Bill Maher's 'New Rule: The Great Garbage Election' plus the EMA Awards winners

I concluded Company Man asks 'The Decline of TGI Fridays...What Happened?' A tale of the Retail Apocalypse by promising "a follow-up to John Oliver on corn for National Food Day about the winners of the Environmental Media Association (EMA) Awards." As I wrote last month "It's between Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Real Time with Bill Maher [for Variety Series]. I'm rooting for Oliver over Maher, but both are HBO series, so HBO wins no matter what." I got my wish — Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won — so I'm featuring last night's New Rule: The Great Garbage Election | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) as consolation.

Here’s the thing: there actually is an island of garbage in the ocean – but the only person who mentioned it during the whole campaign was Trump's insult comic.

I've been writing about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and plastic pollution for more than a decade, most recently in PBS NewsHour and SciShow explain the difficulties of recycling plastic and plastic pollution and SciShow and Wild Hope explain 'How to Save the World from Plastic', so I'm singing in the choir Bill is preaching to. I hope my readers have been listening (reading) to both Bill and me. I expect the EMA listened; they might just nominate this segment for the Variety Series category next year.

Follow over the jump for the winners of the EMA Awards as a bonus entertainment feature.


I called the movie winners of the 2022-2023 EMA Awards but didn't fare as well with the TV winners because the environmental content of the nominees didn't correlate well with the overall quality and entertainment value. That wasn't the case this year. None of the winners came as a surprise to me and most would have been my picks had I written a post about the nominees. That's a relief. It also means that when I recommend the nominees and especially the winners to my students, they won't came back to me and say, "that was boring; why did I watch that?" Instead, they'll enjoy the experience and learn something.

Speaking of my students, when I told them the nominees for Feature Film — Dune: Part Two, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Marvels, and Twisters — they unanimously picked Twisters. They were right; Twisters won.

This is the first time I've mentioned Twisters, but it won't be the last. It's nominated for two GRAMMYs, only one of which is listed on the movie's IMDB awards and nominations page (its EMA Award isn't listed, either), but the promotional image from Twitter/X mentions both.


These nominations demonstrate that the sequel exceeded the original, which had such impressive music that the Vice Principal at the middle school in Detroit where I taught in 1998-2000 enjoyed the end title theme so much that she asked me to play it again at the end of the school day when I played it for my students as an example of good depictions of science in movies. Twister won the BMI Film Music Award, but didn't earn nominations at the GRAMMYs or Oscars.

I expect to write more about the GRAMMY movie and TV nominees. I also expect to see Twisters nominated for Best Action/Adventure Film at the upcoming Saturn Awards. So far, it has my vote.


I was familiar with only one nominee for Documentary Film, Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion, but Bad River beat it and Wilding. After seeing Bad River's Critics' Choice Documentary Award nominations, I'm not surprised it won. I expect to write more about it and the Critics' Choice Documentary Awards after the awards ceremony tomorrow.


I had never heard of Poacher, a nominee for Drama Series, and barely knew about Industry, but my wife and I watched all of Emmy winner True Detective: Night Country, so it was my pick. It won. Like Twisters, I expect to see the series on my Saturn Awards ballot. The only question is which category, Horror Series, Action/Adventure/Thriller Series, or Television Presentation.

On the other hand, I had heard of all the nominees for the Paul Junger Witt Comedy Series award, Hacks, The Curse, and The Simpsons, and thought Hacks was the best nominee after winning three Primetime Emmy Awards. It also won.

I covered two of the nominees for Documentary Series as part of the Emmy Awards, Planet Earth III and Secrets of the Octopus and Planet Earth III had five Emmy nominations to one for Secrets of the Octopus, so I expected Planet Earth III would win. It did.

I already wrote that Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won Variety Series, so I'm moving on to Reality Series, which is the one category I would have missed, as I would have picked 2020 EMA Award and 2024 Emmy winner Shark Tank over Emmy nominee Top Chef and OMG Fashun, which has no awards or nominations listed at its IMDB page, not even the EMA Awards. I'd have been wrong, as Top Chef won.

Finally, I might have chosen Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock over A Real Bug’s Life and Cyberchase, based on the EMA's history but I'm pleased to see A Real Bug’s Life declared the winner.

Congratulations to all the winners! Now stay tuned for a special election edition of highlights of tomorrow night's Saturday Night Live.