Offline with Jon Favreau - Stephen Colbert on Finding Laughter in the Darkness

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

Stephen Colbert joins Jon to defend his 8 hour-a-day screen habit and preach the benefits of a Twitter-free lifestyle. The two talk about what it took to produce The Late Show during the pandemic, why Stephen is glad his live audience is back, and what some of the darkest days of American democracy looked like behind the scenes at the Ed Sullivan Theater. Jon also asks Stephen about his perspective on cancel culture and why comedy must be rooted in empathy.

If you own a smartphone, you can't say that you're not on the internet too much. I went and got my booster on Friday. And I sat down. And as I sat down, I reached into this coat pocket here and pulled out my phone and flipped it open to look at it. And I went, oh, why did I really need to do that? I have 15 minutes here because you have to wait 15 minutes before you leave. Right.

I could just spend 15 minutes people watching. And so I did. did and i people watched and every single person was on their phone and so i went ah fuck it i'll do the same thing i'm john fabbro welcome to offline hey everyone my guest this week is stephenbert, host of The Late Show on CBS. Stephen is, by all accounts, one of the funniest and most successful comedians of our time. He's an alum of Second City and The Daily Show who went on to play a satirical version of a right-wing pundit on The Colbert Report before taking over for David Letterman on The Late Show. But anyone who knows Stephen or works with him will tell you that what sets him apart is what a thoughtful, genuine, and fundamentally decent human being he is when he's offstage. He talks so much about politics on his show

because he actually cares deeply about the state of our democracy. And his views on everything from media and culture to both political parties run much deeper than the jokes he tells every night. All of this is why I was so excited to interview Stephen for Offline. I wanted to talk to him about how internet culture has changed comedy, and we did that, but per usual, Stephen had incredibly insightful things to say on so many other topics.

We talked about what it was like to tell jokes during a really tough year, why his job requires him to be so online, how the debate over cancel culture could use some Thanks for having me. Colbert. Stephen Colbert, thanks for making the time. It is my pleasure. You have made the time for me so many times. I was going to say one of the top live guests, one of the top live guests, you guys. Well, I've been so excited to do this because ever since you kindly invited me on the Colbert Report back in 2013, I feel like our conversations are almost entirely one-sided. You ask me questions, I talk about myself, we cut to commercial break, and that's it. We talk about politics, too. It's not just you.

No, that's right. As fascinating as you are, Mr. Favreau. So I guess my first question is, after more than 200 remote shows during the pandemic, how has it felt the last few months to be back in front of a live audience? Well, man, I don't know how to begin because I have to, I first have to tell you what it was like to not have a live audience. No, I want to hear that too.

It's the delta between those two experiences that really. That's what I'm interested in. The arc of that angle is really what was remarkable is that, I mean, I never wanted to do a talk show. This was never the goal. I was going to be an actor. And then I said, okay, well, I'll be a comedic actor. And then that just got me by hook or by crook and by happy accidents, I became the host of the Colbert Report.

And when I decided to end that show, I still didn't have this gig. Right. All I knew was, well, I was going to, I was going to miss a live audience and doing it every day with my staff. And then out of nowhere comes,

would you like to take over for Dave? And I went, I, it scratches every itch. Yeah. But the biggest itch it scratches was live audience. I am no fan of performing comedy to just to a camera. Like the theoretical comedy.

Like, you know, if comedy is working, comedy is hard. Yeah. But you know if it's working because the audience makes this noise with their mouth. And if they're not making that noise, it ain't working. And so I did 15 months with no audience. And so, I don't know, you do the math, call that over 200 shows with no audience. That was like shooting a, like a movie or something. It's like single camera. It's just me and the camera and your mind. You have like the old occipital Rolodex of all the possible

ways a joke will land and the rhythm with which you have to hit it so you're hitting the next joke properly. And the thing is, that's almost entirely, but not completely, comedy. Reaction. Yeah, that's the idea. In the same way as walking on stage and reading sheet music to an audience is music. Yes.

You know, just reading sheet music to silence is music. And so going back to it was like slowly being suffocated for 15 months and then going, and like getting the pillow off your face. It was fantastic. And a great thing for the audience too, like they've been so high. Lately, the audience is a little muted because things aren't changing.

Fast enough. And the things that aren't changing are Biden's approval ratings. Yeah, no, we get that too. So what's it been like? Everything I could possibly want it to be. Like some people didn't want an audience back. Like some people didn't want an audience back. You know,

I think Trevor doesn't have an audience back. Seth took a long time to get an audience back. Um, we, we, we've talked about like what the value is of not having an audience. Cause there is some value, but I just can't imagine doing it any other way.

It's I want to be with other people. I like people. I can't, I can't imagine not having an audience. I mean, we, our podcast is different. Obviously, we do that like sitting around a table, but we do these live shows and haven't

done them in over a year. And I am like so eager to just see people again. Like, I don't understand people who are like, I'm totally changed now. I don't need to see people anymore. I just need to like, that doesn't, I don't get that. That's sour grape. That's sour grapes right there. Yeah, I think that is sour grapes. I would say, though. And I'll say this about your podcast. And I've said it about others, too, is that I, you know, it's not like your live shows aren't good. They are good. But I feel like you're cheating. Because when I'm listening to your podcast, the great feeling is that I'm just the fourth person at the lunch table. Yeah, well, we try to do that listening while you guys are talking about this thing you know about and care about that I do too.

But I'm just eavesdropping with like these three, you know, interesting guys. And when you do it in front of a live audience, I'm like, wait, I thought this was our thing. I thought we had other people. I don't know them. You find it in a relationship to spice things up. Like I'm not into that scene. What are they doing here? Is there anything from doing the show at home that changed you in any way,

that taught you anything about yourself? Hmm. Well, it reinforced how much I like my wife's company. Oh, that's nice. Because she ended up being my crew for three months. Each of my boys was a crew for one month, and then each of them, one was graduating from high school and one one month. And then each of them, one was graduated from high school

and one from college. And they each said, dad, I won't graduate if I continue to work for you. Because it was essentially a full-time job being my crew. Because we couldn't let anybody else in the house. Right.

Because we did it from home for five months. And then Evie took over. And, you know, it's just great when you've been married to somebody for 30 years. And it turns out, like, they're're great company. It turns out that we actually like each other.

That's a nice thing to realize together. It was, it was really lovely. And then she became part of the show. Like that was one of the best parts of it to me is that she, she's now a character. I saw, I know I saw her on the other night. I saw her on for Halloween. And I was like, this is great that it's, it's continued. I love,. I love it. One of the reasons I did this show is because I felt like the pandemic forced our already extremely online culture to spend even more time online. And I'm not sure that's been a good thing.

What do you think? Have you experienced that at all? I don't think anybody could honestly say, if you own a smartphone, you can't say that you're not on the internet too much. I went and got my booster on Friday. And I sat down. And as I sat down, I reached into this coat pocket here and pulled out my phone and flipped it open to look at it. And I went, oh, why did I really need to do that? I have 15 minutes here. Because you have to wait 15 minutes before you leave. 15 minutes here, I could just spend 15 minutes just people watching.

And so I did and I had people watched and every single person was on their phone. They were on their phone. And so I went, ah, fuck it, I'll do the same thing. And so because that wasn't that interesting to watch because they were just doing this. They were just, you know, doing the scroll. I have the little thing. I don't know. Maybe everybody has this, but I have the how long, how much.

Yes. How much you spend on your phone. Comes on Sunday. Comes on Sunday. I don't know if that's an app I've installed or whether it's something, some toggle I've flipped over in my iPhone. I'm not sure where that information comes from, but I do find it distressing that it's like eight hours a day. You're eight hours. Oh, wow. Oh, I thought I was like over, I was like hitting five and I was worried about myself. We're constantly searching for what is the conversation today? And I know you have very much the same thing, but because we have to do a new one of these every day, I am constantly trying to peel the onion and say, well, what's what's really behind that?

What's behind that? What's behind that? What's behind that? Just give some context for the conversation. So even as someone's pitching me their jokes on the story, I'm listening with one ear and the other ear, I'm reading about the story to see whether there's any sort of juxtapositional information here that could be comedic or does it relate to some other thing that we're talking about today? And so for what I do, which is really, it's not necessarily much media criticism, is that I'm a curator of the daily media experience. We watched it too, or I read it too, or I saw that meme too, or I had that reaction to this event as well. And here's how we processed it.

Because you had your emotional process, you the audience. This is our emotional process. But to have such a wide net cast all the time, we have to lower ourselves into the radioactive pool that is the internet. Just to know, yeah. So that we're going to be pulled out like a carbon rod at the end of the day, and they put the carbon rod in front of a TV, and I irradiated back at the audience at a much lower rad level that's not lethal. Do you know what I mean?

But we feel poisoned. Part of the job is that I'm drinking the radioactive, you know, I'm doing shots of the radioactive pool in order to radiate it back at you. So that's part of the job that I don't particularly dig, Daddy-O. Is it all Twitter that you're doing? Are you scrolling through Twitter? Oh, no. I don't ever

do that anymore oh that's good i don't even have twitter anymore oh wow and i still tweet i still tweet but i literally give a tweet to somebody else to tweet and that's one of that's the only the only way i've been able to reduce my intake at all is that i i never read twitter well i was going to say that that's a much you say i'm going to read the people I follow, but you're lying to yourself. Yeah, no, you're going to start looking at your mentions. You're going to look at the comments. You're going to look at people saying about the show. You don't want to do that.

And I don't do. I haven't looked at my mentions forever. I don't do that. Well, see, this is already a much healthier social media diet or news phone diet. I don't search. I don't Google myself. That's great. I haven't done that since I have not

searched for my own articles since the Porch Bonnets dinner in 2006 because- You figured that was enough. Jesus wept. Exactly. That was enough attention for anybody. Yeah, I think it's ultimately, here's the thing. Does it break our brain? brain came pre-broken you know i always have six thoughts going at once in my mind that sort of balkanized way that we all think now at the same time it's as if you like how you can partition a hard drive you know my brain is always partitioned and running three or four programs at once and the internet merely, as my daughter once said to me, dad, there's never been anybody more ready to receive the internet than you because you are the internet. Like that's how your brain works in good ways and bad ways. And so I don't feel, I feel basically the culture of

the internet is poisonous. The mechanism of the internet, I think, is wonderful. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I talked to the New Yorker journalist, Gia Tolentino, for the show, and the crux of her- Name drop. Name drop. Yeah, I'm just dropping it. That's just one of many, so get ready. The crux of her argument is that the internet, and especially social media, has become like an endless performance with no backstage, where we're all forced to create and

maintain a public identity all the time and it made me think about something that you've said which was that becoming the host of the late show required you to figure out what part of you and how much to put out there what what was that process like figuring out how to become become the host of the late show and sort of show that identity to the world? Still figuring that out. I mean, honest to Pete, because not to go Walt on you, but I and all of us contain multitudes. So, you know, we make decisions within our family life

growing up of like what we're going to, what our identity is there. And then we have identity with our friends and another identity in our job and another identity with our lover or whatever. So it's not an easy thing to figure out what part of that is a form of entertainment for people. And, and I think standups have a better transition into the kind of job that I do

because that's part, you are yourself, but you're also a persona unless you're like high concept like emo or somebody like that right and for me Evie was the first thing I there's a seat called E1 in the theater that's Evie's seat and and is that for the first month I I asked her to be there every night oh wow so I could look at her and go okay I'm her husband that's the first thing I know. Because in my character,

the truly curated Stephen Colbert, which was everything we said and did was highly intentional. And there was a big backstage for that show. And I never let anybody see the backstage for that. I think right toward the end, I let the New York Times in for like a week or something, but I never wanted anybody to see the curtain. For this one, I don't really mind the

pulling the curtain because it helps me be myself. You know, these shows all revolve around the person at the desk and it all revolves around what that person cares about. And it took me a while to figure out how much I cared about the national conversation on a daily basis. And it wasn't until right before the conventions that I went, oh, you know what? I'm trying to like not be quite as political as I was before. But there's no escaping the fact that I really care about what's about to happen. And so I should go full bore on this and really kind of give in to my appetite. But appetite. Really, I just gave into my appetite. I was kind of denying my own. Well, that's who you are, right? I really care about the news.

I really care about American democracy, such as it is. Yeah. And that made a big difference for me. I'll tell you what made a huge difference for me was doing the show during COVID. We already had found the show, but I, as a person that the audience gets to see, made a big leap in my own sense of self on camera during the pandemic because truly there was no trappings. Just me in a shirt, like not even a suit. Just me and like whatever linen shirt I found in my closet. And I would talk to the camera and an hour, I'd go, is that a show? And then I would walk away.

So it was just you. And there's a great moment. There's a great moment in the Lord of the Rings in the chapters that nobody likes to talk about, which is the Bombadil chapter. Well, there's three Bombadil chapters, but in the house of Tom Bombadil. At one point, he's telling these stories

and the hobbits are sitting entranced. And there's a moment of stillness. And Frodo says, who are you, master? And Tom says, hey, what's that? Don't you know by now? Who are you? Yourself, alone and nameless. And that's what it felt like for me as a performer.

You alone, yourself and nameless. And that's what COVID felt like for me as a performer, you alone, yourself and nameless. And what were you comfortable sharing with the audience was an organic thing that was driven by the absolute agony of that year. And you like publicly go through the same thing the audience is going through, albeit with all the trappings and safety net that is being a rich and famous celebrity, but still going through the anxiety and still going through the dread and the horror of that year. Truly a horrible year. A horrible year. Anus horribilis. And that was a very raw experience. And at times, I couldn't do jokes. And there were times I couldn't even sit down.

Literally, I just had to stand for the monologue. And just because sitting down seemed too passive. But that pulled out of me some real part of myself that I had not yet shared with the audience. And I'm not saying it's a positive or a negative or better or worse, but it was a new thing that I had not yet shared with the audience. And I'm not saying it's a positive or a negative or better or worse, but it was a new thing that I discovered. And I think we discover ourselves

in ways that we don't control. You can't say, I will discover this part of us. You just learn things about yourself in moments of crisis. I was going to ask about sort of the comedic challenge of going through this year. Like, you guys had to come up with jokes about some of the heaviest, most depressing news we've had in decades. Pandemic, police killings, protests, violent insurrection. Like, how did you stay funny through all of this? What was the process like?

I would not claim to have stayed funny through all of it. That's the one thing that is all theoretical because there was no audience. So I have no data to give you. But you guys still wrote jokes for each night. Oh yeah, we still, that's our job. We still got stepped up to the plate and took a couple of chops at everything because that's our job.

And it's also our sort of form of self therapy. That's our talking cure. We're there to deal with our own anxiety because, you know, we're all a box of broken toys in show business and especially comedy. And we had no other choice. Like how else? Everybody in comedy, not everybody, but pretty much everybody in comedy has got some trauma back there. And that's how we dealt with that trauma in our lives was to do this for a living. So it's not that big of a stretch to then now do that on an immediate way to the audience that almost has no veil between performance and reality. And however I felt in the morning, I couldn't believe it.

I would come into that pitch meeting at nine. And God damn it, if those writers did not have ideas and we would acknowledge what we all acknowledge, like, what do you feel like? That's what I was wondering. OK, what kind of pitches I'm throwing. Yeah. You have to have some shared emotional state, or at least we can acknowledge each other's emotional states, so I don't just throw a hummer right past their ear. You know, there's literally a sound the audience makes if I tell a joke that they weren't ready to receive. And they literally make the sound

like, oh! And it's like, it's the sound you make if somebody buzzed one by your skull without telling you how they were going to throw the pitch. And that's literally the metaphor my exec and I use. Like, we've got to let them know what we're pitching here. Then we can throw any pitch we want as long as we've established an emotional agreement. That's interesting. And so that emotional agreement was the real challenge of the last year.

I mean, what really struck me about your monologue after the insurrection, which I thought met the moment perfectly, was that it was filled with more anger and emotion and explicitly political criticism than any of the other late night hosts. And can you talk about like how that came together? What you're what you're thinking was during that? Well, we had a show, I mean, every night before we leave, because we do the show, and if the show goes really well, you've got about, you've got as long as it takes to walk off the stage, down to the rewrite room to enjoy that.

And then you go in and you basically say, you know, you're the attaboys, attagirls for like, whoever were the MVPs of whatever happened that, and then you immediately go, okay, so what's tomorrow? And, like, who's my guest? And where are the trucks going to be tomorrow? And like, who's my guest? And where are the trucks going to be tomorrow? You know, what's the footage we're going to be working off of? Because again,

we're a shadow of news. We're not really that informative. And we had a plan, not scripts, we had a plan for the certification. And we knew that there was going to be this thing on the ellipse, I guess, that the former president was going to, I don't even think we even knew whether he was going to be there at that point, that it was going to be pro and it's possible, pro him, and it's possible that he would be there and that it was bad. That's all we knew. So we had eyes on. And the morning pitches were all just about certification and who might vote and who might not. And basically the people who are still promulgating the big lie.

But we didn't expect this, as most people who aren't in the Republican caucus didn't. And those who weren't at the planning meetings at the Willard Hotel who knew exactly what the fuck was about to happen. Right, exactly. And literally were saying, hey, tune in tomorrow because it's going to be – It's going to be wild. It's going to be wild.

It's going to be earth shattering. So at about 1 o'clock is when we look at scripts. And this was back at a time when we didn't have live shows. We didn't have the audience. And so our process was a little different. I stayed home right until I went and did the show. Now I go in midday to rehearse, but I stayed home just until the last minute. And I've got the TV on in my office at home and we're doing the reading. We're about 10 minutes into the read down. I said, guys, I just got to stop here. Does anybody else have this on? And I said, let's just take five minutes and stop and watch and see how far this goes.

And it was kind of in that critical moment where it went absolutely cuckoo banana cakes. It went to this is bad to this is historically tragic. And I said, does everybody agree that everything we've written is of no use? Like the last four hours of work is of no consequence, unfortunately. And Tom Purcell, my creative executive producer, he said, OK, here's what I think you should do. I think we should stop right here. I think you should get in the car. Come to the theater. Like, come to the Ed Sullivan.

We're going to do the show tonight. And we will watch this. And you watch this on the ride in. And when we get in, we will have some concept of what our emotional reaction is to this. And then we'll see if we can even do a show. And so I come in and I'm watching it the whole way again, like everybody else, having a unprecedented emotional reaction to the threat to the great experiment.

And I got to the office and we start talking about, should we do a live show? Because there's no way to process this. There's no, we don't know, you know, don't speak too soon because the wheel's still in spin. You know, how do you do this? And so Chris says, it's up to you. Do you want to do a live show?

And I said, I have to go to the bathroom. I'm out of the bathroom. I'd really like you to have an opinion. And I bet I'll agree. I said, because I actually have to process this. That's management. That's management. I can't process this functionally.

I can only process this emotionally right now. I can't use that part of my brain right now. And I know you can because he's so great under that kind of pressure. So one of the bathroom came out and he goes, we should do a live show. And I said, I think that's a great idea. And then like everybody else, we just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. And at one point we found out, and I don't, I think, I think this is okay to say, I don't know why it wouldn't be, but I've never said it. So we had no sponsors oh every sponsor pulled out

no one wanted to be associated no product with whatever might come out of your mouth well with with a show like a late night show that's dedicated to that like yeah and so what chris said remember that what that means now is there's going to be a live show and the camera will never go off. That is a high wire act of the first order. I said, okay, okay. So, okay. I mean, listen, compared to what I'm seeing on TV, throw that log on the fire. Fine. That's great. What more damage could you do at that point? What does that matter? What does that matter? And then we wrote for hours and hours and rewrote and kept adjusting

and seeing what reaction is and and that they're like watching the certification and i can't even remember whether it actually it didn't happen by the time the show went up i think they were still wasn't until the middle of the night right yes right so i went on it was still going on and um i mean how could you be madder i mean i've never been that furious in my entire life and it was just absolutely blood-curdling fury is all I could feel and that was the honest thing but now there were jokes you can make jokes when you're mad right you're mad then then when you're horrified because horror and fear is the opposite of comedy was there any part of your brain that self-editing thing in the brain where you're like okay I'm mad I want to say what's on my mind, but I have, you know,

I have to be careful or I don't want to be, I don't want to go to, there was nothing. It was, you were just like, I'm going to say what I want to say. I can't drop an F bomb. I know that because I mean, we're on a seven second delay. They'd bleep me, but then that kills the rhythm of a joke or whatever. So like, I know not to do to do that but i mean is there any superlative of of condemnation that is too great for that moment is there any joke that would be too harsh no i don't think so i remember saying some some footage of some couple coming out and they're like they're pouring milk in their eyes or whatever they that's they've got the snot right on their face because they've been maced or they've been pepper sprayed by security. And the reporter goes, what happened?

He goes like, we were pepper sprayed. And they said, well, why? He goes, we're trying to get in. And he goes, well, they were mad. They were pepper sprayed. He said, why are we doing that? He goes, well, they were mad. They were pepper sprayed. He said, well, why are we doing that? He goes, well, I mean, it's the revolution. And I remember saying, I think this is from the night, saying, revolution?

If it was a revolution and you lose, they cut your head off. There might have been more to it that actually made it a joke. But how is that not truly treason? And that's why people give their lives for their country. There is something more important than you. And that is the continued existence of the United States of America, because there will never be another one. And it is the last best hope of humanity. I mean, this, well, this brings up a question I've wanted to ask you for a while, which is, you know, you said that what you do is interpretive, but not instructive. And like, are you only hoping to entertain every night? Or is there a part of you hoping that when you go

out there and you talk about issues like this as passionately as you just have and have on air that you're you're trying to persuade people to either think differently or at least think more urgently about the issues that you cover? Every joke. OK, that's a little that's a little moses on the mountaintop um i would say most jokes have at some degree um hey see this my way i invite you to see this my way whatever the thing is and so is that persuasion well to the degree i want you to see this my way so you'll get the punch line and it's easier to make jokes on a daily basis about something you sincerely care about i mean you can't kind of do this work about stuff you don't care about i mean i love silly jokes or what conan calls going to the strawberry patch

and i hope i'm quoting him correctly. I believe I am. I certainly admire him. But I don't derive the value of our work from whether I've persuaded you. Okay. Yeah, that's that's that we see the thing come up and we harvest it with our microphones and we sell that to CVS. But, you know, to be mechanical about it. Hey, do I really do care about most of the things we're talking about? So, look, do I care what then happens about the thing? Yeah. Do I delude myself that what I'm doing is going to affect that? I don't. I've been doing this for a long time now, and I have not seen a material effect in the direction that I would like. Well, it's not just on you, but you're contributing,

I think, you know? I'm contributing to something, and I don't know what it is. I've been accused of contributing to a lot of different things. How often do you feel constrained in what you can joke about because you might get criticized for offending people or crossing a line? A lot of comedians have been weighing in on this issue, especially in light of the controversy over Dave Chappelle's last special. Chris Rock has said that the fear of getting canceled has made too many comedians unfunny and boring. What are your thoughts on that issue? Being unfunny and boring is a constant hazard. I would say so. Yeah. Especially in your line of work. Especially

when you talk about things that are a current topic of controversy. Yeah. Delicate, right? Yeah, it's delicate. I think, and I have lived my career with the idea that I can control my intention, but not your interpretation. That said, I also value humility and that is something that I have not always associated with my work I mean when I was doing the Colbert Report I got to piggyback on that guy's ego and pretend it wasn't mine if you know what I mean

and listen I didn't believe what he was saying but I was indulging in appetites. And one of the appetites is I want to be able to say anything I want about anything. And I think that you should have the ability to say anything you want about anything. That doesn't mean you get the response you want for having said anything you want about anything. There are consequences. You know, what does cancel culture means? Somebody didn't like it.

They got a lot of people to agree that they didn't like it. And now you have to deal with their feelings. Right. Okay. So is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a real thing. It is reality. It is the existence we're living in.

It is reality. You know, and if cancel culture really existed, why is Mel Gibson working? He's still here. He's still here. Really? Why? So I never hide behind it's just a joke. It's a joke.

And those are hard. Okay. And try to do them thoughtfully. And if I have some place to stand where I think it has an overt meaning, then there's no joke I feel uncomfortable saying. Okay. But, so that's my preamble. Oh, I like that.

Okay, great. My answer, and having to do with humility, is I have come to believe Oh, I like that. Okay, great. to those people, y'all got to take a joke, is a little Olympian. And you can say it, but I think it might be a little solipsistic to think that your intention is more important than the effect of your work. Yeah. Well, it requires, like you said, humility and also, I think, empathy, right? Before you say something, you want to put yourself in the shoes of the person who might hear it and try to imagine their experience in receiving whatever that joke or criticism is. Right. And that doesn't mean like you can't do the jokes you want.

And it doesn't mean that if you do jokes, you have to apologize. You don't. You don't owe anybody anything. That's what I'll agree with, is that you are not obligated to do any kind of work that anybody wants you to do. And you will find an audience for it. That is guaranteed. It's there. Yeah. Free speech doesn't mean that there's no reaction.

Well, it goes both ways. Yeah. In my dinner with Andre, hilarious. In my dinner with Andre, Andre Gregory talks about he sort of perceives a kind of a perfect emotional life where he could just say to his wife, Marina, like, get away from me. You're annoying me. Get away. But of course, if I do that, she has her right to her own emotional reaction. And when I'm ready to talk to her again, she may not want to talk to me because the way I've behaved. And there's this perfect world where we're all willing to piss each other off to say what we want to say. But then we have to live with those consequences.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. And a hilarious way to think about it. It gives me a little existential angst. Dude, it's nothing funnier, man, than deconstructing what jokes you can or cannot do. No, I mean, it's... I will say this, though. That's why comedy seems so hard to me. It seems so hard to figure that out.

Chappelle, I respect him enormously. He did something on Michael Richards dropping N-bombs at the Laugh Factory at a set that he did at the Laugh Factory saying like, every time I see that sign behind me, I think about Michael Richards being up here. And he goes, you know what? I think I might be only 20% human and I'm 80% comedian because I watched that and I thought boy's having a bad set you know

he'll get them next time and then went oh nope there's not going to be another next time just only view it through the comedy lens I value human beings a lot and I'm married to one. It's one of the reasons I love her is that, boy, God, I love humans. But, you know, I've said it many times, comedy, comedians and comedy writers aren't necessarily looking at things the same way.

And they're looking and you can look at it sort of mechanically or or just with respect to a craftsman. And if somebody does a good joke, however rough that joke may be to somebody, my first reaction as a comedian is like, oh, that's well-constructed. Oh, that's a good joke. Oh, I totally see why somebody would be mad about that. I 100% get it. Shit, I wonder how he's going to deal or how she, because it happens to women too, I wonder how he or she is going to deal with the fallout from that thing because I've had to deal with fallout from shit. Right. Yeah. And, but my first reaction is I'm, I'm, I'm afraid it's not the human reaction. My reaction is, oh, wow. That was a daring thing to do knowing what the reaction is. And boy, you certainly did land that dime right in the cup, man.

That was a nice little toss. It was like a carnival. Can you throw the dime into the fishbowl and win the... When I see somebody throw that dime in there, I don't know what they're going to win. They might win just a bag of shit for having done it. But I do notice how well they threw that dime. You know, Trump has been gone for a year.

I know that you breathed easy, as many of us did, if only for a moment when Biden won and Trump left. What is your current level of concern about the state of democracy right now? How are you feeling? Oh, not good. Yeah. I partly ask you because you've always been such an optimist. I've always considered myself an optimist. Partly it's by nature, partly it's because I worked for Barack Obama for so long. But you've always talked about America in such an optimistic way. And I've been feeling it lately and I've been wondering what you felt. I haven't lost my optimism, but it's like watching a flood come into your town

and cover everything with mud and whatever was in the sewer today. And an optimist says, we're going to clean that up. An optimist doesn't say that's not a problem. Right. It's not ignorance of reality optimism right uh i actually had a conversation with your old boss about this uh-huh and fairly recently and he said i am optimistic but i am not naive and i would say the same thing yeah what i'm trying to say is brock obama and i are a lot of talk about the name drops jesus

well you're up there do you do you think i mean do you think your optimism comes from um your religious background at all i've always because i'm i was sort of raised catholic social justice jesuits and it's sort of driven me that even though it's things are awful, that there can always be something a little bit better, that we can always sort of push towards something better. I just sort of, I fundamentally like people. And for all the history of humanity and our ability to do terrible things to each other that almost always arises from being led toward darkness as opposed to you choosing darkness as your default uh setting as a person and we were led toward darkness for these past four or five years. And then that was like commodified,

that darkness. And that was seen as a successful gambit. And politicians or certainly political strategists, I believe, are not particularly imaginative, you know, much like television programmers. If it worked for that person, it'll work for me. And so right now we're, we're feeling the, uh, backsplash, you know, the, uh, the, it's not an echo cause it's got force behind it. You know, like the wave that hits the seawall and comes back in with this double force and higher peaks. We're seeing a critical incursions of evil in our political marketplace. And I'm not sure of how many of those words actually fit that sentence, but you get the vibe. I do. I do.

But I actually think that without the actual central leadership toward the darkness, this would not be happening. I think it is not entirely an American problem because, as my son pointed out to me, well, then why is there a rise of totalitarianism or fascistic tendencies all around the world? Everywhere, yeah. Right now. Or at least in every hemisphere, if not in every country. And I think it is, again, not a new problem. Or rather, the fascistic tendency is not a new problem. We have new crises that fascism is a lazy response to. It is the lazy man's political ideology

because it's only about appetites. It is not about values. And so I think this too shall pass. Will it get terrible? Is it going to get worse? I don't know. It's not inconceivable that people like Gozar or Kevin McCarthy, and I do not see the difference between the two of them at this point, because someone who knows better, okay, let's get back to your Jesuit training. Someone who knows better, but does the same thing is actually in a state of greater sin than someone like Gozar, who apparently is mentally ill. Do you know what I mean? I have more sympathy.

The distinction without a difference at this point. It really is. Gozar probably is insane. You know, allegedly, if any lawyers are listening. So I've heard satire, satire. You hide behind it. It's just a joke. Just a joke.

Just a joke. Or a joke. No, just a jokes. not unlikely next speaker should know better and does know better and therefore is far more guilty of sticking a knife in our democracy than some mentally deficient former dentist. We're talking about hope, though. We were talking were talking about we started with hope and then we ended with what gives hope is i will say in the light of eternity was a phrase my mother would always use try to perceive this moment in the light of eternity and um i would say not in the light of eternity i would say but in the light of the power of the constitution i believe in the american people this too shall pass i truly it, but it will take effort.

Yeah, it doesn't happen on its own. Nobody gets to opt out of this decision. And that was one of the things that was very hopeful to me. Hey, did the former president get more votes than anybody else other than Joe Biden? Yeah, but that's kind of cool that America actually saw this moment as important and people did step up. That actually gives me hope. And it also gives me hope that

eight million more people thought it was a bad idea to continue where we're going. You know, one thing I'll say about Democrats is that they never, never cease to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That's our thing. I like, you know, what do you want? Enjoy it. You know, enjoy this. Because, of course, it'll end. You know, was there a blue wave?

Yes, there was. And the one thing we know about waves is they go up onto the beach and they stay there forever. Of course, this is cyclical. Fucking enjoy it while you can, you maniacs. And get to work and get to work. You just got to tend to democracy over and over. Exactly.

It must, it has to continue. And I'm in, you know, will there be bad news? Of course, there's always been wars and rumors of wars. But you shall not know the hour nor the day. And I think that it is a little, listen, let's get back to humility. It is not for me to say how people react to my work. It is not for me to say whether my work has an influence. It is not for us to say what this present moment

brings as its fruit next year. Is Virginia a bellwether? You can't prove it until next year. Right. We'll find out. You can't even prove it next year because God bless him. He's somebody's little boy. But the minute I heard that Terry McAuliffe was going to be the nominee for Virginia, I went, really? I mean, lots of great service and I'm sure there's many positive things, but he does not look like the future. Really? You don't think you don't think Terry McAuliffe? You don't think an old Clinton fundraiser? I refuse to see that as indicating anything. Four months ago, Joe Biden was riding high in the polls

and it was no COVID summer and we were all vaxxed and waxed and ready to get saxed. And we were still in Afghanistan and that tragic and terrible, but eventual and inevitable withdrawal hadn't happened yet and Delta hadn't come back, man, who knows what four months from now is like.

That is, that's, that's how I try to think about it as well. Last question. I'm asking all of our guests, what's your favorite way to unplug and how often do you get to do it? So no phone, no internet,

no nothing. I've got a, a nice, but not palatious boat in South Carolina where I'm from. I've got a nice but not hellacious boat in South Carolina where I'm from. I've got a Scout LXF 275, which is a center console fishing boat, 27 and a half feet, big enough to take the waves offshore. And I have always wanted this kind of a boat. And my wife relented a couple of years ago. And my favorite thing is to take that out of sideland

and to go anywhere between 13 and 70 miles out, which is where the drop-off is in South Carolina. And out there, there's marlin and mahi-mahi and tuna and sailfish. And it's a beautiful, extraordinary place with deep, deep blue blue water that special deep blue you can't get anywhere else and but listen if I just get 10 miles offshore and I just feel the wind in my hair and I my cell phone doesn't work anymore um I do it at least once a trip when

I go home and I try to do it more than once and I I'm home, I don't know, seven or eight times a year. But that's really where some switch, that some switch goes off in me. And the nice thing is, you know, you can't stay out there forever. You have to come back. You can't actually, you know, lose yourself in it because you actually very much have to keep yourself found so you can get home.

You can't really drift away with it. But it's a profound spiritual experience that is entirely renewing like i'm always a little bit better when i come back i love that answer a lot a lot of guests have just said uh marijuana so this is much this is uh much more poetic than that i appreciate it not into that scene man i know you democrats just yeah yeah yeah steven colbert thank you so much for doing this we really appreciate it take care bye offline is a crooked media production it's written and hosted by me john favreau it's

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