Watch a Tearful Jon Stewart Announce His ‘Daily Show’ Retirement to a Stunned Live Audience

It's the moment we all knew would happen eventually—and, based on the immediacy of the news cycle and when late night shows are actually filmed, it's the moment most of us also knew was happening yesterday—but ‘Daily Show’ host Jon Stewart has finally announced his retirement after seventeen years at the news desk. Stewart's show films in the late evenings in New York City, so the news that he had announced his imminent retirement during a taping last night hit the wire many hours before the show actually aired.

In short, we knew what Stewart was going to say before he said it. (And Stewart, ever-mindful of the way news works, cheekily hinted at that throughout last night's show, promising his live audience an announcement that his at-home audience already knew about, like some weird televisual time travel). Still, that doesn't lessen the emotion of Stewart's goodbye speech, which is just as it should be: funny, moving, and honest.