Today “Luddite” is used as a derogatory term for someone who doesn’t understand technology. But the original Luddites weren’t behind. They were technical workers who were concerned about the impact that technology would have on people.

This hour, we look at the history of Luddites, how their philosophy applies today, and ask what our present would look like if they had won. Could we all gain something from thinking more like a Luddite?

GUESTS:

• Miriam A. Cherry: Professor of law at St. John’s University and the author of Work in the Digital Age: A Coursebook on Labor, Technology, and Regulation

• Brian Merchant: Author of Blood in the Machine: the Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech

• Gavin Mueller: Assistant professor of new media and digital culture at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job

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!

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Colin McEnroe, Eugene Amatruda, and Jonathan McNicol contributed to this show, which originally aired August 21, 2023.

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve been doing these shows 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 Lonesome Dove, the public intellectual, how to talk in more complex sentences, tragedy and tragic figures today, quilting, the music of 1976… Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one.

Music featured (in order):

• Pizza – Eitan Kenner, Natalie Tenenbaum
• Bite Your Tongue – Duncan Sheik
• Hudson – Henry Jamison (feat. Lady Lamb)
• A car wash and a new pair of pants – Lizzy McAlpine
• I Will Be Blowing More Jazz in the Future – Dan Reeder
• Waters of March – Cassandra Wilson

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This special edition of The Nose — guest hosted and co-hosted (!) by comedian and writer Shawn Murray and journalist and noted bat expert Lindsay Lee Wallace — looks at:

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a satirical surrealist psychological romance slasher film with a film-within-a-film narrative. It’s the third feature film written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun and their followup to I Saw the TV Glow. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

And: Lanterns is the third TV series and fifth entry overall in Chapter One: Gods and Monsters of the DC Universe. It is created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, and it’s meant to tell a Green Lantern story kind of in the style of TV shows like True Detective and Slow Horses. Lanterns stars Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre as John Stewart.

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.

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You’ve likely heard the Greek myth of Cassandra, a woman given the gift of prophecy who was cursed never to be believed.

This hour, a look at the Cassandra story and its relevance today, including some real-life Cassandras, like the diplomat who tried to stop World War II and the public health official who tried to warn us about the COVID-19 pandemic.

GUESTS:

• Joel Christensen: Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the CUNY Graduate Center; author of The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic

• Charity Dean: CEO, founder, and chairman of the Public Health Company

• Steve Kemper: Author of Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor

• Amanda Rees: Historian of science at the University of York and the author of Human

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, which originally aired January 25, 2023.

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People have been preoccupied with the end of the world for a very long time. And that preoccupation isn’t going anywhere. As AI experts warn about potential catastrophic scenarios and the Doomsday Clock continues to move closer to midnight, a look at how we imagine the world ending and what that says about us.

GUESTS: 

• Dorian Lynskey: Journalist and author of multiple books, most recently Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World. He is also co-host of the Origin Story podcast. 

• Brian Slattery: Freelance writer and editor. He is the author of four novels. His latest short story is “Clouds” which appears in the anthology Shadow Lab

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, which originally aired on February 4, 2025.

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How has our national discourse and our perception of national identity shifted in the 25 years after 9/11? And how can we heal from those traumatizing events? This hour, we talk about what we can learn from our response to 9/11 with a local psychiatrist who helped shape New York City's mental health response for its children. Plus, we look at how journalists coped with covering that day.

GUESTS:

• John Woodall: Psychiatrist whose clinic is in Newtown. He is a former Harvard Medical School faculty, and founder of Healing the Heart of America.
• Sam Martin: Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs at Boise State University.
• Dr. Anthony Feinstein: Professor of Psychiatry at University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He specializes in the psychological effects of covering war and violent conflict on journalists.

Music featured (in order):

• Listen to the Heroes Cry – Christian McBride
• Loose Ends – Sergio Mendes, Justin Timberlake, Pharoahe Monch
• Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood – Nina Simone
• We’re All Gonna Die – Joy Oladokun, Noah Kahan
• When Doves Cry – Prince
• Roll With the Punches – Randy Newman

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We’ve been doing these shows 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 — helmed by our old pal Chion Wolf! — winds around to “Crossing Muddy Waters” by I’m With Her, Phoebe Bridgers, The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, follow ups, paper routes and summer jobs for kids, loss … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one.

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Official Movie Star of The Colin McEnroe Show Illeana Douglas’ brand new book is Jungle Red! The Making of MGM’s The Women.

Early this week, Colin went down to The Kate in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, to help launch the book.

This hour, a recorded version of that onstage conversation about the women of Hollywood’s golden age and about golden age Hollywood’s The Women.

GUEST:

• Illeana Douglas: An actress and author; her new book is Jungle Red!

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, Robin Andreoli, Jacob Kaufman, and Wes Swan contributed to this show.

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Next week marks 250 years since Connecticut's Nathan Hale was executed by British soldiers. This hour we look back at the life of Nathan Hale, and the local historian who kept his legacy alive. Plus, we'll learn about spying during the Revolutionary War, and discover another Connecticut spy who escaped Hale's fate.

GUESTS:

• Alexander Rose: Author of books including Washington's Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. His last two books have been on American secret intelligence. He is also a writer and producer on the television series Turn: Washington’s Spies
• Michael Morand: Director of Community Engagement at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He is also the City Historian of the City of New Haven
• Claire Bellerjeau: Co-author of Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth and the founder of Remember Liss, a nonprofit sharing this story in schools and communities

Music featured (in order):

• The Girl I Left Behind Me – The Norman Luboff Choir
• Hush – Joy Williams & Matt Berninger (Theme to the AMC Original Series “Turn”)
• Spies – Coldplay
• My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose – Wendy Weatherby
• Miller and the Lass – Eliza Carthy
• Turpin Hero – Colin Meloy

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Laura Nyro’s most famous compositions — “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Stoney End,” “When I Die,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Eli’s Coming” — are jewels of mainstream music, and her covers of songs like “Jimmy Mack” and “Gonna Take a Miracle” are legendary.

But she was uncomfortable under the spotlight and withdrew from it to become the Belle of Danbury, Connecticut.

This hour: a night of singing, reflecting, and celebrating recorded in front of a live audience at Watkinson School in Hartford.

GUESTS:

• Jim Chapdelaine: Guitar and vocals

• Latanya Farrell: Vocals and tambourine

• Steve Metcalf: Piano and vocals

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 contributed to this show, which originally aired February 21, 2020.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.