How the real-time meme factory makes the funny sausage out of hand waving and other bits of debate-night ephemera.
At 7:30 p.m., roughly a dozen comedy writers and digital producers gathered around a large rectangular wooden table inside a window-lined conference room at the center of The Daily Show‘s studio in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. The outpost featured two giant flat-screen TVs already tuned to CNN and was filled with laptops and takeout Chinese food—all key components for being funny on demand during the second installment of this campaign season’s Democratic presidential debates.
