Prop Comedy Science

The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research's David Page stood up for the Y chromosome last month. He and his colleagues published a paper in Nature saying the chromosome would be stable for millions of years, despite early decay, and despite other researchers' claims that the decay was a sign that the chromosome would eventually disappear. Page made an appearance on the Colbert Report Monday night to explain his work. "Nothing much has happened to the Y chromosome in the last 25 million years," Page said, using props to illustrate his point. "So this in turn tells us that all this shrinkage of the Y chromosome mostly played out a couple of hundred million years ago. … So [men] are going to be OK."