The Colin McEnroe Show
Episodes
The echoes of the Red Scare can be heard today
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour we talk about the history of the Second Red Scare, a period also known as McCarthyism. We learn about why the Scare took off in the United S...
A look at the quiet power of the Schuyler sisters, Eliza and Angelica
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You may know the Schuyler sisters, Angelica and Elizabeth (and Peggy!), from Hamilton. But the musical just scratches the surface of their fascin...
Why the American dream and the tragedy of 'The Great Gatsby' still resonate today
16 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year marks 100 years since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby was first published. And it turns out that it took a while for the ...
All calls: The thing about cats and comets is that you can’t reason with either one
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
‘Love’s in need of love today’: A look at Stevie Wonder
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stevie Wonder turned 75 this year. Also this year, our friend the jazz pianist Noah Baerman put out an album of covers of Wonder’s “messag...
How robots, and our attitudes toward them, have evolved
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What counts as a robot? This hour, a look at what robots are and the latest in robot technology. Plus, how robots were used and thought about in medie...
Nothing to see here: Erasure in history, art and more
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, we look at the political erasure of history, and its impacts. Plus, we talk about why artists destroy their own work or the works of others...
What the history of the McKinley era, tariffs, and the Gilded Age can teach us about the present
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Donald Trump has found inspiration for tariffs and more in the 25th President of the United States: William McKinley. This hour, we look at ...
All calls: Should we be less worried about the Netflix deal and more worried about the collapse of the CDC?
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
The Nose looks at ‘PLUR1BUS’ and ‘Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5’
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s Nose — guest hosted by writer and journalist Lindsay Lee Wallace — looks at: PLUR1BUS is a new post-apocalyptic sci-fi t...
A look at cultural manias from Liszt and orchids to the Beatles and beyond
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From fueling some of mankind's most violent events to inspiring your daughter's latest pop star obsession, mania has become an indispensable force in ...
Trinity College's new president, Daniel G. Lugo, reflects on the transformative power of higher education
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, Daniel G. Lugo, the new president of Trinity College in Hartford, joins us to talk about the value of higher education, his background, the...
All calls: Guess the song; Win a free starling
02 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. The...
Remembering Sir Tom Stoppard
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, Colin McEnroe and the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard recorded a live conversation at The Study in New Haven. Stoppard, whom Colin c...
Wednesday is Soylent Day
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if you just don’t really enjoy food very much? What if you’re totally fine eating the same thing every single day? What if you think ...
The art of the recipe: Gravestones, fictional worlds, and cookbooks (of course)
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour: recipes. We talk with someone who makes recipes found on gravestones, and we consider what makes an effective recipe, the history of the mo...
‘Betcha can’t eat just one’: The science and art of snacking
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Snacking on snacks, savory or sweet, has become a way of life. This hour, we sink our teeth into our snack-food obsessions. GUESTS: Andrea Hern&aacu...
A (Paul) Winter’s Tale
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, we’re joined in studio by seven-time Grammy Award-winning local musician Paul Winter. His new album, Horn of Plenty, is out today. Wi...
There are rules for punctuation, but we don’t always agree on them
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Should people use the Oxford comma? Is there a correct number of exclamation points per email? If someone ends a casual text with a period, does that ...
From spiritual to practical: We could learn a lot from modern (and Sixteenth-century!) nuns
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What's it like being a nun in 2025? Sister Monica Clare joins us to explain her path to the Community of St. John Baptist and why she is sharing her s...
Happy Little Trees: The joy of Bob Ross (and Thomas Kinkade)
18 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been over 30 years since Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting went off the air, but the painter is still a household name. This hour: a look at the und...
All calls: Beware Pandora's crawlspace, it's FULL of sprickets
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. The...
The Nose looks at ‘SNL’s Trump, Pope Leo’s favorite movies, and ‘Death by Lightning’
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s Nose looks at the way Saturday Night Live is using its cold opens to deal with the never-ending firehose of news each week — a...
What the world needs now: The chemistry of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, it’s our show on the relationship and chemistry between Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick (and the lyricist Hal David) recorded live ...
Why stories about heists, real or in movies, steal our hearts
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In late October, thieves broke into the Louvre and stole priceless jewels. It’s a story that feels familiar in large part because of countless h...
All Calls: Wiggingham, CT overrun with stomping, jumping spiders
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. The...
The Nose looks at ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere’
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Blue Moon is the ninth movie directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke. It is written by Robert Kaplow and “inspired by” the ...
Shall we dance?
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we dance? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Dancing has served a multitude of functions for various cultures throughout hist...
What if we were addicted to forgiveness instead of revenge?
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Revenge is as old as humanity itself. And new research shows that revenge functions in our brains like a type of addiction. This hour a look at reveng...
From jelly beans to Diet Mountain Dew, how politicians eat and why it matters
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Food is an important part of the campaign trail, from tamales to McDonald's. This hour is all about how food is used in politics, including in the Whi...
All calls: Does anybody even know what time it is on Lord Howe Island anyway?
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
The Nose looks at ‘A House of Dynamite’ and ‘Task’
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A House of Dynamite is an apocalyptic political thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow. It is Bigelow’s first movie in eight years, since Detroit ...
A look back at more than 200 years of Frankenstein (and his monster)
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are few monsters more iconic or enduring than Frankenstein’s. From Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel to the 1931 Universal monster movie to ...
Mysteries, hoaxes, and magic: Decoding mystifying manuscripts
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most mysterious texts in the world lives here in Connecticut. The Medieval Voynich Manuscript is at the Beinecke Library at Yale University...
The road to sainthood: Who’s on it and how did they get there?
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, a look at the path to sainthood and how it’s changed over time. Plus: the local example of the Rev. Michael McGivney. GUESTS: Teres...
All Calls: Not everyone involved in this episode went to the bathroom beforehand
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. The...
The Nose looks at ‘Mr. Scorsese’ and ‘No Other Land’
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Guest host comedian Shawn Murray returns! This week’s Nose looks at: Mr. Scorsese is a five-part, more-than-four-hour documentary series about t...
A tribute to the proud and peaceful pigeon
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
B. F. Skinner thought pigeons were so smart they could be used to guide missiles during World War II. He proposed a system in which pigeons would esse...
The ‘father of history’ would have some thoughts about our present
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Greek writer Herodotus "invented" history by turning away from myth to a new kind of writing. And although he wrote his Histories nearly 2,500 years a...
From hot mics to mic drops, a celebration of the microphone
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The microphone makes everything we do on the radio possible. This hour we celebrate the invention and look at the role of microphones in music. Plus h...
All Calls: Trump’s AI video is so Skibidi Toilet
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
It can be an art, too: On murder and more in Hitchcock’s close quarters
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rope is an interesting movie in Alfred Hitchcock’s œuvre. It’s his first color picture. It’s one of 13 movies he made based on...
A look at the women buried in the footnotes of scientific discovery
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Women scientists and inventors have been making ground-breaking discoveries since Agnodice pretended to be a man in order to become the first female a...
Rope has been knotting humanity together for centuries
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rope has been foundational to so much of human civilization. It's made sailing, hunting, building, and so much more, possible. This hour, we look at t...
Today: Did episode on notebooks & diaries, bought kiwi fruit, had teeth cleaning
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour is all about notebooks. We'll talk about the history and evolution of notebooks, favorite examples, and celebrate the joy of writing things ...
Chion Wolf takes your calls (again)!
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
From chorus lines to emus: A look at the stage musical
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year is the 50th anniversary of A Chorus Line and Chicago and the 10th anniversary of Hamilton. Meanwhile, new Broadway ...
A look at the next pandemic with Michael T. Osterholm
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
COVID has caused more than 7 million confirmed deaths (and estimates of the actual total go well past 20 million). Here’s the even worse news: I...
Words, words, words: A look at style guides and Britishisms in American English
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, a look at words and usage and grammar and language and all that fun stuff. Have you noticed how we Americans have become “so bloody k...
A tribute to cereal: Kid tested, mother approved
07 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We once did a show about beer jingles, which is a great example of how a product becomes a culture. Cereal as a culture, is off the charts. There&rsqu...
All calls: Be who you want to be. Not who the midges want you to
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. The...
The Nose looks at ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘The Lowdown’
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One Battle After Another is the 11th feature film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. It is written and produced by Anderson and inspired by the no...
The secret lives of numbers
02 Oct 2025
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 around us...
Multiple wars rage on. Does the Nobel Peace Prize still matter?
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The 2025 winner of The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in a few weeks. President Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants it. This hour we loo...
It’s time to talk about the alphabet in the room
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most of the Western world is organized by alphabetical order, which is so much more than the 26 letters that make up the alphabet. Alphabetical order ...
All calls: In a world of Gumby folk, I’m a Pokey
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
The music and mystery of Nick and Molly Drake
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The singer and songwriter Nick Drake died in 1974. He was just 26, and he remains a bit of a mystery. He recorded three albums but played very few sho...
What can we learn from the myth of Antigone? For one, it’s so 2025
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sophocles' play Antigone was originally performed around 441 B.C.E., but the themes in the play still resonate today. This hour, we revisit ...
Shark fever: The lore of the great white
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The myth of the great white, exacerbated by the 1975 megahit Jaws, is false. Great whites are not the aggressive creatures still portrayed in popular ...
Necks: More than just something we have a pain in
23 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you feel about your neck? Maybe you only think about it when you’re sore from sleeping wrong or from sitting at a desk all day. But for c...
All Calls: If you give a mouse a vasectomy, can you keep your Hulu subscription?
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. The...
The Nose looks at Jimmy Kimmel, ‘The Paper’ and ‘The Naked Gun’
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In July, after CBS canceled The Late Show, President Trump posted that “Jimmy Kimmel is next.” And now his administration seems nearly to ...
A show about psychics! (But they already knew that)
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There is perhaps no figure more emblematic of the paranormal than the psychic. Able to predict the future, see into the past, and even communicate wit...
Fly with us to Neverland: Why we're forever hooked on Peter Pan
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been over one hundred years since J. M. Barrie first told the story of Peter Pan, Wendy, and Neverland. Since then, Peter Pan has been adapted co...
Turns out common sense isn’t all that common
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Donald Trump has been using the phrase “common sense” a lot. But it turns out that this is nothing new for politicians. This hou...
Chion Wolf takes your calls!
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
Laura Nyro was the Emily Dickinson of American pop music
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Nyro’s most famous compositions — “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Stoney End,” “When I Die,” “Weddi...
‘Never be the same’: 24 years in the shadow of 9/11
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 24 years since the sunny late summer Tuesday morning that changed basically everything. This hour, a look back at September 11, 2001, and ...
Sugar highs (and lows): A history of "white gold"
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The history of sugar is a complicated one. Once available to only the rich and powerful, sugar now shows up in everything from cereals and soups, to c...
Neither snow nor rain nor heat... A history of the U.S. Postal Service
09 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. Postal Service was one of our earliest experiments in democracy. The vast transportation networks that led to more than 30,000 post offices r...
All calls: What's the name of the zip line at the Robert Frost Fantasy Camp?
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, the conversation winds around to Robert Frost, bucket lists, the Supreme Court, spotted lantern flies, New England autonomy, and dating. &h...
How Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman can help us break the spell of technology on our lives
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you listen to The Colin McEnroe Show regularly, you likely know that Colin has been influenced by two media theorists: Marshall McLuhan a...
Beyond woods and roads: The life and poetry of Robert Frost
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You have probably encountered Robert Frost through his poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Not Taken.” B...
An ode to the sun
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What can you say about the sun? It sits at the center of our solar system and has, over time, been at the center of religions, scriptures, songs, art,...
Rum raisin, Ryan Reynolds, flies grooming themselves … the acid is starting to kick in
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
What’s wrong with men: A look at Michael Douglas movies with Jessa Crispin
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You hear a lot about the ongoing American crisis among men, among boys, around masculinity, right? You see lots of headlines about how we got here, wh...
Colin and Dylan tell you what the song of the summer should have been
28 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the you sit contemplating the end of long summer days, you might wonder what might have been. What might have been if there was a song of the summe...
Tangle's Isaac Saul has us look at both sides and beyond
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The political newsletter Tangle approaches things differently than most news organizations. Each day they do a deep-dive on one topic where they lay o...
The battle for butter
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We tend not to think much about that pat of butter we put on our morning toast, including how the store-bought sweet cream butter we're eating likely ...
First Colin takes your calls and then Senator Chris Murphy does
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For the first half of today's show, Colin will take your calls about whatever you want to talk about. Then, it’s been a minute since Senator Chr...
Senator Chris Murphy takes your calls and reflects on the fight to save democracy
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been a minute since Senator Chris Murphy joined Colin for a check-in on state matters and a chat about the weather in Washington. And we do...
The Nose looks at ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ and ‘Alien: Earth’
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s Nose, guest hosted by comedian Shawn Murray, looks at: Highest 2 Lowest is the fifth collaboration between director Spike Lee and ac...
What is culture without the guidance of critics?
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, we take a critical look at the role of art critics in our world. What is the status of criticism, and is it under threat? GUESTS: Naveen ...
Why does "like" bother us so much?
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The word "like" has been around for centuries, but it reached a new cultural prominence in the 1980s, partially thanks to Frank Zappa's song "Valley G...
The unfolding evolution of origami
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you make a 100-meter telescope that folds down to three meters so you can tuck it inside a space vehicle? How do you make a heart stent that fo...
All calls: Why ABBA will never win the Nobel Peace Prize
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
What the golden age of Condé Nast can tell us about the future of magazines
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Michael M. Grynbaum's new book Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America, traces the rise of Cond&ea...
190 years after his birth, Mark Twain is as relevant (and funny) as ever
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chances are, you know Richard Thomas as John-Boy on The Waltons. Or maybe you saw him more recently in his many-episode arcs on shows like The America...
One leg at a time: The history of women and pants
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
According to mytho-historical accounts, the ancient Amazons wore pants while riding into battle. But the trend this tribe of warrior women set was sho...
Smiling will get you everywhere
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Smiling is a universal way to show happiness. But not all smiles are happy. In reality, we smile less for happiness than for social reasons that have ...
All calls: If you try to talk on the radio with your radio on your head will explode
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
You may be wrong, but you may be right: A look at Billy Joel
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Billy Joel has reportedly sold more than 160 million albums. He’s been nominated for 24 Grammy Awards (and won six of them), an Emmy, and a Tony...
This show is the cat’s pajamas
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is really going to be the cat’s pajamas. Or is it pyjamas? Do cats even wear pajamas? Why would they? Why do we? Should any of us w...
The intangibility of ‘good taste,' from literature to food
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to have 'good taste'? And what would it take to develop it? This hour, we talk about taste and discernment. Plus, a look at flavor a...
Combating corrosion: The war on rust
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rust is all around us. It’s in our cars, our homes, our infrastructure. It’s also the subject of Jonathan Waldman’s book Rust: The L...
All calls: Mordor is no longer theoretical
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting ...
The Nose looks at ‘Eddington’ and ‘Sunday Best’
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eddington is the fourth feature film written and directed by Ari Aster. It’s a neo-Western comedy set in the fictional and titular New Mexico to...
Monsters: A look at the real, the fake, and the friendly
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Monsters are our subconscious perversions, our twisted fears realized, but what causes their creation, and how are they made? This hour, we look at fa...
‘A most confounding affliction’: A look at headaches
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Headache symptoms can strike sufferers without warning, disabling them for even days at a time. There have been nearly 4,000 years of documented heada...
'Tis a show about castles, me Lord
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
They're in the books we read, the shows we watch, and the art we hang on our walls. They conjure notions of might, magic, romance, and more. Castles, ...