Highlights from recent years, worth watching:

David Letterman on Sandy Hook, & President Obama.

With an assist to Reddit’s PhysChemCalcTeacher …I’ve edited it a bit for a few more likely scenarios.

The announcement (I watched it, it’s long, kinda funny…I’m a fan of David, but this video…anh. Perhaps the least touching retirement announcement in recent memory).

Via Reddit, a right-on comment:
“The sad part is with Letterman leaving, the art of the talk show interview dies. At least here in the US, i guess every country could be different. Letterman is the king of interviews. He asks provoking questions, he knows when to stop talking, he knows when to intervene. You pretty much always learn more about the guest than you knew before. He is by far and away the best interviewer. Somehow, that art was lost a long time ago and wasn’t picked up by any other talk show hosts. They read questions off their blue cards, listen for a little while and nod quietly, then attempt draw attention back to themselves with some unnecessary joke. We now have two generations of talk show hosts who were seemingly never given instruction of any kind on how to interview a person.”

An interesting article from one year ago. Excerpt:

CBS Corp. chief Les Moonves has previously said Letterman can choose his own retirement date, and Letterman recently made it clear it’s up to Moonves. “He and I have an agreement,” Letterman told Oprah Winfrey in January. “When he wants me to go all he needs to do is call and say, ‘You know Dave, it’s time to go,’ and I’ll go. I’ll miss doing what I’m doing. But I won’t feel like I’ve left anything on the table. When it’s time to go, somebody else tell me. Because I don’t know when it’s time to go.” You can bet that whatever happens, when Letterman retires it will at least appear to be the late-night host’s choice (there will be none of this PR messiness of “categorical” denials and on-air sniping that have made headlines during NBC’s turnover).