The Colin McEnroe Show

Punk rock’s been around for a good half a century, but we’ve never devoted a show to it. This hour, a deep dive into punk’s past and present. GUESTS:  Legs McNeil: Co-founder of PUNK Magazine and co-author of Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Kelefa Sanneh: Author of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres and a staff writer at The New Yorker Amy Wappel and Ben S...

Should people use the Oxford comma? Is there a correct number of exclamation points per email? If someone ends a casual text with a period, does that mean they’re mad at you? This hour: punctuation and how we use it. We talk about the history of punctuation marks, timeless punctuation debates, and how writing for texts and emails has changed the way we use punctuation. GUESTS: Raquel Benedict: Cla...

This week’s Nose is ’bout to explode, take off this load. “ Break My Soul ” is the lead single from Beyoncé’s forthcoming album, Renaissance . The song dropped on Monday, and by the end of the week, its “You won’t break my soul” repeated refrain has taken on a whole new weight. And: The actor Chris Pratt is taking his 9-year-old son on a 10-day camping trip. During an appearance on the Smartless p...

Translators help open up our worlds by bringing us stories from around the globe. But often they’re not given very much credit for their work. This hour, the art of translation. Plus, a look at the challenges of translating movies and TV shows through subtitles and dubbing for international audiences. GUESTS: Jennifer Croft: Writer and translator and the winner of the 2018 Booker International Pri...

We’ve been doing these shows a lot of weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. We don’t even, anymore, start with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. We’ve had fun with these shows, and you seem to like them too. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EDT hour about anything at all.  888–7...

This week’s Nose gave an idiot a machete. Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a hybrid live-action and animated sequel to and reboot of the 1989 Disney Channel series. It’s a metafictional comedy that might really be less for kids and more for their parents. The Lonely Island production stars Andy Samberg, John Mulaney, KiKi Layne, and many others. Old Enough! is a reality TV show th...

Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the Watergate burglary. This hour, we look back at the events surrounding Watergate, discuss how we remember them, and explore the parallels between that event and the January 6 hearings. Plus, a look at the making, and the legacy, of the 1976 film All The President’s Men . GUESTS: Garrett Graff : Author of Watergate: A New History Ann Hornaday: The Washington...

This hour, we investigate what it means to be a good citizen today. What are our responsibilities? What do we owe each other? GUESTS: Tamar Gendler: Professor of philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale University Azar Nafisi: Author of six books, including  Reading Lolita in Tehran ; her newest is  Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of...

For a period of about 50 years, many of America’s top cartoonists and illustrators lived within a stone’s throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut. Comic strips and gag cartoons read by hundreds of millions were created in this tight-knit group — Prince Valiant , Superman , Beetle Bailey , Hägar the Horrible , Hi and Lois , Nancy , The Wizard of Id , Fa...

This week’s Nose is one bubble floating in the cosmic foam of existence. Everything Everywhere All at Once is the second feature film written and directed by Daniels (the filmmaking duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert). New York Times film critic A.O. Scott called it a “swirl of genre anarchy.” It has recently become indie auteur studio A24’s highest-grossing release to date....

This hour, our new favorite way to communicate: emoji. We look at how emoji are created and how they change meaning and talk to the creator of Emojiland: The Musical . GUESTS: Keith Broni: Editor-in-chief of  Emojipedia Keith Harrison Dworkin: Composer and creator of Emojiland: The Musical Alex King: Associate professor of philosophy at Simon Fraser University and editor-in-chief of  Aesthetics fo...

We’ve   done   this   show   every   year  ( except  2012)  since   2011 . (We maybe even did it in 2010. We probably did.) It’s a bit of a tradition. It’s a tradition that… makes some people angry, we realize. And that has a lot to do with how we define the term ‘song of the summer.’ We use  the Amanda Dobbins...

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 latest project, 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...

We’ve been doing these shows a lot of weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. We don’t even, anymore, start with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. We’ve had fun with these shows, and you seem to like them too. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EDT hour...

This week’s Nose thinks the less it says, the less it gives away. But, really, it’s the opposite. Obi-Wan Kenobi  is a six-part Disney+ limited series. It’s mostly set 10 years after the events of  Revenge of the Sith , with the Empire in power and Kenobi in exile on Tatooine. Three episodes are available so far. And: A  recent Reddit thread  on the ways diffe...

Humans have long been interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This hour, a look at why that interest has persisted. Plus, we talk to a scientist who is looking for extraterrestrial life and a linguist who is preparing in case we ever receive communications from extraterrestrials. GUESTS: Kate Dorsch: Historian, philosopher of science, and the associate director of the philosophy, p...

When was the last time you had fun? I mean the kind of fun where you lost track of time, you didn’t care what others were thinking of you, and you felt connected to the people you were having fun with. We all know what fun feels like, so why don’t we make time for it? We tend to think of fun as a side dish, something to eat if you’re not too full. That’s wrong. Fun should b...

Touch, grip, read, dance, gesture — what can't they do? Our fingers are so vital to our everyday life, sometimes it seems they have minds of their own. In this hour, we talk about the hidden language of finger gestures, the future of Braille, and the joys and challenges of animating fingers for DreamWorks. GUESTS: Kensy Cooperrider: Cognitive scientist, writer, and host of the podcast M...

This week’s Nose is the first one to say it’s a great country, but it’s a strange culture. George Carlin’s American Dream  is a new, two-part, nearly-four-hour HBO documentary directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio. At 225 minutes, it actually runs 45 minutes shorter than Apatow’s previous HBO doc,  The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling . And:  Brig...

You probably know when you’re feeling happy, sad, or angry. But our range of emotions stretch beyond the language we have for them. This hour, we learn what emotions are and give names to ones you’ve probably felt without ever having had a word for them. GUESTS: Edgar Gerrard Hughes: The editor of  How Do You Feel? A Spectacular Compendium of Ideas, Interactive Games, Provocations...

There’s something almost romantic about airships. The image of a giant, floating aircraft feels both nostalgic and futuristic. In the early 20th century, airships were on the leading edge of aviation; today, they mostly live on in the domain of steampunk art and speculative fiction. But a number of companies are betting they can bring airships out of the history books and into modern real-wo...

This hour, we’re joined by Kelefa Sanneh, author of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres . We talk about music genres and look back at the history of music. GUESTS: Kelefa Sanneh: Staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Po...

On the one hand, calling something “medieval” carries with it negative connotations of outdated times. But lately there has almost been a nostalgia for life in the Middle Ages. This hour, we look at what life was really like in that time period and why we remember it the way we do. Plus, a look at the medieval origin of environmental anxiety and student debt. GUESTS: Jenny Adams : Associate profes...

Your strength breaks men’s bones. This week’s Nose has the cunning to break their minds. We Own This City  is a six-part HBO miniseries developed by David Simon and George Pelecanos and based on the book by  Baltimore Sun  reporter Justin Fenton. It chronicles the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force and corruption within and around it. Simon  to...

On the long timeline of long-distance communication technology that starts with the telegraph and leads all the way to the iPhone and beyond, there’s a particular, once-ubiquitous device that seems to have left an indelible mark on the culture while also disappearing nearly completely from it. This hour, the history and present? (and future??) of the fax machine. GUESTS: Jonathan Coopersmith...