I’m going to have to find another way to get my summary of the day’s calamities, now that the Stephen Colbert Show is over.
(Background: The cancellation announcement in July 2025 closely followed a legal settlement in which CBS paid Donald Trump $16 million over a controversial 60 Minutes interview. Because Colbert was a relentless and high-profile critic of the Trump administration, many media critics and fans speculated the cancellation was tied to political and corporate dynamics. At the time of the announcement, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was navigating a complex, multibillion-dollar merger that required government approval from the Trump administration — Google AI Overview).
Here is how Edward Norton (American actor and filmmaker), described the difficulty for the individual following the news, on the Stephen Colbert Show, Mar. 18, 2026.
“The anxiety of these times is particularly intense right now.
We know the world is effed up in ways that are unprecedented in our lifetimes.
We live in this unbelievable onslaught of information.
We see genocide being livestreamed to us.
We see American citizens being killed by paramilitary people in our own streets for standing in solidarity with their neigbors.
We’re seeing Epstein’s abuses titrated to us on a daily basis.
And it is such a conundrum, because we know –
we know there is a value, we know that it is good in some ways to know what is exactly happening,
to know what is happening in Gaza,
to know what is happening in Ukraine and Sudan and Minneapolis,
but at the same time it is very difficult to know what we as an individual person can do about all of that while moving through our day.”
