#especially since i don't think he and dan have ever interviewed her?

[10yearsofdnp]

January 30, 2015: THE Sarah Michelle Gellar shouts Phil out in a follow forever ON HIS 28TH BIRTHDAY, finally fulfilling all his teenage dreams! (Well, all except for the gay ones anyway...) 🎉🎊🤩

[boombox-fuckboy]

Podcasts with a plot but also characters who actively study? I don't exactly know what I want but I have this thing where I take on random elements of current fictional characters I'm following, and this can be anything from catchphrases, shamelessness, and anxiety. I'd like some motivations to study if you have any recs. Thanks and I love the blog, I've found some fun shows from here.

Glad to have helped you find shows before.

I'm not sure how much use I'll be here, I can think of a few characters who are very enthusiastic researchers or have studied hard in the past... They aren't students, is what I mean.

The closest to an active studier who comes to mind is Althaar (Life with Althaar), who's an alien diplomat living in human space, but his study often aligns more with human recreation: socialising, consuming media, making friends, cooking etc. He's a sweetheart and an eager learner, so, maybe? Life with Althaar follows John B, a human repairman who moves to The Fairgrounds, a large and extremely haphazard space station at the very edge of human space. His new roommate is polite and friendly, and rent is cheap, but there's one issue: said roommate is a member of an alien race humans find viscerally terrifying, on a primal level. Sci-fi, comedy, takes a while for the plot to pick up proper, especially given the episodes are HOURS long (I'm not complaining).

Edison Tucker (Where the Stars Fell) worked her ass off at uni and is a very qualified cryptozoologist. The show follows her as she moves to a remote town to investigate claims of strangeness and finds out way more than she'd bargained for. I'm a few episodes behind, but I hear the newest season is very gay.

Chell and Peter from Janus Descending are a xenopaleontologist and a xenoanthropologist respectively. Janus Descending is a heartbreaking sci-fi horror and follows their trip to investigate ancient alien ruins on a distant world, where they find more than they bargained for. You hear her logs first to last, and his last to first. Weirdly this is one of the only podcasts I can write/study along to.

Sally Grissom from ars PARADOXICA, an accomplished physicist, and is studying time travel. The show follows her as she accidentally invents time travel and finds herself pulled into shady government work in the 1940s.

The cast of season 3 of The White Vault are mostly university staff, investigating ancient ruins. The first two seasons of TWV follow a repair crew who get trapped in a remote base in the arctic when a seemingly never-ending blizzard rolls in, and decide to investigate the ruins beneath.

Nicholas Waters from season 3 of Archive 81 was very studious and passionate pre-podcast, but has since given up the french revolution for eldritch sorcery, which granted he's also studious with (his sister Chris, on the other hand, not so much). Dan seems to have also been an enthusiastic student, and I guess he's researching? Archive 81 follows a young archivist sent to digitise a collection of bizzare interviews made in an appartment building in the mid 90s. He has a bad time. Cosmic horror/mystery s1, cosmic+body horror/weird fiction for s2, cosmic horror/weird fiction/urban fantasy for s3.

I'm stopping there I'm not going to list every podcast with a researcher/scientist in it to you

Other passionate students of magic include:

Bea in Absolutely No Adventures is a student from our own world who decides she'd much rather study magic in a fantasy world (fair). The show is mostly about a baker who's The Chosen One in about every prophecy ever. He'll help out where he can, so long as there's absolutely no adventures. More slice of life than plot driven.

At least some of the kids in Electromancy, which is set in a prestigious school for magic and follows a young and very powerful electromancer who very much doesn't want to be there, and is just trying (and failing) to keep her head down.

Whisper and Talee from The Stonesinger Chronicles are both unlikely students to a powerful mage and academic. Whisper will read just about whatever he can get his hands on (whether it sticks is another matter), but Talee finds most study frustrating as she's never had a teacher try to adapt to her intense dyslexia. This podcast is a fantasy with a healthy dose of political intrigue.

Lastly, superpowers and technically some study gets done:

The Path Down is set at a university, though I honestly can't remember how much study actually gets done. Not so plot driven, follows a telepath in a world where superpowers are common enough, as she tries to balance college life with learning to manage her friendships and ability.

And of course Caleb and Adam from The Bright Sessions (which is about therapy for people with superpowers) are high-schoolers. So a bit of study there, though Dr. Bright and Sam arguably do just as much over the course of the show.

Wish there was one that fit the ask better, but maybe one will appeal. Good luck with your study.

[dherzogblog]

The Birth of The Daily Show: 25 Years of Fake News and Moments of Zen

It was July of 1995 and I had left MTV to become President of Comedy Central. It was the basic cable equivalent of going from the NY Yankees to an expansion team. I was on the job just two weeks when I received a call from Brillstein Grey the high powered managers of Bill Maher, host of one of the networks few original programs, "Politically Incorrect". We were informed Bill and his show would leave the network when his contract expired in 12 months. It was a done deal. Bill wanted to take his show to the "big leagues" at ABC where he would follow Night Line. Comedy Central was left jilted. Terrible news for a network still trying to establish itself. We had a year to figure out how to replace him and the clock was ticking. So began the path to The Daily Show.

It was very much a fledgling Comedy Central I joined, available in barely 35 million homes, desperately seeking an identity and an audience. It was just over three years old, born into a shot gun wedding that joined two struggling and competing comedy networks, HBO’s Comedy Channel and Viacom’s HA!, Watching them both stumble out of the gate, the cable operators forced them to merge, telling them: "We only need one comedy channel, you guys figure it out”. After some contentious negotiations the new channel was born and the red headed step child of MTV and HBO set out to find the pop culture zeitgeist its parents had already expertly navigated. The network had yet to define itself. The programming consisted mainly of old stand up specials from the likes of Gallagher (never underestimate the appeal of a man smashing watermelons), a hodgepodge of licensed movies (“The God’s Must be Crazy and The Cheech and Chong trilogy were mainstays) and Benny Hill reruns. The networks biggest hit by far was the UK import “Absolutely Fabulous”, better know as “AbFab”. Comedy Central boasted a handful of original shows, including the wonderfully sublime "SquiggleVision" of “Dr. Katz”, the sketch comedy "Exit 57" (starring the then unknown Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert) and of course Maher’s "Politically Incorrect". In retrospect I don��t think Bill got enough credit for pioneering the idea of political comedy on mainstream TV. Back then he was the only one doing it.

Politically Incorrect performed just fine, but got more critical attention than ratings. It was a panel show, and I had something a bit different in mind to replace it. I knew we needed a flagship, a network home base, something akin to ESPN's Sports Center where viewers could go at the end of a the day for our comedic take on everything that happened in the last 24 hours….."a daily show". I had broad idea for it in my head. I would describe it as part "Weekend Update", part Howard Stern, with a dash of "The Today Show" on drugs complete with a bare boned format to keep costs low so we could actually afford to produce it. We could open with the headlines covering the day's events (our version of a monologue), followed by a guest segment (we wouldn't need to write jokes...only questions!), and finish with a taped piece. Simple, right? We just needed someone to help flesh out our vision.

Comedy Central was a a second tier cable channel then and considered a bit of a joke (no pun intended). It had minuscule ratings, no heat and even less money to spend. Producers were not lining up to work with there. Eileen Katz ran programming for the channel and the two of us began pitching this idea to every producer who would listen. One of the first people we approached was Madeleine Smithberg, an ex Letterman producer and had overseen "The Jon Stewart Show" for us at MTV. We thought she was perfect for the role. “You can’t do this, you can’t afford this, you don't have the stomach for this, it will never work ” Madeliene said when we met with her. We could not convince her to take the gig. Ok then....we moved on. The problem was we heard that same refrain from everybody. No one wanted the job. So after weeks being turned down by literally EVERYONE, I said to Eileen: “We have to go back to Madeleine and convince her to do this with us"!

Part our pitch to her was we would go directly to series. There would be no pilot. The show was guaranteed to go on air. We had decided this show was our to be our destiny and we had to figure it out come hell or high water. As a 24 hour comedy channel, if we couldn't figure out a way to be funny and fresh every day...what good were we? We told Madeliene we were committed to putting the show on the air and keeping it there till we got it right (for at least a year anyway). That, plus some gentle arm twisting got her to sign on. Shortly after that, Lizz Winstead did too.

Madleiene and Lizz very quickly landed on their inspired notion of developing the show and format as a news parody. It brought an immediate focus and a point of view to the process . All of the sudden things started to take shape and coming to life. Great ideas started flowing fast and furious while an amazing collection of funny and talented began to come on board. Madeliene and Lizz were off to the races. Now all we needed was a host.

The prime time version of ESPN's Sports Center was hosted by Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann back then and it was must see cable TV. But I had recently started to notice another guy hosting the show's late night edition. He was funny, with a snarky delivery reminiscent of Dennis Miller. His name was Craig Kilborn. On the phone with CAA agent Jeff Jacobs one day, I asked if he knew happened to know who repped him? “I do" he said. "We just signed him”. Within days he was in my office along with Madeleine, Lizz, and Eileen who were all a bit skeptical about the tall blond guy with the frat boy vibes sitting across from them. After opening the meeting with a few off color comments that would probably get him cancelled today (an early warning sign fo sure), Craig ultimately won them over and we had our host.

FUN FAC#1: Minutes after the news of Craig's hiring went public, Keith Olberman's agent called me directly to ask why we hadn't considered hiring him?

Ok, we had a host and producers...but what to call it? After sifting through dozens of ideas for a title, Madeleine called me one day and said, "I think we should just call it what we've been calling it all along...."The Daily Show". As we approached our launch date we taped practice shows and took them out to focus groups to get real life feedback. The groups hated it.... I mean with a red hot hate. They hated Craig, the format, the jokes, everything. We were crushed and dejectedly looked around at the room at one another. "Now what?" “Either they’re wrong, or we are". I said I think they are...but it doesn’t matter, we're doing this!" We never looked back.

The show took off quickly garnering some quick buzz and attention, we felt like we had crashed the party. Well, sort of. We had no shortage of fun, growing pains and drama along the way. The Daily Show version 1.0 was about to unravel. In a December 1997 magazine interview Craig made some truly offensive and inappropriate remarks about Lizz and female members of the staff. Whether it was poor attempt at humor or just plain misogynist (or both) is beyond the point. It was all wrong, very wrong. Craig was suspended for a week without pay. Lizz left the show. In the moment I chose to protect the show and its talent more so than Lizz. That was wrong too. It's more than cringe worthy looking back now, and I regret not making some better decisions then. My loyalty to our host was later "rewarded" when in the Spring of 1998 Kilborn's team, a la Bill Maher, unceremoniously informed us he had signed a deal to follow Letterman on CBS when his contract expired at the end of the year. No discussion, a done deal. Comedy Central jilted again. Like Maher, Kilborn wanted his shot at the network big leagues and we had a little over six months to figure out how to replace him. We all know how that chapter ended. That search would eventually reunite us with Jon Stewart who along with The Daily Show took Comedy Central and basic cable to the "the big leagues" on their own terms, redefining late night comedy in the process The rest, as they say, is "Fake News" history.

Fun Fact #2: before approaching Jon (who I did not originally think would be interested) I initially offered the job to a chunkier, largely unknown Jimmy Kimmel, fresh off his co hosting duties on "Win Ben Stein's Money" ...only to have him turn us down.

My fascination with late night began as a kid. I remember how exciting it was to stay up to sneak a peek at the Carson monologue and watch him do spit takes with his chummy Hollywood guests. Later on I also loved the heady adult conversation Dick Cavett would have with everyone from Sly Stone to Groucho Marx. But it was the comedic revolution of Saturday night Live in 1975, followed by Letterman's game changing show in 1981 that truly established late night as the coolest place on the television landscape. I could only dream of one day being part of it.

25 years on, I couldn’t be more proud of The Daily Show and its legacy. Those days helping build it alongside Madeleine, Lizz, Eileen and the team were among the most satisfying (and fun) experiences I have ever had. It was thrilling to take a shot at the late night landscape and try and make our mark, especially when no one thought we could.

I am prouder still of what Trevor Noah and his staff have achieved since they took the hand off from Jon, evolving and growing the show through a new voice and lens. I think my personal "Moment Of Zen" will last as long as Trevor remains behind the desk, allowing me to selfishly boast of having hired every host this award winning and culture defining franchise has ever had.

25 years later. it remains as relevant as ever, a bona fide late night institution, standing shoulder to shoulder with all the great shows that inspired us to start.

[madamspeaker]

I’m sure you have seen the headline that some idiot was convicted for threatening Nancy, and I can’t help but think of Paul when this kind of thing happens. He must be so worried about her and even her leaving when she goes to work with people that want to harm her. No one ever thinks about how these attacks and threats hurt the 80 year old man who loves her and even if she says she isn’t bothered by them, he is the one who comforts her at night and i feel so bad for what he gets put through 🥺🥺

I imagine it's hell for him, especially since January 6th. I imagine it's hell for all her family to be honest. I still find it hard to fathom how no one in the media really bats an eyelid at how common place death threats are to elected officials - even before January 6th. There's something deeply disturbing about the notion that Nancy Pelosi had just got used to them - that they had become so regular a thing in her life as to be routine. No one should be getting so many death threats that they just get used to the idea of them (no one should get them, period). Of course January 6th was something else entirely, and as more and more information emerges about that day in legal filings, the picture presented is truly frightening. So many taking part really did want to harm her, and the horrifying thing is that they seem to be the tip of the iceberg. That guy convicted this past week is but one of many who acted separate of the insurrection. There was another during the summer which was again separate from January. And these are just the ones we hear about because the court case had ended. This is what is so unforgivable about McCarthy and the rest of the GOP not moderating their language - they know the nature of their base, that their inflammatory words only serve to inflame these people further. They saw exactly how their words can play out on January 6th, and rather than pause and take a step back, you have McCarthy talking about his fantasy of hitting Nancy Pelosi with a gavel. I had a very unsettling thought yesterday when I read that quote from McCarthy's rant the other night about how he wants her to hand him the gavel (the intention clearly to humiliate her) - he reminds me of Dan White, the guy who murdered Harvey Milk. I wish my brain hadn't gone there but it did. Anyway, back to Paul -- I think it's rather telling how much he has been in D.C. with her this year. I don't know if that is for her sake or for his own, but it is telling none the less. It's one my frustations with Susan Page - she interviewed Paul and never gave us any insight as to what he thinks of the threats to his wife (and she was getting plenty before January). Now maybe it's a case of her asking and him passing on an answer, but I wish she would have said if that was the case. I do imagine it's hell though - I mean how can it not be? He clearly worships and loves his wife dearly, and he has to contend with the fact that there are evil people out there - both at large and in her place of work - who want to hurt her.

[twopoppies]

Understandable, truthfully. The 'excitement' is mere what we make up. A written interview is much, much, easier to use propaganda with. Again, we give what we think will make the most impact and bring the most audience in. Respectively, she was doing what every journalist does in that placement. I don't think that it was accurate, as Louis hasn't ever spoke excitedly about Simon (ever), but.. Journalism will never be 100% truthful, no matter how hard one tries. It'll always be muddled. It's shit

Yeah, I know what you mean. Her description of him was intended to make him appear excited - “suddenly sitting up in his seat and looking more animated, cigarette ash falling into his lap as he flails his arms around.” I’m not blaming her for what was in the article. I’m sure she was working around some parameters that were required or topics that were off limits. I just found it odd - especially since it had seemed the girl band has broken up. Not sure why they’re still pushing that angle. And I hate seeing Simon’s name. Ever. Especially in connection to Louis. But yeah....I don’t think we can ever count on 100% truthfulness where any celebrity is concerned. As a journalist I’m sure it’s a hard pill to swallow at first and then you go on to do the best you can with what you have to work with! Unless you’re Dan Wattpad, of course. 🙄

[spreadplaylist]

SPREAD CH.1 - ARTIST SPOTLIGHT... SPOTLeyeT <3

Hi SPREAD listeners! For those of u that don't know, the SPREAD blog will feature a monthly Artist Spotlight, an interview I have with an up and coming artist featured in that month's playlist. A core value of SPREAD is sharing music that u may not have heard, hopefully increasing artists' exposure and fanbase. The SPF 30 featured artist, LeyeT, is a dear friend of mine, and I can't wait for u to get a closer look into her music and her artistry. HERE WE GO!

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LeyeT: Hi! I’m LeyeT, pronounced "light." (: I’m from Orange County, California – reside in LA, and LOVE all things music. I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember and songwriting since I first picked up the guitar about 12 years ago. I recently began my new artist project as LeyeT and released my first single on 2.28. Can’t wait to bring you more music in the coming months