John Oliver Makes Us Ponder Uncomfortable Truths About the Phillie Phanatic

The Last Week Tonight host made a Phillie Phanatic joke on his show last night — about the Phanatic having sex. Ew, we think.

Last night, John Oliver did a long segment on how the media often misreports scientific studies. In it, he referenced p-hacking — a way of data mining that uncovers patterns that can be shared as statistically significant, without developing an underlying hypothesis first. This increases the chance that the results are falsely statistically significant.

Anyway, Oliver truncated p-hacking to “phacking,” then described it as “a euphemism for fucking the Phillie Phanatic.”

Of course, this makes us think uncomfortable things about the Phillie Phanatic. Do Phanatics have sex? The Phanatic has a mother, so she must have copulated with another Phanatic to produce the Phillie Phanatic. Right? Perhaps that’s what the Phillie Phanatic is doing when he thrusts his pelvis repeatedly.

Or do Phanatics reproduce asexually? Ugh, John Oliver, why did you make us think about this?

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