The Colin McEnroe Show

Italians fled northern Italy  Sunday after Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte imposed a lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus Covid-19, which has killed 366 residents to date. The government banned all public gatherings including concerts, sporting events, religious services, and weddings until April 3. Scientists say one of their biggest concerns is preventing the virus from spreading faster...

Katy Perry dropped  a new single and video  (which we apparently call a "visual" now) on Wednesday night. The video ends with what's being called "a stunning reveal." And:  A pair of new comedy specials  caught the Nose's eye. Pete Davidson's  Alive in New York  on Netflix and Whitmer Thomas's  The Golden One  on HBO are both kind of... sad-funny? Funny-sad?...

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! When did you move in? How do you like it here in Connecticut after leaving the beautiful weather in Hawaii? 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 partly on how we value speech that establishes and maintains relationships, as opposed to speech that is...

Sanders  won big  in Nevada. Biden  won big  in South Carolina. Steyer and  Buttigieg  are out,  Bloomberg  is in, and Warren and Klobuchar are pulling up the rear. There will be  1,357 delegates from 14 states  up for grabs on Super Tuesday. We try to make sense of it. Also this hour: Iowa and New Hampshire no longer mirror the diversity of Americ...

Quarantine culture  is coming. Maybe. So we start with a look at the  coronavirus in comedy ,  COVID in culture , etc. And then:  Knives Out  is Rian Johnson's fifth feature film as writer and director. It's mostly a  howcatchem  in the vein of  Columbo  and an all-star ensemble cast murder mystery in the tradition of Agatha Christie adaptations like&nb...

Secession is in the air. Britain withdrew from the European Union, Scotland wants out of the UK, Catalonia from Spain, and, wait for it,  California from the U.S. Yes, the days of our country's states being united may soon come to an end. In fact, not only is California home to active secessionist and separatist movements, but so is Texas, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont and several other...

Most of the characteristics we associate with hotels - the welcoming yet  alienating effect  they have on our psyches - we absorbed from the artists, musicians, and filmmakers who have long been fascinated with the relationship between our physical travels and our spiritual journeys. Hotels like Mariott and Hilton are jumping into the  microhotel market  that up to now, has bee...

The recent  Senate trial for President Trump's impeachment  riveted the nation, but little consensus could be reached about the facts of the case or the outcome. Additionally, many in Congress knew how they would vote before the trial began.  The strong convictions that every member of the Senate brought to the trial - minus Senator Mitt Romney - didn't waver after the facts were pr...

Bernie Sanders  won a decisive victory  in last week's Nevada caucuses after effectively tying with Pete Buttigieg in the less diverse states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Is he the candidate that can beat President Trump? Or the one who will lead the Democratic Party down the road to ruin? It depends on who you talk to.  Also this hour: More than 70,000 people have been infected with...

Laura Nyro's most famous compositions -- "Stoned Soul Picnic," "Stoney End," "When I Die," "Wedding Bell Blues," "Eli's Coming" -- are jewels of mainstream music, and her covers of songs like "Jimmy Mack" and "Gonna Take a Miracle" are legendary. But she was uncomfortable under the spotlight and withdrew from it to become the Belle of Danbury. This hour: a night of singing, reflecting, and celebra...

It's been over 40 years since former President Richard Nixon resigned the presidency over Watergate. But, the story of Watergate is almost impossible to tell. It's too big and too murky. It's full of files that were burned and a tape that was erased. It's full of characters named McCord and Magruder and Mitchell, who are hard to keep track of. With each passing year, it becomes more of a...

Nyctophiliacs rejoice! The color you know and love (black) is now blacker than ever before.  And nevermind that black is not technically a color. The point is that as you were traipsing through graveyards and reveling under the night sky, scientists were busy inventing two new shades which are so dark they'd make Wednesday Adams reach for a flashlight. But while Vanta black and Black 3.2 are...

On December 13, 2019, the House Judiciary Committee voted to recommend two articles of impeachment against President Trump, and the full House of Representatives adopted them on December 18. On February 5, 2020, the Senate acquitted the president on both articles. Going by those dates, the full, official impeachment saga lasted 54 days. Our side-project, Saturday-show chronicling of the impeachmen...

The Outsider  is a planned 10-episode HBO miniseries based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. It airs on Sundays nights, and we're six episodes in so far. The premise is actually pretty simple: What if a guy actually were in two places at once? Then what? The ramifications of that, though, are about as complicated as you'd expect from Stephen King. And: a look at  the Gayle King...

What is real is no longer a question for philosophers alone. In today's world, it's a question we all contend with on a daily basis. Online, on television, in print and in public discourse, facts, feelings, and flat-out lies all share the same stage. So how are we to tell the difference? Experts in technology, media, education, science, and politics are debating this very question. And while...

The Democratic primary season is just getting started. How have the results from the New Hampshire primary affected how you might vote?  Bernie had a good night, Biden and Warren had bad nights, and Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg are vying to win the middle. Are you all in for Bernie? What if he doesn't get the nomination? Will you back someone else, sit out the race, or something else,...

Note: This episode contains strong language. This hour, we air an updated version of the most recent episode of our weekly impeachment show,   Pardon Me , which normally airs Saturdays at noon. The Senate acquitted President Trump  on both articles of the impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was  the only Republican who voted to convict  the president on one charge, for "egre...

The Atlantic  writer McKay Coppins says President Trump's reelection team is waging a massive  disinformation campaign  that uses the same tactics of information warfare used by autocrats like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and by Russian President Vladimir Putin in our 2016 election. He says their tactics include coordinated bot attacks,  micro-targeting  millions o...

We've done this show every year around this time for some number of years now. Unless we missed a year or two in there somewhere. But we've probably  tried  to do this show for every year that The Nose has existed. Of course, we aren't really sure how many years The Nose has existed. But the point is: The 92nd Academy Awards are this Sunday, and so this hour, it's the 2020 edition of The...

William Outlaw is a natural leader. He's been a key figure in helping to lower New Haven's homicide rate over the last decade. He's a strategist and an organizer who can size up a situation quickly. He can defuse a threatening situation with his charisma and charm. He can run a business.  As a street outreach worker in New Haven, he uses all the same skills today that he used when he co-ran N...

B.F. Skinner thought pigeons were so smart they could be used to guide missiles during WWII. He proposed a system in which pigeons would essentially pilot the missile. Skinner said pigeons could be trained to peck at a screen to adjust the trajectory of a missile toward its target. Project pigeon was funded but never used. It's one of the many reasons I could talk about pigeons all day.  In 2...

The Iowa caucuses descended into chaos after problems with a new app led to delays, mistrust, and renewed questions over whether Iowa should remain first in the nation. Does the primary system even work? Why don't we just hold a national primary? Ironically, the new app Democrats developed to increase transparency and speed up results led to delays, mistrust in technology and the voting process in...

This is a Colingram, a brief encounter with the host of The Colin McEnroe Show . We’re getting ready for an all-call-in show at 1 p.m. Tuesday discussing the results of the Monday caucuses which Colin claims are in Idaho, followed by primaries in New Vermont and South Kentucky. And even if that’s not strictly correct, it doesn’t matter, because geography in 2020 is like playing h...

This is a Colingram, a brief encounter with the host of The Colin McEnroe Show , recorded on Friday while we all tried to figure out whether our stealth-brand show, Pardon Me (Another Damn Impeachment Show?) , would be preempted from its usual Saturday noon time slot. (Connecticut Public Radio will air it at noon on Sunday.) Colin is distraught over the news that Mr. Peanut, who is even older than...