The Colin McEnroe Show

Last weekend, a little girl asked her father for help opening a can of beans. Rather than help her,  Bean Dad left his daughter to figure it out for herself . For six hours (supposedly). And tweeted about it. It was peak internet. Also: This will come as a shock (it probably won't), but Kim Kardashian is  rumored to be divorcing Kanye West . Or she's  rumored to be about to be divor...

President Trump has gotten away with bad behavior since long before he was elected to the presidency. When faced with an election loss that he couldn't change, he instigated his followers to fight for him. They obeyed his command. He may not be able to get out of the consequences of the actions they took on his behalf.  We talk about the implications of what happened yesterday. And we take yo...

As our show starts today, the U.S. Congress will begin the process of officially tallying the Electoral College votes in the 2020 elections for president and vice president. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received 306 votes, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence received 232 votes,  and this should be a pretty pro forma exercise. Should be. Ins...

Nietzsche called Richard Wagner "a volcanic eruption of the total undivided artistic capacity of nature itself," and Thomas Mann said he was "probably the greatest talent in the entire history of art." More than a thousand movies have Wagner on their soundtracks, including classic scenes from  Apocalypse Now ,  The Blues Brothers ,  Bugs Bunny cartoons , and  Charlie Chaplin ....

President Trump kept Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on the phone for an hour Saturday, using a combination of cajoling, lies, and threats to encourage him to  “find” enough votes  to overturn the election.   All 10 living former defense secretaries stressed in an  op-ed for the Washington Post  published yesterday that: “The time for q...

To round out the year, we round up the best jazz  of  the year. We've done this every year  for   at   least   the   last   seven   years . Here are our 2020 picks: "Kurinji" by Jen Allen featuring Kris Allen, Marty Jaffe, and Kush Abadey, from  Sifting Grace "The Sidewinder" by Artemis, from  Artemis "Dream Without Me" by Noah Baerman & F...

2020 was … not great. But, from a pop culture point of view, it wasn't so bad either. I mean, we got  the  Hamilton  movie ,  The Queen's Gambit , the final season of  Schitt's Creek ,  David Byrne's American Utopia , the  Borat sequel , " WAP ,"  I May Destroy You ,  Tiger King , two new  Taylor Swift  albums,  Ma Rainey's Black B...

We tend not to think much about that pat of butter we put on our morning toast, including how the store-bought sweet cream butter we're eating likely pales in comparison to the rich, nutty flavor of  the cultured butter not found in many stores. Nor, do we think about butter sculpture, butter bogs, pleasure dairies, or the dairymaids, those once respected and well-paid artisans and economic p...

Toward the end of every year since 2014, we've picked a day and put "Big Al" Anderson, Jim Chapdelaine, and Colin in a room together, sung some songs, told some stories, and wound up with some sort of a holiday special. The "in a room together" part of that is essential… and just not going to happen in 2020. So, in lieu of doing a new show with Al and Jim, this year we've gone through...

Primary tabs View(active tab)   Edit The Nose Hasn't Happened Yet: 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' And 'Tenet'By  JONATHAN MCNICOL   •  1 HOUR AGO The Colin McEnroe Show Share Tweet Email Chadwick Boseman, Colman Domingo, Viola Davis, Michael Potts, and Glynn Turman in 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.'NETFLIX, INC. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom  is George C. Wolfe's film adaptation o...

Kurt Andersen's last book,  Fantasyland , looks at America's "centuries-old weakness for the untrue and irrational, and its spontaneous and dangerous flowering since the 1960s" and how it got us where we are today. His new book,  Evil Geniuses , is a kind of sequel, a companion. It's a parallel history, really, that looks more closely at "the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy...

It could be months or years before the US government knows the full extent of last week's  sophisticated cyberattack  that targeted private tech and security companies and  federal agencies  like the Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration. President Trump dismissed the significance of the attack, tweeting that "everything was under co...

For decades, we didn't take television seriously. We saw it as ephemeral, as " chewing gum for the eyes ," as, literally, furniture. And then, around the turn of the century, things started to change. There was  The Sopranos .  The Wire . And, at the same time, shows like  Big Brother  and  The Amazing Race . For Emily Nussbaum, it was  Buffy the Vampire Slayer  ...

Native Americans exerted their  political power  in the 2020 election. A record-breaking six Native-Americans were elected to Congress and Native American votes  tipped the scales  in Arizona - which went blue for only the second time in seventy years. And U.S. Representative  Deb Haaland  (D-NM) is on President-elect Biden's short list to be Secretary of the Interior...

2001: A Space Odyssey .  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb .  A Clockwork Orange .  The Shining .  Full Metal Jacket .  Spartacus .  Eyes Wide Shut . This hour, a careful consideration of the filmmaker Steven Spielberg called "the best in history": Stanley Kubrick. GUESTS: James Hanley  - Co-founder of Cinestudio at Trinity Coll...

What is yodeling, anyway? Some consider it singing, some say it's an ululation, and still others consider it merely a means to herd animals. Whatever yodeling is, one's thing clear: Yodeling has been around for thousands of years and shows no signs of disappearing. This hour we speak with a musicologist, a DJ, and a professional singer about this age-old vocal practice. We'll trace yodeling's hist...

Each state's slate of electors will cast their votes for president and vice-president today. President Trump won't win today. Nor will he win in the final Congressional certification on January 6, despite talk among some Republican legislators about plans for some type of  electoral coup  during the final vote count.  Trump and his supporters are retreating deeper and deeper into an...

Mank  is David Fincher's feature film portrayal of the writing of  Citizen Kane . Gary Oldman plays the title character and  Kane  screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz.  Mank  hit Netflix last Friday, and it's already got lots of Oscar buzz. The Godfather: Part III  is a movie that was actually nominated for seven Oscars 30 years ago (it didn't win any), and it's t...

Are we on the verge of societal collapse? We tend to worry about the big explosive stuff like nuclear war, asteroids, and solar flares when we consider end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios. The reality is that most "fallen" civilizations gradually decline over many decades with a banality that can barely register.  We often remember the decline of civilizations as the fault of poor leader...

Seventeen AFC East championships. Nine Super Bowl appearances. Six Lombardi trophies. Twenty seasons pairing maybe the greatest head coach in the history of the NFL with maybe the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL. At the same time, there are words like "spygate." "Deflategate." And even "solicitation in Florida." This hour, a look at one of the all-time great (and all-time most divis...

In May, I discovered ( along with   the rest   of   the   internet ) a video on YouTube of a guy in his loft in Surrey, England ...  solving a Sudoku puzzle . It was intense, a roller-coaster ride, and, ultimately, sublime. Those are not words you might expect someone to use to describe watching a stranger solve a little number puzzle, but here we are. Since I found that v...

Roger Cohen, a former columnist and current Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, longs for  a return to decency  - a moral shift away from a Trump Presidency characterized by retreat, self-obsession, and a lack of respect for truth or decency. He welcomes the tenor he anticipates President-elect Biden will bring to the White House, but cautions against a return to the status quo. T...

Warner Bros. announced Thursday that all of its movies for all of 2021 will be available to stream on HBO Max the same day they debut in cinemas.  The movie theater chains see this as " doomsday for the theatrical experience ." And:  Three strange, metal monoliths having been discovered in recent weeks , one each in Utah, Romania, and California. The ones in Utah and Romania have since d...

The Trump presidency has exposed many vulnerabilities in the laws and norms that govern presidential behavior. His brazen disrespect demands action to protect against a future president who might build on Trump's playbook.  President Trump has flouted norms against conflicts-of-interest and courting foreign interference, abused his pardon power, threatened nuclear war, used the office to atta...

How we define what it means to be a hero depends a lot on the values shared by the group that's in power at any given time. We're seeing it today in the push and pull over the statues of men whose values no longer reflect the values of a changing community. And time tends to wash away the nuance and complexity of heroes that stand as a symbol of a prior generation. Yet, America loves its heroes, e...