( cheers and applause ) gliewn that's our show. here it is, your moment of zen. >> there was something fishy going on in the subway last night. a surprise strap hanger sent new york 1 the captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org captioning sponsored by comedy central ( theme song playing ) ( cheers and applause )

>> stephen: welcome to the show, everybody. welcome to the report. good to have you with us. >> stephen! stephen! stephen! stephen! stephen! stephen! >> stephen: thank you so much ( cheers and applause ). thank you, ladies and gentlemen. nation, let's get straight to the top story tonight-- me. ( laughter ) the world is abuzz over last night's show. it was my third annual colbchella concert series and it was without a doubt the third time we have done it. ( laughter ) my star-studded video tribute to the song of the summer lit up the twittersphere, though i do have to say, i am a little hurt that not nearly enough people have congratulated me on the height of my chorus line kick with the rockettes. ( cheers and applause ).

yes. i am deeply hurt in that i believe i tore my hams string. ( laughter ) now, folks, if you weren't here last night, you're probably in daft punk. ( laughter ) these guys-- they were a no-show because of an alleged exclusive agreement to appear on mtv, i assume because they're 16 and pregnant. ( laughter ) but it turns out, it turns out-- that's what i thought-- but it turns out, as i explained in minute detail last night, that are surprise guests at this year's vma's, so remember to act surprised. but it all turned out great because robin thicke showed up at the last minute to kick it wild style. end of story, or so i thought. until some sharp-eyed journalists over at the indy music site pitchfork questioned the honesty of my explanation

sarcastically using, "maybe robin thicke, his dancers and band were able to pull off an elaborate performance two hours' notice or maybe it was the plan all along, an elaborate fake-out to promote daft punk's appearance on the vma's. i got one thing to say to pitchfork-- busted! you got me! they're good. we thought we tricked you by flying in the disco decepticons from paris in a it sophisticate pantomime to fool everyone, even myself, so committed was i. that daft punk was coming. all-- all just to help someone else's show on another network a month from now. ( laughter ) but we can't put one past you, pitch forng. oh, what a load off. the guilt was killing me. and now that i've come clean, i

can just do what i love, promote the vmas. ( cheers and applause ). which once again-- thank you. it's my calling. once again, the vmas the appear on the oprah winfrey network, following the premiere of "hysterectomy horrors" with host lou diamond phillips. set your vc cs. nation, it pains me, that in a country of such wealth as ours, there are still so many in poverty, and it pains me even more when those people won't stop whieng about it. ( laughter ) "i want a union. i i want safety regulations. i need all my fingers." ( laughter ) and now that whining is coming with a side of fries. >> walkouts by fast food workers are spreading around the country. this week thousands of employees have gone on strike for a day. the movement is about money.

>> employees from mcdonald's, wendy's any other chains want their wages doubled to 15 bucks. >> stephen: $15 an hour. what do they think, those arches are made of gold? the consequences, folks, the consequences of a wage increase are horrifying to contemplate. at last count there were 3.6 million front line cashiers, cook and crew in america's fast food industry. a living wage would eliminate 3.6 million poor people. that's the kind of thing hitler used to talk about. if only someone had been around give him a happy meal. layoff laugh and i'm not the only one with maximum rage over the minimum wage, so is fox news anchor and burst tube of pillsbury crescent rolls so is

neil cavuto. >> diever tell you when i was a kid you would be grateful for any job you could find. now a lot of kids turn up their noses at fast food jobs and go begging at $11. a lot of folks would be happy with any wage, any time. >> stephen: neil and i are not fixated on our hourly wage. i don't know what i make an hour. that many zeros gives me vertigo. i want to support him in my new segment, "rich white guys agreeing with each other." ( cheers and applause ) folks, if you're out of work, you get up off your sesame seed buns and take anything you can get. just listen to neil's inspiring story. >> all i know is as soon as i turned 16 and heard that a fast food chain called arthur treacher was opening a storr in my down in danbury, connecticut,

i stood in line for a position, any position. i i got the job, and soon rocketed to relief managers then weekend manager and then by the tender age of 16 and a half years old full-blown manager. it all started at 2 bucks an hour. >> stephen: you hear that strikers-- neil made $2 an hour at age 16 and somehow still paid his rent and fed his kids. ( laughter ) and you know, folks, i know where ?eel's coming from because when i was young i had a low-paying job losing teeth for a living. ( laughter ) ( applause ) but with hard work-- ( applause ) yeah. thank you. thank you. with hard work and a little dumpster diving outside a hockey rink i turned it into a profitable business, and today you may know that tooth loss business as the "colbert report." ( cheers and applause ).

my savings account right in here. i just wish i knew who that magical tooth fairy was so i could thank for her for making me independent of my parents. please welcome the head of the service employees international union mary kay henry. thank you for joining us. ( cheers and applause ). okay, all right, let's get this straight. first of all, why are these people striking? the people in fast food shouldn't expect to be getting rich. they're just teenagers working part-time jobs. >> 28-year-old is the average age of these jobs. these jobs are now the jobs that are available to people that lost good middle-class jobs before the recession, and they're trying to make ends meet and are making a demand to make these bad, low-wage jobs, good middle-class jobs so we can get the economy going again. >> stephen: but why should

this corporation have to pay these people more than minimum wage? isn't it up to these people to pull themselves up by their own fry baskets. ( laughter ) >> these corporations are making millions and billions of dollars. >> stephen: you have a problem with that. you union people-- let's call a spade a spade here. i'm using a bad word here and i know it might offend you, you're in a union. you union people hate capitalism and hate business. >> we're proud to stand with the fast food workers asking corporations making record profits to pay them a living wage. $5.5 billion in profits from mcdonald's just this past year. and workers can't-- are work hard and can't even make ends meet. that's wrong. >> stephen: okay, then get a different job. >> there are no other jobs to get. and we cannot have a strong economic recovery in the united states if workers don't have money in their pockets so they can buy goods and services so those companies can hire more people and we can have an economy that works for everybody in this country, not just the

corporations. ( cheers and applause ). >> stephen: these people are clearly on my side because you said the word "corporations" and they started clapping. ( laughter ) you want these people organized and in your union. >> no. >> stephen: you don't want them. say it right now, "don't join my union." >> the members of our union want these workers to succeed. they want to do everything they can to make sure fast food workers get $15 an hour because it will mean all the wage can rise in this country again. >> stephen: won't that mean the service jobs, the guy flipping the burgers, aren't those jobs going to go overseas? ( laughter ) i have to drive my car all the way across the pacific into geng gong, to get a burger from a chinese guy. >> a very long lunch break. >> stephen: you've heard fast food called a guilty pleasure, right, okay? part of the guilty i feel is

that i know they're being treated so poorly. ( laughter ) you know, and if that gets taken away from me, the food will lose some of its flavor. ( laughter ) you know what i mean? i won't feel as naughty when i buy it if i know they're not being oppressed by a corporation. ( laughter ) same reason i like veal. i can taste the sadness. ( applause ) you know? >> yeah, i know. >> stephen: you're willing to give that jiewp yes, i'm willing to give that up because people should be able to work hard, get by and get ahead. and that's the promise we made to every workener this country. people are working hard and barely getting by, and it's wrong. and these workers are standing up for all of us, and they're going to make these low-wage jobs good jobs, just like auto jobs became good jobs, service jobs can become good jobs. and thank god for the fast food workers for standing up and making that happen. >> stephen: thank you for joining me.

( cheers and applause ). >> stephen: welcome back, everybody. folks, you know, it's hard to believe but it's been five whole years since the global financial crisis cost the u.s. economy more than $22 trillion. and we're still trying to figure out who to blame. was it the patriotic bankers willing to fut all on the line to make america the greatest economy in the world or the greedy reckless home grubbers looking for the cheap thrill of heat and shelter? we can argue all day. at this point, who knows which side has better lawyers. and yet, some people just won't let it go. >> we're this far after the financial crisis, and no one's in jail. >> there's been nobody put in jail because of the financial collapse. >> it does seem extraordinary not one of them has ever been put in jail. >> no. >> not one. >> stephen: oh, the angry mob wants a scalp, and goldman sachs c.e.o. lloyd blankfein is

practically daring them with that thing. ( cheers and applause ). well, everyone can finally calm down. because we got him. >> it took five years but this morning the government is celebratings its first big victory in court, in its attempt to hold wall street accountable for the fnld crise. former goldman sachs trader fabrice tourre, known by his nickname-- "fabulous fab--" has been found liable for fraud for his role in a failed mortgage deal that cost investors $1 million. >> fabrice tourre is found liable for defrauding investors. it is a huge victory for the s.e.c. >> stephen: a $1 billion fraud out of a $22 trillion meltdown. let me do the math here and see what's going on here. and that is... my calculator won't take numbers that large. so how did-- how did the sleuths at the s.e.c. prove this

mastermind knowingly misled his investors? he sent e-mails saying he knowingly misled his investors. saying, "the entire building is at the risk of collapse at any moment. only potential survivor? the fabulous fab." standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of these monfrosts. when that e-mail came out, folks, everybody on wall street had the same reaction-- "we should hire that guy." during his trial febreeze had an explanation calling the e-mail a silly romantic e-mail to my girlfriend. i mean, that makes sense. for instance, this is the valentine's card i gave my wife this year. "how do i love thee? let me count the ways... use, arcane account methods that hide of majority of my love in a shell corporation in theica men

-- caymen islands." ( applause ) anyway, they threw the book at him. after all, this man oh, straight the global subprime crisis from his lofty perch as a 28-year-old midlevel trader. sorry, gordon gecko. your days of flaunting your six flags flash pass are over. no more three-martini lunches at quiznos, and don't even call. they will not be holding your table anymore at jardin d'olive. we'll beight right

( cheers and applause ). >> stephen: welcome back. my guest tonight plays the cofounder of apple computers. it's a lot like the bill gates biopick, but sleeker and twice the price. please welcome archton kutcher. ( cheers and applause ). ashton, hey. good to see you. good to see you. thanks for coming on the show last night. >> absolutely. >> stephen: you're an impressive guy, okay. actor, producer. you're a bit of a tech entrepreneur. you help fund spoddify, air b & b, and in 2009 became the first twitter user to hit one million followers. is that-- ( cheers and applause ) now you're playing steve jobs in the "biopick jobs," opens august

16. how-- are you a fan of jobs? did you come at this as a super fan of a tech genius? >> i came as a admirer of his work, and i had a lot of friends in the tech industry that knew him and loved him and worked for him, were berated by him, but felt he definitely made them better. ( laughter ). >> stephen: that berated thing i like. >> yeah. >> stephen: that inspires people. >> yes, it does. i kind of think he was like a great football coach. i had a football coach in high school, he was also my uncle, which was a little weird-- ( laughter ) he used to abuse me verbally, consistently, constantly -- >> stephen: naik name? did he call you a nickname? >> ( bleep ). >> stephen: so that's endearing, ( bleep )? >> when he wanted to be kind. he really pushed me, and i think he made me better. and i think people that had the

capability to take steve jobs' brutal honesty, he made them better. >> stephen: okay, we have a little clip of the movie here. jimmy, can you show that? >> your big bald brain wanted something that didn't exist, so you just willed it into existence. >> what do you call the system, the operating system. >> operating system. >> it's a realtime display of current operations. >> you can see what you're working on while you're working on it. >> okay. >> this is freedom. this is freedom to create and to do and to build and-- and artists, individuals. >> look, you're over-reacting. even if you were developing this for freaks like us-- and i doubt are you-- nobody wants to buy a computer, nobody! >> how does somebody know what they want if they've never seen seen it? ( cheers and applause )

>> stephen: did you have to like him to do this part? because i hear-- i'm not an actor, but i hear that actors have to find a little bit of themselves in the person that they're portraying. ( laughter ) and if he's a little bit of a dick, did you have to find a little dick in you? >> well, you can't judge your character. un, you know, steve jobs, even though he was like a luminary and this brilliant genius, he was also a person and he had flaws and he had scars and he. personal wounds. when he was a kid he was adopted. and i think when he found out, he felt very rejected by his birth parents. and then he was rejected by the very company that he created when apple fired him. so i think the way that he sought love and appreciation was through the products that he built. and i think that he was such a perfectionist and so driven to actually make something that people loved and appreciated and make the consumers happy, that the way he received love, if

they loved the product, it meant that they loved him. and to me, once i found that chord in the character, i was able to sympathize with him being aibility of a dick. ( laughter ). >> stephen: his emotional state could have been peg to the stock price. if the company was doing well, he was doing well? >> i think that that's the other thing that made him extremely innovative. he understood that he didn't have to be beholden to the stockholders. if he built a company and built innovative products that consumers loved and appreciated and he did it intelligent inteltly by vertically integrating all the hardware of apple with the ipod and iphone and those things, i think what he understood is if he made a great product that people love, that the effective that would be that he would have happy stockholders. >> stephen: wow. you're throwing me off a little bit here. ( laughter ) no offense, no offense. okay. but you're known for playing not the smartest character. ( laughter ) ( applause )

okay? you're coming off as smart right now. you're coming off as smart. >> i can bring this all back. i can bring it all back. >> stephen: you're playing, like, this genius, and from what i understand from that documentary i saw, you can't find your car. ( laughter ) ( applause ) did you ever get a chance to talk to jobs himself? did you ever get a chance to meet him? >> because i work with a lot of young entrepreneurs that are developers building on apple's platform for a long time, i got invited to go to their worldwide developers conference to meet steve but i was working on "two and a half men" that day and i couldn't go. i think when he passed away, i realized that i had a chance to meet the leonardo da vinci of our day, a guy who was a true artist and true inventor and innovator, and i missed it. so when i read this script, i thought this would be a great opportunity to get to know a man that admired.

( applause ) >> stephen: well, arton, good luck. the movie is " "