Yesterday I attended McSweeney’s Presents: The World Explained last night with a few NYC entrepreneurs last night. The evening started with dinner, which was excellent because I had a chance to geek out and live vicariously through startup stories and new tech. Then, we headed over to the show at Symphonyspace up on the UWS.

The show featured four comic writers was some unrehearsed, slightly-drunk indie-rock mixed in between each speaker. The speakers were:

  • Rodney Rothman – author of Early Bird
  • David Rakoff – from This American Life on NPR
  • John Aboud – from Modern Humorist
  • John Oliver – who is a correspondent on The Daily Show

All of the speakers supplemented their comedy with illustrations and video projected on to a screen. I think all speaking engagements should take advantage of rich media if possible. They were all better for it.

John Oliver was definitely the highlight of the night. He had the best stage presence and delivery, which makes sense based on his practice with the Daily Show. He set speeches by both Bush and Osama to rocking 80’s power ballads to show that politics could learn a lot about presentation from sports. You really would have to see the clip to appreciate it, and I can’t find a copy online… Apparently he’s done this before, but that makes sense because the material is too good to just do once.

If you want to recreate the experience of seeing Bush’s infuriating warhawking set to a power ballad. Press play on both pieces of media below at the same time. (if you’re reading in RSS, click through to this post to try it out)


Overall it was a great night.