Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today wears many, many,
Speaker 1: many hats. He's a radio host, columnist, author, playwright, college lecturer,
Speaker 1: and has even written incidental monologues for a symphony. He's
Speaker 1: also one of my favorite broadcasters on public radio, the
Speaker 1: host of the Colin McEnroe Show on Connecticut Public Radio.
Speaker 1: It's the man himself, Colin McEnroe. On his show, McEnroe
Speaker 1: unpacks the week's events in news and pop culture, in
Speaker 1: addition to covering some truly eccentric topics like Neanderthal's zippers, tambourines,
Speaker 1: and punk rock. McEnroe's writing has appeared in The New
Speaker 1: York Times, Men's Health, McSweeney's, and even Cosmopolitan. As a
Speaker 1: columnist and hometown hero of Hartford, his work has appeared
Speaker 1: in low cool papers like the Hartford Current, Stanford Advocate,
Speaker 1: the New Haven Register, and the Connecticut Post. Of all
Speaker 1: the paths Commin McEnroe could have taken, I wondered how
Speaker 1: he found his way to public radio. Radio was never
Speaker 1: the plan. The plan was to be a writer, and
Speaker 1: what happened actually was in I was a newspaper columnist.
Speaker 1: And that was right around the time that Limbaugh and
Speaker 1: Hannity and all those people, they had taken over what
Speaker 1: was the vast wasteland of AM radio and turned it
Speaker 1: into a different kind of wasteland with the kind of
Speaker 1: show that they were doing. But they took the A
Speaker 1: M Ban, which was almost useless at that point, and they,
Speaker 1: you know, they revived it. And I was interested in that,
Speaker 1: and I was offered an opportunity as a newspaper columnist
Speaker 1: to guest host on two different radio stations, and to
Speaker 1: my dismay, they both offered me jobs on the spot.
Speaker 1: When I got off the air, I mean, I thought
Speaker 1: this was like a horrible industry full of bullies and morons.
Speaker 1: So it was disappointing to discover that I was a
Speaker 1: natural at it. You fit right in, Yeah, But the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is that that's another thing that
Speaker 1: struck me as all your credentials. You know, you went
Speaker 1: to Yale, you went there on a scholarship, and then
Speaker 1: you wind up teaching in the political science department. Now,
Speaker 1: I studied policy at George Washington University for three years
Speaker 1: before then took off and uh went to n YU
Speaker 1: to study acting. But what specifically do you teach at
Speaker 1: the Policide Department there. I teach a seminar in the
Speaker 1: spring term that's about political media. I mean, it's called
Speaker 1: Century Political Journalism. I feel like more and more it's
Speaker 1: about political media because there's such a blurring of all that.
Speaker 1: I will say this also, I'm relatively confident at this
Speaker 1: point about being, you know, a pretty okay radio host.
Speaker 1: I have terrible imposter syndrome when I'm teaching in the
Speaker 1: Policide Department of Yale and when the seminars over every week,
Speaker 1: I step out under Prospect Street and I think I
Speaker 1: am a freaking fraud. These kids should get their tuitions
Speaker 1: pro rated and get there. And why do you feel
Speaker 1: that way? Why? I really don't know the answer to that,
Speaker 1: except that it's, you know, it's a little bit out
Speaker 1: of my comfort zone. I wasn't a policy major at Yale.
Speaker 1: I just think there's something about the classroom. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're looking right at you. I mean I went into radio,
Speaker 1: so nobody would ever see me, so that could be
Speaker 1: part of the problem. But I also think that I've
Speaker 1: taught acting intermittently. You know, I did a full semester
Speaker 1: in at n y U with a teaching partner, Daniel Specter,
Speaker 1: who was a fully accredited faculty there. I taught an
Speaker 1: acting class with a friend of mine in the summertime
Speaker 1: at the old l i U Southampton campus before Stoneybrook
Speaker 1: took it over, and my friend Michael Disher, who taught
Speaker 1: full time at the faculty there, he and I taught
Speaker 1: a class and I must say I didn't care for
Speaker 1: it because I don't think I have that skill to impart.
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of look at them at the
Speaker 1: end and I'm like, well, either you've got it or
Speaker 1: you don't. You know, And I can make you a
Speaker 1: better actor than you were when you walked in, but
Speaker 1: I can't make you a good one. So the teaching
Speaker 1: thing for me, I felt uncomfortable teaching acting per se.
Speaker 1: Is there something you think you can teach? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: I think I can teach this, and I do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite things in the world to do.
Speaker 1: I get a tremendous amount of gratification from it, and
Speaker 1: my students come out of this almost invariably saying I
Speaker 1: didn't really think about journalism that way before. I didn't
Speaker 1: think about media that way before. What I say to
Speaker 1: them at the beginning of the semester is I will
Speaker 1: have succeeded if for the rest of your life rather
Speaker 1: than simply consuming journalism political journalism, you think about all
Speaker 1: of the questions that we brought up here. That's a
Speaker 1: win for me and I'm I'm thrilled during the semester
Speaker 1: when they do that too. It's very, very exciting. So
Speaker 1: what's your journalistic diet meaning when you wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning, where what do you are you? David Remnick
Speaker 1: said he just reached the Times cover to cover, That's
Speaker 1: where he begins. But about you, Um, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: diverse one. And of course part of the problem with
Speaker 1: our show, our show, we do typically four new episodes
Speaker 1: of our show a week, and so we're kind of
Speaker 1: hungry for ideas all the time. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I do all the conventional stuff. I read the Times,
Speaker 1: I read the Washington Post, I read a lot of
Speaker 1: odd little publications on the internet. I read a lot
Speaker 1: of newsletters these days. For example, the one that I
Speaker 1: like right now is by a guy named Mark Slutsky,
Speaker 1: and I think he's like an independent filmmaker based in
Speaker 1: Montreal and it's called his newsletter is called Something Good,
Speaker 1: and it's just anything he thinks of, and he clearly
Speaker 1: thinks a little bit the way I do. I think
Speaker 1: I want to do something with Mark Slutsky. I want
Speaker 1: to have them on my show. I want to do something.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know much about him, but I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated with the way his mind works. But there's one
Speaker 1: by a young guy, this one called Tangle, by young
Speaker 1: guy named Isaac Saul, and he is doing, I think,
Speaker 1: maybe the best job I've seen of anybody, trying to
Speaker 1: really look at both sides of issues, of issues. The
Speaker 1: newsletter is nearly daily, and he takes an issue nique.
Speaker 1: Here's what the right is saying about it, Here's what
Speaker 1: the left is saying about it. Here's what I think
Speaker 1: about it. And it's a very useful crucible, I think,
Speaker 1: for for looking at something that way. When I do
Speaker 1: the show that I've done for a while, there's a
Speaker 1: part of me I didn't really think very much about
Speaker 1: it in terms of why I did it. I said,
Speaker 1: to these are people that I'm fans of. I admire
Speaker 1: their work. I've always wanted to meet them and talk
Speaker 1: about their origin story and the path of their career,
Speaker 1: people who I am interested in what they have to say, topically,
Speaker 1: writers and so forth. I rarely sit there and say,
Speaker 1: who's this show for? I mean, I kind of have
Speaker 1: an idea about that. But when you're talking about politics,
Speaker 1: for example, when you're talking about Isaac sol and Mark
Speaker 1: Slutsky and people like that you follow, who do you
Speaker 1: think shows that you craft in that way are aimed at?
Speaker 1: Who do you think is listening to your show? In
Speaker 1: some ways, I have no idea, But we also we
Speaker 1: try not to think about that too much. I mean,
Speaker 1: the show really is the product of a group of people,
Speaker 1: just me, and our whole philosophy is we're going to
Speaker 1: do something that really interests us, and we're gonna try
Speaker 1: to do it in a creative enough way so that
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy it if you're open to that kind of thing. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes out of sheer perversity, we will deliberately pick a
Speaker 1: really bad idea just to see if we can do it.
Speaker 1: Could we possibly do for example, well, I did a
Speaker 1: whole show about yodeling. Uh, And you know, yodeling more
Speaker 1: than five minutes of yodeling is kind of intrinsically annoying
Speaker 1: at a certain point. I mean, and I got a
Speaker 1: yodeling lesson for you to let that stop. If you
Speaker 1: did not stop, you know, my thought is, if I
Speaker 1: can make you stay with me, stay with me all
Speaker 1: the way through this, this is gonna make you love
Speaker 1: ye And I sort of think that was a bad
Speaker 1: show in some ways, but it was also a really
Speaker 1: good show. I mean, people would back away from me
Speaker 1: if I when I said I want to do an
Speaker 1: entire episode about yodeling, they would make excuses to leave
Speaker 1: the room. We even have a thing with a kind
Speaker 1: of an internal term within our show called the Bad
Speaker 1: Ideas Department, where we will work really hard on an
Speaker 1: idea we know is bad, just to see if we
Speaker 1: could possibly do it. Now. This also leads to some
Speaker 1: epic failures. I mean, people in the business will bring
Speaker 1: up shows we did ten years ago that were such disasters.
Speaker 1: But you can't be afraid of that, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you interviewed Ira Glass, and he and I
Speaker 1: spoke about this, and we were both kind of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't break public radio. You can do
Speaker 1: a bad episode. It's only we have a patient on
Speaker 1: the table. We're gonna lose. The worst thing you're gonna
Speaker 1: do is do an episode that's not great, And in
Speaker 1: my case, I gotta do another show tomorrow anyway. So
Speaker 1: the mothership for you is the Colin McEnroe Show itself,
Speaker 1: which is on twice a day. Yes, it's on at
Speaker 1: one and at nine. Yeah, And what other shows are
Speaker 1: you doing there? One of the duties do you have? Their?
Speaker 1: At public radio in Connecticut. I'm in and out as
Speaker 1: a political analyst. I have sort of a background in
Speaker 1: doing that kind of stuff. We on occasion. First of all,
Speaker 1: I don't I do for shows a week. I feel
Speaker 1: like I don't need any more jobs. But one thing
Speaker 1: we did is at the beginning of the first Trump impeachment,
Speaker 1: as it was clearly coming, first of all, we thought, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get preempted, so what should we do? And
Speaker 1: we decided that we would invent a new podcast that
Speaker 1: would be sort of a stealth brand podcast, and we
Speaker 1: called it Pardon Me, Another damn Impeachment Show. And we
Speaker 1: decided to do it as usual as differently from everybody
Speaker 1: else as we could. So we we made it sort
Speaker 1: of more cross disciplinary. I mean, we would have legal
Speaker 1: experts on, but we would also maybe have Dave Eggers,
Speaker 1: who's a novelist on, or we'd have a musician on
Speaker 1: who's writing protest music, or just attack it from as
Speaker 1: many different angles as we could. And so two things happened.
Speaker 1: One of them was that, if you recall, Pelosi held
Speaker 1: the impeachment articles for an unusually long time, so we
Speaker 1: didn't get preempted, which means we were working around the
Speaker 1: clock on this new podcast and having to do our
Speaker 1: daily show, and there are people involved in that who
Speaker 1: never recovered, I think. And then the other thing happened
Speaker 1: was there was another damn impeachment, so we had to
Speaker 1: revive the brand all over again. So a lot of
Speaker 1: projects like that within I'll just tell you one other
Speaker 1: thing that we did. We invented a format called radio
Speaker 1: for the deaf, which I know sounds almost like a joke,
Speaker 1: but it's not. We realized that deaf people obviously have
Speaker 1: no experience of radio. I was talking to this deaf
Speaker 1: woman who works at a school near here, and she said,
Speaker 1: you know, I know you as a writer, but I
Speaker 1: don't know you as a radio post. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that is really, And so we figured out how
Speaker 1: to do a show that was simultaneously transmitted using video streaming,
Speaker 1: was simultaneously translated using to as L interpreters. And it
Speaker 1: was really, really hard. It took a little a lot
Speaker 1: of work. But we're trying to see if we could
Speaker 1: create a radio product that deaf people could use, which
Speaker 1: is once again kind of an insane thing to dry
Speaker 1: and and it was. We did it. We ran out
Speaker 1: of money eventually, but we we did do that. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think maybe my other job at the company's to
Speaker 1: come up with improbable projects and trying to make them work.
Speaker 1: The public radio I was there with my show at
Speaker 1: NYC for a while. For you, why public radio and
Speaker 1: not something more commercial, Well, I mean one answer is
Speaker 1: I got fired from commercial radio. So I have to
Speaker 1: back up and say so, remember I was telling you
Speaker 1: my origin story and how I did this kind of
Speaker 1: guest hosting thing, and I wound up at a pretty
Speaker 1: big CBS owned radio station here in Connecticut, where you know,
Speaker 1: the Limba style was the dominant style and content of programming.
Speaker 1: I was sort of the house liberal there and so,
Speaker 1: I mean the audience was overwhelming Allen Combs. I was
Speaker 1: the Alan Colmes. I guess, yeah, I mean there are
Speaker 1: a couple of other analogies, but you know, the audience
Speaker 1: was there for that, and almost everybody on the air,
Speaker 1: with a couple of other exceptions, was either Rush Limbaugh
Speaker 1: or somebody trying to be Rush Limbaugh. And then there
Speaker 1: was me. And so I worked there for sixty and
Speaker 1: years and the audience just hated me so much. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had a Connecticut audience. Connecticut. Yeah, but if the
Speaker 1: Connecticut still has conservatives and that's who this the programming
Speaker 1: on the station. I mean I had a lot of
Speaker 1: people who liked the show, obviously, but just it was
Speaker 1: I always felt like the sort of damocles was hanging
Speaker 1: over me. One of these days, they're just gonna fire
Speaker 1: me because the show is too wrong for the the
Speaker 1: overall vibe of the station. And I'll just quickly tell you,
Speaker 1: in commercial radio, as you perhaps know from your your
Speaker 1: previous Explorer, from your other experiences, so ratings are really important.
Speaker 1: Arbitron is the big ratings company, and they don't like
Speaker 1: us to ever talk to anybody from Arbitron because they're
Speaker 1: worried about the appearance of tampering. So one day I'm
Speaker 1: standing there in the studios and there's this guy walking
Speaker 1: towards me. He's pulling a suitcase, and my boss is
Speaker 1: kind of hopping up and down behind him, saying he's
Speaker 1: from Arbitron and he wants to meet you. And he
Speaker 1: came to me. This is when they were I was, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a little nerve wracking. And he was
Speaker 1: kind of an ominous looking guy too. This is back
Speaker 1: when Arbitron was really relying heavily on written diaries. And
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I travel all over the country
Speaker 1: and I read all these diaries, and he said, I've
Speaker 1: never seen anything like you. People hate you, and they
Speaker 1: listen for like minutes hating you. Said, usually if people
Speaker 1: hate the host, they just turned the show off. People
Speaker 1: don't do that with you, because in commercial radio, you
Speaker 1: win the game if you keep somebody more than fifteen minutes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I was regularly doing that with people who just were,
Speaker 1: you know, on the verge of vomiting over everything that
Speaker 1: I sat, which that was one of the most thrilling
Speaker 1: days of my life out because I thought, well, that's great,
Speaker 1: because you know, we're so siloed in this country, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, we tend to listen, to read and consume
Speaker 1: media and content that kind of reinforces our brandforce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that I could actually get people who think
Speaker 1: very very different from me to listen for protracted periods.
Speaker 1: It really felt like a real win. So I liked
Speaker 1: commercial radio for that reason. I mean, if there were many,
Speaker 1: many days where the primary job of the operations manager
Speaker 1: was to take phone calls from people who wanted me fired,
Speaker 1: but it was still exciting and fun and really kind
Speaker 1: of different. You know. When I went over to public radio,
Speaker 1: it was a big adjustment. Everything was so much more
Speaker 1: civilized and I wasn't used to it. And that was
Speaker 1: when what year it was, I started in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: And who brokered that arrangement? How did that come to pass?
Speaker 1: It was mainly a guy named John Dankowski, who was
Speaker 1: also a host at the time but also kind of
Speaker 1: the leader of the newsroom. He'd been listening to me
Speaker 1: on this other station for a really long time. But
Speaker 1: I will say that at one point I was in
Speaker 1: a little meeting with the big bosses and one man,
Speaker 1: very very nice man. He had this huge binder and
Speaker 1: he said, these are the public radio standards and practices.
Speaker 1: This is the handbook for public radio. So I'd like
Speaker 1: you to spend some time reading that, and he kind
Speaker 1: of pushed it across the table to me, and in
Speaker 1: the nicest way that I could, I pushed it back
Speaker 1: to him and I said, I'm not looking at that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know what the standards and practices are.
Speaker 1: If I did read it, it would be for the
Speaker 1: purpose of violating those standards at every opportunity. And they've
Speaker 1: been very patient also with that aspect of me. Colin McEnroe.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy conversations with talented broadcasters from public radio,
Speaker 1: check out my interview with w n y C S
Speaker 1: Brian Larr of The Brian Larr Show. The other thing
Speaker 1: about live radio as opposed to podcasts, people are constantly
Speaker 1: coming and going, so you have to reset right. This
Speaker 1: conversation has to make sense if you tune in at
Speaker 1: ten o'clock or if you tune in at ten oh eight.
Speaker 1: We have to constantly be thinking, okay, if this person
Speaker 1: tuned in to this half hour segment seventeen minutes through.
Speaker 1: We wanted to be able to make sense for them,
Speaker 1: but at the same time be able to progress for
Speaker 1: the people who have been there since the beginning. It's
Speaker 1: just sort of a whole other layer of presentational awareness
Speaker 1: that you don't have on television and they don't have
Speaker 1: on podcasts. Here the rest of my conversation with Brian
Speaker 1: Larr in our archives that Here's the Thing dot Org.
Speaker 1: After the break. Colin McEnroe on terrestrial radio's potential extinction.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Host Colin McEnroe has been a compelling an uninhibited presence
Speaker 1: on the radio since I was curious if the pressure
Speaker 1: and restrictions of the public airwaves ever constrained his instincts
Speaker 1: on the air. First of all, I totally grant the
Speaker 1: premise of your question, and I certainly see that around me.
Speaker 1: But the direct answer to your question is no. I mean,
Speaker 1: my whole goal really has been to create a situation
Speaker 1: where I can do what I want to do and
Speaker 1: people buy and largely of me alone, and that's the
Speaker 1: management where I work has been great about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: probably just it's such a pain and they asked to
Speaker 1: have a conversation with me that they're just they'd rather
Speaker 1: not do it. But also they've just they've been very
Speaker 1: generous about that and they know that whatever it is
Speaker 1: that I'm doing. It's reasonably successful. They don't try to
Speaker 1: tamper with it. And no, we don't really get that
Speaker 1: thing about. You better not talk about, you know, car
Speaker 1: automobile safety because we've got some underwriters at Buick or
Speaker 1: something that well, that just doesn't happen without You're untouched
Speaker 1: by that. I'm totally untouched by it. Do you have
Speaker 1: any fear about the long term prospects for public media
Speaker 1: public television and public radio. I mean, as we are
Speaker 1: going to have, I think people's charitable donations. I wonder
Speaker 1: I go to philanthropy conferences every now and then because
Speaker 1: I work with the New York Philharmonic, and they talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, they have people speak about not just how
Speaker 1: to raise money, but how to spend it. They talked
Speaker 1: about the long term arc of public giving decreasing for
Speaker 1: public media as it become is a lower priority on
Speaker 1: their giving list. Do you fear that in public radio?
Speaker 1: I think we have to keep changing and evolving. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that's I mean, public radio is
Speaker 1: a battleship. It's hard to turn a battleship. You don't
Speaker 1: do it in twenty four hours. So one thing that
Speaker 1: I say all the time is every day it becomes
Speaker 1: a little less important that we have transmitters like it is.
Speaker 1: It's great to have transmitters, So Alec Baldwin listens to
Speaker 1: my show. But it's increasingly the case that we'll be
Speaker 1: moving to digital that we are. My show is now.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say more popular and more
Speaker 1: listened to as a podcast than it is in it's
Speaker 1: it's broadcast time slots, and that's one thing the public
Speaker 1: broadcasting is going to have to understand. Then. I never
Speaker 1: go to the conferences, but the one conference I went to,
Speaker 1: I was pleased that there was an entire workshop on
Speaker 1: the automobile dashboard, because you know, you get lazy in
Speaker 1: radio and you think, okay, everybody's got a radio in
Speaker 1: their car and they're driving down the road at one
Speaker 1: o'clock and they're in it's not on the Colin mcinroe show.
Speaker 1: But increasingly, of course, their dashboard is far more complex
Speaker 1: than that, and it often has smart speaker features where
Speaker 1: they can say, well, I know, put on here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to listen to Colin mcinron. So we've
Speaker 1: got cert of things uff to that. I know. It's
Speaker 1: your voice that comes on and says that, which I'm
Speaker 1: I'm very I'm gonna talk to Subaru about that. I
Speaker 1: want that change. But but you know, we've got to really,
Speaker 1: we've got to rethink all of those paradigms all the time.
Speaker 1: You cannot continue to do the same thing you've been
Speaker 1: doing and expect that to work. And in terms of
Speaker 1: the fundraising part, I don't know. I think that's on us.
Speaker 1: If we do the right kind of programming, it's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to go to a funder and say, look at this,
Speaker 1: look at what they're doing, would you like to underwrite? Now,
Speaker 1: I don't need massive amounts of money to do my show,
Speaker 1: so I can't speak for you know what it's like
Speaker 1: for you know, here and now or something like that. Now,
Speaker 1: writing was the plan, as you mentioned, and you've written
Speaker 1: for quite a deck of publications, The Times, Men's Health, Cosmopollen.
Speaker 1: What did you write about for Cosmopolitan? You know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to answer this question, but with great reluctance, I'll
Speaker 1: just quickly say that I was. I had a little
Speaker 1: downtown office from my freelance writing career. This must have
Speaker 1: been back sometime in the nineties, and the phone rings
Speaker 1: one day, and this woman says, Hi, I'm Katherine Rano
Speaker 1: from Cosmopolitan and Helen Gurley Brown is retiring and we're
Speaker 1: about to kind of transform the magazine and we've been
Speaker 1: reading your work and other magazines. We really like it.
Speaker 1: We think you're a great fit for our new look
Speaker 1: and our new style, and we'd like you just to
Speaker 1: get going with us right away. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: which is what I say that pretty much everything. And
Speaker 1: they said, we have an idea we think you'd be
Speaker 1: perfect for. And I said, okay, well what is it?
Speaker 1: And she said it's what is it? Like? A thousand
Speaker 1: word essay? What do you men feel about women touching themselves?
Speaker 1: And to my credit, I screamed into the phone and
Speaker 1: then I said, you don't even know me. Why am
Speaker 1: I perfect for this? How did you deciding? I said,
Speaker 1: I'll do it, but I mean, why am I perfect
Speaker 1: for this? And so I really I wrote a whole
Speaker 1: series of pieces for Cosmopolitan where I was terrified that
Speaker 1: my mother would pick up the magazine, you know, at
Speaker 1: the hair salon, and start reading some you know something
Speaker 1: that by the way, she's not anymore, no, but I
Speaker 1: was going to send her a copy, but it's no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I had so many other ways of disappointing my mother
Speaker 1: that I didn't need Cosmopolitans help. So is there a
Speaker 1: phase where it's writing and only writing? Are you going
Speaker 1: back and forth between radio and writing? Well, since I
Speaker 1: once I started in radio in ninety two, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never stopped doing radio except for the nine months
Speaker 1: after I got fired. So it's good to have something
Speaker 1: to fall back on at times like that, but I'll
Speaker 1: probably never entirely stop writing. Let me just say this,
Speaker 1: this goes back to pretty much your first question. There's
Speaker 1: something about radio, something about the intimacy of it and
Speaker 1: something about the immediacy of it. I mean, alec I
Speaker 1: bet if I asked you, you could tell me the
Speaker 1: names of two or three disc jockeys you listen to
Speaker 1: in fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade when you were trying
Speaker 1: to listen to Top forty radio. You know that, you
Speaker 1: know they're fake names. You know it's not really Sandy
Speaker 1: Beach or whatever the person's name was. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: because those were voices that were really important to you
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. In some ways, they might be
Speaker 1: like the first grown ups who were talking to you
Speaker 1: and specifically to you. They weren't talking your parents didn't
Speaker 1: care about Herman's hermits, so they were talking just to
Speaker 1: you and and and they were kind of famous, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of exciting, right to listen to them.
Speaker 1: And and that's the relationship that people have with radio.
Speaker 1: It's a friend, it's somebody they feel like they kind
Speaker 1: of know. And you can do that in radio so
Speaker 1: much more powerfully than I love writing. But you can't
Speaker 1: do it the same way in writing well, to take
Speaker 1: people into a dimension, that's the only way I can
Speaker 1: think about it. I've gone back to segregating time in
Speaker 1: the day now that my kids are in school and
Speaker 1: the summer is, you know, is behind us, and I'm
Speaker 1: and I'm getting back to where I'm reading more devotedly.
Speaker 1: And some of what I'm reading is dry, but I
Speaker 1: soldier on because I want to get to the parts
Speaker 1: of it that I'm reading. I think it's Gean Herbert
Speaker 1: Smith is the writer, his biography of Eisenhower. To have
Speaker 1: a writer engage you and draw you into that dimension
Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, you stop counting pages, you
Speaker 1: stop thinking about time, and you're really into the reading
Speaker 1: and it's you're really engage that requires a talent I
Speaker 1: don't have. I've written three books. But for me, if
Speaker 1: you have any success in radio, the human voice is
Speaker 1: a very much quicker way to get in. You know,
Speaker 1: people will let you in quicker if they develop some
Speaker 1: relationship with you in your voice. You and I are
Speaker 1: very different, but but I get the sense for you
Speaker 1: that you genuinely are interested. For the most part of
Speaker 1: the guests that come on to people who I'm dying
Speaker 1: to have them on the show is really couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to sit down and talk to them. Do you feel
Speaker 1: that way as well? I do. I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm is still there. Yeah, I'm pretty excited most days.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that you and I are different
Speaker 1: is you're very good at interviewing people that you admire
Speaker 1: and people who are pretty famous, and I tend to
Speaker 1: be interviewing people more. I don't think I'm very good
Speaker 1: at that. In fact, I think I'm actively bad at
Speaker 1: interviewing people I admire, and I almost now try to
Speaker 1: avoid it because I know how bad I am at it.
Speaker 1: And so for me, what drives it more is this,
Speaker 1: we pick a subject, you know, we pick an idea
Speaker 1: and then we try to put the voices in with it.
Speaker 1: Just you know, we did a show about Acam's Razor,
Speaker 1: you know, which is the concept that begins in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. But for the most part, for me, it
Speaker 1: starts with the idea, you know, when I'm interviewing somebody
Speaker 1: really famously, somebody I admire, I'm you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have the kind of detachment it takes to make that
Speaker 1: a good interview. Colin McEnroe. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: be sure to subscribe to Hear Is the Thing on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. When we come back, Colin McEnroe tells
Speaker 1: us how he inherited the playwriting gene despite his father's
Speaker 1: intentions to steer him anywhere else. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is Here's the Thing from my Heart Radio. Colin
Speaker 1: McEnroe is the author of three books, including a memoir
Speaker 1: and a collection of his hilarious columns. His writing also
Speaker 1: found its way to the stage. He co wrote the
Speaker 1: play A Woman of a Certain Age with Steve Metcalf
Speaker 1: and Larry Bloom. I'd sort of avoided playwriting my father
Speaker 1: was a playwright, and he had two shows on Broadway,
Speaker 1: and then he had a lot of trouble getting produced.
Speaker 1: And his goal in life was to make or I
Speaker 1: did almost anything other than that. He wanted me to
Speaker 1: stay out of the theater in every possible way. So
Speaker 1: I hadn't really done too much like that. And these
Speaker 1: two other gentlemen who I knew pretty well, were at
Speaker 1: a point where they realized that they had songs, but
Speaker 1: neither one of them was really able to write the
Speaker 1: so called book of the musical, and so they brought
Speaker 1: me in with There was not a lot of time
Speaker 1: to do this. We thought we would be working on
Speaker 1: this for two or three years. We we wanted a
Speaker 1: place to kind of workshop it. And there's a beautiful
Speaker 1: theater in connected called the Ivoryton Playhouse, And if you
Speaker 1: go there and you look at the walls, it just
Speaker 1: turns out everybody you know has appeared there at some point,
Speaker 1: I mean like Groucho Marx performed there. So we said, look,
Speaker 1: can we just come in during a flat time in
Speaker 1: your schedule and just, you know, scripts in hand workshop
Speaker 1: this show. And they their board men and they said, no,
Speaker 1: we want you to actually put the play on with
Speaker 1: real actors and costumes and sets, and we're going to
Speaker 1: give you a budget and here's some money. And we
Speaker 1: really weren't ready to do this at all. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that was sort of the story of that, and it
Speaker 1: was it took maybe I'd save four years off my life.
Speaker 1: I was approached a couple of years ago to write
Speaker 1: some material for a symphony orchestra that was going to
Speaker 1: do lists Faust, which is a very very difficult symphonic piece,
Speaker 1: and it's too long and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: problems with it. So they said, what if you could
Speaker 1: write the kind of interstitial dramatic interludes, And so the
Speaker 1: orchestra would stop playing, and some actors would come on
Speaker 1: and they would you know, they'll perform your material and
Speaker 1: then the orchestra will come back. And I was working
Speaker 1: with a very good conductor and very good director, and
Speaker 1: I was writing the stuff and I just thought, this
Speaker 1: is crap. I am terrible, And I was actively discouraging
Speaker 1: friends from college from coming to this. You know, people
Speaker 1: have known me for forty years. And and then the
Speaker 1: actor showed up and they hired really good actors from
Speaker 1: New York and we had a table read and I
Speaker 1: got up from the table read. At one point I
Speaker 1: kind of excused myself and went into the hall and
Speaker 1: I called my partner, my significant other, and I said
Speaker 1: to her, it turns out I am Tennessee Williams. I am.
Speaker 1: I am a genius at least Oscar levant you're Oscar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's only so I can get on the Jack Parka.
Speaker 1: That's not nutty enough. You got fun. But I mean,
Speaker 1: when really good actors read your stuff and then they
Speaker 1: also ask you questions, I'm sure you do this all
Speaker 1: the time. Why is God saying this line here? Why
Speaker 1: is it? Why did you word it that way? What?
Speaker 1: It's inevitably as the writer, it's stuff you never thought about.
Speaker 1: But it's a really good question that you have, and
Speaker 1: that's so stimulating and exciting that, Yeah, if I had
Speaker 1: more time, I'd probably do more of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I find oddly that over the years, there's strategy and tactics.
Speaker 1: There's what you want to do and how you go
Speaker 1: about doing it. What do you want your screenplay to
Speaker 1: be about? What story do you want to tell? And
Speaker 1: how effectively do you tell it? I mean, there there
Speaker 1: are people who have like really stupid ideas like The Hangover,
Speaker 1: but they execute it brilliantly. They get every drop of
Speaker 1: juice out of the rind that they can. Then there's
Speaker 1: people who have fabulous ideas and the execution is poor.
Speaker 1: But I found very often when I was working in
Speaker 1: the movie business, and especially I'd say that the writing
Speaker 1: is good and the ideas in this scene, the ideas
Speaker 1: are just in the wrong order. Now talk about your dad.
Speaker 1: Your dad was a playwright. He was a playwright. He
Speaker 1: had kind of a big hit. It was called The
Speaker 1: Silver Whistle that started jose Fire. It actually got turned
Speaker 1: into through a very painful process. I think it got
Speaker 1: turned into one of the Mr Belvidere movies. It's Mr
Speaker 1: Belvitere rings the Bell with Clifton. But so that was
Speaker 1: his big hit. And then he did a show called
Speaker 1: Donnie Brook, which was a musical. It was a musical
Speaker 1: adaptation of The Quiet the movie The Quiet man Um
Speaker 1: and it was less successful. He wrote the book for that.
Speaker 1: Johnny Burke wrote the music. I will say that over
Speaker 1: the years, I've become friends with Frank Rich. Frank is
Speaker 1: one of the few people I know who actually saw
Speaker 1: Donnie Brook, not as the New York Times film creator
Speaker 1: because he was way too young for that. But Frank,
Speaker 1: when Frank was young, he just yeah, he went and
Speaker 1: saw everything. So yeah, he he saw Donny broke and
Speaker 1: then after that he really struggled a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: And there were you when the struggles began. I was
Speaker 1: still in elementary school, I think, you know, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw writing is this thing that was really really
Speaker 1: hard to do, and where you were. I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing about the theater, as you know, is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like writing a novel. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people involved, and some of those people are going
Speaker 1: to make you better. It's what like what I said
Speaker 1: about writing the faust stuff. You know, two actors show up,
Speaker 1: they start reading your lines, and you think you're a
Speaker 1: genius because they're making you better. But also in theater
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of stakeholders, a lot of collaborators.
Speaker 1: And I think seeing that and seeing him get very close,
Speaker 1: you know, to have a really prestigious director attached to
Speaker 1: the project. They were like really famous producers who would
Speaker 1: almost produce one of my dad's plays and then it
Speaker 1: would fall apart. And I realized I didn't want that.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to spend three years of my life
Speaker 1: writing a script that was eventually not going to make
Speaker 1: it to the stage ignored. Yeah, I'm I have a
Speaker 1: pretty short gratification span. Like I really like being on
Speaker 1: the radio because I do it every day and whatever happens,
Speaker 1: it happens over a twenty four hour arc. And I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of patients. One reason I'm not
Speaker 1: more of an author is I don't really want to
Speaker 1: work for two years on a book and then, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to deal with all that work if they
Speaker 1: have to be a certain kind of person. And your
Speaker 1: father passed away when you were how old he passed away?
Speaker 1: So I guess I was. Yeah, I was forty four.
Speaker 1: He's a lot of the reasons I am the way
Speaker 1: I am. He was a very funny guy. He was
Speaker 1: in a lot of pain, a lot of emotional and
Speaker 1: psychological pain, and it took me a long time to
Speaker 1: understand that how much pain he was in. Because of
Speaker 1: I wanted writing an entire book about it. It's called
Speaker 1: My Father's Footprints. This is why I don't write books,
Speaker 1: Alex So I had this project. Warner Books came to
Speaker 1: me and they said they read an essay that I
Speaker 1: had written about my father. They said, we want you
Speaker 1: to turn it into a whole book, and I said, okay.
Speaker 1: And so the book was called The Last Time My
Speaker 1: Father Died. And it was very much based on the
Speaker 1: idea that, you know, this is sort of true with
Speaker 1: our parents. You kind of watched them die in different
Speaker 1: ways over the course of their lives and or almost
Speaker 1: died from some real medical cause or whatever. So it's
Speaker 1: called The Last Time My Father Died. And I think
Speaker 1: they were this is kind of a right around the
Speaker 1: time of Tuesdays with Mori, and I think they were
Speaker 1: thinking they'd read this essay and they thought, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this will be like Tuesdays with Mori, but it's his
Speaker 1: father and his father dies, And it wasn't anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was this kind of big Irish book about Irish
Speaker 1: American dysfunction. And it wasn't a big book, but it
Speaker 1: was a lot of big dysfunction in it. And at
Speaker 1: a certain point they changed the title without telling me.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody looked it up on a border's computer.
Speaker 1: One day they said, you know, your book is not
Speaker 1: called The Last Time My Father Died anymore. And I said, no,
Speaker 1: first t exactly. Now you're born maised in Connecticut. Did
Speaker 1: you spend any length of time living anywhere else? Not
Speaker 1: really No, I mean I made it worse by going
Speaker 1: to Yale, so I didn't get out of the state
Speaker 1: that way either. I'm very similar, which is I used
Speaker 1: to tell people my dream, and it remains my dream.
Speaker 1: I've abandoned it for practical purposes, but in my heart
Speaker 1: it still lives. Which is, I get a nice little
Speaker 1: house in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and I can walk to the
Speaker 1: Red Line and have lunch every day, and then I can,
Speaker 1: you know, read a book or whatever. I just love
Speaker 1: the Berkshires. I love Tanglewood. That's my favorite place in
Speaker 1: the world. And I love the area in Vermont where
Speaker 1: my wife and I just bought a home. But to
Speaker 1: stay somewhere and to and to live somewhere for maybe
Speaker 1: not your entire life, but much of your life, mean
Speaker 1: large chunks of your life. I've kind of fond of
Speaker 1: that idea. Is there anything that you wish you'd done differently?
Speaker 1: Or there are places that you wanted to live? May
Speaker 1: forget about your career. Are the places you wanted to
Speaker 1: experience and live there for a while? And did you
Speaker 1: ever contemplate that yeah. I mean, I mean I'd like
Speaker 1: to live in Paris for a year, but then I'd
Speaker 1: like to come home to Connectic It. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is really hard, you know, I'd like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of places I like to live for a year, but
Speaker 1: I'm fine here, you know. I mean, this really is home.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful state. I agree about the Berkshires. We
Speaker 1: used to do our show every year from the Berkshire
Speaker 1: Film Festival, which is a really fun, you know, way
Speaker 1: to do something, and everybody's there and so Peter Reager
Speaker 1: comes and sits down at your microphone and start talking whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. Karen Allen has like a shop. I love Karen.
Speaker 1: So I mean, in Connecticut, I've been able to do
Speaker 1: most of the things that I want to do. And
Speaker 1: I mean, thanks to the miracle of the Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can have an active magazine writing career. I can
Speaker 1: write filthy articles for a Cosmopolitan. But I think also
Speaker 1: because I think part of your question is why am
Speaker 1: I at a smaller market, a medium sized market, whatever?
Speaker 1: And there is something fun about punching above your own weight,
Speaker 1: and that's what I think we do on our show.
Speaker 1: And maybe I give us too much credit, but on
Speaker 1: any given day. We field as though we can do
Speaker 1: as good as show is just about anybody. We don't
Speaker 1: have of the kind of you know, phalanx of producers
Speaker 1: that that some shows have, but we feel that we
Speaker 1: can compete with anybody. And it's always kind of thrilling
Speaker 1: if you're from Connecticut and you've got a small staff
Speaker 1: and you're doing a show, if like Adam Gopnik, who's
Speaker 1: from the New Yorker, who has been on our show
Speaker 1: a few times, If like Adam will call up my
Speaker 1: producer or email my producer at the end of a
Speaker 1: book tour and say, you know, I just did a
Speaker 1: lot of radio shows. Your show is the best one
Speaker 1: I did. That was the most thoughtful interview anybody did.
Speaker 1: That's really thrilling to us when people have that reaction
Speaker 1: and they want to come back to the show. I
Speaker 1: mean that means we're sort of the mouse that roared
Speaker 1: a little bit. There was a day when I got
Speaker 1: on my computer in the morning and there was this
Speaker 1: email that was, you know, purportedly from Ira Glass, and
Speaker 1: it said, high, I've been listening to your show for
Speaker 1: a while and I have some questions about you know,
Speaker 1: what it is you're doing, why you do it? And
Speaker 1: I'm just looking all over to figure out how am
Speaker 1: I being pranked, which one of my friends from college
Speaker 1: has figured out how to make it seem like he's
Speaker 1: sending me an email from Ira Glass. But it did
Speaker 1: turn out it was from Ira and you know, he
Speaker 1: did have something. He'd been listening pretty carefully and he
Speaker 1: had some very specific questions about this. Now, the humiliating
Speaker 1: part about this was he was gonna be giving a
Speaker 1: speech at a public radio conference. He wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about somebody who's doing really creative, innovative programming at the
Speaker 1: local station level, produced out of a you know, a
Speaker 1: local station, and he was going to use us as
Speaker 1: the example. And I wasn't going to be at that conference,
Speaker 1: and I decided I'm not going to be this desperate
Speaker 1: guy who needs to watch this speech to see what
Speaker 1: Ira Glass says about me. And then of course I
Speaker 1: lost all my willpower and I did exactly that, and
Speaker 1: I'm watching and watching it comes to the end of
Speaker 1: the speech and he goes and for example, there is
Speaker 1: this one show. It's very unusual. It's done out of Connecticut.
Speaker 1: The host is a guy named Chris McEnroe, and I went, Chris,
Speaker 1: this is my moment of fame. Ira. Yeah. Do you
Speaker 1: ever think of doing a show with someone else? Or
Speaker 1: do you feel you're the lone ranger you need to
Speaker 1: it's you being you? Or do you ever thought about
Speaker 1: partnering with somebody? I think when you're alone, you want
Speaker 1: a sidekick, and then if you have a sidekick, you
Speaker 1: start thinking why did I want to? Well said, I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of yours. Thank you, Colin mcamron, Thank you,
Speaker 1: My thanks to Colin McEnroe. This episode was recorded at
Speaker 1: c DM Studios in New York City. Were produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingwich. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio two.