John Oliver just did a show on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E

John Oliver has really grown on me. When he stood in for Jon Stewart for a while, I couldn't stand him. But he's really come into his own with Last Week Tonight.

One thing in particular he does better is falling into the cynicism trap. Jon Stewart progressively become more and more cynical, to where his shows became less comedy and more "WTF is wrong with anything, why even bother?" I think after he did that protest with Colbert in DC and nothing improved afterwards, he became very jaded. Oliver is clearly intentionally injecting some levity into his comedy bits, which I think helps on multiple levels. It's not just a sanity-saving tool, I think it also helps instill some hope for change since he doesn't focus 100% on how fucked up everything is.

It also helps that it's a weekly show, I definitely appreciate Oliver's 15-20 minute deep dives on a single topic over Stewart's 30-second summaries of literally everything that happened that day.

I'd like Jon Oliver more if he actually called out capitalism instead of getting right up to the line and then backing off. Also, his foreign affairs topics are constantly full of the sort of misinformation and propaganda I post on here about. :(