The Colin McEnroe Show

In A.J. Jacobs' new book, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning, he details his experience living by the Constitution for a year. Jacobs joins us for the hour to tell us about the experiment and what he learned. GUESTS: A.J. Jacobs: Author of The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning. His previous books include Drop Dead Healthy and The Year of Living Biblically. He is also host of “The Puzzler” podcast Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What exactly is charisma? You know it when you see it, but is it possible to measure? Is it something you can learn, or just something you’re born with? This hour we look at the impact of charisma, especially in politics. Plus, in the world of wildlife conservation there’s a term for those animals everyone cares about: “charismatic megafauna.” What are the impacts of decisions about conservation or leadership coming down to a nebulous trait like charisma? GUESTS: John Antonakis:Sophie Monsarrat:Russ Schriefer: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired September 6, 2023. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of thrillers and mysteries probably best known for The Chain and the Sean Duffy series. On a dark and stormy night in September, McKinty talked to Colin on stage at The Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford. It’s the first show we’ve done in front of a live audience since the before times. This hour, a lightly edited version of that conversation. GUEST: Adrian McKinty:The ChainThe Detective Up Late The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired September 14, 2023. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's hard to stay on top of everything happening in the Supreme Court lately — a case about whether governments can criminalize sleeping outside when you're homeless, a different decision that headlines tell us "effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states." Today, we're getting caught up with three of the most important cases you might have missed! GUESTS: Mark Joseph Stern: Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law Vera Eidelman: Staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project Nisha Kashyap: Attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. 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! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s been reported that Donald Trump has been sleeping during his Manhattan trial. This hour, a look at the storied history of people sleeping through things. We talk with a sleep doctor. Plus: an actor on what it’s like when an audience member nods off during your stage performance. GUESTS: Maura Judkis: The Washington PostMichael Greaney: Dr. Rafael Pelayo: How to Sleep Derek Garza: Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Journalist Lisa Belkin spent 10 years retracing the ancestry of three families, over four generations, to understand how a series of random encounters between three men led to the 1960 murder of a Stamford, Connecticut, police officer. Genealogy of a Murder looks at how family “truths” passed down through the generations can influence the choices of the descendants that follow. How do family stories, happenstance, and the cultural ethos of the moment shape the people we become? GUESTS: Lisa Belkin:Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful NightDoreen Troy Dolan:Kelsey Rose Dolan: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired August 24, 2023. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve been doing these shows a couple times a month 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 people backing into parking spaces, incorrect (maybe) pronunciations, spoon theory, the movie Civil War, Gov. Kristi Noem’s puppy … Anything. (Seemingly) everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fallout is a post-apocalyptic TV series developed for Amazon MGM Studios by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, who co-created Westworld for HBO. It is the first screen adaptation of the game franchise, which comprises four main series video games, seven spinoff video games, and six tabletop games. It stars Ella Purnell (from Yellowjackets), Aaron Morten, Kyle MacLachlan, and Walton Goggins. And: Conan O’Brien Must Go is a Max Original travel series. It is a spinoff from the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and a successor to the Conan Without Borders travel specials that aired as part of the TBS late night show Conan. Four episodes are out so far, in which O’Brien travels to Norway, Argentina, Thailand, and Ireland. GUESTS: Rich Hollant:Shawn Murray:Nobody Asked ShawnCarolyn Paine: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Supreme Court recently started hearing oral arguments about whether the Jan. 6 attacks constitute obstruction of an official proceeding. Thursday, they’ll hear arguments on Trump’s claim of presidential immunity. This hour, a status update on the confusing, monumental, and democracy-defining goings-on in the Supreme Court. GUESTS: Melissa Murray: Strict ScrutinyThe Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with CommentaryHolly Brewer: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniel Dennett was one of the most famous philosophers in the world, one of the so-called “Four Horsemen of the New Atheism.” Dennett died April 19 at age 82. This hour, our 2015 conversation with Daniel Dennett, as recorded onstage at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford. GUEST: Daniel Dennett: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe, Betsy Kaplan, Dylan Reyes, and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired January 21, 2016, in a different form. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It took almost a week to select the jurors and alternates for the Manhattan trial of former President Donald Trump. This hour is all about juries. We'll talk about jury selection, how to root out potential bias, and the process of choosing an impartial jury in this day and age. Plus, we'll look at depictions of juries in popular culture. And, some of the jury selection questions have to do with what media a person consumes, so we'll look at what the media we consume can say about us, and discuss media bias. GUESTS: Renato Mariotti:It’s ComplicatedNancy Marder: The Power of the Jury: Transforming Citizens Into JurorsVanessa Otero: Media Bias Chart Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rupert Holmes won two Tony Awards for his musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. His single “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. His dramedy Remember WENN was AMC’s first original scripted series. And his newest novel, Murder Your Employer, was a New York Times bestseller. This hour: Rupert Holmes. GUEST: Rupert Holmes: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In January, we did a show that wondered both how much the American Civil War speaks to the present American moment and how likely a new American Civil War might be. Well, movies and television have now, finally caught up with us. Civil War is the fourth film written and directed by Alex Garland. It tells the story of the end of a future second American Civil War as four journalists — played by Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson — move through it. Civil War is currently the No. 1 movie in the country. And: Manhunt is a seven-episode limited series on Apple TV+. It is based on the book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson. It’s a conspiracy thriller that focuses on War Secretary Edwin Stanton (as played by Tobias Menzies) leading the chase and on John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) as he’s being chased. GUESTS: Taneisha Duggan:Xandra Ellin:Frankie Graziano:The WheelhouseMatthew Warshauer:Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation: The Real Story of September 11 The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Our programming is made possible thanks to listeners like you. Please consider supporting this show and Connecticut Public with a donation today. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, we've got one show with three topics. First, the Trump 'hush money' trial; next, the history of slouch-shaming; and finally, the Golden Bachelor's divorce news. GUESTS: Mark Joseph Stern: Senior writer at Slate covering courts and the law Beth Linker: Professor and Chair of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her recently-released book is called “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.” Kay Brown: Host of the Bachelor recap podcast, “The Betchelor” 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! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Taylor Swift’s newest album, The Tortured Poets Department, comes out Friday. So this hour, we are taking a look at the idea of the actual tortured poet. We talk about where the idea of tortured poets came from, learn about the nature of creativity, and hear from a poet about where their inspiration comes from. GUESTS: Roland Greene: Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and PoeticsFive Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and CervantesJames C. Kaufman: The Creativity AdvantageThe Cambridge Handbook of CreativitySandra Simonds: TriptychsAssia Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We imagine pirates to be the quintessential rule-breakers — but really, they had their own strictly-followed codes. How did 18th-century pirates dictate their own community standards? How did they create social mobility in an age when changing one's social status was nearly impossible? This hour, we join pirate historian Rebecca Simon to find out! GUEST: Rebecca Simon: Pirate historian with a doctorate in history from King’s College London; she’s the author of several books about piracy, including The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show, which originally aired on October 11, 2023. Our programming is made possible thanks to listeners like you. Please consider supporting this show and Connecticut Public with a donation today. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve been doing these shows a couple times a month 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 an essay about NPR in The Free Press, NPR’s response to the essay, (our friend) David Folkenflik’s reporting on the essay and NPR’s response and such … Oh, and Scrabble … Anything. (Seemingly) everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ripley is an eight-episode limited series adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. It is the first serialized screen version of those stories following five feature film adaptations, including the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jude Law. The Netflix series stars Adam Scott, Dakota Fanning, and Johnny Flynn. It is created, written, and directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (who also created The Night Of) and shot — in black and white — by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit. And: Scrabble Together is a new, forthcoming version of the classic board game that’s coming to Europe from Mattel. It’s a faster-paced, collaborative version of Scrabble that’s being billed as less “intimidating.” It will not be available in the U.S. GUESTS: Irene Papoulis:The Essays Only You Can WriteLindsay Lee Wallace: The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If I say “cult classic,” what do you think of? Probably an underground movie that built up an intense following over time, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Room, right? Or maybe even something a bit more mainstream like The Big Lebowski? But where’s the limit here, if there is one? Is Blade Runner a cult movie? Or Pulp Fiction? Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Office Space? Slap Shot? (I mean: Slap Shot?!?) This hour, a look at a genre, a cross section of cinema history that seems to include everything from all-time classics like A Clockwork Orange to all-time terribles like Plan 9 from Outer Space and many, many weird and not-even-so-weird things in between: the cult classic. GUESTS: Millie De Chirico:TCM Underground: 50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night CinemaI Saw What You DidDavid Edelstein:Sam Hatch:The Culture DogsKevin O’Toole:The Culture Dogs This show was produced with Sajina Shrestha. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, Yale Dean Tamar Gendler joins us to discuss her course “Public Plato: Ancient Wisdom in the Digital Age.” We'll talk about how to make ancient philosophy relevant for a modern audience, questions of framing and form, and what we can all learn from concepts like alief, phronesis, and eudaimonia. GUEST: Tamar Gendler: Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Cognitive Science, and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Yale University Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode. Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired on October 5, 2023. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.