Are we as a population getting dumber? How would we know if we were? This hour: stupidity. We’ll look at the history and philosophy of stupidity, and explore how it shows up in our daily lives and politics.

GUESTS:

• Lane Brown: Features writer for New York Magazine, who recently wrote "A Theory of Dumb"
• Stuart Jeffries: Journalist and author. His new book is A Short History of Stupidity
• Shannon Mancus: Teaching Professor and Associate Department Head in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Department at the Colorado School of Mines. You can follow Dr. Shan on Instagram and Substack at “Pop Smart Media”

MUSIC FEATURED (in order):

• Able Sisters – Animal Crossing New Leaf OST
• Manchild – Sabrina Carpenter
• Dumb All Over – Frank Zappa
• Get Stupid – Aston Merrygold
• How Sweet to Be an Idiot – Neil Innes
• Idiot Wind – Bob Dylan

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Touch, grip, read, dance, gesture — what can’t they do? Our fingers are so vital to our everyday life, sometimes it seems they have minds of their own.

This hour, a look at the hidden language of finger gestures, the future of Braille, and the joys and challenges of animating fingers for the movies.

GUESTS:

• Kensy Cooperrider: Cognitive scientist, writer, and host of the Many Minds podcast
• Jonathan McNicol: Producer of The Colin McEnroe Show
• Sile O’Modhrain: Professor at the University of Michigan studying sound and touch and the ways in which they interact
• Carlos Fernandez Puertolas: Animator with DreamWorks

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, Cat Pastor, and Lily Tyson contributed to this show, which originally aired May 31, 2022.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Touch, grip, read, dance, gesture — what can’t they do? Our fingers are so vital to our everyday life, sometimes it seems they have minds of their own.

This hour, a look at the hidden language of finger gestures, the future of Braille, and the joys and challenges of animating fingers for the movies.

GUESTS:

• Kensy Cooperrider: Cognitive scientist, writer, and host of the Many Minds podcast
• Jonathan McNicol: Producer of The Colin McEnroe Show
• Sile O’Modhrain: Professor at the University of Michigan studying sound and touch and the ways in which they interact
• Carlos Fernandez Puertolas: Animator with DreamWorks

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, Cat Pastor, and Lily Tyson contributed to this show, which originally aired May 31, 2022.

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

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, which originally aired on May 22, 2025.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This hour, America’s Greatest Living Film Critic, David Edelstein, joins us to look back at the year in movies that was 2025.

Plus, The Nose tries to catch up on some of the awards-season movies it’s missed — movies like After the Hunt, Cover-Up, It Was Just an Accident, Jay Kelly, Sentimental Value, Train Dreams, and more.

GUESTS:

• David Edelstein: America’s Greatest Living Film Critic
• Sam Hadelman: Director of public relations at Dark Matter Media
• Shawn Murray: A stand-up comedian, writer, and the host of the Fantasy Filmball podcast
• Carolyn Paine: An actress and comedian; she’s the founder and director of CONNetic Dance and the creative producer and choreographer for The Bushnell’s Digital Institute
• Irene Papoulis: Taught writing for a long time at Trinity College
• Bill Yousman: Professor of media studies at Sacred Heart University

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.

We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls, calls about anything, everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one.

This hour, the conversation winds around to CDs, records, and consuming music, Buddhist monks, our show, young listeners … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

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, Dylan Reyes, and Eugene Amatruda contributed to this show.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wikipedia has lately been under attack, accused of bias and spreading propaganda. And for years students have been told not to trust the source. But are any of those claims fair? This hour, we take a look at the free online encyclopedia, how it functions, and its role in the modern world. We'll ask: can we trust the information we find there? And we'll celebrate the joys of falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

GUESTS: 

• Stephen Harrison: Writer and tech lawyer. His new novel, The Editors, is inspired by Wikipedia

• Amy Bruckman: Regents' Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and author of Should You Believe Wikipedia?: Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge

• Annie Rauwerda: Writer, comedian, and Wikipedia influencer, who created “Depths of Wikipedia.” She was named “Wikimedian of the year” in the media category for 2022, and is currently working on a book about Wikipedia

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 on May 14, 2025.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Historian Timothy Snyder is the author of the books On Freedom and On Tyranny. This hour we listen back to the conversation we had in March about the latest in our country, and what we can learn from history.

GUEST: 

• Timothy Snyder: Holds the inaugural Chair in Modern European History, supported by the Temerty Endowment for Ukrainian Studies, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is the author of books including On Freedom, On Tyranny, Our Malady, and more 

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, 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, which originally aired on March 26, 2025.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we have every year for at least the last 12 years, to round out the year, we round up the best jazz of the year.

GUESTS:

• Jen Allen: A pianist, composer, arranger, and educator; her new album is Possibilities
• Noah Baerman: A pianist, composer, and educator; in 2025, he has released a four-volume series of albums called Right Now
• Gene Seymour: A film, television, and music critic

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.