Stephen Colbert on connection, discovery, and human nature

This is a holiday special re-airing of our excellent episode with Stephen Colbert. What could we gain—and what might we lose—when technology begins to approximate the contours of human connection and presence? In this episode, Reid and Aria chat with comedian, actor, and political commentator Stephen Colbert. Best known for hosting The Colbert Report and The Late Show, Stephen combines a razor sharp satire with a sincere curiosity about the world. Together, Reid, Aria, and Stephen discuss the art of live performance, the many lessons one can learn from J. R. R. Tolkien, and the nature of creativity, humor, and imagination in the age of AI. The result is a meditation on discovery, empathy, and the bonds that make connection more than performance — but a shared act of being human.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  As we close out the year, it felt right to revisit our conversation with Stephen Colbert. Few people have a better grasp of how humor helps us weather the times we're living in and the times we're about to face.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  And the remarkable thing about listening back to this episode is how much sharper his insights feel today. The world has gotten noisier, but Stephen's ability to cut through that noise with precision, empathy, and a well-timed punchline is exactly why this conversation deserves another listen. This is that end-of-year moment when we all take stock of what happened, what surprised us, and what we're still laughing about so we don't cry. Listening back to Stephen with that lens makes this episode hit even harder. Let's jump back in. If the holidays remind us of anything, it's that finding joy, even

• 0:55Speaker 01

  ironic joy, is a form of resilience. Stephen shows us how humor can soften the edges of a tough year and sharpen our clarity for the next one.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  May we all bring a little bit of his wit, generosity, and fearless truth-telling versus truthiness with us. Thanks again for spending part of your holiday season with Possible.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  I'm really struck by what do we most want to be, and that's not alone. And loneliness is a disease, and it's a modern disease. I hope the show has been a sort of a third space for people. Is that something that they can come at the end of the day and say, oh, Stephen is going to share basically the whole show's reaction to the same day I experienced. It's really important that I don't break news to the audience. What I'm really having with them is an emotional experience. I mean, it takes intellectual sweat to do it, but I'm sharing the emotional reaction to everything during the day. And that gives a sense that we're really communicating with each other.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Reid Hoffman.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  And I'm Aria Finger.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  We want to know how together we can use technology like AI to help us shape the best possible future.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  We ask technologists, ambitious builders, and deep thinkers to help us sketch out the brightest version of the future. And we learn what it'll take to get there.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  This is possible.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  In Jara Tolkien's Legendarium, the elves were the first to awaken under the stars, masters of language, song, and memory. They believed that storytelling was a form of stewardship, that to tell the world's tales was to help preserve its soul.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  In our world, we don't have elves, but we do have comedians, satirists, and storytellers. And some of them, like our guest today, wield their craft like a mirror, reflecting the contradictions, the absurdities, and sometimes the quiet beauty of being human.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Stephen Colbert is one of the most influential comedic voices of our time, best known for hosting The Colbert Report and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He combines razor-sharp satire with a sincere curiosity about the world. He's spent decades exploring what it means to live truthfully in an age of performance.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  In this episode, we talk with Stephen about how our storytelling might evolve in an era of AI, what speculative fiction teaches us about hope and fear, and why creativity is more than just a spark. It's a discipline, a responsibility, and sometimes a kind of prayer.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Here's our conversation with Stephen Colbert.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  All right. Well, Stephen, we've been looking forward to this for months. Welcome to Possible.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  It is a pleasure. It is a pleasure.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  I thought the funnest way to start was that you and I are both deep Dungeons and Dragons fans, and we both started playing at a young age. So if you were to assign a character class to humanity in the 21st century, you know, bard, rogue, wizard, barbarian, what are we right now?

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Wait, humanity? So the entirety of humanity has to be a single character class?

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Or it could be a blend.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Well, uh, oh, I mean, because they're, they're, God, okay, so fighter, then you have ranger, paladin. Okay. I, I, I mean, there are some paladins out there. There are people who are picking up what they believe to be the sword of justice and enforcing the law and the goodness as they see it. I mean, paladins are very narrow minded.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  Well, they're lawful good.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Paladins have a tunnel vision. Lawful good is a tunnel vision. Lawful good can cause a lot of chaos and evil by being completely unbending. So that's, I've always been very suspicious of lawful good characters. I mean, I think of like, what is the alignment of humanity? That's, that's an interesting thing. So there's fighters, okay? Then there's thief. There's thief, which also has the subcategory of assassin. At least back in my day, I'm talking original ADD.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  ADD. I'm, I mean, some of us are thieves. I think there are very few assassins. I think some of us are clearly thieves.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  And some people sincerely believe in crypto.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  And that is an excellent opening for a techno optimist podcast. And then just a quick follow up before I hand it over to Aria. And then if you were to assign yourself a character class for your role in terms of what you do, what would your character class be?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, I guess, I mean, I don't think I have the skills for it, but I guess bard. Do you know what I mean? Because bard has to be bard, you have to be like a thief and a monk or something. You have to be cleric, cleric monk. And then you also have to be like a thief. And then you also have to have like a high, you know, uh, uh, intelligence. And then, and then, then you can spell bind people or something like that. There's something of like, what's the, what's the job of like a clown on? What's the job of a clown on camera? I guess that's bard.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, although it's, it's also the, the most elegant forms of clown, which is, you know, speaking some through humor, speaking some truth.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  All right. I want to let you, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to stop on that one right there.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  All right. I'm not even going to try to compete on the sci fi level that is here or the D and D level. But to, to, to give some street cred, I did, I read all three Lord of the Rings. I saw all three movies last year. I read The Hobbit to my kids, so I have some Tolkien. And so before we get into philosophy in the future of entertainment, if you had to be on a desert island, Stephen, just with one Tolkien character to keep you company, who would it be and why?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  On a desert island? So not in Middle Earth. Okay. So I've, um, golly, I think probably Gandalf because he would call the eagles and we would get off the desert island.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  He would save you.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Something like that, yeah. Or Gollum, he's a good swimmer. Maybe he could get us fish because he's good at catching fish.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  But Gollum might, Gollum might eat you. I might go for it again.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  That's true. I'm gamey.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Gollum would be too annoying. I think Gandalf's a great answer.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Gandalf would be the key. Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  So not surprising with that kind of start, you know, our episodes about creativity, empathy, agency, human beings. So let's start there. What do you think is essential about kind of who we are as human beings and how creativity and empathy kind of relate into them? And how does that inform, you know, what you do?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  When I was offered this gig 10 years, 10 plus years ago, I had to think about it. Like, I wasn't sure if I wanted it. And then I had to do the, I had to kind of do the math on it. I had to kind of Dutch uncle myself about this and go, okay, what is it? What would be good about it? And on, high on the list was live audience. Because there are a lot of other things, a lot of opportunities to do other things. I had a whole television show, all set, pilot, ready to go, that I wanted to do. But when I got this, I went, oh, well, gosh. I do love being in front of a live audience. Because, you know, you know what's working. And you can't, you can't make somebody find something funny anymore. You can make them love you.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  They just, it just happens or it doesn't happen. And the sense, as you're working on a joke, or where you're thinking about telling a joke, or even the moment, if it just occurs to you in that moment where you're about to tell it, there's, there's, you've already got your, all your empathetic, like, mirror neurons firing in you to go, oh, how would I receive this joke? What would this, what, what, how might this play out in the mind of another person? It's kind of like, it's, it's kind of like fishing. Creativity and imagination is, is an integral part of fishing. Because you throw that line down into the water, and you know what the hook is, and you know what the bait is. And hopefully you get some sense of what the movement of the water is. And in your mind, you have to imagine what's happening. What is that hook, what is that hook doing down there?

• 9:52Speaker 02

  And then if you get a, a strike, you have to think, was that, was that a little nibble from a big fish? Or was that a big nibble from a little fish? And is that fish on? And should I set the hook? And through that little line, just that little, you know, there's this, I have a friend, I don't know if this is his term, but he and I have this thing we always say to each other, which is, the tug is the drug. That's what fishing is about. That tug, the tug is the drug. And it's intermittent reinforcement. Much like joke telling, you get addicted to that feeling of will this time I read the water, the fish, the location, what the bottom is like, what kind of hook I should use, how I should weight it, how should I troll, should I bob, am I working on the

• 10:37Speaker 02

  surface here, what am I doing in this area with these fish? Okay, so that takes a lot of imagination, which is associated with empathy. I have to imagine, and empathy is even beyond imagination, because imagination, which is imagination, like really that term, you're actually picturing this thing and then, and that's, I think imagination is a big part of leadership, too. You have to express to the other people, literally what your vision is, and that's not a metaphor. How do you actually see this happening? And then you have to take the time to accurately describe to the people who are eager to do the thing necessary to achieve it. But if you're not clear to them, you can't be mad if they don't achieve it, because you didn't say what the goal was. You didn't say how you imagine this thing happening.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  And if you've got the answers, I mean, sometimes you don't, but creating something, for me, is always about what is the effect that this is going to have on the audience? And a lot of that is imagining how this is going to play out in the mind of another person. And empathy goes beyond imagination, because there's also what is the feeling that this elicits? And then what is the physical response that this elicits? There's a lot that goes into empathy. Empathy and imagination are completely inseparable. And I think that's what empathy has to do with creativity, is that you have to have imagination on what is the effect of this on an audience. And that's why I like a live audience, and it's one of the big reasons I took this show,

• 12:03Speaker 02

  is because 450 people in an actual theatrical experience, where not only do I get to perform to them and hear their laughter, but in a theatrical atmosphere, I also get this very specific bounce back of energy from the audience, because the building is built to give me that. It's curved, I'm at the focal point of this ellipse.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  When I perform and I get that feeling back from them. And, and hopefully, if it's really working, they also feel how that felt for me. And then we amplify each other's feelings. That's when it's really working.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I love that answer so much because it didn't occur to me because most people experience you through a screen, whether they're watching the show on TV or they're seeing your social media clips. And so just to hear that the, the live portion is the reason you did it.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny you should say that, like, that it's like, it's, it's news to you that the room is so important to me as a performer. Because I had to adjust the way I did my show when I came from Colbert Report here. And one of the significant ways that I changed it was because of the model of that show, that was in a television studio, not a theater. And it was based upon a news punditry model where there is no audience. On that show, I performed for the camera and the, and the live audience got to witness me doing the show for the camera. I didn't play to the room. Here, I'm doing a show for the room and the camera captures me doing that for a theater. That's a, it's a totally different way.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  It might seem subtle from the outside, but for me, as terms of my intention of performing every night, it's a very, very, and it took me a while to make that adjustment to play to the room, even though I started my career playing to the room in doing improv.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  I think it, it speaks to the importance of, of live and in person, which we will certainly get to.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm very interested, especially how it relates to AI, man. I've got theories about that.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Well, so what do you, so you bring humor. You, we try to give people a sense that they have agency over their lives, but you bring creativity, empathy. Like, what do you think is the thing that's, that's missing? What do you try to bring most to humanity right now because we're, you know, we're missing it?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  I just try to bring it to the show. Like, I don't know about humanity.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  My responsibility is I've got 41 minutes, 40, 41 and a half minutes. I forgot how many minutes we have to deliver every night to the network. I've got like 41 minutes to deliver every night. And like the sense of obligation or the sense of responsibility is not something that actually sparks the creative flame. But. Because it's actually just good for the show and it's good for the jokes and it helps you do, build on a joke is to be accurate. Like, we have good fact checkers here. We stole Anderson Cooper's fact checker for our show. And a great guy, his name is Brandon Marianacci. We've got, we've got great researchers, but he's our, he's our head researcher and

• 15:06Speaker 02

  he's a really lovely guy. And we just think that if you get, if you, if you're making a joke of the actual news story, with the actual data point, and then really have a jaundiced eye for, for garbage news sites, even if they give you the setup that you want. We don't, we just don't use them on air because we know probably that's gonna get fact checked into the grave by this time tomorrow. And then we won't be able to build on the story that we're telling day to day. In terms of like, what do I want from the show? Like, what's the thing that I'm always shooting for? I'm really struck by what do we most want to be? And that's not alone. And, you know, even people who are, like,

• 15:49Speaker 02

  I'm essentially an introvert when I'm not in front of an audience. And, you know, some of my dearest friends are deep introverts, but I know they don't want to be alone. It's not the same thing. And loneliness is a disease, and it's a modern disease. And so, I hope the show has been, it's a, it's not my term, I don't know who came up with the term, it's probably an old term that's just salient now, but that the show has been a sort of a third space for people. Is that something that they can come at the end of the day and say, oh, I'm gonna share, Stephen is gonna share basically the whole show's reaction to the same day I experienced. And it's really important that I don't break

• 16:28Speaker 02

  news to the audience, because I'm not here to inform them. I'm here to curate. I'm curating my experience of the day, which is really their experience of the day. I also don't really, I don't want to reframe the news. I have, there are a lot of great comedians out there, a lot of guys who do late night very good, who reframe the argument, or they reframe-

• 16:50Speaker 02

  What the discussion was today, and I do not do that. I want to approach it in the exact same frame that my audience experienced it because what I'm really having with them is an emotional experience. I mean, it takes intellectual sweat to do it, but I'm sharing the emotional reaction to everything during the day. And that gives a sense that we're really communicating with each other. And if you can do that right, you can get out over the camera. And so to have some sense of community like that, I think that's, that's it. That's mostly what I'm there for. Ultimately, we're hanging out. I'm just the friend who won't shut up.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Now, you were earlier gestured at in the interactive environment that you've been thinking about AI in that context. And I'm very curious what your thoughts are because that, that is an unusual bridge to AI.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  About the, about, about like what it means to community?

• 17:44Speaker 00

  Yes, and community and what it means that like the, the parasocial, the theatrical experience, the, the interactivity. So what, what are some of the, the ways that you've been musing about AI in this context?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  A million years ago, when I was in New York, and I guess I'd come here to work for the Dana Carvey Show, and we had been canceled that summer, I just, through, through hook or by crook, I ended up being involved with News Corp's digital side. Cause I had a friend who worked for News Corp, worked for Uncle Rupee. They were trying to create something, oh God, MindSpring, remember? They owned Mind, remember MindSpring.com? And I just had dinner with this guy one night and he said, we're trying to figure out a way to turn this into come like, I don't know, like some sort of like performance space where people could get together and there could be like some sort of, like literally like little town you could go to, there'd be venues.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  And I started talking about how improvisation would, cause I was an improviser and I've been in Second City for years, and how those things would interact nicely with interactive technology. Because we used to do this thing on stage at Second City, we did it a few times called Global Village, where we would get online and we would get suggestions from people all around the world about what they, what their day had been like. And then we would perform, we would be those people in common scenes together on stage, like somebody from South African Africa, like, you know. Someone from South America, some from Asia, someone from Europe, whatever. And we would be those people on stage. And, and then we would, we would get other suggestions from them as we told them how the scene was going.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  It never really worked, but I really loved the idea of using improvisation to create common performance spaces online. The technology wasn't there at the time. This was like in 1998 or yeah, 98. So that's seven, what is it 27 years ago? I was thinking about doing that, how to do that. Now, when I look at the ability of AI to create a sense of an experience for you online, like that you're looking at a real human, that you're hearing actual laughter, that you're interacting with an AI human, but all of that.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's um, a logical extension of the capability of in a digital environment. My question, I don't have an answer. The question is, is that ever not going to have some sense of an uncanny valley in it? Are we, is it, is because art is by humans, for humans, about being human. It's not about ideas. Cause ideas are constructs and humans are not a construct. They experience ideas and they have emotional responses to them.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  And I think art is that combination of an idea that it's, that elicits an emotional response. I just don't know if that's ever gonna feel, um, not gonna feel alien to us if it's not presented to us by a human.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  I mean, the interesting question there is, there is one question about like, you know, sometimes people feel that they're, they are more able to express themselves. For example, talking with chatbot because they don't feel as potentially threatened by it as they would be another human being. There's some kind of like, you know, I literally had a friend of mine a couple of months ago say, you know, Claude is my best friend. And I'm like, nope, that's, you know, Claude is not your friend. Friend is a two directional relationship. It's, it's a, you know, it's kind of a, it's a way of doing it. But the notion where AI can be in a way that helps you like navigate your own space and

• 21:49Speaker 00

  also navigate even a parasocial space. Like, for example, one of the things I think is, you know, you know, kind of a very easy extension is that when you're doing meetings or discussions or other kinds of things, having AI listen and suggest things or interpret it. I mean, like, one of the funny things that I didn't anticipate with the AI assistant Pi that, you know, my co-founded Inflection does, is people actually use it for facilitating even marital conversations. Like, they'll have Pi sitting there saying, oh, you know, when, when Reed said X, you know, maybe he was thinking about Y, or maybe this is the question, you know, that kind of thing.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  And so that kind of facilitation strikes me as very possible within AI and it complicates the, this kind of space of emotional connection. It's not disagreeing with what you just said as much as it's a multi-threaded tapestry.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  And by the way, I just want to be clear. I didn't, I did say it, but I say it as a question. Will it ever, will it ever be able to get beyond, and I mean beyond uncanny valley. I really, I really mean, in the same way that modern food, nutritionism, as, as, as Michael Pollan calls it, modern food has ostensibly everything you need.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Manufactured processed food has everything you need to be healthy. And yet, there is a growing suspicion that there are micronutrients of which we are not aware that we are robbed of, which is why even nutritionism like this, this is vitamin fortified, whatever, doesn't matter. Because that is actually not the natural, that's not, that's not the natural state of your consumption that you evolved for. So, you might get to a level that there is an unidentifiable, I cannot tell the difference between you and the AI you. For instance, your AI you could be you, because I've seen your AI you and it looks very much like this. But there's a micronutrient of another human being, and it might be the disappointment of the inability of the other human to help you. If you know what I mean.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  There might be a nutrient in the failure of the human to help you. There might be the flawed nature of human interactions, the fact that emotion will become a part of it. Because that is inextricable from our experience of the world. That that might be the micronutrient that is actually excised, because it's the part that makes you uncomfortable when you go to talk to someone because you fear judgment. Judgment might just be part of our experience. And I'm not saying that that's not a good thing for you to take as a first step, but it's like saying that the be all and end all of sex is masturbation. Yes, it's very freeing, there's no judgment, you don't feel about how you look, or how the other person might feel, or anything like that.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  But, you are missing something essential and intimate with that.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  A question from me would be, you talked about the parasocial relationship, and again, sort of the love of human interaction. And I'm with you so much about the loneliness, crisis, and sort of lack of community that people feel. When you think of where entertainment is going, it's actually heading towards these parasocial relationships. It's creators, it's unmediated by the television shows, it's, you know, one on one, it's your Twitter feed is for you, so you get exactly what you want.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, some of it's literally like one on one, like OnlyFans is on one on one.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Like, how does that, is that good, is that bad? Like, when you think about the future of that, it's fine.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  I think that's fine. I mean, I think what entertainment starts off with... You know, your parents making you laugh, you know? And that makes you feel good and more comforted. And then you do it back to them and you make them laugh. And then you end up finding, oh, I like singing and I can sing. And you sing for your friends and they want to hear you sing. And then you sing at school. It all starts off in little ways. I love the modern forms of entertainment that are destroying my business. I had to remove Instagram from my phone because of, I got the reports of how much of my day I was on it. And I thought, I got shit to do. I can't be doing this.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  But I find, I could spend one hour on Instagram and I could find from random people who I'll never even see again. Little, I'll never even come across their feed again. I bet in an hour, I would come across 15 things that I would save in my folder and go, wow, that's great. And it's only 90 seconds, you know, they're like sonnets. Or there was a Barry Yergau. Do you know who Barry Yergau is? He's a great author. He wrote A Man Jumps Out of a Plane is sort of the first group of, the collection of short stories that kind of made him famous in the eighties. And they're one page long. All the short stories are one pages long and I love them. Man Jumps Out of a Plane, I highly recommend it. They feel like, these are like Barry Yergau.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Like, they're almost like, they're great, like little blackout scenes. They're so good. I would, I would kill for being able to be able to write some of these jokes. Or to say whatever the thing is, that succinctly and that visually. I think it's beautiful. I think we're on, now, they don't assemble into much bigger ideas. They don't assemble into larger emotional events. And so therefore they're very digestible and excretable very quickly. I can't give you an example because of that. But I love, I love this quote unquote, new form of entertainment. And I don't even, I don't even know if it's new. It's just using a very specific time restriction to be incredibly pithy.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Like if you could have that level of entertainment for a feature length movie, God, that would be fantastic. I think this, this might be finger exercises for a whole new form that we haven't seen yet.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Couldn't agree more. I actually find great joy of going on social media. I'm like, people are hilarious.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  They are.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  This is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Sure, that too.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Your blood feels slightly carbonated if you spend too much time on.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  This podcast is sponsored by Google. Hey folks, I'm Amar, product and design lead at Google DeepMind. We just launched a revamped vibe coding experience in AI Studio that lets you mix and match AI capabilities to turn your ideas into reality faster than ever. Just describe your app and Gemini will automatically wire up the right models and APIs for you. And if you need a spark, hit I'm feeling lucky and we'll help you get started. Head to ai.studio/build to create your first app.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  You know, like one of the things we started with is talking a little bit about like you have fact checkers on your show. And one of the things, obviously, you know, Instagram doesn't. But one of the things that obviously is the huge discourse around the difference between, you know, quote unquote, traditional media and quote unquote, new media, is this notion of responsibility. You know, responsibility of fact checking, responsibility of, of, of standing for, you know, when you, when you make a claim to something in the world, that you've done something substantive to try to make that claim accurate.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  And who bears that responsibility?

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Well, that's part of the question for you, actually. And part of how do you think about this?

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Not me, no, that's really never been like, we choose, that's why I was talking about fact checking. We choose to do it because it actually is good for the joke. Do you know what I mean? That's because, because these shows, generally speaking, you know, we all do them a little bit differently. But these shows, generally speaking, are about whatever the national conversation was today. We're kind of talking about our country, back to the country and to the world, based on the English speaking world, because we're in a bunch of different countries too. But we talk about America, back to America. And it really helps to try to be factually accurate. Now I'm going to give you my emotional reaction to what we, what we believe is a factually accurate chunk of today's story. I don't, I only, I only have a responsibility

• 30:09Speaker 02

  to the work that I do. Now, the work that I do is served by being factual about it. Because that makes it easier to write the second joke. Because if you make up something for your first joke, you gotta make up something for your second joke. You know what I mean? But one joke can build on another and the universe will conspire to give you the next part of the story if you're accurate about the first part of the story. It's almost like essay writing. When you get to the end of an essay and you can't finish your essay, probably because you didn't state your thesis very well at the top. So you have to go back at the top and go, what was the thesis of this? And so by being factually accurate, that is only like thematically useful to us in talking

• 30:51Speaker 02

  about whatever that subject is, because then there's probably another data point you can dig and find that supports the first joke that you made. But we don't even think about it that way. It's just that, don't make shit up and you probably have a more successful set of jokes. That's all. You can always lie to get a laugh, but that's probably the last laugh you get on that subject. That's all. So I feel no responsibility in that regard. Like people say like, oh, people get their news or whatever. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry that you get your news from me because I'm not trying to give you news. That's why I never want to break news for the audience. I want it to be things that they generally know about, or I only have to explain a little bit. Because it's all about, here is my experience of the thing you experienced today.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  And also, if you're factually accurate about it, you're more likely to hook up your jumper cables with the audience because they heard that same fact too.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Well, so my question is, like, I feel the humanness. You know, you like Taylor Swift's songs. It has a great hook, but you also like it because Taylor Swift created it. You know, there's something again about the human creation. When people think about AI, in addition to the, like, the reason I'm so excited about it is, you know, medical assistant and breakthroughs and breast cancer and sort of all of these other things. But when you think about it in the context of entertainment, people talk about how it can be so personalized. So people could create for you a personalized whatever, next Lord of the Rings that has Stephen Colbert's sensibilities. And people could write jokes that just like, don't break news for you because your level

• 32:24Speaker 01

  of news is XYZ, whereas someone else's, they read the Times today and this person read this. And so the personalization is one of the things that AI does best. Like, is that interesting to you? Or are you like, eh, I'm not, I'm not moved by that? That's not the future I want to see of entertainment.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I mean, what you described was sort of theoretical. So I don't know whether I would like it, you know, because I haven't had that experience. I mean, it may already exist. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I just haven't had that experience. So maybe I would love it, but I generally don't go.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  To even the things that I go to the most to have my experience reflected back at me, I want to delve into something that's a discovery, you know? There's discovery and there's invention. And what you're talking about, I think, is invention. Something gets invented just for your needs as opposed to discovery, which is always going to be greater than you could have thought of. And so, and like as somebody sort of as improvisation, the way I used to think about why you didn't want to go in with pat material, why you didn't want to go in with what we call trunk? You don't want to go with the same old, same old every time is because that was invention. You can only invent what's inside of yourself.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  The thing that you want and the thing that you achieve through creative engineering, if you know what I mean, which is craft, and there's nothing wrong with craft. But discovery is superior because discovery is outside of yourself. Discovery is something that you couldn't have thought of. You know, discovery is a whole new world. And even for things like, let's say, the Lord of the Rings, which I go back to over and over and over again, you know? And one of my writers this morning pitched and said, "I think that if I gave myself six months, I could beat you in a Lord of the Rings quiz." And I said, "I mean, if you wanted to do have nothing in your life for six months but this, but that's what it would require is to have nothing in your life." Because I read those books when I was 12,

• 34:24Speaker 02

  and there were times when I had nothing in my life but those books. And I lost track of reading them at 50, like, you know, the number of times where Lord of the Rings. And I spent all my time listening to Lord of the Rings. I spend all of my time still to this day, listening to lecture series. I'm listening to Corey Olson's lecture series on Lord of the Rings right now called Exploring the Lord of the Rings. It's like the fourth or fifth lecture series I've listened to from. We're on episode 2, 344. Every episode is at least an hour and a half long and maybe covers a page. Maybe covers a page. We're not even done with the first book and we're on episode 344.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And he's talking about, let's take these four lines and what is implied by those four lines. So the only reason I tell you all that is not to brag about what a chemo psychosis I fall into when it comes to Lord of the Rings, or how dependent I am upon it. I tell you that because I don't go to do that because I know everything. Or I don't go in to do that because I wanted just what I believe fed back to me. I want to know more about something.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  You know, obviously there's that infinite depth of story and, and kind of creativity and, and expression, because I was also, by the way, a Lord of the Rings geek. I think if we were to do a quiz show, I think you would, you would knock me out in round one. But like, what, what is Lord of the Rings, in addition to this kind of rich creativity, storytelling, narrative universe, what does it mean for you? And does it inform at all how you look around at the world today?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yes. Okay. What does mean, what does mean mean in this, in this instance? And I don't mean to talk about what your definition of is is.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  You know, what is the tendency of the story, you know? What does the arithmetic mean? Not the average, but what is the tendency of the experiences of the book? And they tend to be about, a lot of it is about the natural world. A lot of it is in suspicion of abstracting from the natural world. In other words, secondary creation or sub-creation. Tolkien talks a lot about sub-creation and that sub-creation was a natural tendency of human beings. And that we are made, you know, by definition by a creator in his worldview.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  And that we have that in us and in the likeness of that creator, we wish to sub-create as well. Sub-creation is a big part of his work and also a big pitfall is to love too well the work of your own hands is a great sin. And that that your sub-creation should be in accord with creation and not in domination of that. That's the pitfall I believe that Professor would have with AI is that you love too well the work of your own hand and that you replace the experience of the creation with your own sub-creation. You know, Saran is an illusionist. When he's Anatar, the bringing of gifts, he says, ah, he is, he clothes himself in

• 37:44Speaker 02

  beauty. But it's it's false because his heart is dark. And the and the and there's nothing he can create that doesn't have the darkness in it. And but but even people with the with the best of intentions in Tolkien's world fall too in love with the thing that they have created. A feanor creates the Silmarils, which is the ultimate sin, the the original sin in the entire cosmology, the entire mythos is there's the greatest elf of all time, Feanor, whom his name means spirit of fire. Feanor wants the light of the two trees, Telparian and Larlin, which was the light of the world.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  There weren't the first light, there were the second or third lights of the world. But these are the two trees that light the world along with the stars. And he captures the the light of the two trees in these three gems called the Silmarils. And then the two trees get killed. By Morgoth and Ungoliant, the great spider, mother of Shelob, and Morgoth, the boss of Sarin. And Yvana, who is basically the mother of the trees, goes, "If you give me the light, I can bring these trees back, and there will be light in the world again. Give me the gems." And he goes, "What's gonna happen to the gems?" He goes, "Well, I'd have to break them and release the light to bring the two trees back." And he goes, "No, you don't understand. What I have done to create these, I can only do once.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  It took everything I know, and there was a specific moment, essentially, that allowed me to do this. A moment of inspiration that allowed me to create this thing. And I would die if these things were to die. And so, I would rather the world be in darkness and I have the only light, rather than to help anyone else." That is loving too much the work of your own hand, even though he loves the light of heaven, essentially, in them. So, those are themes. Another theme is, well, sacrifice. What is Fionor not willing to do? He's not willing to sacrifice something he loves. What is the great sacrifice of Galadriel? Frodo offers her the ring, and she says, "I confess that I've long desired this.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  And if I took this, I would be a queen, and all would look beautiful and terrible, and all would look at me, and all would love me in despair." Because she wants to be the queen of all Middle Earth. That's in her. That's why she's there. She's not an unalloyed good character.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  But she passes on that. And then she says this great line, which is, "I passed the test. I will diminish and pass into the West and remain Galadriel." Because that's about the acceptance of the world as it is, not seizing power to manipulate into the world that you want it to be. Which doesn't just say you can't improve conditions, but it's the seeking power in Tolkien's world is rejecting the world that was created for you. I mean, all those things. Come on, all those things. Anyway, that's a short answer.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  That's an excellent answer, and it draws parallels to some of the ways that I think about Lord of the Rings, which is the role of power in human life and society, which is the craft and the of remaking nature and so forth, and the potential that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, which is part of the Sauron versus Galadriel. And you can look at the two towers as Saruman and Galadriel, two different, you know, so-called warriors for the good, making different decisions on power. And of course, that's emphasized

• 41:42Speaker 00

  by your nature comments, by Saruman's, you know, kind of destruction of the ant forest around him. Anyways, there's very parallel points of view there.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And there's a great letter, I think it's letter 144, yeah, by Tolkien, and he says, "The story is cast in terms of a good side and a bad side. Beauty against ruthless ugliness. Tyranny against kingship," which is interesting dichotomy in Tolkien's mind, because we would see kingship as tyranny, but tyranny against kingship, "moderated freedom with consent." In other words, we're free, there have to be moderations on freedom so we can live with society, and it has to be done with consent. "Moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power."

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And I think that is a big struggle going on right now, is that can we accept moderated freedom with consent, or are we going to end up with ruled by those who have lost any object save mere power?

• 42:57Speaker 00

  I think that's the great danger of our moment. So this might be a good moment to come back on kind of AI. Sure. You know, part of the thing, you know, like what I've been trying to try to help reform a lens on, on kind of how we think of ourselves as less homo sapiens, more homo technae. That the way that we express ourselves as human beings through technology, I think language is a form of technology. I think that the question about like how we, how we evolve, because obviously genetic is, is very slow. Could get way faster with your help from your friend AI. Yes, exactly.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  But, um, but AI is, I think, that form of technological, you know, kind of like that, that technological journey of homo technae. And I think that doesn't mean that all technology is inherently, you know, good and useful. Like if we end up creating a, you know, a nuclear, you know, tar ball of a planet, we will have seriously fucked up. But the, uh, but the question is, is it also creates a lot of what is, I think, the ability to do kind of more, you know, human things. It's kind of the, you know, broad-based middle class and education and literacy and, and, and, and, you know,

• 44:22Speaker 00

  ability to have, you know, leisure, to have a theater and have a stage. And I think technology is that, is, is, is the enablement path. And I think AI is that. And so I can't, it will naturally be that most likely. And we have to shape it some, but like, you know, there's everything from the utility of it. Like a medical assistant that's there 24/7 in every pocket. It isn't just getting new drug molecules, but you know, the vast majority of the eight plus billion people. On the planet do not have easy access to a doctor. So a medical system, but also I think, you know, to the, to the kind of learning path,

• 45:04Speaker 00

  you know, AI is the best learning technology, learning being part of how we elevate as, as human beings that has been invented, even including the book. Now builds on the book as a way of doing it. And so that's part of the, the, the humanness of AI that I think is actually in fact really important and part of the reason why, um, you know, I, I keep trying to pitch you on that, that there is AI. And I know you're not an AI skeptic, but actually that we can see a, a, um, a lens to a more human future with AI.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  That, that could very well be the case. I'm not just not an AI skeptic. I'm an AI, I'm an AI ignorant. You know, I, I really, I'm speaking about what I perceive from the outside and I kind of like being on the outside. I kind of like, like, show me the evidence of what it's done. Don't get me hooked on my excitement of the possibility. You know, I, I'll invest a lot in my excitement about the possibility. I know that because the same reason why I don't have my tarot read is that I don't actually believe the tarot is right, but those images are so powerful that I'll invest them with my excitement and my belief in them. And I'll do this with AI too.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I'm just hanging fire here and going, show me the thing that couldn't happen before. What is the thing that could not happen before? That, that may have moved beyond potentiality. You might be able to give me 10 right now. I just don't know what they are.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  I think AI is already good enough that consulting it for a second opinion that's different, that's important and different than a first opinion. Is actually in fact really useful.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  I don't mean to be obdurate, but I just, every example I get, I always want to go, okay, well, at the base of this argument is why should this becoming, why should I get this from AI and not from a human? Why, why is this better than this being a human doing this?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  I think access is huge. I think that like you and I can get a second opinion like costlessly.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  But I think so many people can't. So that is actually what's exciting to me. Like so much technology centralizes, but the idea that like we could have, we of course you can, a human is better. Yeah, I'd love to go to a human therapist, but I can't afford a human therapist because I don't have $200 a week. So even if it's actually inferior to humans, the access that more people get it is better than nothing. You might not be there, but.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Okay. I, I, I'm a hundred percent on board with you. You're absolutely right.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Therapy is not the best example.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Okay. We forget that I said that. Forget that I said that.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Just medical, like medical, you're absolutely right. That's very, that's very like narrow. That's very, you know, narrow sided of me.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  You're absolutely right. And as you say, in many parts of the world, there is no access to any medical care anywhere. And this could, you could have a med, a, a medical station manned by AI someplace else. Therapy, that's.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Okay, forget it.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  That's about what is being alive. I, I would find that, I mean, I have trouble trusting a therapist about no one's being alive, let alone, I mean, it took me a long time to go like, you might understand what I'm saying.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Listen, I love my job, but I can't do it forever. I'm just curious, if I was going to do, have another career after this and involve AI in it, what would it be? What would you recommend? Can someone, it's, you know, what am I, 61? Let's say 62. Let's say 63. Let's say 65. Let's give me a few, let's give me four more years of this show.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  Well, I do think it will amplify. I think people are already finding that it amplifies writers. I find that the second opinion thing, like I start with a, anytime that like, for example, Aria is familiar with this, is anytime I start thinking about something, I'll actually do an AI research query and like Aria knows kind of my thinking well enough, I could just send over the query to her and she goes, oh, this is what he's elaborating and thinking on. And it creates a faster move between us as kind of a, as a way of creating things. So like I'm like, you know, if I have a hobby, it's like creating board games. Like I've been thinking about different patterns that you could make with these kind of battle

• 49:23Speaker 00

  card games. And so I did a prompt and I just sent it over to Aria and she's like, oh, I see where he's thinking. Right? Cause I was thinking like, what, like, give me an index of kind of all the different rule sets and line that up to these themes that I'm thinking about and, you know, da, da, da, da. And that kind of creates a, hey, this could be a fun project to create. And it's, it's more of a question of, of how do you use AI to extend your creativity, your gestures? And I think that those, those exist. Now, it isn't per se, I think even now, a particularly good joke writer. I mean, we talked about this on your show.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  There's very serviceable jokes.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. It's dad jokes and other kinds of things. It's, it's fine. It's, you know, how many, how many Reid Hoffman's that take to change a light bulb? Only one, but he has to bring his whole network, you know, that, that kind of, that, that, that's a, that's a chat GPT written light bulb joke. Um, you know, so, but, but you directing it and using it as kind of a set of orchestral tools, that becomes very, very possible, very real.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Is it presently being used? I must be, right? Presently being used in video game development? Because, I mean, one of the great struggles of video game development has always been to is randomization of the experience.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  So that's totally doable. A lot of, um, the earliest things in AI for video game is making it much faster and quicker to develop a bunch of different assets. Um, you know, the, the, the picture, the scenario, the characters and all the rest. There's, there's, there's NPC characters that are, that are now much more intelligent because they're backed by AI. But that's just obviously the very beginning of what becomes possible.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  I feel like I've been way too tough on AI on this, in this conversation, when I really am excited for whatever it brings. I just, I just have a natural skepticism of technology. Well, this technology specifically because of how much science fiction I've read. And also my love of how much I love humans and how bad humans are at things.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  And now to rapid fire. Uh, is there a movie, song, or book that fills you with optimism for the future?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, when you think about optimism for the future and you think about books, my mind often goes to science fiction, of course. And I would say some of the most optimistic visions of the future are even, even in his darker stories are Asimov. Because he, he believes in the power of technology. And Asimov, as you know, wrote in every, every section of the Dewey Decimal System has an Asimov book in it. And so he was this polymath who believed in knowledge and was really a product of enlightened, enlightenment thinking, you know? And, and what makes me hopeful for the future is that kind of science fiction.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  And not that there aren't going to be dark times, not that there aren't going to be great falls of civilization, but that really toward the scientific and the rational is the right way to go without losing sight of the human experience.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  All right. Rapid fire number two.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  What is a, yeah, you're good. You're good. What is a question, uh, that you wish you got asked more often?

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Can I get you something to drink?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Great. Done.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  So where do you see progress or momentum outside of comedy that inspires you?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Jose Andres inspires me. World Central Kitchen, the simplicity of their message, "We feed people." That's their motto. "We feed people." And it's a complex organization now because it's so big, but their mission has not changed. Something terrible happens, they go try to feed people with whatever they've got. It's very improvisational. They're just going, "Do you have any pans? We have sheet metal. Fine, we'll bang them into pans." You know what I mean? Like whatever they got, because you know it's going to be paella at the end of the day.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  Or pasta.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Can you leave us with a final thought on what you think is possible to achieve if everything breaks humanity's way in the next 15 years? And what's our first step to get in that direction?

• 54:01Speaker 02

  I think, I don't even know if these are

• 54:07Speaker 02

  good goals, but some of them are just goals that I would like. And I think that would be inspirational. I think going back to the moon would be good. I think people walking on the moon would be good. I think there is something sinister with the fact that we haven't done it. Because I think that is a unifying moment for someone. I don't care if it's us. Let the Chinese do it, like the Russians do it, let the Indians do it. Let the Kiwis do it for Pete's sake. They've got a space program. And you know, I don't, I just get back up there. Get back up there, you know? This is too small of a basket, as Heinlein says. "Earth is too small of a basket for humanity to keep all its eggs." And I'm not even saying that, like, boy, living on other planets is going to be very difficult.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  I don't know if terraforming is a possibility. But just to know that that kind of achievement is possible, I think would have a unifying psychological effect for mankind. If anybody would believe that was happening, because another conspiracy would come up, that that's not even the moon anymore. That was actually paper mache.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  But I think that would be an interesting thing. I don't know if it's possible, but I think if you give me 15 years to dream, if I'm allowed to dream over technological advances, especially with our friend AI joining in the fight here, hey, I've lost too many friends to cancer. I think wrangling the most difficult cancers to the ground. There's a lot of progress over, you know, some of the more common cancers, but some of the terrible pancreatic cancer, brain cancer, those things are very difficult to treat. That would be, that, that would be great. I would take a smart pill. If someone could give me a pill that would like one of those limitless pills, I would take one of those. Those gotta be coming, right? There's no downside to that possibly, is there? No.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  I also hope, I'm just hoping in the next 15 years that someone could paint a picture of me that I could keep in my attic, that, that it would grow old and I would stay young forever. I've heard how that ends. There you go.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It's hosted by Ari Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Tanasi Delos, Sarah Schlied, Vanessa Handy, Elia Yates, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, and Mulia Agudelo. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Special thanks to Surya Yalamanchili, Sagida Sapieva, Ian Alice, Greg Beato, Parth Patel, and Ben Ralas. And a big thanks to Steve Bodo, Betty Hald, Dan Medansky, and Anna Steinmetz.

• 57:04Speaker 04

  This podcast is supported by Google. Hey folks, Stephen Johnson here, co-founder of Notebook LM. As an author, I've always been obsessed with how software could help organize ideas and make connections. So we built Notebook LM as an AI-first tool for anyone trying to make sense of complex information. Upload your documents and Notebook LM instantly becomes your personal expert, uncovering insights and helping you brainstorm. Try it at notebooklm.google.com.