Laughter ensues as John Oliver interviews the Dalai Lama on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight”

In the latest installment of his hilarious post-Daily Show comedy/newsmagazine hybrid, Last Week Tonight, John Oliver actually traveled to Dharamsala, India to visit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This first video posted here, of the full segment, may or may not work for you (depending on your location), but a fresh new clip (below) has also appeared, and coverage from various outlets helps paint a picture of the proceedings.

As The Week notes, Oliver happily waded into the Tibet/China issue, noting of the latter’s government, unlike nearly everyone else, “instead of vaguely loving the Dalai Lama, they specifically hate him.” He also addressed reincarnation and the controversy surrounding the disappearance and China’s replacement of Tibet’s Panchen Lama: “They basically counterfeited a religious leader like a knockoff handbag”:

“Broadly speaking, when the Dalai Lama dies, he reincarnates as a child somewhere on Earth. And traditionally, a key person in the process of finding him is someone called the Panchen Lama. And when the Panchen Lama dies, the Dalai Lama plays a similar role in finding him,” a process Oliver likened to “a Buddhist version of hide-and-seek.”

The Dalai Lama was critical of China, accusing Chinese hard-liners of lacking common sense, to which Oliver replied, “I’m happy to sit here to criticize China with you, because the consequences for me are not necessarily as bad as they are for you.” His Holiness also suggested once again that he, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, might be the last. Oliver, for his part, bestowed upon the Dalai Lama a new epithet: “the original woke bae.”