show.t that's our join us tomorrow at 11:00. here it is your moment of zen. ♪ >> what was the real wrecking ball 2013? our n >> tonight a new breakthru in medicine, a pill that doesn't give you a boner. then america is enveloped in record cold, luckily americans are enveloped in record fat. and my guest author ishmael beah was a child soldier, still better adjusted than a child actor. happy birthday to north korea's kim jung-un, please accept our gift of dennis rodman. no returns. this is "the colbert report."

captioning sponsored by comedy central >> stephen, stephen, stephen, stephen, stephen! stephen, stephen, stephen! stephen, stephen, stephen! >> stephen: thank you, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the report, good to have you with us. (cheers and applause) folks, i tell you, with a welcome like that, was that not a welcome? thank you. folks, with that kind of welcome it is almost as if you knows what's coming. folks, huge news tonight. the president of the united states of new jersey chris

christie, is in hot water. okay, hold on, i just pictured him in a hot tub. shake it off. new e-mails link top aides in the christie administration to a shutdown on the george washington bridge back in september. it was traffic on a biblical scale with new jersey highways backed up for days which is slightly longer than normal. (laughter) now it turns out, turns out, folks, that the lane closures were meant to make life hell as payback to the mayor of new jersey for not endorsing christie for re-election. no word yet on what the rest of new jersey is payback for. (laughter) nation, i, i will have full team coverage on this tomorrow by which i mean just me, of course. and rest assured, i'm going to go extremely easy on this

man. because i am a commuter and do not wish to get on his bad side. not to imply that he has a bad side. all your sides are wonderful! now nation, it's important, i hope you know this, it is important to talk to your kids about the dangers of drugs. but that can be nerve-racking, so before due do pop some xanax, it helps. this is cheating death with dr. stephen t colbert, dfa. (cheers and applause) as always, folks, team death is brought to you by prescott pharmaceuticals, prescott, look for us in your your spam folder. tonight on cheating death, first up, medical miniatur miniaturization. for years now scientists have theorized the future of medicine lies in nanotechnology. using microscopic robots to fight illnesses and disease,

recently researchers made a major miniaturization breakthrough in their ability to control these, the first cyborg sperm remote controls using magnets. scientists were able to accomplish this by getting individual sperm to enter tiny magnetized nanotubes. now the obvious downside of magnetized sferm is the danger of watching perform and accidentally erasing your-- but there are some benefits, for example, these little cybersperm could be used to help fertilize an egg or deliver drugs to very specific parts of the body. for instance, it could deliver anxiety medication right to your brain which you will need after learning that there is sperm in your brain. (laughter)

and if you are's uncomfortable with a stranger's robo sperm pushing drugs around your bloodstream, rest assured it isn't some random person's sperm, it's random bull sperm. (laughter) yeah. so ladies, the good news is there's help for your infertility. the bad news you're having a minitaur. that's right. that's right. we're going to build you a labyrinth. (laughter) well i'm not going to let this cyberbaby batter craze pass me by. which is why i'm drive grabbing the bull sperm by the horns and teaming up with prescott pharmaceutical to launch an upgrade to my best selling line of baby batter, formula 401 by introducing formula 401 oh one oh one oh oh one. it is radio controlled sperm that you know is cutting

edge technology because each batch of cyberseed was produced in the corner of a local radio shack. (laughter) believe me, they're happy just to have anyone in there nowadays. side effects of formula 401 oh one oh one oh oh one include mathlete's foot. involuntary jowl movements and gland of the lost. next up, health technology. we all know-- thank you, skelly. we all know obamacare is a disaster. just lack at any newspaper headline from when the web site wasn't working. luckily, now there's a free market solution to seeing a doctor without the crippling burden of having insurance. jim? >> welcome to dr. on demand. the doctor on demand applets you have an immediate face-to-face consultation with a real board-certified licensed physician who can diagnose you and prescribe medication.

>> this doctor is one of about 1,000 doctors nationwide treating patients via app. >> this is a major breakthrough. medical expertise with the convenience of a smart phone. why waste time getting an exam when you can just shoot your doctor an emoji of your shattered femur. little sunglasses, isn't that cool? (laughter) with dr. on demand you facetime with a doctor from your computer, smart phone or tablet which is great news for anyone with an iphone, an android or a public library where they can press their junk up against a web cam. (laughter) folks, this app is going to revolutionize medicine. it's designed to mod other than-- modernize the health-care system by using mobile technology to make a simple doctor's visit stress-free for patients and doctors alike. yes, it's less stressful for everyone. do you really think your doctor enjoys cupping your balls? no. now can watch you do it

yourself. and hey, if you get really good at it, i know a site that will pay you $40 to do it on camera. (laughter) and once you connect with a doctor you can even upload photos for them to examine. in fact, the only thing you can't do is send a stool sample. learned that one the hard way. ruined a perfectly good head phone jack. clearly, clearly app-based health care is the future of modern medicine. and prescott will not be outfutured. that's why they are proud to introduce a brand-new app, it's called health roulette. for just $20 you can get a 30 second face-to-face consultation with a certified medically aware human and member of the health roulette community. will it be a doctor? maybe. that's why it's called health roulette-- roulette. simply press consult and you

have logged in to your first a pointment. okay, hello there. i have got a little rash on my hand, does that look red and swollen to you? >> i don't know. does this look red an swollen? (laughter) >> stephen: okay, okay. yeah, yeah, you might want to put some ointment-- and you already have. okay. side effects-- (applause) >> side effects have help health roulette include a temp-and-teeth, carney toob and abra cad daver. that is it for sheeting death. brought to you by prescott pharmaceuticals family-owned for three generations because we can't lift the curse. until next time i will see n

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody, thanks so. folks, you know if you've been watching the news you know that america is still on the grips of the polar

vortex. jack frost isn't just nipping at our nose, he's snapping at our genitals like a kit kat. give me a break. but don't take my word that it's cold out there. take the tvs. >> and how cold is it? even the polar bear, that is right, has to spend the night inside. >> how cold is it, check it out. so cold in michigan the detroit river has frozen. >> how cold is it? it's so cold in louisville, kentucky, that a prisoner who escaped from a minimum security lockup on sunday turned himself back in on monday night when it was 20 below zero. >> just how cold is it. >> how cold is it out there. >> how cold is it, john scott. we'll tell you, across the country coming up. stay with us. >> stephen: how cold is it, it is so cold you fill in the blank. >> stephen: okay be. >> okay, get creative but do not use a witches anatomy, as some people already are. >> stephen: hey, no props, you get t keep it clean,

keep it clean, here we go. @fox news t is colder than a warlock's taint, okay. and send. there you go. okay. but cable news knows that americans can't comprehend that it's cold outside from abstract concepts like temperatures. that's why they don't just tell, they show. using the latest meteorological technology ripped straight from youtube, the doppler cup of water 9,000. >> it's so cold if you take boiling water and throw it into the sky t turns into snow just like this. >> when you get this boiling hot water and throw it up in the air-- you can see a lot of it just turns right into snow. >> three, two, one. >> and there you have it,. >> this is the post dramatic

science experiment in news. (applause) since they brought rich human back to life with a bolt of lightning. (laughter) okay, okay, let me get this concept. water turns into ice but i just don't really understand what it feels like outside. anybody else? >> you know i love my cold weather experiments. i brought a piece of wood with a nail in it. and now my hit enis stuck. and then-- i brought a banana, a frozen banana, i walked outside. just to show, see-- you can actually hammer a nail with the banana. >> stephen: oh, it's cold, it's cold outside. now i understand. by the way, she's hammering the banana, okay. by the way, if you are's going to hammer the banana

make sure you're alone because my college roommate walked in on me once and it was very embarrassing. folks, like fridaying an egg on the sidewalk in summer, hammering with a banana is but one of the many food-based techniques that reporters have at the ready to demonstrate weather conditions to those of us who have never been out of doors. (laughter) now not many people know this but back when i anchored the channel 7 news at noon at wpps paterson springs north carolina i was also the second alternate weekend go understudy and i still have my meteor logical demonstration fruit kit, okay so if there are nichold weather reporters out there looking to learn from a master, pay attention. here is how it works. if you want to show the audience that it is brisk, but still above freezing, use a naval orange to

assemble a swing set. alternatively if you need to show that it's in the 50s with a chance of rain, change a car tire with a bartlett pear, okay. but if it's over 60 degrees and cloudy there is no way to say that except by beating a raccoon to death with a pineapple. all right? like that. dow like that? a little rough stuff. little rough stuff. any temperature higher than that, fruit won't work. you're going to want to use deli meats, all right. and audience can only understand that it's 95 degrees if you buff out a scratched quarter panel with a honey baked ham. we'll be right back. (cheers and applause)

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody, my guest tonight is a former soldier whose new novel is radiance of tomorrow. the kir sum friends of tomorrow divided by two times pi of tomorrow. please welcome ishmael beah. >> thank you for coming on. all right, all right, may i call you ishmael. >> yes. >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much. now you from age 13 to 16 were a child soldier, correct? >> yes, i was. >> okay, we're up against

letterman and conan so, any funny stories. >> there are plenty of funny stores. >> really? >> people may not really understand. >> is there any way to keep this light? >> there could be some ways. >> okay. >> could be some ways. >> how does one become a child soldier at age 13? >> well, in my country you had a civil war that started when i was 11. >> okay. >> sierra leone. >> i didn't know it was a country. >> most people don't. >> it sounded like a station wagon. >> we became really, really famous because of the war that we had right after that. we did not know that they were there. >> what does it mean to be a child soldier. is there an organized child militia or is it more like guerrilla group. >> no, what happens is that when there is a war in the country, at some point the government army even, the rebel group start recruiting children. in various ways, sometimes it can be by foot, sometimes it would kill their families and then they would take

them into the group and sometimes young people trying to stay alive because if it comes to it, if they are not part of any group you become the prey for anybody. so in my case i lost my immediate family and was run approximating from the war, everything i knew as a child had been completely destroyed. and then i went to a military base to look for safety along with a group of young people and this is where we were trained in the middle of war. >> it is not like regular soldiers where you train for years and sometimes never go to battle. you are trained while you are hearing the gunshots. >> so they give you a gun and say go out and train. >> you just have to shoot and then you learn on the job. >> do you have children yourself? >> not the question. >> okay. when you do, you are going to have the trump card of all trump cards. they're going to say dad, i didn't get an x box one this christmas, they will say you know what i got for christmas when i was your age, an ak-47. >> you worry about this, called a long way gone. >> yes. >> long way gone. you've got a new book called

the radiance of tomorrow. that is a very hopeful title for someone who was a child soldier and have seen the horrors of war. are you a hopeful person, like are you hopeful for your home country of sierra leone. >> i am very hopeful. i'm hopeful for a lot of things. i'm here so that in itself is hope. >> how did you get here? how does one stop being a child soldier. >> well, it depends on where you are. in my case i was removed from the fighting by union i self and actually didn't want to leave because it's all i come to know. i didn't know anything else was possible. and at there point in my country the war was still going on. so they removed me. and my commander had to give me up and i went and i went, and eventually i came to the united states and new york. >> what was your first impression when you left. when you got on the plane, what was your first impression. >> hi never been on a plane before. it was very cold. i turn on the air and i didn't turn on the air, the air was coming out. and nobody told us, nobody

gave us any indication whatsoever. so i was there with another young fellow and we survived this or are we going to die on this. it was absolutely cold. on the plane, you know. >> very cold. >> were you in coach? >> we were in coach. >> this is to the-- which was worse. >> huh? >> the civil war, a civil war or coach, which one. >> i would tell you, actually a lot of things were very, very-- for example, you know, when we got to new york it was winter of '96, i'm from a place are it gunt get colder than 60 degrees, i arrive here. >> wow. >> what what fruit do they use to demonstrate how cold it is? >> because we don't have to do, our weather, our weather, i don't think we even have to-- tomorrow will be nice and the next day and the day after that, you know. >> this is a novel about a

man or two friends who go back to sierra leone to the life where they used to live, to see the people they used to know during the civil war. >> it really talks about why the people go back after war, why do they go back to their own country. because i began to observe after my first book that most people were very interested when the place had collapsed. but no one talks about it when the gunfires. and people go back. and this is actually the most difficult. how do you go back and start living again. what traditions dow hold on to. how do you move towards the future when the past is pulling at you. so i have a few characters. i have the elder, three older people and then there are two young men, one of them is trying to keep the family together, and then of course all the challenges that come with that. so the radiance of tomorrow, really what i'm trying to explain is oftentimes people think about peace or happiness in one's life. that's not true. every day a human life you have to face some

challenges. some challenges are bigger than others that done mean are you not leap. in the back of all that people find time to love each other to have funny moments in their lives, great family, and to move on with their life. and this is possible. so that's really what i am trying to get at in this. and also using language with my own culture and my own tradition. because i come from the old traer decisions. as well. as a boy i would sit around the fire and the older people would tell a story. and it's quite beautiful. so i tried to show some of that as well. >> what dow miss most about sierra leone. >> pretty much everything. the food is absolutely wonderful. if i was there i wouldn't be cold right now. >> well, ishmael beah, thank you so much for joining me. >> thank you. >> stephen: the book is the radiance of tomorrow. ishmael beah, we'll be right back.

>> that's it for the report, everybody, good night. captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org e keep putting more on, and it's not showing up at all. well, then i guess cocaine is weightless, all right. i'm gonna file that up here, actually. what-- what are you doing? cleaning my hands off. what are you? a cat? - use a towel. - my mouth's right here.