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 …Social links:
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Even a fact has a half-life
In April, 2010, we did a segment on the concept of the mesofact, a certain kind of data point that feels fixed even though it’s actually always slowly changing. And we’ve gone back to the idea every now and again ever since. This hour, a look at three things about the world that changed pretty dra…
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Sycophancy: From Shakespeare to AI
A study shows that AI chatbots often engage in sycophantic behavior. Just like some humans. This hour, we take a look at sycophants in literature and in politics. And we talk about sycophancy and artificial intelligence. GUESTS: Mark Parker: Professor Emeritus of English at James Madison Univers…
49:59
All calls: Celebrate your stinkiness
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 — calls about grammar, gardening, long-distance dialing, autotune. Anything. Everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to…
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The Nose looks at ‘Furious’ and the apparent moviegoing renaissance
Furious is a Hulu Original crime drama-thriller series created by Elizabeth Meriwether, who also created New Girl and The Dropout and other things. It is inspired by the 1987 thriller Black Widow, which is also about a female serial killer and the female cop (a DOJ data analyst in 1987 and a new FB…
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An ode to the sun
What can you say about the sun? It sits at the center of our solar system and has, over time, been at the center of religions, scriptures, songs, art, and countless other aspects of our culture. We’ve relied on its light, heat, and gravity for as long as we’ve been around, and we continue to find …
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A look at unfinished projects, from literature to our roads
What does it mean for a work to be incomplete? This hour, we look at a wide span of unfinished projects, from posthumous novels to highways to nowhere. Guests: Alex Belth is the editor of Esquire Classic and author of the substack “Dig This with Alex Belth” Jacob Proctor is the Gilbert and Ann Kin…
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What “pleading the Fifth” actually means
Dr. Anthony Fauci recently invoked the Fifth Amendment in a Senate Hearing. This hour: we take a look at our Constitution's Fifth Amendment to learn why it exists and what it means for all of us. GUESTS: Akhil Reed Amar: Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. His lates…
49:59
All calls: It’s good for incumbents to feel some hot breath on their neck
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 Todd Blanche, Open AI’s Hugging Face hack, the Iran war, hopium, Connecticut’s highways …
48:59
The Nose looks at ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the 38th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the 15th movie in the Multiverse Saga and the second movie in the MCU’s Phase Six. I didn’t really follow most of that, but this next bit will be a little clearer, I think: Brand New Day is the 11th theatrically-rel…
48:59
Long live teh typo! The history and future of mistakes and misprints
Typos and misprints are as old as writing and printing. This hour, we take a look at them from the "Wicked Bible" to National Park signs and your email inbox. And: the changing status of human typos in the age of AI. GUESTS: Rachel Churner: Art critic, editor, and professor. She is a co-curator wi…
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