Can 15 simple questions truly reveal a person’s soul?
Stephen Colbert has long maintained that they can. On The Late Show, his recurring “Colbert Questionert” segment has asked guests to answer a deceptively simple list of prompts—some mundane, some existential, all revealing. Make it through the full list, Colbert likes to say, and you are “fully known.”
Tonight, with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert nearing its final sign-off, Colbert is set to take the Questionert himself, with unannounced special guests joining him for the segment’s final installment.
But one fan has already made sure the Questionert will live on after Colbert leaves the airwaves.
Late Show fan Erik George has created “The Coal Bare Questionnaire,” a searchable archive of every public figure who has taken Colbert’s personality quiz. The site catalogs the answers both by celebrity and by question, making it easy to compare, say, who picked what sandwich, what song they’d listen to for the rest of their life, or what they think happens when we die.
George, who works in data and analytics, also built a matching engine that lets users take the Questionert themselves and find out which celebrity’s answers most closely resemble their own. George’s responses, for instance, aligned with Owen Wilson’s—which he says “probably would have been in the top three” if he had been able to choose his own doppelganger.
More than 80 public figures have taken the Questionert on The Late Show, from Barack Obama to Bruce Springsteen. For George, the appeal is how easily the segment slips from the absurd to the sincere.
“People really are thoughtful about it, or at least many people are,” George says. “They really take those questions seriously, even though some seem kind of silly on the surface.”
The Coal Bare Questionnaire—a bit of Colbert-adjacent wordplay—has a sense of humor about its own matching system. Users who don’t closely align with any known Questionert-taker may be deemed a “Glowing Ember,” while those who provide especially dark or nihilistic answers risk being rewarded with a lump of coal.
George says he would like to keep expanding the project even after The Late Show ends, adding more public figures to the database if he can.
“What I’d like to do in the future is continue to grow the public figures who’ve taken the questionnaire,” he says.
Those plans are still taking shape. But as Colbert prepares to become fully known himself, George sees no reason the Questionert has to end with him.
“As the show is winding down, it just popped into my head,” he says. “This thing really needs to live on.”
To view George’s archive and/or become fully known yourself, visit the The Coal Bare Questionnaire at coalbarequestionnaire.com.
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