a very big donation to a cause close to their hearts this morning. and w-i-n-n-e-r-s? a thrilling finish at the national spelling bee, and the event ends in a rare tie, the first in more than 50 years. the co-champs are celebrating with us today, friday, may 30th, 2014. life is a highway from nbc news, this is today, with matt lauer and savannah guthrie, live from studio 1-a in rockefeller plaza. and good morning, everyone. welcome to today on a friday morning. can we take that shot one more time? that is a concert crowd. wow. so many. eat your heart out, austin mahone. that was a big crowd earlier this week, but huge today. and there is good reason. this is the most awarded country group in the past decade. they have 14 number one hits, 22 1/2 million albums sold. they have a new album that s getting critical acclaim and they re going to give us a great concert in a few moments. that crowd, it s all ages. they, everybody loves rascal flatts. good to h
stay, if you will, and we ll continue this on line captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org captioning sponsored by comedy central ( theme song playing ) stephen colbert presents, the c-olbert book club, tonight s selection. everything, the catcher in the rye, by j.d. salinger. stephen! stephen! stephen: welcome to everybody. thank you for joining us, in the studio and all around the world. you are joining us for an historic evening. this is the second edition of the c-olbert book club. tonight, we are stepping away from the conflict in syria, because apparently that was the united states. a lot of details still to be worked out and we will get into those tomorrow, but the upshot is that america will not attack syria for gassing its citizens if they give up their chemicals weapons. it is like if you decapitate add co-worker, so they are taking away your ax. but you get to keep your job and your hatchett. be
but now i do have this book club, which is why i have been chugging chardonnay since noon. .. and pitching about my sister-in-law sharon and the way she feeds my kids when they are over at her place. don t tell me they had dinner if all you gave them but a gogurt and a cliff bar, you bitch! [ applause ] speaking of drinking heavily, f. scott fitzgerald. that is the author we talked about last time. tonight, we will be talking about the biggest initials in 20th century literature, j.d. salinger. a man so reclusive his first two names are still a secret. was it joe don? juan diego? joe da plumber? unfortunately salinger cannot be with us tonight, either mtv booked him to appear on the vma s, or [ cheers and applause ] stephen: or he died in 2010. only time will tell. but we have got a fantastic show later on we will be talking about salinger s literary influence with tobias wolff, author of this boy s life and we will be discussing the new documentary about sali
captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org captioning sponsored by comedy central ( theme song playing ) stephen colbert presents, the c-olbert book club, tonight s selection. everything, the catcher in the rye, by j.d. salinger. stephen! stephen! stephen: welcome to everybody. thank you for joining us, in the studio and all around the world. you are joining us for an historic evening. this is the second edition of the c-olbert book club. tonight, we are stepping away from the conflict in syria, because apparently that was the united states. a lot of details still to be worked out and we will get into those tomorrow, but the upshot is that america will not attack syria for gassing its citizens if they give up their chemicals weapons. it is like if you decapitate add co-worker, so they are taking away your ax. but you get to keep your job and your hatchett. be good now! be good! okay. anyway, forget that stuff. it
one more solid month of summer and that s it. but that s okay because why? because simon cowell is going to be a daddy. daddio. good news and bad news. he has i guess is the way you say it. both new york papers. the interesting thing isn t so much that he was with a girl and she s pregnant. it s that the girl happens to be one of one of his friend s wives. and apparently they re separated and have been separated for a while. did you hear that or no? i hear some people are saying they have been separated for a while. other people saying no, they just recently separated when the husband found out. that s andrew silverman, her real estate developer husband. so i don t know which is true, hoda. i just work here. of course you do. but you know the news. what s weird is they all went on vacation together, which is always i have done that many times, hoda, and not come back pregnant with somebody else s baby. it is possible, even in today s world. sou