From abortion rights to partisan school board elections, ballot measures are a big deal in 2024. But what are they? A drop of direct democracy to defend against corrupt politicians? A pawning-off of governance to voters who don’t know what they’re voting on? This hour: the good, the bad, and the weird of ballot measures.
GUESTS: 

Dane Waters: Founder of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California
Desmond Meade: Executive Director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and author of "Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens"
Ryan Byrne: Managing Editor of the Ballot Measures Project at Ballotpedia

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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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“A safety valve”: The impact of ballot measures on democracy

The Colin McEnroe Show is public radio’s most eclectic, eccentric weekday program. The best way to understand us is through the subjects we tackle: Neanderthals, tambourines, handshakes, the Iliad, snacks, ringtones, punk rock, Occam’s razor, Rasputin, houseflies, zippers. Are you sensing a pattern? If so, you should probably be in treatment. On Fridays, we try to stop thinking about what kind of ringtones Neanderthals would want to have and convene a panel called The Nose for an informal roundtable about the week in culture.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Roommates: can't live with them, can't (afford to) live without them. They're the people who use your dishes and don't wash them. They're the people who apparently have a huge influence on your career choice and drinking habits. This hour, we're getting to know them better!
 
GUESTS: 


Ken Jennings: Colin’s college roommate


Kelli María Korducki: Journalist who writes about work and the family


Bruce Sacerdote: Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College


Francesca Fontánez: Social Media Editor at CT Public and a former college RA


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, Cat Pastor, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roommates wanted: How the people you live with impact your life

We hear about algorithms all the time, but what is an algorithm exactly? This hour, we learn about how algorithms work, a bit about their history, and how they're impacting our culture.
GUESTS: 

Ed Finn: Author of What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing, and founding director of the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University
Bruce Gil: Reporter for Quartz
Liz Pelly: Writer and editor, whose forthcoming book is Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

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 and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How algorithms shape our world, for better and for worse

From book bans to comics and the strange origins of fairy tales, this hour we look at children’s literature and who decides what’s appropriate for kids to read.
GUESTS:

Adam Gidwitz: Author of A Tale Dark and Grimm and its companions and the creator of the podcast Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest
Carol St. George: Professor of teaching and curriculum and director of reading and literacy at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester
Maria Tatar: Research professor of folklore and mythology at Harvard University; her latest book is The Heroine with 1001 Faces
Carol Tilley: Comics historian, librarian, educator, and youth advocate; she is a professor in the faculty of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois

This show was produced with Stacey Addo.
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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired September 20, 2023. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

‘Books can be mirrors or books can be windows’: How to decide what kids should read

We’ve been doing these shows a couple times a month where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting and surprising and amusing.
This hour, the conversation winds around to the stock market, inflation and the real estate market, incidental music in theater, commercials and trailers and such at the movie theater, Woody Harrelson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., rocketing all of our plastic into the Sun … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.
These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one.
Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
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.
Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We take your calls

We’ve been noticing a sort of backwards-looking bent lately in TV shows like Ripley, with its 1960s setting and its black-and-white aesthetic and its lush 1950s Italian pop soundtrack. Or Fallout, with its particular brand of retro-futurism and its Jazz Age-to-Space Age music. Or Sugar, with it classic movie-obsessed protagonist and its neo-noir tone.
There’s a theory that there’s more of an emphasis on nostalgia right now than normal because no one wants to live in 2024. There’s even a whole new Taylor Swift song about it.
This hour, a Nose-ish look at the heightened role of nostalgia in our popular culture right now. Plus: the dark side of nostalgia culture.
GUESTS:

Jessica Andrews: A novelist and a contributing editor at Elle UK; her most recent novel is Milk Teeth
Spencer Kornhaber: A staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of On Divas: Persona, Pleasure, Power

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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“A safety valve”: The impact of ballot measures on democracy

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