For his latest trick, John Oliver has tackled how internet virality is killing journalism. He correctly indicts his own show as a cog in the machine that is dismantling local news, and now you’re reading about it on one of the million news sites to post the clip. It’s all very meta.
Around 6,000 federal prisoners were scheduled for release this month after a loosening of the harsh mandatory minimum sentences that came with three decades of successful and definitely not futile War on Drugs. It’s the largest single prison release in U.S. history. But, as John Oliver explained on his show Sunday night, they’re about to encounter the shitty, broken process of prison re-entry.
A few weeks ago on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver exposed televangelists—evangelical preachers whose sole purpose is to get on TV and ask for funds for their ministries—who prey on the sick, poor, and desperate in order to line their own pockets, funding lavish lifestyles that include mansions, airplanes, cars, vacations, and more.
John Oliver, HBO’s best critic of America’s broken-ass political and economic systems since The Wire, turned his attention this week to one of the brokenest-ass systems of all: the way we handle bail for people accused of crimes.
Earlier this week, Ed Snowden sat down with John Oliver in what turned out to be his first real, substantive interview since his stint in Russia began. Now, Last Week Tonight has released an extra clip in which Snowden offers us all a few, handy security tips. First and foremost: Your password probably sucks.
John Oliver took Last Week Tonight to Russia this week to sit down with the best person to explain the spate of confusing government surveillance programs and how they affect the dick pics we send: Edward Snowden himself.
On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver devoted his "How Is This Still a Thing?" segment to the timely topic of Daylight Saving Time, which is ruining your morning as we speak. At least it will help you later, right? Nope, not really! How is this still a thing?
State legislatures: their campaign ads may be completely ludicrous comedy goldmines, and even some of the incumbents are unhinged lunatics, but with Congress basically deadlocked, they're the only place shit gets done. John Oliver spent nearly 20 minutes mocking these buffoons last night, and explaining why you need to vote anyway.
On Last Week Tonight Sunday, John Oliver noted that Lowe's has introduced robot employees to help customers find whatever they're looking for—which is precisely not the point of home improvement store employees. They're there to keep your marriage from collapsing before your eyes in the bathroom fixtures section.
There are lots of scary things about Halloween: Ghosts (human), ghosts (animal), zombies (real), and throngs of college students (drunk). But, as John Oliver points out, perhaps the most terrifying is the $2 billion worth of candy (plus some Necco wafers) that Americans will consume in celebration of the holiday.
On this weekend's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver welcomed renowned chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall to his ongoing series, "Great Minds: People Who Think Good," where he drags famous scientists down to his level and tries to beat them with experience. Several willfully stupid questions later, they agreed on exactly one thing: Poothrow Hitler would be an amazing name for a chimp.
TV coverage of the Supreme Court is hampered by the longstanding ban on cameras inside the highest court in the land. News shows have been forced to make do with sometimes-shoddy artists' renderings of the Justices, and John Oliver's sick of it. So here's his alternative proposal: Let's just use this footage of dogs in robes instead.
Last Week Tonight was on a break Sunday, but John Oliver couldn't stay silent about the artificial flavor that saturates America every autumn. He threw this rant about pumpkin spice (disclaimer: contains no actual pumpkin) up on YouTube over the weekend.
In this segment from the most recent Last Week Tonight, John Oliver is pissed that the police have a legal mechanism by which they can seize your money for essentially no reason, and then use it for whatever they want, with virtually no limitations.
Do you understand how exactly the United States' drone program works? The genuine, terrifying answer is that barely anyone has a complete picture of not only who we are targeting, but also who we're killing. "Perhaps the most incredible thing about our drone program," Oliver says, "which again, a majority of us support, is not how little we know about who the government is killing, but how little they themselves seem to know."
