This episode is brought to you by Audible. Please visit audiblepodcast.com slash

best for your free audiobook download. Now welcome to the best of left podcast

with clips today from Countdown with Keith Overman, The Young Turks, Bill Marr,

The Onion Radio News, Slate Magazine, and The Daily Show.

Not long after Stephen Colbert spun himself off the Daily Show, I had the privilege to be

among the early guests on his new program. He asked me what I thought and I answered,

you know, you might be too subtle. Some Republicans don't realize your

savaging them. He laughed and said he doubted that. Our third story, doubt it, no more.

Stephen greets his guests backstage by saying, you know how this works, right? I play an

idiot. Three and a half years later it turns out that still not everybody knows how it works.

The study is called the irony of satire, political ideology, and the

motivation to see what you want to see in the Colbert Report. 332 conservative,

liberal and independent students at the Ohio State University were shown a clip

from the Colbert Report in which Colbert was doing his usual stick. The students

were then asked, do you think he's funny? Do you think he's conservative? Do you

think he's Republican? Do you think he dislikes liberalism? It turns out all the

students were laughing, but for different reasons. The conservatives did not

understand that Colbert is not actually one of them. The lead author of the

story joins us shortly. First, Colbert reports, you decide. But guys like us, we

don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of

statistics that reflect what people are thinking in reality. And reality has a

well-known liberal bias. Tonight, it's Obama's first day and the economy is

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