Comedy Central’s dark horse The Daily Show has become a prize stallion since Jon Stewart took the reins in January 1999. Under his stewardship, the skewed news program has nudged robot battles and six-week wonders aside to become one of the station’s best runners, winning Emmy and Peabody awards and proving that there is something funny about today’s often-bleak headlines. South Park may still rule with the X-box set, but it’s Stewart who has established the high-water mark for contemporary American political and social satire.

Stewart started in comedy clubs before working his way up through an MTV talk show, HBO specials, and minor film roles to his current $1.5 million–salaried position. Next Saturday he’ll make an increasingly rare return to stand-up at the Orpheum Theatre. "I probably don’t spend as much time on my stand-up as I should," he explains over the phone from The Daily Show’s New York City offices, where he and his staff work furiously to write and wrap four episodes a week, which air Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m. "I feel this TV show is a worthy adversary, and one that deserves all my attention when I’m doing it." With that, he submits to a few questions.

Q: How has doing The Daily Show affected your stand-up?

A: Now that The Daily Show is broadcast internationally, I do my stand-up show in seven different languages.

Actually, I don’t know that it’s much different. I was always pretty topical. But oh man, do I have a Lyndon Johnson chunk that’s going to blow the kids away. Well, really, with the country on code yellow, that has a tendency to influence where you’re going with your stand-up. The elections and where we’re going with Iraq — these are things that have a little more relevance.

And then, of course, there’s my ending with the show tunes. You’ve got to give the kids some music. You can’t just talk to ’em.

Q: The show’s previous host, Craig Kilborn, led with a parody of vacant anchor-man narcissism — if that was a parody. But along with your satire comes a sense that you care.

A: Well, you don’t want to be strident or didactic, but if you don’t care, the show has no sense of direction, and that was one of the larger problems I had with it when I arrived. I wanted to add a point of view, so it came from a place that was consistent but real.

Q: Humanistic, too?

A: You try. It’s hard to write the show every day, but as long as you keep in mind what you’re trying to accomplish, you can’t stray too far. Although there have been times . . . [laughs].

Q: In a New Yorker profile, you said that one of your earliest memories was the day Martin Luther King was shot. JFK and Bobby Kennedy were also killed in that era . . .

A: Not a good run!

Q: . . . so I wonder how that and growing up with Vietnam on TV affected your viewpoint.

A: It’s not just that. What informed a lot people’s political upbringing was also a sense of protest leading into Watergate. That’s a different cultural foundation than Reagan into George Bush senior.

It’s hard to point to moments and say those were the defining ones. I recall Martin Luther King being killed as one of my first memories, but I can’t say that memory necessarily skewed my view one way or the other. I may have been too young to digest it.

Everybody likes to wonder how things play out in different directions. How did September 11 affect us, etc. For the most part, I just think it’s a long road. There’s still shit in my parents’ divorce that I haven’t figured out, and I was 10 when that happened.

Q: We’ve talked about some serious stuff. What strikes you as flat-out funny?

A: I’m a big fan of people slipping on ice. A big fan of dignitaries coming out of planes and bumping their heads. Love that!

Jon Stewart plays the Orpheum Theatre, 1 Hamilton Place, next Saturday, December 14, at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at the box office or by calling (617) 931-2000.