Billy Joel has reportedly sold more than 160 million albums. He’s been nominated for 24 Grammy Awards (and won six of them), an Emmy, and a Tony Award (which he won). In the U.S., he’s had 33 top 40 singles and 11 top 10 albums. He’s simply one of the most popular recording artists in the history of music.

But. Critics have never been terribly kind to him, and a lot of the general public hasn’t either.

This hour, we look at the new two-part, nearly five-hour HBO documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes. And we look at Billy Joel more generally and at the love/hate relationship we all seem to have had with him and his music for more than 50 years now.

GUESTS:

• Jen Allen: A pianist, composer, arranger, and educator; her new album, Possibilities, comes out August 22
• Rebecca Castellani: Co-founder of Quiet Corner Communications and the director of marketing at Washington Montessori School
• Jack Hamilton: Slate’s pop critic and the author of Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination
• Gene Seymour: A “writer, professional spectator, pop-culture maven, and jazz geek,” and he now writes Gene’s Substack

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 contributed to this show.

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This episode is really going to be the cat’s pajamas. Or is it pyjamas? Do cats even wear pajamas? Why would they? Why do we? Should any of us wear pajamas at all?

And if we do don a pair, are they only for bed? Or should pajamas have their day in the sun? If our PJs are making a fashion statement just what exactly are they saying?

We’re talking today about what we wear to bed, but who knows? Does not wearing pajamas to bed have health and other benefits once we settle in under the covers?

GUESTS: 

• Henry Alford: American humorist and journalist, author of books including I Dream of Joni: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell in 53 Snapshots

• Clare Sauro: Director of The Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection and Assistant Professor of Design & Art History at Drexel University

• W. Chris Winter: Sleep specialist, neurologist and author of The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It 

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.

Produced by Debora Timms. Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired on April 8, 2019.

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What does it mean to have 'good taste'? And what would it take to develop it? This hour, we talk about taste and discernment. Plus, a look at flavor and why some things taste good.

GUESTS:

• Henry Oliver: Writes the literary Substack “The Common Reader,” and is the author of Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Reinventing Your Life. He is part of the Emerging Scholars Programme at the Mercatus Centre
• Becca Rothfeld: The Nonfiction Book Critic at The Washington Post, an editor at The Point, and a contributing editor at The Boston Review. She is the author of All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess
• Nik Sharma: A molecular biologist turned two-time James Beard finalist, best-selling cookbook author, photographer, columnist, and editor at America’s Test Kitchen. His cookbooks include The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained in More Than 100 Essential Recipes, among others

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Rust is all around us. It’s in our cars, our homes, our infrastructure. It’s also the subject of Jonathan Waldman’s book Rust: The Longest War, which introduces us to the people who fight it.

This hour, Waldman joins us. Plus: a visual artist who has found a way to incorporate rust into her work.

GUESTS:

• Esther Solondz: A Rhode Island-based visual artist
• Jonathan Waldman: Author of Rust

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.

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Colin McEnroe, Greg Hill, Jonathan McNicol, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired March 25, 2015.

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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 winds around to counterfactuals in baseball, majoring in art history, adult softball, The Terror on AMC and The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, the Connecticut Sun leaving for Boston, Northern Ireland and the Troubles … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

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

You can now watch our calls shows on Connecticut Public’s YouTube. Subscribe and get notified when we go live. Or 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, Robyn Doyon-Aitken, Isaac Moss, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.

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Eddington is the fourth feature film written and directed by Ari Aster. It’s a neo-Western comedy set in the fictional and titular New Mexico town during May, 2020. Eddington was nominated for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and it’s one of three Pedro Pascal movies that are currently in the top 20 at the domestic box office.

And: Sunday Best is a new Netflix documentary directed by, and in memory of, the late journalist, musician, and filmmaker Sacha Jenkins. It’s about the cultural importance of The Ed Sullivan Show and Sullivan’s “legacy of equality.”

GUESTS:

• RS Benedict: A writer and bureaucrat whose fiction and non-fiction has been published in the New Haven Review, Fangoria, Current Affairs, and a bunch of other places
• Shawn Murray: A stand-up comedian, writer, and the host of the Fantasy Filmballpodcast
• Bill Yousman: Professor of media studies at Sacred Heart University

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.

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Monsters are our subconscious perversions, our twisted fears realized, but what causes their creation, and how are they made? This hour, we look at fantastical creatures, terrifying beasts, and the scariest monsters of all: humans.

GUESTS:

• Natalie Lawrence: Historian of science and the author of Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings
• Surekha Davies: Historian of science, speaker, and monster consultant for radio, tv, and film. She writes a newsletter called “Strange and Wondrous: Notes from a Science Historian,” and is the author of books including Humans: A Monstrous History
• Margery Cuyler: Author of 62 children’s books including Monster Mess, Bonaparte Falls Apart, Skeleton Hiccups, and the forthcoming Stompie the Zombie

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Headache symptoms can strike sufferers without warning, disabling them for even days at a time.

There have been nearly 4,000 years of documented headache disorders — and virtually everyone has had headaches — yet their underlying neurological cause is still unknown.

This hour, a look at the long history of headaches and the current science around and treatments for headaches. Plus: headaches in our literature and popular culture.

GUESTS:

• Kathleen O’Shea: The editor of So Much More Than a Headache: Understanding Migraine Through Literature
• Tom Zeller Jr.: The author of The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Condition and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Undark

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/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They're in the books we read, the shows we watch, and the art we hang on our walls. They conjure notions of might, magic, romance, and more. Castles, perhaps as much as any other architectural structure in history, define the landscape of our fantasy and imagination.

But is our imagination an accurate lens through which to view these fortresses of ol'? And why, after hundreds of years, does our culture's fascination with these structures seem to be on the rise? This hour, we speak with experts and enthusiasts about the reality and mystique of castles.

GUESTS:

• Marc Morris: Medieval historian and author of books including Castles: Their History and Evolution in Medieval Britain

• Victor Lodato: Playwright, poet, and novelist whose books include Edgar and Lucy

• Edward Town: Assistant Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art

• Brent Bruns II: - Star of the hit National Geographic reality TV show "Doomsday Castle"

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 Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired on May 18, 2017.

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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.

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

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.