What Next - Pour One Out for Stephen Colbert
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The late-night show is a staple of network television—maybe even one that has held on past its era. Still, that doesn’t mean The Late Show with Stephen Colbert had to end like this.
Guest: Adam Conover, comedian and host of the Factually! podcast.
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In case you have been living under a rock, I'm here to tell you that this is the final week of the late show with Stephen Colbert. |
| 0:14.8 | Plenty of people have sung Colbert's praises as this deadline approached, but allow this program to add one more compliment to the pile. |
| 0:23.8 | Stephen Colbert is far in a way one of the most talented people to ever do late night. |
| 0:29.8 | I mean, he is a, when I watch him perform as a comic, it's like watching a figure skater do a |
| 0:37.0 | triple axle over and over again. |
| 0:39.9 | This is comedian Adam Conover. You may remember him from his true TV series, Adam ruins everything. |
| 0:45.7 | Or maybe you just like his stand-up. He's such a beautiful performer, you know, and everyone |
| 0:53.2 | working on the show is working at the highest level of their ability. I know, you know, and everyone working on the show is working at the highest level of their ability. |
| 0:56.8 | I know, you know, writers on that show, senior writers who have been with him for 20 years, worked on the Colbert Report, right? |
| 1:03.6 | And you've been on the show. |
| 1:05.2 | I have been on the show. |
| 1:06.2 | Yeah, I've been on the show twice, I believe, on the couch. |
| 1:09.5 | And it was one of the, you know, highlights of my career at the Ed Sullivan Theater. |
| 1:14.2 | Have you been watching as the show comes to a close? |
| 1:17.2 | You know, I've been seeing clips like everybody else. |
| 1:20.3 | I plan on tuning in for the last couple shows. |
| 1:23.4 | It feels like awake. |
| 1:24.5 | Do you know what I mean? |
| 1:25.3 | Like, it feels like awake where everyone's like lined up to pay homage. |
| 1:31.6 | But there's not much left to say. |
| 1:34.2 | And everyone is sort of following a script of what they think should happen on a show like that, right? |
| 1:41.7 | Like when Johnny Carson retired, you know, famously was it it, was it Bet Midler or Barbara Straceant? |
... |
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