The Colin McEnroe Show

At 10 years old, M. Leona Godin began losing her vision. Her experience with sight and blindness is detailed in her new book, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness . In it she also explores blindness throughout literature, and through key figures and inventions throughout history. This hour, we’re joined by Godin to discuss “the vast, dappled regions between se...

The Nose is off this week. In its place, America’s Greatest Living Film Critic, David Edelstein, joins Colin to talk about the year in movies and television and, well, everything. GUEST: David Edelstein - America’s Greatest Living Film Critic Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter . Colin McEnroe, Cat Pastor, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www...

With the New Britain Museum of American Art staging two concurrent exhibitions of Sol LeWitt’s prints , we listen back to our 2019 hour on the Hartford native, one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art. As an artist, LeWitt abandoned the long histories of painting and drawing and sculpture in favor of his Wall Drawings and Structures . And as an art figure, he abandoned the conve...

In their new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home , Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel argue that “whatever you were doing during the pandemic and its stilted aftermath, it was not working from home,” but instead “doing your job from home.” This hour: Charlie Warzel joins us for a conversation about remote work, our relationship t...

The 18-year wait is nearly over, and the fourth Matrix movie, The Matrix Resurrections , is almost here . This hour, we look back at the original film and its continued influence across the culture with bullet time and red pills and the “woah” meme and so much more. We take the question of whether we’re living in a simulation much more seriously than we did when The Matrix came o...

We’ve been doing these shows most weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. The last few times, we haven’t even started with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. And those shows have been fun. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour about anything at all . 888...

This week, The Nose might mind if you come to the table without a washup. The 1970s are back. Again. For the nth time. But maybe it’s different this time ? That said, the ’70s weren’t all that bad . And, the age-old question: Should movies have intermissions? And finally: The Power of the Dog is a Western written and directed by Jane Campion and based on the 1967 novel. It’...

Newsletters have become a great way for journalists and others to dive deep into less-covered topics and engage directly with their readers in ways not always possible in the mainstream media ecosystem. The platform  Substack  is making it easy for them. The subscription-based model  offers writers  more editorial control and the ability to offer free content and earn a sustain...

We’ve been doing these shows most weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. The last few times, we haven’t even started with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. And those shows have been fun. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour  about anything at all...

Former Senator Joe Lieberman believes the center of Congress is the best place from which to legislate. It’s the sweet spot for negotiation and compromise and making the deals that move the country forward. He thinks Congress would get more done if members would shift closer to the center and away from the fringe. But how do you bring legislators in today’s Congress together when they...

This hour, we talk about an assortment of topics. First, the omicron variant has been found in at least 16 states. We’ll learn about the latest with COVID-19 and this new variant. Then,  we’ll get tips for how to think critically . Finally,  why cute cat videos have been used to spread misinformation online . GUESTS: Dr. Leana Wen  - An emergency physician and public hea...

This week, The Nose was a frying pan. The Beatles: Get Back  is a three-part Disney+ docuseries produced and directed by Peter Jackson. It’s made from material originally captured for a 1970 documentary of the making of  Let It Be . Jackson has called it “a documentary about a documentary.” Originally conceived as a feature film,  The Beatles: Get Back  was ul...

From toilet paper shortages, to delayed shipping and low product inventories, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on our global supply chains. This hour we look at what’s going on, and how supply chain disruptions have impacted truck drivers and secondhand stores. Plus, why you don’t have to worry about maple syrup shortages any time soon, thanks to a Canadian maple syrup reserve. G...

We’ve been doing these shows most weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. The last few times, we haven’t even started with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. And those shows have been fun. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour about anything at all . 888...

In 1959, Soviet geneticist Dmitri Belyaev started an ambitious experiment to study the origins of domestication: he would attempt to breed domesticated wild foxes by selecting on their behavior alone, a process he imagined our ancestors carried out with dogs thousands of years before. This hour, a look at the history and progress of this still-ongoing experiment: What can it tell us about our anim...

Stephen Sondheim was, put simply, among the most important figures in the history of musical theater. His major works include West Side Story , Gypsy , A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum , Company , Follies , A Little Night Music , Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street , Merrily We Roll Along , Sunday in the Park with George , and Into the Woods . Sondheim won eight Tony Award...

Bob Dylan turned 80 years old in May. His first album, 1962’s Bob Dylan , is in its 60th year on record store shelves. We’re at a point where, for most of us, there has simply never been a popular culture in which Dylan wasn’t a towering figure whose influence seems to touch, well, everything. This hour, a look at Bob Dylan at 80. GUESTS: Noah Baerman - A pianist, composer, and e...

From New Kids on the Block to *NSYNC to One Direction, boy bands have been a staple of popular music for decades. This hour, a look at the history — and future — of boy bands. GUESTS: Brad Fischetti  - The surviving member of LFO Aja Romano - A culture staff writer for Vox Maria Sherman  - Author of Larger Than Life: A History of Boy Bands from NKOTB to BTS Join the conversat...

Joni Mitchell’s album Blue turned 50 this year. It may not have the artistic sophistication of her later albums, but Mitchell’s vulnerability endeared her to fans, if not early critics unused to such intimate storytelling. That was okay with Mitchell. She said her “music is not designed to grab instantly. It’s designed to wear for a lifetime, to hold up like a fine cloth .&...

This week, The Nose is lightning with the blam blams. First: Taylor Swift’s new 15-minute film for the new 10-minute version of her old five-minute song “All Too Well.” Swift played all of “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” in front of some of the film live on Saturday night . It is now the longest song anyone has ever performed on SNL . And then: The Problem with Jon...

It’s a smorgaspourri of disparate topics this hour. First: Who will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2024? President Biden says he’ll run, and being that he’s supposed to still be president in 2024, that would make sense. But not everyone believes him. So then you’d have to figure Vice President Harris, right? Well,  there are some questions about that theory...

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: Johnjoe McFadden  -   Author of “Life Is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe.” Kurt Andersen &nbs...

Between all we know to be true and all we know to be false lies a world of woo. “Woo-woo,” to use the full term, refers to ideas considered irrational or based on extremely flimsy evidence or that appeal to mysterious occult forces or powers. But who decides what’s woo-woo, and what gets accepted into the hallowed halls of scientific truth? The easy answer is that scientists deci...

We’ve been doing these shows most weeks where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. The last few times, we haven’t even started with the suggestion of a topic that your calls might, potentially, be about. And those shows have been fun. So we’re doing that again. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EST hour  about anything at all...

Dragons have captured our imagination going back to the Greek and Roman Empires when the skeletal bones of dinosaurs fed the myths we still believe today. And those myths show up in our most popular popular culture today – in the Harry Potter books and movies, in Tolkien’s Middle-earth books and movies, in George R. R. Martin’s Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion. This hour, a look at...