> > rose: welcome to the program. tonight, jon stewart, the former "the daily show" host, and his book. >> any artistic pursuit is a relatively selfish pursuit. it's a catharsis for the individual and it's a way to express ideas and get them out and feel the seduction of it is it's going to score or not score, that's the hit. that's the adrenaline. but what begins to wear on you is where it's taken, and i think this election could be a great lesson in that controlling the culture is not the same thing as power. >> rose: jon stewart for the hour, next.

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: jon stewart, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: we're going to talk about a lot of things but this is "the daily show," an oral history. why an oral history? come on. >> well, the title, you know, if i did it, was taken. so we had to go with an oral history. >> rose: why? because -- >> rose

because it's an oral history. yeah, and the voices of the people who wrote and performed this show are so interesting and are really not terribly well known outside the 22 minutes a night that jon and everybody else did for 16 years. certainly stephen colbert and samantha bee have done interviews, but the actual process, the making of the show wasn't exactly kept secret but it was kept close because jon and everybody else was so focused on those four days a week and just getting it down, and that's a real hard job, that the actual process, the making of the show, the evolution, the growth internally and externally was a story best told by the people who lived it. >> rose: so you've got to go to john and everybody else and say will you do this and cooperate? and you said, yes? >> yes. well, i've known chris for a very long time and i've always

enjoyed his reporting because he always came at things from a really thorough and fair -- when you were reading his work in "new york magazine" and in other places, it always felt invested but not, you know, purposefully pejorative. it's just really well done. i thought -- we were so involved over those 16 years and people always said, what was it like, man? what were your favorite parts? i said, i don't know. >> rose: you learned something about -- >> absolutely. >> rose: -- the perspective of the guys you were with. >> absolutely. >> rose: the men and women who made up "the daily show." >> absolutely. and if it was going to be told, i want it told as thoroughly and fairly, warts and all, as it could possibly be, and i thought chris was a create reporter to be able to do that. >> rose: over the 16 years, how did the show evolve? what did it become that it was not at the beginning?

>> i mean, in truth, i think the evolution of the show we just became better at doing it. so it's not that it's -- it's what the show became and what people thought of the show and the outside perspective of it, and that was the thing that, i think, you know, i talked to chris a lieutenant about which is you had to ignore, you know, what we tried to develop was a decent internal barometer of what worked for the show and how well we could execute it. so, you know, you couldn't ever look at a piece and go, like, i don't know if this is emmy worthy, and we're an emmy award winning show. ( laughter ) you had to try and keep your own morality and integrity as the beacon for where you wanted the material to go. >> rose: was your instinct almost always right about what would be funny and not funny? >> i think we got better at

that. there is something fragile about comedy and somewhat musical and one man's meat is another man's -- so i can say there were things we wrote that i thought were funny where the audience might not and other things, a pun that come up with the shoulder and the crowd would go bananas and you would stop and look at them and say, really? because we didn't think that was -- you know, you spent the whole day on something and then they like the pun on the double. >> people forget the show existed before jon as host and they laid a real willed

foundation in some ways, the mock correspondents, the satire of news, the tone and the focus was very different. it was much more of a parody of local newscasts in a way, there could be a mean-spiritedness to some of the material, they were much more interested in celebrity and hollywood and show business stuff. >> rose: not political people. yeah, exactly, and it punched down in a way that could funny, but was kind of ev ephemeral. one to have the things that was interesting talking to jon and folks at the time when he came in, in 1999, is he knew he wanted it to be more substantive, but he didn't have a master plan, he didn't have a blueprint of, okay, here's where we're going. >> rose: you just said -- i have been fired enough. ( laughter ) >> rose: do you know why you were successful this time?

was it the best extension of your talent? >> i believe it was the best extension of what i know how to do. perhaps i didn't necessarily know that at the time, but beyond that, cable is a very different animal, especially during that time, the network is, and, so, it has a different level of pressure and a different level of performance. you are able to use it as a laboratory in ways that you wouldn't be able to do on a network. a network lives or dies by the overnights, whereas in cable, you know, they had this crazy deal worked out where they live and die by the carriage theme. >> rose: they have two revenue streams. >> yeah, and, so, their goal was to throw things out there. i knew we had more time, and i think maybe that allowed me a little bit more confidence to push it. and i had to push them as well, because it wasn't necessarily the direction that they wanted thto go in.

>> rose: but you were running the show, too. you were there in the trenches. >> i wouldn't refer to them as that. if you have a craft services table, generally that's not trenches. ( laughter ) >> rose: so what was it? it's the number of metaphors involved in the creation of "the daily show" -- >> rose: what did it become? it became for all of us a kind of cultural event. >> yeah. >> rose: more than a show. yeah, and jon started to touch on this, too. it's easy to forget in 2016 what the media world looked like in 1996, 1997, 1999, where comedy central was, you know, still kind of a sketchy proposition, where msnbc and fox news had just launched at the same time "the daily show" was coming into

being. facebook didn't exist and now it's had a major influence on a presidential election. >> it came in frozen dishes and you had to heat it by hand! it was a different time! ( laughter ) >> rose: we just went through an election. >> what?! yes. >> rose: your reaction to this election? >> it all ties together. >> rose: fear? well, fear -- you know, here's what i would honestly say, i don't believe we are a fundamentally different country today than we were two weeks ago or than we were a month ago. the same country with all its grace and flaws and volatility and insecurity and strength and resilience exists today as it existed two weeks ago, the same country that elected donald

trump elected barack obama, and those contradictions are -- this election, to me, is just another extension of the long argument that we've had from our founding, which is what are we? and that's -- you know, are we an ideal or are we some form of ethno-state? and that argument has existed. so on a philosophical and theoretical level, i feel badly for the people for whom this election will mean more uncertainty and insecurity, but i also feel like this fight has never been easy. and i think it's odd. it's like we're a couple and we met and the first fight we had when we met was -- i mean, look,

the people on our money had slaves, the people we honor had slaves, and they didn't know it was wrong. >> rose: many came from a slave-owning state. >> right. so the argument between real and urban and inalienable rights and slavery has gone on. it's never been easy. and fighting for this -- i don't see this as some form of end point. it's a continuation of a long battle to determine what we are. it made me wonder -- you know, one of the things that struck me odd about this election, and maybe i just missed it, was nobody asks donald trump what makes america great, and that

was the part i -- >> rose: he wants to make america great again. nobody said to him, well, what is it that makes america great? what is it you want to do that we aren't doing now? >> what are the metrics? because it seems like, from listening to him, the metrics are that it's a competition and that it's wins and losses. we're going to win more. is that what makes us great? and i think what many would say is what makes us great is nobody -- america is an anomaly in the world. there are a lot of people, and i think his candidacy had animated that thought, that a multi-ethnic democracy, a multicultural democracy is impossible. and that is what america by its founding constitutionally is. >> rose: and is becoming more and more year by year.

>> correct. >> rose: some people were worried that it meant different things for them and their life was changing because of that and there was a certain fear. >> i think no question. the insecurities that people feel as marginalized populations are also felt -- you know, a rust belt worker who lost his job in manufacturing feels an insecurity and you can say to him, but look at all the terrible things he says, and they might think, look, i live in an area that voted for him. >> rose: but the question is did democrats and did secretary clinton open the door for donald trump because she did not or could not speak to them? >> whether or not she opened the door or not, i don't think it was her door to open. you're talking about a global issue. globalization and the pushback of that. now, in ethno-states, it sort of makes more sense that we have an ethnic identity, but when you

live in a state that's an ideal, what is the bar of venture? the bar of ven comiewr is i agree, people have inalienable rights and can i come in? and as long as you behave within that manner. but let's not pretend this is a battle that hasn't been revisited time and time again. that's why i feel we have a resilience to it that we have to continue to fight. >> rose: but do you think it's healthy that we have this now, this battle, this real sense of finding out who we are? >> yes, but i also know -- >> rose: and whether we have gone off track in some way? >> absolutely. you know, i think -- i would rather have this conversation openly and honestly than in dog whistles. somebody was saying there might be an anti-semite working in the white house saying, have you listened to the nixon tapes? forget about advising the president. have you read l.b.j.? do you know our history?

you know, this is -- and we also have to caution ourselves to the complexity of that history that i thought donald trump disqualified himself at numerous points, but there is now this idea that anyone who voted for him has to be defined by the worst of his rhetoric, and i think it's a big mistake and i think that our relationship status with our own worst impulses is complicated, and you have to remember, who is the most progressive president maybe in our history? roosevelt. franklifranklin delano roosevelo interned asian-americans during world war ii. so we are a complicated and real people. i know -- the hardest thing for me during this election was the disconnect i had between watching the rallies, which i think animates generally because it's a rally the wisdom of

crowds is never particularly moderate, but to see "lock her up" and shouting at the media and terrible things that happened and his inability to in any way tamp that down and in some cases inspire it, to view that with my own experience with real people that i knew were voting for trump who were friends of mine who i don't tolerate because they're -- well, they're irredeemable and deplorable, i love. like, there are guys that i love, that i respect, that i think have incredible qualities who are not afraid of mexicans and not afraid of muslims or blacks, they're afraid of their insurance premiums, and this idea that, you know, that they

represent, they have given tacet approval to a dictator and a mad man, you know, look at your phone, man. look at everything we have. we make those kinds of compromises every day for exploitative purposes. i've gone on too long. >> rose: no, you haven't. charlie, i haven't had anybody to talk about this, so -- >> rose: you've come to the right place. >> all right, i appreciate it. >> rose: did you miss it during the campaign. >> god, no! >> rose: you did not for a second? >> no. >> rose: you didn't want to be there. >> no. >> rose: and being able to do what you just did, tell us what you thought both with satire and with comedy and with reason? >> no. not a>> rose: not at all? >> no, because impotent rage wears on you. >> rose: meaning that you could be full of rage but it wouldn't make any difference?

>> correct. generally, almost any pursuit like this is -- any artistic pursuit for whatever effect it has on its audience is a relatively selfish pursuit. it's a catharsis for the individual and it's a way to express ideas and get them out and feel the seduction of it is it's going to score or not score, that's the hit, that's the adrenaline, but what begins to wear on you is where it's taken, and i think this election could be a great lesson in that controlling the culture is not the same thing as power, and a viral video ee-- eviscerating racists not the same thing as a grassroots mostly that seeks common ground and create a multi-ethnic coalition and understanding everybody's

hierarchy of needs may not necessarily be yours. >> rose: by "the daily show" wasn't necessarily banging around in your head when you took this job? >> well, what was banging narnd my head was is there a better way to execute public affairs comedy that means something to me? i hosted talk shows, i did one on mtv and one on, like, a syndicated -- >> rose: yeah. -- and i was spending 12 hours a day on things that didn't feel substantial and meaningful to me. so this was a chance to can i express my comedy about things that i care about in a way that's entertaining enough that i won't get fired? because i have been fired.

when you fide get the fired and your name -- when you get fired and your name is on the show, it's hard not to go, oh, you may suck at this. and you have to reevaluate, you know what? if i'm going to put myself in that position, then, i'm going to lay it on the line and i'm going to put out there what i care about, and it could get rejected, but at least -- >> rose: at least i'll go down doing it my way. >> that's right. i'm going to go down the way i feel like -- i'm going to do it in a way that i think is the best it regulation of my abilities, and if that goes down, you know, i can bar tend. >> rose: yes, you could. ( laughter ) was there a moment in which -- was there a time, was there an event that you said we've got it, we have traction? i can be confirmed in my belief that what i was rolling the dice on has come up a winner? >> no. >> rose: not in terms of

success but in terms of the confidence that what i wanted to do and what i was insisting on doing has been -- >> i woul would say -- you've td to a bunch of people. >> rose: right. i would say it was more would we be able to develop a process to do that well and, you know, it's the inherent juxtaposition of a creative pursuit which is can we build a machine that is redundant and rigid enough that it can sustain inspiration, improvisation and creativity. >> rose: and five days a week. yes. >> rose: when did the process kick in that you knew -- >> that wasn't my concern. >> rose: when did that happen? november -- no, no. well, it really took shape

through the 2000 campaign and the recount, the day-the to-day process. like jon says, the technology eventually caught up with what "the daily show" was doing. they pieo neared it -- pioneered it in montages. it was not just simply we're having a meeting at 9:00 and need these clips. what they found early on was a tone to what they wanted to do, and while events went on in the outside world that changed what they thought, they found a tone in a piece steve carell did with john mccain on the straight talk express in late 1999 where carell does the preamble where he's chasing the bus and trying to get on the bus. >> they wouldn't let us on. they had a main bus and -- two press buses.

>> main stream press. one was nicer with air conditioning and a bathroom. >> they go to cindy mccain and she is appalled at the rollover bus conditions and says come on the main bus with jon. and what you don't know from watching the finished piece is all the work that went into this, and it became a prototype of how jon shifted field pieces away from, in his phrase, abject cruelty to actual point of view, and they -- carell and the producer of the piece, a guy named nick mckinney, laid out a series of questions, and carell is a world-class improviser so that if you ask this question and he says, x, here's how you respond. >> rose: right. the difficulty in this, one of many difficulties, is you have world-class improvisers working with civilians who don't know they're in an improv, so

they develop all these questions of what they're going to ask mccain, and most of them are softball like what kind of tree would you be. what became famous at the end of that piece and the turning point ant development of the show is carell asked mccain, senator , you have been a strident opponent of pork barrel spending, how can you justify when you are chair of the commerce committee, you okayed billions of dollars in pork barrel spending? and mccain freezes. there's a deer in the head lights moment. then carell bursts the tension by saying, oh, i was just joking, i don't know even know what that means. now what's fascinating to me and carell had not remembered it until i talked to him, mckinney and carell found that question in "time" magazine driving over to the shoot and that kind of structure and

last-minute improv genius was something jon created that held throughout his run at the show. >> but it also brings up an interesting thing which is the crux of th of "the daily show" x which is in that moment you hold in account a senator whose entire identity is based on a hypocritical behavior -- i am against this type of pork barrel politics, unless it benefits -- we nailed you. what do we have to do at that point? we let you go. it's catch and release because we have to undercut it with a laugh, and it gets to the joy and frustration of doing that type of job, which is -- and it's when we realize, too, that access didn't help us. so it's that idea that i got

you, and here's my one moment and i'm going to, with a scalpel, go at the crux of your identity as a politician and expose it for everybody to see, and then i'm going to have to make a jokes about it, walk away and laugh and it's going to humanize you. >> one of the difficulties of this is satire ebegan to take the place of reality. i think this has been given a greater place in the discussion and a larger role in the discourse than is warranted, and once that started to happen, i think you began to question if it's a good thing or a bad thing. and i know it's not a black and white issue, but controlling the culture -- and for as much fun as we could make of the tea party, like, while we were up there passing around viral

videos of evie evieserrations, e were friendlies off the highway taking over a school board. we just had an election where democrats won popular vote by a million and they don't control the house, senate, government, state legislatures. this may be the largest disconnect between majority rule and majority power that we've had in this country in ages. and i'm in no way saying, and i'm responsible! ( laughter ) but what i am saying is there is a comforting culture that can be mistaken for real power. there are only two towns i thought were delusional, one was washington, d.c. but the other was los angeles. the only difference between

los angeles and de d.c. is los angeles believe they have power. >> rose: de d.c. has power, l.a. just believes they have power. >> yes. >> rose: whatever we're saying about culture and tim print we have on culture, in the end it's not political power. >> and in the end it's not real cultural influence, even. it's a story we tell ourselves about the right necessary of our position. but it is argument, and it's not without weight, but it is not with so much weight. i believe that culture played a good role in marriage equality. i think it brought a story out that had been so much of what occurs with inequality is ignorance and i don't mean that in a malevolent way. i mean that in a way that i have no experience with this.

i don't know what that is. so exposure can be positive. though generally in an entertainment sense, exposure is -- >> rose: but do you think people came as guests because of the numbers you had, wanted to reach the audiences you had, or because they enjoyed it and it gave them a sense of being part of something that was hip and in? >> i will say they did not enjoy it. >> rose: really? yeah. chris? >> yeah, to that point, i mean, chris wallace, fox news said almost those exact words to me is his kids were never more yes, impressed with him than when he went on "the daily show" and it felt like you had been invited to become the member of a hipper club. >> rose: and you had the ticket to that club. that's power. >> it's power in a way a bouncer has power. ( laughter ) >> rose: you were a bouncer.

i was a bouncer at a club that did pretty well, but i have to tell you, drive down 14t 14th by 2nd avenue, pa laid yum is not there anymore. it's a condo now. >> on the way over here i walked past fox news world headquarters and there is a marching band, dancing girls, free jell-o shots. apparently, they won. >> rose: speaking of fox news, it was the gift that kept on giving. >> it was not the gift that kept on giving. it was the relentless offer of -- they were a good foil because they were offering cynicism which they continue to offer. there is no more cynical enterprise than fox news. whatever they want to say about the liberal media -- >> rose: or fair and balanced.

which may be the most cynical expression in the history of slogans. it's like if coca-cola went out and said, healthy vitamins for what they see as eitherction unfairness or something hidden. >> rose: okay, but did you see what you were doing as simply offering an alternative to what fox is saying because -- >> no. >> rose: okay. go ahead. >> we saw it as -- so the headline for it on huffington post would be "stewart eviscerates arguments against gay marriage!" and we would look at it as "the daily show" comes up with a somewhat humorous book as what they think is a hypocritical

stance on personal freedoms. and that's the weight it should be given. >> rose: but you liquid your chops when you saw hypocrisy like never before. if you saw it was hypocritical, that would be the point where you would just say -- >> it was animated by visceral feelings, no question. that's the stuff that -- this show is basically just -- if you imagine in general -- and i hate to do this to your audience and i don't know if this is pbs so you want to do a trigger warning -- but the dale "charlie rose" was a satirical expression of me sitting in my underwear and yelling at the television and i get to go back the to doing that except now i'm surrounded by farm animals. >> there is a lot of different people in the book, among them a guy named john field, who has been a leader in pushing for healthcare for 9/11 first responders.

they walk us through what jon and others did to get the permanent extension of the zadruga bill a little while back. >> rose: much passion for tissue. >> yeah, which we can debate influence and power. there were points where the "charlie rose" had real-world impact and, you know, jon does not get up and raise his hand and say, i did that. but, you know, there are a lot of first responders who are going to have their medical bills paid because in large part of his focus on this. but in that discussion, jon, at one point in the book, says, in some ways the debate over zedroga was what "the daily show" for me was all about. a lot of people looking in a come on sense way and are saying isn't this crazy this isn't getting done? you know, why isn't this

happening? >> rose: it's a common sense argument. >> yeah, and i think ehe and the show were ahead of the curve -- and people back talk about this in the book -- in recognizing on the left and the right how government was not functioning for a lot of average americans, and they pointed that out in all sorts of ways from the healthcare debate to the government showdown, minimum wage, all sorts of things over the years, katrina. and at one point there was a former correspondent named dan bakendahl (phonetic) who wasn't on the show for a long time and had unhappy experience there, but sometimes people who had unhappy experiences think deeper about what worked and didn't, and he talks in there about he thinks bernie sanders would have not been possible if not for "the daily show."

people grew up thinking about government and hypocrisy and politicians in terms that "the daily show" and jon defined. i think that's true of the media. you have kids that grew up watching "the daily show." in this campaign maybe it was too little too late, more print than tv and can we curse? >> rose: yes. there were a lot of people in this campaign that called it bull (bleep) and, you know, annotating lies. footnoting every lie in a donald trump speech was something jon and "the daily show" had done with bush, obama, all along and that kind of thing, you know, you can point to filtering through the media culture. >> but you have to meet force with force, and "the daily show" is -- what i would say we are -- and, again, i'm not saying this to den grate what we -- denigrate what we did.

this was the best it regulation, for me, of what -- the best iteration of what i could do with satire and we prosecuted it to the fullest extent as far as my brain could go. one of the reasons is i left is i would be redundant and going back and forth on the same thing. i'm going to really do a terrible analogy, but we were patrick swayze after he died in ghost. we were in the subway yelling at dead people and raging and no one could hear us, but if we focused everything that we had in one moment at just the right time, at just the right moment with everything we had, we could move the can just a little bit. you want to talk about the pottery scene? ( laughter ) but do you understand what i'm saying? >> rose: yes.

we're impotently raging. zadroga was ten years of back breaking labor by john field and these first responders. it was corruption at a government level at the highest order that could be done. it was the people that had been hailed as heros that ran into burning buildings that were told by our government and the e.p.a. that the air was safe but it was not safe. they were dying and continue to die to this day. they were forced with their afflictions to go down and hat in hand knock on doors to people who wouldn't meet their eyesight, and those ten years of working they did all the construction and, at the very end, cindy lou hoo came in and got more credit than was deserved. they deserved that and continued to, and the ultimate irony of this election is the cynical strategy of the reps republicans which is our position is

government doesn't work, we're going to make sure it doesn't work -- >> rose: draining the swamp. but they're not draining the swamp. mcconnell and ryan, those guys are the swamp and what they decided to do is say i'm going to make sure the government doesn't work and use its lack of working as evidence of it. donald trump is a reaction not just to democrats but republicans. he's not a republican, he's a repudiation of reps but they will reap the benefit of his victory in all their cynicism. i guarantee you republicans will come to jesus about the how we are of government. they will realize government authority is actually not tyranny when we want it, it's actually authority, and it's consent of the people and, you know what? you want an infrastructure project? and let me give you that and tax cuts and let's see how far we can take that. and that's the irony of it. >> rose: when we began this

conversation you were arguing this country has had a long and tortured history of dealing back and forth on these debates. >> no, not on that debate. on race. >> rose: just on race. i'm talking about the foundational creed of the country which is we are not -- you know, originally, we were just white anglo-saxon protestants,. >> rose: white anglo-saxon protestant men. >> white anglo-saxon protestant men. who singlizes the frustration of this country is almost probably more than anybody susan b. anthony. she was a suffragette. people were putting stickers on her grave. but i think she was also steeped in racism and didn't want black men to vote before she got to vote because white women are better than black men! so those are the inherent contradictions.

does that negate all the good she did? of course not, but it tells the story with the complexity that it deserves and, hopefully, allows us to see each other more clearly and have an empathy and compassion for the complexity of people and not negate people for the worst statement they've ever made or, in the literal community, you hate this idea of creating people as a monolith. don't look at muslims as amonto lit. they are individuals and it would be ignorance. but everybody who voted for trump is a monolith, is a racist. that hypocrisy is also real in our country. and, so, this is the fight that we wage against ourselves because america is not natural. natural is tribal. we're fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something no one's ever -- that's what's

exceptional about america and this ain't easy. it's an incredible thing. >> and one of the things i hope the book does is illustrate that, in some small way, jon and the show made, over the course of the years as the show evolved, a very determined attempt to diversify the ranks from off camera to on camera, and near the end of john's run there, there was a little hubbub about a confrontation he had with one of the correspondents, an african-american. >> i remember, yeah. and we go into some detail about how and why that happened. >> yes. and i think it's a fascinating illustration of how people of good intention, of strong values, these are tough things to wrestle with day in

and day out, in workplaces, if creative environments, and a fascinating total coincidence when this wyatt story broke publicly, ta-nehisi coates happened to be jon's guest that day, . i interviewed coates for the book. he said, you know, people struggle with racism in good ways all the time that we don't see and hear about. we hear about the confrontation, the conflict and, to him, yeah, what jon did over the course of a number of years sometimes didn't make everybody happy, but was moving the ball forward, was of good intention and progressive in every day. >> rose: diversity there.

yes. when you are faced with that type of criticism, your first response is generally defensiveness. when we first started the show, comedy was -- especially late night -- was the realm of late night irony. just very witty and people did very well on their s.a.t.s and wrote for their rivaled parody papers at their colleges, and the room was populated with a variety of relatively unathletic white men. >> rose: who love sports. who did not love sports, and you would find -- usually i would have one guy who would-be, did you see the giants game last night? yes. then we would go back to the marvel universe. ( laughter )

>> when you are in it, sometimes the systems that perpetuate different forms of either racism or any of those things, you don't even realize you're in it when you're in it and you certainly don't think that of yourself. so an article came out and said, they don't have any women writing for the show and on and on about that sort of thing. and my first response was they don't understand, there are women here, they're in power, this is not a sexist environment. i was raised by a single mother. who do they think -- and there were things in the article that i thought were cheap shots and thought, what are they? then i sat in the writer's room and i sat around and went, oh, we're all just white dudes with various forms of facial hair. i looked at that as diversity.

diversity to me was that guy writes one-liners, that guy thinks in structure, that guy's narrative. that guy's crazy, we're going to stay out of his way. >> rose: that justifies your existence. >> right. so we had had a policy at the show that you don't put your name on your submissions and we thought that's what made us progressive. but what we forgot was the system doesn't funnel you women. it funnels you the same people it had been funneling for 20, 30 years. it's a self perpetuating system. so if i call agents and say i'm looking for writers, they're going to send me 100 white male writers. now, i'm not going to look at their names because i don't want to be prejudice, but what you forget is change is effort, and it's not effort for effort's sake. it's effort because it makes the show better, stronger.

different viewpoints are what gave the show strength. so what we had to say, is by the way, thank you for sending those men. send me your women. get me those submissions, please, the same with when we're adding correspondents. but you have to do that actively and you deserve no credit for that, but it is you have to, to a large extent, inertia is tacet in its complicity with the system. >> rose: and by doing, so you're ignoring half of the population. >> and you're not getting the best stuff. >> rose: right. this is something that's certainly not publicly known, jon in a variety of respects over the years felt the need, okay, i'm going to be out there talking about veterans, i'm going to make jokes. i should go to the v.a. and actually talk to veterans. >> rose: did you leave that ah-ha moment in the writers room? did you go in there and say,

look, i realize -- >> everybody has blind spots and it is hard to overcome your own ignorance, and that's what i had to face in myself, which is, you know, it's gut-wrenching sometimes. >> rose: do you think because of all this and you've found the right expression is the word i used earlier, that you can find something that's equally right for you again? or do you just simply hit a home run there? you've found the perfect place for you and it was 17 years of -- >> yes. and i'll never have that again, but i shouldn't. like, it was a gift that was -- that i was fortunate enough to be graced with for all that time and to be in contact with all those incredible people, but i don't expect to find that again.

but what i've found is a more balanced existence that where i get -- there is a difference between satisfaction and joy. this gave me great satisfaction, and it gave me great confidence, but joy, joy, driving a couple of knucklehead kids home from school that i get to sit and listen to, joy. and you need to have that as well. and this was an obsession that, i think to be able to do it as well as we did, to me, felt like the only way that we could do it, but, at a certain point, you have to hang up your cleats and go, i got out of this more than anybody -- my cup runneth over and it's time to cede that to someone else whose enthusiasm and vigor and intellectual

curiosity will carry this forward and bring it to a place it needs to be that i'm incapable of doing. >> rose: did you find that joy in making movies? >> work is work. people say, oh, when you're not working, man, when something happens and you're not at work, do you think, oh, i wish i was at work. has that ever happened to your in your life when you're not at work and said to yourself, oh, i work in a bar and just heard of people coming in for a bus load of drinks, man, i wish i was there. >> rose: what are all the things of "the daily show" family that you were privileged to talk to and get a sense from them of what was going on. >> i don't know unusual as much as striking that so many of the people working there were unaware -- unaware is too

strong -- but didn't realize or didn't take in how much the outside world was paying attention because the grind is actually doing the show day in and day out and the ethos, the jon said we've won all these emmy awards speaking truth to power. it was about showing up and doing the best show that day possible. sure, they knew people were paying attention. they knew, you know, they would go out to the emmys and accept awards. but the ability to stay in the moment of the creation of the show to me was really kind of surprising. >> rose: you do accept the idea that, because of the audience, even people who said it was their source of news, as you know, were influence by "the daily show" in terms of curiosity and a mindset and

those young people are going out now and doing things, really interesting stuff and were influenced by you. >> yeah. >> rose: i think a teacher has an influence. >> if it stimulated a curiosity for people to make arguments -- you know, if it stimulated a curiosity for people to look behind the veil of what is seen publicly and deconstruct what they see on television and political campaigns, i would consider that an incredible compliment to the show and the legacy. >> rose: and to you? as my name was on it. >> rose: yeah. but i would also caution anybody -- like it did come from our herspective and there were a lot of people out there who thought it was unfair, and, you know, one of the big things is when people push back you say, i'm just a comedian, i never would have said that. >> i claim to have seen and

heard every utterance of jon's in 20 years, but i'll vouch for that, he never said i'm just a comedian. he took responsibility in all kinds of ways for the point of view as well as the jokes. >> and the material. i think it came from on crossfire, you know, i'm on comedy central. but the point of that is not to say, this is comedy, it doesn't matter. the point of it is to say that the language of satire is different than the language of news and media, that our weapons are hyperbole and satire and hard juxtapositions that are are a coggle when news media might use a scalpel, but that we stood by our arguments, and when our arguments were wrong or if we thought, you know what? that was unfair and we did take that out of context, we had to own it and apologize for that because that's not the intention. the intention was not to propagandize. the intention was to see if you

could make your argument in a really interesting and smart way that was funny but that was also as unassailable as it could be on the facts. >> rose: what you come away with both from the book and this conversation is that comedy and satire ain't easy. it's hard, and the pursuit of it is a daily demand and requires a process. >> i think what i tried to come out of it is excellence is hard and competence is hard and the pursuit of that is that process and that whether it be satire or interviews or whether it be news is that, you know, every artist that i've ever really admired and i delve into their process it's always the same, it's always deconstructed, somewhat obsessive and intentional.

and i think you can translate that ethos not just the satire but to any profession that people would go in, and if your aim is to challenge yourself and be excellent and improve and truly try and, you know, one of the things i hated about the movie reviews i got was that they came out after the movie because you would read through it and some you thought was unfair but every once in a while you would hit something and go, why didn't they tell me that before? you have to be able to handle constructive criticism because that makes you better. all processes are drafts, first, second, third draft revision, and that's what i feel like, it's just a methodology that you could apply to anything that's done. that's why i have such great admiration for people who excel and what they do because i foe what goats into it.

nothing is an accident. >> rose: "the daily show (the book): an oral history as told by jon stewart," written by chris smith, forward by jon stewart. thank you for joining us, see you next time. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> you're watching pbs.

the following kqed production was produced in high definition. ♪ and their buns are something i have yet to find anywhere else. >> cause i'm not inviting you to my house for dinner. >> breaded and fried and gooey and lovely. in the words of arnold schwarzenegger, i'll be back. >> you've heard of connoisseur, i'm a common-sewer. >> they knew i had to ward off some vampires or something. let's talk desserts gentle