Eric Deggans

He comes to the late show.

He has to figure out, you know, who am I going to be on camera?

And he decides he's going to try to not talk about topical things and he's going to maybe shy away from politics.

But there was a sense that when he leaned into politics and stopped doing bits so much,

People were seeing him, which is what they wanted.

They wanted to see him.

And I think that's just where we are with these shows.

That's what the whole influencer trend is about.

You know, seeing authentic people.

Even when they are inauthentically authentic.

Yeah.

So I think this is emblematic of how times change.

So the very first show that he did... So the background is that Stephen Colbert was a correspondent on The Daily Show, and he sort of developed this character of a know-it-all.

He called it, quote, a high-status idiot.

So this guy...

is an anchor, a conservative anchor, cable TV news pundit, who is hosting his own show.

They created a show called The Colbert Rapport.

And in the very first episode, he coined this term truthiness.

Now, what's interesting about that is that he kind of alludes to what it means during that segment.

He doesn't actually sort of totally spell out what that means.