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At the start of this pandemic, host of "A Late Show" Stephen Colbert decided to leave the iconic Ed Sullivan Theater in New York and take his show to his bathtub and eventually a small office - last night "A Late Show" made it's much anticipated return to the Ed Sullivan Theater.
With a fully vaccinated audience, Colbert welcomed his longtime friend, Jon Stewart to the show. The interview started normally with a very happy Stewart receiving his first big ovation in over 15 months. When asked by Colbert about how he was feeling about the scientific response to Covid-19, Stewart responded,
“So, I will say this—and I honestly mean this—I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has, in many ways, helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.”
Most likely surprised by Stewart's response, Colbert decided to follow up with the question:
“Do you mean perhaps there’s a chance that this was created in a lab?”
Where Stewart would respond:
“A chance?” Stewart asked. “Oh my god, there’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China, what do we do? Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab. That’s just a little too weird!”
Stephen Colbert continues the interview and later jokes that Stewart secretly works for Senator Ron Johnson.
“This is not a conspiracy!” Stewart said. “But this is the problem with science. Science is incredible, but they don’t know when to stop and no one in the room with those cats ever goes, ‘I don’t know if we should do that.’ They’re like, ‘curiosity killed the cat, so let’s kill 10,000 cats to find out why.’”
After this, Stewart comedically stood up and looked directly into the camera and said,
"I have been alone so long. And when I realized that the laboratory was having the same name—first name and last name—of the evil that had been plaguing us, I thought to myself, that’s f***ed up.”
Once the show returned from break, Stewart praised scientists and all the work they have done in the past year.
“Can I say this about scientists?” he asked. “I love them and they do such good work but they are going to kill us all.”
You can check out the full interview with Jon Stewart linked below.