Andrew Huberman | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher sits down with neuroscientist Andrew Huberman to explore how smartphones, artificial light, and social media are reshaping how we think and connect. Huberman explains why morning sunlight and dark nights are critical for sleep, metabolism, and overall health. The two also dig into biohacking, peptides, and Big Pharma incentives, separating what’s real from what’s hype. They tackle shifting behavior, shrinking attention spans, and the future of health—from mRNA cancer treatments to CRISPR gene editing—along with more unsettling territory, including Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to the scientific world. In the end, they land on a striking truth: “We don’t relate to each other anymore—we relate through a screen." Support our Advertisers: High blood pressure can’t wait. Get 20% off at ⁠https://www.120life.com⁠ and use code RANDOM 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 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

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

• 0:30Bill Maher?

  Breaking news, our merch just got a full revamp with all new designs and items. So if you want a little more random in your life, head over to clubrandom.com and check out the store. We've got premium hoodies, including our brand new quad hoodies with the updated logo, super soft t-shirts, super soft, for men and women, and even tie dye shirts. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. While you're there, catch up on recent episodes and grab some swag and bring a little random home. Once again, that's clubrandom.com.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  I mean Clinton, I supposedly spent time with him.

• 1:14Bill Maher?

  You gotta be kidding.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I supposedly spent time with him, right?

• 1:16Bill Maher?

  Whatever, think of him as all...

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Would want to invest in doing that kind of work.

• 1:23Bill Maher?

  What are we gonna get out of it?

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Okay, well, you're asking me to justify something for which I'm a little...

• 1:27Bill Maher?

  No, no, I'm not asking you to justify...

• 1:30Bill Maher?

  Thanks for coming by.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me. Beautiful place you have here. It is.

• 1:35Bill Maher?

  Well, it's not serious. Let's be real about it. And that's, to me, that's what's great about it. I mean, this place was like a mess when I bought the house. And I was like, everybody said, "Tear it down." I was like, "No, there's something about this place, just the crooked door." Look at that, you know?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and...

• 1:54Bill Maher?

  How could you tear that down?

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Right, and I don't know, are we allowed to say that there's a body in the bathtub?

• 2:01Bill Maher?

  That is not a body. Mr. Hooperman, that is Whitney Cummings.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  That's right. I recognize her.

• 2:11Bill Maher?

  That is, she's got quite a body, but yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a very expensive. She gifted that to me. I'm very grateful. It's, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars to make that, you know, they can make, she did it for a special. A like, electronic, what's the word, version of her. I remember going to the World's Fair and they had the, you know, back in the day of Lincoln, hello, you know, it was, it was kinda like that, but this is much more realistic.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  It's very realistic. I'm friends with Whitney and.

• 2:46Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  I walked in and there was Whitney in the, this Whitney.

• 2:53Bill Maher?

  Yeah, we put her in the bathtub. We had her sitting over there, but every time I walked in the room, it's like, oh, fuck, there's a person here.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  It is a little shocking because it's so accurate.

• 3:02Bill Maher?

  It's so accurate.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Minus the hair, there's no hair on.

• 3:06Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, we're close to having sex robots, aren't we? I mean, I'm not making that, there's a movie I just saw, it's pretty good, called Companion.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:14Bill Maher?

  Have you seen it?

• 3:14Speaker 02

  No, I haven't seen it.

• 3:15Bill Maher?

  It's interesting. It's a, it's, you know, and they, Megan Fox did one about sex robots. There's gonna be a lot of sex, trust me, Sydney Sweeney's gonna be playing a sex robot at some point. I just think that's inevitable. But, you know, and in the movies, this is, of course, a little bit in the future at least, you know, the robot is indistinguishable physically from a real human and it's just someone who is programmed to adore the person who bought her.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I know she's at her, so this assumes that no one will have a male sex robot.

• 3:50Bill Maher?

  I think it's different in the woman's brain. I think that's why men want. You know, the male fragile ego and everything probably wants, you know, someone who adores them. Who doesn't really want to be adored?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I'm sure there are going to be guys out there that are going to be paid for the for the robot that insults them and all sorts of things, but that seems like an entirely different domain.

• 4:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah, those are the guys who now are having pay someone to dig their high heel into them.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Isn't that, isn't that bizarre how some of, like when those cases have been unearthed? I don't know, something about ultra powerful people, maybe they have never been told no and they crave that? Odd. I don't know. I don't know. We're speculating here.

• 4:32Bill Maher?

  Well, on that score of people who, men who like it in, shall we say, the reverse. Somebody once told me a story, it probably was a stripper in a club, about this guy who had a really small dick. So he like, his way to deal with it was he wanted the women to humiliate him and apparently that's like a thing sometimes. You know, well, it's like making a virtue out of it. Like, at least it's getting attention.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, the AI relationship thing maybe not, is not as, you know, as edgy as what we're talking about now, but it does seem like it's already happening. People are having relationships with AI.

• 5:18Bill Maher?

  Exactly, but it's not physical yet.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  As far as I know. I'm just hearing.

• 5:23Bill Maher?

  Well, it can't be. We don't have it yet.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Right. I'm guessing if it's physical, it's unilaterally physical. The, yeah, it seems that.

• 5:29Bill Maher?

  You can, you're in love with your phone. I mean, they've been doing this in Japan and the movie Her was like almost 15 years ago. That's.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  It was like a crystal ball. Yeah, it's amazing.

• 5:39Bill Maher?

  I mean, that's where it was going, but there was no, remember in the movie, he like hires a surrogate? Like an actual woman while he's on the phone with the thing. So we can like feel like he's really having sex with the phone that he's in love with.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  It's like taking all the functions of the human brain and compartmentalizing them into different actions and trying to interleave them. It's so bizarre.

• 6:05Bill Maher?

  I used to ask this in my act, doesn't anybody just fuck anymore? I mean, is it really, are we that jaded that this, you know, it just seems like people do. Everybody has some crazy kink. I feel like I'm the last member of the land that time forgot. I don't do anything, never, I don't even fantasize about kinky shit. I don't, you know, it's not like, oh, I'm not fucking anybody in the ass, but I'm thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  What used to be vanilla is now, you know, is not even on the page for. It seems, you know, one thing, it seems like with these different generations, you know, we hear like I'm Gen X, right? I'm 50, so we hear like Gen X, Gen Z, millennials and this sort of thing. But it does seem that there was an entire generation that was raised so deeply in these short video, social media landscapes that they're almost like an experimental group, right?

• 7:02Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  I mean inadvertently, they're the experimental group and nobody knows how this is gonna work out. I did hear that there are data that, you know, people won't hire kids of certain generations because their inability to have, you know, generate eye contact, have a conversation, because they're just so used to staring in a little box all the time. It's wild.

• 7:21Bill Maher?

  And, and yeah, and I mean, we know how much this affects their sex life. They, they don't relate on a one-to-one basis, you know, they, you see video of people. Or you could go to a bar and they're all looking at their phone in the bar, even though the person is sitting right across from them.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Even people out on dates.

• 7:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 7:46Bill Maher?

  That's, that's, that's common sense, that that's, we've, now.

• 7:53Bill Maher?

  Could it in the future turn out? I mean, anything's possible that that isn't so deleterious. I don't think so, but what we do know is it's different. You can't deny that, that this is a difference not just in degree, but in kind of something that we never saw before, where we're not relating directly, where we're putting some filter between everything. Look at a concert. You know, I watched as much as I could of the Taylor Swift concert because Nikki Glaser made me and.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Nikki Glaser made you?

• 8:28Bill Maher?

  She did, well, she's a giant Taylor Swift fan. And like everybody throughout the whole concert, anytime they cut to the crowd, they're all watching through their phones. I mean, everybody is like this.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  What is that about? Because, I mean, that image can be, you know, they could get that image after the show.

• 8:48Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  I guess it's to project oneself into the onstage experience somehow, but it's very bizarre.

• 8:54Bill Maher?

  What do you mean? You're here as the expert. What are you asking me for? I don't remember, but tell you, this is what I want to know from you.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there are some interesting studies. I think the one that's probably most relevant to everyone is this study that looked at people's ability to focus when their phone is off and turned over in front of them versus in their bag, turned off underneath or behind their chair.

• 9:16Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Versus in another room, separate room.

• 9:18Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  And the interesting thing is that the ability to focus was the same essentially across those groups, but it took a lot of extra cognitive resource to work and to focus when the phone is on the table or even in a bag underneath or behind your chair.

• 9:36Bill Maher?

  How do they measure that?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  They can measure how much, essentially how much energy people devote to focusing versus to generating new sort of creative thoughts into, you know, a flexible use of the information. And so it takes a lot more work to focus when your phone is in the room. That's just the simple takeaway. So when the phone's out of the room, you see what looks like a boost in cognitive performance. It's actually just getting people to baseline. And this is something that it reminds me of, you know, David Goggins, the guy who's. Former Navy SEAL, he's always running around and shouting and this kind of thing. And a super high performer in the physical domain, who's actually studying to become a paramedic. And he said it perfectly. He said, "It's never been easier nowadays to outperform your peers, but it's mostly a function now of what you don't do." Right? Just putting your phone away gives you what looks like a cognitive boost, but it just

• 10:22Speaker 02

  puts you on par with all the generations before you that didn't have phones in the room. Right? So, you know, to succeed now as a young person, it's much harder unless you're able to abstain from interactions with short-form video mostly, and the phone generally.

• 10:37Bill Maher?

  So, speaking of outperforming your peers, I'm always interested in like, why something wins? I mean, and that's like, take Mr. Jesus Christ. I mean, there was many religions that were prevalent, besides the old Greco-Roman religions, which were kind of dying out at his time in the Mediterranean. It wasn't just Christianity. Why did that one win? You know, why did MySpace go away? And, you know, Facebook, you know?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Is MySpace the Heaven's Gate of cult religion? Now I'm really dating myself. Heaven's Gate, I think it was a cult, I think they castrated themselves, shaved their heads in war.

• 11:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, the Heaven's Gate cult?

• 11:18Speaker 02

  The Heaven's Gate cult.

• 11:19Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Right, that was sort of the MySpace of cults. It's self-destructed.

• 11:23Bill Maher?

  In the cult world, that's when you win, is when you kill yourself, I think.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  That's right, Branch, James Town.

• 11:29Bill Maher?

  I was gonna say, in the field of like, you know, medical advice, so crowded. What is your own assessment of why you became prima interparis in this field? What is it? Now, I think you're great, so I'm not gonna prejudice the jury. I mean, I listened to you and I feel like it's great information delivered in a way I can understand, but what is your thing? Because this is a very, very crowded field. I mean, half this country is like too poor to be able to even worry about their health and what they eat. And the other half are like fucking paranoid, so maybe that's because I live in LA.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:07Bill Maher?

  Who are just like doing every fucking cold plunges and they're tanning their asshole. Remember that one? Tucker Carlson, wasn't he tanning his asshole?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Was he?

• 12:17Bill Maher?

  Yes! There was taint tanning, like he was saying, I think it was, I'm pretty sure it was Tucker Carlson, who was like, "Yes, you gotta, you gotta get sunlight on your taint." You didn't remember, you didn't see?

• 12:29Speaker 02

  I remember that fad. I didn't realize Tucker was associated with that.

• 12:32Bill Maher?

  I believe it.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  I think of him now as the nicotine guy. He's really bullish on nicotine, which we can also talk about.

• 12:37Bill Maher?

  And hating Jews. It's tanning your taint or hating Jews. This guy is, I'm telling you, a little all over the map.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  He's definitely taken a turn in.

• 12:49Bill Maher?

  Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  He's taken a turn, for sure.

• 12:54Bill Maher?

  So, but really, why you?

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, well.

• 12:57Bill Maher?

  Why you?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Well, thanks for the kind words. I'll say, you know, some of it was a matter of circumstance. We launched the podcast during the pandemic, and there was a lot of discussion about vaccines, right? And that's obviously where the major debate was, besides the lockdown issue. And I decided at the time, in part because Stanford had a very strict rule that we weren't supposed to talk about vaccines publicly, because early in the pandemic, if you recall, there were like documents, like Word documents circulating on the internet, people claiming to be affiliated with certain universities and having protocols for dealing with COVID. And, you know, universities, including Stanford, said, listen, you know, we need virologists and public health experts to talk about this or no one else. So on the podcast, I chose to talk about all the things that were universal.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  How to manage your sleep, how to keep your anxiety down during the lockdowns as best you could, how to maintain some level of physical fitness if you couldn't, you know, leave your house, what. And then I just started teaching. And I think in large part it was because I wasn't selling a book. I didn't have a podcast. I was just giving away information. I will say also, if you look at a lot, not all, but a lot of the top podcasters, including yourself, including Rogan, Lex Friedman, and there are others, Jaco Willink, for instance, most of them did something else very well first. They were credentialed someplace else, right? Lex is, most people don't realize this, Lex is a PhD, right? He's very versed in computer science and artificial intelligence and these kinds of things.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Joe, obviously, had a prior career. You had a prior career, very successful, in addition to the other things you're doing. I was running a lab at Stanford up until a few years ago. Now I still teach at Stanford, but I shut my lab down because of the podcast. So what you find is that often, the most successful podcasts are from people that, sure. Entered the field at a certain time and there were fewer people in the podcast game then. But who also were very fluent in a particular subject and were ready to bring that to the world. So it wasn't like, I want to be a podcaster. It was, I love science, I love learning and teaching. I have an interest in health, I have a longstanding interest in health and fitness in addition to my neuroscience background. So I'm going to talk about all of that.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  And I think the connections that one has, like your colleagues, like the people that I bring on my podcasts are, I'm honored to say and so privileged to have the opportunity. These are the top, top neurosurgeons, Chair of Neurosurgery at UCSF, Eddie Chang, Robert Malenka, the expert in dopamine, Anna Lemke, the expert in addiction medicine. You know, Sean Mackey, the expert in pain medicine and on and on. And, you know, we include other people, creatives, you know, David Cho, Rick Rubin, et cetera. But to be able to put those people in front of the world was not really happening before. The only person who had really done it before was Charlie Rose. And he had taken a pretty swift exit in the previous years.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  I'd never met him, but that's where you saw the neuroscience.

• 15:44Bill Maher?

  He was great at neuroscience, bad at coming out of the bedroom with a bathrobe on.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  I don't know what the circumstances were.

• 15:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's what it was, coming out of the bedroom with a bathrobe on.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  Well, so I think that was it. And then I think, I like to think it's also because, you know, I do the things I talk about, right? I'm, I get morning sunlight, I've long been interested in resistance training. And I, and I believe, of course, in modern medicine. But I also believe that lifestyle factors and the things we can control fundamentally shape how healthy or unhealthy we are and how many medications we need or don't need.

• 16:17Bill Maher?

  Look, about 2003, I switched from Western medicine, not that I abandoned it, because of course, Western medicine is wonderful in many ways.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:27Bill Maher?

  But from, you know, but to a much more holistic approach, meaning preventative. And I feel like I, you know, I got with a doctor I respect very much, who I think knows a great deal, we don't agree on everything. And of course, you also need an M.D. But I feel like until that point in my life, I did not really understand how the body worked. I read different books. I, you know, I don't want to like go through the whole holistic. Bible, but you know, they more are of the notion that there is really only one disease, which is cellular destruction.

• 17:12Bill Maher?

  And it has two main causes. One is deficiency of nutrients and the other is toxicity getting into the cell. And we label things a million ways, there's a million names for many diseases, but it all comes down to not just all that, because I think genetics is really important.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, some people who have Huntington's, for instance, you know, they could be doing everything right and still be

• 17:36Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Eventually get seriously ill, although doing as many things as possible right in terms of lifestyle will greatly extend their lifespan and health span, there's no question.

• 17:45Bill Maher?

  Do you subscribe, would you say that is your overarching theory also, that it's just, it's all about the cells, winning the battle on the molecular level and our cells? I mean, there's so much in society that is, you know, fatigue, like chronic fatigue, these kind of things, and irritable bowel syndrome, and even allergies, maybe even asthma, just this stuff that like says, it's because we're not treating our cells right, they're getting too much toxicity, and they're, and they are deprived of nutrients, because what they're being given is processed food, you know, sugar, corn, fungus, love to get into fungus with you, I'm a big fungus person.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  When you talk about psilocybin?

• 18:32Bill Maher?

  Which never, no, no, not that kind of, that's fungus too, I used to do it. But no, just how harmful fungus is and how much, we always go to germ theory, it's always the bacteria, and sometimes it's a fungus, I mean, fungus is everywhere.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah, I mean, so I absolutely subscribe to the idea that when cells get sick, organs get sick, when organs get sick, you get systemic breakdown eventually. I think that when you talk about toxicity, I think it's very clear that you can have, for instance, toxicity from too many calories, but

• 19:09Bill Maher?

  Affluent malnutrition.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  That's right. So too, too many calories, but not enough micronutrients, perhaps, right? Or just too many calories, calories, energy load toxicity.

• 19:19Bill Maher?

  And, and when you don't get the right nutrients, even though you're eating more food, your body is still asking for those nutrients.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 19:26Bill Maher?

  Which is why you get fat, because you're eating more food. But you're, but you're not getting what the body needs, so it wants more.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  I think the two things, I mean, there are many things that are making Americans and others sick, including the lack of physical exercise and so on. But I think two, at least two of the important ones that aren't discussed enough are being divorced from our natural circadian schedule. So you want bright days, we've talked about this before, but I'll just briefly reiterate, bright days, meaning sunlight in the morning, bright days as best you can, getting sunlight through a window. There's a recent study showing that if you work near a window, it actually can help with blood glucose management, and dark nights. And, you know, for some people, going to bed late and waking up later is best for them. For other people, waking up early and going to bed earlier is best for them. People have to figure out what's ideal for them.

• 20:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely.

• 20:14Bill Maher?

  Because there are some hardcore people who insist that the healing only happens between 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  No, that's, that's nonsense.

• 20:23Bill Maher?

  Thank you.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  That's nonsense.

• 20:24Bill Maher?

  Thank you, sir. Because I, you know, 2:00 PM, 2:00 AM is when I'm just getting to sleep.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so you're a night owl. And there are what we call chronotypes, and some people do best on a late to bed, late waking up schedule. And nonetheless, getting bright light, ideally from sunlight in your eyes in the first hour after waking.

• 20:41Bill Maher?

  I, I listen to you on that, and the first thing I do is go over to the window, and it's always like, oh, I feel like a vampire, you know, because it, but I force myself.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Great.

• 20:52Bill Maher?

  You know, offer my eyes to that.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Great.

• 20:55Bill Maher?

  You know, and also I'm very, very aware that light in the eye at night, you know, it's the worst thing for you. It wakes up the penile gland, right?

• 21:05Speaker 00

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

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so your pineal gland makes melatonin, which makes you sleepy and makes you fall asleep. Light inhibits melatonin. Light reaching the eyes specifically. I should point out that it's clear that some people can tolerate screen light and fall asleep with no problem. But what bright light does in the morning is it increases cortisol, which we know is a stress hormone. But in the morning, you want your cortisol high. This is the foundation of health, to have your morning cortisol high. Yes, high. And then to have it taper off into the afternoon and evening. This is true for men, for women, perimenopausal, menopausal, pregnant women, kids, everybody. This has been, it's called the healthy cortisol curve. And if that curve flattens, meaning if it's not a big enough peak in your morning, whatever time that happens to be,

• 22:49Speaker 02

  and if you have too much cortisol in the evening, you're going to have problems with sleep. You're also going to have problems with blood sugar regulation because cortisol has been labeled a stress hormone. But we need to think about cortisol as a glucose, as an energy mobilizing hormone. So it turns out that even if you can sleep just fine after being around a bunch of bright lights at night, it will elevate your morning blood glucose. Now, is that going to make you prediabetic or diabetic? Over time... It actually might.

• 23:16Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  But kids nowadays, we've done a beautiful experiment that where they had kids sleep in a room with a hundred lux. That's very dim, a hundred lux light overhead, eyes closed, and they saw significantly elevated morning blood glucose levels. So dimming the lights at night is important. Now, there's a lot's been said about blue light, and for some people, wearing blue blockers can be helpful, et cetera. But just dim, dimming the lights. This environment that we're in here is actually quite dim. It's bright enough for us to see each other, but this environment is not nearly bright enough for the morning. What we need in the morning to spike cortisol, which is what we want. But it's, but it's plenty bright to spark cortisol at, say, an hour before sleep. So just in the first hour, make the first hour of your day as bright as possible, ideally from sunlight.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Make the last hour of your day as dim or as dark as safely you can.

• 24:03Bill Maher?

  I do start to lower the lights, but, you know, there's only so much you can do.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 24:09Bill Maher?

  But when I go to bed, I cover up all these little things. Everything in fucking America now has to have a little fucking stupid light that you don't need. I cover them all, like with, with like washcloths. I'll put things all over that.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  I bring duct tape and I'll cover it a little bit.

• 24:23Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Or get a, get a great, a soft eye mask is one of the best investments.

• 24:28Bill Maher?

  I don't like that because I feel it and it's onerous, but I have blackout curtains. No, when I go to sleep at night, it is so, it is as black as Stephen Miller's heart. It is black in there, I'm telling you.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Oh, my.

• 24:42Bill Maher?

  When I open my eyes or close them, I see the same thing.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Great.

• 24:46Bill Maher?

  That's dark.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  Great.

• 24:47Bill Maher?

  You know what's stupid? And I don't mean to knock this product. I'm wearing it right now, these rings that I'm sure you're burying.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  I wear a wooaband, or I measure my sleep with an eight-sleep, the cooling mattress.

• 24:57Bill Maher?

  Okay, well, this is the same idea, and I'm, look, I've just started it up.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  And it blinks.

• 25:03Bill Maher?

  I had to, you know what I did? And by the way, I was.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  That's why I don't wear one of those. That's why I measure my sleep with my.

• 25:09Bill Maher?

  I figured it out, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you, here's a life hack, you life fucking hackers. Okay, so, yes, it blinks at night. It's supposed to be about your health, and it does the one thing you're not supposed to do, which is have light on in when you're sleeping. Bright green light or yellow light. Okay, so what I did was I took a black surgical glove. You know, like the thin rubber gloves that we gave out a zillion of them during COVID. And now they're polluting the entire country and world. So great on that one. But I just cut off a little piece of it and I put it on as a fucking Oura Ring cozy at night. And then it blacks it off.

• 25:52Bill Maher?

  So there's your life hack for all the people who wrote in like I did and said, this is so silly. We're trying to do our health here.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  I know. So I think the emergent theme in our conversation already today is technologies that we use to improve convenience or improve our health inevitably have some sort of side effects that we run up against.

• 26:11Bill Maher?

  Everything does.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  It's true. So this is wild. So the long wavelength light, red light, infrared light, et cetera. That's the heat from the sun that you feel. It's part of that.

• 26:20Bill Maher?

  I love it.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  That long wavelength light is not the light that burns your skin. It's not the wavelength of light. And it was present in incandescent bulbs. So incandescents are, you know, even if you see a white incandescent bulb, it's got short wavelengths, so it's got blue, it's got green, it's got yellows, all the way out to red. And in some cases, even infrared. That infrared and red, we'll just call it long wavelengths. Believe it or not, beautiful data on this from Glenn Jeffries Lab, University College, London. It can go into and through your body. And it actually helps, this is a loose term as I'm using it, charge your mitochondria. The mitochondria, there's water in that area and the water absorbs the red light. If you've ever gone swimming, you've gone down, you know, snorkeling or something below a certain depth, you lose the reds. Okay, because the reds get absorbed. So your mitochondria function better.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  You increase ATP production. Your metabolism increases in the presence of red lit, long wavelength light to the skin. This study has been done. Shine long wavelength light on somebody, watch blood glucose levels in a blood glucose test, and it's blunted. Now, the LED lights that are commonly used now are most everywhere. They are truncated so that it's all short wavelength and medium wavelength light. And that short wavelength light in the absence of long wavelength light has been shown to damage the mitochondria. There's a kind of a niche group online, different from the butthole sunners. So that are very bullish about this idea that the switch from incandescents to LEDs,

• 27:46Speaker 02

  and not just screens, but general lighting, is causing disruptions in mitochondrial function. This used to be considered crazy. This was like chemtrail crazy, right? But now, we're starting to see from animal studies and human studies, from Glenn Jeffrey and others, that people's vision gets better when they get in front of an incandescent bulb once a day. If they get sunlight, which also has long wavelength light, your vision improves. Because of improvements in mitochondria, you can, again, better blood glucose regulation. This study just came out, eating near a window, or working near a window, improves blood glucose regulation. So, you know, I'm not paranoid. I have LEDs in my home, right? But if you can get outside and get some long wavelength light from the sun without getting a burn, that's the trick, right?

• 28:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, do it every day.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  You don't watch too much UV. Yeah, and you look extremely healthy. I'm not just saying that. I'm all close. So I'd be in a position to gauge, right?

• 28:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, finish your thought, Todd.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Well, it's absolutely true that...

• 28:40Bill Maher?

  I owe it all to clean living.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Right. So I don't want to say that short wavelength light is poison. That's not quite right. It's short wavelength light in the absence of long wavelength light. And if you would ask me about this, you know, eight, 10 years ago, I'd say, ah, my colleagues in the sleep lab at Stanford, you know, one of the preeminent sleep labs in the world, they're really big on morning sunlight, afternoon sunlight. That's actually where I learned it from, from the sleep biologists at Stanford first. But you start to look at, our environment is becoming very short wavelength rich, long wavelength diminished, where having darker mornings, people straight onto the phone, in the evening it's too bright, and then you, you know, we can make it generational and say this younger generation that seems to really be struggling. Let's set aside the content they're looking at, right? What's actually on those screens. It may be that we've made them sick. And so, while I am a fan of modern medicine...

• 29:26Bill Maher?

  The light itself.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 29:28Bill Maher?

  It's the light itself, is what you're saying.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  I'm saying it's the light itself and the timing of light.

• 29:32Bill Maher?

  It's such an important message, that it's not just the fact that it's a bunch of stupid TikToks...

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Well, it's that too.

• 29:39Bill Maher?

  ...that are poisoning your mind. It's the light itself, even if it was transmitting the smartest, wisest messages throughout history.

• 29:48Bill Maher?

  The light itself.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  The light itself.

• 29:50Bill Maher?

  It's just not natural.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  That's right. And incandescent bulbs and firelight and candlelight, all of these things were very healthy for us. And I actually think it's hard now to get incandescents. There's some, there's some people think it's illegal, they're just very hard to get. They are less energy efficient than LED.

• 30:06Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  But when you talk about going to the hotel and everything is like this bright, intense blue. When was the last time someone had to change an LED bulb? You never have to do that, right? So it's like idiot proof and it's, you know, power efficient, but there's always a cost on the back end.

• 30:21Bill Maher?

  There's always.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  And, and you mentioned TikTok, but you, you know, as much as I'm a fan of Instagram, I teach on Instagram and YouTube. They've really migrated towards shorter content. They promote three minute or shorter reels on Instagram. They tell you if it's longer than that, it's not going to get shared as broadly. I mean, all of the platforms have shifted towards shorter video. At the same time, longer audio is still on the rise.

• 30:43Bill Maher?

  That's, I've said this many times, I don't understand the American public. Their attention span seems to be eight seconds or three hours. If I, if I do a podcast that's less than ninety minutes, they feel very cheated. And yet, what you're talking about, that seems also prevalent in our culture. That people have no attention span at all. And you've got to get it in there in, in two minutes or less, or just forget about it.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  It's wild.

• 31:11Bill Maher?

  How do, what do you make of that? Is that a generational thing?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  I think it's a fundamental difference between the auditory system and the visual system where the visual system can tolerate a lot of fast updating. But if you had to hear something different every ninety seconds, or, or every three minutes even, it would be chaotic. You just feel like, this is crazy.

• 31:28Bill Maher?

  That's interesting.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  This is crazy. I mean, it's like shorter than a Ramones song.

• 31:31Bill Maher?

  It's how we're taking it in.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:33Bill Maher?

  It's, right. Visually, because we're so used to movies for, I don't know how many decades now, quick cutting. And just, you know, we can, we can, they get subliminal advertising. Remember when that was a thing?

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:47Bill Maher?

  They would, they would, it would be, you wouldn't even notice. The, the controversy was they put a skull and crossbones into, subliminally, into cigarette ads. Because the theory was people really want to die.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Are you serious?

• 32:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I am absolutely serious.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:06Bill Maher?

  They sublimally put a skull and crossbones in there.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 32:11Bill Maher?

  There was.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  I would have thought they would have done the opposite.

• 32:14Bill Maher?

  Right, no.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  You know, put it like a beating heart, it was like a robust beating heart or.

• 32:17Bill Maher?

  No, that's how evil they are.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Nude woman or something like that.

• 32:21Bill Maher?

  No, that's how fucked up we are. But you know.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 32:25Bill Maher?

  When you said like, a few years ago, it was like chemtrail level conspiracy theory. That's why I get a little nervous when people say, oh, the ultimate expert in. I'm sure they are.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 32:40Bill Maher?

  But you know what? Science, there's no final answer. I mean, there are, you know, but it takes time, like evolution. When it first came out, people didn't just sign on. It had to go through the testing period. Okay, we're past that. And we're past that with global warming too.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  I was saying about, Tucker would argue.

• 33:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, okay, we're past that.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:04Bill Maher?

  You know, we can argue about what to do about it. But we're past the, you know, humans aren't causing it. Yes, they are, and you know, maybe that's whatever, you know. But, you know, this, this idea.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting. It seems like there's bipartisan support for the idea that we're contaminating water sources and food sources. You know, I think, I guess more closely to what you just raised. It's beyond me why artificial lighting environments might be damaging us in some way. And certain medications like antibiotics can be beneficial. Like we are living in the, with respect to health, we do seem to be living in the land of whatever expert, certainly is not how I try and pitch things, but whatever expert is speaking to us, seems to think that the things they're talking about are the only things that are important. Like, I'm not saying it's only light, I'm saying light is foundational, circadian biology

• 34:00Speaker 02

  is foundational, cortisol rhythms are foundational, nutrients and food, not excess calories, getting enough micronutrients. But when you look online, what you find is that the people couch themselves as the, it's all sunlight. It's all food. And I think this is what's really damaged the Maher movement, frankly. Because I think most people across the board would say, OK, getting food additives out and reducing processed foods, surely that's a great thing. But then the vaccine debate, for instance. Actually, I have an update on the vaccine piece that I spoke to NIH director today to get you an update, because last time, when I was on your show, we talked about it. And it's about these mRNA vaccines.

• 34:37Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Because I said, and I still think, that to cancel the research for mRNA vaccines for cancer would be utterly foolish. I think that's a three neuron decision.

• 34:47Bill Maher?

  Agreed.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  OK, so I talked to Jay, and he assured me.

• 34:52Bill Maher?

  Jay Bhattacharya.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Jay Bhattacharya, director of NIH, and actually currently also director of CDC.

• 34:57Bill Maher?

  Let's give people some background, who during COVID, and you know, I was one of the people who took a lot of shit during COVID. I feel very vindicated, by the way. But I'm sure not nearly as much as the people who are in charge of health now. And Jay Bhattacharya was one of those people who was thrown off Twitter or wherever because, you know, like he's a nut, because he had an alternative view of how we were handling COVID.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  He was largely opposed to lockdowns at certain phases. I know this because he's my colleague at Stanford.

• 35:31Bill Maher?

  He was right. We didn't treat it, overarching, we just didn't treat it the right way, which was to protect the most vulnerable population, but let society go on. Because it wasn't the bubonic plague. It killed mostly very old people and obese people. I know that's politically incorrect to say. It's just the truth. We didn't need to overreact the way we did. We didn't need to spend more money than we did on World War II.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 36:02Bill Maher?

  Yes, it's right.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 36:04Bill Maher?

  On, you know, well, of course, we told everybody to go to your room and hide under your bed, you know, and we'll make up your salary. Where do you think we got that money? Where we always get it, out of thin air.

• 36:18Bill Maher?

  That's gonna come home to roost, and that's gonna affect your health.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the mental health.

• 36:23Bill Maher?

  There's pot for that.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  In the lockdown.

• 36:24Bill Maher?

  Before I.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Before we talk about vaccines.

• 36:26Bill Maher?

  Because it makes you do this.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  I have an update for you on.

• 36:30Bill Maher?

  I don't know what this is, but. Oh, yeah, what is it?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  So, OK, so the mRNA vaccine update is Jay, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who now is also acting director of the CDC, by the way, he's juggling both roles.

• 36:42Bill Maher?

  And a smart guy.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  And a very smart guy, and a very, and somebody who listens, you know, I'm not formally associated with Maher, despite what you might read out there, I'm not formally associated with any political group. I'm neither a double hater nor a double lover when it comes to politics. I am, I am an issue-by-issue person.

• 36:59Bill Maher?

  That's me in politics.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Great, OK, appreciate you, thank you.

• 37:03Bill Maher?

  You too.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Thank you. So, he assured me that the, his words, that the NIH funding for mRNA vaccine research for oncology for cancer has not been cut. What was cut, he said, his words, it was the $500 million put towards mRNA vaccines for upper respiratory illnesses that was set aside from Project Warp Speed, which people forget was a Trump initiative. I'm not, I'm not trying to.

• 37:27Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  What do the kids say, glaze or glow up or what? I'm not trying to, but we should remember that that was, that was part of the Trump administration.

• 37:34Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  And I think that the, the mRNA vaccines, the label, has caused a lot of people to say, I don't want anything to do with those, but I just had an oncologist on my podcast. The potential to eradicate cancers using technologies like those, or others like CRISPR, is so exciting. And the way this is gonna work is not by testing on humans, it's going to be by harvesting a T-cell.

• 37:59Bill Maher?

  Let's stop on CRISPR. Because I remember first seeing it on 60 Minutes. Gene splicing, right?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  It's, it's gene editing.

• 38:07Bill Maher?

  Gene editing.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  So you can actually go in and add genes and modify genes. A Nobel Prize was given.

• 38:12Bill Maher?

  Why is it called CRISPR?

• 38:14Speaker 02

  The CRISPR Cas system is an enzyme system that can get and insert and cut and repair DNA at specific locations.

• 38:21Bill Maher?

  Okay, but yes, I've been hearing about CRISPR ever since that 60 Minutes report, but that was like seven or eight years ago. I feel like, hey, I'm 70 now, where's CRISPR when I need it?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  So CRISPR is being used?

• 38:33Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm saying I need it, but I think I'd like it.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  CRISPR has been used to successfully treat certain childhood cancers. CRISPR, now, I should say, that's by taking cells, modifying their genes, and reinserting those cells, which works very well in the immune system.

• 38:49Bill Maher?

  But it's not a cure for cancer.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  Well, it holds-

• 38:52Bill Maher?

  Sometimes it is.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  It holds the potential to cure many forms of cancer. See, cancers are all generally-

• 38:58Bill Maher?

  And it's done it, sometimes, right? Already?

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah, I mean, it's not in widespread use, because there are a lot of ethical issues. I will tell you, there was a guy, he actually trained as a postdoc at the same time as I did in the United States, then went to China. He did, he made CRISPR-modified babies. Okay, this is a well-known, yes, he announced at a meeting that he had taken some kids that, from IVF. The report was that the father was HIV-positive. He modified the receptor for HIV in these embryos, and two kids were born with modified genomes. Now, here's the twist.

• 39:35Bill Maher?

  From what womb?

• 39:36Speaker 02

  They were inserted into the guy's wife, I believe. You know, so they took the eggs, her egg, his sperm, modified the embryos, once the embryos were in a dish, using CRISPR.

• 39:45Bill Maher?

  She carried.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  So targeting a specific gene. And I should say, when people get really worried about genetic selection, when people partner select, they're genetic select, right? When they go, oh, that person's attractive, or successful, or kind, or whatever.

• 39:57Bill Maher?

  But she, but they put, she carried it determined they had a baby shower?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Two babies, yeah, two babies.

• 40:03Bill Maher?

  I'm asking about the shower.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Chinese baby shower.

• 40:05Bill Maher?

  I want to know about the shower.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, Chinese baby shower, I don't know what that looks like.

• 40:07Bill Maher?

  Is it different?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  I imagine it is. And, and, these babies were born, now, here's why it's controversial. First of all, he didn't get any approval from the International Ethics Committee. There is no International Ethics Committee, there was no International Ethics Committee on this. And there is rumor that this HIV receptor may actually not just confer some susceptibility or resistance to HIV, but that it also might be involved in brain circuits involved in memory. So the story became that he used CRISPR to generate these, you know, super babies or something like that. The Chinese government claims that he was punished. We don't know if he was punished by being put in jail or given a laboratory. We don't

• 40:50Speaker 02

  know. It's all very mysterious and cloaked. But when this happened, the international community paused, and it was very unclear. I was watching this very closely. It was very unclear for a few moments whether or not he would be given a Nobel Prize or whether or not he would be thrown into a cell. The world didn't know how to deal with this because he was way ahead of the curve. I guarantee that there are countries now where people are using CRISPR on embryos. I'm certain it is, you know, has serious ethical concerns. It is not allowed in the United States, but it's coming. In fact, you can deep sequence embryos now from IVF, and you can isolate the embryos that you think have the fewest disease genes, or that you think have the most genes that would confer whatever traits that you.

• 41:30Bill Maher?

  Don't you think we're always late on getting to some of these things? I know from a friend who had cancer that he had to go to Mexico to do the thing where they take the stem cells out and put it back in your body. And it worked, by the way.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:48Bill Maher?

  Why do we have to go to Mexico to do that?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Our regulatory bodies here are much stricter on certain things than anywhere else.

• 41:57Bill Maher?

  But I mean, if you're dying, what do you have to lose?

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there's this weird inverse stringency. So when it comes to like sunscreen, we'll talk about sunscreen, for instance, you know, or food additives. Europe bans certain things that we allow very readily.

• 42:13Bill Maher?

  Formaldehyde.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and certain pesticides. And in Europe, alcohol, no dis, is classified as a...

• 42:20Bill Maher?

  No dis.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  The World Health Organization classifies it as a class one carcinogen. Do as you like, but know what you're doing. Here, we don't classify it as a carcinogen, even though we know it increases cancer risk. You're fine. You're healthy in other ways.

• 42:31Bill Maher?

  I wasn't freaking out.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Right, you're very calm. So that, but, but on the other side, when you think about which drugs we allow doctors to provide, or what's allowed over the counter, here, there's a lot more stringency. For instance, right now, there's a huge battle over peptides, which I'm happy to talk about because the GLPs are so popular, which are peptides.

• 42:55Bill Maher?

  What are peptides?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Peptides are small chains of amino acids that have a biological function. Insulin's a peptide, GLP-1 is a peptide. You make these things naturally, but it can be, these can be synthesized and put into the body, and they can have an effect. And typically, when a drug, like a GLP-1 drug, like Ozempic, Monjaro, or the big one that's coming, this is going to be a trillion-dollar drug, and it has huge implications for the sorts of things you and I think about, the interaction between politics and health, is retitrutide. It's a GLP-3, meaning it hits the GLP receptor, GIP, and glucagon. It can cause up to a third of loss in body weight, and some degree of muscle sparing, some. People should still exercise. Now, Eli Lilly holds the patent. It went through Phase 3 very successfully.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Eli Lilly does not want compounding pharmacies selling retitrutide. Why? Because it's far cheaper. And we had this, this recent thing where Trump argued for lower drug prices, right?

• 43:53Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Do you think the drug companies were like, "Oh yeah, sure, let's just lower drug prices"? No. It was a deal, right? I won't say how I know this, but it was a deal whereby the administration kind of did a wink nod that drugs were going to pass more quickly through R&D to market. So they're going to make up, make up the, the cost differential on the research and development end, right? Less, less money invested in research and development, less time to market, and happy to lower prices. This is my understanding. I, you know, someone will probably tell me I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. Now, Eli Lilly wants to protect the patent for retitrutide, but I'll tell you, in Los Angeles County right now, there are a lot of people, mostly people that get in front

• 44:35Speaker 02

  of cameras, taking retitrutide because it works so spectacularly well at a fifth of the prescribed dose, or the recommended dose from these trials, and at a tenth of the price if you get it from a compounding pharmacy. Now, compounding pharmacies aren't supposed to make it, but this is another area where the FDA would like them to not do it, but it's pseudo-regulated. The gray market, as I'm referring to it, is the when people can buy this stuff online for research purposes only, okay? And then the black market, people refer to as Chinese peptides, which are peptides that probably don't contain what you think they do, and there's very little stringency, and you have to really worry about contamination. It's a little unfair to China, I want to be clear. Like, these could be coming from Belarus for all I know. I mean, they could be coming from anywhere, but people refer to them as Chinese peptides, which is not fair.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  We should just call them black market peptides. So, the FDA would like to protect its relationship to pharma. Pharma wants to protect the patents for drugs where there's a lot of money. Retitrutide stands to be a trillion-dollar drug. So here's the weird split. I want to make sure I close the hatch on the FDA piece. Right now, the key is to prevent harm, right? We don't want people taking black market or gray market peptides that could hurt them. At the same time, these compounding pharmacies have made many drugs, not just GLPs, but many drugs, much more affordable to people in a landscape that I don't even have to justify, right? People are really struggling to for healthcare, for self-directed healthcare. Are peptides the be-all, end-all? Well, no, not necessarily.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Lifestyle factors and drugs, in some cases, or lifestyle factors and, you know, other things. But the key here is that if a drug stands to make a company a lot of money, then there's an incentive to regulate this stuff. So we're in this weird landscape where I really think you have two populations of slightly overlapping populations of people. You have people that their level of stringency is if it's not FDA-approved from a traditional company, you know, from pharma, multiple randomized controlled trials, I don't want to take it, I'm not putting it anywhere near my family or anyone I know. And then you have a separate category of people, which is quite large, who say the fact that something is from pharma, the fact that it's associated with the FDA, is the

• 46:48Speaker 02

  major reason why they do want to take something. And this is where I think, I'm so tired of looking at traditional media coverage of like peptides, where they throw it out like a dog's breakfast of all these different things, lump it and just say peptides don't do anything. Really? Insulin doesn't do anything for a diabetic? Really? The GLPs don't do anything? The root of all of this is control of the patent and financial pipeline, which is not to say that I don't understand, can't relate. I mean, Lilly, I have no stock in Lilly. Kind of wish I did. I mean, it's over a thousand bucks right now. It was a couple hundred bucks a few years ago. Lilly invested hundreds of millions of dollars. They stand to make trillions of dollars. It makes every bit of sense why they would try and shut down the Reddit TruTide compound.

• 47:30Bill Maher?

  It's so funny that it's so similar to politics, which is you can't trust either half fully. You have, when the argument is like their peptides are all bad.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:42Bill Maher?

  It's like Trump is all evil, or you know, the Democrats are all evil. And it's like you have to read both sides because nobody tells you the full truth. They only want to forward their narrative. And it sounds like it's the same thing in medicine as it is in politics.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  It is. I mean, as a research scientist and friends with many, many physician scientists and physicians, I do think, at least at Stanford, most, all physicians and scientists, I do believe, want to solve problems correctly and provide good for the world.

• 48:12Bill Maher?

  Stanford seems like it's a super woke place.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:15Bill Maher?

  Stanford?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  We have Hoover, who, the, we have the Hoover folks, right? I mean, that's like a libertarian think tank, basically. Connie Rice runs it, I believe.

• 48:24Bill Maher?

  Is that at Stanford?

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's at Stanford, the big tower, the tower, you know?

• 48:28Bill Maher?

  I'm not that familiar with the campus.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  No, I would say Stanford on balance is, is very, is very balanced.

• 48:33Bill Maher?

  Cause I read somewhere, like this is going back, you know, sort of peak woke time, five years ago or something, that they had 10,000 administrators.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  It's a big place. It's got its own zip code, you know?

• 48:49Bill Maher?

  Okay, but it just seems like that's all, we're not talking about professors. And we're not talking about students. We're talking about bureaucrats, kind of.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  But there is a hospital, a children's hospital. I mean, it's one of the most modern and, look, I,

• 49:01Bill Maher?

  All right, maybe, you know.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  You know, I have this podcast.

• 49:04Bill Maher?

  I don't trust anything until I get both sides of the story. I'm just saying I read that and that, and that, that I, Concede right away, that is forwarding somebody's narrative that elite colleges are out of control, which by the way, I do think there is absolute truth in that. What's the other side of it? Well, there's another side of it too.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:23Bill Maher?

  So I'm anxious to hear you tell me.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:25Bill Maher?

  Maybe we need 10,000, maybe they do need 10,000 administrators at Stanford.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Well, with the caveat that I can already hear the voices saying, oh, you know, he's just trying to protect his job. Look, I'm tenured, you know, Jay kept his job during the pandemic.

• 49:38Bill Maher?

  You're a celebrity now, you can't be fired.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I have this other gig, so I'm comfortable.

• 49:41Bill Maher?

  No, you can't be fired.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  So, you know, but I will tell you, I'll give you the positives, I'll give you the negatives. I'll be real direct with you. I've been many places in my academic career, and I will tell you that while there are other, many other excellent places, there are very, very few, if any, places in the world where you find people who are just absolutely focused on bringing their science, which often impacts healthcare, to the next level with the utmost degree of rigor. My colleagues are amazing, I'm telling you. I mean, I've got colleagues like Carl Deiserth, who developed ways to image, image and modify cellular activity across the board, everything from humans, rat, cat, monkey, bat, for research purposes.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  People who were blind are seeing again as a consequence of that work. I've got colleagues building artificial retinas. I've got colleagues who are figuring out in the psychology department that are really parsing this notion of, like, Alie Chrome mindset, like, which is a setting for the mind, how to navigate stress, not just thinking that stress is going to dissolve you into a puddle of tears, but how to harness stress into performance. She's a D1 athlete, clinical psychologist, and runs a major research lab, and mom, and happily married. I mean, these people are like on a whole other level. Okay, it's also a place where people are very collegial. Now, are there a lot of administrators? Yes. Are there a lot of beautiful lawns and palm trees? Also, yes. But I'll tell you the real strength of Stanford. You know this woman, this freestyle skier who ended up skiing for China in the...

• 51:12Bill Maher?

  L.A. Go.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. She, she, she's Stanford. Okay, I will tell you, the real prize at Stanford... Is the students, right? Everyone who works there knows that the intellect of the students and the ingenuity of the students is what sets it apart. And again, there are other places. Now, the downside, doing research is very expensive, very expensive. And in the current NIH climate, one of the first things that happened when HHS got revised, and I was very bullish about pushing back on this, is they wanted to cut the indirect costs, the support of the university, not just the labs, to 15% across the country. That would devastate science across the country. Now, you could say, oh, Stanford's got this massive endowment, it's as big as a country, same with Harvard, why don't they pull from there?

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Okay, let's just take that argument and say 15% would take the University of Utah's, which is a fantastic place, a fantastic place for biomedical research and many other things, the UT Austins, the Wisconsins, the Wash U's, and it would demolish them. Fortunately, that cut didn't happen, and I'm very happy to say, and I take no credit for this, but I've been very vocal on the phone and elsewhere, getting in Jay's ear and other people's ear, you cannot cut the federal budget for research in this country. It fuels companies, it fuels the, basically, the healthcare exploration and development for the entire world, and they just put a 1% increase on the budget.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Now, I think that's too small, but the problem that I have with big institutions, rich institutions like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, now here's the other piece of it, is that 30% of the indirect money, meaning the additional funds that come from NIH, go to a very small subset of universities across the country for big facilities, genomics facilities, proteomic facilities, which means that the laboratories there have what many people view as a bit of an unfair advantage. Okay? So if we really wanted to equally distribute intellectual growth, and we want to equally distribute scientific growth, we would distribute that money more equally across the country. Now, my colleagues at Stanford are gonna hate me for saying this, but it's kind of weird, right?

• 53:21Speaker 02

  I mean, if you're at the University of Colorado Boulder and you're a graduate student, shouldn't you have the opportunity to do the most cutting-edge experiments there? And just because you're not at Stanford, that shouldn't, you shouldn't be hindered.

• 53:32Bill Maher?

  A lot of the country feels left out.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think the redistribution of some of these funds would be good.

• 53:38Bill Maher?

  It would be helpful. A lot of the country feels like all the cool jobs are in a few different places, and they kind of look down on us, and we're not all hicks out here. You know, I think something like this would go a long way, yes.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:54Bill Maher?

  I mean, I don't know what the University of Boulder is like, but you know, I've been to Boulder. I played the city. It's not a bunch of fucking hicks.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  No, great place.

• 54:01Bill Maher?

  Very liberal.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Great place, great science, yeah. I mean, they had some unfortunate incidents there. I think it was like a, like some sort of pseudo terrorist attack.

• 54:09Bill Maher?

  No, no, no.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Someone threw a Molotov cocktail or something, had some protester. I mean, this guy, I mean, Boulder seems like a nice little peaceful town.

• 54:15Bill Maher?

  I think it was the place where the Batman, he dressed as the Joker or Batman or something. This is like 2013. I remember, because I played the city like a couple of months after. The, it was in a theater. It was, it was a shooting.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Oh, I know what you're trying, yeah, right. That's right. I know what you're referring to.

• 54:34Bill Maher?

  And, um.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I think that was, yeah, I'm thinking of a separate incident, a more recent incident. And that was related to a public protest.

• 54:40Bill Maher?

  No, I remember, because I donated the proceeds from the weekend in Colorado to that fund.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 54:47Bill Maher?

  It was a.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was one at University of Virginia as well.

• 54:50Bill Maher?

  Would have looked bad not to.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Or Virginia Tech.

• 54:52Bill Maher?

  But, yeah, it was.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, redistribution of resources across the country would be great. And so I talked to Jay about this today, and he said that one of the initiatives is to start creating national centers that get a large percentage of funding so that scientists and people running clinical studies from anywhere in the country can go there and use the state of the art tools to be able to do their experiments anywhere. I think that's a wonderful idea. I think that that's going to ruffle some feathers at some of the, let's say, wealthier institutions, but endowments are very, you know, are thick at certain places, right? There's, there's a lot of money sitting in the endowments of these places.

• 55:32Bill Maher?

  No, and as you say, I think it's important for people to know that some of the stuff that, and I agree with you that they shouldn't cut any of this money, it hasn't happened. You know, people come up to me all the time when I'm out and, Bill, what are we going to do? Like, like their world is coming to an end, which it's not. And I was just saying, the Supreme Court stopped the president from his tariff thing. You know, I'm sure you saw that. That was a kind of a big one, that the Supreme Court, including two of his appointees, said, no, I'm sorry, you know, we'll give you a lot, but we're not going to give you this. Thousands of cases of local courts have pushed back on detaining immigrants, and the budget that he asked for.

• 56:17Bill Maher?

  Never got. It's basically the same down the line as it was the year before he took office. So for people who think the sky is falling, it's not quite falling. You know, there still is a system that we have. It's definitely taking a stress test we've never had before, but it's sort of holding in this way, and this is part of it. Like, that money is still there.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:42Bill Maher?

  This is still America, and we're still, you know, are we, do you think we're the leading edge in scientific research?

• 56:50Speaker 02

  Holding in there with some other top places.

• 56:53Bill Maher?

  Like?

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Like in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia. And I will tell you, China is, in terms of brain-machine interface, inserting chips into the brain of non-human primates and humans to do, you know, increasing memory, novel ways of using AI for cognition, they are miles ahead of us.

• 57:13Bill Maher?

  What do you mean, non-human primates?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Macaque monkeys is the typical model. Very hard to do that work in the United States because it's very expensive and it's dangerous. Macaque monkeys carry something called, it's a form of herpes that kills humans. They get a cold sore. People have died from this. There was a woman in Atlanta had some monkey.

• 57:29Bill Maher?

  How did you get a cold sore from a monkey?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  Well, no, the monkey splashed urine in her eye. And so it's, yeah, I mean, it's, it was deadly. She was dead within, within a couple of weeks.

• 57:38Bill Maher?

  Is that right?

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So years, you know.

• 57:40Bill Maher?

  Just, just, not that it's gonna really affect my personal life, but which monkey is this?

• 57:45Speaker 02

  The macaque monkey.

• 57:46Bill Maher?

  The macaque monkey. Oh, then I'm totally.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  The big ones with big teeth.

• 57:50Bill Maher?

  No, no.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:51Bill Maher?

  I fucked them chimps, but this is, this is not, okay.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 57:55Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  So.

• 57:57Bill Maher?

  That's.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So China is making strides. You know, Switzerland shut down non-human primate research as far as I know. It's very expensive to do in the US. The National Primate Centers used to be a, a big piece of research in this country for everything. The development of, of birth control was tested in non-human primates. You know, they're the closest model to us. Now, I have to say, you know, I'm not saying this to protect myself. I'm saying this because I truly feel. I think the need for justification to do work on non-human primates has to be very high. They are very much like us. I've interacted with these animals a lot.

• 58:32Bill Maher?

  Does it hurt them when they do it?

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:34Bill Maher?

  It does.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  They do what they can to minimize pain, but it absolutely does. I mean, having a, you know, a Sterotax implanted in the head, injections into the eye, there's no way to do that completely painlessly. And, you know, that's tough. It wears on the soul, I will tell you, to do that work.

• 58:50Bill Maher?

  I'm Peter. I'm Peter, bro.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so, so, I'm, right, so I am, I personally couldn't do that work. You know, years ago, you know, I, I've worked on a bunch of different species, and I'll tell you, one of the reasons I'm so happy to be doing what I'm doing now is I hated working on animal models. But in many cases, animal models are what we have. But again, non-human primates, we need a very, very, very high justification and threshold before one would want to invest in doing that kind of work. As long as-

• 59:21Bill Maher?

  What are we gonna get out of it that's worth it?

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, I think, okay, well, you're asking me to justify something for which I'm a little-

• 59:28Bill Maher?

  No, no, I'm not asking you to justify it. I'm just saying, what in the best possible scenario would we get out of it where someone down the road could make the case and say, yes, I'm sorry the monkey suffered, but now, you know, eight million, you know, children with Tourette's syndrome are free of this curse?

• 59:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, I guess it depends on the extent to which you believe that going from mouse to human is a reasonable jump. It's been the intermediate species. It's either been mouse to pig to human, or mouse to non-human primate to human for, you know, dose lethality, infectious disease, you know. I mean, they are very similar to us. You know, I'll tell you, I'm very happy to not work on non-human primates. They, they are sentient, as are dogs, in my belief, and it's a, it's a really tough, tough problem. I think one of the, one of the challenges is that now there's a lot of excitement about AI, and I think you can do a lot with AI that you, you know, that you couldn't do a few years ago, but-

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Cells, as you were pointing out earlier, are the foundational building block of all organs and health, and oftentimes to understand human health, you have to understand it in a model system that's similar. Let me give you an example, as long as we're staying edgy. There's something new that's being done in Mexico and in Europe called three-party IVF. It's illegal here. It's actually being done in the UK.

• 1:00:52Bill Maher?

  I think I had one here.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  So, we know that-

• 1:00:58Bill Maher?

  Only one of them was Mexican.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  We know that as women age, the number of eggs that can be successfully fertilized and create healthy humans goes down with age. We know this, right? So, one of the things that makes it harder as women get older is the mitochondrial genes that control some of the splitting of the egg and the formation of more cells, etc. Turns out that people figure this out first in mice and then in non-human primates, that you can take the DNA from the woman who wants to be the mom, the sperm from the guy that wants to be the dad, and you can take those and put them into an egg from a younger donor, where the DNA's been taken out, but the spindle and the things that pull it across with the

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  mitochondrial genes are intact, and you can end up with a healthy kid. How do we know this? Because there are women who have mitochondrial genetic diseases, this was done in the UK, and all your mitochondrial genes come from your mom, and so these people wanted to have kids, so someone said, "Hey, maybe you could do this." So they did it first in mice, then in non-human primates, and now, in Mexico and elsewhere around the world, people who are having trouble conceiving or by standard IVF are starting to do this three-party IVF. It's not yet legal in the United States, but this is a good example where it went from mouse to non-human primate to human. So, you would say, "Gosh, would you want to go from mouse to human? Like, that's a pretty big jump." So, at the same time, we're not macaque monkeys. They're not identical to us, obviously. So, it's-

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  It's the way the fields have progressed. And in terms of cognition and things like that. But again, I don't want to be. I'm not arguing that more work should be done in non-human primates. I'm not making that argument. I think whenever possible, we should avoid the use of animal models. Always, right? Why injure or take a life when you potentially don't have to?

• 1:02:50Bill Maher?

  But you know, when you say whenever possible.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there are cancer treatments that I doubt humans unless they're dying and they're really at the end of life.

• 1:02:57Bill Maher?

  No, it's just, it's just say, I mean, this is the, this is where the rubber meets the road.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Bill Maher?

  Is whenever possible. Of course, I think everyone would say whenever possible.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:06Bill Maher?

  Or most people.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  And in this country, we don't tend to have cat and dog research anymore largely because of the advocacy groups.

• 1:03:12Bill Maher?

  Because we like them because they're our pets.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  And at the same time, the pig people.

• 1:03:15Bill Maher?

  The other one, yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  People tell me pigs are very sweet.

• 1:03:18Bill Maher?

  They do.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:03:19Bill Maher?

  But we don't, they're not our pets and we throw them under the bus. They're bacon.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  And China's different. China treats, you know, I think they treat this whole landscape of animal research very differently. They have a lot of researchers in Europe keep their primates in, in China because of the lower costs and do the work there. I mean, we're sort of going into the future of brain-machine interface and kind of where that is. And yes, China is really a, a kind of a hot seat for that.

• 1:03:43Bill Maher?

  But why couldn't, why do we have to use animals? Why can't we just use humans that nobody likes? Like, you know, Klansmen or, you know, guys who are on Epstein Island.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:03:53Bill Maher?

  Something like, something like that. I mean, they're.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  So that's how they should settle the Epstein.

• 1:03:57Bill Maher?

  Well, of course, because they're human. It's going to be better research anyway.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness, those files. I, I couldn't help but go into those files and I was able to find examples of people saying. You can find this there saying, we should, too bad we can't experiment on kids or we should experiment on kids. It's in those files.

• 1:04:15Bill Maher?

  Experiment what on kid?

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  They just are talking about wanting to do experiments on, on children.

• 1:04:20Bill Maher?

  Who is?

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  In the files.

• 1:04:21Bill Maher?

  But who, which, which people?

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, so.

• 1:04:23Bill Maher?

  Bill Gates?

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  You really want to go down this, into this rabbit hole?

• 1:04:26Bill Maher?

  I, well, yeah, I'm fucking curious.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  All right, it's all on the DOJ site.

• 1:04:29Bill Maher?

  Okay, yeah, so.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  So. So here's what I think is.

• 1:04:34Bill Maher?

  Not Deepak.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Do you part- I don't think so, no.

• 1:04:38Bill Maher?

  Oh, he's, I think that's the worst. Because he always was like, oh, I'm the spiritual man, I'm the healer, I will tell you. You are part of the uni- yeah, part of the universe that went to Epstein Island. And, and, I mean, his shit just, I mean, I like him, he's been.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  I've never met him, I've never.

• 1:04:56Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  I'm proud to say, I'm proud to say I've never met him.

• 1:04:59Bill Maher?

  He's a sweet guy, but you know, it was always a Halloween costume. And I'm not that sorry that it got, the mask got torn off. I mean, it just, look, I'm not a person who's big on, you know, like people, people who say they're spiritual leaders anyway. So like, you know, his thing was always, I was winking. And I've always felt he was kind of winking back, like, you and I both know I'm selling a book. Okay, you know, like that kind of thing. And it's the same book, like 45 times.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's weird when people publish the same book over and over. That's just because, what is that?

• 1:05:30Bill Maher?

  It's because people want to be reaffirmed of what, sunken cost fallacy, you know what that is. You know, like you, you, you say you believe the gypsy who's been telling you that, you know, to give all your money to this person. And you just, you're already out a million bucks, you can't turn back on it now. Even though something in your mind is telling you, this is not right. But it's sunken cost fallacy, you just keep going with it. I think that's what it is.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  You're talking about the customers or the people who write these things?

• 1:05:59Bill Maher?

  That, I, I, the customers.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Bill Maher?

  I mean, for the people who write them, it's just a gravy train. But for the customers, yes, it's like, you know, the latest version of, yes, it's the same book over and over. But it's telling them, it's comforting to hear what you already think you know and believe and is helping you. Even though there's probably a mountain of evidence that it's not. Or maybe it does, because the human mind is an amazing place. It can convince itself of anything and a lot of success in life. Somebody once said it a million years ago, if you think you're happy, you're happy. Are you happy?

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  I am happy.

• 1:06:38Bill Maher?

  Right now?

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm happy. I equate being peaceful and being happy very similarly.

• 1:06:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, I mean, why you, if you're not happy, then you have big fucking problems. I mean, you're doing well, you're well liked, you're popular, you're a huge success, you know.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  I mean, I have my internal.

• 1:06:55Bill Maher?

  Time of life.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  Internal storms like anyone else where, where, you know, I see things out in the world that frustrate me. And, but then I remind myself, my, you know, I'm striving and I'm, you know.

• 1:07:06Bill Maher?

  Yes, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, I feel, between the top half of the country that is doing well. You know, not the people who are working three jobs and paycheck to paycheck, but the people, the ones who come up to me and say, "Phil, what are we gonna do?"

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Well, because the.

• 1:07:22Bill Maher?

  It's just a dissonance between like their world.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Bill Maher?

  Which is fucking awesome. And I, I, look, even if your world is awesome, I'm not saying you're wrong to be worried about the state of the country, absolutely. I'm in the boat with you there, I am. But I also don't lose sight of the fact that my own world, no, I'm not on the edge of madness every day, and maybe we'll get there, but we're not. So let's not pretend we are. Let's not pretend, what are we gonna do? Go finish your dinner. That's what you're gonna do.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think that the numbing out and the rage that the internet offers are incredibly intoxicating for people. I think, you know, to go online is to either forget what you would otherwise be surrounded by.

• 1:08:10Bill Maher?

  It's what every algorithm is built on.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  It is built on that.

• 1:08:13Bill Maher?

  It's built on hate and rage and conflict.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think the Epstein files, to me, are an interesting, I, I think people are gonna be talking about this 100 years from now. I think it's gonna be.

• 1:08:23Bill Maher?

  Wow, really?

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Because I think it's, well, I'll say a couple of things. First of all, I never met him. Never interacted with him, never corresponded with him, you know, and thrilled about that.

• 1:08:33Bill Maher?

  Makes two of us.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, great. Nice, thank you, once again, thank you.

• 1:08:38Bill Maher?

  We'll start our own club.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  He had, he had deep pause in the scientific community.

• 1:08:44Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  And in media.

• 1:08:45Bill Maher?

  Every community.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  In every community. I'm very happy to know that, you know, no one at Stanford was taking money from him. That's great. Actually, I remember in 2017 when that case first broke, and I'm in touch with our development, our fundraising office all the time, and I said, "Please tell me that he's not funding labs." And they said, "No, he approached us, we gave him the cold shoulder." You know, they vet very carefully, which is what MIT didn't do. It's what Harvard didn't do, it's what Columbia didn't do. I mean, I consider him a colleague only because he's in the field of neuroscience, right? But Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular basis of olfaction. He shared it with Linda Buck in 2004, and he had to step down as the director of the Columbia Neuroscience Institute today.

• 1:09:22Bill Maher?

  You got this off YouTube?

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  No, I got this off every, yeah. So, you know.

• 1:09:28Bill Maher?

  Don't take me so seriously.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I'll try not to.

• 1:09:31Bill Maher?

  You're gonna have to learn to sit here and club random and take it.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  He was a pillar of our field, and to learn that he was, you know, buddy-buddy with Epstein for so many years.

• 1:09:41Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  And, you know, I think that it's, so here's one thing that's clear to me at the, I'm not a psychologist, but I'm a human being with some degree of experience, and what I know is that if you're in touch with your gut sense, if you're around a guy like Epstein, you should want to get out of there. So the fact that people with, with, now, I understand how some people were manipulated by him because they were too young or whatever to be able to navigate that, but why anyone, especially these supposed high IQ folks, would actively seek him out and trying to, you know, embed themselves in his world?

• 1:10:18Bill Maher?

  Well, I can answer that question.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  Omnipotent.

• 1:10:20Bill Maher?

  But before I do, who are you gonna tell me about?

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Richard Axel.

• 1:10:23Bill Maher?

  Is that who you were talking about?

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Oh, before.

• 1:10:25Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that wasn't what I was gonna tell you about.

• 1:10:27Bill Maher?

  Well, tell me.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Okay, so. I've looked at this thing very carefully now because you and I are in the business of media. So here's the question that I think has not been explored thoroughly enough. Why is it that in 2008 Epstein was convicted, then comes back to New York, I mean, he's still traveling all over the place, and people continue to engage with this guy? Like, people seek him out, people are taking funding from him. And yes, I got it, he wore the Harvard sweatshirt, which doesn't mean shit at all, by the way. Anyone can buy that anywhere.

• 1:10:57Bill Maher?

  I can tell you why.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:10:59Bill Maher?

  He's a pimp. I can't believe I have to explain this to everybody. He's a pimp, okay? There are people in this world, a lot of them, who are very achievement-oriented, shall we say, and successful in their field, which is either science or finance, who have zero clue how to get a female human into bed.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Oh, so you think these guys were just too dweebie to get laid?

• 1:11:26Bill Maher?

  Correct. He's a guy, like any pimp, who can just get, I don't know what it is, I don't possess it, I don't want to possess it, it's horrible if you do it, but he could get all these women and they, you look at the emails, it's in the emails.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  I mean, some of them are certifiably dweebie.

• 1:11:45Bill Maher?

  Well, they're saying things like, Richard Branson, "Hope I get to see you again, but, you know, only if you're gonna bring your harem."

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  So it's what he brought with him. I accept your hypothesis, but the, but, may I do a yes and?

• 1:11:58Bill Maher?

  Yes, please.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  Yes and?

• 1:12:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, or you can disagree.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I've talked about this before publicly, actually, a couple of years ago, before any of this popped, I was on Rogan and I, and we were talking about, you know, why scientists cozied up to Epstein, and he, he provided, either directly or by, you know, being the rabbi in certain introductions, enormous amounts of funding to certain places. Like, you know, I mean, they're in the files, right? I mean, I'm not trying to dodge a lawsuit here. I mean, the Columbia Neuroscience Institute was not funded by Epstein, but there's a lot of record of sort of joint meetings around that, and, you know, people in the leadership from Columbia meeting with Epstein and the people who eventually gave the money. So here's the part that, I don't Maybe I'm just too west coast to understand.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  But, but here's the thing. What's that? Well, it's just, you know, this is a very New York story when you really think about it. He had the biggest real estate footprint. He had all, you know, an island and all this shit like, honestly, like I grew up in the, in the South Bay. I'm impressed by people that have discovered things and done things and, you know, creatives and things like that. Like, I, I get it. I understand Manhattan, where your, your real estate is, how big the real estate is. But for people to, otherwise intelligent people to blow past their understanding of his crimes, because that's what they were, against minors, wait, hold on. This means something. I know, let's, let's just take the, the example of the person who's not there for the women, who's there for the money. Because a lot of people made a lot of money for their pet projects, their research projects, their technology projects.

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  I mean, the list of people that's in there, it doesn't look to me like they were all with him so they could, you know, get access to women. They wanted money. And I think what he, what he offered people was a sense of omnipotence. He has an island that's separate. It was like a level above the level that he offered other people. That turned out to be the level below everything else. And we're somehow shocked now that this happened. But I, I do think from 2010, this is, was emphasizing before, from 2010 or so, until he, he was eventually arrested again and was standing trial before he was killed. It's so obvious he was killed and didn't kill himself. He was trying to be a member of the scientific community. I mean, there are interviews in there, he had a staff, he hired people.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  The guy who he hired, you want something interesting? The guy who he hired to redo his web presence, to kind of bury his sex offender status, was a guy named Al Sekul. I know because he came from the science community. He wasn't a neuroscientist, kind of a failed scientist. He ended up marrying Ghislaine Maxwell's sister. Guess what happened to Al Sekul in 2015? Found at the bottom of a cliff in France. No one knows what happened. Wild, right? The woman that eventually came out against Prince Andrew, right? Uh, Virginia Giuffre.

• 1:14:44Bill Maher?

  Told herself.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  Said at some point, "If I die, it's not suicide." And then, quote-unquote, "Killed herself." There are a lot of people that off, apparently off themselves, or allegedly off themselves around this. And one of them was the guy who was in charge of his rebrand, okay? So, I don't, I completely agree with you. There were people that were...

• 1:15:03Bill Maher?

  But that's a different issue.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  It's a different issue.

• 1:15:05Bill Maher?

  Which I do not disagree with you.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  No, no, I think these are yes ands. These are yes ands.

• 1:15:08Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it very well could be. That these deaths are legitimately suspicious.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Bill Maher?

  Because a lot of people have a lot to hide from.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:18Bill Maher?

  But to the essential question, it's that no matter how big the big head is, there's some, you're right, some of the smartest people in the world, no matter how big the big head is, it's the little head that is going to... This is the oldest maxim about men in history. You're thinking with the wrong head.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  No, and...

• 1:15:39Bill Maher?

  And they, they will always do that.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  But to the point of over... But to the point of over...

• 1:15:44Bill Maher?

  Lizard brain.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  The part that makes no sense to me is, is over, overlooking whatever, but not to the point of overlooking the fact that he was a pedophile. It wasn't that he was, he was caught with a prostitute.

• 1:15:55Bill Maher?

  That's morals. You think they fucking care about morals?

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  I guess, I, I guess I, um...

• 1:15:59Bill Maher?

  First of all, they were able to, they were able to justify it. Because when he came out of that, what they said, what they put out there, was that she was like six months below the legal age.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  That's what was online, but that's not true.

• 1:16:14Bill Maher?

  Okay, but that's enough for them to believe in.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Which is exactly the point.

• 1:16:17Bill Maher?

  Enough for them to tell themselves, "I'm not really engaging with a true pedophile."

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  But how could they tell themselves that? I would argue it was his web presence, which was very orchestrated, right? To make him seem like a rich guy who had gotten into some trouble, came back to you. That's, they, he had people actively working to build that persona. I've spent some time with his files, and I'll tell you, if, you know, if his representation online had been closer to the reality, maybe I'm naive, but I like to think it would have been harder for him to pull so many people around him as layers of protection.

• 1:16:50Bill Maher?

  I would totally agree with that.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Okay, so we're in agreement?

• 1:16:52Bill Maher?

  Yeah, we're in agreement, but, you know, so...

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  But what about the, the other folks around him? Like that people, that visited his island that clearly do not fall into the category that you're talking about? I can't wrap my head around that.

• 1:17:03Bill Maher?

  Like who?

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, it'd be, I mean... I mean Clinton supposedly spent time with him.

• 1:17:09Bill Maher?

  You gotta be kidding.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Supposedly spent time with him, right?

• 1:17:11Bill Maher?

  Whatever, think of him as all.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  But he's not, but he's not, he's not a dweeb, right?

• 1:17:16Bill Maher?

  No, but.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Or, or let's say, um.

• 1:17:18Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  All right, as long as we're coming up with examples, I mean, I've got to be really careful here.

• 1:17:23Bill Maher?

  I just think.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  Um, some of the folks that, that sat down to dinners with him, right? Like, you couldn't pay me enough money to have a dinner with a guy where I had knowledge of, of that. Listen, I'm far from perfect. I'm not arguing that I'm perfect. I'm not trying to draw a distinction. And sure, I, I have my flaws.

• 1:17:40Bill Maher?

  No one says you're perfect.

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  Right. I certainly, I'm replete with flaws.

• 1:17:42Bill Maher?

  No one has been saying.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Actually, for years, for years, for years I said I'm replete with flaws.

• 1:17:46Bill Maher?

  I like you, but no one's saying you're.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  But the problem is, no one understood what replete meant.

• 1:17:49Bill Maher?

  No one's saying you're perfect.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  So I'm, I'm cer- but I just don't see a world where people who are otherwise intelligent don't have this issue with not being able to get laid, as you refer to it.

• 1:18:02Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Are sitting down with somebody who's a convicted criminal for something like that. I mean, pedophiles get killed in prison. I mean, Epstein killed himself, we know that.

• 1:18:10Bill Maher?

  I, I mean.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  But, but it's, it's, I mean, other criminals kill pedophiles.

• 1:18:15Bill Maher?

  Dude, I explained it to you.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:18:17Bill Maher?

  I mean, I mean, if you don't want to get it, you know.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  No, no, I get it. I guess, I get it. I guess maybe.

• 1:18:20Bill Maher?

  I'm telling you, that is exactly what it is.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:18:23Bill Maher?

  That is exactly.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  I trust your judgment.

• 1:18:25Bill Maher?

  I'm telling you.

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:18:26Bill Maher?

  The, the urge in men like that, these nerdy guys who are like, I created eight big companies and, you know, I, I, I made $300 million dollars last week and no girl cares.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  But some of these guys seem pretty happily married.

• 1:18:41Bill Maher?

  Except for the money.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Beautiful women, like some of the big tech giants are very happily.

• 1:18:44Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  You know, Zuck seems happily married. I mean, Bezos is now happily married. I mean, you know.

• 1:18:49Bill Maher?

  Well, Bezos is newly married and I agree.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Elon doesn't, it seems to have, you know, he's got a lot of baby momos.

• 1:18:54Bill Maher?

  Elon is on, on the emails, first he totally denied it and he's caught being a huge liar. That's who Elon is in the emails. He's caught being a huge liar who said to the world, "Oh yeah, he tried to get me on his island and I was not interested." And then the email says, "When can I get there? What night is the wildest party?" You didn't see that one?

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  I missed that one.

• 1:19:20Bill Maher?

  I guess we read different emails.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  I guess we read different.

• 1:19:23Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean that's.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  I was spending time trying to understand the sort of trajectory of this as it related to the academic and scientific community and his media presence.

• 1:19:31Bill Maher?

  But, you know, people like that who have access to do anything tend to do it. You know, my friend has this theory about shark soup. You know, you're not supposed to have it. It's endangered the sharks, but they make soup and it's not supposed to be really good, but you know what? I can get it and other people can't.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Wait, I thought you're peta. You're peta.

• 1:19:54Bill Maher?

  I am. I'm not supporting this. I'm just saying people, that's what people, they just, the point is that it's forbidden fruit. So I'll, so I, and I'm a special person, so I'll indulge in that. But that's, I'm saying, the essence of this. They think of themselves, and they are so special in this, many other ways, and yet in this fundamental human need. I mean, not to always be picking on Bill Gates, but obviously it was a sexless, passionless marriage at some point. Maybe not in the beginning. Most marriages become that. I know, horrible thing to say, but it's true.

• 1:20:34Bill Maher?

  And at that point, men are just living lives of quiet desperation.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  But men who cheat, and I'm not condoning cheating, or women who cheat, certainly not condoning cheating in either direction. They don't have to cheat with minors. Like, I mean, that's the part that makes no fucking sense.

• 1:20:53Bill Maher?

  I don't think these guys were cheating with minors. I think Epstein had the minors. I think he introduced them to women who were masseuses or.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Do you think he was blackmailing them and keeping files?

• 1:21:05Bill Maher?

  That too, probably, yes.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  There's this thing about the tiger with the camera eyes and all that shit.

• 1:21:10Bill Maher?

  Even if he didn't have it documented, they knew he knew.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  All right. Can I, can I, before we close, we have to close on this? We're gonna close on this?

• 1:21:21Bill Maher?

  No, I just wanna say, I know, there's a lot of, everybody wants you, because you bring a lot of ratings. So it meant a lot to me that you would come here and I really appreciate it.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm delighted. I'm always happy to talk to you.

• 1:21:31Bill Maher?

  There's a million things I was wanting to ask you about my own health and health, but you know, I.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  Well, I always learn from you and seriously, I, I really enjoy our conversations.

• 1:21:41Bill Maher?

  Oh, well, come back anytime.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  I would love to. I'll tell you one thing about cannabis before we wrap. It's likely being rescheduled or has been rescheduled to schedule three, which means, it's told this today, which means that now it can be explored more thoroughly for potential therapeutic uses.

• 1:21:58Bill Maher?

  I've been exploring it for 45 years and I'm telling you, it's fantastic. It doesn't, I mean, it's, do you think-

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  Unless someone has a predisposition to psychosis, in which case it can be very dangerous.

• 1:22:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, for fuck's sake, yes, unless, unless, unless. I mean, do you think smoking like a joint every few days is gonna really hurt me?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  You? No. The kid, the kid with a predisposition to schizophrenia? Yes.

• 1:22:22Bill Maher?

  Okay, well, okay, I'll keep it away from him.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Oh my.

• 1:22:34Bill Maher?

  That's a lot.

• 1:22:35Speaker 02

  All right. Well, thank you.

• 1:22:37Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  Appreciate you. Man, I got an education there.

• 1:22:40Bill Maher?

  I'm gonna-

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  Oh my.

• 1:22:42Bill Maher?

  I'm gonna loosen you up, Andrew. Over the years.