrating thing come to be so frustrating? And must it be so? This hour, we’re learning about why taxes are so complicated to file in the U.S. Then, we’ll talk about how some of the richest people in America end up paying next to no taxes on the wealth they grow every year. Finally: a conversation with someone who doesn’t pay a chunk of his taxes — on purpose — as a form of protest. GUESTS:  Monica Prasad: Professor of Economic and Political Sociology at Johns Hopkins University  Paul Kiel: Reporter for ProPublica who covers taxes Lawrence Rosenwald: Professor of English Emeritus at Wellesley College and a longtime war tax resister Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Constructed languages have existed in popular culture for a long time, but they've reached a new level of ubiquity today. This hour, we talk with professional conlangers who have created languages for Game of Thrones, Dune, and many other worlds. We'll learn about the art of constructing languages, and the appeal of learning one of them. GUESTS:  David and Jessie Peterson: Professional conlangers whose work appears in Dune: Part Two, Elemental, Shadow and Bone, and more. They co-host the weekly livestream “LangTime Studio” on YouTube. David also created languages for Game of Thrones Gregory Danielson III: Experienced Toki Pona speaker and teacher Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.  Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, we grapple with the impact our ancestors have on our lives and what our responsibility is if they did something we disagree with. GUESTS: Maud Newton: Author of Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation Jenny Strauss: Great-granddaughter of Lewis Strauss The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired August 17, 2023.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Plastic is everywhere in our world, and scientists are increasingly discovering the negative health and environmental impacts of the material. This hour, we take a look at our relationship to plastic. We talk about the material, its evolution, and its symbolism in our culture. Plus, we look at the use of single use plastic in television and why it matters. GUESTS:  Susan Freinkel: Author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story; her Substack is 1,017 Acres: Life in the Park Erica Cirino: Communications manager of the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the author of Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis Dana Weinstein: Project specialist for the Media Impact Project at the University of Southern California Annenberg Norman Lear Center The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. 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.

The Nose is off. In its place this hour, a look at the current controversies swirling around certain celebrities: Catherine, Princess of Wales hasn’t made a scheduled public appearance since last year. Kensington Palace announced in January that she was having “planned abdominal surgery.” The internet was dissatisfied with that explanation. And then some photos this month, including one that the Princess admitted to doctoring, have left the internet, let’s say, even less satisfied. And: Dan Schneider has been described as “the Norman Lear of children’s television.” His Nickelodeon shows launched the careers of people like Amanda Bynes, Ariana Grande, Keenan Thompson, and others. But a new docuseries, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, brings together a number of previously known stories and allegations with some new information that, altogether, paints an ugly picture of what was going on behind the scenes — and often even on the screen — on Dan Schneider’s sets. And finally: Director Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech at this year’s Academy Awards included this passage: “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?” At the ceremony, people applauded. Since the ceremony, (some) people have responded, uh, less kindly. In any case, the Oscars have a long history of political controversy. GUESTS: Alison Foreman: A features writer at IndieWire covering and critiquing TV, film, and trends in Hollywood Tiffany Hsu: A technology reporter for The New York Times covering misinformation and disinformation and its origins, movement, and consequences Pete Hammond: Awards columnist and chief film critic at Deadline The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. 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.

March Madness is here! And so the only logical thing to do is to get improv comedian Julia Pistell and the actual Bill Curry together to talk basketball for an hour on the radio. That may not be the only logical thing to do. It may be that that’s not actually a logical thing to do at all. But we’re doing it anyway. *It’s our 14th one of these unless it isn’t. We’re pretty sure we’ve done this show every year from 2010 on, but for 2020. There’s circumstantial evidence, at least, that we did this show that first March that our show was on the air, in 2010. But no proof that that’s a thing we did survives. But we’re still fairly confident we did it. GUESTS: Eugene J. Cornacchia: President of Saint Peter’s University Bill Curry: Playing the part of Bill Curry Frankie Graziano: Host of The Wheelhouse on Connecticut Public Julia Pistell: A founding member of Sea Tea Improv, among a number of other things The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all strive to be right about things — we do our research, we listen to people who seem smarter than us, we make compelling arguments over dinner tables. But is there an underappreciated art to being wrong? This hour, lessons on changing your mind and admitting mistakes, from newspaper corrections to public intellectual pivots. GUESTS:  Eranda Jayawickreme: Professor of psychology at Wake Forest University Ty Seidule: Visiting professor of history at Hamilton College and the author of Robert E. Lee and Me; he’s a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army and the former vice chair of the Department of Defense’s Naming Commission Isaac Saul: Founder of the newsletter Tangle The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You’re probably familiar with the panicked rush that comes when you’re running around your house, looking for keys or a wallet you’ve misplaced. It’s an awful feeling. But maybe there’s some value in the process of searching for lost things — beyond the prize you may (or may not) find at the end. This hour, we talk to some professional “lookers” to find out: Is there joy, or hidden value, to be found in the search process? Can we learn to be better lookers? GUESTS: Chris Turner: CEO of The Ring Finders, a global directory of metal detecting specialists James Renner: Journalist and author Walter Wick: Photo-illustrator and picture puzzle designer known for the I Spy and Can You See What I See? series The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Cat Pastor, and Lily Tyson contributed to this show, which originally aired August 16, 2023.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour we take your calls about anything you want to talk about. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Irving Berlin, Dorothy Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein. These, along with many others, are the sorts of songwriters we associate with the Great American Songbook, the amorphous canon of important 20th-century pop songs, jazz standards, and show tunes from Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, and movie musicals. But there’s another important detail here. The songs we think of as the Songbook are from, more specifically, the 1920s through the 1950s. With some simple arithmetic, you can see that they’re, uh, getting on in years — which might (must?) mean that their devotees are, too. The Nose is off this week. In its place this hour, a look at and a listen to — and some concern for the future of — the Great American Songbook. GUESTS: Joelle Lurie: Vocalist, songwriter, voiceover artist, and bandleader Steve Metcalf: Founder and director of the Garmany concert series at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Eugene Amatruda contributed to this show, which originally aired September 1, 2023.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.