THE GEEKIFICATION OF TV

摘要

To look at his academic resume, you wouldn't think David X. Cohen was funny. The son of two biologists, Cohen left his hometown of Englewood, New Jersey, in 1984 to major in physics at Harvard University. He followed up with a master's degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley and was on track to earning his doctorate. Then came Beavis and Butt-Head. Cohen had been an amateur comedy writer since Harvard, and in 1992, one of his scripts landed him a job writing for the now-classic MTV animated series. That was the end of grad school. The next year, he was hired to write for The Simpsons, and by 1999 he had co-created his own show, the Emmy Award-winning science-fiction comedy Futurama, which begins airing new episodes this fall. Cohen spoke with us about the growing popularity of science in popular culture, the similarities between writing and research, and why real science and entertainment don't mix.