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This week.... Facebook announces their company is now called "Meta." (MeFi). Congress is hammering out Biden's final spending plan. And Now: Once Again, Our Annual Look At What Happens When Local News And Halloween Collide. Main story: Homelessness (25 minutes), and how our institutions make a bad situation for a lot of people worse.
posted by JHarris on Nov 2, 2021 - 6 comments

This week.... Idaho's Lieutenant Governor issued an executive order forbidding vaccine mandates, even though the Governor is opposed it. It turns out OAN, which has been covered by the show before, owes a lot of its existence to AT&T, the same AT&T that's Last Week's Tonight's abdicating business-daddy, which John Oliver cuts them no slack over. And Now: "Fox & Friends'" Brian Kilmeade Likes Christopher Columbus Way, Way Too Much. Main story (YouTube, 20 minutes) : Misinformation as it spreads through immigrant diaspora communities, for although more than 90% of Facebook monthly users are outside the U.S. and Canada, only 13% of hours the company has spent on monitoring information is focused outside the U.S. LWT made some memeable pass-around videos to try to spread the word about not spreading misinformation on the internet, available at bettermorningmessages.com. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 11, 2021 - 3 comments

This episode aired on July 29:

• More Stupid Watergate, "Something with the potential gravity of Watergate, if the entire White House was on bath salts and Nixon was a raccoon with his head stuck in a jar of peanut butter." Revealed is that Cohen secretly taped interactions between him and Trump, and some of one of the tapes was leaked, relating them planning to keep a story about Trump's affair with Playboy Bunny Karen McDougal secret. Also, Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of the meeting with Russian representatives in Trump Tower. And, Mueller is looking into whether Trump's tweets constitute obstruction of justice.
• Facebook loses $119 billion dollars of value, 19% of its total valuation, overnight. That's more than the value of the entire global cheese market: Facebook's stock dropped by the concept of cheese. It's because of piracy issues, which they've apologized for via an ubiquitous ad. LWT provides one of their trademark more honest versions.
• Main story: Workplace sexual harassment. In the wake of a number of prominent male executives being brought down, it's looking like something may finally be done about it... except that the current situation shares a lot of things in common with the 90s, at which time everything was supposed to change, and then, didn't. The issue became national news with the testimony of Anita Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
• The last act was a great interview with Anita Hill herself.

Both the main story and the interview are on the show's official Youtube channel. (29m) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 13, 2018 - 1 comment