Stephen Colbert Brings Laughs and Book Tour to Google

in Comedy, Google, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | January 1st, 2013

Stephen Col­bert is one of the most refresh­ing come­di­ans work­ing today. He main­tains his character’s obnox­ious­ness dur­ing his own show, riff­ing and impro­vis­ing dur­ing inter­views with every­one from Bill O’Reilly to Eli­jah Wood, build­ing his char­ac­ter to dead­pan heights even with Jane Fon­da’s tongue in his ear.

But in the hot seat him­self, as an inter­vie­wee on Let­ter­man, Oprah or even with Play­boy mag­a­zine, Col­bert is authen­tic, can­did, fun­ny and a fast-on-his-feet smar­tie. In ear­ly Decem­ber Col­bert vis­it­ed Google’s New York offices and taped an inter­view for At Google Talks. Col­bert fans will want to check out the unedit­ed ver­sion recent­ly post­ed by Google. As a guest, Col­bert is fun­nier than Jon Stew­art and we get an hon­est look at the bright guy behind the buf­foon. The uncut inter­view has its high­lights, includ­ing the point when Colbert’s reac­tion to Eric Schmidt’s sug­ges­tion that The Col­bert Report launch its own YouTube show. His answers to ques­tions from the audi­ence are engag­ing, fun­ny and reveal­ing. It’s won­der­ful to hear the per­son­al sto­ry about the moment he real­ized he want­ed to make peo­ple laugh.

Col­bert was also con­duct­ing busi­ness. The inter­view was part of his book tour to pro­mote Amer­i­ca Again: Re-Becom­ing the Great­ness We Nev­er Weren’t. Below, you can see Col­bert give his comedic pitch for the book. And, if you want to down­load a free audio copy, you can always do so by start­ing a Free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. We have details here.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com. 

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Hear Beck’s Song Reader Songbook Performed by the Portland Cello Project

in Music | January 1st, 2013

Beck Hansen is the ulti­mate musi­cal changeling. His career has tak­en him from ear­ly anti-folk begin­nings to the lo-fi col­lage art of his major label debut Mel­low Gold.  He has per­fect­ed tongue-in-cheek white-boy funk on Mid­nite Vul­tures and sad sack coun­try trou­ba­dourism on Sea Change. His mas­tery of gen­res and styles and abil­i­ty to shift from rev­er­ent homage to irrev­er­ent par­o­dy on a dime is per­haps matched only by the sad­ly now-defunct Ween. But with his lat­est release, Song Read­er, Beck leaps out of the ranks of pop chameleon and into that of the Amer­i­can Com­pos­er.  In per­haps the great­est exper­i­ment in retro musi­cal crowd­sourc­ing, Beck released his last album as a book of sheet music—20 songs in all, with lyrics—and asked the fans them­selves to arrange, play, sing, and record the songs.

Plen­ty of peo­ple have tak­en up the chal­lenge. A col­lec­tion of Song Read­er interpretations—from sim­ple acoustic gui­tar treat­ments to lush piano-and-strings arrangements—is avail­able here (each with accom­pa­ny­ing videos). Most recent­ly, an ensem­ble called the Port­land Cel­lo Project has tak­en on Beck’s “album,” enlist­ing the tal­ents of a hand­ful of vocal­ists. In the video above, watch the cel­lists per­form “Title of this Song” with Lizzy Elli­son at Portland’s Aladdin The­ater. You can hear the full record­ing of the Port­land Cel­lo Project’s Song Read­er below, and lis­ten to Beck explain the gen­e­sis of Song Read­er on NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered” here.

via NPR

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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The Genius of Charles Darwin Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

in Biology, Television | January 1st, 2013

Evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins has, over the past decade or so, grown close­ly asso­ci­at­ed in the pub­lic mind with athe­ism, and specif­i­cal­ly with the cause of tak­ing down cre­ation­ism. While he has no doubt court­ed this fame by writ­ing books like The God Delu­sion (wher­aeas thir­ty years ago he wrote books like The Self­ish Gene), we for­get at our own per­il that Dawkins can argue for things as well or bet­ter than he can argue against them. If Dawkins’ intel­lec­tu­al bête noire, the notion that an intel­li­gent design­er delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed life on Earth, already holds no appeal for you, you’ll enjoy The Genius of Charles Dar­win, his cel­e­bra­tion of the father of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, all the more. Even hard­core cre­ation­ists, in refer­ring to the accep­tance of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry as “Dar­win­ism,” acknowl­edge the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry nat­u­ral­ist’s exten­sive influ­ence. Dawkins, an even more ardent Dar­win admir­er than he is a cre­ation­ism detrac­tor, lays it unam­bigu­ous­ly out at the begin­ning: “This series is about per­haps the most pow­er­ful idea ever to occur to a human mind. The idea is evo­lu­tion by nat­ur­al selec­tion, and the genius who thought of it was Charles Dar­win.”

This British Broad­cast Award-win­ning Chan­nel 4 doc­u­men­tary series comes in three parts: “Life, Dar­win & Every­thing” (the title a nod to Dawkins’ late friend, Hitch­hik­ers’ Guide to the Galaxy author and biol­o­gy fan Dou­glas Adams), “The Fifth Ape,” and “God Strikes Back.” Begin­ning with the basics, it has Dawkins explain how, exact­ly, species evolve by way of nat­ur­al selec­tion, at one point to a dubi­ous high school class­room. After tak­ing the stu­dents on a field trip to check out the fos­sil record for them­selves, he returns to his colo­nial birth­place of Nairo­bi, Kenya — coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin of homo sapi­ens itself. He explores the reli­gious impli­ca­tions of of evo­lu­tion, the wrong­head­ed nature of what’s called “social Dar­win­ism,” and the even wronger-head­ed nature of eugen­ics. He inter­views fig­ures like evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker, Cre­ation Research pres­i­dent John Mack­ay, and Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca pres­i­dent Wendy Wright. All have some­thing to say about Dar­win’s obser­va­tion, whether for or against, and if against, Dawkins has a response. Call him over­con­fi­dent if you must, but in a show like this, he cer­tain­ly does take pains to approach his sub­ject from every pos­si­ble angle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Darwin’s Lega­cy, a Stan­ford course in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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