"John Oliver"

Sean, I know that you like telling your sort of your bad jokes, I don't use the term dad joke. Why don't you go ahead and write one yourself right now, let's hear.

Just off the top of my head? Yeah.

Yeah. It's a joke off the top of your head.

Okay. Uh-huh.

Not reading. Put the fucking book down.

Okay.

No.

Oh, good. So now it's down. Now he's just closing his eyes and he's thinking.

Now he's just memorizing.

Uh, can February March? No, but April, May.

Oh, God. And you just came up with that. I just came up with that.

Unbelievable.

I just came up with that. All right, welcome to Smart List.

Smart.

List.

Smart. List.

List.

I'm often down here.

In your whisper booth.

In my whisper booth listening to music. When I get down here a few minutes early and I'll listen to music, as I'm kind of setting up.

Sitting sideways in your chair today. You know why? Looking all sexy. Oh, because your leg still hurts?

It still hurts?

Yeah, man.

It's a real. Sean, don't you have from your list of 25 doctors you see on a regular basis.

I went to Sean. I'm seeing Sean's guy.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, Jason, do you. How did Maple's basketball game go?

She has found a real stride. She had a tough first game and then the second game she hit the kids version of fuck it and just started taking what was hers and driving the lane and raining threes.

Raining down threes. I was going to say, was she raining threes?

She was. And all the. She had a fantastic game. She's got all this confidence and then went out. the next game, did it again.

She's a superstar.

Did you make it in time yesterday? Because I know that we were on a call. Were you a little bit late?

No, no. I was. I was fine. And, and, and, and, and listener, if you haven't heard or been bored by it yet, uh, she is, uh, she plays on the boys team and she's the first girl in the history of the school. That's 30 years to ever play on a boys basketball team.

That's awesome.

It's really cool.

Is there, is there a girls basketball team or no? There is.

Yeah.

Wow.

Um, she's a, uh, she's a pretty remarkable kid that made love. And yeah, she really is. And she's got an old soul.

Yeah. She's super smart.

She's super funny. Yeah. I mean, she's hit me with a more mature than Sean.

Yeah.

I will say, by the way, also, I want to say, Jay, I know you an apology. Cause. I said at the end of our call, right when we got off, I said, I said, Hey, I like you in the crew, but I prefer you in a V neck. And that's not true. I, like, you, look great in a crew neck.

I, literally, when I was putting on this crew neck this morning, I, literally, when I was, I was looking through my sweaters and I swear to God on my kid's life, I was looking at the V necks because I remember knowing it was a joke, but I was like, yeah, but you know what? He might be right.

I can't wear, I can't wear V neck only because, since I was a kid, my brother used to call me ET, cause my neck is so thin and long.

He's an asshole.

And so I always wear crew neck.

You know what? I can't wear, I can't wear turtlenecks, cause of my, cause, of my fat chin, you know, the. I can't wear a turtleneck and I will cascade my neck skin over the top of it.

I can't pull off a turtleneck either. What about a mock? Could you ever get, find yourself in a mock? Richard Ehrlich.

Let me tell you something. Richard Ehrlich can wear a turtleneck.

Dick Ehrlich can get himself into it.

Old, tricky dick. He's just unfair for other men.

Uh, what, but I did, I don't want to gloss over the mock turtleneck made popular by goaltenders in the NHL in the eighties. Do you, would you ever find yourself, Sean, I bet you were a mock turtleneck.

All the time. No. I used to work at limited for men, limited express for men, and I'm colorblind. So women would come in and say, could you put an outfit together for my husband? I'm like, sure.

I mean, I feel like I've heard this about you before, that you're colorblind, but I've forgotten it. But now that I'm reminded, it does explain a great deal.

Really bad.

Think about it. Just on its, just on the surface. It's not a viable thing. It's a mock. It's mocking the turtleneck.

It's a half. It's a half a turn. But now in hockey, speaking of hockey, with the new neck guard there to prevent cuts, um, that it does look like the, the mock is back.

Yeah, it does. And I, I, by the way, I'm not opposed to those, those, uh, neck things, but yeah, they should.

do them.

I think if you look at the numbers of actual people, get cut, I don't have the numbers in front of me.

It's rare, but it's, it's worth the, it's worth the fix. Somebody, wake up the guest, cause we're coming to, here. we go, guys. Today's going to be a tough for you, because our guest this morning is a truth teller. I know it's difficult for you to, to deal with the truth, given that you both act for a living and show business.

Wait a second.

Wait a second.

Wait a second. That's the reveal. I've moved my paper over the camera. Like as someone jumping out of a birthday cake.

Very good.

Here's the crazy part. You said he's from Birmingham, which is maybe potentially true. I don't know if that's true.

It is.

It is true.

Well, I immediately was going to say, Oh, he's a fucking, no, he's a fucking, we got a Villa fan on our hands. And I never would have guessed it, because I know that you're Liverpool fan, because you did, you did start to spew out the starting 11 of Liverpool as, and you know that I'm a fellow massive Liverpool supporter. And it was the best speech of all the speeches. Cause he's like big verge, fucking Trent Alexander Arnold. Uh, I forget who else you, how far did you get?

Let's hold on to our listeners just for a few more minutes before we lose them to a soccer talk.

Okay.

Okay. Or football.

Football. Soccer is an English term, by the way. I don't want to get into the, uh, the origin of the word. Yeah. Originally it's in English.

John Oliver.

What a pleasure to be here. What a lot of turtleneck talk. I had to endure that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's our, it's our Regis and Kathie Lee morning powder, you know, John, why don't you have, why don't you have a podcast yet? I mean, you know, you got, you got, you got time.

I think it's enough. I think a TV show is enough for me and definitely for everybody else. I'm primarily thinking of other people.

Speaking of congrats on the Emmy. You just won the Emmy and well deserved.

Thanks very much.

Again. Really cool. Again.

I love, I love the, uh, the base in your voice there again.

No, again. I mean, but I'm saying, but it is, it is an incredible accomplishment and you know what? I mean, it is all writing, right? I mean, you don't stop talking for 30 minutes. It's insane and incredible.

No one can do it faster. That's the promise. I will speed read a prompter. All right.

Now, where do we, where do we find you today, John? Where's home?

I'm in home. is the office today. So I'm in the office.

That's New York or Los Angeles, New York, New York.

Um, John, you know, uh, I, I watched your show all the time last week tonight and I'm a big fan. And when you first came, when I first heard of you and the show, I was like, who, like, I, hopefully you don't take offense to this, but I was like, wait, who is this guy? And the second you started talking? and the show, I was like, Oh, my God, I'm in, I love him. And it's funny and it's clever.

Ricky Gervais. Does Ricky Gervais deserve the, the, uh, the, the, the, did he not, uh, recommend you to John Stewart?

Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. The Daily Show was looking for a new correspondent. I didn't, I didn't know Ricky. I'd never met him.

And that helped a lot.

I didn't know that. That's cool.

I did not know that at all.

And, um, and, and you still love doing standup. Yes.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I love it. It's the only way to relax.

Really? It's relaxing.

I know, I know that sounds insane. That sounds like a medical problem, but the only, yeah, the only way I can truly calm down is doing standup.

I mean, that says so much about your confidence and your, your self image and God, I want some of that. So you're totally comfortable getting up in front of a bunch. Now you're not, you've got stuff that's worked out or, or do you kind of like to kind of riff it a bit when you're up?

No. I mean, I'd like, I'd like to, I like to have stuff that's very worked out and then I like to be distracted.

So, right now, how do you decide which, which part of it you will dedicate to a standup and which part you will put on your show? How do you, sometimes you're like, Oh, they're so different.

This show is so narrow in terms of the stories that were attacking the way we're doing it. There, there isn't a way really for one to cross over into the other. So it's much easier to keep the two apart.

Right? So the standup is more sort of stuff in life, in any area, your family life, yada, yada.

And then the show stays much, much looser than, like you say, taking a deep breath and then exhaling after 30 minutes.

So how did, so? how did, uh, how did a young, a young man from Birmingham, uh, all of a sudden find himself a standup comic? What was that? I mean, walk us through that a little bit.

Well, I went to university and started writing comedy there and then started writing. my, uh, started writing shows with, uh, another guy there. We, we really loved doing that.

You didn't happen to go to Cambridge, did you?

I did. Yes, I did. I wrote with a guy called Richard Ayoade there. And so we, we were in a, uh, a sketch group and then we did shows, uh, two man shows together. Really loved it.

I thought you were going to say you started as a compare. I like when people talk about starting as a compare, but anyway...

I didn't start as a compare. No, but you're right. It would have been a better story. I started as a compare, just welcoming people to the evening. What's a compare?

Like a, like an emcee sort of.

Like an emcee. Just a very fancy way to say emcee.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Who will be your compare tonight?

I, I got it, got it.

So you started writing with him.

Yeah. Then left, left, uh, university and tried standup and really loved it.

So that first experience was successful. Yeah.

First experience was successful. That's often the case. It seems that many people have a similar story. They have to do a first gig. It goes well.

Yeah.

Normally the second gig is terrible. It definitely wasn't my case.

I've heard other people say that. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's the same thing. You get too confident. You think, I can do this. People like it when I do this.

Now, if somebody gets, if somebody gets lippy in the audience, is that something that throws you off, or do you kind of lean into that?

I love it.

You do love it. Of course you love it.

You're smart. You're a masochist.

What's the worst one? What's the worst one?

No, because if you're smart, then you can fucking cry. Yeah, go ahead.

They're all good. The thing is, like, once you do enough, it hurts. at first, I will say. Yeah. Once you've, once it's, once you've bombed a hundred times, no audience retains the capacity to harm you anymore.

Right.

Dignity has been removed surgically by a hundred failures and you're left thinking, I'm, I'm. now, I can do anything.

Was your stand-up always politically focused or no?

No. I think for a couple of years, it was just basically trying to make people laugh and not to leave the stage to the sound of your own footsteps. That was basically it. So it's just an exercise in survival. Then, once I kind of learned the fundamental tools of how to do stand-up, then I wanted to talk about the things that I cared about, which were kind of political issues.

But it's hard figuring, I mean, that process of going through this, finding the stuff that works, I mean, that's an arduous process because obviously there's a lot of stuff that, you might write. a joke. You might go like, hey, a lot of people say ballet is hard and I say, just don't do it.

Oh, Jesus.

Like somebody might write a joke like that. That doesn't sound like a joke, I know.

That, John, that was one of my first jokes I ever wrote, when I was like 23 years old.

It always, it always works.

Did you do that on stage?

Or does this mirror work?

I know, I really said that.

Did you go in front of people expecting entertainment, possibly promised entertainment?

Here's another one.

Have you been in with that?

Oh, here's another one. We haven't even heard the first one.

There's not even a first joke.

What about another one?

Oh, that was your opening joke? I will say, I've come 180 degrees around to loving the fact that you went on and brought up ballet to get an audience on site.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Now, I like that a lot. Yeah, for sure.

And another bad one, and this is going to be real cringey. This is going to make you come out of your skin because there's no joke here. And that's how bad I was. I didn't know you actually had to write a joke. And so I would say, you know what's really weird?

Oh, boy, great opener. You ever wonder why? Let's have it.

You know, what's really weird is when you're at a dog park and you hear people call the name of their dog for the first time out loud. So you'll just be there and someone will go, mustard, come here, mustard. That was the joke. I said there's no joke. Oh, boy.

The beauty there is. you've identified something that I really think isn't weird.

Should have been prepped for that one, Sean.

I told you it was cringey. There's no joke.

This sounds like an absolute banger of a stand-up set.

Yeah, thank God we found podcasting.

You know what people say about ballet?

You're kind of like the Seinfeld of observational comedy, but the things you observe are totally normal, expected things and they're not unusual. You ever notice when people turn the corner, when they're in their car, they turn the wheel of the steering wheel?

The direction they want to go.

I know, it's pretty bad.

All right, so you're doing stand-up in England and you're having a good time and you're finding some success. and then Ricky Gervais either hears about you, sees you, mentions you to John. John says, come on out, and within a day or two you're on television. Have I overly truncated the first half of your life?

Within a single day. I flew to New York and then they put, I think, looking back, it was a standard tactic that they would get you on TV straight away. so you didn't overthink it too much. But I was jet-lagged. So I had just landed the previous night, then I'm on television and then the crazy thing was in the audience.

How bizarre. Wow. Now, were you comfortable in front of the camera? Was that the first time you were in front of the camera?

I think I was so tired, I was actually fine.

Wow.

And we will be right back.

Nancy's love story could have been ripped right out of the pages of one of her own novels. She was a romance mystery writer who happens to be married to a chef. But this story didn't end with a happily ever after.

When I stepped into the kitchen, I could see that Chef Brophy was on the ground.

and I heard somebody say, call 911.. As writers, we'd written our share of murder mysteries. So when suspicion turned to Dan's wife, Nancy, we weren't that surprised. The first person they look at would be the spouse.

We understand. that's usually the way they do it.

But we began to wonder, had Nancy gotten so wrapped up in her own novels?

There are murders in all of the books.

that she was playing them out in real life? Follow Happily, Never After Dan and Nancy, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Happily, Never After Dan and Nancy early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Hey, it's Guy Raz here, the host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the biggest products were built and the innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists behind them. Every week, I speak to someone new.

And now back to the show.

So then the appearance on The Daily Show goes well enough to have another one and another one, and even eventually hosting while John was directing his movie, and you did that for eight weeks. It went so well. They said, this guy deserves his own show. perhaps. You start talking to them, but then HBO comes around the back door and says, how about with us?

I love that you've been able to put his whole answer and explanation into a question, so he can just agree with a yes or a no.

I'm trying to brag about my ability to do research on my guest.

This was great, guys.

Yes, that is correct.

Do I have that right?

Yeah, Comedy Central were very much not offering my own show at the end of that. Yeah, what John and I wanted them to do was let me have the summer so that he could leave each summer. Right. But they were not keen on that idea and my contract was up at the end of that year. so then HBO said, would you like to do a show on Sunday nights?

Yeah, you're so good. Really? Yeah. Now, are you one of those people that do you seek out other comedies or stand-ups or do you go to live shows? Are you like, you know what?

It used to be my favorite place to be. I've got kids now. So my wife, understandably, it got to the point of having a conversation. Do you need to go and do this, or is this something that you want to do?

But I mean, do you seek it? Like, do you watch comedy specials? Are you a comedy?

Okay, got it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I love it. It's one of my favorite things to watch and to do. Do you have a fave?

Do you have a fave? that's out there now?

I just saw Jacqueline Novak's Get On Your Knees. That was fantastic. The new Netflix special. Maria Bamford, is probably my favorite stand-up. God, she's great.

Yeah, she's really funny.

She is so brilliant. If I could only watch one more stand-up in my life, I think it would probably be her.

Oh, wow. That's so cool.

Yeah, she's so unique. Have you ever seen the show that Mitch Hurwitz wrote for? Really good.

No.

Yeah, really, really good. What's it called? Jay, do you remember that, when he wrote that show for Maria?

I don't.

Really good.

It wasn't called. It's Maria. Is it? Like, something like that?

No. No, no, no.

All right, now, before you got to do the HBO show,

Lady Dynamite.

That's right, Lady Dynamite.

Lady Dynamite. Very good.

Oh, you have a Wi-Fi connection. Good for you.

Oh, sorry. I should have mentioned, I gave Sean, for Christmas, I gave him Google. Oh. For Christmas, yeah.

And, by the way, I haven't said thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, of course, dude. Now, were you out like a roving reporter for the daily show? Yeah. Did it ever get contentious? Were you brave with them?

It was constantly tense.

Constantly. Ever get punched in the face? Shoved around? Insulted?

I don't think I ever got physically attacked. We definitely got threatened a bunch, but it never actually came to physical violence. And the problem is, the tension generally showed that things were going well. Right. So I would luxuriate in that tension.

Right. That meant that you were successful at what your objective was.

Yes, exactly. Rob Riggle was a correspondent when I was there.

Well, Rob can handle himself.

Yeah, which the crazy thing is. he couldn't stand those silences. So he can physically handle himself, and he couldn't bring himself to inject that kind of tension. I can't physically handle myself, and I loved it.

Yeah.

But that's also because you had a six-foot microphone and a long lens on the camera, right? You were standing very far away from your subject.

Not always. Sometimes it's just the length of an arm. If I've got a microphone at the end of my arm and they've got a fist at the end of theirs, there's definitely room to connect.

Right.

But what you were doing and what they do on The Daily Show and what you've continued on your show is this great blend between satire, but also very important political issues that you bring to the public's attention. Is that something that was always... Well, I guess you said when you were doing your stand-up in England, it was part of what you wanted to start to infuse into your comedy, yeah? Yeah.

The thing with those interviews, though, is they're always tense for The Daily Show because you always want to embody the counter-argument. So you are going to be really rough with the people that you agree with, and you are going to pacify and encourage the argument that you don't.

Yeah. Whoever's saying the dumb stuff, keep them going.

Exactly. Then you just say, please, tell me more. Say more about that.

Yeah, of course. How did you...

I don't have that skill, newsflash. How did you hone that? Is that something that developed in college or after college, or was there a person that influenced you? It was like, I want to be more like that, because I like how they approach this thing.

For those interviews, you could only hone that by watching the edit, going through the edit, watching your own failures. That was the way to sharpen that particular tool, that you would watch yourself on screen, and think it would have been really helpful if I'd said something at this point that was funny. I literally had an editor turn around to me at one point and say, hey, Pawson said, it would have been great. just any kind of funny remark from you at this point. Yeah, you're right.

Really?

I'll try to remember that.

But that ability to be uncomfortable in those moments and ask uncomfortable things and obviously being provocative, right? You're provoking people to try to get to elicit... Definitely. ...a response. that's going to be hilarious because it's so misplaced.

You definitely get better at it. What's his answer? Does he disassociate as well? Because my head is always half in the edit. I'm barely there.

While you're present, while you're doing it, you mean?

Yeah, I'm just in the edit nonstop. So it means that I'm not really emotionally engaging with what's happening in front of me.

Well, he's just... Right, and he's got his... I guess it was a version of that, which is he's got his eye on the prize and he just wants to get the thing that he wants to get. He wants to get them to that point. And so everything else is kind of noise until you get them to reveal themselves, right?

I felt that. Yeah, I felt that way about this. The craziest example of that was. I felt that way with the Dalai Lama. I flew to India to interview him and I was starting to feel tense, right, because you're driving up a mountain, there's monks there, and I've taken two flights to fuck with this guy.

Oh, boy. Oh, my God.

Oh, boy, I think I'm on a slightly different page than everyone else on this mountain. And he talks for, like, ten minutes at the start, and I am literally, it's kind of nothing. I'm not listening to any of this. I can't do anything with this. It's only when I start kind of needling him that he opens up and you think, okay, now we're doing it.

Wow, wow.

Right, because you're just trying to get that thing.

Yeah, I'm not sure that fit. I'm not sure he as an individual has ever been listened to less than I listened to him in the first ten minutes of that.

No, but...

But through those efforts, and then, and also on your show, you're exposing and enlightening people to certain issues, but even all the way up to and including affecting legislation, yes? I mean, there are... Well, but you'll be very humble about this, but please don't. And tell us what... Tell us something that you might be really proud of, that you got done through very clever satire and basically making the medicine go down easy.

Well, I don't know about... Yeah, I don't know about the legislation. Making the medicine go down easy, that is something that we can do, right? So, even in that Alarmer interview, what I wanted to do was get him off balance so that we could communicate what was actually going on with him and with the succession problem that he and Tibetan Buddhism has. The same was true when I went to talk to Edward Snowden.

Right.

Were you ever worried that, like, interviewing Eric Snowden, that you're subjecting yourself to potential hacking and destruction of your life?

Oh, yeah. It was terrifying. That was legitimately terrifying. We were being followed the entire time by the Russian Secret Service. They were angry that we were there.

Yeah, giggling until...

Everyone is the Russian government, the U.S. government, and my employer.

But, by the way, like, it's all fun and games, and you're just getting a good bit and a good comedy bit until you're in fucking Moscow and you get a case of window cancer. You know what I mean?

I will say, it's funny you say that, because it's a completely false sense of security that you get there thinking, oh, we're doing bits, it's fine. No one minds the jester. And they're following us the whole time. There's a guy drilling in my room, the ceiling, 2 a.m. Yeah, I'd hear this, like, zzz, zzz, 2 in the morning.

Your wife, I'm sure, can provide some security for you and some proper guidance. She's a war veteran, yes? Yes, she is, yeah. That's a pretty interesting combination there.

Yeah, she can provide perspective. That's not what it was. A hard perspective. Oh, it was so dangerous over there. Was it?

When you say she's a war veteran, what did you mean?

She was a combat medic in Iraq.

She was?

Right? Yeah.

Fucking awesome.

I'd love to hear those stories. She nearby?

In the U.S. Army?

Yeah.

In the U.S. Army, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So at any point, was she like, hey, dummy, let's just do your little stand-up sets down at the comedy cellar, whatever it's called, and stop messing around. Leave that stuff to the adults like me.

Yeah, I think a little bit. I think she sees a different side of me come out because I'm probably a natural coward, and then I'll become utterly fearless whenever it's inside a comedy bit.

Because you know you've got the U.S. Army behind you if things get hot.

Yeah. Right? Exactly.

It's kind of like in hockey, like a skills guy who feels tough because he's got an enforcer on his line.

Right.

You know what I mean?

That's exactly it. Talk a big game, but that's only because Vladimir behind me is going to take over as soon as your gloves come off. Yeah.

But is there like a thirst? There's obviously a thirst for this dangerous side of the correspondence, and not just Russia or the Dalai Lama or whatever. Where does that come from? Where does the, you know what, I like to live just on the edge. I want to almost get in trouble, but I get out of it.

I don't know. I live an unexamined life, Sean. I don't know where that comes from. I'm sure. I've never looked inward.

That's the most honest thing anybody's ever said on this show, by the way.

Unexamined life.

Can. I guess you're a smart person that is able to see all the inequities and injustices around the world, and you have a platform and you are able to say something about it, but you can skin it in a way that is also kind of entertaining.

Or you saw that we're idiots and you want to come get some of that sweet American cash. It's got to be one of the two.

Yeah, exactly.

Two things can be true at the same time. Right. A little column A, a little column B.

A couple of my, two of my favorite battles that my Wikipedia page told me about that you've had, will you explain to the audience, let's start with the Russell Crowe, back and forth. How did that, what is that, how did it come about, and how did it end?

So what, that was just a stupid bit that we were doing. The true joy is where bits get out of hand and they get added to once they've left our building. So, with that example, he was staging a divorce auction. So he was selling. A divorce auction.

Yeah, he was selling off all the memorabilia and stuff.

Exactly. Wait, wait,

he was divorcing somebody and selling all of her stuff?

No, that would be less charming. He was selling lots of his memorabilia.

He was selling T-shirts from like.

Like the gladiator boots.

30-yard foot of concert T-shirts and stuff.

Got it.

Yes, exactly. And so we bought his jockstrap from the movie Cinderella Man. Sure. And we sent it to the last remaining blockbuster in Alaska as a kind of way to try and keep it open. He found out about it, and I wasn't sure, it didn't feel to me at the time that Russell Crowe was well known for his enjoyment in Bon Ami.

Why?

I can't tell you how much joy that put in my soul.

Of course.

It's such a good joke.

Is chlamydia a thing with koala bears?

Huge. It's a huge thing. But truly. It's a massive, yes, it is a massive problem.

Come on.

Did you not know that?

It's the perfect joke. No.

They all have chlamydia. I did not know.

I didn't know that either.

How?

What are you talking about?

Do you really not know that?

Because they're fucking each other nonstop.

They do?

Yeah.

They're like bunnies?

They're diseased tiny bears.

So then the bears have this STD.

Yes. Yeah.

And Russell Crowe sets up a specific ward at the animal hospital and puts your name on it.

Yes. God bless.

It's a perfect joke.

I've got all the time in the world for shit like that, for him doing that.

Yes. It's a perfect, perfect. He elevated our joke. He handled it perfectly. He also managed to highlight a very real, albeit very funny, issue among the koala community.

And was that the end of it? Or did you go down there?

No. The beauty was. This is how good it was.

Go host a benefit. That's the only way.

We shut down the show the next week. This show's finished. Nothing better than this can ever happen. Wow. Then we were going to start the next show with a bit that he'd done.

Huh? Russell Crowe, the comedy doctor.

You're right. Fuck, you're right. Eventually, at the end of the year, he came back and he did something for us, like the big movie parody. And we returned it to him. But at that moment, it was a really solid comedic note from Russell Crowe.

God bless him, man. That's fucking funny. What a funny dude.

All right, now. take us to the Connecticut sewer plant.

Again, another perfect example, right? We're trying to do a story about, I think it was, jury selection. Yes. And very dry, very dry story. And so one of our writers, Owen, wrote a drive-by joke just shitting on Danbury, Connecticut.

Because they were tilting the jury selection away from perhaps a diverse community.

they weren't paying attention to. Yeah, that was the large story. Just a sideways joke, throwing an elbow on Danbury. They didn't deserve it. The town of Danbury does not respond to this well at all.

But by the way, they didn't do it on purpose. That's the worst part. They don't understand. I don't think they get the memorial part. I don't.

I really don't. I really don't.

I think that they didn't get it until after. and you go, what a brilliant joke. And they go, yeah, thanks, yeah.

We'll be right back.

And back to the show.

Okay, so you start of your own church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.

Yeah, is this true?

That's true. So that was in our first season.

That's genius.

We were doing something about televangelists and we got one televangelist on it. So we were writing back and forth to him for seven months. I think, kind of sending him money. He would send us more things back saying, please put your hand on this piece of paper and pray and send me another $3.. Okay, $3, what are you going to send us now?

And keep going, so what happened?

Well, they sent tens of thousands of dollars. Tens of thousands, yeah. And then various offerings and, we're pretty sure, two cups of semen. And that's when we shut the church down. It's the second cup of semen.

But that's amazing to me that you can just do that and it be legit.

By the way, I knew, I could see Sean's face and I could see the fucking wheels turning in there. I saw both hamsters get on the wheel. And he was like, wait, if I do it, can I be tax exempt and then I can buy my own plane and I can buy a mansion. Did you not a little bit?

No, no, the reason, because I'm fascinated by religion. And I'm fascinated by...

And you hate money?

No, I am. And just like, without naming other religions, I mean, there's thousands of religions in the world. Every single thing in the world is invented, right? Even religion is invented. How dare you?

How dare you?

And even you, just, so, with that little stunt or whatever, it's just proved that you can, and just that's fascinating to me that you did that and it worked.

Yeah, with some stories, it feels like it helps sometimes to show, if a problem is, that there is a very low bar of entry for something, sometimes it feels the best way to prove that is to clear that bar. So that's why we have sometimes done things in practice as well as telling people what's possible in theory.

Right, right, right.

And that's where things can get a little legally dicey and very, very fun.

Yeah, yeah. I love it. You will oftentimes cover multiple issues in the 30 minutes and sometimes you will dedicate the whole 30 minutes to one. How do you, well, first of all, how did you come up, what was the genesis of the format for the show?

That changed a lot actually, because we didn't have an idea of what really we were going to do, other than there were a couple of stories that we'd done, that some of the jobs away that it felt like the Daily Show wouldn't normally have done. One was about aluminum pricing and one was about the city of Detroit, I think. And it felt like, oh, we could do more things like that. So we did two test shows, but we had a guest area built in because I thought that you just had to have guests on late night shows. So one note that HBO had for us was you don't need to have guests.

Yeah, but I mean, a huge credit to you and your staff. You don't need anything else other than the results of your research, the shaping of that opinion, and your delivery of it.

It feels like it's better to live or die that way. And I think we're very, very lucky because we don't have to take ad breaks. And I do think what we need is a trapped audience because it's not like you can hold people's attention, say, okay, we're going to let Twix tell you how delicious it is for three and a half minutes. Then you need to remember we're coming back into this story about facial recognition technology exactly where we left off.

Also, the fact that there is no ad support on HBO, you don't need to worry about offending any brands. That's a huge deal.

That's a massive, massive deal.

You get to build your own momentum. One of the things I like, when you get on a subject, you get to drive the momentum and you don't have to take those breaks like, as you said, where you lose it. You can keep doubling down and compounding the energy and the focus, and as you get sharper and sharper by the end of the thing, and you actually get more animated and more into it. And that's part of the allure of what you're doing is making that point of shedding all the shit and getting to it. If you were to have ad breaks, it would take away that energy.

Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons I talk so fast. It isn't just that we're racing the clock. Sometimes it is that energy of, don't leave, don't leave, don't leave. I know this sounds bad. We're talking about the lethal injections, but please don't leave.

Because you'll time your monologue, right?

Yes, all year, down to the second. Got it.

Yeah, well, I remember they did the same thing. Sometimes in Entourage, they hadn't finished telling the story that they needed to tell, and they would go over. They'd have something really important. They were going to go for lunch in Fairfax, and they didn't have time to get to that.

I'm so glad you brought that up. We are standing on the shoulders of Dark Ellen and Entourage. We couldn't have done what we've done unless they put you. Thank you for giving the comment.

We're all standing on those shoulders, believe me.

Now, what is your process of finding these stories? Does it take many shapes and sizes, as little as you just finding something interesting in a magazine? Sometimes. All the way up to including what?

And not just me. It's just the whole staff can pitch stories, and then if something is interesting, we'll give it to a researcher. They'll take it away for a week to work out if the story stands up, if it's been reported accurately, if things are changing, that might mean that now is not the right time to talk about it. If it gets through that first stress test, we'll give it to a footage producer as well to see if there's any footage through which we can tell the story. Only at that point would we have writers to have them just write an outline of a story without any jokes.

Oh, that's amazing. And then it's always susceptible to total derailment based on the topical stories of the day.

Yeah, we try to contain that at the top of the show most of the time. It rarely will be that actually we have to hit pause on everything and just crash a show in a week. That does happen, but we try not to have that happen.

Because you are live, yes?

No.

Or a tape delay. You're on the same day.

Yeah, tape delay.

So, when you're working on six stories, six weeks in advance, so is it like Monday, we're working on the thing, or is it all kind of combined? It is. So. Monday is that thing, then Tuesday is that, and it's all color-coded days?

Yes, exactly. It's a complex web of things that we need to do, to the point that, just after we've taped the show, literally just after, we come back over the road from the studio and read the drafts that have just been logged for the next week's show. And then the first day back, we'll be going through the outlines that have come in. So we'll only then revisit the show that we're doing next week three days later. So it's a lot of plates to keep spinning, but it's the only way that we can do it.

Now, in your hobnobbing around the political elite, as I'm sure you have an opportunity to at times, have you gotten your pocket stuffed with a bunch of cards and numbers for deep sourcing if you need it? It's a serious question.

I know, I just like your phrasing.

Do you have some deep throats out there that are really highly connected that can give you say, hey, listen, this is a real big issue and we love the way you make a mess and go down easy. You might want to talk about this and I'll give you some choice.

No, I'm not a hobnobber, especially in the circles you're referring to there. So I don't have any. I think we've annoyed enough people that we're generally not welcome for some reason everywhere. Oh, God.

If I worked for the government, you'd have my number. You don't think your knob is welcomed by some deep throats?

There's a clip.

I'm trying to figure out.

The excitement in the pause. Hold on. Oh, I've got all the pieces for this sentence.

Everybody be quiet.

Yeah, I know. I know, I know.

I love it, I love it.

And by the way, it was messy. at best. It was just, it was an opportunity. I took the shot.

You tee it up, he'll hit it.

Yeah.

I didn't have a great, I didn't have a great look at the net, but I had enough that I thought that fuck, I might, it might go in.

I'm turning around before it even hits the net.

John, I know you've done a lot of acting too in your life. Do you miss that? Do you want to do more of that? Or you're like, no, I'm good.

Sean has a script.

Not really. I haven't done a lot of acting. And I think when I have done it, I'm not sure I would call it acting.

Yeah.

I remember I did these NBC sitcom community. I remember what Jonathan Banks, legitimate actor, he came up to me before a scene and said, I just wanted to talk about what I can do in all this. And I had to say, oh, Jonathan, I'm just going to say these words in the funniest possible way.

These words here, with the yellow marker over the top of them?

It really was. You know, when actors act opposite a tennis ball, I will be that ball for you.

I've never, yeah, that's funny. In scripts, I've never highlighted lines because I just figured when it says my character and there's a line under it, that's when I talk. Right. Like. I don't need to highlight when I talk.

They do it for you. Yeah. There's no reason to be confused as to what lines are yours. Right.

Yeah. And you don't need to make a big deal. I mean, I used to do, I've done thousands of scenes with Jason. And at a certain point, they were like, do you want Jason? And I'd go, no, just tape his head shot to a C-stand.

A lot of early days for me.

We did this one piece with Warren G. Harding's wax statues. And we got Laura Linney to act opposite that Warren G. Harding. And no offense, watching those takes, you realize, oh, she's been carrying actors for her entire career.

She needs nothing. Yeah.

She doesn't need anything. Literally a wax statue wobbling in front of her. And she's in tears. You're a one-man band.

She is incredible. You are absolutely right. Now, how are you shutting off from all of your hard, hard work and intelligence? Do you do anything stupid, John?

Not really. No. I've got kids. So I guess everything that kids do is fundamentally stupid. So I'm stepping to their level right now.

Right. You're getting on your knees and making funny faces and making dumb noises.

That's right. I'm pretending that I understand the rules of Pokemon, and I'm also pretending that they understand them. Wait.

How old are they, John?

Eight and five.

Wait. Three and five, did you say?

Eight and five.

Eight and five. So you're out of PAW Patrol. Yes.

I'm out. I'm out of PAW Patrol.

Now, is a lot of your day spent, especially these days, wondering who's going to come back first, Tiago or Samikis? I mean, where are we at with that?

Here we go.

We're back on Liverpool.

It feels like the guy is an absolute Rolls Royce of a footballer, but I'm just not sure his body can stand up to the Premier League.

Rolls Royce of a footballer. He really is. I love it. Now, where did soccer come from? Is that true?

Yes. Sorry. Go ahead. You can explain it, John. You know it, right?

Go for it. Go for it.

So, like, in the way that, like, a lot of people, call rugby rugger, right?

It was called rugby football, I think. Rugby football. Yeah.

And the same thing, right? Soccer came from the association football.

The association football. Yeah.

What we know as soccer was called association football to distinguish it from rugby. And so, instead, they shortened the association to soccer and they called it soccer. The English football. Oh.

That would be genuinely how I would react, is watching Liverpool.

Yeah.

How are they doing this year?

They're doing really well.

They're doing well. I mean, this is going to be a little delayed, but they had a nice draw yesterday. They put them in the final of the Caribou Cup against Chelsea, who are – who fuck knows how they got there. But they're doing great, aren't they?

Yeah, they're very good.

Are you all sports, John? Or are you, like, just soccer?

I like all sports.

John, we're going to go together. We're going to go over there together and we're going to go – look at this. I showed the guys. The guys know this.

Oh, yeah.

That's me and Jurgen.

Oh, yeah. Jurgen, I get it.

That's pretty good, dude.

You're going to get it.

I've got to be honest. Thanks. That's pretty good.

It's high level.

Yeah. I may make a donation to the Chlamydia Foundation, and now in your name for that joke.

Mr. Oliver, this has been fantastic. Yes. I mean –.

Such a pleasure.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

You're very, very nice to do this with us. I know you're busy. And you're much smarter than us. And you dumbed it down for us, and we appreciate that. Thank you.

We love it. We love you, dude. Keep doing what you do. Honestly, it's funny and it's fun and it's important.

I love it. Watch it all the time.