Tom Green | Club Random with Bill Maher

On this episode, Bill sits down with comedian, cultural provocateur and former neighbor Tom Green. The two recall the time Tom’s house burned down, why Tom is touring the country in a camper van, navigating public perception in the age of social media, Tom’s cancer treatment during his MTV fame and how a misdiagnosis almost derailed his health, getting fired on the Celebrity Apprentice, the blurred line between clever and stupid in comedy, his film Freddy Got Fingered, life on his Canadian farm, finding love, his latest documentary project and much more. Go to https://www. RadioactiveMedia.com or text RANDOM at 511511 to save up to 50%, today! Try ZipRecruiter for free at https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random Shop SKIMS Mens at https://www.skims.com/billmaher #skimspartner Follow Club Random on IG: @ClubRandomPodcast Follow Bill on IG: @BillMaher Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Watch Club Random on YouTube: https://bit.ly/ClubRandomYouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro, para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos y los que no vende cerca, para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen, para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Born in Texas, made in America. That's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.

• 1:00Bill Maher?

  Well, I don't know what you thought this program was, Mr. Green, but it's a family, it's a family show.

• 1:10Bill Maher?

  Who's the biggest election counselor than Donald Trump?

• 1:13Speaker 03

  You know, he was my old boss. He fired me on The Celebrity Apprentice.

• 1:16Bill Maher?

  I have to hear this story.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Hey, Bill, how are you?

• 1:23Bill Maher?

  Tom, Tom, listen, oh my gosh.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Are we wearing the same shirt?

• 1:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah, mine's better.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Good to see you, man.

• 1:31Bill Maher?

  Yours is more like a farmer shirt.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly, because I'm a farmer now.

• 1:34Bill Maher?

  I know you are.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  I am a farmer.

• 1:35Bill Maher?

  Mine's fresh.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  Very.

• 1:38Bill Maher?

  Listen.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  Pretty farm, Mike.

• 1:39Bill Maher?

  I borrowed that weed walker from you 24 years ago. And I have been meaning to give it back to you.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  I actually got it back today. I was wondering about that.

• 1:47Bill Maher?

  Now, for people who are wondering what I'm referring to, you used to live here.

• 1:51Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:52Bill Maher?

  And I live next door.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, until it burned down.

• 1:55Bill Maher?

  I lived here two weeks, and then you burned your house down on purpose.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, well.

• 2:01Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 2:01Speaker 03

  It wasn't exactly the way it went, but.

• 2:05Bill Maher?

  Drew did.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do remember having a conversation. I'd probably just moved to Los Angeles just weeks earlier. I remember having a conversation with you through the fence once because the dog ran over there or something.

• 2:16Bill Maher?

  Through the fence.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17Bill Maher?

  Just like regular people.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19Bill Maher?

  Just like regular neighbors. Stars are just like us. I moved here in January of 2001.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:28Bill Maher?

  When did you move next door, which is now this store?

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Ah, it must have been in 2000, I would say, because it was when my show was on MTV in Los Angeles, so.

• 2:41Bill Maher?

  Was Drew already living here?

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, she was, yeah. Yeah, it was basically.

• 2:47Bill Maher?

  So you moved into this place, but it was already here for, she already had it?

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I was basically doing my show on MTV. I'd just moved to Los Angeles and I was here for probably just a couple of months or something like that, not too, too long. But, yeah, it was because the place burned down, so then we moved. That was a scary thing. Now, were you, were you here the night that that happened? Do you remember the fire or?

• 3:14Bill Maher?

  It's so funny. The fire, two weeks after I moved in, and of course, you don't really know where you are in the house versus the street. Now, you're just getting reoriented. There were still boxes in my living room.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:25Bill Maher?

  And I remember emailing my assistant and said, I think it was a Sunday. And I said, I didn't get the Sunday New York Times today. Do you, do you happen to know why? And she emailed back, yeah, because there were 16 fire trucks on your street.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Oh, that's amazing, yeah. So you must have slept pretty good through that, huh?

• 3:49Bill Maher?

  Apparently, my bedroom is, I know it now is, is on the opposite side of my house. So this property, it was, and your, this house was set quite a bit back. But, yeah, you would have thought I would have heard, I didn't think I'd sleep that well today.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a scary situation for sure. I had just gone about six months earlier, just gone through cancer treatment.

• 4:14Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Because I had had testicular cancer while I was on MTV. So my show had ended.

• 4:20Bill Maher?

  I fear that one.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's not a fun one to have, but it's a good one because you don't die from it usually.

• 4:25Bill Maher?

  Right. How did they detect it?

• 4:27Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I noticed something was kinda I felt some pain down there in my right testicle.

• 4:33Bill Maher?

  Actual pain?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a throbbing kind of sort of thing, and I went to the doctor and got checked out, and that's what happened, but

• 4:40Bill Maher?

  You didn't feel anything?

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Uh, well, like, I mean, yeah, a little bit of pain and

• 4:45Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, like, when you felt your, did you go, hmm, did I used to have three balls?

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, well, actually, the right one had gotten significantly larger as well, which I was kinda thinking.

• 4:55Bill Maher?

  That's what I mean.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, so it felt like there was

• 4:57Bill Maher?

  So if I checked my balls and they feel basically e- equa

• 5:04Bill Maher?

  I'm okay, you think?

• 5:05Speaker 03

  I think so, yeah. You would feel something, some sort of a dull aching pain is what I felt. Some people feel more pain, like sharper pain, but I felt a dull aching pain. And then you'll go to the doctor, and sometimes they'll misdiagnose it. Uh, and so, like, I was misdiagnosed initially as

• 5:20Bill Maher?

  Is that right?

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, they said it was epididymitis, and it was, put me on antibiotics for a few weeks, and we went off and shot another show with Monica Lewinsky. Well, we drove up to flew up to Canada with her and shot a television show for MTV with her. And all the while

• 5:36Bill Maher?

  She's felt a few balls in her day.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  You know, I'm just, I'm lobbing these up for you, Phil.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  I appreciate you taking the bait there on that one.

• 5:48Bill Maher?

  Oh, anytime. Monica Lewinsky said, well, not to get off on a tangent, not that we have an agenda here, so one could buy everything is a tangent, but you know, I take a lot of shit for my views about medicine, which I don't think are weird at all. I'm just more skeptical, I think, than most people. And it's because, partly because, partly, and just anecdotally.

• 6:13Bill Maher?

  I can't tell you how many times I've heard the phrase, and it was misdiagnosed. And it's like, I'm not saying you guys aren't trying in the medical field. I'm not saying you're corrupt, although there is some of that. You know, and I'm certainly not saying that everything Bobby Kennedy is right, says is right.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:31Bill Maher?

  But, yes, I'm skeptical of everything. You guys very often don't get it right.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:40Bill Maher?

  So, don't fucking look at me like, how dare you question what we in the white coats are saying? Because when have we ever gotten one wrong? A lot. You get it wrong a lot.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:51Bill Maher?

  So, no, I don't take anything you say at face value. And I'm just not going to march to whatever you say, because you are the science.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, I think.

• 7:01Bill Maher?

  Damn it, Tom, you've got me all riled up about your balls.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely.

• 7:06Bill Maher?

  These aren't even my balls, and I'm pissed off.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Did you just make yourself a drink there?

• 7:09Bill Maher?

  Yes, can I do it for you?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  I suppose I should have a drink then, yeah. If you want, yeah, what did you have there? What did you make there? Is it a little?

• 7:14Bill Maher?

  Ah, it's just tequila.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Okay, that sounds good. Yeah, I think.

• 7:17Bill Maher?

  A little rotgut.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  Why not?

• 7:19Bill Maher?

  Never heard a farmer like you.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Canadian farmer can have a shot of tequila.

• 7:24Bill Maher?

  Can I make you the same drink I have?

• 7:25Speaker 03

  What are you mixing it with?

• 7:26Bill Maher?

  This is an interesting concoction. First, we, of course, have ice.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:31Bill Maher?

  Would you like to pour your own ice? Or, I don't want to put my hand in.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  No problem, no problem. Yeah, okay. And then would you just mix it with some water there? Or what did you put in?

• 7:41Bill Maher?

  We will add the, I'm doing a cooking show now with you.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:44Bill Maher?

  I feel like our future is, has a cooking show in it.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 7:48Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  That would be amazing, if it involved tequila. It's always fun.

• 7:52Bill Maher?

  Cooking with liquor.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:54Bill Maher?

  I'm going to call it. I mean, it's different. Okay, so, then we add, this is Jing, and this is, because I'm a health nut.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:03Bill Maher?

  This is, I love this stuff. It's a way to make sparkling water into a diet soda without any of the chemicals that are in diet soda.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Okay, okay, oh, yeah, sure.

• 8:12Bill Maher?

  But not even the stuff that's in the non-sugar ones, which are still chemical.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  It's like a flavored, sort of, chemical.

• 8:19Bill Maher?

  Yes, and then we add the sparkling water.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:22Bill Maher?

  There are some health nuts, real nuts, and anyone who is more to the left than me is nuts, of course, who don't even think sparkling water is good for you. But you know what?

• 8:33Speaker 03

  This is what, some sort of carbon in nut or something?

• 8:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, carbonated. I can't even remember why. I'm sure, you know, is anything as good as clear mountain water? No, but we got none of that here. What we got is liquor and good time.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  That looks good.

• 8:47Bill Maher?

  And, you know.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  There we go. That looks like a nice drink there, for sure. All right, cheers, Bill. Thank you.

• 8:55Bill Maher?

  Great to see you.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Great to see you too.

• 8:56Bill Maher?

  Congratulations.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Thank you. My fiance is here as well.

• 9:01Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  I'm engaged, and my fiance is out in the, in the control room.

• 9:04Bill Maher?

  Well, I hope you're engaged to your fiance.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:07Bill Maher?

  Because other than that, it doesn't look like much of a commitment.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  No, yeah.

• 9:10Bill Maher?

  No, but I saw you, the front page of the New York Times, Arts and Leisure.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Wasn't that something, huh?

• 9:16Bill Maher?

  I was like, wow, this guy is iconic. He never sorts, he always reinvents himself. The public never doesn't want to read about him or see him in whatever new iteration he's in. You know, he's a real artist. You are. I mean, you, when I think of like, when you first blew up and you were like one of those rare rock star comedians, really, cover Rolling Stone type stuff.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a wild time, for sure.

• 9:44Bill Maher?

  And now you're a fucking farmer?

• 9:49Bill Maher?

  No, but, you know, it makes sense because in life you do go through passages. You aren't the same person you are at 22.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:58Bill Maher?

  How old are you now?

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I'm 53.

• 9:59Bill Maher?

  Yeah, 53.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  And, you know, I'm in, I'm not essentially doing a lot of farming, really. I do, I live on a farm. I have a hay, there's hay fields that we cut the hay, and I have a donkey and a mule. And I ride this mule. I didn't know anything about mules.

• 10:15Bill Maher?

  What is the difference between the donkey and the mule?

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I actually thought they were the same before I got the mule. A mule is half horse, half donkey.

• 10:22Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  It's like a hybrid. So it's like the, her, Fanny is her name, and her father was a mammoth donkey, and her mother was a Perscheron horse.

• 10:31Bill Maher?

  Horse, half donkey?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Half donkey, yeah. They have 60, they have 62 chromosomes. A donkey has, oh, sorry, 63 chromosomes. A donkey has 62, and a horse has 64. It might be the other way around, but.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  One way or another, the odd number of chromosomes, the sixty-three chromosomes, means they're sterile, can't reproduce. So the only way you can make a mule, two mules won't make another mule.

• 10:59Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Breed mules, you have to get donkeys and horses and put them together.

• 11:03Bill Maher?

  What's odd to me about the whole thing is that donkeys and horses fuck. Because the definition of a species usually is creatures that will only fuck creatures that are in, like, you know, leopards don't fuck tigers.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 11:21Bill Maher?

  Although you'd think, if you're horny one night.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:26Bill Maher?

  You'd be like, okay, I was looking for a tiger, but, I mean, is it that different? But they, but they don't.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  It's generally the male donkey fucking the female horse.

• 11:39Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Not the other way around.

• 11:40Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  So like, a horse doesn't generally want to have sex with a, I'll say it more politely, have sex with a, uh,

• 11:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  with a donkey for some reason, so, and it's, I don't know, it's, uh, I wasn't there when it happened, you know, I just got.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  I, uh, she was eleven, ten years old when I got her, but it was, uh, it was, it's been a lot of fun, yeah.

• 12:02Bill Maher?

  Well, you say you weren't there, but I've certainly, um, seen in enough movies, uh, and that's where I know everything I know about farming from, where someone has to assist.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 12:15Bill Maher?

  The horse.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah.

• 12:17Bill Maher?

  In the sexual act.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  I think when you're getting two different species to procreate, there's a little bit of human inter- interaction.

• 12:23Bill Maher?

  Even if it's not two, even if it's just two horses.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:26Bill Maher?

  You know, they want, of course, the horses to mate because they want a pony and, and, um, who doesn't want a pony? For your birthday, um, but they have to, like, lubricate sometimes the horse.

• 12:41Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, so I'm a new farmer, so I don't know everything.

• 12:43Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm saying this is in your future, you're gonna have to learn to jerk off a horse.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  I could see, you know, if you've seen Freddy Got Fingered, I mean, I know a little bit about that, but.

• 12:51Bill Maher?

  Right. Oh, right, I forgot about Freddy Got Fingered.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  But, uh, no, it's been, it's been an amazing, uh, thing, you know, I, I moved back, uh, to Canada where I'm from. So I live not too far from where I grew up, and my parents live down the road. And, uh, you know, I, um, I.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Found this property and uh.

• 13:14Bill Maher?

  Can we say what province this is?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  It's in Ontario, yeah, yeah, sort of between Toronto and Ottawa, closer to Ottawa, yeah.

• 13:19Bill Maher?

  Don't tell the nuts where you live.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  No, no, it's Ontario's pretty big, Ontario's about twice the size of Texas, so we, they'll have a hard time narrowing it down just from that, but.

• 13:28Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  We're a big country up there, the future 51st state potentially, you know.

• 13:33Bill Maher?

  Well, fingers crossed.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'll be the only state in America where nobody in it wants to be American.

• 13:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I, I mean.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Except for Jordan Peterson, Wayne Gretzky, and that guy from Shark Tank.

• 13:47Bill Maher?

  Well, if Jordan is sat there, I'm a.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Have you had Wayne on yet? Yeah.

• 13:51Bill Maher?

  Wayne Gretzky?

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:53Bill Maher?

  I know he's a hockey player, I never followed hockey.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  The great one, the great one.

• 13:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, why, is he a big right winger?

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know, I do, I do know that he hangs out a little bit at Mar-a-Lago, and that it may be that the, that Mr. Trump was, President Trump was attempting to maybe get him to run for prime minister.

• 14:12Bill Maher?

  Are you happier now that you're in Canada?

• 14:15Speaker 03

  I am, actually, not, it's not that I wasn't, uh, it's just a nice, it's nice to be closer to my family and uh, it's a nice change, for sure. I like, I like being in nature, you know, I like being out in the, in the.

• 14:28Bill Maher?

  Is it something you couldn't have done unless you got, were getting engaged? I mean, it's a very different thing to move alone to someplace.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Actually, I met her there, so I met her after, after I moved, I moved three and a half years ago, met her up there, and, and, so she's Canadian, and uh, my, my life's really coming together as soon as I went back to Canada, I don't know what it is, Bill, but.

• 14:49Bill Maher?

  Do you have kids?

• 14:50Speaker 03

  No kids, no.

• 14:51Bill Maher?

  So, do you think you're gonna start a family now?

• 14:53Speaker 03

  I would like to, yeah, yeah.

• 14:55Bill Maher?

  And what will you tell your kids you do? Because certainly you're not gonna admit to being Tom Green, I mean, that, that, that certainly.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  I'll show them the documentary.

• 15:05Bill Maher?

  Not until they're like 20.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Uh, you know, I, I don't know, I uh. I'll probably, you know, I'll probably tell them I'm a comedian. I too are doing stand-up comedy. Maybe, I don't know if I'll bring them to one of my shows in the first 10 years, but, uh, but, uh, you know, maybe I'll show them the documentary that I just put out. That should explain it.

• 15:22Bill Maher?

  What about Freddie Finger?

• 15:24Speaker 03

  You'll have to wait till they're at least 14 to see that one.

• 15:27Bill Maher?

  What was the, what was the controversy with that? I forget. I remember it was a very big, they wrote about it a lot. What year are we talking about?

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Uh, we're talking about 2000, I believe it was. 2000.

• 15:39Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 15:39Speaker 03

  2000, 2001, early 2001.

• 15:42Bill Maher?

  It was like The Fire and then that?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was right. A lot of things happened in close succession.

• 15:48Bill Maher?

  You should have read your horoscope that week.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:52Bill Maher?

  You were, Mercury was in retrograde or some shit like that.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  A lot of good things happened, a lot of weird things happened, you know, I mean, the fact that they let me direct the movie and do this movie when I was just on MTV.

• 16:01Bill Maher?

  Why were people so mad about it?

• 16:03Speaker 03

  I think it was just, um,

• 16:07Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a good question because it's kind of gotten a little bit of a...

• 16:11Bill Maher?

  Resurgence, because that's what happens over...

• 16:12Speaker 03

  People actually say they like it now.

• 16:14Bill Maher?

  And we're time. Time is great for that.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It was one of these things where it was obviously, it was a very, I pushed the envelope as far as the outrageousness and the scenes and it was very silly. Um, I don't know if there was a feeling of why is, why was I directing this thing? Or I don't know. I don't, it's really hard to say. It was one of those things though where I had that opening weekend experience where, you know, there was all of this anticipation. We were all really excited about it, you know, we, we thought it was pretty funny, you know, we enjoyed it. And then, uh, and then when it came, you know, when the, the Roger Ebert came out and sort of did his sort of

• 16:56Speaker 03

  review of it, it was kind of like, oh, that's not very good, is it now? You know, so it was, it was dis- sort of very, uh, uh, disheartening.

• 17:04Bill Maher?

  Explain to the kid, Tom, explain to the kids out there this Roger Ebert you speak of.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. So back in the, back in the olden times.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:16Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Three movies would come out every weekend and it was very important that you went to the right one and spent your money in the right place. So they would have these critics who would advise you on how to spend your hard earned dollar.

• 17:30Bill Maher?

  So people would watch that as a television show? They would watch critics talk about movies?

• 17:34Speaker 03

  On this thing called television, of course, yeah, absolutely. And it was very, they were very respected, their opinions.

• 17:39Bill Maher?

  Would they tell you which movies had done best at the box office that week? Yes, they would.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Sure, of course, yeah.

• 17:46Bill Maher?

  That was a big thing.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Of course, and it was very.

• 17:48Bill Maher?

  And I remember there were people who complained about it. It shouldn't, we shouldn't know because we should just be able to decide on the merits of the movie and not by, oh, it's number one. Of course, I'm going to see the number one movie, as if I ever did that. As if I ever looked at it and went, well, it's number six, I don't know.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's.

• 18:06Bill Maher?

  It's Kubrick, but it's six, so fuck it.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  The, the, the head of the studio, new regency, Arnon Milshon, I don't know if you know Arnon.

• 18:16Bill Maher?

  Of course, I know of him.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  He took me aside after, after the Roger Ebert negative review and told me, you know, my very first movie, Tom, was King of Comedy, and Roger Ebert, you know, destroyed it. And 20 years later, he actually was the only movie he's ever reversed his opinion on it.

• 18:35Bill Maher?

  That's a Mortens Gorges movie.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Exactly. But funnily, funnily enough, he did kind of, a few years later, Ebert did kind of give a little bit of a, not a complete reversal, but he said, well, I'm still thinking about that movie. There's something weird about it.

• 18:49Bill Maher?

  But what did Gene Siskel say?

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Well, it was, it was, it was actually Ebert and Roper. Remember, there was a

• 18:54Bill Maher?

  Oh, of course.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Short period of time there where it was that Roper, so, and he didn't like it either.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  So, but it's, it wasn't really, it's weird, you know, because, you know. Well, it's very much like stand-up in a lot of ways. You can sort of choose to

• 19:15Speaker 03

  shock or polarize your audience, or you know, maybe purposefully, you know, push half of the audience away for the entertainment of the other half of the audience. This is what I thought we were doing. We were making this movie that was gonna be so weird that maybe half the audience would get up and walk out of the theater, and then the half that remained would be sitting there like they were in on the joke, right?

• 19:38Bill Maher?

  People like you and me never have the whole audience. And, and, and very few people do. And that's okay.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:46Bill Maher?

  It's a big country.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:48Bill Maher?

  But, I mean, I, I get it the way you're explaining. To me, it's like, that's what an artist does. I make the movie I think is funny. And some people are not gonna like it, and I know that going in, and that's okay. Because I'm not playing to them. I mean, that's what I go by.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think with that movie, part of it was, I guess we kind of felt like part of the punchline was the fact that some people just weren't gonna get it. Like, that was kind of the punchline, you know, like, this was so stupid that like, how could you have made something so stupid? And then people get angry about it, and that's what's funny. And so, I was surprised that Roger Ebert and Roper weren't able to kind of sort of step back a bit and go, "Some 28-year-old kid who's just, you know, fell off the turnip truck here in Los Angeles, and he's trying to, to make a weird movie, and let's, you know, maybe understand that this isn't..." You know, he wasn't trying to make The Jazz Singer. You know, this is supposed to be stupid.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  But instead, it was just sort of treated as it was not a successful...

• 20:51Bill Maher?

  I'm sure you're a fan of Spinal Tap.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah, absolutely.

• 20:54Bill Maher?

  And of course, there's the great line in Spinal Tap where he says, "It's a fine line between clever and stupid."

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Right, right, yeah.

• 21:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah, when they're accused of, yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes. Para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola, para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 21:40Speaker 04

  Sometimes creating an ad campaign can feel like you're talking on mute. That's why their Spotify's advertising will help your business turn up the volume and reach an engaged audience that's ready to hear and see your message. Learn more at ads.Spotify.com.

• 21:57Bill Maher?

  And in a way, there actually is. I mean, it's just how something strikes you. I mean, there are people who saw Spinal Tap and didn't understand it was a mockumentary at all. They just took it at face value and like, oh, this band isn't very good.

• 22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's amazing, because that was sort of, you know, what year would Spinal Tap have been, early 80s or?

• 22:22Bill Maher?

  Early 80s?

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Late 70s, early 80s, mid 80s?

• 22:25Bill Maher?

  Not 70s.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Mid 80s then, early 80s? I don't know what year it came out.

• 22:30Bill Maher?

  I mean, it's Rob Reiner's first movie, right? Yes, let's just say 80s.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  It's kind of amazing to think that people would have actually believed it was, was real. It's like, I remember when I started my show in the 90s and I was pulling pranks on my parents. People didn't understand that they were not actors at first. They thought, are those? People would say, are those your real parents? You know, they hadn't, hadn't sort of been inundated with reality TV yet. So they were sort of unable to sort of process the fact that some kid would go, you know, paint pornography on his parents' car or paint their house. And so they just thought they were actors, which blew me away because, I mean, they obviously weren't actors. It was obviously a home video kind of thing.

• 23:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, it was, I feel like a bridge to something like Borat.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was like, just before that.

• 23:22Bill Maher?

  Right, just before that.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So it was.

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  So when, so, so let me ask you this. When did you decide you wanted to do a second TV show in your living room here?

• 23:36Bill Maher?

  Uh, well, of course, it's not my living room. I bought your house.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 23:42Bill Maher?

  So, um, this is, this, this was always a strange

• 23:48Bill Maher?

  room, this, this building.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:50Bill Maher?

  Um, many people told me to tear it down. I mean, I didn't buy the house directly from you. Somebody else bought it for a few years and I bought it from him.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:58Bill Maher?

  Okay. So, up top is a tiki bar. I was told Drew put that in.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure. I, I don't actually recall ever being in this room, so I

• 24:08Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, it might have been the second, uh, after, after me was this was built, or maybe, I don't know. I'm not sure.

• 24:15Bill Maher?

  No, I think this was here when you were

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:17Bill Maher?

  I think you were just stoned and didn't see it. Really, you don't remember?

• 24:22Speaker 03

  You know, I did not smoke marijuana when I was making my show back in the day. I was like afraid of it. I was like this uptight kid who didn't smoke marijuana. I do occasionally now, but back then I was not, uh, uh, maybe I'll wait a little bit, cause I might, I might stop, uh, I'll make even less sense than I make now, but

• 24:38Bill Maher?

  They used to be so uptight about just mentioning stuff.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:45Bill Maher?

  I mean, it was, it was, it was like, I, I'm trying to think of what an analogy for today would be, like pedophilia or something, just like, you know, just, just Nazism.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  It was an amped up anti-drug era in the eighties with the, this is your brain on drugs and Nancy Reagan and the egg and the frying pan, and it's like, that's my brain in a frying pan frying my brain. So, yeah, I can see why people would have been a little worried about it, uh, with that sort of being constantly plugged into our minds, but, but, um, yeah.

• 25:19Bill Maher?

  It was a billboard, I remember, on the way to LAX, back when I was often on that road. You know, that road that connects like the 405 to the, to, uh, LAX.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:33Bill Maher?

  I can't remember it.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Right, right, yeah.

• 25:35Bill Maher?

  But I, but I was on it a zillion times and there was a billboard and it was, you know, like one of those, this is your brain on it. But it was about coke and it was, showed a line and, I mean, every time I saw it, I was like, you know, I'm not even a cokehead and I want to do some coke now.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:52Bill Maher?

  I mean, just seeing the line of coke was like

• 25:54Speaker 03

  It was sort of like an ad for cocaine.

• 25:56Bill Maher?

  Seeing the egg, I'm, I want eggs.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's a, well, that's.

• 26:03Bill Maher?

  Do you have chickens?

• 26:04Speaker 03

  I have chickens, yeah.

• 26:05Bill Maher?

  Well, let me tell you, you can make a killing right now.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  I've been thinking about this, getting into the egg business.

• 26:11Bill Maher?

  Maybe you and I could work something out, like, I mean, I'm here in America still. You could get it to me.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  You can be my egg distributor, my dealer. I'll be the, yeah, well, it's amazing, you know, how many eggs a few chickens will lay.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Like, I don't eat a ton of eggs, so I don't actually go, I have six chickens, and I have these other guinea hens, they're called, which are sort of like a cross between a quail and a turkey, but they, they run around the property and they eat a lot of bugs and stuff.

• 26:43Bill Maher?

  It's not quail and turkey fucking now, is it?

• 26:45Speaker 03

  No, they're actually, they're, I mean, I don't think that's where they actually, they look like that, but they're not, they're actually their own distinct species called guinea hens. They eat a lot of ticks. A guinea hen will eat thousands and thousands of ticks and bugs a day, so they clear out the whole property of all these.

• 27:01Bill Maher?

  You have ticks up there?

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Well, you know, we didn't until five years ago. Global warming, climate change has, they've moved north, they've been in the US, of course, forever, but they come up from Pennsylvania and New York on the deer. But five years ago, there were no ticks in Canada, so that's, climate change is real.

• 27:18Bill Maher?

  That is one you don't want, brother.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, no.

• 27:21Bill Maher?

  It's Lyme disease.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  The Lyme disease, yeah, exactly, so.

• 27:23Bill Maher?

  I would never go anywhere near any place that had ticks. I mean, if, I don't know what I'll do if they come here, and they probably will.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  They aren't in California, I guess, okay, yeah, yeah.

• 27:33Bill Maher?

  Well, there are still some at the Morris office. No, I'm kidding, I'm actually with them now. I'm making fun of my own agency now, I forgot.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  It sounds better with the Morris office.

• 27:43Bill Maher?

  It does.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  It's more old school, you know.

• 27:45Bill Maher?

  It was what I heard when I was a kid, where I thought it was so cool to be in show business when George Burns or somebody would say like,

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 27:52Bill Maher?

  You know, the Morris office, and I would think, oh, gosh.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 27:55Bill Maher?

  If I could one day.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  I remember when my show was on MTV, I was, where I was signed to the William Morris Agency and.

• 28:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  It was.

• 28:03Bill Maher?

  It's like when you watched Danny Thomas as a kid, that's like who his agent was. That's who you, that's all you knew as a civilian.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:12Bill Maher?

  About agencies.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:13Bill Maher?

  Who'd have thought that they would have wound up being William Morris Endeavor?

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it doesn't have the same ring to it, but.

• 28:20Bill Maher?

  No, it's not the Morris office of old, but that's probably good.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  But I get about, if I go in the chicken coop. Back to this egg deal we're working on.

• 28:30Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  And I haven't had a uh I haven't gone in there for a few days. I'll go in there, there'll be like forty-five eggs in there. Like, each chicken is laying one or two eggs a day. Um, and, and so, you know, if, if, if you have six chickens, you definitely will never be able to eat all the eggs that those six chickens will produce.

• 28:51Bill Maher?

  It is amazing to think that if we weren't a species that was so into chicken abortions. What? The world would be overrun with chickens.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:03Bill Maher?

  Every egg we ate had become a chicken.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  You know, the thing is, well, you know, they're not fertilized yet unless you have a rooster. So they're not really.

• 29:12Bill Maher?

  Was that right?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  I don't know if it would be considered a chicken abortion until the, so I don't have a rooster. So if you don't have a rooster, then the eggs are never gonna hatch.

• 29:20Bill Maher?

  What does the rooster do to the egg?

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I think it just, uh, just fucks the chicken, actually, but then the egg.

• 29:26Bill Maher?

  Then the egg.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Then the egg comes out and it's a fertilized egg and there's an embryo in it and uh it's like uh eighth grade sex ed class right now, Bill. You know what a chicken does. A rooster does to a chicken.

• 29:37Bill Maher?

  But, I do, but it's before the egg. Once the egg comes out, it's ready to hatch.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  That's the difference with a chicken. The, the egg hatches outside the, the body, but it's still has to be fertilized, I think, beforehand. So, so if you don't have a rooster, you never have a a fertilized egg. And, by the way, I didn't know any of this shit till three years ago either, so I have chickens now, so I know a lot of this stuff.

• 29:56Bill Maher?

  So the rooster does stud service for the entire bunch of, of hens?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, if you have a rooster, then, then you'll, you'll get fertilized eggs, but then the chicken still has to sit on it and incubate it for a period of time before it hatches. So even if you have a rooster, you can still

• 30:10Bill Maher?

  That must be where the connection is with calling a cock after a rooster.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  Sure, absolutely, yeah. I think so. Must be. Well, of course it must be. I haven't thought about that, but it must be.

• 30:21Bill Maher?

  It must be.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Why would it not be?

• 30:24Bill Maher?

  Tom, you're so reasonable. I, I can't believe people think you're a weirdo.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  It makes sense to me, yeah.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  You know, well, it's like, you know, it depends who you ask, you know, it depends who you ask, but yeah, no, it's uh.

• 30:36Bill Maher?

  It's so funny that you go from like Ultimate weirdo to like ultimate non weirdo.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  I thought.

• 30:42Bill Maher?

  It's a great, it's a great arc.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  I thought that like, there's so much weird shit on the internet now.

• 30:49Bill Maher?

  Right, you got it.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Like, how do you sort of.

• 30:52Bill Maher?

  You're right.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  You get up in the morning, you pick up your phone, you're seeing like violence and, you know, Karens getting, you know, chased through malls and screaming at people and everyone fighting and.

• 31:04Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  And, and, and, and, you know, so were you gonna compete with that?

• 31:08Bill Maher?

  Right, no.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  No, I thought maybe the weirdest thing that I could do is to go do something really normal.

• 31:13Bill Maher?

  You're so right.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Become a farmer.

• 31:14Bill Maher?

  Zig when they zag.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 31:16Bill Maher?

  You know, that, that's it.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  And there's a lot of comedy in my new show. I mean, my parents are on it. It's just more.

• 31:23Bill Maher?

  So it's you and Nicole Richie.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Simple life type thing.

• 31:29Bill Maher?

  That's what it.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  It's a little bit like that.

• 31:32Bill Maher?

  It's Eva Gabor, but you.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  It meets the simple life, yeah.

• 31:37Bill Maher?

  Do you remember Green Acres?

• 31:39Speaker 03

  That's, we were almost, we almost called the show Green Acres, but, uh, because, you know, but, uh, but, uh, it was taken, but, um.

• 31:46Bill Maher?

  Wasn't that great?

• 31:48Speaker 03

  You know, that was a little before my time, not to.

• 31:50Bill Maher?

  You should watch them.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:52Bill Maher?

  It was very.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  I remember watching reruns of it. I was more of a Beverly Hillbillies kind of guy.

• 31:56Bill Maher?

  There's a layer to Green Acres that's, that's very sophisticated. It was almost surreal because, you know, the plot was, of course, Oliver, Eddie Albert played him. He's a New York, uh, you know, I guess he was a lawyer or something. He's wearing three-piece suits. Marries Eva Gabor, who's darling and, you know, but she's hot and she wants to live in the. Oh, no, he wants to live in the country. She's like, oh, fuck it. You're, we're leaving Park Avenue for the country, but he wants to, he has this thing in his head about. And so. All the people around him on the farm and in the town, they're all like insane.

• 32:40Bill Maher?

  He's the only sane one there. And yet they also vibe with the wife, because she's insane in her way. So they kind of meld, even though she hates being in the country. And he's just like this, the sane guy in the middle. And it's really very well scripted. I think you would be impressed.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  It was, you know, it was sort of the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies, right? Which was they were-

• 33:03Bill Maher?

  I mean, I think that show was funny too, and it had a similar thing. Where the, the hillbillies would, in their own way, meld with some people he wouldn't expect. But, yeah, it was more just misunderstandings of, you know, the cement pond and like what, what things were and... But I, I feel like they, the writing back then, those writers were good. You know, those Green Gene shows that they used to call them on CBS. That's what kept CBS alive for years. It wasn't just the Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres. There was also Petticoat Junction.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Okay, I've, I've heard of it.

• 33:46Bill Maher?

  And they were all sort of, and Andy Griffith.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Right, watched that quite a bit.

• 33:50Bill Maher?

  They were all sort of, and they all kind of like, cross pollinated at a certain point with the ones on the other shows. It was, I think it was all taking place like in North Carolina. I'm sure it looks very racist today.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  But it was shot probably in the parking lot at CBS Radford or something.

• 34:08Bill Maher?

  Of course it was, and it wasn't overtly racist. It's just that there weren't black people in existence in their world. The 60s and the South, I mean, they're just... But that's where the world was, you know? I mean, yes, even liberals didn't think it was the wrong thing. So nobody should like fucking look back to the past and go, "Oh, we're better than you." No, you just came later.

• 34:33Bill Maher?

  You sound horrible.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  Oh, I feel worse. This flu is not playing around. Dad, you promised you'd be in my band, and it's showtime. Then it's dateable intense flu time. For fast and powerful relief of-

• 34:45Speaker 06

  For your flu symptoms, try Dayquil Intense Flu. Hit it!

• 34:48Speaker 05

  Yeah!

• 34:50Speaker 06

  Dayquil Intense Flu. The fast-acting daytime coughing, aching, aching, aching fever power through your flu medicine. Use is directed. Keep out of reach of children.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes. Para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola. Para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  Sometimes creating an ad campaign can feel like you're talking on mute. That's why their Spotify's advertising will help your business turn up the volume and reach an engaged audience that's ready to hear and see your message. Learn more at ads.Spotify.com.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  It's interesting living in Canada as a Canadian, having lived here and then moved back to Canada. And, you know, with these tariffs that are being implemented, or threatened at least. People are obviously very upset in Canada about this. Now, it's going to completely decimate the economy. And of course, it's going to have a same sort of effect on the American economy in a lot of ways.

• 36:10Bill Maher?

  It's a terrible idea.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  So it really doesn't make a lot of sense.

• 36:13Bill Maher?

  No sense.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  But then, um, you know, there's a hockey game, US versus Canada this week. And the Canadian crowd booed the American National Anthem, of course. Now, this was not a very nice thing to do normally.

• 36:26Bill Maher?

  That's from my garden.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Okay, I'll get that.

• 36:28Bill Maher?

  Where you used to live.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Under a normal set of circumstances, I don't think the Canadians would boo the American Stravose Spangle Banner, but they did.

• 36:36Bill Maher?

  Not that I love everything that's been going on in Canada under Trudeau, because I don't.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  He did legalize weed, though.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  That was one thing he did.

• 36:43Bill Maher?

  I love that.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  But he also resigned, so.

• 36:48Bill Maher?

  Good. He was super woke.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:51Bill Maher?

  To a degree I can't hang with. I mean, there is a thing about, that should be very important to someone like you, Tom. Freedom of speech. There is a level of hostility to freedom of speech that's going on. And of course, the Republicans are criticizing it now, but they have no leg to stand on. Because they're not for it either. But there are things going on in Europe right now, where they canceled an election in Romania.

• 37:17Bill Maher?

  Because the wrong people won, and I'm sure they were the wrong people, but you know what? Once you start canceling elections, and again, Republicans. No standing to make this case, because who's the biggest election canceler than Donald Trump? He tried every which way to cancel the 2020 election, still hasn't conceded it.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  You know, he was my old boss. He fired me on The Celebrity Apprentice.

• 37:39Bill Maher?

  I have to hear this story.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I went out drinking with Dennis Rodman on the night I was the project manager.

• 37:45Bill Maher?

  First of all, just Dennis Rodman is hysterical. And that you were drinking with him.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it was after, we weren't taping the show, we were done for the day. I had a big job, I was the project manager. You've seen the show before, you know it works, you have to sort of compete business tasks.

• 37:59Bill Maher?

  I never watched that show.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Well, it's a business competition, and I sort of fancied myself a pretty good businessman. We had to build a wedding dress store. And we were competing, the guys versus the girls. I had to sell more wedding dresses.

• 38:10Bill Maher?

  This is because.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Joan Rivers and Khloe Kardashian and her team. And I had Clint Black and Herschel Walker and Dennis Rodman on my team, right? And so it was very serious, right? But then after the, you know, I could tell we were kind of gonna lose, because my team sort of mutinied against me. Scott Hamilton as well, Olympic gold medalist, they kind of. They kind of wanted to lose and then get me fired, and so. So I was kind of a little upset about that, so I went out drinking with Dennis Rodman after the show that night. And I guess we were a little hungover in the boardroom the next day, and the president fired me. The president of the United States fired me.

• 38:46Bill Maher?

  Well. You know, going out drinking with Dennis Rodman, I have to say, is not something that recommends somebody as an employee. Again, that's just my thing with Trump.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  It was worth it, though.

• 38:58Bill Maher?

  I'm not gonna pre-hate everything.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:01Bill Maher?

  Firing you, I feel like was the right move.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're probably right, yeah. It was not a business, like, thing to do.

• 39:08Bill Maher?

  You know, you can't trust anything he says, cuz like, the next day he changes his mind, or whatever, but I think he said last week he wanted to cut the defense budget by 50%. I've been saying that for years. Am I gonna hate it now because he says it? That would be hypocritical.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Right. Or get rid of nuclear weapons.

• 39:25Bill Maher?

  Or get rid of the penny.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, we don't need those.

• 39:28Bill Maher?

  Well, we can't get rid of nuclear weapons unilaterally, but we could, we should reduce them.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  I think he was talking about trilateral. China, Russia, US, uh, for a planet.

• 39:39Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Lower them.

• 39:41Bill Maher?

  But I have to, I have to know, politics aside, like, Dennis Rodman.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, back to this, yeah.

• 39:49Bill Maher?

  As a, just very curious. I remember, of course, I'm a basketball fan.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:55Bill Maher?

  You remember the court? Was that here when you were here? The basketball court? You don't remember that, Ethan?

• 40:01Speaker 03

  Tennis court.

• 40:03Bill Maher?

  Okay, same thing.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a tennis court, yeah.

• 40:05Bill Maher?

  Ben made it into a basketball court.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:08Bill Maher?

  Anyway.

• 40:10Bill Maher?

  What was I gonna say about?

• 40:11Speaker 03

  We were talking about, um...

• 40:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, basketball, Dennis Rodman.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Dennis Rodman, yeah.

• 40:14Bill Maher?

  Big basketball fan. So I remember Dennis Rodman as a player. He was, that was...

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Best rebounder, and, uh...

• 40:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I remember I was in Chicago for some reason in 1996, when they won the championship. The night they did, and I went to this club where the, where they were partying. I met him on a championship night, like, at the, in the VIP room. It was like, wow, it's really cool being a celebrity, like, you know. The show had only been on a couple of years, and I was like, oh, this is great, I get...

• 40:45Speaker 03

  He was a lot of fun. We had a lot of, we became friends when we were there on the show. He was the only one that was kind of... Sort of not really uptight about the game. He was having fun with it. These reality shows are pretty nuts. Like, I assume you've never been on one of these kinds of shows.

• 41:01Bill Maher?

  No.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  I got asked to do it, so I did it. It seemed like a fun thing to do. And it was fun to do. But, you know, it is sort of like a Stanford prison experiment type of situation.

• 41:14Bill Maher?

  That's exactly what it is.

• 41:16Speaker 03

  And it's clearly purposely orchestrated like that. It's not unintentionally so. I mean, they'll put, you know, the celebrities. We'll put them, The Celebrity Apprentice, it was called, right? So they'll put the celebrities in a room. A room kind of like this, but it'll be Dennis Rodman and Herschel Walker and Clint Black and Brian McKnight and Scott Hamilton and myself and a couple other people. And then it'll be a day, you know, a television shooting day. Everyone will come in at, you know, nine in the morning, it's eight in the morning. And there'll be cameras all around, locked off with, you know, no camera people in there. And then they just basically don't give you anything to do for like way too long. Like four hours.

• 41:56Bill Maher?

  So you'll fight.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  And there's like, there's a cheese plate and a coffee. And then people just, and there's a competition that has some rules. And there's a bit of a hierarchy that they create within the group. Cause there's a project manager who becomes the leader of that group. And then people disagree with the leader and they all form these little sort of Lord of the Flies type sort of groups. And then they film it and it's pretty hilarious, you know, usually. And I think that's why people enjoy it. But being actually in there and being actually, you know, you don't want to be piggy, you know?

• 42:32Bill Maher?

  It does seem, Lord of the Flies, it's so right. It does seem like a lot of reality television in America is about pitting people against each other.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 42:43Bill Maher?

  We're a cockfighting, loving nation. We don't, people who would not normally perhaps be fighting.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Exactly. They know, they study this. I don't know for certain, but I would assume they have studied the science of it. They figure out exactly who's in there and. You know, what would get them mad at each other and you know.

• 43:04Bill Maher?

  You think they cast it that way also?

• 43:05Speaker 03

  I think they cast it that way. I think they put a bunch of people in there that would probably be, you know, maybe a little bit.

• 43:11Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Nutty, people like myself and Dennis Rodman and Scott Hamilton. Everyone knows Scott Hamilton's a bit of a wild man.

• 43:17Bill Maher?

  So you were allied with, you were, you had an alliance with Dennis Rodman. That was in, you were a.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Well, so, well, to break down the actual game, because it did get pretty serious there for a bit.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  So in the second episode, first episode of my season, each episode, someone gets fired. Okay, first episode, Andrew Dice Clay, my good friend, who I'm sure you know very well, got fired.

• 43:44Bill Maher?

  I know Randy, yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  He got fired for, he was a bit, he was a bit aggressive with Donald Trump when he asked for, in the first, in the first episode, Dice kinda was a bit aggressive with Donald Trump because there was not enough butter for the bagels in the green room. And he got angry about it in the boardroom on the show.

• 44:05Bill Maher?

  My guess is he, he actually didn't get angry about it. My guess is he's sort of.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Well, I think he was doing it for fun, you know, but it.

• 44:12Bill Maher?

  I think he, he likes to play the character of Andrew Dice Clay. That's a character.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I'm very good friends with Dice, too.

• 44:20Bill Maher?

  But that's not really him.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I know, yeah.

• 44:22Bill Maher?

  And sometimes he just lets the character drive the bus. Because it's more fun for the character to be mad about the bagels and for him to be a reasonable person.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  It was hilarious. I mean, it was so funny. I mean, and it was kind of, probably not what you would really do if you were gonna try to win the game, to start complaining immediately.

• 44:41Bill Maher?

  What do you get if you win?

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Uh, I think you win money for a charity of your choice, is what it was, yeah.

• 44:47Bill Maher?

  Why even try?

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. Yeah, well, it becomes, then it quickly becomes a point of pride to the people in there about trying to prove that they are smart.

• 44:57Bill Maher?

  What was your charity? Sick Kids?

• 44:59Speaker 03

  It was a cancer, cancer.

• 45:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, so you fucked a bunch of kids because you and Dennis Rodman wanted a drink.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no. I. By that point, I I knew I was I was not going to be, uh, cause I had an alliance against me, you see. Uh, Bill, an alliance against, so my team had sort of turned on me, decided to get me fired, so I uh, I basically just, uh, I threw in the towel, pretty much, and said, okay.

• 45:22Bill Maher?

  A rough few years, bro.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was funny.

• 45:25Bill Maher?

  Fire, divorce.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:27Bill Maher?

  Drop.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  By the president of the United States, too.

• 45:29Bill Maher?

  Come on, man.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  By the president of the United States.

• 45:31Bill Maher?

  Bad reviews from Roger Ebert, this was, something was going on in your horoscope, I'm telling you.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Those, those were kind of, in hindsight, at, uh, as I look back on it, they become kind of, become kind of funny, those things. Those are some of the funniest things that happened.

• 45:46Bill Maher?

  When you think of what, to, uh, overuse a term that's overused. Privilege, kind of life we live.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:54Bill Maher?

  Where what we do is something we basically considered to be fun. So, do we work? Yeah, we work, but I've also had jobs when I was younger. That was work. In other words, I fucking hated it. I didn't want to throw triangles of fish product into a vat of grease.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Is that something you did? Were you, were you, were, did you ever work as a short order cook somewhere, or?

• 46:16Bill Maher?

  No, I'm.

• 46:17Speaker 03

  Fast food? Have you ever done that?

• 46:18Bill Maher?

  I'm bragging, Tom.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  I worked at Dairy Queen.

• 46:21Bill Maher?

  I'm bragging about my, yes, I, of course.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Which one? Where? Which McDonald's?

• 46:26Bill Maher?

  Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, cool.

• 46:29Bill Maher?

  At the Gineer. Arthur Treacher was this old British actor.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 46:33Bill Maher?

  Who was Merv Griffin's announcer, like sidekick, like Ed McMahon.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:39Bill Maher?

  And that was enough, in this day, I guess this is the seventies. That was enough for Arthur Treacher to have gotten himself a franchise, cause he was British.

• 46:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:51Bill Maher?

  A franchise of.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  It was like a Kenny Rogers Roasters.

• 46:56Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  But with Arthur Treacher.

• 46:57Bill Maher?

  He wasn't that big a star.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:59Bill Maher?

  But they had, uh, it was, it was a viable restaurant, restaurant. It was a fast food shithole.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:04Bill Maher?

  That I worked in, yes, and, and.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  And so you, would you deep fry the fish in a fryer?

• 47:08Bill Maher?

  It would, you'd be your arms, you'd be, you'd have to wear a uniform, you'd wear shorts, and your arms would have.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Because the grease would come up, you'd be burns on your arms. Yeah, I, I, I, I know that. I, I used to cook, uh, the, I got fired because I am a miscooked a chicken burger at Dairy Queen, so.

• 47:28Bill Maher?

  These kids who get offended at microaggressions and like they, not that I'm a marine. I mean, I'm, people have had way harder lives than me for lots of reasons.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  No, that's definitely not the worst thing that could happen is getting a little chicken grease on your arm.

• 47:42Bill Maher?

  It really hurt. When that shit comes out. And then you'd have just all these red marks on your arm.

• 47:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I'm not saying it's.

• 47:51Bill Maher?

  At a time of my life when I was, you know, thinking about asking a girl out. It wasn't the greatest thing to approach her with red marks all over my arms.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Right, right, but you had a few bucks though.

• 48:02Bill Maher?

  I didn't.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Because you were working.

• 48:04Bill Maher?

  I went from that to selling pot in six months.

• 48:07Speaker 03

  That was, that was.

• 48:07Bill Maher?

  That was my last.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  More lucrative?

• 48:10Bill Maher?

  Way more lucrative and way more fun.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's cool, that's cool.

• 48:13Bill Maher?

  I didn't smoke until I was a sophomore in college. But I went from first smoking it to selling it in six months.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:22Bill Maher?

  Because I couldn't afford it otherwise.

• 48:24Speaker 03

  See, the, the, I, I have honestly not, like, I did not, uh, when I first ever tried that, I was kind of later. Maybe I was in my twenties and it made me sort of have a panic attack in a way. I, I, I found very paranoid the first time I ever smoked.

• 48:38Bill Maher?

  Oh, well, it can.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  So why does it do that?

• 48:41Bill Maher?

  You asked me before about eating it.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:43Bill Maher?

  That's another reason.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Right. It makes you kind of paranoid?

• 48:47Bill Maher?

  Well, it's just a more, it's more like tripping. It's a, it's a five, six hour experience.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:54Bill Maher?

  Which I'm not up for.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, too much energy required.

• 48:58Bill Maher?

  I don't have six hours to give to your trip, you know, and, uh, yeah, you can be almost too high sometimes. It's just, it's just, you can't control it. And for a control freak, it's just not, it doesn't work.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 49:14Bill Maher?

  And I've tried to make it work.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  It's a fear of a loss of control, which feels, so what? Why does that not always happen though? When, why does it happen when people eat that? Not, not when you smoke it then?

• 49:25Bill Maher?

  I mean, everybody's different, you know, I mean.

• 49:27Speaker 03

  I'm having a beer, by the way.

• 49:28Bill Maher?

  Please do.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  You drink beer, Bill?

• 49:30Bill Maher?

  I fucking hate beer.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  You hate beer, huh?

• 49:32Bill Maher?

  I do, I really do.

• 49:35Speaker 03

  Why, why do you hate beer? You just never got into it?

• 49:37Bill Maher?

  It stinks. It, it's like, it's cheap.

• 49:40Speaker 03

  It's cold.

• 49:41Bill Maher?

  It's, it's, it's cheap. It's like, low level, uh, percent.

• 49:46Speaker 03

  It's an art form to make a beer, you know?

• 49:47Bill Maher?

  About.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  I don't know how they do it, but it's, I know it's.

• 49:49Bill Maher?

  It's German, you know?

• 49:51Speaker 03

  It's like barley and stuff in there and hot.

• 49:54Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  All, all beer tastes different, different kinda? You know, this is a, uh, Peco, and this is a lager, nice.

• 50:02Bill Maher?

  No, I could, I could drink it. It doesn't like make me wretch.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:06Bill Maher?

  But the idea of, of drinking something with only like 12% alcohol or something?

• 50:12Speaker 03

  There's not enough alcohol.

• 50:14Bill Maher?

  Well, if you're drinking, you're drinking to feel the effect, whatever it does, like, I always think it kills, say, 5% of my brain cells. Not permanently perhaps, although I guess they are permanent, okay? But I, at the moment, 5%. And for some reason, that makes you, in a way, smarter sometimes. In a, I mean, in many ways stupider, of course, drunks do the worst things. But, you know, if you could control it, just, uh, why do people, you know, have a couple of drinks at dinner? I think it takes down attention level in people.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 50:49Bill Maher?

  And it makes you just more you.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  But a beer with the 12%, it's still kind of a slower kind of tension.

• 50:56Bill Maher?

  Right, yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  It's just a little more, you know? Uh, to me, it's almost like a, I'm rehydrating a little bit with a beer. It's almost like a glass of water sometimes, you know? You don't have to think of it like you're just drinking it to, uh, get drunk or whatever, right? With beer, it's sort of more like just a.

• 51:11Bill Maher?

  I just.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Come on, Bill, have a beer. Just have one beer.

• 51:16Bill Maher?

  I just saw this, uh, great show, I gotta say. I'm a big Billy Bob Thornton fan anyway. I mean, even if he'd only ever done Bad Santa, I'd love him. He's done a lot of great stuff. And his band is great, I've always been a fan, but.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  I was in an episode of The Trailer Park Boys with Billy Bob Thornton.

• 51:33Bill Maher?

  What's that?

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Canadian legends, The Trailer Park Boys. Do you know them?

• 51:36Bill Maher?

  I don't.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  They're very funny. You have to have The Trailer Park Boys down here on the show.

• 51:39Bill Maher?

  What does that mean?

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Uh, well, it's a TV show up in Canada, yeah.

• 51:42Bill Maher?

  The Trailer Park?

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, they've been, it's been hilarious show.

• 51:45Bill Maher?

  On now?

• 51:46Speaker 03

  It's been on for a long time, but it's like kind of, uh, yeah, it's on now too, for sure, yeah.

• 51:51Bill Maher?

  You know, my earliest years in comedy were when SCTV was on.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 51:57Bill Maher?

  And I would, I had the one, one of the first, I guess, yeah, the first generation certainly of, um, of V, of something I could tape off TV. It was like this big.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 52:12Bill Maher?

  And you had to like.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Recorded on a V, on a VHS tape?

• 52:15Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Or a Beta?

• 52:16Bill Maher?

  A VHS tape.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  VHS tape, yeah.

• 52:18Bill Maher?

  And you would, just like with the old tape recorder, you would have to push like two buttons at the same time to, like, press and play or something.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  And. Record and play, yeah.

• 52:27Bill Maher?

  So it was on Saturday night, SCTV, and that was always a big night to be out at the clubs.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:34Bill Maher?

  But at the end of that night, I would be like drooling in the cab.

• 52:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:40Bill Maher?

  Going home.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  Just to go home and watch that VHS tape.

• 52:43Bill Maher?

  Hee, rewind.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:45Bill Maher?

  And watch SCTV.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:47Bill Maher?

  It, it was like just on a level that was.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  And that, so that would have been, how, how old were you when you were watching SCTV? Were you, were you?

• 52:56Bill Maher?

  Twenty three.

• 52:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:58Bill Maher?

  You know, my first year in comedy.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:00Bill Maher?

  And living in, or, oh no, I guess I was, yeah, probably. I'm, I'm picturing it in the apartment. I, I got my main apartment there, which was not a nice place. Um, but I didn't have the dots on my arms anymore, so it evened out. But, uh, yeah, so yeah, seventy nine, eighty, around there, eighty, eighty one. I mean, early twenties and, uh, you know, just at that part in your life where I've never had more anxiety because it was like, you know, am I gonna go anywhere in this? Crazy job I picked for myself.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:38Bill Maher?

  Or, you know, and if not, what? And could I, can I be happy?

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:45Bill Maher?

  Doing anything else, because I always kind of, as a kid, I kind of knew, I'm not gonna be happy doing anything else.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:53Bill Maher?

  That's a lot of pressure on your.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  That's, that's, and so, yeah, I felt that way, I felt that way.

• 53:59Bill Maher?

  Did you have a backup when you were starting?

• 54:01Speaker 03

  I didn't really have much of a backup plan, because, I mean, I, I, I went to school for broadcasting, so I knew I was gonna work. I wanted to do something technically, at least, because I guess I could have done more technical side of the business, too. I do, I do like camera work and editing and stuff like that. That might have been, but, uh, yeah, so it's terrifying.

• 54:19Bill Maher?

  You look like a director.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Well.

• 54:21Bill Maher?

  You do.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  I, really, how, what does that look like exactly?

• 54:24Bill Maher?

  I know you have directed lots of stuff, but I'm just saying you just look like a director.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I, I.

• 54:31Bill Maher?

  Much more than a farmer.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's, uh, yeah, so when you get to interview the cast members of SCTV for the first time, how old are you when you first interviewed Martin Short? And what was that like?

• 54:45Bill Maher?

  Well, Martin Short's become a great friend.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  Sure, so when the first time you met him, though, was it just kind of an incredibly sort of weird experience for you?

• 54:52Bill Maher?

  I'm guessing you haven't seen this, you should look this up on, um, wherever YouTube it. But I had a book out last year. So, I was like, in the one-on-one interviews section of the show we do after I do a monologue, it's very often an author. You know, it's a topic, it's a single topic, and it could be anyone, it can be an iconic celebrity, it can be the governor, whatever. But, yeah, if somebody has like an amazing book, like Jonathan Haidt has this amazing book that's been on the charts for years, you know, uh, the anxious generation about kids and phones and all that shit.

• 55:37Bill Maher?

  But I was like, okay, but now I'm the person with the book. Can I have someone interview me and I'm the guest?

• 55:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:46Bill Maher?

  Well, Jiminy Glick did it for me.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:48Bill Maher?

  And I'm telling you, it's like the funniest 10 minutes. I mean, I'm just playing straight, man.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 55:55Bill Maher?

  I'm just, I did do my part well, but that's just because I understand that what's going on here.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:03Bill Maher?

  And it's.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  You had the VHS tapes.

• 56:05Bill Maher?

  Get out, yes, get out of the way and let the genius do his thing and just, and of course, just play everything straight. As if he's a person who deserves, deserves an answer. I mean, his first question was, why go after Harriet Tubman?

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 56:21Bill Maher?

  I mean, I was, I had to have a tissue box there for, I couldn't, you know, he is. There is a genius to Martin Short that really, he deserves all the accolades he gets.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  And it's probably you relate to that character because you probably would like to be Jiminy Glick sometimes when you're interviewing people, I would think, right? Would that be kind of a dream to be able to just sort of one night come out and just say?

• 56:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:47Bill Maher?

  Well, just because it's silly.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:49Bill Maher?

  Because it's, I mean, it's like the comedy of silly, you can't beat it. You can't beat getting someone giggling, you know?

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Do you remember when you saw a talk show for the first time? Who, who was it? And who was your favorite talk show host from before 1980?

• 57:07Bill Maher?

  Johnny Carson.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Johnny Carson, okay, yeah.

• 57:09Bill Maher?

  That was my era. I mean, I was a little.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  Of course, it would be, yeah, but other than Johnny Carson, I guess I would say.

• 57:14Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  We'll talk about Johnny Carson in a second.

• 57:16Bill Maher?

  I mean, he was so, you know, the Zeus of the universe that everybody, I mean, look, one of my great friends in life was Alan Thicke.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I knew.

• 57:28Bill Maher?

  Came with me on my.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Canadian.

• 57:31Bill Maher?

  My first Hawaiian excursion I did for 12 years. I did a thing in Hawaii over New Year's and he was on that first trip with us. Loved him.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:41Bill Maher?

  He tried. And Alan, you know, people never really appreciated what an amazing, dry, sophisticated wit he was. Because he was known as the sitcom dad.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:54Bill Maher?

  You know, but that wasn't Alan. Alan was like slyly the most hysterical guy.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  In Canada, he had a talk show, I believe it was before the one he had in the US too. So we grew up with Alan Thicke on TV. A lot more.

• 58:10Bill Maher?

  Let me tell you an Alan Thicke story that's so funny.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  He had a show, Stick of the Night, right?

• 58:15Bill Maher?

  Oh, yes, Stick. I have the T-shirt.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:17Bill Maher?

  He got me the T-shirt.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was hilarious. I got to interview him a couple of times on my, on my web podcast show that I did.

• 58:23Bill Maher?

  Oh, you did?

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I got to.

• 58:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, he was a Canadian icon.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, the best, yeah.

• 58:27Bill Maher?

  Oh, I loved him. So, listen to this. I remember I'm meeting him one night and he was newly engaged to Tanya, his third wife.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 58:37Bill Maher?

  I think she was Miss Colombia.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 58:39Bill Maher?

  Barry Allen.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 58:40Bill Maher?

  A beauty pageant winner.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 58:43Bill Maher?

  You know, but they were like, I mean, it was hysterical because it was like NAFTA. The dry, unflappable Canadian and then the Sofia Vergara character.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Right, sure.

• 58:55Bill Maher?

  You know, and I loved Tanya. She's awesome.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:57Bill Maher?

  But, you know, she's Colombian and fiery and, um, so it was just hysterical to have them on the trip. But I remember when they got, um, I was, I met them at a restaurant. It was just me. And I don't know why I was, I agree, but, you know, I loved him. I saw him a lot. And she's like, you know, she wanted me to notice the, she finally got the engagement.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, sure.

• 59:23Bill Maher?

  You know, and it was, you know, girls do, you know.

• 59:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 59:26Bill Maher?

  So then we were joking about that. Okay, great, congratulations. We were talking about, at the time, his kid was like four years old, three or four years old, Carter. Um, and, um, he was playing hockey with that kid who was then 18 when he died.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:43Bill Maher?

  Um, so Canadian.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  Yes, but at least a very Canadian way to go.

• 59:48Bill Maher?

  Special Valhalla salute for that.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 59:52Bill Maher?

  So, you know, I'm asking Alan about the kid and he loves Tanya. That's great. I said, you know, I said, does he understand sex yet? And Alan said.

• 1:00:08Bill Maher?

  I don't think so. But he knows it has something to do with the diamond.

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  With, with the-

• 1:00:20Bill Maher?

  He knows it has something to do with the diamond.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Well, you know, that's funny. He was a great guy. He was a great guy. I, yeah.

• 1:00:32Bill Maher?

  Canadians, man.

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  It's tough when-

• 1:00:34Bill Maher?

  The roster is like so impressive.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  My, I got to know Norm MacDonald on, when he came to my web show and he's from my hometown of, you know, Ottawa. He's, grew up blocks away from each other, but he was not at the same time. He was a bit older than me. But I remember I saw him for the first time at Yuck Yucks when I was a kid. I would go down to Yuck Yucks and he was performing before he was on Saturday Night Live.

• 1:00:57Bill Maher?

  Yuck Yucks in-

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  In Ottawa. I would see him in Ottawa.

• 1:01:00Bill Maher?

  Where? What, what city?

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Ottawa.

• 1:01:03Bill Maher?

  Oh, Ottawa. The capital.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  The capital. That's where I'm from. Yeah. So, yeah. And Yuck Yucks is, you know, you know Mark Breslin probably?

• 1:01:09Bill Maher?

  Why didn't I get that gig?

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  You know, uh, well, uh, you know, you have to-

• 1:01:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  You, you have to be from Ottawa and then you probably-

• 1:01:16Bill Maher?

  Oh, really? They didn't have American comics?

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  No, they did, but-

• 1:01:19Bill Maher?

  Cause we played, I played Montreal and-

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, for sure. It was, it was a lot of, uh, you know, Canadian comics just started at Yuck Yucks.

• 1:01:26Bill Maher?

  I played Winnipeg.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, uh, which one did you play? Have you played in the clubs there or Rumors?

• 1:01:34Bill Maher?

  I mean, it was 1992.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  You ever play the Rumors Comedy Club in Winnipeg? Shout out to Rumors Comedy Club. It's a great comic club. It's been there since the eighties.

• 1:01:41Bill Maher?

  That's probably what I was playing.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:01:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Winnipeg's, uh, did you enjoy your time in Winnipeg or were you just kinda in and out?

• 1:01:49Bill Maher?

  I did. I, I'm not gonna tell this story, but I actually had a great time.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Bill Maher?

  But, um, I mean, the, the reason I got there does not, uh, favor well on Winnipeg, but that's not their fault. I only got there because, uh, my house had to be tented.

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:08Bill Maher?

  They called my agent and they said-

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Get me a gig fast. Well, we got Winnipeg. Okay, whatever. Let's go. That kind of thing. That's cool.

• 1:02:18Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Well, I, you know, it's, I, I've, I have a lot of, I've had a lot of fun in Winnipeg. You know, it's good. Go Jets, you know, Canadian city, but um.

• 1:02:26Bill Maher?

  Canadians.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  I don't know. There's a, really a reason why their team is called the Jets. By the way, the hockey team is the Winnipeg Jets, but I don't think there's really a lot of Jets or anything in Winnipeg.

• 1:02:35Bill Maher?

  I love Canada.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:36Bill Maher?

  I love the people. I have some serious connections with friends.

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:41Bill Maher?

  There, um, and I

• 1:02:46Bill Maher?

  remember moments there that would never happen in America. Like

• 1:02:53Bill Maher?

  somebody refusing a tip.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:56Bill Maher?

  I remember somebody doing that, pushing the money back and saying, you've been generous enough. And I said, you know, in America, you could be arrested for that.

• 1:03:06Bill Maher?

  Refusing money?

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Bill Maher?

  That, that is. Boys.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  You've, you've been to every city in Canada, probably, right?

• 1:03:13Bill Maher?

  I've been, no, but certainly I, on the tour was always.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Toronto, you've been to Toronto.

• 1:03:18Bill Maher?

  Of course, Toronto.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  You love Toronto. Vancouver, you've been to Vancouver.

• 1:03:21Bill Maher?

  Yes, but Toronto.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Have you been to Ottawa? The capital.

• 1:03:25Bill Maher?

  No, no, no. I'm saying I, I've never played Ottawa.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  I don't think you have been to Ottawa. You've got to come to Ottawa.

• 1:03:30Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm not doing it anymore, so.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  You're not, you're not going on the road anymore?

• 1:03:34Bill Maher?

  I just stopped as a.

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  I did hear you say that, but I wasn't sure if I believed it or not, but you're like a hundred percent stopped or just like slow? Well, you can still go and do a couple of shows a year if you want, or?

• 1:03:43Bill Maher?

  You know what? I really feel you can't because you have to be in practice to do stand up, at least the way I want to do it.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Because you would feel, every, every time you got up, you'd feel like you were not.

• 1:03:54Bill Maher?

  I mean, I've kept.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  In a groove, yeah.

• 1:03:56Bill Maher?

  For forty-two years, I've had an act. Like, there was my life on TV.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:01Bill Maher?

  And then there was my act. Now, there was stuff that bled between them. It was, it was very good. I would.

• 1:04:07Speaker 03

  How often are you, I mean, I don't know if people like to talk about, hear about writing and stand up sets, but how often do you try to? Slide that material out, or do you keep some jokes for years?

• 1:04:20Bill Maher?

  I never try. I never try.

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Bill Maher?

  But, I mean, well, now I don't even have to worry about it because I'm not doing it. But for years.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  But hypothetically, you were still doing it.

• 1:04:29Bill Maher?

  There was things, there was, there were, I'm not gonna say there aren't things that were written for real time that didn't wind up in my act. There are. But mostly, I wrote that myself.

• 1:04:45Bill Maher?

  It was just too, stand-up is just much more personal than like doing a monologue each week, which is really just about the events of that week. It's not, it's very impermanent.

• 1:04:57Bill Maher?

  Stand-up, I just did a special. I mean, like, I, that, they can watch that for years. Not everything I'll like.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  It takes a lot out of you just having to exude that kind of emotion, emotional energy live every, every weekend, you know?

• 1:05:11Bill Maher?

  No, I like that part. I like, I mean.

• 1:05:13Speaker 03

  Is it the anticipation of it? Is there anxiety that you get before the show? The travel, just exhaustion, it's exhausting, yeah.

• 1:05:19Bill Maher?

  It's like, you know, when I, when I said I wasn't gonna do it at the end of last, well, the beginning of last year, so we didn't book anything for this year. All year, I kept thinking, oh my God, I'm not gonna be doing this after this, you know, there's eight more gigs, there's six more gigs, there's four more gigs.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  It's not a legal contract. I mean, you can always change your mind at any time.

• 1:05:40Bill Maher?

  That's why I never made an announcement. I just.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  You decide next year, oh, I think I will do it again.

• 1:05:44Bill Maher?

  But I was like really wondering, when it comes to it next year, am I really gonna be okay with this? And you know what happened? I was. I was right. Like.

• 1:05:57Speaker 03

  Maybe, maybe another year you might start to get the itch for it, you know?

• 1:06:01Bill Maher?

  Couple of weekends ago would have normally been, as it has been for so many years, the weekend when I first went out back on the road, the third weekend in January, the holidays are over, okay, people go to a show again. I was so glad I didn't have to fucking drag my ass out of bed on a Saturday and go to Cincinnati after I don't love Cincinnati or whatever it was. I just wanted to be home.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:26Bill Maher?

  And that's it, you know, you just, I, it's not that I couldn't, I'm not crippled in any way, people. I mean, it's not like, I just don't fucking feel like it.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, have you ever, did you ever take a break before for a year or two?

• 1:06:40Bill Maher?

  Never.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Never, yeah, exactly. So that's why it feels weird, but it doesn't mean you can't take a break. It's because you've never done it before, it doesn't mean you can't take a break. It could just be a break, maybe you're just taking a break.

• 1:06:49Bill Maher?

  There's other things to do.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, but maybe it's just a break, maybe it could be a five-year break.

• 1:06:53Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you don't have, I mean.

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

  I just don't think you should set it in stone, I don't want you to see you quit doing stand-up just because you decided to quit.

• 1:07:02Bill Maher?

  Stand-up is just a medium.

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Bill Maher?

  It's a medium for ideas.

• 1:07:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Bill Maher?

  That's what this is in its own weird way.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:09Bill Maher?

  And there are, there are people who will watch us do this.

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Bill Maher?

  Who wouldn't watch us do anything else, and I get that. I am not that, but I get that. Because there are, it's just like there are people who want to hear a jam band instead of something polished.

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:07:29Bill Maher?

  And that's personal taste, and I get it, and I'm fine. But I want both. I want, I want to have a jam band, and I also want to make Abbey Road every week on Real Time.

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  Right, and that's what, that's, I was, because I was actually about to ask you why you built a television studio in your, in your basement here.

• 1:07:50Bill Maher?

  I mean, I just.

• 1:07:52Speaker 03

  But there's the answer, that's the answer, yeah, it's fun, this is kind of like, you can just kind of.

• 1:07:55Bill Maher?

  But it's still, I didn't change anything in this room, this room was always so cool. I mean, it was a mess when I got it, but, and I think Drew is the person who built that tiki bar up. It looks, that thing that looks like you're in Mexico.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:11Bill Maher?

  I, I was told, I don't know how I know that.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's true, actually.

• 1:08:15Bill Maher?

  I think it is true, it's beautiful, I still love it, as a place to like, um.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  That was, I think she built that before I knew her.

• 1:08:22Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm gonna have a party this summer and invite both of you. It's time you reconnected, oh wait, you're married.

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely, in fact, well, you know, I was gonna say relating to stand-up, you know what I've been doing since the pandemic? Is that, how do you describe the? When you say since, do you say since covid or since the pandemic? You know.

• 1:08:41Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  Either one.

• 1:08:42Bill Maher?

  Either one.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  When the pandemic happened, that's when I kinda

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  moved, right? I moved back to Canada.

• 1:08:48Bill Maher?

  Oh, that was the impetus?

• 1:08:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, yeah, yeah. And, uh, and it was kinda like, cause the, I was do, I'm touring all the time and my tour was cancelled for the whole year and I was sitting there going, okay, I didn't have a TV show to go to every day, so I'm sitting around my house going like, what the heck am I gonna friggin' do this weekend?

• 1:09:06Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  And so I, I got this camper van, I got my dog Charlie. I started going out into the deserts out here and filming some stuff for, just for, basically just cause I wanted to go check out the desert, but filming some stuff for social media. And then I, I decided to move back to, sold my house, moved back to Canada. Sure, thank you very much.

• 1:09:22Bill Maher?

  What'd you do with that other one I gave you?

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  I smoked it. No, here it is, right here. There it is, there you go. Thank you. Trade ya.

• 1:09:29Bill Maher?

  That sounds like a conversation I would have had at nineteen.

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Bill Maher?

  What'd you do with that one I other? The other?

• 1:09:38Speaker 03

  It's exactly that.

• 1:09:39Bill Maher?

  Oh no, I didn't smoke it.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  It's exactly what it was. But I got this camper van and so now I, I'm touring. You have that?

• 1:09:47Bill Maher?

  No, I don't, I don't smoke. I don't smoke a lot, Tom.

• 1:09:50Speaker 03

  I'm touring with my, I'm, I'm, I'm now driving on my touring more is what I'm getting at. I haven't been going to the airport and flying to, instead I've been doing these, so I drove here from Canada in a camper van.

• 1:10:00Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  Right now.

• 1:10:01Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I left Canada.

• 1:10:03Bill Maher?

  That's so Tom Green.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  In my camper van with my fiance and my dog. And we drove and we did gigs all the way down.

• 1:10:09Bill Maher?

  You two must be close.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're having a lot of fun though.

• 1:10:11Bill Maher?

  To be able to be together all day long in a camper.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  It's, it's going well. I mean, it's.

• 1:10:16Bill Maher?

  No, I'm not doubting it or wishing.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  She's still here, she's here.

• 1:10:18Bill Maher?

  No, I, I get it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 03

  She didn't go, she didn't leave yet. Still, she didn't fly home.

• 1:10:22Bill Maher?

  What is it, what is it that makes, that you think allows one person to be like so

• 1:10:31Bill Maher?

  easy on your just vibe that

• 1:10:36Bill Maher?

  You can be around them all the time, because a lot of, I feel like, you know, success in a relationship is that. Can you just be around somebody?

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Bill Maher?

  And feel almost as calm as you do when you're alone?

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Bill Maher?

  You don't fart.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Bill Maher?

  Not that calm.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  I try not to.

• 1:10:55Bill Maher?

  Not that, no, not that comfortable. Are we agreed?

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I'm not gonna say what I'm guilty of in the terms of farting too much department, but I don't try to fart a lot, if that's what we're talking about here, Bill.

• 1:11:10Bill Maher?

  Okay, well, the only fart that ever should happen in your mutual space,

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Bill Maher?

  I believe, is an inadvertent fart. That can't.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:11:24Bill Maher?

  The way you're like, yes, of course.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think of whether I agree with that.

• 1:11:28Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, well, you can't help it, it's like a nocturnal.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  This isn't really, honestly, this isn't really the first thing I want to talk about when talking about my new engagement. My fiancee, you know, she's amazing, and that's why we're having a lot of fun. She's, she puts up with the absurdity of this idea of traveling around in a camper. But we are staying in hotels, you know, when we're not.

• 1:11:50Bill Maher?

  She loves it.

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  No, we're having a lot of fun, we're having a lot of fun.

• 1:11:53Bill Maher?

  Are you funny all the time?

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  Uh, not, I get kinda, I'm pretty tired right now, now that you mention it. You want me to mention me, because I've been, I drove here in a camper van.

• 1:12:03Bill Maher?

  That's amazing.

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  I slept in the Mojave Desert.

• 1:12:05Bill Maher?

  I appreciate it so much.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Four nights ago.

• 1:12:07Bill Maher?

  I really appreciate.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  It's beautiful out there.

• 1:12:09Bill Maher?

  Putting out like that.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  Have you ever slept out in the Mojave Desert?

• 1:12:11Bill Maher?

  Fuck no.

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  It is so beautiful out there.

• 1:12:14Bill Maher?

  I'm sure it is, but there's also.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Seeing the sunset coming up over the mountains in the Mojave Desert.

• 1:12:19Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Making some coffee, just.

• 1:12:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  Do you drink coffee?

• 1:12:23Bill Maher?

  I do, but not in the middle of nothing in the morning.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  Well, that's, what's not, what, what's, why does that sound bad? It's not nothing, there's beautiful.

• 1:12:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  Cactuses and wildlife and.

• 1:12:36Bill Maher?

  You know what it is?

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  Flora and fauna.

• 1:12:38Bill Maher?

  We're at different stages of life, not that I would do it at 53 either.

• 1:12:41Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:12:41Bill Maher?

  But especially.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  Just not your thing, you're just not a guy, you just don't go camping.

• 1:12:45Bill Maher?

  No, I wanna come.

• 1:12:45Speaker 03

  Have you ever been camping?

• 1:12:46Bill Maher?

  I want a comfortable bathroom.

• 1:12:48Speaker 03

  Have you ever gone camping?

• 1:12:49Bill Maher?

  A comfortable bathroom, okay, I think, I think after comfortable bathroom,

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Bill Maher?

  you get the, it's just like.

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Have you ever slept in a tent?

• 1:12:57Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  Wow, really? That's amazing.

• 1:12:59Bill Maher?

  Never slept.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not sleeping, I'm sleeping in a camper van. It's scary sleeping in a tent. Animals can tear through that tent.

• 1:13:04Bill Maher?

  I did not sleep in a tent, but I once slept

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  Terrifying, actually.

• 1:13:07Bill Maher?

  in a hammock.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:13:09Bill Maher?

  You'll never guess where. On Frankie Valli's tour bus.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  You're right, I would have never guessed that.

• 1:13:20Bill Maher?

  I am right, aren't I?

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  Would have never guessed that, no.

• 1:13:24Bill Maher?

  That's right.

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  That's amazing. So, was that just kind of, was he a friend of yours?

• 1:13:28Bill Maher?

  No, I was opening for him.

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 1:13:32Bill Maher?

  And.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  What year would that have been?

• 1:13:34Bill Maher?

  That would have been 1982.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  And what venues would you be performing there all around today?

• 1:13:39Bill Maher?

  Are you familiar with Wolf Trap in Washington DC?

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  Okay, no, I don't know that.

• 1:13:43Bill Maher?

  No, Wolf Trap is very famous.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  Okay, cool, cool.

• 1:13:46Bill Maher?

  A lawn, you know, seating and then a lawn. It's a big summer.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  Oh, nice, nice.

• 1:13:50Bill Maher?

  Unless you're playing like stadiums.

• 1:13:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:53Bill Maher?

  Everybody will, nobody turns their nose up at Wolf Trap in the summer.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 1:13:57Bill Maher?

  You know, James Taylor with Jackson Browne.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:14:01Bill Maher?

  Wolf Trapper.

• 1:14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Bill Maher?

  So that was one.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  Sort of like a Hollywood Bowl kind of.

• 1:14:06Bill Maher?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  Got some gravitas to it, but you're outside. It's like camping, but you're not, you're watching a show.

• 1:14:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  Sort of like camping, you feel like you did something in the nature.

• 1:14:21Bill Maher?

  Right. Blanket.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:23Bill Maher?

  A blanket may involve.

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  You've never really, really never gone camping. It's, anyways, it's fun because you get into nature and you really kind of ensconce yourself in that. It's very calming or relaxing.

• 1:14:35Bill Maher?

  No, no, I think nature's a great town.

• 1:14:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:38Bill Maher?

  I love nature. I do. I live amid nature. I feel like, that's one reason I don't need to do that is because I feel like I see a lot of greenery. And stuff that isn't urban every day.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Bill Maher?

  Um, because you burned your house down.

• 1:14:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Bill Maher?

  It always is gonna come back to that.

• 1:14:59Speaker 03

  Now, I did not do it, by the way, for the record.

• 1:15:01Bill Maher?

  Nobody did it. I'm joking, for the record. You know, it was a fire.

• 1:15:05Speaker 03

  I knew you were joking. I just wanted to put on the record that I did not do it. Just in case there was any confusion.

• 1:15:10Bill Maher?

  I'm very glad we did.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  Some people might, people.

• 1:15:12Bill Maher?

  No, they.

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  I know there was no reason for them to think that, but some people still get confused and think the wrong thing. I just wanna make sure I did not burn the house down.

• 1:15:18Bill Maher?

  Well, there's just too many people in America with time on their hands, and they also have access to the internet. So if they can just start some shit. For no reason, because they just, it entered their mind, they will do it.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  So is it more fun doing television when you have the internet as well as a factor? Or is it more fun doing television when there was no internet? Cause you seem like you're having a lot of fun with the internet. So I would expect that you would say that, not, you know, but I'd expect you would say that it was probably, this is more fun to have this kind of. But then you also have to deal with the complexity of all that kinda, just energy on the internet that we're talking about.

• 1:15:54Bill Maher?

  You know, you asked me about, I don't know how long it's been here. Six hours or maybe 20 minutes.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Bill Maher?

  It could be the one. But at some point, you asked me about something that is frustrating, which, as you said, what about when they take like clips?

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. Cause you lose control over, you know.

• 1:16:14Bill Maher?

  It's like, it's amazing when you are somebody who's in the middle like me. And not in the middle like in an ambienpambe, where it just like, yeah, I'm, I'm a proud, old school liberal. But no, I'm not going to go along on the crazy train to nonsenseville. So when you're in the, in there. Oh, what are you talking about? It was so important to me.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I was just saying, uh, yeah, you know what?

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  What were we talking about, Bill?

• 1:16:44Bill Maher?

  Oh, good. Now we're both too fucking high to remember what the conversation was about.

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  No, but you, uh... I knew exactly what we were talking about until you questioned it, and then it made me sort of second guess myself, and now my mind's gone blank. What the hell were we just talking about, Bill?

• 1:16:58Bill Maher?

  I don't know, but, you know, if this is what Al Zomers is like, it's not that bad.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  No, I mean, you know.

• 1:17:05Bill Maher?

  They're making a bigger deal out of that shit.

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  Sitting around on these extremely soft chairs, by the way.

• 1:17:10Bill Maher?

  I don't feel like it's...

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  I got a beer, you know, this is incredible.

• 1:17:14Bill Maher?

  You know, it's...

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  What we were talking about, okay, is before the internet...

• 1:17:19Bill Maher?

  Yes, we were talking about clips.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Bill Maher?

  And how they just take...

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  I know what we were talking about, I just pretended we didn't see what happened.

• 1:17:25Bill Maher?

  Good for you, good for you.

• 1:17:26Speaker 03

  But of course, I actually want to know the answer too, because...

• 1:17:28Bill Maher?

  I want to give you the answer.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Bill Maher?

  Because it is very frustrating that when you're in the middle, that's what I was saying, and you, you, over the course of an hour of real time,

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:17:38Bill Maher?

  you can take, like,

• 1:17:43Bill Maher?

  three or four great clips for you on Fox News, and show them where I'm calling the left out on their bullshit, or occasionally saying, "Yeah, you know, this is not the stupidest idea I ever heard of." And then you can do the same thing on the, uh, the left-wing stations. You can, if you wanna, if you want to make me look good to your audience, you can show all the times I'm excoriating Donald Trump.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Bill Maher?

  And calling out that administration, and that list of things I hate.

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:18:17Bill Maher?

  Or if you hate me on liberal media, just show the ones where I'm saying the things that the Fox News crowd likes.

• 1:18:25Speaker 03

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:18:26Bill Maher?

  So I can't, like, watch the whole show.

• 1:18:29Speaker 03

  You lose control of the narrative, because the wrong clips go out.

• 1:18:32Bill Maher?

  Totally, and, and people just want to hear what they already believe fed back to them. So if you already believe, on the left, that I'm some sort of red-pilled person who's now become a conservative, you can be fed things where all you see me doing is saying, "Yeah, I don't hate this, let's get rid of the penny," or whatever it is.

• 1:18:51Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:18:51Bill Maher?

  And then you can do it, you can manipulate, and they do. Because that's what feeds their kitty. They want those same eyeballs coming back to them. So, you know, it's a lonely place in the middle. It can be a lonely place.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Bill Maher?

  Fuck them, I don't care. I've got my middle people.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  So before the internet, you didn't have to, but there were still people would write about the show.

• 1:19:16Bill Maher?

  Well, they got my first show canceled.

• 1:19:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So there was still this sort of different kind of.

• 1:19:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but then it would.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  Energy pushback.

• 1:19:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Speaker 03

  But this is a little bit.

• 1:19:26Bill Maher?

  I was canceled when it was like literal. We're actually canceling you. We're using that word.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  Yes, right.

• 1:19:32Bill Maher?

  To make sure you're not doing.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  Have you been credited with being coining that term possibly?

• 1:19:37Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  You don't wanna, you don't wanna be credited with that.

• 1:19:39Bill Maher?

  No, and, and also, I mean, the things like, people had been fired on television.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  Those were crazy times. It was nine eleven, right?

• 1:19:46Bill Maher?

  Nine eleven.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  That was crazy times. And, uh, you know, that's, uh, that was, was that the beginning of this sort of new kind of crazy that we're seeing in our, in our politics?

• 1:19:56Bill Maher?

  I mean, that was, okay, so I moved in here January of two thousand one. Um, which is actually the, you know, two thousand is still, I think technically the last century. I think the first year of the twenty first century. So we're, we're literally days into the twenty first century.

• 1:20:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Bill Maher?

  Which is a little, could be something if you were the kind of person who believed in spooky stuff. Okay. Uh, so I move in here January and you're already here and then the house burns down. And then nine eleven.

• 1:20:34Bill Maher?

  I'm wondering, maybe it's you, Tom.

• 1:20:38Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:20:40Bill Maher?

  Is that a crazy theory?

• 1:20:42Speaker 03

  I mean, it's a, it's a heavy thing to blame me with, for sure. Yeah. It's like a lot to, it's a lot to, for me to consider. No, no, no. Uh, you know, it's, it's, it's crazy though. That was, that, was that the beginning of, that's the beginning of kind of this sort of, things weren't as political before that. I mean, it seems weird to say, obviously, things have been political forever, but doesn't it seem like.

• 1:21:01Bill Maher?

  I think what you.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  Have there not been sort of a reprieve on this kind of divisive politics or something for ten years or twenty years?

• 1:21:08Bill Maher?

  It literally goes back to.

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  I don't remember it being that crazy.

• 1:21:10Bill Maher?

  I know, but.

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  Reagan, Reagan, when Reagan.

• 1:21:13Bill Maher?

  It goes through periods. I mean, the, the period when you were a formative youth.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Bill Maher?

  You're right. It was, they were always at each other's throats, but there was a civility to it. And also, they both played by the rules.

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  That's exactly what I was asking, yeah, cuz.

• 1:21:27Bill Maher?

  I mean, in two thousand, Al Gore lost or didn't, there was a lot of shenanigans. They talk about shenanigans with Trump in twenty twenty. There was no shenanigans.

• 1:21:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:39Bill Maher?

  In 2020, no shenanigans.

• 1:21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Bill Maher?

  I could quote all the people who were involved, the election commission, many of his own appointees. It was one of the smoothest, fairest, most, they had their eyes on it for good reason.

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  There were hanging Chads.

• 1:21:54Bill Maher?

  That was to that, right.

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  That, that was Gore.

• 1:21:57Bill Maher?

  Hanging Chads.

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  Was that Gore Bush?

• 1:21:58Bill Maher?

  The secretary of state in the, in the, was a Republican in the state of Florida. The governor was Jeb Bush, the guy's brother.

• 1:22:07Speaker 03

  Right, well, that's where the Chads were being counted.

• 1:22:08Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  In Florida.

• 1:22:09Bill Maher?

  Whatever it was, you know what? Out, the truth is Al Gore.

• 1:22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Bill Maher?

  And, and Bush, they played to a tie.

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Bill Maher?

  And then it was like, okay, the Republicans had the Supreme Court and that was it. And Al Gore said, yeah, you know what? I got robbed, but for the good of the team. That's gone with Trump.

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Bill Maher?

  That's, and that's why the people who think, you know, oh, Bill, you know, you're so clear eyed about the problems on the left. Yeah, I am, but I'm not coming over to your side. That's so much worse that you guys will not acknowledge when you lose an election. That is a non-negotiable with me. You know, we can't, we can't talk about it. That, that's it. That's the essence of the country.

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. So.

• 1:23:00Bill Maher?

  So I'm moving to Canada is what I'm saying. By the way.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  We'd love to have you, Bill.

• 1:23:04Bill Maher?

  My girl, Chrystia Freeland, and I say my girl, like I'm really close and I'm not, but.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  You should move to Canada, by the way.

• 1:23:10Bill Maher?

  Uh, no, but she used to be on Real Time.

• 1:23:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:14Bill Maher?

  And now she's going to be the prime minister.

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:17Bill Maher?

  I'm a big fan.

• 1:23:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:23:18Bill Maher?

  She was always great on the show.

• 1:23:20Speaker 03

  Who, who, who is it?

• 1:23:22Bill Maher?

  Chrystia Freeland.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  Oh, Chrystia Freeland, oh, yes, right, I didn't hear you talking about Chrystia Freeland. She's been on Real Time. She's great, yeah, well, let's see what happens.

• 1:23:28Bill Maher?

  She was the minister. She was a minister, I forget what department, but she was very important.

• 1:23:33Speaker 03

  Finance, I believe.

• 1:23:34Bill Maher?

  In the Trudeau government.

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I believe.

• 1:23:36Bill Maher?

  And then quit.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Bill Maher?

  And said she basically didn't believe in him anymore. And.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  You come up and campaign on her behalf?

• 1:23:43Bill Maher?

  That to me is the woke versus liberal debate. In Canada, the one I'm having here.

• 1:23:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Bill Maher?

  And I'm her.

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Do you think she could be the, she could be?

• 1:23:53Bill Maher?

  I hope so. I think she's smart.

• 1:23:57Speaker 03

  Trudeau resigned.

• 1:23:58Bill Maher?

  Savvy.

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

  And but it has still not been an election as of yet, so they're gonna call in, calling an election soon and there's gonna be a leadership race on the Liberal Party. Kristi Friedland is running for leader of the Liberal Party and but she's and there's also Mark Carney as well.

• 1:24:16Bill Maher?

  But you, you parliamentarians.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I am a parliament, I'm not personally one, but.

• 1:24:22Bill Maher?

  Your country.

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  I used to go up there, I used to go up to the Parliament Buildings all the time though when I was a kid in Ottawa. You know, I used to go down there and just play soccer on the front lawn of the Parliament Buildings, yeah, so.

• 1:24:33Bill Maher?

  Are you kidding or you?

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  No, I actually did do that, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:36Bill Maher?

  Because?

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Uh, because I was doing, I was doing, I was doing a college radio show in downtown Ottawa. And I would say at the end of the show on midnight till two in the morning every Friday night. I'd say, anyone wanna come meet me on the front lawn of the Parliament Buildings, bring a soccer ball and some pizza and we'll go play soccer out there till four in the morning and then we go and we play soccer on the, not to cut you off with that story, but it.

• 1:24:59Bill Maher?

  No, no, no, that's, it's so, no, I love that.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  Fun things I love to do in Ottawa. That's why I, you know, when you, we talk about, you talk about the Canadian Government and Trudeau and all the elections and all the stuff that's going on out there. I also think of it sometimes just in like real personal terms. I basically grew up in Ottawa or something. When you say Parliament, for instance, I think about, you know, how beautiful our Parliament Buildings are. Have you seen our Parliament Buildings? Have you ever, have you seen them before, Bill? Quite beautiful buildings, by the way.

• 1:25:26Bill Maher?

  I wanted to start that way.

• 1:25:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Bill Maher?

  When I got to Cornell.

• 1:25:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Bill Maher?

  I want, what you're describing, I wanted to be, get on the college radio and be the college funny prankster on there. I thought that was gonna be my first entree.

• 1:25:42Speaker 03

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 1:25:42Bill Maher?

  And.

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  It was the easiest way to get.

• 1:25:45Bill Maher?

  I did not succeed.

• 1:25:46Speaker 03

  Into broadcasting though, was it through radio, right?

• 1:25:49Bill Maher?

  No, I mean.

• 1:25:49Speaker 03

  Did you do radio for a while?

• 1:25:51Bill Maher?

  This is very evocative for me to hear you talk about because when I went off to Cornell, I had already wanted to be a comedian for ten years.

• 1:25:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:59Bill Maher?

  I just kept it inside. So now I'm away from home. I really wanted to be in New York, like hanging out at the clubs, but I gotta go to college first. And I thought, yeah, that's it. And I remember practicing like in my room. Like to be, say things like pre, you know, pre ad libs.

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:26:18Bill Maher?

  That I could say.

• 1:26:18Speaker 03

  And just announcing and, yeah.

• 1:26:20Bill Maher?

  And I never even got the nerve to go audition.

• 1:26:24Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:26:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Speaker 03

  You wanted to do radio, but you just never.

• 1:26:27Bill Maher?

  I was a shy person.

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:29Bill Maher?

  I was very, very shy as a teenager, a kid as a teenager, into college.

• 1:26:34Speaker 03

  So at what moment do you get up on stage then, what age? And how's that decision get made?

• 1:26:39Bill Maher?

  I, the first time I ever got on stage was in high school. I emceed the talent show.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  Mm hmm, yeah.

• 1:26:46Bill Maher?

  And it was so exhilarating to get laughs.

• 1:26:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:26:49Bill Maher?

  That I was hooked like a drug, like a drug I've never had since.

• 1:26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Bill Maher?

  And the next time I got up on stage was at Cornell. They had poetry readings.

• 1:27:01Bill Maher?

  On like Thursday, Thursday afternoon in the Temple of Zeus coffee shop. And I got up there when people are doing poems.

• 1:27:08Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:27:08Bill Maher?

  And I tried to do like material.

• 1:27:11Speaker 03

  Stand up, sure, yeah.

• 1:27:12Bill Maher?

  Well, it was like a top ten list.

• 1:27:14Speaker 03

  They must have loved that. I mean, probably gotta be better than poetry, you know?

• 1:27:19Bill Maher?

  It was like something like.

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  I mean, I like poetry.

• 1:27:20Bill Maher?

  You're no your friend.

• 1:27:21Speaker 03

  I'd rather see someone attempt stand up than someone sincerely pull off poetry, to be honest with you. It's fun even watching stand up when it fails, really, sometimes. But in that environment, in college, it must have been good. So you, did you do that regularly then, or?

• 1:27:33Bill Maher?

  Well, then, I, I mean, all the time I was in college, I was like, sort of like, why am I here learning about Homer? When I should be like in New York.

• 1:27:40Speaker 03

  Say philosophy?

• 1:27:41Bill Maher?

  Telling a joke. I, yeah, I studied all the liberal arts stuff. It's, I got an English major degree, but history, English, classics. I loved mine. The education they gave me at Cornell, I cannot front. Awesome. And I am a different person because of it.

• 1:27:59Bill Maher?

  One who can survive in a cocktail party with anybody.

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  Mm hmm, mm hmm, yeah.

• 1:28:04Bill Maher?

  Not dominate, but survive.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 1:28:07Bill Maher?

  And not be laughed out of the room.

• 1:28:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:28:09Bill Maher?

  With any group of, except astrophysicists, not science, but anybody.

• 1:28:14Speaker 03

  They don't party anyways.

• 1:28:15Bill Maher?

  But, so I give.

• 1:28:16Speaker 03

  Astrophysicists, they don't really ever go out.

• 1:28:18Bill Maher?

  Well, I think Neil deGrasse Tyson gets down.

• 1:28:21Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 1:28:21Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess you know more than I do. You've probably met more, you've met more astrophysicists than me, so I wouldn't really know. I was just speaking off of a hunch, basically.

• 1:28:29Bill Maher?

  I'm just, he's just a fun guy.

• 1:28:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:32Bill Maher?

  You know, not only when you see him on, on the, my show or any show, but like, I've been with him at Seth MacFarlane's parties and, you know, he's just a great. Great guy to hang with. And you don't always, you know, he doesn't always wanna talk about astrophysics. He, you know, he would like actually a break from that, I think.

• 1:28:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:50Bill Maher?

  With people.

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, uh, cause do people come up and ask him sort of technical questions that they really need answered?

• 1:28:56Bill Maher?

  I mean, it's just, it's, it's like seeing Rocky and wanting to punch him in the jaw.

• 1:29:01Speaker 03

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:29:04Bill Maher?

  It's, it's.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  I don't wanna talk about, uh, the wormholes or string theory anymore.

• 1:29:10Bill Maher?

  That's it. Who else are you gonna like throw that question to that, you know?

• 1:29:15Speaker 03

  So, when, uh, so.

• 1:29:16Bill Maher?

  I see an asteroid is heading toward Earth.

• 1:29:20Speaker 03

  The astronauts?

• 1:29:21Bill Maher?

  I said, I see an asteroid is heading toward Earth.

• 1:29:24Speaker 03

  Absolutely. What, yeah, I know, twenty thirty-two, yeah? And there's also, I thought you were talking about the astronauts that are stuck up there, you know, that are.

• 1:29:30Bill Maher?

  No, I just think it's a great conversation breaker there.

• 1:29:34Speaker 03

  Absolutely nice.

• 1:29:34Bill Maher?

  I see an asteroid.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  The entire planet is going to be destroyed in ten years. What are you planning on, uh, doing about?

• 1:29:40Bill Maher?

  That's a good question. Seven years, actually, Tom, but, um.

• 1:29:43Speaker 03

  I was never real ma- good at math, but yeah.

• 1:29:45Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:29:45Speaker 03

  Twenty thirty-two, okay.

• 1:29:47Bill Maher?

  I'm torn between trying to survive and kissing my ass goodbye.

• 1:29:53Speaker 03

  Saying making an extra effort to survive seven years so you can see the asteroid, or would you rather just, uh?

• 1:29:58Bill Maher?

  I mean, if it's.

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  Not have to witness that?

• 1:30:00Bill Maher?

  If it's gonna hit and wipe out all life on Earth, I want it to hit me right in the head.

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  Right, right. Please make it a direct hit.

• 1:30:08Bill Maher?

  I wanna be part of the cleanup committee.

• 1:30:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:11Bill Maher?

  Now, how do you, why do you think they're so, um, exasperated by this? Because I assume it, it's the same reason why the dinosaurs were wiped out because it's not the asteroid itself that's gonna dent the Earth so bad. It's that it creates a.

• 1:30:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, the whole atmosphere is full of dust and the sun is bluffed out and it becomes frigid winter and we all freeze to death.

• 1:30:34Bill Maher?

  That.

• 1:30:34Speaker 03

  Except for those few hardy enough ones who dug little shelters for themselves and lived off, uh, freeze-dried noodles for the next

• 1:30:45Speaker 03

  generation, essentially.

• 1:30:46Bill Maher?

  How do you think it would affect?

• 1:30:47Speaker 03

  You wanna be part of that group that ate freeze-dried noodles underground for a generation to try to repopulate the Earth, or would you rather have a direct hit? You say direct hit.

• 1:30:57Bill Maher?

  Well, when you put it that way.

• 1:30:58Speaker 03

  You get to continue. You could probably open up a little, you know, comedy club in there or something like that. Keep everybody entertained.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  Repopulate the earth eventually. Because of you, because of you keeping everybody.

• 1:31:12Bill Maher?

  Underground comedy.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  There'd be stuff to do.

• 1:31:14Bill Maher?

  Literally underground comedy.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  There'd be stuff to do, yeah.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  So, so when you built the studio here, has it been, this has got to have been a lot of fun, right?

• 1:31:25Bill Maher?

  I'm telling you, it's, it hasn't changed at all.

• 1:31:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I'm not talking about the structure, just when you put the cameras in, started doing the show here. That must have been a lot of fun, right? I mean, are you?

• 1:31:36Bill Maher?

  What's fun is that I wouldn't be here with you without it. Which is a shame, because I'm having such a great time.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:45Bill Maher?

  I always liked you, liked you, I mean, I was disappointed we never got to be friendly or when you were the neighbor. I always thought you were just an innovator and, you know. So, that's what's great about a podcast, is that it's like you can summons people. Now, they don't have to answer the summons.

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:07Bill Maher?

  But it's like, I would like to talk to you.

• 1:32:10Speaker 03

  So, I had built a studio in my house in, now, 2005. I was, had a lot of people over and did a lot of interviews and, and I got to make so many good friends. I got to know Norm MacDonald, I mentioned, who had, was, you know, idolized growing up. But then I got to know him and become friends with him, but, you know, he, that's, that's a great thing about doing this. It's fun. So, you, but you've got, you've got a studio here. There's like, there's, there's.

• 1:32:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, we got, I mean, you know, look, I'm, I'm trying to make it the least likely, the least like a studio.

• 1:32:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, for sure, yeah.

• 1:32:45Bill Maher?

  But, yeah, there has to be cameras and, and people operating them somewhere, I assume. I don't get involved with the detail.

• 1:32:52Speaker 03

  So, other than Johnny Carson. Before 1980. Who was your favorite?

• 1:32:57Bill Maher?

  Well, I'll tell you who else was out.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  Including David Letterman.

• 1:33:00Bill Maher?

  David Letterman didn't come along till 1982.

• 1:33:04Speaker 03

  That's why I say before.

• 1:33:05Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  It was out of the, you know, all of the others.

• 1:33:08Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:33:08Speaker 03

  Merv Griffin, Jack Parr.

• 1:33:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, the people, well, Jack Parr was before my time.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  Did you like Jack Parr? I bet you liked Jack Parr.

• 1:33:15Bill Maher?

  I, as I say, before my time.

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  But I mean, have you gone back and looked at his work?

• 1:33:19Bill Maher?

  All I know about Jack Parr, no, I really haven't.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:33:21Bill Maher?

  All I know about Jack Parr.

• 1:33:23Speaker 03

  He was great.

• 1:33:23Bill Maher?

  Is that my parents spoke well of him.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:27Bill Maher?

  But my parents are sophisticated. So that I can.

• 1:33:31Speaker 03

  He was a bit of a shit disturber too, though.

• 1:33:32Bill Maher?

  Yes, he was.

• 1:33:33Speaker 03

  He quit on the air.

• 1:33:34Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:33:35Speaker 03

  And then he came back a week later and went back on the air and said some funny line like, uh,

• 1:33:39Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:33:39Speaker 03

  And I said, I said, there's gotta be a, because when he quit, he said, there's gotta be a better way to make a living than this. And he quit on NBC Live, walked off. And then he went away to Africa. And then he came back and he, the show was still a hit. He got the, they gave him the show again. After he quit, he came back live on NBC and he said, I went, uh, and had a look and, uh, when I left, I said, there was gotta be a better way to make a living than this. I went and had a look and it turns out there isn't, you know? And then he continued the show for like another, I don't know how many years, few years, not too much longer, but.

• 1:34:11Bill Maher?

  I mean, it's amazing that.

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  Steve Allen after that.

• 1:34:14Bill Maher?

  It's amazing that he had to have that revelation.

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  Or no, it was Johnny Carson after Jack Parr, right?

• 1:34:18Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  Steve Allen, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson.

• 1:34:19Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:20Bill Maher?

  Jack Parr, I know, was 57 to 62, so.

• 1:34:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Bill Maher?

  I was a toddler.

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  Incredible interviews, though, with Jack Parr, you know, Kennedy.

• 1:34:30Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, again.

• 1:34:31Speaker 03

  Muhammad Ali and all this sort of people.

• 1:34:33Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, the country was so different. The people were, Johnny Carson also used to do an author every night. An author?

• 1:34:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Bill Maher?

  Can you imagine, an au, an author?

• 1:34:44Speaker 03

  The show was, was the show 90 minutes at one?

• 1:34:46Bill Maher?

  Yes, it was 90 minutes at one point.

• 1:34:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. Every night?

• 1:34:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:51Bill Maher?

  The country was different, and so the talk show hosts reflected that. Johnny Carson himself, as great as he was, wouldn't survive today, too slow. Attention spans are different. People's just with the phone and the pace of things and the depth of understanding. No, you can't do the show he did, and that was just into the early 90s. You know, then Jay Leno was the right guy for the right time.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's always been very controversial, the whole hierarchy in talk television.

• 1:35:28Bill Maher?

  It's, it's, it is interesting. It is, it is sort of like a royal family position in the country.

• 1:35:36Speaker 03

  That's American.

• 1:35:37Bill Maher?

  The talk show person who.

• 1:35:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Bill Maher?

  And, you know, it's, it's a reflection of where I think, well, it was, where the middle was. I mean, Johnny and Letterman and Leno, they were in the middle. Now, talk shows are just, all of them are to very far left. Not to say I wouldn't agree with them on most of those issues. But they do not attempt to please anybody except the people who are already voting for Kamala Harris. If you're not voting for her, you are not going to feel welcome watching this. You're not going to feel welcome watching Saturday Night Live.

• 1:36:22Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah, and it seems like it's become kind of the priority is to talk about that subject. Into politics, it used to be a one joke about Reagan or something, and then we move on. It was the whole monologues about, about politics. It's all about the sort of social issues.

• 1:36:37Bill Maher?

  Oh, well, that is, yes. I mean, and Leno and Carson, they, they, and Letterman did jokes about what was going on politically also, but they found a way to do it in a way that wasn't obvious where their feelings were. And there was plenty to be made, as there always is on both sides. But that's not where we are now.

• 1:37:00Speaker 03

  Why is that? Why isn't there not a more, is it because it's just?

• 1:37:09Speaker 03

  Social media has divided things so much that you have to pick a side firmly? Is that what it is? Or because the internet made that happen? Because the shows have their internets, they get all these comments coming through. Oh, we better like, please use these comments.

• 1:37:23Bill Maher?

  Well, it starts with Fox News.

• 1:37:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:37:25Bill Maher?

  That's the beginning of the problem. There was no such thing as Fox News, like a right wing media. Every media organization tried to be down the middle.

• 1:37:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:37:36Bill Maher?

  That's why Leno and Letterman and Matt Carson tried to be.

• 1:37:40Speaker 03

  Being a non-biased observer.

• 1:37:43Bill Maher?

  You're not saying to one half of the country, we don't even bother. I mean, twice, when Trump won, Saturday Night Live did not do an opening sketch. They had a fucking dirge. Now, they just had their big 50th anniversary. Look, Lorne Michaels, I don't know him, never worked for him.

• 1:38:05Speaker 03

  Canadian.

• 1:38:06Bill Maher?

  But, yeah, a Canadian, yes.

• 1:38:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:38:10Bill Maher?

  And.

• 1:38:11Speaker 03

  I'm just gonna say, anytime you mention a Canadian, I'm gonna say they're Canadian, just so you know.

• 1:38:16Bill Maher?

  And he's the biggest Canadian.

• 1:38:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Bill Maher?

  Because literally, nobody even comes close to the effect this guy has had on comedy for a half a century. I mean, it would be easier to name the comedy movie stars who weren't coming through the Saturday Night Live factory. I mean, not to mention the several late night franchises, just the stamp on the industry.

• 1:38:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's unbelievable.

• 1:38:41Bill Maher?

  Is just enormous. But to have a dirge, okay, so I'm reading this article about him and he says, "I said to the cast," and maybe this is in the early days, you know, "we're playing to all 50 states." Well, you're not anymore. Or at least not all people in 50 states. Trump wins, like, I didn't vote for him either. But I wouldn't do a fucking funeral, like, where the cast is there somberly. Oh, we're here. Yeah, it's still America.

• 1:39:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:16Bill Maher?

  You're fine.

• 1:39:17Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:39:17Bill Maher?

  Most people will be fine. Yes, there's a lot of shit I don't like. I've got a whole hate list. But this is how America voted. America, I thought you loved democracy. But you can't do a sketch, you can't be funny. You have to, like, tell us how in mourning you are. It's, it's, that, that, that shit leaves me cold.

• 1:39:39Speaker 03

  You feel it's too partisan, for sure.

• 1:39:41Bill Maher?

  Is that what you got out of that story?

• 1:39:43Speaker 03

  SNL. I, I, I mean, it seems to be more of the equal up.

• 1:39:48Bill Maher?

  They won the election.

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:39:49Bill Maher?

  And you're a comedy show, and the left is so far from perfect.

• 1:39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Bill Maher?

  So the idea that we have to have a few-

• 1:39:55Speaker 03

  There was always sort of politics in SNL, but now more so than ever. I mean, it was Gerald Ford fell down a flight of stairs.

• 1:40:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but that's not what's political about it.

• 1:40:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So, so, yeah, well, so why is, why is that, though? Why has everything gone so political?

• 1:40:09Bill Maher?

  Because, I, I guess, I think it began with Fox News.

• 1:40:12Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 1:40:13Bill Maher?

  And then, I think, they, they politicized news gab.

• 1:40:16Speaker 03

  It was not the internet, it was cable TV.

• 1:40:18Bill Maher?

  I think that's the beginning.

• 1:40:19Speaker 03

  When the beginning of the division happened, because it was competing for viewers. He had to split the, the audience and, and-

• 1:40:26Bill Maher?

  Right. Well, first of all, they felt that-

• 1:40:28Speaker 03

  There was three channels, and Walter Cronkite's on at night.

• 1:40:31Bill Maher?

  Well, four with Fox.

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  They can be non-biased and, or to be central, central, and then when, when, when the cable came in-

• 1:40:39Bill Maher?

  Okay, now, now Fox News would say, yeah-

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  CBS never went right wing, and NBC went left wing back in 1953 to compete against each other.

• 1:40:48Bill Maher?

  Exactly what I'm getting to.

• 1:40:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:50Bill Maher?

  Fox News would say, not without some merit.

• 1:40:55Bill Maher?

  That it was necessary

• 1:40:57Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:40:57Bill Maher?

  to have a right-wing media organization because the majority of the media had gone so far left and was in the pocket of the left.

• 1:41:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:07Bill Maher?

  Now, there is some truth to that.

• 1:41:09Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:41:10Bill Maher?

  It got crazy worse, but this is not how it was then. But just as an example, there was a whistleblower at NPR last year, a guy who worked there. I think his name was Uri Berliner, okay? And he just didn't like the fact that you were squelched if you tried to present anything other than the super, super duper far woke-left point of view on NPR.

• 1:41:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:41:36Bill Maher?

  So it comes out that of the eighty-seven top managers at NPR, the number who voted Democratic was eighty-seven.

• 1:41:48Speaker 03

  Right, okay.

• 1:41:49Bill Maher?

  Now, even if you're a Democrat, that's not a good thing.

• 1:41:53Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:41:53Bill Maher?

  That's, when you have, that's incest, that's intellectual incest.

• 1:41:58Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:41:59Bill Maher?

  And you know what incest produces.

• 1:42:01Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Well, it's, is it just because the, is it regional? I mean, you travel around the country, so you know, it's, is that what it is? Just because most television has always come out of New York and Los Angeles, I guess, right? So this is what happens?

• 1:42:14Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, I mean, the media definitely has an enormous effect on how the country's mores change, often for good. Gay marriage would never have happened if Americans didn't see gay people in sitcoms, acting like regular people.

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:42:39Bill Maher?

  And not horrible people.

• 1:42:41Speaker 03

  Sure, sure.

• 1:42:42Bill Maher?

  And people you love.

• 1:42:43Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:44Bill Maher?

  And TV nor, and that was a great thing.

• 1:42:48Speaker 03

  That happened after cable, too, you'd say?

• 1:42:50Bill Maher?

  Well, that happened, when was Will and Grace on?

• 1:42:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, at, so cable. When the TV expanded, there was, yeah, so, yeah.

• 1:42:55Bill Maher?

  But it was a network show.

• 1:42:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, network show, yeah.

• 1:42:58Bill Maher?

  Um, and I'm sure there were other shows and, you know, I mean, When I was a child, it was a scandal because at the end of a duet in the late sixties, Harry Belafonte, a black man, like planted, I think, a little kiss on the cheek of a white girl and like lost all the southern affiliates.

• 1:43:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:22Bill Maher?

  Okay, and then at some point, Tom Cruise kissed Thandie Newton in a mainstream movie.

• 1:43:28Speaker 03

  William Shatner as well in Star Trek.

• 1:43:31Bill Maher?

  Kissed green chicks.

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  Canadian, by the way.

• 1:43:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and has sat there in that chair twice.

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  It must be fun to hang out with Shatner.

• 1:43:38Bill Maher?

  I love him.

• 1:43:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Bill Maher?

  I love him.

• 1:43:40Speaker 03

  You know, he was my first landlord in Los Angeles.

• 1:43:43Bill Maher?

  I thought you were gonna say first lover.

• 1:43:44Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:43:45Bill Maher?

  But this is, this, that's.

• 1:43:46Speaker 03

  Not what I said at all.

• 1:43:47Bill Maher?

  I know, but it's.

• 1:43:48Speaker 03

  But he's a good guy, though.

• 1:43:49Bill Maher?

  But why can't we just go with that? It's a better story.

• 1:43:53Speaker 03

  When I moved up, when I came to MTV, I rented a house and.

• 1:43:55Bill Maher?

  Is that right?

• 1:43:56Speaker 03

  He was, he owned the house and rented me.

• 1:43:58Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:43:59Speaker 03

  He was, uh, he'd come over and say hi once in a while, great, a lot of fun, yeah, great guy. Must be fun to sit to talk to, I've never gone to interview him, I've gone to interview people, though, I've done quite a few interviews over the years, I enjoy it, I enjoy.

• 1:44:12Bill Maher?

  Well, I couldn't help but notice you fall naturally into that role. You're doing more interviewing than I am. I'm sitting here stoned, you're the guy who's like, and I love it, I mean, I'm more than happy to go either way, but you have this natural inclination, it's great, it's like a curiosity.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's a nice opportunity to get to interview, I've now got to get to interview, I have interviewed a lot of people, though, before, because I've done.

• 1:44:37Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  You know, my, like, that's something that I've kind of enjoyed, the, really enjoyed kind of trying to, not just doing it because I like meeting people and like getting to know people, but it's also, um, yeah, it's been fun, it's been fun, like, so, I built a TV studio in my living room in two thousand and five, right?

• 1:44:59Bill Maher?

  That's so you to put it in the living room.

• 1:45:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, it was, my house wasn't as big as this, so, so, I had a couple of rooms, one of them was the living room, that was the room, the only room that was big enough to put a couple cameras in.

• 1:45:10Bill Maher?

  I get it.

• 1:45:11Speaker 03

  But no, it was, it was fun, it was fun, and, you know, it's like, um. There is sort of a, something about being able to have a.

• 1:45:20Bill Maher?

  So when you have guests now to do this in your, in your home where you live now.

• 1:45:25Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not really, I'm not really doing a podcast right now where I'm interviewing people. So I'm just kind of not doing that, but, but I may, I may, I may build a podcast studio in my barn now. I have a barn. Do you have a barn?

• 1:45:38Bill Maher?

  I do not have a barn, if you mean someplace where I keep hay and horses.

• 1:45:42Speaker 03

  Do you have any animals? Do you have any pets right now?

• 1:45:44Bill Maher?

  Yes, but they're not horses.

• 1:45:45Speaker 03

  No. Dogs or?

• 1:45:46Bill Maher?

  Yes, dogs.

• 1:45:48Speaker 03

  How many dogs do you have?

• 1:45:49Bill Maher?

  Two from, as of six o'clock, but they're very old.

• 1:45:54Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. Yeah. How old are they? What kind of dogs are they?

• 1:45:57Bill Maher?

  I mean, one of them's got to be a thousand. I don't know. He, I, I mean, I've had him since 2010 and he wasn't a puppy then.

• 1:46:05Speaker 03

  A big dog? Like what kind of dog?

• 1:46:06Bill Maher?

  No, no, he's a.

• 1:46:07Speaker 03

  Do you know what kind of dog it is?

• 1:46:08Bill Maher?

  That's him as Kid Rock.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  Oh, like a Chihuahua kind of dog?

• 1:46:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he looks like a Chihuahua. He's not.

• 1:46:13Speaker 03

  A little, it's a little dog?

• 1:46:14Bill Maher?

  He's a half.

• 1:46:15Speaker 03

  Chico, trash.

• 1:46:16Bill Maher?

  Chico, yeah.

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  Nice. Chico. Hello.

• 1:46:18Bill Maher?

  Chico, yeah.

• 1:46:19Speaker 03

  Are they both Chihuahuas or?

• 1:46:21Bill Maher?

  No, no.

• 1:46:21Speaker 03

  Or small dogs?

• 1:46:22Bill Maher?

  No, and then Chula is, um, Chula is half German shepherd, uh, half pit bull. You'd never guess. It looks like, it looks like a German shepherd, but not as big.

• 1:46:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. Good guard dogs that let you know when there's something going on?

• 1:46:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, fuck no. They're, they're a thousand years old. One of them, Chula's blind, you know, takes a million years just to get up.

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  You had them since they were puppies?

• 1:46:44Bill Maher?

  Um, well, again, Chico, I'm guessing was about two when I had him.

• 1:46:49Speaker 03

  You've had them for most of their lives. So they weren't always?

• 1:46:54Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:46:54Speaker 03

  When they were younger, were they good guard dogs? No, were they good guard dogs? Did bark? No?

• 1:46:58Bill Maher?

  No, but that's.

• 1:46:59Speaker 03

  Always been kind of just a chill dog.

• 1:47:00Bill Maher?

  That's my fault because I don't train dogs. I always say.

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  It's kind of nice when they don't bark at everything that goes by, actually.

• 1:47:06Bill Maher?

  Oh, no, he barks at things that don't go by. I mean, Chico just stands in the middle of the driveway. The reason why he's alive, unlike the other one who never moves, because she's blind, I can't blame her. But is because Chico takes his job very seriously as a guard dog. So he stands in the middle of the driveway at night and just barks at nothing. He just preemptively wants to tell everybody, don't fuck with me. I'm Chico. I'm here. I'm in the middle of this driveway. I've got one eye and I can bite and I will bite. He'll bite me.

• 1:47:38Speaker 03

  You know she's doing that because she's trying to protect you.

• 1:47:41Bill Maher?

  Yes, no, no.

• 1:47:42Speaker 03

  Because she loves you.

• 1:47:43Bill Maher?

  Chico takes.

• 1:47:44Speaker 03

  Loves you and wants to make sure that you are safe.

• 1:47:46Bill Maher?

  No, no. Chico takes his job very seriously and that's what keeps him young.

• 1:47:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Bill Maher?

  Or he's not young, it keeps him alive. I don't know if he's still alive, but I'm glad, I'm glad he is.

• 1:47:57Speaker 03

  I mean, the last time you saw Chico.

• 1:47:59Bill Maher?

  Was right before I came over here.

• 1:48:01Speaker 03

  So still alive, I would say.

• 1:48:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah. No, I. I mean, I worry about them.

• 1:48:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:07Bill Maher?

  Like that because.

• 1:48:09Speaker 03

  Well, it's.

• 1:48:10Bill Maher?

  You know, I buried right, like, maybe 25 feet that way from this building, up that hill, is my dog graveyard.

• 1:48:21Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:48:21Bill Maher?

  And there's five graves there.

• 1:48:23Speaker 03

  Oh, wow, yeah.

• 1:48:24Bill Maher?

  You know, and I personally dug all of them because I found it to be a very cathartic experience.

• 1:48:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:30Bill Maher?

  To dig the grave yourself.

• 1:48:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:32Bill Maher?

  I did one in a howling rainstorm. It was so therapeutic.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  Do you.

• 1:48:38Bill Maher?

  With the tears rolling down my cheeks, mixing with the rain.

• 1:48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's, it's.

• 1:48:46Speaker 03

  It is a heavy thing.

• 1:48:47Bill Maher?

  I'd like to thank the academy.

• 1:48:50Speaker 03

  No, but it's because, because you, you know, you're, it, it is a, a, one of the, one of the worst things you have to do, right? I mean, the animals are, are family, right? These are family. I, you know, I had to put, I had two huskies for 15 years. I went through that. It's a horrible thing, right? But, but you have to kind of, you know, move on and they, they, they had great lives, I'm sure, you know, they're, you know, you know, they all live, you know, yeah.

• 1:49:18Bill Maher?

  You'll appreciate this from apropos to our discussion there about people in the middle and all that shit. But I quoted this lady I read, wrote a story in the Free Press last year. And she had lived in New York with her husband, exactly what you would think of as like a left-wing liberal couple in Brooklyn.

• 1:49:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:49:43Bill Maher?

  Not bad people. Again, I would probably agree with them on most issues. They decided to move up to the country, just like you did. But this is upstate New York.

• 1:49:53Speaker 03

  Sure, the Poconos.

• 1:49:55Bill Maher?

  Well, that's Pennsylvania.

• 1:49:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, right, right. The, no, sort of I'm thinking of the, the.

• 1:50:01Bill Maher?

  It's closer to where I went to college at Cornell.

• 1:50:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:50:04Bill Maher?

  Ethic in New York.

• 1:50:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:06Bill Maher?

  Ethic in New York is like outside of Cornell.

• 1:50:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:10Bill Maher?

  You'd think you were in Alabama.

• 1:50:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, no.

• 1:50:13Bill Maher?

  I mean, shacks.

• 1:50:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Bill Maher?

  And like meth, that kind of stuff.

• 1:50:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:50:18Bill Maher?

  Like, as soon as you get out of New York.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  Is a lot of shacks and meth in Alabama?

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  You said you'd think it was like Alabama, and then you said shacks and meth. I'm just like.

• 1:50:29Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:50:29Speaker 03

  There probably is a lot of shacks and meth in Alabama.

• 1:50:31Bill Maher?

  I think, I'm not saying this in a put-down way.

• 1:50:35Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I just wanted to clarify.

• 1:50:37Bill Maher?

  Appalachia.

• 1:50:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:50:39Bill Maher?

  Appalachia, which stretches over, I think, seven or eight states.

• 1:50:43Speaker 03

  I'm sure there's meth in crack.

• 1:50:44Bill Maher?

  There's, I think there's definitely meth.

• 1:50:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:47Bill Maher?

  If I can believe what I saw.

• 1:50:48Speaker 03

  If you're gonna bet on a place to have it, that would be the place, probably.

• 1:50:51Bill Maher?

  Did you ever see Winter's Bone? Really great movie. Jennifer Lawrence's first movie before she was known.

• 1:50:58Speaker 03

  Okay, cool.

• 1:50:59Bill Maher?

  And it's about life in, you know, West Virginia.

• 1:51:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:51:03Bill Maher?

  Appalachia and meth and everybody. It's, it's, it does not have a false note. And I say that as someone who would not know what a false note was in a movie about West Virginia. Because I don't know about that area, but it just seems very true. Anyway, so, why were we talking about that?

• 1:51:22Speaker 03

  Uh, we're just, we're just, why were we talking about that?

• 1:51:25Bill Maher?

  Why did we get on to like meth in West Virginia?

• 1:51:29Speaker 03

  Uh, well, we were talking about.

• 1:51:31Bill Maher?

  Something important.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, let's talk about, we would not have to talk about meth anymore. I don't think we really need to talk about meth.

• 1:51:39Bill Maher?

  Well, that's one drug I.

• 1:51:41Speaker 03

  Have you done meth? Have you taken meth? I've never taken meth, for the record. I've never.

• 1:51:46Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:51:46Speaker 03

  Partaken in the meth. You have actually been.

• 1:51:49Bill Maher?

  Cornell.

• 1:51:49Speaker 03

  So really?

• 1:51:50Bill Maher?

  Cornell was.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  It was a different time. You were. It was, there was, it was sort of all these drugs were kind of new experimental. The Beatles were. Right? Right? The Beatles, right? They started all that.

• 1:52:03Bill Maher?

  Well, the Beatles had.

• 1:52:04Speaker 03

  They got the ball rolling and all that, though. They mainstreamed.

• 1:52:07Bill Maher?

  Now, this is mid seventies. The Beatles and John Lennon hadn't even appeared in like three years.

• 1:52:12Speaker 03

  No, no, but they, they got the ball rolling on that. And now it's the, now it's led, uh, Pink Floyd led Zeppelin. What was music?

• 1:52:18Bill Maher?

  Zeppelin was huge in the seventies, yeah.

• 1:52:21Speaker 03

  And what were you, were you listening to Zeppelin?

• 1:52:22Bill Maher?

  I was listening to Zeppelin, uh, Jackson Brown.

• 1:52:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:52:27Bill Maher?

  Those were my two big ones, big go-tos.

• 1:52:30Speaker 03

  You listened on a record, on vinyl? You had a record player in your place?

• 1:52:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah, we were still into vinyl, sure. Or tapes.

• 1:52:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, tapes, right?

• 1:52:38Bill Maher?

  Tapes.

• 1:52:40Speaker 03

  I was all tapes, pretty much. Vinyl had just disappeared, basically, when I was a kid. So it was. Cassette tapes was pretty much my era, which was.

• 1:52:51Speaker 03

  Seemed like it wasn't as cool as vinyl, but now at, at this time, you know, I would love to be in a cassette tape world right now, listening to music on cassette tape. Or vinyl, you know, it's a, well, I don't, I don't love having to listen to music on this digital. Stuff, but it's, it's great to have access to the music, but it was nice to just be able to. Put in that album, push play, listen to the whole album.

• 1:53:12Bill Maher?

  Uh, yeah, I don't miss that at all.

• 1:53:14Speaker 03

  You really don't?

• 1:53:15Bill Maher?

  No, I have my vinyl collection, though.

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:18Bill Maher?

  And kids see it and they just flip.

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  And do you listen to your vinyl a lot?

• 1:53:21Bill Maher?

  No, never.

• 1:53:22Speaker 03

  You never listened to it?

• 1:53:23Bill Maher?

  Why would I?

• 1:53:24Speaker 03

  You never go, do you have a record player?

• 1:53:25Bill Maher?

  No, you know what I.

• 1:53:26Speaker 03

  That's probably why you don't. You gotta get a good record player.

• 1:53:28Bill Maher?

  I used the iPod.

• 1:53:29Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:30Bill Maher?

  I, I don't want to bore people. I always talk about my love of the iPod.

• 1:53:33Speaker 03

  I'm surprised you don't have, if you have a.

• 1:53:34Bill Maher?

  There are advantages to the iPod that I insist.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  Oh, the actual original iPod?

• 1:53:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Speaker 03

  Like, not your phone? You have the actual device still?

• 1:53:44Bill Maher?

  With the circle.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  They still make that, or?

• 1:53:47Bill Maher?

  You can get them on eBay.

• 1:53:48Speaker 03

  You just have a vintage one.

• 1:53:50Bill Maher?

  I have five of them.

• 1:53:51Speaker 03

  Wow, and you love, because.

• 1:53:53Bill Maher?

  There are advantages to it.

• 1:53:56Speaker 03

  I agree with that for sure. I don't have one, but I remember having them because it's nice because all the the music's there, it doesn't disappear, there's no ads popping up. It's your music, you feel like you own it.

• 1:54:05Bill Maher?

  Thank you, and also. Yeah, I don't think if if you're on a streaming service, I think not every artist is licensed to every service. So I don't think you can have every song you actually want. I mean, can I get all four thousand songs on one service? Uh, I know what I can't do is edit the beginning or end of a song, which I can do on an iPod. Because it's on your computer. And all you gotta do is go to options and you can, and many songs need the beginning or end clipped.

• 1:54:37Speaker 03

  Really? You have a, you have a, you're not a fan of some over long intros and the seventies rock stuff? You just want to get right to the guitar solo?

• 1:54:47Speaker 03

  Right to the first verse? It's big intros in some of those old Led Zeppelin songs.

• 1:54:51Bill Maher?

  People's phone machine messages on some of those songs.

• 1:54:55Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:54:55Bill Maher?

  There's people talking to a live audience for two minutes and telling the same story I want to hear a million times. There's applause at the end, or yes, sometimes musicians do make mistakes. And they just put thirty or forty seconds of some sort of ambient bullshit. They're supposed to set up the song, but it doesn't.

• 1:55:13Speaker 03

  So this is a pet peeve of yours and therefore you've gone and et- you've edited a lot of your songs?

• 1:55:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, it's not a pet peeve. A pet peeve, a pet peeve would be.

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  It irritates you enough that you've actually done something about it. Like you sit down at a computer and edit the front out of a bunch of songs.

• 1:55:33Bill Maher?

  To listen to the beginning or end.

• 1:55:35Speaker 03

  You just want to get to the meat of it.

• 1:55:38Bill Maher?

  You're making it sound worse than it is. I'm telling you, I'm getting rid of stuff that is bullshit.

• 1:55:44Speaker 03

  I'm just fucking around, but like. It is funny to picture you.

• 1:55:49Bill Maher?

  The pretending that what I'm taking off is because I'm just sort of some sort of nut. Who's only like a hook junkie. Just give me the middle thirty seconds of that song where they go.

• 1:56:02Bill Maher?

  No, no, no, I'm cutting off actual bullshit. I'm cutting off the fat off this steak that I don't want to eat.

• 1:56:10Speaker 03

  It's a nutty thing to do. I'm just saying it's like, it's a little more, you're, most people would just not do anything about it.

• 1:56:17Bill Maher?

  That is true.

• 1:56:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:19Bill Maher?

  And that's why I'm not most people.

• 1:56:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not crazy. It's just a little bit more than the average person would do. They wouldn't go and cut the song, cut a little file and only carry a vintage iPod.

• 1:56:29Bill Maher?

  It takes two seconds.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  The only thing that allows them to do that. They just listen to a different song without the intro they don't like or whatever.

• 1:56:35Bill Maher?

  It takes, it takes thirty seconds.

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's cool. That's cool. I like that. The sound quality is better too, I think, than through the internet. The sound quality is actually better. Like more, uh, more, uh, resolution or whatever than the audio.

• 1:56:48Bill Maher?

  Uh, maybe you can do this on a, on a playlist in Spotify or, or Pandora, whatever the fuck. Maybe you can do this, so just don't write me letters if you can. But with the iPod, you put it on shuffle. No, with the iPod, you can mark also songs as skip when shuffling. So in other words, of my four thousand two hundred songs.

• 1:57:13Speaker 03

  Right, right. You won't get this.

• 1:57:14Bill Maher?

  I don't want to hear Christmas music on shuffle. And there's other stuff I have in there, you know, yoga music. I don't, yeah. So I marked all those.

• 1:57:25Speaker 03

  Or even particular songs in general, specific songs.

• 1:57:28Bill Maher?

  I mean, I don't want just like upbeat songs, ballads or no. Lots of, but like comedy record, no, that's not going to come up on shuffle.

• 1:57:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 1:57:39Speaker 03

  You're listening to music.

• 1:57:40Bill Maher?

  It's music. Some of it might be slow, some of it might be long. For, I love putting it on shuffle. Frank Sinatra comes up and then Tupac.

• 1:57:48Speaker 03

  So this is on your iPod and then it's plugged into your speakers or you?

• 1:57:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah, it just goes in.

• 1:57:52Speaker 03

  Plug it in the car? When you get the car, do you plug it in the car?

• 1:57:54Bill Maher?

  I have one that you can get in the car, yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 03

  And so it's an iPod.

• 1:57:57Bill Maher?

  Not the old iPod in the car, but you can get this music of your.

• 1:58:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:58:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 1:58:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:58:02Speaker 03

  Music is the, a very important thing, like to actually listen to music and enjoy musics.

• 1:58:09Bill Maher?

  So important. And now this is, you're gonna say is, is not rational and probably isn't. But I also believe that my iPod on shuffle does speak to me. Like, there are messages that come through with the songs that it's picking on shuffle. I mean, it's just, there are too many times and it's

• 1:58:27Speaker 03

  This is a bit nutty, but no.

• 1:58:29Bill Maher?

  Even for you.

• 1:58:31Speaker 03

  So, you really do think there's sort of a, like, you, some synchronistic sort of

• 1:58:36Bill Maher?

  I think the Lord works in mysterious ways.

• 1:58:39Speaker 03

  Songs will come on, there are just, it just doesn't make any sense that that would play right now. Is it possible, like, a lot of songs have themes of emotion and it sort of reappear throughout this?

• 1:58:49Bill Maher?

  I thought of that. I swear to God.

• 1:58:51Speaker 03

  Because a lot of songs are both

• 1:58:52Bill Maher?

  That's exactly the right answer to what I'm saying.

• 1:58:56Speaker 03

  That a certain day, you know, a sad song comes on and, oh, you know, yeah.

• 1:58:59Bill Maher?

  If it was just that simple.

• 1:59:01Speaker 03

  But it's more, more specific than that.

• 1:59:03Bill Maher?

  So specific.

• 1:59:04Speaker 03

  Like, it really is.

• 1:59:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:06Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:59:06Bill Maher?

  Like, I'll be thinking about a song for a certain reason and then it'll play the first thing up on the shuffle. I mean, it's just, it's

• 1:59:15Speaker 03

  I believe in that.

• 1:59:16Bill Maher?

  I feel like the Chinese are involved somehow.

• 1:59:19Speaker 03

  With TikTok, maybe. It's TikTok's algorithm.

• 1:59:21Bill Maher?

  Saying that there.

• 1:59:22Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:59:24Speaker 03

  There is, so you're a, consider yourself a spiritual person?

• 1:59:30Bill Maher?

  Not up until that minute, but I don't.

• 1:59:33Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:59:34Bill Maher?

  So, in fact, I'm not even sure what it means.

• 1:59:36Speaker 03

  You believe in some form of energy coming from the iPod, though, some sort of Maybe that could be God?

• 1:59:44Bill Maher?

  That's what I'm saying. It does rhyme.

• 1:59:46Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:59:48Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying, I'm just reporting. I'm not making any judgments or conclusions. I'm just saying the iPod shuffle does speak to me. It does, it just, it just, it just suggests things through the music that it could not possibly have known. We didn't arrange anything. I've never met this magician before. It just doesn't. It just doesn't. And I'm not saying this is a reason why they shouldn't, you know, make it so that I can't use my iPod. But I do worry about Apple someday just making it so it just doesn't exist at all. Because, you know, you have to, what I like about it is you can edit all this stuff like on your computer.

• 2:00:28Speaker 03

  We have a vintage iPod.

• 2:00:30Bill Maher?

  But then you have to put the iPod in the dock to transfer from the computer.

• 2:00:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:00:35Bill Maher?

  I mean, they could cut that off at any time.

• 2:00:37Speaker 03

  They could change the format that music's recorded on.

• 2:00:40Bill Maher?

  I mean, they've already.

• 2:00:40Speaker 03

  What are the MP3s still?

• 2:00:42Bill Maher?

  No, I don't know what it is, but I mean, I can't do it.

• 2:00:45Speaker 03

  All the songs are in a certain file.

• 2:00:47Bill Maher?

  At some point, I did have to, you know, get a super duper computer expert to undo something Apple had changed.

• 2:00:56Speaker 03

  With iPod, so your iPod wasn't working for a second?

• 2:00:59Bill Maher?

  It would not.

• 2:00:59Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 2:01:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it would not re, you know.

• 2:01:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, I'm, I'm, cause I, it's, I miss owning the music in a tangible way, right? Where it just doesn't.

• 2:01:12Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 2:01:12Speaker 03

  You sort of have this organized set of music, whether this is, you know, you could just get a record player and get back to listening to music, but they can't take that in the car and all that stuff.

• 2:01:21Bill Maher?

  I like the fact that I have the music I have and they can't change it because you see they do change songs. Because, um, you know, woke Canadian assholes, for example, are the type of people that don't believe in free speech, like they don't anymore in Germany or England. And so like they will change songs. I saw.

• 2:01:39Speaker 03

  We have freedom of speech in our, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

• 2:01:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah, well, you gotta fight for it, you know.

• 2:01:45Speaker 03

  Say whatever we want up there.

• 2:01:46Bill Maher?

  Okay, I hope so. Because I, I.

• 2:01:50Speaker 03

  I think it's a little overblown. There's, there was, there was a, something about sharing news on.

• 2:01:56Bill Maher?

  No, it's not Canada, but England has arrested people for opinions on the internet. And I'm not down with that. And so is Germany.

• 2:02:03Speaker 03

  There's been some misinformation about Ca- me getting all Canadian right now, but there's been some misinformation about Canadian freedom of speech though that's been floating around. That they're like, we've, we've got freedom of speech in Canada. It's, it's in our. Our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We have freedom of the press, freedom of assembly.

• 2:02:19Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, just because something is in a charter. I mean, we have it too, and Trump is threatening that. And sometimes the left is threatening that too.

• 2:02:25Speaker 03

  I've never experienced a situation where I can't say something up there. There are hate speech laws in Canada, so there are things you can't say. But you know what? Who would want to say that shit anyways, right?

• 2:02:36Bill Maher?

  Well, that's not how, that's not what free speech means.

• 2:02:39Speaker 03

  Right, it's a slight, it's a slight, but it's, there's a clearly defined definition of what hate speech is. So it's not overreaching, you know? It's fairly specific. That's, so it's not really, you can pretty much say anything you want, except for extreme things that you would not agree with, I would think, and that nobody would really want to agree with in a civilized society.

• 2:03:00Bill Maher?

  You don't know what free speech is then. You don't know. That's not what free speech is. That's the definition of not free speech. Like what everybody thinks. Not everybody thinks the same. The Supreme Court ruled in our country

• 2:03:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:15Bill Maher?

  that the Nazis could march in Skokie, Illinois.

• 2:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:21Bill Maher?

  Which they were marching in because it is a community of a lot of Holocaust survivors, many of whom were still alive at the time.

• 2:03:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:27Bill Maher?

  And the Supreme Court said, as abhorrent as that is, that is what free speech is about. Anybody can defend the speech that we all like.

• 2:03:37Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 2:03:37Bill Maher?

  But sometimes it changes what people like. And you just don't want to be limited that way. Now, if you are literally inciting violence, or kiddie porn, or something like that, yes, there are things, and they're already illegal.

• 2:03:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:51Bill Maher?

  But it gets very dangerous, in my view.

• 2:03:54Speaker 03

  There was a lot of talk about banning TikTok in America, though. That's almost like a clamping down on.

• 2:03:58Bill Maher?

  Well, that was different.

• 2:03:58Speaker 03

  They didn't ban it, but I mean, they were.

• 2:04:00Bill Maher?

  Well, they, actually, they passed a law to ban it, and Trump, who's king now, just said, "I'm undoing that."

• 2:04:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:04:08Bill Maher?

  I mean, this was probably helped in getting him elected. First most blatantly illegal thing he did.

• 2:04:12Speaker 03

  I think it probably was favorable to him, TikTok. It was favorable to Donald Trump in the election, so why would you want to cancel that?

• 2:04:18Bill Maher?

  Well, you know what your old boss is so good at? He's so good at picking.

• 2:04:22Speaker 03

  My old boss?

• 2:04:24Bill Maher?

  Picking off little constituencies. Like, he got it. Oh, TikTok. Kids love TikTok. What do I care? I'll say TikTok's legal now. He picks, he RFK. He's like, you know, I don't know if this guy's a nut, but you know what? He's got a constituency, which he does. Like, people who wanna make America healthy again. RFK combines, like, people from the left and people from the right. People libertarian types from the right and super-healthy moms from the left who don't want, who wanna have raw goat milk and don't want their kids to have unnecessary vaccines. So Trump's like, oh, I'll pick off him.

• 2:05:07Bill Maher?

  I mean, he's, he's, he's gonna pardon this guy who was running a internet website. He's in jail. That was like, you know, all the nastiest shit.

• 2:05:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:05:21Bill Maher?

  And he, Trump's like, well, uh, no, it doesn't hurt me if I, and he'll get like a million, because this guy's got like a million faithful followers.

• 2:05:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. Millions.

• 2:05:32Bill Maher?

  He's genius at doing that. Like, picking off these little constituency where it doesn't hurt him.

• 2:05:38Speaker 03

  And it travels through the internet at the speed of light more than other things.

• 2:05:42Bill Maher?

  He pardons rappers. It's like.

• 2:05:46Speaker 03

  Kodak Black, he pardoned.

• 2:05:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah. So like, lots of black guys who.

• 2:05:51Speaker 03

  You like Kodak Black? He's pretty, I'm not sure, I could name one of his songs, but I like his music.

• 2:05:56Bill Maher?

  I do not know his music, and that's all on me. Why? Is he really great?

• 2:06:00Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I, I like, I listen to it a bit. I like, I don't know, I'm not super aware of everything.

• 2:06:05Bill Maher?

  What do you, what do you listen to when you're out on the tractor?

• 2:06:09Speaker 03

  Uh, I listen to a lot of music that I, I, I was gonna ask you that too, but I did ask you that. But I, if I would go to, uh, like, I, I listen to like Joy Division.

• 2:06:19Bill Maher?

  Joy Division.

• 2:06:20Speaker 03

  Uh, New Order. Uh, I listen to Johnny Cash.

• 2:06:24Bill Maher?

  Johnny Cash, I know him.

• 2:06:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I listen to, uh.

• 2:06:27Bill Maher?

  Johnny Cash.

• 2:06:28Speaker 03

  Neil Young. I listen to.

• 2:06:29Bill Maher?

  Neil Young, Canadian.

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:06:31Bill Maher?

  There is a town in North Ontario.

• 2:06:35Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I live in North Ontario, absolutely. That's, it's a, it hits, it hits close to home when you hear some Neil Young talking about Ontario. It's like Tom Petty singing about Ventura Boulevard, you know?

• 2:06:45Bill Maher?

  Right. Oh, I get it.

• 2:06:47Speaker 03

  It tugs on the, uh.

• 2:06:48Bill Maher?

  That's why I sang it.

• 2:06:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. No, yeah. Yeah. No, I, I listen to, uh. No, let me think of what else I listen to. I wanna, I wanna. Cause when I was, when I was younger, I listened to a lot of rap music, but I don't really listen to it as. Even the music I listened to growing up, it doesn't. You know, I don't feel like listening to. I won't say name the particular bands, but it just, I don't feel like listening to rap music that much. As an adult, I wanna listen to something more like. Calming, something that's gonna calm me down, you know, like.

• 2:07:18Bill Maher?

  But when you get done with this. RV trip that you're on.

• 2:07:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's sort of, yeah, yeah, it's, it's not an ongoing thing. We're just, I'm heading back up to Canada touring.

• 2:07:26Bill Maher?

  You gotta stay put for a while?

• 2:07:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm still, I'm touring, doing stand up, so I'll be going out and doing shows and, and.

• 2:07:32Bill Maher?

  What do you, what do you, when you're on the road, like, so how many, you do like a bunch in a row?

• 2:07:38Speaker 03

  On this particular trip, it's been driving, so it was one nighters, so it was in Chattanooga, Nashville, and, and.

• 2:07:43Bill Maher?

  And you drive to like a band?

• 2:07:45Speaker 03

  I, I was on this trip. I did, you know, over the last 20 years, I usually flew out, but when COVID happened, I kinda got this van. I started enjoying driving around, cause you know, rather than going to a comedy club for a weekend and doing four shows. It's more like, oh, I'll just do. One nighters across as I go and then, and then not have to go to the airport, not have to go through all that.

• 2:08:07Bill Maher?

  What do you do after the show?

• 2:08:10Speaker 03

  Well, right now I'm traveling with my fiance, so we're, we're having a great time. We go, you know, get dinner and do what a man and his fiance does. After a show.

• 2:08:21Bill Maher?

  Well, I don't know what you thought this program was, Mr. Green, but it's a family.

• 2:08:26Speaker 03

  No, I'm just saying.

• 2:08:27Bill Maher?

  Family show, and we don't like.

• 2:08:29Speaker 03

  But other than that, other than, you know, we, we go get dinner and go visit the city. We're, and, and we have a few days off here and there, so we. Well, like right now, like we're not actually doing any shows until I'm in Colorado in a couple of weeks, so I'm here in Los Angeles for a week. You know, here's something, I left Los Angeles. And had not come back for. Three and a half, almost four years until three days ago. So I lived here for 18 years, I lived here for 20 years.

• 2:08:56Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 2:08:57Speaker 03

  When COVID happened, I sold my house when COVID happened that I'd owned for 18 years.

• 2:09:01Bill Maher?

  There was nothing that brought you here?

• 2:09:03Speaker 03

  Well, I came here to see you.

• 2:09:04Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, in all that time.

• 2:09:06Speaker 03

  No, there's nothing. Well, I wasn't, I wasn't trying to purposely avoid it, but I just kind of, yeah, it was sort of, there was no real reason to come, other than I have friends here that I missed. But I talk to them all the time on the phone and stuff, and FaceTime and stuff, so.

• 2:09:22Bill Maher?

  So you're.

• 2:09:23Speaker 03

  I was kind of excited about setting up this farm, but this, so this is actually the first time I've been back, so it's kind of.

• 2:09:27Bill Maher?

  And this is, this is on Netflix?

• 2:09:29Speaker 03

  Uh, Prime, Amazon Prime.

• 2:09:31Bill Maher?

  I mean, Amazon.

• 2:09:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's on Prime and.

• 2:09:34Bill Maher?

  You know, they didn't tell me to watch it, but I'm anxious to see it.

• 2:09:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's fun.

• 2:09:38Bill Maher?

  I should have seen it already, I'm sorry.

• 2:09:39Speaker 03

  It's okay, it's okay.

• 2:09:40Bill Maher?

  I just wasn't told, but, um, it's on Amazon called.

• 2:09:45Speaker 03

  I don't think we would have talked about a lot of the things we talked about tonight if, if you had watched it, so I think it worked out for the best.

• 2:09:52Bill Maher?

  That was Larry King's thing always, like, he would do very little prep and he'd be like, "Hey, I wanna be the guy who wants to know." "If I know, why am I asking?"

• 2:10:02Speaker 03

  You know, I was Larry's guest host.

• 2:10:05Bill Maher?

  Sorry, you say lover again, and I'm disappointed.

• 2:10:08Speaker 03

  Not lover again, I'm sorry.

• 2:10:10Bill Maher?

  God damn.

• 2:10:10Speaker 03

  It was, I was his, I guest hosted his final show, show that he was doing there over, did he ever do a show in Burbank in that church?

• 2:10:18Bill Maher?

  A million times. Oh, in Burbank?

• 2:10:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, when he was doing it on Aura TV.

• 2:10:22Bill Maher?

  Oh, Russian TV?

• 2:10:24Speaker 03

  No, well, he had a show on Russian TV, which is politicking, and then he had a talk show on Aura TV.

• 2:10:31Bill Maher?

  I feel like you gotta know when to get off the stage.

• 2:10:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:10:33Bill Maher?

  I mean, Larry had a great run, and I loved him.

• 2:10:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:36Bill Maher?

  But.

• 2:10:36Speaker 03

  I thought you were talking about us right now.

• 2:10:40Bill Maher?

  But, no, because we got real gigs, but, but like, you know, Russian TV, they're gonna get, not gonna, I'm not gonna hang on on Russian TV.

• 2:10:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:10:49Bill Maher?

  And I'm not going on that one of those celebrities, you know, go in the jungle.

• 2:10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, no. Yeah, or, or a business competition with, uh.

• 2:10:59Bill Maher?

  All right. Uh, let's wrap it up.

• 2:11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:02Bill Maher?

  I could do it all, so much fun.

• 2:11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:11:05Bill Maher?

  Welcome back to the homestead.

• 2:11:07Speaker 03

  Thank you, man.

• 2:11:08Bill Maher?

  Thank you for the weed whacker, and I, uh, I'll get you into whatever.

• 2:11:12Speaker 03

  Okay, thank you.

• 2:11:18Bill Maher?

  That was so much fun. Thank you.

• 2:11:20Speaker 03

  Thank you, Lewis. An honor, an honor and a pleasure. Thank you, Bill.

• 2:11:28Speaker 00

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos. Los pacifistas, los valientes. Para los optimistas y los pesimistas. Los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos. Los que no vende lejos. Y los que no vende cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos. Para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola. Para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.