The Colin McEnroe Show
Episodes
Does Spite Advance Survival of a Species?
08 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Spite is everywhere. It's as fresh as today's sports headlines as UConn readies to play Notre Dame for the women's basketball championship. Fighting I...
The Scramble Peeps Veep With Frank Rich
07 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the Scramble, we get to spend some time with Frank Rich. Frank wears a lot of hats these days as both editor-at-large at New York Magazine an...
The Nose Enjoys Neil deGrasse Tyson's Cosmos on the Rocks
04 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The original Carl Sagan "Cosmos" was at least partly a response to the Cold War. Its message: "We're such little specks, can we embrace our comm...
The Race for the Higgs Boson
02 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists made an announcement on July 4, 2012 to little fanfare outside the world of scholarly physicists that ended a 50-year search to explain the...
Celebrating the Ninth Annual Trinity Hip Hop Festival
02 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When I say "hip hop," do you think about an art form the exalts bling, consumption, excess, decadence, and vulgarity? What about all the other hip hop...
April Fool's! Exploring Pranks and Practical Jokes
01 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I'll be honest: I hate April Fools' Day, and I'm not a big fan of practical jokes. I hate it the way that some people hate Valentine's Day or New Year...
The Scramble Meets Charla Nash, Talks Politics With David Plotz
31 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Scramble, our Monday episode, is a wrap-up of the weekend's news, and a look at the week ahead. This hour, we have a conversation with Charla Nash...
The Nose Travels to the Grand Budapest Hotel
28 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A hilariously fussy hotel manager with a taste for the high life is wrenched from his gay surroundings by the specter of war and a false murder charg...
What It's Like to (Try to) Make Cartoons for The New Yorker
27 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I'll tell you one of the big thrills of my writing career: I was a contributing editor to Mirabella Magazine in the 80's. I'd written an essay about g...
Secrets of the Sea
26 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I get way too much of my information from movies and this year large container ships played a role in two major films.The firs...
Hearing Voices
25 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Teresa of Avila very unambiguously reported hearing voices. She's a saint. John Forbes Nash heard voices. He won a Nobel prize. Robert Schumann heard ...
The Scramble: Intelligence Gathering, the History of Missing Airplanes, and the Book of Mormon
24 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Scramble, we'll talk about a system run by the Navy that keeps track of, among other things, parking tickets and field information cards ...
WARNING: The Nose May Contain Trigger Warnings
21 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
here are the topics for the Nose today:Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Comics, From Niche to Mainstream
20 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, comic books were a niche for kids and nerds. Now they are mainstream culture. "The Avengers" is the number three all-time worldwide ...
A Salute to Irish Music with Martin Hayes
19 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The musician Christy Moore said Ireland could never have the equivalent of a folk revival because it never let its traditions lapse. And that's very t...
March Madness 2014
18 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Where is Wofford College? What is a shock of wheat, and what does it have to do with Wichita State's scary mascot? For that matter, what's a Chanticle...
The Scramble on Agunuah, Vaccinations, and More
17 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Oppenheimer writes about religion and a whole bunch of other things. Today, he'll be talking about the difficulty Orthodox Jewish women...
The Nose Lurks Behind the Backdrop of "Between Two Ferns"
14 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
President Obama has consistently refused to be a panelist on The Nose, but his appearance this week on "Between Two Ferns" with Zach Galifianakis...
Hartford Was the Typewriter Capital of the Country
11 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the second season of the Netflix series, House of Cards, the protagonist Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, pulls out an old family typewrite...
The Scramble: Losing at Jeopardy, Finding Lost Dogs, and Winning Back Lost Freedom of Information
10 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Amanda Hess is one of our favorite social critics. She writes for Slate and lately, well always, she's thinking about the depiction of women in mass m...
The Nose Explores True Entertainment and "Normcore"
07 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Can great television be as satisfying as great literature? On today's Nose, we'll apply that question to HBO's True Detective. Support the show: ...
The Psychology and Sociology of Coming Out of the Closet
06 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the space of a lifetime, the status of gay and lesbian people in the United States and Western Europe has been transformed. So to watch a play like...
Raising the Minimum Wage
05 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Minimum wage in Connecticut is higher than the federal minimum, $8.70 an hour instead of $7.25. In fact, the federal minimum is so ridiculously low th...
It's Grammar Day! Is My Exclamation Point Wrong?
04 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It's National Grammar Day, a time to take stock of the current status of the English language, and possibly get into bitter fights.I'm old school. I'm...
The Scramble: Are A.J. Jacobs, Lupita Nyong'o, and John Rowland Related?
03 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Scramble, one of our favorite writers, A.J. Jacobs takes us deep inside the world of modern ancestry research where websites are all &nbs...
The Nose Predicts High Drama at the Academy Awards
28 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We have a question: Where does Adam Sandler watch the Oscars? Does he sit there with all the people who are actually up for awards, or is he home alon...
Broccoli is Best!
26 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Somehow, kale has become trendy in the last few years, although its moment in the sun seems to be almost over. How did a thing like that happen? Would...
Get the Popcorn. Take Your Seat. We're Talking Remakes
26 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Remakes are easy. Money-makers are hard. We live in a sloshing sea of those movie remakes but it's rare for one of them to out gross the original. An ...
Women Speak Out on the State of Sports
25 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Four women join us to talk about sports, mostly football. Two of them are sports journalists. A third is a journalist specializing in legal issues, an...
The Scramble Talks TV, Drones, and Big Changes in Sports
24 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There's something exciting about a critic who challenges your perceptions in a compelling way. I love the movie American Hustle but when I read Willa ...
The Nose Wipes Its Eyes, Blames the Fame, and Explores the Radio Dial
21 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Last Sunday, we took a road trip into New York City, but before we left, I read Beth Boyle Machlan's New York Times essay about the joys she sometimes...
A Conversation With Ingrid Newkirk, Co-Founder of PETA
20 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The debate over animal rights is as old as Voltaire, as old as Aristotle. But as you'll hear today, it turned some kind of modern corner in 1975 with ...
Connecticut in the Civil War
19 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Here's a little bit of Civil War history that seems to have started here in Connecticut. It was in this month of February in 1860 that Cassius Clay, a...
The Scramble "Likes" Douglas Rushkoff
18 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We're starting out today with a segment about "Generation-Like," the media term media theorist Douglas Rushkoff uses for the generation of Millennials...
The Nose Questions God and Atheists; Judging the Morality of Athletes
14 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I was still digesting some of the lessons of the play "Freud's Last Session" -- a 90 minute conversation between Freud and C.S. Lewis -- when I stumbl...
Pondering Modern Love
13 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It's hard to improve on the poet, Rilke, who wrote, "Love consists of this, that two solitudes meet, protect, and greet each other." But did Rilke hav...
Living With Multiple Sclerosis
12 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The actresses Teri Garr and Annette Funicello, the television hosts Montel Williams and Neil Cavuto, the writer Joan Didion, Ann Romney, the wife of t...
The Passion of Pickling
11 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In 2030 B.C., somebody brought cucumbers from India to the Tigris Valley, and they said, "We can pickle that!" And so it began, from the first stirrin...
Scrambling to Make Sense of Russia, Woody Allen, and the Westminster Dog Show
10 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
While visitors watching the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, enjoy spectacular feats of athletic ability from the world's most accomplished athletes,...
The Nose Hacks Jeopardy!, Inspects Reality TV, and Flinches at Russian Controversies
07 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
While tying together all the stories for today's session of the Nose, I keep hearing (in my mind) Charlie Seen say, "Winning!" We have a lot of storie...
Seeking the Truth in Secret Societies
06 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The first secret society, according to Theodore Ziolkowski, a Princeton-based scholar on the literature of cults and conspiracies, "consisted of Eve a...
50 Years of The Beatles!
05 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In February of 1964, the Beatles appeared not once, but on three consecutive Sunday nights on "The Ed Sullivan Show," attracting what was the the larg...
An Ode to Opera
04 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Last fall, the New York City Opera -- what Mayor LaGuardia called "the People's Opera" -- declared bankruptcy. This is/was the opera that introduced A...
The Scramble: The Famous Are Human Too
03 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On Sunday, two people named Dylan made news. So much so that you had to be careful on Twitter. If you tweeted "Dylan sold out" about Bob Dylan's Super...
The Nose Does the Guilt Pose, Spoils Superbowl Commercials, and Survives Anxiety
31 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the Nose, we'll discuss one of those eruptions that happen in the digital world -- a frenzy of discussion and expressions of outrage over an ...
Adjuncts in Academia
30 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a day without adjunct faculty. Many colleges and universities would effectively shut down. Somewhere between 70-75% of the academic wor...
The Healing Power of Music: Colin McEnroe at Watkinson School
29 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of interconnected things were happening in the 1990s, an oncologist and hematologist named Mitchell Gaynor discovered trough a Tibetan mon...
The Conjuring Arts
28 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Led by Harry Potter, the last 20 years have unleashed a new wave of enthusiasm for the fantasy side of magic. But, we've also seen an undeniable...
The Scramble Shares Limited Information About Today's Show: FOI and Football
27 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It's Monday. That means our show is The Scramble, where we make a lot of decisions on a last minute basis. We asked our super guest, Marc Tracy of The...
The Nose: Bieber's Bust, Casting Peter Pan, and Scapegoating Maureen McDonnell
24 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It was a fertile week for topics, but here at The Nose, we've boiled them down to four.First, the decision by NBC to capitalize on its live Sound of M...
Talking About HIV/AIDS in 2014
23 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
"Dallas Buyer's Club" covers a lot of the same ground as an Oscar-nominated documentary about AIDS from last year, "How To Survive A Plague." Each fil...
Asteroid Apocalypse: How Likely Is It?
22 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Scientists say that the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia this past February was a rare event, unlikely to happen more than every 100 -2...
The Scramble Is on the Scrimmage Line
21 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Through no act of overarching planning, all three of our segments today will deal directly, or otherwise, with sports.In our first segment, we talk wi...
Living in Interpolitical and Interfaith Marriages
20 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
I spent one night in the company of James Carville and Mary Matalin, in the course of being their onstage moderator at the Bushnell. My lasting impres...
The Nose Falls in Love With Its Operating System
17 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Nose panel went to the movies this week to see the critically-acclaimed Spike Jonze film, "Her," about a future world in which it's not unusu...
The Complications of Comedy
15 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Dying is easy, comedy is hard. But, why is comedy so hard, especially on the stage, and what makes something funny?The premise for a famously funny pl...
Why Compost?
14 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You may think that composting all your kitchen waste sounds like a good idea, but you probably don't realize how many things really can be composted, ...
What's It Like To Be Republican in Connecticut?
14 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When I first started writing about politics in Connecticut, I can honestly say that there were many more Republicans who excited my admiration than th...
The Scramble Catches Up with Gene Demby and Roger Catlin
13 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today is Monday. That's when we do the show on the fly. We call it The Scramble and one of the twists we're trying is the reverse of ordinary public r...
The Nose is Stuck in Traffic
10 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Governor Chris Christie's administration is under fire for ordering lane closures that blocked access to the George Washington Bridge for ...
Cinema Scuffle! With David Edelstein and A. O. Scott
09 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
My two favorite film critics, A.O. Scott and David Edelstein, appear on the show today, and we've got a longer list of topics than we can possibly get...
A Tribute to Twins!
08 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Identical twins are just like us - and then they're not! From Ann Landers and Dear Abbey, from the Castro brothers, one of whom might be our first ide...
Remembering the Collapse of the Hartford Civic Center Roof
07 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
For many years, Ralph Nader has pushed the idea of an American Museum of Tort History which would be located somewhere in Connecticut, probably Winste...
The Scramble: Insider Trading, Anxiety, and David Brooks Best Friend
06 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Scramble we lead off with some reporting that will be featured this week on a PBS' "Frontline" story, To Catch a Trader. It's the st...
The Nose: Originality, Subarus and Sexuality, Anonymity, and Grand Exits
03 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Today on The Nose, we'll talk about this relatively insignificant bit of Rush Limbaugh peevishness, and the degree to which each of us thinks he ...
Enjoying the Randomness of Miscellanea
02 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Wandering the vast labyrinth of useless information, you might encounter some people having a debate about the last person who knew everything. This i...
The Final Report on Sandy Hook
30 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There are a lot of people who, for understandable reasons, would like the story of the Sandy Hook shootings to fade away. But, of course it never will...
The Nose Gets Inside Llewyn Davis
27 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Nose panelists explore the hidden mysteries of the Coen Brothers' new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, based on the early folk movement of 1960's ...
2013 Jazz Picks By Jazz Fanatics
26 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
You loved jazz in college, but these days, do you really have time to follow it? Maybe I'm only talking about myself. The jazz scene I loved so much i...
Christmas Songs That We Love to Love and Hate
25 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There are some holiday songs that should banned. I'm sorry, Burl Ives, but there's really no reason for anybody to have to hear "Holly Jolly Chri...
Scrambling Toward Christmas With Sad Songs, Oscar Isaac, and Tight Flights
23 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of weeks ago, we did a whole show about blood pressure only to have an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association blow a lot ...
The Nose Blows for Duck Dynasty, Netflix Adultery, and More
20 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Here are the topics for The Nose today -- and this week we had to throw out a lot of perfectly good ones because there were so many:We pretty much hav...
Paying Homage to Pigs!
19 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Behold! The unique dilemma of the pig: There is nothing that smart that tastes that good. Is it true they're as smart as dogs? Why do some religions r...
Daniel Menaker's Journey Through the Hallowed Halls of The New Yorker
18 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
If you read magazines and live on the North half of the East Coast there is a good chance that you believe that The New Yorker is the ne plus ultra of...
How Do We Determine the Value of Art?
17 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
A Francis Bacon triptych, "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" sells for $142.4 million.Jeff Koons work sells for $58.4 million, making it the most expensi...
Monday Scramble: Peter O'Toole, Jameis Wilson, and Joan Fontaine
16 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This is the Monday Scramble, the show we assemble on very short notice to challenge ourselves and keep things fresh.Two film icons died over the weeke...
The Nose Sniffs Out the Controversy Surrounding Housework, Smarm, and More
13 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
After a two-week hiatus, The Nose, our weekly cultural panel, is back on with discussions of a controversial New York Times essay about who does house...
A Swig of "Christmas on the Rocks"
12 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Today we're talking about the afterlife of characters from classic Christmas stories. What happened, in later years, to Ralphie from "A Christmas Stor...
Singing Away the Blues
11 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
I suppose you could say that today's show is about a fairly obvious truth--singing with other people feels good. But, it's a little bit more comp...
Tuesday Tumble: Eddie Perez, "Rent" in Trumbull, Snowy Owls and the Ivory Trade
10 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Connecticut town of Trumbull, and especially its thespian society, has become a familiar name in the theater world, but maybe for the wrong reason...
Naked, Afraid, and at the Mercy of Producers
09 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
"Reality TV" is perhaps the biggest misnomer in the entertainment industry today. A better name would probably be "scripted unscripted television." It...
Bringing Back Boy Bands: Did They Ever Really Leave?
06 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The Monkees were the first group to exhibit all or most of the qualities we now associate with the term "boy band." They were assembled through auditi...
Preserving the Moon and Protecting Its Rocks
05 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, but the first man to urinate there was Buzz Aldrin, just a little ahead of Neil. The two astrona...
Blood Pressure is One Measure of Future Cardiovascular Disease
04 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Long before we knew how the cardiovascular worked, ancient doctors may have recognized what we call hypertension. It seemed like maybe there was too m...
Colin Quinn Takes On The Constitution
02 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There aren't that many jokes in the US Constitution. Either that, or there are too many, and they're all on us. Comedian Colin Quinn says most of you ...
The Scramble: Metro-North, the "Globalization of Indifference," and Kurt Weill
02 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Metro-North has had a tough year. Yesterday's derailment in the Bronx follows the May derailment in Bridgeport that injured more than 70 people, the d...
Will the Real Norman Rockwell Please Stand Up?
26 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Norman Rockwell. It's the day before Thanksgiving. Who else are we gonna talk about? Deborah Solomon (the same one who invented the "Questions for" fo...
The Dark Side of Zen
26 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Here in the West, Zen Buddhism is often where you go when you've concluded the religion you grew up with is marred by venality, hypocrisy, misogyny, p...
Catching Fire, Culture, Condoms, and the Law
25 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Why should sex feel bad? It shouldn't, and Bill Gates is offering $100,000 to the inventor of a condom that puts the pleasure back in sex. And, it isn...
The Nose Pays Tribute to Melodrama
22 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Today, on The Nose, well we can't entirely ignore the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, but the subject is so vast we can only break off ...
Harmonica Heroes Take Over WNPR
19 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Are there countries where harmonica players are BIG stars? Why don't more women play it? How many different musical styles can you squeeze out of one ...
Dealey Plaza, Same-Day Voter Registration, and Chess
18 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we visit historical sites? Commentator Mike Pesca wants to talk about the value of seeing a place, especially one like Dallas' Dealey Pla...
The Nose is (Really) Not Racist
15 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Here's the plan for The Nose today. We'll begin with a widely discussed column by Richard Cohen of The Washington Post who took an odd detour from a d...
Are We Born Moral?
14 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
In 1965, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, spread stamped and addressed but un-mailed letters around public locations in New Haven. Most of the l...
A Tribute to the Proud and Peaceful Pigeon
13 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
B.F. Skinner thought pigeons were so smart they could be used to guide missiles during WWII. He proposed a system in which pigeons would essentially p...
When Will CBS Do More Than Apologize?
12 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Once again we start the week with a show that we planned on the fly based on stories that grabbed us over the weekend. Support the show: http://w...
The Nose Tackles Racism, Past and Present
08 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
As my friend Alex Beam said today, 12 Years a Slave has a way of taking things that were abstractions and making them real. It's one thing t...
Can The Humanities Be Saved?
07 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
This show originally aired on July 2nd, 2013. When considering what show we wanted to re-run, we found this recent article from the New York Times, As...
An Ode to Opera
06 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Last month, the New York City Opera-- what Mayor LaGuardia called "the People's Opera" -- declared bankruptcy. This is/was the opera that introduced A...
Narrative in the Age of Distraction
05 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Okay, this is sad. Like a lot of people, I have trouble achieving the deep focus needed to enjoy long fiction. And, like a lot of people, I have troub...