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The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert

Stephen Presents: Patti Smith (Extended)

The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert

CBS

News, Comedy, Comedy Interviews, News Commentary, Tv & Film

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stephen's gracing the podcast airwaves this week to kick off "Rock & Roll Thanksgiving" with Hall of Famer member Patti Smith, who says her new memoir “Bread of Angels” was written to express gratitude to the people she’s loved, some of whom have been lost along the way. In this extended interview, she offers advice to young artists and shares stories from her decades-long career like being photographed by the legendary Robert Mapplethorpe for the cover of her seminal 1975 album, “Horses.” “Bread of Angels” is available everywhere now. For a performance by Patti Smith, head to YouTube.com/ColbertLateShow! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody, you're listening to The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert.

0:09.5

He's here in the flesh.

0:10.6

One of my favorite things I get to do once every five weeks, five or six weeks, something like that.

0:15.8

We're here in the booth.

0:16.7

And I'm here with Becca.

0:17.6

Yeah, I'm the producer here on the pod show.

0:19.9

Thanks so much for listening.

0:21.0

A pleasure. Oh, I mean, the people listening, pod show. Thanks so much for listening. A pleasure.

0:39.7

Oh, I mean, the people listening, not me. Well, yeah. I thought you were thanking me for listening to you right now. I mean, you are. This is my I'm listening to your face. Okay, so one fun thing that we do on the Late Show Pod Show, if you've listened before, is we have a little game called Late Show Vocab, where we talk about

0:38.4

insider shorthand that only we know that's integral to our process. So I've won for you to start off

0:44.0

this week, and it's the quote, let's earn it. Can you explain why, when you would use this term?

0:52.0

Let's earn it means someone has said something in the room that generally I then associate with some of that.

1:00.8

I mean, I don't know.

1:01.4

I think other people use Let's Earn It Now just to mock me.

1:04.5

But it means that somebody said something and made me think of like, oh, wow, we should really listen to Acky 1, 2, 3 by the English beat.

1:28.1

And I'll go, let's earn it. Meaning we have to finish the work in front of us because as much as I'd much rather, at this moment, just listen to some music. And it's often music. Yeah. Especially in the rewrite room before we do the show, which is a real pressure cooker. we have rehearsal and then we have to basically have the show rewritten in an hour after that, which is high pressure, because sometimes you might be rewriting 22 minutes of material, maybe even more, because you have to cut down a fat monologue. And so it's basically you have to rewrite a minute every 30 seconds. No, you have to rewrite a minute every two minutes. That's what it is. Yeah. And breaking news could happen at any point. At any point.

1:47.5

And I'm a thousand times the worst at delaying us at every moment. Because if I'm in a meeting

1:56.5

and everything is just going smoothly, it probably means on board. But if I'm constantly interrupting people with other things that I'm thinking of, that means that whatever we're talking about actually sparked my interest and it made my brain fire in my own attention deficit disorder way, is that if I'm really paying attention, I'll stop focusing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? It's part of the creative process, you know, sparks of creativity. So let's earn it means, okay, I know I can't start this now, but let's get this done so we can actually listen to the song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or watch the sketch or something like that. Yeah, it's like watch a little bit, and then you say one sentence and then say let's earn it. and then I go, okay, how do I find this in the next 45 minutes and then I'll say, oh, by the way, we were going to earn something. What was it? Exactly. Because I'll always forget what it was because it was a fleeting enthusiasm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes no one remembers. Yeah, I try to remember. but it's yeah so that, yeah, so that, that is so integral to our process,

2:51.5

and it is often music-based. And so that's launching into this week's theme. We have a theme week. Wow. Is this our first theme week? It is. And guess what it is? It's rock and roll Thanksgiving, because we've had a lot of great rock and roll-and-roll-themed guests on the show lately.

3:05.4

Yeah, yeah.

3:05.9

And I would love

3:06.7

to just blast on

...

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