Welcome to Better Know a Guest, your weekly guide to the wonderful and diverse array of personalities appearing on ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ each week.
Hello, Colbert News hub! Happy to be back for what promises to be an exciting week of shows. The Daily Show will be covering the midterm elections from Austin, which promises some excellent field pieces and surprises from the team. As for the Report, we’ve got a war on Halloween brewing! In Colorado, police are concerned that some candy might be infused with marijuana as a prank. Other warnings from CBS News this week included jack-o-lanterns catching fire, getting hit by cars, and tripping over long costumes. Aside from Halloween, the other major threat to America this week is continued Ebola panic, as quarantine measures are instituted at airports and confusion continues about the best way to prevent the health crisis from spreading.
Jon’s guests are two congressional candidates, a band, and a mystery guest. Stephen’s are a talk show host, two authors, and the president of the International Rescue Committee. Let us know what you are most excited to hear about this week, and which guests you’re looking forward to!
Monday, October 27 (2014)
Meredith Vieira (Host: “The Meredith Viera Show“)
Meredith Vieira is a journalist, news anchor, and talk show host. This fall she launched The Meredith Viera Show, a daytime syndicated talk show produced by NBC. The show focuses on celebrity interviews, human interest stories, and health. It tapes across the hall from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, with the set being modeled after Vieira’s own living room. She also runs the YouTube channel “Lives with Meredith Vieira“, on which women join Viera to tell their stories in a segment called “Overshare”. Viera got her start working for local radio stations, before landing a job at CBS where she reported for West 57th, 60 Minutes, and CBS Morning News. She became the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2002 when the show went into syndication, and then joined ABC’s The View which she hosted along with Millionaire for 9 years. She has been with NBC since 2006, anchoring Today and as a correspondent on NBC News, Rock Center with Brian Williams, and the 2014 Winter Olympics (for which she was the first ever female solo host, as she and Matt Lauer traded off duties after Bob Costas got pinkeye).
Born: December 30, 1953 ( Providence, Rhode Island, United States)
Education: Lincoln School | Tufts University
Filmography: West 57th | 60 Minutes | CBS Morning News | Turning Point | The View | Who Wants to Be a Millionaire | Dateline NBC | Today | Rock Center with Brian Williams | The Meredith Viera Show
Awards: P.T. Barnum Award | Emmy Awards
Follow: @MeredithViera | @MeredithShow | Facebook | Instagram |
Tuesday, October 28 (2014)
Michael Lewis (Author: “Liar’s Poker“)
Michael Lewis is a journalist and author, most famous for writing Moneyball and The Blind Side – both of which became films – and several books about Wall Street including Liar’s Poker, a semi-autobiographical book about the culture of bond trading in the 1980s. Liar’s Poker talks about Lewis’s experience as a bond trader at investment bank Salomon Brothers (now part of Citigroup) in the 1980s, and also about what the “crude, rude, and unacceptable” Wall Street culture was like at the time, 25 years ago today. In the book, Lewis also traced the history of the bond trading industry, with the theme of how under-regulation by the government allowed financiers to take advantage of people and make huge amounts of money, to the detriment (Lewis argues) of society as a whole. The title of the book is based on the game “Liar’s Poker”, in which players try to guess how many times a specific number appears in the serial number of a group of dollar bills. The game encourages risky bluffing, and people who are good bluffers and risk-takers stand to make a lot of money. Lewis is known for taking what could be dry subjects (like finance and this history of Wall Street) and writing about them in a compelling way.
Born: October 15, 1960 (New Orleans, Louisiana, United States)
Education: Isidore Newman School | Princeton University | London School of Economics
Publications: Bloomberg News | Vanity Fair | The New York Times Magazine | The New Yorker | Slate | Sports Illustrated | Foreign Affairs | Poetry Magazine | The Spectator | The New Republic
Books: Liar’s Poker | Pacific Rift | The Money Culture | Trail Fever | The New New Thing | Next | Moneyball | Coach | The Blind Side | The Real Price of Everything | Panic | Home Game | The Big Short | Boomerang | Flash Boys
Awards: Los Angeles Times Book Award | Alex Award | New York Times Notable Selection | Business Book Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance(s): Interviews – October 2, 2006 | November 19, 2008 | February 1, 2011
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interviews – June 4, 2009 | March 16, 2010 | October 5, 2011 | April 1, 2014
Follow: Website | Facebook
Wednesday, October 29 (2014)
Jill Lepore (Author: “The Secret History of Wonder Woman“)
Jill Lepore is a writer, American history professor, and historian, who currently teaches at Harvard University (where she is known for her hands-on classes and her “walking office hours”, at which she invites students to talk a walk with her around Harvard Yard), and is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She founded Common-place, a web magazine focusing on early American history, and is known for being very passionate on subjects outside her classes’ subject matter (she is obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe, for example). Her new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman paints the superhero as a feminist icon while also telling the weird life story of her creator, William Moulton Marston. Marston was a psychology professor, an inventor of a blood pressure monitor that was a precursor to the lie detector test, and a husband in a bondage-fueled polyamorous relationship, which explains why there are so many bondage scenes in the original Wonder Woman comics. Marston’s wife Elizabeth Holloway came up with the idea of a female superhero, and Marston made the idea happen at Universal Studios, where he was working at the time. In creating the character, he was inspired by the womens’ suffrage movements of the early 1900s as well as by Elizabeth and one of their lovers, Olive Byrne. In The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Lepore talks about the history of Wonder Woman herself, but also about the complicated life story about her creator. The Wall Street Journal calls the book “surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip” and notes that, “this one shows how issues we debate today were under contention just as vigorously decades ago, including birth control, sex education, the ways in which women can combine work and family, and the effects of “violent entertainment” on children.”
Born: August 27, 1966 (West Boylston, Massachusetts, United States)
Education: Tufts University | University of Michigan | Yale University
Books: The Name of War | Encounters in the New World | A is for American | New York Burning | Blindspot | The Whites of Their Eyes | The Mansion of Happiness | The Story of America | Book of Ages | The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Awards: Time’s Best Nonfiction Book of the Year | Mark Lynton Prize | Times Book Review Editors’ Choice awards | Anisfield-Wolf Award | Bancroft Prize | Ralph Waldo Emerson Award | Berkshire Prize
Follow: Website
Thursday, October 30 (2014)
David Miliband (President: International Rescue Committee)
David Miliband is a former member of Parliament and the current president of the International Rescue Committee, which provides humanitarian relief and refugee services around the world. Miliband was the MP from South Shields for 12 years, during which he was the minister for Schools, Minister for Communities and Local Government, Secretary of State for the Environment, and the UK Foreign Secretary. Before being elected to parliament, Miliband was the head of policy for Tony Blair. He has advocated strongly for environmental policy, and spearheaded the UK’s Climate Change Bill, which was the first emissions guideline to be legally binding. Miliband’s parents were both Jewish refugees from Belgium, and he has been a strong proponent of refugee rights. Miliband left parliament in 2013 to head the International Rescue Committee, and is involved in the organization’s efforts to combat Ebola in Africa.
Born: July 15, 1965 (London, UK)
Education: Primrose Hill Primary School | Newlaithes Primary School | Haverstock Comprehensive School | Oxford University | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Follow: @DMilliband
And now, let’s check in with our good friend Jon Stewart over at the Daily Show!
Monday, October 27 (2014)
Wendy Davis (Author: “Forgetting to be Afraid: A Memoir”)
Wendy Davis is a democratic senatorial candidate from Texas, who rocketed to national fame last year after she filibustered an abortion bill for 11 hours, in an attempt to prevent higher regulations on abortions. The bill ultimately passed, but Davis’s filibuster went viral and she is now Texas’s democratic candidate for governor. She is currently representing Texas’s 10th District in the Texas Senate, where she has been since 2008. Previously, Davis served on the Fort Worth city council. Her new memoir, “Forgetting to be Afraid”, was released on September 2, and made headlines for her description of a difficult young adulthood as a single mother, and her admission that she’d had two abortions for medical reasons.
Born: May 16, 1963 (West Warwick, RI, United States)
Education: Texas Christian University | Harvard Law School
Books: Forgetting to be Afraid: A Memoir
Awards: Bold Woman Award | Champion for Children Award | Texas Women’s Health Champion Award | Camelot Award | Meritorious Service Award | Women Who Dared Award
Follow: Campaign Website | @WendyDavisTexas | Facebook
Tuesday, October 28 (2014)
Joaquin Castro (Democrat: Congressional Candidate)
Joaquin Castro is a democratic congressional candidate from Texas’s 20th district, up for reelection for a second term. He is currently the president of the freshman class of representatives, and is a member of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Before being elected to the US House of Representatives, Castro served ten years as a representative in the Texas state House of Representatives, representing Texas’s 125th district. He is on the board of several education-based nonprofits. Castro’s identical twin brother, Julian Castro, is the mayor of San Antonio and gave the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Joaquin Castro provided the introduction for that speech.
Born: September 16, 1974 (San Antonio, TX, United States)
Education: Stanford University | Harvard Law School
Awards: Hispanic Organization for Public Employees Amazing Energy Award | Hispanic Affairs Agency Bravo Award
Follow: Website | @JoaquinCastroTx
Wednesday, October 29 (2014)
TBA
Thursday, October 30 (2014)
Spoon (Album: “They Want My Soul“)
Spoon is a Texas rock/pop band made up of Britt Daniel, Jim Eno, Rob Pope, Eric Harvey, and Alex Fischel. The band has been making music since the early 1990s, and began to have commercial success in the 2000s after signing with indie label Merge Records. The band has played on many late night talk shows (Late Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Late Late Show, Last Call, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien) as well as Saturday Night Live, but South by South Mess will be their Comedy Central debut. Their music has been widely featured on television shows such as Veronica Mars, The Simpsons, Chuck, Scrubs, Numb3rs, How I Met Your Mother, and House. “They Want My Soul” is Spoon’s first album since going on a temporary recording break in 2011. Pitchfork calls the album “the quintet’s most booming LP, eons ahead of their Pixies-worshipping beginnings and a far cry from the relatively small-scale charm of their early-2000s touchstones “Girls Can Tell” and “Kill the Moonlight”, as well as their self-consciously lo-fi 2010 record, “Transference”.”
Formed: 1993
Discography: Nefarious | Telephono | Soft Effects | A Series of Sneaks | Love Ways | A Series of Sneaks | Girls Can Tell | Kill the Moonlight | Gimme Fiction | Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga | Don’t You Evah | Transference | They Want My Soul
Awards: Metacritic’s Artist of the Decade
Follow: Website | @SpoonTheBand | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly favourite guest poll!! See you all next week!!
Better Know A Guest, October 27 – 30 2014
Welcome to Better Know a Guest, your weekly guide to the wonderful and diverse array of personalities appearing on ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ each week.
Hello, Colbert News hub! Happy to be back for what promises to be an exciting week of shows. The Daily Show will be covering the midterm elections from Austin, which promises some excellent field pieces and surprises from the team. As for the Report, we’ve got a war on Halloween brewing! In Colorado, police are concerned that some candy might be infused with marijuana as a prank. Other warnings from CBS News this week included jack-o-lanterns catching fire, getting hit by cars, and tripping over long costumes. Aside from Halloween, the other major threat to America this week is continued Ebola panic, as quarantine measures are instituted at airports and confusion continues about the best way to prevent the health crisis from spreading.
Jon’s guests are two congressional candidates, a band, and a mystery guest. Stephen’s are a talk show host, two authors, and the president of the International Rescue Committee. Let us know what you are most excited to hear about this week, and which guests you’re looking forward to!
Monday, October 27 (2014)
Meredith Vieira (Host: “The Meredith Viera Show“)
Meredith Vieira is a journalist, news anchor, and talk show host. This fall she launched The Meredith Viera Show, a daytime syndicated talk show produced by NBC. The show focuses on celebrity interviews, human interest stories, and health. It tapes across the hall from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, with the set being modeled after Vieira’s own living room. She also runs the YouTube channel “Lives with Meredith Vieira“, on which women join Viera to tell their stories in a segment called “Overshare”. Viera got her start working for local radio stations, before landing a job at CBS where she reported for West 57th, 60 Minutes, and CBS Morning News. She became the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2002 when the show went into syndication, and then joined ABC’s The View which she hosted along with Millionaire for 9 years. She has been with NBC since 2006, anchoring Today and as a correspondent on NBC News, Rock Center with Brian Williams, and the 2014 Winter Olympics (for which she was the first ever female solo host, as she and Matt Lauer traded off duties after Bob Costas got pinkeye).
Born: December 30, 1953 ( Providence, Rhode Island, United States)
Education: Lincoln School | Tufts University
Filmography: West 57th | 60 Minutes | CBS Morning News | Turning Point | The View | Who Wants to Be a Millionaire | Dateline NBC | Today | Rock Center with Brian Williams | The Meredith Viera Show
Awards: P.T. Barnum Award | Emmy Awards
Follow: @MeredithViera | @MeredithShow | Facebook | Instagram |
Tuesday, October 28 (2014)
Michael Lewis (Author: “Liar’s Poker“)
Michael Lewis is a journalist and author, most famous for writing Moneyball and The Blind Side – both of which became films – and several books about Wall Street including Liar’s Poker, a semi-autobiographical book about the culture of bond trading in the 1980s. Liar’s Poker talks about Lewis’s experience as a bond trader at investment bank Salomon Brothers (now part of Citigroup) in the 1980s, and also about what the “crude, rude, and unacceptable” Wall Street culture was like at the time, 25 years ago today. In the book, Lewis also traced the history of the bond trading industry, with the theme of how under-regulation by the government allowed financiers to take advantage of people and make huge amounts of money, to the detriment (Lewis argues) of society as a whole. The title of the book is based on the game “Liar’s Poker”, in which players try to guess how many times a specific number appears in the serial number of a group of dollar bills. The game encourages risky bluffing, and people who are good bluffers and risk-takers stand to make a lot of money. Lewis is known for taking what could be dry subjects (like finance and this history of Wall Street) and writing about them in a compelling way.
Born: October 15, 1960 (New Orleans, Louisiana, United States)
Education: Isidore Newman School | Princeton University | London School of Economics
Publications: Bloomberg News | Vanity Fair | The New York Times Magazine | The New Yorker | Slate | Sports Illustrated | Foreign Affairs | Poetry Magazine | The Spectator | The New Republic
Books: Liar’s Poker | Pacific Rift | The Money Culture | Trail Fever | The New New Thing | Next | Moneyball | Coach | The Blind Side | The Real Price of Everything | Panic | Home Game | The Big Short | Boomerang | Flash Boys
Awards: Los Angeles Times Book Award | Alex Award | New York Times Notable Selection | Business Book Award
Previous ‘Colbert Report’ Appearance(s): Interviews – October 2, 2006 | November 19, 2008 | February 1, 2011
Previous ‘Daily Show’ Appearance(s): Interviews – June 4, 2009 | March 16, 2010 | October 5, 2011 | April 1, 2014
Follow: Website | Facebook
Wednesday, October 29 (2014)
Jill Lepore (Author: “The Secret History of Wonder Woman“)
Jill Lepore is a writer, American history professor, and historian, who currently teaches at Harvard University (where she is known for her hands-on classes and her “walking office hours”, at which she invites students to talk a walk with her around Harvard Yard), and is a staff writer for The New Yorker. She founded Common-place, a web magazine focusing on early American history, and is known for being very passionate on subjects outside her classes’ subject matter (she is obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe, for example). Her new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman paints the superhero as a feminist icon while also telling the weird life story of her creator, William Moulton Marston. Marston was a psychology professor, an inventor of a blood pressure monitor that was a precursor to the lie detector test, and a husband in a bondage-fueled polyamorous relationship, which explains why there are so many bondage scenes in the original Wonder Woman comics. Marston’s wife Elizabeth Holloway came up with the idea of a female superhero, and Marston made the idea happen at Universal Studios, where he was working at the time. In creating the character, he was inspired by the womens’ suffrage movements of the early 1900s as well as by Elizabeth and one of their lovers, Olive Byrne. In The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Lepore talks about the history of Wonder Woman herself, but also about the complicated life story about her creator. The Wall Street Journal calls the book “surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip” and notes that, “this one shows how issues we debate today were under contention just as vigorously decades ago, including birth control, sex education, the ways in which women can combine work and family, and the effects of “violent entertainment” on children.”
Born: August 27, 1966 (West Boylston, Massachusetts, United States)
Education: Tufts University | University of Michigan | Yale University
Books: The Name of War | Encounters in the New World | A is for American | New York Burning | Blindspot | The Whites of Their Eyes | The Mansion of Happiness | The Story of America | Book of Ages | The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Awards: Time’s Best Nonfiction Book of the Year | Mark Lynton Prize | Times Book Review Editors’ Choice awards | Anisfield-Wolf Award | Bancroft Prize | Ralph Waldo Emerson Award | Berkshire Prize
Follow: Website
Thursday, October 30 (2014)
David Miliband (President: International Rescue Committee)
David Miliband is a former member of Parliament and the current president of the International Rescue Committee, which provides humanitarian relief and refugee services around the world. Miliband was the MP from South Shields for 12 years, during which he was the minister for Schools, Minister for Communities and Local Government, Secretary of State for the Environment, and the UK Foreign Secretary. Before being elected to parliament, Miliband was the head of policy for Tony Blair. He has advocated strongly for environmental policy, and spearheaded the UK’s Climate Change Bill, which was the first emissions guideline to be legally binding. Miliband’s parents were both Jewish refugees from Belgium, and he has been a strong proponent of refugee rights. Miliband left parliament in 2013 to head the International Rescue Committee, and is involved in the organization’s efforts to combat Ebola in Africa.
Born: July 15, 1965 (London, UK)
Education: Primrose Hill Primary School | Newlaithes Primary School | Haverstock Comprehensive School | Oxford University | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Follow: @DMilliband
And now, let’s check in with our good friend Jon Stewart over at the Daily Show!
Monday, October 27 (2014)
Wendy Davis (Author: “Forgetting to be Afraid: A Memoir”)
Wendy Davis is a democratic senatorial candidate from Texas, who rocketed to national fame last year after she filibustered an abortion bill for 11 hours, in an attempt to prevent higher regulations on abortions. The bill ultimately passed, but Davis’s filibuster went viral and she is now Texas’s democratic candidate for governor. She is currently representing Texas’s 10th District in the Texas Senate, where she has been since 2008. Previously, Davis served on the Fort Worth city council. Her new memoir, “Forgetting to be Afraid”, was released on September 2, and made headlines for her description of a difficult young adulthood as a single mother, and her admission that she’d had two abortions for medical reasons.
Born: May 16, 1963 (West Warwick, RI, United States)
Education: Texas Christian University | Harvard Law School
Books: Forgetting to be Afraid: A Memoir
Awards: Bold Woman Award | Champion for Children Award | Texas Women’s Health Champion Award | Camelot Award | Meritorious Service Award | Women Who Dared Award
Follow: Campaign Website | @WendyDavisTexas | Facebook
Tuesday, October 28 (2014)
Joaquin Castro (Democrat: Congressional Candidate)
Joaquin Castro is a democratic congressional candidate from Texas’s 20th district, up for reelection for a second term. He is currently the president of the freshman class of representatives, and is a member of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Before being elected to the US House of Representatives, Castro served ten years as a representative in the Texas state House of Representatives, representing Texas’s 125th district. He is on the board of several education-based nonprofits. Castro’s identical twin brother, Julian Castro, is the mayor of San Antonio and gave the keynote speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Joaquin Castro provided the introduction for that speech.
Born: September 16, 1974 (San Antonio, TX, United States)
Education: Stanford University | Harvard Law School
Awards: Hispanic Organization for Public Employees Amazing Energy Award | Hispanic Affairs Agency Bravo Award
Follow: Website | @JoaquinCastroTx
Wednesday, October 29 (2014)
TBA
Thursday, October 30 (2014)
Spoon (Album: “They Want My Soul“)
Spoon is a Texas rock/pop band made up of Britt Daniel, Jim Eno, Rob Pope, Eric Harvey, and Alex Fischel. The band has been making music since the early 1990s, and began to have commercial success in the 2000s after signing with indie label Merge Records. The band has played on many late night talk shows (Late Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Late Late Show, Last Call, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien) as well as Saturday Night Live, but South by South Mess will be their Comedy Central debut. Their music has been widely featured on television shows such as Veronica Mars, The Simpsons, Chuck, Scrubs, Numb3rs, How I Met Your Mother, and House. “They Want My Soul” is Spoon’s first album since going on a temporary recording break in 2011. Pitchfork calls the album “the quintet’s most booming LP, eons ahead of their Pixies-worshipping beginnings and a far cry from the relatively small-scale charm of their early-2000s touchstones “Girls Can Tell” and “Kill the Moonlight”, as well as their self-consciously lo-fi 2010 record, “Transference”.”
Formed: 1993
Discography: Nefarious | Telephono | Soft Effects | A Series of Sneaks | Love Ways | A Series of Sneaks | Girls Can Tell | Kill the Moonlight | Gimme Fiction | Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga | Don’t You Evah | Transference | They Want My Soul
Awards: Metacritic’s Artist of the Decade
Follow: Website | @SpoonTheBand | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly favourite guest poll!! See you all next week!!