The Colin McEnroe Show

As secular attitudes increase around the world and beliefs in the supernatural decline, how is it that the demand for exorcisms has never been higher? In America and across Europe, the Catholic Church is struggling to keep up. And as the Vatican is busy teaching courses to train new exorcists, the question remains: Why now? This hour we speak with a historian, a psychiatrist, and an officially san...

"Compassionate release" of our sickest and oldest prisoners is a way to reduce the federal prison population. It's also meant to save on the high cost of health care for aging inmates, and show some -  well, compassion, to prisoners closing in on the end of their lives.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At President Trump's first full cabinet meeting in June 2017, we watched with some amusement while each member expressed over-the-top gratitude for the president's giving them the privilege to serve him and/or the American people.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot has happened in the recent days. The news is fast, complicated, disturbing and in some cases, hopeful. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No one likes a cloudy sky. A cloud on the horizon is seen as a harbinger of doom. We feel like clouds need to have silver linings. But here's our thesis: Clouds are unfairly maligned. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For most of time, microbes ruled the planet alone. Microbes have been around for billions of years - long before people ever began to inhabit the earth.  Am I giving you a good picture of how small humans are in this grander view of life?  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Here are some songs from your life, "Backstreet Girl" by the Rolling Stones, "Joey" by Bob Dylan, "Road to Nowhere" by the Talking Heads, "Boy In The Bubble" by Paul Simon, "July Fourth, Asbury Park", better known as "Sandy" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys. They all rely heavily on the accordion. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See o...

The Thighmaster, the Chop-O-Matic, the George Foreman Grill and the Clapper: Products which are all part of American consumer culture and which were all introduced through infomercials. But as online shopping increases and traditional television watching decreases, are we beginning to see the end of these high-energy, late-night shows? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omn...

Cambridge Analytica, a data company backed by Republican donor Robert Mercer and headed by Steve Bannon, harvested private information from almost 50 million Facebook users without their permission to develop and exploit psychological profiles in the 2016 U.S. election. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There was a lot of pressure on Ava Duvernay to bring Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 classic book, A Wrinkle In Time , to the screen. This is the first $100-million movie directed by an African-American woman with a diverse cast chosen to fill the roles written for whites in 1962. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did a figure like Hitler emerge so quickly and so forcefully onto the world stage? How, in what was thought to be an enlightened and civilized society, did such demagoguery manage to incite an army to commit one of history's greatest atrocities? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every year at this time, we invite an improv comic and an ex-politician-turned-political-pundit on to break down the NCAA tournament brackets and battle for sports analyst supremacy. Logically. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you ever think about the people who make sure the medicine you're taking is safe for you to take? If your like most of us, probably not.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to mytho-historical accounts, the ancient Amazons wore pants while riding into battle. But the trend this tribe of warrior women set was short lived. For nearly two millennia after their demise, the notion of women wearing pants was steeped in controversy. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's Ridiculous Moments in Late-Stage Capitalism: Pizza Hut's new shoes -- because there are Pizza Hut shoes, apparently; they're, of course, called "Pie Tops" -- will pause live TV when your pizza delivery arrives . Amazon's Echo devices have started spontaneously laughing at people , which might really be scarier than it is funny. And, to celebrate International Women's Day, KFC is int...

The Times of London has said that Martin Amis "is as talented a journalist as he is a novelist." His latest collection of essays and reportage covers 1994 through 2017, Travolta through Trump. Amis joins us for the hour. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Populism is on the rise from Europe to India to the United States. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Voodoo is more than just a misunderstood religion, its practice draws on age-old beliefs, cultural elements, and folk traditions from a multitude of nations and ethnic groups. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like the Alexander of children's literature, President Trump had a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad" week. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's The Nose's annual Academy Awards special, and this year we're doing it live at night. The Nose has covered 15 of this year's Oscar-nominated movies. The only Best Picture nom we missed was Darkest Hour , so we're doing this show at the, uh, darkest hour of the day that we're on. Or... something. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the one hand, obituaries are an amalgam of a bunch of different kinds of journalism: they're feature stories, they're profile pieces, they cover history, and they're hard news too. On the other hand, the subject is always... dead. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Slime is not something we often think about. But there are plenty of reasons why that should probably change: From the theory that life on Earth may have have first emerged from a primordial ooze, to the current slime-making craze that's sweeping the internet. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Consciousness has been an elusive enigma for philosophers and scientists alike for about as long as there've been philosophers and scientists. And, while it's long been thought that artificial intelligence would bring us the next big breakthroughs in our understanding of consciousness, A.I. authority David Gelernter has a different idea entirely. He looks for answers to these fundamental questions...

Grading on the post-2016 scale, it was a relatively earth shattering revelation-free weekend. And so we have some time to regroup and take a look at more iterative developments in Mueller investigation- and Parkland-adjacent news. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ryan Coogler's Black Panther is the eighteenth feature film entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe . It is the sixth movie in Phase Three , and it's most directly a sequel to Captain America: Civil War , the first film of the phase. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.