The Colin McEnroe Show

They're in the books we read, the shows we watch, and the art we hang on our walls. They conjure notions of might, magic, romance, and more. Castles, perhaps as much as any other architectural structure in history, define the landscape of our fantasy and imagination.

But is our imagination an accurate lens through which to view these fortresses of ol'? And why, after hundreds of years, does our culture's f...

Mike Pesca is one of our very favorite guests — on any number of topics.

His book, Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History, is a whole series of earth-shattering, hypothetical, what-if questions (and posited answers to said earth-shattering, hypothetical, what-if questions):

What if a blimp full of money had exploded over world track headquarters in 1952? What if Nixon had been good at football? What if B...

How does reality television shape our politics and our opinions? This hour two reality TV scholars join us to discuss how reality TV helps us understand (or sometimes misunderstand) actual reality.

GUESTS:

• Danielle Lindemann: Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University and a Visiting Professor in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. She is also the author of the book True Story: What Reality TV Says ...

Dating back to Homer and Hesiod, artists have been calling on muses for inspiration. This hour, we look at the mythology of the muses, real-life muses, and what they can all teach us about creativity.

GUESTS:

• Alison Habens: Novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and lecturer and Programme Lead at the University of Portsmouth
• Francine Prose: Author of many books, including The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and th...

Nobody likes termites. They get into the wood in our homes and can lead to infuriating and expensive repairs. What’s to like?

It turns out, there’s a lot to like about termites. Scientists study how they build their mounds for clues to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems, like mitigating the effects of drought, building colonies on Mars, and creating biofuels.

Plus, their ability to adapt to the har...

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 thunderstorms and lightning, squirrels, the band (and word) Enigma, trains … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one.

You ca...

Thursday night, CBS announced that it is cancelling its flagship late night show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, after next season, in May, 2026. CBS says this is “purely a financial decision.” At the same time, The Late Show has the largest audience in American late night TV by a pretty wide margin. In any case, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end after its 11th season, the 34th overall for the larger Late...

On the morning of May 24, 2019, Jennifer Dulos dropped her kids off at New Canaan Country School. And then minutes later, she vanished.

Her presumed murder quickly became a national story.

This hour, Wall Street Journal columnist Rich Cohen joins us to talk about his new book, Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story.

Plus: a look at our ongoing obsession with these true crime stories.

GUESTS:

• Rich Cohe...

Do you ever wish you could have a conversation with your pet, or the bird outside your window? This hour, we learn about how animals communicate with one another, how we communicate with them, and what this can teach us about human language.

Plus, some pet owners are turning to soundboards to communicate with their pets. We'll talk with a researcher who's exploring how effective that is, and what that can ...

Earlier this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. The end of the world has been something humans have been preoccupied with for a very long time. This hour, we talk about how we imagine the world ending, and what it says about us.

GUESTS: 

• Dorian Lynskey: Journalist and author of multiple books, most recently Everything Must Go: The Stories We ...

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 Squid Game, the routinization of protests, the elusive Jeffrey Epstein report, 9/11 and the movies Fight Club and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Harvey, Keurig coffee makers, too much plastic everywhere …...

We think of dinosaurs as figures from science, from history, from the fossil record.

But if I say “Tyrannosaurus rex,” do you picture bones arranged in a museum — or do you picture that one scene in Jurassic Park?

The more you think about it, the more you realize that your whole real concept of dinosaurs comes from movies and TV and kids’ books and comic books.

So this hour, with the latest&nb...

Lately the ancient philosophy of Stoicism is having a bit of a resurgence. This hour we learn about the philosophy, why people are drawn to it, and how to live like a Stoic. Plus, we look at how Stoicism appears in music.

GUESTS:

• Massimo Pigliucci: The K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He is the author of books including Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Ske...

I’ve had some well-documented trouble with our neighborhood squirrels over the last few winters. It could be that most homeowners in the Northeast and beyond feel like they’ve had some sort of conflict with the local squirrels.

But we maybe misunderstand squirrels. Their seemingly scattershot behaviors actually suggest a fascinating intelligence and intentionality. And while we see squirrels as a nemesis of birds and bi...

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 aggressive grills on cars, wrong-way drivers on Connecticut highways, the composer Lili Boulanger, voting rights for permanent residents, the herbicide diquat in Connecticut, volunteering … Anything. Seemin...

Ironheart is a new miniseries from Marvel Television. It is the 28th (not a typo) TV series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it concludes Phase Five of the MCU after six movies and eight series. Ironheart is set about six months after the events of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which came out in 2022, but which is set in the spring of 2025 — which sets this show in our future, around the fall of 202...

This hour we take a look at the history and evolution of chapters, and discuss how they impact our reading experiences.

GUESTS: 

• Nicholas Dames: Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he studies the history and theory of the novel. His new book is The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. He is also co-ed...