Francis Collins on the Late Show

A NYC Adventure (does everything here cost $40?)

My previous post on being exiled from Christian higher ed appeared to strike a chord. It may have be a jazzy major7 or even a funky augmented chord for some people. I’m not saying everyone thought it was beautiful and harmonious. But a lot more people read and engaged with it than is typical for my posts on these Stump Speeches.

In that post I noted that you don’t need to feel bad for me for being exiled — working for BioLogos has been very rewarding and has given me some incredible opportunities. This post is an account of one of those.

First let me note that BioLogos is primarily funded by individual donors who believe in our mission. But they might not all be thrilled to see their charitable dollars going to support an experience like this. Rest easy friends. I took PTO for this trip and paid for it myself out of the line in my family’s budget labeled, “Things Too Cool To Pass Up” (or maybe it was Groceries… I haven’t reconciled the books yet!). So while this was work-adjacent, it definitely was not work.

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BioLogos was founded by Francis Collins. In a survey we sponsored several years back we found that only about 10% of Americans know who he is. I’d guess the readership here skews higher than that, but just in case, you should know that he’s a pretty big deal… at least as far as scientists go. He discovered the genetic mutation that causes cystic fibrosis, led the Human Genome Project, and he directed the National Institutes of Health at the appointment of three different presidents. In between the second and third of those items on his resume, he wrote the NYT best-selling book, The Language of God, which explained how someone could be both a world-class geneticist (he didn’t call himself that because he’s too humble) and a Christian. That really struck a chord — or more like evoked the sound of a Beethoven symphony. And it led to the founding of BioLogos.

I joined BioLogos part-time in 2013, leading to the troubles chronicled in my previous post, and have worked for the organization full-time since the resolution of said troubles in the summer of 2015. It’s not like Francis (that’s what Dr. Dr. Collins prefers we call him) is hanging out in the BioLogos office every day. He’s been pretty busy doing things like, oh leading the charge for the development, testing, and distribution of the first COVID vaccines. But I’ve had the extreme privilege getting to know him pretty well over the last decade.

Well enough, so that when he told me he was going to be on the Colbert show again (this was his seventh appearance, including the Colbert Report and the Late Show), I responded with, “Oh wow… hmm… by the way… do they happen to give you tickets for people to sit in the live studio audience??” He responded with, “Yes, I get some for the green room that my wife and grandkids are going to use. But I’m told I can have two people in the audience. You and Chris want to come?” Answering that question didn’t take much deliberation.

So we took off Tuesday evening from our humble South Bend airport, missed our connection because of thunderstorms and had to take a later flight, arriving at Newark at 1am. I thought the right strategy would be to skip the line for Ubers and just take a cab two miles to our hotel. That strategy cost $40.

The next morning we did wait for an all-electric Uber to take us to the ferry dock. Half way there, our driver said, “You’re sure this one’s running? I’ve never taken anyone here.” Uh oh… a quick google search showed that it stopped running for the late morning hours we were already in. But he was helpful, getting us to a different ferry station. That strategy also cost $40.

Waiting for the ferry

We came ashore in Manhattan near the World Trade Center Memorial, and Chris had never been there. So we paid our respects. Still kind of emotional to relive that episode.

WTC Memorial

Then we took the subway uptown and dropped our bags at the hotel. Then we walked around Central Park and got some lunch. Our instructions were to show up at the Ed Sullivan Theater by 4pm and “join the VIP line.” We got there at 3:55 and found several hundred people waiting outside the theater. No obvious VIP line was in sight, but my good wife spotted someone wearing a headset. So we walked up to him and asked, “Is there a VIP line here somewhere?” He responded with, “Name?” and upon supplying that he said, “right this way, Mr. & Mrs. Stump.”

We were taken inside the theatre, where there were several hundred more people waiting. They took us past all of them to join a small group of people waiting at the head of the line. In just a few minutes, one of the pages or interns came out and greeted everyone, saying we’d be taken inside shortly. It was explained that there will be a comedian who comes out first to get everyone hyped up, that he can be kind of rude sometimes, but it it’s all in good fun. Then the Late Show band will give us our own private concert. Then Stephen Colbert himself will come out and take a few questions from the crowd. “Please have your question ready to go, because of lots of people throw their hands up when Stephen asks, ‘Anyone have a question?’ and then they get called on and they don’t know what to say.” I decided that I was going to ask, “What were your last three meals and who were they with.” Then I got worried that he’d make fun of my incorrect grammar (it should be “whom”). But then I thought it would sound really pretentious if I asked the question “…and whom were they with.” So I resolved not to raise my hand.

There were also very strict instructions not to use you cell phone at any time once you are taken into the theatre. That was a little disappointing, as I’m predisposed to chronicle my adventures with pictures. And I half-expected them to actually take our phones from us. But this was a very liberal crowd who values the common good, and as far as I could tell, everyone complied the whole time. (There’s probably some political commentary there that I’ll just skip.)

We got seated in the third row, right on the aisle. The pre-comedian came out, and was rude as advertised. He brought several people onto the stage and made some jokes about them. The funniest was a woman from Philly who kept dancing and yelling “deuce deuce”. When the comedian asked why, she said in a tone that suggested it was obvious, “Because I live on 22nd Street! That’s what we do!”. The reason I tell that story is because during the taping of the show, one of the jokes during the “Meanwhile” segment was about Philadelphia, and the crowd started chanting “deuce deuce!” and Colbert made a joke about not letting people from Philly in there anymore.

The rest of the pre-show was entirely geared toward juicing up the crowd as much as possible. Several people — including Colbert himself — told us that the performers feed on our energy, and to have a really fun show, it’s up to the audience. So we all resolved to laugh loudly at the jokes, and they made us practice that several times.

When Colbert came out beforehand and took questions from the audience, the funniest was when someone asked him about his favorite obscure lore from the Lord of the Rings. We proceeded to give a several-minute lecture about the significance of Galadriel giving Gimli a strand of her hair. He really is a LOTR geek. I’ve read the trilogy three times, but couldn’t begin to compete with his knowledge and understanding of Tolkein’s world.

Finally the show itself started. It was kind of surreal. We’ve seen the show a hundred times and so knew well the way it looked once edited and produced. But to be there behind-the-scenes was a different experience. The theater itself is pretty intimate, but also very loud. And Colbert’s mic is set for the TV audience, so quite often when the crowd was cheering, we couldn’t hear what he was saying at all.

And there were the “unedited” parts. Once during the monologue, he stopped because there were technical difficulties with the photo being shown on-screen. So he had to start that section over. But most alarmingly, there was part of the edited show that weren’t recorded with us, and parts recorded with us that weren’t on the recorded show. We had seen that Owen Wilson would be on that night too, but then after a commercial break Stephen came out and told us, “sorry, but Owen Wilson isn’t really here. I didn’t tell you earlier because I didn’t want you to hate me.” Evidently Wilson was there yesterday and recorded with that studio audience, but would be edited into the show for our episode. Instead, we were going to be there for the recording of a special musical guest — Alex G — but he was going to be appearing on tomorrow night’s show. Interesting.

When Francis came out, the crowd welcomed him warmly, but it wasn’t really a “funny” segment. Colbert wanted to know primarily about the circumstances with him “retiring” from the NIH. You can tell that Colbert really respects Francis and wanted to know his perspective on things now. Francis was very diplomatic. The most interesting part of their exchange from my perspective was Francis saying, “The country isn’t just suffering from an economic deficit. We have a deficit of truth, and a deficit of trust, and a deficit of civility, and a deficit of compassion.” Everyone cheered for that. But we were also at a comedy show that night-after-night skewers the current administration and its shenanigans. To be fair, they made fun of the Biden administration too. But the things to make fun of now are at entirely different level. All of us good liberals cheered when Francis said there is a deficit of civility, but I wonder whether shows like this contribute to that. It sure feels good to be around like-minded people and to laugh. But I’m not sure whether it contributes to a better functioning polis.

After the show, we met up with Francis, his wife, and his grandkids. We walked together to their favorite place, The Algonquin. We laughed and relived our experiences. And we all read a Dorothy Parker poem, since she used to haunt the Algonquin along with The Vicious Circle back in the roaring 20s.

The whole crew after the show.

I’m aware that my account here might feel like a (not-so) humble brag, and that the name-dropping reeks of privilege. Those feelings are probably legitimate. It’s probably more pretentious than using “whom” correctly in a sentence. Yet I hope you might hear and enjoy all this as the adventures of people from small towns in Indiana and Michigan who have somehow (or in the scheme of Providence) had some pretty remarkable experiences and don’t take them for granted.

We’re on our way back to Indiana now. We took the subway to Laguardia and sat at a bar to watch some of the British Open and have a drink, which cost — you guessed it — $40.