John Oliver: Why Everything is a Scam: FIFA, Mergers, & Information Literacy

Summary

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What Now? with Trevor Noah

Episode: John Oliver: The Daily Show, "Ignition" CPR, and Corporate Shit-Stirring

Release Date: January 15, 2026
Host: Trevor Noah
Guests: John Oliver, Eugene

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Overview

In this laugh-filled, candid episode, Trevor Noah sits down with John Oliver—comedian, political satirist, and host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight—joined by their friend Eugene. The trio dives into everything from their personal Daily Show origin stories and adjusting to American comedy, to expert-level football/life metaphors, the weirdness of fame, and the art (and ethics) of stirring shit, especially when it comes to large corporations. The conversation is equal parts hilarious, revealing, and profound, offering an insider look at two masters of political comedy reflecting on their journeys, philosophies, and the state of our information-saturated world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. John Oliver and Trevor Noah’s Daily Show Journey

Timestamp: 04:12–17:32

• John's Arrival in New York:
  • Moved for The Daily Show in 2006; first day in NYC was his audition ([04:12]).
  • Was unfamiliar with NYC but saw The Daily Show as the "gold standard".
  • Shared quintessential "immigrant in America" stories (Applebee’s, staying in midtown).
• How Trevor Was Recruited:
  • Recounts surreal initial call with Jon Stewart while in Harrods, UK ([07:48]).
  • Trevor didn’t know who Jon Stewart was; suspected scam:

    “I come from South Africa. I’m like, there’s a 50% chance this is a scam.” ([13:12], Trevor Noah)

  • Initially turned down the job due to his small comedy tour; similarities with John’s story.
• First Days and Being Thrown Into the Deep End:
  • John appreciated the tactic of immediately being assigned a show appearance, preventing overthinking and self-doubt ([16:55], [17:32]).

2. Cultural Adjustment and Comic Identity

Timestamp: 20:06–23:00

• The struggle to acclimate to American political references (e.g., “John Boehner,” “gerrymandering”).
• John's advice: comedy writers’ meetings feel humorless because they’re focused on “building the foundation for jokes that will come later.”

  “You build that joke on sand, the joke you loved collapses…” ([23:01], John Oliver)

3. Comedy as Survival and Family Heritage

Timestamp: 45:07–47:29

• John roots his comedic instinct in his Liverpool upbringing:

  “That's a city that's been through some shit. And its main processing technique was often comedy.” ([45:16], John Oliver)

• Shares touching story about his mischievous grandfather and being called “an idiot” as the final words from him ([47:28]).

4. Accents, Identity, and Fitting In

Timestamp: 21:08–22:00; 71:08–73:11; 88:38–91:11

• The comedy and confusion of immigrant accents in America.
• John’s kids speak with American accents; Britishness becomes something they mimic:

  “It is odd, the first time it hits your ear…you go, oh, oh, yeah, of course.” ([89:23], John Oliver)

• Explaining fame to children, and the weirdness when your job makes little sense to them.

5. The Stand-up/Showbiz Grind and Preferences

Timestamp: 58:59–65:36

• Stand-up as a meditative exercise for John:

  “I love it so much. It calms me down like nothing else.” ([61:13], John Oliver)

• Differences between collaborative TV work and the selfish, solitary stand-up process.
• John’s collaboration and friendship with Daniel Kitson—parallels drawn to Trevor’s relationship with Eugene.

6. The Fascination with "Shit-Stirring" and Corporate Critique

Timestamp: 40:06–42:24

• John discusses his particular love for exposing corporate wrongdoing over political:

  “When you get into like corporate—yeah. You listen. I love it so much.” ([40:46], Oliver)

• Not interested in corporate work, English major led John to comedy.

7. The Mechanics and Transformation of Political Satire

Timestamp: 28:25, 51:02–54:24

• The difference between The Daily Show’s reactive structure and Last Week Tonight’s longform, researched (6-week process) pieces.
  • Last Week Tonight aims to “show people something they hadn’t seen before.”
• More robust research and fact-checking:

  “Now, we have a much bigger… department… so that they can spend weeks before the writers get anywhere near a story.” ([39:13], John Oliver)

8. Handling Lawsuits, Network Mergers, and Creative Freedom

Timestamp: 54:24–58:29

• John boasts undefeated lawsuit record; describes adversarial but vital relationship with lawyers:

  “What they think their job is is to stop us getting sued… their job is to make sure when we get sued, we win.” ([55:13], Oliver)

• Talks about surviving three corporate mergers at HBO:

  “You want to be that village … so unreasonable that gigantic corporate armies just go, just leave them alone.” ([57:36], Oliver)

9. The Bias and Weirdness of Fame

Timestamp: 70:09–73:11

• John relishes the utility of fame (protecting creative freedom) but has “no connection to it at all” otherwise.
• Dissects the “comic’s curse”—wanting admiration but only on their own terms.

10. The Existential Crisis of Information & Media Literacy

Timestamp: 78:08–86:05

• John flags information silos and misinformation as a primary existential global threat:

  “Now [people] can be confidently wrong about something, which I actually think is more dangerous.” ([83:23], John Oliver)

• Calls for a societal premium on accurate, expert-sourced information.
• Considers the impact of AI and online platforms, citing “unearned confidence” of AI boosters.

11. Football (Soccer), Stand-Up, and the Art of Endings

Timestamp: 92:20–104:10

• Football fandom as an immigrant’s lifelong thread; Liverpool allegiance is non-negotiable for John and his kids.
• Philosophizes on the fleeting nature of football careers and the quest for a “good ending”—for Mo Salah at Liverpool and himself in comedy.
• Trevor: “I always felt the Daily Show was Jon Stewart’s show; I just know how to drive the car.”

12. Reflections on The Pandemic Era in Comedy

Timestamp: 110:26–113:35

• Struggles of remote production—losing sense of audience feedback, experimenting with new formats.
• John: “I found it very hard to know what kind of jokes are going to feel remotely appropriate… there’s nothing to cue you.”

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Memorable Quotes

• Trevor Noah (13:12):
  "I come from South Africa. I’m like, there’s a 50% chance this is a scam."
• John Oliver (23:01):
  "You build that joke on sand, the joke you loved collapses, or you’re gonna do some very dicey work trying to reinforce a joke that you should not be standing up."
• Trevor Noah (50:36):
  "It was the first time I saw an American lens on the world—not from an American, but including America. I was like, 'That’s a possibility.'"
• John Oliver (83:23):
  "Now [people] can be confidently wrong about something, which I actually think is more dangerous."
• John Oliver (55:13):
  "What they think their job is is to stop us getting sued... [our lawyers'] job is to make sure that when we get sued, we win."
• Trevor Noah (105:18):
  "I just know how to drive the car."
• John Oliver (57:36):
  "You want to be that village... so unreasonable that gigantic corporate armies just go, just leave them alone."
• John Oliver (41:24):
  "That’s what three years of higher education will give you. I didn’t come in talking like this. I left that way."
• Eugene (83:11):
  "So basically...your worldview changes with what you choose to obsess about!"
• John Oliver (101:06):
  (On ending of football careers) "All you want is the best possible ending for the thing that’s meant so much to you..."
• John Oliver (110:26):
  "There’s so few people in the world, I think, who can say I’m doing the thing that is my favorite thing to do."

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Notable Highlights and Humorous Moments

• Opening Bit About John Wick:
  John and Trevor riff on the idea that the real appeal of John Wick is the hotel’s impeccable service (“For me, it’s a hotel movie with some fighting.” [00:27], John Oliver).
• The Underwater Scooter in Harrods:
  Trevor can’t forget being drawn to a totally impractical underwater scooter while receiving Jon Stewart’s call for The Daily Show ([07:48–13:13]).
• Role of Fact-Checking and Legal Review:
  John relishes the robust, sometimes adversarial process:

  “Our lawyers think their job is to stop us being sued. Our job is to win when we are.” ([55:02])

• The 'Ignition' CPR Joke:
  Trevor recalls one of his favorite John Oliver bits, about the brain’s odd power to remember R. Kelly’s “Ignition” more than crucial CPR steps ([59:04–60:26]).
• On Mergers:
  John compares his team to “that village... so unreasonable that gigantic corporate armies just go, just leave them alone.” ([57:33–57:36])
• Football as Therapy and Life Metaphor:
  Lamenting the ephemerality of joy in football and analogizing it to careers, legacy, and endings ([96:59–101:08]).
• Mo Salah’s Impact:
  John (and Eugene) humorously debate whether his biggest legacy is changing football… or his haircut ([98:13–98:59]).
• Explaining Stand-Up to Kids:
  Figuring out the least confusing way for kids to understand “just talking in front of people” as a job.
• Liverpool Allegiance:
  Non-negotiable in the Oliver home:

  “They absolutely support Liverpool. That is one thing that is non-negotiable.” ([92:27], John Oliver)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• John & Trevor’s Daily Show origin stories: 04:12–17:32
• Meeting Jon Stewart, Harrods scooter story: 07:48–14:54
• Transition from UK/ZA comedy to US political satire: 20:06–23:00
• Information crisis and AI: 78:08–86:05
• On lawsuits and corporate pushback: 54:24–58:29
• Stand-up, creativity, and friendship with Daniel Kitson: 58:59–68:41
• Philosophy of “shit-stirring” and corporate lampooning: 40:06–42:24
• Pandemic era comedy struggles: 110:26–113:35
• Football, Liverpool, Mo Salah’s ending: 92:20–104:10
• Reflections on succession, legacy, and endings: 104:21–110:26

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Takeaways

• The path to groundbreaking comedy is non-linear and often rooted in personal displacement and inquisitive, stubborn personalities.
• Both Trevor and John reflect on their careers as both highly improbable and deeply influenced by immigrant perspectives and comic subcultures.
• The modern information ecosystem’s toxicity and AI’s questionable optimism are John’s top existential concerns.
• The challenge of lasting creative freedom is as much about surviving corporate changes and legal wrangling as it is about making good jokes.
• Fulfillment lies in finding the “right kind of trouble” and building enough autonomy and community to withstand institutional pressure—a lesson for both comedy and life.

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A must-listen for fans of sharp, empathetic comedy, media critique, and post-Jon Stewart late-night history.

Transcript

[John Oliver]

Foreign. Wick was the hotel.

[Eugene]

Yeah, that was pretty badass.

[John Oliver]

The hotel was such a great concert. The martial arts is great. I think part of that is people's just longing for a hotel that. Well run. It's so. I like the fighting, but I love the service.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Oliver]

You can turn up nearly dead, sir. We'll take care of a dog. For me, it's a hotel movie with some fighting.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, didn't they say they don't take. Wasn't there something they don't do that they did for him?

[Eugene]

Maybe the dog?

[Trevor Noah]

I feel like there was something that they don't.

[John Oliver]

It is. No, it's a no pets building. No, no, no. But they did it for him.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. But I swear they don't accept pets.

[John Oliver]

But it was a no pets enterprise.

[Trevor Noah]

I, I hope I'm not wrong about this.

[John Oliver]

International assassins.

[Trevor Noah]

I swear there was something.

[John Oliver]

Don't try and bring a pet in here.

[Trevor Noah]

They said, Mr. Wick, we don't allow. Da, da, da. And then they, then they like made an exception for him.

[Eugene]

No, that was.

[John Oliver]

He wanted to kill somebody on premises.

[Trevor Noah]

Maybe it's that. That's more likely than pets.

[John Oliver]

That's more likely than pets.

[Trevor Noah]

It's more likely you're not allowed to kill him.

[Eugene]

Coming with his dog. And they were like, they greeted the dog as if it was a customer.

[Trevor Noah]

Ah, because it is.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

They're like, oh, John and Fluffy.

[John Oliver]

Fluffy.

[Trevor Noah]

I love, I love the fact that you watched John Wick and your biggest takeaway was, what a hotel.

[John Oliver]

I, I love the fact that you thought it was plausible they didn't take pets. So that, that was the lie.

[Trevor Noah]

I do think it might be that.

[John Oliver]

Come in with a blood dripping samurai sword and a dog cage and they're like, put the cage down. I'll give you a towel for the sword. I, I, I see you've had your shots. But as he. No, it's just some, some of the other assassins, they go, it's the hair of the dog.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they're allergic to dog. I don't know, man. I feel like there was something. You should check it. I think there was something about, about no pets. There was like a, there was just like a vibe.

[John Oliver]

But, you know, it's a great hotel.

[Eugene]

The yolk is an entire pet friendly zone.

[Trevor Noah]

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[John Oliver]

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[Trevor Noah]

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[John Oliver]

You don't have your wallet.

[Trevor Noah]

Dun, dun, dun. You could drive all the way back home and you could get it. But you remember that you have your Apple card on your iPhone so you can tap to pay with Apple Pay. Imagine that. No need to carry a wallet. But you know, one of the things I do like about having my card on my phone is we live in a world where you lose your card and then you don't know where it is. And then you're like, what do I do? Well, if your phone is connected to your card and your card is connected to your phone, you know what's going on. The best thing about having an Apple card connected to your phone is you know what every transaction is. You, you know, like sometimes you're like, what did I spend this month? The Apple card will show you one month. I had spent an obscene amount of money ordering videos online.

[Eugene]

Just videos?

[Trevor Noah]

They were just videos.

[Eugene]

What kind of videos?

[Trevor Noah]

That's not the point. The point is I knew that I didn't want to order those videos anymore. Cause I'd spent too much money on was videos on how to not spend money online.

[John Oliver]

I felt like I'd been duped.

[Trevor Noah]

Point is, Apple showed me what I was spending my money on and I was able to change my spending habits. And you can do it too. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase with my Apple card. That's unlimited daily cash back no matter where I shop. Apply for Apple card in the wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com. How long have you lived in New York now?

[John Oliver]

I've been here since 2006 or nearly 20 years.

[Trevor Noah]

What, what, what first brought you to New York?

[John Oliver]

Daily Show. I got offered the job. That was my first. My first day in New York was the Daily Show.

[Trevor Noah]

Are you serious?

[John Oliver]

Yep. Yep.

[Trevor Noah]

No, wait. Tell me your Daily show origin story.

[John Oliver]

So I was. They were looking for a new correspondent. Okay, I'm in London, right. Having, you know, doing the Edinburgh Festival every year.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[John Oliver]

So they say, put yourself on tape. You saw who said this to you? They were. They were looking for a correspondent from the world, right. For the first time. Not from America, from outside of the borders of this land. And so there were a bunch of people in London. As a British person, I'd love to criticize, but, you know, game. Recognized game, You know, India, you know.

[Trevor Noah]

What about.

[John Oliver]

What about if we call it something different?

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

So a bunch. I think a bunch of English comedians have been asked, like, to put themselves on tape. Then, like, they. So I think I'm never going to hear from them again. Then they say, oh, they want to. They want to meet you. So you can. So I think, fine. I've never been to New York before. This will be my free trip to New York for 36 hours. So I flew over here, stayed in midtown, went to the. Went to Applebee's for a meal. Thought, thought this must be like a quintessential American diner. Applebee's.

[Trevor Noah]

I love how you're ticking all the boxes of every immigrant who comes here.

[John Oliver]

That's right.

[Trevor Noah]

It's midtown. You think, best location. You can't get better than this. Hell's Kitchen. What a great name.

[John Oliver]

It's true.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean? Probably ironically named. Yes.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. This must be where everything is.

[Trevor Noah]

And then Applebee's, Midtown. Yeah. And then you go to Applebee's, or one of you, like, wow, this seems like fine dining.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, you're just ticking all the boxes.

[Trevor Noah]

And then.

[John Oliver]

So then, yeah, I. Then I went to the building, like, auditioned for John.

[Trevor Noah]

Did you know who Jon Stewart was?

[John Oliver]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[John Oliver]

Because it wasn't on in England, but I knew of it. It was very much the gold standard for me of what. What political comedy in the world could be. It was even. Even back then, in 2006, it was. It. Despite not being on TV in England, it's presence and influence was still felt.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, all right, got it. Got it.

[John Oliver]

So I was thrilled just to see it. So then I read a chat.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, exactly.

[John Oliver]

And they said, when could you start? I live in England, so I don't have anything here. And I was supposed to be doing the Edinburgh Festival that summer. So I went back to England, picked up two bags full of stuff, and then came back here in July of 2006. And I've barely been back since.

[Trevor Noah]

It's so crazy how similar the stories are. It's almost like they have, like, a specific. Because. Because, yeah, because mine. Because mine was, like, similar. It really feels like that. It really feels like. Because mine was, like, similar, but. But slightly different. Mine was. I got a call from John, right. I was in London. I just started, like, one of my first tours ever. I was, but it was like a tiny tour, but I was doing all the small cities, you know, from London, Bright Newcastle, you name. Everywhere. Big ones, small ones everywhere.

[Eugene]

That's very tiny.

[Trevor Noah]

And. No, but I'm saying, like, whole entire.

[John Oliver]

What I.

[Trevor Noah]

Listen. Listen to what I mean by tiny. It was like 200 seaters. 150 seaters. Does make sense.

[John Oliver]

He's not talking about the population size.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you for clarifying. Thank you for clarifying.

[John Oliver]

You're not saying Chipping Norton, a Village.

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[John Oliver]

120 people, but an amphitheater. Weirdly so.

[Trevor Noah]

My tour was tiny is what I'm saying. So I get a call, don't know the number. I'm standing in Harrods. That's why I'll never forget this call.

[John Oliver]

Standing in Harrods. So I'd heard about Harrods again, Quintessential immigrant. I've literally never been in Harrods in my whole life.

[Trevor Noah]

Ah, this man. Everyone told me, you got to go to Harrods. Everyone was like, you have. Because they're like, it's the store. And remember, this is before Amazon Mall. Yeah, but this is before things like that existed in that way.

[Eugene]

You could find anything there.

[Trevor Noah]

They said, you go to Harrods and you can find anything. And I was like, what does that mean? They said, just go. Just go to Harrods. Very nicely done. So I go to Harrods.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. You find anything?

[Trevor Noah]

I'm in the.

[John Oliver]

You can't afford anything.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you can't. I'm in the low, lower level one below the, like, minus one level.

[Eugene]

Wait, there's different levels?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, and they all have different things. So clothing, perfumes, food, you know, international.

[John Oliver]

Arms, dealing with misogyny. Yes. Apparently you are samus that's pumped in through the vents. That's. That's. Historically, that's everywhere, so.

[Trevor Noah]

And then my phone rings. I was staring at an underwater scooter. I will never forget this moment. I was staring at it, thinking, how in my life will I ever be able to afford one of these? Because it's impossible. I didn't even think about where I would use it. I just went, I need this in my life. It is an underwater scooter. So you. You have like the. What do you call those things where you put the bulb over your head?

[John Oliver]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, like when you. You wouldn't scuba dive.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You'd wear that.

[Eugene]

Oh, yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Thing. Old scuba guys would wear it.

[John Oliver]

That was an underwear.

[Eugene]

That used to be brass.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes, that thing. But now it's on a scooter. So you go down on the scooter and then you have that on your.

[John Oliver]

Head and you impulse buy.

[Eugene]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So it's that brass helmet, but it's not brass anymore.

[John Oliver]

It's not brass, no, because it would be too heavy. Yeah. So I think we've moved past brass. I think the moment that we've got underwater scooters, we fix the brass helmet situation. I think one followed the other. So this thing's gonna be great. If I could just. Oh, man.

[Trevor Noah]

So it's okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Eugene]

I can't move on from this. You have to describe the contraption.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. Okay, so now imagine a scooter, or what? I guess in America they call it a moped.

[John Oliver]

Done.

[Trevor Noah]

Whatever. This little thing. Me. Like a Vesper type thing. Like me, me, me, me, me, me. That's okay. And I imagine it has no wheels.

[John Oliver]

No wheels?

[Trevor Noah]

No, that's how they sound. Roadrunners. Meep, meep. There's a difference.

[John Oliver]

So I wish he was wrong, but he is right. I wanted that to be a distinction without a difference. But actually that was okay.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, that's the story of Eugene's life. So now imagine that no wheels.

[John Oliver]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

But it has a little propeller underneath. Okay. So sort of like a jet ski, but not. But you can't see the motor. So that's it. So you sit and you ride like that. But then it has a contraption that comes over the front of it that. Questions? Wait, wait, I'll explain this part. So there's a contraption that comes over the front of it. And then there's a dome that goes over your head with the glass bubble that you can look through. So all you gotta do is get in there. You don't wear any scuba gear. And it has oxygen tanks on it. And then you just ride around.

[Eugene]

So does it have weights to weigh down to the bottom of his weights.

[Trevor Noah]

The whole thing is weights. You can't, like, put this in your backpack. It's the size of a scooter.

[Eugene]

So how would you get into the water with it? So do you.

[Trevor Noah]

These are not things I thought of at the time.

[John Oliver]

All he knew was, I want this in my life. Despite the fact there's no room or practical use for it or anything.

[Trevor Noah]

I come from Johannesburg. We don't even have the ocean there. I was just like, I know I need this in my life.

[John Oliver]

I'm in the market for an instantly depreciating asset. To call this thing an investment would not be fair. You are setting fire to money.

[Eugene]

To your money.

[John Oliver]

To your money.

[Trevor Noah]

But I didn't have. I was just staring at it. Then my phone rang, and it was Jon Stewart. I didn't know Jon Stewart. Unlike you, I didn't know who he even was.

[John Oliver]

And.

[Trevor Noah]

And then he came on. And you. You know Jon better than anyone. Like, John does not take himself as seriously as people take him.

[John Oliver]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

Right?

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So he calls me, goes, hey, can I speak to Trevor? I'm like, speaking. He says, hey, are you speaking to Jon Stewart? I host a little show. That's what he said. The exact phrasing was, I hosted a little show in America called the Daily Show.

[John Oliver]

That joke only works if you know what the Daily show is. Otherwise, it just seems. Yes. Like a description.

[Trevor Noah]

Because this was the big.

[Eugene]

So I like the water. Underwater scooter. I was just, like, totally wasted on you.

[Trevor Noah]

I was like, no, no, that was not wasted on me.

[Eugene]

Did you buy it?

[Trevor Noah]

I couldn't.

[John Oliver]

Let's get back to that.

[Eugene]

Okay, let's get back to that.

[Trevor Noah]

So then John goes, I'm not done with that either. So John goes, wait. So John goes, I hosted a little show in. I'm John Stewart. Then I was like, he's like, I don't know if you've heard of me. I was like, no, no, I haven't. And then he said. He's phrasing. I. I forget it sometimes. But he goes, like. He said something to the effect of nor should you have.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, that sounds right.

[Trevor Noah]

He said, john Stewart, I don't know if you've heard of me. Then I said, no, I. I haven't. And he said, nor should you have. And then I. He said, I host a little show in America called the Daily Show. Then I was like, oh, I think I've heard of that. And he's like, as you should. As you should have. And he's like, we. We saw some of your stuff. I like your stuff. I was wondering, like, you. It's like, what do you. What do you do? Would you like to come to New York? And now, first of all, I come from South Africa. I'm like, this 50% chance this is a scam one. This is. Somebody's just trying to get my details. I know how this.

[Eugene]

Never mind. The underwater scooter.

[Trevor Noah]

No, he's going, what? Is your.

[John Oliver]

He's barely listening to the guy. He's more just. I'm still reading the specs on the.

[Trevor Noah]

Thing while he's talking. Then he said, can you come to New York? And I was like. I was like, what's, what's that? He's like, we want to hire you. You want to come to New York? And I was like, oh, no, no, thank you. He's like, I'm sorry, what? And I'll never forget, he went, I'm sorry, what? I said, yeah, I've got a tour that I'm doing now. Luton, like all these places. Chipping Norton, like, I'm out here, baby Squawksbury.

[John Oliver]

I said the same thing. I said a version of that. When they offered me the job you did. My manager said, yeah, they want you to do the job. And I said, I can't do it, I'm going to Edinburgh. And he said, yeah, you're not going to Edinburgh.

[Trevor Noah]

You're gonna go.

[John Oliver]

You had a manager, you're gonna go do this job. Otherwise, I was thinking, yeah, but I got an 80 seater room, guys.

[Trevor Noah]

You know how hard it is to book Edinburgh?

[John Oliver]

Yeah, I got a room.

[Trevor Noah]

Your internationally acclaimed satirical TV show has to wait.

[John Oliver]

I don't think you understand. Supply and demand in Edinburgh in August.

[Eugene]

And your review written by Kobstick.

[John Oliver]

Oh, wow, what a cut.

[Trevor Noah]

What a deep cut. You should.

[John Oliver]

Wow, you got a Kate Kobstick reference.

[Trevor Noah]

Man, we've made it. So. So that was me. And then John said, wait. So then he paused and he went, tell me about your life. Who are you? I was like, I'm a comedian and I'm doing comedy now.

[John Oliver]

Staring at an underwater scooter, wanting it.

[Eugene]

To be mine in a landlocked city.

[John Oliver]

Remind me, who are you again?

[Trevor Noah]

And then he basically said, well, if you ever change your mind and if you come to New York, let me know. And he said. He said, wait, but I'm just confirming. Are you saying no? And I said, yeah, but with all due respect. And he was. And I'm glad I didn't. I genuinely didn't know. I wasn't like. It wasn't me being like, I don't have time for this. It was more like, oh, you and your little show. I also have a little show.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

We gotta prioritize our little shows in life. So thank you for the call. I'm gonna carry on with my life. Had I known that, he would have brought me much closer to that underwater scooter. So much closer than anything else.

[Eugene]

This.

[Trevor Noah]

That wouldn't have.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, it's. That's amazing. That is relatively similar then other than. So when did you find out what that show meant?

[Eugene]

I was more worried about. Did anyone come and help him at the store?

[Trevor Noah]

No one.

[Eugene]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

No one came and helped. No one came and said, sir, do you need any. I didn't look like I could buy anything in that store.

[John Oliver]

I think Harrod's staff are pretty well trained for racism. Whether you can. No race. I mean, I think that comes through the vents with the classism too. That's all there. I think what they're looking for is Saudi money, I think.

[Trevor Noah]

I think.

[John Oliver]

Or Michael Jackson moving through it when.

[Trevor Noah]

Or even.

[Eugene]

Even like Michael Jackson compound.

[John Oliver]

They did Michael Jackson, you know the.

[Eugene]

Story about how they sold him all the cheap knockoff stuff and then he just has money, he's just going to take it. And he was like, that's pretty. That's pretty. Like he doesn't know the difference.

[John Oliver]

Interesting.

[Eugene]

Sold him everything.

[John Oliver]

That was. That is not Michael Jackson. My takeaway from the flawed like of Michael Jackson is not that he was scammed out of some purchases. I think we would get to that. But I would probably work through the abuse allegations and the history of music before we got to. Contractually, it felt like Harrods let him down.

[Eugene]

Buying a fake Ming dynasty vase ironically made in China as well.

[Trevor Noah]

Wow. Wow. So wait. Okay, so now let's. Let's go back to your world. So now you get. You get brought in. So now you come in immediately.

[John Oliver]

And that's it. You come in, start work immediately. So I don't know if they did this with you. When I got my stuff, I came back my first day in the office. I think I've found out since then this is a very nice thing that they would do. They would try and get you on the show straight away so you're not hanging around too long watching, thinking about what it will be like. I landed back here exhausted, got, went to the office. They said, you're going to be on the show tonight. Like, wait, what? And so the whole thing then moved very, very quickly. And all of a sudden I was in. In retrospect, I see that that is a very kind thing to do for people to get them in quickly.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

So you're not overthinking it.

[Trevor Noah]

Essentially, it's. I think it's like the same tactics that like a drug gang uses when you. When you're flirting with the idea of being part of the cartel. They get you into a deal as quickly as possible. So that you can't now back out.

[John Oliver]

Perfect analogy.

[Eugene]

Wait, wait, wait. You have to explain to us. You said no at the shop.

[Trevor Noah]

Right? I said no. Yeah.

[Eugene]

So how long before you say yes? And what, what makes you say yes?

[Trevor Noah]

So this was, I don't know how long it was after that. I'm bad with time in that way. Maybe six months, I don't know. I don't know. But it was much, much, much later. I'm, I, I'm coming to New York to do my show in a small little theater. Cause remember, I'm on my trajectory, I'm nailing it. I'm doing my thing.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

John contacts me again, basically goes like, I heard you're in New York.

[John Oliver]

Oh, wow.

[Trevor Noah]

Then I'm like, ah, man, this, I'm like this guy.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Yo. Now I still don't. So here's, here's what I have to explain about this. I didn't, first of all, I didn't know what the Daily show was because we didn't get it in that way in South Africa. But more importantly, I had seen what John did and I've told him this. I'd seen it, but it used to air on cnn.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, that's right.

[Trevor Noah]

The Global Edition. International Edition, exactly. Yep, the Global Edition.

[John Oliver]

Yep.

[Trevor Noah]

So what I saw was Christiane Amanpour.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Richard Quest. News from Hong Kong, news from India, news from England, you name. Then this guy would come on tv, I assumed drunk. Mm. Because he was reading the news. But man, this guy was not taking it seriously.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

But this was. So Jon Stewart was part of cnn. In my world, it was still a package.

[John Oliver]

But he would introduce it standing up by a green screen.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

I then watched him do it because it would be one of the writers jobs, one of us to write. You just shit out a wraparound bit for the Global Edition. And no one cares about it because they don't see it.

[Trevor Noah]

Nobody cared about it.

[John Oliver]

Unfortunately, the rest of the world, it's the only thing they see. So they see there's only one once a week, half baked thing of a guy, speed reading his way through. Welcome to Global Edition. This is just, I'm vomiting this out into the world and no one's going to hear it. And then the rest of the world is watching it after Christian Amanpour has just told them what happened in Libya, is this very, very confident guy in New York going, oh, welcome. Anyway, here's my show.

[Trevor Noah]

And it was so I, that's what I. So I was like, definitely don't want to be part of that thing, whatever it is. I don't want to join the news. Do you know what I'm saying?

[John Oliver]

Don't want to join the news. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So the first time I find. So I come to the show. Came to the show when I was in New York. John said, just come to the building and hang out with us. So I walk in.

[Eugene]

Does sound gang, like, see?

[Trevor Noah]

Just hang out.

[John Oliver]

Was I gone then or was I there?

[Trevor Noah]

You were. You weren't there.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. So I must have gone.

[Trevor Noah]

You were gone. You were gone. Yeah. You were gone. I think you were just about to launch your show. You. You hadn't launched your show on hbo, actually.

[John Oliver]

Oh, wow. So you were right in that window. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You had just left. You had just left, but you hadn't launched your show.

[Eugene]

Huh.

[Trevor Noah]

And they were using you as the template for me. Like, literally. They were like, so this works for John. So they were literally like, John Oliver would sit in this office. So you can sit here in this office.

[Eugene]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And. Cause I'm assuming they were just like, it's Empire vibes, you guys. This is what you do, right? You sound like him. I think so, yeah.

[John Oliver]

We do all sound the same.

[Eugene]

You're not from here. Okay.

[John Oliver]

It is. It is. There is something about the American ear that cannot distinguish between English, Australian, New Zealand, and South Africa. All the four of us are the same, and they can't do it. They don't hear the vowels. It just hit. For some reason. That's. Our sounds are completely indistinct. So it just. It's a gamble. It's one in four chance each time.

[Trevor Noah]

The best description someone gave me once that helped me understand this. It encapsulated. It was. There was a guy I met in the streets, UPS driver, big fan of the show. I was hosting the Daily show this time, and he looked at me and he went. He's like, hey, man. He's like, yo, man, I mess with this dude. He said, you that. You that British dude from South Africa.

[John Oliver]

Well, again.

[Trevor Noah]

But that was.

[John Oliver]

Again, historically.

[Trevor Noah]

But that was so perfect to what you're saying. He said, you're that British dude.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

From South Africa.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

He knew where I was from.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

But he's like, I can't hear it.

[Trevor Noah]

You're British.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So I'm at the show, they're using the John template, which I'm grateful to you for, by the way, in many ways, because now they had, like, an idea. They're like, all right, these are things that we think work for you. Cause you like tea. Not Coffee. You're that kind of guy.

[John Oliver]

Sure. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. So they go, this is what we're gonna do. John goes, just hang out. I go into one of their meetings. If you go into a Daily show meeting, you will not know a single thing. Maybe now, because of Trump, the world has become more attuned with what America's talking about. Back then, it was John Ba.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Which threw me off, because on the screen, I read boner. It's cuz B O e H n e r. And then everyone was saying ba. And I was like, are they doing this on purpose as a joke to avoid saying bona an addition? And then they were talking about gerrymandering, filibustering. They were talking about, like, you know, I was. I was like, what is this? And then at the end, John was like, so, what do you think? And I said, my friend, you're a very funny guy, but this thing you do and what I do, very different worlds. You guys are doing homework. I'm doing comedy. So, yeah, I like you a lot. Then he just walked around the building with me. We told jokes, told. Cause John is funny. We just told jokes, told jokes, told jokes, told jokes. And then John said, let's do this conversation on the air.

[Eugene]

Did it sound the same?

[John Oliver]

But, yeah, but interestingly. Cause having been in that process, you're there at the morning. I understand the distinction you're making between you're doing homework, I'm doing comedy. That time of the day, for the best comedy to happen, that time of the day has to be homework. Yes. Right. So what feels like an anathema when you're looking at it is, hey, this is a writer's meeting of comedy writers. Why is no one making jokes? And the thing is, you can get too attracted to a joke, right? And you can try and build the whole day's show around a joke that you loved. Whereas the truth is, you need it to be foundationally solid. You build that joke on. You build that joke on sand. The joke you loved collapses, or you're gonna do some very dicey work trying to reinforce a joke that you should not be standing up. So that is why those meetings can appear humorless if you're looking at it from the outside. But what they are doing is building the foundations for jokes that will come later.

[Trevor Noah]

No one explained it like this to me. Yeah, I wish you were there. No one explained it like that.

[Eugene]

First of all, using the word anathema to describe what's going on.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. No, no, no. Already, already, already, already. No, no. Full On. So then John said, let's do this in a conversation, literally the conversation we're having. He's like, what do you think of New York? And then I told him a few things. He laughed and he said a few things, I laughed and we went back and forth. And John said, why don't we do this on the show? Said, I don't understand. I really don't understand what this show is now.

[Eugene]

Yes, I have to go to Applebee's.

[Trevor Noah]

Then John said, let's just. This thing, let's do it on the show. And long story short, that's what we did. We basically took our conversation, turned it into a chat between us, and that, that's what we put on the show. And John was like, that was amazing. Let's do it again. And then I said, no, I'm going home. I don't want to be a part of this. And I left.

[Eugene]

Meanwhile, in South Africa, we're building statues of you.

[Trevor Noah]

Guys. It is hard. Did you, did you anticipate how much hard work it would be?

[John Oliver]

Yes, I think I had a. I think I knew it was going to be hard. I think I didn't know exactly what you were talking about. I didn't know how quickly I was going to need to do a crash course in American politics. Not just the characters, but the functions of it. Right. Where you are starting to look at the separation of powers and just the basic way that government operates. And you realize as you're in meetings for months, you're thinking, I need to Google that later. I need to Google that later. You're gonna have to kind of teach yourself as you go along and fill in the gaps and know that in a sense, you're always in search of gaps because that is how you're going to fundamentally understand the country that you're hoping to call home. In my case, did you always know.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, what were you doing in. What were you doing in the uk?

[John Oliver]

No, because my manager, the same guy that said, you're not going to Edinburgh this year, he said, just go like, don't, don't sign anything more than a three month lease because American TV shows fire you after three months.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[John Oliver]

That was his inspiring team. Talk to me.

[Trevor Noah]

This is an English manager.

[John Oliver]

This isn't very. This is English manager. Yeah, exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

American. American managers would be like, yo, this is it, baby. Yeah, a seven year lease. You're going six seasons, baby. You got it. English manager. I can see him being like, all right, nothing more than three months.

[John Oliver]

That's right. It's a Huge opportunity for you. But to be honest, I'll see you in September with your tail between your legs, having been humbled by what they're about to do to you. Good luck. So that. Yeah. So he had told me, this is not going to take long. Yeah. So I put all my stuff in storage in South London. It was there until last summer, when was. When I got it out. It had been installed facility for 18 years in South Norwood.

[Trevor Noah]

Now you finally. Now you've relaxed. You finally were like, all right, I think this thing's going well.

[John Oliver]

You say that, though, because that is the problem. Right. It's partly falling in love with a job and falling in love with a country where you don't legally, permanently belong. I remember, like, six or seven months in, being very happy with what was happening at the show and what I was learning and how for the first time, I felt like I fit in. And I remember landing from London, like the wheels hitting the ground in New York, and things were like, oh, it's good to be home. And I thought, uh, oh, that's a dangerous thing to think because this is not my home. Like, I'm on a working visa. That's a pro. If I feel that way, I might need to start making plans for this truly being my home. Because I. It before, it had just felt like a fun adventure that I was having. Then you realize, oh, no, I think I love this more than I've loved anything. And there were people at the Daily show at the time using it as a springboard because it was such a big deal, the show.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, it was. It was huge. Yeah. When I think about in you, in your era, sort of like where you came on towards the end of. When I look at the class of people around that time, you had Steve Carell.

[John Oliver]

Steve Carell was just. Was before me. He'd gone.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, he had just left.

[John Oliver]

I turned up. Ed Helms was. I mean, it was his last week, so he was off going off to the office.

[Trevor Noah]

And the Hangover as well was coming up.

[John Oliver]

Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

So they were all doing stuff, but I didn't want to do any of that, So I didn't want it to be a springboard at all. I didn't want to go out on auditions. I just wanted to do that show. I didn't want to be in movies, but wait. I didn't want to be in a sitcom. I didn't want to act in something. I just wanted to be in that building doing that show.

[Trevor Noah]

But what version of it? Because the first time I Saw you was when you did the piece about South Africa.

[John Oliver]

Oh, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You did that? Have you ever seen that?

[Eugene]

No, no, no.

[Trevor Noah]

He did a piece for the World Cup. It is one of the most amazing pieces you'll ever see. Especially if you're South African. But even if you're not. But John came to South Africa.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. For the first. First game. I was. I watched that first game in Shabinis.

[Eugene]

South Africa versus Mexico.

[John Oliver]

Yep. Yeah.

[Eugene]

With our bought goal. I still think that goal was paid for.

[Trevor Noah]

You think you can pay for that? This is what happens when you don't watch football, my man. Do you think you can. Let me tell you something.

[Eugene]

You can. 100%, Eugene.

[Trevor Noah]

Let me tell you something.

[Eugene]

100%, Eugene. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I can pay you all the money in the world and I can give you all the time in the world. You will never create that goal, my friend. Do you understand how hard there's so many things you can. So, Eugene, I should give you a bit of context, Eugene. A doesn't believe in football. Nope.

[John Oliver]

Wait, hold on, hold on. I'm more interested in this than I. The underwater scooter. You don't believe in the concept of it?

[Eugene]

No, no, no. Because I think football fans basically like other men. Because if they really love football, they would watch women's football too. But because they appreciate just watching men only play football.

[John Oliver]

This argument is flawed on so many levels.

[Trevor Noah]

It's over for you.

[John Oliver]

What? What? What are you talking about?

[Trevor Noah]

Also, add in the fact that he also thinks it's all a scam. It's all rigged.

[Eugene]

Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So it's all like manufactured.

[Eugene]

It's all actors.

[Trevor Noah]

He thinks we're watching wwe.

[Eugene]

People have been groomed from childhood. They've been put on these camps to kick this ball. They promised jerseys. Other people are being co opted into the scam.

[John Oliver]

It's a World Cup. The World Cup's coming.

[Eugene]

Yep.

[John Oliver]

Nobody wants this shit right now. America's gearing up.

[Eugene]

That World cup of ours. Bought. It was just for Madiba.

[John Oliver]

Oh, oh. That the World cup was bought.

[Eugene]

And that gold.

[John Oliver]

No. For the whole spirit. No, no, no, no, no, no. The World Cup, Every World cup is bought. FIFA is a criminal organization.

[Eugene]

At least we agree there first catch.

[John Oliver]

Yes. And then. So I'm getting on your argument saying FIFA is a criminal organization. Then I'm getting off and you are driving that argument off into crazy town.

[Eugene]

Remember? And also it's very hard for me to admit this because I did a show called Countdown 2010, which was a magazine show for four years. And I traveled the world.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you hyped up for it. He hyped up the whole thing for the World Cup.

[Eugene]

Four years attending huge sporting events, Euro cup, caf, Africa cup of nations, everything. I was there. What I took away home was my salary. And the fact that all of this is a scam.

[John Oliver]

Oh, all of it is a scam. But the World Cup, FIFA as an organization is. I have to think of it in terms of crime. You can't really think of them as a sporting organization. The sport is somehow immune from their fuckery. So I was even seeing that Zoran Mumdani had that. He's just. He had released that video.

[Trevor Noah]

The one about ticket prices.

[John Oliver]

No. Was it the one just saying, like, FIFA, like, choose the game over greed? And that was the first time with Mom. Dani, I'm thinking, who do you think you're talking to? If I was FIFA over greed, But Infantino, the head of Heat, was just gonna. I choose greed. I've always chosen greed. I've not.

[Eugene]

I've not chosen anything.

[John Oliver]

There's no moral compass that you can appeal to here. Nothing points north in my soul. So, yeah, FIFA is a terrible organization that happens to produce the best imaginable product. But those two.

[Trevor Noah]

It's like a drug organization, making the.

[John Oliver]

Best drugs, the greatest cocaine.

[Eugene]

And the worst thing is when I saw this one documentary where they spoke about the football, the ball itself, that every ball for the World cup has a name.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, the Jabulani. Yeah.

[Eugene]

And it has its own idiosyncrasies.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[Eugene]

And I was like, you see now? So someone who played a World cup eight years ago kicked a ball that's not similar to a World cup ball.

[Trevor Noah]

Now, that's true.

[Eugene]

So you don't. Because cricket, the ball is the same.

[John Oliver]

You are right about FIFA and you are wrong about football.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay?

[John Oliver]

Football is the beautiful cocaine that the Sinaloa cartel produces.

[Trevor Noah]

It is the most beautiful thing that has ever existed.

[Eugene]

This explanation sounds better with a British accent.

[John Oliver]

Well, we both have one of those American Indians.

[Eugene]

To a FedEx driver.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. To a FedEx driver. It's all the same. Oh. Oh, Johnny from Joburg here.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. But you also. Do you. I mean, you. I'm sure you remember it. Do you remember the piece where you were talking to racist white South Africans?

[John Oliver]

Oh, man.

[Eugene]

You took it there.

[John Oliver]

Oh, yes.

[Eugene]

Imports.

[Trevor Noah]

Let me tell you something.

[Eugene]

Exports. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

John Oliver talking to racist white South Africans and them rolling with him.

[John Oliver]

Yes. But you know what?

[Trevor Noah]

They loved him.

[John Oliver]

I was. What? I was of course, there is something about me they like. But the interesting thing is that with that interview, what I wanted to do was get the ugliness out in the open in a short space, Right? And so it's difficult because there is, as you well know, a polish to racism, very much so in South Africa, A real. A real patina of dignity around the horror. So I wanted to get under this guy's skin. And I got Louis Theroux. You know, I'd done some pieces in South Africa. And so I. One of the producers of the Daily show had worked with Louis Theroux. So I'd asked him, hey, can you ask, is there anything. How does he get to the ID of this ugliness? How do you get through all of the poise?

[Eugene]

Yeah, the pretense.

[John Oliver]

Exactly. And he said, as a British person, the one knife you have is make some glib remark about the Boers and the Boer War, and all of a sudden things will change. So, like, he's sitting down in his chair and like, he's just. He seems very confident, very media practiced. I made some comment as they're putting his thing, and just the eyes change. It's like, oh. And he went, oh, there's the human being that I came here to talk.

[Eugene]

Because the relationship between British people or English people and Afrikaners is quite dicey because there's a term that they have for someone who's half Afrikaans, half British, called a salty. Because you know what that means? Salty dick.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

So it means one foot is in Africa, and then the other foot is in Europe, and you're.

[Trevor Noah]

And your penis is in the ocean.

[Eugene]

Your penis is in the ocean.

[Trevor Noah]

Which always threw me off because I was like, if you look at. If you look at where you're standing.

[John Oliver]

I was going to say that on the map.

[Trevor Noah]

It never made sense to me.

[Eugene]

Johnny from Joburg is like, yeah, that's.

[Trevor Noah]

It never made sense to me.

[John Oliver]

Slightly sandy, right? Testicle.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it never made sense to me. It never made sense.

[John Oliver]

So geographically, I know it's not the main problem with that term, but it doesn't seem it works on any real geographic level now.

[Eugene]

It makes biomechanical checks and comment of it.

[John Oliver]

But it worked. But it worked. And it got you.

[Eugene]

It got you.

[John Oliver]

He was immediately spiky. And it was easier to coax out the ugly. He was less poised.

[Trevor Noah]

I always wondered, when I watched you doing your pieces, I was just like. Cause I didn't know you at all as a person. I always remember thinking, is this how this guy Is.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. It's not how I am because I think naturally I'm kind of non confrontational, but in those pieces.

[Trevor Noah]

But you love stirring.

[John Oliver]

I love stirring shit. You really love stirring shit. That's exactly it. I love stirring shit up more than I love being a human being. So all of a sudden you have this excuse to be the worst version of yourself that secretly you love more than the other parts. And you get to go full sociopath.

[Eugene]

That's what Nazi officers used to say. It's the uniform.

[Trevor Noah]

I get to be a totally different person.

[John Oliver]

It's something about the Hugo Boss tailoring.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man.

[Eugene]

Yeah, because you Louis Vuitton purse, you.

[Trevor Noah]

Just like, it's not me.

[John Oliver]

It just makes me feel jacket.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, but did you. But did you know. Did you know that you. So you loved that part of the job?

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But did you know that you would love the hosting part of the job before you hosted. Before you guest hosted?

[John Oliver]

I was terrified of it. So he did this. A similar version of that conversation that he pinged on you was that he called me at home and I'm in my apartment and he said, hey, I'm gonna. That movie that I've been writing, I'm gonna be able to direct it. And we go, oh, that's great. This feels like a conversation. I don't know. This can't be the first call. You're just calling everyone you know to say you're excited. So he talks about when he's gonna do it over the summer. Oh, okay, great. Yeah. So what? He went and could you. Could you host the show for me? I went, yeah. Because he'd give me everything. I think I was just hardwired. I would say yes to everything he said, right. You need something from me, I will do it. Whatever that thing is, criminal or not, I'll do it. So I said, yes, like. Like it's nothing. Put the phone down. And then thought, whoa, boy, what have I just agreed to? And that was terrifying. So then I. For the month before he left, I shadowed him much more closely to work out exactly what the day is like. Right. The parts of the day that I didn't see.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

Just as a writer and the correspondent show what things need to happen so you get a fuller understanding of what mistakes do you need to fix earlier in the day. Otherwise you're gonna live inside them for.

[Trevor Noah]

The rest of the day. I tell you. Cause it's li. It's literally. That's something people don't understand about making the Daily show or like, you know, a Version of last week, tonight, which is. Has a different process, but it's. It's the. That first block.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

That you. That you start building on defines everything.

[John Oliver]

That's right. Everything. Everything cascades after that.

[Trevor Noah]

That first block. So if you put that block just.

[Eugene]

A little skew, it's downhill from there.

[Trevor Noah]

By the time you get to block 100 at 5pm you're like, why is this thing falling over and touching the ground? And you're like, oh, it's that first block. And if you didn't catch the first block early enough, now you're there at 5, trying to be like, how many blocks can we go back before we can. Yo.

[John Oliver]

That's. So what you learned, right. Is a different way to look at that room than that first day that.

[Trevor Noah]

You were in it. Yeah. Yeah.

[John Oliver]

For sure. What you really. You're thinking is, why is this. Why. Why don't we do.

[Trevor Noah]

Why is everyone so serious?

[John Oliver]

Yeah. Why aren't we worrying about what the color of the blocks are? Oh, you don't want to worry about. You can change the color of a block in a second.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

That's what I realized was being in rewrites, good and bad, you realize you can write jokes at the last second. You can't fix part of the story quickly.

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[John Oliver]

Otherwise you're in big, big, big trouble.

[Trevor Noah]

Were you shocked at how much fact checking went into making an episode of the Daily Show?

[John Oliver]

Not really. Because I assumed, like, if to take big swings, you're going to have to have a system that can back you up. Otherwise you're just not gonna be able to do it for long in a country as litigious as America. So I wasn't that surprised. I certainly loved it. I loved that part of the process. And I think what we've done on our show is extrapolate that out now so it's not just chods in a room, basically just drowning in people's opinions, thinking, I'll tell you how much of this you can actually say, and then an hour later, we'll have an answer for you. Now, we have a much bigger scaled out research department now so that they can spend weeks before the writers get anywhere near a story to work out what can you say? And then you can craft the story from those ingredients, and then you can craft jokes from that story.

[Trevor Noah]

I've always wondered why you like stirring the shit that you like stirring. Cause I just because you are a shit stirrer does not necessarily mean that you choose to stir shit in every cup. Does that make sense? Anyway, Well, I feel like that's like more shit stiry if you're doing it in like a toilet. You're just weird. You know what I mean?

[John Oliver]

I do love the feeling of trouble.

[Eugene]

Yeah, you do.

[Trevor Noah]

But a specific type of trouble is what I've noticed. Like, maybe it's just me, but you'll correct me if I'm wrong. When I think of John Oliver, I go like, political shit, stirring. I'm like a little bit, but not so much. But when you get into like corporate. Yeah, you listen.

[John Oliver]

I love it so much.

[Eugene]

You a guy almost maybe became corporate. If it wasn't for comedy, maybe you would have been in corporate, right?

[John Oliver]

No, I wouldn't. Never, never, never. I. I couldn't survive in that world. I couldn't do it. That was not for me.

[Eugene]

What was the plan?

[John Oliver]

There was no real plan.

[Trevor Noah]

Did you study anything?

[John Oliver]

I studied English.

[Trevor Noah]

Wow, that's a waste that you speak at home, John.

[John Oliver]

Hugh. And do I. Do I not speak it beautifully?

[Trevor Noah]

Can I tell you? You speak so well.

[John Oliver]

Thank you.

[Trevor Noah]

You speak so well. Has anyone told you how articulate you are? You speak very well, John. Very well.

[John Oliver]

That's what three years of higher education will give you. I didn't come in talking like this. I left that way. No, I wanted. I started writing comedy at college and then I did my first stand up gig and it was. I imagine how a drug addict feels when they get their first taste of something which they know is now going to alter how they live the rest of their life.

[Trevor Noah]

We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

[John Oliver]

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[Trevor Noah]

The 2026 Chevy Equinox is more than an SUV. It's your Sunday tailgate and your parking lot snack bar.

[John Oliver]

Your lucky jersey, your chairs and your big cooler fit perfectly in your even bigger cargo space. And when it's go time, your 11.3-inch.

[Trevor Noah]

Diagonal touchscreen's got the playbook, the playlist and the tech to stay a step ahead.

[John Oliver]

It's more than an suv.

[Trevor Noah]

It's your Equinox Chevrolet Together. Let's drive.

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[Trevor Noah]

Do you remember your first joke on stage or your first like bit that was like your.

[John Oliver]

I had a bit about driving theory tests. I think. I can't remember exactly what I about EasyJet at the time. Not great jokes, but I remember before EasyJet was, it was early days of EasyJet.

[Trevor Noah]

Isn't EasyJet back now with that thing, is it Jet2? Oh, Jet2 holiday.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, yeah. No, so I bad, bad marketing didn't work on me.

[Eugene]

Great.

[John Oliver]

But the process of the feeling of it, I knew I was at college with Richard Iowadi. Do you know that?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh yes, I do know. Yes, yes. So we wrote Richard with the glasses, with the hair.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But in the movies now and stuff.

[John Oliver]

We wrote, we wrote Footlights together and we did a two man show. And I remember walking off the stage for the first night that we put our own show on.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

And thinking, I want to do this. I don't know what that's gonna mean. I don't know where I'm gonna be.

[Trevor Noah]

Able to do it.

[John Oliver]

But all of a sudden my life became quite clear in terms of not how it was going to turn out, but what I was going to try and do. And that's a huge gift, isn't it? In many ways.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh no, it's the greatest gift of all.

[John Oliver]

I remember my dad years, years later saying, oh, I admire that you never gave up. And it only at that point occurred to me that at some point that would have been an option. It never even crossed my mind to give up. Even when from the outside it must have looked like this is not a dignified life that you're building for yourself here. But I was so happy in it, it never crossed my mind.

[Trevor Noah]

Where did your funny come from in the family?

[John Oliver]

I mean, I don't know. Survival, you know.

[Trevor Noah]

Is your dad, your mom, your grandfather your like.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I think. Would you say you have the closest comedic.

[John Oliver]

Probably my dad's dad, but no, my family's from Liverpool. Right. And so that is a city that's been through some shit. And that its main processing technique was often comedy.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

And my. My granddad was a really, really funny guy. A very odd man. Loved jokes.

[Trevor Noah]

I remember John Bishop explaining this to me. That.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Liverpool comedian. He was like. I was like, why are you so. And he. And he said, honestly, he said, I'm not even the funniest person in this place. I just do it professionally for sure. And it's just a vibe of people. It's interesting you say that because it almost feels like the people of Liverpool, so many shit things happened to them that they were like, we will exist in a world of shit stirring in this world now.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean?

[John Oliver]

It's just how you survive gallows humor, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[John Oliver]

And so it's the only thing that's ever made sense for me. It's the only way I've ever processed the world is through laughs. At his funeral, I did granddad's funeral. Yeah. He was. I wanted it to be funny.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

Because it felt like if this event isn't funny, this is no reflection of who he was. That in many ways, in my mind as a kid, he was the guy that taught me how to misbehave. Cause he knew it would be funny. Like sitting at a table, he's like saying, just bang your cutlery like this. And like two seconds later I'm in trouble. And he's laughing. You're like, oh, I like the sound that came out of that mouth. I've caused a big problem in this room. But this guy's just chuckling to himself, oh, why do I need to get a little bit more of that?

[Trevor Noah]

He was your first audience I like.

[John Oliver]

Yes, he was. And you know what? The last time I saw him, I think I've told this story before, was he was dying in an old people's home. And my. He was definitely not going to be around for long. And he. My dad left to get the car. He was on the ground floor. And so I just thought I could leave through the door or I could like climb. There was a. Like a little window into a hedge. And I thought. Or I could just like climb out through the window and go through the hedge. And so I thought I just. I'll just do the hedge. So the window climb out, like scratching through into the car park. And the last thing I heard him say to me was, you're an idiot. That was.

[Trevor Noah]

That's the last thing.

[John Oliver]

That's the last thing he said to me.

[Trevor Noah]

Your grandfather ever said.

[John Oliver]

Those are the Last things I heard from him out of his mouth was, you're an idiot. I remember, like, hearing it as I'm scratching through her head going, that went well. I'm glad I did that. Option B was the right choice. You don't get. You're an idiot if you walk functionally through a door. Who wants that?

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man, I love this for you. Like, it's just like. It's a crazy journey for me because, like, what I've selfishly always enjoyed about your career is I've always said to people, you were the pioneer for my path. You know what I mean? So when I first came to the us, One thing that was made apparently clear to me was, hey, you're nice and everything, but Americans don't like people with an accent, especially doing anything in and around their world. Just keep it moving. Keep it moving.

[Eugene]

Let alone speaking about their politics.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, keep it moving.

[John Oliver]

You can see why, though, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Completely.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

There is, like, it feels like you earn the right to criticize. Right. And they can be questioning, I think, understandably, Americans, where is this coming from? And it was a shift for me to go often from you. You do this, you do this, we do this.

[Trevor Noah]

You started saying, we do this because.

[John Oliver]

I'm an American now. Right. And so I play with you. And we. But there was at least a sense of ownership. And again, as a British person, a sense of ownership of the country has a bit of an asterisk on it. But it did feel like this isn't coming from. I think there have been people who've come, like, done a smash and grab in America, and there's no real emotional investment in it. Whereas that was not the case with me. And I don't think it was ever gonna be the case with you.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but I think at the time, the industry, this wasn't people. This was just the industry going, hey, it doesn't work. Don't even bother. I remember one of my. One of my good friends, Neil Brennan, the comedian, he said to me, he's like, just leave. We were in a. We were in a small little diner in Denver, Colorado. He had been performing at the Improv. I'd been performing at, like, a. Like the Happy Clap, whatever, you know, like one of the second type clubs. And he was just like, what are you doing here? He said, just go home. Go home. I was like, oh, I'm doing comedy. He's like, no, just.

[Eugene]

Just.

[Trevor Noah]

He's like, america won't give you. Just go home.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, I'm not so.

[Trevor Noah]

And I'll never forget. Yeah, but you say that, but I will never forget when the switch flipped and it almost happened at the same time for both of us. I had done, I think, two episodes of the Daily show just as like a pop in contributor, even. Not correspondent. I just contribute and I leave. Contribute and I leave. And someone had asked me, would you do this full time? And I was like, no, there's no world where I would do this full time. I just can't see the possibility. And I was at home watching tv, and your show came on, and it was the first episode, and it was about India's elections.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And I. I remember sitting on the couch and I went, oh. Oh, yeah, I would. Oh, I would. Do I. Okay, okay. Cause it was the first time I saw an American lens on the world.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Not from an American, but including America. I was like, in America? Yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. Okay, that's. That's a possibility. I was like, okay, I would do that. And I genuinely think I wouldn't have gotten the Daily show if it wasn't for you. Genuinely.

[John Oliver]

Maybe.

[Trevor Noah]

I promise you.

[John Oliver]

Really?

[Trevor Noah]

I'm willing to bet money. 6. How many months did you do it? Guest hosting?

[John Oliver]

Three. Just three months.

[Trevor Noah]

Three months?

[John Oliver]

Yeah. Just a summer.

[Trevor Noah]

Just that three months alone.

[John Oliver]

I think maybe. I think there was real panic about John ever leaving. And I think at least it showed that that staff was solid enough that somebody could do that job temporarily.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

I still don't think there was any confidence that somebody could do it forever. Someone could fill in for him in a panic. I don't think there was any real institutional confidence at Comedy Central of, oh, great, so someone else can do it. Still were very much his thing.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but you being successful even at HBO made people go, oh, that's a possibility.

[John Oliver]

I think that was different.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you get what I'm saying?

[John Oliver]

Yeah. Because I think what we were trying to do was stretch the form of it, and it took us a while, but I think that Indian election was such a gift for a first show, because to my mind, there was nothing more interesting happening in the world that week than the Indian election, the largest exercise of democracy in human history. And it was nowhere on American television, which was just wildly insular. It felt. Nothing is happening in America that was more interesting this week than what is about to happen in India. That was almost a gift from there. We had to kind of get out of our system. That rhythm from the Daily show where you're just reacting. Reacting.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, reacting.

[John Oliver]

And we did one show that wasn't very good. I remember about immigration early on, that felt like we'd done like a 10 minute headline that was really just. You could have kind of done it on the Daily Show.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Oliver]

It was stuff that you'd already seen. It didn't feel good. Luckily we had. I think, I think it's that I'd shot an interview with Stephen Hawking that we did after that. And so that was the main thing that people thought about. For us, the real lesson that we learned that day was that what we wanted our show to be about was showing people something they hadn't seen before.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

Because it felt like then you're actually using the extra time that you got. Otherwise it feels like cheating. It's just doing one show a week that you could have written in a day or two, to be fair. Now we, from that lesson on, we extrapolated our process out so that we're spending six weeks on each story. And you're just juggling them at the same time.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, just moving them around and then choosing.

[John Oliver]

And you can force feed any story that you like on people. Then you can like, you have a. You earn the right to have an audience that will actually sit through something that sounds unbelievably boring, like mobile home financing. But the moment that you get into it, you realize how interesting everything is in, you know this.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, everything is interesting. Everything is interesting. If you know enough about. Yes, I find.

[John Oliver]

Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

That's. That's literally what it is.

[John Oliver]

So you just need to give people enough information about it for them to be able to find it interesting. But that takes time. You need. And commercial television, that is much, much harder because you need.

[Trevor Noah]

You can do any duration.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, that is a big difference.

[Trevor Noah]

Right.

[John Oliver]

It's hard to hold people's attention. You take them on a long narrative story. If you're having to say six, eight, nine minutes in. We'll be right back. Three minutes of Twix commercials and they're like, I forget where I was. So it's. That is why it's much easier for us to be able to do like 40 minute long stories that sound like they're just in one breath because you can't leave.

[Trevor Noah]

I've always loved watching it. Thinking about how many enemies you make in like, sometimes I genuinely think to myself, I go, are there moments where Jon maybe can't get a loan or maybe someone gives him a less favorable. No, because I think of like, how many times has your show been sued?

[John Oliver]

We've been sued a bunch of. Not a Lot of times we've been threatened with lawsuits. Huge amount.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, okay.

[John Oliver]

Actual number of lawsuits is less is one handful, but we haven't lost any. That's the key thing I always say to our audience.

[Trevor Noah]

Undefeated.

[John Oliver]

That's the thing. It can be a fractious, albeit functional, relationship with our lawyers, but I think we have, like, a different view of their job, because I think what they think their job is is to stop us getting sued.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Oliver]

And I think their job is to make sure that when we get sued, we win. Right. And that part of it is everything that I love. When you know you're in trouble, the company's angry with you, your own lawyers are angry with you. The only people that are excited are the people that you work with.

[Eugene]

And the audience.

[John Oliver]

And the audience. Yeah, the audience, because they love. Everyone loves watching a car crash. Right. And it's so much fun to be in that position. And it feels like to me, because it's not commercial, because you have full freedom of speech as well, that you. It is incumbent upon you, if you're lucky enough to be in that position, to push it as hard as you can.

[Trevor Noah]

So then are you worried at all about all the mergers and stuff that are coming?

[John Oliver]

Oh, sure. But I mean, this would be.

[Trevor Noah]

Because you. Your show would be, what is HBO's under Warner. So if Warner gets sold, you would. If it was Netflix, you'd be under Netflix technically.

[John Oliver]

Or if it was Paramount, and then.

[Trevor Noah]

They might break it up as well. And then everything could go everywhere.

[John Oliver]

Who knows? And it'll be, like, tied up in the courts. This would not be our first merger.

[Trevor Noah]

This would be around for AT and.

[John Oliver]

T. This would be our third merger.

[Trevor Noah]

How many have you been around for?

[John Oliver]

We were around for.

[Trevor Noah]

First.

[John Oliver]

We were taken over. Time Warner was taken over by AT and T, then AT and T was taken over by Warner Brothers Discovery. Yeah. And then Warner Brothers Discovery is going to be taken over by company question mark. So we'll see.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you think of the merger?

[John Oliver]

I mean, I think mergers are generally bad. I think you're always hoping for the least bad option.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

And I think that, like, the key thing for us is to act with enough, like, aggression or confidence. Like I would. I will act. Assuming nothing is going to happen. We're not going to change. Right. I think we've been on. We've been behaving the way we've been behaving.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

For long enough that you can't really reason with us. So there's no point in doing that. There's no. Yeah. You're not gonna be.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I just pictured, like, you and your team are like that. Like that village. You know those stories that they would talk about, like every empire had it, whether it was the Romans or the Mongols or whoever it was. And there would always be this one village where they went. They went. You know what? We've technically conquered this whole area. Just leave them.

[John Oliver]

Just leave them.

[Trevor Noah]

Just let them do their thing.

[John Oliver]

It's not worth it. You want to be that village? You want to be that village? So unreasonable that gigantic corporate armies. Just go. Just leave them alone. That's all you want. Be enough trouble that you're too much trouble to deal with. Well, I mean, again, it's least bad, right? It's not like there's good options, like, as played out during mergers, but, you know, these things come with cuts.

[Trevor Noah]

I have yet to see a merger that has done well for the whole. You know what I mean? Like, it's just almost. It's almost like the only mergers that do well are outliers. Almost every merger doesn't do well. I don't understand why mergers are still a popular thing.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's going to get tied up in courts. Cause you can't really. There are going to be question marks on all of this. Right. Cause it's very hard to justify this legally. Now, whether that makes it impossible for it to happen, that's an open question.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

But again, you can't waste time worrying about something that you're not gonna listen to anyway. Right. It feels like they. We. We're just gonna do what we do. They're gonna. Whoever they are, is gonna have to realize either you ignore us like that irritating village, or you're gonna have to take us around the back of the woodshed.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you miss the standup that you used to do?

[John Oliver]

I do. I love it so much.

[Trevor Noah]

You know, one of my favorite jokes ever is a joke of yours that I never heard you tell that Someone told me you told, uh. Oh, it was your R. Kelly joke, the ignition joke. Do you remember that?

[John Oliver]

Yeah. What was that?

[Trevor Noah]

So the joke. It's crazy that I remember it. It was just one of my favorite jokes ever. So it was. It was the John Oliver joke. And the joke was it was basically you saying, I hate how my brain chooses what it wants to remember and what it doesn't want. And I'm paraphrasing everything, but it was basically the premise was I hate how my brain chooses what it wants to rem and doesn't allow me to choose what I want to remember, because there's very important things that I want to remember in the world, you know, like the capital of this place or the laws and of this. But instead, my brain is filled with random things. Like, so, for instance, I went to a CPR class and I learned how to do cpr. Like, they taught me how to do cpr. And there's very specific steps that you have to do. Right. I also heard R. Kelly's Ignition song, which I know all the words to. He's like. And John was like, I've never sat down and I've never learned the words. I've never tried to remember the words, but I know them all. It's the Remix 2 ignition. Then you're like. When I was at the CPR class, they said to me, they were like, the CPR technique, the rhythm of it is the same as the rhythm of Ignition. Yeah. So while you're doing it's the remix to Ignition, like, that's what you got to be pumping to. And then John was like, but now I'm afraid that my brain will screw me up. I'm going to be on a plane one day and we'll be like, oh, my God, someone's having a heart attack. Someone. Can somebody come? And then John's gonna come in there and he'll be like, ah, I forgot the cpr. But he's like, it's the remix to Ignition.

[John Oliver]

Here's the amazing thing. I don't remember any part of that joke at all, but I do remember all the lyrics to Ignition by R. Kelly. So that I don't know if that's my joke or not, but the premise stands up. R. Kelly, by the way, did Harrod screw him over for any purchase?

[Eugene]

They should have.

[Trevor Noah]

Maybe that's their origin story. Maybe that's the beginning of it all. Right? His Harrod screws you over.

[John Oliver]

R. Kelly, like, Michael Jackson is really the victim when it comes to Harrods.

[Eugene]

Leave the other women at the penthouse, those two.

[Trevor Noah]

But you.

[John Oliver]

I mean, why can't the Al Fayed family catch a break?

[Trevor Noah]

No, because you love stand. I'm assuming you still love stand up, right?

[John Oliver]

Yeah, Yeah, I still do stand up. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but you. And you love it.

[John Oliver]

I love it so much. It calms me down like nothing else.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, it calms you down?

[John Oliver]

Trevor, I will take that surprise from anyone but you.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no.

[John Oliver]

You know that, right?

[Trevor Noah]

It calms you down. Yeah. Fully surprised.

[John Oliver]

Really?

[Trevor Noah]

Fully surprised.

[John Oliver]

You don't find it that way too.

[Trevor Noah]

Calming.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Invigorating? I would say. Yes.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Calming. No. What. Eugene, what are you. Calming. Which word would you use for stand up?

[Eugene]

Avoiding avoidance.

[John Oliver]

Sure.

[Trevor Noah]

But how does stand up make you feel?

[Eugene]

Oh, yeah. You know, every time I do stand up, I'm like, thank God I'm. I'm naturally good at it, but I don't rely on it because. Because I'd be miserable.

[John Oliver]

Why?

[Eugene]

If it's all I had to do, I'll die. So when I do it, I'm going, I'm not gonna suck. I know that. So thank God for that part.

[John Oliver]

Okay.

[Eugene]

But I'm like, thank God I don't have to come back here every day and do this thing to survive.

[Trevor Noah]

Huh? Oh. So that's why I think every comedian has a different. Like, I don't.

[Eugene]

I don't hate it.

[Trevor Noah]

Calm. I don't get Jon.

[John Oliver]

No.

[Eugene]

And I don't get nervous.

[John Oliver]

When you first said, thank goodness I'm so prednaturally talented at this, you sounded like Cristiano Ronaldo at that point.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no.

[John Oliver]

You wouldn't even get the reference, or he'll think he's just some kind of puppet from the CIA.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no. Oh, no, no. Eugene knows everyone in football. Just to troll people who know football.

[John Oliver]

Where I understand is that, like the grind of standing, especially when you're starting off right where it is such a slog just to get by. I am very grateful that I don't have to do that exclusively, but I would never not want to do it at all.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but I.

[Eugene]

But I'm saying English summed it up nicely.

[Trevor Noah]

3 years. 3 years have paid off. No, but calm. Yeah. Calm. I don't get genuinely.

[Eugene]

So for you, it's coming.

[John Oliver]

You. I find it. Yeah. It clears my head like nothing else, I think, just like the process of it. The fact it's. You know, our show is so collaborative. There are so many moving parts. There is a simplicity, a directness to stand up that you can't really replicate. It's just. It's like. It's a fundamentally selfish exercise. Right. And there's something I love about the social side of it. The fact that you're not socializing. Like, you can be an isolated person among a lot of people. Like, you can. You're with a lot of people, but you're alone.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

Like, you're. There's a purpose to your day. You can structure everything around that.

[Eugene]

See that?

[Trevor Noah]

What was your.

[John Oliver]

What.

[Trevor Noah]

What is your stand up day? What's your.

[John Oliver]

Well, it depends like here I get to once a month at the Beacon with Seth.

[Eugene]

Okay.

[Trevor Noah]

So no, but I'm saying like just a stand up date.

[John Oliver]

If I'm.

[Trevor Noah]

What's your routine? What would you do from. From the morning, from the time you wake up. What time do you wake up and then what's your day before you go on?

[John Oliver]

Well, you see, it changed over the year because I had kids. So my body clock is not what it was. I used to have the stand up body clock where I could happily just sleep past noon and do. Now I. Now I'm stuck between two worlds because my body wants to get up at 6 o' clock when my kids are getting up where they are. So I'm kind of up then. So for me doing stand up right now, what I'm really. Because I'm not kind of. I'm not in that regular routine. It's kind of trying to break the routine of the way my mind works.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[John Oliver]

For writing.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, got it.

[John Oliver]

The show and structuring the show, it's getting back into so. Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

It's a vacation.

[John Oliver]

It's to. It's trying to think about jokes in the stand up form, which you know is different. Right? It's different. There are things that you. Jokes you would love on the Daily show that you know would not work and similarly stand up jokes that wouldn't work in the form of the Daily Show. So, yeah, it's really just about trying to keep my love for Stand up alive despite the fact I don't get to do it enough. Yeah, yeah. I did it a whole bunch during the strike just because it was the.

[Trevor Noah]

Best way to do it. There was like, now you're off the show and now you can go out there and you can do something.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. So I just scrambled a whole bunch of dates and did a lot of that was the most I've done it. So for a few months I was out constantly because it felt like it was the only way that I could, you know, help the staff pay, but also just the only way that was going to stop my head from exploding.

[Trevor Noah]

Are your kids funny?

[John Oliver]

Yes, they are. Thank goodness. God, that would be hard.

[Eugene]

Ronaldo.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you remember when they asked Cristiano Ronaldo, they're like, your son's really good at football. Do you think he'll be as good as you? And he was like, no. He's like, no, I don't think he'll ever be as good. He's like, he'll never be as good as me. He's not focused. He drinks Coca Cola. He won't be as. He was just like full. I was like, yo, bro, not even like a. Yeah, he has it in. He's like, nah, bro. He's like this kid. Nah, he doesn't have it in him to be the best.

[Eugene]

Yeah, but at least he didn't lie. We have one kid that's been lied to and is in the NBA now.

[John Oliver]

Wow. Who. Who are we talking about?

[Trevor Noah]

Wow.

[Eugene]

Who are we talking about? Trevor?

[Trevor Noah]

Who are we talking about? Who are we talking about? Oh, I'm not going to engage in your shit sternness at all in a cup at.

[Eugene]

Not even in a plastic cup at all. All shit is staring in a plastic cup at. Not even ceramic at all. Plastic cup. No chance with a wooden spoon.

[John Oliver]

Zero.

[Eugene]

Not even.

[Trevor Noah]

Nada.

[John Oliver]

Are you trying to bring Trevor into a high profile NBA?

[Trevor Noah]

This guy's trying to bring me into beefs. That's what Eugene tries to do.

[John Oliver]

He's trying to suck him all the way into.

[Trevor Noah]

This guy's trying to bring me into beef.

[Eugene]

I don't like the way you said suck him.

[Trevor Noah]

It was suck him into.

[John Oliver]

Into.

[Eugene]

Yeah, but that's what stuck out because say it again.

[John Oliver]

Suck him.

[Trevor Noah]

Your suck him is strong.

[John Oliver]

I'm not gonna lie that it felt. That felt. It felt like there was suction there.

[Trevor Noah]

That felt like him is strong. I will say that.

[Eugene]

And after he said that, I just said hard and straight out the kitchen.

[John Oliver]

Mama. What a song, by the way.

[Trevor Noah]

By the way, is Daniel Kidston gonna come do more comedy on this?

[John Oliver]

Like, I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. I mean, he's the greatest.

[Eugene]

That's one of your favorite comedians. I heard his name from you for the first time. He. He's.

[Trevor Noah]

You guys are very close friends.

[John Oliver]

He's my best man at my wedding.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, he's my best friend. So you know what's funny is like I feel like you and Daniel have a relationship. Like me and Eugene where we have a relationship. This is what I'm talking about. See, I love it. See what you just did there? So, like, it's where. Where two people meet. You're similar, but you're not the same. You have like a comedic undercurrent that connects you. When I met Daniel, I felt like I knew him because of you.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Daniel Kitson is, in my opinion, the greatest comedian that most people do not know. But if you know comedy, he has to be in like your top five.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, he's very good. Where did you see him?

[Trevor Noah]

Everywhere I could. Everywhere I could. Australia.

[John Oliver]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Melbourne.

[Eugene]

The Guy who loves late shows.

[Trevor Noah]

He.

[John Oliver]

He.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But again, the myth around him is people, I don't know if you've heard any of these people be like, oh, the Daniel Kitson, he does shows at 1201 or 1159. Because he likes how the towel that. Yeah. And you're like, wait. They're like, he does a show at 12:03 midnight. And you're like, and I heard all these myths about him. Or he only does a show at 1pm because he wants real comedy fan. And then I met him and I was like, yo, man, I have to ask you about some of these myths. I'm sorry. And then Daniel was just like. He's like, oh, I put the show on at 12:03, because then it's the next day. Otherwise, if you put it on at midnight, it screws up most booking systems. So he's like, that's why I did that.

[John Oliver]

There's much more practical thing. I think it's a bit of a hangover from the fact that when he won the Perrier Award. Award, you know, the big award in. In Edinburgh, I think that. That.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it is.

[John Oliver]

That's right. You see. Yeah. It's the Ballon d' or of comedy.

[Eugene]

Right.

[John Oliver]

And that, I imagine you think you have to pay for it somehow. Is that right?

[Eugene]

Yep.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

If Gostick has their way.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

When.

[John Oliver]

When he won that, all of a sudden he was finding there were people coming to his shows that he didn't necessarily want there.

[Eugene]

Oh, he didn't want the commercial success.

[John Oliver]

He did. No. Yeah, he wanted. He wanted to do his show the way he wanted to do it. He didn't want people there who he didn't want in his audience.

[Trevor Noah]

This makes complete sense.

[John Oliver]

And so he needed to get rid of some of that by making it more difficult for them to watch it than it necessarily needed to be to come. So it was a filtering system and it worked because the Perrier back then was such a gravitational force as an award, all of a sudden, you were plunged into a certain kind of career and he did not want that. So that came with a need to do things his own way.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But the fact that he chose that, that's what I feel like with you, in some ways is like, you. No, you have this choice, though. No, but you have this thing where. How can I put it? So some people are famous because of what they do and they love that Fame.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. And then there are other people who have jobs that are just attached to fame, and if they could, they would slice that out of their lives. That's how I feel about you. Like, you, you have a very, like, Even if, even if you win an award, you have a very.

[John Oliver]

Like, there's like a. I cannot wait to get off because it's the weirdest place to be and it's not a funny place to be. So I cannot wait. The only thing I like is when they play you off. I love the feeling of being played off an award ceremony. So the music, I love it so much. The thing that I just. It's just, it's such an absurd situation to have to be interrupted by an orchestra.

[Trevor Noah]

It's just.

[John Oliver]

I love it.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, but help me, help me understand that. What, what is it about? Because everyone has a different reason. That's why I'm interested. What is it about the fame or the spotlight or the anything that just like makes you just a little even now look at your body.

[John Oliver]

I don't know. I don't like it. It's not. I don't like. I. I'm very conscious of the fact that because. Because our show has become well known. I am the face of that show.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

And so there are things that you can do with that in terms of protecting your ability to say what you want, to not conform to a corporation who to go, yeah, you can do whatever you want. So though the value of it is extreme there, that's the utility of fame, as you put it, is that you can do what you want in your show. Everything else around is not for me. I don't have any kind of real connection to it at all.

[Eugene]

That's the comics curse. Right. You want people to love you, but you want them to love you at your own terms or you want them.

[Trevor Noah]

To love what you do. I would even say, yeah, but they.

[Eugene]

Have to love you because there's nothing else to distract them from you.

[John Oliver]

But it feels like it's two different. I was talking to this little girl in my. My kids, my kids class. She was, she was, she was. She's at my kids school and she was. I think that would. At the start of a season, we had like pictures, we had posters on the subway. And so she was very confused about like, why is there a picture of you on the subway?

[Trevor Noah]

That's hilarious.

[John Oliver]

And so I was trying to explain to her, oh, I just do. I just do a show. And so they're trying to advertise that show and that she went, I don't know what that means. Oh, I just, I do a TV show. And so we need people to know about it. And so then she said, are you famous? Went, I don't think I'm famous. Cause you're asking me this question. So I don't think I'm. I don't like the people that watch. Some people watch the show. Most people don't. So those people do know me. No one else knows. And you know, you don't need to. You know me, right? You know me as Marzi's dad. So there's nothing. You don't need to worry about this. And she said, I'm not worried about this at all.

[Eugene]

I'm worried about Marz.

[John Oliver]

She's like, I don't know what's happening to you right now. I just asked, why is there a picture you're having an existential crisis in front of you. I'm sick. Six years old. How am I the mature presence here? I just asked.

[Eugene]

Have you had the fame conversation with your kids? Do your kids know how famous you are?

[John Oliver]

No, initially.

[Eugene]

How old are you kids?

[John Oliver]

Initially, I didn't. They're 10 and 7 now. Initially, I didn't. Because there's no need to. Right. And so I would. If I just ran these people in the street, Like, I would say, who's that? And I'd say, oh, that's just a friend. Like after. After some of the time, then you realize, hold on, New York, what a friendly city. Everyone says hello, actually, that's not the city that you live in. So then. And I didn't want to lie to them. Right. I didn't want kids at school to know things they didn't. That was the problem when you realize, oh, I think there are other kids that know that.

[Eugene]

I figured it out.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. And you feel the only ones who don't. Yeah. Something's been kept from you. I didn't want that to be the case. So I kind of explained to them as best I could. They came to see one show. The one thing that I thought that would be fun for them to see was when we were messing with that New Zealand bird of the year contest.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[John Oliver]

Did you ever see about that? I was dressed up like the putekiteki. So I'm like, in this huge, colorful bird.

[Eugene]

Is this how you chose your kids to see you? Yes.

[John Oliver]

This is the only time they've been to my work. I'm dressed like a giant, colorful bird. And then I realize that in their heads, understandably, they think that's happening every week. They think I'm Big Bird.

[Eugene]

Suit is in your star, in a uniform.

[John Oliver]

Six months later, like, I'M going to work. And he said, how have you got the bird costume on? What bird costume? Oh, shit. Yeah. That was just a one off. I just wear a suit. Yeah, but it's hard. It's impossible for a kid to understand because it's not. It's. It's important for them to, like, know what you're doing. Yeah, but the more you describe it, the worse it sounds.

[Trevor Noah]

It's just, it's, it's, it's. Yeah, it's weird. But I, I found if you explain it to kids, like using class dynamics, they get it.

[John Oliver]

Huh.

[Trevor Noah]

Because they have their pictures up on walls. People know the class kept. And people do you get what I'm saying? Then they sort of. What did you tell your daughter? What did you.

[Eugene]

Yeah, which daughters?

[John Oliver]

Is.

[Eugene]

It the daughter for the show that we're gonna fictitiously. Are they twins?

[John Oliver]

Which daughter is this? I didn't. I haven't acknowledged that and you know that you're bringing that up. You're returning fire because of that NBA thing. Oh, man. Now you're trying to suck me into some shit.

[Trevor Noah]

This guy. Daughter.

[Eugene]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

What did you. What did you say?

[Eugene]

I think I didn't have to say much because we spent so much time together. Obviously, when people recognize you, they would recognize you from the thing that you do. So my thing was always denying it and say we look alike. And she'll be like, no, it's him.

[John Oliver]

Oh.

[Trevor Noah]

So when people will be like, Eugene.

[Eugene]

Yeah. Don't lie.

[John Oliver]

How do you describe stand up?

[Eugene]

I don't.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. All I said was they came to. When I was down at last December, the Kennedy Center. So they, I came and I said, this is where I'm gonna go and do my talk. I just said, like, I'm just gonna stand and talk into this microphone. Because that makes sense because it makes a lot of. They talk.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they talk in front of the class.

[John Oliver]

Exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

So I said, I'm just gonna be doing like.

[Eugene]

I think that just confuses them even more. I. I think your daughter relates more to your television work than your stand up work, because that's, that's the real thing. There's more people that she sees on television than she'll ever see doing stand up. So stand up will never be a thing. It's a thing that you.

[Trevor Noah]

Until they're old enough, then it's.

[Eugene]

Yes, but then they'll understand that stand up is the thing that got you the TV job.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. That's why I don't say it's stand up. I say it's just talking because you can. They can understand the concept of talking in front of a classroom. Makes sense. You stand on a chair and you talk to people and they just don't have to.

[Eugene]

Their teacher stands there and talks and he's poor. So. So they. The jig is up. So you think I say remix to Ignition.

[John Oliver]

I told that song is sticky.

[Trevor Noah]

It. No, it is. It really is.

[John Oliver]

That is about as catchy bounce music.

[Trevor Noah]

Bounce, bounce, bounce. No, that. That thing is just like no mama.

[John Oliver]

Rolling that body got every man.

[Trevor Noah]

Look at this, look at this.

[Eugene]

I'm not so bored.

[John Oliver]

I'm drunk. It's the freaking weekend, baby.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm about to have me some fun anyway.

[John Oliver]

He's a terrible human being.

[Trevor Noah]

You have to say that.

[John Oliver]

You have to say.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I'd love to know what you think are the biggest existential crises that like America, the world is facing now.

[Eugene]

Are you ready to take a sip?

[John Oliver]

I really hope that is a question you just ask all your guests.

[Trevor Noah]

No, it's just you.

[John Oliver]

Like if you could have one meal for the rest of your life. Yeah, that kind of shit.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, just you.

[John Oliver]

Here's the little ask. What's the biggest existential. Trevor, just say you want us to go.

[Trevor Noah]

I'll tell you. Okay. Can I tell you why? Can I tell you why? I'll tell you why. So I'll ask you the question. Because I remember when I was fully immersed in the Daily show, my worldview was shaped in many ways by everything I was reading in and around that space. Do you get what I'm saying? So if you asked me at that time, I think I would have said something politics related, etc. Etc. You get what I'm saying? Because I was so fully engulfed by this world. Yeah, fully, fully, fully. If you ask me now because I spend most of my fun time reading about like monopolies and corporations. I'll actually say that's the thing. And you know, that's about me. That. No, that is like my fun time.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Reading finance, it's that pickleball and then football.

[John Oliver]

You should be doing pickleball for another 35 years, shouldn't you? You play pickleball now?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I love it.

[Eugene]

I used to play pickleball.

[John Oliver]

Really?

[Trevor Noah]

I love it.

[Eugene]

He lives there.

[Trevor Noah]

It's fantastic.

[Eugene]

One day dragged me there for four hours.

[Trevor Noah]

Only one day. I've dragged you there many days, my friend. Many. You know what I love about you though is you don't seem to learn the lesson. I really love this about Eugene. The first time he Came along. He was standing on the side and he was. I watched him at some point. The first five minutes, he was like, okay. And then I saw him.

[John Oliver]

Look you.

[Trevor Noah]

You almost look like a parent who had brought their child to an activity and then they were like, how long do I have to stay?

[Eugene]

I don't know. That long. I thought decent people, I thought they play a match and then they go home.

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[Eugene]

Remember, all organized sport has a time limit. Oh, yeah. You know, football has 90 minutes. So I was like, if I. Oh.

[Trevor Noah]

No, you're not wrong. No, I do like four hours.

[Eugene]

And he's the Kaiser of.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I do like four hours.

[Eugene]

He shouts orders, let us play.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, I just think I'm motivational.

[Eugene]

Cleaners are coming in, security guards, everyone grabs a package.

[Trevor Noah]

We just have fun, Joe. Yeah, I have a good time.

[Eugene]

Have you played pickleball, John?

[John Oliver]

I haven't played people.

[Trevor Noah]

Have you?

[John Oliver]

I did play pickleball once.

[Trevor Noah]

Did you?

[John Oliver]

I thought it was fine.

[Eugene]

Fine?

[John Oliver]

Yeah, I thought it's fine.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it is fine. It's fine. And then the more you get into it.

[John Oliver]

But it doesn't do to me what it does to other people. Taking heroin and going, this takes the edge off. Football, I love.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you still play football?

[John Oliver]

Football? Yeah, we used to play Tuesday. Every. Every. I don't play now. There's no time now. Just family and work. I just don't have time now. But I. That.

[Trevor Noah]

Not even like to squeeze in like an hour. No, nothing.

[John Oliver]

I have. No, nothing.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man. I thought it would be like knees or something. No, I stopped because of knees.

[John Oliver]

Just the concept of knees.

[Trevor Noah]

Just knees in general. I was seeing too many of them. No. I would go home and have these thoughts about knees.

[John Oliver]

Just like knees everywhere.

[Trevor Noah]

Knee just. I can't.

[John Oliver]

There's just 22 of them bearing down.

[Trevor Noah]

It was. No, no. Especially running on AstroTurf. It killed me. I just. I was like, I can't do this. I played at Pier 40.

[John Oliver]

Oh, nice.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, we'd play like a midnight game and then we'd go. That was the hardest episode of the Daily show every week because we would finish a game at midnight, 1:00am oh, yeah. And then 8:00am you're in the office trying to concentrate on what Mitch McConnell is saying.

[John Oliver]

He just got knees.

[Trevor Noah]

Just knees in your head. That's all I have. No, so. So, yeah, you. I've brought him along a few times. Yeah. And. But the reason I'm saying, yeah, hour four. You're not wrong. I did take it too far that day. You're not wrong. And I did apologize at the time.

[Eugene]

Like you're on steroids.

[Trevor Noah]

But I even said everyone was tired. I even said to you, I'm sorry. Did I not say I'm sorry?

[Eugene]

I did.

[Trevor Noah]

From the court.

[Eugene]

I couldn't take it seriously.

[Trevor Noah]

I did say I'm sorry from the court. I said, eugene, I'm sorry. We took it too far. I did apologize.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

But going back, what I'm saying is your worldview. I find for anyone who spends a lot of time consuming information in certain spaces or spheres, they often have a different perspective on what they think is most dangerous for the world in that moment. You know what I mean? And so I'm wondering, because you're reading everything, you're engaging, you're doing research, you know what I mean? You're consuming so much.

[John Oliver]

I think my answer might be related to that. So rather than. Because obviously mergers are a constant threat and the most immediate one is always the most immediate threat. Like land disputes around the world are everything from horrific in the medium term to systemic in the long term. I think in terms of a threat being existential, one of the biggest problems right now is the kind of information that is available to you to get. That feels to me like an existential threat because people are so siloed now and are so able to traffic in low grade information. One of the big things that I've learned by doing our show is that there is a huge amount of utility in having access to experts in the field that researchers will speak to.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay.

[John Oliver]

And you can get good primary source information. There is so much trash being passed around and confidently passed around. I worry about that. It's hard to have a conversation about anything when the information about that thing is so poor. That is my concern. Feels like in the past, past people just didn't know about certain things. Now they can be confidently wrong about something, which I actually think is more dangerous. So that is my. I guess that is what would come to mind in terms of an existential threat. I just, I worry about our information funnels right now.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. The analogy I used to use with some people is I'd say it would be the equivalent of people watching sports, whatever sport you want and you have opposing teams or you choose your teams. People already disagree on the game. That should have been a foul. That shouldn't have been a foul. But imagine if they were watching two different games.

[John Oliver]

Yes, right.

[Trevor Noah]

How would you even.

[John Oliver]

That's the problem.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you know what I mean? Now we're not even watching the same problem. And we're supposed to live in the same stadium, but we're literally not watching the same game.

[John Oliver]

That's the thing. So then any kind of shorthand of, oh, we just need to come together, any of that, like Joe Biden, this is not who we are. You are so far off addressing the central problem here that this is functionally useless.

[Trevor Noah]

What would you change?

[John Oliver]

I don't know. It feels like it's something that societally is going to have to change. There's going to have to be a premium put on good information.

[Trevor Noah]

So where do you get your information?

[John Oliver]

Well, again, like that, that's where we are very lucky. And this is not scalable. I have a staff who can go out and speak to experts for weeks, produce a packet of good information. They can update. They can, they can, they can find out, is this data still current? So often you're passing around data in maybe in good faith. Doesn't apply anymore. You don't know.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you don't know that he's been updated. Yeah, it's very difficult that.

[John Oliver]

So I think that that kind of information literacy is something I think people are going to have to get better understanding. I, it may be that this generation of kids are going to be better, I hope are gonna be better at seeing through the garbage than older people are now.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you think AI makes it better or worse?

[John Oliver]

I mean, we'll see, we'll see. It imminently seems like it's making things significantly worse, but I hope that long term there are ways to fix that. But yeah, again, the kind of unearned confidence of these billionaire AI cowboys is not inspiring.

[Eugene]

The unearned confidence.

[John Oliver]

Oh, go.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, it is pretty. I mean, that's a perfect way to describe it because they approach a situation that they have never been in with the confidence of someone who has lived there for a century. They make it seem like they exist in the future, that they're preaching and they're selling it to us as if it's already concluded in a good way.

[John Oliver]

Or just making decisions on a series of best case scenarios.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, that's.

[John Oliver]

That feels like fatally problematic. I think there was a story about Kumail Nanjani when he was doing that show Silicon Valley. They would go up to Silicon Valley and walk around and into these companies, these startup companies, and he would ask them kind of, yeah, what though? If how could this be used for fascism just in general? And he would see them go, oh yeah, we don't really think about that here. Like, oh, you don't? That's interesting. Feels like Something you might want to think about. How could your product be used to hurt people? That might be part of the decision process. You want to fold in to all of this.

[Trevor Noah]

There's a book I read about. Have you read the book Careless People? I think it is. It's a book written by this woman from New Zealand who basically started working at Facebook as a sort of like international liaison, like their diplomat. And she talks about how even when Facebook was starting to become the de facto social media platform around the world, they did not think they needed to care about how their platform could be used. Like, they were just like, no, no, no, that's not our. That's not us. We have nothing to do with that.

[John Oliver]

That is the most obvious example. Bring the world together. Bring to it. Let's share information. Next thing you know, what's happening in Myanmar. Oh, that can't be anything to do with us. Oh, it's very much to do with you. You've just thrown gasoline over what was happening.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

So now what are you going to do about it? Oh, well, you know, we're going to learn. Are you? Or is that just something you could say you're going to do? Yeah, that's. It's. Yeah, it's a. That. That is what I'm concerned about.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you keep your kids off social media and everything?

[John Oliver]

Absolutely.

[Trevor Noah]

Do they have phones?

[John Oliver]

No.

[Eugene]

How do you.

[Trevor Noah]

How do you deal with this?

[John Oliver]

Well, it's easier now. They're 10 and 7, right. So they're not really going anywhere that I'm not as well. That's why I don't play football anymore. Prison warden took over and. But is it amazing how often now, even my seven year old, he basically treats me like Siri. He'll just say, look it up. Type it in. Type it in.

[Eugene]

You asked for that job.

[John Oliver]

That's right.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I love?

[John Oliver]

Pete Alonso. Type it in.

[Eugene]

What I also like about this.

[John Oliver]

Hey, Siri. Hey, Dada. Hey, Dada. Hey, Dada.

[Trevor Noah]

What I also like about this, though, is I'm assuming she has an American accent.

[John Oliver]

Oh, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So you're like her English butler.

[John Oliver]

Essentially it is, you know what is odd?

[Eugene]

Or her kidnapper in public. You never, if you don't have the same accent as your child, that is the thin liner.

[John Oliver]

It's the craziest thing, though, because it's the stupidest thing that I'd never considered was that it didn't occur to me that they would not. When you grow the idea of having kids, you always think they'll sound like you so it is odd the first time it hits your ear and they're around for a while, not speaking. Right. So it feels like, oh, this is. There's going to be a. Hello, how you doing? Oh, nice to see you. That's coming out one day, Chipping Norton all the way. Yeah. And then the first time you came, catch them saying, hey, how's it going? Nice to see. Or what? You know what any kind of, like, American are?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

You go, oh, oh, oh, yeah, of course. That makes sense. You're gonna sound like the people that you're around all the time, but.

[Trevor Noah]

And even better for them is they've got the immigrant dad. Because you realize for them, yeah. In your head you're normal. Right. For the most part, in your head, you're normal. In their world, when they grow up, they're gonna be American kids and they're gonna be like, oh, yeah. Oh, my God, I remember my dad always be like, oh, are you going to put that away? Are you going to put that.

[Eugene]

Like, you are Peppa Pig's grandfather.

[John Oliver]

That is when you really realize I've got an American accent is when they do a shift, when they're doing an impression of me.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

You know how dad is. He's all, oh, you gotta put your toys away. Like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. You're getting a little confident with that accent. It's okay when I do that voice. It's not. Don't give me the Dick Van Dyke version of this.

[Trevor Noah]

Do they. Do they get to go back to England? Do they spend time there?

[John Oliver]

Yes, they love it there. So. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

How long do they spend? Like, how will you, like, do the thing of shipping them off for, like, six weeks, or.

[John Oliver]

No, we haven't done that yet.

[Eugene]

South African thing.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I think a lot of people do that. A lot of people around the world.

[John Oliver]

Like, ship off kids for six weeks.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Like the country where they come from, people. Yeah, People come from another country. Doesn't matter where. They'll be like, oh, my kids are going to Colombia for six weeks or so. They're going to go back to South Africa for six. They're going to go back to England for, like, the summer period.

[Eugene]

What are they hoping it's going to do?

[John Oliver]

Okay, summer's so long here.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes. That's the thing.

[John Oliver]

Because we have, like, in our summer holidays in England were, like, five weeks, five and a half weeks in total. Here, it's like, months. Months and months. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

So people will send their kids, if they come from a place, and they can send their Kids back, they'll just be like, oh, the kids are back in wherever. My friends, some of my friends are like, oh, the kids go to Trinidad. And they go there for like months in the summer holidays.

[John Oliver]

Oh yeah, no, then.

[Trevor Noah]

And it just gives them back their, you know. So I was wondering, if you do.

[Eugene]

That, what does it give them back?

[Trevor Noah]

You know, their vibe. You know what this is?

[Eugene]

Gyroscope.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what this is? Come on, Eugene. So what's the longest they've gone?

[John Oliver]

It's only been like 10 days. It's just taking them back for a week, walking them around. But I do like, I like, I like walking them. Well, yeah, it is walking them around though, because you want to see them in the places you work and they don't care much. No, but it was like the thing that was most meaningful to me was especially cause of the pandemic, right, where they didn't travel as little kids, they didn't go much. So last summer I took them back. I remember taking them to Dan's house, to Kitson's house. And there was something very meaningful to me of seeing them on the stairs outside his house, on the couch where we would play FIFA. And to see them sitting in that place in his world, that really made me feel like, you know, as an immigrant know you, you're fractured, right? There are little parts of your life everywhere. So when you, when some of those things combine, it can really give you a sense of, oh, this makes sense. Look.

[Trevor Noah]

That is so beautiful. Do they play FIFA?

[John Oliver]

No, they haven't done yet.

[Eugene]

They don't even own.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but you might have a console. What do you mean?

[John Oliver]

Yeah, they don't have a console. Do they support Liverpool? They absolutely support Liverpool. That is one thing that is non negotiable.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, so you haven't given them.

[John Oliver]

They can choose every. No, they can choose everything. I wasn't given a choice. My dad said you we support Liverpool. Okay, that's fine.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm always torn on this. I feel like some, some, I feel like parents maybe should give their kid an option to say, hey, this is the team I support. I'm gonna let you watch other teams and then you decide if you also want to support this team.

[John Oliver]

I have to say I, I, I technically gave him a baseball team option, but I think I did like thumb the scale. I just said, do you want to support the Mets?

[Eugene]

Mets.

[John Oliver]

The New York Mets. I want to spot the vet. There you go. Great. We got it, we got it. So you technically had a choice. You had a choice.

[Trevor Noah]

We'll be right back after the short break.

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[Trevor Noah]

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[John Oliver]

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[Trevor Noah]

How much of a Liverpool fan do you think you are? Like, how much.

[John Oliver]

How many.

[Trevor Noah]

How many of your. Of your, like, your thinking hours do you think of?

[John Oliver]

Consumed thinking hours is such a good way to put that. Because, you know, the honest answer to that is like, it's, you know, whenever your mind is at rest, it's going there. So you can really rack up the hours. Then if you're thinking about happy thoughts, sad thoughts, anxious thoughts, like right now I'm thinking about Mo going to Afcon and how he's gonna do over there.

[Eugene]

You wish him well?

[John Oliver]

I do wish him well. Of course I wish him well. Yeah, I wish.

[Trevor Noah]

I also wish he didn't have to go. Because now I feel like he just got back to a good place.

[Eugene]

You wish he doesn't go and represent the continent that he comes from.

[Trevor Noah]

Don't you put that. You see you trying to stop. You see you and the beef. You see you. You see you. Nah.

[John Oliver]

Wait.

[Trevor Noah]

Is this because I took you to pickleball? Just say it, Eugene. Don't. Don't. Don't.

[Eugene]

Four Hour marathon.

[John Oliver]

Is that. No, no. Around the fourth hour.

[Trevor Noah]

You know why?

[John Oliver]

Because we just got back to declare war on Egypt.

[Trevor Noah]

No, we just. We just got back to. I wish the timing was different because we. We just got like you. It felt like, oh, him, his smile, the team, the coach, the win. We needed it.

[Eugene]

But maybe. Doesn't he need to go home to refresh and come back happier?

[Trevor Noah]

I don't know if Afcon refreshes you.

[Eugene]

Here's my question, John.

[Trevor Noah]

Can I ask on a selfish level? Wait, before you go.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Can you do an episode on Manchester City?

[John Oliver]

What about the fact it's a beautiful team built on blood money?

[Eugene]

My man. Have you heard about Harold selling Michael Jackson?

[John Oliver]

Retract.

[Trevor Noah]

No. What were you going to ask him?

[Eugene]

No, no. I was going to say, whenever I watch people who love football, especially top level football, I'm thinking to myself, in that field, there's a bunch of foreigners, right, with their lives, who've left their homes, who get incentivized very well to play for this team, for our amusement. And the sponsors, obviously, payback. But life happens. They get injuries, they move on. The most other thing happens. So in all this time of being a fan of an individual inside a team institution, you've never thought they'll have to one day be put to pasture or move on to some other things?

[John Oliver]

No, I think, you know, it's ephemeral, right? Which is why you try and enjoy it so much when it's happening. You don't expect victory or pleasure from football. You kind of know you're. It's a much more complicated relationship. And you know that you should take the joy when you get it, and you should, you know, absorb the stress, the anxiety and the misery when it comes. You know that even with Mo, you know, it's. We loved this guy, Jurgen Klopp, right?

[Trevor Noah]

The coach.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. It was clear that was never gonna last forever. That was not gonna be like a long Alex Ferguson run. He's always just done these 10 years. One of the many, many ways in which he's a uni is you would have these unique, intense periods with the club. So you knew it was not gonna be forever, which is why it meant every second of it meant so much. Cause you know it's gonna come to a close. And I think I felt the same with Mo. You know, it's. When you know that something's not gonna last forever. All you want is the best possible ending for the thing that's meant so much to you, and you want that for him as well, well, he deserves a good ending to Liverpool whenever that ending is. And it shouldn't be now because this would not be one.

[Eugene]

What would a good ending look like for. Because I like, I love Mosal. I love his new haircut, I love his fade. I think he's evolved quite well with it. So I'm like, okay, this man changed his hairstyle. He's changed many people's lives. How would you like his career to end?

[John Oliver]

You led with, you led with that. With Mo Salah. You let, you led with his. He changed his haircut. He changed so many lives.

[Eugene]

First for him.

[John Oliver]

What an amazing thing.

[Trevor Noah]

Sure.

[Eugene]

First for him, then for you all. You say murals are being changed right now. In Egypt he was single handedly changed.

[John Oliver]

How Muslims were viewed. Yeah, he changed his hair that one time. And I think at the end of the day that's what we all remember. It was big and then it was tight. Anyway, Mo, thanks for everything.

[Trevor Noah]

That literally sounds like how Trump would describe it. If you ask Trump, if you ask because you know, he never admits that he doesn't know anything. So if you said President Trump, what do you think about the most high thing? Be like, you know, Mo Salah did a lot of things. A lot of things. Big guy did a lot of things. Had the hair. Changed the hair. Changed the hair.

[John Oliver]

I thought it was big.

[Trevor Noah]

Changed a lot of lives. A lot of lives changed the hair. Hair was big, then it became small. Then it became small. I love it. Good guy.

[Eugene]

Artists are losing their minds.

[John Oliver]

Having to seem like he's going bald. One trip to Turkey. We all know what he did. We all know what he did.

[Eugene]

What would that, what would that happen? Cuz I watched the game over the weekend where he did that assist and then the goal went in and then my friends were happy. Yes, they were all jubilant and I was happy with them because I'm that kind of guy, you know, I share in my friend's pleasure. But then when you say you want an ending for him, that's befitting.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, but that was what I was worried about without that game.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

I was worried that we were hurtling to the opposite of that. We were hurtling towards an ugly ending that was in no way representative of everything that he's done for that club and for his.

[Eugene]

And him not starting the game obviously made it worse.

[Trevor Noah]

Right?

[John Oliver]

It made it much worse because I think he felt like he had been snubbed, that he was not his work, what he had done.

[Eugene]

His contribution.

[John Oliver]

His contribution follically and with football Was not. Was not being respected. I don't know that he was entirely wrong about that to be. He wasn't playing particularly well, but I think they did. It's not wrong to infer a level of disrespect from it. So, yeah, I was desperate for that situation to be handled and diffused because the idea of it ending that way would have hurt. I think, lastingly. He is a singular figure. And it feels like generally statues should not be built for footballers. Not just because they can be embarrassingly bad, like that one Ronaldo won, but. But because you.

[Eugene]

I even know that one where he had a stroke.

[John Oliver]

They are overpraised in so many ways. But what Mo has done transcends football. How he carries himself as a human being transcends football. And I just didn't want it to end badly, and I hope it doesn't now.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I would say it like this.

[John Oliver]

It's.

[Trevor Noah]

Whether it's sports or not, just think about the moment you get to say goodbye to the thing that you were part of and the thing that you are part of turning into a success. Whether you're at your office and you're leaving, it's nice to be able to have the cake, have everyone come around, say goodbye, say the Versus. People come in on Monday and you're just not there. What happened? Yeah, gone. Where's the desk?

[John Oliver]

Gone.

[Trevor Noah]

That's not an ending, you know, that's what it felt like it was about to be, by the way.

[John Oliver]

And that felt wrong. That felt like there was gonna be. There were gonna be hard questions to answer, if that was the way.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, no, it wasn't gonna be because.

[John Oliver]

He did definitely deserve much more than that. I actually, I, I. He was here in New York for the time 100. Wait, you were there that night?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I was.

[Eugene]

Yeah, I was.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I was there. Yes, he was there.

[John Oliver]

He had a game, like, on Tuesday. He was just in for the night.

[Trevor Noah]

Wait, we. Cause we. When did we. We went to a game. I remember the game that we went to. Do you remember?

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

And we're standing backstage.

[John Oliver]

Oh, yeah.

[Eugene]

Oh, that was the memories of flooding.

[John Oliver]

Back, you know, it was because I was. It was my one time that I was. I didn't have any. I have nothing to say to Joachen Klopp. I just wanted to see him. Then big Verge, he walks out, he sees Trevor says. Trevor looks at me and he says, all right, Zazu. I went, excuse me, excuse me, Verge. Do you. Do you. Did you know that I'm the news asu or do you think I'm Rowan Atkinson? I'll take either, by the way. I'm happy with either. When I was with Mo at the time 100, I remember I was trying to say to him what he meant to me, stumbling my way through it, and he's, like, listening in his patient way, and then he said, do you know Khaleesi?

[Trevor Noah]

What.

[Eugene]

Mother of dragons?

[John Oliver]

Yeah. I said, oh, my goodness. Yeah. And he said, khaleesi's over there. Can you please introduce me to Khaleesi?

[Eugene]

Oh, man.

[John Oliver]

No.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, man.

[John Oliver]

If that's. If that's what you want, then I will give that to you. That will be my gift to you.

[Trevor Noah]

What did you.

[John Oliver]

Mo. Khaleesi, mother of Dragons. Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons. Mo.

[Trevor Noah]

I genuinely love how in life we all have. Do you know what I mean? You're there going, nothing could be bigger than Mo Salah in this room.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

Yes. Oh, my God.

[Trevor Noah]

And Mo Salah's going, I hear you.

[John Oliver]

British man, but I. I hear you. I tolerate you.

[Trevor Noah]

But do you know Khaleesi? Yeah, because it goes to your point.

[Eugene]

Because I want to be the stepfather of dragons.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But also, in. In my world, I'm going to. I can only assume that the games are not to him, what the games are to us.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, of course.

[Trevor Noah]

So when you like what you mean to me and what you. Yeah, I'm sure someone has done that to you as well. They've come up and be like, hey, John, can I just say, everything you've done in my life and what. And now.

[Eugene]

What have I done?

[Trevor Noah]

And now you're just standing in a suit.

[John Oliver]

I look at them and say, do you know Paulie Wallace?

[Trevor Noah]

And they're just like, you know, how many seasons have you been running now? How many years has it been?

[John Oliver]

13.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you see yourself going, I would. What would you like your ending to be?

[John Oliver]

I'll go to the Saudi League, probably. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

It feels like there's a Saudi League for comedians now. So I'll go there.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

I tell you how amazing that would be is just seeing you there, pop up randomly one day, just probably full on, come out and just be like, riyadh, let's talk about the best city in the world. It's just like, john, what happened?

[John Oliver]

They got to you. They got to you.

[Trevor Noah]

Ah, man.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, but it.

[Trevor Noah]

It. Cause it must be. I don't. I don't know what this is like from your side. I remember, for me, in many ways, I think I, I, I felt the feeling that you were talking about of, of impermanence. Always with the Daily show, because in my head it was always Jon Stewart's show.

[John Oliver]

Huh, that makes sense.

[Trevor Noah]

Does it make sense? I was always like, I know who, whose car this is.

[John Oliver]

Totally agree.

[Trevor Noah]

I just know how to drive it.

[John Oliver]

Well. Yep.

[Trevor Noah]

You know what I mean?

[Eugene]

And living in your parents house completely.

[Trevor Noah]

It is always your parents house. But I was like, yeah, yeah. And everyone's like, oh, it's, it's, you've made it yours. I was like, no, no, I've put some of my furniture, but this is my parents house. Yes. In my brain, you know, so, and because, because John was my mentor, you know, as I call him, my Jewish Yoda, it never felt like it was in his house. So I'd go like, hey, John. I remember once when I even asked him, I was like, hey, how did the guest interview? It's so short. What are you trying to do there? And he said, oh, fill five minutes.

[John Oliver]

Oh God, that's all he said.

[Trevor Noah]

I was like, oh. Cause like I'm really struggling to get to the crux of somebody in this like four, five minute segment. What are you trying to do there? And he was like, oh, I was trying to fill five minutes.

[John Oliver]

I could not, not do those things. That was the one part of that job I could never do. It was talk to someone I had no interest in whatsoever. So it was the actors was the problem for me.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you struggle with that.

[John Oliver]

Oh man, that was tough.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you struggle with that.

[John Oliver]

It was, I just, I ran out of things to say so quickly. I remember once I was talking to one actor and I would look at Spinny sometimes the floor manager, to see like, he would say, how long you got left? And I looked over to him as if, say, are we, are we good? And he said, you've been going one minute, 60 human sections. And I was all out of questions.

[Trevor Noah]

Is that why you just cut guests out of your show?

[John Oliver]

Yeah, it was. We built a big.

[Trevor Noah]

Remember you had a, you had a guest.

[John Oliver]

We had a guest area.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, I remember the guest area. The whole first season you had the guest area.

[John Oliver]

Yes, because it felt like you were supposed to have a guest, have a guest. That was all the only thing I knew about American late night shows.

[Trevor Noah]

You have to have a guest.

[John Oliver]

Anything can happen, but there has to be a guest. There's gotta be someone else. And to their credit, hbo, after our two test shows that we did, just said, you know, you don't have to have someone. You don't have to talk to anyone at the end. If you want, you can just like.

[Trevor Noah]

Was it that bad?

[John Oliver]

One, I think it was that bad. I think it genuinely was that bad. And two, that changed everything for me. Like, oh, I can have that six minutes and we can make the story longer. Oh, I'll do that in a second. Yeah. And so that was the. A thing I'm massively grateful for, for them to kind of save me from myself, because otherwise I absolutely felt like. And you have to have a guest every week.

[Eugene]

But I think you had a good question.

[John Oliver]

I did not want that.

[Eugene]

Yeah, sorry, sorry. John, you had a good question there about how you'd want to see your ending. Because I think.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh, yeah, sorry.

[Eugene]

I have sympathy for sports people. They give so much of their lives. They start very, very early.

[John Oliver]

Yes.

[Eugene]

That's so many milestones. That's all they know for such a long time. I sometimes wish for them that when they want to retire at their. At their prime of their human lives, not of their sporting lives where they can have families.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

They can also be rubbed out of the zeitgeist of. Of that side of their life. And then people will not recognize or know them as much, you know? So don't you wish that for most.

[John Oliver]

It must be so difficult for him to have been so difficult, because it's amazing to think that that part of your. Your whole life has been building this one thing. It's over, and you're 37 years old. That's a young age to be to retire, for everything to have stopped. It's no wonder that there can be big problems in terms of what you want the rest of your life to functionally be. And that the idea of it slipping through your fingers, something that came so naturally to you since you were three years old. And all of a sudden you realize when you are the best in any environment that you're in, to all of a sudden feel it fading away. I cannot imagine how that must feel. I remember talking once to Joe Dumas. Joe, he was a basketball player with the Detroit Pistons. Really fascinating, interesting guy. And he was talking about towards the end of his career, Kobe Bryant started playing. And he was 18, I think, when he started playing, which is young for American sports, not for football, but for American sports. He's young. And he said he could feel him standing off him. And he had been thinking about, oh, when am I going to retire anyway? He could feel the first time you're not playing. Think properly against me. You're Treating me with respect.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

Oh, no, the old guy. I'm done. He said he went back to his wife that night when this is my last year. And he said he was lucky that he had enough money so that he didn't need to play beyond.

[Eugene]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

He had the point.

[John Oliver]

That was that natural end, which I think, again, is not the case with lots of athletes, which is, oh, I need to do three more because I need the money. So that. It must be incredibly difficult. Difficult.

[Trevor Noah]

So could you. Could you see yourself doing anything else?

[John Oliver]

Oh, I don't. I didn't want to do anything else.

[Trevor Noah]

That's what I mean.

[John Oliver]

Goes back to that springboard thing with it.

[Trevor Noah]

But that's what I mean. It's like, could you. That's what I'm saying. Is there anything you could see yourself doing?

[John Oliver]

This is my favorite thing. That's not.

[Trevor Noah]

I'm so happy for you.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. This is what I like.

[Trevor Noah]

I am genuinely so happy for you. No, because what I was saying about the. The temporary thing for me was I never thought it was my forever thing. I thought maybe it would be like two months or three months.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, right.

[Trevor Noah]

Or two years or three years. But I never assumed that it was. And then it's like one thing led to another, one thing led to another, and then it's a pandemic. Then it's like, where you going in a pandemic now? You're staying in the pandemic. But I never assumed that this would be for. But for you to say that. I actually love that for you. There's so few people in the world, I think, who can say I'm doing the thing that is my favorite thing to do in the whole world.

[John Oliver]

It's so much fun. Cause it's. It's, you know, it's the best kind of trouble. It's the trouble that I love so much. And you're doing it collectively, so you're all in trouble together. It's so fun. And it was a real relief during the pandemic. How did you feel during the pandemic? It was really difficult, like, just doing a show at home, keeping everyone employed, and, like, performing jokes to silence. But I worry a lot about where my head would have gone without it. I feel for the standups who all of a sudden, like, I don't know when you can do this outlet. That's a hard, daily rhythm of your life to have taken away during the pandemic.

[Trevor Noah]

How do I. So I think there were stages. The first stage was it was like, the fun and it was the experimentation of it all. It was the. It's exploration.

[Eugene]

School's closed.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, because remember, they said it was gonna be 21 days, and everyone could use 20 days. You remember this? I'll never forget the 21 days.

[John Oliver]

So that was always bullshit.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

In the lead up. In the lead up to this. Right. I remember saying to someone on the technical team at the Daily Show, I said, hey, if we needed to, could we film the show from home? You know? Cause things were starting to shut down. Spain, Italy was shutting down. I was like, could we. And they were like, well, we're not gonna get shut down. That doesn't happen in America. It might happen in Europe. It won't happen in America. I was like, no, no, but could we shoot the show from home? They were like, nah, it's not possible. So I spoke to David Meyer, now director of the Davey show, the Daily show, and I was like, david, do you think we could do this? And he's like, oh, well, I mean, he's like, I guess technically there's like a way we could do this. And he's like, figured out all these things and he's like, I guess we could do it. So we planned out this whole system for what might possibly happen if it were to happen. So when it happened, I was like, oh, wow, we get to test out this thing for 21 days. Let's see how it goes for 21 days. You know what I mean? And then, you know, it was the countdown to 21 days. So I was having a lot of fun. It was just school holidays.

[John Oliver]

Right.

[Trevor Noah]

And then the second phase was, oh.

[Eugene]

Shit, people are dying.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. New York. Remember, there was the body bags in Central Park.

[John Oliver]

And so that was the. That was the thing for me that was difficult because, like, when you're doing stand up, you can at least infer tone from a room.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, you can.

[John Oliver]

And. And it's. It was. I found it very hard to know what kind of jokes are going to feel remotely appropriate or are gonna be wanted when CNN has a death count in the corner of the screen that's going up. Like, there's nothing to cue you.

[Trevor Noah]

No.

[John Oliver]

For tone.

[Trevor Noah]

You aren't part of. And that's.

[John Oliver]

You're just talking to yourself.

[Trevor Noah]

That's one of the key parts of comedy, I find, is being part of the society you're doing the comedy in. There's very little comedy that exists in a vacuum, but you are doing it with people, for people.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

And so you.

[John Oliver]

You.

[Trevor Noah]

This was the one moment where there was One point where I remember sitting there going, is that a joke? Like, literally things would come out of my mouth and I'd be like, I don't know if these are jokes anymore. I genuinely don't know. Some of them are, some of them aren't. I don't know if they're funny. I don't know if they're not funny because there's no. Do you know what I mean? There's nothing to that.

[Eugene]

There's no feedback, there's no interaction.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. So you could just do. We could be like, man, this is so great. I just imagine you being like an old man doing your show.

[Eugene]

Is that what you want?

[John Oliver]

Do I want to be just an old man ranting about systemic problems in America? Yeah, probably. I'll probably be there. And it doesn't have to be on television. It can just be in the corner of an old people's home. I'll just be gathering people over and saying, I need you to listen to what I have to say about the Ugandan election coming up.

[Trevor Noah]

It'll just be like John Oliver in the corner, people getting ready. He's like, catheters. And it's like, oh, boy, here we go. John. He's like, you probably think it's just the thing that you wear inside your pants to help your face, but like, here we go. And it's like, you know, everyone in the lounge is like, ah, what's John? And someone like, shut up. This is interesting. Tell me how the old age homie's screwing me over.

[John Oliver]

John, if that sounds dark, he might do something dumb at the end of this.

[Trevor Noah]

It's gonna bring it up. It's gonna. But you know what? You know what you did, and I hope people are giving you flowers for this. It's not just like the awards. You created like a new thing. You do realize that?

[John Oliver]

I don't know, but I wanted. I was very, very conscious of not doing it because of John's thing. Right?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

We did not want to just do John's thing because that felt like stealing, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

Well, that's. He did that.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

So it feels like our responsibility is to take what we learned with him and develop it.

[Trevor Noah]

Do a different thing.

[John Oliver]

Right. See what you can do with it in a different form.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Oliver]

So, yeah, we were taking very much those part, as we were saying at the start, those like, ingredients and the parts of that process and trying to use that to build something meaningfully different. And at the end of the day, it is still just a guy behind a desk Talking. So I know that.

[Trevor Noah]

I mean, but so is the news.

[John Oliver]

Oh, exactly.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

It's. It's kind. It's graphics over the shoulder because that's kind of the best way for you to see it.

[Trevor Noah]

But that's like. But that's different. Yeah.

[John Oliver]

In general, it felt like what we wanted to build was something very, very different.

[Trevor Noah]

And it is very different.

[John Oliver]

We have done that. Yes.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, it is, it is. And congratulations and thank you. You know, I'm sure I've said this to you before, but thank you. Because, like, I feel like because of you, you know, I was able to do.

[John Oliver]

So, like walked so you could run. Is that what you're about to do? Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

You colonized. So that I could live. Let's put it that way. Thank you, John Oliver.

[John Oliver]

Coming from a South African. You're welcome.

[Trevor Noah]

Thank you, John Oliver, for colonizing late night.

[John Oliver]

So that.

[Trevor Noah]

Why.

[Eugene]

So basically what he said.

[Trevor Noah]

You.

[Eugene]

You bought them the fake vase.

[Trevor Noah]

You brought me. You brought me over on a ship, John, so that I could be in a land that wasn't my own.

[Eugene]

For heralds by.

[John Oliver]

That's right.

[Eugene]

You brought me in.

[Trevor Noah]

And because of you, John, I was able to do well. An African was able to come to America so we could do something. We good?

[Eugene]

We're good. No, the patina is still there.

[Trevor Noah]

No, man, for real. Thank you, John. Thanks for joining us. This is really fun. Oh, by the way, are you gonna go to the World Cup?

[John Oliver]

Oh, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Can you go?

[John Oliver]

I would. I would love to go. I would love to go. I don't know if I will be let in. I mean, I was allowed to go in south.

[Trevor Noah]

What do you mean?

[Eugene]

You went to Rustenburg?

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no.

[John Oliver]

But Rustenburg I went to. That was the. The stupidest part of the World cup was the fact they put games in Rustenburg which didn't function well.

[Eugene]

You know, ironically, that was the first story I did when I started doing Countdown 2010.

[John Oliver]

Really?

[Eugene]

Yeah. When they were starting to build a stadium. Royal Bafukeng Stadium, right in Phuken. Yes, right in the platinum building.

[Trevor Noah]

It didn't have any team.

[John Oliver]

It was just a mining town that didn't. They were just going to get three games. They were going to build this stadium. We got there, the scoreboards didn't work. They were funneling all the fans in through the same entry. Like, oh, you don't want to do that. There's no plan, huh, guys? Absolutely no plan. Everyone had to walk there again. I don't know who was camped there.

[Eugene]

But every team was Assigned England played.

[John Oliver]

The United States there, though. Yeah, yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

There was one team that was camped there.

[Eugene]

Yeah, there was one team that was camped there.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. But this was pre. Or like FIFA beefs is what I mean.

[John Oliver]

Oh, you're right. I mean. Oh, that's right.

[Eugene]

You have FIFA.

[Trevor Noah]

This guy is the king of FIFA. He's done multi series, multiple parts on FIFA.

[Eugene]

I knew there was something about you.

[John Oliver]

If I was Kendrick, FIFA are my Drake.

[Trevor Noah]

Damn.

[Eugene]

So basically, don't kill your vibe.

[Trevor Noah]

No, but I'm being serious. So.

[Eugene]

Because.

[Trevor Noah]

Did you go to Qatar?

[John Oliver]

No, no, I did not go to Qatar.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, so you go.

[John Oliver]

I was not walking into that trap. I talked about shit about feet and the Qatari government.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, no, you would have been fine.

[Eugene]

Can I tell only at the embassy?

[Trevor Noah]

No. Let me tell you something. The best time to go to any country is when the World cup is there.

[John Oliver]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Trevor Noah]

I've only been to Russia once in my life and it was during the World cup because I knew the only thing you should fear more than the Russian government is FIFA. FIFA was going to keep me safe. FIFA. Let me tell you something. Do you remember during the 2010 World cup in South Africa, do you remember what our crime rate was?

[Eugene]

Zero.

[Trevor Noah]

Exactly why FIFA does not remember. They had their own courts. They had mobile police stations.

[John Oliver]

That's right. You have FIFA laws. Certain distance.

[Trevor Noah]

Yo, let me tell you something.

[John Oliver]

Get all those, all those vendors kicked out.

[Trevor Noah]

FIFA does not mess around. So what I'm saying is you're technically. Because they can't have it that something happened to John Oliver.

[Eugene]

Wait, so your beef with them stops you from attending any of their.

[Trevor Noah]

No, I'm asking if it does.

[Eugene]

Okay, yeah.

[John Oliver]

You should have gone to Qatar. I think I should be allowed to attend. I live here.

[Trevor Noah]

No, no, we do.

[John Oliver]

I, I, I, I live here. I think I feel allowed to go.

[Trevor Noah]

You should go to the game.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, I think I should go.

[Eugene]

I want that for you.

[Trevor Noah]

England's going. You should go.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Do you think this is the one?

[John Oliver]

Oh, no, I don't.

[Trevor Noah]

It's coming home.

[John Oliver]

I don't think I will ever think this is the one thing.

[Trevor Noah]

It's coming home.

[John Oliver]

No, I've been hurt too many times.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, but, John, this is one of the best teams in terms of balance.

[John Oliver]

I've heard this.

[Trevor Noah]

In terms of balance.

[John Oliver]

I've heard this every four years, but you are still right. It's true. Every four years. Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

This, this. I'll tell you what happened. As someone who watched it in Qatar, you know what I think Happened in that one game.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Southgate was the coach. Right. I just think his problem was when he got the. When he was 1 nil up, he was more worried about losing a game.

[John Oliver]

You're always worried when England go up too early. When England went 1 nil up against Brazil, you're like, this happened too quickly.

[Trevor Noah]

Story of the empire. They were up too early and then look what happened.

[John Oliver]

That was all we were really guilty of, was doing too much speaking too soon and assorted other things. But, yeah, that's that. I think the problem with England is going to be that it's just we're at the point now where you're right, the team is really well balanced. Tuchel's a really good manager. But we are at the point of the season now where every injury is meaningful. Right. So this is true, what happened from January on.

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

It's all like, oh, we're all going to learn like we do every four years. What's the recovery time for a metatarsal?

[Trevor Noah]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

It's going to be like. I remember on the. When Beckham broke his metatarsal on the news in England, they're like, it is this bone of the foot, like, making people qualify podiatrists, Is it gonna. It'll heal in about three and a half weeks. He'll then be able to put pressure on it, then he can start bending it. So maybe by the quarterfinals he'll be back to full strength.

[Trevor Noah]

Okay, but here's a question I have about this. Why is it that the English media, and this is just my, like, my observation of it. Why does the English media give. Give the English team so much shit and then get so pissed off when they, like, they don't seem to support them.

[John Oliver]

No, no, no.

[Eugene]

On what they seem to expect them to win and when they lose. No, no.

[Trevor Noah]

But more than that, the English media.

[John Oliver]

They expect them to win is a deep level of entitlement, which is that.

[Trevor Noah]

Every World cup, it's coming home.

[John Oliver]

Every World cup is England's, unless you allow another country to take it away from you.

[Eugene]

That's.

[John Oliver]

That is the kind of tone of the British press.

[Trevor Noah]

Right. But then they shit on them so hard. They give them so much shit, they play scared. You would think there's like a moment in time where the press would go, we behind you fully. Don't worry. No. But instead. No. Why do they do that?

[John Oliver]

I don't know. I think there's two things going on. One, I think they are. You can be terrified to make a mistake because you've Seen the examples that people that have been made of people. You've seen effigies of Beckham hanging outside of his family's house. Right. So you do not want to be the one that misses a penalty.

[Eugene]

Yes.

[John Oliver]

You've seen what happens.

[Trevor Noah]

Like, what happens to. Sucker.

[John Oliver]

Sucker. Of course. That's right. Southgate himself, he knew. He knew he missed a penalty.

[Trevor Noah]

He knew.

[John Oliver]

The fact it upends your entire life, that is a monumental amount of responsibility to feel the failure in a moment.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah.

[John Oliver]

Before you can even contemplate success. Plus, back then, those teams were so siloed. The players were so. They did not interact.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah, they didn't at all. That was unfortunate.

[John Oliver]

Very, very interesting now hearing them talk because you see them on podcast talking in a way that you wouldn't. You see, players say, oh, yeah, we didn't really. You see Rio until Gerard. We didn't really hang out. I didn't really know anything about you.

[Eugene]

That's the players, right?

[Trevor Noah]

Now they go on vacation together. No, now they go on vacation together.

[John Oliver]

They're friends back then, but I think that comes with a level of regret because, like, oh, we could have really done something together. But I was suspicious of you. You were suspicious of me. Neither of us liked Frank Lampard.

[Trevor Noah]

The players have told me it's.

[Eugene]

And the agents were fueling the dudes.

[John Oliver]

That must come with real regret. But I think it's just the way things were at the time.

[Trevor Noah]

You told me social media changed that.

[John Oliver]

Oh, really?

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. Like, a few players, I asked a few players, I was like, yo, I feel like there was a time when one, you know, a Manchester United player would never be friends with Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Never. Now I see you guys on vacation. I see you in clubs, in Mykonos. And he said, social media, he said, it used to be that. That the only images you got of that person were, like, from the official games.

[Eugene]

Yeah. In combat mode.

[Trevor Noah]

Whereas now you see a clip of them.

[Eugene]

You see.

[Trevor Noah]

You see them doing cool things and you're like, oh, I like this person. And I remember, like, Marcelo was a fan of Alfonso Davies, and Davies was like, wait, the Marcelo? The greatest left back in my life. And Marcelo was like, I think you're the greatest new left back ever. And all of a sudden they became friends. And so you now have these, like, cross team, cross generational links that couldn't be formed but because of social media. So Facebook is good.

[John Oliver]

I do find it so interesting watching them talk now. The kind of watching, even eligating. We loved growing up. Looking back on that time.

[Trevor Noah]

Oh yeah, they're very.

[John Oliver]

With regret or just talking or just reminiscing about those moments that you grow up witnessing. First time, I think the hardest I laughed this year was there's a start. You know, Beckham and Gary Neville do that Salford, that series of welcome to Salford videos. There's just Beckham and Neville in the back of a town car driving through Manchester and they're just sitting there like, just like two friends who've grown up together, which they have. And Beckham says, hey Gabby, do you remember that time you tried to lob Buffon in the Champions League and Neville looked back and went, what do you mean tried? A perfect exchange between those two.

[Eugene]

I think what you've just explained is the happy ending of all football fans. Social media and television and these kind of programs allow you to have a life with them after the football.

[Trevor Noah]

Yeah. You're not wrong.

[Eugene]

So they won't disappear into the ether and you'll never hear of them again. Or it has got under some strange administrative job as an assistant coach. You will still see them functional and living.

[John Oliver]

It's that classic thing with social media though, isn't it? Like what it, what it gives with one hand will take away with the other because like, yes, they can be more. They can present themselves to society as a more well rounded human being and they can have the most horrendous things said to them relentlessly online. Yeah, that is at least in the past you could hear it, you could tune it out, but it was fundamentally dumb. Yeah. It doesn't for them sit there in their phone.

[Trevor Noah]

That Morata. Morata talked about that. Alvaro Morata. Yeah, he talked about how like when things weren't going well for him, I think it was at Madrid, but he said he just couldn't get off the phone and he would see people just saying these. And I used to go, just turn off the phone. But if you grew up in that generation.

[John Oliver]

Yeah, that doesn't apply.

[Trevor Noah]

You play a shit game, you go home and the fans are still with you. Fans are with you on the couch. Fans are with you on the couch.

[Eugene]

Yeah.

[Trevor Noah]

Those aren't like, those are your, that's your team, the people wearing your on you the hardest.

[John Oliver]

Yeah. It must be very, very difficult.

[Eugene]

That's what I discover whenever I watch American television, especially sports channel like espn, I see how these ex football players, I think people who love Tom Brady see him more now than they've ever seen him.

[John Oliver]

Yeah.

[Eugene]

When he plays. Because there will be a match and they will play and that'll be it. But now they get to hear his opinions. They get to see him. They get to, in fact, feel like they're interacting with him. That's a win, right?

[Trevor Noah]

You can retire into podcasts. Come and join us when you retire.

[John Oliver]

Oh yeah, there's a bit that we'll just sit around and just reminisce about. 100% Daily show episodes.

[Trevor Noah]

That's all we do. Yo man, this has been fun. Jon. Thank you, man. What Now With Trevor Noah is produced by Dayzero Productions in partnership with SiriusXM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hack. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannis Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Hardooth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of what Now.

[John Oliver]

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[Trevor Noah]

At night, don't try to tough it out.

[John Oliver]

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