The Colin McEnroe Show

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 do a show about all the problems presented by, well, a hole. For instance: How many holes are there in a straw? Did you say one? Okay, cool. Then how many holes are there in a sock? (A relatively new sock, I mean.) You said one again, right? But how can both of those things be true at the same time? Or, put another way: What happens to the hole in the donut as you eat the donut around it? This gets into mereology, the theory of parthood relations -- for our purposes, the parts and wholes of holes and the wholes the holes are parts of. Your head hurts a little, right? And then there's trypophobia, an irrational fear of clusters of holes and cracks. And finally: We've just found a black hole right in our cosmic backyard. GUESTS: Chrissie Giles - A science writer and the global health editor at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Marina Koren - Staff writer at The Atlantic Achille Varzi - Professor of philosophy at Columbia University and the coauthor of Holes and Other Superficialities Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 side by side, often in the same community. Nowhere is it on display more than in Greenwich, Conn., where hedge fund managers in gilded mansions live across town from minimum wage workers in local service jobs. The inequality on display today is the byproduct of decades of policy choices that benefit the wealthy. Also this hour: We help you make sense of the sometimes conflicting news about COVID-19 with the host of the podcast This Week In Virology. GUESTS: Evan Osnos - Staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China Vincent Racaniello - Professor of microbiology & immunology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and the host of the podcast This Week in Virology Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Nose thinks it's great. And also that it sucks. And then: Waco is a six-part miniseries that tells exactly the story you'd guess it tells. Taylor Kitsch plays David Koresh. Waco was the big, original launch title for the Paramount Network when it rebranded from SpikeTV in January, 2018. So why is it relevant now? One wonders, but it was recently added to Netflix, and it's been trending there for weeks. Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: 'Murder Hornets' in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant HornetSightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations. A 5-year-old boy was pulled over in Utah on his way to California to try to buy a Lamborghini What will Connecticut restaurants look like after coronavirus? Owners expect an entirely different dining experience from the past The Red Sox are exploring 'changes' to their uniform Was Donald Trump Good at Baseball?The president has long claimed he could have gone pro. We looked into it. TV Ratings: Remote 'Voice' Slips to Monday Season Lows Grimes & Elon Musk Have A Baby Boy Named X Æ A-12 Turns Out Elon Musk and Grimes Can't Actually Name Their Baby X Æ A-12 Due To California LawsWell, they tried. Risky Business? NASA and Tom Cruise Talk Movie Shoot in SpaceThe head of NASA said the agency is working with the "Mission: Impossible" star on a new film aboard the International Space Station. Drive-Thru Strip Club Serves Up Sexy (And Safe) Solution For Coronavirus BluesLucky Devil Lounge in Oregon has come up with yet another innovative, fun and sexy idea to keep income -- and customers -- coming during the pandemic. What Is Demon Time? Instagram's 'After Dark' Craze, Explained Twitter Asks Users to Reconsider Before Sending Vulgar Tweets Drive-in concerts could provide coronavirus workaround An Unhappy Ending For Movie Theater Chains AMC And Cineworld Adele's new birthday photo thanking frontline workers sparks debate on body image TV Writers Wrestle With How (and When) to Work COVID-19 Into Series What Happened to Val Kilmer? He’s Just Starting to Figure It Out. GUESTS: Jim Chapdelaine - An Emmy-winning musician, producer, composer, and recording engineer, and a patient advocate for people with rare cancers Taneisha Duggan - Producing associate at TheaterWorks Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"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 own a number of pairs of cotton pajama pants. They're my sweatpants proxy. Back before the pandemic became the central preoccupation of our existence, back when we made our radio show in, ya know, a radio studio, I would always get a little dressed up on my show days. I'd wear a jacket. Or a tie. Or a jacket and a tie. Now that we're all working from home all the time, I spend the great majority of my work hours in pajama pants and stocking feet and a bathrobe. But when it comes time for one of my shows -- like this one, for instance -- I change out of my PJ pants into jeans or chinos. That's what "a little dressed up" means these days: putting real pants on. (Or even "hard pants," as they're now known.) For we are living in the age of sweatpants. Question is: Are we ever going back? Or should we go back right now and start dressing like grownups again? What if we got, like, some fancy pants sweatpants? Would that be grown up enough? This hour, from The Bad Ideas Dept.: a show about sweatpants. GUESTS: Tim Chan - Lifestyle and market editor at Rolling Stone Rebecca Jennings - A reporter covering pop and internet culture at The Goods by Vox Rachel Tashjian - Style writer for GQ Adam Tschorn - Deputy fashion editor at the Los Angeles Times Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 become one of the most influential and greatest recording artists. Mitchell has won nine Grammys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, and countless music awards, and her albums are considered among the best ever made. We're big fans. It turns out we're not alone. This hour, we talk to a few friends of the show to discuss Mitchell's influence on them while listening to their favorite Joni songs. Plus, we chat David Yaffe, the author of Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. GUESTS: David Yaffe - Assistant professor of Humanities at Syracuse University and the author of Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell Taneisha Duggan - Producing associate at TheaterWorks Brendan J. Sullivan - Producer and author of Rivington Was Ours: Lady Gaga, the Lower East Side, and the Prime of Our Lives Lee Newton - Director of program promotion at Connecticut Public Jim Chapdelaine - Musician, producer, recording engineer, and Emmy-winning composer Steve Metcalf - Music critic, arts consultant, composer, director of the University of Hartford's Presidents' College Noah Baerman - Jazz pianist and composer Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, Carlos Mejia, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired April 4, 2019.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 leaders of both parties to have an honest conversation about the moral trade-offs of this pandemic and how to balance them toward the public interest? The world is rushing to produce a vaccine against COVID-19. We talk about the trade-offs of shortening a process that typically takes 10-15 years to complete and the ethical challenges of manufacturing one or more vaccines and how we choose to distribute them. The Asian giant hornet has arrived in the U.S. for the first time -- and it doesn't bode well for honeybees. What are scientists doing to eradicate it? GUESTS: John Harris - Founding editor of Politico Carl Zimmer - The author of 13 books about science; his latest is She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Power, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity Mike Baker - Seattle bureau chief for The New York Times Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 social distancing and everything else than does standup comedy. As such, people are just going to have to try new things, right? New York club comedian Ted Alexandro's YouTube comedy special is one of the first such experiments. And: Do you feel like you're running out of movies to watch? Have you crossed just about everything off of your must-see list? The Nose has compiled its own list of semi-obscure, semi-forgotten, semi-overlooked movies to help get you through this time. Nothing too artsy-fartsy, nothing too oddball. Just some titles you might've missed that are worth your time. (Here's the full list in handy Twitter-thread form. It runs fully 43 titles.) Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take: G.I. Joe Artist Hector Garrido Passes Away At Age 92 For Graduation, Cal Students Build 'Blockeley University' in Minecraft SNL Promotes Kate McKinnon's Cat to Featured Player Someone Edited Every Star Wars Movie To Play At Once, And I Can't Look Away Pentagon officially releases UFO videos Comedy Community Mourns The 'End Of An Era' As UCB Closes New York Locations Academy Alters Oscars Rules: Streaming Films Eligible, Sound Categories Combined, and More AMC Theatres Refuses to Play Universal Films in Wake of 'Trolls World Tour' Museums Challenge Each Other to Show their Creepiest Object Have Serena Williams And Roger Federer Won Their Last Grand Slams? FAA looking into a runway incident involving Harrison Ford Coffin Floats Are Real And You Can Bury Yourself In One This Summer The Erotic Chaos and Suspense of a Zoom Orgy Little League Cancels 2020 World Series and Region Tournaments GUESTS: Susan Bigelow - A librarian, a columnist for CT News Junkie, and a science fiction/fantasy novelist Shawn Murray - A standup comedian and writer Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 know, this present moment, that show has been on our minds. But we've realized we've got a new set of questions now too. After all the dystopian and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction there's been over the past couple decades -- and there's been KIND OF A LOT, right? -- has any of it actually prepared us for our very present, very current, actual nonfiction dystopia? Well, mostly no. But some of it just may have. And then: What exactly is dystopian fiction going to look like after this is all over? GUESTS: Naomi Kritzer - A science fiction and fantasy writer; she wrote "So Much Cooking" in 2015, and her novel Catfishing on CatNet just won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel Laurie Penny - An author, columnist, journalist, and screenwriter Ben Winters - The author of ten novels; his new collection of short stories, Inside Jobs: Tales from a Time of Quarantine, is out tomorrow as an Audible original Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 seismologists study the vibrations that can be hard to detect in the din of our noise. The world is eerily silent now, showing us how accustomed we have become to cacophony of loud sound in our lives. We're hardwired to focus on the sounds we need to hear and tune out those we don't. It's hard to notice what we miss when cars and horns and other noisemakers compete for our sonic attention. And we don't always notice how loud it is until it's quiet. Today, an ode to the sound we take for granted, including the soothing sound of another human voice on the telephone. Yep, that's what I said. The telephone.   GUESTS: David Owen is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of more than a dozen books. His newest book is Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World Chris Hoff is a sound engineer and co-creator with Sam Harnett, of the podcast, "The World According to Sound." (@chrisjameshoff) Sam Harnett is a reporter and co-creator with Chris Hoff, of the podcast, "The World According to Sound." (@samwharnett) Heather Radke is a writer and critic. Her work has appeared in The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, and RadioLab, among others. Her book, BUTTS, will be published in 2021. (@hradke) Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This show originally aired on July 25, 2018. Two years ago, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ran an intricate simulation of a rapidly spreading pandemic with government leaders to talk about the difficult ethical questions that arise in the event of a pandemic and the same questions we are confronting today.     They learned what had to be done in the event of a real "Clade X". We haven't done it.  The CDC said another pandemic was coming and that there was a good chance it President Trump would be confronted with it just as the two presidents before him. Yet, he cut funding for pandemic preparedness that has helped curb prior deadly global outbreaks and rid his administration of scientific advisors.  Just under 150 million died globallyby the end of the Johns Hopkins simulation. It doesn't have to end this way or when the next pandemic hits. But the threat won't go away simply because we choose to ignore it.  GUESTS: Ed Yong - Science writer for The Atlantic and is the author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. (@edyong209) Eric Toner - Senior Scholar with the John Hopkins Center for Health Security and Senior Scientist for John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Environmental Health and Engineering. (@JHSPH_CHS) Laura Spinney - Science journalist and the author of most recently, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed The World. (@lfspinney) Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.