Jon Stewart will make his long-awaited return to “The Daily Show” on Monday night, a weekly gig that will continue through the November election.
The comedian hasn't said much publicly about what drew him back to basic cable nearly a decade after he bid farewell to “The Daily Show” in 2015. But ahead of his return home to Comedy Central, Stewart sat down with “ The Daily Show: Ears Edition” to talk about what drew him back to work and how much has changed in the intervening years, from the transformed media landscape and the existential threat of artificial intelligence to the improved quality of snack offerings on “The Daily Show.” “Offices.
The Times has the full episode of the podcast exclusively; It will be widely available on Monday.
In conversation with showrunner and executive producer Jen Flanz and writer and co-executive producer Zhubin Parang, Stewart says his decision to return to Comedy Central was motivated by more than just the presidential election and the likely rematch between President Biden and former President Trump .
“If you want to be present in this world, you have to be present in this conversation and you have to be as relentless and tenacious as the counternarrative that is forming. “A lot of the information we see now is weaponized … and it continues to make exponential leaps,” says Stewart, who will also serve as executive producer of “The Daily Show” through 2025, and potentially beyond. “It's not just about the elections. It's AI. It is the way we have militarized all our conflicts. It all ties into a larger idea, which is that the form of government we love so much is analog (I don't want to say dinosaur), but it is analog and the world is now moving at an increasingly infinite digital pace and reconciling those. I think “Two things are the challenge of the moment for people.”
Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn as host of “The Daily Show” in 1999 and transformed the quirky late-night show into a destination for incisive media criticism and political satire. His Apple TV+ show “The Problem With Jon Stewart” premiered in 2021 and was canceled last fall, reportedly amid creative tensions with Apple.
In “Ears Edition,” Stewart tells Flanz and Parang that he feels compelled to stay in the conversation to combat the effects of artificial intelligence and other bad actors on social media.
“I'm excited to be with you again and with the best news team and just be a part of that conversation because I think you need to record your thoughts and complaints so they can be referenced,” he says. as a way to counter AI, which he called “an information laundering system, a vacuum that sucks up every piece of human information and then spits it out in reconstituted form.”
“If you want the world of the future to be informed by what you think is the right part of the present,” he says. “You have to register, you have to spread it.”
“The Daily Show” has not had a permanent host since Stewart's successor, Trevor Noah, signed on in late 2022. The late-night show won an Emmy for talk series last month, notching a win in a category that had been long dominated by another series from a “Daily Show” veteran, “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” Stewart's surprise return may help Comedy Central shore up one of its flagship shows after a lengthy transition period.
In the podcast episode, Stewart also reflects on the changes in the media landscape since he left his hosting position nearly a decade ago, particularly the way social media has come to act as an accelerator for conspiracies, misinformation and hate speech.
Compared to when he hosted “The Daily Show,” “It's a much more serious situation,” he says, “but at least none of these social media entities have monetized that idea and incentivized misinformation because that would be really dangerous. “I’m so glad they’re fighting this so hard.”
Clearly, although much has changed in the last decade, Stewart's sense of irony remains intact.
