Our Creatively Speaking series of interviews continues this week with J. Michael Matkin, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Gnostic Gospels, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Early Christianity, just published last month. I found it very well written and full of information I never knew before.Tomorrow, we’ll be giving away a free copy of J. Michael’s latest book, so be sure to tune in for the giveaway contest. Meanwhile, below, check out the interview about the book, as well as J. Michael’s advice for pitching your own Idiot’s Guide book. (Come on, admit it: you know you’ve got an idea for one, too!)

DI: In your book you state: “Christianity has been growing by leaps and bounds in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By 2050, if present trends continue, only one out of five Christians will be wealthy, white suburbanites. .. The last time Christianity looked like this was during those formative three centuries we will examine together in this book…” To what do you attribute these new believers, these new followers of Christianity?

JMM: A friend of mine once commented to me that Christians had made a pretty shrewd marketing move by making a crucified man their symbol. That was his tongue-in-cheek way of pointing out that Christianity has a special attraction to those who are suffering, to the marginalized, to the oppressed. On the off chance that someone hadn’t noticed, that tends to be a rather large chunk of the world’s population these days. The Jesus story resonates with many in postcolonial Asia, Africa and Latin America in ways that it has ceased to for the majority of Europe and Canada, and increasingly so for the United States.

Lamin Sanneh, a scholar at Yale, has pointed out that one genius of Christianity is that it translates into different cultures well. We’ve seen a lot of that happening as Christianity has been spreading so rapidly.

Around the world, Christians are creating indigenous (as in, local) theologies. They’re telling the Jesus story in new ways, in ways that speak to their own circumstances, rather than just accepting Western forms of worship and theology. It’s this ability to leapfrog from one cultural setting to another that makes Christianity such a nimble faith.

DI: In researching the book, were there one or two facts you stumbled upon that were particularly interesting or surprising, even to you?

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You might recall my post on June Casagrande’s first book, Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies. Well, she’s back with a new book, Mortal Syntax 101 (Language Choices that Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs Even if You’re Right) and on Friday we’ll be giving away 3 copies of it! But first, check out my interview with June below and discover the one grammar rule she’s itching to change, and a whole lot more.

DI: We know whose side of the language snob war you’re on, but still, there must be a couple offenses that really get your grammar goat. Lay ‘em on us.

JC: I hate confessing this stuff. But you got me: I cringe when I hear “between you and I,” mostly because people instinctively know better but are overcompensating for their grammar insecurities. We all know to say “between us” instead of “between we,” but with these “and I” constructions, suddenly we start hearing a mom voice in our heads and we panic. Then, despite our instinctive understanding that an object form like “me” is called for after a preposition, we goof up and say “between you and I.”

I also get a taste of bile from “there’s” used before a plural. Technically, you can get away with this. The “Oxford English Grammar,” for example, sanctions it. But I was taught to use “there are” before a plural, so it’s hard to stomach “There’s some people I want you to meet.”

DI: How much has the success of Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves changed the language landscape? Or has it always been cool to kibitz about grammar?

JC: Lynne Truss did a good thing: She gave voice to all the people who were frustrated with a world full of misplaced apostrophes. It’s a valid frustration. The problem is that, given the slightest bit of encouragement, these types can go too far. Way too far. So criticizing something like “carrot’s” on a sign becomes a slippery slope into a valley of bullying and misinformation: a place where people run around making others feel dumb for ending sentences with prepositions, for using the word “nauseous” to mean “queasy” and for starting sentences with the word “hopefully” — all of which are completely grammatical and acceptable. A pathetic brand of power-drunkenness if ever there was one.

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Here at the _floss, we love to blog about the Nobel Prize. From Mangesh’s 7 Geniuses and 1 Entire Science That Never Won the Nobel, to Jason’s 15 Award-Winning Facts About The Nobel Prize and many others.

The tradition continues today with a very special guest, David Pratt, who’s recently put out a book called The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates, a stunning collection of witty and wise quotes, most of which have never been anthologized previously.

Check out my interview with him below and be sure to tune back in tomorrow for you chance to win a FREE copy of this awesome collection.

DI: How long have you been collecting quotations?

DP: I’ve been collecting quotes almost as long as I remember. Other kids collected stamps—I collected quotations.

DI: When did you decide they should be published in a book and what was the publishing process like for you?

DP: I started collecting quotations by Nobel Prize Winners after reading Winston Churchill’s saying “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” I submitted the manuscript to some 50 publishers in three countries without success, but eventually found an agent who had faith in the project, and after two years of submissions, she found a publisher.

DI: Of all the Nobel winners, who do you think was the most deserving?

DP: The most deserving was one who never got the Nobel—Mahatma Gandhi. Of those who did receive it, one of the most deserving was certainly Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the democracy movement in Burma, who has maintained her Buddhist belief in non-violence, despite being under house arrest for most of the past 20 years, unable to see her sons while they were growing up or her British husband when he was dying of cancer.

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Creatively Speaking continues today with Hillary Carlip. Longtime readers of this blog might recall my review of her hilarious memoir, Queen of the Oddballs. Now she’s got another book out called À la Cart, a collection of curious, but very real shopping lists she’s found over the last decades. Check out my interview with her below, as well as the very cool trailer she’s put together for the book.

And be sure to tune in tomorrow to enter our Famous Historical Figure Shopping List Contest to win a FREE copy of À la Cart. Hillary will be helping us pick the finalists!

DI: Amy Sedaris says she wishes she came up with the idea for this book first. I’d have to agree with her. So tell us: How did you come up with the idea?

HC: I’ve been collecting found grocery shopping lists for years – decades, really. I’ve always been fascinated by how much you can tell about a person from their abandoned list. To me, shopping lists are the new memoir.

DI: Was there ever the temptation to fictionalize some of the lists to make them even funnier?

HC: Totally no need to. There are some that I don’t think I could ever have come up with: “Mouse Traps. Cheese. Mouse.” (Yeah, for real!) or “Whole Milk. Heavy Cream. Ice Cream. String Cheese. Gas-Ex (!!!)” (Complete with the three exclamation points!). To me, the humor comes in the quirkiness of these real people showing their humanity.

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We’re proud to introduce you to the Superbowl of Smarts today via Ash Minnick and Kimberly Gibbs. They’ve been working on a documentary film about a fascinating high school robotics competition called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). After you check out my interview with them, be sure to head over to the FIRST Web site for information on how you can volunteer and help these amazing kids. Or check out the doc Web site here

Browse through past Creatively Speaking posts here >>

You’ll love today’s Creatively Speaking interview with reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian. I mean it. Even if you don’t yet know what reddit is… the kid is pure genius. And, apparently, a musician (and natural wit), as well.

Reddit founders: Chris Slowe, Alexis Ohanian, the alien, Steve Huffman

DI: I guess i should lead with the absolute most important question–the one on every reader’s mind: what’s the deal with the little reddit cartoon character? Is there a story behind him/her/it? A name? A history worth sharing?

AO: I was bored in marketing class one day and decided our yet undesigned website needed a mascot — one from the future. That way, we knew the startup would succeed. How else would it have been able to travel through time?

Otherwise, there’s not much of a history to it (yes, “it” this alien has no need for gender. The sex life of the future isn’t very alluring. Be warned.) My first version looked like something from Soviet propaganda, but the third version is basically what you see today. I still can’t believe Steve let me talk him into that…

Oh, and there is a name, but I never tell on the first interview.

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Creatively Speaking continues today with Tom Snyder, creator of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Dr. Katz.

I’ve also selected two excerpts from episodes that make me laugh every time I see ‘em (recently got a hold of the complete Dr. Katz on DVD, including commentary by Tom and Jonathan Katz, as well as some episodes that weren’t originally aired).

First one to correctly tell us what movie Ben Katz is quoting somewhere hidden in the first clip gets serious _floss braggin rights. Another interesting bit of Katz trivia: the song the Dr. sings in the first clip was written by our interviewee today, Tom Snyder.

DI: How did you first come up with the idea for Dr. Katz?

TS: I had an educational software company at the time and I’d met a woman, a bartender, at the bar where I liked to write. She drew on napkins all the time and eventually I asked her if she’d like a job drawing illustrations for the educational software games. She worked for me for a year and we started messing around on weekends with me recording my voice and her drawing silly illustrations. So I did a little thing where I played a shrink who was talking to his son and did both of the voices by pitching my voice electronically. It was about a minute long, animated. We sent it out to a friend of mine who worked in Los Angeles. A week later he called and said, ‘Come on out and we’ll pitch it to Comedy Central,’ which we did. They said, ‘It’s fantastic, but what you need Tom is talent.’ Of
course, I thought they meant I wasn’t talented, which was hurtful. But what they really meant was I needed to hire someone like a professional voice comedian to play some of the parts. So I found out that my favorite stand-up comedian, Jonathan Katz, lived in my neighborhood in Boston. So I went over to his house and played this little one minute thing and asked him if he’d like to be the doctor and he said, ‘Definitely, yes.’ So we started making little bits and pieces and Comedy Central picked them up. At first they were little bumpers that would go between advertisements. But then they moved us up to the half-hour format and pretty soon we had an Emmy.

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Most people know Monty Hall from his brilliant game show, Let’s Make a Deal. Others know him because of the famous math puzzle/paradox known as The Monty Hall Problem (definitely worth a click over and reading about if you’re a math geek). But you might also know Monty as the emcee of shows like Beat the Clock and Split Second. Trivia buffs might know him as one of only two game show hosts with stars on both Hollywood and Canada’s respective Walks of Fame. (Can you name the other?) Or you may know Monty as the father of Broadway star/actress Joanna Gleason, who won a Tony for Into the Woods (I also loved her in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors). You may also know Monty from his guest appearance on shows such as Love Boat, The Odd Couple, The Wonder Years, Hollywood Squares, That 70s Show, or Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

However you know Monty Hall, I’m sure you never had the experience of getting this up close and personal with him. So click on through for my in-depth interview with him about his life and Let’s Make a Deal, as well as some more fun Let’s Make a Deal clips.

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Laraine Newman may be best known for her funtabulous roles on Saturday Night Live (Connie Conehead, the Valley Girl, etc.), but she’s been plenty busy in recent years doing pantloads of voiceovers for every animated feature under the cartoon sun, as well as working on a memoir and writing for the exciting new food zine, One for the Table.

I’ve been contributing some personal essays to One for the Table, and was introduced to Laraine by the zine’s founding editor, author and screenwriter Amy Ephron.

So click on through to find out all about the origins of the Coneheads, who Laraine’s favorite cartoon character was when she was growing up, what her writing process is like, as well as some links to her own essays on One for the Table.

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It’s Zach Kanin week here at mental_floss, and I’m so excited about it, I’m going to lock the Caps and type that all over again: IT’S ZACH KANIN WEEK HERE AT MENTAL_FLOSS!

Zach’s responsible for many of the hilarious cartoons over at The New Yorker and has a funtabulous new book out called The Short Book: Tall Stories, Freakish Facts, & the Long & Short of Being Small in a Great Big World.

If you’re short, if you’re friends with someone short, married to someone short, in love with someone short, envious of someone short, sympathetic to someone short, or just plain short on time, you really want to pick up a copy of this little gem, right over here. Tomorrow, Zach will be sending us our own cartoon for the caption contest, which he’ll personally judge. And then Thursday, well, you don’t even wanna know what’s coming Thursday…

Look, I’m so excited about it, I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a little background on the little man: in addition to working for The New Yorker, at 5’ 3”, Zach was the shortest president ever of The Harvard Lampoon.

And now, the interview! Click on through to find out how Zach came up with the idea for his book and other fun things like why Romans used to starve children and constrict their growth. And for more great Kanin cartoons, check out this page at the Cartoon Bank.

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