The Colin McEnroe Show

Sherlock Holmes is the most recognizable character in the world. According to the Sherlock Holmes Society, the famous detective has been portrayed by seventy-five actors in more than 260 films, making him the most portrayed character on film. This could explain why a significant percentage of the British think Sherlock Holmes was a real person who lived at 221B Baker Street - a view supported by the Sherlockians, a loyal group of scholars dedicated to keeping his memory alive.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ficre Ghebreyesus and Elizabeth Alexander were born two months apart in 1962, he in Eritrea, she in Harlem. They didn’t meet until 1996. He was an artist and a chef at a New Haven Eritrean restaurant he owned with his brothers. She was a poet and professor. She had been teaching at the University of Chicago, where she had also met a senior lecturer named Barack Obama. She married Ghebreyesus. She delivered Obama’s 2009 inaugural poem. In 2012, a few days after her husband’s 50th birthday, he died abruptly. Her new book, “The Light of The World,” tells that story.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may have heard there was some big football game on Sunday. You may have heard that the Denver Broncos won, 24 to 10. You may have heard that Beyoncé upstaged Coldplay's halftime show or that Lady Gaga’s national anthem was "fabulous."But our guess is you've also probably now heard of something called a, um, puppymonkeybaby.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The CDC this week recommended women between the ages of 15 and 44 not drink alcohol unless they're on birth control. Why run the risk to the baby if there's a chance you could be pregnant and not yet know it? Some question whether the caution against any alcohol instills a fear that outweighs the risk, while others chafe at the condescension that targets only women, and not the men who get them pregnant. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While basketball didn’t take up residence in the White House in January 2009, the game nonetheless played an outsized role in forming the man who did, according to Sports Illustrated’s Alexander Wolff, author of The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our deepest convictions shape how we see the world from a very young age. Our parents, community, and religion deeply influence our beliefs and ultimately, the political identity we choose to adopt.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Recently, a group of us gathered on stage at Watkinson School for a conversation about humor and comedy. The conversation had two fields on inquiry. The first was the very strange business of trying to be funny as a way of putting food on the table. It's a weird job. It's not so much a matter of trying to be funny as it is of trying to figure out what's funny about the thing sitting in front of you. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The eyes of the nation turn to Iowa. But, why? The caucus process doesn't really resemble voting as we do it the rest of the time in this nation. And, the Iowa caucuses aren't really binding in terms of national delegate selection.  Iowa doesn't look like the rest of the nation, by which I mean, way whiter, but this in the words of Bruce Hornsby, is "just the way it is."We also talk about the New York Times endorsement of Hillary Clinton and reactions to her candidacy. Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joseph Fiennes will play Michael Jackson in a new British made-for-TV movie about a fictional road trip taken by Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Marlon Brando from New York to California after 9/11. We might applaud the casting of a white actor to play one of the most iconic black entertainers in American culture if we lived in a post-racial society. But that's fiction, too.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We once did a show about beer jingles, which is a great example of how a product becomes a culture. Cereal as a culture, is off the charts. There's the box, there's the prize, there's the character, there's the jingles, there's the commercials. Most of us can probably sing some jingles and discuss favorite cereal personae from our childhoods, which makes it kind of weird when marketing experts tell us that cereal consumption is in decline.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.