The Colin McEnroe Show

Almost everybody has a favorite donut - even if you don't eat a lot of donuts. It's not so much about the donut as it is about how donuts bring people together - to celebrate, to mourn, to share. Donuts have been part of cultures around the world for more than a thousand years, first as a festival special-occasion food, later as an everyday treat.  Later still, as a "weapon" in World War I. T...

Almost everybody has a favorite donut - even if you don't eat a lot of donuts. It's not so much about the donut as it is about how donuts bring people together - to celebrate, to mourn, to share. Donuts have been part of cultures around the world for more than a thousand years, first as a festival special-occasion food, later as an everyday treat.  Later still, as a "weapon" in World War I. T...

We are still living in two different realities. President Trump lost the election but  still can't concede  or admit it, and a high percentage of Republicans  say they doubt  the results -  even though courts have found  no evidence  to support their claims of fraud.  Meanwhile, President-Elect Joe Biden is  moving forward  with his transition - in...

Last week, President Obama  twittered a list of "memorable songs"  from his administration. The list was, let's just say, not necessarily well received. Vaguely relatedly: Incoming secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken…  has his own "wonk rock" tunes up on Spotify ? And:  The Liberator  is a sort of animated, four-part Netflix miniseries that tells the story of...

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 about political candid...

We're almost three weeks past Election Day. Yet, President Trump and his evolving legal team continue to spew conspiracy theories intended to delegitimize the voting process, sow confusion, and delay the transition of power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden.  Meanwhile, most Senate Republicans remain silent and Trump's most fervent supporters ignore our post-election reality in favor of c...

A hard-boiled private eye, a glamorous blond, and a hapless drifter all sit at a bar on the seamy side of town. It's night, the streets are wet, the shadows are long. They each nurse a drink to the notes of a mournful saxophone and a lonely piano. Smoke from the cigarettes swirls in the darkness. We all know classic noir when we see it and hear it and read it; yet, we don't really know how to defi...

Many of the poll results that drove headlines this election season  missed the mark , even after pollsters spent the previous four years  correcting  for the errors of 2016. They shouldn't feel too bad. Even George Gallup  got it wrong . But Gallup had it easier. Almost ninety percent of people answered polls in his day. Today, about six percent of people answer polls - and the...

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...

The number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 is rising in  almost every state . America averaged over 100,000 new cases every day over the last seven days and 1,000 deaths every day over the same period. The positivity rate is more than 50 percent in some states,  straining hospital systems and front line staff.  Have we normalized the pandemic to the point where we're no long...

t's been eight days since Election Day. It's been four days since Joe Biden was projected to become President-elect Joe Biden. But we've still got  the secretary of state saying , "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration." We've still got  any number of lawsuits flailing their way through the courts  in various states. Are we really going to reject democra...

Benedict Arnold's reputation as a traitor instead of a skilled warrior and confidante of George Washington has become accepted history in the minds of many Americans living hundreds of years removed from our founding. But that's too simple a story.   The Revolution was a chaotic time. Congress was in constant battle with the military and feelings ran high over whether power should r...

The world  has an Alex Trebek-shaped hole  in it. Which raises a question:  Who should fill said hole? Billie Eilish has  a new single  out this week, which got The Nose thinking about her now-in-limbo  James Bond theme song , which got The Nose thinking about James Bond theme songs in general. And:  Ted Lasso  is a half-hour comedy series on AppleTV+. It st...

On the surface, a flag is a piece of cloth with pretty colors and designs. That's the thing with flags. They're often judged on their aesthetics, but their power lies in how well their design captures the culture, religion, politics, and history of a place and its people.  We have flags for everything - nations, states, cities, sports teams, schools, micronations -  you can even mak...

On most Mondays, we  scramble  around trying to put together a show reacting to the weekend's news. But being that  nothing much  happened over this weekend, we decided just to take your calls this hour. 860-275-7266. Call in and talk to Colin about how you're feeling at the start of this new day, this new week -- this new era. Join the conversation on  Facebook  and&...

Laszlo Ratesic is a nineteen-year veteran of the Speculative Service. He lives in the Golden State, the only place left in what was once America. Laszlo's job is to bring the worst criminals to justice, those who tell lies. In his new novel, Ben Winters  creates a world  which might sound Eden-esque in our era of misinformation.      It's getting more difficult to dis...

Since nothing has really been going on lately, we figured we'd do an hour about the week in pop culture, as usual. The Nose is sad  to see Sean Connery go . But it's glad  to see John Mulaney on  SNL  again . And:  The Queen's Gambit  is Netflix's new limited series adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel of the same name. Some other stuff that happened this week, give o...

The Trump campaign  threatened legal challenges  Wednesday, to force four states to stop counting ballots after Joe Biden's wins in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin narrowed the President's path to reelection. How bad must an American president behave before a majority of voters repudiate him for his actions?  We want to hear from you. How are you coping with this c...

The one thing we knew for sure was that by the time we got to today, yesterday would be over. And it is. And  we don't quite know what actually happened yet . This hour, we look at today and start to think about tomorrow... and the rest of the week... and maybe the weeks after that. GUESTS: David Folkenflik  - NPR's media correspondent Michael Lynch  - Professor of philosophy and di...

The Colin McEnroe Show has an Election Day tradition of celebrating voters by inviting "citizen observers" from around the state to share their experience with voting. An ongoing pandemic and tensions stemming from a deeply divided electorate make this a year like no other. People nationwide are working hard to make sure their vote is counted. They're voting early, they're waiting hours in line, a...

Most of us are approaching Election Day with a mix of excitement, hope, and fear, as we live with surging numbers of coronavirus cases, threats of civil unrest, and uncertainty over when the election will be decided -- and who will get to decide. We want to hear from you.  Call us at 888-720-9677 or 888-720-WNPR to share your hopes and concerns about Election Day and for a post-election Ameri...

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan  (on Amazon Prime) is a sequel to 2006's  Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan . Sacha Baron Cohen returns as the titular character. And:  The Trial of the Chicago 7  (on Netflix) is Aaron Sorkin's film de...

A lot of people are wondering if it's time to look at " court packing ," and other  court reforms , to address judiciary dysfunction that we can see playing out during this election and in the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.  Look at what's happening with voting rights. The Supreme Court had been asked to intervene in several state decisions that would allow ballots...

It's our annual Halloween special! For this year, the script kind of wrote itself. We look at the way our current, actual horror is likely to affect our future fictional horror through the lens of the genre's past distinct historical eras . Plus: A new study that seems to say that  horror fans were better prepared for the pandemic  than the wimpy rest of us were. And: Every year on this...

We wake up to coffee from a pod, listen to music through our EarPods from our iPods, drive our Smart cars and Fiats and other increasingly pod-shaped vehicles, wash our clothes using  Tide pods , and while we wait for the clothes to dry, we listen to our  favorite podcast  through our AirPods from our HomePod. Sound about right? What is it about pods that we're so drawn to? And why...