Lewis Howes | Club Random with Bill Maher

On this episode Bill hangs out with author-podcaster Lewis Howes for a free-wheeling chat about life choices and staying sane. They swap stories on moving to L. A., falling in (and out of) love, and how childhood baggage can push you toward self-improvement—or self-destruction. Bill explains why he’s happily child-free and “married to the job,” while Lewis talks about healing old trauma without drugs or alcohol. They poke at big questions—meds vs. mind-body fixes, meat vs. veggies, woke kids vs. baffled parents—and laugh over a possible 98-year-old tortoise adoption, and Bill’s headline-grabbing dinner with Trump. Mostly, it’s two guys comparing notes on how to stay curious, healthy-ish, and kind of normal in a crazy world. Save time hiring with ZipIntro at ⁠https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random Get 15% off OneSkin with the code RANDOM at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod #ad Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://www.trueclassic.com/random ! #trueclassicpod #ad Go to https://www.ffrf.us/freedom or text "CLUB" to 511511 and become a member today Go to https://OmahaSteaks.com and order the Built for the Grill Pack with 16 FREE smash burgers. Minimum purchase may apply. See site for details. A big thanks to our advertiser, Omaha Steaks! 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

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 0:30Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, we don't know that. What we do know, I mean, I think there's a place here where we are going to agree.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  You train ducks?

• 0:42Bill Maher?

  Sort of. They walk around the pool, they never go in.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  How do you train a duck not to swim?

• 0:51Bill Maher?

  It's flying by the seat of the pants at this place. Hi, how are you, man?

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 0:56Bill Maher?

  How are you?

• 0:56Speaker 02

  An awesome spot. Thanks for having me.

• 0:58Bill Maher?

  Thanks. Nice to meet you.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Great to meet you. Well. It's a great space.

• 1:04Bill Maher?

  It is a great space. I tell you, I thought about five years ago during the, we had fires, horrible fires here, and it blocked out the sun for a week. And I actually thought about moving to Miami. And then I stopped being super high. And I realized, first of all, I'm just too dug in, too old to like move. If I moved anywhere, I'd always feel like, when am I gonna go home? And California, I'm going down with the ship. You know what I mean? It's got its bad shit. But you're right, it's a great spot, and I'm never gonna find a place where I'm more comfortable.

• 1:47Bill Maher?

  This particular place has such a vibe to it. I'd never find a place like that. So, yeah. Where do you live?

• 1:56Speaker 02

  I'm in Studio City, yeah.

• 1:58Bill Maher?

  Oh, but you've always been out here, or did you?

• 2:00Speaker 02

  13 years ago, I moved out here. Yeah, from Ohio.

• 2:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah. And why did you come to LA? Why do you need to be?

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Well, I originally came for a girl I was dating that didn't work out. And then I ended up staying, and it worked out.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I didn't want to be in LA. I never wanted to live in LA. I moved to New York for like a year and a half after, you know, college days. And I loved the energy in New York for whatever reason. Maybe it was because I was my late twenties. But then the first year here, I thought it was kind of more superficial and less real. But then I met my people and I met, you know, communities I was involved in. And I was like, oh, this is awesome.

• 2:37Bill Maher?

  New York is, I always used to say, you know, at least we're honest about being phony. New York, you know, please. I mean, yes.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  You lived there, right?

• 2:48Bill Maher?

  Twice.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49Bill Maher?

  And I'm from the area, you know, I lived across the river. We were New York centric. My father worked at the center of Manhattan every day. We were just, you know, so New York teams, New York attitude. It's why I get along well with East Coast people.

• 3:06Bill Maher?

  You know, and West Coast people. But, you know, New York is still so phony. I mean, not the, perhaps the glitterati, I mean, the literati, but the glitterati, yes. It's, it's the home of like, you can't come in, you're Van Brown. You know, like, we don't get started until 1 a.m.

• 3:33Bill Maher?

  My friend used to always say, there's so many beautiful girls in New York. None of them will talk to you.

• 3:42Bill Maher?

  It's like any other city. I mean, the people are not, it's not a, just a plethora of intellectuals. It has that, but it's just, you know, it's also very, just like everywhere else. Except, you know, you have to put up with bad weather, rudeness, overcrowding.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Trash everywhere.

• 4:04Bill Maher?

  I don't like living in a building.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:07Bill Maher?

  Do you?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  I used to, but then when I got, you know, in the right relationship, I was like, oh, I want space now. Being married, I'm like, I love having a bigger space and a yard and, you know. All this stuff.

• 4:18Bill Maher?

  You need a yard when you're married, huh?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 4:21Bill Maher?

  I don't even know what that means. It sounds like it must be true.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  I lived in a two-bedroom condo until like two and a half years ago. Essentially, I mean, not the same one, but essentially I was living in two, three-bedroom condos like for the last fifteen years.

• 4:33Bill Maher?

  Are you a newlywed?

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, two months ago.

• 4:36Bill Maher?

  Two months ago?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:37Bill Maher?

  Well, that's, wow.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  And we were living together for a few years, but got the home a couple of years ago, but um, just got married, yeah.

• 4:45Bill Maher?

  Here's a question, Mr. Life Coach, like, so when, when you're living, when you're living like with someone for a couple of years and, and then you have the wedding day.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 4:56Bill Maher?

  What do you do on the wedding night to like make it like?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  You have a lot of fun.

• 5:00Bill Maher?

  I know, but like.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  You have a lot of fun.

• 5:02Bill Maher?

  But how can you, but, but like in the old days.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  This was the night.

• 5:05Bill Maher?

  I mean, a lot of the world still operates that way.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 5:08Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, I'm sure the wedding night in Karachi, Pakistan is still the wedding night, you know? I, I don't think there's a lot of premarital going on. Um.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  But I think for me, you know, I was, when I met her, I was what, thirty-eight or thirty-nine, I'm forty-two now, so it's where different seasons of life, you know, we've lived life a little bit longer and got married at this age, so.

• 5:29Bill Maher?

  Is she uh, age-appropriate?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  She's the same age as me.

• 5:33Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, she's now like twenty years younger or something, yeah.

• 5:36Bill Maher?

  Nothing wrong with that, dude. Twenty, you gotta be kidding. Um, so.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's great.

• 5:42Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm sure you married her, that's awesome. So, two months and they said it wouldn't last, huh?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  You know, two months. It's still going.

• 5:50Bill Maher?

  It's still going strong.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Cheers to that, right?

• 5:52Bill Maher?

  Unbelievable. There you go. Well, um, did you always want to get married or did you just meet somebody?

• 5:58Speaker 02

  I was terrified of, of marriage for a long time, probably because I grew up with my parents were always, you know, it felt like they were always fighting and they were stressed out and I was the youngest of four and it just felt like there wasn't a good model of marriage-love. It was like, seemed like stress and chaos. It's one of the reasons why I left home at thirteen.

• 6:17Bill Maher?

  What did they fight about?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Money, stress, who knows? I was always, I was also young, so they wouldn't, no one would tell me what was going on.

• 6:25Bill Maher?

  Do you know, they've, they've studied this. And the number one thing people fight about, and there's not a close second.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Money.

• 6:32Bill Maher?

  Is money.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:34Bill Maher?

  You'd think it would be, you know, fucking, you know, you, you, you don't.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  In-laws or something, yeah.

• 6:39Bill Maher?

  You don't fuck me anymore. I would guess that would have been like a high on the list, but it's, it's.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:45Bill Maher?

  Kids, of course, but no, it's, and all those things matter and many other things, but it's money.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. They got married when they were nineteen, they had a kid at nineteen. I just don't think they had the emotional tools on how to communicate effectively. And really know what they wanted, you know, it's just a different time, so I don't blame them for it.

• 7:03Bill Maher?

  Emotional tools. I may not have emotional, I gotta look at my tools.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  What do you think is the?

• 7:10Bill Maher?

  I don't know, but like, that's one of those sayings. I've never heard that exact one, but I bet you they.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Emotional.

• 7:16Bill Maher?

  I bet you you use it a lot.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I do. Think, uh, understanding how to navigate emotions is one of the most powerful skills.

• 7:23Bill Maher?

  Yeah, so how did you become an expert in it?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  I think by being a failure at it for a long time. You know, just making mistakes over and over again, constantly feeling like I was never enough, constantly doubting myself.

• 7:36Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  And saying, I don't want to live this way anymore. How do I overcome this insecurity, self doubt, this feeling of not enough, this feeling of unlovable, unworthy, all these things.

• 7:46Bill Maher?

  So it's, it's totally an auto didact.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Well, I don't even know what that is.

• 7:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Like as opposed to going to school, self taught.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Self taught, because school, this is everything, I had to learn after school how to live life because school didn't give me life skills. It taught me, I was dyslexic growing up, I was in the bottom of my class every year. They used to grade us on our report cards and I was always in the bottom four. And I pretty much cheated my way through tests and homework and things just to get by. So for me, school didn't give me life skills and that's what I wanted to learn after school. Was really like, how do I live a better life?

• 8:27Bill Maher?

  Did you use drugs as a crutch?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  I've never been drunk, never been high in my life.

• 8:32Bill Maher?

  Oh. Would you like to start?

• 8:38Bill Maher?

  That was your problem. You've never, you gotta have a moderation, I always say.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Well, I have sugar, you know, I have coffee, I do other things.

• 8:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but that's not, no, but that's not, but, you know, without looking into places in your mind that you can't get to, without drugs, you're, I would say that that is walling off part of the self-discovery process, which I know you're so invested in, in ways that you can, you know, there are just certain ways you can't get to a place without,

• 9:15Bill Maher?

  well, I know a guy, let me, no.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Have you ever done like, deep fasting for many days?

• 9:20Bill Maher?

  Oh, I fast every year.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  For like?

• 9:23Bill Maher?

  Five days.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Five days?

• 9:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Would you say that your mind opens up in certain ways when you fast?

• 9:28Bill Maher?

  Not really. I mean, you, you, you, there are times when you feel more clear.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:33Bill Maher?

  I mean, if I fasted for thirty days, maybe, you know, that kind of thing. I mean, you, we really are nuts. Or similarly, Keith Richards used to talk about, they would purposely stay up and not sleep for like, three days. Because, again, you are accessing-

• 9:52Speaker 02

  You're hallucinating, yeah.

• 9:53Bill Maher?

  You're accessing a kind of delirium.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 9:58Bill Maher?

  I ain't gonna do that.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:59Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, I remember coming down from taking speed in college, and you couldn't get to sleep for, at least, it was just terrible.

• 10:09Bill Maher?

  But, drugs, you know,

• 10:15Bill Maher?

  Aldous Huxley wrote a book called The Doors of Perception. That's where the rock group The Doors got their name. And it was, that was his metaphor for, like, these, this is a door to perception that you can't otherwise get. I mean, I'm not trying to, it sounds like I am trying to convince you to do this, but I'm really not. But I'm, I'm just interested if you're never curious about seeing that part of your head.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  I've never had a desire. I mean, maybe I've thought about what would that look like, but I-

• 10:47Bill Maher?

  Well, you think you know everything?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  No, I don't know anything. And I think that's why I keep learning and keep trying to grow. But I feel like-

• 10:57Speaker 02

  You know, when I was eight years old, my brother went to prison for selling drugs from undercover cop. And I read that you you got by in college by selling like pot.

• 11:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  And.

• 11:08Bill Maher?

  Well, we had whatever our dealer had.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:10Bill Maher?

  Let's put it that way.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  And it's kind of helped you get by and it's something, you know.

• 11:13Bill Maher?

  Also, my first couple of years living in New York in comedy, I was a pot dealer.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  There you go. And he got in a sting with like an undercover cop and it sent him six to 25 years in prison. Now, so I was an eight year old. I was the youngest of four. He was 11 years older than me. He was 18, 19 when he went in. He got out in four and a half years on good behavior, but it was the war against drugs in the 90s. It was the whole thing. And it was devastating for our family. It was like crippling for our family and it's what caused a lot of pain, a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, just. But you know, but it was a lot. And that led to, you know, I saw that early on, what drugs can do with the destruction of a family.

• 11:55Bill Maher?

  But, I mean, you could say I saw fire and saw what that destruction can do. And so I'm never going to use fire. And of course you want to use fire for certain things.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  I also think that, you know, for me, I just learned that drugs or alcohol are a toxin or are a poison. And it's like, as an athlete growing up, my whole vision was sports because school was, I was horrible in. And I was like, oh, guys are getting drunk on the weekend and then on Monday, practice, they're slower. This is an edge. So it wasn't like I wasn't exploring, like, maybe I'd go do this or maybe check this out. But I was like, oh, this is going to slow me down or hurt me with my skill set. Maybe with you as a creative writer or a comedian or, you know, it's like opening and expanding your.

• 12:37Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Capabilities.

• 12:39Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  But I was like, this is going to hurt me.

• 12:41Bill Maher?

  Well, there's also performance enhancing drugs.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Which I've never done.

• 12:45Bill Maher?

  I know, but like, but athletes do, you know.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Guys in college were doing it and shooting up steroids, coming back 20 pounds bigger with, you know. Freaks of nature. And I was like, I thought about that. In college, I thought about it because if I was two tenths faster in a 40 yard dash, I probably would have gone to the NFL. And I was just like, I couldn't live with myself knowing if I would have done it. Like illegally, based on society's terms and based on where sports was at. I was just like, I can't do it.

• 13:12Bill Maher?

  You dodged a bullet, man. Because if you had played in the NFL, you'd be broken now. Your body would be hit by a train.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  I played arena football for one year and I broke my wrist and had to have surgery. It's just like so physically demanding.

• 13:28Bill Maher?

  It's demanding is a kind word for it. It's just punishing.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  It's a train wreck every day.

• 13:34Bill Maher?

  Destroying you, yeah. So.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  It was a blessing. It ended after a year, but I got to live a dream and pursue that and experience it, but.

• 13:42Bill Maher?

  But you must feel a tremendous responsibility to people who like can't afford a shrink or, you know, they don't have a best friend and they're like, what should I do? I was like, well, what would Jesus do? And then you, right after Jesus, or you know.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think of myself as that.

• 14:01Bill Maher?

  Well, you're very successful in the industry of telling people what the fuck to do that, you know, you'd think.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  The responsibility would be high. Well, for me, the reason I started my show, it's been twelve, every week for 12 years. It's called The School of Greatness. The reason I started it, I didn't call it The Lewis Howes Show because I knew I was getting into a world of expertise around personal development, growth, health, wellness, mindset, therapy, money, all these topics. And I was like, I don't know any of this. I know a little bit of a lot, but I really am not the expert at anything. Let me go find these experts and elevate those voices.

• 14:41Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  So that's been, but by doing it over 12 years, you pick it up. You learn, you grow, you know.

• 14:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you immerse yourself. It's the old 10,000 hours thing, you know?

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 14:51Bill Maher?

  You've spent 10,000 hours or whatever the number is with the experts and the people and so.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  And then I've made a ton of mistakes and I've implemented how to overcome it and I've.

• 15:02Bill Maher?

  What do you do when, when the experts disagree with each other?

• 15:06Speaker 02

  I bring them together and I say, let's talk it out and let people decide. You know, it's kind of like what you've done for a long time. It's like, hey, bringing the experts in and then maybe no one has the answer, or maybe this research paper is combating with this research paper. And every, if it's around health and wellness, everyone's got to have a different process and try things.

• 15:25Bill Maher?

  I mean, this theme comes up a lot here and I guess on my other show and probably at dinner too much, but you know, I am less of a believer than most people in how advanced we are medically. I think this is a big difference between how I see things and they see things. I mean, they call me like an anti-vaxxer. I'm certainly not. I say it a billion times, vaccines, one of the greatest tools, physical tools we ever came up with, but I have way more skepticism and questions about it. Because I have way more about everything and like, if you ask me, like,

• 16:05Bill Maher?

  of all the things we possibly could know about wellness in the human body, what percentage do you think we know now? Most people would probably say, oh, we're probably at like 90%. I mean, like, yeah, of course, 100 years ago, we didn't know much, but and I would say maybe more like 20.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 16:21Bill Maher?

  I mean, like cure cancer and then tell me you really have even the fucking faintest clue. Because there's just lots of shit that they don't know. And I'm like not blaming them for it or saying it's because of corruption. I'm just saying, we're just where we are in history. We're in the year 2025. We're not, we're not quite living in the future. I hope we get there soon and AI gets us there and I never have to die. But as long as I have to die, I feel like we're pretty much, we're not at the infancy, of course. We know what a germ and an atom is and a lot, but we're just not where people think we are. And that gives them a faith in what the experts say.

• 17:03Bill Maher?

  And my thing is always, but the experts don't agree with each other. That's why they say get a second opinion, because that tells you, one, it's an opinion, which isn't a fact. And two, you need a second. And that often doesn't jive with the first one. And then what do you do?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Then you go with your instincts, your gut, what feels right to you, what aligns with you, especially if it's like a health or medical condition and you're like, one doctor says, there's no cure, and another doctor says, oh, have you tried this yet? Maybe you're gonna feel more open-minded to seeing how the energy was or what the research shows and feel more open to it.

• 17:39Bill Maher?

  I actually have someone I've hired for many years now, you know, an actual job that is pretty much just to referee what doctors say.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 17:52Bill Maher?

  Like, when they disagree, you do a deep dive and you tell, give me the, give me an opinion. Now, I may disagree with the ref too, but like, there's no other way to do it.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:04Bill Maher?

  And it is funny, you say that a minute ago about what I do, similar, yes, it's like refereeing or trying to keep it right there and with just the truth between like the two political parties. It does remind me of like when, I mean, because I have had diagnoses from doctors that are just diametrically opposite.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:27Bill Maher?

  And sometimes it's just factual. You know, like, free PSA, the higher number, the better. No, the lower, it's like, really, it's a fact.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:39Bill Maher?

  You mean, we can't just look it up? Well, we can. You know, stuff like that.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you mentioned, you, how old do you want to live till? You mentioned you would love-

• 19:18Bill Maher?

  Well, until I'm not enjoying it anymore, but I'm enjoying it right now.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is there a number, though? Is there like an age that you'd love to reach? If you could-

• 19:26Bill Maher?

  I feel like, once you've gone down that road, you're fucked, you know, like, I only look forward. Really, I'm not a backward-looking person, but-

• 19:38Bill Maher?

  I can't look too far. I mean, it's like tomorrow, you know? Tomorrow has to be a good day.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  What makes it a good day for you at the end of every day when you look back and you say that was a good day? Versus that's not a good day?

• 19:52Bill Maher?

  It's a good question.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Does one thing have to go off for it to be not a good day? Is it a few things? Does it have to be? You felt good, you created something, you were with people, you enjoyed, what was?

• 20:02Bill Maher?

  Starts with sleep.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:04Bill Maher?

  You know, mostly I get the right amount of sleep and wake up refreshed. That's like, if you, if you don't, certainly at my age, if you don't sleep well, you're gonna feel like shit. But I don't, but even when I was younger, your age, even you, I, I always remember if I didn't have enough sleep, I just didn't feel, I just felt like shit. You know, nothing is quite great. And um, so that, that would certainly, that, that can throw a wrench into any day. I mean, a feeling of accomplishment is always great, you know? I mean, I'm not a-

• 20:39Speaker 02

  At this level, you've done so much creative work, you've had so much success. What, do you have to go that much greater to feel accomplished? Or could it be like, oh, I, I did something small and it was accomplishment today? Do you know what I mean? You've, you've got so much accomplished.

• 20:54Bill Maher?

  I mean, thank you. But, I mean, you know, it, it is amazing in the way when you start out,

• 21:01Bill Maher?

  the littlest thing is like-

• 21:04Speaker 02

  A big win.

• 21:04Bill Maher?

  A big, yes.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  I got a callback, I got this.

• 21:10Bill Maher?

  I remember when I first in the clubs and there was a guy and he got a sitcoms like, and then there, his picture was in TV Guide and I was like, wow, I know a guy whose picture is in TV Guide. And now, you know, like, you know, I can have, oh, I'm not gonna name drop, but like, there are nights when I'm like, wow, I can't believe the people who I was with tonight. And they accepted me as their peer, you know, and we- And the next amp, I mean, it's like, yeah, I'm not even thinking about it. Whereas the guy in TV got it, I thought about it for a month. It's just like your perspective changes.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  What do you think has shifted?

• 21:50Bill Maher?

  But I don't want to ever be jaded, and I don't think I ever am. I mean, I am acutely aware, I make myself. I enjoy being aware of how far I've come and how much I cherish what I have. And I'm not a materialistic person, really. I mean, I had a break in here about six months ago, and they didn't take anything. They looked everywhere, they didn't find anything. There's nothing here but sentimental shit. You want my fucking yellow submarine poster, you know? Go nuts, bro, because like, it means a lot to me, but you, nothing. And, you know, I just don't have cars and watches and, you know, the crazy shit that people have.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  You've got nice property.

• 22:35Bill Maher?

  Property, it's hard to steal the property.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't take that with you. You were talking about peers, though, you're with around a lot of inspiring people lately. I saw some great clips of you with Trump. And I was wanting to ask you about that. I'm curious about what that was like, because I saw the before clips that you said.

• 22:51Bill Maher?

  I did a 12-minute piece on my show describing the whole thing in great detail, because there was intense interest for me to do it. You watched that. I will send it to you, the 12 minutes, did you see it?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I don't know if I watched all of it, I watched clips of that. I watched some clips of that.

• 23:06Bill Maher?

  You're gonna have to knock yourself out and devote 12 minutes.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  I'll watch it.

• 23:10Bill Maher?

  Because I'll give you the headlines of it. But basically, you know, by the way, there was a big fight over this, sort of within, I would say, within the Democratic Party.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Why, you can't hang out with someone?

• 23:26Bill Maher?

  Well, exactly. And, you know, look, I don't want to like, make this a bigger thing than it was, but I do think I won this one. Just because, I mean, the number of people I heard from, you know, even the internet, yes, the people, the 10% who hated me before this, just found another reason to hate me. But I do think that it was not a hard case to make. One, if you want to break it down, should you go if you're invited to have a private dinner with the president? Yes, of course, you'd be crazy not to, to see the, see in person, get the. Two, then you're, you have to describe it. Should you lie?

• 24:10Bill Maher?

  No, to me, that's also a no-brainer, but obviously, a lot of people wanted me to, but no, I'm not a liar. And then, three, after this, do you go back to just doing, and before this, I never took a break from exactly doing what I've always done with Trump, which was keep it real. It's not like I went MAGA, you know? If that had happened, they would have a case, and they have no case, and they know it. Because I went right back to tearing him a new asshole the week after, I did it the week before, he even complained about it to me, like, "Oh, you hit me hard last week, you hit me hard." And, yes, that's my job. I can separate the two.

• 24:52Bill Maher?

  It's funny how these people who think of themselves as the most intellectual, they violate the very first rule of being an intellectual, which is keeping two disparate thoughts in your mind at the same time. It's like Page One. But they apparently couldn't do that, but, you know.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  What was the big?

• 25:10Bill Maher?

  It was easy to make the case, I don't want to, like, keep doing it forever, but, yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  What was the biggest takeaway from you, from the whole experience?

• 25:20Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, that the haters and clickbaiters are always going to be there, but, you know, if you just tell the truth, people really appreciate that, whatever it is. And then, there's this other segment, the haters and clickbaiters. Who hate the truth, unless it's their truth, you know? They even use that term a lot. I'm sure this comes up in your world.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  This is my truth.

• 25:48Bill Maher?

  My truth. This is, well, you know, there's your truth and my truth and the truth.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  The truth, yeah, yeah.

• 25:53Bill Maher?

  You know, and people, people gravitate, I think, to what I do because they feel like, well, I don't always agree, possibly. Many people do agree most of the time. Doesn't matter. I feel like this guy is telling me what he really thinks and what really happened. And he'll let the chips fall where they may. And he'll, he'll take the fans who like that and be okay with the fans who leave the room because they can't take that.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:19Bill Maher?

  And that is exactly right. That's exactly what I'm doing.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Did your perspective of him shift afterwards, knowing that also?

• 26:25Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, it, it wasn't a total shock. I've, every person I've ever known, who has met him privately, including big liberals, like I believe Keith Oberman once was telling me, maybe on the air, that he lived in the same building as, as Trump for a while, or no, that couldn't be. Trump lives in, well, whatever, that he saw him and, yeah, same thing, charming in person. So it wasn't like a shock that he was different. It was, it was, it was surprising that he was more self-aware, let's put it that way, that he lets on in public.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  He was more self-aware.

• 27:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, watch the, watch the piece, you'll see.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 27:05Bill Maher?

  And, uh, but also that, you know, I said lots of things to him that liberals should love, that a guy got in there and said to him to his face. And I think they hated it that I also reported it when I did that. He was okay with it. He never like went ballistic like he does publicly. You know, if you, if these things had been said to him publicly, he would've been like, "You're a terrible person, you're disgusting." But obviously, he's two different people.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 27:39Bill Maher?

  Um, but, you know, that, that's complicated and people don't like things in life that are complicated, you know? I'm sure you deal with this all the time.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:48Bill Maher?

  And I'm so sorry that I complicated your life with the truth, but, you know, that's what I'm gonna do. And if you can't hang with that, I get it. But, you know. I I noticed we're like the number one show, my rerun of my show, it's the number one show on CNN. And I feel like CNN is the place where people at least used to go for like down the middle like let's just just tell me what the fuck happened. Don't fucking give me your slant. Or if you do, just be honest about your slant. Just tell me what you really think. So I feel like that's a good sign that people are watching it also on CNN.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  That's cool. That's great. You talk about truth. What is, I'm asking you the questions now, but I'm curious with all the experience that you've had. You know, the success, the ups and downs, what is the truth for you?

• 28:38Bill Maher?

  About what?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  About what you've learned.

• 28:41Bill Maher?

  About what? It's so broad.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  About life. About life. What's the, yeah, what's the truth for you?

• 28:46Bill Maher?

  You're gonna have to narrow this down. I mean, life is a very broad topic.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  If you could give three truths about all of your experiences, three truths.

• 28:57Bill Maher?

  You like advice to people? Okay, I would, first of all.

• 29:03Bill Maher?

  Don't be a jack of all trades and a master of none, as the old saying went. Figure out what you're naturally good at. And develop that because if you try to do something that you're not naturally awesome at to begin with, from the get go, given to you. You will fail because there are people who are. The people who are just have the God given, God, you know, I'm kidding.

• 29:39Bill Maher?

  Ability in something, they're just gonna always be that far ahead. And you know, like the athletes is a perfect example. You know, if you're, you can have the greatest basketball skills, and I do. But if you're five eight, you're never gonna play in the NBA. You know, just don't waste your time. You have to be awesome at it. And I mean, even guards are six, six and up.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I know.

• 30:04Bill Maher?

  Michael Jordan was six, six. Magic Johnson was six, nine. Luca is six, seven. He's hulking and LeBron basically plays point guard, point forward. He's six, whatever. You know, it's just, it's just not for you. If you're not big and tall. So don't like wo- work on that. Work on what you are already great at. And and sometimes that's hard for people to figure out. And I imagine sometimes it's it's, you know, something that's not that sellable.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:36Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Okay, that's one truth.

• 30:38Bill Maher?

  That's so that's very important in life, I feel like is develop what you're good at.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  But you still play basketball even though you'll never make it.

• 30:46Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I play it for fun.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:48Bill Maher?

  You know, I play with girls because I can beat them. I do. I'm seventy. I mean, there's the girls are good.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  They are.

• 30:57Bill Maher?

  I play they're they're not bad. I just can beat them.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  I mean, you can't beat WNBA players.

• 31:02Bill Maher?

  No, I didn't say that.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  You can beat a twelve year old girl.

• 31:05Bill Maher?

  Not a twelve year old girl. Girl, good girl. I'm but, you know, I was never in the pros and.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:12Bill Maher?

  I mean, but.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  So that's true number one.

• 31:14Bill Maher?

  So that's one.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  What would be the second one for you?

• 31:17Bill Maher?

  Be be a decent human for the sake of it. And and don't don't think that there's some like ulterior reward. Or that the the devil is poking you with a pitchfork if you're bad or you're gonna get this. Go to paradise if you're good. Just accept that, you know, you'll feel better about yourself. It actually helps all of humanity, which comes back to help you. Don't look for a giant reason to not be an asshole. Just don't be, just don't fucking be an asshole, just, you know, be. And and that's a lot, that's a hard one for a lot of people to take because they do need that motivation.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:01Bill Maher?

  To stay in line or to, you know.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Why do you feel you don't need that?

• 32:05Bill Maher?

  I mean, I mean, maybe I did when I was younger or, you know, I I don't know. It's just something you come to. I mean, I would make the case that atheists and agnostics are usually more ethically aligned than religious people. Of course, because religious people very often do the most horrendous things. I mean, a lot of wars, a lot of beheadings, torturings, burning people at the stake. Lots of stuff that happens because you think the most important thing is that your god is the god. And that you're so invested in that, that it's not really the kind of thing where when another person says,

• 32:48Bill Maher?

  "No, I think my god is the god," you can just kind of let it go. You have to either kind of convert this person or kill them. That is the view that has been...

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Those are extremists in the religions though, right? It's not like...

• 33:01Bill Maher?

  Okay, but there are times in history when extremists ruled the religions. They ruled the religions in Christianity in the 16th century. I think I was talking to somebody here, I don't know why we got onto this, but I was saying that, you know, Columbus discovered America in 1492. And then the next we hear about it is the first colony at Jamestown, 1607. What happened for that whole century? Why didn't they go back? Because they were killing each other in Europe. Because some of them are Protestants and some of them were Catholics. And the entire 16th century was just fucking killing you over whether you think,

• 33:42Bill Maher?

  "I need to go to a priest or I don't," or whether Jesus is foreskin ascended with them or it didn't. This bullshit that people fight about. So, you know, I don't know...

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Why do you think atheists or non-religious individuals are more ethical?

• 33:59Bill Maher?

  Because it's not about this bullshit. The first four commandments in the Bible are all about God's ego. Atheists don't give a shit about this. We don't care about praying to other gods and this nonsense. And, "Oh, God, don't let them hear you praying in the other room." "Hey, you got another god in there, bitch?"

• 34:20Bill Maher?

  Okay, you know.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  But why be ethical?

• 34:25Bill Maher?

  Because if you're absent all the bullshit and the spiritual shit and the nonsense where you're really invested in who is the God and how we worship him and your wisdom comes from books that were written 2,000 years ago that don't even condemn slavery, if that's where your wisdom comes from, yes, your morality is going to be fucked up. Mine isn't because it doesn't come from books like that. It just comes from logic.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Where do you get logic from if it doesn't come from wisdom of the past? Wisdom of the past in general, yeah.

• 35:04Bill Maher?

  It's a priori. It's just from living life. It's just from what makes logical sense.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  But why live an integrous life at all? Why not just, I'm gonna do what I want to do and say what I want to say and live my life and I don't care what people think?

• 35:20Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, you can, first of all, you can likely get arrested for doing the things that that would lead you to do. You know, that's, I mean, not always. You could get away with being a serial killer. They have. Usually they find them after a while. Now they never really have them anymore because the forensics are so great.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  It's pretty good.

• 35:41Bill Maher?

  That they really have, it's a shame. Please, give to the Serial Killer Foundation. Give whatever you can because there are so many serial killers who'd like to be doing it, but they just can't do it anymore.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  You think atheists live with more integrity or because of logic versus?

• 35:59Bill Maher?

  Yes, it's, I mean, all we have is morality. We don't have the bells and whistles and the nonsense about who's the God. And it's, I mean, it's not about faith. And the definition of faith is the purposeful suspension of critical thinking. That's what you do when you're a person of faith. They brag about it like it's a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's stupid. You're a human being. You have the ability to reason. Use it. But it's so much.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Don't you do both, though? If you have critical thinking?

• 36:32Bill Maher?

  Not really, not really.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  And then if you can't find a solution in your mind and there's no research or science to a solution to something that you're trying to solve?

• 36:40Bill Maher?

  Well, what, solution like to what?

• 36:43Speaker 02

  I don't know, healing, you know, if you feel like, oh, there's a disease and no doctor can help me cure.

• 36:49Bill Maher?

  Right, and neither will Christian science.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Well, it might, faith might.

• 36:55Bill Maher?

  Faith might heal you?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, belief.

• 36:58Bill Maher?

  Wow, and people listen to you? I'm kidding.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Well, people have miracle healings all the time of their body, their sickness, their something.

• 37:05Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, we don't know that. What we do know, I mean, I think there's a place here where we are going to agree. But I wouldn't necessarily call it faith, although, yes, you're correct, some of it is that, which is that there is a mind-body connection.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:22Bill Maher?

  That I think is another reason why I'm skeptical of Western medicine, because I don't, yes, I don't think they take that into account as nearly as much as they should.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  They don't.

• 37:34Bill Maher?

  It's why placebos work very often at the same rate as the pharmaceutical drug.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Not better sometimes, yeah.

• 37:41Bill Maher?

  Sometimes better.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:43Bill Maher?

  It, you know, somewhere I read this, some guy made a great point, he said, you know, 200 years ago, all they had was placebo. Because the doctors, of course, doctors, you know, these like-

• 37:55Speaker 02

  So like, here's an herb, it's gonna help you.

• 37:57Bill Maher?

  Or herb, but you were lucky. I mean, they would do things that were like-

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Sticks and water.

• 38:00Bill Maher?

  Well, they would put dirt, dirt in on things, and you know, they just, they would do the opposite of what would help very often. But because the person thought that it was helping.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Isn't that interesting?

• 38:12Bill Maher?

  So, in that sense, you are correct.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  The way we think something influences the body to heal.

• 38:18Bill Maher?

  Right. Unfortunately, I can't-

• 38:20Speaker 02

  And where's the thought come from?

• 38:21Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Where's mind? Where is our mind? You know, when we're thinking, we have a brain and then we have a mind. Where is that all happening? Are we able to, with science, discover and understand all of it 100% yet?

• 38:35Bill Maher?

  No, this is what neuroscientists are always working on.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Exactly, which is what I'm fascinated by.

• 38:40Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  I love having neuroscientists on to understand the emotional charge, the physical charge in the body, the mind, the way of thinking influencing the brain chemistry, influencing the body to either be healthy or be out of alignment and create more cancer cells. And how can we create a thought process, a thinking environment that is more elevated, that is more in harmony with health versus out of harmony with health? And I think- If you're thinking in faith, or if you're thinking, you know, whatever else that's allowing you to think in harmony and to be more peaceful thinking rather than chaos thinking, your body typically is going to align to that. Not always, you know, it's not like

• 39:25Speaker 02

  it's 100%. But there's definitely been so many instances in my life where I'm thinking negatively and I'm thinking chaotically and my body responds in a similar fashion. And then I think more harmoniously, I think more peacefully, I think more forgiveness, and the body feels better. And so where's that coming from? You know, why is that happening? And it's just, you know, I don't have all the answers. And I think that's where critical thinking, you can also be a critical thinker and search for answers.

• 39:59Bill Maher?

  But are you suggesting that comes from a god?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Um, I'm suggesting that...

• 40:03Bill Maher?

  It could.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  It could.

• 40:05Bill Maher?

  We don't know any...

• 40:05Speaker 02

  It could.

• 40:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah. People think atheists believe dogmatically. There is... No, all we're saying is, we don't know, and we don't believe in it. It's just atheism. We don't believe in it.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  You don't believe it also. I mean, it could be a possibility.

• 40:22Bill Maher?

  The truth is, we're apathetic about it. Our view is, we don't know, we can never know. So we're not gonna just waste time like worrying about it or thinking about... It just, we don't know. And you just have to accept that.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:40Bill Maher?

  But it seems unlikely, the virgin birth and whatever, all the, you know...

• 40:45Speaker 02

  A lot of things seem unlikely. I mean, it's like...

• 40:48Bill Maher?

  Well, not to that degree.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, I mean, how did the world get here? You know, do we really know the answer to how we're here?

• 40:56Bill Maher?

  Well, we know how the world got here. We don't know how the universe started. We know when. We know when the big...

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Do we know exact day, time? Like, we don't know.

• 41:03Bill Maher?

  No, no, we know generally, yes. We know the big bang was...

• 41:07Speaker 02

  We think we know.

• 41:07Bill Maher?

  No, no, no, no. That they know. That they know. They know... And that's not even the key question. We know that there was a big bang about 14 billion years ago. What we don't know is why, what was before then...

• 41:24Bill Maher?

  If there's some sort of universal mover, why did he choose this way to start the universe? Um, you know, it just seems weird. But of course, it's on a level that we could never quite understand. But yeah, there are lots of questions like that. Um, we certainly know when our world came here. It's about, I mean, our sun is about four billion years old. We're about, I think, three and a half billion. You know, the moon was a piece of the earth that broke off. Yeah, these are not hard things. What's hard is like, why did it all begin?

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 41:57Bill Maher?

  Why is there?

• 41:57Speaker 02

  What's the purpose?

• 41:58Bill Maher?

  Why is there anything?

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:59Bill Maher?

  And if there was nothing, wouldn't that be something? These are the kind of questions that just hurt your head.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. But that's also, you can have, I like to think about and try to explore those conversations. And when I don't have an answer, I try to keep going deeper. And at the end of the day, for me, whether it's four billion or ten years ago, or twenty billion years ago, that doesn't actually matter to me. What matters to me is, can I live a peaceful, harmonious life? Can I live a life full of love, joy, abundance?

• 42:31Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Inner freedom and have great experiences?

• 42:34Bill Maher?

  But isn't that what I said? Just do it for the sake.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 42:37Bill Maher?

  Not, not because you're worried about a punishment or a reward, which is just something they made up.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  I think you should do it for the sake, no matter what. It doesn't mean, you know, there's not a God that we can still be grateful for our existence and...

• 42:53Bill Maher?

  Grateful?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Are you grateful you're here?

• 42:55Bill Maher?

  I am, but I've got a cushy life. I know a lot of people who aren't so grateful.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:00Bill Maher?

  You know, what, what, where's God there?

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Do you feel like, um, it's a responsibility if we do have a cushy life to give and serve in greater levels?

• 43:09Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  To try to lift others up who are struggling?

• 43:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah. And, and by the way, some of that is forced upon us, which is, which I'm okay with. But when I say forced upon us...

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Taxes or?

• 43:21Bill Maher?

  Well, yes. I mean that, I don't remember the last year when I paid less than half. I mean, what I'm trying to say is I pay more than half.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:29Bill Maher?

  They take more than half.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Especially here in California.

• 43:32Bill Maher?

  I, I'm told, I'm like, you know, if you were like a billionaire, it would be way better because they have ways of getting away from it and corporations.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  But if you're just a mega millionaire, you're screwed. Your life is horrible. Yeah, it sucks.

• 43:44Bill Maher?

  It's not horrible, but don't tell me I don't pay taxes.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  I'm not saying.

• 43:50Bill Maher?

  No, no, but people do.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:51Bill Maher?

  You know, like, the rich don't pay, don't pay taxes.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  You pay a lot of taxes.

• 43:55Bill Maher?

  More than half. Okay, that's between the state and the, I live in California, of course.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Federal, state, everything.

• 44:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but if you just add up state and federal, it's already over fifty and then there's sales taxes.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  It doesn't feel good, yeah.

• 44:07Bill Maher?

  Okay, but just, but don't tell me that I'm not already.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Contributing.

• 44:13Bill Maher?

  Yes, there are lots of people going to the free clinic and places and good, I'm not, again, I'm not complaining about it. Just don't tell me it's not happening. And beyond that, of course, I also give to charities, the ones that, I mean.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  You care about, yeah, yeah.

• 44:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's animals.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:30Bill Maher?

  People like, really hate that, they're like, you don't think humans, I do, I like humans too, but I like animals more, I'm sorry. And they're more innocent. And I don't know, it just pulls on my heartstrings and that's, and you know, fuck it.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Do you have a lot of pets?

• 44:44Bill Maher?

  Well, I have two dogs. Um, and somebody offered me a tortoise the other day. It was ninety-eight years old.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  You got the land for it, that'd be great.

• 44:52Bill Maher?

  I do, I'm thinking about it strongly, I'll have a ninety-eight-year-old tortoise.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  That'd be cool.

• 44:56Bill Maher?

  I mean, can you believe ninety-eight years old?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 45:00Bill Maher?

  I know, no, I, I.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  I wonder if he's lived a good life.

• 45:03Bill Maher?

  Uh, ninety-eight?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  I wonder if, I mean, he's seen a lot, probably, I wonder what it's like.

• 45:09Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but I, I'm hoping to get him out of his shell.

• 45:16Bill Maher?

  Goodnight, everybody.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 45:19Bill Maher?

  But wouldn't that be cool to have, I mean, ninety-eight, ninety-eight years old, this fucking thing?

• 45:23Speaker 02

  It'd be amazing, you should adopt it.

• 45:25Bill Maher?

  No, I'm thinking about it seriously.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  You should.

• 45:27Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  What's holding you back from taking?

• 45:29Bill Maher?

  I just got the message yesterday.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:32Bill Maher?

  It's like, he, he comes with his own house and his own heat, heat lamp.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  That, that, uh, turtle lived like a king back here, you know, you got the gardens back there, it's got grass, it's got carrots or whatever, yeah.

• 45:44Bill Maher?

  I have two ducks that.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 45:46Bill Maher?

  They used to go in the pool. I let them for a while, which was a big mistake. Now I've trained them.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Uh, you train ducks?

• 45:53Bill Maher?

  Uh, sort of, they, they walk around the pool and they never go in.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  How do you train a duck not to swim?

• 45:58Bill Maher?

  When. They, when they get, for a while, when they were getting back in the pool, I would take one of the lemon, I would pick the lemons off the lemon tree, and I would throw it right near them. I never hit them. And of course, it would scare them the fuck off.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Stop.

• 46:14Bill Maher?

  And they would fly away. And then after a while, I hit it, and I threw the thing in the water, and they just, they didn't fly away. They just got out of the pool. They were like, okay, I get it. And now I never see them go in the pool.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  But they live here?

• 46:27Bill Maher?

  They have learned. They don't live here, but they come here every day.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:30Bill Maher?

  They like to walk around there. It must be a safe place, just safe space.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Got a lot of acres here, yeah.

• 46:35Bill Maher?

  Watch the turtle kill them.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  It'd be sweet if they, the ducks rode the turtle, you know, instead on top of it.

• 46:42Bill Maher?

  I gotta get that picture.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  That'd be amazing. That's cool. What would it take to get the turtle then? What makes you decide to do something or not?

• 46:51Bill Maher?

  I don't know. Well, first of all, you gotta live with it for a minute. You know, you don't just get a 98-year-old turtle, Louis, come on.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 46:58Bill Maher?

  You gotta, you gotta think about it.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Come on, what's, what's it gonna think about? It seems like an amazing experience, life experience.

• 47:04Bill Maher?

  It does.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  You care about animals.

• 47:06Bill Maher?

  It's a big responsibility.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  It's just gonna sit back there.

• 47:09Bill Maher?

  I know, but like.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  You got a team, you got staff, you got people gonna help out, right? I mean.

• 47:13Bill Maher?

  I don't want it to die on my watch.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 47:15Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, but no, I will give him, I mean, I was gonna say, doesn't he need a mate? But I'm like, oh, 98? No.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  He's not getting that thing up.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  I don't know anything about turtles. Maybe, maybe he made for life.

• 47:28Bill Maher?

  Tortoise, yeah. I mean, I don't know.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  How big is this thing? It's like a massive.

• 47:33Bill Maher?

  I, I saw the picture. It was not that big. But, um, I, all I know is it's a big decision, and when you're gonna get a tortoise, you gotta think about it slowly. Okay, that's.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Man.

• 47:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I love, I mean, I see butterflies here. I mean, when I was a kid, there were, they were, the world was teeming with nature-like butterflies, and now it's like, oh, if you see one, you're so excited.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  I know.

• 47:58Bill Maher?

  I mean, we're just killing everything. It's horrible.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Well, in the face of that, what's excites you at this season of life then, the most? You, again, you've achieved and accomplished so much, you've met everyone. Now that you've met Trump, you've met everyone. You've been invited to the White House. Isn't that interesting that you were never invited to the White House?

• 48:16Bill Maher?

  No, I was. I was there, but I did, I was there because I was doing the correspondence dinner in the nineties. It's not the same, but I do remember being in the White House because I have the picture of me and my mother and Clinton. Um, that was exciting.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  But none of them invited you.

• 48:32Bill Maher?

  No, exactly.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Isn't that weird that you're in this world for so long and they never invited you?

• 48:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, Obama, who is my basically favorite president, but um, he was not uh, very helpful as far as like, he never did my show when he did every other show.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 48:52Bill Maher?

  I had to, well, I had to go on the air and beg him on my sixtieth birthday in his eighth year in office and shame him into it, basically.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  He did.

• 49:03Bill Maher?

  And he finally did, but you know, it was at the White House. It was in the interview room. It wasn't fun.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  It wasn't a real.

• 49:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it wasn't in front of an audience. I mean, it could have been fun and funny if he came and did my show in the studio like he did many other shows. But he must have had someone around him saying, you know, I'm a very dangerous person, Louis. That's the thing. I'm a dangerous person who nobody can trust. Because I might tell the truth about something or ask a hard question.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 49:32Bill Maher?

  So, you know, they avoided me for all that time. So you're right. And I said that in the piece when I did it about, you know, and I know uh, liberals, again, they don't like the truth, but that's the truth. It's like, as far as like just feeling free to just speak exactly how I feel, uh, yes, I felt freer to do that with Trump than Obama or Clinton. And that's emblematic of the way the two parties have kind of switched as far as which one has the stick up their ass. Now, this doesn't say that the Democrats don't have better policy ideas. They do. But just on that level and people vote on this level all the time.

• 50:14Bill Maher?

  Like it used to be when I started in the nineties on that show, Politically Incorrect. It was always the Pat Robertson's and the, and the, you know, the Reagans and these kind of people who had the stick up their ass, the Moral Majority and the Jerry Falwells. And then it switched and the people with the stick up their ass. Became the left. They're the ones who were the police on language and the police on how dare you not, you know, and so.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  And you're all not free speech.

• 50:43Bill Maher?

  Trump is a kind of, I'm sorry, but in person, he's definitely the kind of guy, you know, you just feel like you can say anything and you don't have to like censor it. And I didn't. I didn't.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Would he let you interview him here on another show?

• 50:57Bill Maher?

  He definitely wouldn't here because I smoked pot. And he's just like you. He had a brother.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  He's like a drunk, right?

• 51:02Bill Maher?

  He's never had a drink because also a brother.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 51:06Bill Maher?

  Also a brother. The brother died of alcoholism.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  That's interesting. Yeah.

• 51:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Would you ever interview him on TV, you think, if he?

• 51:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, of course. He's the president of the United States. Are you crazy? I mean, he, of course.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Did you ask him if he would?

• 51:23Bill Maher?

  Well, no, but, you know.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Now you have his team. You can talk to his team and ask and see.

• 51:27Bill Maher?

  Like, talk to him.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Wow, there you go. You have a cell?

• 51:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Has he been friendly since then, even though you've kind of like attacked him a little here and there? Or has he been?

• 51:38Bill Maher?

  Look, we're not having a bromance here.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  You're not?

• 51:42Bill Maher?

  No. It's funny.

• 51:46Bill Maher?

  Kid Rock brought me there.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  I know. I heard that. I saw that.

• 51:49Bill Maher?

  He's the one who brought me. Okay. So like a week.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  He seems like a nice guy.

• 51:52Bill Maher?

  He's, I love him. You know what? I have no patience for people who just can't find friendship with people who don't agree with them. It's just, it's just, it's just a way to civil war and I'm not going down that road. But like a week before we were going, he texts me, Kid Rock, and he says, he shows me this picture. I may have told this story, but he shows this picture of a vintage guitar, kind of like that thing. And he's like, um, I got this, um, for POTUS. Why don't we give it to him as a gift? And I texted back, Bob, uh, I'm not at the gift giving stage yet. Okay. Let's see how the first, let's see how the first date goes.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  Right, the first five minutes.

• 52:30Bill Maher?

  And like, that's, no. And, and, but, you know, to their credit, they both understood that, yeah, we're going to have this dinner, partly, um, the perfect choice because I was the hardest one on him. And the, I was the one who said he was never going to leave office. Great, you know, graceful. So like I had this standing.

• 52:51Bill Maher?

  But they they both understood. Yeah, when the dinner's over, Bill goes back to his day job. And he's what they I think they like about me is that what other people like and some people don't is that I don't pull my punches. I'm gonna call it as I see it. And I I do it without malice.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:14Bill Maher?

  You know, but I'm I'm you're you're not gonna like turn me into something. I I, you know, I I went to that dinner, had a good time, and then I kept my honor. That's the truth.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 53:27Bill Maher?

  I kept my honor.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 53:29Bill Maher?

  And, you know, I know I'm kinda over it now.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:36Bill Maher?

  But he is a guy who like everything with him, I think, especially from his upbringing and his work in New York and real estate and stuff. It's really always a lot about personal relationships.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, to to a degree, every presidential leader, I guess, that's true. You know, if if, you know, I remember George Bush used to love, or Reagan, was it? Loved late Margaret Thatcher in England and, you know, okay, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were buddies and you can be buddies and. But this guy, I think, more than most.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:11Bill Maher?

  Like, you you gotta.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  It's in it's in his DNA to be about relationships.

• 54:16Bill Maher?

  It kinda is, yeah, yeah. So I just feel like it's better to have relationships with people than not. And some people, you know, just think, you know, well, let's just run out of the room screaming, I'm not talking to you.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Right. That doesn't solve anything.

• 54:32Bill Maher?

  It really doesn't. I mean, I'm I'm sure you get lots of inter-family.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 54:39Bill Maher?

  Issues. I mean, do you ever get people asking you about, my husband voted for Trump and I didn't, and we can't get along, we can't get over that?

• 54:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not a therapist or anything, but it's like.

• 54:51Bill Maher?

  Does that come up?

• 54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, people ask, or I'll bring an expert in to kinda talk about that, and I'm. I'm more about how can we be our most authentic selves and come from a loving compassionate way and so and say, listen, I want to hear what you're what you're talking about, what your political views are, whatever. And I don't even talk politics because I don't understand it. I'm thinking about how can I live the most free, harmonious life and create that within my community? How can I set my health up? How can I set my mind up to feel free on a daily basis and not be worried about what is happening or what the latest drama is? Things I can't control today, but I do know I can wake up and I can eat well and I can move my body and I can go to bed at a good time and I can say

• 55:37Speaker 02

  nice things and I can do things.

• 55:39Bill Maher?

  But you must concede that politics is always going to intrude on some of this.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Because this is. If you allow it.

• 55:48Bill Maher?

  But a lot of this country, everything is politics. I mean, there are people hearing this now who go who are saying, well, that's easier for you. You're white.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 56:00Bill Maher?

  That's politics.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 56:01Bill Maher?

  That gets into politics.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  There's always going to be people that are gonna attack you for whatever reason. They don't like you or say, you have money. You don't understand what it's like. You know, I was.

• 56:11Bill Maher?

  That too, yes.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Whatever it might be. You have money. You have a TV show. You should have nothing to complain about, whatever it is. But I dealt with sexual abuse when I was a kid. You know, I experienced that was one of my first memories is being abused by a man that I didn't know sexually. My brother went to prison.

• 56:24Bill Maher?

  How old were you?

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Five. He's a five year old. My brother went to.

• 56:28Bill Maher?

  You have that memory?

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Every day since that day, I've had that memory in my mind. I could relive that moment.

• 56:35Bill Maher?

  How long did it go on for?

• 56:36Speaker 02

  It's probably 20 minutes.

• 56:38Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, I mean, over time.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  It's just one time.

• 56:41Bill Maher?

  Just one time?

• 56:41Speaker 02

  It's one time. Probably like a 20 minute experience over one time.

• 56:45Bill Maher?

  An uncle?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  But it was, no, it was a babysitter's son. He's probably about 16, 17 year old. I was five.

• 56:50Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 56:50Speaker 02

  And.

• 56:51Bill Maher?

  What did he do?

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Stuff, yeah, stuff that, I mean, I don't want to talk about it publicly. I, I just, I've, I've shared that I've been sexually abused, but I don't want to relive the whole story.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  But that was my, one of my first memories as a child.

• 57:07Bill Maher?

  I'll bet.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  No matter how much success in sports I gained, it was like, huh, but why is something still off? And when I started to turn around and face, you know, those dark parts of me and start to heal through workshops and therapy and processes and meditation and just anything I can find.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  I started to create harmony through healing and it took a long time and it's a journey. But that harmony is something that I think I was always seeking and it doesn't mean every day I'm perfect and I don't go through challenges and I don't get stressed and, you know, get angry still. But it is a more consistent baseline of peace and I think that's what most people want, whether they're broke and have no resources, they want to feel free, abundant and peaceful. And you probably know a lot of millionaires, billionaires, people in political power, athletes, celebrities who have it all. But are miserable or still are not free.

• 58:08Bill Maher?

  The guy on, did you ever watch Succession on HBO?

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:12Bill Maher?

  It was so great.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Great show.

• 58:15Bill Maher?

  Logan Roy.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Great show, yeah.

• 58:17Bill Maher?

  The, the, the patriot.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 58:19Bill Maher?

  Who they're trying to succeed and he's a billionaire and he's got everything and everything. Just so angry. How long are we gonna be circling? You know, he's in a private plane and they're circling and his blood pressure is going through the roof. And it's like, these, I've, you asked me.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  You know a lot of these people.

• 58:37Bill Maher?

  Truths, I maybe never got to the third one.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:40Bill Maher?

  I'm sure I could.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  What is the third one?

• 58:42Bill Maher?

  Many more, but one of them would be, I don't know if it would be three, but.

• 58:47Bill Maher?

  If you have ninety-nine percent of what you could possibly want, don't obsess about the one percent you don't.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 58:57Bill Maher?

  That's good. And there are so many people, there are so many Logan Roy's, and I've met them.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Did you know them?

• 59:04Bill Maher?

  That, you know, and there are other ones who are not. You know, I know Jeff Bezos a bit. He's a happy warrior.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Seems pretty peaceful.

• 59:13Bill Maher?

  Not just peaceful, he like loves his girl, you know, that's a real thing. And, you know, he's just, he's like the nerd who got a hot chick and now it worked like, you know, very hard and he still works a lot. And they, she tells me. But like, he's just, he's happy. But that's the way to do it.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's a lot of people we know.

• 59:34Bill Maher?

  But there are Logan Roy's who just.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  It's never enough.

• 59:37Bill Maher?

  It's, it's the, they seem to be only happy when they're unhappy.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 59:42Bill Maher?

  And.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Because that's familiar.

• 59:44Bill Maher?

  That's sort of also what I always thought about, to go back to what we were talking about in New York and L.A. I always thought that that was kind of very characteristic of New Yorkers. You're not really happy unless you're unhappy. You know, when you think about.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  And it's what's familiar. And when we go into, even when we go into peace, it's so unfamiliar. If we go from chaotic relationship to chaotic relationship into a healthy relationship, it almost feels like something's wrong. Because you've never felt health, you've never felt peace, you've never felt someone accepting you or just being okay with your flaws and not making you change or not getting angry at you if you're not doing something for them all the time. And you, you're like, wait, something wrong? Because it's peaceful.

• 1:00:26Bill Maher?

  I gotta send you a song, I'm sure you're too young to know, but you know who Paul Simon is?

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:30Bill Maher?

  Simon and Garfunkel.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:00:32Bill Maher?

  Amazing solo career. He wrote a song called "Something So Right." He recorded it, Barbra Streisand recorded it. If something goes wrong, I'm the first to admit it. The first one to admit it and the last one to know. If something goes right, it's liable to lose me, apt to confuse me. It's such an unusual sight.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:00:54Bill Maher?

  It's a great song about this exact subject, you know.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  That's a guy who's dealt with trauma, you know, or confusion, or struggle, or stress. And it doesn't mean you're not living in a nice home. You can still have inner struggle and inner trauma. Even though you're provided for, and even though you have money and you have nice things.

• 1:01:12Bill Maher?

  That's, that's a.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  You could be living in a psychological.

• 1:01:15Bill Maher?

  That's a conundrum a lot of people have who are enjoying a good life and then they're unhappy for some reason. And they feel guilty about being, feeling unhappy because they know there are people who are, have it even worse.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:31Bill Maher?

  And you have to find a middle ground there between, yes, people have it worse. And also, your pain is real too.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Bill Maher?

  If you feel like shit, yeah, does it help to have money when you feel like shit? Yes, I can absolutely throw the flag on this one because I've lived both. I've been poor and unhappy, and I've been rich and unhappy. And being rich and unhappy is way better. It just is. It just is.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  But it also amplifies things. It amplifies challenges, stress, problems by having more.

• 1:02:06Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, but like you can go out to dinner and.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:02:10Bill Maher?

  You know, go retail. I'm not a retail therapy person really, but people do that.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  But at the end of the day, no matter how much you spend or buy, it still doesn't make you happy with what's going on. So it's almost like a bigger mind fuck because you're like, I should be happier with this money and I'm still not.

• 1:02:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah. But while you're going through something, like a breakup or something.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:32Bill Maher?

  It's just.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  It's better to have money than not to.

• 1:02:35Bill Maher?

  It's better to have money for everything.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  But unless you abuse it and you're like, I'm gonna go buy drugs and alcohol and just destroy myself. Then you're like, what am I doing? So it depends on how you learn to manage your.

• 1:02:46Bill Maher?

  I know, but we're back to that, that you can't really organize life around what the dumbest people will do with something.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:02:52Bill Maher?

  Yes, they, there are people who will abuse anything. But that doesn't mean you should prohibit it from the people who, who know how to.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Use free world, do it as you want, you know? But it's like, how can we? And my whole thing goes back to how can we create inner harmony, inner freedom, inner peace of mind? When we're dealt with stress, chaos, overwhelm, breakups, trauma, bankruptcies, whatever it might be, like, we're all gonna go through different stuff. But how do we get back to a centered, grounded place of harmony?

• 1:03:24Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  And how do we influence that in the people we love and care about the best way we can?

• 1:03:29Bill Maher?

  A lot of people work on your side of the street say meditation.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Bill Maher?

  Like, that's a big thing.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  I love meditation. I love prayer, meditation, whatever allows you to get back into centered peace.

• 1:03:40Bill Maher?

  Prayer and meditation, you say they're in the same breath.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  I love prayer and meditation. I've been meditating for a long time. And I've been praying for a long time. They're different. But I look at meditation, I don't, I don't know what you say prayer is. I look at prayer as more of gratitude, for me. It's not about like, help me, God, fix some problem. It's that for me, prayer is not solve my problem. For me, prayer is I'm grateful and I trust. I'm grateful and I trust, and I'm gonna be taking the action steps to see what unfolds. To get back to a place of harmony or figure out the problem that I'm, that I'm dealing with in the material world or my inner world. I'm gonna get back to a place.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  And meditation is more about not thinking about really God or anything. For me, it's more about breathing and being connected to self. And kind of calming nervous system. And really allow myself to feel peace so that I can make a clear decision in my life. Or just feel more peaceful. Cause I think a lot of people don't feel peace. And meditation is a place where I think it can support the process.

• 1:04:53Bill Maher?

  Are you able to, when you meditate, like, clear your mind of all thoughts?

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Not every time, but I think there's, you know, times where I can do that for moments. But then thoughts come back in and it's not about clearing of all thoughts. I think it's really about calming thoughts, like calming the chaotic thoughts. And feeling more.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  Peace, that's what it is. And I think when we can make decisions from a more peaceful place or a calmer place, as opposed to angry, resentful, scarce place, we tend to make better decisions. And if we make better decisions, we live a better life.

• 1:05:35Bill Maher?

  Well, maybe I'm meditating wrong. I don't know, I don't really meditate, but sometimes.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  A lot of atheists meditate.

• 1:05:41Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a great thing, but I just think.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Sam Harris has got a great podcast about meditation.

• 1:05:47Bill Maher?

  Yes, no, no, meditation's a real thing. Um, I just think some people are, uh, ea- easier, um.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  It's a practice, it didn't happen naturally.

• 1:05:59Bill Maher?

  Practitioners of it.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  I mean, I wasn't like, oh, I'm gifted at this in the first week.

• 1:06:03Bill Maher?

  But some people's minds, I think it has, it's connected to the way some people can be hypnotized. And some people cannot. I was once.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Have you been hypnotized?

• 1:06:16Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  I've never been hypnotized.

• 1:06:17Bill Maher?

  When we were, I was making this movie, Religulous, in 2007 and, and one of the bits we were gonna put in the movie, but did not, was I really, they had a guy to hypnotize me and I really wanted to be hypnotized.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  You couldn't do it.

• 1:06:30Bill Maher?

  Some people just can't, they just have a mind that doesn't go there.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  I've had, yeah, I've never been able to do it either, but I think you can be self-hypnotized. I think you can hypnotize yourself more.

• 1:06:39Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  Yes, I've done, and I think it's not the way it looks where it's like, oh, I'm gonna go to sleep and, you know, the hypnotist's shtick.

• 1:06:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  It's more of a, I'm going to visualize and become more hypnotic towards a belief that I have, a vision that I have, um, something I wanna create in my life. And I've created different.

• 1:07:01Bill Maher?

  Manifesting?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, just creating what you want.

• 1:07:03Bill Maher?

  Do you believe in that?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  I believe in manifesting and I.

• 1:07:06Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  I mean, it depends what your term, you know, what the definition of manifesting is.

• 1:07:11Bill Maher?

  I don't know. I always thought it would just something chicks say.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Well, I think you've, I think you've manifested everything in your life.

• 1:07:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I, I mean.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Everything in this, this building is a manifestation of a thought that you've had. You thought, I want to have a home one day. And you were once in New York and then you moved to LA and then you went and said, I want to look at something and I have a vision. I wanted to have space and I would like to be five acres and I'd like to have property where there's no noise and I, you know, and you said, oh, and then you found this place based on a thought and an intention and you showed up and the realtor showed it to you or whatever it was. And you said, this is mine. And you worked hard for the money you made to get this physical space. That's a manifestation of an idea.

• 1:07:53Bill Maher?

  I don't know about that. I don't, I don't, I don't, I could be. I don't remember ever picturing anything like this. This, this property came to me because uh, somebody was moving. Uh, because the husband had gotten too old to take the stairs. And they knew my manager and said, this place would be perfect for Bill. I think they manifested it.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:08:16Bill Maher?

  I don't think it was me. They did. Because, because it was a house that was perfect for one person. It was a nice house, but you know, I mean.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  But you manifested, you did tons of movies in your TV shows.

• 1:08:26Bill Maher?

  I definitely have not done, done some movies.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  But you've had.

• 1:08:29Bill Maher?

  All the movie posters around here are fake.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  But you've had a vision for your show. You've got a vision for the guest you want to have on and what you want to ask them and any moment you want to create in the segments and you think about it.

• 1:08:41Bill Maher?

  I've always.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  You intend it and then you create it. That's manifesting in my mind.

• 1:08:46Bill Maher?

  I never got married because I'm married to my work.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Bill Maher?

  And, you know, um, that's okay. You know, that's, that's not for everybody, but, but I also must say, I've read a number of health books where they're listing all the things that are good for your health and I kind of resent it.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Being married or not being married?

• 1:09:05Bill Maher?

  When number forty-seven is, you know. Get married and find the, it's like for you. For you that would make you happier and healthier. It's like, don't put it in the fucking book. On how everybody can be happier and healthier. I'm not saying.

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure, sure.

• 1:09:21Bill Maher?

  I just, I don't know why I'm yelling at you. You're not the guy who did this, but I've read that in more than one place, you know, like. Okay, that's for you. We're all so different.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:30Bill Maher?

  We are all very idiosyncratic human beings.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Bill Maher?

  That's why I don't want one for all vaccines or one for all anything.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  I agree with you.

• 1:09:38Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  I agree with you there, yeah. I mean, for me, it's.

• 1:09:41Bill Maher?

  Do you get shit about that?

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Um, about what?

• 1:09:45Bill Maher?

  Vaccines.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  I don't really talk about it myself. I mean, I have different doctors on and experts on to talk about those things. For me, it's more about what makes sense for me. And I grew up not getting vaccinated through my religion, Christian Science. I didn't have any shots until I was like twenty-four and I went to Mexico and got like a shot to go. You know, and I've been to Ghana and I've had to take different shots and things like that, but.

• 1:10:09Bill Maher?

  How did you live? How did you survive?

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  Effortlessly, you know, and.

• 1:10:13Bill Maher?

  How can you still be here on earth? Oh my god.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  I had no medications.

• 1:10:17Bill Maher?

  You must be the luckiest person in the world.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  I had no medications, I had no shots.

• 1:10:22Bill Maher?

  Oh no.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  And I grew up.

• 1:10:23Bill Maher?

  You mean you used the human immune system?

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Just developed it, you know, and I also, I also got chicken pox, like there was a chicken pox, a measles outbreak.

• 1:10:31Bill Maher?

  So did I. We all had them when I was a kid. They used to try to give them to the kids.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. My sister got them, they gave it to me. They had me sitting there with them.

• 1:10:38Bill Maher?

  And I understand that there can be harmful effects from getting the measles.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, yeah. I, I think whatever's been tested for a long time and if it's something that's, you know, recommended. Like for me, I wasn't gonna go to Africa and not get a shot, or just don't go. But I wanted to go, I was building schools for kids and I wanted to be there. And it was like, I knew the risks that I could get sick, so I needed to take the shots and hopefully prevent that.

• 1:11:04Bill Maher?

  My, you know, as long as we're on this. My view on measles, for example, is, because people get very upset about the measles issue. Is, you know, when I was a kid. We all got the measles and nobody worried about it. And that's because when I was a kid, we didn't eat processed foods and we weren't basically unhealthy. So everybody got through the measles. It just wasn't a thing. Fast forward to today. I get it why parents are worried that kids aren't gonna get the measles and have some deleterious effect. Because you're unhealthy to begin with.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:11:41Bill Maher?

  Because you've had too much processed foods and possibly too many vaccines. And you don't have a robust immune system. I don't know. I'm not saying that for sure. I'm saying it's a possibility. And don't try to word me off saying that that's a possibility because it is. Everything's a possibility. And we are just basically more unhealthy than we used to be. A lot. Everything that's in the air and the water, what we breathe, the plastics, the fucking fungus. Every fucking thing is worse than it used to be. So something like measles comes along and you're already compromised or COVID. You know, when you're already compromised, this is just common sense kind of medicine. Then

• 1:12:26Bill Maher?

  things like that are opportunistic. They wanna win.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Bill Maher?

  And in a normal human immune system, they don't. But the way we are today, yeah. But what's the answer to that? To go more down the road?

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  To get healthier first.

• 1:12:42Bill Maher?

  I think so.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  To get healthier first.

• 1:12:44Bill Maher?

  What's your, what's your health program? Like your physical health. Cause I just had dinner two nights ago with Brian Johnson.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Oh, how was that?

• 1:12:51Bill Maher?

  Who also was here and I like Brian a lot. It was a very fascinating dinner. More of what we talked about here. If you don't know, Brian's the guy who's forty seven. Uh, but he's.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Wants to live to a two hundred or die, never die.

• 1:13:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, he, he is, claims to be, and I don't think he's lying. I, I think he's a very, um. Smart and honest guy, certainly about this.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  He's studying it the most, yeah.

• 1:13:15Bill Maher?

  Shit about his personal life, but that's his personal life. But he wants to, you know, be the healthiest person ever. And so he lives in incredibly regimented, what I would find to be a ridiculous kind of unreachable life. But he does it, goes to bed at eight o'clock at night. It only eats one meal or whatever, and it's only lentils. And I mean, it's just crazy. And monitors his health.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Uh, 24/7.

• 1:13:42Bill Maher?

  Like, I mean, this guy.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  How was the dinner? Was it good?

• 1:13:46Bill Maher?

  It was awesome, and I like Brian. I said to him here and I said to him there, "Look, we can't do this, but I'm glad you're doing it because you're on the forefront of finding out what we can do with the human body. And what if we did do, you know, we could live more and longer and better and more healthy." And, you know, he monitors himself at an incredible level. He was telling us, you know, "Oh, my liver is 18 years old and my dick is 12 and my heart is 19." And I'm sure he's right.

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:20Bill Maher?

  You know, but who could live that life? Well, Brian can.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  He can. Very few can do that.

• 1:14:24Bill Maher?

  I'm glad he can.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, again, I keep going back to, I keep interviewing these people, people like Brian as well. And I keep trying to seek more information to find ways to stay in a beautiful relationship with the world. And that starts with a beautiful relationship with myself, feeling good about myself, a beautiful, learning how to be in relationship with others, I think makes me healthier as opposed to horrible relationships. Doesn't help my health. And so relationship is an important thing. My relationship to money, relationship to my wife, relationship to my body, relationship to food. Like, relationship is important and having a healthy interaction with those relationships. So I think about, for me, I'm more of an 80/20 guy. You know, I think I'm probably, you know, not with like weed or whatever,

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  but I'm more like in moderation of food and things like this. I still want to travel and adventure and try things. Um, but I really like getting seven, eight hours of sleep. I think sleep is the greatest way to heal your body.

• 1:15:23Bill Maher?

  It is. That's not an opinion.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Um, and I'm, I'm all about trying to eat eighty percent of whole foods, healthy foods, non-processed, minimally processed foods. I just think that's the way to go. My vice has always been sugar. So it's like, I still have sugar and I eat candy and things like that.

• 1:15:40Bill Maher?

  It's the worst.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  But it's one of the worst things for me. So it's, I'm never gonna be perfect, but it's like an eighty, twenty type of thing. And I don't drink alcohol.

• 1:15:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you gotta live.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't do these things.

• 1:15:53Bill Maher?

  I'm glad Brian's doing what he's doing.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's doing great.

• 1:15:55Bill Maher?

  But it's just not, I mean, he, he must have, what I was saying earlier in the day, earlier in the show about like develop what your, that your natural big thing is.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  He's great at that.

• 1:16:07Bill Maher?

  His natural big thing is self-discipline. He obviously has, somebody asked him at the dinner, like, you know, you only eat this meal, like, like, maybe he has two, but like he gets up at four thirty in the morning, probably the la, because you're healthier, the less you eat later.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Bill Maher?

  So he probably has like, you know, his last meal so many hours.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Noon or something.

• 1:16:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah, exactly. And they said, what do you do when you get hungry? And his answer was, I feel good about it. You know, I feel good about being hungry because I know I'm doing the right thing. And I'm like, like, most people are not born with that level of discipline. And, you know, again, I, I don't even wanna be. I, I, I, when he was here, I said, Brian, like, how many years have you shaved off your life living like this? And I think he said six. And I was like, I, I've shaved three and I'm smoking pot all day. No, I'm not doing it all day.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 1:17:00Bill Maher?

  But, you know, it's like, and what good is a Ferrari if it's always in the garage?

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  It's interesting.

• 1:17:08Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, your body is a Ferrari, but what the fuck?

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  But if you can't run, you can't like rev it up and let it go.

• 1:17:15Bill Maher?

  Let it take it out.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  I saw that he went to like, he like went to a dance party or something and hurt himself. And now he's like, I don't dance anymore or something like that. But it's like, if you can't enjoy it at the highest level.

• 1:17:25Bill Maher?

  I mean, he does enjoy his life because he gets up in the morning. And like does a lot of physical activities with his kid.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  It's enjoyable for him.

• 1:17:32Bill Maher?

  Yeah, for him, exactly. You know, just let us all be us.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  And it's, I can also learn from him. There's a lot of wisdom that he's gained.

• 1:17:39Bill Maher?

  That's what I mostly love about Brian Johnson. Is that like he is a font of wisdom. And you know, it's again, a personal relationship I have now. I can call, I can text him and say, you know, Brian, is this really true about hyperbaric chambers? I hear they're really good. I know Michael Jackson had one and one is he made a bad decision.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Oh man, this is speaking of all the people you've met over the years. If you could put three people in a room, three of like the most interesting people in a room.

• 1:18:14Bill Maher?

  I can't answer this question.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Who would you put in a room?

• 1:18:17Bill Maher?

  I can't.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Just to see what the conversation would be.

• 1:18:21Bill Maher?

  Louis, that's like the ultimate like.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  The three most unique people or five?

• 1:18:24Bill Maher?

  I can't.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 1:18:26Bill Maher?

  I can't.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  It's gotta be.

• 1:18:27Bill Maher?

  I can't answer that question. If you name some people, I'll give you my opinion on it. But I'm not gonna say, okay, Jesus.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  No, people you've met, people you've met, people on your phone, let's say, people you've met or hung out with.

• 1:18:39Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, I'm never gonna answer that question because the people I don't mention will call me the next day and say, why aren't I on the list? That's, that, that, that's a trap question.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Oh man.

• 1:18:52Bill Maher?

  But, you know.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  More for like, what would be the most crazy conversation to have? Not the most like fun conversation of like, oh, my three friends that all think the same. But like Trump and then someone else and you know, who would it be?

• 1:19:04Bill Maher?

  That's what I do for a living, bro. I mean.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Well, you wanna get Trump on this, you know.

• 1:19:10Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 1:19:12Bill Maher?

  Look, I don't even think it's that interesting anymore because, I mean, he's the headline in the news every day, whatever he does. I mean, that was, you know, again, one of my arguments against the crazy people who thought, "Don't go there." I'm like, "Really? This guy has dominated, dominated, whether you like him or hate him, dominated American life for 10 years in a way I don't remember anybody ever dominating in life." You wouldn't want to have dinner with him? You wouldn't want to see that up close? Really? Really? Then you're just not a curious person.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Bill Maher?

  And so, you know, it wouldn't be him. We know what he's up to. Look, the reason I love this podcast is because I get to talk to you, who I never would have been able to do that, probably. It's like, it just happens that I have a day job at HBO. I don't have time to work on this. I just told them, "I will show up here at 5:30 on Wednesday and have somebody interesting for me to talk to." And God bless them, they almost never fail. Now, also, I can talk to anybody. I mean, I've done shows with children. I can talk to 10-year-olds and have a good time. You get a joint in me and a couple of drinks. I really could.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  You can talk to anyone.

• 1:20:33Bill Maher?

  But I also like to talk to somebody like you, who I can have an intellectual conversation. It's just on a different level. Can I talk to the hawk to a girl? Yes, and I did. And it was great and fun and funny. But this is, you know, I, obviously, you know, the more you get on in life, the more you can have interesting intellectual conversations. And I think that's mostly what my audience wants to hear.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  I got a question for you. I don't know if you've ever thought something like this. You probably have, because you think about everything. But how old are you about to be? Are you just turning, you're gonna birthday in a month?

• 1:21:04Bill Maher?

  I'm gonna be 70, so I'm saying, I'm saying now I am, because I feel like it takes a year to get used to a new decade.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Wow, okay, so this is, I'm interested in this question.

• 1:21:14Bill Maher?

  But I really don't give a shit anymore. Because it's not how old you are, it's how old you act and how old the people you're with.

• 1:21:25Bill Maher?

  I'll just leave that out there.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:21:27Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  Well, here's my question for you, if I'm curious about, you know, you've got a lot of wisdom and tons of experience. Uh, I'm curious if you ever think about like when you hit 70, if you ever think about what you'll think at 80? Like what's your 80 year old self will? Think about or what advice your 80 year old self would give you? If you can think about now of when you had turned 60, you know, almost 10 years ago, where you were then and where you are now, would you have given yourself advice? With the wisdom you have now from 70 to 60 versus what 80 year old you would give at 70?

• 1:22:02Bill Maher?

  I mean, you know, life is walking down a very dark tunnel. Where everything behind you is well lit. Because you've been there and everything ahead of you.

• 1:22:16Bill Maher?

  It's pretty dark and you're walking like this because you can't see it and then, oh yeah, that's well lit. I know what happened. So I feel like each decade you get a little better at that. You get a little better at seeing what's ahead, but you still just don't know.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:22:33Bill Maher?

  You don't know.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  What excites you about the new decade now?

• 1:22:36Bill Maher?

  I mean, I, I, again, I live day by day.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're not thinking that far ahead.

• 1:22:40Bill Maher?

  I really don't because we could be here, I could not be here. I mean, we really, I mean, the world could not be here. We, we just, it's, or it could be all solved. You know, AI could, the robots could take over.

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:22:53Bill Maher?

  And we were all so afraid of them, but they're really very benign and they keep me living forever and they, and they solved all the problems and, you know, I mean, I, what I've learned is that it's almost a fool's errand to predict 10 years ahead. Because no human can and, and almost all those predictions are wrong, very few. The one guy who got a few things right. Ray Kurzweil.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:18Bill Maher?

  You know him, Ray Kurzweil. He wrote the book, The Singularity, about, and he predicted that humans and machines would become sort of interdependent in 2028. He looks like he's almost right on the money.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Wow, it's getting close.

• 1:23:34Bill Maher?

  He predicted when the Soviet Union would fall. I mean, this is a really smart guy. And, uh.

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  Is there anything you predicted when you hit 60 in the last decade? Like, things you wanted to create for your life? Not talking about the world, but like, I just, I want to create this and I'm gonna do this.

• 1:23:51Bill Maher?

  I already had what I wanted at 60, which was.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  Which was what?

• 1:23:56Bill Maher?

  The best job in the world. The, doing what I do on HBO, best job in the world. That I can, every week, talk exactly how I feel to a very loyal audience, get well-paid for it, make it funny. I mean.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Enjoy it.

• 1:24:14Bill Maher?

  And, and I love the process of putting the show together. I'm a process person, you know? So I love Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You know, that it gets better, better, better, until I go out there and deliver it. And I love making my audience happy. I love them expecting me to do a certain thing and me producing and giving that to them. That is, that is my ultimate joy, probably, in life.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:24:41Bill Maher?

  So, like, I just want to keep doing that. I mean, I don't really have, um, ambitions. I was on the road for 40 years and just this year stopped doing that. Really haven't missed it that much.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:24:56Bill Maher?

  You know, because you do change when you, when you go through life. And, um, I miss performing. I miss being onstage. I miss getting the laughs with the real live audience. But I have a show every week. I get, I do a monologue every week. I get that fix anyway. Um, it, it wasn't worth the travel and you, and it takes a lot to.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  A lot of energy.

• 1:25:18Bill Maher?

  Maintain an act. Um, so, you know, I just, uh, I just, when you're 70, mostly what you're thinking about is, how do I keep my health? Because life is better than it was when, when I was young. When I was young, I was stupid and like, poor and lots of bad things. Night, life is better, but of course you have to worry more than you did when you were twenty.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Your health, yeah.

• 1:25:40Bill Maher?

  You know, that something shit's gonna happen.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  What's, what's missing for you at this age?

• 1:25:44Bill Maher?

  Nothing.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Nothing's missing? Nothing you want or no, like, relationship or this?

• 1:25:49Bill Maher?

  No, I've got, I mean.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  You've got the properties, you've got the career.

• 1:25:53Bill Maher?

  Properties, I don't care about properties.

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  You got the turtle coming, maybe.

• 1:25:56Bill Maher?

  I got the turtle.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  The ninety-eight-year-old. You have something older than you here, you know, that'd be great.

• 1:26:01Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, I don't wanna.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  There's nothing that's missing in your life.

• 1:26:06Bill Maher?

  No, I don't, you know, let's not knock, let's knock wood and not say. There's a movie you probably also haven't seen called Broadcast News, it's great. James Brooks did it and the news guy in it, William Hurt, he says at one point, like, "What do you do when your dreams exceed your expectations?" And Albert Brooks says, "Shut up about it." You know, don't tempt fate. You know, things are going good. I've seen it too many times where it turns. The Ferris wheel always comes around to the bottom, you know? So just don't, like, I, I'm, I'm not greedy. I'm not a greedy person. You know, I don't need more than I have.

• 1:26:49Bill Maher?

  I have a good lot. I'm, I'm super lucky, I'm very philosophical about what I have. Some people say, "Well, you worked for it." I did, but I'm also born the person who would work for it. Some person, people are just not born that way.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Bill Maher?

  So, when you say, "I worked for it," yes, but it's also sort of, it was.

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  It's in your DNA.

• 1:27:14Bill Maher?

  It is, it was built into the cake to begin with, and I was lucky to get that.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Bill Maher?

  You know, not everybody is.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:20Bill Maher?

  Not everybody can. Not everybody, as we were saying before, has some great thing they can develop.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Bill Maher?

  Like, I did know when I was.

• 1:27:30Bill Maher?

  Less than ten years old that I was gonna be a comedian.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:27:33Bill Maher?

  You know, I knew this is what I wanted to do. That's lucky. Most, I know kids who are in their twenties and still can't. They're not stupid. They have talents, but they just don't know where to direct them.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:27:46Bill Maher?

  I was lucky. I was always going to, like, even when I was at college, I was like, what the fuck am I doing here? What the fuck am I doing here? I'm gonna be a comedian. This is not helping me. I remember having that anxiety a lot, sitting at, you know, in my dorm room at Cornell. Like, what the fuck? I'm taking Greek history. It's great, I'm enjoying it, you know, I like academia. And of course, as it turned out, it was great to get a good education, because it did help me, ultimately, with my job. But at the time, I was like, no, I know what I wanna do. That's, that's a...

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  That's a key thing. Was there, is there anything you regret from the last few decades that you missed out on?

• 1:28:36Bill Maher?

  A thousand things.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:28:38Bill Maher?

  I, I never understand these people who say, I have no regrets.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  What is your, what's your top two that you think of off the top of your mind?

• 1:28:45Bill Maher?

  For fuck, I mean, we could spend all night talking about this.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Just two, just one or two then.

• 1:28:52Bill Maher?

  From, from how long ago?

• 1:28:53Speaker 02

  Last couple decades, yeah. From fifty to sixty-nine.

• 1:28:58Bill Maher?

  Uh, I'm not gonna get specific about this.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:01Bill Maher?

  But the life I started to live at sixty, I wished I lived, started to live at fifty. And I'm just gonna leave it at that.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:29:12Bill Maher?

  But like, I do beat myself up about that. Like, I could have enjoyed my fifties a lot more if I had just realized, oh, I could live like this now. But you can't beat yourself up about how dumb you were before you got smart. You just were, and it just is. You know, I'm not the smartest person in the world. I'd be the first to admit it. And I'm also someone who like often, it takes a while to get me there. Like, I'm not the quickest study.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  Slow learner.

• 1:29:42Bill Maher?

  But once I get there, boy, do I get it.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  You're all in now. You're like, let's go.

• 1:29:47Bill Maher?

  Once I have it locked in, so.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  Would you never get married?

• 1:29:51Bill Maher?

  Well, come on, why would you at seventy? I mean, that's kind of crazy.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  Why would you never have a life partner? And say like, hey, we are in a union and we're living, you know, we're living together like we're married. Maybe not legally married, but would you have a life partner?

• 1:30:04Bill Maher?

  I'm in love. I believe in love. That's all. Everything else is just bureaucratic bullshit.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  What does that mean? Would you have a partner though, a life partner, like a, a relationship long term that you'd be in, you think?

• 1:30:17Bill Maher?

  I'm good right now. I'm, I, I'm good right now.

• 1:30:22Speaker 02

  Would you be open to the possibility if it was like, it felt like the right thing for you?

• 1:30:25Bill Maher?

  I'm open to the reality. I'm good with the reality. It's just like, why, why are we bringing the government into my private life?

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I understand the government, yeah.

• 1:30:36Bill Maher?

  You know, um, now if I wanted to have kids. But, you know.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  Would you have kids?

• 1:30:41Bill Maher?

  At seventy, what?

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  That's first of all. De Niro or who had a kid recently?

• 1:30:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah, De Arro and Pacino.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, why wouldn't you?

• 1:30:49Bill Maher?

  Uh, well, first of all, I haven't been in any of the Godfathers.

• 1:30:54Bill Maher?

  Also.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  You have no desire for kids?

• 1:30:56Bill Maher?

  I've never had a desire for kids, and so I don't think that's going to change.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Bill Maher?

  And.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  What if you got someone pregnant?

• 1:31:07Bill Maher?

  Well, I'd text everybody I know. No.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  What if that was someone you were dating was like, oh, I'm pregnant? And what would you say?

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  And you were like, you're about to be a father, whether you like it or not.

• 1:31:20Bill Maher?

  Wow, now you've really thrown the gauntlet down.

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  I got a chuckle in the back. There's someone like laughing in the background listening.

• 1:31:29Bill Maher?

  People from all over the world are laughing right now.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  What would happen if someone's like, oh, I'm gonna have a child in six months?

• 1:31:35Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, it's not gonna happen, because I wouldn't, that wouldn't.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  I mean, anything's possible. You know? If you're having, if you're having relationships.

• 1:31:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I guess that's true. I mean, you know, if you're careful.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:31:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you're right. I mean, even condoms are 99%.

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:53Bill Maher?

  You know? Um, well, it's, uh, interesting. Uh, I don't think it would be, be an issue. Um, but, you know.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  What would you?

• 1:32:06Bill Maher?

  I, I certainly, you know, you can't, if, if someone wants to have a, it's just not gonna happen.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Come on, man, come on.

• 1:32:13Bill Maher?

  It's not gonna happen.

• 1:32:14Speaker 02

  What do you think?

• 1:32:15Bill Maher?

  It's not gonna, I'll.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  How would you respond, you think?

• 1:32:17Bill Maher?

  I'll cross that baby when I get to it, but I'm, it's just, it's just not gonna happen.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  But if it did, do you think, what type of father do you think you'd be?

• 1:32:23Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm not gonna strangle it in the crib, yes. I mean, if I had to have a baby, of course. I'd hire 10 nannies and, and, you know, see it like Nick Cannon. I, I don't know what the fuck I'd do. It's just like, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this clip in a year and a half. And then you say, you say, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. They're just having a repeat. Someone's gonna make a techno song.

• 1:32:50Bill Maher?

  Hold on a second, I've just gotta get the bottle in the mouth.

• 1:32:54Bill Maher?

  No, I mean.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  What type of dad do you think you would be?

• 1:32:56Bill Maher?

  Terrible. I mean, I don't wanna be a dad. I wanna be a daddy.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Goodness.

• 1:33:03Bill Maher?

  I was.

• 1:33:04Speaker 02

  That's why you have five properties next to you.

• 1:33:06Bill Maher?

  I'm just, I'm just saying, I was never really cast right when I was a boyfriend. I was never, because I never really wanted to be married or have kids or, you know, go down that path of, you know. Occasionally, I would meet somebody who was so amazing that I would like, you know, get serious with them, and then I have had many girlfriends, but, you know, it never really, it never obviously resulted in marriage, because it, it just wasn't who I was. And, and I'm glad it didn't, because it would have been, ended in more, more tears than it did. And, and that's okay. You know, you can be that person.

• 1:33:47Bill Maher?

  I feel like that was a sign.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  That was a sign.

• 1:33:50Bill Maher?

  That was a sign from God.

• 1:33:54Bill Maher?

  But, you know, kids, I totally understand how people feel about their kids because of course I know everybody and most of people I know have kids. You don't get to seventy without most of the people you grew up with having kids.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  But all these parents that you know are in their sixties and seventies who have kids, what are their views?

• 1:34:13Bill Maher?

  Or fifties and forties.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, what are their views on having kids that they share with you? What do you see? Is there a benefit or you just don't see the benefit?

• 1:34:21Bill Maher?

  I mean, the ones who have kids who are teenagers and in their twenties do nothing but bitch to me about how their life is miserable because their kids are super woke and they're driving them insane with their out of control uber wokeness. Everything is like, "Mom, you don't get it. Mom, it's old thinking." Or, you know, and the parents are like, and these are liberal people, you know, these aren't like conservatives.

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:34:46Bill Maher?

  And they can't deal with their own kids. And I'm like, "It's your own fault. You spoiled them, the way you raised them, you know, they're not well educated. They're America-hating, ahistorical hysterics who don't know how lucky they are. Their whole life is based on how terrible privilege is while it's supported by ultimate privilege."

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  Why do you think so many kids are hating America?

• 1:35:18Bill Maher?

  Because they're not educated, because we don't teach them anything that would give them any perspective about America. So they don't, they think they live at the worst time in history, in the worst country, when they actually live at the best time in history, undoubtedly the best time in history, and probably still the best country.

• 1:35:38Speaker 02

  How could you explain it to someone in simple terms where they would actually understand that? When they think you're completely, they're like...

• 1:35:45Bill Maher?

  You can't. You have to have a more broad education. You have to understand Western civilization and Western history.

• 1:35:53Bill Maher?

  As well as if you want to throw in the history of the other parts of the world, and they probably didn't teach that to people in my generation as much. But I'm sorry, the most important things didn't happen there. They happened where people developed ideas like the rule of law, and democracy, and scientific inquiry. These things are not inconsequential. They're what make our lives valuable today.

• 1:36:22Bill Maher?

  I wish they had happened all over the world in equal measure. They didn't.

• 1:36:27Speaker 02

  What about capitalism?

• 1:36:27Bill Maher?

  They happened in Athens, and Rome, and Philadelphia, and London, and Paris.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Bill Maher?

  That's where they happened.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  What about capitalism? You know, a lot of kids don't like capitalism, right?

• 1:36:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, because they're stupid. And they don't understand what communism was. If they had the slightest idea how horrible life was under communism, they would run screaming and begging to live in a capitalist society. Please, go live in East Germany in the 1970s. See how you like it. Where every third citizen is informing on the other two, and no one can get ahead in life because the government takes 90% of your earnings. It's ridiculous. Communism was an enormous failure. And the fact that we don't teach that, that we leave that as an open question, good luck. I mean, we already, they think we, you know, we should be socialist. We already have a very socialist society. I'm not even complaining about it.

• 1:37:24Bill Maher?

  But when they take that much of your taxes, that's socialism. When they redistribute wealth, Medicare, Social Security, the Marine Corps, these are socialist programs. This is the government doing things that private enterprise doesn't do. And they should, to a degree. It's all, we're just talking about what that degree is. But to think that we're not socialist is just, they just don't know things. They don't know things.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Is that the schooling system? Is that colleges?

• 1:37:53Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 1:37:54Bill Maher?

  That's schools.

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:37:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, you're gonna have kids soon, right?

• 1:37:59Speaker 02

  That's the plan. That's the hope, you know?

• 1:38:02Bill Maher?

  Well, we know, we, science knows what causes it now. I think you'll be fine.

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:07Bill Maher?

  Uh, are you trying right away?

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're trying, yeah. So hopefully.

• 1:38:10Bill Maher?

  It's fun to try.

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's the intention.

• 1:38:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  That's the intention.

• 1:38:15Bill Maher?

  All right, that was fun. I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you. I'm glad I got to know you.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, appreciate you.

• 1:38:21Bill Maher?

  The beginning and not the end.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. We're connected now. Thanks, man.

• 1:38:25Bill Maher?

  Thank you. That's what I love about this.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  Good to connect. Congrats on everything.

• 1:38:32Bill Maher?

  Thank you, you too. Oh my God, you're killing it out there.