Is Wuthering Heights “the greatest love story of all time?” Or is it a tale of hate, violence, and vengeance? Or maybe a gothic satire?

This hour we look at Emily Brontë’s novel and how it was received when it was published in 1847.

Plus, a look at the highest-grossing movie of the year so far — Emerald Fennell’s loosely adapted “Wuthering Heights” — and how it stacks up against other retellings.

GUESTS:

• Richard Brody: The movies editor for Goings On About Town at The New Yorker
• Claire O’Callaghan: Editor-in-chief of Brontë Studies and the author of Emily Brontë Reappraised
• Irene Papoulis: Taught writing for a long time at Trinity College

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• Wuthering Heights – Cecile McLorin Salvant
• Wuthering Heights – Kate Bush
• I Am Stretched on Your Grave – Eithne Ni Uallachain
• Out of Myself – Charli xcx
• Chains of Love – Charli xcx
• As Time Goes By – Julie London

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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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would it mean if we treated rivers as alive? That's the question that nature writer Robert Macfarlane wrestles with in his latest book. What would happen if we took that aliveness seriously? How would we know what a river would want? Who would speak for it? These are questions that communities around the world are dealing with as they work to figure out how to protect rivers and the ecosystems that rely on them. This hour, Macfarlane joins us to talk about his book, Is a River Alive?, and the stories we tell about the natural world.

GUEST:

• Robert Macfarlane: Writer whose books include Underland: A Deep Time Journey, The Lost Words: A Spell Book, and The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. His new book is Is a River Alive?

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, Dylan Reyes, and Eugene Amatruda contributed to this show, which originally aired on June 11, 2025.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Biblical scholar James Tabor says that Mary – the mother of Jesus – is “the best known, least known woman in history.” This hour, we’ll get to know Mary a little better and talk about why some people are obsessed with preserving her purity at the expense of her humanity. And, we talk with (The Reverend) Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones from Emory University about Mary mythology, Black Madonnas and the myriad ways Mary is depicted in art and culture.

GUESTS:

• James D. Tabor is a biblical scholar, and a retired professor of religious studies at the University Of North Carolina at Charlotte. He’s the author of The Lost Mary: Rediscovering the Mother of Jesus.

• (The Rev.) Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones is Assistant Professor of Theology and Africana Studies at Emory University. She’s a constructive theologian and scholar of Black religion specializing in Mariology, Black feminist and womanist thought, and theological anthropology. She’s the author of Immaculate Misconceptions: A Black Mariology.

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• Mary On A Cross – Ghost

• Along Comes Mary – The Association

• The Wind Cries Mary – Jimi Hendrix

• Mary Rock the Baby – Jarell Smalls

• Like a Prayer – Madonna

• Lady Madonna (Theme from Grace Under Fire) – Aretha Franklin

• Mary, Did You Know? – The Braxtons

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 Doyoon-Aitken and Dylan Reyes contributed to this episode.

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

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

This hour, the conversation winds around to musicians, politics, jobs, journalism, planning for the future … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• The World Is A Ghetto – George Benson
• Desire – Kurt Elling, WDR Big Band
• Sambadouro – Ivan Lins
• Kindness Isn’t Common Sense – Katie Pruitt
• In the Still of the Night – Lauren Henderson, Sullivan Fortner
• Bags (Live at Electric Lady Studios) – Clairo
• CUT FOR TIME Blues Be Gone – Hayes Carll
• Next Spring – Lucy Yeghiazaryan

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Listen live Friday at 1 p.m.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is the third series in the A Song of Ice and Fire television franchise. It is set about 90 years before Game of Thrones and almost 80 years after House of the Dragon. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is created by Ira Parker and George R. R. Martin and based on the Tales of Dunk and Egg series of novellas by Martin.

And: Hamnet is the fifth feature film written and directed by Chloé Zhao. The screenplay is by Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell and based on O’Farrell’s 2020 novel. It stars Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as her husband, Will Shakespeare. Hamnet is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

GUESTS:

• Rebecca Castellani: Co-founder of Quiet Corner Communications and the director of marketing at Washington Montessori School
• Taneisha Duggan: Director of arts, culture, and entertainment for the city of Hartford
• Tracy Wu Fastenberg: Associate vice president for development at Connecticut Children’s

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• Bonny Sweet Boy – Les Witches
• What Do the Simple Folk Do? – Camelot
• Main Title (from the HBO Series Game of Thrones) – Ramin Djawadi
• Ophelia – The Lumineers
• On the Nature of Daylight – Max Richter
• See You On The Radio – Grayson Hugh

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whistles have become a protest symbol, from the streets of Minnesota to the Grammys red carpet. This hour, we look at how whistles are being used by organizers across the country to alert communities about ICE presence. Plus, we discuss ancient whistles and talk about whistleblowers, why they step forward, and the costs of doing so.

GUESTS:

• Trevor Mitchell: Senior Metro Reporter for "MinnPost"
• Sean Hollister: Senior editor at "The Verge"
• Jessica MacLellan: Anthropological archaeologist interested in ritual, household archaeology, ceramics, and the development of complex societies in Mesoamerica. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wake Forest University
• Carl Elliott: Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book is The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• The Foggy Dew – Dicky Deegan
• Right By Your Side – Eurythmics
• Lonesome Whistle – Little Feat
• Crossing Over Into the Spirit World – Xavier Quijas Yxayaotl
• The Whistle Song – Frankie Knuckles
• Whistleblower – maryjo

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nobody likes termites. They get into the wood in our homes and can lead to infuriating and expensive repairs. What’s to like?

It turns out, there’s a lot to like about termites. Scientists study how they build their mounds for clues to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems, like mitigating the effects of drought, building colonies on Mars, and creating biofuels.

Plus, their ability to adapt to the harshest conditions over millions of years says a lot about them. Almost 90% of the microbes found in their guts are unique to the termite. Those same gut microbes are what make them so productive and, on the flip side, so destructive.

Lastly, some believe termites work with joy and have a soul. You be the judge.

GUESTS:

• Jennifer Dacey: An entomologist and a wildlife biologist and integrated pest management technician in the UConn Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture
• Lisa Margonelli: Author of Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology
• Mick Pearce: An architect

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, Lydia Brown, and Jonathan McNicol contributed to this show, which originally aired August 29, 2018.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On February 1, President Trump announced that The Kennedy Center would close for two years for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” (capitalization sic). Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott sees this as an existential threat to the Center.

And: New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman thinks everyone has been misunderstanding the Melania documentary from the get go. It’s less an actual movie, she says, and more the launch of the Melania luxury brand.

And finally: Don Glickman was a design professor. He had retired in the late 1990s, and he died last year at 94. And then some people started getting postcards from him — charming, amusing, perfectly Glickmanian postcards.

GUESTS:

• Vanessa Friedman: Fashion director and chief fashion critic of The New York Times
• Philip Kennicott: Senior art and architecture critic at The Washington Post
• Sydney Page: Staff reporter at The Washington Post, where she writes for The Optimist

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• Take Care of This House – Cynthia Erivo, Leonard Bernstein
• ALT Take Care of This House – Frederica von Stade, Leonard Bernstein
• Regrets – Ben Folds Five
• Two Hearts on a Post Card – Vance Dolan
• I Really Like You – Carly Rae Jepsen
• I Got My Brand on You – Muddy Waters, Otis Spann

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.