Science Comedian

Science Comedian, Lincoln, and Darwin on Time.com

February 16th, 2009

If you know me, you prob­a­bly know I’ve always had a thing about Abra­ham Lin­coln.  Noth­ing kinky.  It goes back as far as 2nd grade – at least that’s my old­est sur­viv­ing writ­ing about Abe.

Now, com­bine that with my obvi­ous respect for Charles Dar­win – who shares his birth­day with Lin­coln (Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809) – and you’ll know how excited I am to have tied it all together in a video piece cel­e­brat­ing their birth­days – and also the 150th anniver­sary of the pub­li­ca­tion of Darwin’s “On the Ori­gin of Species.”

I wrote the piece and it was pro­duced by Craig Duff – and today it’s fea­tured on the front page of Time.com – as a “Must See” video about Lin­coln and Darwin.

“Lin­coln and Dar­win – Birth­days and Evolution”

Check it out, let me know what you think – and please feel free to for­ward it to EVERYONE!

* Update 2/23/09: Although it was only a “Must See” video for a short time, now it’s dis­played as one of the most pop­u­lar videos!

Mike Brotherton and the Science Comedian

January 18th, 2009

Mike Broth­er­ton has a really nice blog post about me.  Mike is a sci­ence fic­tion writer who also hap­pens to be an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming in the depart­ment of Physics and Astron­omy.  Quasars are his spe­cialty!  And there’s a lot of great con­tent in his blog.  Check it out.

I’m ecsta­tic that, of the two jokes he sin­gled out for men­tion, one is an anal­ogy that rarely gets the laugh I wish for it.  It’s about the abil­ity of a virus to take down a human.  We must out­weigh them by a fac­tor of a bil­lion or more.  It’s the ulti­mate David and Goliath…  “It’s like Luke Sky­walker tak­ing out the Death Star in a lit­tle X-Wing Fighter.”

Well, it is, isn’t it?

He also says this about the embed­ded video:

Next time I teach an intro­duc­tory sci­ence class, I’m going to show some of these. I might be able to deliver a cou­ple of the sim­pler jokes and fit them into lec­tures. I’m a good lec­turer, but not great, and wak­ing peo­ple up with a smart joke that has some real sci­ence in it isn’t pan­der­ing, it’s educating.

Too often I think thatI just get depressed about the never end­ing bat­tle with igno­rance and sci­ence illit­er­acy, with the folks who reject our best knowl­edge because it con­tra­dicts their polit­i­cal or reli­gious beliefs.  Get­ting peo­ple to laugh and want in on the joke is prob­a­bly a bet­ter method of doing some­thing other than preach­ing to the choir and bring­ing in some peo­ple who want to chuckle, too.

Thanks, Mike!

I haven’t read his two nov­els yet – Star Dragon and Spi­der Star - but they’ve been praised by David Brin and Paul Di Fil­ippo.  They are hard SF and have been com­pared to the books of Larry Niven and Robert L. For­ward.  Sounds good to me!

Science Comedian on Public Radio

January 14th, 2009

Roman Mars of KALW, a San Fran­cisco pub­lic radio sta­tion, pro­duced a piece on me that aired yes­ter­day on the show Cross Cur­rents:

“The Bay Area is home to some of the smartest peo­ple on the planet. So, it makes sense that our brainy nature would demand the occa­sional brainy enter­tain­ment. That’s where Brian Malow, the sci­ence come­dian, comes in. Malow stopped by KALW to tell Roman Mars why he thinks sci­ence is so funny.”

If you have five min­utes, you can hear the seg­ment on their web­site:
Brian Malow, the Sci­ence Come­dian.

My thanks to Holly Ker­nan and Roman Mars of KALW! 

Cross Cur­rents airs at 5pm (Pacific), on FM 91.7, and streams live from the KALW website.

Science Comedian on Pirate Cat Radio

January 12th, 2009

I’ll be on Pirate Cat Radio at 8pm Pacific tonight for about 20 min­utes.  It’s a low-power FM sta­tion that broad­casts on 87.9 FM in SF, LA, and Berlin.  It also streams live for the whole world.

Even if you miss me, check it out some­time.  It’s a good thing.  Pirate Radio!!

———————-

UPDATE:  I had a great time on the Canary Hour.  Pirate Cat Radio makes all their shows avail­able as down­load­able mp3s, so here’s the show for 1/12/09:

http://www.nerdnetworks.org/pcr/Canary-20090112.mp3

I was on for the first 20 min­utes.  Fri­day 1/9/09, I was on the Morn­ing Show with Casey and the Noto­ri­ous BAG:
http://www.nerdnetworks.org/pcr/MorningShow-20090109.mp3

I come on around the mid­point of the show/file.  Much fun.

Pirate Cat rocks!

Domain Name Buying Spree

January 12th, 2009

A clas­sic, from the archives…

San Francisco Chronicle Features Science Comedian

January 9th, 2009

The San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle ran a fea­ture story on me today (the print ver­sion actu­ally appears in the Date­book sec­tion, Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 11, 2009):

Mak­ing Sci­ence Funny:  Brian Malow

It’s writ­ten by Nick Thomas, who we love!  Last year, Nick did a Q&A with me for Nature:

Helium Walks Into a Bar

In addi­tion to being a pro­lific free­lance writer, Nick is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Chem­istry at Auburn Uni­ver­sity in Mont­gomery, Alabama.

The arti­cle comes out in time to pro­mote my upcom­ing Bay Area shows – Tues­day at the San Fran­cisco Punch Line, and Wednes­day in Sun­ny­vale at Rooster T. Feath­ers.  Also, a week later at the Sacra­mento Punch Line on Jan­u­ary 22.

P.S.  The book I’m hold­ing is Cosm by Gre­gory Ben­ford, one of my favorite reads of 2008.

SF Chronicle Best of 2008 Portraits

January 9th, 2009

This week­end, the San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle should be run­ning a story about me in con­junc­tion with next week’s shows at the SF Punch Line Com­edy Club (Tues, Jan.13) and Rooster T. Feath­ers (Wed, Jan.14), in Sun­ny­vale.  See Upcom­ing Shows for details.

A Chron­i­cle pho­tog­ra­pher, Paul Chinn, met me over at the new Cal­i­for­nia Acad­emy of Sci­ences sev­eral weeks ago for a photo shoot.

Appar­ently, even though the story hasn’t run yet, they’ve included a pic­ture of me in their “Best of 2008 Portraits.”

They spelled my name “Brain” (I’m used to it) and called the show “Irra­tional Com­edy for an Irra­tional Planet” (which is close – the planet is, indeed, irra­tional but the com­edy is ratio­nal)…  but it’s still pretty cool.

[In the com­ments, Jim Hardy brought it to my atten­tion that they also mis­spelled "science-themd."  Three mis­takes in two sentences!]

The fea­ture is dated 12/29/08.  Nobody even told me it was online.  I had to do a van­ity search on the Chron­i­cle site.  Inter­est­ingly, it only works if you search on “Malow” or “Brain Malow.”  A search on “Brian Malow” returns no rel­e­vant results.

Any­way, nice pic…

LabLit Interviews Science Comedian

November 24th, 2008

I was gone but now I’m back, apparently.

Rea­son­ably objec­tive third-party proof of my exis­tence is to be found in the form of an inter­view with me on LabLit.com – a web­site ded­i­cated to “the cul­ture of sci­ence in fic­tion & fact.”

I met LabLit edi­tor Jen­nifer Rohn at Sci­Foo this year.  She’s a cell biol­o­gist at Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don, a writer for pub­li­ca­tions such as Nature, and a fre­quent blog­ger.  Her first novel, Exper­i­men­tal Heart, has just been pub­lished, too.  It’s avail­able from Ama­zon or directly from the pub­lisher, Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­tory Press. And, of course, it’s an exam­ple of “lab lit” – it’s described as a “roman­tic thriller set against the back­drop of con­tem­po­rary sci­en­tific research.”

Jenny attended my sci­ence com­edy ses­sion at Sci­Foo, and I par­tic­i­pated in a ses­sion that she and John Gilbey pre­sented enti­tled, “Seduc­ing the Pub­lic with Sci­ence.”  It was one of my favorite ses­sions and was attended by Ann Druyan, Brother Guy Con­sol­magno, Kevin Gra­zier, Ben Goldacre, Tim O’Reilly, Euge­nie Scott, Shel­ley Batts and others.

Any­way, Ian Brooks inter­viewed me and LabLit is an excel­lent web­site worth explor­ing and here’s a great place to start:

LabLit’s inter­view with sci­ence come­dian Brian Malow.

On the Green Podcast Features Science Comedian

August 4th, 2008

I’m fea­tured on the On the Green Pod­cast with host Jerry Kay. It’s only one minute long!

“Brian Malow makes sci­ence funny, excit­ing and eas­ily digestible for all audiences.”

Check it out…

http://bicoastalmedia.com/podcast/?p=165