The Colin McEnroe Show

Semiotics is the study of sign process, which is to say: it's the science of the search for meaning. And then, part of the underlying premise of semiotics -- which just happens to be part of the underlying premise of  The Colin McEnroe Show , itself -- is that there's meaning... everywhere. Why do people smoke cigarettes even though everyone knows they're terribly harmful? Why do women wear t...

Alex Trebek’s imprint as the host of "Jeopardy" looms large over the show, making it hard for anyone else to live up to the impeccable standard he demanded during his 37 seasons as the show's iconic host. But more than a dozen guest hosts have tried, from big winner Ken Jennings to Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Who will the next host be and  what will the next iteration l...

Elon Musk will host tomorrow night's  Saturday Night Live . It is, if nothing else,  an odd choice . Speaking of choices,  Rolling Stone 's list of the  100 Best Sitcoms of All Time  is out this week. Finally,  This Is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist  is a four-part Netflix docuseries about the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Bosto...

Numbers are so fundamental to our understanding of the world around us that we maybe tend to think of them as an intrinsic  part  of the world around us. But they aren't. Humans invented numbers just as much as we invented all of language. This hour, we look at the anthropological, psychological, and linguistical ramifications of the concept of numbers. And we look at one philosophical q...

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 sustainable salary at a time wh...

to help. They chose to be nurses at a time when the risk to their own health was never greater. Why are some people willing to run toward the fire when others are running away from it? Most of us fall somewhere on a spectrum of altruistic behavior. We might adopt a stray pet, donate a liter of blood, or check on an older neighbor. Others pursue a career based on helping others, and, at the extreme...

Aaron Rodgers leaked his  dissatisfaction  with the Green Bay Packers just before last week's NFL opening round. The  NFL draft  drew about 2 million people and has become something of a cultural event. In essence, he made himself the story within the story. So, what's going on with Aaron Rodgers? Does he have a future with the Packers, another NFL team, or will he head to&nbsp...

As we were preparing for  our show on underdogs , I kept saying that we shouldn’t overlook the fact that, often, to be an underdog in the first place, you have to be relatively bad at the thing you’re an underdog about. The more we talked about it, the more I found myself making the case that losers and losing are fascinating. And they are. There’s  a whole podcast abou...

Seriously: a show about towels. There's  the history of towels ,  towels in Christianity ,  Terrible Towels ,  Towel Day . Oh, and there are  actual towels  too. Because when has a bad idea ever stopped us before? GUESTS: Marcel Danesi  - The author of  Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics John Dankosky  ...

We're so caught up in  fetishizing (mostly) female breasts  in film, literature,  art , and in the  anatomy-defying breasts of comic book heroines , that we overlook the breast as a vital source of food and and as a body part vulnerable to cancer, including  young women  under forty. How often should we get that  mammogram ? To breastfeed - or not? Last...

No one likes a cloudy sky. A cloud on the horizon is seen as a harbinger of doom. We feel like clouds need to have silver linings. But here's our thesis: Clouds are unfairly maligned. Consider this: From almost any vantage point (literally -- any vantage point in the universe), clouds are planet Earth's defining characteristic. They're what changes, what moves. They're what's  going on  ...

André Gregory has directed and acted in the theater for more than 50 years. He has appeared in a number of movies, including Martin Scorsese's  The Last Temptation of Christ , Woody Allen's  Celebrity , Brian De Palma's  The Bonfire of the Vanities , Peter Weir's  The Mosquito Coast , and many more. He has starred in three movies about the theater with the playwright, ac...

We're not the same people today that we were before covid upended our lives last spring. We found ways to survive a deadly and invisible virus, even as it threatened our survival. We learned to  work from home ,  sew masks,   Zoom , and  create new words  to describe our unique situation. And scientists  developed vaccines  so we could adapt faster than the virus...

Hartford native Sol LeWitt was one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art. As an artist, he 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 conventions of celebrity and resisted ever even having his picture taken. This hour, a look at Connecticut's own Sol LeWitt. G...

Americans like to believe we live in a meritocracy but the odds are stacked in favor of the already lucky and fortunate. We congratulate the "winners" and humiliate the "losers," who are told to better themselves or carry the burden of their failure.  The 2016 election of Donald Trump was decades in the making.  Like other populist leaders around the world, Trump gave voice to the resent...

The jury will begin deliberations later today on whether George Floyd's death was caused by his inability to breathe under the weight of Derek Chauvin. Breathing is so automatic that we don't think about it until lung disease, dirty air, poor breathing habits and, now,  COVID-19  and  police brutality  make it hard to do. We take breathing for granted; we don't breathe dee...

Taylor Swift has announced plans to re-record six of her previous albums in order to own master recordings of her older catalogue.  Fearless (Taylor’s Version) , which came out last Friday, is the first of these six re-recordings to be released. Fittingly, this would appear to be the sixth  Nose   that   is   substantively   about  Taylor Swift. And: If you...

New York Times  columnist Nicholas Kristof recently 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...

Popeye .  The World According to Garp .  Good Morning, Vietnam .  Dead Poets Society .  Awakenings .  The Fisher King .  Aladdin .  Mrs. Doubtfire .  Jumanji .  The Birdcage .  Good Will Hunting .  What Dreams May Come .  One Hour Photo .  Death to Smoochy .  Insomnia .  Night at the Museum . And that's just a super-abbrevi...

During his remarkable career with the Boston Red Sox, Ted Williams earned many nicknames: The Kid, The Splendid Splinter, Teddy Ballgame... but the only nickname that he ever wanted was "the greatest hitter who ever lived." And maybe he really was?  He's baseball's all-time leader in on-base percentage , and he's second behind only Babe Ruth in both  slugging  and  on-base plus...

Fox News broadcast the first episode of Greg Gutfeld's new late-night show,  Gutfeld! , earlier this month. They're betting that Gutfeld can turn his talk show format into a successful late-night comedy show for conservatives. The problem is that conservatives don't do political satire any better than liberals do opinion talk radio. Dannagal Young  believes  that opinion talk is pol...

At Connecticut Public, there's a smallish corner conference room thing that we think of as The Crying Room. I, personally, haven't ever seen anyone cry in there, but I've had my suspicions. In any case, where people go to cry is part of  the essential geography of the modern office . On the other hand,  do we even have offices anymore ? And:  Hemingway  is a three-part PBS docu...

Joni Mitchell's album  Blue   turns 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 cl...

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 hit -- as part of Colin's  Freshly Squeezed seri...

humor = tragedy + time OK, but then the logical next question is: How much time? If it's OK, at this point, to joke about, say, The Spanish Inquisition ... what about, for instance,  the Holocaust ? Or  AIDS ?  September 11th ? The  #MeToo movement ? ...Derek Chauvin? There's a line there somewhere, right? Or are some topics just never going to be funny? GUESTS: Mike Bent &nbsp...