Shadowing Practice: Sometimes John Oliver Wants to ‘Burn Everything Down’ | The Interview - Learn English Speaking with Video
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so you don't have to wear headphones uh um personally i
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just don't like the nerdy big cans on my head podcast look so oh oh it's literally it's just that superficial
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it is just that superficial that is why we're not doing it i am vain
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hello it is a pleasure to have you it's a pleasure to be here Thank you for having me.
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You just walked through the halls of the New York Times.
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This is your first time here, right?
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It is my first time in this building.
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Yes, I saw the red staircase.
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And that really is the main thing, isn't it, that you think of when you walk through this.
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It's empty right now, though.
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We're here quite early.
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We are here quite early.
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So it's less bustling than you would want a cartoon newsroom to be.
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I will take that under advisement.
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It usually is busy.
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We are busy here normally.
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This is not an accusation of there's basically nothing happening here at the New York Times.
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So just as it happens, if you were looking for people throwing balled up pieces of paper at each other and yelling about deadlines, that was not my experience.
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Not your experience.
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Not yet.
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No. Not yet.
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We are in this very contentious political moment.
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And one of the things that I noticed was
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that you have said you've never wanted to cover a debate on your show.
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Yes.
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Is that still true? even though President Biden had this unbelievable debate in June that caused the race to upend itself.
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And the most recent debate with Kamala Harris and Trump, I mean, they've been pretty consequential.
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Yes, I guess the Biden -Trump debate was pretty consequential because Biden isn't the nominee anymore.
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So it'd be hard to push back on that.
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I guess it's very hard to say how consequential it is in real time, isn't it?
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That's the problem.
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It can feel very consequential, but you just don't know.
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And so I don't know what we could add to the commentary on those debates that isn't widely available everywhere else.
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It feels like to a certain extent, our show has moved into an area where we are very much slow cooking.
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And so there's not much there for us.
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Also, those debates tend to be pretty uninspiring to me.
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As a form of entertainment, yeah, you could definitely be entertained by what happened
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but you know what they actually mean i don't i don't know yet right
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and however much better it felt to watch it it is pretty depressing
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that it's this close that's i guess my aftertaste from it
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that it's still this close when everyone can see what you can see in
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that debate it's hard not to find that somewhere between depressing infuriating and outrageous
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last week tonight has been on the air for 10 years yeah and
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that maps pretty neatly onto the trump era you sounded like
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you're about to sigh then it's been on for 10 years
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no that's not what i was doing let me be clear um
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but when you look back what are the biggest ways
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that you think the show has changed so
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when we first began we were doing our main story in one week then it became clear
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that was a crazy thing to do it was a terrible way to set it up
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because we would come up with the idea for a story
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start writing three days later research would come in should wipe away everything
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that we just written so now you're trying to write the show in two days
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and that's not a good idea
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so now the answer to how our shows change is
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that we we write those main stories in six weeks
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so we're writing six stories at one time so
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that doesn't really relate to trump's role in the last 10 years
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but it's in terms of the development of our show
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that is the most critical part of it hmm you know
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it's funny going back to the first season as a viewer
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i found it to be remarkably similar no i mean yeah
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there's a consistency there i mean it as a compliment okay i was i was literally wincing both inside
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and outside you did this face like what is she gonna say i don't do many interviews about myself
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so i am i am kind of emotionally in a defensive position
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and unfortunately i think it's translating to my face
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because i i every time i say something just your face
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looks like you're absolutely you know having a very very difficult bowel movement
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and so i'm sorry wow let me start again all right um you know there is a consistency there
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and it does seem like you understood what you were up
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to quite early on i think we learned some big lessons early on
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because i guess one of them would be we did one story called prisons
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and it was about 16 minutes and
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that seemed like a long time at the time
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and i think what we gradually learned was it is crazy to try and talk about all
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the problems with prisons in 16 minutes, especially if two of those minutes are going to be a song with Sesame Street characters at the end.
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So since then, we've basically come back and redone that story in 20 different ways, because we've talked about prison labor,
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prison phone calls, prison recidivism, prison re -entry.
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There are so many different aspects to criminal justice that you can't just slap prisons on it and say, oh, we've done it now.
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In hindsight, I look back at that
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and do slightly wince thinking oh man we're moving really fast through some incredibly complicated aspects of this problem
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that deserve a lot more attention than we're giving it
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you know you obviously say you don't do journalism yeah i
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do see you as a sort of opinion columnist though i
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mean it does seem like an extended very pointed very deliberate crafting of an argument that you want people to understand.
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Does that resonate for you?
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Maybe.
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I mean, I think certainly by the end of the story, like the last few minutes of the story is opinion, right?
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That is so, right.
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Whenever we're saying, so what can we do?
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Everything after that probably is an opinion because people will feel differently about that.
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Everything up to that point is, it is what it is.
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Like we've so rigorously fact and legal checked everything up to that point.
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There's no real opinion or wiggle room in that.
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Well, I mean, opinion columnists also get fact -checked.
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I guess what I'm getting at, though, is not that facts are mutable, but you can choose the kinds of arguments that one puts forward, right?
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And so you're crafting a narrative about certain issues.
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I guess, right, centrally, we work really hard to make sure that we do incredibly rigorous fact -checking,
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both because we want it to be right, and
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if we're talking about companies, just basic self -preservation you don't want how big is your
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fact -checking team oh i mean we have six senior researchers six junior researchers
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and a whole bunch of lawyers so yeah a lot
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so yeah it's very very important i guess that's that's why i'm instinctively pushing back a little bit on this is
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i'm not saying you said it like this but this is uh this is just opinion that's of course you're right
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that how we feel about a story is probably present in terms of how we research it
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but i really can't stress enough how much work goes into making sure
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that we are totally right on the facts like
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if you're going to work this hard we're going to put our researchers through this.
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We're going to, for six weeks, looking at sometimes incredibly dour stories.
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If you're going to ask writers to write jokes with sometimes incredibly bleak material, you want to make sure that that stands up to scrutiny.
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That would be too depressing to make mistakes there.
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Talk to me about the process.
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Who comes up with the ideas?
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Well, everybody can pitch stories.
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Everyone on staff can pitch stories in our email channel, and then we'll give it to a researcher to say, is there something here?
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Like, has this story shifted in any way?
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Is now a good time to tell this story?
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They'll go away for two or three days, come back with a broad answer on that.
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If we feel like it's worth going forward, we'll add a footage producer to that story to check whether there's any footage to go with it, whether there's something that we can show to tell the story
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and then they will write packets over the next couple of
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weeks uh there'll be like a 400 page footage packet only
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100 page research packet the writers will have been following along
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with some of those meetings then they will take those packets
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away for a week write outlines jokeless outlines then we will
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combine those outlines then we will send them a way to
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write a draft that'll be another week then it'll be the production week
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and is it you that's deciding the topics myself
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and tim carvel we run the show together tim was at the daily show with me yeah
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and what are the ones that appeal to you the most that's a good question
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i guess what was there i'm blanking there was a story that we did recently that had tim and i
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bouncing in our chairs a little bit and walking away from it.
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Hospice care, Hawaii, RFK.
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Why are you going to hit me with hospice care?
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Hospice care was interesting, but I don't know that it was that.
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I don't know.
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I guess in general, it would be ones that feel really challenging,
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that it feels like we can bring something to with directing this machine that we built, directing them at a complicated,
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perhaps superficially unappealing story and getting something palatable and fun out of it.
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Either that, or I guess the really honest answer is something very, very dumb.
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So you have these heavy subjects and the two ways
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that I see in your show that you use comedy is either taking something
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that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand and just putting in something completely absurd to lighten it,
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to give it levity, to just have it be a kind of mood breaker
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or using things that are very much to do with the issue at hand, but are funny in and of themselves because people have said absurd things
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or they've you know they've done things that are just kind of crazy is
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that the kind of stuff that you're looking for the material
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that you're looking for after you've done the bones of you
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know this kind of big endeavor you mean once we've got the outlines of the story yes definitely that's
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that is the challenge for the writers and it's a really hard challenge
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but it's a really satisfying one as well and
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we try our best to put the writers in a position where they can succeed
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but I think we've got better at
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that over the years in the past we would sometimes be handing them stuff
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that is so dry and
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so bleak they justifiably would be sitting there going what do
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you what do you want me to do with this like
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this is a horrendous episode of like a comedic chopped i can't give you a cake out of these ingredients
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so now we try and like troubleshoot that on the way in
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so that they have stuff which is enough stuff which is light
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and funny enough that they can attack the material more directly
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so that you vary the jokes
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when it comes to pacing out the clips of the show
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that is something that we look at constantly but i guess
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that the first time that we really reckon with it is
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when we get the writers outlines and we combine them
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because then we're literally putting the story up on flashcards so
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that you can see it and this is going to sound ridiculous
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but we literally have like a blue star sticker that we stick on a clip that's really sad
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and red stars and ones that are very funny and
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so you want to make sure that you in terms of a blue star, really sad clip, you don't want many of those
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because those are really hard to write any joke off without it feeling incredibly glib.
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What you want is as many red star clips as you can.
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That's the challenge for the footage producers.
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So it's a hugely collaborative process.
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And at its best, it should be better than the sum of all of our parts.
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And how much does your view of the topic change over the course of the story?
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I mean, does the process confirm, strengthen, you know, your thinking or does it challenge it?
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Oh, it can definitely shift it.
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You can go, I mean, I guess one of the slightly dispiriting patterns you can find in researching these stories is some of the data
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that is most commonly passed around by activists can collapse there is some real as I'm sure, you know, garbage data passed around where it feels like,
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well, you've inflated this by 15 % and it really did not need to be.
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There's a perfectly usable stat that's slightly less than what you're saying, which you can actually stand on rather than this one, which is just nothing.
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That can be pretty annoying when foundational stats collapse under relatively minor scrutiny um
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but things are generally with some of these systemic problems worse than you thought
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when you start looking at them um it's relatively common
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that at some point in the story process
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that we've just talked about i'll walk into tim carvel's office
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and we'll look at each other after we've just learned a certain part of a story
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and say burn it down burn everything down to the ground you feel rage yeah
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because things are so much worse than you thought they were
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and you thought they were pretty bad then you have to work through
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that right because nihilism is completely useless that thick cowers way out so you work through that and
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i have found generally with these stories
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that the light at the end of the tunnel albeit
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that light might be smaller than you would like it to be ideally is
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that there are activists making small incremental progress on the ground, and that progress is really, really important.
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How do you not give into the nihilism?
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Because you delve into these very disturbing, bleak, some would say almost dystopian topics.
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Just classic comedy show fodder.
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Yeah.
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And I mean, you're still angry and going into, you know, your colleague's office and feeling furious.
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How would you not be, though?
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Unless you're a sociopath.
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Yeah, I don't know how you wouldn't be.
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I mean, the thing that's exciting about the show is that we have these resources,
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right, in a time when expertise has been absolutely put through a sausage grinder.
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We are very, very fortunate to have researchers who have access to great experts in a field, whatever that field may be,
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from criminal justice to deep sea mining.
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They will talk to us to make sure that we get something right
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and it is such a privilege to be able to find something interesting
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and then send a researcher away to talk to great experts
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in the field to get an answer it's it's having a machine for your own curiosity
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that is like the internet
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but it brings back reliable results do you know what else
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it's like what journalism well we let me let me say like with the journalism tag it's a little tricky right.
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I am not a journalist.
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I did not train as a journalist.
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We do have journalists working for our show.
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A lot of them.
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I'm glad someone's hiring journalists.
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Unfortunately, it might just be us.
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So yes, I am not a journalist, but they are for sure.
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But don't you think like saying that you're not a journalist
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or not acting as a journalist allows you to elide some of the accountability of journalism, right? Which is...
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Oh, that's interesting.
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I really hope that we don't elide that responsibility.
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I both don't think I'm a journalist because I really think I am not.
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I could send my researchers away for six weeks and I think they'll come back saying, yeah, you're not.
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But in terms of the responsibility of journalism,
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we do have intense fact -checking because we want it to be right.
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I mean, again, our stories are, those big stories are aggregations of incredible journalism.
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So it cannot function without journalism.
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Now we recheck it to make sure it's accurate or that it hasn't changed, but
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we're building this to make jokes it's just we want the foundations to be solid
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or those jokes fall apart those jokes have no structural integrity
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if the facts underneath them are bullshit so that's what's important
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because it's true sort of thing well it's only it's only funny
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if it's true right yeah and
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so it has to be true for it to be funny
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but i guess the why is are you trying to make
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the world a better place are you trying to no
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but i mean really what is the big what is the what is the big driving force here
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because some people would say i'm just want to make people laugh
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and entertain them uh some people would say yeah i want people to think about something
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and and and maybe um have a nice conversation over dinner with their husband
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you seem to have a much bigger aim here i will say the most important thing to me
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and and to lots of people at the show is to do this in service of writing really funny, weird jokes about interesting things.
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So that is our outcome.
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It's not necessarily to make the world a better place.
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I'm not sure that comedy can do that.
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To a certain extent, sometimes it's fiddling while Rome burns.
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But I think what we want is to get the best ingredients that we can to write comedy from.
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That's the really honest answer.
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It's the thing I love the most in the world.
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I love writing comedy so much.
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It's just, it feels like this is the best process through which we can write interesting, fun, surprising jokes.
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It seems to have made you uncomfortable that I've accused you of trying to make the world a better place.
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I guess the problem, I mean, this might be a hangup of being British.
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British people took a real stab at, if not making the world a better place, making it a more British place and it didn't go too well.
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So yeah, you don't want me involved in
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that um your segments now go on youtube after they air on sundays yes
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but this season for the first time hbo is delaying putting
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the episodes on youtube by four days yes i assume this is to encourage people to subscribe i assume
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that too yes to max the streaming service i take
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that that's frustrating to you yeah it's huge massively frustrating to
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me i was not happy with it at all i certainly can make the same assumption
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that you do which is
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that they want to make sure other people watch it i
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would prefer people watch the show in its entire form when it goes out
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this is a partly self -serving not just that i would like my employer to be happy but we do
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take a lot of effort to make sure
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that the show makes sense as a whole so that
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if we're doing a really bleak main story we like putting real dumb stuff around it
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but when we when we did death penalty drugs, the pentobarbital.
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Pretty bleak story.
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We made sure that we had a story after
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that about a stock photo model that we managed to fly in from Azerbaijan.
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i like the conflation of those two things so i would much rather people watched the show
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altogether because that's how we make it so i hope
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that they i hope it works because
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because i i i worry about it i i worry
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that i i i guess i i it remains to be proven to me that this was necessary
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are you worried about the method of distribution i mean we know
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that you know cable tv generally speaking is changing changing a lot a lot and definitely you know youtube is obviously
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exponentially growing and it's a place where a lot of different types of people come to get their content
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so you want everyone to see it in its full entirety
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but is it also that it reaches as just a different type of person?
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Yeah, I think that's what I was, what I love about having the show on YouTube at all, the A story, is that we can reach beyond HBO subscribers.
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I think that feels really important to me.
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I think it's a good advert for HBO.
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I think it reflected really well on them and still does, the fact that they released this main story.
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I really, really appreciate the fact that they do that.
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I would rather they did it straight after the show that we've always done it, but I'm very grateful that they are willing to still do it at all
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because I do think it's a good advert not just for our show
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but for the network because we are very lucky to have a big staff, right?
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That staff costs money
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and so we're lucky to have an employer that will pay the costs of our show which is small by their standards,
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by Dragon standards but, you know, not insignificant.
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I mean, do you see your show in the same format
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that it is? the same way
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that it is 10 years from now i mean i hope so if i'm still alive um you look healthy
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let me just say uh i'm gonna have to have
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that statement sent through this building's fact checkers
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and i don't think either of us gonna like the answer that comes back
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you look healthy you have to add some qualifying language to
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that for a 47 year old man with two children who's been through a pandemic recently
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and a stressful job albeit that stressful job isn't
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that stressful by general standards um uh yeah i i have no idea what the future is of uh television
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or of late night there will be a future um
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uh but i don't know what it's going to look like yet
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and i have an active interest for sure in knowing the answer to
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that last week tonight was renewed for another three seasons last
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year yes meaning it will be on the air till at
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least 2026 yes um what oh boy would make you feel
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oh boy i didn't like the way you said the word
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what there oh my god do you think you're doing what do you have planned over the next five years
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because i'd take any dream trips right now
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you should go you should go now i do not think you should go now
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but i am curious what would make you feel done with
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the show that's a good question i don't know i've seen
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i guess i worked with john stewart for a long time i saw him get exhausted
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so i know what that looks like um
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i saw him reckoning with the fact oh i don't know
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if i can do this in another i've done this in every possible way
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that i can do it uh and he was right about
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that but he can't really do it any better um i've not hit
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that point yet i still i still absolutely love making the
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show i i get excited like to your point of like bouncing up
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and down in the chairs when when we feel
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that we're onto something with a story
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or we've worked out something really dumb to do it's
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so fun maybe i've made this sound very academic the way
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that we make it the show but it's so fun i can't believe
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that we get to do it i can't believe
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that we get to ram stories down people's throats
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that they might not naturally want to hear and
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that they will watch it and i can't believe
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that we get to play with hbo's resources
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and do dumb things on fiscally irresponsible scales i love it
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so much so i guess my answer is
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that point might come i don't feel like i'm there yet
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because this is i still can't believe
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that we get to do this why haven't you ever had a fill -in host
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huh you mean like kimmel or like or like let him roll that way well like i mean it's a
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I hadn't considered that.
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I think it's a little tricky, not because I'm indispensable, because I don't think that's true.
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I think it's more that because of the way that we make the show, I don't think that would make any sense because there are these six -week cycles.
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So you would need someone, if I'm talking myself out of a job here, but you'd need someone to come in for one of those cycles, and that's a lot to ask of them.
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Honestly, we have a stand -in who does like a technical rehearsal that we've used from the start.
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He's pretty good.
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And we call him Hot John because he's pretty good looking as well.
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And sometimes you watch him do the rehearsal and think, oh, shit, that's pretty good.
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You have a stand -in called Hot John.
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That's not his name, but it's what the staff call him.
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And I think I've, really thinking about it now, I think I've participated in that joke without fully realizing that I'm the butt of it.
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John Oliver, thank you so much.
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You're welcome.
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Thank you.
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We'll talk again.
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Yes.
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After the break, I call John Oliver back and ask him about why he can't help but laugh at the hard stuff.
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Hey, Lulu.
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Hey, how are you?
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Good, thanks.
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Good.
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Buenos dias.
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Where are you?
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I'm in our office.
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So it should be quiet.
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It's before the dogs get here.
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Okay, I want to ask you something about our last conversation where you couldn't remember
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which episode it was that got you bouncing in your chair.
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Do you remember now?
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Oh, yes.
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Before then, I would say the thing
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that has been most rattling around my head since we talked is
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that I know that we spent a long time talking about the label of journalism.
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And I didn't want you to feel like I was dodging it there.
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I guess just to be completely clear, we really don't elide the responsibility of that term.
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The accuracy of our show is so, so important to us.
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We go to lengths that I think many would find absurd from the outside in terms of accuracy.
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We recheck reporting to check that it is still valid.
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When we show people in clips, we try and contact as many of them as we can to check
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that they felt their story was told accurately
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and whether there's any other context that we should know we do
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so much and the responsibility of that label is really important it just doesn't apply to me
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and i guess the thing that i wanted to get to the bottom of
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because it seemed interesting to me was because this comes up quite a lot
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and this felt like it would be this kind of conversation
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feels like it might be a good time to get to
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the bottom of it is i was wondering why it's
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so interesting to you or why getting to a fuller answer is it
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that you feel like i've dodged in in the past
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and how would you feel if i said yes to that
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that i am a journalist
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because my sense is you'd feel no you're not rightly um
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i think the reason it comes up a lot is because there is a sense that you are a news source,
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but you don't have the constraints that journalists have, right?
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You can, for example,
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take a topic that is very complicated and difficult and put in a lot of jokes to make it arch or funny,
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to sort of move the audience in a particular direction and
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so i think there is this sort of dissonance that happens
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when journalists like myself are engaging with this we're curious about
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how you view yourself i mean i don't think it's like
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a it's not a knock it's more just trying to understand how you view yourself
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and your show and where it sits in the ecosystem right that's it yeah yeah
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and i guess that is where much of the show would be, I guess, to that first comparison you made would be more editorial, right?
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It's just that, I guess, what I, I guess when I recoiled at being described as an op -ed was,
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was not wanting the worst version of that to be applied to this show, not just someone deciding I'm going to say my opinion, because it is not just that.
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To get back to a point that I wanted to make, because I think this is useful to the discussion that we've been having is, do you remember which episode it was that got you bouncing in your chair?
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I do.
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And it was an episode recently because I remember the literal bounce and it was, we were working on an episode about the West Bank.
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And I think what I was so excited about was the challenges
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that were ahead of us and the material that we were gathering and the opportunity that we had.
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And it really felt to me in working on that story, it felt like, oh, this is the point of having a show where you can talk about whatever you want to talk about.
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This is kind of using that incredible opportunity. to do something hard.
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I found this episode fascinating.
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I was in Jerusalem as a reporter for many, many years.
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This stuff is really hard.
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Yeah.
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That episode talks about the Israeli settlements.
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And you really tried to parse what is very complicated and very nuanced, and you packed a lot in.
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So what was the reception after it went out?
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I'm sure some people liked it, some people loved it, and some people hated it do you pay attention to
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that um i like paying a little bit of attention in
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the wake of our stories especially regarding how experts respond to it in stories in general i know
427
that people aren't always going to agree with the conclusions
428
that we land on um but i do want experts to think that the information that we presented is accurate.
429
It raises this question for me about something you said when we first talked.
430
Basically, that you ultimately see the show and the stories you focus on as a vehicle to write jokes.
431
Yeah.
432
And I can see that logic when you're doing a piece about corn or UFOs, for example.
433
Both very funny.
434
And you don't see the logic applying to something that's more complicated.
435
You don't do a half an hour about one of the most contentious issues in the world because it's comedy gold.
436
Do you? oh i mean that's that's an interesting perspective i
437
guess comedy is the the way i handle the world
438
so it's the darkest moments of my life i still find myself compelled to try
439
and make jokes either to take the weight off some of what's happening
440
or to sometimes to feel what's happening a bit more i
441
find people employing comedy at moments of tragedy incredibly meaningful i know some might find it glib
442
or offensive to me it is the absolute opposite of that when done well i still think one of the
443
one of the best moments in late night comedy over the last decade
444
was uh jimmy kimmel talking about his son billy's heart surgery it was incredibly generous
445
to be so emotionally honest and raw uh it was incredibly brave to be
446
that honest knowing
447
that people were gonna ask him how his son was every day for the rest of his life after
448
that and and this is the most important thing to me it was really funny
449
and the fact that he was telling jokes
450
while choking through tears was the thing
451
that really really meant something to me it was more sincere
452
because he was communicating through jokes explain that to me it was more sincere
453
because he was communicating through because it's how because it's like i i love comedy so much it It is, like I say, it has been,
454
it's my favorite thing just in general in the world.
455
So I do not see a distinction between how could you joke about this?
456
For me, it's more like how could you not?
457
How could you not tell jokes about a situation that is absolutely absurd?
458
Darkly absurd, but absurd. Does that make sense?
459
And that would apply to the West Bank, too.
460
Do you think it also gives, I'm thinking of Jimmy Kimmel in particular, do you think it also gives people access to very uncomfortable emotions?
461
Probably.
462
And for me, look, I'm British, right?
463
So my ability to deal with my emotions is, and has been, limited at best.
464
The very fact that I'm telling you, yeah, I find it better to laugh at things rather than
465
you know feel them sincerely as a human being says something what i found
466
so meaningful about jimmy's thing was i had had um
467
of our first child's pregnancy was really difficult
468
and i just couldn't i couldn't talk about it in general
469
i certainly could not do anything as generous as deciding to talk about it publicly
470
so that the people who would also experience situations like
471
that could feel
472
that their experiences were being reflected back at them i i didn't have the emotional ability
473
or even the comedic abilities to do that so that's why i was
474
so in awe of what he was doing in the crucible of
475
that pain it was just this absolutely incredible as a
476
as a comedian what he managed to do
477
and yet for me the fact i was laughing along with
478
a lump in my throat made it way more impactful for me has being a parent exacerbated
479
that burn it down feeling that you mentioned about some of the ways the world is messed up or the opposite
480
i do remember after the brexit boat happened looking at my baby son and thinking
481
oh this is sad your horizons have slightly contracted
482
because you know he would have been able to have a british passport
483
which would have been an eu passport meaning that he could live
484
or work anywhere in the eu which for young people in britain was a massively
485
consequential thing to have access to my little sister left college
486
went straight to france started washing dishes in a bakery ended
487
up learning to bake now she's a pastry chef like
488
that the ability to move having those borders opened massively consequential and
489
so i i will say there was a selfish side of
490
me watching about looking down at me thinking oh your world got smaller that's very sad
491
but no in general my my feeling of let's burn it down
492
when we're at a point of researching a story where things seem utterly hopeless
493
and the history that we have of working through that despair partly by seeing the incremental changes that are possible
494
um that's probably pretty consistent i don't think they've really changed
495
changed my disgust with the political process
496
and my hope for better are you going to talk about
497
that with your kids at the dinner table are you going to be
498
that dad oh god i mean it's a really fair use of
499
that dad there i mean that actually in the best possible way
500
uh how do you mean am i gonna say to them things are unfair just like sit
501
and talk about the state of the world
502
and have them be engaged in it and yeah i'm probably gonna be
503
that dad i mean my husband's like that with our daughter
504
and she loves it some days and hates it others yeah of course i think
505
that feels like an utterly human response to that
506
but there's a time and a place for this dad can we can we please talk about something else now
507
john oliver this has been an absolute pleasure thanks lulu i appreciate it
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 507 sentences and 6273 words to shadow. The speech runs for 37:23. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| journalist noun | /ˈd͡ʒɝnəlɪst/ | The keeper of a personal journal, who writes in it regularly. |
| incredibly adverb | /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/ | In an incredible manner; not to be believed. |
| journalism noun | /ˈd͡ʒɝnl̩ˌɪzəm/ | The aggregating, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles for widespread distribution, typically in electronic publications, broadcast news… |
| researcher noun | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | One who researches. |
| absurd adjective | /əbˈsɜːd/ | Contrary to reason or propriety; obviously and flatly opposed to manifest truth; inconsistent with the plain dictates of common sense; logically contradictory… |
| complicated adjective | /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ | Difficult or convoluted. |
| clip noun | /klɪp/ | Something which clips or grasps; a device for attaching one object to another. |
| bounce verb | /baʊns/ | To change the direction of motion after hitting an obstacle. |
| outline noun | /ˈaʊtlaɪn/ | A line marking the boundary of an object figure. |
| topic noun | /ˈtɑpɪk/ | A subject; a theme; a category or general area of interest. |
| footage noun | /ˈfʊtɪd͡ʒ/ | An amount of film or tape that has been used to record something, or the content of the recording. |
| packet noun | /ˈpæk.ɪt/ | A small pack or package; a little bundle or parcel |
| stressful adjective | /ˈstɹɛsfəl/ | Irritating; causing stress. |
| depressing adjective | /dɪˈpɹɛsɪŋ/ | Causing depression or sadness. |
| massively adverb | /ˈmæs.ɪv.li/ | In a massive manner, in a way that appears large, heavy or imposing. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come back verb | To return to a place. | |
| work through verb | To get past a difficult or stressful situation by thinking or talking about it. | |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| pass around verb | To distribute something through a group by giving several items to one or more people to then give to others in a row, line or circle; to spread something to… | |
| walk through verb | To explain (something) to (someone), step by step. | |
| bring back verb | /ˈbɹɪŋ bæk/ | To fetch something. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 163 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thick /θɪk/, throat /ˈθɹoʊt/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, altogether /ɔl.tuˈɡɛð.ɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, superficial /ˌsupɚˈfɪʃəl/, wash /wɑʃ/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/
- Long words — get the stress right: incredibly /ɪŋˈkɹɛdɪbli/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, accuracy /ˈæk.jɚ.ə.si/, communicate /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪt/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like journalist, incredibly, journalism.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | have been following · we've been having |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have said · they've been · has moved |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be entertained · be proven · was renewed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | stuff which is · one, which is · show which is |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.