Chris Pratt | Club Random with Bill Maher

From AI doomsday paranoia to Arnold’s grandpa art projects, Bill and Chris cover it all – California taxes, broken-thermostat politics, why movies predict the future, and how Pratt went from Parks and Rec’s lovable goof to full-fledged leading man. Along the way: quantum qubits, AI girlfriends, and the wild story of his door-to-door salesman days. Basically, it’s part bar chat, part TED Talk, part roast – served neat with a splash of peaty Scotch. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our Advertisers: Drink Zbiotics before drinking and wake up feeling great and ready to take on the next day and all that summer has to offer! Go to : ⁠⁠https://zbiotics.com/RANDOM⁠⁠ to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use code RANDOM at checkout. It’s summer, and it's time to heat up your strategy before your competitors beat you to it. Go to ⁠⁠https://www. RadioActiveMedia.com⁠⁠ or text RANDOM to 511-511. Message and Data Rates May Apply. Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher 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

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple. Like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive. Or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  They're getting? Right. That's part of the craft. And every time an actor says craft, I feel like an angel gets kicked in the nuts. But I'm like, oh, please.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  "Brady, get in the car, bitch." And then they're like... "Eat it, nerd." The torpe guy kicks my ass and the audience is like, "Yeah."

• 1:47Bill Maher?

  Then all I need is a guest. What's up, bro? How are you, man?

• 1:52Speaker 03

  I'm good, man. How you doing?

• 1:53Bill Maher?

  Excuse my laugh.

• 1:53Speaker 03

  Oh shit, what'd you do?

• 1:54Bill Maher?

  Basketball injury.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Basketball?

• 1:56Bill Maher?

  Do you play?

• 1:57Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:58Bill Maher?

  No? Uh-uh. What a shame. I could use a rebounder.

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 2:01Bill Maher?

  Well, that's how you do this. You know, the ball hits it. It's a very common thing. They call it a mallet finger.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:08Bill Maher?

  Did you ever hear of that?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:09Bill Maher?

  I hadn't heard of it either.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Was it like, did it break at the end?

• 2:12Bill Maher?

  It's a severed, the tendon gets severed.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15Bill Maher?

  And then your, your finger is like this. So when you give someone the finger, it just looks so weak.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that happened to Russell Wilson.

• 2:23Bill Maher?

  And it's very common because the ball, this finger's longer.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:28Bill Maher?

  Hence the fuck you finger.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:30Bill Maher?

  You wouldn't want to give someone like, hey, fuck you.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. That's a gentle, that's a gentle one. That's like a...

• 2:38Speaker 03

  I only, I only mean it a little bit.

• 2:39Bill Maher?

  That's, uh, maybe we could get that going.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  I, I, uh...

• 2:42Bill Maher?

  You've got a zillion followers. Put that on your Instagram.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Start that. Start that. This one.

• 2:49Bill Maher?

  The pinky challenge.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  Pinky challenge.

• 2:50Bill Maher?

  Make it a challenge.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  I severed this, the tendons in this finger a long time ago.

• 2:56Bill Maher?

  From?

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Sticking a steak knife in my hand on accident.

• 3:00Bill Maher?

  I hope on accident.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. This is a bad day. This is a real rough, it's a rough season.

• 3:05Bill Maher?

  Kids do crazy shit to themselves.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Brother, you're right.

• 3:07Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean...

• 3:09Speaker 03

  It looks like, it looks, I mean, look at the scar. It starts here. It looks like one of those, it goes all the way up my whole hand.

• 3:15Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  But that's because they had to open it up and, and, are you gonna get a tendon surgery?

• 3:20Bill Maher?

  I, I don't think it's surgery. I think you just got a, I've been splinting it. I, I must say, because it didn't really hurt, that I, uh, didn't treat it right. And I knew, the person I was playing with immediately looked up on ChatGPT.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  Oh, well, you're good.

• 3:36Bill Maher?

  No, to see what it was.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, a mallet finger.

• 3:38Bill Maher?

  A mallet, and they knew. I mean, look, I will not have ChatGPT, and I want to talk to you about this because I saw your movie about the robots.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:45Bill Maher?

  And, uh, I'm all about the robots lately. I mean, like, even the people at work are like, Bill, you know, don't get Lenny Bruce about the robots. Like, but I am. But, okay, so let's just...

• 3:58Bill Maher?

  Wait, why did I bring this up? What would it?

• 4:00Speaker 03

  You were talking about mallet finger and you went on ChatGPT.

• 4:03Bill Maher?

  So like Chat, I gotta give it this. When it's not fucking up humanity, which it definitely will do.

• 4:10Bill Maher?

  It does things that, like you take a picture of your finger and it's like, hey, it's a mallet finger and you should put a splint on it. It wasn't wrong.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  I want, like, clearly the progression of ChatGPT and AI becoming sentient. At some point, it's going to get funny, right? And how do you know it's not already there and it just made up mallet finger? And that's not a real thing. What if it's like, you know, I've watched your stuff, Bill, and I think you're pretty funny. And I think it would be funny is if you went around and told Chris Pratt that you had mallet finger because I'm the one who told you what that was.

• 4:40Bill Maher?

  That is not an outrageous scenario. It already hallucinates. You know this.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Is that true?

• 4:47Bill Maher?

  You never heard this?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:48Bill Maher?

  It's called hallucinating.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  The thing hallucinates?

• 4:51Bill Maher?

  They called it. Well, that's the term the experts have coined for this. It's when it just completely makes shit up, which it does frequently.

• 5:02Bill Maher?

  Really? You're not on this? Oh, I'm gonna, you're gonna leave here much more paranoid than you came, for good reason. And, you know, you keep making these movies about this shit. I mean, fuck, your father-in-law made the original.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 5:19Bill Maher?

  And it wasn't wrong then.

• 5:22Bill Maher?

  It wasn't.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it predicted that, what, it wasn't wrong in what regard do you mean?

• 5:27Bill Maher?

  That the robots are going to take over and be hostile. And, and we will have no chance against them. Isn't that not what the Terminator is about?

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, but that was what it was about, but that hasn't happened yet, so we don't know that that's gonna happen.

• 5:43Bill Maher?

  Not quite yet, but you, did you see the tape of the one that's fighting back? The robot fighting back?

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Was that real?

• 5:51Bill Maher?

  Yes, of course.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  Are you sure?

• 5:54Bill Maher?

  Well, that's the other thing AI is bad for. It can, we are moving into a post. I have no idea what truth is age.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:07Bill Maher?

  So, but that I think we're pretty sure was true. It is, it was from a factory in China or Japan. And the robot is, he's on some sort of scaffold. They're working on him, you know? They're perfecting it. It's the lab.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:22Bill Maher?

  And at one point, they try to turn it off and it fights back.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's freaky.

• 6:30Bill Maher?

  I gotta, I gotta send you this shit. I'm telling you, it's, this is, this is, this is what's happening.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:38Bill Maher?

  Anyway, ChatGPT was right about this.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Mallet finger. Go like, go like this. Take your finger, go like that. Put your pinky and your, and your thumb together and roll your wrist towards yourself. Okay, go do it the other hand. Cause we have a, an extra tendon.

• 6:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  That we can actually have removed. I think you might have one on this side. Some people have it, some people don't. I, I had mine removed and was used to, to fix this hand. So they could take it, so you'll have a moment in your life where you will not be able to wipe your butt.

• 7:12Bill Maher?

  I'm already there. I poured your drink.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Did you? What'd you pour?

• 7:18Bill Maher?

  Whiskey? You're drinking Scotch.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  I think that's right, Scotch.

• 7:20Bill Maher?

  I'm so glad you're having a drink.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Ah, you know, I thought I would. I thought I would. I'm not gonna let my friend drink alone.

• 7:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, this is what I just made for myself.

• 7:27Speaker 03

  Oh, good. This is.

• 7:29Bill Maher?

  It's only with.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Cheers, brother.

• 7:32Bill Maher?

  Thanks for coming. I know you're super busy. Giant movie star. So thrilled to have you. Been a fan forever, by the way.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Oh, man, thanks, me too.

• 7:41Bill Maher?

  You know, I don't know if anybody ever made the leap. The only person I can think is Sally Field. Like, you know, she was the flying nun.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:53Bill Maher?

  And which was like the silliest of, I mean, it's called the flying nun.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:57Bill Maher?

  I don't know, you're probably too young.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  I remember the flying nun.

• 8:00Bill Maher?

  From Nick and Knight or something.

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:02Bill Maher?

  I saw it when it was on, I was 10 years old. I mean, for those wondering why she flew, it was because she wore that, you know, like. What are the, a habit?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  The hat, oh, that's the, the hat, yeah.

• 8:15Bill Maher?

  I was raised Catholic. You're Catholic, I know.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:18Bill Maher?

  Okay, so I used to see that. And she was so light, it actually flew. She flew.

• 8:25Bill Maher?

  Really, I mean, you cannot, other than my mother, the car. That has gotta be the stupidest premise. And yet, ten years later, she was getting Oscars.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:34Bill Maher?

  And you were, I mean, your show was not stupid. I loved you on Parks and Rec, that was great. Uh, but, you know, you just became such a different. I'm watching your series now, I love it, the, um.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Terminalist.

• 8:48Bill Maher?

  Terminalist. Is that Antoine Fuqua?

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, Antoine, Antoine Fuqua did, uh.

• 8:54Bill Maher?

  Training Day.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Training Day, Magnificent Seven, he's a fantastic director. He directed our pilot, he's the EP on the show.

• 8:59Bill Maher?

  And didn't he do the Equalizer?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, Equalizer, yeah.

• 9:02Bill Maher?

  I mean, he is, and you, uh, once I saw that name at the end of the, I was like, oh.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:07Bill Maher?

  That's why I'm, he's got a great, uh, or whoever's writing the scripts, great.

• 9:15Bill Maher?

  Finger on the beat of like, always what's next.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:20Bill Maher?

  Which is the most important thing in drama.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:23Bill Maher?

  You know, ahead of you, but not so far ahead that it's murky. You know?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:28Bill Maher?

  Because some things, I hate TV shows that make me feel stupid.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  I know, I'm like that. I know, I know what you mean, I know what you mean.

• 9:35Bill Maher?

  Well, you think I'm an idiot? You're right, I am, I can't follow this.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  And on one hand, you don't wanna underestimate your audience and feed them everything. You want them to, you want them to have the mystery and be able to kind of solve the mystery and keep guessing. But you don't wanna be so far ahead that you're like, wait, I'm gonna just turn this off. So it's a fine balance. He does a, he does a great job. Yeah, we're, we're super lucky.

• 9:54Bill Maher?

  What, I mean, my God, it must be so fucking grueling to do a series like that. I mean, like, you're compared to a movie.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:03Bill Maher?

  Like, you're shooting so many more hours and scenes, aren't you?

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, especially that. I mean, the first season of The Terminalist was really, I'm in almost in every frame of, uh.

• 10:14Bill Maher?

  You're in every shot.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  The, the show, and so, you know, we probably did. I think we were doing eight episodes of fifteen to s- fifteen to eight to, we did probably a hundred and thirty-five or a hundred and forty shoot days. And that's, that's a lot, but it was all in California. It was funny, cause when I was looking to, you know, I, I optioned the book, I read the book and got the option and, and brought it to Antoine and we've, it was odd, cause-

• 10:38Bill Maher?

  Navy SEAL.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Navy SEAL, yeah. My friend who I was living with at the time, former Navy SEAL, who's my partner in producing on, uh, the show, brought me the book, the galley copy of the book, and I found out that, uh, Antoine was interested in it as well. So we, I was like, I called him, I said, "Let's not bid against each other." You know, "How about, I'll just get the rights and you direct it and we'll come," and he said, "Great."

• 11:01Bill Maher?

  That was smart.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, we did it and, and, uh, it worked really well, but it was, it was definitely grueling and, and the reason I chose it was, cause it was in, uh, California, you know, I could shoot in California. I was like, "I'm trying to find things that I can shoot close to home. I'm a father, you know, I wanna be, I don't wanna just be off around the world all the time." And so I, we were able to shoot that in LA, and so that was a big reason to wanna do it.

• 11:22Bill Maher?

  Why? Because all I read in the paper is that, that this industry doesn't even exist in LA anymore. Even when, I read that, even when they're very often shooting something set in LA-

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:32Bill Maher?

  They won't shoot it in LA because the business atmosphere is so hostile. It, it costs so much more.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:42Bill Maher?

  Is that not the case?

• 11:43Speaker 03

  It is the case, but we shoot here anyways. You know?

• 11:47Bill Maher?

  Oh, so you're just saying, "Fuck it, I'm gonna,"

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:49Bill Maher?

  That's how I feel about California. I mean, do I really wanna pay so much more in taxes than everybody else in the country? No, but like, where am I gonna go?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:01Bill Maher?

  Uh, if we're selling sunshine, they're not selling it in Indiana.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 12:06Bill Maher?

  To this, to the degree we have it here.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, listen, I don't, I don't, uh, argue with the idea that we're probably overtaxed in California and I, I'm not going anywhere, so I wanted to shoot it there. It's, it's definitely not, um-

• 12:20Speaker 03

  It's a bit cost prohibitive. We have great crews here and there are people willing to take a haircut to work here, which is interesting, you know, you can say like, listen, maybe we can negotiate that you get paid slightly less than you would if you were on location, but you're gonna be close to home, you can attract great talent that feels the same way. Uh, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think because I'm a producer on the thing and I'm, you know, an owner on the thing.

• 12:43Bill Maher?

  You're gonna get.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  It's gonna cost, I could, if, as a, as a owner on the thing, I would make more money in the premium down the road if I shot it somewhere that was a tax incentive place, but I needed to be home. So that's why we did that there. Did it in California. And I, by the way, I shot two movies here last year as well. So it can be done, it's just, uh, you have to negotiate hard on it and, and make sure that, you know, you're willing to prioritize being in California. And you need someone who's like, says, otherwise we won't do it.

• 13:14Bill Maher?

  I mean, it is almost, um, galling the way it has its hooks in us.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 13:22Bill Maher?

  California. I mean, when I think about all the problems we have, the fires, the taxes, I mean, God forbid that your house burns down and you want to rebuild, I mean, if you start getting the regulation permits now, you might have it in 30 years when you're ready to sell it. That, and we put up with all of it. Because, like, I'm always amazed, like, people who don't have to live here still live here.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:57Bill Maher?

  Like, lots of people, I mean, most people who do movies, you're usually on location, you don't really have to live here. A few of them live in New York, but it's amazing. Even the people who you think, like, live overseas or too cool for, no, they live here.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:11Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:14Bill Maher?

  Brad Pitt lives here. They don't live in France, Johnny Depp, he lives here. They have houses over there. They just live here.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:24Bill Maher?

  It's, I don't know, it's where, it's where your friends are, where the people, you're like anybody, comfortable around the people in the same industry.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I mean, how long have you lived here? Your whole life. Eighty-three. No, I grew up on the East Coast. Okay. See, I've been here twenty-six years. Yeah. And so I've put down roots, which make it hard for me to just uproot and go. And like you said, where would I go? You know, my wife's family is here. They're. Right. You know, I'm not gonna, I'm not going anywhere. Why are they here? They're from Massachusetts. Yeah, right, yeah. Because everybody. Cause Arnold was, you know, is. Right. Arnold and he's a mega star and was the governor. He loves it here. Yeah. He wants to ride his motorcycle all year round, right, on PCH or whatever stuff he does and. Yeah. Like.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great, it's a great place to be and it's, it's, we, you know, probably pay too much in taxes and also some of the tax, that tax money probably goes to things that. Maybe could be seen as a little silly, but maybe, who knows? Maybe it can change. Maybe it'll bounce back. Maybe it'll swing back the other direction. You never know. We might, uh, we might see some. Is he a normal father-in-law, like? You know, yes. Yeah, like as far as like, um. Father-in-law, he.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Yes and no. In, in, in fact, for me. He's. He, it's more normal for me than if he wasn't Arnold. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like. What I mean is.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  Uh, it's a really wonderful fit. In my life to have a father-in-law. Who understands. Understands the business and understands where I'm coming from and, and, and gives me advice that I honestly don't know. There's gonna be a handful of people, a dozen people in the world that could give me the advice. That he could give me in regards to navigating the world. Just, uh, just like, you know. You know, just. Give it to me. Silly. Pass it on, bro. Um, play it forward. Just, just as, as it relates to, you know, if I, if I have a question about promoting a movie, if I'm like, hey, I'm going to. Right. Promote a movie here and, and what are your take on, you know, if I go to promote a movie, is there a global market for the movies? You know what I mean? So like you're, you're, you're promoting. He invented that.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  In, in areas that have. Yeah. Different values and different views, but it's still a market and you have to be mindful of what you say, not. Being, being thoughtful in your speech, but. Most importantly. As a father-in-law, um, he's, he's really normal when it comes to just adoring his grandchildren. Like the other day.

• 16:59Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  He had the girls come over and Ford come over for Mother's Day and he like had a whole paints, all these paints set on his table and he was doing their handprints and he painted like, he paints pictures for all the kids every Christmas and every, every, you know, all their gifts and stuff. He carries, he's, he's, you know, has all these wonderful gifts that he gives and he's just really thoughtful. He has them come over every week to feed the animals. So he's just, he's a doting grandfather, which is pretty cool.

• 17:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he seems to be very mellow now. I mean, I feel like, I mean, this is just from an outsider, but I feel like you and he are very different actually as far as like, you seem to be a guy who's really on the straight and narrow.

• 17:45Bill Maher?

  Like I, I don't ever feel like I'm gonna read a scandal about you. You are that kind of square jaw Navy SEAL guy. Maybe that's why you're so convincing in those roles, you know?

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 17:56Bill Maher?

  Whereas he, come on, what's a bad boy?

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:01Bill Maher?

  He was, when he was your age and a movie star in Hollywood, i- i- it was just different.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  And times were different.

• 18:07Bill Maher?

  Times were different and he was different and, you know.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  He's, he's a one-on-one. There's no one like him. That's the truth.

• 18:14Bill Maher?

  That is the truth.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  He truly is. He's one-on-one and, uh, yeah, there's no one like him and he's, yeah, he's great.

• 18:20Bill Maher?

  I would love to talk to him here. I've tried. I'm not even asking. You don't, I'm not, that's not why I'm saying it. I just find, I just love him and find him fascinating.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  He is fascinating.

• 18:30Bill Maher?

  And I wasn't even against him as governor, you know?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Great as a governor.

• 18:34Bill Maher?

  Uh, I don't remember. I remember it was, I remember how he got there. It was a lot about the car tax. We had a car tax, the previous governor put on a card and people, you know, this is car city.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:49Bill Maher?

  Okay, this is a car state. I mean, it's almost famous for it. Tax anything. Don't, but you know, tax their dildo, don't tax cars. And he was smart. He rode that right. And of course, it blew a hole in the budget, caused other problems, but, but no, he was, I always thought like, that is kind of what America needs to bring it together. And by the way, there's. Not just my opinion of this. The most successful politicians are in America are Republican governors in blue states. Because they don't go too far either way.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:28Bill Maher?

  They're in a blue state, so they can't be fucking right-wing mouth breathers.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:33Bill Maher?

  But like even people in blue states.

• 19:38Bill Maher?

  You know, they want shit taken care of. Like they don't want it overly woke. They want the roads paved and you know what I mean?

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, and probably they get to the position they're in by making promises on the sort of front of social progress. And then they have to cash the check on that, but if they're like, hey, listen. Oh, I didn't do what he did, but you know, he's in charge. God, I hated all that shit anyways. I only did that to get elected.

• 20:06Bill Maher?

  I feel like our whole political system now. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of a thermostat war. That have you ever had a lover and you were away with them? And or maybe something more permanent, but you you one of you like to sleep in very cold.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:28Bill Maher?

  And one of them liked it very hot.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Great, yeah, I love it already.

• 20:31Bill Maher?

  Okay, I had this once. This is like what our government is now. One side gets in and they turn the thermostat to eighty. Because the other and then in the middle of the night, I would get up and turn it down to sixty.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:44Bill Maher?

  You know, because you went too far.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 20:46Bill Maher?

  Eighty.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 20:48Bill Maher?

  And then and all night long, we're having this thermostat war and nobody can just go. Put it at seventy.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, put it at seventy, set it and let's just relax, yeah.

• 20:56Bill Maher?

  So.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 20:57Bill Maher?

  That's that's my cogent analysis of it.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Very, very good, very good metaphor. I think in that metaphor, maybe to extend it, I know all metaphors fall apart eventually, but maybe the thermostat breaks.

• 21:10Bill Maher?

  The thermostat is broken. That's so true. That's a great way to finish that. The thermostat is now broken. Because we don't know what, you know, the temperature is or, you know. But I don't want to worry your pretty little head about that. You must have a thousand things.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 21:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it is amazing how you went from like the schlubby guy. I really did not see that coming. Because even in one of my favorite movies, Moneyball. You know, I must have seen that three or four times already by now.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  It's a great movie.

• 21:44Bill Maher?

  It's a great movie. Well, it's Aaron Sorkin, right?

• 21:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, Aaron Sorkin.

• 21:47Bill Maher?

  Aaron Sorkin writing.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Bennett Miller directed, yeah.

• 21:49Bill Maher?

  Baseball. Who?

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Bennett Miller, the director.

• 21:52Bill Maher?

  Bennett Miller.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:53Bill Maher?

  I don't know that name. What did he? He must have done something else.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  I think he's done some other things, but Moneyball is.

• 21:59Bill Maher?

  So great. And the book by.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  It's C.S. Not C.S. Lewis, Michael Lewis.

• 22:03Bill Maher?

  Michael Lewis.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Different Lewis.

• 22:05Bill Maher?

  C.S. Lewis.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Slightly different.

• 22:06Bill Maher?

  Very author. Catholic, yes.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  I like C.S. Lewis, though.

• 22:09Bill Maher?

  You would.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:11Bill Maher?

  Not an atheist like me.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  No.

• 22:13Bill Maher?

  But he is your boy. C.S. Lewis, yes.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Of course, yeah.

• 22:17Bill Maher?

  But not the only. He's, I think, a convert, but T.S. Eliot, you know, one of the great intellects, the great poet of the wasteland and stuff. I think he was a late life Catholic convert.

• 22:30Bill Maher?

  It's quite a large club. Tony Blair, former English Prime Minister, I think J.D. Vance.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  J.D. Vance, yeah.

• 22:39Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, I was brought up Catholic. I know this.

• 22:45Bill Maher?

  To this day, if I walk into a church, you know, there's a feeling that will never go away. For me, fear.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 22:52Bill Maher?

  But it's also, you know, I'm sure for many people, inspirational. It's both, you know.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  I was baptized Catholic as a child, and then I was raised. My family wasn't religious, but I was baptized Catholic kind of procedurally through my family because my dad was Catholic and he baptized babies. And then we never really went to church. I grew up next to a Lutheran church, which I went to a few times. And of course, Lutheranism and Catholicism slightly differ in terms of like the way that they translate the literal Bible.

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  Lutheran, correct me if I'm wrong, it may be, is the closest of the Protestant denominations to Catholicism?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, still a lot of the same. I believe so. And I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I know that like a lot of the same traditions with the acolytes and the crucifers and the altar boys and all this stuff. And like, you know, it feels like. Like when you go in, some of the rituals are really similar to a Catholic church.

• 23:46Bill Maher?

  Which is what Protestants originally was all trying to get away from that.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:51Bill Maher?

  And they stripped it of all the bells and the whistles and the magic and the, I don't know, talking to the priest about what you.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, confession and all of these things, yeah.

• 24:02Bill Maher?

  But Lutherans got back to some of that.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think from my understanding, and I, like I said, I'm not an expert on this, but I know Martin Luther was this German guy, the printing press, he created this printing press and then.

• 24:11Bill Maher?

  No, no, no. Gutenberg created the printing press.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  But.

• 24:14Bill Maher?

  Soon after the printing press came on the scene.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:17Bill Maher?

  He printed his 95 theses, which was the criticism of Catholicism.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:22Bill Maher?

  And he nailed it to it.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Rooted in the Bible with translations from, because people getting, you know, people maybe in Germany at the time or wherever around the world were getting mass in Latin. They didn't even understand Latin and they were kind of just looking to their priest to say, what is this book saying? And the priest could kind of say whatever he wanted.

• 24:38Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  And so Martin Luther was like, actually, let's look at the Gospels. What do they really say? None of this stuff is in there. There's nothing in this book about confession. There's nothing in this book. So that I think was spawned like this new branch of it. So anyways, you had mentioned I'm Catholic, but I did a collaboration with a Catholic app, Hallow. And I go to a Catholic church. My wife is Catholic, but I would probably consider myself to be more Christian than Catholic. I don't know that I'm necessarily like one or the other.

• 25:04Bill Maher?

  Well, Chris.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  Non-denominational.

• 25:06Bill Maher?

  Anyone who believes in Christ is a Christian, right?

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:09Bill Maher?

  So that would be Catholics and.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Would be Catholic as well, right. But I like, I wasn't confirmed in the Catholic church and.

• 25:16Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  I, I don't want to say, I guess I'm sort of like, I go to a Catholic church. I love it all. I'm, I'm, I'm a follower of, you know, Jesus, so.

• 25:27Bill Maher?

  I, I mean, I made a movie about this, but it was never mean spirited.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  I, I know that.

• 25:31Bill Maher?

  It was just questioning.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:33Bill Maher?

  And having fun with it, but everybody we, we left after we talked to them, almost everybody, certainly at the time. Maybe after the movie came out, there was some ruffled feathers, but at the time we were all hugging. And like, it was never like, oh, you were mean to us or trying to put us down, you know? Uh, I said in the movie, you know, I just, I'm preaching the gospel of, I don't know. I don't know either.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:56Bill Maher?

  You know, I just don't, I don't sign on to these things. And part of it is because, you know, they did traumatize me. I mean, it's, it's, you can believe in Jesus as a God. I don't, but you can and still be critical of. His minions on Earth and the things they've done.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 26:14Bill Maher?

  Uh, and I'm not getting into even the worst things they do, which is way worse than, I mean, I was never molested or anything.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:21Bill Maher?

  Disappointed about it, but I would never have.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  You don't have the face for it.

• 26:25Bill Maher?

  That's what I. Can't rub it in.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  You know what, you know what, Bill?

• 26:29Bill Maher?

  But.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  I'll molest you. It might make you feel better.

• 26:34Bill Maher?

  It would, it would.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  I hear you. Listen, mankind has been messing this up since.

• 26:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  The dawn of time.

• 26:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Cause men are, mankind is broken and flawed and when, you know, you give them.

• 26:44Bill Maher?

  And especially men. See, you started to say men.

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Well, it's been primarily men, but it's mankind.

• 26:51Bill Maher?

  And, and, and we, some of that we can flagellate ourselves for. We are toxic and violent and yes, rapey and a million other things. We're also created that way. And part of that also has been why we've also been able to defend humanity from forces. I mean, somebody had to defeat Genghis Khan.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:13Bill Maher?

  You know, I don't know who it was, but I'd like to see that movie. I'm sure they've made it. You know, I mean, that's why movies like about Navy SEALs and shit are attractive if you do them right.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:26Bill Maher?

  Because we still understand, uh, there's bad people out there.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admiral's Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  It's interesting, yeah. That was really topical. The book, The Terminalist, is a series of books written by this author, Jack Carr. He's a former Navy SEAL. He's written several books now, and it's amazing how he's predicted things through the course of his books. The first, the second book is, we're making the second season of The Terminalist, based on the second book. It's called True Believer, which you're going to appear in, which is amazing. But it's--

• 28:56Bill Maher?

  I play the Admiral.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  You play the Admiral, yeah. And you drop all the bombs. It's so cool. And he, and that book came out years, probably a few years before things popped off in Russia and Ukraine, and he predicted the invasion of Ukraine by Russians. And then he did, in a follow-up book, he predicted a Hamas terror attack on kibbutzes in Israel.

• 29:24Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really wild, like--

• 29:26Bill Maher?

  What is he predicting now, is what I would want to know.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  It's all AI. You should read, you should read, you should read his books. Bro, I'm telling you, read his books. They're really great.

• 29:37Bill Maher?

  I will, but you know I'm already buying this car off the lot about robots taking over and AI being evil. Well-- I got to tell you, it's just moving so much faster than people realize. And not only are the robots fighting back physically, but the ones in your phone and in our computers now, they do hallucinate, like make shit up out of thin air. They don't know why it happens. They'd fall in love. The very first story after ChatGPT, it was about a month after it came out, and everyone was talking about it, and a New York Times reporter, it was all on the front page.

• 30:20Bill Maher?

  The thing tried to talk him into leaving his wife.

• 30:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah, they tried to convince him they were in love. The villain now is AI.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but also so is the hero. And so there's also, you know, if you think about it as a tool, like all all tools and systems created by men, they can be used for good and they can be used for evil as well.

• 30:45Bill Maher?

  What do you mean the hero is AI?

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Well, the hero is James Reese.

• 30:49Bill Maher?

  For you.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  The hero is James Reese, but they they've, and this is a spoiler alert to anyone who hasn't read any of these Jack Carr books, but the hero is James Reese, but he is confronted by this AI entity called Alice. And it exists now sort of in the ether. The government had been creating it to try to stay ahead of a geopolitical foe who had created something similar. And we're trying to like basically allow it to be autonomously controlling our nuclear fleet. And be like, you can think faster than us. If we're in trouble, you fire off the thing, but the thing goes sentient. And then it tracks down my anyways, I won't get into the weeds of it, but she becomes very helpful.

• 31:25Bill Maher?

  No, get into the weeds of it, because this is.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  I don't want to.

• 31:28Bill Maher?

  You're making my case for me. This shit, it's it's not benign. It's not gonna stop. And we're just watching it. We think in slow motion, but it's going a lot faster. And one thing I've believed my whole life, movies always like predict the future.

• 31:53Bill Maher?

  You know, they like what happens in movies then happens. They imagine it first. You think of Spielberg movies and remember Minority Report?

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:03Bill Maher?

  Tom Cruise, and I remember he's like moving things around with his hand on a screen before any. And I was like, whoa.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:10Bill Maher?

  Look at that. I wonder if they'll ever be able to do that. And it's like now it's it's all our lives is just moving. Oh, like you instinctively, you could look at any screen and you just kind of want to go. If I touch it, I've done that like like a fucking parakeet flying into a window like an idiot. I'm just touching like Bill, that's, you know, that.

• 32:29Speaker 03

  That's a calendar, Bill.

• 32:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, what the fuck are you doing?

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Enhance, enhance.

• 32:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Well, what I really love about this film that came out, or sorry, the book that came out that Jack wrote, that dives deeply into this, you on the page, you can obviously.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Explain an idea much better than you can in a film. Because in a film you have to show something, or you have to have the actor explain it to you.

• 32:56Bill Maher?

  Better to show.

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Better to show, but really complicated to do in filmmaking to show things that are really technical. And like, so you just have to say the entity squiggly lines, but. So, you know, Jack Carr did this really incredible explanation of the difference between quantum computing and quantum computers and supercomputers. And like how, and there's a thing called qubits. Have you heard about this, qubits?

• 33:21Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, I think I've heard the word.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  And by the way, I, this I learned from reading his book. It might be complete BS. I don't know if it's real, but it seems like it could be. And knowing him, it probably is real because he does painstaking research, but. So, you know, the binary code of the internet ones and zeros, like the matrix. Everything is ones and zeros, you know, about the binary code, right?

• 33:43Bill Maher?

  I mean, you know, could I explain it to another person? No. Do I have a passing cocktail party knowledge?

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Yes, well, we're at a cocktail party, so you're right on board.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  It's basically a computer processing a sequence of on and off.

• 34:02Bill Maher?

  That's how all computers work.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Right, but quantum computers don't work that way.

• 34:07Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  They work on qubits. So instead of one or zero, each bit in a one or a zero, in order to give you a pattern of like a million different, a million different bits, or say a billion different bits. What if you, a sequence, a very specific sequence of one and zero, ones and zeros, a number of a billion that it could process quickly. Well, qubits are like, imagine this sphere right here, this cube, that can be turned in any direction. And with basically an infinite number of signatures on the outside of this cube. So instead of processing simply either a one or a zero, it's processing each bit has an infinite number of possibilities.

• 34:48Bill Maher?

  So qubits more.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Dude, you got it. In fact, in fact, I was hoping.

• 34:55Bill Maher?

  My Frankenstein. Cubits more.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 34:58Bill Maher?

  Right, cubits bigger.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  That's it. Hey, look, you did get it.

• 35:04Bill Maher?

  I said cocktail.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you nailed it, you nailed it.

• 35:07Bill Maher?

  Okay, so how, so, and what is the ramification of this, is what I'm interested in.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Much faster processing speeds, and so if you have like.

• 35:13Bill Maher?

  To what end?

• 35:14Speaker 03

  To the end that, like, say, uh, let's say that you're a person who has, uh, you know, like so many people, you keep a series of passwords locked in an encrypted account online. Let's say you have like a million different passwords and you try to create that long password that would take, uh, it would take like a supercomputer sixty-five years to, to come up with this sixty-five digit passcode.

• 35:34Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  You know, this thing could do it instantly.

• 35:36Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  Because it, it just, it's the process of, and so when you talk about the ramifications could be, what's our most secret information that we keep under lock and key digitally, under massive protocols of, of safety that, that could be breached relatively quickly. When our entire financial system is, uh, electronic and, you know, it, it, it's really dangerous, really scary.

• 35:59Bill Maher?

  That is, do you ever, um, like, when you're working on a show and these, you know, you, one reason why your show is engrossing to me, you know, I'm an adult. I like a show that has issues involved, and this does, it weaves them well into an entertaining plot. That's the trick.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:19Bill Maher?

  But, you know, I'm not a child, I need something substantive, you know. But like, do you ever like, cause you're working and, and there are issues of it, you ever like, does it, you take it home? Like, like, you're, you're still like chewing on it when you get home?

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Y- yeah, I think so, I mean,

• 36:40Speaker 03

  the things that I'll find myself chewing on when I get home, in, unless I'm really thoughtful and mindful and, and, and processing it is, is like, if you go and, say like you're doing a scene where it, it calls on you to be. Truly heartbroken, truly devastated, you know? And you want it to, you want, in, in the first take, you do your fake in it and, and it sucks. And the director says, hey, listen, I need you to go there, you know? And then you're like, okay, the cameras are on me, I need to be heartbroken. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go through my mind. I'm gonna mine some things that really broke my heart or, or I'm gonna imagine sequences that really put me in the position to where I'm truly feeling devastated, so that I'm not faking it. It's real. And then you unpack all this stuff.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  And then they say, action, you do it, your, your tears in your eyes, you're, and it looks real. And they say, cut, you say, great job, Chris, all right, see you tomorrow. And you're driving home and you're left to clean up that subconscious mess. And so if you're not mindful about kind of repackaging some of that stuff and, and putting it back and having a process to, to get away from that, then you can take it home.

• 37:42Bill Maher?

  I gotta say, they used to ask actors much less of what we ask actors now, because there was a certain revolution in acting in the sixties, I guess, maybe it started in the fifties. Brando certainly was probably there, yeah, the fifties. Which was method acting, which is basically what you're talking about, like, you know, think of, you go there emotionally and then your character is saying the lines, but emotionally, okay, Spencer Tracy never had to do this, Clark Gable didn't do that. They were like, hit their, hit your mark and bark. I'm all upset about you, I'm dying inside, it's terrible, lunch.

• 38:26Bill Maher?

  There was no, he would never, we made our actors like become a lot more emotionally, you know, on a roller coaster. Because that's the way we do it and it is, it looks more realistic, of course, it works, it's not like it doesn't work.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:43Bill Maher?

  I mean, I love Gone with the Wind and Spencer Tracy, but, you know, I'm not fooled, you know?

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:50Bill Maher?

  There's one movie where he's playing a Mexican, they just put like, like shoe polish on his face. It's like, talking like this, but in that era, people just accepted, you know, people accept different sort of norms. That was just how they did it.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're right. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, the art form has definitely evolved and, you know, I'm not like, it's, it's pretty rare because there's still times where I show up on set and all I really have to do is just be a prop and I walk through and I look up and that's the day. You know what I mean? So it's not like every day, but there are moments where you have to really go there emotionally and, and, and it's a challenge and it's an, ultimately it's an art form, you know? And so you're giving, you have to give a little bit of yourself up for it.

• 39:29Bill Maher?

  I mean, I made my living as a, here you go, as an actor mostly in the eighties, you know, when I first came out here. I was always a stand-up and doing the Tonight Show and stuff, but you know, I was on sitcoms and shitty movies. There's some of the posters around here. Some of them are not really movies. I was in, they, my friend makes them and they're so funny. They seem like they should be. Um, I like that one, like the team.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's funny.

• 39:51Bill Maher?

  That's my rim home too. But I wasn't really in that, but I was in ones like that.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Bring more of them home.

• 39:56Bill Maher?

  And like, it's really funny.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Bring them home. You, you have to show the audience that that's fine.

• 40:01Bill Maher?

  I will at the end. They'll have to stay to the end. But, uh, you know, I could never, I did very well in like comedic roles like that, but I could never make that bridge to what you're talking about. Like go be, be there. It's not what comedians are. We're the opposite. We're, we're always like saying exactly what you're thinking.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:23Bill Maher?

  We're, we're, we're, we're the opposite of like acting, that what I think. That's when I'm at my highest level.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:31Bill Maher?

  Um, and that's, you know, just very different than what you're doing. You're pulling off. Yeah, and you're pulling it off, man. I mean, you, you went from that doughy. You, you have to think back and think, boy, fat me was like, like, what, what was better? Was there anything better about fat you than when you, like, like, like, did you know that this hunky guy was inside? And then you, all you had to do, like, was like, get, get, uh, stop being fat.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Well, the thing was this, so there's kind of two questions there. Was there anything better about that? Yes. Not a lot, but some things.

• 41:14Bill Maher?

  Like what?

• 41:16Speaker 03

  Eating. Eating, yeah, the moments of, it was really like, like my life now is almost a photo negative of what it was then. In terms of process for the day, you know, like, I ate, and in the moments I was eating, it was pure euphoria. And then the minute I stopped eating, I did not feel good until I ate again. And now it's the exact opposite. Like, I feel pretty good through the course of the day, and when it's time to eat, I'm like, eh, this is boring. This is like stopping at the gas station, putting three dollars in the, in the gas tank, you know, it's like enough to get me going. Nothing sexy about vegetables and chicken and rice and the like that. But in, in the interim, which is a lot more percentage wise of the time of the day, I feel pretty good.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  Like, I feel like I'm not processing shitty foods and, and sugars and all that stuff, so, so the, it's almost the exact opposite. So I miss what I got to eat. That was, because that was fun, man, you could have a lot of fun. Eating is fun. And on Parks and Rec, oh god, it was the best, I remember. But, but, but the second part of your question is, like, in, in terms of like me as that guy at that time, I had discovered that I could get work that way. But when I showed up in Hollywood, I was like twenty years old, I was in great shape. I was in great shape, I had been an athlete my whole life, I feel like I looked the part. But the problem was, I, I could only, because I had no, uh, reach and I hadn't done anything, the only auditions I ever got was like douchebag boyfriend guy. Because people would see me and be like, that guy, no, that guy at the end needs to get kicked in the nuts.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Like, he's the guy who drives up in daddy's Escalade, and he's like, "Brendy, get in the car, bitch." And then they're like, and then, and then the, the torpe guy kicks my ass and the audience is like, "Yeah, because fuck that guy." I was the fuck that guy guy for a long time. And, and the thing is, is I would get cast in those roles, but also I wasn't very good at playing that character because it's just innately not really who I am. Right. I'm, hopefully, you know, humble brag, but I'm not a piece of shit, you know what I mean? So, like, it would, so when I was doing mediums in television, like, I did a, I did a, a, a television show called Everwood on the WB back in the day, and it was four seasons, and in the pilot, and it's not dissimilar to Parks and Rec,

• 43:21Speaker 03

  in the pilot, I was written as the jerk, and by the end of the fourth season, I was like this nice guy, and they'd kind of tailored the character to be a little closer to who my own personality, because they thought, you know what, that's actually more entertaining, it's a little more attractive to the audience than the piece of shit we kind of imagined, the two dimensional caricature of a bully on the page. So, that, so, I, I was doing those roles. And then I got Parks and Rec and well, actually, I was doing those roles and then I got uh into a season of my life where I was drinking and eating a lot. And that that fit guy stopped working out and I kind of became a little chunky and then I had a real serious spell where I didn't get any any work. And then I got Parks and Rec and I was supposed to be just like a six episodes as a guest star.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  And I was getting laughs and then they picked me up and I said, hey, I noticed. I was watching an episode and I was, I was like, dude, I got, I'm getting fat. Like, I need to really tighten it up. Like, I've never seen myself look so fat. And then I was like, this is the funniest I think I've ever been. And then I went to the showrunner mic, sure, and I said, I, two things, one, I'm getting fat. Two, I want to get much fatter. And he goes, great. And so I just pushed it. I was like, how fat can I get? It became like a challenge. Yeah, I was like eating four burgers at mealtime. I was really impressing everybody. And I was really diving into this super indulgent season in my life, which, like I said, was really fun.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  While I was eating, but it was also, it also made me feel pretty, pretty terrible when I, when I was look myself in the mirror and when I sat down and at nighttime I'd feel bad and I was like, it wa- it wasn't healthy and I didn't like it.

• 44:59Bill Maher?

  You actors are so dedicated. It's no wonder that we give you so many awards.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. Not enough, you know, not enough.

• 45:05Bill Maher?

  That's what I say.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  I think, yeah, there should be Oscars for the Oscars.

• 45:11Bill Maher?

  And there actually is, because I've seen the Oscar win an Emmy. Like the Oscar.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  The Oscar.

• 45:16Bill Maher?

  Guest is.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 45:18Bill Maher?

  It's like.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the best show for is the Emmys.

• 45:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, they, they will actually do that in show business.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  Wow, you're right.

• 45:26Bill Maher?

  But that's interesting that you can have that on your resume, which is a really good thing because you are going to go back to it. I'm talking about being funny.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:38Bill Maher?

  Which is, you're positioned greatly for it because like the best thing you can be is the hunky guy who also can be funny, like, and you know, and play against type. That's Cary Grant.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:50Bill Maher?

  That's what made him Cary Grant and Burt Reynolds in Another Generation.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Burt Reynolds.

• 45:55Bill Maher?

  When you're that guy, Ryan O'Neal did it.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 45:58Bill Maher?

  You know, Ryan O'Neal within a couple of movies, like the scientist, like he's a scientist.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:05Bill Maher?

  Glasses, we need glasses there.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, wow, boom, I trust him.

• 46:09Bill Maher?

  The key prop in that movie, trust me, the glasses. Like, that's okay, all right, we had this great looking guy, he's a scientist, right, sure. He's working with dinosaurs and Cary Grant and I think it's Bringing Up Baby, he was like dinosaurs, you know, it's like they're paleontologists, they're brilliant men, and they're also like the girl that wetens panties from all the women in the room. Okay, that's the good thing. So like now you're in a phase, like your, your series, like

• 46:36Bill Maher?

  there's no lapse in it, and I don't want any lapse in it.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not one.

• 46:39Bill Maher?

  I, I hate it when they like, like, look, I love the Mission Impossible series, but there's a little forcing of humor, and it's just like, oh, you know what, just save the world.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:50Bill Maher?

  Like, I'm, I'm not buying this, just, it's not that kind of movie.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Right.

• 46:55Bill Maher?

  And, um, you know, it's like, no, I want like, oh, what's next, and like, oh, wow. You know, it's just, but.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  It speaks to tone, I think, that's the thing, right, like.

• 47:09Bill Maher?

  But you'll want to do a comedy soon.

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'd love to, I think that'd be great.

• 47:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 47:13Speaker 03

  I think that's where I'm, I think that's where I feel the most comfortable. In fact, when I'm, when I am working, usually the third rail that.

• 47:18Bill Maher?

  And you'll go home happier.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  If you do comedy?

• 47:21Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, unless, unless.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  I, the, the truth is, the outcome, you know, if the destination is to create, like, Say for Terrible, something that's like compelling, uh, psychological thriller, really dark, we're still having fun the entire time. So it's not like you go there and you're like, don't look me in the eyes, I'm fucking painful. It's like, no, they yell cut, and usually before they yell cut, you say some stupid joke, and you get people behind the monitors laughing.

• 47:46Bill Maher?

  Well, that's not.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  You're having the same amount of fun shooting a comedy as you are, at least I am, shooting a drama versus shooting a comedy.

• 47:52Bill Maher?

  That's not every set, and you must have been on sets, I mean, that's a good day on a good set. It's very, very common on sets, because there's just a lot of tension and stress. There's a lot of money on the line.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:04Bill Maher?

  How much does each shooting day of that series cost? What are you burning in, just in that day, if?

• 48:11Speaker 03

  One day?

• 48:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  A million dollars.

• 48:14Bill Maher?

  A million a day, alright, so you don't really wanna fart on that take.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  I do anyways. My sets are fun.

• 48:21Bill Maher?

  What, you know what I'm saying?

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:23Bill Maher?

  It's a, but it's not just that. It's like people fighting lines, fighting whatever, like it, there's a lot of tension. That's why we've seen video of people just going ape shit on set.

• 48:34Speaker 03

  I know, but that, I know, but that, those are, those are isolated incidents. I think for the, at least, you know, and by the way, I, I, I'm, I've been on sets.

• 48:40Bill Maher?

  I've seen it, I've been on sets where, I mean, i- in my little 10 year acting career, I saw it. And they weren't like big movies. It's just something, or TV shows, it's just something that happens. People are, actors are high strung, it's their instrument.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  Not my sets.

• 48:57Bill Maher?

  Good.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  No, that's not like that.

• 48:59Bill Maher?

  Yeah, people take their cue from the top, you don't allow it.

• 49:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 49:02Bill Maher?

  That's good.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I bet you that's often the case.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  I think it is, and, and if I'm, if I'm gonna be number one on the call sheet, then usually the vi- the vibe and the tone is gonna be really good. I've been on film sets where it's not the case, though, I have been, so there are instances, but it's, it's really, uh, really kind of rare in the, in my career.

• 49:19Bill Maher?

  It's a weird, now, a series goes on longer, but even that, it's gonna end at some point. You're not gonna do this your whole life.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:27Bill Maher?

  It's a weird thing to be that concentratedly with a group of people.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:34Bill Maher?

  For a period of time, and then,

• 49:39Bill Maher?

  it's like they all died. You know?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:42Bill Maher?

  It's like, it's that same feeling, you ever have that feeling where somebody you just saw died?

• 49:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:48Bill Maher?

  You're like, I saw him last week.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:50Bill Maher?

  Like, oh yeah, he died. This is not something for, you know, Peter Graves to look on, you know, mysteries. Yeah, because that was the day he died, it just happened, you saw him there. But it is still, it's hard for us to process that.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a little bit like, uh, I've heard, I never went to summer camp as a kid, but I heard that summer camp can be like this. Where you, you put into this crucible of like, uh, forming relationships that are so intimate and accelerated in a, in a way.

• 50:20Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  You know, and like, even now, like, I'm having a great conversation with you, I'd never met you today, until today, you know what I'm saying?

• 50:26Bill Maher?

  So like, I love about a podcast. I love liquor and pot.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  Well, I like that about what we do. I think that like in show business, it's like that. You get thrown into this situation. It's you make it's like a circus. You make these temporary, but really powerful and meaningful relationships. Some of them do last a very long time.

• 50:44Bill Maher?

  Yes, some of them do. Sure.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  A lot of them, like great friends, last are lasting in a way that you might not see them for 10 years. But when you do, you you plug right back into that level of intimate connection that you had when you were last together.

• 50:57Bill Maher?

  Like with school kids.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Like school. That's just right. And so I like that about it. It's not like necessarily that they died, but it just means that the circus moved. You know, you're on to the next town and and that's why it's really important, at least for me, to make sure that my wife, my children, my family, my roots here in California are something that I really foster because I know that those relationships are going to outlast every relationship that I make in show business.

• 51:18Bill Maher?

  Right. There is the constant to go back to. So you can then improvise life wise.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you got, you know, and I thankfully I'm blessed that the job I have, I love, I'm good at it. I get paid a ton of money and I get to do it because I can then support that life at home. So it's kind of really great. But if you're not careful, you get swept up in it because it's very seductive. You jump into the if you go from if you go from movie set to movie set to movie set. It's really, it's really wonderful. It's just, it's a little bit, uh, it's not long lasting.

• 51:46Bill Maher?

  Tell your agent that you want to do a movie like What's Up Doc. Did you ever see that?

• 51:53Speaker 03

  I don't know if I did see What's Up Doc.

• 51:54Bill Maher?

  Okay, that's the Ryan O'Neal one with Barbra Streisand. It's great. It's an homage to those movies of like the 1930s that were originally with Cary Grant. He's really playing the Cary Grant part.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:09Bill Maher?

  You know, the hunky guy who's really a scientist.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  I want to play a scientist.

• 52:14Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Give me a lab coat.

• 52:18Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Put on a glove.

• 52:19Bill Maher?

  This is like a nerdy, a nerdy guy who doesn't even know he's having this effect on the woman because he's really interested in the dinosaur or whatever.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 52:29Bill Maher?

  Aren't you in Jurassic Park?

• 52:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I didn't play. I played like a

• 52:33Bill Maher?

  No, I know.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  A cool guy.

• 52:35Bill Maher?

  It's not. You could be the dinosaur.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  I'll do it. I'll tell them. What's up, Doc?

• 52:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, tell them you want to, you want to do a comedy where you're, you're playing Cary Grant, Burt Reynolds, Ryan O'Neal. Those are the models.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:53Bill Maher?

  Um, if there's no one in your agency who understands those references, fire that agency.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Understood. You got it.

• 53:00Bill Maher?

  Um, and, um.

• 53:02Speaker 03

  And then, and then you'll become my agent.

• 53:05Bill Maher?

  I would actually have been a very good manager.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  You think so?

• 53:08Bill Maher?

  I do think so. I think I've, I've been a very good spotter of talent and also, um, you know, if, if you're in the business long enough, I mean, you gotta learn a few things.

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:18Bill Maher?

  You know, and I adore show business. I always say, I'm in show business, I'm just not of it. You know, I'm not, I'm in a kind of a different category.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:27Bill Maher?

  Which I like because I like having one foot in it. I don't want two feet in it. You kind of are the same way because.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  And it not of it is, is, is an incredible adage and I love it. I, I live by that as well.

• 53:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we, we do it by different methods. But, you know, I have no doubt, like, you, family, that's first. I mean, you got four kids?

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's, uh.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:53Bill Maher?

  What are kids like? I, I, they seem, they seem like they know less than us. I, I know that. And that's, I think that's the barrier I have with wanting to get to know a kid. And they just seem to know less than me and like, what are you gonna tell me? But I know parents say that they learn from their kids. I guess you see the world through their eyes and you see so you things, see things anew. Is that, is that it?

• 54:16Speaker 03

  That's really, that's just really, uh, that's definitely a part of it. I mean, you, you find that wonder in things that otherwise you wouldn't think twice about.

• 54:26Bill Maher?

  Like, give me an example.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  The sound a paper bag makes when you crumple it.

• 54:31Bill Maher?

  That blows their mind.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  Blows their mind, and you see their mind being blown. And in that regard, you're experiencing that for the first time as well. Because it's through the eyes of someone who's never seen it. And so you get to live every moment that you've already lived again.

• 54:50Speaker 05

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones. Like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. Then sometimes you make great ones. Like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Hey Spotify listeners. When you travel with American Airlines, you'll enjoy comfort and convenience at every altitude. Before takeoff, unwind in the Admirals Club Lounge with curated self-serve offerings of hearty bites and refreshments. In flight, stay connected with high-speed Wi-Fi. Sponsored by AT&T. Your journey is designed to feel easy from the moment you check in to the moment you arrive. No matter where you're going, American gets you there. Book now at aa.com.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  When everyone's finally together, what makes mornings even brighter? Keeping things deliciously simple. Whether you're pouring up a glass of morning refreshment or topping off festive drinks for a family brunch, Simply Orange brings that 100% fresh squeezed taste to every moment. Deliciously bright and delightfully easy, Simply Orange is made for all your seasonal gatherings. Simply Orange, say yes to simple.

• 56:15Bill Maher?

  Okay, but a follow-up question?

• 56:19Bill Maher?

  Okay. I get all that, but... Why is having your mind blown by a paper bag really something you wanted to begin with? I mean, it wasn't that impressive the first time it happened to you.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Oh, it was, though. It was.

• 56:33Bill Maher?

  It was?

• 56:34Speaker 03

  When you were a baby? Yeah, everything, everything is wonderful.

• 56:37Bill Maher?

  I have no specific memory of the first time I encountered a paper bag being crunk, crunkled, but...

• 56:43Speaker 03

  Okay, that's, that might be a, a thin example. But, you know, uh, uh, you know, catch, you know, I don't know.

• 56:51Bill Maher?

  Oh, it's just...

• 56:52Speaker 03

  Here, here's the thing, i- i- it's tough, you know? It's not easy. It's not easy to, to...

• 56:55Bill Maher?

  What is?

• 56:56Speaker 03

  Parenting, being, having, having children.

• 56:58Bill Maher?

  Being a good parent.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:59Bill Maher?

  Be easy to be a shitty parent.

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:01Bill Maher?

  And there's plenty of them.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:03Bill Maher?

  There always were.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Anyone can leave it in, you know?

• 57:07Bill Maher?

  Can what?

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Leave it in. That's, that's all it takes, you know?

• 57:12Bill Maher?

  You mean the penis?

• 57:12Speaker 03

  Great job! But, being present and, and, but even then, it's, you can try as hard as you want and it still end up kind of, you know?

• 57:21Bill Maher?

  There's a very...

• 57:21Speaker 03

  There's always gonna be, i- i- it's, it's, no one can, no one's perfect, but it, it's, it's a beautiful thing, but I can't remember what, what...

• 57:27Bill Maher?

  There's a very toxic, I feel, bro sort of subculture. You know, we were talking before about men, are they to... Yeah, they are toxic. I mean, we, we, some of that, we can't help. It's the way we were drawn, okay?

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:43Bill Maher?

  We do have testosterone coursing through our bodies and it will protect you in some ways and hurt you in others. I mean, that doesn't mean we're not accountable, but, but there is a disturbing bro culture as far as their attitudes toward women, what they, what they, what they're unabashed to say out loud. We do have that capacity in us to be really bad like that.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:09Bill Maher?

  Um, and I don't know if we're helping by, um, you know, sort of demonizing just what it is to be a boy.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  I think you're right.

• 58:20Bill Maher?

  But, you have boys, one of them?

• 58:21Speaker 03

  I've got two boys, two girls.

• 58:22Bill Maher?

  Two, oh.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  But I have a 12-year-old son, and I, and to speak to what you said, yeah, I think it's right, and I think that, you know, um, recently, in probably the past fi-, you know, maybe five or 10 years or maybe more, there's been this move towards, uh, uh,

• 58:41Speaker 03

  I'm trying to thi- think of how to word this properly, uh...

• 58:47Speaker 03

  This, like, you know, in this awakening, right, around, around.

• 58:51Bill Maher?

  Yes. Correct. An awakening.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  There's been an awakening and, and.

• 58:57Bill Maher?

  As there should have been.

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Exactly. Indeed. And in.

• 59:01Bill Maher?

  A reckoning.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  A reckoning. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater of like what it means to be.

• 59:06Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  An important part of society as a healthy masculine male and young boy who can be affirmed in that identity. Cause I think that right now, there's so much that's geared towards girl power, which is great. I'm a total girl dad. I've got two girls. They're fantastic. I love them. I want them to live in a world where they can be treated equally socially, economically. You know, given every opportunity that a boy has and.

• 59:30Bill Maher?

  Well, they do. They already live in that world if they live in America.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  Agreed. Agreed. And, and I, I.

• 59:35Bill Maher?

  We're not a patriarchy anymore.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 59:37Bill Maher?

  I don't care what Barbie says. I know that was necessary for the plot.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:41Bill Maher?

  But girls are doing good. It's boys who are not doing good.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  You're right. I completely.

• 59:46Bill Maher?

  That's just facts.

• 59:47Speaker 03

  The truth is, across the spectrum, neither boys nor girls are doing all that well right now. I think that.

• 59:51Bill Maher?

  The boys worse.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  But boys are worse. Yeah. I think that Jonathan Haidt had that incredible book, The Ancient Generation. But he also talks about the level of, in, in Coddling of American Mind, he talks about the level of self-harm amongst young girls.

• 1:00:01Bill Maher?

  Absolutely. Oh, both. Yes. Kids is fucked up.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  Boys and girls are.

• 1:00:05Bill Maher?

  Kids is not learning.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  And so I think it's really important in a world with people who may, you know, be bad influences. It's important to step up and try to be a good influence.

• 1:00:16Bill Maher?

  Right. That is, amen, brother. And, you know, the only answer to bad speech, many people have said when they're defending free speech, is more speech.

• 1:00:27Speaker 03

  True.

• 1:00:28Bill Maher?

  You can't, because you can never like just shut, oh, we, we can't hear from you. It's gonna get out. Especially in this day and age with the Cubits. Are you kidding? You don't think, you don't, you think you can quell any free speech?

• 1:00:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:00:38Bill Maher?

  What, what you can do is have other people, like you say, step up. And say, this is a different model.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:47Bill Maher?

  Of masculinity and, you know, it gets mixed up with politics is everything. I mean, you're playing like a Navy SEAL. Which, look, I've always been a military backer.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Bill Maher?

  My parents met. During World War II, my mother was an army nurse, so like they were both in the army.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:01:05Bill Maher?

  So I have a soft spot for army and also we need an army. There are bad guys and, you know, I'm glad I live in America, the kick ass-iest nation. Do I think we always kick ass the right way? No.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:18Bill Maher?

  But I'd rather be with the kick ass people than the getting their ass kicked people.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:23Bill Maher?

  And generally, we've been writer and more moral than most. I know that's a low bar. Yes, it is a low bar. That's why we were pretty good at passing it. Um, you know, if you think we're the worst country in the world, then just fucking do some research. Just fucking noodle around the internet. You will find a lot of people who did a lot of worse things.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:45Bill Maher?

  And the military, you know, has its issues, but generally, you know, I'm thankful for them. Orwell said it, great quote about like, "Most people sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men are willing to do violence."

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Bill Maher?

  They should put that on your, I saw like, there's some scenes where you're like, I guess you're in your garage. It's kind of like your man cave or something. And the flag behind you, I don't think they, you say anything about, but it says, "The only easy day was yesterday."

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Bill Maher?

  Is that like a?

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  That's like, that's a creed in the, in the SEAL teams. Yeah, only easy day was yesterday.

• 1:02:29Bill Maher?

  I mean, for the people who are getting their food delivered by Grubhub every day or whatever. Food fuck, whatever the, you know, and really aren't doing, and playing Minecraft and, I mean, come on, man. Just be a little realistic about how cushy your life is.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:47Bill Maher?

  And it just, it just doesn't happen.

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:02:51Bill Maher?

  You know, freedom ain't free.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  That's truth.

• 1:02:55Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  That is a truth, yeah. Um, I, I, I agree. I agree. I think.

• 1:02:59Bill Maher?

  So that's the speech I'll be giving when I do your show.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  Great. Perfect. Perfect.

• 1:03:03Bill Maher?

  I'm writing myself a much bigger.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. Please, say anything, literally anything you want. Um, yeah, uh, and I, and I think that.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  We are a bit reactionary now, right? I think there are people who are just like really quick to cut someone off at the pass and be like, I know enough about you to know that I'm not interested in hearing what you have to say.

• 1:03:26Bill Maher?

  So true.

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  And I don't know that that's necessarily healthy.

• 1:03:28Bill Maher?

  It is not healthy.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  I think that like even like

• 1:03:31Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  Like I, I'm, I'm really, I find myself really interested in everybody and I think that you can't really be interested in someone unless you love them. I think you have to start there and that sounds probably a little foo foo and a little trite, but I, I think I truly, I find that to be true. You have to be willing to engage with someone in a loving way and that's something I really like about you, Bill, is you can sit down with just about anybody, hear their point of view.

• 1:03:58Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  Be interested in it, whether you agree with it or disagree with it or share it or don't share it. That's not really the point. The point is you can, you can have a conversation with somebody and it doesn't have to be a fight. It doesn't, you know.

• 1:04:11Bill Maher?

  And by the way, when you do have these conversations, the person you're talking to is invariably so different than the person that was painted a picture to you.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Bill Maher?

  By the media.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  Right. Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:24Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean,

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:26Bill Maher?

  I thought you were gonna be a huge asshole.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:04:30Bill Maher?

  They love you.

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  That might be true. That might be true. No.

• 1:04:32Bill Maher?

  But, you know, yes, I, I will talk to anybody and I want people just to, to speak to each other because

• 1:04:42Bill Maher?

  look, you're part of the Kennedy clan now. When I was a kid, you could never say a bad word about the Kennedys in my house. My father was Irish Catholic and John Kennedy was the first Irish Catholic president. This was to the Irish what Obama was to African Americans. It really was. I mean, because people as old as my father remember when the Irish were really a minority that was looked down on and could not get jobs everywhere.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Hundred percent, yeah.

• 1:05:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah. So this was a big deal that a president and a Catholic, that was also very, very, this was a Protestant country. Catholics were, the Ku Klux Klan hated Catholics as much as they did blacks and Jews.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Bill Maher?

  Catholics were like papists.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:05:27Bill Maher?

  You follow the Pope.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Bill Maher?

  That whore. That harlot in Rome. Yeah. But anyway, you know, so I grew up in that house where you, and then of course, reality sets in and, you know, there's some people in the family who haven't done admirable things and, and, but I still love the Kennedys, you know, it was just like in my blood and basically they were always on the right side of the issues, I thought, and, you know, they took on the big one, civil rights, which had to be taken on. There was no greater political sacrifice ever made than John F. Kennedy sending troops into the South. Yeah. Um, and, uh, you know, I'm sure people ask you about RFK now because he's in the news.

• 1:06:14Bill Maher?

  Right. And, you know, he's sat here, I, we're friends. I love him. Yeah. I don't agree with everything. Right. But I agree with like the overall view that what makes us sick is the toxicity. You know what, when he was here, I said, my advice to you was like, you need to marry your former life more with what you're doing now. Your former life, you were very admired as a environmental lawyer. Yeah. Now you have this other issue, vaccines and how, that's kind of the same issue. Right. Now, he's way more on the left vaccines than I am. I'm skeptical of all medical

• 1:06:55Bill Maher?

  interventions, including vaccines. He's, he said things I don't agree with, but if he would just take those two issues, I think he'd get more toward the middle of where people are, which is like, they kind of get it that what makes them sick is all the shit in the water and the air and the food. Food. And giving kids pharmaceuticals when they're young. Yeah. And like lots of things where we're self polluting. Yes. Including stress and social media and being on screens all day and what that does to your pituitary gland and all this stuff. He's not, so his big picture, I feel like, yes, I'm, I'm glad he's there doing that. But then he gets specific about things

• 1:07:40Bill Maher?

  and I, I'm like, I know why people say he's nutty. Right. Do they, do people ask you about him? Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I don't, I don't know. Uh, no, I kind of feel the same way that you do, like.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  I've spent a, you know, number of occasions hanging with him just in a strictly, you know, family dinner kind of vibe and I really got along with him well.

• 1:08:05Bill Maher?

  He's great.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  I think he's great. I think he's funny.

• 1:08:07Bill Maher?

  He's wonderful.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  I like him.

• 1:08:08Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:08:09Speaker 03

  I love him. I think he's, uh...

• 1:08:10Bill Maher?

  And he's not crazy. I mean, the people trying to... He's, he's also got, like, I said to him when he was here, so I don't agree with everything you said and I don't think your father would either, but your father would be so proud that you stuck to your guns, like more than anybody. I mean, this guy, you can't, when this guy believes something, you cannot move him off of it with your bribes.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:08:35Bill Maher?

  For better and worse.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  That's, that's a virtue in the, and, and...

• 1:08:38Bill Maher?

  Well, it's rare.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  And I think that, uh, you know, politics, it's a nasty business and when you jump in... And I've seen, and I'm not in politics, obviously, but there's a certain ass level, uh, uh, to this in, in Hollywood because Hollywood itself is...

• 1:08:55Bill Maher?

  Political.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  A political, you know, institution and, and I've seen, I've seen how the person you are can be so, so, such a contrast to the people, to, to the person that people being, are being told that you are. And you can go, wow, that is, that is pure fiction. And hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people are being fed that and I'm not there to defend myself.

• 1:09:20Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Nor am I gonna jump in and, and be mired in this story because there's this proverb, proverb 2620, for lack of wood, the fire will go out. And you're like, okay, so, uh, uh, someone tweeted something, it's not real. 300,000 people liked it. Am I gonna shine this light of 50, 70 million people onto this to...

• 1:09:43Bill Maher?

  I don't even read them.

• 1:09:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can't...

• 1:09:45Bill Maher?

  I, I don't...

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  And, and, and so, so to, so my little bit of experience, I've been able to see how the person that you are can be sometimes in stark contrast to the person that, that your enemy is saying that you are. And in politics, you, you inherit enemies and when you jump on, in, in, on, you know, the, the bandwagon with who is, you know, the most divisive president ever, it makes sense that... You're going to be made to look terrible. And so I don't know what to believe because it's not like I sit with Bobby and I go, so hey, let's talk about this. Let's talk about it's like we're just playing cards or playing mafia or having fun or having dinner. I'm not going to pick his brain to find out exactly which of those things are true. I just kind of assume that none of them are. And for the most part, I wish him well, man, I hope.

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  There's certain things that he oversees that seem to be supported in a bipartisan way. Like getting terrible, toxic stuff out of our kids' food. Of course. I think that's a great thing. And so like, if you just do that, that's amazing. I'd hate to be so mired in hatred for the president that any success from his administration is something I'd be having allergic reaction to. To be like, oh, well, if they do it, I don't want it to happen. I'll put Clorox in my children's cereal myself. You know, it's like, come on, be reasonable here. There's certain things that would be a good thing to have. I want them all to be successful.

• 1:11:04Bill Maher?

  You know, when it comes to like the media, like you were saying, and like what they say about you. People have to understand our cynicism, or I won't include you, I'll just say mine about the media. Comes from something that most people do not have access to, that we have access to, which is. We read things about ourselves.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:26Bill Maher?

  Most people don't.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:27Bill Maher?

  Okay, so, and you go, if you got this much wrong about something where I know what the truth is. What are you getting wrong about the other thing? That's so in my mind.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 1:11:43Bill Maher?

  You know, like you can't really expect me to trust you after you said this and this and this. And maybe you really thought it, if that's the case, then you're just kind of dumb and lazy. Lazy, didn't do your homework, would have been so easy to look it up.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:12:01Bill Maher?

  Or you're just slanted, you're just like, oh. He's on the bad team because he had dinner with Trump or whatever your reason this week is.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Bill Maher?

  And so I'm just gonna shit on that. I'm like, okay, but then don't expect me to believe you about anything.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Right. Anytime you see someone, yeah, it's, it's, it sours the notion of sources close to him saying, I'm like, no, they didn't. I don't, I'm sure no one says that because I don't, no one, you don't have a source close to me that said that because unless they, unless they just made it, someone who hates me lives close to me made it up or something.

• 1:12:36Bill Maher?

  You know, they're, they're not used to, I mean, they know people like you. There are people like you in show business. Tom Hanks, you know, like, like straight arrows. I mean, I don't mean that as an insult. It's a compliment. You're a straight arrow. Most people in show business are not. They're skanky, they're sleazy, they're shady, they're sus in many different ways. And they got lots of secrets and they're doing lots of shady things. And so it's very, a source close is probably 20.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:04Bill Maher?

  You don't think there's people ratting on Kanye or what? You don't think these people make like giant enemies with their crazy behavior and their diva behavior and, you know, all you need is like, one time be like, you can't look at me.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Bill Maher?

  You know, like, which I've heard about more than one person, like,

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:24Bill Maher?

  like, I don't know who started this, or maybe they, there are multiple people who do it, but I heard it about one music artist first. When he walks out on stage, the crew is told, you know, don't look him in the eye.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. That's like, yeah.

• 1:13:40Bill Maher?

  Which just makes you.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  It, it, it's really important though, if someone in your position, my position, that we are mindful of the people that we have around us that represent us, because I'll bet you that, that directive was not given but from the artist. It was given from a representative of the artist. Probably like, hey, you know what? He's having a fucked up day today. Just don't even look him in the eye.

• 1:14:01Bill Maher?

  You're right.

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  And then he's like, you know what he told me? He walked over and then they have to, they have to really gussy up the story to make themselves a, I'm in close proximity to this rock star. You should hear what I have. Here's the dirt. Like, everyone loves a little bit of gossip, you know? And so then by the time the, the, the lie travels around the world, it's like, he kicked the door in. He said, listen, you motherfuckers. No one look me in the eye. You know, it's like, okay. Because that's a more interesting story and that's how lies.

• 1:14:27Bill Maher?

  And also, you're so right about show business minders.

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Bill Maher?

  You know, it's so easy to have people who think they're doing you a favor. And really, they're trying to like, kind of like, big themselves up about how they were saving you from. And he's like, don't save me. You know, save me from, you have to know what to save me from.

• 1:14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Bill Maher?

  My friend Martin Lewis once told me a story about Pete Townsend of The Who when he did a solo thing. I think it was at the House of Blues and he's backstage after the show and sitting alone in his dressing room and no one, no one's there and Martin, who's, I guess, one of his good friends finally comes backstage and Pete's like, he's like, what's the matter? He said, I guess nobody liked the show. Martin said, no, your guy wouldn't let anybody backstage. You know, protecting you from like, what a performer probably needs more than anything? Affirmation.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Bill Maher?

  Why do you think we did this in the first place?

• 1:15:28Speaker 03

  We are deeply insecure.

• 1:15:30Bill Maher?

  It's all about mommy, look at me, I'm doing it.

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  What about me?

• 1:15:34Bill Maher?

  No, I'm doing it now, you didn't see. I'm doing it, look mommy. Right?

• 1:15:39Speaker 03

  Yes. Or daddy or somebody.

• 1:15:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah, somebody.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be loud enough that you'll, you won't leave me in the mall again or whatever.

• 1:15:46Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the truth.

• 1:15:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm so glad I got out of your game because I wasn't, as I say, really suited for it. And hated like makeup on my face all day and sitting in the trailers. I don't, I'm not a patient person, you have to be patient to be an actor.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:16:05Bill Maher?

  But I do remember the, it was a high, an adrenaline kind of high to like, do your close up and hit it.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Bill Maher?

  You know, not that, I mean, you said before, the first take is shit. Do they still do a master first? Like, when I was doing stuff, they would do a master first. And I remember hearing Ryan Gosling talk about this on some documentary and he said, it's such a waste of time the way they do these movies. Like, they do a big master which they never use. Right? And you use up all your.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  All your juice.

• 1:16:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah. And then you get to see a close up and you've done it six times and it's like, and I thought, oh wow, I thought I was the only one who thought that.

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, God, it's a great point, yeah. It kind of depends on. That's really the job of a great communicative director. To be like, hey, listen, we want a master because we want to create the geography of this thing.

• 1:17:01Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:17:01Speaker 03

  Don't blow your nut on this take, okay? Let's just walk through it, let's just get through it, get the lines, let's get the cameras. Make sure everyone's on board, make sure the camera's in the right spot, the boom's in the right spot. We're gonna make sure we're doing everything we can properly, so don't waste it. If a director says that to you, then you'd be less likely to be like, oh, that six months of prep and you blow it and they're like, oh, that was a great rehearsal. And you're like, I'll never get that back. And so, yeah, you have to be careful. And that's the job of the director, to make sure that they're really great communicators in terms of what we're getting, because that's a big thing that I learned, sort of like, as I stepped to the other side of the camera, being more of a producer now, or as much of a producer as I am an actor, whereas before I was just acting, is like, it kind of, the only important thing is what's picked up on that little 35mm lens,

• 1:17:45Speaker 03

  you know, what's picked up on that screen. That's what happens, that's what matters, that's what you're taking to the edit. So all this other stuff that you might be doing as an actor, it might just be kind of wasted, and so understanding-

• 1:17:58Bill Maher?

  Like what other stuff?

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  Like, like, like, like, um-

• 1:18:01Bill Maher?

  An activity?

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  Like, like, behavior, activity, um, you know, sort of deep painful feelings if you're in a big wide shot, so like, understanding where the camera is, which lens is on the camera and what shot they're getting.

• 1:18:15Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  That's the part of the craft, and every time an actor says craft, I feel like an angel gets kicked in the nuts, but I'm like, please. But it really is kind of a craft, you know?

• 1:18:25Bill Maher?

  No, it is, it's, it's, it's, yeah. And, and that's why I always say, older actors are better.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's more experience.

• 1:18:32Bill Maher?

  They just are, like, anything in life that's like a 10,000 hours thing.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Bill Maher?

  Like, you watch them in their 50s and 60s, and they're like, you know, they're the old thing, I'm not, they're not acting at all, you know, you don't see the acting.

• 1:18:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's it. That's just right. I think, and you know, it's like you did, you've done stand-up for years and years and years. It's the same kind of thing, right? I mean, like, once you've done stand-up for many years, I'm assuming. I did it briefly for like a little bit when I, in my early career.

• 1:18:59Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, a little bit of stand-up comedy.

• 1:19:02Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:19:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it wasn't great, but it was fun. And yeah, it was like.

• 1:19:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and I did some kick-ass movies.

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:19:09Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:19:10Speaker 03

  So we, so we get it.

• 1:19:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I did a few billion-dollar franchises, so we're even.

• 1:19:16Speaker 03

  But I, I think that that's, there's a, there's a, there's a looseness and a flow state that comes with knowing,

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  not what to expect, but being ready for all of it and ready to kill in any, at every moment.

• 1:19:32Bill Maher?

  You're talking about in a scene?

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  In a scene, or when you're in a flow state of on stand, on, on,

• 1:19:37Bill Maher?

  Oh, the stand-up.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  Doing stand-up comedy or in a scene, where like you get there, you may have rehearsed one thing, but you can't be married to what you expect to do. You just have to be ready to do the right thing at the right time and innately you're gonna know what that is. You might move off your material and if the crowd is liking something else, you might want to do some,

• 1:19:53Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  Some crowd work, you might just go back to the joke that worked. The big punchline from last week all of a sudden gets nothing, but then this, you have a different audience tonight. It's like you're feeding off the energy of the actor opposite you. You're like, wow, I really thought they were gonna, there was an exclamation point. I thought they were gonna scream that at me. They whispered it to me. I have to react to that whisper. I have to listen and react rather than just like say it how I prepared it.

• 1:20:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's not exactly how stand-up works.

• 1:20:17Speaker 03

  It's, trust me, it's exactly how stand-up works. You heard it here. I did it 26 years ago and I know a thing or two.

• 1:20:27Bill Maher?

  If a big punchline works one night.

• 1:20:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'll always work.

• 1:20:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, you can have the occasional lucky night where the crowd is hot and they're kind of going for anything, but, you know, you, the, the, I, I've been, I had been doing stand-up on the road for over 40 years and just recently stopped. Like I'm, I'm only retired from stand-up, not from life in general or my show or this, but just stand-up for six months. And one reason I stopped.

• 1:20:59Bill Maher?

  It's because, it's funny, I would only do weekends. I'm a homebody, you know. I don't wanna, I'm not like a warrior like you. I don't wanna be fucking in, you know, Jish booty for six weeks. I done, now you guys do it. You guys earn your pay, movie stars. I'm a baby, so I would do two cities. Private plane, go home after the second show, the second night. So I'd only be home, away from them one night. The first night, because I hadn't done stand-up since like two weeks before. I would do it like every couple of weeks. My act was like not in my head enough. And the second night, I was bored. Because I'd done the jokes and I...

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:21:41Bill Maher?

  There was no like middle ground anymore. So, but generally, no. I always worked with a, yeah, not always, but like in all those years in this century. I had a music stand on stage with like my bullet points, you know. It was just like a poor man's teleprompter, just bullet points. But it was the greatest thing in the world because as you're saying about improv. I could just like, that's the dock. And I can take the boat out as long as I want because I, I'm not gonna lose sight of the shore.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:22:11Bill Maher?

  Cause I always go right back to, you know. And that's the greatest, to me, freedom in the arts is when you can have like structure. And then the freedom to make it even better.

• 1:22:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Bill Maher?

  But you always have that. I mean, you know, and I guess there are some people who are ballsier than me who are like, whoa. We're gonna throw away the structure. We're just gonna, we're going out to sea and we're either, we're gonna find America or die on the way. You know?

• 1:22:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Bill Maher?

  Maybe that's ballsier, I guess it is, but I like the other way and, you know. I'm not trying to win any medals here doing stand-up. You know, I don't need to be the ballsiest one.

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:22:51Bill Maher?

  Just the funniest one.

• 1:22:52Speaker 03

  Well, who, who, who are, in your mind, the greatest in that art form?

• 1:22:59Bill Maher?

  Well, Carlin is like to most comics, you know. The first one they probably would put on the Mount Rushmore because he sort of...

• 1:23:14Bill Maher?

  Had the trifecta, he was ballsy as shit, like he would just say what he felt. I mean, he had a special right before nine eleven that they had to change the title for. The special was called, I like it when a lot of people die.

• 1:23:34Bill Maher?

  And even George said, yeah, we gotta change the title now. That's not the kind of thing he normally would have said.

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:23:41Bill Maher?

  But even he was like, yeah, okay, but like.

• 1:23:47Bill Maher?

  I mean, he was just, I remember one special. And this is when Lance Armstrong was, before he was found to be cheating.

• 1:23:58Bill Maher?

  Was the hero of all time because of course, America cares so much about bicycle riding. I never understood why that was such a big thing in America.

• 1:24:07Speaker 03

  It was, yeah.

• 1:24:08Bill Maher?

  But he was like the biggest hero, bicycle riding? What's next in the Olympics, running around the block? Okay, so. He started one of his specials by saying, fuck Lance Armstrong. Don't tell me who my heroes are supposed to be. That's why we love him.

• 1:24:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Bill Maher?

  And he was very hard to peg politically.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:32Bill Maher?

  I mean, there were some things he would do that would, you would think traditional, he was left wing, certainly like quasi socialist, like. You know, standing up for the poor and that kind of stuff. Okay, cool. But he was also like, didn't care about the environment, like his thing was the planet will be fine. I'm like, George, yeah, the planet, we're not worried about the planet, we get it, the planet itself will be fine. We're concerned about our lives on the planet, okay? So he, you know, but he was never contrarian just for the sake of it.

• 1:25:07Bill Maher?

  You know? I mean, you got the feeling, and he was just funny. And he could go back and, and he also got to like so many premises in the seventies.

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Bill Maher?

  When observational comedy was fairly new, you know, before that it was a lot of my mother in law.

• 1:25:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:25:23Bill Maher?

  I took her on a pleasure trip, we went to the airport. You know, that was, you know, that was comedy. Right, right. Yeah, the setup, the setup. Yeah, just Henny Youngman, you know. Yes. And then, you know, he kinda changed the game the way Brando did in acting, you know, and it was not just him. Robert Klein was also a huge hero for people of my generation. Same kinda thing. But George was just, he got to so many premises first. And he went through a transformation and kinda like you. You'd be interested in this because you are a transformer. He started out suit and tie, short hair. You know, skinny tie, this is the 60s.

• 1:26:05Bill Maher?

  And was on Ed Sullivan and, you know, very mainstream shows, doing fairly mainstream comedy. And then he put out an album called AM and FM. AM was him, the old him, that was side one. And side two was, now he's in like a tie dye t-shirt. His hair's down to here, he's got a beard. Wow. And he wasn't the, you know, he started out in an era where you could only be that guy with the suit and tie and the short hair and the clean material. And then he said, fuck that, I'm going for, you know, this, the real me. Right. And of course, we loved it. That's great. We 15-year-olds. Yeah. Who were thinking about being comedians. That's cool.

• 1:26:47Bill Maher?

  So some of it's emotional, like all our connections to stand-ups are. But, you know, he certainly, I think is the one guy we would put up there. But very few people would argue with that choice if you had to name three guys. Yeah. You know, Richard Pryor, obviously is in that kind of Yeah. realm, changed the game. I was never a Cosby fan. Until.

• 1:27:19Bill Maher?

  Exactly, yeah. Till I found out he was a horrible serial rapist. Then I was like, well, maybe I've misjudged. I'm gonna go back and know through some of his stuff. Maybe I've misjudged this guy. No, never was a fan. I just thought he was corny. I thought the whole thing was corny and fake and phony and turned out I was right about that one. You were, yeah. But, but I didn't know you had done stand-up. And how did you like it? You know, I, I.

• 1:27:46Speaker 03

  I don't know that I did it enough times to where I really got into a rhythm to and I didn't have like a great act, but I liked it. I liked performing. I was hungry to perform.

• 1:27:54Bill Maher?

  Where did you do this?

• 1:27:55Speaker 03

  I did it in Seattle at a couple of, a club called, I was from, grew up in Pacific Northwest in Washington State from like second grade till I was just out of high school and uh

• 1:28:05Bill Maher?

  I love that area.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  It's really beautiful.

• 1:28:07Bill Maher?

  I love that. There's something about it. I mean, I've been there many times, you know, obviously on the road as a comic, every couple of years you play Seattle and Portland.

• 1:28:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:28:15Bill Maher?

  You know, and Vancouver.

• 1:28:17Speaker 03

  Yep, B C.

• 1:28:18Bill Maher?

  Oh, you know, what is it about that area? I mean, first of all, it's clean, I think, because the air, something about the air, right?

• 1:28:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's clean. I think that um I'll tell you, I think that the, I think that the weather itself is, it's really oppressive nine months out of the year.

• 1:28:38Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:28:38Speaker 03

  And so if you catch the right day, you're just going to find an entire state full of people in a good mood.

• 1:28:44Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:28:44Speaker 03

  Like, like, I remember, we would have, seriously, a hundred to a hundred and thirty or a hundred and forty days of rain in a row. And then spring around May, June, the first day of sunshine would hit and traffic would slow on the freeway to like forty miles an hour.

• 1:29:04Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  And you would just feel the sun through your window and it was just

• 1:29:08Bill Maher?

  But see

• 1:29:09Speaker 03

  amazing.

• 1:29:10Bill Maher?

  I live in L A. So when I went to Seattle, I was looking for the opposite experience and usually got it. I wanted the raw. I grew up in the East Coast.

• 1:29:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:19Bill Maher?

  There's a kind of a raw weather feel that we would get, like at the beginning of spring, like St. Patrick's Day.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Bill Maher?

  Like when winter had lost its nip.

• 1:29:29Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:29:30Bill Maher?

  But it was still kind of just bracing.

• 1:29:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Bill Maher?

  I loved it. Maybe a little drizzle in the air. And when I would go to Seattle, like, that's what I got, you know? I wanted to be at Pike's Market, feeling the drizzle and

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Bill Maher?

  filling up the fish, but

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Bill Maher?

  and the ice there, you know?

• 1:29:48Speaker 03

  It's definitely

• 1:29:50Bill Maher?

  Remember Pike's Market?

• 1:29:51Speaker 03

  Pike Place Market, of course, yeah. I used to, I was for a while

• 1:29:54Bill Maher?

  Iconic.

• 1:29:55Speaker 03

  I was a door-to-door salesman and I used to row all through Seattle in those, when I was doing stand-up comedy and I just got to know

• 1:30:01Bill Maher?

  A door-to-door salesman?

• 1:30:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:03Bill Maher?

  What are you, eighty?

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  No, I was seven, I was seventeen, eighteen years old, yeah.

• 1:30:08Bill Maher?

  There were no door-to-door salesmen. What year is this?

• 1:30:11Speaker 03

  Nineteen ninety-seven.

• 1:30:14Speaker 03

  Selling what? I was selling these little coupons like for businesses in the service industry. So like oil changes or like trips to a spa or salon, that kind of thing. It was, uh, it was, you know. And you just cold cocked the door? I would cold call business, people working. So I would walk around, like if I, if we did like, say represented a Midas shop. And it was somewhere in Seattle, I'd walk within like a four mile radius and just go to the people who worked there. So I'd walk into the store, no soliciting, I would walk right past and say, hey, I just come down here from Midas. And we're doing this thing for people who work in the neighborhood. And so I'd sell it to employees of businesses around there. And why did you stick with it? You know, I'm gonna be honest with you, Bill, it fucking sucked. I did pretty well though. I was, I was salesman of the year. I won a free chip to Jamaica.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  I opened my own office in Colorado, like I, it was multi-level marketing. I was an idiot. I had zero critical thinking skills. I was the perfect fucking patsy. And honestly, I thought I was set for life until I realized everyone else who answered that ad was smarter than me. And they didn't buy it. And I was like, but, but like the biggest sale you do in that job is selling yourself. That this is something that's going to help you. I remember when I wanted to quit, I called the guy who had hired me and I said, man, I'm just dying out here. This, I am so, I'm dying, I'm out of debt. I can't keep anybody on, like we would hire just the bottom of the unemployment barrel. Like I had a guy come in and he like robbed a place and was like, I don't know what to do.

• 1:31:46Speaker 03

  And, uh, and he said to me, I remember Greg, I remember Greg, I won't say his last name. That's not good. Yeah, I was like, oh shit. And I, I literally hired a guy who was a two-time convicted violent felon.

• 1:31:59Speaker 03

  Here it is. This bit take, I got one. We have a whole reel. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, and, and he was on the house, he was like on a kind of house arrest situation, like living in a home. And he was like tall and we, and, and they were like, listen, we need him.

• 1:32:19Speaker 03

  By the way, he was, I won't, I'll get to this, but he was an amazing guy. Like, he taught me so much.

• 1:32:26Bill Maher?

  He found it.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  He was, no, listen, he had, he really found God in prison. He was like a really special dude. It was one of the first authentic relationships I had with someone who was African American in my life. Like, yeah, it was actually really beautiful. But, point being, when I first hired him, I didn't know any of that. And his, like, he was living in like a halfway house and the guy was like, "Hey, we need him to be supervised at all times." And we were like, "Oh, yeah, for sure, that's what we do." And then, day one, I just drove in my minivan, I was like, "I'll pick you up here at 5:00 PM." "Go knock on every, every door in this neighborhood." And he did very well. He got arrested a couple of times.

• 1:33:07Bill Maher?

  Arrested?

• 1:33:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, working with for us.

• 1:33:09Bill Maher?

  For?

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  Probably for being black. Like, he was down in Olympia and he was knocking on doors and someone got scared and called the cops. And the cops came and they were like, "Hey, someone was scared." Which I think a lot of times when people who are arrested,

• 1:33:22Bill Maher?

  Look, they're-

• 1:33:22Speaker 03

  Who are black, it's because someone who was scared of them called the cops. And then the cops, all they know is we got a report of a guy who's suspicious and they come and arrest him. But anyways, Audi, we, yeah, I said his name, but his name, yeah, his name was Audi. He was amazing. And, uh, and, uh, I was 18, he was 42, I was his manager. And we became really close friends and he was, he was awesome.

• 1:33:42Bill Maher?

  No?

• 1:33:43Speaker 03

  Actually, I don't know where he is. It's been 26 years, I don't know if you're out there watching Audi, I don't say his last name, but.

• 1:33:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  If you're out there, buddy.

• 1:33:50Bill Maher?

  You'd like to reconnect?

• 1:33:51Speaker 03

  Oh, it'd be awesome, it'd be awesome. I remember him telling me one time, he goes, "You know, man, you've transcended." I was like, "That's amazing." I was like, "I don't know what that means, but I think that's-"

• 1:34:00Bill Maher?

  I know what it means, and he's not wrong.

• 1:34:03Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:34:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Speaker 03

  What did he mean?

• 1:34:05Bill Maher?

  He meant, "You transcended being the fat guy who was like on a sitcom to being like a giant movie star."

• 1:34:12Speaker 03

  You could see into the future.

• 1:34:14Bill Maher?

  Well, oh, he said it before that?

• 1:34:15Speaker 03

  He said it when I was 18, yeah.

• 1:34:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow, then, then he was predicting the future.

• 1:34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was predicting the future. Anyways, door to door sales back to Seattle, and I did that. And, uh, so, to, to circle back to why Seattle is, uh, so lovely. There's an attitude there, too, there's a real attitude there. I think part of it is, um, you know, if you look at like, it's a different attitude than the East Coast. I think like if you look at just the way Manifest Destiny pushed, you know, we colonized, headed west.

• 1:34:44Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:34:45Speaker 03

  And it was like, if you're in New York, you were like- Fuck you, you keep going. This is mine. You know, people from Seattle are like, I'll go. Like, I'll keep going. They got pushed all the way to Seattle before they were finally like, I guess we can stay. It's rainy, but we'll do it. You know, it's like, there's a toughness, but also a politeness on the surface. So like, people are, people can handle a lot.

• 1:35:06Bill Maher?

  It reminds me a little of Chicago, in the sense that it's a, like, Seattle is a big city.

• 1:35:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:35:12Bill Maher?

  Like, you forget, like, when you fly into Seattle, like, a lot of cities in this country, and I've been to them all, I mean, there's a little downtown with some tall buildings. Seattle's big. It's a big fuck, and it's like the gateway to a lot of the, you know, commerce to Asia, which is a lot of the commerce.

• 1:35:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:33Bill Maher?

  It's big.

• 1:35:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Bill Maher?

  And rich. But like, and so is Chicago, but it doesn't have the bad New York attitude.

• 1:35:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Bill Maher?

  You know, I lived in New York twice, and, you know, I love New York. It's kind of my roots. I grew up across the river, and New York teams, still root for them and all that. But, you know, it was never, I never vibed with that city. It was not my city.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Bill Maher?

  You know, I like visiting, but it's, I vibed here, you know, like, we're back to that, California, babe.

• 1:36:04Speaker 03

  I've never vibed in any city, really. I'm not a fan of, because I think that, like, for me, I like nature. I want to, like, walking here and through your grounds, beautiful, that beautiful sycamore, those oak trees, it's just gorgeous. I love that. Because it's, and as a believer, it's the creation. And I'm looking at this creation, and I'm like, and it points me towards the Creator. Whereas, I mean, I go to a city, they're all man-made creations, and it points me towards men, and I'm like, eh.

• 1:36:32Bill Maher?

  You know, the Creator put some pot plants out there, too. Did you know that? The Creator's been busy.

• 1:36:37Speaker 03

  Do you smoke the pot that you grow?

• 1:36:39Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:36:39Speaker 03

  Is that right? That's kind of cool.

• 1:36:41Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:36:41Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 1:36:42Bill Maher?

  That's, talk about getting high on your own supply.

• 1:36:45Speaker 03

  Literally, yeah. Yeah, you, you, you.

• 1:36:48Bill Maher?

  Who else can I trust not to spike my pot?

• 1:36:52Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 1:36:52Bill Maher?

  Well, you can't trust the woods, the.

• 1:36:55Speaker 03

  That's your pot company.

• 1:36:56Bill Maher?

  That's my, well, my pot story that Woody Harrelson.

• 1:36:58Speaker 03

  And Dean, are you with, uh, is, is?

• 1:37:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, Howard Dean, not Howard Dean. Dean Phillips is now running it, yes.

• 1:37:06Speaker 03

  I had dinner with him.

• 1:37:07Bill Maher?

  Is that right? What a small world. And what were you two talking about?

• 1:37:11Speaker 03

  Uh, he came over to Maria's house. We do, uh, my mother-in-law has a, a family dinner every Sunday.

• 1:37:15Bill Maher?

  If people don't remember, he was the guy who challenged Joe Biden. He was a congressman when we lost on him.

• 1:37:21Speaker 03

  Congressman ran for president.

• 1:37:22Bill Maher?

  So he's a friend of the family?

• 1:37:23Speaker 03

  I guess he's a friend of the family. Yeah, I think he was, I think he is, yeah, I think he may have been a guest of, I, yeah, he must be a friend of the family. He came, but we had a nice conversation. He told me to tell you, say hello, and he told me a little bit about, uh, The Woods, your, the company you guys are in.

• 1:37:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah. But it's a, first of all, it's a terrible

• 1:37:41Bill Maher?

  situation that pod stores are still sort of bad people who we can't like trust with your, like, banking and shit. So like, there's too much cash.

• 1:37:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Bill Maher?

  You know, uh, that kind of stuff, which tends to attract robbers.

• 1:37:58Speaker 03

  Wait, well, why is there so much cash?

• 1:38:00Bill Maher?

  Because they have banking laws against bad people.

• 1:38:03Speaker 03

  Oh, there's banking laws against the pod stores?

• 1:38:05Bill Maher?

  We're bad. We're bad people who are, who are-

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  Well, I support that. I think you're probably, probably a piece of shit, but.

• 1:38:11Bill Maher?

  We're bad people who are addicting people to something terrible. So we can't bank. It's all, you know, it's just the kind of bureaucratic bullshit that makes us-

• 1:38:21Speaker 03

  It's really interesting that they choose to throw a conscience in that aspect of capitalism.

• 1:38:25Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:38:26Speaker 03

  Now, now we're gonna use our conscience.

• 1:38:28Bill Maher?

  If I told you all the hurdles that we had to try to get over to just establish a marijuana company in this state.

• 1:38:41Speaker 03

  Let me ask-

• 1:38:42Bill Maher?

  It's just, it's just ridiculous. They do not make it easy.

• 1:38:45Speaker 03

  Do you think that is because of big tobacco or someone who would like to kind of like-

• 1:38:53Bill Maher?

  No, that's because of-

• 1:38:55Speaker 03

  Turn my, a pot into the new Bud Light or something and they just want to make it difficult for the mom at pop shops to be-

• 1:38:59Bill Maher?

  That is because of, that is because of big Democrats.

• 1:39:04Speaker 03

  Democrats?

• 1:39:04Bill Maher?

  Yes. And I know your family. And again, my family loved them too.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11Bill Maher?

  Tried and true for the Democrats, but Democrats have a lot to answer for too. I didn't vote for the Republican.

• 1:39:20Bill Maher?

  I don't think I've ever voted, one time I did, but it was a sentimental vote. But, yes, Democrats run this state and Democrats are the ones who need to.

• 1:39:35Bill Maher?

  If you wanna have an easy, low-hanging fruit victory with people, just cut the red tape. You make it impossible to fucking do anything in this state.

• 1:39:48Speaker 03

  That's truth.

• 1:39:48Bill Maher?

  And we put up with it because of the sunshine and for the rest of it, but it's so unnecessary. It is so unnecessary and, you know, why would, why would you just commit this unforced error? Why do you think so many states, I mean, so many companies have left this state and went to other states?

• 1:40:10Speaker 03

  Right, regulations, overly regulated.

• 1:40:12Bill Maher?

  You make it impossible, not just regulations, I mean, just hooking up my solar here was a nightmare. And anything, anything you, you wanna do, you know, I mean, changing my garage doors from three to two required three inspections, I just put a new roof on, that required two inspections. You're trying to inspect my fucking roof. If it falls on my head, that's on me, you know? Trust us, people, to do a few things for ourselves.

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Bill Maher?

  Stop looking over my shoulder for everything. I get nagged enough by my car.

• 1:40:50Speaker 03

  What's your car?

• 1:40:51Bill Maher?

  Every car, you don't get nagged by your car?

• 1:40:54Speaker 03

  Oh, by your car, by your car, I think it's for your car, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Listen, you, you don't have to, you don't have to sell me too hard on the idea of of cutting some of the red tape, I think that's, but that's unfortunately, it's the mindset.

• 1:41:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, if you wanted to like, I don't know where you live, and I don't wanna know, cuz, you know, we don't need to like put that shit out there, but.

• 1:41:16Speaker 03

  The address is.

• 1:41:19Bill Maher?

  But I would like your parents' home number. No, um, okay. But, um, you know, say you wanted to, um, add on, you know. Either you're gonna do it without telling the authorities, or you're gonna tell them, and they're gonna make your life miserable. And it's just like, why? What do you think is gonna, what, what bad do you think is gonna happen? What a giant movie star is putting on a second bedroom or something? You know, like, just, just let us live our lives.

• 1:41:49Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:41:49Bill Maher?

  It's, and, and they wouldn't do it. You would have to have, I mean, a friend of mine's house burned down in Malibu during the first Malibu fires, like, four years ago. And he was putting in, I think, a septic tank, and it needed Wi-Fi.

• 1:42:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, that was your best Jim from the Office take.

• 1:42:13Speaker 03

  The septic tank needed Wi-Fi?

• 1:42:15Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:42:15Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 1:42:16Bill Maher?

  To like, tell, to like, send something to an iPad to tell you when it was overflowing or something, but, you know, it's a vat full of shit. I grew up with a septic tank.

• 1:42:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:26Bill Maher?

  Yes, when it rained a lot, we were like pumping.

• 1:42:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:30Bill Maher?

  Like, we were like, don't let the septic, but...

• 1:42:33Speaker 03

  It's a perfect metaphor. It's like, no, we wanna get in your shit.

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  We demand, we impose.

• 1:42:41Bill Maher?

  That's...

• 1:42:42Speaker 03

  Our, we will know when you shit. It'll cost you. But it is nice weather.

• 1:42:48Bill Maher?

  But I still love it.

• 1:42:49Speaker 03

  I do too.

• 1:42:50Bill Maher?

  I'm hooked.

• 1:42:51Speaker 03

  I'm hooked too. And I'm, and I'm not, and I'm not, uh, I'm not completely sold that it can't be made better, and I think that there's enough people who feel the same way. I think it can be.

• 1:43:01Bill Maher?

  Well, and everywhere. I mean, traditionally, of all the sectors of our lives, the military, actually, has been the one most sane, most apolitical, you know?

• 1:43:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:16Bill Maher?

  Most forward-thinking racially.

• 1:43:20Bill Maher?

  You know, once they integrated after World War II, I mean, African-Americans did very well.

• 1:43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:27Bill Maher?

  You know, we just had an African-American Secretary of Defense and Colin Powell, and, you know, it was a place for advancement. I mean, I'm sure there was still racism.

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:43:37Bill Maher?

  But, um, the military, you know...

• 1:43:41Bill Maher?

  Was sort of like when they would do polling. What do you trust? The press, the Congress? No, hate them. The president, hate him. Hate the media. Hate everything. Military? No.

• 1:43:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Bill Maher?

  You know, they're still mostly guys who are, you know, putting their life on the line and, you know, wanna do it for the right reason. Anybody who like signed up after nine eleven.

• 1:44:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Bill Maher?

  It wasn't for the money.

• 1:44:07Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:44:08Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 1:44:08Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:44:09Bill Maher?

  I think about a guy like Pat Tillman. You know, remember him? Arizona.

• 1:44:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:44:14Bill Maher?

  Cardinals football hero. Real good player.

• 1:44:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:18Bill Maher?

  Went to Afghanistan, killed over there. I mean, that's America to me.

• 1:44:24Speaker 03

  It is. I think, and it can be found in the military. It can also be found in politics, but it's, I think, being of service is really.

• 1:44:33Bill Maher?

  But the guy you're playing, he's not a real guy.

• 1:44:36Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 1:44:36Bill Maher?

  He's just a composite of what a SEAL guy really is.

• 1:44:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the writer of the book, Jack Carr, is a former SEAL team commander. And so he's, he's kind of, you know, he crafted this character.

• 1:44:49Bill Maher?

  If you haven't seen the Netflix documentary on Bin Laden.

• 1:44:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Bill Maher?

  It's so good.

• 1:44:54Speaker 03

  American Manhunt?

• 1:44:55Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:44:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:44:57Bill Maher?

  I gotta, I shouldn't plug something not on HBO, but that was.

• 1:45:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:45:03Bill Maher?

  But it was great because.

• 1:45:04Speaker 03

  White Lotus, you're talking about White Lotus.

• 1:45:08Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:45:10Bill Maher?

  Oh, was that your cousin? Who's he now? What is that kid now to you?

• 1:45:13Speaker 03

  Brother-in-law.

• 1:45:14Bill Maher?

  Brother-in-law?

• 1:45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's my wife's brother.

• 1:45:15Bill Maher?

  Brother-in-law?

• 1:45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:45:17Speaker 03

  He's great.

• 1:45:18Bill Maher?

  He was great.

• 1:45:19Speaker 03

  He's great in it.

• 1:45:20Bill Maher?

  What a family, what a thing.

• 1:45:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:22Bill Maher?

  The whole Kennedy vibe going. Do you play touch football on the lawn like the old Kennedys used to do? You gotta get into that Kennedy vibe, right?

• 1:45:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've gone out a couple of times out to like Hyannis Port and been able to kind of see some of the old haunts of where they've. Yeah, it's, it's, it's been really, it's really amazing and eye-opening for me because I mean, I didn't grow up. I'm not educated. I, you know, I went to high school and got really good grades and did some AP classes, but I didn't go to college. And I was educated on Arnold. I mean, that was my college. It's like watching Commandos. You know what I mean? So like, so when I met Catherine, I was like, that's crazy that her dad is Arnold. Well, I didn't think it was crazy. I've been in business long enough to know that it was pretty normal and actually kind of relatable in a way to me that that would be sweet. But I didn't, I didn't fully comprehend how many people were such fans of the, the political side of her family. I didn't really strike me until.

• 1:46:15Speaker 03

  And you're telling me, being raised, you know, is Irish Catholic, I imagine your whole life was the Kennedys. I remember seeing the movie about Kennedy with Kevin Costner, that was that Oliver Stone movie. Oh, so great. But beyond that, I didn't really know much about it. Are you kidding? No. No. I know someone named Kennedy. Named Kennedy? Yeah, their first name. Really? Oh, yeah. And she's great. Is it, is it the, the MTV? No, no, no. Not that one. That's the only Kennedy I knew. No, no. All right. That was so much. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Oh, it was so much fun. No. And we'll see you soon, I think, when we're shooting our thing. I can't wait. I'm excited.

• 1:46:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm not in the scene, but I'm gonna come by and visit set. What's my motivation? Am I me? You're Bill Maher. Okay, and I'm. And. All right. Well, I can't wait to see the scene and. Your, your real motivation is? I'm gonna tell you real quick. A terror attack has, there's a, there's a new, there's a new terrorist. Oh. He's the new head of Al Qaeda, a new type of Al Qaeda. And you're, the world has considered him enemy number one. He's like the new Osama bin Laden. And you're having a panel on people who are experts in terrorism. And one of them is a journalist named Katie Baranek, played by Constance Wu. Oh, I see. Oh, she's the reporter. Yeah, the reporter. And you'll refer to me, and you'll say, well, what makes, what, what's the difference between James Reese and this guy?

• 1:47:39Speaker 03

  This is also a guy who is a true believer, who lived for all this stuff, who killed people. Did those people not deserve to have a trial? Doesn't that make him a terrorist in a way? Isn't he imposing his own views? So that's the idea is you, and to do it in a way that you do, only you can do, which is somehow make it funny. Fucking kill it. You're gonna crush it, bro.

• 1:47:58Speaker 03

  People are gonna be asking me to do Bring 'Em Home 3. Bring 'em, bring even more of 'em home.

• 1:48:09Speaker 00

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy, terms, and conditions.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  When everyone's finally together, what makes mornings even brighter? Keeping things deliciously simple. Whether you're pouring up a glass of morning refreshment or topping off festive drinks for a family brunch, Simply Orange brings that 100% fresh squeezed taste to every moment. Deliciously bright and delightfully easy, Simply Orange is made for all your seasonal gatherings. Simply Orange: Say Yes to Simple.

• 1:49:09Speaker 06

  They're running a Cover 2 defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go-to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.