Hey, guys, Willie Geist here with another edition of the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along.

Got a good one for you this week with the host for nine more months anyway of the late

show on CBS, Mr. Stephen Colbert. Now, Stephen and I got together well before,

several months before, the surprise announcement he made on the air in July that CBS effectively

had canceled his show. He's got to run through May of next year. A lot of people believe this

is mixed up in politics as Paramount, the parent company to

CBS was seeking to close a massive media merger that needed approval of the Trump administration's

FCC. Of course, Stephen Colbert has been a long and vocal critic of President Trump and his

administration. So a lot of discussion about what was really behind this move. But as I say,

Stephen and I sat down for this conversation well before that news around the release of a new

cookbook with his wife, Evie. Stephen, of course, took that job on the late show about a decade

ago, 2015 after David Letterman announced his retirement from the late show.

It's an elevation from the Colbert report in which Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central was playing a character,

kind of this cable news blowhard that he introduced on the Daily show when he got that job in 1997.

So gets to the late show and suddenly for the first time in his career

actually has to play himself. It had been an improv actor before that. So Stephen and I talked about

his life, his rise through comedy, born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where he

met his wife Evie, had tragedy in his life, as you'll hear about,

a commercial plane crash that killed his father and two of his brothers, Stephen, the youngest of 11

kids, a fascinating guy, a smart guy, a funny guy. So sit back, relax, and enjoy now a conversation

with Stephen Colbert on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

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