
The Colin McEnroe Show
The Colin McEnroe Show is public radio’s most eclectic, eccentric weekday program. The best way to understand us is through the subjects we tackle: Neanderthals, tambourines, handshakes, the Iliad, snacks, ringtones, punk rock, Occam’s razor, Rasputin, houseflies, zippers. Are you sensing a pattern? If so, you should probably be in treatment. On Fridays, we try to stop thinking about what kind of ringtones Neanderthals would want to have and convene a panel called The Nose for an informal roundtable about the week in culture.
Latest episodes

May 6, 2025 • 49min
O Romeo (and Juliet): The lasting appeal of Shakespeare’s tragedy
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.

May 5, 2025 • 49min
All calls: Are we living in a simulation? Are you thinking of leaving the U.S.? Book bans, gaslighting, the economy, and more
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.

May 2, 2025 • 42min
The Nose looks at ‘Sinners’ and our culture consumption in anxious times
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.

May 1, 2025 • 42min
From boredom to handwriting: Christine Rosen on the embodied experiences we lose to technology
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.

Apr 30, 2025 • 50min
There are rules for punctuation, but we don’t always agree on them
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.

Apr 29, 2025 • 49min
We're still pushing the boulder on the meaning of Sisyphus
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.

Apr 28, 2025 • 49min
All calls: Temporary tattoos, Americans emigrating, ‘MobLand,’ and more
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 temporary tattoos as an “I’m Spartacus” type of protest, Americans emigrating elsewhere, MobLand and Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren’s accents, why people are intimidated by classical music … 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.

Apr 26, 2025 • 21min
Cut for time: More from our Bacharach / Warwick show at Watkinson
Note: This episode contains strong language. Easily the hardest part of turning something like our live event celebrating the chemistry between Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick (and lyricist Hal David) into a radio show is figuring out what NOT to include. Onstage at Watkinson School in Hartford, we went nearly 80 minutes. The finished radio version runs just 50 minutes. So we thought we’d present to you here separately some of that excised half hour. This podcast extra includes four full song performances that didn’t make it into the radio show plus some odds and ends from rehearsals at soundcheck that we particularly enjoyed. GUESTS: Lou Bocciarelli: Bass Atla DeChamplain: Vocals, Atla & Matt Matt DeChamplain: Piano, Atla & Matt Latanya Farrell: Vocals Steve Metcalf: Piano Molly Sayles: Drums This show was produced, mixed, and edited by Dylan Reyes. 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 Jonathan McNicol contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apr 25, 2025 • 49min
The Nose looks at ‘Conclave’ and ‘MobLand’
With rare exceptions, The Nose doesn’t usually cover movies from the previous Oscar season once the actual Oscars have happened. But major world events are the sort of things for which one might break with tradition, and with the death of Pope Francis on April 21, we thought we might make an exception. Conclave is a 2024 political thriller melodrama based on the 2016 Robert Harris novel. It’s set at the Vatican and tells the story of the death of one pope and the election of the next. Conclave was nominated for eight Academy Awards this year, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Ralph Fiennes, and Best Supporting Actress for Isabella Rossellini. It won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. And: MobLand is a British crime drama television series. It was originally developed for Showtime as a spinoff origin story for Ray Donovan. But it eventually morphed into the standalone gangster story that has become the most-watched series launch ever for Paramount+. It stars Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Paddy Considine, and Helen Mirren. GUESTS: Taneisha Duggan: Director of arts, culture, and entertainment for the city of Hartford Shawn Murray: A stand-up comedian, writer, and the host of the Nobody Asked Shawn podcast Lindsay Lee Wallace: Writes about culture, health care and health equity, and other stuff, too Bill Yousman: Professor of media studies at Sacred Heart University 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.

Apr 24, 2025 • 50min
What the world needs now: The chemistry of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick
This hour, it’s our show on the relationship and chemistry between Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick (and the lyricist Hal David) recorded live onstage at Watkinson School in Hartford. It’s an hour of music, conversation, and demonstrations of how GPS can help you find the way to San Jose. GUESTS: Lou Bocciarelli: Bass Atla DeChamplain: Vocals, Atla & Matt Matt DeChamplain: Piano, Atla & Matt Latanya Farrell: Vocals Steve Metcalf: Piano Molly Sayles: Drums 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, Maegn Boone, Meg Dalton, Robyn Doyon-Aitken, Megan Fitzgerald, Dylan Reyes, and Lily Tyson contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.