1. Comedy writing is not a choice. When asked about how they became comedy writers, head writer Barry Julien posited: “I think people realize they’re comedy writers more than decide.” “It’s exactly like being gay,” added Peter Gwinn quickly.

2. The panel’s moderator, a former Lampoon guy and cartoonist called Zachary Kanin, seemed a bit stilted but did have his moments. He turned to Meredith Scardino, the only female of the 12 staff members, asking, “Okay, everyone here wants to know: What’s it like being the only member of the staff to have been on Cash Cab?” A joke, sure, but a good one that kicked off a long riff about discrimination against Cash Cab participants and the glass ceiling they inevitably struck.

3. There really is no room on the set under Colbert’s desk. Rob Dubbin, dressed in robes and sandals to play a Biblical-era Jew being freed from bondage in Egypt, had to wait with two other guys under the cramped desk for an hour while the audience shuffled in. “It was like Tetris,” he complained. One of the other writers put it this way: “When you finally popped up, it was like you were being freed.”

4. Colbert’s now-legendary appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner received mixed reactions from the staff, at least initially: “He delivered it well. Why weren’t people laughing?” wondered Gwinn. The morning after the event, when Dubbin overheard someone at another table talking about it in a restaurant, he considered, “If [Colbert] bombed, maybe it was a kamikaze bomb.” After more of the public response came back their way, Gwinn finally determined they “were connecting with people.”

5. Few things are more fun than baiting comedians. When one happy writer mentioned that Colbert had a great track record for not hiring jerks, Scardino immediately snapped, “Would you guys shut the fuck up?” which prompted this tidy, callback quip from Gwinn: “Oh, here comes Cash Cab…”