3 Things: Fun Home, Kim Kardashian on WWDTM, and Copypainters
Hi friends,
If you're new to these emails, welcome! Every Saturday, I send out a short email with three great things. I've also got some of my upcoming shows featured below. If you know anyone who you think would enjoy this, feel free to spread the word! They can sign up here or to see the archive of past emails, click here.
SHOW UPDATE:
I'm currently sitting on the train to Boston, enjoying a welcome break from my typical experiences on the BoltBus. Tonight, I'm hosting FeastMass, a community dinner party and show where artists/community groups propose new projects. I've been going for years and it's always amazing and inspiring (plus the food is really really good). There may still be a few spaces available! Check online here
Tomorrow (Sunday), I'm back in NYC to host and give away audience prizes at YOU GET A SPOON! featuring work/prizes from Gideon Irving, Bianca Giaever, and Mark Doss. Guaranteed to be the most positive way to spend a Sunday night in Manhattan. Tickets here
No matter where you live, today at 6 p.m. and Wednesday at 9 p.m. WBUR will be airing the "Forensic Archaeology" episode of You're the Expert. Tune in at 90.9 FM or stream the show live on WBUR's website. If you really want to be a superstar, fill out this online surveyand tell WBUR you love the show!
Ok, on to this week's list!
1 Thing I Think Is Great:
I didn't expect that one of my favorite live performances of the year was going to be a musical about a butch lesbian growing up in a Pennsylvania funeral home. But there you go. For my mom's birthday, Mollie and I took her to FUN HOME on Broadway. If you're not familiar, it's a musical based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. I can't say that I really knew anything about Bechdel or the show before we went (other than that she invented the Bechdel Test). I was blown away by how good it was. It's an amazing experience and also a great example of how important it is to get new diverse voices in the arts. I'd never seen anything like it before. The great part about FUN HOME is that even if you can't make it to the show live on Broadway, you can read the novel. Here's a video about FUN HOME's Journey to Broadway.
1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:
Kim Kardashian was a guest on Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me this week and NPR fans lost their minds. Reading the hilarious rage that filled people when they learned Kardashian was going to be on the show, I could not stop laughing. Also, to be honest, I thought she was kind of great. She was funny and self-deprecating. I really enjoyed her segment. For me, the weirdest part of the show was that it wasn't Peter Sagal's voice as the host... Kim Kardashian Appears on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR Fans Go Postal
1 Interesting Thing:
Dafen, China is known for its master artists. A village of painters who are incredibly skilled at classical techniques using oil paints. But rather than work on their own art, these men painstakingly recreate famous works and then sell the copies. Makeshift Magazineproduced this fascinating short video on the artists and their community. China's Copypainting Village
Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/
Have a great weekend,
Chris
3 Things: All Things Considered, Simply Unemployable, and Hostage Camp
Hi friends,
If you're new to these emails, welcome! Every Saturday, I send out a short email with three great things. I've also got some of my upcoming shows featured below. If you know anyone who you think would enjoy this, feel free to spread the word! They can sign up here or to see the archive of past emails, click here.
SHOW UPDATE:
Today at 6 p.m. and Wednesday at 9 p.m. WBUR will be airing the "Bacteria of the NYC Subway System" episode of You're the Expert. Tune in at 90.9 FM or stream the show live on WBUR's website.
I'll also be doing live shows in DC, NYC, and Boston this week:
-DC: June 17 A special live You're the Expert all about the neuroscience of laughter and hiccups at the DC Improv. Details/Tix
-Boston: June 20 I'm hosting FeastMass, an amazing dinner party and community arts celebration. Details here
-NYC: June 21's YOU GET A SPOON! features music from Gideon Irving, poems from Mark Doss, and of course, tons of awesome Oprah-style prizes. Details/Tix
Ok, on to this week's list!
1 Thing I Think Is Great:
I try to only rarely put myself on these lists but this week I got to be a guest on WBUR's AllThings Considered, which was a public radio nerd's dream come true. They interviewed me about the on-air debut of You're the Expert and I got to play a few clips from the show. Now all that's left on my bucket list is meet Lakshmi Singh and have Ira Glass use a clip of my voice to make fun of Torey Malatia. All Things Considered: You're the Expert's debut
1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:
Richie Moriarty and Matt Catanzano are an improv group called Simply Unemployable. Their live shows are some of my favorite comedy shows around. They're so consistently hilarious and both are just great guys. Every once in a while, they'll put out a gem of a video as well. They're the masters of a simple premise taken to just an absurd extreme, like when they got obsessed with the weird noises they use in movie trailers. Their latest video is a send-up of the very dumb names you see on menu items nowadays. Get ready for the most spectacular cheese puns you'll ever hear: Mac and Cheese Food Truck
1 Interesting Thing:
Hostage Camp is either the most important survival course a person will ever take or a scam designed to fleece paranoid nutjobs out of a couple thousand bucks. It's not at all clear to me which is true. Either way, this story by Mitch Moxley (fantastic name) for Roads & Kingdoms is a must-read. British Army Veterans, insane Floridians, waterboarding, and ransoms left in malls: it's everything you'd want in a weekend. Hostage Camp
Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/
Have a great weekend,
Chris
You're the Expert in the Boston Globe!
Here's a great article from the Boston Globe today about You're the Expert:
WBUR turns podcast into radio program
‘You’re the Expert’ mixes science, some goofy comedy
By Callum Borchers GLOBE STAFF JUNE 02, 2015
WBUR on Wednesday will launch a six-week pilot of a weekly radio program called “You’re the Expert” that features a scientist fielding goofy questions from a panel of comedians.
But the show is not exactly new: Episodes have been available as podcasts for three years.
The sudden leap by “You’re the Expert” from digital-only platforms like iTunes to the airwaves of a leading public broadcast station represents the latest evidence of podcasting’s recent growth and clout, a decade after the medium’s introduction as a playground for amateurs.
“We now have this real shot at legitimacy,” said Chris Duffy, the program’s 28-year-old host. “We have a lot of people who listen to the show now, but those people have sought it out. What happens when a random person listening to 90.9 hears ‘You’re the Expert?’ What do they think? In the next six weeks, that’s what we’re going to discover.”
Podcasts have lately become an important extension of many mainstream media outlets, much like blogs before them. The podcast “Serial,” launched in the fall as a spinoff of the popular public radio series “This American Life,” was recognized Sunday with a Peabody Award — the first time a podcast has earned the honor.
Between March and May, WBUR and the Boston Globe partnered on a podcast series called “Finish Line” during the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The WBUR Idea Lab, the station’s new-media initiative, has created or helped develop other podcasts, including “You’re the Expert” and an audio version of the “Dear Sugar” advice column.
“These aren’t just things a few people download anymore,” said Devan Rosen, director of the emerging media program at Ithaca College. “Podcasting is a real, important, viable media format.”
But putting a podcast on the air is a rare move — made more noteworthy in this case because “You’re the Expert” is a grass-roots phenomenon.
Duffy was a fifth-grade teacher and moonlighting comic when he started “You’re the Expert” as a live comedy show with an educational twist. He would book small venues, like the Somerville Theatre and Oberon in Cambridge, record the performances, and post them online as downloadable audio files.
WBUR general manager Charlie Kravetz attended one of those early shows and left impressed. “I remember thinking, ‘This is really right up our alley,’ ” Kravetz said. “It’s got science and academia and really smart people doing really interesting things, and it’s done in a very entertaining, engaging, accessible way that makes it not like you’re eating porridge.”
Duffy has spent the last two years refining the format in the Idea Lab, with the help of WBUR producers. The vibe of the hourlong program airing Wednesdays at 9 p.m. will be familiar to fans of “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” the weekly news quiz produced by Chicago Public Media that is broadcast by NPR stations across the country, including WBUR.
Kravetz said the station will conduct listener surveys after the six-week pilot and make tweaks before a likely second run later in the year.
“The goal eventually is to turn it into a weekly program,” he added. “Chris travels around the country for recordings, so this could be a very successful national program, if and when we feel it’s ready for that.”
