Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to another edition of “funny people out there giving us lots to blog about”!

Let’s start with the Jon Stewart bit, shall we? Most of us know Jon as the host of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but you’d be wrong if you thought that meant he had any real power or clout. Don’t believe me? Watch the clip below featuring Daily Show execs Josh Lieb and Rory Albanese. It’s an advertisement for Josh’s new book (I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President), but it’s also quite a revelation, where Jon’s duties are concerned.

Sounds like a great book, Mr. Lieb!

There’s a lot more to cover, both about Jon and others, so click past the fold to see more.

Did you all watch The Daily Show last night? I hope so, because Jon interviewed a remarkable young man named William Kamkwamba, author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

It was a wonderful interview (one whose tone reminded me of the interview he did some years ago with Ishmael Beah), and I was impressed both by Kamkwamba and by Jon’s willingness to sit back and let his guest set the pace. Well, it’s no surprise, but it turns out that Daily Show “monkey” Mr. Stewart was even more generous in that interview than we might have guessed; according to this post over at Kamkwamba’s blog, Jon actually re-shot and cut part of his intro to allow the interview to run long. That’s thoroughly sweet and charming. I really don’t think I have any other words for it.

Shifting gears, I stumbled across this video some time ago. In it, our friend Rachel Sklar interviews one of the co-creators of The Daily Show, Lizz Winstead, and the two talk about women (or their lack) in the industry. Since it’s a topic that pops up here from time to time, I thought it was well worth posting. We’d heard Allison Silverman say in her interviews that she generally got very few applications/writing samples from women, so from that angle, I wasn’t surprised by what Winstead said. But the ratio of male to female applicants did surprise me — three out of 150? Wow.

Interestingly enough (to me, anyway), Daily Show Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore was recently part of a panel discussing the related issue of minority writers on “general market” shows. As you might expect, it doesn’t sound like any great solutions are forthcoming, but I suppose it’s a good thing that people continue to have the conversations; if people are still talking, then at least it’s still on our collective radar.

Everyone seems to like soliciting people connected with The Daily Show and/or The Colbert Report for their opinions on media, and former Daily Show head writer and Colbert co-creator Ben Karlin gives his two cents in this video clip discussing “Traditional Media in Transition”. They have some fun with the usual discussion about the “Colbert Nation”; it’s always fun to revisit some of the old Hungarian Bridge segments.

Other Daily Show notables are hard at work on other projects of their own. I can’t remember whether we mentioned it here before (if so, it bears repeating), but Aasif Mandvi is going to be in the new M. Night Shyamalan movie (The Last Airbender). Broadway.tv caught up with Aasif at last night’s premiere of the new production of Hamlet; you can watch the video of their exchange here.

I mentioned recently that Lewis Black had a new stand-up in the works, “Stark Raving Black”. Depending on your location, it should be hitting theaters either this weekend or within the next few weeks. The L.A. Times has reviewed it here, calling it “Lewis Black at his cranky best”. In anticipation of the release, Mr. Black also did an interview with ABC News, which you can read here. I like that he compares comedy to “housing insulation”, saying, “We help fend off the cold and the heat.” Not a bad summation.

Finally, I included this in my last “Six Degrees” post, but I added it a day or so after the post went up, so I’m not sure people here saw it. If you want to know what it feels like to win an Emmy, you should know that, for John Oliver, it ranks somewhere just below watching an American football game. Heh — I wish my life were exciting enough to allow me to be so blasé, sir.

(Hat tips to TWoP’s MagicHour and shamskygirl for some of these links!)

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UPDATED: What is it with John Oliver that practically every time I do one of these posts, someone posts an interview with him right after I’ve hit “Publish”? Today, the Newark Star-Ledger (via NJ.com) has that honor; they’ve posted an interview with him here. This was my favorite bit of the Q&A, but it was hard to pick just one part:

Q. Stephen Colbert had left when you started. Did you feel like they were big shoes to fill?
A. Trying to fill his shoes is like standing in clown shoes.

And, while I’m editing this post, I should also mention this article in the “Home & Garden” section of The New York Times, which contains a couple of fun Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello name drops. The closing quote from Paul certainly made me smile; it’s a sentiment with which I’m quite familiar!

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