The Colin McEnroe Show

Mike Pesca is one of our very favorite guests -- on any number of topics . And he's got a new book out: Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History . Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who's afraid of the Bix bad Beiderbecke? Hartford has an amazing jazz history, and Colin has a lot of jazz musician friends. This hour, a little onstage jazz party. Colin and the panel look to make jazz accessible to mere mortals. They talk about what makes jazz jazz, invite the audience to sing, and teach the audience to scat. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listen...

From the penny press, to yellow journalism, to supermarket tabloids and beyond, sensationalized news has been around for centuries. But while this style of reporting may have its critics, it may also serve as an important reflection of American culture and democracy. This hour we speak with journalists and historians about the evolution and influence of tabloid journalism. We'll also discuss the a...

There has been a lot of confusion about how many people died in Puerto Rico as the result of Hurricane Maria and its aftermath. Several publications reported last week that approximately five-thousand people may have died. They based their reports on a new study  published in The New England Journal of Medicine that reflected more ambiguity than often reported.   Support the show: h...

Solo is the tenth feature-length, live-action Star Wars film. It is the fifth Star Wars prequel. It is the second Star Wars anthology film (following 2016's Rogue One ), and it's the second Star Wars movie to come out in just the last six months (along with The Last Jedi ). It is, though, a number of Star Wars firsts too: It's the first Star Wars picture to have its director(s) fired midway throug...

We've been trying to push this show out for quite a while now. It's been a bit of a strain, and we got kind of backed up. But, this hour, we let loose a long look at... constipation. It should be a big relief for everyone involved. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Numbers are so fundamental to our understanding of the world around us that we maybe tend to think of them as an intrinsic part of the world around us. But they aren't. Humans invented numbers just as much as we invented all of language. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I have traveled to three foreign countries since President Trump was elected. While I have always been proud to be American, even as I criticize much in my country, I was humbled by what people thought of America in the countries I visited. They were puzzled by our health care system, and appalled by our guns and voter apathy.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/l...

Radiation is everywhere. It's emitted by our sun, by cat litter, by bananas and occasionally by nuclear bombs. It's even emitted by you, and by me, and by every living (and dead) person in the world. So why are we so scared of something so prevalent in our everyday lives? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology is that they were not entirely mythical. While many of the deeds and details ascribed to these women warriors were imagined, the Amazons themselves were inspired by a real-life horse-riding tribe of nomads called the Scythians. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...

Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, etc. These are just the beginning of what experts believe will be a future filled with verbally interactive, digital and robotic assistants. And as we become more accustomed to interacting with machines, the machines are becoming more life-like. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I hear the word "diorama," the first thing I think of is Mr. Mack’s fifth grade class and painting hills and grass and clouds and a fence into a shoebox and making little cardboard cut outs of Lassie and the boy she loved. God, I hated that stuff. The second thing I think of is a place like the Peabody Museum in New Haven and their incredibly, obsessively, over-the-toply detailed dioramas of...

Flags have been in the news a lot lately.  South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its Statehouse and one Missouri county threatened to lower the flags at their courthouse for one full year to mourn the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. I'm in awe of the emotions a simple flag can evoke. On the surface, it's a piece of cloth with pretty colors and designs. Support...

It's just a dance, right? Actually, maybe that's the last thing the prom is. Maybe the photo is even more important, because it freezes you. It's your chance, as high school trickles away, to say "This is who I am. This will be who I was." We've been looking at prom photos by Mary Ellen Mark, who will be on our show today, and they're striking in the range of emotional states they convey. We see j...

You remember the dress, right? In case you don't: Three years ago, a poorly-lit photograph of a dress pretty much tore the internet to pieces. Some people saw a black-and-blue dress; some people saw a white-and-gold dress. The black-and-blue-dress people couldn't understand how the white-and-gold-dress people were living their lives; the white-and-gold-dress people called the black-and-blue-dress...

Sarah Kendzior predicted that the conditions she witnessed in 2013 from her home in America's overlooked heartland would lead to the rise of a candidate like Donald Trump. She was one of the few that saw it coming. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule is back in our Hartford studios to sing and play and talk and who knows what else! Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If there's one thing that unites us all (literally, ALL of us) it's gravity. Gravity attracts every bit of matter in the universe to every other bit of matter in the universe, no exceptions! But for something (a warping of space-time, to be precise) so universally present, it remains one of the least understood forces in physics. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/list...

Connecticut's political parties are in the midst of choosing who they will endorse in this November's elections. How much do you trust that they've endorsed the candidate most likely to represent your interests? On the other hand, how much do you want or need to know to cast your vote?  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Glover can do anything . He's an actor and a comedian, he's a singer and a songwriter, he's a rapper and a DJ. Mainstream audiences know him from Community and maybe the FX series he created, Atlanta . Nerdy audiences know him as the voice of Spider-Man , and they're about to know him as a young Lando Calrissian . But Glover's music -- he sings and raps as Childish Gambino and DJs as mcDJ -...

Lauren Bacall probably does have the most famous line about smoking in all of cinema. But there are other good ones too. "What are you gonna do? Charge me with smoking? " " Smoke if ya got 'em. " And many more. Cigarettes have been such an integral part of movies for so long that one big concern in the lead up to Disney and Fox's planned merger is -- seriously -- all the smoking in Fox movies . Su...

Comedy forces us to confront uncomfortable realities that we prefer to ignore. It also makes us laugh. Laughter is a powerful force. It can release chemicals in our body that make us feel good and help us better cope with the daily stress of living in a world that can lately seem to be spiraling out of control.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

From its humble, South Korean origins in the early 2000s to its current place as an international, cultural phenomenon, esports is certainly on the rise. Huge venues including Madison Square Garden, the Staples Center and others are routinely selling out to diehard fans of these competitive video gaming tournaments Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privac...

We live in a big world and we're focused on one small speck in it named Donald Trump.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The bands Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Rush, Asia, and Styx have sold, literally, hundreds of millions of albums. And that's despite the fact that This Is Spinal Tap is a devastatingly accurate spoofing of, ya know... all those bands. This hour: a look at the rise and fall of progressive rock. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/list...