The Colin McEnroe Show

This week, on Last Week Tonight , John Oliver tackled public shaming with perhaps the one person who has had the worst case of public shaming in recent memory, Monica Lewinsky. The interview focused on how Lewinsky survived the shaming, and she said if social media was around in the mid-90s, it could have been worse. That’s how James Gunn got his dose of public shaming. Eight months ago the...

March Madness starts TODAY with some of the best games coming to Hartford! There's a lot of excitement over the match-up between No. 5 seed Marquette's Marcus Howard and No. 12 seed Murray State's Ja Morant. I'm just sayin' that a  No. 5 seed has beat a No. 12 seed 67% of the time . Last year's winner, Villanova, also starts in Hartford. And Florida State will play the University of Vermont....

In case you haven't heard, our planet is as flat as a pancake. Sound crazy? Perhaps. But around the globe (disc?) a flat Earth movement is steadily on the rise. More and more people, educated and not, from all walks of life, are posting videos, attending conferences, and publishing books embracing this seemingly radical notion. NBA all-stars like Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O'Neal have publicly sup...

Colin was diagnosed with melanoma last year. He had a few scary weeks between diagnosis and removal of the cancer. He's told he's clean but, what happens next?  Fewer Americans diagnosed with cancer this year will die from their disease than at any other time in the last two decades. Medical advances in detection and treatment and a population more aware of the habits that can lead to cancer...

We're outraged that wealthy parents illegally paid to get their kids into elite colleges they would otherwise not qualify to enter. Despite evidence to the contrary, we still want to believe that America is a meritocracy. It's not. And believing that it is might be bad for you. The word ‘meritocracy’ was coined as a satirical slur by Michael Young, a British sociologist and politician,...

This week, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp suffered major worldwide outages , and Twitter previewed some possible new changes . And people took to (what else?) social media to (what else?) complain . And: The Ringer asks the age-old question, if a TV show falls in the woods, and no one talks about it, can it be certified fresh ? Or something like that. And finally: Captain Marvel is the 21st fea...

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...

Sunday morning news shows were abuzz about the Democratic National Committee's decision to deselect Fox News as a media partner for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates. But you may have missed it if you didn't reset your clocks to Daylight Savings Time, or like a lot of us, spent your weekend fixated on that hour of lost sleep. On this week's Scramble, we take on the weary rants over...

It's been rough going here for the famous for a little while. This week, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek announced his stage four cancer diagnosis . Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver retired from public life because of his dementia diagnosis . And then there are the deaths: Actor Luke Perry at 52 . The Prodigy frontman Keith Flint at 49 . Actress Katherine Helmond at 89 . Also this hour: a look at Netfli...

You know all the reasons Trump won, right? Economic anxiety . Racial anxiety . The forgotten working class . The forgotten rustbelt ... But what if the real cause were something much simpler and much more pervasive: our popular culture. This hour, a conversation with Peter Biskind, the author of The Sky Is Falling: How Vampires, Zombies, Androids, and Superheroes Made America Great for Extremism ....

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 distinguish real from f...

For the past few months, Nose regular Jacques Lamarre has been posting debate-starting, head-to-head style Facebook posts . Taylor Swift vs. Katy Perry. Ketchup vs. mustard vs. mayonnaise. When Harry Met Sally vs. Sleepless in Seattle . That kind of thing. And so now, we've decided to try to turn the concept into a radio show. This hour, YOU MUST CHOOSE. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donat...

Joyce Maynard has been writing for over 45 years about the kind of human experiences we're often taught to keep hidden - stories  about envy, anger, vanity, self-pity, pride.   We read her stories because they offer a chance to first confront and then forgive ourselves for how those emotions can shape us into people we don't like.  Her honesty has come at a cost to her.  S...

It was hard to watch the first part of Leaving Neverland , the documentary which aired on HBO aired on March 3. The poignancy of the mixed emotions expressed by two men and their mothers who fell under the spell of Michael Jackson and later, his predation, left me feeling like a fly on the wall of a particularly difficult visit to a therapist. I was forced to consider my own complicity in how we c...

Nobody likes the termite. They get into the wood in our homes that can lead to infuriating and expensive repairs. What's to like. It turns out, there's a lot to like about the termite; scientists study how termites 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 the creation of biofuels. Pl...

Why do we dance? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Dancing has served a multitude of functions for various cultures throughout history, and there is even evidence to suggest we, as a species, are biologically hard-wired to dance. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You have pain that wakes you up at night and distracts you during the day. You go to the doctor, who asks you to grade your pain on a scale of 1-10. The doctor can't find anything wrong with you; it may be stress or anxiety or that you need more exercise or sleep. You're confused. You feel pain but nothing seems to be wrong. Does this sound familiar? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate Se...

We were going to produce a show today on loneliness with British writer Olivia Laing. We still want to do that show with Olivia - but not today. Instead, we decided to switch gears and talk with Olivia and other artists about the themes in Olivia's new novel because they mirror our own concerns: how to live life in this fast-moving world where the present is history in the blink of an eye and worl...

Today, we remember Peter Tork of The Monkees. This show originally aired April 25, 2013. John Lennon said they were the greatest comedy team since the Marx Brothers. Gene Roddenberry based the look of the character Chekov on them.  The Jimi Hendrix Experience got its first U.S. concert work as their opening act.  Their TV show generated the money that launched the movie career of Ja...

It's been a year of aborted missteps for the Academy Awards. There was going to be a new Best Popular Picture category . But now there won't be. Kevin Hart was going to host. But now there's nobody . They were going to present four awards -- including Film Editing and Cinematography -- during the commercial breaks. But now they aren't . Oh and there're the actual movies . Roma and The Favourite le...

Religious scholar Elaine Pagels , trusted the Gospel of Thomas to get her through the almost unbearably painful years after the death of her six-year-old son -- born with a congenital heart defect -- followed one year later by the unexpected death of her husband.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Religious scholar Elaine Pagels , trusted the Gospel of Thomas to get her through the almost unbearably painful years after the death of her six-year-old son -- born with a congenital heart defect -- followed one year later by the unexpected death of her husband.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elvis left two legacies. Musically, he pulled several American musical traditions out of the shadows, braided them together, and made them mainstream. Personally, he created a far darker template for the way a musical celebrity could be devoured by the very fame he avidly sought. Recorded live in front of an audience -- and with a band! -- as part of Colin's Freshly Squeezed series at Watkinson Sc...

To do a show about local stand-up comedy, we figured we should probably do a show of local stand-up comedy. So we went to a comedy club , put on a comedy show, and then did a talk show about the comedy show we'd just done. This hour: some of said comedy show plus most of said talk show -- and we're fairly confident it'll make more sense when you hear it than it probably just did reading about it....