The Colin McEnroe Show

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a column proclaiming that "America Is Not Made for People Who Pee." It hit a nerve. People responded with stories that all seemed to agree with him. So, why don't we complain about locked doors, long lines (for women), or the lack of a public toilet where one should be? Lezlie Lowe might say that we don't like to talk about bodily functions that are...

This hour we talk about the history of the Second Red Scare, a period also known as McCarthyism. We learn about why the Scare took off in the United States, its impact, and how it eventually fizzled out. Plus, we’ll look at the parallels and throughlines between that time period and our current moment. And, a look at how the Second Red Scare impacted Hollywood, and how it, in turn, was refle...

This hour we took your calls about anything you wanted to talk about. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Belushi, John Candy, Rick Moranis. Animal House , The Blues Brothers , Beverly Hills Cop , Caddyshack , The Jerk , Ghost Busters , ¡Three Amigos! , Funny Farm , Spaceballs , Stripes . We maybe didn’t properly appreciate it at the time, but the 1980s were one of the most fertile periods ever for screen comedies and screen comedi...

You know Michael Schur from the shows he’s created, like The Good Place , Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine . This hour we talk with Schur about his book, How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question . Through the conversation we discuss moral philosophy, and big moral questions like “should you return your shopping cart to the cart corral?” GUEST: Mich...

Jane Austen completed six full-length novels. And today, 250 years after her birth, those novels are all still present in our culture. This hour, a look at Austen’s life and work, the world of Janeites, and the many film and television adaptations of her work. GUESTS: Devoney Looser: Author of  The Making of Jane Austen  and  Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters,...

Finally, baseball is back! This hour, a look at all the fun, weird, interesting storylines in this new season — including, yes, the so-called torpedo bats . Plus: Is Aaron Judge the best right-handed hitter … ever? Is Shohei Ohtani the best baseball player … ever? How the A’s lost their Oakland. How the Rays lost their ballpark. The future of umpires and umpiring …...

This hour we took your calls about anything you wanted to talk about. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s something kind of special about the experience of a really great, really bad movie. Think Red Dawn or Under Siege . Snakes on a Plane or Batman & Robin . Independence Day is nearly perfect and so rewatchable — and also terrible. This hour, a Nose-ish look at the joy of bad movies. GUESTS: Theresa Cramer: A freelance writer and editor and the co-founder of Quiet Corner Commu...

Why do we dance? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Dancing has served a multitude of functions for various cultures throughout history, and there is even evidence to suggest that we, as a species, are biologically hard-wired to dance. Whether it’s for social, spiritual, or even psychological reasons (yes, dance therapy is a thing), humans have been dancing since the very b...

This hour, a look at why, more than half a century after they first came walking down the street, we’re still bananas for The Monkees. GUESTS: Mark Rozzo: Contributing editor at Vanity Fair , where he published “ The Most Influential Pop-Rock Band Ever? The Monkees! ” Andrew Sandoval: Manager of The Monkees from 2011 to 2021 and host of the podcast  Come to the Sunshine Rosa...

From fueling some of mankind's most violent events to inspiring your daughter's latest pop star obsession, mania has become an indispensable force in shaping our collective story. This hour we explore a centuries-long flower frenzy and modern-day fanaticism to uncover why we are so drawn to being "totally obsessed." GUESTS:  Daniel Durbin:  Professor of Communication and Director of the...

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 Sen. Chris Murphy’s New Yorker interview , Stephen Graham and Adolescence and A Thousand Blows , whether John Donne and William Shakespeare knew each other, whether you sho...

Adolescence is a four-part Netflix limited series crime drama. It is written and created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, who also stars. Adolescence “tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school.” Each hour-long (ish) episode is told in real time in one shot over...

B. F. Skinner thought pigeons were so smart they could be used to guide missiles during World War II. He proposed a system in which pigeons would essentially pilot a missile. Skinner said pigeons could be trained to peck at a screen to adjust the trajectory of the missile toward its target. Project Pigeon was funded but never used. In 2013, New York conceptual artist Duke Reilly trained half his f...

Historian Timothy Snyder is the author of the books  On Freedom  and  On Tyranny . He joins us this hour to talk about the latest in our country, and what we can learn from history. GUEST:  Timothy Snyder:  Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is the author of bo...

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 and co-author of the book This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You Az...

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. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 or whatever. This hour we do the opposite thing: a show not about a specific...

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 mysteries of Connecticut distant past. But we're also going to talk about the ecosystem of the trails and...

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 do at all. But we’re doing it anyway. *It’s our 15th one of these unless it isn’...

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 Kern: Associate Professor of History at The University of Akron. He is co-author of Ohio: A History...

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 Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,&nbsp...

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: A Hollywood Reporter piece worries that the recency bias in Netflix’s catalog &mdas...

“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 translation when the narrator says, “The stranges...