What's a dew point? Why is my weather app wrong all the time? Should I be worried about a Super El Niño? This hour, we explore the mysteries of the weather while checking in on the state of modern meteorology.

Plus: How does literature teach us about the changing weather?

GUESTS:

• Kristine Harper: Meteorologist, oceanographer, and science educator turned historian of science at the University of Copenhagen
• Matthew Cappucci: Senior Meteorologist at MyRadar and Meteorologist at CapitalWeather.com
• Amy Brady: Author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks – A Cool History of a Hot Commodity. She is also the former executive director and publisher of Orion magazine, a contributing editor for Scientific American, and coeditor of the anthology The World as We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate.

Music featured (in order):

• Teen Town – Weather Report
• Storm Warning – Bonnie Raitt
• Pennies from Heaven – Emilie-Claire Barlow
• Isn’t This a Lovely Day? – Dana Lauren
• Heatwave – Martha Reeves and the Vandelas
• After the Rain Has Fallen – Sting

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There is perhaps no figure more emblematic of the paranormal than the psychic. Able to predict the future, see into the past, and even communicate with the dead, the psychic’s (supposed) awesome gifts are matched only by his or her ability to withstand skepticism and ridicule.

But are our misgivings towards these intuitives justified? Is it merely smoke and mirrors which they’ve learned to master, or are they, in fact, possessed of powers beyond our comprehension?

This hour, we speak with believers, skeptics, and self-proclaimed psychics to find out.

GUESTS:

• Daryl Bem: Emeritus professor of psychology at Cornell University and the author of Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect
• Allison Dubois: A psychic medium and profiler and the author of several books, including Into the Dark: How the Dead Help Us Heal
• Benjamin Radford: Deputy editor for Skeptical Inquirer and co-host of Squaring the Strange
• Emily Stroia: An ituitive medium, the founder of the Intuitive Soul Academy, and the author of several books, including Psychic Development for Beginners
• Jenniffer Weigel: An Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist and the author of Psychics, Healers and Mediums: A Journalist, a Road Trip, and Voices from the Other Side

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 Chion Wolf contributed to this show, which originally aired June 28, 2017.

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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 Connecticut lobster rolls, curating everything, Canadian blue lettuce, the movie version of Jurassic Park, the correct pronunciation of “New Haven” and other things, the problem with open primaries … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.

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

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One Night Only is an R-rated dystopian sci-fi sex comedy rom-com. But then, what movie isn’t an R-rated dystopian sci-fi sex comedy rom-com, really? It is directed by Will Gluck (who also directed Anyone but You and Easy A and other things). It has grossed $7.4 million over its first six days in theaters, and it’s in danger of becoming a box office bomb.

And: “Two People Exchanging Saliva (Deux personnes échangeant de la salive)” is a black-and-white French-language absurdist comedy-drama short film written and directed by Alexandre Singh and Natalia Mistreata. It won this year’s Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

And finally: The Atlantic says there’s an “eroticism shortage.” And that feels right. Right? And so what’s that all about?

GUESTS:

• RS Benedict: A writer and bureaucrat whose fiction and non-fiction has been published in the New Haven Review, Fangoria, Current Affairs, and a bunch of other places
• Irene Papoulis: Taught writing for a long time at Trinity College
• Lindsay Lee Wallace: A writer and journalist whose latest work includes the cover stories for the four most recent issues of Bat Conservation International’s Bats magazine

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If you ask an AI chatbot what its favorite color is, chances are it’ll say blue. What’s going on? This hour, we look at why so many people love the color blue, and what blue means in art and culture and our lexicon. Plus: Why are Democrats blue and Republicans red? And, the universe is getting less blue?

GUESTS:

• Kory Stamper: Lexicographer, and author of True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color–from Azure to Zinc Pink
• Kushin Mukherjee: Postdoctoral scholar in the Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford University
• Einav Rabinovitch-Fox: Historian, Visiting Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University, and Managing Editor at the Cleveland Museum of Art
• Ivan Baldry: Professor of Astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University

Music featured (in order):

• Blue (Da Ba Dee) – Eiffel 65
• Am I Blue – Dinah Washington
• Blue – Joni Mitchell
• Blue Skies – Eva Cassidy
• Blue Money – Van Morrison
• I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues – Alessia Cara

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In April, 2010, we did a segment on the concept of the mesofact, a certain kind of data point that feels fixed even though it’s actually always slowly changing. And we’ve gone back to the idea every now and again ever since.

This hour, a look at three things about the world that changed pretty dramatically while you were thinking about other stuff.

Hey, did you know there’s a fifth ocean now? Hey, did you know that you can put hot food right into your fridge now? Hey, did you know that goldfish are actually pretty smart?

Those kinds of things.

GUESTS:

• Andrea Barnes: A writer at Wirecutter covering large cleaning appliances and laundry
• Liam McCabe: A writer at Wirecutter covering home improvement
• Cait Newport: An associate professor at the University of Oxford, where she leads the Animal Perception and Cognition Group
• Alex Tait: The Geographer at the National Geographic Society

Music featured (in order):

• Things Change – Venus
• It Ain’t Necessarily So – Jaimee Paul
• Rock the Boat – Hues Corporation
• Washing Dishes – G. Love and Special Sauce
• Money for Nothing – Dire Straits
• Goldfish – Fionn

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A study shows that AI chatbots often engage in sycophantic behavior. Just like some humans. This hour, we take a look at sycophants in literature and in politics. And we talk about sycophancy and artificial intelligence.

GUESTS:

• Mark Parker: Professor Emeritus of English at James Madison University and co-author of Sucking Up: A Brief Consideration of Sycophancy

• Virginia Heffernan: Writes a regular column for The New Republic and the Substack “Magic + Loss.” She is co-host of the podcast “Omnishambles”

• Malihe Alikhani: Assistant Professor at Northeastern University’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences, and a resident Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution with a focus on AI policy

Music featured (in order):

• Overture to Rigoletto – Giuseppi Verdi, Herbert von Karajan, Berlin Philharmoniker

• I Believe in You – Peggy Lee

• Don’t Cry – Seal

• You Fascinate Me So – Mabel Mercer

• What You Want To Hear – Sub-Radio

• Flattery – Rosemary Clooney, Jose Ferrer

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 April 8, 2026.

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 — calls about grammar, gardening, long-distance dialing, autotune. Anything. Everything.

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

In other words: Give us a call during the 1 p.m. EDT hour about whatever you want to talk about. 888-720-9677.‌

Music featured (in order):

• Light the Way – Leon Bridges
• 47th Street – Lalah Hathaway, J. Ivy
• Twiggy – Remi Wolf
• Sweet Surrender – Halie Loren
• Inspira – Lauren Henderson, Sullivan Fortner
• Back in Love – Suki Waterhouse
• Reminder – Margaret Glaspy

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.