‘Two polar bears walk into a bar …’ is an unlikely opener for a joke, but memes and parodies are surprisingly effective ways to get people talking about climate change.
If people are starting to look much worse in democratic terms, trees are starting to look much better. We are learning that plants engage in meaningful and, more to the point, truthful communication.
In shedding the caricature of a conservative pundit, Colbert can have more substantive conversations with his guests, while still employing his unique brand of satire.
Jon Stewart’s Tuesday night announcement that he’ll be leaving the Daily Show garnered an audible cry of disbelief from his live studio audience. Stewart himself was visibly emotional: “What is this fluid…
If you were following politics over the last few election cycles, you were most likely getting some of your information from satire. In fact, research has shown that in today’s political climate, satire…
John Oliver’s new program Last Week Tonight is the most recent addition to the parody news genre. Like its predecessors, the show frequently mocks American politics; for example, an attention-grabbing…
The news that Jimmy Kimmel’s contract as host of ABC’s late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! is being extended for two years completes a period of upheaval in this great American genre. Jimmy Fallon…
What happens when an actor who has built an amazing persona is called upon to reveal a truer self? When Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, discards his right-wing talk show host persona and takes…
A few years back, mock-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert famously introduced the notion of “truthiness” into the political lexicon. As Colbert put it, truthiness pertains not to whether beliefs are…
Professor of Environmental Studies and Fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder