Jeff Dunham | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher sits down with Jeff Dunham, the world's most successful ventriloquist and one of the highest-grossing comedians of all time, for a conversation that goes well beyond comedy. From their Johnny Carson debuts to decades spent on the road, the two swap stories about success, audiences, and the strange realities of show business. Jeff shares what it's like performing the same act in places as different as Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv, while Bill weighs in on modern politics, free speech, and the cultural shifts that have transformed comedy. Along the way, they get into Gen Z's aversion to capital letters, the disappearance of common sense, and why comedians with props still don't get the credit they deserve. Support our Advertisers: Try ZipRecruiter for free at https://www.ziprecruiter.com/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

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• 0:45Bill 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.

• 1:26Bill Maher?

  And it's so great that we went back, because it's gonna get us a lot.

• 1:29Speaker 04

  Oh, come on, it's fun!

• 1:30Bill Maher?

  It's just another thing for rich people to do.

• 1:32Speaker 04

  No!

• 1:35Bill Maher?

  It's a lot of car guys in one industry.

• 1:37Speaker 04

  I think you just named a bunch of guys that don't have any real vices.

• 1:42Bill Maher?

  So interesting.

• 1:45Bill Maher?

  Jeff?

• 1:46Speaker 04

  Bill, how are you?

• 1:49Bill Maher?

  Good, how are you?

• 1:50Speaker 04

  I'm great, please, this is fascinating.

• 1:52Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 1:52Speaker 04

  Let me see you.

• 1:53Bill Maher?

  You look the same as ever. Really?

• 1:55Speaker 04

  The last time I saw you in person was at a comedy festival in, like, Montreal or something.

• 1:59Bill Maher?

  How long ago?

• 2:00Speaker 04

  That was like, I think before Politically Incorrect.

• 2:04Bill Maher?

  Before?

• 2:05Speaker 04

  I think it was, yeah.

• 2:06Bill Maher?

  What year did you do Carson first?

• 2:08Speaker 04

  The first one was 90.

• 2:09Bill Maher?

  90?

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:11Bill Maher?

  Mine was 82.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Is that, oh geez, is that right? That's great.

• 2:15Bill Maher?

  We're probably... Almost the same Carson age. How old were you when you did it?

• 2:21Speaker 04

  I don't know, I was.

• 2:22Bill Maher?

  I was 26.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  I was 28. Yeah, so, um, yeah, I just, I just did Walking with Kevin Nealon, by the way. So, we chatted about you a little bit.

• 2:32Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:33Bill Maher?

  All good, I hope.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:35Bill Maher?

  I've never known comedians to talk shit about each other.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  Never.

• 2:38Bill Maher?

  They're not feuters. And they're not petty, also.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  Ever, ever. And so, by the way, has it been revealed who's gonna present you with the award?

• 2:47Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Is Lino gonna do it?

• 2:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Oh, that's great. And congratulations.

• 2:51Bill Maher?

  Oh, thank you. You're talking about the Mark Twain Award.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:55Bill Maher?

  Believe me, it's turned into, I mean, I'm very honored, I mean, if this, if it wasn't a big one, I wouldn't have done it, you know? I don't need awards, because they never wanted to give me awards. So, I was all, if it was just anything less, I would have been like, oh, please, because it's a lot of work to, you know, you've got eight speakers and the Kennedy Center, and you know, it's a show. It's a Netflix special.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:18Bill Maher?

  You know, I'm not gonna put on a dull show. So, like, I'm doing my jobs, not that this is a job, because, you know, I love this. I mean, what a great break in the week when I get to talk to somebody who I never really knew, often, like you, but always knew of and was around.

• 3:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:38Bill Maher?

  You know, that, to me, is so fascinating, like, let's catch up on the last 40 years. I feel like, you know, there was that night in Montreal.

• 3:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, right, right.

• 3:46Bill Maher?

  And then, you know, you kinda ghosted me for two score.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  Well, I've always been kind of an outsider, anyway. I never, I mean, coming over here is amazing. I never make it over the door.

• 3:55Bill Maher?

  Our paths just wouldn't cross.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 3:57Bill Maher?

  First of all, we're both on the road all the time. The last place either one of us would be is in the same city, because we're probably playing the same theater.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 4:05Bill Maher?

  Although you probably play much bigger, you play stadiums? I mean, arenas?

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Arenas, yeah, but, um.

• 4:10Bill Maher?

  Like, what, how about 20,000?

• 4:12Speaker 04

  Nah, we average between 8 and 10 now, something like that. And it's, it's fun. Between 5, 8, 10, yeah.

• 4:18Bill Maher?

  You, that's one, another thing I love about doing this. I like to talk to successful people, and I know you have big numbers on, like, of all time, like, people come to see you. That, you were playing on a level above where I ever played. I never played 8,000, 10,000. The highest I got was like 5, 6,000.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a whole, it's a whole different thing. I don't know, everybody has their niche.

• 4:42Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, it is.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it is, it is amazing and it's.

• 4:46Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm not saying you're better than me.

• 4:49Bill Maher?

  Please, there's no accounting for taste. No, I mean, you're a great comic and people recognize that. But yes, do I think numbers, Dice Clay used to do 25,000. Do I think he's a better comic than me? I don't and I love him and he's funny.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:02Bill Maher?

  And he's a good actor too, by the way.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:05Bill Maher?

  But, you know, I don't have to.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  No.

• 5:08Bill Maher?

  Numbers sometime, numbers, they don't mean everything, but I always respect them. I always respect them.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Well, it's the same thing with McDonald's or Ruth Chris. You know what I mean? It's, McDonald's does billions, Ruth Chris does a few hundred steaks. And it's a completely different thing, so.

• 5:25Bill Maher?

  Ruth Chris Steakhouse? Is that what you're talking about?

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm talking about that steakhouse versus McDonald's burgers, you know what I mean? Just because somebody's doing.

• 5:34Bill Maher?

  I know that name, it always bothered me, I don't know why. It's a terrible sounding name. And it was like, you know, look, not like I haven't eaten a steak, I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm not a particularly fan of steak and, like, it just seemed like a place there would be a bunch of meathead. I could be wrong, you know, but.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  I was trying to find the fanciest steak place I can think of.

• 5:54Bill Maher?

  No, that's right, it is, I just have a, you just triggered me, I'm just a thing with Ruth Chris Steakhouse. I've always, always saw it on the road in Vegas and, like, I just, I don't know, I'm not trying to insult. I'm trying to feud, you know, with comics and their roots with Ruth Chris Steakhouse, these bastards. Where I never was and never treated me bad, but oh, I'm burning to get even with them. No, they could be the greatest, I'm sure they're very good because I know they're successful.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Right, oh, never, never mind.

• 6:25Bill Maher?

  Fucking bug me.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Okay, by the way, what is what here? What is that?

• 6:31Bill Maher?

  That's mine, get your own, no.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  What is it?

• 6:33Bill Maher?

  That's just sparkling water, I think.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  And this is the tequila.

• 6:39Bill Maher?

  That's tequila, have some.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  I have a tiny bit, that's great.

• 6:42Bill Maher?

  Are you a redneck, where are you from?

• 6:45Speaker 04

  I grew up in Texas, yeah.

• 6:46Bill Maher?

  Texas, yeah, I knew it, something, but...

• 6:49Speaker 04

  I don't know what that means.

• 6:51Bill Maher?

  I know, you don't really look like you're from Texas.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Well, I never really had an accent, my parents didn't have much of an accent, so I never really, you know, but yeah, I grew up there and...

• 7:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  Whatever. Can I ask you a question before we talk about me?

• 7:05Bill Maher?

  Before, we're halfway through.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  I don't know what the word reasonable actually means, but I've just been fascinated watching you in the last couple, three years, and it just seems like it's shifted a little bit, where, what is the definite...

• 7:23Bill Maher?

  Well, it's more than three, three or four years, it's longer than that, but there definitely was a shift. I mean, this is the debate I'm always having with my critics, who would like to say I've changed, and I have a million ways of saying it to them, but basically, I didn't change, I didn't forget what it is to be, I didn't become a conservative, you forgot what it was to be a liberal. And we don't have to go through all the ways that the left, the far left, has gone off the deep end, but it is what got Trump elected and so forth. So, did I change? I didn't, and I wrote a whole book, or like took stuff from my show mostly, but weaved it together into a book that basically tried to prove that point, "Look at my history, I'm pretty much always the same."

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Right. But I will, I will put the reasonable in there because I feel like you listen a little more now.

• 8:13Bill Maher?

  I, well, that could be true, I mean, look, we all, who are on TV a lot, I mean, how many specials have you done?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Thirteen.

• 8:23Bill Maher?

  What?

• 8:24Speaker 04

  There's thirteen.

• 8:24Bill Maher?

  Thirteen, thirteen hours.

• 8:26Speaker 04

  But they're all big ones.

• 8:27Bill Maher?

  Thirteen hours.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  No, it was more than that, they're, yeah, so when I tape a special, I do, easily do almost two hours.

• 8:34Bill Maher?

  That's a lot, wow.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  But then, but then we edit it down to an hour, so that's a lot of material.

• 8:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you take out the shit, huh?

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, sure, you know, of course, but you, you know, you take it down to the fine points, and, and people don't understand when you, it's so much different doing stand-up in person, and then you try and put it on television, the timing changes.

• 8:54Bill Maher?

  But that's a lot of material.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 8:57Bill Maher?

  I mean, I've done thirteen HBO specials.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:00Bill Maher?

  But, you know, over, from nineteen eighty-nine...

• 9:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, it's crazy.

• 9:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, and do you, let me ask you this. Does somebody come to you and tell you a joke and you go, I've heard that somewhere before? And then you realize it was a big part of your act years ago?

• 9:17Bill Maher?

  Also, I go through, I'm sort of a meticulous chronicler of, I'm just an anal person, you know, as far as like taking notes and stuff, so. I'm the opposite of Belzer, who never wrote down one word.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Is that right?

• 9:31Bill Maher?

  Ever.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 9:32Bill Maher?

  You know, and it showed sometimes, you know. Not me. So like, I will go through like a set list from 1982, and I'll just see like the little bullet point I had for it. And I'm like, what does, you know, wet painting mean?

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:48Bill Maher?

  You know, that was some bit I had.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  I know, and then I've done that same thing, and I'll go, and I'll try and regurgitate it in my mind, and go, it killed. I could at least.

• 9:57Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Right, and I'd like to do it again just one time, and you can't remember it. Yep, and those notes made absolute perfect sense when you made them.

• 10:07Bill Maher?

  I look through them, and I realize, I mean, they're voluminous. These, the files I have of how much I put pen to paper and wrote. Some of it is just raw stuff, writing, and I was never the kind of comic who purposely wrote. That was the Seinfeldian way. You get up in the morning, you get the yellow pad, because they learned it from Dr. Cosby. Whatever happened to him?

• 10:30Speaker 04

  Right, right, I've heard of him.

• 10:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but that was his thing, you just purposely, I said, I can't, and I know, I could never do that. What my method was to get high.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Oh, perfect.

• 10:40Bill Maher?

  You know, with my friends, and the funny shit would just come out, and just try to capture what comes out naturally.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  And would you, like, if you were gonna, when you were getting ready for a special, did you go to a club and work on it?

• 10:51Bill Maher?

  Oh, for me, I mean, mine are, we never edit any of them, because I have so practiced it that when we shoot it, I know it's the right, basically an hour, so that's an hour or two or something, but, or 58 minutes, you can't tell, it changes with crowds, how much, you know, Friday, they can be more tired, they don't laugh as much.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:15Bill Maher?

  That can be five minute difference in a show between Saturday, when they're rested, and they have the energy to actually laugh more. That's our business.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:25Bill Maher?

  So, you know, but I have, I mean, the last one I did, this, we taped at the beginning of December twenty-four in Chicago. And, you know, I stopped after doing that, stopped the road, which is like where you still are. And I still was, you know, if you're like a few, a decade younger than me or something.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:45Bill Maher?

  That's probably, I totally know exactly where you are.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  You're not seventy-four.

• 11:50Bill Maher?

  No, I'm seventy.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:52Bill Maher?

  You're sixty-four.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  I was sixty-four, yeah.

• 11:53Bill Maher?

  All right, so we only six years.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Closer. You got out here soon.

• 11:56Bill Maher?

  You aged well.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks.

• 11:59Bill Maher?

  Some people at our age, they are unrecognizable.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  Well, especially, I don't mean to be mean, but do you look at the, at the women that were in your high school class and go, huh, what happened?

• 12:09Bill Maher?

  No, where would I see them? Oh, Facebook, right. See, the whole world is, it's funny that you say that, and most of the world knows what that means because they're on Facebook and I'm.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  You don't do any of that stuff?

• 12:19Bill Maher?

  No.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:20Bill Maher?

  Why the fuck would I want to see my old high school people? I mean, it's only got to be depressing.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Well, I, I gotta tell you, I, I don't do either. I, I don't, I kept up with technology for many, many years. And in fact, in the early nineties, you know, when I was doing my own tapes, I learned to edit digitally when that was all brand new. Taught myself all that, but that was the end of my technological, you know, I know how to work the phone, but when it comes to social media, I don't mess with it.

• 12:49Bill Maher?

  Do you keep up with like everybody you ever met in your life?

• 12:51Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 12:52Bill Maher?

  But isn't that, but you're on Facebook.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, and I.

• 12:56Bill Maher?

  It's not an accusation, do you?

• 12:57Speaker 04

  I am, I am, but I don't do it. I have other people that do it. Every once in a while, after a show.

• 13:02Bill Maher?

  That's me too, I'm sure.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:04Bill Maher?

  I don't know, I have people who know people who know the answer to that. That's how removed I am.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:08Bill Maher?

  I'll have to ask those people to ask the people who actually do shit.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:12Bill Maher?

  No, I'm sure we do.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  I'll post a picture now and then because I know how to do that. But, and I'll say things and then they'll put it up there for me, but I don't know how to, and Facebook is now, you know, it's all yesterday. Now it's all Instagram and TikTok and all that stuff.

• 13:24Bill Maher?

  I, I think it's awesome to just embrace the generation you're in. Not on everything, of course, but. Look, there is a movement among the younger generation now to go back to the way we had it. They get it that the phone fucked up their heads.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:41Bill Maher?

  They know they're fucked up.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 13:43Bill Maher?

  That's one thing about them. They're ignorant, but they're not unsavvy about like real life, I R L.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:50Bill Maher?

  And they know how fucking crazy it is. They know this.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:54Bill Maher?

  They can't seem to stop themselves.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  So you don't, you don't have a device that you look on Instagram?

• 13:58Bill Maher?

  I have an iPhone.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, but are you, do you like at night go, I'm bored, I'm gonna look at this? I'm gonna ask the trick question. What do you do when you're not doing this? You're not playing golf.

• 14:08Bill Maher?

  I'm doing this, but we're not filming it. I'm getting high and drinking. What else was it? No, I wish I could do this every day.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Seriously, now I'm really curious. When you have free time, what are you gonna do?

• 14:20Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, up until a year ago, a year and a half ago, I guess now, really having a stand-up act and being on the road, not quite as much as you, I'm sure, but all year long, regularly, like every other weekend.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:37Bill Maher?

  I would do it very, I had to be here to do the show, and also I don't wanna be away that much. It was perfect. I would fly into one city, I'd get up Saturday, fly to one city, do the show, stay overnight, fly to the second city.

• 14:50Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:51Bill Maher?

  And then after that city, fly home.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Private.

• 14:53Bill Maher?

  That night. Of course, you have to do it that way.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, the other way, you can't do it.

• 14:57Bill Maher?

  You can't do it that way. And you couldn't even get to these gigs in time.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:01Bill Maher?

  I have to be here all week, so.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  And it's theaters, right?

• 15:04Bill Maher?

  Theaters. And, you know, so like two cities, over thirty hours, home in my bed Sunday night, after I leave Saturday morning. That's not the worst.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 15:13Bill Maher?

  It was great. But even that, you know, it just became the travel, the hotels. It's wear and tear. It's not great for your health.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 15:23Bill Maher?

  But, you know, you have to make, if you wanna have an act, people say, well, just do it sometime. No, you have to keep sharp.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Your pigeon arm is crazy. And you know, during the pandemic, I had never, this is, sounds crazy, but I started the ventriloquism thing when I was in the third grade. And I realized that since the fourth grade.

• 15:40Bill Maher?

  Those are puppets.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  What?

• 15:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, those are puppets.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that's.

• 15:44Bill Maher?

  I'm sorry.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  And what's your name in your bathtub is great. I felt right at home.

• 15:48Bill Maher?

  Whitney.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Whitney in the bathtub. Everybody said, be careful, you might scare. And I walked in, I went, this is like my house. Still big meal. I got this. So I made her talk, by the way. She's very happy.

• 15:59Bill Maher?

  What's this?

• 16:00Speaker 04

  In the bathtub. I made her talk.

• 16:01Bill Maher?

  Oh. Now that would be funny. If I could, if she went, if she didn't weigh a ton, I'd drag her out here and put her on my lap.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Then I can make her talk that way.

• 16:12Bill Maher?

  She weighs a ton.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  What was I talking about? I can't remember.

• 16:14Bill Maher?

  Talking about Whitney Houston in the bath. Oh, oh, no. I don't know. What were you talking about?

• 16:18Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 16:18Bill Maher?

  I'm the one who's smoking pot. You don't smoke pot?

• 16:21Speaker 04

  No.

• 16:21Bill Maher?

  Don't, don't say it like you're ashamed. Some people like it, some people don't.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  I've never, ever in my life tried it. I'm one of those guys.

• 16:29Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 16:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I don't. If I don't want people to judge me for doing it, I, I, everything is like people's personality. I always say this about politics. Everything is political these days, which is kind of good for me. That's what I've always been talking about. So I'm not complaining.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:48Bill Maher?

  But every, but politics really comes out of people's personalities. It comes from like what your parents told you.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 16:55Bill Maher?

  How they brought you up, where you were brought up. You know, I mean, conservative. It's just, it's for, it's a person, I feel like it's a personality trait before it becomes a political party.

• 17:09Speaker 04

  I, I also think, I equate it to sports. It's like you, most people love whatever sports it was that their dad loved. At least for guys.

• 17:16Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God, of course.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Okay, so, and, and I think the political parties are the same way. And I, and I look at it and I think, I'm in show business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would think that I would tend to lean left. And I tend to lean right, and I, that's just the beliefs that my father and my parents, uh, in where I grew up. I remember what I was gonna say.

• 17:35Bill Maher?

  Doesn't mean you're in the Klan.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 17:36Bill Maher?

  You know, this is my problem with the left. It's like anything that's not super with us on the far, far end of it, and then you're a conservative. Do you get, do you get this? Like, you're a conservative. I did a rant here one night about Landman never getting any love.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 17:51Bill Maher?

  From the media or the awards. It's an awesome show. But it's like seen as conservative. Why? Because it's not, you know, taking place in a yurt. You know, there's not a transsexual sh- sharp, sherpa in the show, so it's a.

• 18:05Speaker 04

  I've been to a yurt, but I've never used the word yurt in a conversation, so.

• 18:09Bill Maher?

  I think it'd be a great name for a show. Yurt!

• 18:12Speaker 04

  Have you been to an actual yurt?

• 18:14Bill Maher?

  His name is Yurt and he also lives in a yurt. That's my idea for the show.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  Have you ever been to a yurt?

• 18:19Bill Maher?

  No, it's like in Mongolia.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Oh, no, they haven't. There's like one, I have to ask my wife. Up in, I don't remember where it was. It was in Utah or something. In the dead of winter, you get there, they drive, they take you in a, you're drawn by a horse, like Santa Claus in a sleigh. And you show up there and it's this big yurt and you're, it's, and they have an outhouse. And it's fantastic, so.

• 18:40Bill Maher?

  So what's the difference, for the layman, not like, I don't know, between a yurt and a teepee, would you say?

• 18:48Speaker 04

  I have no freaking clue.

• 18:50Bill Maher?

  Well, a yurt is.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Now what are you doing? What's that?

• 18:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm roofing you, Jeff. I've always wanted to fuck you from that first night in Montreal. It was so romantic. People were speaking French. You were younger, you look awesome.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  No, wait a second. I want to know what you're doing. What is it?

• 19:06Bill Maher?

  That's, that's.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  What's jing?

• 19:09Bill Maher?

  Jing. It gives me superhuman strength.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Does it? All right. I noticed you.

• 19:14Bill Maher?

  It's why I can lift this glass.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  All right, fine. Very nice.

• 19:18Bill Maher?

  No, a yurt, yeah, it's like a teepee, but.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  But bigger?

• 19:25Bill Maher?

  That's what I'm asking.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 19:26Bill Maher?

  Like, if I'm in the market for a yurt slash teepee, if I go to Amazon, it's, you know.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  I don't know. I have no idea. All I know is that there was a chef there. It was a four-star yurt.

• 19:37Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was amazing.

• 19:39Bill Maher?

  A four, why do you say four-star?

• 19:41Speaker 04

  Because it was, it was incredible. The food was there. They had a chef there, a famous chef. And you're in the middle of nowhere. There's snow everywhere. It's 10 degrees outside. And you're sitting in a, in a coat and, but it was fantastic.

• 19:54Bill Maher?

  Americans can be hypocritical about anything. They really can. Just like, I dare you. Yurts, oh yeah, I can fuck that up. I can look like an asshole in a yurt, absolutely. Peace rallies, oh please. I'll be marching for Hamas, how about that for fucking up? They can fuck up anything, it's hysterical.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Okay, so we're talking about the left and the right. So I have always said that I truly believe that most of this world is good people. And my example, when I was doing one of my specials in 2013, I was in Abu Dhabi.

• 20:28Bill Maher?

  No, that's Yogi Bear.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  That's Yogi Bear.

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• 21:16Speaker 04

  So, doing a show there for 4,000 Muslims. And all in the front rows were the guys in the white dish stash, and the women in the black, and the few rows back. And I did the same show with Ahmed the Dead Terrorist, and that was their favorite character. Two nights later, I'm in the middle of-

• 21:29Bill Maher?

  It's mine. It's my favorite too.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  Oh, well, thanks. Well, two nights later, I'm in the middle of Tel Aviv, Israel, doing the exact same show for 4,000 Jewish people. Didn't change a word of the show. And they all loved it equally the same. So, my big thing is, I truly feel this world is filled with good people that all want the same things. We want a house, we want a job, we want security, we want healthcare for our kids and ourselves and all that. And it takes a handful of idiots to fuck it up for everybody else.

• 21:56Bill Maher?

  You know what you should do? And I know I'm getting a reputation with the staff. I'm always telling people career advice, but I think I really would have been a good manager.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:05Bill Maher?

  But, you should do that as a documentary special. The same show, in both those cities.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 22:15Bill Maher?

  And-

• 22:17Bill Maher?

  Put stuff in the middle, little interviews here and there.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:21Bill Maher?

  You can handle that with people from the region and stuff. But show the same material.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  The same people.

• 22:27Bill Maher?

  From that character, working in both those cities. I think that would be very powerful. A lot of people would watch it. I would definitely watch that.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, that'd be, well, one of our biggest YouTube videos is showing me there in front of them. But, uh, yeah.

• 22:40Bill Maher?

  I got a great location scout crew. They're right now in the Strait of Hormuz. That's the one. We may not be able to get through, but that's why you get a fixer. You get somebody over there who speaks the language, they can, you know, a little rattling of the cups, as they say. A little bribe here, a little, you know, goes a long way.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  That's actually a great idea.

• 22:59Bill Maher?

  It actually is a great idea.

• 23:01Speaker 04

  Interesting, yeah. Um, you're right, people would watch it. Because people watch that thinking I'm gonna be killed. And, uh, it was great. But I will tell you, before the show started, my manager comes to me and he goes, we got it. Because I was a little bit nervous about being there. I'm like, well, what am I doing here? You know, we've been doing Norway and Sweden and the UK and all that, and I knew it was all great. And even Paris, France was great. They lived in Paris, France. But then they said Abu Dhabi, and I'm like, are you kidding?

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  But they loved it, loved it.

• 23:27Bill Maher?

  Okay, I'm gonna now put it in perspective, however. It is great, and you should get a Medal of Honor for the balls to do it. Balls means a lot to me, and you have them, I'm, I don't mean that in a personal way.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  All right, thanks. But there was Montreal, anyway.

• 23:42Bill Maher?

  That's right, now we've created this whole thing where we have a backstory where we fucked in Montreal. It's ridiculous. But, uh, oh shit, what was I gonna say?

• 23:52Speaker 04

  You're talking about the special, about doing the special.

• 23:56Bill Maher?

  Yes, but it was something so important to me. You were, uh, doing this special, we should do it as a special. Oh, I'm gonna put it in perspective, which is, it's great that you can do those jokes with that character.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 24:11Bill Maher?

  But. You don't really have freedom until you could do those jokes. And the character was a Mohammed puppet dog.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no, no.

• 24:21Bill Maher?

  Exactly. No, no, no, no, no.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  No.

• 24:24Bill Maher?

  But just, just know where the parameters are.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 24:27Bill Maher?

  That's where we are.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:29Bill Maher?

  We are not in, we are not in free speech country.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 24:32Bill Maher?

  It is not, I mean, I know America to the kids is the worst country that ever was because they know nothing about us or any other country. But it doesn't matter. Che Guevara looks great on a T-shirt. That's what they know. Che Guevara looks great on a T-shirt. Why you try to fill my head with facts?

• 24:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 24:49Bill Maher?

  Uh, but the truth is that we do have, that is, there are levels of freedom. And, uh, you know, that there's just, you know, and people have different opinions about that and we, we don't have to go through them here, but, you know.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  So in your current act, is, is this what you're talking about?

• 25:07Bill Maher?

  Well, there is no current act because I did stop touring.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  That was it? Really?

• 25:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah, I didn't do anything in 2025. No, I, I feel like, um, like I said, you, you either like fully have an act going all the time.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:23Bill Maher?

  I mean, I was always working on it. It was always a third job, um, a job I liked, more like, I always said more like a hobby. I always said it was more like building a ship inside a bottle that people do. Because it was always this tinkering with my act. I loved the process of doing my act and, oh, okay, that worked great. I, it would work better if I moved it here.

• 25:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 25:43Bill Maher?

  You know, I used to wear, bring on stage a kind of a poor man's teleprompter, bullet points, so. And I could edit that in my computer and just every time I did it, it got better and better and sharper and cleaner and fun. That, I love that process.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, and people don't understand that every word and every pause and every breath matters.

• 26:01Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 26:02Bill Maher?

  Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  But what I was gonna tell you was, uh, I forgot, is, is during the pandemic, I, since the fourth grade, I had never gone more than two weeks without doing a show. I always, was always working, always, always, always. Only job I ever had.

• 26:14Bill Maher?

  I got withdrawn too.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, so I thought, I'm gonna do a special during the pandemic. So I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. This entire act, never having tried one joke in front of anybody. But you talk about the pitching arm and having to do it. I felt like I know what I'm doing here. I think I know where I'm gonna get laughs. And sure enough, after five months of not being on stage, we shot it and then somewhere out there, outside, everybody with four tops, you had to be with your own family. Everybody's wearing masks. We had like, I don't know, a couple hundred people.

• 26:47Bill Maher?

  You, you didn't need rehearsal. You didn't need a run through. I never understood these, most of my friends, the comics, that, you know, they go to the comedy clubs and work out the shit before they like, like, I never did that. Once I was at the comedy clubs, and I didn't need to. I would been already doing this for twenty fucking years or whatever. I know what's gonna work and what's not gonna work.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 27:09Bill Maher?

  You know, maybe not as well, or maybe better, or maybe it would go there or go there. But, I mean, rarely, without ever having to try it out, did I do a joke, you know, in Des Moines or Cincinnati that I'd never done before and it just got nothing.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 27:26Bill Maher?

  No, I couldn't done that after two years in the business, or five, or maybe even ten. But after twenty, I don't know how you can't.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Right. And, and, and your act, I never saw the, the live act in a theater. What, what, was it the subject matter that we'd all expect it to be? Was it political stuff? Was it?

• 27:44Bill Maher?

  Well, then I guess you've never seen the stuff on tape either. But it, I would say it was a mixture. I would say my view is that everything is sort of political. So there was nothing that was trivial, I put it that way. But I talked about my sex life. I talked about, I mean, I loved the last.

• 27:59Speaker 04

  No, I've seen the bits. I've seen the bits and they're great. But I mean, it's like, like trivial stuff. So, yeah, you and Seinfeld.

• 28:05Bill Maher?

  But not trivial. Like, even if I talked about my sex life, it always was like, be, with the idea of some sort of issue in the day that was going on, like incels. You know, I mean, that wasn't a thing when I was a kid. In-cells, you know, involuntary celibate, that were these guys who like have made a virtue out of being unable to get laid. I was an incel also, I just didn't, we didn't have a name for it and we didn't want to fucking brag about it and put it on the internet. I tried to keep it a secret, you know, I can't get laid. But these guys think it's like a thing to like, we're incels and you know, we demand pussy, I mean, that's really, this is what they're... So like, am I talking about my personal life?

• 28:48Bill Maher?

  Yes, I'm also talking about something that's really going on in this country. I mean, men being lost is a big problem in this country.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  I don't understand it, and I hear about like kids these days, the 16-year-old boys that don't, they're scared to drive and they don't want to get their driver's license. What, what happened? What are you talking about? And they're not dating as much?

• 29:10Bill Maher?

  You know what I read today?

• 29:11Speaker 04

  What?

• 29:11Bill Maher?

  This is gonna blow your boomer mind.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Okay, sorry. And that's gonna be, that's gonna be the clip I use. This is gonna blow your boomer mind, I'm keeping that. Okay.

• 29:25Bill Maher?

  Steady yourself, because it's gonna, you're gonna want to punch something.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:29Bill Maher?

  I read that the reason why Gen Z doesn't like capital letters? They're too intense.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  No.

• 29:38Bill Maher?

  I read, that, that's, I believe it. I mean, why don't they? You know, they, they're just, they're different. The brains have evolved, I feel like, because, a lot of because of the phone.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:52Bill Maher?

  Gen Z is the first post-phone generation.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:55Bill Maher?

  That's why they matter. That's why we talk about them so much.

• 29:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:59Bill Maher?

  That's why they're so different.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:01Bill Maher?

  Is that they are the beginning of what Ray Kurzweil years ago called the singularity, which is, he, he said in 2028 is when man and machine would kind of, sort of meld.

• 30:16Bill Maher?

  Inexorably, and that's what they're talking about now with AI.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  Right. And it is amazing and.

• 30:23Bill Maher?

  Isn't that your tour called AI?

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, Art of Intelligence, right.

• 30:26Bill Maher?

  Look at me like I'm a real host. You know Jeff, I don't know about you, but if I was in.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Wait, before we get to that, I'm serious.

• 30:35Bill Maher?

  Oh my god.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  So I've always blamed all these problems on Steve Jobs.

• 30:40Bill Maher?

  What are you on, ginseng? Look at this, every day you fucking Toledo.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  Wait, I don't want to lose this thought.

• 30:46Bill Maher?

  Penn State College, Detroit.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  I'm at Penn State College?

• 30:49Bill Maher?

  Two nights, the Fox Theatre, see I played the Fox Theatre in Detroit, awesome. Two nights, but of course, you, Mr. Big Shot, two nights. Las Vegas, Planet Hollywood on April 26th. Oh, look at the Davenport, Iowa, unpleasant, Thackerville, I remember Thackerville.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  Thackerville's great.

• 31:06Bill Maher?

  Only comedians know the name Thackerville. Only comedians and geologists who, you know, tornado chasers.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  I'm big in tornado alley.

• 31:16Bill Maher?

  Danville, Cherokee, Chalkdale, Hollywood, Florida, oh yeah, Los Angeles, I heard of it.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  What?

• 31:22Bill Maher?

  The County Fair.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Wait, where am I?

• 31:24Bill Maher?

  Okay, the County Fair, you play county fairs?

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Oh sure, but they're big, they're huge, you're out on a racetrack.

• 31:31Bill Maher?

  And it's outside, right?

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 31:33Bill Maher?

  I don't see me, I don't see me ever having done well at a county fair. Not, I didn't do it, I wasn't asked, it's all like, oh, they snubbed me. I don't remember anybody ever saying, get Bill Maher for the county fair.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  So who's your audience now? Like if you were still doing stand, I had the county fair, eating corn dogs.

• 31:52Bill Maher?

  I have the best audience in the world, are you kidding? They're so loyal and they're so brilliant because they think like me.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you've done stuff.

• 32:01Bill Maher?

  They're the people, I've lost, I mean, you know, you have balls to go to Saudi Arabia. I have balls too, and then I'm not afraid to lose audience, and I have.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:11Bill Maher?

  Like the super woke?

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:12Bill Maher?

  They left a while ago. When I wouldn't go along with their nonsense.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:17Bill Maher?

  Who's left? Great people.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  And they're good people.

• 32:20Bill Maher?

  People who don't like get upset about truth. They don't, the studio audience, I used to fight with them all the time. Now, they don't boo, they get it. It's.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Well, see, that's what I've always loved about you is that, you know, so many times I'll be watching and you'll piss me off. And then a week later, I'll watch and I'll go, oh, okay. And that's why I don't like the word reasonable.

• 32:41Bill Maher?

  What pisses you off?

• 32:41Speaker 04

  I don't know. I mean.

• 32:43Bill Maher?

  Like when I make fun of Jesus?

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I.

• 32:45Bill Maher?

  Like religion? I mean, you're religious, right?

• 32:47Speaker 04

  I was brought up in a Christian home. And my, my big thing is, it's same with Degrassi, what's his last name? Uh, Degrassi.

• 32:54Bill Maher?

  Paul, Neil deGrasse Tyson?

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, that guy. So, and, and I've talked about this in the last few days to, to a few people because I feel like you guys have, both of you have backed off a little bit. And I, I think there's.

• 33:08Bill Maher?

  Well, he's a scientist. We're, we're working in a different.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  I, I get it. But the Charlie Kirk interview with, uh, you and him was really interesting.

• 33:17Bill Maher?

  Me with him here?

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:18Bill Maher?

  I loved it.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Because.

• 33:20Bill Maher?

  And by the way, they're doing a documentary. And they asked if I would be in it. They said, the other people they said are in it already, all, you know, hard right wingers. I said, yes, I'm giving them five minutes after my taping Friday night because, and I told them, don't expect me to be just saying, uh, you know, hey, geography about Charlie. I liked him as a person. I'm glad I talked to him. I do not think he was a monster. And if you look, if you look at.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 33:53Bill Maher?

  Uh-oh.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Yep, go ahead.

• 33:53Bill Maher?

  Heart attack?

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, sorry. I didn't turn this thing on. Okay, okay, okay.

• 33:57Bill Maher?

  Uh, if you look at his statements, I've read the full statements, of course, because everybody is only interested in getting points for their team. They mischaracterize them. But even when I read the full statement, which were accurately characterized, I still disagreed with them.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:17Bill Maher?

  But it wasn't what they present, it wasn't what they presented. Again, it's always in the middle. It wasn't as bad as they said.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:24Bill Maher?

  But I still disagree.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Sure. But that's what I loved about the interview is that, is that you sat there and considered things and listened to him, let him talk, and it was a really great discussion.

• 34:35Bill Maher?

  My little motto here is everybody's a monster till you talk to them.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:40Bill Maher?

  Marjorie Taylor Greene came on Real Time. Suddenly, everybody loves Marjorie Taylor Greene.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:45Bill Maher?

  Lauren Boebert, you know, these people who come on Real Time. And it's like, Anna Paulina Luna, love her.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:53Bill Maher?

  You know, we had a great time. Talked to her after the show. I was like, you know, if I'd only, if I'd only known about you what I read, I would have thought, you know, crazy.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 35:03Bill Maher?

  You're not crazy. Are we gonna agree on everything? No, but not crazy. And certainly, you know, talkable too. That is my single biggest issue with the left. They won't talk to people, including me.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:18Bill Maher?

  Talk, like, really? I'm, I'm so, so out there. I mean, we voted for the same person.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:24Bill Maher?

  How far out there could I be?

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:26Bill Maher?

  But they just won't. And the Republicans, they definitely are better at like, well, we'll talk.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  Right. Well, that's what I do love in having, sitting down like, okay, bring up another thing. Marc Maron, he and I couldn't be further apart comedically, politically, blah, blah, blah.

• 35:41Bill Maher?

  You're not gay.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 35:44Bill Maher?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  But we sat down like this and had a really respectful conversation. And both of us surprised each other. And we walked away with a, with a, with mutual respect. But we, we respected our differences too.

• 35:59Bill Maher?

  And we'll have some of that too.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:02Bill Maher?

  You know, I feel like ours is, I feel like, I mean, look, I like Marc, although he's taken terrible, unfair, stupid shots at me. But that's okay. But I feel like his simpatica was he was probably more on an emotional level. Whereas I think you and I, or, or that's what you were trying to bridge. Whereas you and I are kind of like the same kind of boomer guy.

• 36:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:27Bill Maher?

  You know, no nonsense.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:29Bill Maher?

  None of that, you know, there's, there's no microaggressions in our life.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:34Bill Maher?

  You know, shit like that. Not that microaggressions aren't a real thing. If you're black, that's true. No, it is true.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, you know, a microaggression is somebody just looks at you shitty.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:46Bill Maher?

  And, yeah, when, I know, just as a human, when someone looks at me shitty, I feel shitty about it and I don't like them.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:55Bill Maher?

  So, you know, there is that. But uh.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  Well, what I was gonna say is I, I, I, back to the Steve Jobs thing, I, the cell phone.

• 37:02Bill Maher?

  Same Jobs.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I said, I think, I, I said it a second ago, that I think most of this is Steve Jobs' fault. I, I say that jokingly because of the phone, yeah. I, I, in, in nature, everyone, everyone was not meant to have that loud of a voice. Or that effective of a voice. I, I think we were meant to have, uh, everybody should have a voice, but to be able to say something and the entire world hear and see it instantly, I don't think is healthy.

• 37:27Bill Maher?

  In nature, we were meant to do what we're doing. Looking another human being in the eye, in person. There are things that we are reading about each other. I mean, this is what happened in Montreal.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  I know, it was very exciting.

• 37:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no, there are things that you, you don't even realize consciously that you're reading about another human. When you're talking to them in person, you know, it's just their face, it just matters. It just, it's just hugely different.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:57Bill Maher?

  And they don't seem to want to, they, I mean, anyone who's like, okay with living life on a screen. They don't seem to care to acknowledge that very key distinction, that we have not evolved past that. And maybe we shouldn't. It's not making us better.

• 38:14Speaker 04

  I think it's fascinating that Trump, you know, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, and then you have these leaders go in a room and three hours later, they come out and they've made a deal. It's like the art of the deal behind a door and he knows how to talk to people. And there's something there, you meet the guy in person.

• 38:30Bill Maher?

  That's why I, that's why I had that dinner with them that they all hated.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 38:34Bill Maher?

  But, but.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  I bet you walked out of there, and I've, I've heard what you've said, and I've seen what you've said. And, and I bet you walked out of there going, you've, you've said it a million times, that this is not the guy that you thought it was gonna be. Is that right?

• 38:46Bill Maher?

  No, that, I, I said, a crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV lives in the White House.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 38:54Bill Maher?

  And why he chooses to do that, or whether that is the real, I just put it in the lap of the audience. You decide, I'm just the reporter. I went into the mine, this is what I saw down there, and you make up it what you will. But of course, we don't live in that world.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  Is he a master manipulator? Or is his skin just that thin?

• 39:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, it's totally that thin. I mean, he's really that thin. But not in all contexts. That was so interesting. Was I challenged him on any number of things.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:21Bill Maher?

  From the trivial, like, why you don't have a dog.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:24Bill Maher?

  To the Iran deal.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:26Bill Maher?

  And he never once, never once, bristled, like, cut me off.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:32Bill Maher?

  Delivered a monologue, stopped looking me in the eye.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:36Bill Maher?

  You know. Right. I wrote, by the way, I wrote a great joke about the AI. Because I want to ask you about why you called it that. But it happened to be my editorial at the end of the show this week is about AI. And I've never really been as aroused about a subject. Because I do think it's gonna kill all of us.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:53Bill Maher?

  And, you know, I had done one earlier about, and now everybody's writing about it. How AI is just such an ass kisser. I mean, everything, you know. Hey, you know, can I? Great question, Bill. You know, everything is just always, and I'm saying it's seducing us.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:09Bill Maher?

  It's gonna fucking kill us. And it's seducing us, including all the people who say, Donald Trump, he can't do anything without a bunch of ass kissers.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:19Bill Maher?

  Just like you.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 40:21Bill Maher?

  Great question, Ashley.

• 40:25Speaker 04

  So, so I'm curious, is your AI a man or a woman?

• 40:29Bill Maher?

  I don't have it.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  Oh, you don't talk to it?

• 40:30Bill Maher?

  I don't want it in my phone. I don't want it knowing everything about me. You already lost the battle. You just sold your humanity for a bunch of fucking bar tricks that it does. If it had cured cancer by now, I'd be, maybe I'll make that trade off. But it hasn't. It can make SpongeBob look like it's getting blown by Stephen Hawking. Great.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  But, but you gotta say that it is unbelievably useful in many cases.

• 40:55Bill Maher?

  You know what?

• 40:56Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 40:57Bill Maher?

  I'm sure it is. I seem to be getting along just fine.

• 41:01Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 41:02Bill Maher?

  Like, it wasn't, like, I didn't have Siri and Google. But now, I need something even better than them. You know, we get so hooked on convenience that we are willing to sell such bigger things for the slightest little improvements in convenience. Seinfeld used to have a great bit about the, you know, the thing on board games that, you know, you hit the thing and the dice go up in a bubble.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:29Bill Maher?

  And he would mimic throwing dice and go, gotta be an easier way.

• 41:36Speaker 04

  That's really funny.

• 41:37Bill Maher?

  That agree.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's really funny. No, I get it. I just enjoy the toy aspect of it all. That's all. I just, I love the technology.

• 41:44Bill Maher?

  Well, you're a car guy, right?

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, a car guy. And, um...

• 41:47Bill Maher?

  What is it with comics? I mean, Letterman's a car guy, and Leno's a car guy, and you...

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Seinfeld.

• 41:54Bill Maher?

  Seinfeld, of course.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. I don't know what it is, but you know what it... You just named...

• 41:59Bill Maher?

  It's a lot of car guys in one industry.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Well, I think you just named a bunch of guys that don't have any real vices.

• 42:07Bill Maher?

  So interesting. So interesting. You're right.

• 42:11Speaker 04

  And so maybe this is the thing.

• 42:14Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  It's expensive, it takes time, it takes money, but...

• 42:17Bill Maher?

  That's why I hate cars.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  You can't smoke it.

• 42:21Bill Maher?

  I don't hate them, but they do nothing for me.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  You can't smoke a car.

• 42:24Bill Maher?

  I get a new car like every three or four years, and every time I get it, I'm like, okay, this is gonna be different this time. I'm gonna actually learn all the things about this car. Because, you know, you have to go through the guidebook and learn everything is, and I'm like... And it never happens.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  So what is your...

• 42:40Bill Maher?

  And then two years pass, and I go, ah, fuck it, I'm almost to the next car.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  So what do you drive?

• 42:45Bill Maher?

  I drive a electric, and boy, was that a good decision. Mercedes. I used to have the Tesla.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:54Bill Maher?

  I did not switch because of Elon's politics. I can separate them. I switched because Mercedes made a, like, much better version of the Tesla, and it charged twice as much.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  So you're being serious. It was a good decision? You like it? You love it?

• 43:08Bill Maher?

  I don't love cars, no. I fucking hate it, actually.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:11Bill Maher?

  I fucking hate it that the robots are too much in control. Um, they, uh, something else I'm putting in the thing for Friday night about. I do not like the idea that the robots are in control and these people who say, you know, huh, the future's gonna be great, the robots will be our slaves doing everything. Bullshit. I already feel like I'm in competition with them. I'm not their slave master.

• 43:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:37Bill Maher?

  My car tells me when we can go.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:41Bill Maher?

  I was stopped once. I was... Stopped. I didn't want to be stopped. I was in the middle of, like, very heavy traffic.

• 43:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:48Bill Maher?

  And apparently my passenger side door was ajar.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Right. It wouldn't let you go.

• 43:54Bill Maher?

  And though, you know that feeling when everyone behind you is honking?

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:58Bill Maher?

  And you're like, and it's not like a big thing lit up and said, "Close the door."

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:04Bill Maher?

  I guess there was somewhere, like a little, whatever it was, it was typical millennial bullshit.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:09Bill Maher?

  Like, hide it from the boomers. What's really going on on this grid?

• 44:13Speaker 04

  Well, back when we were in college, it would say, "Your right door is open." Remember that?

• 44:17Bill Maher?

  When I first car, I would just pull over because there was no sign at all. I would just, if my door swung open, I'd pull over. That's what I mean. It tells you.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:27Bill Maher?

  I don't like that.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  I got it. I understand.

• 44:30Bill Maher?

  We're human.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  I get it. I do wonder, though, when Elon comes out with the robots that work in the factories, I have a warehouse with merchandise, and I wonder if I'm gonna buy that thing and let it be stacking boxes.

• 44:46Bill Maher?

  Of course you will. You're a greedy fuck.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  No, no. It's just fun.

• 44:50Bill Maher?

  What are you worth? Like, hundreds of millions. I bet you, I've seen, like, I think I read once that only Seinfeld and Chris Rock made more money on the road.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  This is good tequila. I don't know what it is. Thank you.

• 45:04Bill Maher?

  Is that what it is? I thought it was the ketamine. I feel fantastic. I don't know what it is.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  I still wanna know what Jing is, so anyway.

• 45:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm sorry. It's just a way to make sparkling water into diet soda without any of the chemicals that are in diet soda.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Oh, all right.

• 45:21Bill Maher?

  I feel like I keep.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  My wife made you cookies for today.

• 45:25Bill Maher?

  Your wife made me cookies?

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Yes, she did. And she's a vegan.

• 45:28Bill Maher?

  She know about Montreal?

• 45:31Speaker 04

  She does now.

• 45:31Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  That was before we met.

• 45:34Bill Maher?

  So what was that gig at Montreal? Now I'm curious.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  It was a comedy festival. I've only been to like two.

• 45:40Bill Maher?

  And you say the 80s?

• 45:42Speaker 04

  No, let's see, hold on a second.

• 45:43Bill Maher?

  Was it pre-Tonight Show?

• 45:45Speaker 04

  It could have been, yeah, it could have been late 80s, early 90s. I don't know. But you were doing a thing and I was.

• 45:49Bill Maher?

  But how many people were on the bill? Was it a big extravaganza?

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Man, that's tough. You know, no, I swear. I go back to, I go back to theaters now. Like, I shot my first special in, what are you laughing at?

• 46:02Bill Maher?

  Man, that's tough.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  I don't remember because.

• 46:05Bill Maher?

  No, but it is a great way to express what our age is. Because I get this asked all the time. You know, when I'm talking to younger people and it's I often am. You know, I'm a mentor. That's what I live for, that to help the young people.

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 46:17Bill Maher?

  But yes, it's like they they ask questions about things in 1984. And you're like, that's tough. You know, like, I mean, you know, you're asking a lot, like disk full. Like, there is a memory, but it's just no. I mean, it is amazing the way your mind, not you consciously, but your mind decide. Your mind is your mom going through your old Playboys or your old soldiers, toy soldiers and just baseball cards and just throwing shit away.

• 46:46Speaker 04

  Getting stuff.

• 46:46Bill Maher?

  And sometimes you want to say to your mind, Mom, I wanted that.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:51Bill Maher?

  And you threw it away.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Well, the worst part is when you forget what it is that you were trying to remember.

• 46:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Bill Maher?

  I do it live here every week. I mean, I'm doing it right now.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

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• 48:31Speaker 02

  Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 48:34Speaker 04

  But the thing in Montreal, I do not remember because those gigs that I felt were big gigs back then, I will go back to that same facility and be like, what? Because my first special, I thought it was 2006 at a theater. And if you'd have asked me two days ago, I would have told you it was 1,200 people. And we went back because we were going to shoot another special. I said, let's go back to that place, full circle. And they came back to me and they said, it's like 300 seats. I'm like, it's smaller than a comedy club?

• 49:07Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  So the thing that we did in Montreal-

• 49:09Bill Maher?

  Like going back to your old room.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Huh?

• 49:11Bill Maher?

  Like going back to your old room where you grew up.

• 49:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:14Bill Maher?

  And you feel big.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  Right, and no more. So the thing that we did in Montreal could have been, it could have been 300 or 400 seats, or it could have been 1,000.

• 49:23Bill Maher?

  Well, I only obsess on it because Montreal was the site of such a traumatic moment in my life.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  What happened?

• 49:31Bill Maher?

  I was booked there as a headliner before I was ready to be a headliner.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Oh, so what year was that?

• 49:39Bill Maher?

  1980.

• 49:40Speaker 04

  Okay, wow, yeah, it was long before I moved out to LA.

• 49:43Bill Maher?

  I'd only been doing comedy a year and a half.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  Oh, wow!

• 49:46Bill Maher?

  And I was not ready to be a headliner, and proved it that night. And it was just, you know, the only laugh I got was mispronouncing the name of the local premier, Renee Levesque, who was running to separate Quebec. It was a big issue at the time, whether Quebec would become its own country. And there was just something about bombing, like, sometimes I'd go to the Comedy Store. Like after dinner, we're just like, what are we gonna do? I don't want to go home. Oh, you know what's great? Because I don't drink anymore, really, I mean, just here. And I see these people on stage, I mean, it's either really good or painfully bad.

• 50:31Bill Maher?

  Either way, it's not uninteresting.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 50:34Bill Maher?

  And when I see the painfully bad, I mean, I've seen some things that were just, and I'm like, wow. I know that exact feeling. Maybe I didn't lash out that badly, but I definitely made things worse, as this comic is doing.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 50:50Bill Maher?

  And, but I did it. I couldn't do it now, but-

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Well, that's why I'm with the Melrose Improv. And that's why I don't, I don't hang out with comics. I'm like kind of my own lone wolf. I've never been part of that, that, you know. You know, you did the Tonight Show with Carson, then you went back to the improv and you watched it and everybody, yay.

• 51:10Bill Maher?

  Were people snobby because you work with puppets?

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 51:12Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 51:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. It was like.

• 51:15Bill Maher?

  It really should be another kind of designation for the woke to champion, if you will. You know, I mean.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  Right, of course.

• 51:25Bill Maher?

  Like in Walk Hard, you never see Walk Hard?

• 51:27Speaker 04

  No, I never did.

• 51:28Bill Maher?

  Never saw Walk Hard?

• 51:29Speaker 04

  No, should I?

• 51:29Bill Maher?

  What are you, a communist? It's the best. It's so funny. Judd Apatow, send up a music, The Beatles, oh, it's amazing.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  All right.

• 51:38Bill Maher?

  And, but one of them is, there's a Dylan character and his champ, he champions.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  Oh, no, that's great.

• 51:47Bill Maher?

  He sings a folks for the little people. You have to, just even, just look at that clip. It's just too much.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  All right. But yeah, so the improv is anyway, because it was, it was, you know. And there's a stigma against anybody who's not a straight monologist. You walk up on stage with anything, a carrot top, you know, he, people.

• 52:06Bill Maher?

  Love him.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, but now.

• 52:08Bill Maher?

  We're good friends.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  You go see his show and it is, in Vegas, it is laugh out loud funny from beginning to end.

• 52:14Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  It's brilliant.

• 52:15Bill Maher?

  Just because it's a puppet. A puppet is a device.

• 52:20Speaker 04

  Well, see, what I like, what I do, the reason I love it, is because I can point and counterpoint. And I can bring up a subject and a topic. And if the character says something that's not quite right, I can do the opposite side of it. It's a conversation.

• 52:32Bill Maher?

  What it is, you know, I have the same jealousy of you that I have of my very, very dear friend Seth MacFarlane. Because, like, what I do is I say as me what I say. And so I get a lot more shit than they do.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 52:47Bill Maher?

  Because when you're a cartoon. It's amazing. If I said the things that they do as a cartoon.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:55Bill Maher?

  Cripples.

• 52:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:56Bill Maher?

  And race, I would be castigated to no end. And you can hide behind the puppets. No, I'm not. I don't mean that as a knock. It's just, it's just a device that allows you this distance, that gives you a latitude with the audience.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 53:12Bill Maher?

  That I do not enjoy because it is me as me. They know I'm not a character.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 53:19Bill Maher?

  And so you are just much more out front.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  And Gutfeld covers it by, says something horrible. And he goes, a racist would say. He always covers it up that way, which is like really, to me, really brilliant. He'll say something horrible and then he'll back it up with that. A misogynist would say.

• 53:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 04

  So, you know, but you're right. And it is, but it is fun like that because I can say outrageous things and then, and then correct him. So you're right, I do, I can get away with a lot of stuff. And but I like doing that because people walk away from my show going, I really don't know what he thinks. I'm not sure what his beliefs are because he did both sides.

• 53:55Bill Maher?

  Right. And that's, I mean, that's from the very beginning, that is always been and should always be the classic paradigm of the ventriloquist is, you know,

• 54:09Bill Maher?

  just remonstrating the puppet. Yeah, these are nice people. For God's sakes, what are you saying? You're so out of line. I am the voice of, like, don't insult the nice people like that. They're not, you know.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  That's every ventriloquist movie.

• 54:25Bill Maher?

  It has to, it has to have that scent.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 54:28Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  So who, when you, how long have you done this show?

• 54:33Bill Maher?

  We started this in 2022.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Who is the absolute best where you went, I think this is going to be a dud. This is, it would turn out to be a fabulous interview. Where you're like, gotta be.

• 54:44Bill Maher?

  It's not an interview.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  Well, whatever, a discussion. Who turned into the best discussion that you like found?

• 54:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God. I mean, even if I had an answer to that, I wouldn't.

• 54:55Speaker 04

  Then, OK, then which one has gotten the most watches that people have loved?

• 54:59Bill Maher?

  I don't know those things either. I, my deal with this was, I already have a job.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:04Bill Maher?

  All I'm gonna do is walk over here from next door where I live.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:10Bill Maher?

  At exactly the time the show starts and leave right after it ends. And that is the level of my commitment.

• 55:16Speaker 04

  Can I say?

• 55:17Bill Maher?

  And I love it that way.

• 55:18Speaker 04

  Can I say the size of this?

• 55:19Bill Maher?

  I barely know who the guest is.

• 55:20Speaker 04

  Right. I used to love what Carson would say, that he'd walk offstage and he'd get home and somebody'd say, "How was the show?" And he wouldn't even, couldn't even remember who it was he interviewed.

• 55:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, that, certainly when you do an everyday show.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:32Bill Maher?

  But even now, if you said, "Who were the guests on Real Time Friday?", like, I would, "Okay, I could think I could conjure it up, but two weeks ago?", no. You know, I mean, that's the, the nature of this kind of business is, uh, it's a little like a sports team, like, you know, next game. You, you, as soon as the one game is over, you're thinking about the next game.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  So what do you think is gonna happen to the midterms?

• 55:56Bill Maher?

  Bill Belichick, we're on to Cincinnati.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  What's gonna happen to the midterms?

• 56:01Bill Maher?

  Uh, the Democrats are going, cannot help but win this, but even they can't blow it.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  Really?

• 56:08Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah. Trump is, is historically unpopular. He's even unpopular, getting unpopular, more so in his own party, his own base.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:20Bill Maher?

  They did not like the war. They think that was, uh, it's funny, me and the base on opposite sides, I did support the idea of taking out the Iranian regime. Now that it didn't quite work, there was no uprising, I'm not for like, making this indefinite. But he's already pivoted to blockading, which is better than, "We're gonna bomb you and end your civilization." I mean, once it got to that point.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:45Bill Maher?

  He lost me.

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Right. See, that's the point. He says, he says a few of those things where you go, "What are you doing?"

• 56:52Bill Maher?

  A few. More than a few, but, okay.

• 56:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:57Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, look, I said during the campaign before he won, "I'm not gonna pre-hate anything." Since he got into office, I've made a list of what I hate and what I don't hate. It's not like there's nothing on the what I don't hate list. There are lots of things I like.

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:13Bill Maher?

  Or think, you know, he has a knack for like identifying stuff that has been festering. Even something like, you know, college campuses.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:23Bill Maher?

  Yes, there has been an insanity festering on college campuses. No amount of voodoo can make me think, I didn't see that.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:31Bill Maher?

  And the border, you know, he closed it, but he fucked it up by having, sicking ice on the American public in a, in a way that was unconstitutional and way too cruel.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:42Bill Maher?

  You know, so, I don't know, but the Iran war, I thought it's worth a shot. Take this, take a shot, Mav, take the shot. And we did, and I think we missed our timing. They should have done it in January when there were actual uprisings in the streets. When they were in the streets. When they were in the streets, the Iranian regime killed them all.

• 58:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:06Bill Maher?

  Now who's left to rise up?

• 58:08Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:08Bill Maher?

  You know, so, the thing has not been conducted well, but it's still, I'm so glad that he climbed down from, we're gonna bomb your civilization to death.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  I get it.

• 58:21Bill Maher?

  To, we're gonna blockade your blockade. Oh, you think you're the only one to go blockade? Okay, I can live with blockades. Not, not we're gonna destroy your civilization.

• 58:32Speaker 04

  Is there nobody around him going?

• 58:36Bill Maher?

  Me, that's why it was so good that I had dinner with him. That's what I'm always trying to tell the crazy left wingers. You need more people like me talking to him, not less.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:45Bill Maher?

  You're always complaining, you're surrounded by ass kissers.

• 58:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, get me in there.

• 58:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:51Bill Maher?

  Get other people like that. He wants to talk to people, I think.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:55Bill Maher?

  I think he's bored sometimes with, with the ass kissers. And I don't think he respects anyone who does kiss his ass completely, I don't.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 59:02Bill Maher?

  I've known people like that. I.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  Well, does it drive you crazy when, when there's people around you that you know that they're scared to be around you? Or you've had employees that are scared to be around you and will say whatever you want? That has to drive you crazy, right?

• 59:17Bill Maher?

  You talking about me?

• 59:18Speaker 04

  You, yes.

• 59:20Bill Maher?

  It's an interesting topic. There are, it's nice, especially when you're 70, when people give you what I believe is the proper respect a person deserves just for reaching that age.

• 59:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 59:36Bill Maher?

  There is a certain level, and everyone used to understand this in America. It's a very ageist society, many do not. But just for getting there, you should get a little something. Your ass kissed, no, that's not what I'm saying. Just a kind of baseline respect. You got there, you must have done something right, especially if you got there and you're not like, you know, a mess.

• 1:00:00Speaker 04

  Right, but there are 70-year-old idiots. That used to be, that used to be 30-year-old idiots.

• 1:00:05Bill Maher?

  Of course, there's no fool like an old fool.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Okay, but what I'm asking is, because this is what drives me crazy sometimes. The people that work for me, if somebody is scared to death of me and won't say what they're thinking, and won't give me their opinion, it drives me nuts. I want somebody who will tell me what they're thinking and...

• 1:00:25Bill Maher?

  Totally.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  Okay, so you've had those people around.

• 1:00:28Bill Maher?

  So to finish the thought, yes. It's nice that people give you the respect you deserve, but when people work for you, it is, it is very hard for it not to tip into something that I bet you 90% of the people out there would love, or if they enjoy it, do love, I don't love. Which is a little bit of, I don't know if you really feel that way, or you're just saying that because I'm the boss.

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:00:56Bill Maher?

  I don't like that.

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:00:58Bill Maher?

  Because I don't need my ass kissed. I'm very happy with who I am. My ego does not need fluffing. I think it's the appropriate size. It's not small, it's not out of control. It's healthy, that, we need that. But I do not, I, I value the truth. Not, and that doesn't also mean on the other side to be a contrarian. Just don't say the opposite because that's interesting.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:24Bill Maher?

  Just tell me the actual truth. That's what I'm always trying to get from people.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:28Bill Maher?

  Just the actual truth. It's why I love talking to the young people that I mentor. You know, people in their twenties. Because they don't know what the right answer is supposed to be.

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:42Bill Maher?

  They don't know about Rachel Maddow or Fox News.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:46Bill Maher?

  They don't know about what Tucker Carlson's saying. They don't, they just know what strikes them.

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  How are your, how are your conversations with Bill O'Reilly?

• 1:01:57Bill Maher?

  We don't really have any.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  Well, you've been.

• 1:02:00Bill Maher?

  I mean, I've had him on the show.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:02Bill Maher?

  He occasionally emails me and I always.

• 1:02:08Bill Maher?

  To hear what Bill has to say and sometimes it's complimentary and it's nice and I email back. I would say we have a cordial, good relationship. We always kind of did. I mean, there was always, we're cousins, you know. When, when Henry Louis Gates did my genealogy on, you know, that show where they do your. Has he done you?

• 1:02:27Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 1:02:28Bill Maher?

  Oh, you should get it.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  I'm adopted, so I don't know anything.

• 1:02:31Bill Maher?

  That would be even better.

• 1:02:33Speaker 04

  I don't know anything.

• 1:02:34Bill Maher?

  Be like a CSI.

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  I could have married my sister.

• 1:02:38Bill Maher?

  But Bill O'Reilly, which, natural Mar, very Irish.

• 1:02:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:42Bill Maher?

  You know, O'Reilly, I mean, so way back in Ireland, I don't know, you know, we're all cousins at some.

• 1:02:47Speaker 04

  So you really are?

• 1:02:48Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 1:02:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, we all are to a degree.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:02:52Bill Maher?

  Even you and I are.

• 1:02:53Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:02:53Bill Maher?

  I mean, we all come from Lucy.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Yep, yep.

• 1:02:59Bill Maher?

  Not the one with Ethel, although she was almost as old. I mean, the one.

• 1:03:03Speaker 04

  Wait, where was Lucy found? Where in Africa?

• 1:03:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah, East Africa, all of them's in East Africa. That's where man developed. Lucy is about 2.5 million years old, about four foot tall, female, and.

• 1:03:18Bill Maher?

  Stood pretty upright, you know. So 2.5 million years ago, we had an ancestor who was four foot tall and stood upright and, you know, was well on her way. I say, you go, girl, you know. I mean, I know that's not what is in the Bible. I hope I haven't.

• 1:03:38Speaker 04

  Again, yeah, I'm a Christian and grew up in a Christian home. At the same time, I'm, you know, I have those beliefs and I appreciate when people respect people that can have faith. And that's what I was saying about you and DeGrasse.

• 1:03:59Bill Maher?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 1:04:00Speaker 04

  Tyson, yeah. Is that I've been interested in, like, I downloaded one of his books the other day and it just seemed like he tempered that a little bit. And, you know, I don't know the truth. Nobody knows the truth. Nobody knows it yet.

• 1:04:13Bill Maher?

  I can't speak for him. I can only speak for me when I say I'm always with Richard Dawkins, one of the most famous atheists, when he says, on a scale of one to seven, seven being utter certainty that there is no God, I'm a 6.9.

• 1:04:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:26Bill Maher?

  That's what I, I mean, like, who knows where it all began? I mean, I've been following the.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  And see, something like that, I'm fine with that. That's, you're right to believe that. But, and that's what drives me crazy about the left, as you talked about before, that they shove it down and if you don't believe the way we do, then you're an idiot.

• 1:04:43Bill Maher?

  So, no, I'm not saying that, but Bill O'Reilly, speaking of Bill O'Reilly, once, I don't think this was in a debate with me, but again, it's stop to remember the past. It could have been, but I think it's just something he said when he was contesting people who don't have faith or believe in God. And he said, the moon, how'd it get there? How'd it get there? Which I thought was like the low end of your kind of argument if you're gonna make the biggest, first of all, we know how the moon got there.

• 1:05:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:12Bill Maher?

  We don't know questions beyond that. The moon, I can answer that one.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:15Bill Maher?

  It's a, it's a piece of a planet that maybe ours that broke off

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:21Bill Maher?

  and got smoothed out over the billions of years, you know, by the universe.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:26Bill Maher?

  Whatever. Okay. Okay, uh, and it's so great that we went back, cause hmm, it's gonna get us a lot, but.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  Oh, come on, it's fun.

• 1:05:35Bill Maher?

  It is fun.

• 1:05:35Speaker 04

  It's great.

• 1:05:36Bill Maher?

  It's just another thing for rich people to do.

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:05:40Bill Maher?

  But, okay.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  We have to do that.

• 1:05:41Bill Maher?

  But the question, you know, the moon, how did it get there? We can't answer that. What we can't answer is, why is there anything?

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:48Bill Maher?

  Why didn't anything ever exist, you know? And if there was no thing with a beginning, would that be something? Uh, it's just, it's just ridiculous. Your brain is never gonna comprehend this.

• 1:06:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:06:01Bill Maher?

  So, some of us just let that go.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:06:03Bill Maher?

  And we think that people who make up stories about why things are be, you know, be, are just making up stories to make them feel better. But if it does make you feel better, I'm not gonna, you know, I, I, I believe in good health. If that makes you feel healthy, if putting your head on the pillow at night, knowing if I die in my sleep, I'll go to a better place.

• 1:06:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:06:27Bill Maher?

  I kinda wish I had that.

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Well, see, that's a reasonable, all those things you just said is very reasonable. And that's why I appreciate sitting here with you now and talking to you. And 25 years ago, ah.

• 1:06:41Bill Maher?

  25 years ago was all about the sex, you know that.

• 1:06:45Speaker 04

  Well, there were those interviews about you, yeah.

• 1:06:50Bill Maher?

  So.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  And what are you getting ready to smoke?

• 1:06:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, a clove cigarette?

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:56Bill Maher?

  No, I'm kidding, it's pot.

• 1:06:59Speaker 04

  Somebody just laughed, okay.

• 1:07:01Bill Maher?

  Probably my dealer.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Cause they knew.

• 1:07:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm just gonna have a taste.

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  I got it.

• 1:07:08Bill Maher?

  I'm trying to smoke less and eat more.

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  So, I don't know anything, so is this stuff.

• 1:07:12Bill Maher?

  I'm a health king.

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  Is this, is this stuff really more potent now than it used to be?

• 1:07:17Bill Maher?

  I'm really the wrong guy to ask that, because I've smoked steadily over the years. So like, my resistance level is probably like, uh, Dennis Quaid in that movie where he was the quarterback and he's in the hospital and like, you gotta pump up the volume, doc, I'm a football player, you know?

• 1:07:35Bill Maher?

  Uh, I had a dentist once who told me he had Ozzy Osbourne in the chair once and like, you know, Ozzy was like, please, doc, I'm Ozzy Osbourne. You know, I get it that you think this amount of gas.

• 1:07:46Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:07:47Bill Maher?

  Gets people high, but.

• 1:07:48Speaker 04

  Is that true?

• 1:07:48Bill Maher?

  That's cute. I mean, that's, it's a story I remember. Could I have dreamt it?

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  Never.

• 1:07:54Bill Maher?

  Could you have told it to me at a party?

• 1:07:56Speaker 04

  In Montreal.

• 1:07:57Bill Maher?

  It's possible, but that was my recollection of the dentist telling me that. But, you know, the Beatles got acid from their dentist. That's how they got high for the first time. Did you know that?

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  No, I didn't know that.

• 1:08:10Bill Maher?

  Oh, you never heard that story about?

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  Is that what happened?

• 1:08:12Bill Maher?

  Such a boomer, yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  Such a boomer story and I don't know it, is that what you're about to say?

• 1:08:16Bill Maher?

  Well, the Beatles, you know.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:17Bill Maher?

  I mean, yeah, that their dentist like put it in their coffee and they didn't even know it. They, for some reason, there were, there was like this dentist of the stars, you know. We have, same thing that goes on now, there's a lot.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Bill Maher?

  Celebrities love doctors.

• 1:08:32Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:32Bill Maher?

  And very often, by the way, doctors kill them.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:36Bill Maher?

  Elvis, Dr. Nick.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:08:38Bill Maher?

  Michael Jackson.

• 1:08:39Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:08:39Bill Maher?

  Dr. Conrad Murray.

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:08:41Bill Maher?

  My personal internist now.

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  Oh, perfect.

• 1:08:45Bill Maher?

  But, um, oh, what were we talking about?

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  It's tough.

• 1:08:53Bill Maher?

  Doctors and, oh, doctors kill stars.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:57Bill Maher?

  But stars definitely like to have doctors around them. And you, why, why wouldn't you not?

• 1:09:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:04Bill Maher?

  But I know there was a bigger point to it, but.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  We don't care.

• 1:09:07Bill Maher?

  We don't care.

• 1:09:08Speaker 04

  Where'd the tequila go? That one?

• 1:09:09Bill Maher?

  Right there.

• 1:09:10Speaker 04

  That one, right, that's that one.

• 1:09:11Bill Maher?

  Just, just pour me a slight amount, like, like, imagine I'm a drunk who's really trying to, uh, that's enough.

• 1:09:18Speaker 04

  That's enough.

• 1:09:19Bill Maher?

  Really trying to, you know.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  A little bit like this.

• 1:09:21Bill Maher?

  Clean up his act.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 1:09:23Bill Maher?

  And get off the street.

• 1:09:24Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 1:09:25Bill Maher?

  Uh, but.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  But my wife did make you cookies. And she's vegan.

• 1:09:29Bill Maher?

  How long have you been married?

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  Uh, Audrey and I have been married for almost 14 years. We have twin boys that are 10 years old.

• 1:09:35Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:09:35Speaker 04

  And I also have.

• 1:09:36Bill Maher?

  And this is your second wife?

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I have three daughters from first marriage.

• 1:09:40Bill Maher?

  When was your first marriage?

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  When?

• 1:09:42Bill Maher?

  When, yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  94.

• 1:09:44Bill Maher?

  94, and then how?

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Wait, is that right?

• 1:09:46Bill Maher?

  94 to when?

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, 94, uh, to 2007.

• 1:09:51Bill Maher?

  You know, Bob Newhart. Did you love Bob Newhart?

• 1:09:54Speaker 04

  Love Bob Newhart.

• 1:09:55Bill Maher?

  He used to do a bit on the, I had some dude on the Tonight Show, he's like, you know, he said, "At some point, you, the people out here in L.A., they start measuring everything by their wives." Like, "Dodger Stadium, last time I was here, I was married to Helen."

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  That's true. That's absolutely true. Yep. So anyway, I have, I have three grandsons and my son-

• 1:10:18Bill Maher?

  Grandsons?

• 1:10:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, three grandsons.

• 1:10:20Bill Maher?

  Holy fuck, really?

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  And, and they're, the oldest one is almost the same age as my twin boys. So the Christmas cards are very confusing.

• 1:10:29Bill Maher?

  Why do you think the first one didn't take?

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  Oh. She took, only it wasn't for me.

• 1:10:40Speaker 04

  That's why.

• 1:10:42Bill Maher?

  We'll be right back.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Bill Maher?

  Sorry, it kicks in from years ago on ABC.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  I know, it's so great. Did Carson really have on his tombstone, "I'll be right back"?

• 1:10:54Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:10:54Speaker 04

  He didn't?

• 1:10:55Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:10:55Speaker 04

  Are you sure?

• 1:10:56Bill Maher?

  I'm pretty sure.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Aw, man.

• 1:10:58Bill Maher?

  That's a, that's a wife's tip.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  But he said that, he said that he was gonna have put on it.

• 1:11:02Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:11:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think.

• 1:11:06Bill Maher?

  I don't think so.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Oh, well, it'd been great.

• 1:11:08Bill Maher?

  I mean, I think he-

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  Do you still have family?

• 1:11:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I have a sister.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah?

• 1:11:16Bill Maher?

  That's it.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  That's it?

• 1:11:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:17Speaker 04

  And what does she do?

• 1:11:19Bill Maher?

  Um, she's retired. I mean, I'm 70, she's four years older than me.

• 1:11:22Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:11:23Bill Maher?

  Uh, she was a teacher.

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 1:11:24Bill Maher?

  So, um-

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  Do you have nieces and nephews?

• 1:11:26Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 1:11:27Bill Maher?

  No, neither one of us got married.

• 1:11:29Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:11:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Uh, the line ends here.

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  What? All right.

• 1:11:33Bill Maher?

  Many people have said to me, you know, "Bill, don't you know your line, it's gonna end, die off"? I'm like, "What am I, fucking Prince Harry? What do I give a fuck if my line?" And also, I mean, I just think celebrities, having kids, I, I, it would be a nepo baby.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:48Bill Maher?

  I don't want a nepo baby, and it's unavoidable.

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:51Bill Maher?

  Like, even if they're not in your business, it's, you know, it's just, it's almost inevitable. It's, it's, it's, and why wouldn't you? I mean, today's kids of celebrities, it's almost like they were- You're gonna do it.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  Well, I've told all my kids, don't count on anything coming from me. I'm spending every bit of it. My, my father told me that. He said, there will be no inheritance. So, good luck. Keep working. And I, that's what I've told them all.

• 1:12:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you're a celebrity. If they do something, anything in the public eye, it's much more interesting for the media to cover them than somebody who is not, who does not have a parent is a celebrity. Because that's the first thing. It's like, oh, we can put this bold name in. They know your name. So like, you know.

• 1:12:38Speaker 04

  But they gotta work for it.

• 1:12:39Bill Maher?

  Chloe Dunham.

• 1:12:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Bill Maher?

  I'm just making that.

• 1:12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's okay. That's a terrible name.

• 1:12:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, okay. So that's good. I didn't want it to be the real kids. Whatever your kids name.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  Chloe Dunham.

• 1:12:50Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  It was like.

• 1:12:51Bill Maher?

  Okay. This is a kid, maybe you're gonna still have Chloe Dunham. Daughter of Jeff Dunham, the famous, you know. Okay. The, the, made more money on the road than Chris Rock and Gary Seinfeld. And she is now, you know, has a new record contract with Gigantic Records.

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:13:10Bill Maher?

  You know, like, you know, she's got 2 million followers. I mean, a lot of the people who we know are household names. I mean, obviously, the granddaddy of them, the Kardashians. But on down, I mean, yes, half of them come from the Disney Channel.

• 1:13:25Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:13:26Bill Maher?

  And they seem to have talent like Zendaya and, you know, they, they at least have training under Disney.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:13:32Bill Maher?

  And then half of them just seem to be influencers and nepo babies and people who are kind of grandfathered into the whole scheme of show business.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  And what, what did you, what did your dad do?

• 1:13:46Bill Maher?

  My dad was in radio news.

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  Where?

• 1:13:49Bill Maher?

  Back in New York.

• 1:13:49Speaker 04

  And what did he do?

• 1:13:51Bill Maher?

  Like, he read the news. Like, back in the day when, 60s, 70s, when every radio station, I mean, this is before, I mean, there was FM, but it was mostly AM. And every radio station would have news at the top of the hour.

• 1:14:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Bill Maher?

  Headline, Moscow. Prime Minister Kennedy Howell of the. United Kingdom has, you know.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Do you have tapes of him?

• 1:14:17Bill Maher?

  Yes, I have some tapes of him.

• 1:14:18Speaker 04

  And is it a radio voice or?

• 1:14:20Bill Maher?

  Yes, totally, absolutely. Oh, yes.

• 1:14:23Speaker 04

  That's so great.

• 1:14:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's what it, oh, absolutely.

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  Right. And I remember when I first started getting into, you know, auditioning first off and being in front of the mic. And they'd be like, don't talk like that. I'd be like, don't talk like what? Talk like yourself, like that, like what? And then I'd start reading like this and no, no, no, no.

• 1:14:41Bill Maher?

  No, you have the accent that I would say at least eighty percent of the country has.

• 1:14:47Speaker 04

  Which is somewhere.

• 1:14:48Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, it's, it's not, I mean, yours isn't, is, isn't pronounced, but it is an American accent. You're an American.

• 1:14:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:14:58Bill Maher?

  I love America, so this ain't a, it ain't a knock on you.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  And you grew up where in New York?

• 1:15:05Bill Maher?

  In New Jersey.

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  In New Jersey, where in New Jersey?

• 1:15:07Bill Maher?

  Well, right, a suburb of New York, Bergen County, New Jersey.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  Oh, sure, absolutely.

• 1:15:10Bill Maher?

  My father drove across the George Washington Bridge every day, parked in Washington Heights, which is across the river in Harlem, Upper Harlem, and took the train, the subway, down to Rockefeller Center or Midtown where his station was.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  And what was the station?

• 1:15:28Bill Maher?

  First it was W O R.

• 1:15:29Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:15:30Bill Maher?

  Then he worked at NBC and then, you know, in his later years, he was an editor. He worked with Howard Stern, he worked with Don Imus as the news editor. Yeah, he, and you know, in those days, they would work and it was a stressful job. You know, my father was a Irishman, not a drunk at all, because he never missed a day of work or never affected his family life. But he would get home from work, he needed his three or four martinis.

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:15:58Bill Maher?

  You know, and dry, meaning just gin.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  But he, what, he was the morning guy?

• 1:16:03Bill Maher?

  No, the opposite.

• 1:16:05Speaker 04

  The evening, the evening guy?

• 1:16:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah, toward the end, they put him on mornings and he fucking hated it. And he used to get up at three thirty in the morning, drive in the dark and the fog. That wasn't so bad, it was coming home after a night of work where they had stopped off at the Ho Ho, which was the Chinese restaurant in the, at the bottom of Rockefeller Center to have a little Chinese food. And, you know, he probably had three martinis before he got in the car.

• 1:16:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:16:31Bill Maher?

  But, you know, that's what people did in the seventies.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:16:34Bill Maher?

  And.

• 1:16:35Speaker 04

  Happily married, they stayed together?

• 1:16:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Speaker 04

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:16:38Bill Maher?

  I, I think. That era people had such different standards and they just divorce just wasn't.

• 1:16:47Speaker 04

  Okay, different standards, but was the cheating going on and they just stayed together? It has to be that.

• 1:16:54Bill Maher?

  I would be seriously shocked if I found out either one of my parents was cheating.

• 1:16:59Speaker 04

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:17:00Bill Maher?

  Why, you think yours were?

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  No, I don't. I know there was a time that my father was very unhappy.

• 1:17:06Bill Maher?

  That's called marriage.

• 1:17:07Speaker 04

  I know, no, his was financial problems. He'd made some bad investments. They, you know, they just, they built the house. I was a little kid. Things weren't going well. And that's the only time I really remember them arguing. And I look at the pictures and I go, is that all it was? And I think it's all it was.

• 1:17:24Bill Maher?

  It's not all that it was. I mean, it doesn't help when you're having financial problems.

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:17:27Bill Maher?

  I mean, financial problems don't help making your dick hard.

• 1:17:32Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 1:17:33Bill Maher?

  But even if finance is going well.

• 1:17:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:17:36Bill Maher?

  Time, you know, and familiarity.

• 1:17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Bill Maher?

  In a marriage is going to work against excitement and red hot monkey love.

• 1:17:46Speaker 04

  You know what?

• 1:17:47Bill Maher?

  And that's just, that's just the deal.

• 1:17:48Speaker 04

  Okay, so I'm gonna agree with you in my first marriage. And in my marriage now, it's like, I'm telling you, and I hate people that say this, but if it works, it works. And if it's, if the two together are supposed to be together, that stuff can last and keep going. And it's rare, rare, rare, rare. The fact that, and again, I hate people to talk about their marriage when it's great because it's like, shut up. But we love being together all the time.

• 1:18:19Bill Maher?

  That's great.

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  Which is very, very rare. And, um, yeah, when we first got together and Audrey was on the road with me on the tour bus, we were together side by side for eight years, never left each other's side and never got tired of each other. And that's so odd. And she, I'm, you know, how many years older? I forgot. I'm drinking tequila.

• 1:18:40Bill Maher?

  How many?

• 1:18:41Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 1:18:42Bill Maher?

  I'd like to know.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:18:43Bill Maher?

  No, because I get hit with this all the time.

• 1:18:47Speaker 04

  Well, she was born in eighty and I was born in sixty-two, so eighteen years.

• 1:18:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, please, you're an amateur. Eighteen years, please.

• 1:18:56Speaker 04

  Okay, so, uh...

• 1:18:58Bill Maher?

  Beyond respectable for me, I mean, eighteen years, please. But it's, uh, but, you know, that is a great feeling, I know that feeling. I don't know if I could ever maintain that feeling thirty-one days a month. It's just, it's just asking a lot, I just don't know how much... And it's not them, it's just, uh, or her, actually, it's just, how much charm do I have? I like the fact that I have enough days to just be within myself, not having to put out any degree of charm to anyone.

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:19:37Bill Maher?

  Ask my staff, no, I'm kidding, I'm not mean or any way, I just, you know, we only meet once a week anyway, but, you know, I mean, I do my business and I go home.

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:19:47Bill Maher?

  Like a dog.

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:19:49Bill Maher?

  Take me out, I do my business.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  You're not a tough guy to work for?

• 1:19:53Bill Maher?

  No. I mean, I'm a tough guy to work for if you need Michael Scott, if you need some asshole who's like clapping you on the back every week and saying, hey, you're doing a great job, and, uh, you know. No, I mean, you know what, if I'm not complaining, you're doing a great job.

• 1:20:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:20:08Bill Maher?

  I'm that kind of boss. I think that's so much better. When I, when I was an employee, I loved that kind of boss, just don't talk to me at all.

• 1:20:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:20:15Bill Maher?

  Like, if, just don't talk to me.

• 1:20:17Speaker 04

  Do, do you shower them with thanks?

• 1:20:19Bill Maher?

  Shower them? I certainly do not.

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  Okay, here, there's another question. Okay, and I know it's the age-old question, why has it taken this long for anybody to come out and say anything?

• 1:20:30Bill Maher?

  That's, that's amazing, we were having our issues meeting today.

• 1:20:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Bill Maher?

  At the office, that is exactly the question we hit upon.

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  Okay, and I, I, you know, you wanna believe everybody, but why? How has it taken this long? Was he really, was it really all cover-up? I, I have, I far, I find that hard to believe. But why did, does, and Lynn, I'm not, obviously not a woman, don't get it, scared to death if something like that would happen if I was a woman.

• 1:20:56Bill Maher?

  Well, it's, it's a subject I've talked upon before, especially with Cassie and P. Diddy, that case.

• 1:21:05Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:21:05Bill Maher?

  Which was very high-profile.

• 1:21:07Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:21:08Bill Maher?

  Boy, do you get a lot of blowback. As usual, Jeff, I will, I will not pull a punch. Right. Even when I know there's blowback. Right. And my thesis was, of course, we have great empathy for women and what they've had to go through and still go through. Yep. Me Too has a lot of work still to do. But also, at some point, women have to take more agency and when it, when it starts to happen. Yep. Report it right away. Yep. We don't want to hear about 20 years later, you know, I mean, get out right away if it's abusive. Report it right away. It's the only way this is gonna work.

• 1:21:48Bill Maher?

  Because, yes, there's, there's, you'd lose credibility when it's like, he did this horrible thing and then we started dating, or whatever it is. I mean, it's not always that. But it, sometimes it is that. And it just makes it very murky. And, and women are stronger than that. And they can do this and they, they need to do this, you know? I don't think we are living in an era where the authorities are not sympathetic to this anymore. Right. That is one thing that I think did change with Me Too. They're not gonna just say, okay, honey, you know, you're wearing a miniskirt, get out of my office. Right. You know, you can get into big trouble for that now. Right. As you should. Right. So, you can, you know, step forward.

• 1:22:32Bill Maher?

  And so, I still think we're living in that era where women are adjusting to this new reality. And I'm sympathetic to them because they see a guy like this getting away with this for as long as he has. Right. And it looks like, oh, well, what has changed if he thought he could get away with it? But here's the bottom line, he didn't. Right. He didn't. Right. It's kinda like the cop thing. For years, I was very critical of the cops because no matter what abuse they did, they never, like, held their own accountable. That changed. Right. When things change, yes, I change. There's my theme. I change. Now cops do go to jail. Right.

• 1:23:15Bill Maher?

  You know, the guy who choked George Floyd is in jail. Right. Many cops are, that used to never happen. Right. And, and used to never happen that anybody could do anything to a woman. I mean, the, the golden age of movies, it wasn't a golden age if you were an actress. Right. It meant... Louis B. Mayer was gonna get blown.

• 1:23:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:23:38Bill Maher?

  Before we even start fitting you for the costumes.

• 1:23:42Speaker 04

  Right. Yep, so thing sometimes changes for great.

• 1:23:48Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:23:48Speaker 04

  Sometimes changes for great.

• 1:23:50Bill Maher?

  Changes, you know, I mean.

• 1:23:54Bill Maher?

  The thing I object to is with younger people is the idea that change, just if it's change, is automatically better. It's not automatically better just because it's newer. It can be. But some things are not better because they're newer.

• 1:24:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:12Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, we see that with technology. There's just a lot of shit that, you know, I call it reverse improvement.

• 1:24:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:20Bill Maher?

  You didn't make it better.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh, it is fascinating to me when you look back at some of the inventions and stuff when they didn't even have electricity and blah, blah, blah. We're no smarter now. We just have better stuff, that's it. And, you know, the brilliance of the arts and all the stuff that goes back, it's, I feel like we've dumbed ourselves down a lot.

• 1:24:42Bill Maher?

  Well, I hope you and your loyal audience have not felt like you've dumbed anything down. I feel like.

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  I'm not talking about that.

• 1:24:57Bill Maher?

  No, no, but I'm just saying, you know.

• 1:25:00Speaker 04

  I think we've dumbed, we've dumbed ourselves down with technology. You were talking about the same thing with the phones and stuff and everybody staring at it and, and the new generation understands that we need to somehow go back. And it's that, it's that reversal of progression that I think would help society and help us as human beings.

• 1:25:20Bill Maher?

  No, I just mean your audience wants you to be politically incorrect.

• 1:25:24Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:25:24Bill Maher?

  And you should, you know, that's a great thing. You know, they, they don't. You know, want to be pandered to.

• 1:25:33Speaker 04

  Well, here's the way I've always judged it with my audiences. It's like, I feel like if I'm offending 5% of the crowd, and I want, they want to walk out, then I've come to that line that I enjoy.

• 1:25:45Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:25:45Speaker 04

  And this is the other thing, is like, this is one thing that really is, I cannot figure out. My job in front of an audience is to entertain that audience. They have paid good money to come see the show. I am not going to push my politics on them. That's not my thing. My thing is to make them laugh. I don't know at what point, and yours is a different thing. Politically incorrect, you're a different character, different thing. But I'm talking about straight stand-up comics that are supposed to entertain an audience. I always ask an audience, this is what I've done for the past eight years. I ask an audience, I was asking, who's going to vote for Hillary? Who's going to vote for Trump? And then in the last, even over in Europe, I would say, we have had an election a year ago, this past November.

• 1:26:30Speaker 04

  How many people dislike what's going on with that administration? How many people like it? It's crazy, the different countries that give you different reactions. Why am I doing that? I'm trying to see who's in that crowd. Because I can slightly adjust some of the jokes to entertain a majority of the audience. I'm not going to do my show for me, I'm doing it for them. So I don't know at what point at late night, did, or in show business, did celebrities feel that they have to push their political agenda on everybody? And they think that everyone needs to know their politics. My job is to entertain and make people laugh.

• 1:27:08Bill Maher?

  I was just watching the-

• 1:27:09Speaker 04

  It's Carson.

• 1:27:10Bill Maher?

  I was just watching the Elvis, Buzz Lerman, you know, he did the Elvis movie, and then he did like a second movie on Elvis called Epic. Elvis Presley in concert.

• 1:27:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:27:21Bill Maher?

  And it's Elvis singing his songs. I mean, look, I'm a huge Elvis fan.

• 1:27:28Bill Maher?

  I was not a huge fan of the, a lot of the songs he chose to do in his stage act. I love his recordings from that period, late 60s, early 70s, awesome. But he didn't do them on stage. He did shit like C.C. Rider. I don't get it. Anyway, Baz Luhrmann did this, and he showed, you know, clips of Elvis. And there's one where he's doing this press conference. I've seen the clip many times. He's, he's wearing his, his typical huge collar suit. At a beautiful cobalt blue, and somebody asks him, and he's looking at his best. He's amazing. And they're asking him like, what do you think about the protesters these days? And he goes, ma'am, please, I'm an entertainer.

• 1:28:12Bill Maher?

  You know, I, I just, I'd rather keep those thoughts to myself. And, and then, and then she's follow up, you know, what about people, other celebrities who'd comment on it? I, I, I don't even want to comment on that. And I was like, thank you, Elvis.

• 1:28:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:26Bill Maher?

  You know, thank you. You know, just same fucking suspicious minds.

• 1:28:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:28:31Bill Maher?

  As you do so well.

• 1:28:32Speaker 04

  Right. And, and, and again, I'll make fun of both sides. I'll still do political jokes, but I try and even it out the same way Leno and Carson both did. And, because I think that's, I, I think most people can laugh at themselves a little bit if you're not too insulting.

• 1:28:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I, I think, I think there's more in politics in your act than you think there is. I mean, just to have a puppet named Dead Terror.

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. But, I, I, I get, I understand that.

• 1:28:57Bill Maher?

  You can't run away from.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  I understand that, but I'm not calling the other side an idiot.

• 1:29:01Bill Maher?

  Exactly. No, no, no, I, I'm, I'm with you. I'm for you. I like you. I wouldn't have you here if I didn't. I don't think I have people I like. I don't have to do this. This is my little pleasure. It's my mid-weekly pleasure.

• 1:29:14Speaker 04

  It's great. And by the way, can I ask you, what band is that back there?

• 1:29:18Bill Maher?

  That's The Supremes.

• 1:29:19Speaker 04

  It's what?

• 1:29:20Bill Maher?

  That?

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  The, the, the little guy's in the band.

• 1:29:23Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's, that's no band. I mean, that's it. That's actually a real classic. I, I bought that from an art collector. That moves. I could like turn that on.

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  That looks great.

• 1:29:33Bill Maher?

  It's fucking creepy as, they, they look like, they look like something out of The Shining.

• 1:29:37Speaker 04

  I love stuff like that.

• 1:29:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm sure you do.

• 1:29:39Speaker 04

  I collect toys and stuff, so, yeah.

• 1:29:41Bill Maher?

  Of course, you make puppets.

• 1:29:42Speaker 04

  Oh, well, you know.

• 1:29:43Bill Maher?

  You actually make them, don't you?

• 1:29:44Speaker 04

  I do. I build the dummies myself. I even have a workbench on my, on my tour bus.

• 1:29:48Bill Maher?

  Did you ever see the movie The Stepfather?

• 1:29:50Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:29:52Bill Maher?

  You gotta catch up on movies.

• 1:29:53Speaker 04

  I do.

• 1:29:54Bill Maher?

  You should see that one.

• 1:29:54Speaker 04

  What was the other one I needed to see?

• 1:29:56Bill Maher?

  I forget. Something good, though. But The Stepfather.

• 1:30:00Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:30:01Bill Maher?

  It's great.

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  Why?

• 1:30:01Bill Maher?

  They remade it. Well, he kills his whole family.

• 1:30:05Speaker 04

  Oh, perfect. Thanks, Bill.

• 1:30:07Bill Maher?

  Like, the first scene, you see, he just slaughters his whole family. And then he leaves town, changes his look. And, of course, this is, you know, the 80s, 90s, so you could do this easier without social, you know, I mean, without, you know, surveillance and stuff. So now he's in a new town. And, of course, he's a charmer. He gets with a woman always, like in The Last Family, who, like, is, uh, got kids but no husband. And, you know, he's like the all-American guy that's portraying. But he's really down in the basement plotting to kill them because that's how I picture you.

• 1:30:41Speaker 04

  That's perfect.

• 1:30:41Bill Maher?

  I'm a puppet and you're the stepfather.

• 1:30:44Speaker 04

  That's my, that's my second book. And by the way, we have a new show out called Jeff Dunham's The Cars That Made Us.

• 1:30:49Bill Maher?

  The Cars.

• 1:30:50Speaker 04

  The Cars That Made Us.

• 1:30:51Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:30:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:52Bill Maher?

  What I do best, plug shit.

• 1:30:54Speaker 04

  So it's on Discovery and, uh...

• 1:30:56Bill Maher?

  Discovery?

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's on Discovery and, uh, who knows? It's been, it's been doing really, really well.

• 1:31:01Bill Maher?

  What is it called?

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Jeff Dunham's The Cars That Made Us.

• 1:31:03Bill Maher?

  I bet you Leno's on it.

• 1:31:05Speaker 04

  Uh, he is.

• 1:31:05Bill Maher?

  Hey, how could he not be?

• 1:31:07Speaker 04

  He was great, too.

• 1:31:07Bill Maher?

  And what about Jerry? You gotta get him on there. He's a car nut.

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  He, you know, I don't understand. That's another guy. I am a comedian, I think, but he would never have me on the Cars and Coffee thing.

• 1:31:19Bill Maher?

  I'll text him.

• 1:31:20Speaker 04

  Thanks. I like Jerry. I've always said, when I talk about Edgar Bergen, I talk about, I always say that Edgar Bergen was the Jerry Seinfeld of the radio era. Because he was a huge radio star. And I always use that comparison. I've always thought Jerry was great, but he was, never had me on his show. Does he still do Cars and Coffee?

• 1:31:39Bill Maher?

  I'll straighten this feud out.

• 1:31:41Speaker 04

  No feud. I saw him in an elevator and his manager, what's his manager's name?

• 1:31:46Bill Maher?

  Well, his manager passed away.

• 1:31:47Speaker 04

  Oh, no. What was his name? Oops.

• 1:31:50Bill Maher?

  I don't know. I'm still...

• 1:31:51Speaker 04

  I can't remember either. Yeah, yeah. But I met them in an elevator.

• 1:31:54Bill Maher?

  George Shapiro.

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  George Shapiro, I didn't know George Shapiro died. Oops.

• 1:31:57Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:31:58Speaker 04

  Okay. But I met them in an elevator. They were very nice.

• 1:32:00Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah. They were great.

• 1:32:01Speaker 04

  I appreciate you having me on, Bill.

• 1:32:03Bill Maher?

  Real pleasure.

• 1:32:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Bill Maher?

  Great to get to know you.

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. This was, this was almost as good as Montreal.

• 1:32:09Bill Maher?

  Because we had sex there.

• 1:32:12Speaker 04

  Twice.

• 1:32:13Bill Maher?

  Because that's what, oh, now it's twice. I love the way this story only grows.

• 1:32:22Speaker 04

  I don't know how this ends.

• 1:32:24Bill Maher?

  This, it's ending.

• 1:32:25Speaker 04

  It's ending.

• 1:32:25Bill Maher?

  I think it's over.

• 1:32:26Speaker 04

  All right, perfect.

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