The Colin McEnroe Show

Maria Konnikova, best-selling New York Times author and a regular contributor to The New Yorker , has long been interested in understanding the balance between skill and luck. How much of her life could she take credit for and how much was the luck of her draw? So, she took a year away from work to become a professional poker player.  What better way to learn how skill and luck play out in li...

Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Belushi, John Candy, Rick Moranis. Animal House ,  The Blues Brothers ,  Beverly Hills Cop ,  Caddyshack ,  The Jerk ,  Ghost Busters ,  ¡Three Amigos! ,  Funny Farm ,  Spaceballs ,  Stripes . We maybe didn't properly appreciate it at the time, but the 1980s were one of the most fertile pe...

Your sex life doesn't have to suffer just because you're cooped up at home every day. Researchers say that sex is a healthy way to calm the anxiety of pandemic, even if you live alone.  Virtual dating ,  masturbation , and  coronavirus-related porn  are more popular than ever.   Some sex researchers think our desire for sex in the middle of a pandemic is  one way we c...

There are just over 10 million cases of coronavirus globally and almost 500,000 deaths. U.S. deaths recently rose to 125,000. Yet, the Trump Administration continues to downplay the seriousness of this pandemic. The White House Coronavirus Task Force met Friday for the first time in two months, with Vice-President Pence acknowledging  the surge  in several states but insisting, " We're i...

The movie musical died   a long, slow death   a long time ago . Right? Well, except that there's  La La Land . And  Moana . And  The Greatest Showman  and  A Star Is Born  and  Mary Poppins Returns . Oh, and  Bohemian Rhapsody  and  Rocketman . And  Frozen II  and  The Lion King  and  Aladdin . Those are just from...

It's nice to meet you! How do you like it here in Connecticut?  Small talk is both the bane of our existence and essential in our existential quest to understand our place in the world. Whether you like it or hate it may depend, in part, on whether you like speech that establishes and maintains relationships or speech that provides information.  We talk to a humorist, writing teacher, me...

Nobody likes termites. They get into the wood in our homes and can lead to infuriating and expensive repairs. What's to like? It turns out, there's a lot to like termites. Scientists study how they build their mounds for clues to solving some of the world's most pressing problems, like mitigating the effects of drought, building colonies on Mars, and creating biofuels. Plus, their ability to adapt...

Humans typically make enough collective noise to keep the earth vibrating at a steady hum. But the pandemic has quieted that hum enough to let  seismologists study  the vibrations that can be hard to detect in the din of our noise. The world is eerily silent now, showing us how accustomed we have become to  cacophony of loud sound  in our lives. We're hardwired to focus on the...

Dust is a fascinating substance. Our bodies are always shedding dust from our skin, hair, and nails, leaving little bits of DNA wherever we roam. Dust floats unseen through the air around us. It's light. It's hard to see unless it lands on a contrasting surface or crosses the path of a ray of sunshine. It can travel far and wide.   Earth collects more than 100 tons of cosmic du...

Scientists say humans  don't know how to breathe  very well. We don't breathe deep enough, we breathe too much, and we breathe through our mouths instead of our noses. Our bad breathing can lead to conditions that we don't typically associate with the way we breathe, such as asthma. We can't take all the blame. The tradeoff of humans evolving to have bigger brains hundreds of thousands o...

We've  done   this   show   every   year   since   2013 . We almost certainly didn't do it 2012. But  we did in 2011 . And there's good circumstantial evidence that we did it in 2010 too, but no actual record of that possibly inaugural episode survives. Point is: Our song of the summer show is a bit of a tradition. It's a tradition that... makes some people...

Social structures, in almost all cases, are defined by some form of hierarchy. Whether in academics, sports, religion, business, or politics, there's usually someone at the top and others whose goal it is to get there. But while it's easy to think that we've designed our world to be this way, the truth may be that we had no choice. Among our primate ancestors and other social animals  we can...

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 &...

No Country for Old Men .  Fargo .  The Big Lebowski .  Raising Arizona .  Barton Fink .  Miller's Crossing .  Blood Simple .  The Ballad of Buster Scruggs . Over the past 36 years, Joel and Ethan Coen have reliably been among the most recognizable voices in moviemaking. This hour: a Noseish look at the work of the Coen brothers. GUESTS: Tom Breen  - Film cri...

It took two years for the word AIDS to get from coinage to dictionary. It took COVID-19 thirty-four days. The pandemic has inspired a thousand new or repurposed words, slang, nicknames, and neologisms. It has changed the way we speak.   We made technical medical language part of everyday conversation. We created new words to describe  emotions that had no words. We repurposed old wo...

The leagues are working in earnest toward starting back up.   The NBA has a plan.  Major League Baseball can't seem to work one out. Major League Soccer might beat them both back onto the field. How is this all going to work? What are sports going to look like when they start playing games again?  Should  they start playing games again? Plus: One of the ways we've dealt with a...

A group of health officials gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss infectious disease learn that forty-seven people at an internment camp in Indonesia have died from acute hemorrhagic fever. This is how Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright, begins his  new novel  that in many ways, predicts the pandemic we're currently experiencing. He joins us to talk about it.  Befor...

We've all seen any number of emails and Tweets and Facebook posts this week from companies supporting protests and the like. Entertainment industry firms have jumped on that bandwagon too, but  The Washington Post 's Alyssa Rosenberg has a different idea about how those particular players might be able to help:  by shutting down all the police movies and TV shows . And: Comedian Sarah Co...

In 2007, journalist Alan Weisman published  The World Without Us . It was an international bestseller. The book tries to answer what is ultimately a simple question: What happens to the Earth if human beings disappear? Here's how Weisman puts it in the book: "Say a  Homo sapiens -specific virus -- natural or diabolically nano-engineered -- picks us off but leaves everything else intact."...

When did the horrors that once seemed unthinkable become commonplace? We're in the throes of a global pandemic. People protesting a police officer who kept his knee on a black man's neck for over eight minutes, two minutes beyond when he lost consciousness, were tear gassed to make room for a photo op for President Trump. But relax. Nothing is wrong, or at least that's what we're told by a preside...

Something different is happening in America at this moment. Do you feel it? We want to hear from you. Call us during our live show Tuesday, from 1 to 2 p.m., at 888-720-9677 or 888-720-WNPR. People across America are protesting the same police brutality against black Americans that  never seems to stop . America has suffered  more deaths  from COVID-19 than any other nation, and we...

The pandemic has laid bare how racism in housing, education, employment, and access to health care, disproportionately hurts Black Americans more than White Americans and leads to police brutality against people the police are supposed to protect. The country is reacting against both the trauma and rage from sustained racism and frustration over a pandemic we can't control. Will the outcry finally...

Hannah Gadsby has been a prominent comedian in Australia for going on 15 years. In America, though, she arrived seemingly from nowhere in 2018 with  a Netflix special called  Nanette , which won a Peabody and an Emmy.  Douglas  is Gadsby's follow-up Netflix special. It's, as she calls it, her "difficult second album that is also [her] tenth and some people's first." And: ...

As the world waits for an end to Covid-19, billions of people find themselves betwixt and between two realities: The pre-pandemic reality we knew, and the post-pandemic reality that is yet to come. As author and Professor of Theology Shelly Rambo wrote in the wake of hurricane Katrina, "Life as it once was cannot be retrieved,... life ahead cannot be envisioned." On today's show we'll explore the...

Shortly after the pandemic shifted our weekday work scenario from one of shared space and bursts of spontaneous conversation, to one hour-long weekly Zoom meeting, Colin shared his urge to sit down with a few old friends to talk about life in the shadow of a pandemic.  We take for granted the small connections we make every day, including  how good it can feel  to talk to a stranger...