Good morning. Stephen Colbert went off the air last week. Today, a Morning writer reflects on the late-night host’s ability to find connection.
Stephen and I
In the summer of 2007, my friends and I took a train from New Jersey to Manhattan to see a taping of “The Colbert Report.” By luck, we got seats in the front row. That’s when Stephen Colbert and I formed our deep psychic bond. Well, that might be overstating it, at least from his side of things. But it certainly felt true for me. During one commercial break, as I mouthed the words to a Neutral Milk Hotel song playing on the loudspeaker, Colbert spotted me. We locked eyes. He began singing, too, and smiled at me. After he introduced that night’s guest, he leaped from his desk, pointed toward me and ran over and high-fived me and my friends. Then he circled around and did it again.
It was a special moment, one that still comes back vividly all these years later. For Colbert, it was simply what he did, night after night. Over two decades on TV, I can’t imagine how many thousands of others he made feel the same way — like This is my guy. His capacity for showmanship and connection carried him through more than 10 years of hosting “The Late Show” on CBS. It helped make his talk show No. 1 among its peers. But even he couldn’t defy gravity forever. CBS took him off the air Thursday. During his final show, his opening speech summoned the magical alchemy he seemed to have with audiences, the one I felt almost 20 years ago. “The energy that you’ve given us,” he told his crowd, “We’ve given it all right back to you.” In his own wordsColbert’s “Late Show” found its identity in needling President Trump, our chief TV critic James Poniewozik wrote. It was uncomfortable for a company (CBS is owned by Paramount) trying to close a multibillion dollar merger that required Trump’s approval. CBS says that’s not why it canceled the series — late-night interview shows are expensive to make, and viewership has fallen over the decades. Colbert sat down with my colleague John Koblin to talk about the motivations behind the cancellation: Why do you think the F.C.C. and the Trump administration are so focused on you? Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity. Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them. The number of newspeople who have said to me or Jon Stewart or any of the guys who do this, “God, I wish I could say what you say on air.” And we can. I think that upsets them. I think it might be upsetting that we really do not live in their world of principalities and powers. Read the full conversation, in which Colbert explains how he evolved the show and what he might do next. The end of an institutionJason Zinoman, our comedy critic, looked back on the 33-year run of “The Late Show,” which began after David Letterman was passed up for the “Tonight Show” job and decided to compete against it instead. Both Letterman and Colbert came into the show as ironic outsiders, Jason writes, and both sanded down those personalities a bit in their turn to the mainstream. But not entirely: Letterman stayed weirder than his “Tonight Show” counterpart, Jay Leno; Colbert stayed politically edgier than his, Jimmy Fallon. The case for institutions is usually framed as preserving stability, reliability and other virtues that clash with what audiences want from comedy. But sometimes you need the stodgy power of institutions in service of irreverent art. They allow artists to reach new audiences and take risks they wouldn’t otherwise. Read Jason’s full story, or watch him explain it in the video below.
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Harvard recently voted to cap the number of A’s that could be given out in some undergraduate courses. Does this kind of policy improve educational outcomes? Yes — if done right. Easy A’s reduce the incentive for students to learn, resulting in less knowledgeable and less skilled graduates. “For our new cap to work, we will have to show that it is part of a broader effort to improve education and learning — that we are not simply punishing our students with lower grades but raising the bar with more challenging and exciting classes,” Jason Furman and David Laibson, two Harvard professors, write for The Times. No. A cap on A’s does nothing to address the real problem driving grade inflation: that universities rely on underpaid, overworked adjunct instructors and graduate students for a huge amount of grading. “Schools would much rather wring their hands over vague cultural ‘softness’ than admit the obvious: that their revenue-maximizing logic is actively undermining educational quality,” Alex Bronzini-Vender, a Harvard student, writes for Washington Monthly.
Air travel has become miserable enough to make Rachel Feintzeig yearn for the halcyon days of 2023. A Vermont museum housed in an aluminum trailer and run by a 15-year-old boy captures the humanity behind military service, Jasper Craven writes. Here are columns by Ross Douthat on why tech billionaires should make cultural philanthropy a priority and Tressie McMillan Cottom on Trump’s problem with MAGA moms. Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.
Believing: A postcard from the northernmost church on earth, in Svalbard. Linus and Lucy: The owner of the “Peanuts” catalog wants the government to stop using its music without permission. Kid lit crit: The national ambassador for children’s literature published a manifesto for adults. A single line in the book set off a firestorm. Sales man: John Marion, the public face of Sotheby’s for more than three decades, was long considered the country’s greatest art auctioneer. He died at 92.
NASCAR: Driver Kyle Busch died of complications from severe pneumonia that progressed into sepsis, his family said. N.B.A.: The New York Knicks defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers 121-108 to take a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. Tennis: The French Open began today in Paris. Here are 30 players to know. Want daily French Open updates directly in your inbox? Sign up for The Athletic’s Grand Slam Briefing.
If you’re traveling for Memorial Day weekend, get ready for packed highways. The national average for regular unleaded gas was around $4.55 a gallon as of Friday, according to AAA data, up from $3.20 at the same time last year. Despite that, AAA estimates that most Americans who are traveling this weekend — 87 percent of them — are driving to their destination. Americans’ top domestic getaways for the long weekend include Las Vegas, New York, Seattle and Orlando, Fla., according to AAA booking data. Only about 8 percent of this weekend’s travelers are projected to fly. But airports are still likely to be crowded; the Transportation Security Administration predicts that it will screen more than 18 million passengers and flight crew members through Wednesday. And there are signs that air travel will be in high demand this summer. American Airlines is projecting a record 75 million customers from May 21 through Sept. 8, and United Airlines expects three million more customers than it had last summer. — Christine Chung, travel reporter More on travel
This week’s subject for The Interview is the legendary actor Nicolas Cage, who is making his first big foray into TV with his new series, “Spider-Noir.” We talked about his highly unusual ideas about acting, his odd encounters with fellow celebrities, and many other things. There’s a movie you did that came out in 2025 called “Gunslingers.” It’s a western, and your character does a voice that I would describe as “modern blues man.” What was that voice? What happened was, we had a back-to-back strike in Hollywood, and I got a phone call: “You need to do this movie right now or you’re going belly up.” I’m like, What am I going to do? I want to do this other movie, “Madden,” but they pushed. How am I going to be able to afford to do the other movie? I thought, Oh, god, please, I don’t want to do another commercial. I had done |
