Connecticut Public Radio

Whether it's red or white, boxed or bottled -- few beverages stimulate the senses quite like a glass of wine does. Still, the science behind how the human body "tastes" wine -- well, it's more complex than you might think.

A legal fight heated up last summer between state marshals and the Hartford Parking Authority. The question was whether the marshals could, by law, park their cars illegally while doing their jobs. That fight wound up in state court and the marshals lost.

I recently returned from a trip to India, and while visiting a friend in his garden outside Delhi, I was struck by one brilliantly colored, red plant. This five-foot-tall and -wide plant looked familiar. Upon closer inspection, it was a poinsettia.

Everybody knows the Boy Scouts. They're the scouts who don't sell cookies. (That's the Girl Scouts.) But for more than a century the Boy Scouts have been an organization devoted to, in their own words, keeping boys "physically fit, mentally awake, and morally straight."

This year, Hanukkah and Christmas fall on the same weekend. A growing tradition among American-Jews nationwide, has been to spend Christmas day indulging in Chinese food. But for the last decade, in the New Haven area a new tradition has emerged -- an annual concert of klezmer music performed by The Nu Haven Kapelye.

State officials, community providers and youth advocates are continuing their work to reform juvenile justice in Connecticut. The latest efforts have been focused on a plan to close the state’s juvenile jail in Middletown. This hour, Department of Children and Families Commissioner Joette Katz and Deputy Commissioner Fernando Muñiz join us in-studio to talk about the department’s plan to shutter the Connecticut Juvenile Training School and its other responsibilities as the state’s child welfare

The way we listen to music has been changing for years: iPods replaced Walkmans, playlists replaced albums, and streaming services replaced shopping for music altogether. And as our listening habits have changed, so has the business of being a musician.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty said she's been contacted by many people who are concerned about the future of public education under a Donald Trump administration.

Donald Trump's election last month was the culmination of a venom-filled campaign that was nastier than almost any in recent memory. The mean-spirited comments tossed to voters eager to "lock her up" fell just shy of the malicious rhetoric coming from Thomas Jefferson's presidential campaign in 1796. Jefferson's hatchet-man called John Adams a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

The electoral college voted, and Donald Trump is still President-elect. But that big news paled in comparison to two terror attacks that posed direct threats to relations between European countries, Russia, Turkey and the conflict in Syria.