The Colin McEnroe Show

We'll be taking your calls during this hour -- and during more of our Monday shows moving forward. We'll still invite guests when we think it's important. Otherwise, we want to talk to you. Call us today at 888-720-9677 between 1 and 2 p.m. EDT. I'm not sure what you want to talk about today, but consider this: Nicholas Kristof, opinion writer for  The New York Times , complained that " Ameri...

So celebrities and their giant water bottles:  It's a thing , I guess. And then there's  the ABC Carpet couches email thread . Plus:  Netflix's dwindling, dying DVD library . And then:  Godzilla vs. Kong  is the fourth movie in Legendary's MonsterVerse. It's a direct sequel to both  Kong: Skull Island  and  Godzilla: King of the Monsters  (2019), and it...

John Dunton started the first advice column in 1690. He called it the  Athenian Mercury . John, a bookseller, and his four "experts" wanted to answer "all the most Nice and Curious Questions proposed by the Ingenious of Either Sex." One person wondered why they would trouble themselves "and the world with answering so many silly questions." But it was a hit. People have always been  draw...

Did you get enough sleep last night? If you're like most Americans,  probably not . You might feel pretty good after six hours of sleep and a strong cup of coffee, but the physical and mental toll of sleep deprivation is high. We become more impulsive and less mentally agile, and we make more mistakes. Long term, lack of sleep (six hours or less per night) can mess with mood, hormones, and im...

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 ,&nb...

A number of media critics gave  poor grades  to reporters questioning President Biden at his first formal press conference last week. Is there a disconnect between what the media cares about, such as the filibuster and the 2024 election, and what people care about? Also this hour: An Amazon executive set off a firestorm after boasting on Twitter that Amazon was the "Bernie Sanders of emp...

As with all weeks, it's been a strange week. First there were  the Cinnamon Toast Crunch shrimp tails . And then an enormous container ship  got stuck in the Suez Canal . And now there might be  another toilet paper shortage . Which would be bad for the Amazon drivers  who have to poop in their trucks . Maybe it's been an especially strange week. Separate from all that:  F...

On March 6,  Lou Ottens died  in Duizel in the Netherlands. He was 94. I don't think I had ever heard of Ottens before, but the news of his death quickly filled my social media feeds. Ottens, you see, invented the compact cassette in the 1960s. There's a certain romance to the cassette tape, right? They're  more fun than mp3s , for sure. And it turns out they're  having a littl...

After a year of pandemic, we're all itching to break from the restrictions of the pandemic. We want to travel and explore. It makes sense; we're hard-wired to explore. Our ancestors would not have survived absent the drive to seek food and safety from the dangers of the day. Safe and satiated, they later sought new lands to conquer and later still, to escape the constraints and cruelties of rapid...

Last week's  violence  at three spas in Georgia, followed a year of  escalating violence  against Asian Americans, some of it captured on videos that went viral. Despite visual evidence, New Yorker writer  Hua Hsu , writes that this current moment stresses the "in-between space Asian Americans inhabit." It's hard to prove bias when we lack a historical understanding of wha...

It might just be that the pandemic is starting to wind down. Advertisers are  anxious to act like it is . We're all maybe  anxious to get some hugs back into our lives , or maybe we'll all just always be anxious about hugs. And: How does this all work for  half-vaccinated couples ? Plus: The Nose sees some parallels in the  sexlessness of superheroes . And:  Promising Youn...

Writer and essayist Lauren Oyler, joins Colin to talk about  Fake Accounts , her new novel on internet culture. They'll also talk about literary fiction, cultural criticism, ghostwriting, and her staunch  defense of semicolons , among other things. Lauren Oyler will be at the Mark Twain House & Museum, Tuesday, March 23, 7-8 pm. The event is free. You can register at  marktwainh...

Every year around this time, there's a big-old college basketball tournament. So every* year around this time, for every* year that this show has been on the air, we've put together a big-old hour of radio about said big-old college basketball tournament. Until last year, of course. Last year, we were right in the middle of getting this show together when quarantines started, when we closed our bu...

On the one hand, obituaries are an amalgam of a bunch of different kinds of journalism: they're feature stories, they're profile pieces, they cover history, and they're hard news too. On the other hand, the subject is always... dead. This hour, a look at the art of obituaries and obituarists. GUESTS: Kate Cimini  - A reporter for  The Salinas Californian  and  CalMatters Vaness...

Jeopardy!  has been part of the fabric of American TV, in a couple different forms and across a couple different breaks, since 1964. It is the longest-running nationally-televised game show in U.S. television history. At the 2015 Emmys, John Oliver quipped, "The sun could burn out, humanity could flee to another galaxy, time as we know it could cease to exist, but Alex Trebek will still be th...

Criminal Minds .  Mindhunter  and  Manhunt .  Cracker  and  Profiler . Nearly the whole of the Hannibal Lecter universe:  Manhunter ,  The Silence of the Lambs ,  Hannibal  (the movie and the TV series),  Red Dragon , and now  Clarice . It seems we're fascinated by forensic psychology, by criminal profiling, by... mindhunting. This hour,...

The southeastern part of our state conjures images of casinos, submarines, and a blue-collar vibe that's just a little different from the rest of the state's image of leafy suburbs, clapboard homes, and town greens that show off Connecticut's colonial past. The southeastern corner has its own allure, challenging writers and artists mystified by this place that time left alone. It's quirky, a littl...

This hour, we talk about two Connecticut dance halls, each springing from the vision of two very different men who took their respective dance halls down very different paths. One's dream soared, bringing thousands of concert-goers to over 3,000 acts over an 11-year history. The other's dream stalled, his elaborate dance hall sitting idle for decades. Thrall Hall in East Windsor is a lot of things...

We reair Colin's 2016 interview with Patti Smith at the Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford when she was in town for a Mark Twain House event. The church was filled to the rafters with a capacity crowd of 700 people who remained enraptured by her presence throughout the entire evening. If you don't know her, you may come to love her after hearing this very funny and endearing interview.&nbs...

This Week (or so) in Reassessing Not-Necessarily-Current Bits of Culture: Seuss enterprises  pulled six mostly early Dr. Seuss books from future publication . Disney+  added content warnings to certain episodes of  The Muppet Show . Amazon  tweaked its app logo  to look less like, uh, Hitler. Turner Classic Movies  launched a new series called  Reframed Classics...

We produced our first show on masks in the spring of 2020. It was when most of us were isolated at home to sidestep the life-threatening illness we've come to call "COVID." The show was about how rapidly masks had become a statement of political identity. The intensity of the mask battles has begun to calm as we've acclimated to the pervasiveness of masks in our lives. Like them or not, they're he...

Over just six years, from 1954 to 1960, Alfred Hitchcock made four movies --  Rear Window  (1954),  Vertigo  (1958),  North by Northwest  (1959), and  Psycho  (1960) -- that are routinely mentioned among the very best movies ever made. It's maybe an unparalleled run in the history of cinema. And that's just those four movies. Hitchcock's filmography is full...

There's  a theory that ours isn't the only universe . That there are, actually, infinitely many universes. That there are, then, infinitely many yous. That there are infinitely many different yous reading infinitely many different versions of this show synopsis. That there are infinitely many universes that don't even bother to include you. Or this show synopsis. Or even reading. Also, there'...

The theme of  election fraud  ran through this weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference. We talk about how "The Big Lie" is becoming a way for Republican leaders to  rationalize the voter suppression  measures making their way through  state legislatures . Also this hour: In the short term, there seems to be a  mortality gap  between wealthier and poore...

On Thursday, Hasbro announced that its Mr. Potato Head brand  would drop the "Mr."  in a move toward inclusiveness. But they also made clear,  in a move toward not being yelled at by the internet , that the Mr. Potato Head character (and the Mrs. Potato Head character, for that matter) would continue. Also this week, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled  a new design for its mail t...