Ideas, calls, culture, and elegant detours.
The Colin McEnroe Show is a conversational public-radio program with a wide reach and a dry side-eye. Recent episodes move from plot twists and Thomas Pynchon to headaches, sycophancy, AI flattery, stinky cheese, and phone-system failure without treating any detour as wasted time.
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The Colin McEnroe Show is a public-radio conversation with an unusually elastic idea of what counts as a subject. It can begin with a movie, a headache, a song cue, a failed phone system, or a caller who wants to talk about grilled cheese. Then it keeps pulling. A discussion of The Drama becomes less about merely protecting spoilers and more about why shared discovery matters when characters and viewers process a reveal together. An episode on headaches starts with the plain fact that nearly everyone gets them, then moves into migraine categories, medical uncertainty, research history, cultural meaning, politics, and the gendered burden of pain. The show likes that kind of sideways seriousness. It treats a stray detail as evidence, but it also reserves the right to make the evidence funny. A Thomas Pynchon hour opens through Laurie Anderson, Gravity's Rainbow, and the comic problem of whether a banjo-only opera permission is actually a refusal. That is very much the operating frequency. Literature, film, music, theology, medicine, politics, and technology are not fenced off from one another. They are conversational materials. In an episode with a poet and theological thinker, consciousness becomes a mystery near religious mystery, and poetry becomes a route into questions about living and meaning. In a sycophancy episode, flattery travels from Shakespeare to presidential power to AI systems that may be too eager to please. The program is also happy to be locally and technically human. When phones break during an all-call show, the malfunction becomes a comic premise, a production story, and a test of how long one person can keep the room alive. Call-in editions such as Ask or Tell Me Anything give the format a loose social charge. People can arrive with complaints, facts, lies, food theories, or memories, and the show tends to find a larger pattern without polishing off the awkward edges. Its humor is dry rather than bubbly. Its intelligence is casual rather than credential-flashing. The result is a show for listeners who like digression when the digression has a destination, even if that destination takes the long way around.
Made for: For listeners who like public-radio talk that can move from pop culture to politics, literature, medicine, and caller chaos without flattening the odd parts. It especially fits patient, curious people who enjoy dry humor and associative thinking.
What sets it apart: The show's strength is its willingness to let the path stay visible: false starts, callbacks, technical mishaps, and side stories often become part of the argument. Similar culture shows may summarize cleanly; this one thinks in public.
The Colin McEnroe Show is public radio’s most eclectic, eccentric weekday program. The best way to understand us is through the subjects we tackle: Neanderthals, tambourines, handshakes, the Iliad, snacks, ringtones, punk rock, Occam’s razor, Rasputin, houseflies, zippers. Are you sensing a pattern? If so, you should probably be in treatment. On Fridays, we try to stop thinking about what kind of ringtones Neanderthals would want to have and convene a panel called The Nose for an informal roundtable about the week in culture.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Its crime-adjacent conversations trace manipulation and public power through close questions, cultural context, guest discussion, and dry humor.
The Colin McEnroe Show approaches harm and wrongdoing as questions of culture, power, and persuasion. Colin McEnroe moves between guest interviews, panel discussion, and calls, using dry humor without letting it crowd out the subject.
A broken call-in line leaves Colin McEnroe talking, and somehow you still get good radio.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A relaxed call-in hour turns music, cheese, and one persuasive grilled-cheese method into the main event.
A Friday call-in edition gives The Colin McEnroe Show a fitting lane for its Ask or Tell Me Anything format, where ordinary questions are allowed to steer the hour.
A sharp, unruly look at how praise flatters power, and machines too.
This conversation treats sycophancy as more than a workplace habit or a political reflex. It follows praise, deference, and self-protection as they move through culture, from Shakespeare to AI, and it lands best when it stays close to the awkward mechanics of flattery before…
A broken phone line turns the hour into a wry exercise in live-radio improvisation.
The hour is shaped by a broadcast scramble: a missed GoNetSpeed payment, a phone line that may not work, and a host still trying to keep Ask or Tell Me Anything on track.
Rust is framed as art, trouble, and an object lesson in paying attention.
Colin McEnroe turns rust into both material and metaphor, opening with Rust-O, a Rust-Oleum spray paint for street artists, and then widening the frame to rust as art, rust as trouble, and rust as plain physical fact.
A loose, name-rich episode finds a workable path from a hard-to-describe film to Louis Theroux's manosphere documentary.
The episode makes a good-faith effort to untangle Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, and the panel gives it shape through Sean Murray, Carolyn Payne, and Lindsay Lee Wallace, with Susanna McCorkle's Waters of March still hanging in the air.
A loose call-in hour turns pungent cheese, grilled-cheese advice, and a media admission into a study of human quirks.
This call-in edition plays like a compact study of how ordinary obsessions gather private lore. It begins with a John Martyn song and Father Time before drifting into a caller's search for cheese that smells and tastes like the inside of a motorman's glove, plus a new fondness…
A reflective look at sycophancy as power, praise, and AI-enabled flattery.
The episode treats sycophancy as a habit that runs through praise, power, and performance, moving from presidents and athletes to AI. It brings back Mark Parker, who also appeared on the show in 2017, and uses that return to keep the discussion anchored while it opens out into…
Morning-show chaos, saved for later.
Big science, briskly made human.
Sports talk with a grudge and a grin.
Fast talk, celebrity stories, everyday chaos.
Celebrity gossip with manners, momentum, and bite.
Colin McEnroe hosts a special 'Ask or Tell Me Anything' Friday edition with listener calls.
Colin McEnroe hosts a discussion on sycophancy, tracing its history from Shakespeare to modern AI.
A.M.
This episode explores how critics and creatives handle spoilers and plot twists, using the movie 'The Drama' as a case study to discuss the impact of reveals on viewer experience.
This episode explores headaches as a common affliction, examining their types, medical mysteries, and cultural and gender dimensions.
This episode explores the enigmatic author Thomas Pynchon, including a story about Laurie Anderson's attempt to adapt his novel 'Gravity's Rainbow' into an opera with only banjo music.
This episode features an interview with poet Christian Wiman discussing consciousness as an unexplained mystery akin to religious concepts and exploring the role of poetry in finding meaning in life.
This episode of Ask or Tell Me Anything explores the provocative question of whether the Statue of Liberty could use they/them pronouns, with multiple callers lined up to discuss gender identity and related topics.
The Colin McEnroe Show turns a Friday Ask or Tell Me Anything hour into a wide-open mix of politics, cheese, grilled cheese, and AI, with the call-in number 888-720-9677 driving the segment.
The show opens by naming sycophancy as the real subject and tracing it from the president and athletes’ entourages to AI systems that flatter users.
The show opens in trouble.
Colin comes back to rust after a while back.
Waters of March opens the hour.
This episode explores the Jennifer Dulos murder case and examines why true crime stories captivate audiences, particularly in the context of public radio's approach to such coverage.
This episode explores alternative historical scenarios through a sports lens, starting with the question of what if tug of war were still an Olympic sport, and expanding to examine how small changes in the past could create different presents.
This episode analyzes how the Trump White House uses hypermasculinity, Western gunfighter imagery, and action movie tropes to communicate its stance on the Iran war.
This episode features an interview with writer Robert Macfarlane about his new book on rivers, exploring his immersive nature writing style and mystical perspectives.
This episode discusses cultural happenings, including Super Bowl commercials and NPR membership benefits, in an expanded format.