The Colin McEnroe Show

Most of the Western world is organized by alphabetical order, which is so much more than the 26 letters that make up the alphabet. Alphabetical order is an organizing principle that allows us to save, order, and access thousands of years of humankind’s most precious documents and ideas. Without it, we’d never know what came before us or how to pass on what’s with us. It’s u...

Just last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. The end of the world has been something humans have been preoccupied with for a very long time. This hour, we talk about how we imagine the world ending, and what it says about us. GUESTS:  Dorian Lynskey: Journalist and author of multiple books, most recently Everything Must Go: The Stories We...

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 Hartford’s Grammy winners in the jazz categories , Peacock’s Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music documentary, international news reporting vs....

In his book From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy , Scott Meslow lays out two ways to tell if a given movie is a rom-com. First, his own definition: “A romantic comedy is a movie where (1) the central plot is focused on at least one romantic love story; and (2) the goal is to make you laugh at least as much as the goal is to make you cry.”...

Occam’s razor states that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” This hour is all about Occam’s razor: where the principle came from, how it impacts science, its role in medicine, and how it shapes our daily lives. GUESTS: Kurt Andersen: Co-founder of Spy magazine, the host and co-creator of Studio 360 , and the author of  Fantasyland: How America Went H...

Zero is considered by many mathematicians to maybe be humanity’s greatest achievement. This hour, a look at  the strange and essential concept of the number zero and how the human brain deals with it . Plus: the trend toward zero-sugar and zero-calorie sodas. And: 0 (and 00) as a uniform number in sports. GUESTS: Emily Contois:  Associate professor of media studies at The Universit...

Crawford Hall at Yale. The Louis Micheels House in Westport. The Babbidge Library at UConn. Hotel Marcel in New Haven. Connecticut is dotted with stunning examples of brutalism, the divisively modernist and minimalist style of architecture. With Brady Corbet’s epic drama, The Brutalist , nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, we take a long look at brutalism. GUESTS: Bruce R...

Everyone has likely experienced some form of writer's block in their lives — when you sit down to write and the words just won't come. This hour we dive into the phenomenon and talk with writers about their experiences with it. What is writer's block, where does it come from, and how can you get past it? Plus, we take a look at the long history of writer's block, and the muses, goddesses, an...

Randy Newman has been nominated for 22 Academy Awards (he’s won twice), for 23 Grammy Awards (seven wins), and for three Primetime Emmy Awards (and he won all three). Bruce Springsteen has called him “our great master of American song and storytelling.” Jackson Browne says Randy Newman is “the foremost satirist of our times.” And the composer John Williams has called...

This hour, we look at our cultural fascination with dead bodies. What do we owe the dead? What can the dead teach us? What does a body represent to you? We talk to a death investigator who observes what the dead can teach us about living, a poet / mortician, who laments our growing estrangement from our dead, and a reporter who has investigated the large — and legal — market for body p...

This hour, philosopher Agnes Callard joins us to talk about her new book, Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life . GUEST:  Agnes Callard: Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Chicago. Her new book is Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life 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. And your calls have been interesting and surprising and amusing. This hour, the conversation winds around to the inauguration, our immigration system, Van Gogh, The Price Is Right , Klaus Schulze’s Kontinnum … Anything. (Seemingly) everything. These shows are fun for us, an...

We’re at a point where, for many of us, there has simply never been a popular culture in which Bob Dylan wasn’t a towering figure. And with the new Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown , getting awards nominations left and right, this hour we take a look at the Poet Laureate of Rock ’n’ Roll: Bob Dylan. GUESTS: Noah Baerman: A pianist, composer, and educator Fred Bals: Hosted t...

This hour we take a look at the history and evolution of chapters, and discuss how they impact our reading experiences. GUESTS:  Nicholas Dames: Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he studies the history and theory of the novel. His new book is The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century . He is also c...

In the century since Russia’s “Mad Monk” was poisoned, we’ve come to believe a lot of things: he was mystical, he was evil, he was the world’s greatest lover. This hour: Rasputin — the all-too-human peasant who found his way to friendship with the Romanovs and the comical, absurd version of him that just won’t die. Plus, a look at " The New Rasputins ." GU...

It feels like tourism hit a breaking point this past summer, with residents around Europe protesting visitors, new entrance and tourist fees popping up at famous spots, and even a net going up to block a popular view of Mt. Fuji. This hour, a philosopher makes the case against travel . Plus, we talk about how tourism is impacting destinations, like Bologna, Italy , and ways to travel differently....

This hour we take your calls about anything you want to talk about. 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 th...

Elvis left two legacies. Musically, he pulled several American musical traditions out of the shadows, braided them together, and made them mainstream. Personally, he created a far darker template for the way a musical celebrity could be devoured by the very fame he avidly sought. Recorded live in front of an audience — long before the pandemic — as part of  Colin’s Freshly S...

During the Inauguration in a few weeks, President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office. It's a practice that elected officials are taking part in across the country following the 2024 election. So what is the significance of this oath? This hour, we take a look at oaths, vows, and pledges. We'll discuss their history and their meaning, and explore the examples of marriage vows and the P...

While some people decide to abstain from alcohol for Dry January, we take a look at alcohol, and our relationship with it. Drinking alcohol has a number of negative impacts. But humans have been doing it for thousands of years and show no signs of stopping. This hour, a look at why we drink, why more people are moving towards sobriety through the “sober curious” movement, and the rise...

When you think of the Vikings, you probably picture a bearded man wearing a horned hat, pillaging on a Viking ship. But that's far from the whole story. This hour is all about the everyday lives of the Vikings with historian Eleanor Barraclough, from their homes and hair to their myths and music. GUEST:  Eleanor Barraclough: Historian, writer, and broadcaster based at Bath Spa University; her...

This hour we take your calls about anything you want to talk about. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is there some thing that EVERYBODY seems to like that you’re just not that into? Star Wars ? Game of Thrones ? Seinfeld ? The Beach Boys? Christopher Nolan? … Taylor Swift? Or what about some very current thing that seemingly everybody thinks is so interesting and cutting edge and exciting, but you just don’t like it? (For Colin, that very current thing is The Bear on TV.) What...

This hour we took your calls about anything you wanted to talk about. Join the conversation on  Facebook  and  Twitter . The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on  Apple Podcasts ,  Spotify ,  Google Podcasts ,  Stitcher , or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter , an email compendium of merrime...

We’ve put on a holiday special every year for the last decade. But this year, for the first time, we did it in front of a (pretty large!) audience. On the night of December 18, Colin got 10 performers together onstage, and they rocked their way through an 18-song setlist of holiday and holiday-adjacent classics. There were nine different vocalists, three different pianists. Some of these fol...