Back before radio stations (ours included) started re-airing daytime programs during the night as a default, nighttime airwaves were a place for experimentation, confessions, and wondering that wouldn't be welcome in the light of day.

“Why don’t we try that?” said we!

On June 20th, Colin McEnroe, a team of intrepid radio producers and engineers, and one very generous security guard stayed in the office from 11 p.m. - 1 a.m. The resulting radio program, which featured live music, poetry, and phone calls about UFOs, Boy Scout horror stories, and siphonophores, is available here for your listening pleasure.

GUESTS:

• Hugh Blumenfeld Folk musician and singer-songwriter from Connecticut
• Major Jackson: Professor of English at Vanderbilt University and host of the podcast the Slowdown from American Public Media. His most recent book is “Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems”
• Mike Penicello: State Director of the Connecticut Mutual UFO Network
• Keith Trosell: Truck driver and owner/operator of Boba Freight, which is based in Columbia, CT
• Zulynette: Performer, artist, author, and creator of the annual storytelling event, “A Little Bit of Death.” Her most recent book of poetry is “Seeing in the Dark”

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, Robyn Doyon-Aitken, Jonathan McNicol, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Nose is off this week. In its place, a look at how we imagine extraterrestrial life.

What do you picture when you picture aliens? Is it like E.T.? Or little green men? Or an alien from Star Trek?

This hour: how we imagine extraterrestrial life and how those visions are shaped by our TV and movies and more.

GUESTS:

• Jaime Green: Freelance writer, editor, writing teacher, and the author of The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos
• Doug Jones: Actor known for his roles in Hellboy, The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, and more; he plays Saru in Star Trek: Discovery

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 December 1, 2023.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

News outlets and opinion writers have called it: The traditional dinner party is dead. But are dinner parties really so bad? Or are we just bad at hosting them?

This hour, the history of dinner parties and some advice from people who turn party-hosting into an art form.

GUESTS:

• Rand Richards Cooper: Fiction writer, contributing editor at Commonweal, and the restaurant critic for the Hartford Courant
• Nandita Godbole: Author of several cookbooks including Masaleydaar: Classic Indian Spice Blends; she also writes the blog Curry Cravings
• Julia Skinner: Culinary historian and food writer whose work includes the book Our Fermented Lives

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 October 26, 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 favorite TV theme songs; the Ham Primus House in Guilford, Connecticut; the upcoming Poor People’s March; the upcoming presidential debates; the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine … 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.

In Yascha Mounk’s new book, he “traces the origin of a set of ideas about identity and social justice that is rapidly transforming America — and explains why it will fail to accomplish its noble goals.”

This hour, Mounk joins us to talk about the future of democracy and The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time.

GUEST:

• Yascha Mounk: Professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University; founder of Persuasion; host of The Good Fight; and the author, most recently, of The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

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 October 4, 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.

Shakespeare, it turns out, is not immune to the culture wars, the book banning, the cancel culture (despite his being dead for more than four centuries). So, fine. Cancel Shakespeare, then, one argument goes. Because here’s the thing: Shakespeare’s plays and poems ARE dirty and smutty and gory — and that’s a big part of what makes them so great.

And: Earlier this year, the romantic comedy Anyone But You became the highest-grossing live-action Shakespeare adaptation ever made. So we look at Shakespeare as fertile rom-com IP, from 10 Things I Hate About You and beyond.

And finally, Bardcore is a thing. The one and only Hildegard von Blingin’ joins us.

GUESTS:

• Maureen Lee Lenker: A senior writer at Entertainment Weekly and the author of the novel It Happened One Fight
• Drew Lichtenberg: Associate director at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC
• Hildegard von Blingin’: A singer and illustrator

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, Meg Dalton, Cat Pastor, and Lily Tyson 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.

Just in time for your summer vacation, an hour about beach reads. We look at how the term came to be, get some beach read recommendations, and even hear a case against reading on the beach.

GUESTS:

• Meghan Hayden: Owner of River Bend Bookshop, which has locations in Glastonbury and West Hartford, Connecticut
• Andrew Limbong: Reporter for NPR’s Culture Desk and Host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast
• Donna Harrington-Lueker: Professor in the Department of English, Communications, and Media at Salve Regina University. She is author of Books for Idle Hours: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the Rise of Summer Reading

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve done a version of this show every year since 2013. And we did it in 2011. We probably even did one in 2010. (We just can’t prove it.)

So it’s a bit of a tradition. It’s a tradition that … makes some people angry, we realize.

And that has a lot to do with how we define the term “song of the summer.” We use the Amanda Dobbins definition:

Let’s be clear about how this works: There is no such thing as a “personal” song of summer. We do not anoint multiple songs of summer. There can only be one; the Song of Summer, by its very definition, is a consensus choice. It is the song that wrecks wedding dance floors. It is the song that you and your mother begrudgingly agree on (even though your mom has no idea what rhymes with “hug me” and won’t stop yelling it in public). It does not necessarily have to hit No. 1 on the charts, but it should probably be on the charts because it must be widely played. It must bring people together. It must be a shared enthusiasm.

So it’s our job here to figure out what song from 2024 will get added to the long list of song of the summer classics like “Party Rock Anthem,” “Call Me Maybe,” “Despacito,” and “Blurred Lines.”

And if we’re wrong, well, it really just won’t matter at all.

GUESTS:

• Sam Hadelman: Works in music public relations and hosts The Sam Hadelman Show at Radio Free Brooklyn
• Brendan Jay Sullivan: A writer, producer, and DJ
• Cassie Willson: A comedian, musician, and content creator

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 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.