34 John Oliver - This World Will Be a Ball of Fire Before It Stops Being Funny

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2014

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In late April, former Daily Show correspondent John Oliver kicked off his HBO news-satire program, Last Week Tonight. Oliver, who spent nearly eight years at The Daily Show and has a solid background in political satire, is off to a good start. His weekly series—which offers biting commentary on the past week's biggest news stories, both national and international—is barely into its inaugural season, and it seems to be hitting the right notes. The premiere episode, for example, featured an exclusive televised interview with Gen. Keith Alexander (Ret.), his first since stepping down as director of the National Security Agency.In another recent episode, Oliver expressed his frustration with the so-called climate "debate" in America by staging a more representative debate between a few climate skeptics and nearly a hundred scientists. One of the guys on the correct side of the "debate" was Bill Nye, who was booked for the show basically at the last minute."We just wanted to really play with that idea that the very fact that the climate debate is framed as a debate at all is problematic," Oliver says. On Inquiring Minds this week, guest host Asawin Suebsaeng talked to John Oliver about Last Week Tonight, politics, climate change, and how he went about finding a, um, very specific kind of model for the show.This episode also features a discussion of surprising new scientific findings about why we don't remember much from our childhoods—because we were so busy growing new brain cells.iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943RSS: feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-mindsStitcher: stitcher.com/podcast/inquiring-mindsSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's Friday, May 16th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.
0:05.4	I'm Chris Mooney.
0:06.3	And I'm Indravis Gontas.
0:07.6	Each week we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.
0:13.4	We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.
0:17.7	You can find us on Twitter at Inquiring Show on Facebook at slash Inquiring Minds podcast,
0:24.3	and you can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, Swell, or any other podcasting app.
0:34.9	I also want to let you know that today's podcast is sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists,
0:39.7	who are authors of the new book, Fukushima, the story of a nuclear disaster.
0:44.2	And this book is written by two nuclear power experts as well as an award-winning journalist.
0:48.8	And it's a definitive scientific retelling of what happened at Fukushima,
0:53.3	and an urgent reminder that U.S. nuclear
0:55.7	power isn't as safe as it could and should be. So learn more about the book that the Los Angeles
1:01.3	Times is calling indispensable at the following URL, UCSUSA.org slash inquiring minds.
1:10.3	So this week we have a kind of special show. And to explain why, let me begin by saying that
1:15.8	perhaps one of the most important things that happened this week with respect to science and how
1:20.5	we think of it occurred on the new HBO show last week tonight with John Oliver. And this segment, it's actually on YouTube,
1:30.2	has been seen by two million people just there, as well as the large number of people who saw it on
1:34.6	HBO. And Indra, I know you've seen it, right? You've already... Yeah, it's like a nerdgasm.
1:40.0	Yes, exactly. That is exactly what it is. I mean, I feel like they said in four minutes, something I've been saying for 10 years with like tens or hundreds of thousands of words. And what they said was there's no debate over global warming. So to have these balanced one-on-one TV debates is just preposterous. And the way they did that was they actually had Bill Nye on.
2:04.6	It looked like he was about to debate a skeptic like he so often does.
2:06.6	But then something else happened.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Inquiring Minds, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Inquiring Minds and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.