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 our tribute to Jill Sobule, spotted lanternflies, The Monkees, the provision in the tax bill that would weaken the courts, cardboard boxes, sea chanteys … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

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

You can now watch our calls shows on Connecticut Public’s YouTube. Subscribe and get notified when we go live. Or 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, Robyn Doyon-Aitken, Megan Fitzgerald, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Note: This episode contains strong language.

Griffin Dunne is Jack Goodman in John Landis’ classic horror-comedy An American Werewolf in London and Paul Hackett in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Loudon Trout in the Madonna-starring screwball comedy Who’s That Girl. He’s Uncle Nicky on This Is Us and Professor Dudenoff on Only Murders in the Building and Dr. Alon Parfit on Succession and Sylvére on I Love Dick.

He produced After Hours and Running on Empty and Once Around. He directed Practical Magic and Addicted to Love and the documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.

His father was the journalist and novelist and movie producer Dominick Dunne. His aunt and uncle were the journalists and novelists and screenwriters Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. His sister was the actress Dominique Dunne. His grandfather was a famous heart surgeon from West Hartford, Connecticut.

In November, 2024, we recorded a conversation with Griffin Dunne on stage at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford. It’s a lot about that complicated, sometimes tragic, often hilarious family. And it’s about movies and TV and writing. And Hartford.

This hour: Griffin Dunne.

GUEST:

• Griffin Dunne: An actor, producer, and director and the author of The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

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, which originally aired November 15, 2024.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are thought to be about 17 million living flies for every human alive on Earth.

They’re predators and parasites and pests, but they’re pollinators too. They help us solve crimes, heal wounds, and understand genetics and evolution. And they literally help at least one artist paint his paintings.

Also this hour: A look at David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of, you guessed it: The Fly.

GUESTS:

• Jonathan Balcombe: Author of Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects
• John Knuth: An artist
• Gale Ridge: Associate scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station
• Jacob Trussell: Author of The Binge Watcher’s Guide to The Twilight Zone; he published the piece “Only Jeff Goldblum Could Make Us Fall in Love with ‘The Fly’” at Film School Rejects

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 August 19, 2021.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What counts as a robot? This hour, a look at what robots are and the latest in robot technology.

Plus, how robots were used and thought about in medieval times and Ancient Greece and the role of robots in science fiction.

GUESTS:

• Chris Atkeson: Professor at the Robotics Institute and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
• Adrienne Mayor: Author of Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines and Ancient Dreams of Technology, among other books
• Elly Truitt: Author of Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art
• Daniel H. Wilson: Author of Robopocalypse and How To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion, among other books

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 July 12, 2022.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over 500 years ago, Sir Thomas More wrote about utopia. Since then, countless communities around the world have worked to create their own versions of a perfect world. This hour, we look at examples of utopian communities from around the world.

GUESTS:

• Avery Trufelman: Host of the podcast Nice Try!

• Akash Kapur: Author of Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville

• Samir Patel: Former editor-in-chief of Atlas Obscura

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, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired August 18, 2021.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

President Trump has instructed his administration to work toward rebuilding and reopening the notorious maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island.

But why? One theory has it that it’s because the Clint Eastwood movie Escape from Alcatraz aired on South Florida’s PBS station, Mar-a-Lago’s PBS station, on the day the president announced the plan.

As ridiculous as that is or would be, it kind of illustrates a larger point: When Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary closed in March, 1963, there were already more than a dozen movies about the prison. In the more than 60 years since it closed, Hollywood has made more than a dozen more.

Alcatraz, for pretty much its entire history, has held an outsized place in the American imagination and culture.

This hour: the past, present, and future (?) of Alcatraz.

GUESTS:

• Shawna Chen: A reporter with Axios San Francisco
• Jeff Himmelman: Author of Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee, Legendary Editor of The Washington Post; he is currently working on a book about Alcatraz

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is the status of expertise in our world? This hour we look at the so called "death of expertise." We talk about the role of experts throughout society. Plus, we learn how to master a skill, and the joy of trying.

GUESTS:

• Tom Nichols: Staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters. He is also a professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, and a five-time undefeated Jeopardy champion
• Alan Dove: Science journalist and co-host of the podcast This Week in Virology
• Adam Gopnik: Staff writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of The Real Work: On The Mystery of Mastery, among other books

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Tolkien’s potential Lord of the Rings sequel, planned Flag Day protests, parasocial relationships, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, former Vice President Kamala Devi Harris, Annie Lennox* … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

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

*Annie Lennox, who doesn't have a middle name, which screws up my series there, is an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), but she's not a Dame Grand Cross or Dame Commander, so she can't use the title Dame. Which also screws up my series there. And I admit that I had to look up Kamala Harris's middle name.

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.

There’s something almost romantic about airships. The image of a giant, floating aircraft feels both nostalgic and futuristic.

In the early 20th century, airships were on the leading edge of aviation; today, they mostly live on in the domain of steampunk art and speculative fiction.

But a number of companies are betting they can bring airships out of the history books and into modern real-world applications like cargo transport and military uses.

This hour, the past and future of airships, both real and imagined.

GUESTS:

• Nick Allman: Chief operating officer of Hybrid Air Vehicles

• Jeanne Marie Laskas: A journalist and the author of eight books; in 2016 she published “Helium Dreams” in The New Yorker

• Ken Liu: A futurist and author of speculative fiction, including The Dandelion Dynasty, an epic fantasy series featuring airships

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.

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.

Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired November 1, 2021.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may have heard that tick borne diseases are on the rise. But don’t worry — we’ve got you covered. This hour, we’re taking you through three ways to defeat ticks. From tick-immune blood, to a tick-destroying robot and tried-and-true tweezers, this show is not for arachnids who are faint of heart.

GUESTS:

• Rick Ostfeld: Distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

• Holly Gaff: Professor of Biological Sciences at Old Dominion University 

• Jen Wegner: Associate curator of the Egyptian section at the Penn Museum

• Birnur Aral: Executive Director of the Beauty, Health and Sustainability Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute

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 Eugene Amatruda contributed to this show, which originally aired on August 31, 2023.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.