I just ate some Americone Dream and listened to the Magical Mystery Tour album. It helped — Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and The Beatles will help almost anything — but it doesn’t change the fact that television lost one of its greatest stars tonight.
Stephen Colbert and his late-night tv show about love were everything we needed, and delivered on a platform we could all share without being on our phones or using the Internet. As a fan of more than two decades, the finale to the show was everything I could have asked for. But I am gutted and grieving the loss of the show and of this man on my TV screen every night.
I’ve learned a lot about interviewing from Colbert and his partner in crime, Jon Stewart. There hasn’t been a time in the past two decades where, while drinking from the firehose that is working in the news industry, I couldn’t watch them and laugh.
By losing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, we lost a daily dose of one of the best comedians and political humorists we’ve ever had. After all, before The Late Show, Colbert played a character every single day for an entire decade who was a foil to who he is. But it didn’t come without rewards — after seeing the show of support at the final episode of The Colbert Report, I could hardly wait to see what The Last Show would be like — and it was just as incredible as I hoped.
Being nostalgic comes easy to me — I’m a millennial. But it’s also easy for me to say that without cable and broadcast TV, I would know a lot less. Sure, there was trash on TV when I was a kid, like reality shows, cheap courtroom dramas and preachers for profit, but there was also Animal Planet, The Food Network and Nick @ Nite.
Both network TV and cable TV have hollowed out in the past couple of decades. We all already know it’s thanks in large part to streaming, which has forced networks and cable channels to shift focus and adjust to online audiences. Much of what used to be addictive fictionalized dramas on network and cable TV are now reruns or remakes of said dramas, and syndicated shows, all of which executives hope will drive consumers to pay for their premium streaming content.
We all know there are theories about Colbert’s cancellation and if it was really “purely for financial reasons.” Colbert has said himself that he can’t argue with people’s speculations about it. But the fact of the matter is if my favorite comedian got taken off of the air for something other than financial reasons, CBS had an easy out — if they say it’s purely for financial reasons as a struggling network TV channel in 2026, many people probably shrugged and said, “Yeah, makes sense, honestly.”
In fact, one of my friends recently said, as we sat around a bonfire, that “Now we all have to pretend like we care about the end of late night network TV.” Naturally, I loudly protested, and said I didn’t know what I was going to do without Colbert at the end of every weekday. And to be sure — the last few weeks without him have been weird and I don’t like it.
For a kid from the sticks, like me, those kinds of shows were one of the first introductions I had to culture, to arts and to news. The Late Show gave me access to famous people and a small window into their world. For an hour each night, even if I was a struggling journalist just starting out in her career, I got to be “in” New York and hear the king of political satire talk about the biggest headlines of the day.
And I feel bad for the kids of today. It’s not like they have the same network or cable TV that I had — thank goodness Sesame Street is still around, but many other network programs I consider essential to my childhood are not. Think Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (the all-time classic), The Magic School Bus and Arthur.
These shows weren’t just entertainment for kids — they provided valuable moral lessons, too. Mister Rogers is still known and is often meme-ified for his proclamations on kindness, understanding and loving your neighbor. Arthur taught us about friendship, empathy and forgiveness. I know there are some content creators for kids, like Ms. Rachel, doing similar work today, but it isn’t quite as easy for kids to find her as it was for us to press a couple of buttons on the remote and be in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Cable TV has similarly hollowed out. Today, it’s not like a kid can flip on the TV, catch Emeril adding an ingredient and yelling “BAM!” or switch to the Weather Channel to listen to the soothing jazz of Local on the 8s. Kids may have some of the same types of experiences today on YouTube and TikTok, but it’s not quite the same. Cable and network television were like an FCC-approved buffet of education and entertainment. A little of everything; take what you like and leave the rest.
Apps and phones are like the illicit off-brand Doritos you take to bed even though your parents (or partner) asked you not to — they taste good going down, but there isn’t much substance there, and they’re designed to be addictive. There’s already research — and many of us see it and feel it in ourselves, now — about how social media, apps and the screeniverse hijack our brains. And that’s not even getting into the data-collection of it all, which deserves its own piece.
There’s also the affordability of it all. Smartphones aren’t cheap and neither is Internet access. And how many times have you read the same story about kids left alone with phones and racking up thousands of dollars of in-app purchases?
Cable was expensive to set up in the 1950s when it was the new shiny thing. Installation rates ranged from $100 to $150, which was a lot of money back then. After the upfront cost, though, service fees were mostly affordable, $5 a month or so. Soon enough, kids of every class and corner had access to cable television. We were watching the same shows and having a separate but communal experience.
And network TV, where late shows were born and have thrived, didn’t even cost $5 a month. Anyone with an antenna could tune in. Network TV was an essential, basic resource for Americans for a long time, and I’d argue that it still is. When the tornado sirens go off, I head straight to my TV so local meteorologists can tell me what time the storm is coming through my neighborhood. (The one with the sleeves — St. Louis, you know what time it is.)
Anyone who’s my age remembers how big of a deal CBS’ Survivor was when it first came out. Families, including mine, gathered to watch it together. And it’s still a big deal — it has truly “outlasted” every other network TV show of its time, and just completed its 50th season this spring.
The same goes for shows like American Idol and what is now known as a classic “comfort show” of many millennials, The Office. We’d all wait on the edge of our seats for the latest episode of these series each week, and then became fodder for lunchroom small talk. Cable and network TV provided entertainment for the masses and, without even really trying, united us. Years later, when documentaries come out (looking at you, America’s Next Top Model) we get to reflect together.
Beyond providing smooth, shared entertainment at the press of a button, the usability of network TV and basic cable was just better. I distinctly remember plopping down on the couch for an afternoon and memorizing channel numbers when there were multiple shows on at the same time that I wanted to watch. I’d switch back and forth between commercial breaks and catch a little of it all.
When it was baseball season, my dad and brother flipped between games easily: ABC, CBS, TNT, TBS. Remotes used to have number pads and a “last” button that would allow you to flip between the channel you were on and the channel you were last on. The “fancy” TVs and remotes at the time had multiple “last” options.
Late Night was always a fixture in my life, even as something in the background. As kids, we stayed up in our rooms watching cartoons or I Love Lucy while our parents watched “those boring late night talk shows.” When my parents hired a babysitter, she always watched Letterman. When I’d have trouble sleeping and sit out in the living room with her in the rocking chair, I’d always wonder what that guy was talking about and what was so funny.
Now I understand — deeply — that we have to laugh.
In addition to being nostalgic, millennials are, in my opinion, the “watch me” generation. Tell us we can’t and we will. We, along with everyone else, wanted access to all of our favorite movies and shows, all of the time, at our demand, on our time. We wanted it that way, and we got it that way, but now it’s created another problem. Content and channels are fractured, and to be able to watch everything, we have to pay Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, MLB, YouTube, Google, Amazon and others.
And if you want to watch every single game your home baseball team plays, you can pretty much just forget about it.
When I was in college, cable cost me $50, and because it was a local package, local sports teams were always included. By the time I graduated, it was inching closer to $100, and things in the television world had just started to fracture. I can’t remember exactly when, but for budgetary reasons, I stopped paying for cable years ago. But I have a digital antenna that I bought 10 years ago just so I could watch Colbert.
Cable is special in its own right, but broadcast TV is even more special because it’s free to anyone with the ability to access it. The digital antenna I bought cost me $10 after a rebate. I’ve never paid anything after that, and I’ve watched Colbert, and events like the GRAMMYs and Oscars, for free for years.
After watching him for two decades, it’s only been one month without Colbert and I’m having a hard time. So far, I’ve replaced watching him every night with writing this piece. It’s been therapeutic, as writing always is for me, but it’s not the same kind of therapeutic that laughter is.
Growing up, my brother and I watched Comedy Central a lot, which was available on our basic cable package. As we got into our teen years, we enjoyed South Park, which was a gateway drug to The Daily Show and then The Colbert Report when I got older. And by the end, I was watching Colbert on what kid-me used to think of as “the boring late night talk show.”
In the Late Show subreddit, people say they already miss Colbert’s humor, his wit, his intelligence. But they say the thing that they miss the most is his interviews. I’ve said for a long time that Colbert and Jon Stewart have taught me more about interviewing than some of my j-school classes did.
I miss his interviews and his monologues the most, but I miss the whole show for the masterpiece that it was. A Late Show graphic artist once said the show was one of the most challenging to work on because of all of the media, images, videos and soundbites they used each night. Rarely did two minutes go by without Colbert using a prop, putting on a costume/disguise, pulling out a photo to discuss with a guest, or running a clip of the current U.S. president as setup for the smartest, sharpest one-liner I could never think of.
Colbert was a fixture on Comedy Central for much of my growing up, and for all of my political growing up. I always thought of him as more than a comedian or a talk show host. I don’t know what the right term for him was or is — he’s carved out a niche in the comedy world and deserves a classification of his own. I know he’d never call himself anything but a comedian or an entertainer; a performer — he once said he has to perform to manage his anxiety.
But he didn’t just talk about or perform about the news, he would report like nobody else has, too: The man started his own super PAC, “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” to demonstrate just how asinine the super PAC funding laws are. To reinforce how reliant Americans are on migrant labor, he stayed in character as the Report right-wing blowhard when he testified before Congress on the matter. His White House Correspondents’ Dinner address during the George W. Bush years will never be forgotten and propelled him to GOAT status at once.
He’s spoken frankly about all of this, like in one of his “Meet The Press” segments.
“I’m not a newsman — I greatly admire newsman, and I enjoy good news — and I’m not a politician, but I like playing political games to see what happens in them,” Colbert said to David Gregory during his 2014 appearance.
During his interview with Gregory, Colbert also said, “satire is parody with a point,” and that he considers himself a satirist. He’s the king of political satire, to me. When he took over The Late Show, he took late night broadcast TV to another level. With the help of his brilliant staff, he combined comedy, politics, humanity, truth to power and subtly, without any of us even realizing it — love — into one hour each night.
My tin foil hat isn’t big enough to suggest anyone planned the division of our attention into a million apps and away from common entertainment spaces like cable and network TV. I think the tech was there, and then the money was there — and then, after they’d captured our attention and encouraged us to lose control of the scroll, we did. And now there’s plenty of opportunity to take advantage of the credit cards behind the doomscrolling.
Sure, we have TikTok trends that go viral, and memes, and some other common Internet currency. But the natural order created by algorithms is separation, and the social media apps serve you what they believe you individually want to see so they can keep you hooked. It works, and we all know it does because we all know the feeling of losing hours to scrolling on your phone. It’s one of the worst feelings, and I think we all know that. But the part that’s more subtle and that I think does more damage — nobody will be able to share that experience with you.
Someone may never know how much they love Walt Whitman’s poetry until they hear Edward Norton passionately deliver it on The Late Show. I’m 35 and until I saw an episode of Colbert’s show earlier this year, I couldn’t have told you what kind of music the Drive-By Truckers make. Or how perceptive and insightful author Ocean Vuong is.
And without a show like The Late Show, sure, we can still share with each other about these things. But it’s more difficult without access to a shared experience every night. Culture, taste, art and joy come to us in different forms. Stephen and his staff understood that, and they brought it to us each night for 11 years.
Colbert discussed the information atmosphere we find ourselves in with Norton in an interview during the final weeks of his show. Norton mentioned doom-scrolling and the onslaught of information at our fingertips. Colbert said he believes that we’re not being informed when we’re doom-scrolling, but that we’re actually under psychological attack at all times and with profit, not an informed citizenry, as the end goal.
Colbert asked Norton if he felt, while doom-scrolling, as if a spell or some type of witchcraft had been cast over him. Norton said that he does feel that way, and that he thinks such purposefully imposed anxiety is meant to paralyze us. And it does. But laughter, love and connection can break the paralysis. They remind us of who we are when we are at our best. That’s what The Late Show with Stephen Colbert brought to me — wherever I was — each night.
A couple of years ago, I traveled by plane more often for work, and I always felt a little more settled, no matter where I was, if I could watch Colbert. I would tell anyone who’d listen that I always felt my day didn’t officially end until I saw Stephen make his entrance on the stage. Oftentimes, when he’d come out onstage, I would grin and throw my hands out, as if to say, “there he is!”
It was a fantastic entrance: The show announcer and the band had to time everything just right so that guests would be announced in time for the crescendo of the song to blast, horns blaring, just at the right time when Colbert walked onstage and greeted the audience in the studio and at home.
I watched Stephen from hotel rooms in Chicago, Wichita, California — wherever I went. I took him anywhere I could. Once, while traveling to a work conference, my plane was landing at 10:35 p.m. in Minneapolis. The flight I was on had WiFi and it actually worked. It was almost too late when I realized I wouldn’t be able to watch the whole show, but I could at least watch his entrance on my phone.
I opened the CBS app, logged in using a friend’s credentials, and as the plane’s landing gear touched the ground, the crescendo hit and there he was, making his entrance. I grinned as he bopped onstage with that slightly cocky spring in his step, with the energy you’ve got to have if you’re the host of a late night TV show. I sighed in relief. I still had a couple of hours to go after deplaning and traveling to my friend’s house where I would finally pass out, but that moment of normalcy during a hectic day meant everything.
When I was at home in St. Louis, he was the anchor to my nighttime routine. I always had a deadline for getting my dishes and chores done. After I’d shower and finish getting ready for bed, I’d watch the monologue, cackling away while massaging jojoba oil into my cuticles.
The first part of the show was the best part of The Late Show. Even before Stephen took over and made it his own, the monologue became enough of a fixture in our culture that it was, for example, part of an eventually-convicted murderer’s alibi. Once it became The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and he found his groove, it became one of my favorite parts of each weekday.
He said everything we’d all been thinking that day, including the stuff we didn’t connect or hadn’t fully formed yet. While we were at work, or picking up kids, or making dinner, or doing hobbies, Colbert and his staff were digesting the news for us. At the top of The Last Show, he said at his previous show, The Colbert Report, he committed to “feeling the news at us.” In this job, he took an oath to feel it with us, and I could tell that he always did.
No matter how bleak the national news was, or how dark of a long-haul investigation I was working on, I knew Stephen and his staff would find a way to make me laugh. I can say without question that nobody makes me laugh like Stephen Colbert does. It’s loud and hearty, an unstoppable cackle from the belly.
For those of us who live with anxiety, routines are important, essential. They provide stability and predictability in a chaotic world. They’re — well, I guess I’d say that they’re “paramount,” but for obvious reasons I want to avoid using that word.
I’ll develop new routines. I know Colbert will, too, and he’ll be on to something else before we know it. It’ll be okay. But in the meantime, I can’t help but watch reruns and continue to reflect on what we’ve lost.
One January show, after he interviewed Chance the Rapper, Colbert brought out Maria Stephan, a nonviolence resistance expert. Colbert’s discussion with Stephan was heartening and gave Americans who want to do something about violence a place to go and a next step to take. He read the room — the country, really — and gave us what was needed before anyone asked.
Days later, the episode after Alex Pretti’s death was measured but with a strong undertone of outrage. The tone was perfect and met the moment. Colbert somehow still managed to make us laugh. And he was calm, but at the same time furious.
He read Pretti’s parents’ statement in full and ended the segment with a clip of Pretti reading a tribute to a deceased veteran at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Perhaps most importantly, he did what many reporters felt they could not do, particularly in this climate. He spoke plainly about what happened to Pretti.
He didn’t mince words, just like he never has. He was, until the very end, a display of courage, intelligence and love.
There was a moment near the end with many, I’d say almost all, of his guests. It passed quickly but I saw it. They wanted to talk about the end, about him, about what he’d do next. But Colbert would have none of it. He would thank them, and accept the accolades, but he wouldn’t let anyone linger on the end and all of the questions it brought because he had a job to do, and one that he loved.
Whatever the guest was there to promote, Colbert pivoted to it quickly after the subject of “the end” was raised. The guest would move along with him, usually at least quickly injecting some profession of love or fandom for him before letting Colbert continue to guide the interview. The conversations proceeded, and Colbert did what he does best, and what I already miss most — he conducted a masterful interview, he pulled anecdotes out of people, he made the guest and the audience laugh.
During that January episode, before he brought both guests out, Colbert launched into a short segment about comments the FCC had made about late night TV hosts. Colbert’s attitude was the same as it ever was, the same as it’s always been — come get me. Try to shut me up, and I will be louder, sharper, funnier.
And honestly? After he was cancelled, Colbert was on fire like I had never seen him. Between last July and the end of the show, I cried real tears and grieved what this means for me personally and what it means on a larger scale. But I also enjoyed him more than I ever had before.
Since cancellation, Colbert was more himself, more of the “real Stephen” than we’d ever gotten before, and I loved it. From the questions he asked to the way he reacted to guests and what they shared with him, it felt like he had removed some of the “performer” veneer. We got to see and feel and hear the true Stephen Colbert, and maybe for the first time.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. This sucks and I did not want this. I wish I still had The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in my weeknight routine.
But also, weren’t we so lucky to see him in perhaps his truest form before we had to let him go as our late night guy? And after all, as he once said — what punishments of God are not gifts?
He wasn’t just the guy in the improv troupe. He wasn’t just a stand-up comic. He wasn’t the satiric “Colbert Report” asshole he played (and I loved) when I was a teenager, the one who helped me understand politics and the one who helped me laugh about politics.
But he wasn’t the traditional broadcast late-night host anymore, either. He was, in the final months, the unleashed traditional broadcast late-night host. The pure Colbert, and with a band, Louis Cato and The Great Big Joy Machine, that let loose, too. They were more visible than ever, appearing in some of their own sketches, and the vibe between Cato and Colbert was absolutely electric.
I just wanted more of this, of him, of his brilliance. And I’m grateful that for months I got it.
On the Feb. 16 show, Jennifer Garner talked about “competency porn” and that Stephen is an example of that. She couldn’t be more right, and watching him interview was enthralling, intoxicating, and addictive for someone who interviews people for a living. He’s a master of his craft, and so much of what he did — in fact, everything he did — was infused with love and was a gesture of love.
It’s in the questions he asks. It’s in the preparation I know that he did before the interview. It’s the glint in his eye when the never-before-told anecdotes make him laugh, and it’s in the quips he improvised in return to make the audience laugh and keep the conversation flowing.
There was love in the way he laughed quietly but knowingly when Jon Stewart said, during his last appearance, “you know I am not a good long-term planner.” I could see the love every time he sat back and put a fist to his mouth to conceal how hard he was laughing at a guest’s story, like he did so many times during his last Late Show interview with one of his best friends, Steve Carrell.
Listening to Colbert and Carrell reminisce about pounding the floor to scare away rats hiding in clothing piles they used for scene changes at Second City is exactly the kind of thing I loved tuning into his show for, and I was honored to, for a few moments, feel the love in the friendship between two of America’s comedic treasures.
I didn’t realize they’d grown up together at the improv shop in Chicago until watching this, and I realized after this episode that Colbert was sharing the love in his life through his guests in the show’s final weeks. He may not have intended it this way, but as a fan, it reassured me that he will be just fine — more than fine — when he’s no longer on my TV screen every night.
The love for his staff was always steadfast, too, which says a lot about a person, and particularly a person with fortune and fame. During his appearance, Stewart praised the staff for being competent, excellent and “most importantly, game” to help him do any kind of bit. Colbert said, “I am so proud to know them and to be one of them.” That’s the kind of boss that fosters a creative environment where great work gets done and people grow to be the best version of themselves.
Stewart told a story about a member of Colbert’s staff, Jay Katsir. For a few seconds, Colbert looks past Stewart, I assume at Katsir or another staffer who knows him, and gives an impish grin. An impish grin full of nothing but love. And that glint in his eye — it was especially noticeable when he was having a moment with a guest, but it never leaves. It’s the sparkle of a man who knows how to live — who has grieved, who has lost, and who loves fiercely.
What Colbert did each night was an expression of love for his country, the values it stands for, and the people in it. He has a special way of creating moments with 100% of his heart.
I could tell his guests felt like the only person in the world when he was with them. During interviews with people I had no knowledge of or attachment to, Colbert would find a way to make me cry. I’m not sure why, but maybe it’s because at 62, he’s still curious, he’s still learning, he still wonders.
Isn’t it a feat that after all he’s seen and done, after all he’s been through in his life, after all the jokes he’s told that put our government on ice (and earned him a stern letter or talking-to from network lawyers), after all the times he’s had to be the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down — he still has wonder? That there’s a steady undercurrent of love running through everything he does?
At the end, Colbert unabashedly shared more of himself with us, and he threw everything he had at making come true the vision he spoke of at the EMMY awards last year: a late-night comedy show about love. I know the show is over, but still, all I can say is let him out. Or rather, let him in. I don’t know how, exactly, but I do know that I just want more of what his show provided. We need more of that.
Lately, I’ve been gardening a lot. It’s another coping mechanism. When I garden, I like to listen to The Beatles. And even before springtime this year, I’d started listening to The Beatles again. After seeing the finale, I feel like the universe was preparing me for the end of Colbert’s show.
Hearing and seeing Colbert sing the background vocals in “Hello, Goodbye” broke me into several pieces and healed me all at once. Before the chorus, when Paul McCartney is singing “You say high, I say low, you say why, and I say I don’t know” the third and fourth bars of the background lyrics are “I can stay, until it’s time to go.” As I watched Stephen joyfully sing those lyrics, backing up McCartney, I knew we had mere moments before his show was over forever. I felt the joy, the sadness, the love, the peace, the resignation.
If I could say anything to Colbert, it’s this:
I think about your EMMYS speech a lot. You declared your love for the country, even after getting cancelled for questionable reasons, and you once again declared your mission to make a late night show about love. I’ve been a devoted fan for all of your 21 years, Stephen, and I can wholeheartedly say that you did it. Thank you for everything you brought me and taught me.
There were several hints throughout the show — his final greeting card, Benny sniffing the snow globe and Stephen telling him to leave it — that he’s not done. Performing is his anti-anxiety medicine, after all. I already knew he wasn’t done before the Late Show ended because how could he be done?
He loved doing the show. We loved watching the show. And now it’s time for him to turn that love into something else.
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”
I wrote this in pieces in the months leading up to The Last Show and finished it on the final night. I’ve tweaked and edited in the month since then. If you loved Colbert’s show as much as I did, I hope you enjoyed reading this. Tips accepted @jayohday on Venmo.
