The Colin McEnroe Show

Last weekend, Saturday Night Live did a thing it rarely does: it apologized for a joke it had made in poor taste. Pete Davidson, the comedian behind the joke and the apology, is a unique figure in the history of SNL.This week's biggest pop culture story is probably the death of Marvel Comics's Stan Lee. The Nose also wants to take a moment to acknowledge the death of the voice of HAL, Douglas Rain.And: Academy Award-winner Melissa McCarthy? Is that a universe we're headed toward? Her turn as Lee Daniels in Can You Ever Forgive Me? just might get us there.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thirty million red blood cells circulate twelve thousand miles in a never ceasing loop through our bodies every day. Our blood has to keep moving in order to perfuse every organ and vessel necessary to keep us alive. Nothing in our body works without the constant presence and movement of our blood. Yet, few of us think about our blood until we see a few drops trickle from a cut. Then, we're horrified by it.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mike Pesca is one of our very favorite guests -- on any number of topics. And he's got a new book out: Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We all regret and we should not regret that we regret.  I regret buying that pair of pink sneakers that I'll never wear. I can't take the sneakers back but I can call the brother that I regret not speaking to for several months. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This weekend was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. World leaders convened in Paris and listened to French president Emmanuel Macron warn against reviving the "old demons" of nationalism that led to our first world war. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last week's Nose painted itself into a bit of a rhetorical corner and somehow found itself arguing that Idris Elba is too old to be James Bond. And while historically that's true, it's not an argument we're proud to have made. Thankfully, this week, the universe has been kind enough to redeem us with the announcement of your new Sexiest Man Alive: Idris Elba. Of course, that's no reason not to make a new bad argument about Elba, like that he's, say, too macho to be the sexiest man alive?And: The Amazon Prime series Homecoming is a few firsts. It's Julia Roberts's first TV series. It's the first scripted TV drama based on a podcast. And it's Sam Esmail's first new television project since Mr. Robot.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As President Trump talks about draining the swamp in Washington D.C., we turn our attention to actual swamps. Associated with death and decay, while also celebrated for their beauty and biodiversity, few landscapes evoke such contradictory sentiments as swamps.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Women won big in these 2018 Connecticut midterm elections. This follows a national trend sparked in response to the 2016 election of Donald Trump. More women ran and more women won, many in seats not held by a Democrat in decades, let alone by a woman. Today, an hour with several of Connecticut's new female legislators. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have a tradition on the show of celebrating voting and the people who vote by speaking to thoughtful "citizen observers" from around the state about their experience of voting on this Election Day. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lewis Black is a funny guy. His expletive-laced RANTS and YELLING about whatever's on his (our) mind lends a rejuvenating catharsis for anyone who's thinking exactly what he's saying. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's almost over. One more day of lawn signs, robocalls, nasty mailers and deceptive commercials. Election Day is upon us and is shaping up to bring an unprecedented number of voters to the polls.  Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Carly Rae Jepsen hadn't released a Carly Rae Jepsen single from a Carly Rae Jepsen album in three years... until Thursday, that is. Her new single and video is "Party for One," and it's the "perfect self-love anthem for 2018."And: The six-part BBC miniseries Bodyguard is British television's highest-rated drama since Downton Abbey and the BBC's highest-rated drama in a decade. The only broadcasts with similar ratings this year were things like the World Cup and the royal wedding. And now Bodyguard is on Netflix.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Native Americans have been getting forced off their land for a long time. Thomas Jefferson forced them from their ancestral home in 1804 after he signed the Louisiana Purchase and promised they shall know the United States as only "friends and benefactors." Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are you one of those people who wants to vote for Oz Griebel for governor but won't because you're afraid your vote might lead to a win for your least favorite candidate? Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a set of steps and a big stone fireplace sitting in the middle of the woods where I used to walk my dog. I can envision the family living in the house that was part of the neighborhood that got washed away when the Farmington River overflowed its banks in 1955.  My exploration led me to the origin of those steps. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The polling industry is seeking to regain public confidence after the 2016 election. Will the advent of live polling, like what's being done by The Upshot at The New York Times, rejuvenate enthusiasm or trust in poll results? What about the Political Atlas and its incorporation of opinions expressed on social media?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In terms of box office, 2017 was the biggest year in the history of horror cinema. One wonders: Why? And then this year has brought us Hereditary, A Quiet Place, and now Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House. This hour: a look at our current horror through the lens of our current horror. GUESTS: Tom Breen - A film critic and the host of WNHH radio’s Deep Focus Aaron Mark - Creator, writer, and director of the scripted fiction podcast The Horror of Dolores Roach Matt Owen - Author of "Our Age of Horror" Jason Zinoman - Writes The New York Times's On Comedy column; author of Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

About 2000 years ago the Chinese came up with something really great: paper! Paper has allowed us to share ideas around the globe, record important historical events, build on our past success, create art, architecture, literature, music and more that may live on long on after we're gone.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shakespeare was famous for his off-color puns, yet much of their cleverness has been lost to the  evolution of our English language.In Shakespeare's English, the word "nothing" was pronounced as "no-ting," which at that time was a euphemism for um, a female lady part. In modern parlance, that would translate to Much Ado About... (female lady part.) Much is lost between Elizabethan times and today. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Things burn: Our environments, resources, and all forms of monument to self. And since the beginning, so too has our imagination. The inspiration humans have drawn from fire throughout the millennia is as impressive as it is immeasurable. Why fire occupies such an elemental place in the creative wellsprings of our consciousness is certainly a debate to had.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has hit a cultural nerve in America. The sustained anger outstrips our response to the killing of 43 other journalists in 2018, Saudi Arabia's jailing of these dissidents, or the U.S.-supported Saudi invasion of Yemen that has created a humanitarian crisis that is affecting millions of people and getting worse.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Louis C.K.'s surprise return to a comedy club stage in late August was widely covered and discussed. His subsequent performances have maybe sparked less internet conversation, but they're just as confounding. This week, the owner of one club where C.K. has been performing has made a couple media appearances to explain his thinking about the whole thing.And: Damian Chazelle is the director behind the three-time Academy Award-winner Whiplash and the six-time Academy Award-winner La La Land. His new movie, First Man, stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know all the reasons Trump won, right?Economic anxiety. Racial anxiety. The forgotten working class. The forgotten rustbelt...But what if the real cause were something much simpler and much more pervasive: our popular culture.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Common wisdom says that once you walk downstairs to the place where the sizes of candidates’ body parts are fodder for discussion, where one presidential nominee calls another “such a nasty woman” in a debate, where middle-finger salutes at the working press become commonplace at presidential rallies, you never go back up those stairs.On the eve of a midterm, we want to talk about whether that’s true and whether the 2018 political ecosystem caught the coarseness virus from 2016. And how do we get back up those stairs? How do we bleed some of the anger and vulgarity out of our political discourse?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Have you ever been to the opera? I know, you think it's stuffy and formal and only for rich, white people of a certain age. You're wrong. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Despite Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and attempts by hackers to infiltrate voter-registration databases in Illinois, Arizona and several other states in the summer of 2016, little has been done to better secure America's network of electronic voting systems.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We now have no fewer than four big screen versions of A Star Is Born.There's the 1937 original, the Judy Garland/James Mason remake, the Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson remake... and now's there's the Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper remake, which is directed by Cooper, and which might just take the fall movie season by storm.This hour: a Noseish (but not quite actually The Nose) look at the phenomenon of A Star Is Born.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So, when Prince died (which was two-and-a-half years ago), we announced that we were finally going to retire our theme song (which was a Prince song). And then we promptly did... nothing at all.Earlier this year, though -- and in typical Colin McEnroe Shovian fashion -- we decided that this non-problem was a big problem. And so, in order to try and hopefully finally fix this non-problem big problem, we did a whole show about theme songs -- ours and other people's.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is yodeling, anyway? Some consider it singing, some say it's an ululation, and still others consider it merely a means to herd animals. Whatever yodeling is, one's thing clear: Yodeling has been around for thousands of years and shows no signs of disappearing.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton were using strategies to deliberately divide America's political system decades before the pivotal 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush divided us into gangs of  'red' or 'blue.'Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, we've booked no guests. It's Colin and your calls. Saturday's confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was the anticlimatic coda to a nomination that has both riveted and more deeply divided our country.Depending on your view, the Kavanaugh confirmation either endangers the legitimacy of the court or is a welcome culmination to a decades-long effort to capture a solid conservative majority on the high court.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So we did a Nose last week. It was good. It was about the second season of Slow Burn and the third season of Serial, and it was kind of also about how both of those shows tie into our present moment in interesting ways and that that's kind of interesting and suchlike.We thought it went well.You probably would've thought so too.Except you didn't hear it, so how would you know? That present moment that I was just talking about got in the way: We were preempted by some Senate Judiciary Committee vote or something.So we brought the show back for this week. We hope you'll like it now too.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The postseason proper is upon us!Baseball has already played four winner-take-all games in three days. The Dodgers and the Brewers won their divisions in a pair of extra, tie-breaking game number 163s. And then the Cubs and the A's saw their seasons end in the two Wild Card Games.And now we're onto a round of real, full-length, five-game series. The two National League Division Series start today, and the American League's DSes start tomorrow.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Eagles' first album touched a cultural nerve in 1971, with songs like "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and "Witchy Woman." And the hits never stopped. Despite mounting criticism from critics and fans alike, within five years they rolled those hits into one of the biggest selling Greatest Hits albums of all time. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of you reading this are familiar with the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder because you watched the popular "Little House on the Prairie" television show that ran from 1974-1983.But the television show came long after Laura Ingalls Wilder began sharing the story of her family's journey through the open frontier. She shared her memories in a series of beloved Little House books that spanned a life of pioneering both before and after the government declared the frontier closed. She speaks in simple and intimate prose of everyday life that fascinated millions of young readers who wanted to live like Laura. Fans today still want to believe in the absolute truth of every word. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like many Americans, our newsroom was glued to the eight or so hours of testimony by Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh during last week's Senate Judiciary Hearings, including the dramatic committee vote on Friday that led to a limited FBI investigation. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's been... quite a week. It kinda seems like nothing happened in pop culture at all this week, doesn't it? Regardless, The Nose has a mandate to satisfy.Slow Burn is Slate's scripted, narrative impeachment podcast. The first season covered Watergate and President Nixon. The second (and current) season is covering Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. It has a strong, willful woman at its center. It has some sexual malfeasance. It has some questionable testimony.Serial is This American Life's scripted, narrative true crime podcast. The first and second seasons covered Adnan Syed and Bowe Bergdahl. The third (and current) season covers the court system in Cleveland. It has some justice and plenty of injustice. It has some lawyerly delays and obfuscation. It has at least one questionable judge.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joyce Maynard has been writing for over 45 years about the kind of human experiences we're often taught to keep hidden - stories  about envy, anger, vanity, self-pity, pride.  We read her stories because they offer a chance to first confront and then forgive ourselves for how those emotions can shape us into people we don't like. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat of departing Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy had already widened the chasm between Democrats and Republicans before allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh blew it wide open. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rust is all around us. It's in our cars, our homes, our infrastructure. It's also the subject of Jonathan Waldman's first book, Rust, which introduces us to the people who fight it.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The celebrity profile is dead. Or dying, at least, according to The New York Times. Case in point: the Times's own terrible profile of the great Maya Rudolph. Counterpoint: The Washington Post's fascinating, and self-eviscerating, profile of the formerly great Chevy Chase.And: Nicole Holofcener's new movie is a Netflix adaptation of Ted Thompson's novel of the same name, The Land of Steady Habits. You'll never guess where it's set. (Actually, you might not. I'm pretty sure it's never said in the movie, and they shot it in Tarrytown, New York. But it's meant to be Westport, Conn., which is why The Nose is covering it.)Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How well do we really know the poor? As our nation's economy grows and the jobless rate decreases, are we increasingly ignoring their voices? Haven't we always ignored them?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We were going to produce a show today on loneliness with British writer Olivia Laing. We still want to do that show with Olivia - but not today.Instead, we decided to switch gears and talk with Olivia and other artists about the themes in Olivia's new novel because they mirror our own concerns: how to live life in this fast-moving world where the present is history in the blink of an eye and world leaders can end our world with one wrong tweet? How can we exist, create art, raise children, commit to a future in a world that could be ending?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a mostly forgotten story by the mostly forgotten sci-fi writer, R.A. Lafferty. It's called, "What's The Name of That Town." We meet a team of scientists and an amusing sentiant computer examining clues that suggested something existed once upon a time and has now been erased.It turns out to be the city of Chicago which has been obliterated in an accident so traumatic that the city's existence has been wiped from all records and from peoples actual memories. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, we have no guests. We want to hear from you. We canceled our previously planned show so we could dedicate the entire hour to understanding how you are feeling about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the  Supreme Court.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Actress Cynthia Nixon lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary in New York yesterday. Did she lose because of the kind of bagel she eats? Probably not. But from the Nose's point of view, what could really matter more than that?And Vulture, last week -- "as the discourse rages on about whether or not political correctness is destroying comedy (spoiler alert: it isn't)" -- ran a piece on the jokes comedians regret. But here's the real question: Do we want comedians regretting their jokes, tasteless or not?Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Color doesn't exist on its own.A red rose will look different to me than it does to you. It will also look different to a pigeon, who can see way more shades and tints than most humans can see. Remember the 2015 debate over the dress? Gold & white,  blue & black or yes, some saw brown & light purple. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may have heard that Bob Woodward has a new book out.It was number one on Amazon... before it came out. It was into its seventh printing -- a million copies... before it came out. The president Twittered about it at least a dozen times... before it came out.Well, now it's out.This hour: a look at the phenomenon of Fear.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nearly ninety-percent of Americans own a smartphone.On average, we spend more than four hours a day on our phones, which adds up to about 56 full days a year. That's like sealing yourself in a room on the first day of summer and not emerging until the kids head back to school. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After Naomi Osaka won the first set against Serena Williams during Saturday's U.S. Open Women's Final, chair umpire Carlos Ramos gave Williams a warning for receiving help from her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, who was sitting in the stands. She asked Ramos to take it back. She told him she doesn't cheat. Ramos didn't take it back. After that, it got ugly.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.