Losing late-night talk shows to the coronavirus crisis feels bleak because they offer perspective and catharsis

TIME

"Outside the vortex of hysteria that is social media, there’s no more reliable gauge of the national mood at any given moment than late-night talk shows. And on Thursday, March 12, that mood was confusion," Judy Berman says of the late-night talk shows going without studio audiences last Thursday. She says it was "kind of comforting to see familiar faces puzzle out what to do—and how worried they should be—in something close to real time." Citing David Letterman's iconic first show after 9/11, Berman adds: "If news programs help us understand what’s happening in the world around us, then it’s talk shows that often aid us in processing that information." ALSO: Watch Conan O'Brien demonstrate how to disinfect a jigsaw puzzle.