The Colin McEnroe Show

The 18th century Parisian cafe was an incubator for the liberal tradition as it was before liberalism became a politically-loaded and dirty word. The cafe brought people together to exchange ideas, talk, connect, argue, debate, and learn about humanity, empathy, and humility outside the control of the state; a place where civil society trumped tribal impulse.  We are a far more humane people...

Populism is on the rise from Europe to India to the United States. Americans elected Donald Trump on his promise to "Drain the swamp" of a political elite no longer responsive to their needs. Populists almost took control of Germany, France, and the Netherlands in 2017. Former prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi regained power seven short years after being ousted from office for co...

The FBI, the Justice Department's inspector general and the New York City medical examiner will investigate how billionaire and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was  found dead in his jail cell  at Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan early Saturday morning.  Conspiracy theories have taken root in the vacuum of unanswered questions and missteps. Many are unsubstanti...

Two things arrived this week that the world probably didn't previously know it needed: The Impossible Whopper and " the definitive Nicolas Cage interview ." The Nose taste tests one of them live on the air and discusses both. I'll leave it a mystery which is which. Plus, a look at two movies: the Charlize Theron-Seth Rogen rom-com Long Shot (now available on iTunes/Amazon/DVD/Blu-ray/etc.) and the...

If you ever drive across the country, you’ll notice there is a surprising amount of World’s Largest  attractions. West Virginia has the world’s largest teapot, California has the world’s largest yo-yo and Arkansas, for whatever reason, has the world’s largest Spinach can. This hour we talk to the man who brought the world’s tallest Uncle Sam to Danbury, Con...

Constantin Mutu was four-months-old when he was separated from his father, Vasily. The elder Mutu was arrested while seeking asylum at the southern border. So far, Constantin is the youngest child to be separated from his family. What distinguishes Constantin and Vasily Mutu from the majority of asylum seekers at the southern border is that they are a family of Roma people, two of the roughly 12 m...

Dr. Joseph Cyr, a surgeon with the Royal Canadian Navy, had to think quick when his ship came upon a rickety boat with mangled and bloody bodies at the height of the Korean War in 1951. As the only doctor on board, he quickly moved to operate on 19 men, all of them his enemies in this war. All survived, making the young doctor a hero. Except he wasn't really a doctor.  His real name was Ferdi...

Marianne Williamson was Googled more than any other candidate after last week's Democratic debate. Voters liked her call for "some deep truth-telling" and a "politics that speaks to the heart." But to understand Williamson's words, we need to first understand A Course in Miracle s , the almost 1,300 page spiritual text she has built a career on interpreting.  Williamson has become a self-appo...

Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino's ninth movie as writer and director. It had the biggest opening of his career last weekend, and its been called " his best movie in a decade " and " his most transgressive film ." We'll discuss it. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On September 3rd of 2019, Random House will release what is likely the very last Dr. Seuss book there'll ever be: Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum . The work, initially just a manuscript and pile of incomplete sketches, was found buried in a box in the late author's California home in 2013. Since then, artists intimately familiar with Seuss's style of drawing have managed to fill in the gaps and finish th...

Women in America die more frequently from complications of childbirth than in any other industrialized nation in the world. In addition, women of color are three to four times more likely to die than white women. And over the last 25 years that the maternal mortality was rising in America, other countries were decreasing their rate.  There are lots of reasons why maternal mortality and morbid...

Hartford native Sol LeWitt was one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art. As an artist, he abandoned the long histories of painting and drawing and sculpture in favor of his Wall Drawings and Structures . And as an art figure, he abandoned the conventions of celebrity and resisted ever even having his picture taken. This hour, a look at Connecticut's own Sol LeWitt. Support the show: h...

Election systems in all 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016. Those were the conclusions of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence report released on Thursday. This comes one day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller III warned that Russian efforts to interfere in the upcoming election are happening right now. How safe are Connecticut's voting systems?  Also this hour: Washington Post columnist...

Last weekend, Marvel unveiled its plans for Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (along with a few hints and winks and nods about Phase Five -- which is mostly notable 'cause it means they're planning a Phase Five). And we're currently in the middle of a year when, when it's all said and done, the top eight highest-grossing movies may well have all come from Disney or Marvel or both . The t...

Summer is the time we look forward to reading -- or rereading -- our favorite books.   How do you choose from the stack of next-to-read books that pile up beside your bed? Do you relish the adventure of what a new book might bring or do you reread an old favorite that changed your life in some way, that one book that resembles a child's much beloved stuffed animal -- dog-eared and staine...

It's been called a "glorified game of toss" and "World of Warcraft for extroverts." But has Ultimate Frisbee quietly become a real sport? It is, apparently, a likely Olympic sport . Which would, apparently, maybe be bad for Ultimate . This hour: The world of the Frisbee disc, including Connecticut's integral part in its history. This episode originally aired on August 31, 2017. Support the show: h...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller made crystal clear that he would not comment on the long-awaited Mueller Report beyond the carefully chosen words we could all find in his 448-page, plus appendices, report.  Now, I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself. No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak furthe...

There's kind of a lot going on this week: There's rumored to be  a new 007 . The Emmy nominations are out . There's a new dating trend called 'Caspering.' Farhad Manjoo thinks we should all use the singular 'they.' 1.7 million people want to raid Area 51 . Anthony Fantano (or an animated version of Anthony Fantano, really) is in the new "Old Town Road" video . During the New York City blackou...

We live in an  Everything Should Take Twenty Minutes  world.  Movies are too long.  SundanceTV has  a show that airs in ten-minute episodes . Tierra Whack has  a fifteen-minute album made of fifteen sixty-second songs . Todd Rundgren's memoir has  183 one-page, three-paragraph chapters . So today, we turn our hour over to five short, little shows about short, lit...

Ocean Vuong emigrated to Hartford from Vietnam when he was two years old. His family brought with them the trauma of an American-led war that ravaged their people and their culture. How do they retain their culture and assimilate into one that doesn't want them? His family struggled in a Hartford very different from the city that many of us experience. It's a place that still exists in the shadows...

Sand is the most abundant material on Earth. And, other than water and air, sand is the natural resource we consume more than any other -- more, even, than oil. The pyramids are made of sand. Our roads and driveways and sidewalks are made of sand. Concrete buildings and their concrete foundations are made of sand. From computer chips to computer screens, window panes to light bulbs, breast implant...

Staffing unrest at the Connecticut Lottery Corp. has been a longtanding source of intrigue. But an employee's whistleblower case before the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities sheds new light on the level of infighting that unfolded at the quasi-public agency under previous its leadership. It's a tale that includes secret recordings and the FBI. More encouraging is the degree of cal...

Spider-Man: Far From Home is the 23rd feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the final entry in its Infinity Saga. It is the 11th and final film in the MCU's Phase Three , even though everybody thought it'd probably be the first part of Phase Four, and now nobody really knows what Phase Four will start with. I haven't entirely understood anything I've written so far, but I do get this b...

Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Belushi, John Candy, Rick Moranis. Animal House ,  The Blues Brothers ,  Beverly Hills Cop ,  Caddyshack ,  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 periods ever for sc...

The Scottsboro Boys were arrested as freight train hoboes in Alabama in 1931 and quickly convicted by an all-white jury of raping two white women. After several retrials and appeals, the case led to two landmark Supreme Court rulings on the right to adequate counsel and prohibiting the exclusion of black people from juries. Yet, the problems in 1931 -- wrongful conviction, juvenile sentencing, pol...