The Colin McEnroe Show

For everyone who watched Sunday's series finale of Game of Thrones, perhaps a better show to get a handle on what's happening inside America is Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. People aren't going around greeting their neighbors with "Blessed by the fruit." But there's an argument to be made that news headlines from the past week are eerily similar to the fictional transpirings that gave way to Handmaid's Republic of Gilead. Today, we consider Alabama's new ultra-conservative abortion law,...

It's been a rough week for the famous. Last Saturday, Peggy Lipton died at age 72. On Monday, Doris Day died at 97. Then on Tuesday, it was Tim Conway at 85. And yesterday, I. M. Pei died aged 102. And the week's gone kind of the same way for TV shows too. On Sunday, Veep finished its seven-year run on HBO. Last night, The Big Bang Theory aired its 279th and final episode. And Game of Thrones's series finale is set to air this coming Sunday. Support the show.

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 three 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 and (soon) Disney, giving us on-demand content with the push of a...

The 18th century Parisian cafe was an incubator for the liberal tradition as it was before liberalism became a politically-loaded and dirty word. The cafe brought people together to exchange ideas, talk, connect, argue, debate, and learn about humanity, empathy, and humility outside the control of the state; a place where civil society trumped tribal impulse. We are a far more humane people today compared to what we've been, despite the astounding level of cruelty in the headlines every...

Religious scholar Elaine Pagels, trusted the Gospel of Thomas to get her through the almost unbearably painful years after the death of her six-year-old son -- born with a congenital heart defect -- followed one year later by the unexpected death of her husband. Thomas was one of many hidden texts discovered in a cave in Egypt in 1945, written around the time of Jesus but omitted from the New Testament. Pagels exploration of the secret gospels revealed early Christianity to be a mix of...

Listen at 1:00 pm. President Trump is working to block more than 20 separate Congressional investigations led by the Democratic-controlled House. Democrats say the Trump Administration has failed to respond to or comply with at least 79 requests for documents or other information. Are we in a Constitutional crisis, or not? Also this hour: Two students lost their lives in recent weeks charging at the school shooter who was trying to kill them and other classmates. Both died and are being...

Father of the Bride is Vampire Weekend's fourth studio album, their first in nearly six years, and their first for a major label. It has been called a "masterpiece" and a "multi-layered dissertation on the world's ills." It's also been called "mild" and "some of the worst ideas the band has ever put to tape." The real question is, though: Is Vampire Weekend still cool? And then: Gorman Bechard's Pizza, A Love Story has its New Haven premiere in a few weeks at this year's NHdocs documentary...

Hartford native Sol LeWitt was one of the giants of conceptualist and minimalist art. As an artist, he abandoned the long histories of painting and drawing and sculpture in favor of his Wall Drawings and Structures. And as an art figure, he abandoned the conventions of celebrity and resisted ever even having his picture taken. This hour, a look at Connecticut's own Sol LeWitt. Support the show.

Reality TV shows like the Discovery Channel's Doomsday Bunkers and National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers perpetuate a stereotype of "preppers" that omits the wide swath of people who engage in preparedness in a less extreme and more varied way. Talk of nuclear war, climate apocalypse, pandemic, economic instability, and the decline of democracy has led more people to think about how to survive a catastrophic -- if not apocalyptic -- event. Do you buy organic food? Will you drink...

Elvis left two legacies. Musically, he pulled several American musical traditions out of the shadows, braided them together, and made them mainstream. Personally, he created a far darker template for the way a musical celebrity could be devoured by the very fame he avidly sought. Recorded live in front of an audience -- and with a band! -- as part of Colin's Freshly Squeezed series at Watkinson School, an hour about the artist who defined the birth of rock and roll and was the genre's first...

NPR has a new theme song. The new theme is much like the old theme with new embellishments created by a "sonic studio" instead of one artist and a "creative director" instead of a composer or arranger. After 40 years, is it time to update or do you miss the old song? Also this hour: Rachel Held Evans was a 37-year-old Christian evangelical writer with an ability to both challenge orthodoxy within the religion and bridge the political divide between conservative and progressive followers....

Avengers: Endgame is the 22nd feature film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is the fourth Avengers movie and the fourth MCU entry directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. It is the 10th film in the MCU's Phase Three and the last part of its Infinity Saga. I didn't understand very much of that stuff I just wrote, but I totally get this last bit: Avengers: Endgame may well be on its way to becoming the highest-grossing movie ever made. And then: Taylor Swift's new single/video, "Me," is setting...

The concept of the early 20th century side show evokes images of bearded ladies, sword swallowers and exotic 'others' exhibited as 'freaks' before audiences both lured and repelled by what they saw. Crowds flocked to Coney Island side shows where, for ten cents, they could find solace that someone was worse off than they were during times of low life expectancy, high infant mortality, world war and financial instability. Few had the luxury of seeing the humanity behind the act. Cartoonist...

Who would have thought that a book on grammar would be #5 on Amazon's best-seller list? (Should that be "whom" would have thought? Should I write out the number five? Should it be "bestseller?" Ugh. I can't remember if the exclamation goes inside or outside the quotation mark in the sentence I just asked myself.) Benjamin Dreyer says we're all writers. Or, we can channel our best writers if we choose our words more carefully, (try not writing the words very, rather, really, quite, surely,...

Dust is a fascinating substance. Our bodies are always shedding dust from our skin, hair, and nails, leaving little bits of DNA wherever we roam. Dust floats unseen through the air around us. It's light. It's hard to see unless it lands on a contrasting surface or crosses the path of a ray of sunshine. It can travel far and wide. Earth collects more than 100 tons of cosmic dust a day. A speck of it might be in your rug. The unseen dust deeply embedded in our homes over many years becomes an...

We want to hear from you. It's just Colin and your calls. Twenty Democratic presidential contenders are in the race for 2020. Are you suffering from choice overload? Is electability your primary criteria? If so, it probably shouldn't be. Who we consider electable usually leaves out women and minorities. Do we even know what makes someone electable? You're not alone if you're having trouble keeping up with who believes what. Give us a call. Also this hour: Sunday's shooting at Chabad Poway...

To say Beyoncé's performance at Coachella was historic feels like an understatement. In about the span of a week, Queen Bey released a two hour Netflix exclusive film (part one of her deal with the streamer) of the entire concert, a 40-track live album from the same show, which was released unexpectedly, and just for fun, she released her 2016 pop culture smash album “Lemonade” on all streaming platforms, which was originally exclusive to just Tidal. Let’s not forget Bey’s Coachella set was...

Fyre Festival, Theranos, Anna Delvey, the college admissions scandal... the list goes on. And whether explored on the news or as a book, podcast, documentary or feature film, consumers can't seem to get enough of this 'scamtent.' This hour, we'll talk about scams and scammers, and discuss why we as a culture can't seem to look away. Support the show.

Most of us know what Kafkaesque means even if we've never read a word Kafka wrote. For example, it's Kafkaesque when your smart home turns on you. It's not Kafkaesque when you wait in line for two hours at DMV and they close the line when you get to the front. (Well, it's a little Kafkaesque.) Franz Kafka, the man whose absurdly dark stories inspired the adjective of the same name, was an ascetic and introspective man. He was given to self-doubt, concerned over his health and obsessed with...

The number of Americans who identify as 'spiritual but not religious' is growing, especially among millennials who may not be finding what they need in the religious institutions of their parents generation. While some of the "Nones" have never affiliated with a particular religion, those who have some connection to faith yearn to find meaning they can't find in traditional churches, synagogues and mosques. We look at why people -- especially millennials -- are becoming disaffected with...