The Colin McEnroe Show
Episodes
We Like To Watch
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, we didn't take television seriously. We saw it as ephemeral, as "chewing gum for the eyes," as, literally, furniture. And then, around th...
(Un)Erasing Native American Culture
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Native Americans exerted their political power in the 2020 election. A record-breaking six Native-Americans were elected to Congress and Nat...
Considering Kubrick
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
2001: A Space Odyssey. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. A Clockwork Orange. The Shining. Full...
An Ode To Yodeling
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
President Trump's Failed Coup; The Voice Of America Is Under Siege
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Each state's slate of electors will cast their votes for president and vice-president today. President Trump won't win today. Nor will he win in the f...
The Nose Has Never Not Been Fired
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mank is David Fincher's feature film portrayal of the writing of Citizen Kane. Gary Oldman plays the title character and Kane scre...
How Will We Know If Society Is On the Verge Of Collapse?
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Are we on the verge of societal collapse? We tend to worry about the big explosive stuff like nuclear war, asteroids, and solar flares when we conside...
From Winner To Champion, From Champion To Dynasty
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Seventeen AFC East championships. Nine Super Bowl appearances. Six Lombardi trophies. Twenty seasons pairing maybe the greatest head coach in the hist...
A Look At Logic Puzzles (Like Sudoku!)
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In May, I discovered (along with the rest of the internet) a video on YouTube of a guy in his loft in Surrey, England ... sol...
The Return of Decency; Vaccine Caution; And, A Run On Christmas Trees
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Roger Cohen, a former columnist and current Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, longs for a return to decency - a moral shift away fr...
The Nose Thinks Schenectady Sounds Terrible, Even Phonetically
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Warner Bros. announced Thursday that all of its movies for all of 2021 will be available to stream on HBO Max the same day they debut in cinemas. ...
Fixing The Norms That President Trump Has Broken
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump presidency has exposed many vulnerabilities in the laws and norms that govern presidential behavior. His brazen disrespect demands action to...
America Loves Its Heroes
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How we define what it means to be a hero depends a lot on the values shared by the group that's in power at any given time. We're seeing it today in t...
Mmmm Donuts
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Almost everybody has a favorite donut - even if you don't eat a lot of donuts. It's not so much about the donut as it is about how donuts bring people...
Mmmm Donuts
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Almost everybody has a favorite donut - even if you don't eat a lot of donuts. It's not so much about the donut as it is about how donuts bring people...
Politics, Religion, and Football. (No Peanuts Or Beer)
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We are still living in two different realities. President Trump lost the election but still can't concede or admit it, and a high percentage...
The Nose Is Ready For Thanksgiving
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, President Obama twittered a list of "memorable songs" from his administration. The list was, let's just say, not necessarily well...
A Long Look at Losing and Lovable (and Loathsome) Losers
24 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As we were preparing for our show on underdogs, I kept saying that we shouldn't overlook the fact that, often, to be an underdog in the first pla...
America's Escalating Post-Election Madness
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We're almost three weeks past Election Day. Yet, President Trump and his evolving legal team continue to spew conspiracy theories intended to delegiti...
It Was A Dark Night In The City. Death Hung In The Air Like...
20 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A hard-boiled private eye, a glamorous blond, and a hapless drifter all sit at a bar on the seamy side of town. It's night, the streets are wet, the s...
Polls Are Like A Bad Mate. They Keep Letting Us Down.
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many of the poll results that drove headlines this election season missed the mark, even after pollsters spent the previous four years corre...
This Is 'Jeopardy!'
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jeopardy! has been part of the fabric of American TV, in a couple different forms and across a couple different breaks, since 1964. It is the lon...
America Has A Pandemic Problem. The President Has A Legal Problem.
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 is rising in almost every state. America averaged over 100,000 new cases every day over the la...
Is Election Day Over Yet?
15 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
t's been eight days since Election Day. It's been four days since Joe Biden was projected to become President-elect Joe Biden. But we've still got&nbs...
Benedict Arnold: Unscrupulous Traitor or Unsung Hero?
14 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Benedict Arnold's reputation as a traitor instead of a skilled warrior and confidante of George Washington has become accepted history in the minds of...
The Nose Got The Boot For Putting Boots In The Boot
13 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The world has an Alex Trebek-shaped hole in it. Which raises a question: Who should fill said hole? Billie Eilish has a new single...
The Flap Over Flags
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On the surface, a flag is a piece of cloth with pretty colors and designs. That's the thing with flags. They're often judged on their aesthetics,...
So. How Was Your Weekend?
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On most Mondays, we scramble around trying to put together a show reacting to the weekend's news. But being that nothing much happ...
The Truth About Lies
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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. Lasz...
The Nose Has Been Watching Some Netflix. What Have You Guys Been Up To?
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since nothing has really been going on lately, we figured we'd do an hour about the week in pop culture, as usual. The Nose is sad to see Sean Co...
Waiting For A President
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump campaign threatened legal challenges Wednesday, to force four states to stop counting ballots after Joe Biden's wins in the battle...
Uh. Well. Election Day Is Over.
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The one thing we knew for sure was that by the time we got to today, yesterday would be over. And it is. And we don't quite know what actually ha...
"Citizen Observers" Share Their Voting Experiences
03 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Colin McEnroe Show has an Election Day tradition of celebrating voters by inviting "citizen observers" from around the state to share their experi...
The Election Is Finally Here. What Happens Now?
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us are approaching Election Day with a mix of excitement, hope, and fear, as we live with surging numbers of coronavirus cases, threats of civ...
The Nose For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
30 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (on Amazon Prime)...
Is It Time To "Pack" The Supreme Court?
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of people are wondering if it's time to look at "court packing," and other court reforms, to address judiciary dysfunction that w...
Not Necessarily The Nose: The Year In Horror, 2020
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's our annual Halloween special! For this year, the script kind of wrote itself. We look at the way our current, actual horror is likely to affect o...
In Pods We Trust: How The Pod Prevails In Consumer- And Pop-Culture
27 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We wake up to coffee from a pod, listen to music through our EarPods from our iPods, drive our Smart cars and Fiats and other increasingly pod-shaped ...
America In The Middle Of An Election During A Surge In The Pandemic
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump Administration continues to downplay the pandemic, Vice-President Mike Pence campaigns even as staff members in his inne...
The Nose Turns Like A Wheel Inside A Wheel
23 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It has come to The Nose's attention that you can rent an entire movie theater out for just $99 and have yourself a slightly less pandemic-pa...
How To Secede From Belgium Without Really Trying
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Secession is in the air. Britain withdrew from the European Union, Scotland wants out of the U.K., Catalonia from Spain, and, wait for it, California ...
You Can Keep Your Socks On
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990's, the Southport Sockmen, otherwise known as Steven Bain and Steven Gawthrop, paid drunk people in Liverpool bars and clubs to give t...
Awake In The Middle Of The Night
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our ancestors viewed sleep as a highly sensual and transcendent experience. Today, about a third of adults have trouble falling asleep, staying asleep...
Trump's Ghostwriter; And, A Covid Surge
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump asked journalist Tony Schwartz to ghostwrite his memoir, "The Art of the Deal," because Trump liked the unflattering story Schwartz wrote...
The Nose Watches 'The West Wing'
16 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Burr hosted Saturday Night Live last weekend, and his monologue -- which included bits about wearing masks, cancel culture, white women...
Right-Wing Extremism
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The pandemic, coupled with Black Lives Matter protests, and incendiary rhetoric from President Trump, has riled up anti-government militias across the...
The Nose Has A Fly In Its Hair
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Undoubtedly, the thing that will most be remembered from Wednesday night's vice presidential debate is the fly that landed on Mike Pence's hair...&nbs...
The Myth Of Meritocracy
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The populist backlash that led to the election of President Trump was decades in the making. Like other populist leaders around the wo...
We Like To Watch
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, we didn't take television seriously. We saw it as ephemeral, as "chewing gum for the eyes," as, literally, furniture. And then, around th...
Republicans And COVID; The White House COVID Tracker
06 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump was quick to downplay the pandemic upon his return from Walter Reed in a tweeted video encouraging people not to let the virus dominat...
The Serious, Subversive (And Sometimes Shocking) History Of Cartoons
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's been over 100 years since the first cartoons were drawn by hand. Since then, the form has delved into everything from sex and drugs to racial ine...
The Nose Needs Loyalty; It Expects Loyalty
02 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Nose had planned to discuss The Danish Girl star Eddie Redmayne standing up for J.K. Rowling and Rolling Stone updating t...
Do You Believe In Ghosts?
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A 2019 YouGov survey says that 20 percent of American adults "definitely" believe in ghosts; another twenty-five percent believe they "...
The New Yorker's Alex Ross On 'Wagnerism'
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nietzsche called Richard Wagner "a volcanic eruption of the total undivided artistic capacity of nature itself," and Thomas Mann said he was "probably...
Sex And Intimacy When Fat
29 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We tend to focus on the physical ailments that can arise from being fat more than how fat shaming can affect the mental health of people who...
The Latest Political Dysfunction To Emerge From The Weekend
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
At a news briefing last week, President Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transition. Now, we're all talking about it. Atlantic&nbs...
The Nose Goes Up 'Schitt's Creek'
25 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Listen live Friday at 1 p.m. The Nose has been contemplating covering the controversy around the The Ellen DeGeneres Show literally for mont...
Motels and RVs Are Enjoying A Renaissance With Millennials
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the few silver linings of the pandemic has been a resurgence of interest in motels and RV life from a diverse group of millennials who want saf...
Kurt Andersen On The Unmaking Of America
23 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kurt Andersen's last book, Fantasyland, looks at America's "centuries-old weakness for the untrue and irrational, and its spontaneous and dangero...
What About Bill? Bill Murray At 70
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Murray has starred in some of our favorite movies of the last few decades: Caddyshack, Stripes, Tootsie, Ghostbusters, S...
The Supreme Court and COVID
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday evening, breaking the hearts of generations of women -- and men -- who have benefited from her work ...
The Nose Treats Its Grammys Better Than Kanye Treats His
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Kardashian and other celebrities "froze" their Facebook and Instagram accounts for one day this week "to protest the spread of hate speech and mis...
The Face Behind The Mask
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We produced our first show on masks in the spring of 2020. It was when most of us were isolated at home to sidestep the life-threatening illness we've...
Some Fierce Thing Replete With Too Much 'Rage'
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Woodward is 77 years old. He's in his 50th year at The Washington Post. And he just yesterday published his 20th book. Rage is Woodward'...
The Politics Of Police Reform And COVID-19
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Black Americans are more likely to be infected from COVID-19, be incarcerated, live in poverty, and/or be killed by the polic...
The Nose Is Thinking Of Ending Things
11 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a week of ending things, really. Keeping Up with the Kardashians is ending after 20 seasons. Diana Rigg -- Emma Peel on The A...
Racism In The Small Towns And Suburbs Of Connecticut
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of resistance to Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice in cities like Portland, Oregon; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and o...
VHS Will Not Die
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Tracking, rewinding, ejecting, collecting -- VHS broke ground in home entertainment like never before. The culture of VHS and its enormous best friend...
The Philosophy And Psychology (And Physics And Metaphysics) Of Holes
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In November, 2016, we did a show about all the problems presented by, well, a-holes. And so it seems only logical to expand our scope a bit and d...
The Nose Parties On, Dudes
04 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Carole Baskin is going to appear on Dancing with the Stars. And with that, I've typed the least surprising opening sentence in the history o...
Imagining Hillary's Clinton Life If She Never Married Bill
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hillary Clinton has spent a lot of time in the spotlight. We know her as a First Lady, a U.S. Senator from New York, President Obama's Secretary of St...
Considering Kubrick
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
2001: A Space Odyssey. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. A Clockwork Orange. The Shining. Full...
Hang Tight. It's Almost Next Year.
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Officials in the Trump Administration last week videotaped both a naturalization ceremony held at the White House and an HUD official's...
The Nose's Bookshelf Is Just A Bunch Of Copies Of Mariel Hemingway's Yoga Memoir
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the NBA, the WBNA, MLB, MLS, tennis, and eventually the NHL all postponed games and matches in response to the shooting...
The Placebo Effect
28 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Placebo treatments have been making people feel better for a long time. They've been working since long before Franz Mesmer was run out of 1...
Trumpism Is The Loyal Child of McCarthyism
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
America has long been attracted to charismatic demagogues who master the media of their time to tap into America’s insecurities. Long ...
A Look At Logic Puzzles (Like Sudoku!)
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In May, I discovered (along with the rest of the internet) a video on YouTube of a guy in his loft in Surrey, England... solving a...
The Secret Lives Of Numbers
25 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Two Political Conventions And A Pandemic
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Food and Drug Administration on Sunday authorized the emergency use of convalescent blood to treat people hospitalized with Covid-19. Su...
Swipe The Nose Like A Credit Card
21 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The No. 1 song in the country -- "WAP" by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion -- seems to make just one concession to commercial decorum: ...
Can You Spare A Quarter?
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The pandemic has led to national shortages in testing supplies, PPE, and now, coins. We've been predicting a cashless society and...
A New Saliva Test; Politics At The Postal Service
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The FDA on Saturday authorized emergency use of a rapid and inexpensive saliva test that could increase testing capacity. It’s qu...
The Nose Knows That It's Going To Be Tired Tomorrow, At Least
14 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Nose is worried about movie theaters. The pandemic has done such damage to the industry that Hollywood has started treating the U.S. as a sec...
Swamps: The Past, Present, And (Endangered?) Future Of America's Wetlands
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As President Trump talks about draining the swamp in Washington D.C., we turn our attention to actual swamps. Associated with death and decay, while a...
The Sweatpants Maketh The Man (And Woman)
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"It is the rare person who doesn't own a pair of sweatpants." I am, it turns out, that rare person. Sweatpants are just too warm, is my take. But I do...
Happy Little Trees: The Joy Of Bob Ross (And Thomas Kinkade)
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 25 years since Bob Ross died and 26 years since his The Joy of Painting went off the air. But there are 52 episodes of the show av...
COVID; And, The Assault On Liberalism
10 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As of this weekend, the number of people in the U.S. infected with SARS-CoV-2 topped five million, just sixteen days after passing the four million ma...
The Nose Won't Make Assumptions About Why You Switched Your Homeroom
07 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Communications Commission requires that The Nose cover each and every new Taylor Swift release*. Folklore is Swift's seventh num...
Two Hours With Songwriter Jimmy Webb: Part Two
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jimmy Webb was possibly the most successful songwriter of the 1960s and 1970s. Classics like "Galveston," "Wichita Lineman," "Up, Up, and Away," and "...
Laura Nyro Was The Emily Dickinson Of American Pop Music
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Nyro's most famous compositions -- "Stoned Soul Picnic," "Stoney End," "When I Die," "Wedding Bell Blues," "Eli's Coming" -- are jewels of mains...
Two Hours With Songwriter Jimmy Webb: Part One
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We're reairing this show from September, 2019, when our team traveled to Glen Cove, New York, to interview legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb. ...
To Bubble Or Not To Bubble: The Sports, They Have Returned
03 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sports! There are sports! Baseball's back. At least for now. With almost all of the teams playing games. And only, ya know, two of them...
The Nose Got Bought Out By The Des Moines Register
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This New or Second or Third Golden Age of Television has been going on for 20 or 25 or 30 years now. Peak TV j...
The Decimation Of The Osage Nation
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Native Americans have been getting forced off their land for a long time. Although Thomas Jefferson promised they shall know the United States as only...
You Didn’t Ask To Be Here: Adventures In Antinatalism
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Colin McEnroe Show alum Chion Wolf has a new show: Audacious. Hear this guest episode from her series! Last year, a 28-year-old guy in ...
America Loves Its Heroes
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How we define what it means to be a hero depends a lot on the values shared by the group that's in power at any given time. We're seeing it today in t...
It's Hard To Be Black In America. Still.
27 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Race is a myth; racism is not. I'm stealing this line from Gene Seymour, one of our guests on our show today. We're reairing a show with three p...
The Glory Of Everything: Reading Kids' Books As An Adult
24 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
My son, Simon, is a year old. His mother and his grandmother are both librarians. His father is, well, me. Simon is, predictably, obsessed with books....
Do You Speak Corona?
23 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It took two years for the word AIDS to get from coinage to dictionary. It took COVID-19 thirty-four days. The pandemic has inspired a thousand new or ...
A Place Where Everybody Knows Your Name
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Christine Sismondo says that "America, as we know it, was born in a bar." Taverns were where the Boston Tea Party was planned. They were whe...