Arts and Culture

Animal rights activists have named this cat William Curry, after Connecticut's beloved former comptroller and gubernatorial candidate.

Here is what we know about it, via Julie Lewin of the National Institute For Animal Advocacy:

Steve Rushin is fearful of robots. First they replaced his father's pin-setting job. Now they're coming for him.

An inspiring collection of kosher recipes-from the simple to the sublime-all created with the slow cooker.

In Jewish Slow Cooker Recipes, the encore to her classic book, Jewish Cooking for All Seasons, Laura Frankel, a respected kosher chef and mother of three teenagers, shares more than 120 easy, delicious recipes for everyday and holiday meals-- all conveniently prepared in the slow cooker-a staple of Sabbath cooking which Frankel affectionately calls her "Shabbat miracle machine."

In this delicious collection, you'll find

Finally, Colin and David Edelstein agree on something - Winter's Bone for Best Picture!

America's Greatest Living Film Critic knows his movies. We talked with him about the surprises in the 2010 Oscar nominations and which awards he thinks are a lock. 

Edelstein also dropped some references to a few really interesting movies, a few of which you can find on the sidebar.

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra has named Carolyn Kuan its new music director.

Kuan visited our studios last year when she was touring Hartford as a candidate. She's the 10th music director for the HSO and the first woman to hold the position.

She sat down with us again to talk about her vision for the HSO's future. Kuan gave her thoughts on music, Mozart, symphonic performance and how she plans to make the HSO more accessible to patrons increasingly distracted by digital white noise.

Yann Beaullan’s mother is Jewish; his father is Cambodian. He grew up listening to Buddhist chants. On Sunday he was worshiping in Wooster Square—to the strains of alto saxes offering Coltranesque riffs on the Christian hymn “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”

Beaullan has joined what might be called a “happening” new phenomenon in the pews: a weekly jazz-style eucharist that is transforming St. James and St. Paul’s from one of the “frozen chosen” Episcopal churches in town to one of the coolest places to worship in New Haven.

I grew up in an environment where it was difficult for me to be a snob even if I wanted to.

This week on The Needle Drop, we've got oddball garage rock from Fergus & Geronimo, and some pop rock on the straight and narrow with Smith Westerns.

We're also serving up a track review from Tennis' new album, Cape Dory; plus, some Swedish metal that looks to the past on Ghost's Opus Eponymous.

In The Liar in Your Life, psychology professor Robert Feldman, one of the world's leading authorities on deception, draws on his immense body of knowledge to give fresh insights into how and why we lie, how our culture has become increasingly tolerant of deception, the cost it exacts on us, and what to do about it. His work is at once surprising and sobering, full of corrections for common myths and explanations of pervasive oversimplifications. 

Connecticut is well-known for its role in the mass-production of firearms through the genius of 19th Century pioneers like Eli Whitney, Simeon North and Samuel Colt. But what came before the Industrial Revolution made its mark? Through the 18th century Connecticut gunsmiths like Benoni Hills of Goshen produced superb fowling long-barreled hunting guns (known as fowling pieces) that served their owners well in peace and in war. These early gunsmiths produced their weapons one at a time, mirroring the craft tradition found in furniture-, clock- and silver-making.

The Town of Enfield seems intent on teaching a living class in First Amendment issues.

Last spring the town wound up in federal court over its plan to hold graduation exercises in a mega-church.

Now Enfield is back in the headlines after the town council majority threatened the town library director with defunding if he went forward with a scheduled showing of the Michael Moore movie "Sicko."

We planning our shows and then having to adjust them based on sudden political developments. Today, however, our planned show is about narcissism, and it's pretty easy to incorporate politics into that.

While he was working on a book called "The Narcisism Epidemic," researcher Keith Campbell, one our guests today, started getting calls from friends and relatives who had, essentially, new narcissist  sightings.

My favorite was an SUV, parked in a no parking zone, facing the wrong way, blocking a stop sign, and wearing a bumper sticker that said "I heart Me."

Recently a compilation came out covering 50 years of African music, an 18 CD compilation of 185 songs.  Many of these tracks crossed borders and helped build a new global awareness of Africa.  

Fleurette King is the director of the Rainbow Center at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. The mission of the Rainbow Center is to serve the diversity of the UConn Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, and Allied community and to provide resources and services to the wider community of students, faculty, staff, and local residents.

How do we know what we know about the daily lives of people in the 18th and 19th centuries? Primarily through their diaries and letters, which make up a large proportion of the research materials at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Women and girls, particularly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, spent a great deal of time either making textiles or sewing textiles to make clothing or utilitarian objects. For example, in May 1784, eighteen year-old Hannah Hadassah Smith wrote in her diary (Ms 1009):

This weekend, anybody famous who isn't on the Mall with John Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be in Connecticut instead. Or maybe both places at once. Glenn Beck will be in West Hartford. Barack Obama will go through Bridgeport. And Bill Clinton will visit the University of Hartford.

Faith and friends talk about the books they've read, and would recommend, in all categories.

To see a list of the books discussed go to R.J. Julia.