‘Colbert Report’ guest Chris Mooney talks about the interview that almost was

I love seeing the thought processes behind the guests that come on the show – if they prepare, what their feelings were of what happened during the interview, etc. It looks like Chris Mooney had given quite a bit of thought to his interview, and had a few more things to say about the subject than he was able to share on the show.

He shared some of his thoughts about his ‘Colbert Report’ appearance with the Science Progress blog today (links omitted):

It’s absolutely true that as host of a show that regularly draws over a million viewers, Colbert features an astonishing amount of science content. Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson is a frequent guest, as is Columbia University string theorist Brian Greene. Other scientists who have appeared include Brown University’s Kenneth Miller, Oxford’s Richard Dawkins (making the non-scientific case for atheism), human genome project head Francis Collins, and numerous others.

And in addition to its many scientist guests, the show has also featured numerous science-related segments, such as “America’s Galaxy is Big” and several concerning the Pluto-demotion saga. In each case—always in the context of Colbert’s role-playing—the show conveys a large amount of scientific information, raises very important questions about the nature of scientific knowledge, and explores and its relationship to others areas like politics. And the viewers—or at least those viewers who get the jokes—come away with good reasons for trusting in science, rather than in “truthiness.”

In other words, you might say that George W. Bush’s anti-intellectual administration created a perfect opening for Stephen Colbert’s hugely popular caricature of anti-intellectualism; and this in turn transformed Colbert into possibly our most important defender and explainer of scientific knowledge. (Again, if you get the jokes.)

Sounds like Mooney is quite the It-getter. That’s so nice to see in a guest! In case you missed it, here’s Chris Mooney’s segment on Monday night’s show.