Late Night's Last Laugh

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episode: Late Night's Last Laugh
Release Date: July 31, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled Late Night's Last Laugh, The New Yorker's weekly culture podcast, Critics at Large, delves deep into the current state and future of late-night television, with a particular focus on Stephen Colbert's recent show cancellation. Hosts Vincent Cunningham, Naomi Frye, and Alex Schwartz explore the evolution of late-night shows, their cultural significance, and the challenges they face in today's fragmented media landscape.

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The Golden Era of Late Night Television

Vincent Cunningham reflects on his long-standing appreciation for late-night television, likening it to an American entertainment pillar similar to Saturday Night Live and Looney Tunes. He reminisces about the unified viewership during Johnny Carson's tenure:

"Johnny Carson, who was the host of the Tonight Show for 30 years, 1962 to 1992. Do you guys know what his audience high was? [08:16] It was 12 million people. That's a lot of people who were tuning in to watch what would go on with Johnny Carson."

This era represented a monoculture, a shared experience that began to fragment post-Carson, leading to the rise of diverse hosts like David Letterman and Jay Leno.

Alex Schwartz emphasizes the impact of Carson's departure:

"You'd have to be totally under a rock. [...] His manner suggested that TV could puncture the culture rather than prop it up."

This shift marked the beginning of a more fragmented late-night landscape, with hosts bringing distinct personalities and styles to the forefront.

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Transition to Political Satire

The podcast transitions to discussing the rise of political satire in late-night shows, highlighting Jon Stewart's influence on The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert's subsequent evolution.

Vincent Cunningham notes:

"Stephen Colbert was a critic not only of politics but of media, which is that he's responding to the rise of cable news."

Alex Schwartz adds:

"Colbert was a critic in a lot of ways and that was a very interesting form to take on in this otherwise totally comedic performance."

Stephen Colbert, through his character in The Colbert Report, introduced concepts like "truthiness", blending satire with insightful critique:

"Truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you."

This approach resonated during politically turbulent times, particularly during the Bush and Trump administrations, providing audiences with both humor and a means to process complex socio-political issues.

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Stephen Colbert's Evolution and Cancellation

The episode centers on Stephen Colbert's career trajectory from Strangers with Candy to hosting The Late Show. The hosts discuss his unique ability to blend satire with authentic emotional depth, setting him apart from traditional late-night hosts.

Vincent Cunningham highlights Colbert's depth:

"There are other clips of him, like trading lines of Shakespeare with Denzel Washington. [...] that kind of philosophical underpinning connects to the way he also then dealt with politics."

However, the recent cancellation of The Late Show amidst controversy has sparked debates about the future of late-night television. Colbert's on-air announcement of the cancellation, alongside allegations of a $16 million settlement paid to President Trump, raises questions about the motivations behind the decision:

"Paramount paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement [...] it smells to high heaven."

Alex Schwartz and Vincent Cunningham discuss the implications of this event, pondering whether it signifies the decline of late-night shows or represents an isolated incident influenced by political pressures.

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The Decline of Late Night and Future Implications

The hosts explore whether late-night television still holds cultural significance in an era of siloed media consumption. Alex Schwartz posits the emergence of a post-late night landscape:

"What is lost or gained with that? [...] These writers rooms and the technical aspects of the job are stocked. It's not just the guy in front, it's all the people coming up through that. And inevitably that's a big loss if those ways of learning and doing go away."

Naomi Frye adds that viewers are also losing a platform through which they engaged with news and politics:

"And it's also the viewers [...] who used to learn about the world and ways of interacting with entertainment and politics through late night shows."

The conversation touches on the challenges contemporary late-night hosts face, including maintaining relevance and navigating a highly polarized political environment. Alex Schwartz mentions:

"It's hard to have fun with the news as it is. And if you are having fun with it, something may very well be wrong."

The hosts express concern that the integrity and trust built between hosts and their audiences are eroding, complicating the role of late-night comedians as both entertainers and cultural commentators.

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Conclusion: The Uncertain Future of Late Night

As Late Night's Last Laugh wraps up, the hosts contemplate the potential end of an era for late-night television. With several main hosts' contracts nearing expiration and Colbert's recent cancellation, the future remains uncertain. They question whether late-night shows can adapt to the evolving media landscape or if they are inevitably headed towards obsolescence.

"It's hard to. [...] It's hard to excavate hypocrisies and the stuff underneath the surface. [...] there's no facade right now."

Despite the challenges, Critics at Large remains hopeful that the art form of late-night comedy can evolve and continue to serve as a critical platform for cultural and political discourse.

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Notable Quotes

• Alex Schwartz [08:16]: "Johnny Carson, who was the host of the Tonight Show for 30 years... their collective experience that has not been there since the 90s."

• Stephen Colbert Clip [26:26]:

  "Truthiness. Now, I'm sure some of the world, the word anistas over at Webster's are going to say, hey, that's not a word."

• Dua Lipa on Colbert [33:03]:

  "Does your faith and your comedy ever overlap?"

• Taylor Tomlinson on Late Night [31:29]:

  "We have a lot to discuss about what happened in LA this weekend and most of it is not funny. But late night shows aren't funny anymore anyway."

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Final Thoughts

Late Night's Last Laugh provides a comprehensive exploration of the rise and potential decline of late-night television, using Stephen Colbert's career as a focal point. The discussion highlights the cultural impact of late-night hosts, the trust they build with audiences, and the challenges they face in a rapidly changing media environment. As the industry stands at a crossroads, the podcast underscores the need for evolution to preserve the essence of what made late-night television a staple of American culture.

Transcript

[Vincent Cunningham]

This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Frye]

And I'm Nomi Frye. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hi, everyone.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hello.

[Nomi Frye]

How's everyone feeling?

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, we just gotta keep on keeping on.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There you go.

[Nomi Frye]

One foot in front of the other.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's what I tell myself on this Monday morning.

[Nomi Frye]

That's what I tell myself every day and every minute.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The midsummer sloth.

[Alex Schwartz]

I've been in the middle of one deadline, one rolling deadline for the last, I would say, six weeks. I could not tell you what day it is. It's a miracle. I know what month it is.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's the life.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's the life.

[Nomi Frye]

Well, Alex, you're talking about day in, day out. You know who also does. Has been doing for many years day in, day out? Mr. Stephen Colbert.

[Alex Schwartz]

Ah, yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

When you guys become aware of Stephen Colbert, what was your first encounter with the man?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think the sort of simultaneous moment during which he was on the Amy Sedaris vehicle Strangers with Candy. And also. Cause I learned that he did this at the same time. And I guess this makes sense because he kind of like sprung into my life.

[Nomi Frye]

This is the late 90s, right?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. He was also first a correspondent and then sort of a more and more prominent presence on the Daily show with Kilbourne and then with Jon Stewart.

[Nomi Frye]

Alex, what about you?

[Alex Schwartz]

For me, it was a little later than that, probably in that 2003, 2004 zone when the Internet and watching things on it were increasingly a part of life, especially for a high school student who was outraged about the war in Iraq and the general idiotic politics of the United States of America at the time. Suddenly there was this vehicle, the Daily show, that expressed that in this really funny and youthful way. And there was this one particular guy on it who just embodied, as a joke everything that we thought was going wrong. And that was Stephen Colbert. And it was huge, right?

[Nomi Frye]

Absolutely. So Stephen Colbert, currently the host of The Late Show, CBS's late night talk show, has been on our minds lately. Two weeks ago, he announced on air that Paramount, CBS's parent company, was canceling the Late Show. And this was only a few days after he called Paramount's settlement with the Trump administration, quote, a big fat bribe. Paramount is claiming that. That the cancellation is a financial decision. The show was apparently losing about $40 million a year, which I have to say, sounds like a lot but it does say something about the state of late night, the fact that, you know, the show is canceled, whether the decision really was economic or political or both. So today we're gonna be talking about the late night show as a genre and also about Stephen Colbert more particularly as a political comedian and a satirist. And we're gonna look back at what late night was doing for audiences before everyone's media consumption became so siloed. We're also going to look back to Colbert's work on the Daily show, the Colbert Report, and even my favorite Strangers with candy. Shout out Mr. Noblet. Late night is an old form that, yes, has been losing viewers, but it still endures. For now, Colbert himself will be fine. But is this cancellation a one off, or is this the first late night cancellation of many yet to come? So the question I have for us today is what does late night offer us now? That's today on Critics at Large, Late night's last laugh. So, you guys, this is not the first time we're talking on this show about media institutions in decline or in potential decline, at least to be kinder. We've talked about Saturday Night Live. You know, it's 50th anniversary, where we talked about Sesame street not long ago and the changes that it has undergone over the last several decades. And this cold bear news feels like it might be another instance of a similar story, though potentially, maybe with an even darker edge to it. I want to start off just by asking you guys, what's your relationship historically to late night television? Are you a fan? Like, is this something that is.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I feel that my relationship to late night television is very similar to my relationship to Saturday Night Live, which is that at a certain point in my life, I was very intensely interested in it. And I have retained a certain fondness and always kind of check in with, kind of retains a certain glamour for me, I think. I don't know, being the host of a late night television festival.

[Nomi Frye]

Like, it's a man in a suit. It's a man in a sharp suit behind a desk, behind a glossy desk. A famous person.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And I have always loved the mix of sort of old school put togetherness, a man in a suit, but then also the variety of it. Okay, there's a band over there.

[Nomi Frye]

Sure.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There are gonna be some sketches. There might be some man in the street. A celebrity's gonna come by this idea.

[Nomi Frye]

There might be an iguana that'll like, try to bite the host.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right. Or an insult dog named Triumph. All kinds of different Things are happening, there's a studio audience there. And it kind of is one of the building blocks to me of what I would call American entertainment.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, totally.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Like when, you know, it's like Looney Tunes and late night TV are kind of these pillars of what I think we mean in America when we talk about entertainment. So I actually have always taken it pretty seriously and I've always wondered what's up with these hosts and what's going on next. So I'm a fan. I'm a fan.

[Nomi Frye]

Alex, what about you? I think I recall you saying that it's not necessarily your genre.

[Alex Schwartz]

Late night television is for me, a vision of adulthood that I still have. Like, I can still step into myself as maybe a 6 year old or a 7 year old who kind of stumbles out of the bedroom and hears the laughs on the TV where your parents are watching. And you think that's what it will mean to be grown up. I too will watch television, first of all, when I want. Second of all, late at night, when I will be awake, there's a sophistication what's going on on the screen that's so true at the midnight hour. And I retain that particular vision of late night because as someone once I was able to stay up late. That's not really what I did with my late nights. I did not tune in. And yet I do identify it as this key part of the adult American media.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I think that's so true, Alex. Like you're linking of the late night genre to a vision of adulthood. There is something about the interaction on late night, when it's good, when it's interesting, that retains the slight frisson of like, sex, danger.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I know what you mean.

[Nomi Frye]

Something unexpected. Rather the wink.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That something's unspoken.

[Nomi Frye]

Something's unspoken. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. You know, something that as a child, as you said, Alex, you might sense, but not totally understand. But when you are on the other side, you know, you will feel a part of, you know, a member of like, again, separating the men from the boys or the girls from the women, you know? Do you think the genre is still doing for culture what it used to do for culture?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, I absolutely don't. Sorry. I just needed. I just wanted to get everybody's attention.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I was like, really?

[Alex Schwartz]

I was like, you know what? Yeah, I just felt like I wanted me for a second.

[Nomi Frye]

That was a curveball.

[Alex Schwartz]

I know. Such as the kind you might expect on late night every so often.

[Nomi Frye]

See, this is the adult unexpectedness.

[Alex Schwartz]

I was getting at any hour of the day from a podcast. And that's the point entirely. No, it's not doing the same thing. My God, you'd have to. To think it was. You'd have to be totally under a rock. Look, two words for you. Johnny Carson, followed by a colon and a single word, monoculture.

[Nomi Frye]

Ah, yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know Johnny Carson, who was the host of the tonight show for 30 years, 1962 to 1992. Do you guys know what his audience high was?

[Vincent Cunningham]

What was how many tens of millions?

[Alex Schwartz]

It was 12 million people. That's a lot of people who were tuning in to watch what would go on with Johnny Carson. That is a collective experience that has not been there since the 90s. Like, you know, I do think we have a declinist narrative about what our media culture is, and in many ways it's justified. But that Decline started in 1992 when Carson went off the air, and suddenly there was Letterman and there was Leno and there was a viewership that was fragmented. And then I think also, and this is like, I'm so curious what you guys think about this. Just a kind of style of humor. Like, you know, Carson is fascinating to me because you can't really tell the story of American entertainment and leave him out. He's so definitional, not just to the form of late night, but to comedy. And I was going down. Not exactly a rabbit hole, but I was looking at some old Carson clips. It's fascinating. Like the kind of straight man congeniality. I mean, straight man in the comedic sense, not the sexual sense, although that too, sure. But like the kind of, you know, like, I watched a great clip of him playing across from Robin Williams. The first time that Robin Williams was on the show.

[Nomi Frye]

Do you want to show us this clip?

[Alex Schwartz]

So this is 1981, and Robin Williams is on Mork and Mindy, and he's getting to be more and more well known. And like, he's. I mean, the phenomenon of this man cannot be replicated.

[Nomi Frye]

Still a Koch addict this period?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. And they talk about that on the show.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

So Robin Williams is coming out and he's kneeling to Johnny.

[Nomi Frye]

Believe. Believe that comedy can heal you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Praise the power.

[D]

Praise the Jesus.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And Sears had a sale. This furniture went cheap. Oh, my God.

[D]

You watch those guys on.

[Alex Schwartz]

So they're riffing, they're ranting, they're going. They're going back and forth. Robin Williams is making a joke about basically, you know, kind of paying homage to Johnny Carson and also treating him a little bit like A televangelist, like, he will be saved by him. And they go back and forth on this. What's interesting to me about this clip is that Carson is able to both, like play along when he needs to. He can do Persona, he can do voices, he can do that stuff. But he also is getting out of the way to let Robin Williams do his thing. And he is a showman in that he's showing other people, like he's providing the platform for other people. Which of course again is a sword that can cut both ways.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. But he himself is sort of a cipher. Right. Which is an interesting thing. And not necessarily the role of the late night host later on.

[Alex Schwartz]

Totally. I mean, after him, you get Letterman. And Letterman, of course, was the like, you know, little bit of a snarky, a little bit of an edge. The mentee of Carson, I mean, Vincent, were you watching like Letterman and Leno in that era?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I did watch. My earliest late night experiences were the so called late night wars when there was this overt competition between Letterman and Leno basically over the fact that both of them wanted to succeed Johnny. And Leno was chosen to do that. Letterman goes to cbs. There's a lot of sort of on air sniping not only at each other, but at the executives that sort of are their corporate overlords in both cases. And it's interesting to see like these different archetypes. Right. Johnny and Letterman were similar in that they kind of loved showbiz and also had a twinkle in the eye. That said, it's also bullshit. Right. Whereas Leno, the classic Leno thing is not really behind the desk. It's him up doing these like corny jokes, doing the monologue. But in all cases though, it was this kind of. To answer your earlier question, Naomi, like, what's different about it to me is today perhaps a base sincerity. People that are very grounded in the world and are concerned whether it's about politics or otherwise. These guys were more like there was a kind of friendly nihilism.

[Nomi Frye]

Totally.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's like, isn't it fun to be kind of nothing?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I was reading an article that our colleague Emily Nussbaum wrote on Letterman when He retired in 2015. And she was taking us back to a time before my memory, in the 80s. She was describing how fresh Letterman felt then. And she has this line that I thought was great where she says, his manner suggested that TV could puncture the culture rather than prop it up.

[Nomi Frye]

Absolutely.

[Alex Schwartz]

And of course the prop it up is what Carson did. And then you get this puncturing which to me is very much like a preface or presaging of all the media culture that follows.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. Although possibly in a different way. Right. I mean, what happens after the late night wars? Right. We have, Alex, the period you were talking about, Right. With the Daily show, the Colbert Report, the Bush era version of late night. And we should say that the Daily show and the Colbert Report after it are on cable rather than the network late night shows we've been talking about. I mean, it was suddenly overtly political in ways which we'd never experienced in American entertainment and American late night, I think. Right?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, yeah, I think that's right. If we talk about this moment in late night, the grandfather of it has to be Jon Stewart.

[Nomi Frye]

Yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And to continue this image of puncturing, I would say that the timeline starts at 9 11, which was a great puncturing of a kind of nihilistic surface of American entertainment writ large. Right. Suddenly everybody's thrust back into history. And if you remember that moment, everything was about how do you start again, how do we tell jokes again, how do we watch baseball again, how do we do things again that seem justified by the relative kind of pacific surface of our lives in a way that isn't disrespectful to like the absolute shredding of our worldview. And Craig Kilborn had preceded him. But when Stewart took over the Daily show and I think is motivated by the sudden sort of hyper reality of the moment, the wars are going on, Iraq, Afghanistan. Bush is sort of this obvious symbol of a certain kind of decline morally and geopolitically. And he engages with it day by day. And I think there is a large group of the culture that is takes real solace in that people talked about getting their news from the Daily show. And this is one of the classic purposes of comedy, I guess, having their confusion, their sort of disorientation within the world confirmed, but also kind of maybe salved by someone who is acknowledging the same realities. Stewart was funny because he was making the subtext, the text. Let's talk about the great fear of the moment. Whereas Johnny was kind of skating over the fear of the moment.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, definitely. It's a completely different beast.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, they're two different things. I mean, it's interesting to me that we are able to really kind of like seamlessly slide from Johnny Carson to Jon Stewart because they are working in two different modes in two different categories. And I think this is where the Colbert of it all maybe comes in, because In Colbert you have someone who starts in one mode, which is the explicitly satirical, who then crosses over afterwards into the much broader made for a wide audience late night category. I mean, while Jon Stewart came on the air and started doing the Daily show and it's not like that just suddenly became late night television, late night television very much came out.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It was still going on.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, absolutely. Letterman is still on the air. Conan, who is a key figure for adults. We can't forget Conan.

[Nomi Frye]

We can't forget Conan.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Certainly not my favorite.

[Nomi Frye]

How would you characterize him, Vincent? And the kind of matrix that we put out between Leno and Letterman and.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He'S Gen X, he's post everything is kind of. He's the David Foster Wallace of late night tv. So you were saying, like there is a genre distinction here.

[Alex Schwartz]

Totally.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which I think is totally right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think there's a genre distinction. You know, in late television there is. Of course, politics does enter into it because the hosts are commenting on the news of the day. It's not like they're completely oblivious. No, in the Johnny Carson mode it's neutral and in the Leno mode it's neutral. I think maybe the self conception for the late night host is as to use that old chestnut, an equal opportunity offender. Like okay, Democrats do something dumb, we're going after that. The Republicans do something dumb, we're going after that. And I think what was going on in the post 9, 11 years is that I don't know if the Youngs coming up today. I mean, we live in such a nihilistic dark time. So like you can imagine it. But the kind of sudden inundation of stupidity was. It was a tsunami of stupidity that suddenly came from what had not been assumed to be a society in decline. Let's just put it that way.

[Nomi Frye]

It was a surprise.

[Alex Schwartz]

We were on the beach and the stupid just boop. Came in like a wave. So when you could take advantage of that, like a Jon Stewart and make hay of it, then yeah, of course you could siphon off a piece of that audience that otherwise might have gone to a Letterman type guy. Suddenly that stuff, the Letterman stuff, which had been super edgy to the Gen xers in the 80s, whoa, that became very square. There is a reason why Jon Stewart was what I was watching and not the Letterman stuff. There is one other thing I wanted to say which I find really interesting. The Leno versus Letterman stuff, really? Before my cultural lived experience, Conan, not at all before my lived experience, that was huge. Conan, who's promised Leno's slot, the coveted 11:30 slot, is told that he's gonna get to inherit that slot. That Leno agrees in five years, Leno will retire for the Tonight show doesn't go so well.

[Nomi Frye]

What happens? For those of us who don't recall.

[Alex Schwartz]

The network NBC moves Leno to an earlier slot to open for Conan.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Bad news. Leno's bombing. No one's liking it. Conan's not doing well. No one's doing well. And the network reneges and says, okay, whoops, like we're actually going to put Leno back in. And basically, if you were watching or even just marginally aware, which is, let's be honest, the category I was in of what was going on at the time, it was, what is this? Les Mis. It was a storming the barricade situation.

[Nomi Frye]

Team Coco.

[Alex Schwartz]

A Team Coco. It was, you know, my people will not be denied. Give us bread, give us water, give us cocoa. How can you do this to us? How can you take this man who symbolizes us, you know, and guillotine him? We will not stand for it. And what I find so interesting about this is the identification with the late night host. Yeah, that this is our guy. He speaks to us and he speaks for us. He is not just an entertainer, he is our entertainer. And when you get rid of him, you get rid of us. And it's touching to me now to think of the digital world rising up in support of this old medium. But they did. And I think it has to do with a particular reality of late night, when it works well, which is that it is an art form and it is an art form of identification to some degree. So that host needs to be the avatar for a bunch of viewers. You feel like he's your guy, he's your guy, and you're going all the way. And that is not an accident. That is a performance skill that the best late night hosts have.

[Nomi Frye]

Stephen Colbert has been a fixture on the late night schedule for over two decades. In a minute, how his comedic stylings have evolved to meet the culture. This is critics at large from the New Yorker. Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it. Griffin wasn't going down. He was going to go for it. No matter what happened after.

[Nomi Frye]

Or Joy Williams, her father was silent. Slowly he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence, A place that indeed contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch, listen to news stories or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the writer's voice wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, you guys, so we've been talking about late night, and what I want us to do now is to turn more particularly to the figure of Stephen Colbert to discuss what's been going on with him right now. But before we attack the current landscape and his role in it, can someone maybe give us a brief overview of his career? And who is he? You know, kind of like greatest hits of Colbert.

[Alex Schwartz]

Who even is he? Who is he?

[Nomi Frye]

And how dare he?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, you guys are the Strangers with Candy watchers.

[Nomi Frye]

I can start from that start. So, okay, for those of you unfamiliar and God, you really, really need to familiarize yourself if you're not Comedy Central show From the late 90s, strangers with candy, where Amy Sedaris plays Jerry Blank, a 46 year old former kind of 70s runaway junkie who has gone straight and is returning to high school to ninth grade. I'm just thinking about it makes me laugh because she dropped out of high school when she became a teenage prostitute runaway in 1975. And there are two teachers, Mr. Noblett, who is played by Stephen Colbert, and Mr. Jalinek, who's played by Paul Danilo, who were also involved in making the show and writing the show. And the whole thing hinges on the fact that the show is like an after school special gone wrong. And the role of Colbert is to be this teacher who's supposed to teach Gerri all of these lessons, but is completely hateful and bitter and like despises her.

[D]

This has been a real roller coaster of a year and I've been pretty tough on you at times. I'm sure you think that I hate you, but I want you to know that I hate you.

[Nomi Frye]

I hate you too, Mr. Knoplin.

[D]

I guess we shouldn't hug.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, probably not. Okay, completely. Actually a very like, weird, extreme, nihilistic show. Extremely funny. So that was the first time I encountered Stephen Colbert so completely. Not in the mold in any way of a kind of like smooth late night host, but in fact as a kind of spiky, pretty alternative comedian.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And I think that's really important what you just said.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, okay. Because I'm like, oh, much of what.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You say is important, but I just like he started out even he went to Northwestern thinking he was gonna be a dramatic actor and got caught up, as people do when they go to Chicago, in the world of improv and sketch comedy.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So he was in that world of improv and sketch of the Second City, the annoyance, et cetera. And if you look at the current crop of late night hosts, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon sketch performers, if the previous era's kind of archetypes were standups, which we think of as people who tour the entire country sort of becoming weather vanes for public opinion and sort of reflecting that. Or the radio host who is kind of a genial cipher. Even Conan was a sketch sort of TV writer with the sort of.

[Nomi Frye]

Famously wrote the monorail episode of the Simpsons, one of the best episodes ever.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But if you think of the sketch performer as an archetype, all of a sudden it's not somebody who you'd find in Las Vegas, which to me seems to be the corollary of the late night sort of hosts vibe. All of it's somebody who grows up in community, in urban enclaves with a certain political orientation. If you think about Colbert comes up from Strangers with Candy, he's a very pointedly satirical performer on the Daily show, bringing his biography along with him. He comes from a Catholic family. He's a practicing Catholic. He used to do this bit on the Daily show called this Week in God, giving these pointed sort of spins on the evangelical culture in America that was kind of rising at the time. And then he starts to don this character, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, who is this faux intelligent ignoramus whose bigotry is part of the deal and found this really smart way on his own show again, before he sort of joins the real late night game on CBS to sort of speak through a character that shows his contempt for the current culture, but also make kind of sincere volleys of connection with his guests.

[Nomi Frye]

It's a weird type of performance art.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I mean, yeah, it was kind of amazing.

[Nomi Frye]

It was kind of crazy.

[Alex Schwartz]

It was more kind of amazing. It was amazing.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

Do we wanna talk about truthiness?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. The thing I wanna say about Colbert from the Colbert Report era is that he was a critic in a lot of ways and that was a very interesting form to take on in this otherwise totally comedic performance. So truthiness. Right. As you've said, Nomi, he introduced a segment called the Word, the first episode.

[Nomi Frye]

Of the show, I believe.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, there you have it. Just brand spanking new.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Shall we?

[Nomi Frye]

Shall we? Let us listen into the clip.

[D]

Truthiness. Now, I'm sure some of the world, the word anistas over at Webster's are going to say, hey, that's not a word. Well, anybody who knows me know that I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. The truthiness is anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay. This strikes me as, like, insanely prescient.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think it. On the one hand, it is. And on the other hand, I do think there's a bit of a. Because again, times are so bad. I think there is a bit of a forgetting about how bad they felt then, too. Like, that was also the reality then. It's both prescient, but it's also just. It is what was happening. I was just. I'm not trying to quibble with the fact that it's prescient. It is. I just would put a slightly different spin on it, which is to say that it was diagnosing an ill in the culture that has become more and more extreme. Oh, absolutely. And it got it and it diagnosed and it gave an emotional outlet to viewers.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And you know, the other thing about that, the other thing that that performance reflects, He's a critic not only of politics, but of media, which is that he's responding to the rise of cable news and that kind of host.

[Nomi Frye]

Absolutely, yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So you're thinking about Bill O'Reilly, thinking about Sean Hannity later on in the 2000s, in the aughts, I guess we get Rachel Maddow, et cetera, that kind of performance, which is again, this kind of amazingly direct address and a kind of startling, demented sincerity makes its way via Stephen Colbert and this performance into what it means to be a late night host.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, so that's like, that's what makes it interesting to me that Colbert then went to this mainstream. Like, then he decided to, in 2015, to jump into the mainstream.

[Nomi Frye]

Right. He is this figure suddenly of the kind of mainstream, conventional, you know, late night host. He is Carson, he is Leno, he is Letterman, he is that guy. So what happened then? Like, how does one transition from playing the satirical character to becoming like America's father suddenly, you know?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, it. First of all, that motion is still a reflection that even as late as 2014, you know, the now halcyon, late Obama era or whatever, relatively healthy, I.

[Alex Schwartz]

Guess.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It still was like, the only way to get bigger as an entertainer is to take on a late night show. We would have been like, what, Stephen Colbert starting a podcast Is he broke? You know, there was still this ideal of upward motion in the Hollywood firmament.

[Nomi Frye]

Totally.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But if you look at the early reviews, one of which was from our much beloved colleague Emily Nussbaum, friend of the pod, the first year or so was not so good for that Colbert show, because I think, again, as a performer, his gift was a kind of critical or responsive orientation toward culture, not just kind of sitting atop it and having fun with it. So it takes him until the rise of Donald Trump to really find his footing, his footing behind that desk because he had a target.

[Nomi Frye]

Right.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And so Trump become as he became for Kimmel and Myers and others. I mean, I think this is not totally unique to Colbert, but he became the grounding upon which the sort of urgent underpinning of this show could kind of rest.

[Nomi Frye]

Everybody got the Trump bump, you know, whether it was conventional media, whether it was the times, you know, the kind of news media, and whether it was, as you say, late night at large. It's like suddenly there was something. I mean, as the country was going down the toilet, there was something to. Yeah. As you say, to respond to. Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's interesting to me, Nomi, that I was not watching Colbert in this era. I was not watching the Late Show. I just. I didn't care about him sitting around talking to celebrities. I mean, that's a whole other aspect that we haven't even gotten into yet, really, of what it means to have a late show. It's. It's interviews, it's conversations, and, you know, these are major, major promotion vehicles. Less than they were, but certainly they endure still. Absolutely.

[Nomi Frye]

And I would actually argue that the desperation is higher.

[Alex Schwartz]

But I do think that during that era, what tended to break through into the digital culture that I was part of, that I remain.

[Nomi Frye]

You're a bit of a digital native.

[Alex Schwartz]

Find myself part. I'm a bit of a digital native. It's just what happens when you're, you know, born at a certain time in history and, you know, that was the time when carpool karaoke, the James Corden bit would kind of. That would leak through.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Literal vehicle.

[Alex Schwartz]

A literal vehicle.

[Nomi Frye]

A literal vehicle. Oh, my God, what a nightmare. Like, what a.

[Alex Schwartz]

Tell us how you really feel, though.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You don't want to hear James Corden harmonize with.

[Nomi Frye]

No, no.

[Alex Schwartz]

Paul McCartney.

[Nomi Frye]

No, absolutely.

[Alex Schwartz]

There was a sweet one where they did that.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, it's kind of. It's sweet, I guess, but it's like, this isn't. It's certainly not comedy. It might be entertainment, but even that is like the blandness and conventionality of the format has become such that really, Alex, I agree with you saying, yeah, I wasn't interested in really watching.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, if Colbert had a version of that and you know, let us know in the comments, it's news to me because I don't think that's what he was doing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And I will say, sticking up for Colbert, this, what you mentioned before about sort of identifying, I kind of feel. I kind of a little bit feel like that about Colbert. I kind of. He's my favorite, I think. And I will say definitely, he was the best conversationalist. Can I play something for you guys? Yes, Real quick. What he did was he could really go into things. He would talk about his faith. He would talk about grief a lot. I don't know if he has a very Joe Biden esque story. When he was a kid, his father and his two brothers died in a plane crash. He could really talk in a kind of emotional, direct way to people. But here is actually Dua Lipa asking him a question. And it's a great moment. I thought.

[Alex Schwartz]

Does your faith and your comedy ever overlap?

[D]

I'm a Christian and a Catholic, and that's always connected to the idea of love and sacrifice being somehow related in the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it. Because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it. And fear is the thing that keeps you from turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness. As Robert Hayden said, we must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as our deliverance from evil. We must keep struggling to maintain our humanity, though monsters and abstraction threaten and police us.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And he was like that. There are other clips of him, like trading lines of Shakespeare with Denzel Washington. It's not Johnny Carson just letting Robin Williams do the thing. And that kind of philosophical underpinning, I do think connects to the way he also then dealt with politics. It came from a very sincere bedrock. So that even when he was being his most silly and abstract, which he could get, there was some link there that has kind of almost nothing to do with Johnny Carson. Do you know what I mean?

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, I'm so glad you showed us that clip. And now I wish I had been watching more in the years when I wasn't. And I wasn't not watching because I thought it was dumb or something. I just was, you know, in my own media landscape, looked different. And, you know, I'M sorry, but just now hearing Stephen Colbert, or Colbert as he reminds us he's Irish, as it used to be before for media purposes, it was funnier to say Colbert quote poet Robert Hayden. I mean, your eyes filled with tears. Yes, in part because I felt also that he was defending the dignity of America. You know, we are laughed at as idiots by the rest of the world and often we deserve it. It's just true, you know, but look, here is an entertainer going on his very popular, top rated late night show and like, giving wisdom when he's asked for it. Okay, I'll take that. I will stand a little bit taller. And I think that's what. Also to go back to the earlier Colbert rapport Persona, that was part of it. It had so much to do as an American. It had so much to do with, did you feel shame or did you feel pride? Those were like the two poles of experience. Ye. And the complexity, the reality of what it means to be any kind of person, let alone an American person, often got crowded out. And Colbert was such an effective way to take the shame and make it into some kind of pride. Yes, we're in the shit, but at least we have an intelligent and funny way to analyze it. And this is a different version of that to me, but I'm glad to have discovered it.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, in a minute. Colbert's Late show might be the first major network late night show to bite the dust, but let's be honest, it probably won't be the last. Where do late night and political comedy in general go from here? This is Critics at Large from the New Yorker. Stick around.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Segregation in the day, integration at night.

[Alex Schwartz]

When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules.

[Nomi Frye]

We didn't worry about what was going on outside. It was like stepping in another world.

[Alex Schwartz]

Inside Charlie's Place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it.

[Nomi Frye]

You saw the kkk. Yeah, they was dressed up in their uniform.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The KKK set out to raid Charlie.

[Alex Schwartz]

Take him away from here.

[Nomi Frye]

Charlie was an example of power.

[Alex Schwartz]

They had to crush him. From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch and visit Myrtle beach comes Charlie's Place, a story that was nearly lost to time until now. Listen to Charlie's Place wherever you get your podcast.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay. We've been talking about Stephen Colbert and kind of trying to lay out the beats of his career and the way he's developed as a performer and a late night host. And now we are coming to the moment that we began with, which is Colbert, you know, Being canceled. Announcing this cancellation on air a mere three days, I believe, after basically saying that Paramount paid off President Trump.

[D]

Paramount paid Donald Trump a $16 million settlement for a nuisance lawsuit Trump filed, claiming that 60 Minutes deceptively edited their interview with then candidate Kamala Harris last fall. Paramount knows they could have easily fought it because in their own words, the lawsuit was completely without merit. Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It's Big Fat Bribe, because.

[Nomi Frye]

And this, it has been alleged, was in the service of Trump not blocking Paramount's merger with Skydance, which did then go through. Which did then go through. And so the whole thing smells. Not great.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Smells to high heaven.

[Nomi Frye]

It smells to high heaven, my friends. So it's kind of unprecedented, I guess.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

And certain.

[Alex Schwartz]

Certainly the bribe is the first instance I can think of where $16 million has been paid to a sitting president by a media company because that president got pissy. Yeah, I would call that unprecedented.

[Nomi Frye]

Yes. So, Vinson, after the cancellation was after Colbert himself announced the cancellation on air. You wrote a piece.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, well, what I cared most about was the lasting, I think, strand of communication between host and audience that Colbert's announcement sort of laid bare as it was reported. First of all, the show's being canceled in May, so next May.

[Nomi Frye]

Which he said, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And they didn't want to announce the cancellation right now, but he said, nope, I'm gonna announce it. And so there was still a bit of that thrill, certainly an attenuated version of it, but it was there that this person could tell you some version of the truth. And that's what I was interested in. When you talk about a figure in the entertainment firmament being something like a critic, even to say that is to confirm a kind of shared reality, but more importantly, shared method of interpretation. And so if there are fewer, and I don't mean this as a defense of monoculture or whatever, but if there are fewer things on which we can agree, fewer voices that we think are kind of even genially uncorrupted by, you know, whatever. The Carson thing of, like, acknowledging. Not acknowledging, irony, whatever, to me, that confirms a sense that there's no ground to stand on.

[Alex Schwartz]

So I think you're getting at something that has to do with trust and trust in a certain kind of voice and trust. Look, it's so misplaced in so many people right now, you know, looking to all the wrong people for the answers, whether they be in politics or in media. So what your piece made me think about was how someone like Colbert or any other late night host is working with this idea of trust. You know, he has to have the trust of the audience in order to be able to do his job. And in some ways, like, now that he's in this position where he can just say what he wants and what can happen, he's gonna be fired. He's already been fired. Like, you can just tell us what he thinks. That trust, I don't think it went away, but now he really has it, you know, for some of his viewers at least. Don't you think?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Like, I would say so, yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

So that might make for a very interesting few months.

[Nomi Frye]

But I want to ask you, Alex and Vinson, you know, this question of trust, obviously, as you implied, Alex, happens in the context of, like, half the country trusts. You know, there are many more divisions than half and half. But let's say, you know, half the country trusts one side and despises the other side and the other half the opposite. And we, because we are liberals, would like Colbert to, you know, like, nothing to lose, gonna speak truth to power. But there is a question, and it has been argued, I think, that the kind of political humor that was championed by people like Colbert or Jon Stewart contributed to that siloing and enacted a kind of like, liberal smugness that made the other side, quote, unquote, dig their heels in. What do you think of that argument? That humor, rather than kind of like somehow ameliorating or is actually something that is hastening the siloing?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I mean, who cares? Honestly, like, oh, my God, you know, oh, oh, yes. Jon Stewart is the problem. You know, get that, man. Like, I don't mean to be so sarcastic about it, for sure, you know, you can talk about it and. But. But here's ultimately, like, the power is not with the comedians, I think is. Is what I mean to say, sadly. Like, did they exacerbate an already very divided political landscape? Maybe, but I don't think by. By all that much. Like, I don't think having like, a more Kumbayaj take, like, let's all gather around the burning flames of the United States and like, warm ourselves by them would be. Would be any better.

[Nomi Frye]

Which brings us to a kind of the larger question, right, Which I think we've been working towards throughout this episode, is that. Is late night even a relevant art form anymore? I mean, Colbert is the first to be canceled, and there's the whole Trump thing. But maybe in general, this is not something that is like, Long for this world.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

And a lot of the hosts of main host contracts are up in the next couple of years. Kimmel's.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

Contract is up in 2026, I believe. Seth Meyers and Fallon is up in 2028. And so we might be approaching a moment where potentially post late night. Post late night, maybe, who knows?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think that's quite likely. I mean, as with many of the older media. Ha ha. I say, looking at the two of you, I guess the bigger question then is what is lost or gained with that? One thing I'd imagine would be lost with the demise of late night is the same thing that's lost if magazines go totally belly up, which is a pipeline for younger people to create, to learn, to get their sea legs, to get a voice. I mean, these writers rooms and the technical aspects of the job are stocked. It's not just the guy in front, it's all the people coming up through that. And inevitably that's a big loss if those ways of learning and doing go away.

[Nomi Frye]

But it's also the viewers, right, the many, many, you know, relatively young people who used to learn about the world and ways of interacting with entertainment and politics through late night shows.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, that's already gone. I mean, that's already going. This comes back to your piece, Vincent. Like this idea that Colbert is the mouthpiece who can kind of articulate from what's going on, like from the halls of power directly to the audience. The problem posed by something as extreme as the Trump era is that if your, like, late night hosting is an art, but it's also business. And so if your job is to get as many eyeballs on you as is humanly possible, what do you do? And it makes me think of something I saw recently, which is the comedian Taylor Tomlinson who did a show called After Midnight. And it was also cbs and this show I remember being discussed, like the run up to it was. Okay, first of all, a woman is hosting late night. Yes, it's at 12:30am but people will watch it the next day. People will watch it in clips. That's the whole point. It basically becomes what you watch with your breakfast. And a young woman, she is now in her early 30s. It's a very different kind of face. And the show has ended. So did it work? Perhaps not. I think there was some talk that she was asked to renew it. She didn't want to, whatever. But I wanted to play for you one of her last opening monologues, which happened a few weeks ago after the protests Against ICE arrests in Los Angeles. And here she articulates from the point of view of a late night host what the problem is with trying to mine reality for the job. We have a lot to discuss about what happened in LA this weekend and most of it is not funny. But late night shows aren't funny anymore anyway. We're just the news now. This is the last week of the show. So I'm just gonna say one of the hardest things about doing this show is a note we kept getting was like, what's on Taylor's for you, Paige? What's Taylor watching? And I'm like, what's on Taylor's for you, Paige? ICE raids, genocide in Gaza, Trump. That's what's on Taylor's for your page. It's not a good time. So she's articulating exactly what we're talking about, which is it's not easy to have fun with the news as it is. And if you are having fun with it, something may very well be wrong.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And I do think that this problem. What to do to be the liberal scold, to be the sort of Mr. Political or to go or be the kind of anti woke equal opportunity offender, which I think is a thing that has worn thin, or to go personal and sort of like telescope and leave the political outside of your purview. It just seems that all of the options for comedy right now are unsatisfying. And I love comedy. I love standup, I love late night, I love all of these forms, I love sketch. But they all seem to be turning their wheels, going nowhere precisely because of the problem that Tomlinson articulates. It's hard to. I mean, I feel this in my writing. It's like, you know, why am I writing about Stephen Colbert even?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, it may be that one reason for that. I think you're absolutely right. And I think one reason for that is what comedy can do really well is kind of excavate hypocrisies and the stuff underneath the surface. This is why the Bush era was kind of perfect for it, because the Bush era pretended to be normal. It pretended to be like normal politicians doing normal things. And what was going on was torture, warmongering, like dismantling of American education, just great catastrophes. But they were maintaining a facade. Yeah, there is no facade right now.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's mask off and you know, and comedy exists often to sort of be the first responder to the problems in the culture. So one of the, you know, promises scant, but still of the moment with Colbert, at least is to say, okay, show us something new now. You've got this freedom, right? And you maybe you're in a position to do something else with the medium. And that shows us what could possibly be on the horizon.

[Nomi Frye]

This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle o'. Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino Condon ASK's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Sioux with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at large@New Yorker.com critics I'm David Remnick.

[Alex Schwartz]

Host of the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Nomi Frye]

There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you.

[Alex Schwartz]

Tune out the noise and focus on.

[Nomi Frye]

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[Alex Schwartz]

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[Nomi Frye]

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[Alex Schwartz]

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[Nomi Frye]

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