Name: Stephen Colbert's Return To New Zealand: A Magical Land Where Hugs Still Happen
Uploaded: 2020-12-17T20:10:19.000Z
Duration: 12 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

As you know, we're now in month nine of the coronavirus locked down here in America.

Which is why I'm still not back in my theater and don't have an audience and have resorted to using old sitcom sound effects to make me feel less alone.

Sympathetic audience from designing women in 1987 You always make me feel like Delta Burke and I may not have a real audience for a while because coronavirus infections in this country are the highest they've ever been.

And because of that, there are still massive travel restrictions for Americans all around the globe.

For example, without a test, I am banned from entering the country of Chile.

I still can't go to my local chilies, and I am banned from eating chili.

That's just in agreement I have with my co workers.

All of these travel restrictions got me thinking about my last big trip last year when I traveled down under than a bit over to the right for my special.

I really wish I could be down there now because, as you may have heard, they have had one of the most successful pandemic responses in the world.

With a population of roughly five million people.

So far, New Zealand has had just 25 deaths and roughly 2000 cases.

Or is America calls it Ah, White House Christmas party.

Well, since I can't return to New Zealand in person tonight, I'm gonna return in my memory.

Unluckily, my memory comes with a lot of videotape.

You see, after last year's trip, there was just too much exciting footage to show it all.

In fact, there was so much extra material that earlier this year we began gathering new segments and recording behind the scenes features to put together a special.

But when the pandemic hit, we had to stop down and save all that stuff until the time was right, which is apparently never gonna arrive.

Tonight we're revisiting those bygone times and celebrating New Zealand with a special episode.

I'm calling return to New Zealand, a magical land where hugs still happened.

Kiara New Zealand is so successfully contained transmissions that much of life there has all but returned to normal and they're even safely attending sporting events and crowded music festivals.

But this is still New Zealand, so those crowds were mostly sheep.

So how is New Zealand successfully contained the virus while other countries struggled Well, for starters, they have an advantage of being a small, remote island nation.

It's much easier to control entry when you're on Lee.

Border is the ocean, and transmission rates are evidently very low amongst giant squid.

But a lot of the success has come down to the New Zealanders themselves.

In fact, according to the medical journal Lancet, public health, the keys to New Zealand success have been decisive governance, effective communication and high population compliance.

So the US came close with just zero of those three things.

Much of the credit for decisive governance goes to New Zealand Prime minister and seashore detective.

Of course, I've long been a fan of Prime Minister Arden since she personally invited me to visit, picked me up at the airport, drove me around Auckland and then invited me to join her family and lord for a barbecue.

I was greeted by the prime minister and the nation's biggest pop star.

So I was already impressed by the prime minister.

But my admiration one up a notch or two when I learned that she had handled the pandemic with a strategy that relies on science and empathy, both things our current president considers a hoax.

Early on in the pandemic, she closed New Zealand's borders to nearly all nonresidents and instituted a lock down so severe that even retrieving a lost ball from the neighbor's yard was banned.

It even included laws that only apply to Dennis the Menace.

Now, if you're thinking that America could learn something about dealing with the pandemic from New Zealand, you're not alone.

Last month, Prime Minister Artur and said she put President elect Biden in touch with New Zealand's health officials in order to share tactics of how to battle the pandemic.

Thanks for the help to send our Dern, we should team up McCall herself.

There's something cooler like the go getters.

Come on, Jack Zenda to send our turn is so good at multitasking.

She actually gave birth to a daughter while she was in office and then.

She did not immediately make that child responsible for negotiating Middle East peace.

Recently, her handling of the pandemic lead our turn to an impressive landslide re election.

But even more impressive is that despite having to delay the election due to co vid and having a ballot referendum on euthanasia, New Zealand's election season was reportedly low key, not a horror show and even boring.

Honestly, New Zealand sounds like a perfect place right now.

Not only is it safe and has compassionate, capable leaders there also filming a Lord of the Ring Siri's that might contain nudity.

Fans like me don't need to see these characters nude when they've already been imagining them that way since middle school.

But when I went to New Zealand, you'd think I was gonna say Smeagol, did you?

You thought I was gonna say Gandel or Aragorn or somebody easy?

When I went to New Zealand, there were times like I was stepping into the past, but I look at it now, and I'm hopeful that New Zealand might actually be our future, our normal, full contact future.

They're actually 18 hours ahead of us there, literally living in tomorrow.

And hopefully they're also living the life we here in America could be living five or six months from now.

Ah, magical life of civic cooperation for the common good.

Let's hope that we catch up to them on that one.

As for now, let us return to New Zealand through the magic of videotape Up first, you may remember that I bungee jumped off a bridge last October.

Tonight I want to show you the behind the scenes drama of my producers convincing me that I had to do that because New Zealanders invented bungee jumping and it was truly a life changing experience.

My producers had it in their mind that it would be great for me to jump off a bridge with rubber bands tied to my ankles.

I understand that you want your star to eventually, um, jump off 140 m bridge down toward the gorge capture the fear on his face for the entertainment of of the of the American people on.

But I warned them that I probably wasn't gonna do it because I really don't like heights.

Okay, that's that kind of language isn't necessary.

E Just get this clutching feeling in my groin.

Just this terrible, cold, empty feeling inside my body When I think about heights So we land We got this beautiful vista from a distance to look at the bridge to see where I'm gonna you know, spend my last few moments on this planet.

If you want to know what I'm like without the cameras on, that's what I'm like.

Please just ask you guys to never stop rolling to especially capture how much I didn't like it in my displeasure at having to do it Jake for your piece.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Stephen Colbert's Return To New Zealand: A Magical Land Where Hugs Still Happen

assume

engage

pandemic

empathy