“The Story of Late Night,” a new CNN Original Series on the history of the iconic genre, airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Listen to the companion podcast, “Behind the Desk: The Story of Late Night,” here.

For more than six decades, American late night talk show hosts have sat behind large wooden desks, with guests in cushioned chairs or couches to their right. Behind them, the wall may be painted to mimic an open vista; around them, a brightly lit studio set is made more inviting through warm wood tones, mugs on a desk or — in Johnny Carson’s case — a couple of well-placed house plants.

As much as the programs themselves are part of Americans’ nightly rituals, the late night talk show set has become an iconic — and predictable — fixture in television, today inhabited by comics including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, following in the lineage of Jay Leno and David Letterman, and further back, Carson, Steve Allen and Dick Cavett.