The Colbert Report/Michael J. Behe (August 2, 2007)

Michael Behe
Year 3, Episode 96
Airdate	August 2, 2007
Production Number
Guest(s)	Michael Behe
August 1, 2007 Michael Beschloss	August 7, 2007 Ian Bogost
The Colbert Report — 2007

This is the ninety-sixth episode of the 2007 season of The Colbert Report.

Guest Stars: Rick MacArthur (Himself), Michael Behe (Himself)

Co-Stars: Eric Drysdale (Bobby), Meg DeFrancesco (Herself)

Episode Breakdown

• Opening: Colbert, though he is not a conspiracy theorist, believes wholeheartedly in the rumored NAFTA "North American Union" highway which would put a massive trade route between Mexico, United States and Canada. Of course this is true, since it's on the internet. Mitt Romney, on the campaign trail, made sure to tell people at an event that he's against it, if it exists. A representative for Romney explained that they believe that it is an urban legend, but Romney is still against it. Furthering sealing the legend's factual nature is the fact that The New York Times published a story saying that it's just a hoax. Colbert was even more horrified to find that there are already highways and roads which make the country easily navigable. He then puts headphones on his bugged cast and introduces Rick MacArthur, Harper's Magazine publisher and "The Selling of Free Trade" author, to talk about it. MacArthur tells Colbert about I-69, which has not been built but is a way to make an end-run around labor union controlled ports. Colbert reconsiders his position on the highway if it'll mean destroying unions and getting a tube socks for cheap. Colbert suggests that they use the highway to destroy unions and, after they're done, they turn it sideways and turn it into a giant border fence.
• Mini-Sport Report: Colbert expresses frustration over all of the obstacles in the way of baseball players who are stuck at one home-run before breaking records in the game. He offers some advice, which he feels capable of doing since he was in little league, to A-Rod and Barry Bonds (choke up on the back and stop letting their moms attend games). He hopes that Bonds can break the record set by Hank Aaron because, in the last game he went 0-3 and transformed into the Incredible Hulk, leading the police on a helicopter chase through the city.
• Michael Behe Interview: Michael Behe, the father of Intelligent Design, promotes his book "The Edge of Evolution," which attempts to search for a limit to Darwinism. Behe suggests that Newton's theory of gravity was not questioned outright and that later on, quantum physics proved that the theory was not the be-all, end-all of physics. Colbert, in turn, asks if Behe is claiming to be Darwin's Einstein. Behe also goes over some of his theories, particularly irreducible complexity which essentially states that if a part of human biology were taken away, it would render the entire mechanism inert like taking the spring out of a mouse trap. Colbert takes offense to the fact that science is diminishing the mystery of God's will and thinks that God should fight back. When Behe says that Colbert was wrong, he ends the interview.
• Closing: Colbert honors Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, who died over the weekend. He says goodbye in a homage to Bergman's black and white treatises on death by giving a monologue over varying backgrounds which are interrupted by Meg's floating head saying things like "You have never loved." Eventually Bobby makes him wrap it up and the piece ends on the final scene from Bergman's opus, The Seventh Seal.