“Stephen Colbert would have no idea that one of his jokes would stop me from suicide one night,” Ron Blake said in a recent TikTok video.
The Arizona man has shared his story countless times before.
In 2011, he was sexually assaulted when three men came into his home in downtown Phoenix and attacked him. He went on to live with dissociative amnesia and post-traumatic stress disorder. About four years later, he was prepared to end his life.
But in the background, the television was on and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was playing.
“On there, this comedy show, something made me laugh,” Blake told WSBT News. “It was … just that moment at 10:44 that night I paused the TV and I just thought, ‘I can't do this. There's still something good left in me.’”
The joke — “that spark of hope,” Blake calls it — would be what shaped his life for the next 11 years.
In the years since, he has become a public speaker, traveling across the country — over 103,000 miles — as he talks about the power of comedy to save lives, and about his own experiences with PTSD and sexual trauma.
Everywhere he goes, people sign messages of support on a poster board, encouraging Blake to reach his goal of being a guest on “The Late Show” himself.
“I’ve gone all over the United States and Mexico. I walk up to total strangers each of those days, and I tell them, “I’m Blake. I’m trying to get on ‘The Late Show.’ Can I tell you my story?”
He says tens of thousands of these strangers have written stories of support across 524 poster boards.
And while his ultimate goal is to appear on the show with Colbert, telling his story has been a key part of his healing journey.
“I always tell people, it’s so much more than ‘The Late Show,’ because for me, it’s about what it represented that night,” Blake said in a 2017 TEDx Talk.
“It was so profound for me that night when I sat there and I paused the TV show because I kept looking for what I told everybody was the miracle … to save me from severe PTSD. It was laughter … but it could have been food. It could have been a pet, a spouse.”
He has spent every day since discovering what that spark of hope is for other people. It has given him a purpose.
“Every day, I’m going out … telling my story to people. I’m connecting with them, they’re connecting with me, and I’m finding out what issues that they’re dealing with,” Blake said in the TEDx Talk. “And I don’t feel alone.”
His dream has not faltered over the last decade, but it has reached its final chapter.
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will air its final-ever episode on May 21, 2026.
“We’re in a bit of a race against time,” Blake said in a recent video. “So, I’m looking to you guys to please share this story, so that somehow, we can get the attention of Stephen Colbert — and fingers crossed — I will finally be invited to be a guest on ‘The Late Show.’”
He said he hopes to take his massive collection of poster boards with him.
“I’d like to take with me this massive collective story of love and hope and support,” he said. “And to share with everybody how powerful comedy and laughter can be in transforming lives.”
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Header images: Scott Kowalchyk/CBS ©2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Ron Blake/Facebook
