The Colin McEnroe Show
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 …Follow the podcast:
Go with your gut: All about the gut-brain connection
This show's all about guts! How are our guts and our brains connected? How much of our emotional lives come from our stomachs? And how, across history, did our digestive systems become such pivotal parts of our identity? GUESTS: Diego Bohórquez: Gut-brain neuroscientist Elsa Richardson: Historian…
49:00
From Barbra to Beyoncé: A look at the appeal of divas
What is a diva? And how has the term evolved? This hour is all about divas. We’ll talk about how the term emerged in the opera and moved into the popular music landscape. And we’ll take stock of the current moment for divas. GUESTS: Myrna Reynolds: Retired singer who sang at the New York City Ope…
49:00
The art of the dial: Why we like hotlines and phone calls with strangers
Hotlines: whether you realize it or not, you’ve likely used one before. From emergency services to customer service and crisis lines, they often fly under the radar in our daily lives. This hour, we’ll look at the history of hotlines and then meet some people who have created innovative ways to ta…
49:00
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. This hour, the conversation winds around to The Hold Steady, Leonard Bernstein and Maestro, the (always) impe…
48:59
From ‘Star Trek’ to ‘Arrival’: How pop culture helps us imagine extraterrestrial life
We come to the end of our week of special coverage with a show about how we imagine extraterrestrial life. What do you picture when you picture extraterrestrial life? Is it like E.T.? Or little green men? Or an alien from Star Trek? This hour is all about how we imagine extraterrestrial life and …
52:33
An hour with astronauts!
If you follow the show, then you probably know that we’ve had a bogus ban on astronauts for quite some time now. In case you don’t follow the show, let me just explain at the top here that it’s been 2,220 days — more than six years — since an astronaut last appeared on The Colin McEnroe Show. But.…
50:00
From flying saucers to flying saints: Belief and how we react to the “impossible”
Today, we continue our week of special coverage with a show focused on belief, and how we react when we experience things that we think should be impossible. A few years ago, Diana Walsh Pasulka published American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, which looked at the mechanism of belief in extra…
49:00
Astrophysicists Adam Frank and Neil deGrasse Tyson discuss the search for extraterrestrial life
Today, our week of discussions about life in the universe continues as we talk with two prominent astrophysicists about the possibility of life outside of earth. Astrophysicist Adam Frank is part of the team of scientists that is currently using the most advanced technology to search for life on ot…
42:58
Garrett Graff on the history of UFOs and our government’s attempts to make sense of them
The United States has a long history of UFO sightings and reports, dating all the way back to the 1940s. This hour we talk about that history, and, specifically, how the U.S. government has related to these objects over time with Garrett Graff, author of the new book UFO: The Inside Story of the US…
49:00
‘Though the heavens fall’: The JFK assassination in our media and culture
President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. It would be hard to argue that the modern American era, the era that we’re still living in 60 years later, didn’t begin on that Friday afternoon in Dallas. It would be hard to overstate the effect and influence of that event, that…
51:21