Brian Williams | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher sits down with longtime NBC News anchor Brian Williams (AKA the James Bond of nightly news) to talk about what happened to network news—and what America lost along the way. Williams explains how newscasts became consumed with East Coast weather and “water-skiing squirrel” filler, and why he believes Democrats lost touch with working-class voters. Away from the anchor desk, Williams shares the double life few viewers knew about: nearly five decades as a volunteer firefighter in New Jersey, near-broke beginnings in Kansas, and why he has avoided alcohol after losing his brother to alcoholism. He recalls meeting his wife in a television control room, tearing up at his daughter Allison Williams’s first Letterman appearance, watching his son build his own career in local news, and returning with Netflix’s We’re Back! With Brian Williams. Call him 007 – licensed to anchor, fight fires, and make his mother proud. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1 Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: https://billmaher.substack.com Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Support Our Sponsors: New customers can save 35% on your first month of subscription by going to https://www.dosedaily.co/RANDOM or entering RANDOM at checkout. Visit https://www.hims.com/clubrandom to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. For a limited time only head to https://www.ridge.com and use code RANDOM at checkout for 10% off your order AND a chance to win Ridge’s biggest sweepstakes ever—a Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato, a Hennessey Velociraptor, A Ford Bronco or $100,000 in cash. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/random #rulapod For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at http://mengotomars.com/ Buy Club Random Merch: https://clubrandom.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM In Club Random, Bill Maher unleashes his comedic wit on an unpredictable lineup – from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Quentin Tarantino and Neil deGrasse Tyson – digging into everything but politics. It’s Maher in his familiar element: one-on-one vibes, unfiltered laughs, and the kind of freewheeling banter only he can deliver. ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last 23 years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 41 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 six 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,” “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass", and most recently "What This Comedian Said Will Shock You". 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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• 0:23Speaker 01

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• 0:54Speaker 02

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• 1:00Speaker 03

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• 1:18Speaker 03

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• 1:22Bill Maher?

  I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of Green in all its forms. Get it? And for fellow lovers of, well, Green, the Club Random merch store has you covered. Grinders, papers, and Zippo lighters, all designed to support your relationship with Green, wink, wink, whatever, and whatever philosophy comes with that for you. Head to clubrandom.com and bring home some random. What do you know about the Jews? You're the least Jew-y guy I know. Why are you telling me? Are you sure about this?

• 2:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. These are all LBJ Democrats. They are now, they tend to all be MAGA.

• 2:10Bill Maher?

  Brian Williams.

• 2:14Speaker 05

  Ladies and gentlemen, from the Sands Hotel and Casino.

• 2:17Bill Maher?

  Holy gro, you're really here?

• 2:21Speaker 05

  Mr. Dean Martin, how are you, bro? Nice to, so good of you to have me.

• 2:26Bill Maher?

  Oh, are you kidding?

• 2:27Speaker 05

  This is perfect.

• 2:28Bill Maher?

  I have to tell you, and, you know, don't make this weird, but I have been waiting for so long to get you along.

• 2:34Speaker 05

  If I had a nickel.

• 2:35Bill Maher?

  What?

• 2:36Speaker 05

  That's something I hear every day. And, well, I'm looking forward to it.

• 2:41Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and I know you're in the game now.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Back in the game.

• 2:47Bill Maher?

  No, the podcast game.

• 2:49Speaker 05

  I know. I'm on television.

• 2:51Bill Maher?

  What, like 20 years ago, if somebody said podcasting was like, I, boy, I would never have invested like-

• 3:00Speaker 05

  We're old guys, so what I get a kick out of is someone says, and it's a live podcast, and I'll say, "Have you tried radio? Because that's very cool as well." And then, and then a piece in the Journal said that Netflix is looking at a model where they would have scheduled shows airing on certain channels, and it reminded me of a television network. But it's so weird. I went from bright lights, big city, big studio, stage manager, a guy who's only responsible for your lavalier and your water, to tiny studio, tiny cameras, huge microphones.

• 3:43Bill Maher?

  Well, that's one thing I avoided here.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, these are very nice.

• 3:48Bill Maher?

  I purposely do this this way, by the way, speaking of that, can I pour you something?

• 3:55Speaker 05

  No, I'm good. I don't drink, and this would be such an unfortunate time to begin.

• 3:59Bill Maher?

  You never drank?

• 4:01Speaker 05

  No, I did. I never, I never, I never drank to excess. There was one night on the beach in Kinsburg, New Jersey-

• 4:11Bill Maher?

  Seriously?

• 4:12Speaker 05

  And tequila was the culprit because I came of age, I'm 17, I went into the fire academy, so I always had a responsibility.

• 4:21Bill Maher?

  Right, you're a fireman. Firemen must drink.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  And volunteers, well, they do. Volunteers drive to the firehouse. So you wake up in the middle of the night, in fact, on the way here, my guys are out at an alarm right now. If you wake up in the middle of the night, job one is waking up and driving, flashing lights to the firehouse, open the bay doors, get your gear on, you're learning about the call, get on the apparatus and go.

• 4:50Bill Maher?

  So you're saying there's a fire you're supposed to be at now, but you came here?

• 4:54Speaker 05

  Well, it's in New Jersey, which would have meant a long drive to get there.

• 4:59Bill Maher?

  So you live in New Jersey?

• 5:01Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:02Bill Maher?

  But you do the show out here, don't you? The Netflix show?

• 5:06Speaker 05

  No, we're at, we're in Lower Manhattan.

• 5:08Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  Netflix is building this huge campus on what used to be Fort Monmouth, decommissioned military fort, that employed about half the parents of my high school graduating class. Ted Sarandos grew up at exit 105, I was at exit 114, and so it was a huge employer in his town. And when the time came, then-Governor Murphy of New Jersey greased the sale of this decommissioned Fort Monmouth. It's massive, there's barracks, there's a PX bowling alley, theater, and they're putting up, I think, eight sound stages there. Hollywood, as you may know, started in Fort Lee, New Jersey-

• 5:46Bill Maher?

  Yes, I know.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Until somebody came out here and said, "Oh, listen, the weather's beautiful, we won't lose light until 8 o'clock at night, and winters are like a summer day." And that was enough of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

• 5:58Bill Maher?

  My father was in your game. You know, my father was a newsman, and he drove every day from northern New Jersey down to Fort Lee, and then you cross the bridge-

• 6:08Speaker 05

  GW Bridge.

• 6:09Bill Maher?

  And he would park in Washington Heights, up on the other side of the bridge, and take the subway to Midtown.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  That's hardcore.

• 6:15Bill Maher?

  That was a commute every day.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  That's hardcore. I wanted to ask you about your dad, because as a young, nerdy, news hound kid, I read everything, dinner in our house could not begin until Cronkite said, "That's the way it is." My parents didn't force it on us, but that's-

• 6:37Bill Maher?

  They watched it?

• 6:38Speaker 05

  The way, oh, yeah.

• 6:39Bill Maher?

  And so you watched it with them?

• 6:40Speaker 05

  We watched it as a family.

• 6:41Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  And this is height of Vietnam.

• 6:43Bill Maher?

  That is gone in America. Families, like, communal experience like that, which is so important.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 6:51Bill Maher?

  But you had it, and I had it, because we're old, and old is good.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Old is fantastic. And we got in the car, news radio was on, so I knew your father's voice-

• 7:05Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 7:06Speaker 05

  And name, and his, when he would say his name, he pronounced it differently than you do.

• 7:11Bill Maher?

  No, he didn't.

• 7:12Speaker 05

  Maher, it was two syllables.

• 7:14Bill Maher?

  Who would know this better?

• 7:15Speaker 05

  I'm the kid listening, you were blinded by familial relations.

• 7:19Bill Maher?

  I promise you, my own father-

• 7:21Speaker 05

  I'm John Maher. It was two syllables, let's pull some air checks.

• 7:25Bill Maher?

  Please do.

• 7:26Speaker 05

  Don't fight me on this.

• 7:27Bill Maher?

  I have some.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 7:29Bill Maher?

  I have, I have one where he's, "I wish I had more doing the news." This is when every radio station had news at the top of the hour. And he was one of those guys who got the news off the wire and did it like, he had stopwatches, because it had to come in right at 5 minutes, he never said it before, it's news.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 7:48Bill Maher?

  And I remember, I have the one, I'm so glad I have this one, where he's announcing one news story, which was Mickey Mantle retirement.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 7:58Bill Maher?

  And he was like, you know, my father had a real flair to it, you know, he could-

• 8:02Speaker 05

  Number seven. He left a mark on me, I remember your dad's voice.

• 8:06Bill Maher?

  That's awesome.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Two syllables, but I remember your dad's voice.

• 8:09Bill Maher?

  Brian, I can't believe you're arguing with me about me. Like, I don't get that, like, when people do that.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  I believe in the power of my argument.

• 8:17Bill Maher?

  But, you know, people who do that, who argue with you about yourself and like insist-

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:24Bill Maher?

  "Oh, Brian, you could get any job you want." And you have to be like, "Wouldn't I know this better?"

• 8:30Speaker 05

  What don't you get about this? Yeah, yeah, I understand, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to my, I'm gonna die on this hill.

• 8:36Bill Maher?

  This girl I went out with a thousand years ago, and she was very cute, and she was working as a receptionist, and she said, "All day long, people say to me, you know, you should be a model." And she says, "I always want to go," don't you think I've thought of that? Like, if I could, I'm like, I'm purposely being a receptionist because-

• 8:55Speaker 05

  I look like Brumhilde?

• 8:56Bill Maher?

  I turned the modeling agencies down.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  I get it. I get it.

• 9:02Bill Maher?

  There are some businesses, you know, especially entertainment, certainly sports, where you can be so good, you can be such a good basketball player and still not be in the NBA. You can be so astoundingly gorgeous and still not make, you know, and that's why there's OnlyFans. No, I'm kidding.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  Stop right now. I love what you've done here, it's beautiful. When are you gonna fire that sucker up?

• 9:28Bill Maher?

  Are you serious?

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Well, I'm-

• 9:31Bill Maher?

  Oh, that you'll do? Awesome.

• 9:33Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no. Here's the, here's the thing. I'm an enthusiast.

• 9:37Bill Maher?

  What does that mean?

• 9:39Speaker 05

  But edibles, edibles have become so adjustable, so goddamn yummy, and so good.

• 9:46Bill Maher?

  I just had one.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  And-

• 9:48Bill Maher?

  That's why I'm not lighting this up.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  I learned a long time ago that indica means into couch, and sativa, I don't like what sativa does.

• 9:58Bill Maher?

  I'm the opposite.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  But with edibles this good, I will never inhale that shit into my lungs if I don't have to.

• 10:04Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I know. That's, that's what I'm trying to do. The problem with eating it is, of course, that it's just a commitment, and, you know, Brian, I've never been married, commitment ain't my thing, you know? So, but I'm committed to like being high for like five or six hours.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 10:19Bill Maher?

  And I'm just not, I don't always want to do that.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  You'd be a bad firefighter.

• 10:25Bill Maher?

  Because I'd always be high for that reason alone.

• 10:28Speaker 05

  They really frown on that.

• 10:29Bill Maher?

  Also, I hate fire.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's well, that's a good trait to have as a firefighter.

• 10:35Bill Maher?

  Well, anytime I see it, I'm always trying to get away from it.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  You want to defeat the enemy, but like during covid, uh, one of the symptoms I got was uh, insomnia. And it did not fit well in my life and it was either become a hopeless ambient addict. Or take a tablet of, you know, pure go to hell THC. And it's fantastic. Now I've had to roll over for some overnight fire calls because I don't feel fit. To hop in my car and drive at a high speed.

• 11:03Bill Maher?

  But that's what gets you. You say you're taking it for sleep, for relaxation.

• 11:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't um, I, I am.

• 11:08Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you that you are, you, trust me, I was a marijuana expert. There are just a few different groupings, I would say of people's reaction to pot. You are, would, we would call group A or B, whatever. I'm a different group. Your group is you take it to sleep.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:27Bill Maher?

  It relaxes you.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:29Bill Maher?

  I'm the opposite. I'm, I get high.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, I get it. It sounded just like Dick Nixon.

• 11:36Bill Maher?

  Woo, you know, it's.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  I.

• 11:38Bill Maher?

  I like soaring.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Here's my family history. I had a brother who moved a lot of product during the sixties and seventies.

• 11:46Bill Maher?

  A brother?

• 11:46Speaker 05

  Yes, through Arizona.

• 11:48Bill Maher?

  I probably knew him.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  Um, uh, like kilos at a time and it would arrive in brown paper. And then Saran Wrap, baby powder to kill the smell, Saran Wrap. And then, you know.

• 12:03Bill Maher?

  Hey folks, you know what kills me about American medicine? The second your cholesterol creeps up, which is basically unavoidable if you eat like a normal person in this country. Your doctor's got one move, pills. That's it. Numbers went up. Here's a prescription. Well, welcome to the rest of your life as a human Pez dispenser. They want to put you on a lifelong regimen of capsules and a lot of people naturally are hesitating these days. We don't want to get stuck taking stuff we aren't comfortable with for the rest of our lives. People want options. They want to feel like they actually have a say in how they take care of their own bodies. That's why so many people are turning to gentler alternatives with real plant forward ingredients.

• 12:47Bill Maher?

  You can actually pronounce stuff like turmeric, ginger, pomegranate and amla. That's where dose for cholesterol comes in. It's a clinically backed cholesterol support supplement designed as an alternative way to self manage your health. By targeting triglycerides, LDL, HDL and total cholesterol levels. Without making you swallow a daily handful of synthetic junk. Members of my team have been taking dose and they've been genuinely encouraged by what they're seeing in their blood work. What I respect about this is the convenience. There are no capsules and no powders to choke down. It's just a daily two ounce liquid shot that actually tastes like fresh mango.

• 13:30Bill Maher?

  It gets delivered right to your door, making it dead simple to work into your daily routine and build healthy habits on your own terms. New customers can save thirty five percent on your first month of subscription by going to dosedaily.co slash random or entering random at checkout. That's D O S E D A I L Y dot C O slash random. For thirty five percent off your first month subscription.

• 14:01Speaker 05

  So he moved a lot of product. Uh, I don't drink because I had a brother.

• 14:06Bill Maher?

  A regular Pablo Escobar, your brother.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  Well, um, I don't drink because I, I had a brother who enjoyed it too much and it died of alcoholism. So I was answering your question. I never enjoyed it that much. And I've always either had a responsible job or I had to go to fire calls. So I had reason not to get gooned.

• 14:29Bill Maher?

  So how many hours a week are you on call?

• 14:32Speaker 05

  When I'm in Jersey, uh, you're there. You, you, you have an app on your phone. We have old school pagers that we rare that are, that are next to the bed. And uh, I've tried for fifty years to figure out uh, the, the pattern of calls. It is club random. Uh, you know, ninety percent of what we go on, turns out to be bullshit. It's a bad alarm, a bad alarm head, a CO2 alarm that's gone bad. Um, when you catch a real one, you know, you've got to be ready for that. Um, so you're, you're subject to the call of.

• 15:08Bill Maher?

  I always say that about cops, like, you know, do they make a lot of mistakes sadly, yes, but they are human and it is a tough job. And no one ever calls the cops to the front porch to tell them how well the marriage is going.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. They um, they're like invisible civil servants. It's a job nobody wants.

• 15:28Bill Maher?

  But um, no, I hope this is not an, an delicate question. But um, I mean, it's mostly a young man's game. Are they uh, do you come up against an age limit where they say you have to retire at seventy and you've got to hang up your hose?

• 15:46Speaker 05

  I am, I am uh, what's called.

• 15:50Bill Maher?

  Come on, Brian, have a drink. Come on, I can tell you, I can tell there's a party animal in there. He's dying to get out.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  Considered an interior firefighter, so every year I have to pass certain qualifications. That means you wear the respirator, you go in.

• 16:05Bill Maher?

  So no age limit?

• 16:06Speaker 05

  Your hands and knees. I, most guys I know who are, who have taken themselves out and who now stay outside at the fire scene have done so because they got a stent. Or they, they are overweight or they're just too old. They don't feel it anymore or it hurts the next day. We're crawling in attics, we're, it, fires are fought mostly from your knees because the good air is down there. Bad air is up here.

• 16:31Bill Maher?

  Whoa, what a great tip.

• 16:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, if you're ever fighting one, stay low.

• 16:35Bill Maher?

  I, I should have known that or I probably did and forgot about it because I smoked too much pot.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  I love it so much. It's a portable skill. We have great exercises at the academy. One of them is called flashover. It can reach fourteen hundred degrees. You're in a, a shipping container. They close the doors, light a conflagration at the front of the container. And it's, it's about thermodynamics. They open and close the rear door. They allow oxygen to feed it. It blows up and rolls over your head. You can, you actually have to keep your helmet out of it. Because it's, it's above your head. It'll melt your face shield. It'll really fuck up your helmet. So, but you can reach up and touch fire.

• 17:19Bill Maher?

  Whatever level you're getting, I would say stick with it because your skin looks fantastic.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you very much.

• 17:25Bill Maher?

  It's just this gentle peel that you're getting.

• 17:27Speaker 05

  It's fantastic.

• 17:28Bill Maher?

  You really can't buy anywhere else.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  I love it and, and no one can bother you in there. Because, because this is, this is a special skill. You're, you're with some of your best friends, people you would do anything for. You always, um, you're surrounded by a team. It's, it's, it's terrific. You do feel it in your fillings, wedding ring, snaps on your coat. It's that hot.

• 17:53Bill Maher?

  See, we're both the same generation. We're both boomers. But I'm a true boomer. You're more like the greatest generation.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  No, I am.

• 18:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you are. That's a greatest gen, I'm not doing it. That's like a greatest generation thing that you're doing. I'm more like the typical baby boomer. It's so funny, the kids today are so incredibly spoiled with everything and they think, I, I, they thought we were spoiled. I, I remember hearing a lot of that.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, true.

• 18:19Bill Maher?

  And as the sixties wore on, it's like, oh boy, you don't hit your kids anymore.

• 18:23Speaker 05

  My dad in framing him mass, they had a kitchen tub. And three kids and one bath. And you wanted to get first on the bath list and not last. But I heard that story a hundred thousand times.

• 18:38Bill Maher?

  What story?

• 18:39Speaker 05

  The, how he had to grow up in the depression.

• 18:41Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know. Money Python did that awesome sketch about it, you know.

• 18:44Speaker 05

  Oh, you know, that's nothing. I grew up under a tree branch. Yeah, that's a fantastic sketch.

• 18:51Bill Maher?

  We had to sleep on the dirt. You had dirt?

• 18:55Speaker 05

  It's fantastic. Look it up on uh, YouTube, you viewers.

• 18:59Bill Maher?

  That is one of their.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Fantastic.

• 19:01Bill Maher?

  You are, you are a comedy fan.

• 19:04Speaker 05

  Oh, hell yes.

• 19:04Bill Maher?

  By the way, before I forget, not that this makes me forgetful. Um, I've always, I've told you this, but I'm going to say it because this is our first time ever like talking or really like being on anything. I was always such a fan.

• 19:18Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 19:19Bill Maher?

  I always said it was like Cary Grant was doing the news.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 19:22Bill Maher?

  You know, you definitely had a quality that Peter Jennings, I was talking to somebody about him recently. He was also erudite, like you are, you know, and cosmopolitan. And I mean, there's the different one, the Dan Rather, very serious and you know, Midwest to Texas and you know.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  And Walter.

• 19:41Bill Maher?

  And Uncle Walter and uh, you know, but then there was this other. Tom Brokaw, he was good, but he, he wasn't quite as James Bondy as, as you.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  Jeez.

• 19:52Bill Maher?

  And uh.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  My mom would get a kick out of hearing that.

• 19:55Bill Maher?

  No, it was a, it was a great, I, I, I don't really uh, catch up with the nightly news anymore. But I mean, even when you were there, I remember doing funny editorials about how it had devolved from, you know, real news to like maybe one block of news. And then whatever fucking shit happened on a plane that day. And then by the time you got to the last segment, it was about the one legged skier.

• 20:18Speaker 05

  And the squirrel on water skis. Don't forget, a perennial.

• 20:21Bill Maher?

  And weather, like any weather that happened on the East Coast.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  It just means it was snowing or raining in New York and, and we are so New York centric.

• 20:29Bill Maher?

  You guys went ape shit about a snowstorm.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  Hundred percent guilty.

• 20:34Bill Maher?

  You could have shown the same B roll from the past.

• 20:38Speaker 05

  Hundred percent. I can admit it now.

• 20:41Bill Maher?

  Did you ever? Say, like, hey, guys.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I thought it was bullshit. I, and you, and you could look out the window at 30 Rock.

• 20:49Bill Maher?

  But that you got overruled.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  Watch the flurry start, count to 10, and someone was saying, should we lead with weather? Because everyone lives here in New York, correct? Meantime, Southern California.

• 21:00Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  First of all, the whole state of California was so ill-served, continues to be. I was home at 9:30 when it was airing fresh in California. We would do the first feed at 6:30 Eastern. It would go on tape. We had some standby anchor in Burbank to do some cumbersome cut-in to my taped broadcast. The West Coast has never had a live broadcast of the evening news. And they wonder why it's a decreasing part of American life. I hated that.

• 21:33Bill Maher?

  It's more the squirrel on water skis.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I guess.

• 21:38Bill Maher?

  That's why. And it, and it irked my father. It was even starting then. And I remember him saying how-

• 21:44Speaker 05

  Mr. Maher, go ahead.

• 21:46Bill Maher?

  You know, he really hated that. People hate it when their name is mispronounced. We pronounced it Mar. And so, it's natural because it has an H in the middle for you to think that. That's what happened. The years passed and your brain transposed that this is what you thought, and then you thought my father said it, which is preposterous because I know my father and you don't. Anyway, so, uh, I forgot, what were we talking about? Why was I-

• 22:12Speaker 05

  Uh, we were talking about, uh, New York centrism and, and how it affected the news.

• 22:20Bill Maher?

  Oh, my father used to always say, you know, they, they squawked for years that they only got a half hour.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:27Bill Maher?

  And when it became the waters-

• 22:30Speaker 05

  Squirrel, squirrel on water skis.

• 22:32Bill Maher?

  Squirrel on water skis. It was like, you can't even fill 20 minutes because 10 minutes was commercials. And it's like, and then you would watch something like BBC for, I don't know, but-

• 22:43Speaker 05

  McNeil-Lairer was on that one.

• 22:44Bill Maher?

  And it was a lot more sober and adult and, uh, you know, this was just, and also very, um, nepo, like, you know, if something happened within the CBS family. I remember like Ed Bradley died. I thought he was terrific and I, it was like the whole show was about Ed Bradley. Okay, that's so narcissistic, you know, that's, I, I get it, you guys are upset. But you're doing a show for the whole country. We can pay tribute to Ed Bradley without doing the whole show about him. There's actual news.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  I just used his name today. Um, yeah, I think the thinking there is you've made a, like the airlines say, we know you have a choice in air travel. We thank you for flying with us. You've made an affirmative choice to watch CBS at 6:30 Eastern time. So you, ergo, you must watch 60 Minutes Sunday nights. Ergo, you must be as broken up about the loss of Ed as we are. That's the thinking.

• 23:45Bill Maher?

  Hey, folks, let's be honest. The most exhausting part of losing weight isn't the exercise. It's the endless parade of people telling you they found the secret. Every six months, it's a new miracle and new rules. Eat this, don't eat that, count macros, count points. I feel like I need a spreadsheet and a decoder ring just to order lunch. Look, if weight loss has felt like a losing battle, this summer could be different. That's why I think it's interesting that Hims is doing. They now offer access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. The Wegovy pill is the first ever GLP-1 pill for weight loss, so there are no needles needed.

• 24:30Bill Maher?

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• 25:13Bill Maher?

  That's H-I-M-S dot com slash club random. Hims dot com slash club random. Weight loss by Hims is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk A slash S. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information and restrictions, visit hims dot com. Let me ask you this.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:39Bill Maher?

  A question that no publicist should ever-

• 25:43Speaker 05

  Boy, I'm not looking forward to this, guys.

• 25:45Bill Maher?

  Advice that you enter. But what the fuck? As you can see, I don't really, uh, feel restricted.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  This is the face of dread. Go ahead.

• 25:54Bill Maher?

  So, what do you make of today's crop of news anchors? And, uh, how do you assess them and which ones are better than others? Like, who's better and then who's not as good?

• 26:06Speaker 05

  I don't think there's anybody better or not as good. They're, they're, they're a product of their organization. My worry is, is for CNN, which I consider a public utility. That's not a pejorative. That's a compliment.

• 26:21Bill Maher?

  I agree.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  I think they're a hugely important, oh, this is why we can't have nice decanters.

• 26:26Bill Maher?

  It is a nice decanter, isn't it?

• 26:28Speaker 05

  A hugely important part of American life. I think, um, with the addition of my friend Richard Engel, their foreign correspondents are superb. Their foreign, uh, their overseas camera crews, which we worked alongside for years, uh, fantastic. Um, kind of casual bravery. They've been, they've been shot at every which way. Just today, as we sit here and have this conversation, there's a Wall Street Journal article that the Ellison's are considering appointing a board to watch over fairness at CNN.

• 27:03Bill Maher?

  Well, they may soon be my bosses. I think it's a great idea.

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Fantastic, isn't it?

• 27:09Bill Maher?

  I didn't even know what you said, but I'm with it.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, so-

• 27:13Bill Maher?

  No, what is it? Tell me again.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  They, they, they might have a board of overseers that makes sure that CNN is on the up and up.

• 27:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, great.

• 27:23Speaker 05

  Which we used to call management. Um, but anyway, look, I, I, I have a lot of friends over there. I admire so many of their people. You know, Wolf is, uh, your basic national treasure and, and he and I covered the White House together.

• 27:39Bill Maher?

  Wolf Blitzer?

• 27:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:41Bill Maher?

  I remember-

• 27:42Speaker 05

  It was President Harrison.

• 27:44Bill Maher?

  Once I was on his show and I said something like, the American people are too stupid to this. And we came back from break and Wolf said, uh, we've had a lot of calls during the break. We want to give you a chance to say the people aren't stupid. And I went, fuck no. I doubled down.

• 28:02Speaker 05

  You've always had the freedom to, um-

• 28:04Bill Maher?

  Well, I, I mean, freedom is earned and freedom is risky and, you know, uh, among the things that apropos of what we were talking about before, when people like tell you your life like better than you, as if you don't know it, like, oh, you know, you're cancel-proof. You could, it's like, shut the fuck up.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  Please, I forget.

• 28:23Bill Maher?

  You know, and no one, no one is cancel-proof.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:26Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, Kanye pushes it.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Right up there.

• 28:30Bill Maher?

  But, but, uh, it, he sells out, you know, I mean, it, it, every case of cancel is, um, mine included, you know?

• 28:41Bill Maher?

  Just a case of timing and what other news happened that week? And the era it came down in. I mean, I hear a lot of people talking. Even AOC this week was like, 2020, woke one was crazy. Did you hear that?

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did.

• 28:58Bill Maher?

  That's, that's, I mean, most of me says, good, I'm glad we're looking back and now wiser.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 29:06Bill Maher?

  Especially from her.

• 29:07Speaker 05

  And you've always said that. You, I mean, in new rules every week, I never miss a word because you're, you know, Rahm Emanuel's doing this too. Rahm Emanuel is trying to teach the Democrats how to talk. And he's trying to teach them how to run for office. And you hold them to account just about every week.

• 29:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  Um, and it's interesting to hear audience reaction. When you get serious, they get serious. They laugh at the laugh lines, but they know you so well.

• 29:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 05

  They know when you're kind of settling in to make a point.

• 29:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no, that's well said. And that's what I'm trying to do. And, I mean, I don't know when you, maybe it's just part of what media does. I just did the rope line at the, like, the Mark Twain thing I got a little-

• 29:56Speaker 05

  Oh, sure, at the Kennedy Center.

• 29:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  At the Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Center.

• 30:01Bill Maher?

  Oh, I could tell you stories about what a mission guys this hole was. Even, I didn't think it would happen and anyway, it did. But on the, you know, they ask you the questions and it's, it's very often these, the same kind of questions, you know, like, what else, you know, what else do you want to do? You know, like, nothing. I, I just want to keep my job.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  I'm good, I'm good.

• 30:24Bill Maher?

  Like, what do you think I'm lacking in my job?

• 30:26Speaker 05

  I'm good.

• 30:27Bill Maher?

  I go, they pay me so well and, you know, I get to say what I want. The network is very supportive. It's fun as fuck. It's a comedy show.

• 30:35Speaker 05

  You get ample time off.

• 30:36Bill Maher?

  I get, yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  I'll be appearing at Chuckles in Hackensett.

• 30:42Bill Maher?

  I don't do that anymore.

• 30:43Speaker 05

  I know.

• 30:45Bill Maher?

  I'm not on the road anymore.

• 30:46Speaker 05

  When was the last time you played Atlantic City?

• 30:48Bill Maher?

  Atlantic City, well, I mean, my last stand up show was December of 2024, probably that year or the year before. I was, Atlantic City was one of those cities, you could like Vegas, where you could play more than a little because it was an out of town crowd.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:06Bill Maher?

  You know, um, I, for years, I played Vegas every couple of months and loved it.

• 31:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:12Bill Maher?

  But passages in life, you know?

• 31:14Speaker 05

  And what did Leno do? He banked his, he banked his NBC salary and used Stand Up for Spending money to acquire his car collection, which is one way of doing it.

• 31:24Bill Maher?

  Jay is, at once, the most brilliant Machiavellian, uh, world, I mean, I think he's also a great person, but, uh, you know, he's, he's an eccentric.

• 31:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:36Bill Maher?

  Not just the cars, but yes, the whole idea of like, uh, stock market, too risky. I mean, you can look at a chart of money you put in a century, like where the stock market went from a century ago to where, and it's like, the stock market thing goes, even with the, the crashes, go, straight up, and the other one kind of just crawls along the bottom.

• 31:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:59Bill Maher?

  You know, Bush had the idea to, uh, privatize social security, like you put money in when you're young.

• 32:06Speaker 05

  That comes up every couple of years.

• 32:07Bill Maher?

  Put it in the market because it will, over 50 years, it's just sitting there while you age. That wasn't the worst idea in the world.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  No.

• 32:15Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 32:15Speaker 05

  That comes up still every couple of years.

• 32:17Bill Maher?

  What?

• 32:18Speaker 05

  Privatizing social security.

• 32:20Bill Maher?

  I think what, yeah, I'm surprised why Trump hasn't like jumped on that one. He certainly isn't afraid of socialistic practices. He takes over companies when he wants.

• 32:30Speaker 05

  And the Democrats now, so that's exciting.

• 32:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  That's exciting.

• 32:36Bill Maher?

  That's what I said about the last election, you lost a crazy contest to a crazy person. And now, I mean, it's, nothing's crazier than canceling Thanksgiving.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  You don't fuck with Thanksgiving. I think we've learned that. As we sit here, we've just learned that she's not gonna be the next governor of Wisconsin.

• 32:55Bill Maher?

  If we were writing a sketch.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:57Bill Maher?

  Where they had, you know, okay, you know, we want to really exaggerate this. What crazy thing that no normal person would ever go for can the Democrats get behind? I, no bad ideas, and then, you know, cancel Thanksgiving.

• 33:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. I, I would add the NFL to that, and I'd add meat. Uh, meat's great.

• 33:21Bill Maher?

  What's the NFL?

• 33:22Speaker 05

  That, uh, this is one of Carville's harangues. They're anti NFL because of toxic masculinity. They're anti meat because the cows that supply the meat fart all day, and that is giving us methane.

• 33:38Bill Maher?

  Well, it is.

• 33:38Speaker 05

  And killing us.

• 33:40Bill Maher?

  Well, it, it is. Both things are true. I know, the, what was the first one?

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Um, Thanksgiving, the NFL, and meat. NFL.

• 33:50Bill Maher?

  NFL, that one I have not heard. Who thinks liberals are against the NFL?

• 33:55Speaker 05

  This is, again, I'm quoting James.

• 33:57Bill Maher?

  I know, but I don't, I don't, I never saw that anywhere. Did you?

• 34:01Speaker 05

  Somebody needs a Google machine. When we're done here, you mark your little ass up to your laptop.

• 34:07Bill Maher?

  You've seen that.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:08Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 34:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:09Bill Maher?

  Because it's violent?

• 34:10Speaker 05

  Yes, it's toxic masculinity.

• 34:12Bill Maher?

  See, this is where the libertarian and I come out. I mean, I've done editorials about this. I, I watch these games. These players are happy. Well, this is their happy place. When it goes well, yes, it breaks your bones. As an adult, you have to have the right to say, I get it, this could fuck me up. Later in life will not be as good. I don't care. That's my choice to do it now.

• 34:35Speaker 05

  And you and I know an elite level of suffering, which is called being a Giants fan.

• 34:40Bill Maher?

  What? We've won.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 34:43Bill Maher?

  Not for a while, but you know, football's hard.

• 34:46Speaker 05

  Just horrible.

• 34:47Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  Just horrible. I hope they.

• 34:50Bill Maher?

  I took my father to the eighty-five, eighty-six Super Bowl against Denver. It was out here at the Rose Bowl. Spent like my last penny to get him a ticket.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  It's a mitzvah.

• 35:02Bill Maher?

  And, uh, yeah, he was a lifelong Giants fan from like almost their inception.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 35:08Bill Maher?

  He was born in 21. I think they were born in 1925.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  Yep. I have all the stuff. I wear my 56 jersey and I love it. Sundays are a big deal. I'm also a NASCAR fan.

• 35:21Bill Maher?

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• 36:02Bill Maher?

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• 36:45Bill Maher?

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• 37:17Speaker 05

  So Sundays are a big deal.

• 37:19Bill Maher?

  Oh, I've seen you talk about it. I'm like, you're, you're one of those guys, like, Kevin Costner's not one of those guys. Like, he's from out here, from California, but people think you're from the Midwest. You know, like, if I didn't know that, I'd be like NASCAR and, you know, anchor, you know, you gotta be kind of from the middle of the country because you're anchoring it, you know?

• 37:44Speaker 05

  I started in, my first job was in, um, Kansas. I lived in Joplin, Missouri and commuted every day.

• 37:50Bill Maher?

  That's where you're from.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  That's where I had to start. But it was a quick 13 months and I, I moved east because I was broke. Um, I still go.

• 38:00Bill Maher?

  You're gonna, willing to take any job anywhere?

• 38:03Speaker 05

  Hell, yes. I got a courier job when I thought I had bombed out of television. I was making 173 a week and that was really hard.

• 38:11Bill Maher?

  You think the kids today lack that kind of?

• 38:14Speaker 05

  It's been proffered that they might, that there's a, a more of a victimization culture and, um, um, because I have college loans, I am ergo a victim, kind of thing. I am not encumbered by college loans. A high school degree, I recommend. By the way, with AI coming, send your kids to a trade school. We need welders. AI can't frame a house. They can't hang sheet rock. They can't wire or plumber house. All the trades.

• 38:49Bill Maher?

  I just had Mike Rowe on the show last week.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Well, Mr. Dirty Jobs.

• 38:53Bill Maher?

  Yeah. And, uh, he's really a great apostle for carrying this message forward. And he's, and he's been at it for a long time and he's right. And we were talking about the sad fact that, uh, not only do we need these jobs, but there are some 7 million able-bodied men who are what they call, uh, not in the labor force. That's different than unemployed. Unemployed is you're looking for a job, you can't find it. This is not working, not looking.

• 39:24Speaker 05

  Not even thinking about it. Yeah.

• 39:26Bill Maher?

  Xbox.

• 39:27Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 39:28Bill Maher?

  Or whatever. I mean, and I'm sure people are like, oh, look at these two old white men talking about the kids today.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  In my day.

• 39:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but, but also engage with the idea, is it also somewhat true? At least somewhat true. The, there's a big story this week about the $20 burrito. Have you heard this?

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Is Arowan selling burritos now?

• 39:49Bill Maher?

  No, somebody was complaining, some, some young person, like 23, was complaining that, uh, how can, you know, you wonder why we vote for socialists? Because a burrito was $20. Turned out, yeah, because it was Uber Eats it over. Like, because they think having food actually just brought to them is part of the living expense.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  Good point. Yeah, that'll do it. That just doubles your costs right there. But you're contributing to the Uber Eats and DoorDash driver economy, which is made up of people who try to make it.

• 40:26Bill Maher?

  Which, by the way, few people ever talk about this. I did it once with.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  Food's cold?

• 40:32Bill Maher?

  With, no, with, with Amazon, the disaster, shopping like that is on the environment. A disaster.

• 40:41Speaker 05

  Well, look at the, the carbon footprint of Amazon.

• 40:44Bill Maher?

  Bringing your food to you. Everybody needs their food brought to them.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  My day, we went out for pizza. Yeah.

• 40:52Bill Maher?

  Well, that's true too, but we're not saying it because we're old. We're saying it because it's true.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  Come on.

• 40:57Bill Maher?

  And because you're hypocritical about your love of the environment, because you don't care. I mean, I very rarely order from Uber Eats or Door, whatever it is, but when I do, I'm astounded at the amount of paper and plastic.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:16Bill Maher?

  That one person's order generate, one person.

• 41:20Bill Maher?

  And Amazon, you know, people order five pair of pants. Oh, they'll bring the other four back that don't fit. So people are, you know, using gas to take your pants back and forth across the country.

• 41:33Speaker 05

  No argument in the contrary.

• 41:35Bill Maher?

  And everything comes in a giant box and the plastic. They, nobody talks about it. It's like, you know what? Liberals, conservatives, we both don't want to give this up. So let's just shut the fuck up about it, you know what?

• 41:47Speaker 05

  I understand.

• 41:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  All right. Victory you.

• 41:51Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 41:51Speaker 05

  There's no other argument to make.

• 41:53Bill Maher?

  I didn't even know what the, were we arguing?

• 41:55Speaker 05

  I mean, there's no other side to that. The carbon footprint has expanded exponentially due to convenience.

• 42:02Bill Maher?

  Yes. I mean.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  It's a trade off.

• 42:04Bill Maher?

  And there is something hypocritical about those who use these things and pretend to be environmentalists. I like to think of myself as an environmentalist to the extent that I totally am on board with. It is still a calamity, even though we have ones that have seemed to have superseded it like AI, but it is still a calamity, slow motion, but, um, you know, did they get some things wrong where they made it seem like it was gonna be worse by now than it was? Yes, and that made a lot of people kind of skeptical, but it is still a really important thing that's going on.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  A hundred percent.

• 42:42Bill Maher?

  But I also flew private a lot to get to gigs.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:47Bill Maher?

  And I don't feel bad about it.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  Well, it's part of your job in a way.

• 42:51Bill Maher?

  It's part of my job, and even if it wasn't, zillions of people take zillions of flights every day, it wouldn't have made a difference. And every environmentalist you can imagine, I can show you a picture of them getting on a private plane.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  Yep, that is a true fact. Um, let me ask you about the environment here in California. Tomorrow, my wife and I are gonna take, uh, drive up the PCH, and it's the first time I will have seen Malibu since the fires. By the way, we have found great success out east putting water in our hydrants. Just, I'd wanna throw it out there. Just want a little, little pro tip, pro tip. Why, Adam Carolla, who I agree with.

• 43:34Bill Maher?

  Love Adam Carolla.

• 43:35Speaker 05

  On an increasing number of topics.

• 43:36Bill Maher?

  I love Adam.

• 43:37Speaker 05

  Um, does these videos on the PCH showing the vacant lots in Malibu and highlighting the ridiculous permit process in this state. The coastal commission, uh, you've got the Bass administration, we could do 90 minutes on that. Uh, what, why is California this way?

• 43:58Bill Maher?

  I've been bitching about this.

• 44:00Speaker 05

  Your solar panels, I watch.

• 44:01Bill Maher?

  I know, I know, I'm just telling you, like, you wonder why that part of the left fucking hates me? Because I, because I will not stop saying these kind of things that are crazy. I, you make me my.

• 44:15Speaker 05

  Now you're doing walking, you're giving me a little walking. I'm not gonna stop saying.

• 44:19Bill Maher?

  I, not just the solar panels, I needed to have my garage needed, it was a, it was a three car garage that really was a two car garage. It really was, was thinking too much of itself.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 44:33Bill Maher?

  It was not really made for three.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  It was an aspirational two car garage.

• 44:38Bill Maher?

  Correct, so I wanted to change this, instead of two things, poles holding up the thing, one in the middle, and like, three inspections, and there should be no inspections. I should be able to do this on my own. I'm not a child, I know my girl personally.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:54Bill Maher?

  I can have him get the best.

• 44:55Speaker 05

  If it doesn't impact safety of human beings.

• 44:57Bill Maher?

  So, it, this, and it just shows the fact that we had this fire, it got this incredible amount of publicity, all the eyes of not just the state, but the country and the world are on California, and what will happen with the rebuilding, and even with that level of scrutiny, they could not get their act together. That shows you the power of bureaucracy and red tape and people in entrenched positions who are used to a certain way of doing things, or whatever it is, but cutting red tape, that is no joke.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I really thought the, uh, mayoral election was gonna go the other way.

• 45:37Bill Maher?

  True, Spencer Pratt?

• 45:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I viewed the videos that campaign put out as having the ability to change campaigning forever. The use of, the fierce use of AI.

• 45:49Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  The cartoonishness, the caricatures of Karen Bass, that was unbelievable to witness out east, uh, knowing a little bit about, I, I love coming to Los Angeles, I always have.

• 46:01Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 46:01Speaker 05

  I was that kid growing up in New Jersey, I bought the whole thing. I bought MASH, I thought, well, hell, they're shooting that in South Korea. I thought there was a place named Mayberry. I, I didn't know, I was looking at sets on Perry Mason. I, I, I loved Manics because I could see parts of real Los Angeles. I never, our family didn't have money to travel to places like this until I was, I came out here for a living.

• 46:30Bill Maher?

  You know what kills me about the healthcare system? The moment you decide to actually take care of your mental health and get therapy, the process itself gives you a panic attack. You spend three weeks searching, calling offices and getting passed around, only to find out nobody takes your insurance and they want a small fortune out of pocket. When you break an arm, you use your insurance, so why should mental health be any different? That's where Rula comes in. Rula is a healthcare company that partners with over 100 major insurance plans, bringing the average copay down to just 15 bucks per session. Depending on your benefits, your copay could even be zero. Plus, they don't just toss you to the first person available, they carefully screen and

• 47:14Bill Maher?

  vet a network of over 15,000 therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, using your specific goals, preferences, and background to help you find the right fit for your therapy or medication management. There are no wait lists, you can book an appointment as soon as tomorrow. And Rula stays with you throughout your journey to monitor your progress and make sure you're actually reaching your goals. So, if you're ready for quality care without the financial headache, go to rula.com/random to get started, that is R-U-L-A dot com slash random. Thousands of people are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that is actually covered by insurance.

• 47:59Bill Maher?

  Visit rula.com/random to get started, that is R-U-L-A dot com slash random. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. How old were you when you didn't know this?

• 48:13Speaker 05

  Uh, it was a couple of weeks back, yeah.

• 48:16Bill Maher?

  We're talking six or like 19?

• 48:19Speaker 05

  And we came out.

• 48:20Bill Maher?

  It's gonna make a big difference.

• 48:21Speaker 05

  I came out for work and we might have, um, indulged in, um, some marijuana with my, my wife, me and my brother, we had a rental car and we were like hicks, we got a map of the goddamn stars, and we got in the car, under the influence, and we were like, whoa, whoa, Lucille Ball, you know, it was just crazy.

• 48:47Bill Maher?

  I love it, I went on the TMZ tour bus about a year ago.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  Oh, I would, I would do that in a heartbeat. I went on the Universal tour bus and just sat there. 1313 Mockingbird Lane, for god's sakes.

• 48:59Bill Maher?

  Oh, Munsters.

• 49:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, hell yes, the Bates Hotel, it's all right there. I, I, driving here, we're not gonna talk about our location, I wanted to know everyone who lived in every house, I wanted to know how close are we to the Sharon Tate house? Did I just pass that road? I, I don't know enough.

• 49:18Bill Maher?

  I go to the Sharon Tate house a lot, my friend lived there.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  Really?

• 49:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah, Jeff Franklin, he bought that property and sadly, I just had lunch with him, he's a great guy, but he, but it's, I, I guess that, uh.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  There's some echoes in that house.

• 49:31Bill Maher?

  I, I've been there many times, I never heard of them, the ghost of Charles Manson never came out of the party room, uh, while Chaka Khan was playing in the music room and stabbed me, you know, uh, uh, uh, people are, I think are a little too superstitious, although, look, could there be such a thing as a ghost? I, I, I don't know, I've said this before, I'm not that kind of person, I'm an atheist, but I do also know, I can't deny it, many very smart, reasonable people who insist they were not drunk, not high, not asleep, who had some sort of experience with some spectral.

• 50:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:10Bill Maher?

  Entity. I don't, I don't know what that is, and I don't know what to do with it.

• 50:15Speaker 05

  UFO sightings, not so much. That's kind of always the same person.

• 50:19Bill Maher?

  I think the, no, that's total, that, we, it used to be the, the fucking farmer who got anally, anally probed, now it's the guys with the buzz cuts. Didn't you see that, the documentary Disclosure? Not all, I mean, these are very serious people.

• 50:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know.

• 50:35Bill Maher?

  I'm, I'm, I totally think they have been monitoring us for a long time, and they're not even being sort of like shy about it now.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  What do they make of us?

• 50:47Bill Maher?

  Plainly, if they wanted us dead, we'd be dead by now, as the detective always says, or the criminal. If you, if we wanted you dead, you'd be dead already.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  I'm so glad I'm not high right now.

• 50:59Bill Maher?

  No, I, I may be high, but that's not wrong.

• 51:02Speaker 05

  I just interviewed Roseanne Cash, who I love, uh, for my, uh, very modest, uh, Netflix show, and she said, we may already be dead. She's into, she's into quantum physics, she's, she's into all this stuff, and it threw me for about a week.

• 51:20Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, this is not new. We might be in an alternative universe.

• 51:24Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 51:24Bill Maher?

  You know, this might be a dream that The Matrix is having with Keanu Reeves. I don't... Yes, there's many possibilities. I spend zero energy wondering about any of them that I'll never know while I'm alive. What I do know is I'm here now. And that feels real, and I know how to make it either... Or try to make it either feel good or bad.

• 51:48Speaker 05

  It all goes back to the getting high scene with Donald Sutherland in Animal House. Where the kid says, "Wait, do you mean? The Earth could be in a molecule under our fingernail?"

• 52:00Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  It's the same argument.

• 52:02Bill Maher?

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  But if you're telling me space is infinite, there's no chance there isn't an orb in space that doesn't support life.

• 52:15Bill Maher?

  Oh, so we do agree?

• 52:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just think the mathematical odds are overwhelming that we're not alone. I don't know about visitations.

• 52:25Bill Maher?

  No, I think they're plainly around, and I just think this... Whatever entity this is, it gives me hope in the sense that it looks like, well, they're definitely technologically more advanced than we are. It tells me that if you do get technologically more advanced, maybe you also get morally more advanced, because plainly they could do a war of the worlds. Remember the movie?

• 52:56Speaker 05

  Oh, fantastic.

• 52:57Bill Maher?

  I love that movie.

• 52:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:58Bill Maher?

  Oh, Spielberg got his best. Tom Cruise.

• 53:00Speaker 05

  That was one of the scariest movies. That movie stayed with me because it involved, like Jurassic Park, it involved children. And children were the subject of that great fear. I thought Steven never got the credit for that film. Tom Cruise was fantastic in that movie. That, his choice of creature was so goddamn scary in that movie. It also took place in our home state. They're chewing up the Jersey countryside as they go.

• 53:32Bill Maher?

  But you know, it's from a war of the worlds.

• 53:36Speaker 05

  Orson Welles.

• 53:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but also there was a...

• 53:40Speaker 05

  A book.

• 53:40Bill Maher?

  A book, H.G. Wells.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 53:43Bill Maher?

  Right, okay. I had trading cards when I was a kid. I had baseball cards, for sure.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:50Bill Maher?

  But I collected those when I was like five, six, seven, eight. I got these other cards. There was a lot of cards back then. Batman cards.

• 53:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember. Football cards.

• 54:00Bill Maher?

  Beatles cards.

• 54:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:03Bill Maher?

  Cards were a thing. We didn't have the internet.

• 54:05Speaker 05

  We also had Tiger Beat magazine, but go ahead.

• 54:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I had a series of cards that I inherited from a cousin, so they were probably collected before even I was around. And they were war of the worlds cards. And it looks exactly like... They made a movie of it first called Mars Attacks, Jack Nicholson.

• 54:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:25Bill Maher?

  It looked like that. And it also, the tripods. Spielberg kept that. That's in that book, the tripods, which was a very unique thing and a very creepy thing.

• 54:35Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 54:35Bill Maher?

  I don't know why tripods are creepy.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  Well, because they're not anthropomorphically us. And Steven, again, in this most recent movie, Disclosure Day, had to decide on how to imagine an alien. And he went traditional, with the egg head and the weird eyes, and the big thorax like an ant.

• 54:59Bill Maher?

  When he came out at the end, it was like one of those reality shows that has a reunion episode.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  A little bit, yeah.

• 55:04Bill Maher?

  "I'm the alien who was here 20 years ago and fucked up your head."

• 55:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, they were reminiscent of our childhood aliens.

• 55:13Bill Maher?

  Well, whatever it is, I do think they're here, and they're queer, and we should get used to it because they're apparently monitoring, but, you know... Is the fact that we first tipped into the nuclear age and then now have tipped into the AI age, is this why they seem to be more letting us know they're here? There's more sightings by more military people? It seems like it would be at least foolhardy to not at least examine the possibility that nuclear and AI are things that would alarm aliens that these morons got a hold of, you know what I mean?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  But you're also...

• 55:52Bill Maher?

  "These fucking idiots now have AI." "No bueno, guys, turn the tripod around," you know?

• 56:00Speaker 05

  You're also viewing their judgment, their potential judgment of our embrace of nuclear power and AI through the prism of all that we know, what we call judgment. Do you get what I mean? And I'm not high, I swear to God.

• 56:14Bill Maher?

  No.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  So you're giving them human qualities because this is our only existence.

• 56:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 56:21Speaker 05

  We only know how to explain things.

• 56:22Bill Maher?

  We're anthropomorph...

• 56:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, that. Well, I'll have that with the white sauce, yeah.

• 56:26Bill Maher?

  Anthropomorphizing them.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  And the vinegar on the side.

• 56:30Bill Maher?

  Which we... Which we do with animals, too.

• 56:34Speaker 05

  Yes, we do.

• 56:35Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 56:36Speaker 05

  Cute little baby cows and doggies.

• 56:38Bill Maher?

  They treat animals so bad, but they're never shy about using them in commercials.

• 56:42Speaker 05

  My family makes so much fun of me. My Instagram feed is dominated by golden retrievers, donkeys. Donkeys are such an underrated, affectionate, lovely and loving animal.

• 56:55Bill Maher?

  You have an Instagram feed?

• 56:57Speaker 05

  No, I'm a lurker. I don't, I'm not on Instagram. I have like a space saver.

• 57:08Speaker 05

  You can not be public on Instagram. You can be private and just cruise around and follow who you want to follow.

• 57:16Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, I don't...

• 57:19Bill Maher?

  I don't do that either unless you're on Instagram, because I do have an Instagram page, and then I do. I totally do, and I'm on it all the time, and that's totally... No, no one would ever write for me. But I think, I mean, on Instagram, we put stuff about the show, but I don't...

• 57:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:35Bill Maher?

  Look, my bond with my audience has always been sincerity.

• 57:38Speaker 05

  Oh, I don't worry about your bond with your audience.

• 57:40Bill Maher?

  What?

• 57:41Speaker 05

  I don't worry about your bond with your audience.

• 57:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I mean...

• 57:44Speaker 05

  Those are your people.

• 57:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but it's like telling the truth, so I would never be like, "Yeah, I'm really on Instagram." I'm really not. There's shit on there, and not shit, good shit, great shit about me and the show.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:56Bill Maher?

  But like, you know, it's just not... I don't want to, it would be like getting plastic surgery. It just doesn't feel right. Okay, if that makes me a dinosaur, I mean, I am slow to adopt to technology. That's not my strong suit. We all have to know our strengths and weaknesses.

• 58:12Speaker 05

  Right.

• 58:13Bill Maher?

  You know, but I don't deny it, but, you know, I don't need it. Listen, folks, nobody warns guys about what happens as the years stack up. You wake up one day, you're eating the same, working out the same, but suddenly feel like you're moving through wet cement. You think you just overworked, but it is actually nature playing a sneaky trick on you. Starting around age 30, men lose about 1% of their testosterone every year. Eesh. But here's the part nobody talks about. Even the testosterone your body is still making often gets locked up by a protein that puts handcuffs on it. It is like having a fortune sitting in the bank, but your debit card keeps getting declined.

• 58:57Bill Maher?

  Well, that is where Mars Men comes in. It's designed to help free up that locked testosterone, so your body can actually use what it already has. They pack eight natural, clinically-dosed ingredients into this stuff like Tonga Heely, Shilajit.

• 59:16Bill Maher?

  Had lots this morning, I feel great. Zinc and boron. Some men report a much steadier, natural sense of energy and drive throughout the day instead of the frantic coffee buzz followed by an afternoon crash. It supports healthy stamina and focus. It's made in the USA, third-party tested, and now available at GNC nationwide. They even give you a 90-day money-back guarantee, though over 91% of users report higher energy levels. For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life, plus free shipping and three free gifts at mengotomars.com.

• 59:55Bill Maher?

  That is mengotomars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. There was no hole in my life that would have been filled by sending strangers pictures of what I'm doing.

• 1:00:15Speaker 05

  I understand. As I just said to Kara Swisher on our show, look at baseball clips from the 80s. And someone hits a homerun. People are watching. Look at baseball clips from this week. A, everyone from behind home plate is having Kobe beef down in the VIP room. So most of the seats are empty behind home plate. It's crazy, but it's true. And B, when someone hits a homerun, people's heads do this. Because they're looking down. All of society's looking down.

• 1:00:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm sorry that I don't want to join every part of the technological revolution. I want to be a cafeteria Catholic. I'll take what I want.

• 1:00:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Bill Maher?

  And, you know, again, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. It's not like I ever said to myself, "Boy, if only Gary Smotrich, my friend freshman year at Cornell, could know what I'm having for lunch." My life would be more completed. I'd just feel better about myself and the day I'm having, and I think I'd be a better partner if I was in a relationship. That didn't ever occur to me. But, I mean, your kids sure turn out great. Your daughter's a giant star.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  What a thrill to have our daughter get into an Ivy League school, first of all.

• 1:01:35Bill Maher?

  Oh, she went to an Ivy League school.

• 1:01:36Speaker 05

  She went to Yale.

• 1:01:37Bill Maher?

  Yale.

• 1:01:38Speaker 05

  Driving up to that campus and unloading her...

• 1:01:41Bill Maher?

  I got turned down by Yale.

• 1:01:43Speaker 05

  She got turned down by Brown.

• 1:01:46Bill Maher?

  Well, that's nothing. Why would you wanna go to Brown? Is that the one in?

• 1:01:51Speaker 05

  In Providence. Our son went to Elon University. He went to Elon in North Carolina. A good friend of mine who worked at CBS said when we were hunting for colleges, "Just look at the kids. Are they happy?" And that sure proved true at Elon. Our son came out of college, trained up for a career. He is in television. He works for WCBS in New York.

• 1:02:16Bill Maher?

  Oh, really? What's he do?

• 1:02:18Speaker 05

  He's an anchor reporter, unbelievably.

• 1:02:21Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:02:22Speaker 05

  At his dad's.

• 1:02:22Bill Maher?

  At the local?

• 1:02:23Speaker 05

  That's where I was in local news at WCBS.

• 1:02:26Bill Maher?

  Cause he's New York local and I, okay. But I'm sure they're grooming him for the national.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  Who knows?

• 1:02:32Bill Maher?

  Well, now that must, now that must give you a kind of feeling. Of course, I could never know, being childless. I tried so many times, Brian, but just couldn't get it done. Um, no, but that must give you as more of the majority of people in the, on the planet who like kids. I mean, I don't have them, but I get it that like there's no love like that for most people. It must give you a lot of spielkis.

• 1:02:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Bill Maher?

  To like.

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  Nokas.

• 1:02:58Bill Maher?

  Whatever. What is that?

• 1:03:00Speaker 05

  Nokas is, is welling with pride.

• 1:03:02Bill Maher?

  What do you know about the Jews?

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  Spielkis is nervous.

• 1:03:04Bill Maher?

  What do you know about the Jews?

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  Spielkis is ants in your pants.

• 1:03:08Bill Maher?

  You're the least Jewy guy I know. Why are you, why are you telling me? Are you sure about this?

• 1:03:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Bill Maher?

  What is it, nokas?

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  You're giving me nokas. You're making me proud.

• 1:03:17Bill Maher?

  Okay. And what spielkis?

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  Spielkis is you're making me nervous.

• 1:03:21Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  I'm keyed up. I'm on edge.

• 1:03:24Bill Maher?

  I'm neither.

• 1:03:26Bill Maher?

  I'm neither nervous nor proud.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  For our viewers, we'll put the Yiddish hotline up at the end of this broadcast in case you're in crisis. Um, our son, uh, first of all, when our daughter made her first appearance on David Letterman, I was like a weepy mess and she looked just like, exactly like my wife when I met my wife. She, she borrows, thank God, so much from my wife. Douglas physically tends to be my mini me. And it was interesting in our firehouse, guys would come up to me over time and say, "Do you have a kid who works at?" Cause they'd hear his voice and it's reminiscent. And because he's in the same line of work as his old man,

• 1:04:09Speaker 05

  um, it's too much. It's just, we're incredibly proud of our kids. They do become your life. They now have kids. So we have grandkids and that becomes your life. You know, we're so, we're so lucky. Our kids wanna hang out with us still and we did something right. You know?

• 1:04:27Bill Maher?

  Tell me about it.

• 1:04:28Speaker 05

  And I wasn't around for, I mean, you know, I, my first day as White House correspondent, we flew to Jakarta for a G8.

• 1:04:37Bill Maher?

  But see, this is what's so wonderful about our life here on earth is people are different and it's good. Because it's good that we're the opposite type of person because then we don't compete.

• 1:04:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Bill Maher?

  You know what I mean? I don't hate you. I wouldn't anyway, but.

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  No, I only have admiration for you.

• 1:04:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but it's like opposites work.

• 1:05:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Bill Maher?

  Uh, in romance situations, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they say opposites attract. They don't always work. I've seen them work. Um, I've also seen them, that was the problem. Is that you're too far apart. I mean, you see in show business, they, people almost always go out with someone else in show business.

• 1:05:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Because they understand the life.

• 1:05:25Bill Maher?

  They understand it.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  I met my wife in a television control room.

• 1:05:28Bill Maher?

  Is that right?

• 1:05:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:30Bill Maher?

  And this was before sexual harassment was a thing. I'm guessing.

• 1:05:33Speaker 05

  She was a manager and I was a lowly reporter. And she went to her boss and said, "We're dating." And I think the quote from her boss was also my boss was, "No shit." Cause I guess we had been a little obvious about it, but we reported it, you know?

• 1:05:52Bill Maher?

  You did?

• 1:05:52Speaker 05

  Yes. She asked me out first. This was not some, you know, me too, sitch.

• 1:05:57Bill Maher?

  And you wanted her to ask her?

• 1:05:59Speaker 05

  Oh, hell yes.

• 1:06:01Bill Maher?

  So you were?

• 1:06:02Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:03Bill Maher?

  So you had a kind of a Pam and Jim thing going on in the office?

• 1:06:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. And when, the day I saw her, uh, I will name check one of my best friends, Bernie Smilovitz of Detroit, uh, Michigan. Uh, he was our sportscaster. He was a long time sportscaster later in Detroit. I, this was at Channel 5 in Washington when I met my wife. I walked into his office and said, "I'm off the market." The day I met my future wife.

• 1:06:30Bill Maher?

  You were dating this guy?

• 1:06:32Speaker 05

  No, he was just my friend. I'm off the dating market. Like I arrogantly said, you know, that I'm, I can't wait to watch this. Go ahead, please. No, let everyone see it.

• 1:06:42Bill Maher?

  What do you think I'm gonna do?

• 1:06:43Speaker 05

  This is like.

• 1:06:44Bill Maher?

  It's a half a shot. That's how careful I am. By the way, this is the only time in the whole week I allow myself a drink. That's what age does to you.

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:06:55Bill Maher?

  Puts you on a short leash, but I enjoy this so much.

• 1:06:59Speaker 05

  It's about the, what, what are three half shots?

• 1:07:01Bill Maher?

  That's one and a half. Really? It's pathetic. I used to have that before I left the house.

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  Water.

• 1:07:09Bill Maher?

  What? Yeah, okay. You know what? We'll see. We'll see who's lives longer. So what were we talking about? It was important to me.

• 1:07:19Speaker 05

  Um.

• 1:07:20Bill Maher?

  It was very important.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  Meeting your spouse, relationships in the office.

• 1:07:23Bill Maher?

  Okay, that's a good one because we're thinking about doing something on that. I, I read so many stories these days and somebody in our meeting today was saying Pam and Jim, there was a sitcom where that was like the whole thing, the office romance. And not just that one. And it was a great show, by the way. That was one of my all time faves. Just genius. It really was. I used to wait for Thursday night. I would finish my work. It was a hard work night. I'd get into bed with the office, a new episode.

• 1:07:53Speaker 05

  Fantastic. And they hold up.

• 1:07:55Bill Maher?

  They hold up, but boy, that is like not, today, you, you know, people get fired, they get outed. I mean, they're paranoid about having an office relationship and that's where you meet people.

• 1:08:09Speaker 05

  Of course it is.

• 1:08:10Bill Maher?

  It's just so dumb to, oh, they always go too far. You know?

• 1:08:15Speaker 05

  Because you go out for work, after work for drinks. It's something you have in common. You have the same employer from the jump. Um, by the way, when Steve Carell shows off his new flat screen TV in his home, oh my God, just the outtakes from that scene, they could not get it because everyone could only break. When he's talking about surround sound and he pulls it out from the wall, it only has about an eight inch extension. It is brilliant television.

• 1:08:42Bill Maher?

  I'm sure I saw it, but I don't remember it. I have to dial.

• 1:08:45Speaker 05

  Look it up. You've got several things to look up after this conversation.

• 1:08:48Bill Maher?

  Oh, you'll have to remind me.

• 1:08:49Speaker 05

  Someone in the Arizona's control room there in radiology.

• 1:08:52Bill Maher?

  You'll have to remind me.

• 1:08:54Speaker 05

  You walk into the room, everyone scatters. I like that. Like we're gonna be dealing with radiology.

• 1:08:58Bill Maher?

  Just us here.

• 1:08:59Speaker 05

  It's, no, it's, I know it's.

• 1:09:00Bill Maher?

  And I'm, I am going to break you down.

• 1:09:02Speaker 05

  It's very chill.

• 1:09:03Bill Maher?

  I'm going to break you down.

• 1:09:05Speaker 05

  Professionals have tried.

• 1:09:06Bill Maher?

  Into a drooling.

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  Professionals have tried.

• 1:09:08Bill Maher?

  I thought maybe you actually would smoke pot with me. I'd sort of got this, this idea that maybe that could happen.

• 1:09:14Speaker 05

  Too much, I'm too much of a control freak.

• 1:09:17Bill Maher?

  What, what was the last year you smoked pot?

• 1:09:19Speaker 05

  Uh, before edibles got good. Um, uh, I guess I had a commercial pre-roll. Those weird kind of state issued Massachusetts government approved joints that are, that are rolled by a government agency. And they're, I mean, as spliffs go, they would make your patron saint proud. They're big. They're fatties. But they're from the government. It's like getting your driver's test.

• 1:09:48Bill Maher?

  Bro, I grow my own right here. It's 10 feet from where you're sitting.

• 1:09:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, but does Gavin know?

• 1:09:53Bill Maher?

  I have a pot store.

• 1:09:54Speaker 05

  That's a cash crop. You need a, you need a permit.

• 1:09:56Bill Maher?

  I'll hook you up.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  If Gavin finds out, you're screwed. You need a permit.

• 1:10:01Bill Maher?

  Where did you say you just drove? It was fun with your wife and it was like?

• 1:10:05Speaker 05

  No, we're about to go on the PCH tomorrow.

• 1:10:07Bill Maher?

  Oh, the P, to where?

• 1:10:08Speaker 05

  And I haven't been here since the fires. We're going up to Los Olivos to, to a wedding.

• 1:10:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, where's that? Like near San, San something?

• 1:10:17Speaker 05

  It's two hours. That's all I know.

• 1:10:19Bill Maher?

  California coast is like nothing in the world.

• 1:10:21Speaker 05

  I know. And we've done the, we've done the big sur. We've done the big ride. And A1A is, is up and running again.

• 1:10:27Bill Maher?

  Have you ever done Solvang?

• 1:10:29Speaker 05

  No, but God bless you. What is that?

• 1:10:32Bill Maher?

  It's a completely, uh, Dutch founded for some reason, Christmas town. Uh, it's a little north of Santa Barbara. I'm serious.

• 1:10:41Speaker 05

  Burl Ives, the mayor?

• 1:10:43Bill Maher?

  Uh, he should be. It's, it's awesome. It's, it was founded by Dutch people. I guess they have some, they found their way around to California and who knows when, the 19th century and established this little Dutch town. Everything looks Dutch, windmills. And of course now they play it up. And so they're the Christmas town. And if you go there, like Christmas week, you can go to the visitor's center and there's a a game where you search for like these, I forget what they call them. I think Neezers. They're like little gnomes that are hidden all over the town. They give you clues and you find the gnomes.

• 1:11:17Speaker 05

  The, the Pokemon system?

• 1:11:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I did last December 18th. I recommended, but only Christmas week.

• 1:11:25Speaker 05

  What I can't imagine and what I could never imagine being a kid was Christmas in Southern California. Because when you grow up out east, it's snow, it's sleigh bells, it's cold as hell.

• 1:11:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 05

  It feels like Christmas.

• 1:11:38Bill Maher?

  I had it as a kid. It was enough. I liked it. This was more fun, Solvang. By the way, Santa was not there and I made a big stink about it at the visitor's center.

• 1:11:48Speaker 05

  You're all about the baby Jesus as well.

• 1:11:50Bill Maher?

  You're the fucking Christmas town and you don't have a Santa? They didn't. They didn't have a Santa.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  Huh.

• 1:11:56Bill Maher?

  Solvang, really? And also Solvang, pipe in music. Like all, it'd be so cheap. There should be Christmas music playing as you're walking on the quaint streets with all the Christmas stuff in the windows.

• 1:12:08Speaker 05

  Take it from Mr. Manger.

• 1:12:10Bill Maher?

  I'm telling you.

• 1:12:11Speaker 05

  Um, they're very direct people, so they can probably take criticism.

• 1:12:15Bill Maher?

  Who, the Solvang?

• 1:12:16Speaker 05

  No, the Dutch.

• 1:12:18Bill Maher?

  The Dutch.

• 1:12:19Speaker 05

  They're very direct.

• 1:12:20Bill Maher?

  Aren't we stealing Greenland from them?

• 1:12:22Speaker 05

  And they probably came here because

• 1:12:24Bill Maher?

  No, that's Denmark.

• 1:12:25Speaker 05

  We st- we- we- we saw Ohio, we didn't like it, you know, they just kept driving west.

• 1:12:31Bill Maher?

  I don't wanna pin you down on political issues, but where are you on stealing Greenland, Brian Williams? Pro or con?

• 1:12:38Speaker 05

  Manifest destiny. Um, I- I think we should let Greenland continue to prosper and live their own lives. I feel the same way about our neighbors to the north in Canada.

• 1:12:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but this is the part in the movie where the bad guys are discussing it and one of them says there's a lot of minerals under that-

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  Rare earth minerals.

• 1:12:58Bill Maher?

  Minerals under that ice cliff.

• 1:12:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, I know.

• 1:13:02Bill Maher?

  Lot of money in those minerals.

• 1:13:03Speaker 05

  Uh, do- do a deal. Do a really great deal for the rare earth minerals and let them, uh, be an autonomous place.

• 1:13:12Bill Maher?

  I agree. It's a terrible idea to like, demand land.

• 1:13:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. Monroe is dead, you know?

• 1:13:19Bill Maher?

  Well, Monroe wasn't demanding land, it was just saying, if you fuck in our hemisphere, we will- we will-

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  This- see this? This is our- under our control, yeah.

• 1:13:29Bill Maher?

  Certainly are- and that, uh, countries have done that for centuries and centuries, sphere of influence, they called it.

• 1:13:35Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:13:36Bill Maher?

  You know, and, um, a lot of times invasions of other countries start because the aggressor country is, uh, pretending to protect one of their minorities that are living in the other country, cause you know, borders don't necessarily mean so, you know, Putin's in Ukraine to protect the Russians, Hitler went into Czechoslovakia to protect the Germans, you know? You know, Austria, although Austria really is Germany, I mean-

• 1:14:06Speaker 05

  Nothing like a cruise missile to protect those Ukrainians.

• 1:14:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Speaker 05

  Unbelievable, what a world.

• 1:14:14Bill Maher?

  The Austrians pretended that they were taken over by Hitler. I've seen the footage. More like a parade to me.

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Bill Maher?

  It didn't look like he was an un- certainly some of the people.

• 1:14:25Speaker 05

  France put up that valant- valiant fight for two weeks.

• 1:14:30Bill Maher?

  Isn't that interesting about the human mind when you think about the Maginot Line?

• 1:14:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Bill Maher?

  Like who could not see that coming?

• 1:14:41Bill Maher?

  To build a wall, but not all the way.

• 1:14:46Speaker 05

  Do not tell them it stops here. I know, I know, I know.

• 1:14:51Bill Maher?

  It should've been called the Wall of Flank.

• 1:14:54Speaker 05

  Yep. Well, there were many, as you know, Mr. Cornell, Mr. Ivy League education. There were many, they- they suffered greatly in World War I, which was also the motivator for Hitler, who thought his country had become a horrible, immoral mess and was a- was a collection of ruins and they wanted to make, uh, Germany great again, to coin a phrase.

• 1:15:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, look, Brian, let's not kid the audience, we're both white guys in our sixties and now seventies, we watch a lot of the History Channel.

• 1:15:31Speaker 05

  Yes, yes.

• 1:15:32Bill Maher?

  And a lot of it is about Adolf Hitler.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  Eisenhower met with his commanders the night before.

• 1:15:37Bill Maher?

  I used to watch, when I was first in New York in 1979, living in this little box in this apartment, this other apartment.

• 1:15:44Speaker 05

  What neighborhood?

• 1:15:46Bill Maher?

  Well, I had a rent-free situation. I lived in the, uh, maid's room of the, uh, South African ambassador and did a service for them. Um, actually, it wasn't them, they were expelled from the UN.

• 1:15:59Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, that was bad, South Africa.

• 1:16:01Bill Maher?

  He was their first, he was their- the first delegate. Twice while I was living there, he- his picture was on the front page of the New York Times.

• 1:16:09Speaker 05

  Wow. How did you fall in with the ambassador to South, uh, from the South African ambassador?

• 1:16:16Bill Maher?

  David Remnick, yes, that David Remnick.

• 1:16:18Speaker 05

  Oh, I just saw him at Shiva.

• 1:16:20Bill Maher?

  Friend of my friend's and suggested I look, I had no money coming out of Cornell. Like, that made a difference to a comedian. Uh, so, I- he said, you know, you can look in the Village Voice, there are, uh, rent-free situations, which as a dumbass twenty-two-year-old, I didn't realize meant mostly gay.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  Let's choose the most racist nation on earth. Hey, is your maid's room available?

• 1:16:50Bill Maher?

  I went to, uh, two interviews before I, well, look, one, where I realized, oh, this is an old queen.

• 1:16:58Speaker 05

  This is how you pay the rent, yeah.

• 1:16:59Bill Maher?

  But there was another one, and it was the, uh, first delegate to the United Nations from South Africa. They lived in a big swanky apartment on the east side. I remember once Mrs. Kissinger was there for tea. Uh, and I got the maid's room and I took care of their children. Don't call me an au pair, but if you do, just know that's how fucking bad I wanted to survive in New York City and have an apartment twenty blocks from Catch a Rising Star.

• 1:17:26Speaker 05

  Your maid's room was my Pittsburgh, Kansas. I was focused on a television career. And I wasn't gonna be talked out of it, so I moved.

• 1:17:35Bill Maher?

  So what was your apartment like in Pittsburgh, Kansas?

• 1:17:37Speaker 05

  It was a studio. I had a-

• 1:17:39Bill Maher?

  You had studio?

• 1:17:41Speaker 05

  It must be nice. I had a corrugated plastic thing to close off my bed.

• 1:17:47Bill Maher?

  You had corrugated? I didn't. I had roaches crawling on my face.

• 1:17:52Speaker 05

  I used to, true, I used to buy a can of Spam, cut it into five slices, fry that up with two fried eggs, that was dinner, but you could have dinner for like pennies.

• 1:18:04Bill Maher?

  I- I have the exact same thing, but it was, I would buy a sandwich at the Carnegie Deli. The sandwiches are like, there's no human I can think of who could literally open their mouth wide enough to eat the sandwich the way they built it.

• 1:18:20Speaker 05

  Size of a mailbox.

• 1:18:21Bill Maher?

  It was like a week's worth of turkey, which it was.

• 1:18:24Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:18:24Bill Maher?

  For me.

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  Corned beef.

• 1:18:25Bill Maher?

  One beef, one sandwich.

• 1:18:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Bill Maher?

  Um.

• 1:18:30Speaker 05

  That could feed a family of six, yeah.

• 1:18:32Bill Maher?

  Well, I was one, it could feed me for six days.

• 1:18:35Speaker 05

  I understand.

• 1:18:35Bill Maher?

  You know, uh, I didn't know what we were talking about, and I know how this is going to be mocked.

• 1:18:41Speaker 05

  No, we went down, we got off-

• 1:18:42Bill Maher?

  It's also true.

• 1:18:44Speaker 05

  There's a tangent, and it was my fault, and I- I- I saw my-

• 1:18:47Bill Maher?

  Exactly, you're not, you're the one who's not high.

• 1:18:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm stone-cold sober. Um, I took my shot and I gave you a tangent and I feel terrible. See, at this point, if you had what we used to wear, an earpiece and a functioning control room, there, I said it.

• 1:19:02Bill Maher?

  I never did.

• 1:19:03Speaker 05

  They would talk to you.

• 1:19:04Bill Maher?

  Well, you had to, you're an anchorman. You- you were, I mean, I always think of broadcast news.

• 1:19:11Speaker 05

  Oh, my god.

• 1:19:12Bill Maher?

  Isn't that the greatest?

• 1:19:13Speaker 05

  It really is.

• 1:19:14Bill Maher?

  When Albert Brooks is home saying it, and William Hurt is like, there are no- Tomcats, the F-14s, and they- and he says-

• 1:19:21Speaker 05

  They're the backbone of naval aviation, yeah.

• 1:19:23Bill Maher?

  I say it here, it comes out there.

• 1:19:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Bill Maher?

  And it's just, but you're not that guy. I've seen you too many times, and the eleventh hour, you know, you're you. You are, that's why you're so successful and why I love what you do. Because you're talking, you're not, some producer isn't, he might say, you know, like, oh, this just in, Admiral Borden killed himself.

• 1:19:45Speaker 05

  Well, that's right, and you have to be, you have to learn how to talk while being spoken to.

• 1:19:49Bill Maher?

  Admiral Borden killed himself.

• 1:19:50Speaker 05

  You have to learn how to talk while being spoken to.

• 1:19:52Bill Maher?

  Do you remember all the stories you've ever covered?

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  Uh, well, I remember a lot of them, especially the impactful ones. But if you're covering a breaking news situation, which too often was a mass shooting, they will, as you're talking, they'll say, mayor? And Jeff Zucker, the long time-

• 1:20:08Bill Maher?

  Mar.

• 1:20:09Speaker 05

  No, the mayor of a city.

• 1:20:11Bill Maher?

  I'm joking, I'm still going back.

• 1:20:12Speaker 05

  Jeff Zucker, the longtime boss at CNN, as a producer, was terrific at speaking during your inhalation. Because he knew the game.

• 1:20:22Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  And you need to be able to talk while someone is unloading stuff.

• 1:20:27Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:20:27Speaker 05

  And not get that look on your face, like, you know, like a dog. Um, that's-

• 1:20:32Bill Maher?

  No, I- I mean, I have that same basic cognitive challenge on a panel because I wanna hear everything they say, and I do, I listen to everybody, but I also kinda have to be loading up what's next if- if I feel like we've exhausted this topic, or, you know, there is that chat, which is, to me, the fun of the game.

• 1:20:56Speaker 05

  And then you get a time cue that you gotta start new rules, cause you have a hard out, and you gotta-

• 1:21:00Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:21:00Speaker 05

  You gotta stop the conversation.

• 1:21:02Bill Maher?

  Well, that's easy, I just go, shut up.

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true, cause you have command over your friend. It's been interesting seeing your regulars over the years, the people that, uh, I view you as valuing, who are on a lot and who match the ethos of the show.

• 1:21:18Bill Maher?

  You always turn us down, but that's because you're an-

• 1:21:21Speaker 05

  I couldn't do opinion.

• 1:21:22Bill Maher?

  You're an anchorman. I get it, Ted.

• 1:21:25Speaker 05

  I couldn't do opinion.

• 1:21:26Bill Maher?

  Remember that episode of Mary Tyler Moore where Ted's gonna become a quiz master?

• 1:21:30Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:21:31Bill Maher?

  You don't, you didn't watch Mary Tyler Moore?

• 1:21:33Speaker 05

  Oh, I loved Mary Tyler Moore, it just that you don't-

• 1:21:36Bill Maher?

  Ted Baxter, the newsman.

• 1:21:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:21:37Bill Maher?

  Was going to take-

• 1:21:38Speaker 05

  Mayor Lou?

• 1:21:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he was gonna take a job being a game show guy, and Lou shames him. So, what'd you wanna be, Ted? Quiz master? That's one you gotta look up.

• 1:21:50Speaker 05

  Murray Slaughter. I love that show.

• 1:21:52Bill Maher?

  I can do an impression of him.

• 1:21:53Speaker 05

  Rhoda Morgenstern?

• 1:21:54Bill Maher?

  You wanna hear my- This is-

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  Who among us does, oh, there's no one here.

• 1:21:58Bill Maher?

  This is, uh, Gavin McLeod.

• 1:22:00Speaker 05

  Okay, yes, Murray Slaughter.

• 1:22:01Bill Maher?

  So this is the episode where Ted meets this hot anchor lady from another station and- and he's telling Murray that, um, she's attracted to him, and she goes, and he says, Murray, she squeezed my hand, she squeezed my hand. So that's your line, and then I'll give you Murray. You do Ted.

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  Murray, she squeezed my hand.

• 1:22:23Bill Maher?

  Ted, she was probably trying to pump some blood to your brain.

• 1:22:28Speaker 05

  Aw, that's nice, that's good.

• 1:22:30Bill Maher?

  It's a-

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  I mean, it's eerie, because just then I thought, I don't know if anyone else had, that we were back on the MGM, uh, MTM Studios, Mary Tyler Moore.

• 1:22:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, did you see that documentary about her?

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  Oh, it was so powerful.

• 1:22:47Bill Maher?

  What a lady.

• 1:22:48Speaker 05

  First of all, she had no-

• 1:22:49Bill Maher?

  Lady!

• 1:22:50Speaker 05

  She had no negatives. There's no one who grew up hating Mary Tyler Moore. She was a party. She was great as Mrs. Rob Petrie.

• 1:22:59Bill Maher?

  And she was a trooper.

• 1:23:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, she put up with a lot that we later learned about.

• 1:23:04Bill Maher?

  Certainly, as a hottie in that era when everybody took a shot at you and you, that was just de rigueur, you didn't, you know, you-

• 1:23:12Speaker 05

  She was fantastic. She- Carol Burnett, we got to grow up in the era of Carol Burnett?

• 1:23:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah, still around, I'm still trying to get her here.

• 1:23:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Bill Maher?

  You know her?

• 1:23:20Speaker 05

  Well, no, I think the weed will be an enticement to get her here.

• 1:23:24Bill Maher?

  It should be.

• 1:23:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, I think that'll sell, that'll put it over the- I can't believe I can see you, cause usually you're, you've got a massive, uh, fatty going during this show. Like RFK Junior, who sat in this very chair.

• 1:23:40Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:23:41Speaker 05

  You had a good one cooking with him.

• 1:23:43Bill Maher?

  He cried in that chair.

• 1:23:46Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:23:47Bill Maher?

  He did. I'm not saying that in a facetious way, or a snarky way, or I'm not proud of it. I'm just saying, um, it's not fake, you know, he's, he's, I said to him, I don't think your father would agree with everything you say, but I can't imagine he would be very proud the way you never let anybody, like, make you turn your back on what you believe. There's something about that. You know, like, not my family, not, and I don't believe everything he believes.

• 1:24:21Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. That's kind of a given.

• 1:24:24Bill Maher?

  Well, but the big picture, I do. Like, his, when he, I told him, I said, you know, you, you made your bones as an environmental lawyer.

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  Riverkeeper of the Hudson.

• 1:24:36Bill Maher?

  And he was. I saw, went through some old papers lately. They like, people like Vanity Fair printed him a lot, like, he was a liberal.

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  I remember.

• 1:24:45Bill Maher?

  Liberal hero.

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  I remember.

• 1:24:47Bill Maher?

  Okay. So, I said, you should marry your desire for us not to be killed by the kind of stuff that's in food and some medicine with your reputation as someone who didn't want us to get killed by what's in the rivers and what's in the air. It's the same issue. We're poisoning ourselves. That's it. You're the don't poison ourselves guy.

• 1:25:13Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:25:15Bill Maher?

  But, you know.

• 1:25:16Speaker 05

  He's so much more than that.

• 1:25:17Bill Maher?

  He, you can't, he, that, you know, he just takes that subway, ten stops too far. And, uh, you know, but, you know, and the victories they've gotten, you know, I see Kellogg's is taking, like, the dye out of the cereal, okay. You know, that's, uh, that's one. But it's not a big one, and like, you know, I think they punted on.

• 1:25:42Speaker 05

  It's gonna ruin Fruit Loops, but go ahead.

• 1:25:44Bill Maher?

  Well, let's get into your diet.

• 1:25:46Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:25:47Bill Maher?

  Cause eat, everything is about what you eat, not everything.

• 1:25:49Speaker 05

  Here's how opposites attract. My, my wife's average meal looks to me like potting soil. And she is happy. I will, they will lay me in the ground, and I want one of the mourners to say, you know what, he never ate kale, quinoa, or sushi. When I was coming up, kale was a stock car driver.

• 1:26:09Bill Maher?

  Is that what you're saying?

• 1:26:10Speaker 05

  Oh, she's, she's so healthy.

• 1:26:12Bill Maher?

  So you're into, so you're.

• 1:26:14Speaker 05

  Her cholesterol's in, like, single digits. She is so healthy.

• 1:26:17Bill Maher?

  Her food and your food are different food.

• 1:26:19Speaker 05

  Hundred percent. I would and have eaten pizza four, five nights a week. It's my go-to. I, I eat one meal a day because I have a massive protein and, um, Athletic Greens shake in the morning. And it's enough fuel to get me through to dinner. I only eat dinner.

• 1:26:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, because you're a Nas, NASCAR fan.

• 1:26:42Speaker 05

  But I like my burgers.

• 1:26:44Bill Maher?

  From Kansas.

• 1:26:44Speaker 05

  I like Hebrew National Dogs, they're always in the house. Um, I was raised on, uh, SpaghettiOs.

• 1:26:52Bill Maher?

  So do you eat dinner together, just different food?

• 1:26:55Speaker 05

  Yes. No, no, we, we mostly share meals. It's a rare event when I'll have pizza and she'll have a salad with a piece of salmon on it or something like that. We usually eat the same things.

• 1:27:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, you do? What's the crust of her food? Cause you just described kind of a dichotomy.

• 1:27:13Speaker 05

  Well, like chicken.

• 1:27:15Bill Maher?

  When you say it, like, well, of course I eat a chicken.

• 1:27:18Speaker 05

  You know, uh, pork loin, uh, chicken breast.

• 1:27:22Bill Maher?

  So she's not a vegetarian?

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  No, no, no. She's just really, really healthy.

• 1:27:27Bill Maher?

  Okay. Well, you know, I've, I've spent so much time and energy in the last twenty years on this sort of subject, which is something that is visited upon you, really, just because you age. And it, it's, you understand why, for example, young people never really wanted to be forced to get Obamacare. Because I remember when you're young, you're like, you're just so.

• 1:27:52Speaker 05

  You're bulletproof.

• 1:27:53Bill Maher?

  You kind of are. I mean, they tried to cancel you for a bunch of stupid shit. Everybody has done some stupid shit.

• 1:28:00Speaker 05

  We used to drive down to the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.

• 1:28:02Bill Maher?

  Oh, really? The Bruce Springsteen place?

• 1:28:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was my, that was my jam.

• 1:28:06Bill Maher?

  You were that close?

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, I grew up, uh, uh, eight miles from the beach, and, um.

• 1:28:12Bill Maher?

  Cause we had a house on Barnegat Light.

• 1:28:14Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. We're, we're in Ocean County in a disclosed, undisclosed location, which I'll share with you.

• 1:28:19Bill Maher?

  Bought a house after the storm, there was a storm.

• 1:28:22Speaker 05

  Sixty-two.

• 1:28:22Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:28:23Speaker 05

  And carved LBI in two pieces.

• 1:28:25Bill Maher?

  It really did. And property was nothing. He bought a house for eighteen thousand dollars.

• 1:28:30Speaker 05

  I have a dear friend in Barnegat Light.

• 1:28:31Bill Maher?

  We used to rent it out for the summer. It was a moneymaker.

• 1:28:34Speaker 05

  It's awesome. LBI is awesome. The Jersey Shore is awesome. Everyone who goes to the Hamptons, continue going to the Hamptons, please. Leave us with our Jersey Shore.

• 1:28:44Bill Maher?

  Did you ever go to Long Beach Island?

• 1:28:46Speaker 05

  Oh, hell, yes.

• 1:28:47Bill Maher?

  We may, we may have seen each other.

• 1:28:49Speaker 05

  Jon Stewart's a big LBI guy, too.

• 1:28:50Bill Maher?

  In nineteen sixty-eight.

• 1:28:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's true. I had an Aunt Hazel in Tom's River, and, uh, we would go to.

• 1:28:57Bill Maher?

  You know, I'm thinking now, this bully beat me up on the beach once.

• 1:29:00Speaker 05

  No, I was never that kid. Uh, we used to go to Seaside, um, and, um, Point Pleasant. Seabright was my closest beach to where I grew up in Middletown. So we would start there on Friday nights, cause Clarence Clements had an apartment there.

• 1:29:17Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:29:17Speaker 05

  And like detectives, like Dick Wolf, like detectives, we would, he would often lead us, when he got in his car, we would stay two cars back, but we'd go all the way down Ocean Avenue. He would often lead us to Bruce. And I've confessed this to Bruce, that I was a stalker for years. But that was such a privilege to grow up there. You got Steven Van Zandt, you've got, uh, you've got Bruce Springsteen. Steven grew up within sight of my high school. We're both from Middletown. Um, they made a sound, they created a Jersey Shore sound that didn't exist before. South Side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Um, it was fantastic.

• 1:29:57Speaker 05

  And we were often under the influence of something because we were dumb kids in the seventies, before the anti-drunk driving movement. Every other car on the road was somebody who'd had, had a few snorts. Yeah, I'm not proud of it.

• 1:30:12Bill Maher?

  You know what?

• 1:30:14Bill Maher?

  We can't all just always stay mad at the past forever, or feel bad about the stupid shit we did. Every generation is the, wow, you know, you did this generation.

• 1:30:23Speaker 05

  But it's all judged through the prism of today. Especially with social media's driving.

• 1:30:27Bill Maher?

  There are things we're doing now that the people in a hundred years will say, like, these two assholes were talking about AI and they didn't get it, you know?

• 1:30:35Speaker 05

  Well, it's interesting now, cause here I am, having very candid conversations on my very modest Netflix show, and with you. And for the nice people who watched me in that other role for so many years, like, tuned in every night, like, they were having a conversation with me. Those are the viewers, the customers you want. They never imagined that, after hours, I was a volunteer fireman in New Jersey who said fuck a lot. Yeah, I had a living, breathing life. I have a wife and children, and all the hopes and dreams and fears that everybody else has. I drive only American cars.

• 1:31:16Speaker 05

  Uh, on weekends, Saturday nights, I go to Wall Stadium Speedway at the Jersey Shore where my dad brought me at age nine.

• 1:31:25Bill Maher?

  And then at night, you get into a superhero outfit that says, sir, fuck a lot.

• 1:31:30Speaker 05

  I go, I go to stock car races, and I remember, because I was politically aware, I wrote Lyndon Johnson when I was an eight-year-old.

• 1:31:42Speaker 05

  And, um, I wrote him, cause I saw the famous picture of him slumped over the cabinet table in the cabinet room. Come to find out, he was listening to tapes of young Lieutenant Chuck Robb, his son-in-law, from Vietnam.

• 1:31:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:56Speaker 05

  Telling him very candidly that the war was going south. So I was that kid. I go to this, uh, uh, stock car track, which is just fantastic, third of a mile paved. It's, uh, the roar of the Jersey Shore.

• 1:32:09Bill Maher?

  Stockyard track?

• 1:32:10Speaker 05

  Stock car. Stock car racing. Uh, the, the, the class of cars I like are modified.

• 1:32:15Bill Maher?

  Is that NASCAR?

• 1:32:16Speaker 05

  Uh, no, it's a, it's a real entry-level form of NASCAR.

• 1:32:21Bill Maher?

  Like the minor leagues of NASCAR?

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  Yes, the race I'm missing this Saturday night because of the destination wedding we're going to, uh, has a retired NASCAR driver in it, and we're all very excited that he's coming.

• 1:32:32Bill Maher?

  But you really, you wanted to go to that?

• 1:32:33Speaker 05

  I love the place.

• 1:32:34Bill Maher?

  Why don't you go to the wedding instead?

• 1:32:35Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:32:36Bill Maher?

  See, that's why I never got married.

• 1:32:38Speaker 05

  No, there you go.

• 1:32:39Bill Maher?

  I'm kidding, I'm just a joke. Don't, don't, don't write letters.

• 1:32:42Speaker 05

  Where was I before you just stepped in?

• 1:32:46Bill Maher?

  Sorry.

• 1:32:46Speaker 05

  Oh, my dad used to say to me, cause I was a precocious kid, I read, I, you know, I leafed through Time Magazine and, and read Life and Look Magazine.

• 1:32:57Bill Maher?

  Me too.

• 1:32:57Speaker 05

  They were on the, they were on the coffee table. I'm listening to your dad, I'm watching Cronkite on TV. And my dad used to, we used to go early, and he'd, he'd buy me a cheeseburger, and he'd say, these are all LBJ Democrats, looking at the crowd of about twelve hundred to two thousand people. And I understood what he meant. Um, they are now all, uh, they tend to all be MAGA. The Democrats have lost that entire slice of the American population.

• 1:33:28Bill Maher?

  They used to call them Reagan Democrats.

• 1:33:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, they have, they have pissed that away. They have, they have gone their separate ways.

• 1:33:35Bill Maher?

  How old were you in nineteen sixty-eight?

• 1:33:37Speaker 05

  I was nine years old.

• 1:33:39Bill Maher?

  Okay, see, that's the difference. I don't know, maybe you were more precocious.

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  But I was watching the Ted Offensive, like a freak at all.

• 1:33:45Bill Maher?

  See, I, I, at nine, I think I was still into baseball and that stuff. Twelve, I was in nineteen sixty-eight, and that was the year of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Ted Offensive in Vietnam.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.

• 1:33:59Bill Maher?

  So like, that's the year I got interested.

• 1:34:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was a good year to dial in.

• 1:34:03Bill Maher?

  It really was. It was, and I kinda got spoiled, cause like, wow, is every year gonna be this fucking awesome? Not great, awesome, always, but like, just not dull. You know, and dramatic, and Nixon running, you know, and, uh, you know, it just.

• 1:34:21Bill Maher?

  Well, it's like your first love, you know. There's a quality to the first time of everything that is so unique that nothing in that way can compare. You can, I, I mean, I've loved people more than my first girlfriend, but I, I was never in love for the first time twice.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Bill Maher?

  You can't be, you know.

• 1:34:44Speaker 05

  You never forget your first, as they.

• 1:34:45Bill Maher?

  Did you marry your first?

• 1:34:47Speaker 05

  Uh, no, I had a whole grown ass adult life before I met her. I was

• 1:34:52Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:34:52Speaker 05

  I was already working in TV, so I had the usual high school girlfriend, uh, who I just got along with great. It was daughter of two Irish immigrants from Keansburg, New Jersey. Um, I understand she is happily married as a family. I had my, I had the usual, usual, uh, love life, as we used to call it.

• 1:35:13Bill Maher?

  But was it good? Cause mine was shit. Like I was very shy and then I went to Cornell. There was no women there.

• 1:35:19Speaker 05

  I was shy.

• 1:35:20Bill Maher?

  But it was very far, few and far between, and I didn't know how to get them.

• 1:35:24Speaker 05

  We used to end up at a bar called Jimmy Burns Seagirt Inn, which was loaded with nothing but preppy girls at the Jersey Shore. A pro tip I learned, don't go to Jimmy Burns in your fire windbreakers with the Expando key ring on the side of your belt. That's a bad look.

• 1:35:43Bill Maher?

  Some chicks like that.

• 1:35:44Speaker 05

  And I had no courage to walk up. I would rather crawl on the floor through blazing hellfire.

• 1:35:52Bill Maher?

  That's my, that was.

• 1:35:53Speaker 05

  Than try to walk up and start conversation with a girl.

• 1:35:56Bill Maher?

  That was my problem.

• 1:35:57Speaker 05

  Oh my God, I'd rather be an infantryman on Normandy.

• 1:36:01Bill Maher?

  I, I, I know. I had the exact same thing. We have amazing parallels in our life, actually.

• 1:36:07Speaker 05

  God, um, and today I'm so glad I'm not in the, on, on, you know, Raya. Or, because as bad as I was about meeting people in person, uh, if I were ever have to go out there and do it again, uh, putting my life on some, uh, on an app.

• 1:36:28Bill Maher?

  Well, I think it does speak well of you that you think you'd go right to Raya.

• 1:36:34Speaker 05

  Well, see, I, I, I believe my son met his wife on Raya.

• 1:36:38Bill Maher?

  Trust me, you could get on Raya.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  Raya's the one where it's secret. You're, you're not supposed to, it's like Fight Club.

• 1:36:45Bill Maher?

  No, it's, no, it's like the VIP entrance at a club. It's like they only allow on there. Um, I've never been on it, by the way. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even know how to get on it.

• 1:36:55Speaker 05

  I'm with you there.

• 1:36:56Bill Maher?

  But like, uh, it's, I know what it is. It's a dating site, but it's like rich guys and every girl's a model, which means like she's not really working, but she's looking for something and, you know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna judge it. I'm sure there's so many wonderful people.

• 1:37:12Speaker 05

  I believe my son met his wife on Raya.

• 1:37:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah, many wonderful people are, I'm sure on it. Um, but you have to like apply, like it's not everybody. It's a, yeah, it's a, look, I don't know. I don't object to meritocracy anywhere, including looks. People care or success of, of men. I mean, I was just reading some story about, um, there's a, a new version of what used to be sugardaddies.com. And it's basically that, but the women are not a get it. It's like, uh, they're not a, they're sort of like a, wanna own it now. Like I'm looking for a guy who will take care of me. All these clowns, if I'm gonna put up with a clown, at least have money. You know what I mean?

• 1:37:57Bill Maher?

  That's sort of where they are. Their cynicism is well earned by how lame men have become.

• 1:38:04Speaker 05

  Scott Galloway, your friend and frequent guest.

• 1:38:07Bill Maher?

  Right here.

• 1:38:08Speaker 05

  Scott Galloway, during COVID, went on your show and I read this quote back to him when he just did my show.

• 1:38:15Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:38:16Speaker 05

  Uh, he thought every Amazon truck should have a nurse and a COVID injections on board as they, because eventually they cover the whole country. And he thought that should be the delivery system for the, um, the, and he said it sitting next to you. I swear to God.

• 1:38:33Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:38:33Speaker 05

  That's where I heard it.

• 1:38:34Bill Maher?

  That's, that seems a little draconian.

• 1:38:37Speaker 05

  He's really at his best with you, but it's an interesting idea. He has, he has a big brain.

• 1:38:43Bill Maher?

  I love, I love Scott Galloway.

• 1:38:44Speaker 05

  And, um.

• 1:38:45Bill Maher?

  I, I love having him on. I'm so glad he has a big following. He's the kind of guy who has, you know, a big following. I always think, uh, when someone who's a public intellectual, a professor of somebody on that level, my friend, Michael Eric Dyson was on.

• 1:39:01Speaker 05

  Yep, guy I interviewed a lot, a hundred thousand times.

• 1:39:04Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it, um.

• 1:39:05Speaker 05

  Neil deGrasse Tyson, isn't it?

• 1:39:07Bill Maher?

  Neil, well, he's a, he's a scientist. Yes, I mean, he's a big star everywhere. But Sam Harris, you know, public intellectuals, people who are actually public intellectuals.

• 1:39:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:39:17Bill Maher?

  It's like they're few and they're far between, but it just shows if you do it well enough now, still, there is not a big, but a sizable audience.

• 1:39:29Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:39:30Bill Maher?

  There's a small rear guard action of people who aren't complete fucking morons.

• 1:39:36Speaker 05

  Kara Swisher is adjacent there too.

• 1:39:38Bill Maher?

  I'm sure I left out many people who, uh, should be mentioned in this, uh, public.

• 1:39:43Speaker 05

  But who were they when we were coming up? Were they Gore Vidal and Bill Buckley?

• 1:39:47Bill Maher?

  Yes, people, exactly. And Johnny Carson would have them on.

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  Yes, he would.

• 1:39:52Bill Maher?

  Can you imagine today?

• 1:39:53Speaker 05

  If feet snobs going on mainstream 11:30 at night TV, but they got Chuy and Capote on Carson.

• 1:40:02Bill Maher?

  They, they, I mean, maybe they were snobs, but they sort of earned it. They were smart. You know, there's something to be said for giving it up for people who actually know things, you know? They weren't, uh, look, I did this show called Politically Incorrect, where we had a bunch of fucking morons every night.

• 1:40:21Speaker 05

  Stop.

• 1:40:22Bill Maher?

  No, we did. I mean, that was the whole.

• 1:40:24Speaker 05

  Makes me a moron for watching.

• 1:40:25Bill Maher?

  Make, no, no, not the people who watch it was a joyous train wreck, but it was purposely designed so that you had, like the person who doesn't know much versus there was one expert and like, it was funny. That's what made it funny. You know, Paulie Shore was debating Bob Dole, whatever it was, you know? I mean, it was a while ago, but.

• 1:40:44Speaker 05

  You had a lot of stoners in your audience.

• 1:40:46Bill Maher?

  I did?

• 1:40:47Speaker 05

  You did.

• 1:40:48Bill Maher?

  I don't remember that.

• 1:40:49Speaker 05

  Oh, it was perfect for stoners.

• 1:40:51Bill Maher?

  I guess so.

• 1:40:53Speaker 05

  I wanna put in a plug for a television show that I've asked all my fancy friends to watch. Because as I call them, and this is micro adjacent, um, being a first responder makes you hyper aware of the people in our society who are invisible to most of the population. I used to wear an Engine 23 FDNY jacket to walk back and forth between 30 Rock and our apartment in New York. I called it my cloak of invisibility, cause no one saw me when I wore it. They looked through me. So my friends in EMS, my police officer friends, my fellow firefighters, all the people who make the country go, especially in the era of defund the police, let me know how that goes.

• 1:41:37Speaker 05

  Um, there is a show on weekends at night and stoners reminded me, cause it's very popular with stoners. It's also very popular with, with first responders and their families. It's called On Patrol Live. It's on a network called Reels. It's hosted by Dan Abrams. You know, Dan Abrams.

• 1:41:54Bill Maher?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:41:54Speaker 05

  Um, it's part of the Dan Abrams empire. They do three hours on Friday and three hours on Saturdays. They have live cameras rolling around with 10 police departments from coast to coast. You learn more about life and more about the invisible public servants who protect us every day, clean up our messes. We don't think about them until we reach for the phone and dial three numbers, 911. Uh, in my line of work, we leave our dinner tables. We get up out of a warm bed on winter nights. We don't ask who's calling 911. We don't question why we're going out. We go out. We love doing it.

• 1:42:37Speaker 05

  We love doing it. Uh, cops, uh, you know, if you, if you have friends who are cops, they'll tell you, Sunday nights is horrendous. Sunday nights is that night before school, the night before work. It's the night your NFL team loses, if you're a Giants fan, and that's when all the domestic violence calls come in. You wanna avoid four to 12, uh, if you have any choice in your shift, you wanna avoid the four to 12 on Sunday nights. I've known that since I was riding along with a police officer friend of mine as a 17 year old in Middletown, New Jersey. And I have this bifurcated life. I had an accidental career that put me with fancy people. Hyper educated, hyper moneyed, people who went to boarding schools and.

• 1:43:21Bill Maher?

  Cornell.

• 1:43:22Speaker 05

  A, a, a, it's a population I had no, I was like Holden Caulfield. I had no exposure to that. I still can't name a, a boarding school. I don't know about that, but, uh, and, and, and I've got this other life and I, I own it. Um, I, I think after, if you've lived a good life, you wanna return to where you came up, as long as it's not negatively associated. I know, I, I know who I was. I know my socioeconomic group growing up. I know how we talked, what we wore, what we wanted to do for a profession. And I'm, I'm back half the time doing that.

• 1:44:06Bill Maher?

  All right. Well, I have two things to say. First, talk.

• 1:44:09Speaker 05

  This calls for another spring water.

• 1:44:12Bill Maher?

  I, I don't know why you're so, uh, exercised about this bifurcated life, you know? You, you had the best of both worlds, you know?

• 1:44:22Speaker 05

  Oh, I'm blessed every day. Talk about privilege.

• 1:44:26Bill Maher?

  That, um, if you had to make the choice, if someone came down like 25 years ago and said, you know, I know you love being a fireman, but you know, you're, you're the anchor of the NBC nightly news. You have to choose one. I hope you would have chosen. The anchor of the NBC nightly news. I mean, not that fireman isn't important, but like other people could do the fireman job. And this is sort of like you, one of the things that you uniquely could, very few people could do it. So you, I hope you would pick that.

• 1:44:58Speaker 05

  The truth is.

• 1:44:58Bill Maher?

  But again, I'm the devil.

• 1:44:59Speaker 05

  The truth is, I mean, it has brought me terrific things, including my family. My first career route, I thought I was gonna marry a local girl from Middletown, maybe aspire to a split level colonial and uh be a firefighter, maybe, maybe get on the wait list for FDNY. Cause I had a great mentor who was a New York City lieutenant. But this is a true story. I had an Irish Catholic mother who was the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. If you ever.

• 1:45:28Bill Maher?

  What does that mean?

• 1:45:29Speaker 05

  If you ever watched Maude, she was just like Maude.

• 1:45:32Bill Maher?

  That's your mother?

• 1:45:33Speaker 05

  She was an actress.

• 1:45:35Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:45:35Speaker 05

  And a singer.

• 1:45:36Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:45:37Speaker 05

  She played at the, she performed at the Count Basie Theater in, in Red Bank, New Jersey, among other places. She was very vocal, very dramatic. Uh, our daughter, I think gets all of her acting chops, just straight DNA chain through her parents. And uh, my mom, television viewing is socio-economic. The less money you have, the more the TV is on. Our TV was on from the Today Show to the Tonight Show. I'm a night owl today because I would crack my door open and listen to my parents' black and white TV for Carson. I would listen to Carson every night. I idolized him, Cronkite, they were my guys. And I'm

• 1:46:19Speaker 05

  still a night owl because I trained myself as a young kid to stay up beyond my bedtime.

• 1:46:25Bill Maher?

  I did too.

• 1:46:26Speaker 05

  But uh.

• 1:46:26Bill Maher?

  I'm telling you, we were.

• 1:46:27Speaker 05

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:46:28Bill Maher?

  We were brothers from another mother.

• 1:46:29Speaker 05

  My mother would sit watching uh Channel Four, local news, and say, come in here. They just hired these two new reporters. You'd, you'd be better than these kids.

• 1:46:39Bill Maher?

  Hmm.

• 1:46:41Speaker 05

  And I literally have just walked in the door.

• 1:46:43Bill Maher?

  What put the B in your bonnet?

• 1:46:44Speaker 05

  From one of my two jobs, not to brag, Perkins Pancake House and Sears. And that's what I was. I was going to school. I was about to enter the fire academy. I was a, if there was a loser float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, that was me. I reek of maple syrup. Um, my shoes were so sticky, they lived outside and I would wear them to the pancake house. And yet she stayed on me. She stayed on me. I had a.

• 1:47:14Bill Maher?

  See, this is why you and I are so opposites, cause our mothers are opposites. Like your mother, this, you said this loud, brash Irish woman. My mother was a quiet Jew. So quiet, I didn't even know she was a Jew. Really? I was raised Catholic.

• 1:47:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. I've heard you say that.

• 1:47:30Bill Maher?

  They didn't even say until I was like 13, like, oh, by the way.

• 1:47:34Speaker 05

  I've heard you say that.

• 1:47:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I, I mean, so I feel like that goes into our, you know, that so much of a personality is determined in zero to two.

• 1:47:44Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:45Bill Maher?

  And certainly zero to five.

• 1:47:46Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:47:47Bill Maher?

  It's all locked in.

• 1:47:48Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:47:49Bill Maher?

  And the rest of your life, you're just trying to either deal with that as it makes you, or in some cases try to undo it.

• 1:47:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

• 1:48:00Bill Maher?

  I mean, why is someone anal? What does anal mean? Like super, like neat? I'm that.

• 1:48:06Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:48:07Bill Maher?

  Okay. It's called anal because it's from the anal stage. It's, it's.

• 1:48:11Speaker 05

  Look at the time, ladies and gentlemen. You know, thanks for.

• 1:48:13Bill Maher?

  Why? Why? Why is that so weird?

• 1:48:16Speaker 05

  I didn't, just, I didn't come here to talk about a rectum, but please continue.

• 1:48:21Bill Maher?

  Ah, well, I thought I could get you loaded, but I didn't.

• 1:48:25Speaker 05

  Anal is being super organized.

• 1:48:28Bill Maher?

  It comes from the anal stage because you are, um.

• 1:48:31Speaker 05

  You wanna keep your poop hanging around?

• 1:48:33Bill Maher?

  It's like, it, you don't. I think, I don't know. It's something with how, it because you're, you're, you're at a stage of your life where you're not even gonna remember it. But it's in your, in your unconscious. Like how that went. And I imagine, yes, sitting around with a loaded diaper or whatever. I don't know what it is. I'm sure my mother did it well. So I don't know why I have it, but like it makes you need. I'm not crazy. I'm not like, you know, uh, OCD C, but like I do have to have things in apple pie order all the time. Or maybe I was just born that way and the theory's bullshit. I'm not a big fan of psychiatry. I know it works for some people. It's also a lot of bullshit.

• 1:49:14Speaker 05

  The following happens to me. We have friends over. I'm sitting, enjoying the conversation. I see a book upside down on the bookshelf in the living room. I gotta get up and I gotta, I gotta straighten it right now, or I won't enjoy the rest of the night.

• 1:49:29Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:49:29Speaker 05

  I.

• 1:49:31Bill Maher?

  That's worse than me.

• 1:49:32Speaker 05

  I, I'm not proud of it.

• 1:49:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Speaker 05

  Like coffee table books, they gotta be a certain way.

• 1:49:36Bill Maher?

  My T-shirts are organized. My T-shirts.

• 1:49:39Speaker 05

  See, that's interesting, cause that's a backstage item for me. My closet looks like a family of six has been living in it for two years.

• 1:49:47Bill Maher?

  All right. This is getting a little gay now. I'm kidding.

• 1:49:50Speaker 05

  I didn't assign.

• 1:49:52Bill Maher?

  No. I don't care. I've been gay for you for a very long time. I've been your biggest fan for such a long time.

• 1:49:59Speaker 05

  Man, I don't think I've missed a word you've said.

• 1:50:01Bill Maher?

  I'm so glad you're back on doing something. I saw that Tom, Tom Hanks, what a great, first of all, it's a, what a feather in your cap to be able to get him. That's a, that's a big, that's a big thing because like, that's a hard guy to get on your show. I couldn't get him here.

• 1:50:14Speaker 05

  He's a, he's, he is a national treasure.

• 1:50:16Bill Maher?

  And he's always a treasure. And he's always funny and, you know, so.

• 1:50:21Speaker 05

  I knew I was gonna be okay if, if he said yes.

• 1:50:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Speaker 05

  But it's hard. We're doing booking, which you live and die around.

• 1:50:28Bill Maher?

  Well, I hope I get to be on it.

• 1:50:29Speaker 05

  And uh, well, yes, of course. Obviously, I'm gonna reciprocate.

• 1:50:33Bill Maher?

  Well, you don't do it because you have to.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  And I'll buy the weed.

• 1:50:37Bill Maher?

  No, no. Now I'm, then I'm on your show.

• 1:50:41Speaker 05

  Bring your.

• 1:50:41Bill Maher?

  I, I know what it means to be a guest versus a, a host. I'll still be stoned.

• 1:50:45Speaker 05

  We have a small, darkly lit studio filled with earnest young people who are terrific. I have a staff of five.

• 1:50:52Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's, you don't need more.

• 1:50:54Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:50:55Bill Maher?

  I mean, bro, they're making movies now. They make 300 million dollars and they shoot on their phone.

• 1:51:01Speaker 05

  I know.

• 1:51:01Bill Maher?

  Like the world, we are, we are dinosaurs from the age of dial phones and.

• 1:51:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:08Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 1:51:09Speaker 05

  I know.

• 1:51:10Bill Maher?

  I mean, I remember when VCRs were new. It's amazing the change we've seen.

• 1:51:16Speaker 05

  Remember eight tracks that we didn't mind just stopping in the middle of our favorite goddamn song?

• 1:51:22Bill Maher?

  I, I never.

• 1:51:23Speaker 05

  To switch channels?

• 1:51:23Bill Maher?

  I never had an eight track. They always looked stupid to me.

• 1:51:27Speaker 05

  Oh, they were. But it was a music delivery system. It was either that.

• 1:51:32Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:32Speaker 05

  Growing up in New York, yeah, when we were kids, you could walk across the beach and hear 77 W A B C without interruption, cause it was on everybody's transistor radio.

• 1:51:43Bill Maher?

  Hey, when I moved out here in 1982, I had a Toyota Corolla as my first car. And my sound system was a boombox. That was in the back of boombox. Remember a boombox?

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:56Bill Maher?

  In the backseat.

• 1:51:57Speaker 05

  Huh.

• 1:51:58Bill Maher?

  That was then plugged into the cigarette.

• 1:52:00Speaker 05

  Wow, that's some.

• 1:52:02Bill Maher?

  Portal.

• 1:52:03Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:52:04Bill Maher?

  Because there was a lighter for cigarettes in the car.

• 1:52:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Bill Maher?

  And you could plug this in it and.

• 1:52:10Speaker 05

  I have one in my Chevy, which is a recent Chevy, but it's how we plug in our flashing blue lights to get to the firehouse. Is a, they call it a cigar lighter now. In the Chevy manual, they call it a cigar lighter. That's how they've gotten away from.

• 1:52:24Bill Maher?

  I remember this girl I was going out with at that time, so out of my league. And boy, did she make fun of that.

• 1:52:31Speaker 05

  Yes, I understand that. Um.

• 1:52:35Bill Maher?

  But the sex was good.

• 1:52:36Speaker 05

  I had.

• 1:52:36Bill Maher?

  Anyway, Brian, it's great to see you.

• 1:52:39Speaker 05

  And again, I love what you've done. So this is like a speakeasy during the week. Well.

• 1:52:48Speaker 00

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