The Colin McEnroe Show

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 and surprising and amusing. This hour, the conversation winds around to Colin’s constant laughter (or not) and his nearly life-threatening reaction to Weekend Update on last week’s SNL, The Kennedy Center Honors, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s proposed autism database, Elissa Slotkin on The New Yorker Radio Hour, the 60 Minutes piece on fraud, Cicero’s Catalinarian orations … Anything. (Seemingly) everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one. You can now watch our calls shows on Connecticut Public’s YouTube. Subscribe and get notified when we go live. Or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe, Megan Fitzgerald, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our friend, the singer, songwriter, and performer Jill Sobule, died May 1 in a house fire in Woodbury, Minnesota, near Minneapolis. She was 66. Jill appeared on our show at least seven times between 2012 and 2022, including the Season Two premiere of Pardon Me and the time she wrote an original song for our dumb towels episode. But it was her four full-show, in-studio appearances that really made her such an important force in the history of our show. This hour, cobbled together from bits of those appearances, a best-of compilation of Jill Sobule on The Colin McEnroe Show. It’s our tribute to Jill and our insufficient thank you for the many hours that we got to spend with her on the radio. GUEST: Jill Sobule: Singer/songwriter The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Eugene Amatruda, Betsy Kaplan, Cat Pastor, Dylan Reyes, Patrick Skahill, Lily Tyson, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, parts of which originally aired June 14, 2012; May 16, 2018; December 6, 2018; December 12, 2018; and September 15, 2022, in a different form.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The New York Times’ Chief Fashion Critic, Vanessa Friedman, joins us for the hour to discuss fashion in President Donald Trump's second administration, what we can learn from how politicians dress, the impacts of tariffs on the clothes we wear, and more. GUEST: Vanessa Friedman: Fashion Director and Chief Fashion Critic of The New York Times Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you the same person, today, that you were when you were a little kid? Are you the same person, right now, that you will be in the last years of your life? When Scotty beams folks up, are the people arriving back on the Enterprise really the same people who were down on the surface of whatever alien planet? In a movie like Mickey 17, is the 16th cloned Mickey really the same person as the original, first Mickey? This hour, a look at the age-old philosophical concept of continuity of self. GUESTS: Edward Ashton: The author of six novels, including Mickey7, which has been adapted as the movie Mickey 17 David Finkelstein: Associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago Hal Hershfield: Professor of marketing and behavioral decision making at UCLA and one of the authors of MIT’s Future You project The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shakespeare’s tragedy about two star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, has appealed to audiences for centuries. It’s been adapted countless times for stage and screen. And it’s in Hartford for the next few weeks. From the set of Romeo and Juliet at Hartford Stage, and in front of a live audience, we talk with experts exploring the play and its legacy. GUESTS:  David Sterling Brown: Associate professor of English at Trinity College; he is the author of Shakespeare’s White Others and a development associate and scholar in residence for the American Globe Center, and he is on the curatorial team for Claudia Rankine’s The Racial Imaginary Institute Melia Bensussen: Hartford Stage’s artistic director Carman Lacivita: Actor who is currently playing Friar Laurence in Hartford Stage’s production of Romeo and Juliet; he is a recipient of the Bayfield Award — given to the best performance of Shakespeare in the New York Metropolitan Area If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Hartford Stage is a current sponsor of Connecticut Public. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Robyn Doyon-Aitken, Megan Fitzgerald, Jonathan McNicol, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Thank you to the staff and volunteers at the Hartford Stage, including Lucas Clopton, Wesley McCabe-Schroeder, Lindsay Abrams, Zoe Golub-Sass, Jennifer Levine, Todd Brandt, and the volunteer ushers.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour we take your calls about anything you want to talk about. You can now watch our calls shows on Connecticut Public’s YouTube. Subscribe and get notified when we go live. Or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sinners is the fifth feature film written and directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan. (Coogler has never made a feature without Jordan.) After years of sequels and Marvel movies, it’s Coogler’s first wholly original movie based on no other source material whatsoever. Sinners is a sexy Southern musical horror gangster thriller set in 1932 in the Mississippi Delta. With vampires. And it’s the No. 1 movie in the country. Plus: We read Jill Lepore’s New Yorker piece about reading a Penguin Classic on each of the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term. And then a Vox piece about giving up Spotify. And we started thinking about the ways that we’re all consuming culture — avoiding or giving up some things, immersing ourselves in other things, etc. — in these, let’s say, anxious times. GUESTS: Raquel Benedict: The most dangerous woman in speculative fiction; she’s the host of the Rite Gud podcast Shawn Murray: A stand-up comedian, writer, and the host of the Nobody Asked Shawn podcast Brian Slattery: A journalist and musician The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour we talk with Christine Rosen about her book, The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World. We talk about how technology has impacted face-to-face interactions, boredom, loneliness, handwriting, and more. GUEST:  Christine Rosen: Author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World. She is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a columnist for Commentary magazine, senior editor at The New Atlantis and fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show, which originally aired on October 3, 2024. Our programming is made possible thanks to listeners like you. Please consider supporting this show and Connecticut Public with a donation today by visiting ctpublic.org/donate.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 mean they’re mad at you? This hour: punctuation and how we use it. We talk about the history of punctuation marks, timeless punctuation debates, and how writing for texts and emails has changed the way we use punctuation. GUESTS: Raquel Benedict: The most dangerous woman in speculative fiction; she’s the host of the Rite Gud podcast Claire Cock-Starkey: Author of Hyphens and Hashtags: The Stories Behind the Symbols on Our Keyboard Julia Pistell: Founding member of Sea Tea Improv and one of the hosts of the Literary Disco podcast The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired November 3, 2021.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, a look at the myth of Sisyphus, and how we invoke it today. Plus, we'll hear from a musician who has found inspiration in the story, and we'll discuss when it's time to give up. GUESTS:  Joel Christensen: Professor of Classical Studies and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at Brandeis University. His newest book is The Many-Minded Man: The Odyssey, Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic Noah Baerman: Pianist, composer, and educator. He is director of the Wesleyan University Jazz Ensemble and artistic director of the nonprofit Resonance Motion. His most recent album is Live at the Side Door Joshua Rothman: The New Yorker’s Ideas Editor, who writes the weekly column “Open Questions” Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.  Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show, which originally aired on November 21, 2024.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.