YouSaid · the spoken record

Stephen Colbert

lines on the record: 51
first: 2025-09-13
most recent: 2025-09-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network. It's hosted by R Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young. Possible is produced by Katie Sanders, Edie Allard, Tanasidilos, Sarah Schleid, Vanessa Handy, Aliya Yates, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, and Mulia Agudelo, Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think wrangling the most difficult cancers to the ground. A lot of progress over some of the more common cancers, but some of the terrible pancreatic cancer or brain cancer, those things are very difficult to treat. That would be great. I would take a smart pill. If somebody could give me a pill that was like one of those limitless pills, I would take one of those. Those got to be coming, right? There's no downside to that, possibly, is there? 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 it would grow old and I would stay young forever. I've heard Cole.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 plants is going to be very difficult. 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 it was happening, because another conspiracy would come up, that that's not even the moon anymore. That was actually Paper Mach ⁇. 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 through something not from a human? Why is this better than this being a human doing this?”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of what it's done. Don't get me hooked on my excitement of the possibility. You know, 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. 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 may have moved beyond potentiality. You might be able to give me 10 right now. I just don't know what they are.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That could very well be the case. I'm not just not an AI skeptic. I'm an AI ignorant. Know, I really am speaking about what I perceive from the outside. And I kind of like being on the outside. I kind of like show me the evidence.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 that has to be done with consent. Moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power. 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've lost any object save mere power? Think that's the great danger of our moment.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She says this great line, which is I pass the test. I will diminish and pass into the west, and remain galadrial, 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 isn't to say you can't improve conditions, but it's the seeking power in Token'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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Frodo offers her the ring. And she says, I confess that I've long desired this. And if I took this, I would be a queen and all would, you know, beautiful and terrible and all would look out be 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. But she passes on that.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. 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, a sacrifice. What is Fionor not willing to do? He's not willing to sacrifice something he loves.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Morgoth and Angolian, the great spider, mother of Shilob, and Morgoth, the boss of Sarin, and Yavana, the Who is the 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's nothing he can create that doesn't have the darkness in it. But even people with the best of intentions in Tolkien's world. Fall too in love with the thing that they've created. A fanor creates the Silmerills, which is the ultimate sin, the original sin in the entire cosmology, the entire mythos, is there's the greatest elf of all time, Fionor, whom his name means spirit of fire. Fionor wants the light of the two trees, Telparion and Laurelin, which was the light of the world. They weren't the first light. They were the second or third lights of the world. But these are the two trees that light the world along with the stars. And it captures the light of the two trees in these three gems called the Silmarills. And then the two trees get killed.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or sub creation. Tolkien talks a lot about subcreation and that subcreation was a natural tendency of human beings. That we are made by definition by a creator in his worldview, and that we have that in us. And in the likeness of that creator, we wish to subcreate as well. Subcreation 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 your subcreation 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. Sauron is an illusionist. When he's Anatar, the bringing of gifts, he says, he clothes himself in beauty. But it's false because his heart is dark”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, there's that infinite depth of story and kind of creativity 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 knock me out in round one. But like, 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? Yes. Okay. What does mean in this instance? And I don't mean to talk about what your definition of is. What is the tendency of the story? 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 Lotab is about the natural world. A lot of it is in suspicion of abstracting from the natural world. In other words, secondary creation.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 234. 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. And he's talking about let's take these four lines and what is implied by those four lines. 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 want it just what I believe fed back to me. I want to know more about something.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But discovery is superior because discovery is outside of yourself. Discovery is something that you couldn't have thought of. 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. In one of my writers this morning's 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 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 we're lower of the rings. And I spend all my time listening to Lord of the Rings. I spent all of my time still to this day listening to lecture series. I'm listening to Corey Olsen's.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, and like, as somebody started 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 didn'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, 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”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, what you described was sort of theoretical. So I don't know whether I would like it because I haven't had that experience. 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. 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. 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thematically useful to us in talking 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 what 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 wanted 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 experience today. 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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...”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because these shows, generally speaking, 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 believe is a factually accurate chunk of today's story. I only have a responsibility 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 got to make up something for your second joke.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't give you an example because of that. I love this quote unquote new form of entertainment. And I don't even know if it's new. It's just using a very specific time restriction to be incredibly pithy. Like if you could have that level of entertainment for a feature-length movie, God, that would be fantastic. I think this might be finger exercises for a whole new form that we haven't seen yet.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Yurgrowd. You know who Barry Yurgrau 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 80s. 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 year growth. They're almost like they're great, like little blackout scenes. They're so good. I would kill for being able to be able to write some of these jokes or to say whatever the thing is, that's 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The future of that entertainment starts off with, you know, your parents making you laugh, you know, and that makes you, 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 find out, 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. I could spend one hour on Instagram and I could find from random people who I'll never even see again. I'll never even come across their feet again. I bet in an hour I would come across.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That emotion will become a part of it because that is inextricable for Mark. 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. But you are missing something essential and intimate with that.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 is vitamin fortified, whatever. It doesn't matter because that is actually not the natural state of your consumption that you evolved for. It might get to a level that there is an unidentifiable, I cannot tell the difference between you and the AIU. For instance, your AIU could be you because I've seen your AIU 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. There might be a nutrient in the failure of the human to help you. There might be the flawed nature of human interactions.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, I just want to be clear, I did say it, but I say it as a question. Will it ever be able to get beyond? And I mean beyond Uncanny Valley. I really mean in the same way that modern food, nutritionism, as Michael Pollen calls it, modern food has ostensibly everything you need.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they have emotional responses to them. And I think art. Is that combination Of an idea that elicits an emotional response. I just don't know if that's ever going to feel not going to feel alien to us if it's not presented to us by a human.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 if 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's... A logical extension of the capability 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? Is because art is by humans for humans about being human? It's not about ideas. Because ideas are constructs, and humans are not a construct. They experience ideas.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just had dinner with Sky one night and he said, We're trying to figure out a way to turn this into kind of like, I don't know, like some sort of performance space where people could get together and there could be like some sort of literally like little town you could go to, there'd be venues. And I started talking about how improvisation would because I was an improviser and had 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're day had been like. And then we would perform, we would be those people in common scenes together on stage, like somebody from Sub-Saharan Africa, like, you know, someone from South America, some from Asia, someone from Europe, whatever. And we would be those people on stage. And then we would get other suggestions from them as we told them how the scene was going. It never really worked, but I really loved the idea of...”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Hooker by Crook, I ended up being involved with News Corpse Digital side because 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?”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, it can get out over the camera. And so to have some sense of community like that, I think 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And loneliness is a disease, and it's a modern disease. And so I hope the show has been, it's not my term. I don't know who came up with the term. It's probably an old term that just is salient now, but that the show has been sort of a third space for people is that something they can come at the end of the day and say, oh, I'm going to share Stephen is going to share basically the whole show's reaction to the same day I experienced. And it's really important that I don't break 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 want to reframe the news. There are a lot of great comedians out there. A lot of guys who do late night very good, who reframe the argument.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 even people who are like I'm essentially an introvert when I'm not in front of an audience. And some of my dearest friends are deep introverts, but I know they don't want to be alone. It's not the same thing.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 great guys. His name is Brandon Marianachi. We've got great researchers, but he's our head researcher. And he's a really lovely guy. And we just think that if you're making a joke of the actual news story, the actual data point and then really have a jaundiced eye for garbage news sites, even if they give you the setup that you want. We just don't use them on air because we know probably that's going to get fact-checked into the grave by this time tomorrow. And then we won't.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hope so. And just try to bring it to the show. I don't know about humanity. 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. We have like 41 minutes to deliver every night.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's funny you should say that it's like 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 Colberta 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 live audience got to witness me doing the show for the camera. I didn't play to the room. Here I'm doing the show for the room. The camera captures me doing that for a theater. It's a totally different way. It might seem subtle from the outside, but for me, as terms of my intention 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I perform, and I get that feeling back from them. 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Creating something for me is always about what is the effect that this is going to have on the audience. 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 is because 450 people and in actual theatrical experience were not only do I get to perform to them and hear their laughter, but in the 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Use how I should weight it, how should I troll, should I bob? Am I working on the 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 like imagination, which is imagination, like really that term, you're actually picturing this thing and then 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 imagined this thing happening. And if you've got the answers, I mean, sometimes you don't.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 the movement of the water is in your mind you have to imagine what's happening what does that hook what is that hook doing down there and then if you get 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 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's 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?”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. You can't make somebody find something funny anymore. You can make them love you. 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, you're about to tell it, you've already got your It's kind of like fishing creativity and imagination is.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was offered this gig 10 years, 10 plus years ago, I had to think about it. 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 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.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something like that, yeah, or going them he's a good swimmer, maybe he could get his fish. Because he's good at catching fish.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On a desert island? So not in Middle Earth. I think probably Gandalf because he would call the Eagles and we would get off the desert island.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I mean, I guess, I don't think I have the skills for it, but I guess Bard do 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 a cleric, a cleric monk, and then you also have to be like a thief. And then you also have to have a high, you know, intelligence. And then you can spellbind people or something like that. I'm just thinking of like, what's the job of like a clown on camera? I guess that's barred. No.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“AD. I mean, some of us are thieves. I think there are very few assassins. I think some of us are clearly thieves. And some people sincerely believe in crypto.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 I've always been very suspicious of lawful good characters. I mean, I think like, what is the alignment of humanity? That's an interesting thing. 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”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, because there are... Okay, so fighter. And then you have Ranger Paladin. Okay, I mean, there are some Paladins out there. There are people who are picking up what they believe to be the sort of justice and enforcing the law and the goodness as they see it. I mean, Paladins are very narrow-minded.”
2025-09-13 · Masters of Scale · Possible: Stephen Colbert isn’t so sure about AI (with Reid Hoffman) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT