Q: How will your new late-night show, "The Colbert Report," be different from Jon Stewart's, "The Daily Show," on which you have appeared for years as a fake senior news correspondent? The character will not change. He's the exact same guy from "The Daily Show," and he has just been promoted into the host's chair. We're trying to establish a persona here. He's a well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot.

Will you continue the tradition of political satire that allowed "The Daily Show" to inject so much welcome gravity into the light, goofy realm of late-night TV? Jon would be so happy as a comedian to hear that he injected gravity. Can I be the one to tell him?

Seriously, what do you have against gravity? If we thought we added gravity to anything, we would feel that we had failed. We're just trying to ease the pain of people who feel the world is going insane and no one is noticing. We're like Cortaid, something not too heavy that is used for a rash or a bug bite. I wouldn't use it for a wound.

I think you're underestimating the influence the show has had. People might perceive it as substantive because the jokes happen to be political. But I guarantee you that it has no political objective. I think it's dangerous for a comedian to say, "I have a political objective." Because then they stop being a comedian and they start being a politician. Or a lobbyist.