Jonathan McNicol

New Haven

Producer at The Colin McEnroe Show

I always carry my own keys. producer, @colinmcshow host, @WNPR’s The Second First Season he/him/his

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Articles

Wild and crazy guys: A look at ’80s comedies

1 week ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published April 11, 2025 at 1:00 PM EDT Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, John Belushi, John Candy, Rick Moranis. Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Beverly Hills Cop, Caddyshack, The Jerk, Ghost Busters, ¡Three Amigos!, Funny Farm, Spaceballs, Stripes. We maybe didn’t properly appreciate it at the time, but the 1980s were one of the most fertile periods ever for screen comedies and screen comedians.
Damn the torpedo (bats): Baseball is back!

2 weeks ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published April 8, 2025 at 1:00 PM EDT Finally, baseball is back!This hour, a look at all the fun, weird, interesting storylines in this new season — including, yes, the so-called torpedo bats. Plus: Is Aaron Judge the best right-handed hitter … ever? Is Shohei Ohtani the best baseball player … ever? How the A’s lost their Oakland. How the Rays lost their ballpark. The future of umpires and umpiring … And more.
All calls: The zipper merge, ‘American Pie,’ music streaming services, and more

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published March 24, 2025 at 1:00 PM EDT 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 the zipper merge, Don McLean’s “American Pie,” our 15th anniversary party, model trains (again), music streaming services, advice for caregivers in times of grief … Anything. (Seemingly) everything.
From The Bad Ideas Dept.: Today’s show is not about tapirs

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published March 21, 2025 at 1:00 PM EDT This week, we’re celebrating the show’s 15th anniversary (which was last year, but never mind about that part). Over those 15+ years, we’ve done something north of 3,000 shows. And every one of those shows was intended, more or less, to be about some … thing. Towels or Trump or toast or television or whatever. This hour we do the opposite thing: a show not about a specific something — tapirs.
March Madness 2025

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

March Madness is here!And for the 15th* time, the only logical thing to do is to get improv comedian Julia Pistell and the actual Bill Curry together to talk basketball for an hour on the radio. That may not be the only logical thing to do. It may be that that’s not actually a logical thing to do at all. But we’re doing it anyway. *It’s our 15th one of these unless it isn’t. We’re pretty sure we’ve done this show every year from 2010 on, but for 2020.
The Nose looks at ‘I’m Still Here’ and the dearth of old movies on Netflix

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published March 14, 2025 at 1:00 PM EDT I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui) is a Brazilian, Portuguese-language political biographical drama based on the memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva. At this year’s Oscars, it won the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and it was the first Brazilian movie ever nominated for Best Picture.
An unusually strange event: Nikolai Gogol, ‘The Inspector,’ and ‘The Nose’

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published March 13, 2025 at 12:54 PM EDT “The Nose” may be Nikolai Gogol’s most famous short story. It’s a surrealist — and self-consciously, self-awarely surrealist — story about a man whose nose disappears from his face and reappears in another man’s biscuits. And other places. There’s a moment toward the end of Susanne Fusso’s translation when the narrator says, “The strangest and most incomprehensible thing of all — is that writers can choose such plots.”Well, yes.
The secret lives of numbers

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published March 5, 2025 at 1:00 PM EST Numbers are so fundamental to our understanding of the world around us that we maybe tend to think of them as an intrinsic part of the world around us. But they aren’t. Humans invented numbers just as much as we invented all of language. This hour, we look at the anthropological, psychological, and linguistical ramifications of the concept of numbers. And we look at one philosophical question too: Are numbers even real in the first place?
The Noscars 2025

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published March 3, 2025 at 1:00 PM EST Kevin Winter / Getty ImagesOscar-winning producer, director, screenwriter, and editor Sean Baker and cast and crew accept the Academy Award for Best Picture for ‘Anora’ onstage during the 97th Annual Oscars on March 2, 2025, in Hollywood, California. Listen live Monday at 1 p.m.We’ve never done this before.
The Nose looks at ‘Severance’ and ‘Rosebud Baker: The Mother Lode’

1 month ago | ctpublic.org | Jonathan McNicol

Published February 28, 2025 at 1:00 PM EST Severance is a science fiction office comedy psychological thriller series created by Dan Erickson and executive produced and primarily directed by Ben Stiller. After a 32-month hiatus between seasons, its second season is running now on Apple TV+. And: The Mother Lode is a standup special from comedian Rosebud Baker.