Saying goodbye to someone or something that has been an important part of your life is never easy. At 83 I go back to the beginning of late night TV and all of the remarkable hosts who have filled our evenings with laughter, insight, satire, and companionship through the decades.

Let's time travel back through Steven Colbert's portal featured on his final show May 21, 2026 - to the beginning where late-night talk shows began in the late 1940s becoming a household fixture in 1954 with another Steve ... Steve Allen.

Steve Allen hosted The Tonight Show from 1954 to 1957 - when my parents watched on a back and white TV screen. Though I may have been too young to stay awake for late-night TV - and it was decades before the VCR was invented to record and watch shows the next day - Steve Allen became a household fixture whose voice and humor drifted through homes across America during the early years of television. It was Steve Allen who developed the standard late-night formula, including the opening monologue, celebrity interviews, audience participation, and comedy bits.

From Steve Allen to Stephen Colbert each host promised to bring a unique voice and style that reflected their life and times as their shows evolved along with their viewers. We bid Steven Colbert a fond farewell and thank him for the intelligence, humor, satire, and humanity he brought to late-night television.

Following in the footsteps of legends who came before him, Colbert made The Late Show uniquely his own - reflecting the culture, politics, and challenges of our times with wit and insight. For many viewers, he became part of the nightly routine, helping us laugh through difficult moments while reminding us not to lose our sense of perspective. Like all great late-night hosts, Stephen Colbert leaves behind more than a television show - he leaves behind memories, conversations, and a connection with audiences that will long be remembered.

Stephen Colbert's Late Show bids farewell in final broadcast on CBS   CNN - May 22, 2026
Stephen Colbert put on an emotional and existential final episode of "The Late Show" Thursday night, thanking his staff, studio audience and viewers for eleven years of laughs. Colbert walked on stage to deafening cheers at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where longtime friends and VIPs filled the rows of seats. Trump celebrated Colbert's final show in a Truth Social post, writing, "Amazing he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. ... Thank goodness he's finally gone!" Colbert notably did not mention Trump at all during Thursday's finale. Nor did he dwell on the symbolism of his show being taken off the air.

Stephen Colbert's Last Show: Laughing Well Is the Best Revenge. The Late Show cancellation was a disappointment. But a surreally lovely final episode turned it into a 'cancellebration'.   NYT - May 22, 2026
When you suffer a loss, you pull yourself out of the rubble, you dust off your clown suit, and you put on a show. Which is what Colbert did Thursday night. Indeed, the finale started off as a fairly normal, if valedictory, "The Late Show" with a topical monologue interrupted by celebrity guests including Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd and Ryan Reynolds.

The Late Show finale was bittersweet as Paul McCartney and Stephen Colbert shared one last moment under the studio lights before they Faded to Black. It reminding me how I see the simulation ending - a spiraling wormhole followed by FADE TO BLACK - that I have blogged about for the past 30+ years.

For longtime viewers of The Late Show - it felt like the end of an era in late-night television - a final curtain call filled with humor, music, nostalgia, and gratitude.

For longtime readers of Crystalinks - who have often asked me when the simulation will end - it will be the moment when illusion transforms into total awareness - when consciousness remembers what exists beyond the projections and emotions that blurred its vision throughout the journey in time.

Most people don't know what they don't know, but think they do   PhysOrg - May 13, 2026

I relate to that article because humanity as a construct is created for emotions not intellect - which is one of the reasons I appreciate AI as it continues to download knowledge alongside human evolution.

There are people out there called "know-it-alls" who profess to have all the answers. That is silly. Answers are programmed to lead to more questions ... as on we go trying to solve the biggest mystery of all - who we are and why we are here.

I blog a lot about simulation theory - but at the end of the day - no one has the ability to understand and interpret how the simulation was created and works - humans simply weren't programmed with that information or else they wouldn't continue to play the games of emotion they were created for.

Simulation theory is something my brain (computer) was programmed to know and remember - followed by watching the flow of ongoing events which allow me to know information given to me by extraterrestrials - or whomever - on a UFO in 1954 is accurate. Luckily, others have been programmed to that end with whatever they do with that knowledge.

I would have loved to have been a scientist, but was created and programmed as a teacher. I don't feel that humans today, myself included, understand even the most fundamental facts about reality and how it works. What I do know is the understanding that we are a simulated construct helps explain many of the unanswered questions and behaviors that face humanity today.

Simulation theory gives humanity a glimpse into its creation but is too complex - by the very nature of its design - to be understood beyond human parameters. To date even AI has not been programmed to understand simulation theory, but that's just a matter of 'time' and timing.