Stephen Colbert

And the audience is just and the audience is just as energetic whether I do that or not.

And so I started eliminating things and said, what what's left?

What's left is you walking on stage and doing jokes.

And then – and so it was just erring on the side of giving the audience more, giving more energy, knowing I had enough energy for that room.

What you learn eventually – and this is something I knew sort of –

intellectually but I'd forgotten instinctually is that you actually don't need high energy to fill a large space you need your own sense of presence and focus you know you can bend an entire room by bending a paper clip if you've got the focus of the room and to accept that the audience you know that you are their focus you don't need to do high kicks you just need to be there present for them and then you fill the entire room

They're very different.

It's not a relief.

I enjoy knowing something about their subject.

I'll tell you that.

I can have Neil Tyson on and know something about –

No, my character was a straw man for whatever – for whoever was on.

I was a mass of ignorances.

And for you to knock down should you choose to.

I used to be alarmed that people would not knock them down.

Like someone would come on and they would call into question the ascendancy of whatever particular figure of the religious right.

And I would say, well, you know, all the founding fathers were fundamentalist Christians.

And then they wouldn't correct me.

And I'd go, oh, good Lord.

What's going to happen now?