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The Nose: Meteorites, Broken Bridges, & Breakdowns Of Trust

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2002-15-2013.mp3

It seemed this week that we were living in a Jonathan Franzen novel -- or maybe a collaboration between Franzen and his long-departed buddy David Foster Wallace. A cruise ship so impaired that passengers spent days pooping in bags. A flurry of accusations back and forth between a great newspaper and the inventor of an electric car.

A screaming comes across the sky -- ok, that's Thomas Pynchon -- as a meteor bombs Russia's Urals just as we're being reassured by the scientific establishment that we have nothing to fear today in that regard. And then the latest installment of the Jonah Lehrer saga -- the story of America's hottest young journalist in a Miltonian free-fall from grace. Lehrer himself is a Franzen novel waiting to happen. And he's a poster boy for this moment when, more than ever, we're wading through multiple sources of factual authority, unsure about whom to trust. And that's where the Nose comes in.

You can join the conversation. E-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.

Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.

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