Jon Stewart tried to tread lightly during a recent episode of The Weekly Show podcast—but any hope of easing his growing concerns about political instability in the U.S. quickly faded.
Joined by History of Rome and Revolutions podcast host Mike Duncan and Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy, Stewart asked how close the U.S. might be to a second revolution. The answers he received were blunt—and unsettling.
“I have a hard time doing this, not looking at the present and gathering up those ingredients — that Tony, you put into this brilliant show about a revolutionary, and Mike, you’ve put into deconstructing — and not think ‘boy, we are in a tinderbox,’” Stewart said.
Duncan didn’t hesitate to confirm Stewart’s fears.
“A historian of revolution has just told us we’re in it,” Stewart exclaimed. “I was trying to be delicate.”
“Yeah, dude, people are flicking matches at a tinderbox right now,” Duncan replied. “Whether or not it’s going to go off, nobody knows, but yeah, dude, we’re there. We’ve been there for years.”
Duncan emphasized that if a major event were to erupt tomorrow, historians would have no trouble tracing its roots: “The big, major structural forces—and individual incidents—that brought us to this point are already in place.”
Gilroy, whose Star Wars series Andor explores rebellion and authoritarianism, reflected on the show’s eerie relevance. Viewers often asked him whether the narrative was meant to mirror current U.S. events.
“People talk about the predictive quality of the show,” Gilroy said. “And as it started to click out, all these things started happening in real life—Ghorman and mineral rights lining up with Greenland, the immigration issues, ICE, and Senator Oran getting arrested as Padilla’s being arrested. It’s all happening.”
The conversation painted a stark picture—one Stewart wasn’t necessarily expecting, but one that neither Duncan nor Gilroy sugarcoated.
