As we were preparing for our show on underdogs, I kept saying that we shouldn’t overlook the fact that, often, to be an underdog in the first place, you have to be relatively bad at the thing you’re an underdog about. The more we talked about it, the more I found myself making the case that losers and losing are fascinating. And they are. There’s a whole podcast about political candidates who lost. We romanticize losers in movies and TV and songs and stories. And think just about the phrase “lovable losers.” In a culture where we focus seemingly entirely on the positive half of the zero sum, where we endlessly exalt WINNING, it’s kind of interesting that we love the losers too, isn’t it? This hour, a long look at losers and losing. GUESTS: Jason Cherkis - Political reporter for The Huffington Post and the co-host of Candidate Confessional Josh Keefe - An investigative reporter at the Bangor Daily News; in a piece for Slate’s Sports Nut, he claimed that he was the worst high school quarterback ever Jonathan McNicol - Producer at Connecticut Public Radio Irene Papoulis - Teaches writing at Trinity College Brian Slattery - Arts editor for the New Haven Independent and a producer at WNHH radio Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Betsy Kaplan contributed to this show, which originally aired August 1, 2016.

Who's afraid of the Bix bad Beiderbecke? Hartford has an amazing jazz history, and Colin has a lot of jazz musician friends. This hour, a little onstage jazz party recorded in front of a live audience long before the pandemic put a pause on live audiences as a thing. Colin and the panel look to make jazz accessible to mere mortals. They talk about what makes jazz jazz, invite the audience to sing, and teach the audience to scat. GUESTS: Steve Davis - Trombone Atla DeChamplain - Vocals Matt DeChamplain - Piano Henry Lugo - Bass Jocelyn Pleasant - Drums Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. This show originally aired February 8, 2018.

Tracking, rewinding, ejecting, collecting -- VHS broke ground in home entertainment like never before. The culture of VHS and its enormous best friend, the VCR, were kings of consumer media for decades. Despite the last VCR and VHS being manufactured just four years ago, videotapes are still consumed, collected, and in some cases, sold(!) across the country. But why? With streaming service giants like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney, giving us on-demand content with the push of a button and with Blu-ray and 4K players displaying movies and TV shows at crystal clear resolutions, videotapes offer a simple, analog experience that will just not go away. This hour, a look inside the impact, history, and legacy of VHS. Plus: the video store! It was the place to get your VHS rental and consume the content you couldn't get anywhere else. A look at life owning and working at a video store. GUESTS: Caetlin Benson-Allott - Distinguished Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Georgetown University and the author of Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens Video Spectatorship From VHS to File Sharing Sam Hatch - Co-host of The Culture Dogs on Sunday nights on WWUH Hank Paper - The former owner of Best Video in Hamden, Conn., and a professor of Film, Television, and Media Arts at Quinnipiac University Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, Jonathan McNicol, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired May 16, 2019.

Humans have long been interested in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This hour, a look at why that interest has persisted. Plus, we talk to a scientist who is looking for extraterrestrial life and a linguist who is preparing in case we ever receive communications from extraterrestrials. GUESTS: Kate Dorsch: Historian, philosopher of science, and the associate director of the philosophy, politics, and economics program at the University of Pennsylvania Amanda Rees: Historian of science based at the University of York Seth Shostak: Senior astronomer at the SETI Institute and host of the radio show and podcast Big Picture Science Sheri Wells-Jensen: Associate professor of English and linguistics at Bowling Green State University who is on the board of directors of METI International 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! Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.

Azar Nafisi is the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, which spent 117 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Her newest book, Read Dangerously, argues that reading literature, reading challenging, dangerous literature is foundational and fundamental to continued democracy. Imagination, itself, she says, is a threat to autocracy and totalitarianism. Imagination is inherently, by definition, “free and wayward.” “It should be clear by now that when I talk about books,” Nafisi writes, “I am not talking about literature of resistance but literature as resistance.” Azar Nafisi joins us for the hour. GUEST: Azar Nafisi: The author of six books; her newest is Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times 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! Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired April 7, 2022.

Occam’s razor states that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” This hour is all about Occam’s razor: where the principle came from, how it impacts science, its role in medicine, and how it shapes our daily lives. GUESTS: Kurt Andersen: Co-founder of Spy magazine, the host and co-creator of Studio 360, and the author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire — A 500-Year History Johnjoe McFadden: Author of Life Is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe Lisa Sanders: Clinician educator in the Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency Program at the Yale School of Medicine and the author of the Diagnosis column for The New York Times Magazine 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! Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired November 17, 2021.

Colin's quite fond of this little piece of trivia: Tom Cruise was five years older during the production of Mission: Impossible -- Fallout than Wilford Brimley was during the filming of Cocoon. And it seems we're all okay with Tom Cruise as a 56-year-old action star. Fallout's opening weekend was the biggest for a Mission: Impossible movie and the second-biggest of Cruise's career. Fallout is the best-received movie in the M:I franchise too. If you had to pick the five best blockbusters of this decade, you could put together a totally reasonable list made just of Tom Cruise movies. (Here, look: Edge of Tomorrow, Jack Reacher, and the last three Mission: Impossibles. See?) In fact, at this point, if you like high-concept summer popcorn movies, but you don't like comic books/Star Wars/Star Trek/Harry Potter/etc.... what else even is there besides Tom Cruise movies anymore? Not much.

Ira Glass -- host of This American Life, creator of Serial, professional dancer -- used our show as his prime example in "a principled defense of fun on public radio." And then he called the kind of failure that we aim for many days of each week "where you'll find the future." We want to know more about all that stuff.

This week, we've started our second decade on the air. Over the first ten years, we did some number north of 2,000 shows. And every one of those shows was intended, more or less, to be about some... thing. Towels or Trump or toast or television or whatever. This hour we do the opposite thing: a show not about a specific something -- tapirs. Note: Today's show features Chion Wolf's performance of "Let's Not Talk About Tapirs," with lyrics by Colin McEnroe and music by Chion Wolf. Also note: We're idiots. Don't let the fact that we're idiots prevent you from finding tapirs as fascinating as we actually do. If you're able, you might consider supporting the Tapir Specialist Group, which "strives to conserve biological diversity by stimulating, developing, and executing practical programs to study, save, restore, and manage the four species of tapir and their remaining habitats in Central and South America and Southeast Asia." GUESTS: Carmen Baskauf - A producer for Where We Live; occasional host of The Carmen Baskauf Show on WNPR Kimberly Hyde - A keeper at the San Diego Zoo; she handles the zoo's tapirs in its Elephant Odyssey habitat Betsy Kaplan - The Colin McEnroe Show's senior producer Jonathan McNicol - the producer of this very episode of The Colin McEnroe Show Carlos Mejia - WNPR's digital producer Mike Pesca - Host of The Gist Josh Nilaya - Producer, The Colin McEnroe Show Susan Piver - Meditation teacher, speaker, and long-time Buddhist practitioner Patrick Skahill - WNPR's science reporter; producer emeritus of The Colin McEnroe Show Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe contributed to this show.