Comedic news shows provide a hybrid and alternative channel for acquiring political information, blending journalism with political satire. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which this content, which has millions of regular viewers, fosters knowledge acquisition. This study investigates how cognitive resources allocated to processing jokes affect the encoding of adjacent factual information. In a within-subject experiment (N = 55) using 21 video segments from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, we examined the effects of fact placement (before a joke, after a joke, or fact without joke) and content relatedness (related or unrelated to the joke) on memory encoding. Signal detection analysis revealed that optimal encoding occurred when facts were proximal to related jokes, particularly when related facts were presented before jokes, outperforming the presentation of facts without jokes and facts proximal to unrelated jokes. These findings underscore the potential of comedic news to enhance political knowledge acquisition through humor, which is especially relevant in the context of rising media skepticism and news avoidance.