Cosmic Variance‘s Sean Carroll doing a very good job indeed on The Colbert Report. That shit is hard. Along the way he makes deft use of a Dara O’Briain line (“Of course science doesn’t know everything — if science knew everything, it would stop”) that I believe I introduced him to, so therefore I take full credit for all the laughs he got and expect to receive a check for any royalties accruing from Colbert-related sales.
{ 8 comments }
Sean Carroll 03.11.10 at 3:14 pm
Full credit for the line does indeed accrue to Dara O’Briain, and hence indirectly to Kieran. If only brief TV interviews allowed footnotes!
eva 03.11.10 at 3:26 pm
But sadly most of us who know who Dara is can’t see the video – anyone got a UK-viewable version?
Stuart 03.11.10 at 3:44 pm
Sorry, Videos are not currently available in your country (i.e. UK). Which must be a change to their old policies, as I used to watch various stuff on their website a year or two ago – or maybe it is embedding it elsewhere which is geolocked.
Ginger Yellow 03.11.10 at 7:17 pm
Comedy Central has region locked full episodes of its shows for quite a while. You used to be able to watch the briefer segments from the UK, but I think that changed recently. You can still watch through a proxy, of course, and other means. It’s very silly, given that (unlike the Daily Show), they’ve never sold the Colbert Report to a UK station.
kid bitzer 03.11.10 at 10:43 pm
major props to dr. carroll, who came across as articulate, interesting, witty, and non-arrogant. gave science a good public face, which in this day and age is a political act of the first importance.
colbert is a tricksy interviewer–he was evidently well-disposed towards carroll (not hostile), but his mind moves very quickly and unpredictably. it’s not easy to go with his flow and still get your points across. as kh says, that shit is hard. well done, s.c.!
Kenny Easwaran 03.12.10 at 5:21 am
kid bitzer – I at first confused which “s.c.” you meant! Colbert is actually generally a pretty good interviewer for academics – he can present them a faux-hostile environment, which gives them the motivation to defend their views, but still have a receptive audience. Also, he’s pretty clever about this stuff and tends to figure that academics are more entertaining when people understand what they are saying than when people don’t. That batter/cake metaphor was quite a good one I think.
Alex 03.12.10 at 9:50 am
Dara is also the man who said that a war on terrorism is like trying to swat wasps with a fridge, IIRC.
Eszter Hargittai 03.13.10 at 11:44 pm
Very nicely done, Sean, congrats!
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