
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

Apr 3, 2024 • 49min
A conversation with Don Winslow about love, money, murder, and why free food tastes better
Bestselling author Don Winslow joins us to discuss his new novel, City in Ruins, which he says is the last of his career. GUEST: Don Winslow: Bestselling author, whose new book, City in Ruins, is out this week 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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apr 2, 2024 • 50min
Radical or relevant? How the Luddites can help us relate to today’s technology
Today “Luddite” is used as a derogatory term for someone who doesn’t understand technology. But the original Luddites weren’t behind. They were technical workers who were concerned about the impact that technology would have on people. This hour, we look at the history of Luddites, how their philosophy applies today, and ask what our present would look like if they had won. Could we all gain something from thinking more like a Luddite? GUESTS: Miriam A. Cherry: Professor of law at St. John’s University and the author of Work in the Digital Age: A Coursebook on Labor, Technology, and Regulation Brian Merchant: Technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and the author of Blood in the Machine: the Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech Gavin Mueller: Assistant professor of new media and digital culture at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job 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, and Jonathan McNicol contributed to this show, which originally aired August 21, 2023.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Apr 1, 2024 • 49min
We take your calls
We’ve been doing these shows a couple times a month 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 — calls about grammar, gardening, long-distance dialing, autotune. Anything. Everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we’re doing another one. In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EDT hour about whatever you want to talk about. 888-720-9677. 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 and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 29, 2024 • 49min
The Nose looks at ‘3 Body Problem’ and ‘Ramy Youssef: More Feelings’
This week’s Nose has crazy substitute teacher energy. 3 Body Problem is a Netflix series created by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo and loosely based on the 2008 novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. 3 Body Problem is the first television series created by Benioff and Weiss since Game of Thrones. And: More Feelings is the second HBO comedy special from Ramy Youssef. GUESTS: Rebecca Castellani: Co-founder of Quiet Corner Communications and a freelance writer Shawn Murray: A stand-up comedian, writer, and the host of the Nobody Asked Shawn podcast 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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 28, 2024 • 49min
Inside the confusing, time-sucking, unequal world of taxes
It's tax season. How did this quintessentially frustrating thing come to be so frustrating? And must it be so? This hour, we’re learning about why taxes are so complicated to file in the U.S. Then, we’ll talk about how some of the richest people in America end up paying next to no taxes on the wealth they grow every year. Finally: a conversation with someone who doesn’t pay a chunk of his taxes — on purpose — as a form of protest. GUESTS: Monica Prasad: Professor of Economic and Political Sociology at Johns Hopkins University Paul Kiel: Reporter for ProPublica who covers taxes Lawrence Rosenwald: Professor of English Emeritus at Wellesley College and a longtime war tax resister Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, 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 and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 27, 2024 • 49min
From ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to ‘Dune,’ a look at the world of constructed languages
Constructed languages have existed in popular culture for a long time, but they've reached a new level of ubiquity today. This hour, we talk with professional conlangers who have created languages for Game of Thrones, Dune, and many other worlds. We'll learn about the art of constructing languages, and the appeal of learning one of them. GUESTS: David and Jessie Peterson: Professional conlangers whose work appears in Dune: Part Two, Elemental, Shadow and Bone, and more. They co-host the weekly livestream “LangTime Studio” on YouTube. David also created languages for Game of Thrones Gregory Danielson III: Experienced Toki Pona speaker and teacher 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, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 26, 2024 • 50min
Reverence? Rejection? Reckoning with the actions of our ancestors
This hour, we grapple with the impact our ancestors have on our lives and what our responsibility is if they did something we disagree with. GUESTS: Maud Newton: Author of Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation Jenny Strauss: Great-granddaughter of Lewis Strauss 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 August 17, 2023.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 25, 2024 • 49min
A look at our ‘toxic love story’ with plastic
Plastic is everywhere in our world, and scientists are increasingly discovering the negative health and environmental impacts of the material. This hour, we take a look at our relationship to plastic. We talk about the material, its evolution, and its symbolism in our culture. Plus, we look at the use of single use plastic in television and why it matters. GUESTS: Susan Freinkel: Author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story; her Substack is 1,017 Acres: Life in the Park Erica Cirino: Communications manager of the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the author of Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis Dana Weinstein: Project specialist for the Media Impact Project at the University of Southern California Annenberg Norman Lear Center 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! 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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 22, 2024 • 49min
A triptych of celebrity scandals: Kate Middleton, Dan Schneider, and Jonathan Glazer
The Nose is off. In its place this hour, a look at the current controversies swirling around certain celebrities: Catherine, Princess of Wales hasn’t made a scheduled public appearance since last year. Kensington Palace announced in January that she was having “planned abdominal surgery.” The internet was dissatisfied with that explanation. And then some photos this month, including one that the Princess admitted to doctoring, have left the internet, let’s say, even less satisfied. And: Dan Schneider has been described as “the Norman Lear of children’s television.” His Nickelodeon shows launched the careers of people like Amanda Bynes, Ariana Grande, Keenan Thompson, and others. But a new docuseries, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, brings together a number of previously known stories and allegations with some new information that, altogether, paints an ugly picture of what was going on behind the scenes — and often even on the screen — on Dan Schneider’s sets. And finally: Director Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech at this year’s Academy Awards included this passage: “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?” At the ceremony, people applauded. Since the ceremony, (some) people have responded, uh, less kindly. In any case, the Oscars have a long history of political controversy. GUESTS: Alison Foreman: A features writer at IndieWire covering and critiquing TV, film, and trends in Hollywood Tiffany Hsu: A technology reporter for The New York Times covering misinformation and disinformation and its origins, movement, and consequences Pete Hammond: Awards columnist and chief film critic at Deadline 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! 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 Cat Pastor contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mar 21, 2024 • 50min
Our 14th* (almost) annual March Madness show
March Madness is here! And so the only logical thing to do is to get improv comedian Julia Pistell and the actual Bill Curry together to talk basketball for an hour on the radio. That may not be the only logical thing to do. It may be that that’s not actually a logical thing to do at all. But we’re doing it anyway. *It’s our 14th one of these unless it isn’t. We’re pretty sure we’ve done this show every year from 2010 on, but for 2020. There’s circumstantial evidence, at least, that we did this show that first March that our show was on the air, in 2010. But no proof that that’s a thing we did survives. But we’re still fairly confident we did it. GUESTS: Eugene J. Cornacchia: President of Saint Peter’s University Bill Curry: Playing the part of Bill Curry Frankie Graziano: Host of The Wheelhouse on Connecticut Public Julia Pistell: A founding member of Sea Tea Improv, among a number of other things 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.