Science Comedian

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

July 29th, 2008

Q: Do androids dream of elec­tric sheep?

A: Only the ones from the Deep South. The oth­ers dream of elec­tric French maids.

- Brian Malow

Linus Pauling on Ideas

July 28th, 2008

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

- Linus Pauling

Science Comedian on the Bob Rivers Show

July 27th, 2008

Back in April, I was in Seat­tle, per­form­ing at the Main­stage Com­edy and Music Club, a fan­tas­tic newer club, which I highly rec­om­mend to any­one in the area.

To pro­mote my shows, I made an appear­ance on The Bob Rivers Show on KZOK 102.5, a clas­sic rock station.

I had about as much fun as I’ve ever had on the radio – the whole crew was fun to inter­act with and they seemed gen­uinely happy to have “the sci­ence come­dian” on the show. They had even been talk­ing me up before I got to town.

They also video­taped my seg­ment and put it up on YouTube in two clips:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Neal Stephenson on Jupiter Envy

July 26th, 2008

“For a West­erner to trash West­ern cul­ture is like crit­i­ciz­ing our nitrogen/oxygen atmos­phere on the grounds that it some­times gets windy, and besides, Jupiter’s is much pret­tier. You may not real­ize its advan­tages until you’re try­ing to breathe liq­uid methane.”

- Neal Stephenson

Why is there something instead of nothing?

July 25th, 2008

For all that astronomers and physi­cists, philoso­phers and poets have learned about the uni­verse since women and men first peered out of those tiny holes in our skulls, we are still no closer to answer­ing per­haps the most fun­da­men­tal cos­mo­log­i­cal ques­tion of all:

Why is there some­thing instead of nothing?

But I have my own theory:

It was a tax write-off.

It was more ben­e­fi­cial to have a uni­verse than not to have one. And it was designed to fail – which it has, if local con­di­tions can be taken as any indication.

The Universe – Why?

July 24th, 2008

“In answer to the ques­tion of why it hap­pened, I offer the mod­est pro­posal that our uni­verse is sim­ply one of those things which hap­pen from time to time.”

- Edward P. Tryon

Brian Malow on MicrobeWorld

July 20th, 2008

One of my favorite places to per­form is the Mar­ian Koshland Sci­ence Museum of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

I’ve per­formed there annu­ally for the past three years. (I’m admit­tedly par­tial to any place that has me back even once

The first event, in 2006, was called Ratio­nal Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet. It was a grab bag, a best of, a great­est hits of my sci­ence rou­tines. The clas­sics. No par­tic­u­lar theme, just sci­ence comedy.

When they invited me back, my con­tact there, Amy Shaw, asked if I could do a new show to go along with their exhibit on Infec­tious Disease.

Yes, in what may be a first in com­edy his­tory, she actu­ally asked me to cre­ate an infec­tious disease-themed com­edy show. Why not?

So of course I did. That became Sci­ence Com­edy: It’s Infectious!

The Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Micro­bi­ol­ogy got wind of the sched­uled show, and Chris Con­dayan (Man­ager of Pub­lic Out­reach) arranged to video­tape it and inter­view me. The result was episode 5 of their sur­pris­ingly pop­u­lar pod­cast, Microbe­World … fur­ther evi­dence of my knack for land­ing the strangest cred­its of any stand up comedian.

“Oh, you got Let­ter­man and a men­tion in Vari­ety? That’s awe­some! I got Microbe­World! And Chem­i­cal & Engi­neer­ing News is doing a pro­file of me!”

It’s a living.