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.
Last week, Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel known as “Putin’s dragon,” lost his cat. “We have begun to seriously worry,” he wrote on Instagram, asking for his country’s help.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton, appeared on yesterday’s edition of Last Week Tonight to address Puerto Rico’s crippling debt crisis. Following host John Oliver’s lengthy introduction about the situation’s manifold origins, Miranda, who was born to Puerto Rican…
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…
As every website has been attempting to inform you since 2012, copy-pasting several paragraphs of dense legal voodoo onto your Facebook wall does not somehow exempt you from the terms of service that bind all Facebook users. If Facebook decides it wants to start using your content in some way you don’t like, your…
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,…
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.
After Bud Light canned its ill-conceived new ad campaign glorifying sexual assault, all that was left for Last Week Tonight to do was to join the pile-on of burns on the disgusting beer’s foul taste, with John Oliver sneaking in a Floyd Mayweather own.
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?
Last Week Tonight won't officially return until Feb. 8, but John Oliver keeps popping up to make delightful videos about how dumb and terrible the holidays are. On the chopping block this week: New Year's Eve, a.k.a The Worst.
John Oliver just popped in from his winter Last Week Tonight hiatus to take a strong stance against an egregious overuse of presidential power that's been going on too long in this country: The annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon.
Jon Stewart's Rosewater, the directorial debut that took him away from The Daily Show this summer and set the stage for the ascension of John Oliver, is finally out. And, because Stewart wanted to talk about his movie on the show, he recused himself as host and summoned Oliver back to the non-premium cable desk.
A "salmon cannon" has been deployed in Washington state to launch fish safely over a hydroelectric dam, and it's giving John Oliver hope for the future. If we can use the cannon to fix the salmon-spawning process (that we broke in the first place, but whatever), who knows what else we can achieve with this wondrous…
You don't need John Oliver to tell you that state lotteries—or, as your mom calls them, "the stupidity tax"—are a bad deal, but you may not have realized the extent to which they suck.
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…
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.
A few Last Week Tonights (Last Weeks Tonight?) ago, John Oliver got around the Supreme Court's ban on cameras by casting dogs as the justices and releasing the footage for anyone to use. And someone did use it, but not to recap a SCOTUS argument.
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.
