Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?

in Comedy, Math, Video - Science | February 28th, 2011

Yes­ter­day’s lack­lus­ter Acad­e­my Awards cer­e­mo­ny may have afford­ed you some unex­pect­ed time for con­tem­plat­ing life’s more urgent ques­tions, such as the one British come­di­an Alan Davies pur­sues above:  How long is a piece of string? Watch Davies, who is also a fre­quent pan­elist on the pop­u­lar Stephen Fry-host­ed quiz show Quite Inter­est­ing, explore the rid­dle’s philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions and inevitable con­nec­tion to string the­o­ry with the help of physics, quan­tum mechan­ics, and final­ly a vis­it with math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus de Sautoy. Fans of the Davies/du Sautoy inter­ac­tion may also want to check out Du Sautoy’s TED talk on Sym­me­try, as well as the debates in that video’s com­ments sec­tion. More docs can be found in our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Watch Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse (A Little NSFW)

in Comedy | February 4th, 2011

What to do after the Apoc­a­lypse? This lit­tle pub­lic infor­ma­tion film was made (wink, wink) by the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence” dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s. Found some­where in an old uni­ver­si­ty archive, the film, now new­ly dust­ed off, is being shown for the first time. Note: It’s a tad unsafe for work…

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duck and Cov­er: The 1950s Film That Taught Mil­lions of School­child­ren How to Sur­vive a Nuclear Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

Hiroshi­ma After the Atom­ic Bomb in 360 Degrees

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Don’t You Eva Interrupt Me While I’m Reading a Book!

in Books, Comedy, Random | January 26th, 2011

This is for every read­er out there who gets the basic sen­ti­ment. A bit of ran­dom silli­ness, cour­tesy of YouTu­ber Julian Smith.

via The New York­er

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My Blackberry Is Not Working!

in Comedy, Most Popular, Technology | December 23rd, 2010

Clas­sic… This fruity sketch just aired on the BBC pro­gram The One Ron­nie. Great work by Ron­nie Cor­bett and Har­ry Enfield.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Conan O’Brien @ Google
The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match Revis­it­ed
Father Gui­do Sarducci’s Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty

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Werner Herzog Reads Twas The Night Before Christmas

in Comedy, Film | December 17th, 2010

Right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son. Faux Wern­er Her­zog reads an uber dark and satir­i­cal ver­sion of Twas The Night Before Christ­mas. Oth­er fun clips in this video series fea­ture Faux Her­zog read­ing Curi­ous George, Made­line, and Mike Mul­li­gan and His Steam Shov­el. via @eacion

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The World in a Satirical Nutshell

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | November 30th, 2010

Greece and Ire­land are down. Por­tu­gal is tee­ter­ing. And Spain may soon be the biggest domi­no to fall. All of this makes this satir­i­cal clip a lit­tle time­ly – per­haps a bit too painful­ly time­ly. Fea­tured here are two Aus­tralian satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe…

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NPR Hip Hop

in Comedy, Music, Radio | November 23rd, 2010

You nev­er saw this com­ing, right? A lit­tle hip hop for NPR lis­ten­ers. Adam Cole, a Stan­ford stu­dent, raps it out with Jen­na Sul­li­van. Get the lyrics for “Good Radi­a­tion” below the jump…
(more…)

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David Sedaris and Ian Falconer Introduce “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk”

in Audio Books, Books, Comedy | November 18th, 2010

David Sedaris’ new col­lec­tion of com­ic sto­ries, Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk: A Mod­est Bes­tiary, was recent­ly released with an accom­pa­ny­ing video that fea­tures the voice of Sedaris and the art­work of Ian Fal­con­er.

If you’re not famil­iar with him, Fal­con­er has drawn over 30 cov­ers for The New York­er (see exam­ple here), while also cre­at­ing the amaz­ing Olivia the Pig series for chil­dren. (Be sure to watch this Olivia Goes to Venice clip for a quick primer.) If this video whets your appetite, then let me direct your atten­tion to Sedaris read­ing the actu­al sto­ry “The Squir­rel and the Chip­munk.” It orig­i­nal­ly aired on This Amer­i­can Life.

Or, as reg­u­lar read­ers know, you can snag a free audio copy of Squir­rel Seeks Chip­munk – Sedaris does some of the nar­ra­tion! – if you reg­is­ter for a 14-day free tri­al of Audible.com. Once the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion (as I did), or can­cel it, and still keep the free book. The choice is entire­ly yours.

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