John Oliver poked fun at himself on the latest episode of Last Week Tonight on HBO.
The late-night host devoted his show to talking about the ocean and the mining of Manganese nodules found on the seafloor.
Oliver explained that the International Seabed Authority oversees the seabed in international waters and joked about the ISA calling this “The Area,” saying, “It’s a wildly lazy placeholder name.”
The comedian went on to ding his show’s title, saying, “It’s like calling a man who is super, Superman, or calling a show where you talk about last week that night, Last Week Tonight. It’s just completely devoid of imagination.”
While discussing deep-sea mining, Oliver focused on The Metals Company’s proposal to mine the nodules. Oliver pointed out that mining the nodules could disrupt the ocean’s ecosystem by creating dust clouds underwater.
“Can do a lot more damage than you might think,” he said. “They have the potential to bury fields of nodules, choke the filters of sponges and anemones, even those living outside the mining zone, and obscure bioluminescence that squid and fish use to hunt and mate.”
He continued, “Basically, it could f*** everyone’s shit up.”
Oliver then invoked the Denis Villeneuve film saga based on Frank Herbert’s novel, adding, “Think less, gently lifting golf balls off the driving range and more a scene of Dune 3: Even More Sand.”
Closing out the show, he moved on to discuss the controversy surrounding his buying a Red Lobster in Kingston, New York. A bakery owner was upset Oliver bought out the closed-down restaurant as he had hoped to have an opportunity to buy some of the equipment for his establishment.
Oliver cut to a clip of a local news report showing the man watching his show on a mobile device, and the comedian pointed out that’s exactly how most of his viewers consume his show.
“I do love that he’s watching our show in the same way everyone else does — on a phone, in the middle of a work day without even a hint of enjoyment on his face,” Oliver joked.
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