From hot mics to mic drops, a celebration of the microphone

The microphone makes everything we do on the radio possible. This hour we celebrate the invention and look at the role of microphones in music. Plus hot mics, mic drops, and more. GUESTS:  Susan Rogers: Multi-platinum record producer, cognitive neuroscientist, professor at Berklee College of Music…

All calls: The zipper merge, ‘American Pie,’ music streaming services, and more

This hour, the conversation winds around to the zipper merge, Don McLean’s “American Pie,” our 15th anniversary party, model trains (again), music streaming services, advice for caregivers in times of grief … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

From The Bad Ideas Dept.: Today’s show is not about tapirs

This week, we’re celebrating the show’s 15th anniversary (which was last year, but never mind about that part). Over those 15+ years, we’ve done something north of 3,000 shows. And every one of those shows was intended, more or less, to be about some … thing. Towels or Trump or toast or television…

Live from a forest: Discussing hiking, archaeology, invasives, and Connecticut's trails

There are more than 800 miles of Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails in Connecticut. Today we're doing our show from one of them. There are things out in the woods that might surprise you, and one of the guys walking down the trail to visit us today is our state archeologist, who's still uncovering the myst…

March Madness 2025

March Madness is here! And for the 15th* time, 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 d…

What the history of the McKinley era, tariffs, and the Gilded Age can teach us about the present

President Donald Trump has found inspiration for tariffs and more in the 25th President of the United States: William McKinley. This hour, we look at the life and legacy of McKinley, and why Trump is drawn to him. Plus, we'll learn about the Gilded Age and its parallels to today. GUESTS:  Kevin Ke…

All calls: Will we ever get back to The Shire? Is Colin ok? Is anyone? And more

We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, 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 and send us a comment on YouTube! The C…

The Nose looks at ‘I’m Still Here’ and the dearth of old movies on Netflix

I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) is a Brazilian, Portuguese-language political biographical drama based on the memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva. At this year’s Oscars, it won the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and it was the first Brazilian movie ever nominated for Best Picture. And:…

An unusually strange event: Nikolai Gogol, ‘The Inspector,’ and ‘The Nose’

“The Nose” may be Nikolai Gogol’s most famous short story. It’s a surrealist — and self-consciously, self-awarely surrealist — story about a man whose nose disappears from his face and reappears in another man’s biscuits. And other places. There’s a moment toward the end of Susanne Fusso’s translat…

Necks: More than just something we have a pain in

How do you feel about your neck? Maybe you only think about it when you’re sore from sleeping wrong or from sitting at a desk all day. But for centuries, humans have worried about their necks, decorated them with jewelry and clothes and ties, and exploited their weaknesses with knives and garrotes …