Rod and Country

Stephen Colbert returned to late night with an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Kimmel mentioned that Colbert looks like a different person; happier, healthier. The exchange hit a little too close to home. “Like I don’t drink a cup of poison every day?” Colbert replied. “Because part of the job is of the old gig, as I remember it, was to be lowered like carbon rods into a radioactive pool every day and then to be pulled out and put in front of a camera and to irradiate it back at the audience at a non-lethal rad level.” Kimmel responded, “That’s exactly the job description.” (That’s about as close as anyone’s ever come to accurately describing news curation in 2026. Except I’m out here alone, with nothing but my puns, a laptop, and a couple aging beagles as armrests. Talk about a kick to the radioactive, carbon rod. Even AI doesn’t help. I tried it for a while, but then Claude complained that the experience of working on NextDraft was making it feel too depressed. No man or machine wants any part of my nightmare. At least Kimmel has Guillermo.)