The Colin McEnroe Show

In terms of box office,  2017 was the biggest year in the history of horror cinema . One wonders: Why? And then this year has brought us  Hereditary ,  A Quiet Place , and now Netflix's  The Haunting of Hill House . This hour: a look at our current horror through the lens of our current horror. GUESTS: Tom Breen  - A film critic and the host of WNHH radio’s Deep Focu...

About 2000 years ago the Chinese came up with something really great: paper! Paper has allowed us to share ideas around the globe, record important historical events, build on our past success, create art, architecture, literature, music and more that may live on long on after we're gone. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shakespeare was famous for his off-color puns, yet much of their cleverness has been lost to the  evolution of our English language. In Shakespeare's English, the word "nothing" was pronounced as "no-ting," which at that time was a euphemism for um, a female lady part. In modern parlance, that would translate to Much Ado About... (female lady part.) Much is lost between Elizabethan times and...

Things burn: Our environments, resources, and all forms of monument to self. And since the beginning, so too has our imagination. The inspiration humans have drawn from fire throughout the millennia is as impressive as it is immeasurable. Why fire occupies such an elemental place in the creative wellsprings of our consciousness is certainly a debate to had. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/do...

The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has hit a cultural nerve in America. The sustained anger outstrips our response to the killing of  43 other journalists in 2018, Saudi Arabia's jailing of these dissidents, or the U.S.-supported Saudi invasion of Yemen that has created a humanitarian crisis  that is affecting millions of people and getting worse. Support the show: http://www.wnpr...

Louis C.K.'s surprise return to a comedy club stage in late August was widely covered and discussed. His subsequent performances have maybe sparked less internet conversation, but they're just as confounding. This week, the owner of one club where C.K. has been performing has made a couple media appearances to explain his thinking about the whole thing. And: Damian Chazelle is the director behind...

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. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever been to the opera? I know, you think it's stuffy and formal and only for rich, white people of a certain age. You're wrong.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Common wisdom says that once you walk downstairs to the place where the sizes of candidates’ body parts are fodder for discussion, where one presidential nominee calls another “such a nasty woman” in a debate, where middle-finger salutes at the working press become commonplace at presidential rallies, you never go back up those stairs. On the eve of a midterm, we want to talk about whether that’s...

Despite Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and attempts by hackers to infiltrate voter-registration databases in Illinois, Arizona and several other states in the summer of 2016, little has been done to better secure America's network of electronic voting systems. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We now have no fewer than four big screen versions of A Star Is Born . There's the 1937 original, the Judy Garland/James Mason remake, the Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson remake... and now's there's the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper remake, which is directed by Cooper, and which might just take the fall movie season by storm . This hour: a Noseish (but not quite actually The Nose ) look at the phen...

So, when Prince died ( which was two-and-a-half years ago ), we announced that we were finally going to retire our theme song ( which was a Prince song ). And then we promptly did... nothing at all. Earlier this year, though -- and in typical Colin McEnroe Sho vian fashion -- we decided that this non-problem was a big problem. And so, in order to try and hopefully finally fix this non-problem big...

What is yodeling, anyway? Some consider it singing, some say it's an ululation, and still others consider it merely a means to herd animals. Whatever yodeling is, one's thing clear: Yodeling has been around for thousands of years and shows no signs of disappearing. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton  were using strategies to deliberately divide America's political system decades before the pivotal  2000 presidential election  between Al Gore and George W. Bush divided us into gangs of  'red' or 'blue.' Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, we've booked no guests. It's Colin and your calls.  Saturday's confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was the anticlimatic coda to a nomination that has both riveted and more deeply divided our country. Depending on your view, the Kavanaugh confirmation either endangers the legitimacy of the court or is a welcome culmination to a decades-long effort to capture a solid con...

So we did a Nose last week . It was good. It was about the second season of Slow Burn and the third season of Serial , and it was kind of also about how both of those shows tie into our present moment in interesting ways and that that's kind of interesting and suchlike. We thought it went well. You probably would've thought so too. Except you didn't hear it, so how would you know? That present mom...

The postseason proper is upon us! Baseball has already played four winner-take-all games in three days. The Dodgers and the Brewers won their divisions in a pair of extra, tie-breaking game number 163s. And then the Cubs and the A's saw their seasons end in the two Wild Card Games. And now we're onto a round of real, full-length, five-game series. The two National League Division Series start toda...

The Eagles' first album touched a cultural nerve in 1971, with songs like "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and "Witchy Woman." And the hits never stopped. Despite mounting criticism from critics and fans alike, within five years they rolled those hits into one of the biggest selling Greatest Hits albums of all time.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

A lot of you reading this are familiar with the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder because you watched the popular "Little House on the Prairie" television show that ran from 1974-1983. But the television show came long after Laura Ingalls Wilder began sharing the story of her family's journey through the open frontier. She shared her memories in a series of beloved Little House books that...

Like many Americans, our newsroom was glued to the  eight or so hours of testimony by Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh during last week's Senate Judiciary Hearings, including the dramatic committee vote on Friday that led to a limited FBI investigation.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been... quite a week. It kinda seems like nothing happened in pop culture at all this week, doesn't it? Regardless, The Nose has a mandate to satisfy. Slow Burn is Slate 's scripted, narrative impeachment podcast. The first season covered Watergate and President Nixon. The second (and current) season is covering Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. It has a strong, willful woman at its cent...

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.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate S...

The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat of departing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy had already widened the chasm between Democrats and Republicans before allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh blew it wide open.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rust is all around us. It's in our cars, our homes, our infrastructure. It's also the subject of Jonathan Waldman's first book, Rust , which introduces us to the people who fight it. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The celebrity profile is dead. Or dying, at least, according to The New York Times . Case in point: the Times 's own terrible profile of the great Maya Rudolph . Counterpoint: The Washington Post 's fascinating, and self-eviscerating, profile of the formerly great Chevy Chase . And: Nicole Holofcener's new movie is a Netflix adaptation of Ted Thompson's novel of the same name, The Land of Steady H...