For his first in-studio edition of The Late Show since the pandemic began, Stephen Colbert welcomed longtime friend and frequent collaborator Jon Stewart, who earlier this year made his Twitter debut with a message of support for Redditors.
At the top of the main interview portion of Stewart’s appearance, the former Daily Show host (and soon-to-be Apple TV+ host) marked the occasion with a joke about the general uneasiness many of us are still feeling about getting back out in public.
“There is nothing I wanted to do more than breathe everyone’s air,” Stewart joked.
From there, Stewart and Colbert’s conversation turned broadly to the topic of science, with Stewart praising scientists for their work during the pandemic.
However, as you may have since seen criticized on your timeline, Stewart also spent a significant chunk of his Monday night Late Show appearance seemingly (jokingly?) pushing the Wuhan lab theory. The theory, which has received wider attention in recent weeks, first began circulating publicly in 2020 (to widespread pushback) in connection with far-right conspiracy theorists and conservative-aligned talking heads.
“I will say this and I honestly mean this, I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to scientists,” Stewart said around the 2:48 mark in the video up top. “Science has in many ways helped ease the suffering of this pandemic which was more than likely caused by science.”
After Colbert mock-prepped for a spit take in response to Stewart’s comments, the discussion continued with the host asking Stewart to clarify what he meant.
“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,” Stewart said.
From there, Stewart mocked the leading theory among many scientists, i.e. that the most likely origin is from animal to human. Notably, Dr. Anthony Fauci reiterated his support for this theory earlier this month.
Stewart also compared the situation to a hypothetical “chocolatey goodness” outbreak near Hershey, Pennsylvania.
“It’s the fucking chocolate factory!” he said. “Maybe that’s it!”
Colbert responded by noting that the origin is indeed being investigated and referenced the recent comments on that investigation from the Biden administration.
“It could be possible that they have the lab in Wuhan to study the novel coronavirus diseases because in Wuhan there are a lot of novel coronavirus diseases because of the bat population there,” Colbert said, later jokingly asking Stewart how long he’s “worked for Senator Ron Johnson,” a Republican known for downplaying the pandemic.
Later, Stewart talked to directly to camera.
“This is what happens,” he said. “I’ve been alone for 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 fucked up.”
See more of Stewart’s Monday night appearance below:
The lab theory aspect of Stewart’s interview has drawn criticism, including from a number of concerned parties in the science community.
“I just watched it, and see the joke,” This Week in Science host Dr. Kiki Sanford said. “But it is at the expense of people who know a LOT about this kind of thing working really hard to figure out where the virus DID come from. The ‘well it must be’ narrative isn’t science.”
Others also expressed disappointment, a sampling of which you can see below.
And on that note, please get vaccinated if you haven’t already done so.
