The Colin McEnroe Show

Searching for sunken treasure? The Long Island Sound is hardly the place to look. But what can be found in its murky waters are  ample remains  of Connecticut's once prominent  shipping industry , and perhaps evidence of early Native American villages from around 20,000 years ago when the Sound was a glacial lake. Today, we survey shipwrecks and other bits of history resting off Con...

The two biggest earthquakes to hit California since 1994 rocked an area about 120 miles northeast of Los Angeles on Thursday and Friday. Seismologists say a big earthquake happens every 100 years in California and the last big one hit 160 years ago. Is California prepared ? If not, what does that mean for them and the rest of us? They are the fifth biggest economy in the world. Also this hour: Som...

No one is surprised to hear that Disney is planning a live-action remake of  The Little Mermaid . Some people were surprised, though, at  the announcement that Halle Bailey, who is African American, has been cast as the titular Ariel . And probably the least surprising part of the whole thing is that  part of the internet (the racist part) is mad about it . And:  Rapper Lil Nas...

Fear of sharks spiked last summer after a great white fatally bit a 26-year-old surfer off the coast of Cape Cod. The fever still runs high as reports of great white sightings coincide with people heading to the beach this 4th of July.  Yet, we have a higher risk of getting hit by lightning than killed by a great white shark. The myth of the great white, exacerbated by the 1975 megahit Jaws ,...

Women scientists and inventors have been making ground-breaking discoveries since  Agnodike  pretended to be a man in order to become the first female anatomist in ancient Greece. Yet, women's scientific contributions have historically been hidden in the footnotes of the work men claimed as their own. It's 2019. Things are better, right?  Not really. Men still hold  the majorit...

Reality TV shows like the Discovery Channel's Doomsday Bunker s  and National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers  perpetuate a stereotype of "preppers" that omits the wide swath of people who engage in preparedness in a less extreme and more varied way. Talk of nuclear war , climate apocalypse , pandemic , economic instability , and the decline of democracy has led more people to thi...

The concept of the early 20th century sideshow evokes images of bearded ladies, sword swallowers and exotic "others" exhibited as "freaks" before audiences both lured and repelled by what they saw. Crowds flocked to  Coney Island  sideshows where, for 10 cents, they could find solace that someone was worse off than they were during times of low life expectancy, high infant mortality, wor...

It's SUMMER! And every year around this time, we gather up a few music mavens who help us analyze and celebrate the kind of music that gets us dancing and singing as soon as it comes on the radio. But how do you define "Song of the Summer"?  Amanda Dobbins breaks it down :  "Let’s be clear about how this works: There is no such thing as a 'personal' song of summer. We do not anoint...

A photo of people inching their way up a snaking line to the peak of Mount Everest last month has drawn attention to a number of problems, one of which was the jostling at the top of the mountain to take social media-ready selfies and photos.  That got us wondering if other people were risking their lives for that perfect photo. It turns out that more than 250 people worldwide have died while...

October of 2018 was an unremarkable month. That is, to everyone who wasn't working for  Youmail . During that month, the California-based company which provides voicemail and call blocking technology, noticed something special:  On average, 164 million robocalls were being placed every single day around America. That's nearly 7 million per hour, and nearly 2,000 per second, for a grand m...

Democratic presidential candidate  Andrew Yang  wants to give everyone a Universal Basic Income to offset the effects of automation. The plan resonates across a broad spectrum of voters from his "Yang Gang" to the alt-right and it has catapulted him to a spot in this week's Democratic primary debate alongside frontrunners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris.  Who is this gu...

Democratic presidential candidate  Andrew Yang  wants to give everyone a Universal Basic Income to offset the effects of automation. The plan resonates across a broad spectrum of voters from his "Yang Gang" to the alt-right and it has catapulted him to a spot in this week's Democratic primary debate alongside frontrunners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris.  Who is this gu...

The Nose  doesn't much   miss a chance   to cover   Taylor Swift . And it turns out, Taytay's got  a new song and video ...  for Pride Month ... and it's been received, let's say,  kind of skeptically . (Relatedly, here's a listicle:  All 126 Taylor Swift Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best .) And then: Last year, the Obamas  signed a big deal to make TV p...

There's much more to vending machines than those tasty, preservative-laden treats temptingly lined up on display behind the glass casing. Today we take a magical voyage to find out what these snack dispensers tell us about how we live, what we value, our stresses, and our restraints. Along the way, we check in with a local author and Hartford Courant columnist who devoured one of each snack in her...

It's hard to believe, but  The Matrix  is 20 years old this year. And its influence is  all over the culture  with  bullet time  and  red pills  and  the "woah" meme  and so much more. We take the question of whether  we're living in a simulation  much more seriously than we did 20 years ago. We're much more attuned to  the allegory...

Connecticut remains riveted by the unfolding saga of Jennifer Dulos , the wealthy, white New Canaan woman last seen almost four weeks ago. It's a tragic and familiar story. Yet, few cases receive the notoriety of this particular case.  Today, we examine several issues raised by Jennifer's disappearance, including how domestic violence in wealthy families can play out in ways not experienced b...

The president suggests he can take information from a foreign adversary without reporting it to the FBI. Kellyanne Conway can violate the Hatch Act without repercussion. American allies aren't sure if they can believe Trump Administration claims about Iran aggression. The president now suggests his supporters may demand that he serve more than two terms.  Amy Siskind has been documenting the...

Joni Mitchell is a singer-songwriter from Alberta, Canada. In 1968, her debut album, Song to a Seagull , was released and since then, Mitchell has become one of the most influential, and greatest recording artists. Mitchell has won nine Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, countless musical awards, and her albums are considered as among the best ever made. We’re big fans. It turn...

There are a group of Connecticut parents who feel they must relinquish custody of  their “high needs” children in order to get them into residential treatment programs when in-home services are inadequate to meet their needs.  Many years ago, the Connecticut Department of Children and Families chose to move children out of residential treatment centers and back to their famil...

This episode is really going to be the cat’s pajamas. Or is it pyjamas? Do cats even wear pajamas? Why would they? Why do we? Should any of us wear pajamas at all? And if we do don a pair, are they only for bed? Or should pajamas have their day in the sun? If our PJs are making a fashion statement just what exactly are they saying? We’re talking today about what we wear to bed, but who...

Jessica Harper has starred in movies like Suspiria , Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise , Woody Allen's Stardust Memories , and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report . And now she's publishing a memoir as a podcast. Winnetka tells the story of growing up in a big family -- six kids, including two sets of twins -- in the 1950s and '60s in the midwest -- in Winnetka, Ill., you see -- and later in...

Are you one of the millions inspired by  Marie Kondo  and her KonMari Method to get rid of your clutter? Kondo's books, such as  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up ,  and Netflix series,  Tidying Up with Marie Kondo , have sparked an intense and prolonged fervor where other self-help gurus have failed.  What is it about this phenom who advocates tidying as the...

Rocketman is the sort of movie where (tiny spoiler ahead here, I suppose) "Elton John," at one point, becomes an actual "rocket man"... and blasts off into the sky... with fire shooting out of his feet. I mean, what else do you need to know really, right? It's directed by Dexter Fletcher, whose previous film -- another little music biopic you might've heard of called Bohemian Rhapsody -- is the se...

In early 2017,  The New York Times uncovered a program at the Defense Department which investigated unidentified flying objects. Then, at the end of May, the reporters published another article , getting navy pilots to talk on the record about their encounters with unidentified flying objects.  In November 2018, the chair of Harvard's Astronomy Department, Avi Loeb,  co-wrote a pape...

What if you just don't really enjoy food very much ? What if you're totally fine eating the same thing every single day ? What if you think food is an inefficient way to get what you need to survive ? What if, rather than eating "food," you just mixed a white powder (that is definitely not made of people because it's made of soy protein isolate instead) with water and drank that in food's place? T...