The Colin McEnroe Show
Episodes
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...
Does Religion Still Matter When We Need It Most?
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Religious scholar Elaine Pagels trusted the Gospel of Thomas to get her through the almost unbearably painful years after the death of her s...
Coronavirus Is Still Rising, Biden Is Still Leading, And It's National Moth Week
20 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The number of people testing positive for coronavirus continues to rise in many parts of the U.S., with sharp rises in places like Florida, Nevad...
The Nose Has Got A Lot Of Brains But No Polish
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Four years ago, over the course of three days, film crews documented the musical Hamilton as performed by nearly its entire original Broadwa...
Awake In The Middle Of The Night
16 Jul 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...
We Like To Watch
15 Jul 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...
A Perfect Storm: A Surging Virus and An Election Meltdown
14 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The number of people being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is rising in 48 states. We're testing more, but the rate of positive tests, ho...
Walking With Dante
13 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Dante's Inferno" is the most famous section of Dante Aligheri's 14,000 line epic poem, The Divine Comedy. But it's only the first part of D...
A World In A Grain Of Sand
10 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sand is the most abundant material on Earth. And, other than water and air, sand is the natural resource we consume more than any other -- more, even,...
Silenced Nights: Curfews And Fear Of The Night
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past weeks, cities across the country have implemented curfews in response to George Floyd protests and to enforce stay-at-home orders during...
Bankers For The Stars: Deutsche Bank, Trump, And Jeffrey Epstein
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is it safe to say that we're not yet ready to kiss and make up with the banks whose reckless behavior led to the 2008 financial crisis? A little contr...
The Evolution Revolution: Women Call The Shots
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Argus Pheasant is a lifelong bachelor. He mates with multiple females but has no further contact with his mates or the baby pheasants he sires. By...
You're Not Dying. But Panic Attacks Can Make You Think You Are.
06 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
You're Not Dying. But Panic Attacks Can Make You Think You Are." width="100%">You're shopping for groceries. Out of the blue your heart starts to r...
The Nose Has Pretty Much Always Hoped Someone Would Rename It
03 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The raft of renaming going on right now obviously hasn't spared popular culture. The Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum are now The Chicks and...
Poker Mirrors Life: Part Skill, Lots Of Luck
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Konnikova, best-selling New York Times author and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, has long been interested in understanding the balance...
Wild And Crazy Guys
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Belushi, John Candy, Rick Moranis. Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Beverly Hill...
You Are Your Safest Sex Partner: Sex And Coronavirus
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Your sex life doesn't have to suffer just because you're cooped up at home every day. Researchers say that sex is a healthy way to calm the anxiety of...
Coronavirus Is Surging; Tax Refunds Will Be Delayed; Fireworks Inspire Conspiracy Theories
29 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are just over 10 million cases of coronavirus globally and almost 500,000 deaths. U.S. deaths recently rose to 125,000. Yet, the Trump Administr...
Long Live The Movie Musical
25 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The movie musical died a long, slow death a long time ago. Right? Well, except that there's La La Land. And Moana. And The Gr...
How Are You? It's So Nice Outside Today; A Great Day For Our Show On Small Talk
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's nice to meet you! How do you like it here in Connecticut? Small talk is both the bane of our existence and essential in our existential que...
The Wonder Of Termites (Yep, That's What I Said)
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody likes termites. They get into the wood in our homes and can lead to infuriating and expensive repairs. What's to like? It turns out, there's a ...
Do You Hear What I Hear?
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Humans typically make enough collective noise to keep the earth vibrating at a steady hum. But the pandemic has quieted that hum enough to let se...
After We Die, Our Dust Will Live Forever
22 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Dust is a fascinating substance. Our bodies are always shedding dust from our skin, hair, and nails, leaving little bits of DNA wherever we roam....
Learning How To Breathe
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists say humans don't know how to breathe very well. We don't breathe deep enough, we breathe too much, and we breathe through our mou...
Our (9th Or) 10th (Almost) Annual Song Of The Summer Show
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We've done this show every year since 2013. We almost certainly didn't do it 2012. But we did in 2011. And the...
Understanding Hierarchies In Nature And Society
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Social structures, in almost all cases, are defined by some form of hierarchy. Whether in academics, sports, religion, business, or politics, there's ...
A Nerding Out About Clouds
15 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 thes...
Not Necessarily The Nose: 36 Years Of The Coen Brothers
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
No Country for Old Men. Fargo. The Big Lebowski. Raising Arizona. Barton Fink. Miller's Crossing. Blood Simple. The...
Do You Speak Corona?
11 Jun 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 ...
Sports In The Time After (But Kind Of Still During) Corona
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The leagues are working in earnest toward starting back up. The NBA has a plan. Major League Baseball can't seem to work one out. Major Leag...
The Facts And The Fiction Of Pandemic
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
A group of health officials gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss infectious disease learn that forty-seven people at an internment camp in Indo...
The Nose Doesn't Know A Frog's Ribbit About Those Things
05 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We've all seen any number of emails and Tweets and Facebook posts this week from companies supporting protests and the like. Entertainment industry fi...
The World (Kind Of) Without Us (For A Little While)
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2007, journalist Alan Weisman published The World Without Us. It was an international bestseller. The book tries to answer what is ultimately ...
What Could Be Wrong? I Don't See What's Wrong.
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When did the horrors that once seemed unthinkable become commonplace? We're in the throes of a global pandemic. People protesting a police officer who...
Something Different Is Happening. Do You Feel It?
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Something different is happening in America at this moment. Do you feel it? We want to hear from you. Call us during our live show Tuesday, from 1 to ...
The Convergence Of A Pandemic, Police Brutality And Racism
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The pandemic has laid bare how racism in housing, education, employment, and access to health care, disproportionately hurts Black Americans more than...
The Nose Is Culturally Confident
29 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Gadsby has been a prominent comedian in Australia for going on 15 years. In America, though, she arrived seemingly from nowhere in 2018 with&nb...
Between Two Worlds: The Liminal Nature Of Life During Crises
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As the world waits for an end to Covid-19, billions of people find themselves betwixt and between two realities: The pre-pandemic reality we knew, and...
An Hour With An Old Friend
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Shortly after the pandemic shifted our weekday work scenario from one of shared space and bursts of spontaneous conversation, to one hour-long weekly ...
The Virus Is Still Here. The Only Thing That's Changed Is That We're Reopening.
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. is on track to reach 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 this week. Yet, most states began reopening last week using data t...
An Hour With America's Greatest Living Film Critic
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today, in lieu of The Nose, an hour with America's Greatest Living Film Critic, David Edelstein. GUEST: David Edelstein - America's Greates...
Masks Maketh The Man (Women And Lions Too)
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who would have guessed a face mask would become the latest cultural symbol of our identity, one more way to express our politics, our sense ...
How Creating A Color Created A Controversy
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nyctophiliacs rejoice! The color you know and love (black) is now blacker than ever before. And never mind that black is not technically a color. The ...
Searching For The Holy Grail Of COVID-19
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Connecticut will reopen some businesses on May 20, as coronavirus-related hospitalizations continue to decrease. This may be good news for busine...
The Nose Wants To Go To Dreamland
15 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter announced on Tuesday that its employees who can work from home can continue to work from home -- for forever, if they want. One wonders h...
Holy Bats In A Pandemic!
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bats get a bad rap. People are afraid of animals that tap into our deepest fears and revulsions. Bats aren't cuddly, they fly at night, have big eyes ...
The Philosophy And Psychology (And Physics And Metaphysics) Of Holes
12 May 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...
Greenwich Republicans And Trump; 'This Week In Virology'
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We can observe how economic inequality in America plays out during this pandemic by watching who gets help and who gets ignored. Two America's live si...
The Nose Is A Made-Up, Bogus, Hyped-Up, Not-Necessary Special Event
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
23 Hours To Kill is Jerry Seinfeld's fourth-ever standup comedy special and his second for Netflix. It hit the streaming service on Tuesday, and ...
The Sweatpants Maketh The Man (And Woman)
06 May 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...
The One About Joni Mitchell
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Joni Mitchell is a singer-songwriter from Alberta, Canada. In 1968, her debut album, Song to a Seagull, was released and since then, Mitchell has...
Pandemic And Moral Relativism; The Rush To A Vaccine; Asian Giant Hornets
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's hard to fathom the idea that more people have to die from COVID-19 before we come out on the other end of this pandemic. Is it time for political...
The Nose Has The Hands Of A 70 Year Old
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are plenty of questions about what the future of live performance looks like right now, and, in certain ways, no form seems more displaced by so...
Did We Get The Dystopia We Were Promised?
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Three years ago, we did a show where we asked which fictional dystopian future we were actually already living in. Now that we've arrived at, ya ...
Do You Hear What I Hear?
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Humans typically make enough collective noise to keep the earth vibrating at a steady hum. But the pandemic has quieted that hum enough to let se...
We Knew This Pandemic Was Coming
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This show originally aired on July 25, 2018. Two years ago, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ran an intricate simulation of a rapidl...
How Do We Make Sense Of President Trump's Behavior?
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
People in several states came together last weekend to protest against stay-at-home orders. Their actions followed President Trump tweets of...
The Nose Rollicks And Frolics With All The Young Dudes
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fiona Apple's new album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, is currently the best-reviewed album, um, ever, according to Metacritic. Bon Iver has ...
Noah Baerman And 'The Rock & The Redemption'
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Noah Baerman Resonance Ensemble's The Rock & the Redemption is a jazz concept album of sorts that recasts the Sisyphus myth&nbs...
The Scapegoat Is Not To Blame
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In March, President Trump blamed our global pandemic on China. When that didn't work, he blamed the World Health Organization (WHO...
Without TV, There's No Trump
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
That headline is just a direct quote from James Poniewozik's Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America. I was torn...
Learning To Live In The Shadow Of Coronavirus
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One can't help but wonder if the President understands that getting through this pandemic will not be a quick sprint. On Thursday, the Trum...
The Nose Hosts 'SNL' In Its Pajamas
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Last weekend, Saturday Night Live aired a prerecorded special, "Saturday Night Live at Home." Tom Hanks hosted from his kitchen. M...
Grocery Blues: Supermarket Shopping In The Time Of COVID
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
I haven't been grocery shopping in 21 days. The last time I went, March 26, was a harrowing experience. It was before this particular grocery store, a...
On Solitude And Hermits
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Before the pandemic, most of us craved of a little solitude away from the hustle of life. Now, we've been been thrust into a form of solitu...
When Will It Be Safe To Go Back In The Water?
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Health experts have released multiple plans that all call for some version of the same thing. We need to conduct widespread testing, trace c...
The Nose Bought $100,000 Worth Of Anthony Fauci Bobbleheads
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We've entered a moment where the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is a celebrity. You can buy donuts wi...