Pod Insights Club Random with Bill Maher Tony Hinchcliffe | Club Random with Bill Maher About this episode Bill Maher sits down with Tony Hinchcliffe, the ringmaster behind the hit live podcast Kill Tony. Tony reminisces about his early days answering phones at the Comedy Store, how Mitzi Shore ruled the club, how talent coordinators silently decide careers, the jelly fish ghost in the Belly room, Tony’s Puerto Rico joke at the Trump rally and the social media blowback, doing stand-up in a parking lot during Covid, Austin’s comedy boom, Kid Rock’s ‘Southern White House”, why comics crave honesty, Bill’s brief detour into the history of Genghis Khan, and so much more.
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Transcript 17,770 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding.
0:43 Speaker 00 Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
1:01 Bill Maher? Yeah, I didn't want to say because it sounds like name dropping.
1:03 Speaker 02 Okay, who was it?
1:05 Bill Maher? Abraham Lincoln.
1:11 Bill Maher? I mean, even though he's like the last guy I would have over here to Club Random to like have a good time.
1:21 Bill Maher? Guest here?
1:22 Speaker 02 I'm here, hello.
1:23 Bill Maher? Play Swept Up?
1:25 Speaker 02 How's it going, my man?
1:26 Bill Maher? How are you?
1:27 Speaker 02 Good, so nice to meet you.
1:28 Bill Maher? Tony.
1:29 Speaker 02 Tony Hinchcliffe, Phil Mar. A pleasure to meet you.
1:32 Bill Maher? Oh, the insult comic. I can feel the barbs coming. Should I not sit in the front row?
1:37 Speaker 02 No, you're safe.
1:38 Bill Maher? If I'm in the front row, am I going to get spritzed with the comic barbs? You're not going to ask me where I'm from?
1:45 Speaker 02 No, no crowd work on you.
1:46 Bill Maher? No, come on, do some crowd work. Ask me where I'm from.
1:50 Speaker 02 Where are you from?
1:50 Bill Maher? Uh, New Jersey. Come on. There's a slow pitch down the middle of the plate, bro. New Jersey?
1:58 Speaker 02 That is a real, that is a shithole, indeed.
2:01 Bill Maher? Well, come on, you could do better than a shithole. Isn't that what you're famous for?
2:05 Speaker 02 I like to feel the people and know them a little bit better than just straight up.
2:09 Bill Maher? Ask me what I do.
2:13 Bill Maher? And then I say nothing and you say, how do you know when you're done? And then tip your waitress.
2:19 Speaker 02 That's it.
2:20 Bill Maher? So you came up to the clubs, right?
2:22 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:22 Bill Maher? Still in the clubs?
2:23 Speaker 02 Yep, started at the Comedy Store, literally 18 years ago yesterday. My mom texts me every year on May 6th and reminds me. I forget, she texts me, happy anniversary.
2:35 Bill Maher? How does she know that? You just tell her everything?
2:37 Speaker 02 Well, no, I told her that early on and she marked the calendar and she found it to be so interesting, my adventure into comedy and the whole Mitzi Shore thing. Moms are obsessed with finding out about, at least my mom found it so intriguing that there was such a powerful, diabolical, cool ass woman that existed.
2:55 Bill Maher? She was all those things?
2:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:57 Bill Maher? She was cool? I never knew Mitzi. I mean, I auditioned, like, I was an improv act out here.
3:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:05 Bill Maher? Not that you couldn't do both, but I was just not her type of act. She went for the more like, that's how we say, theatrical.
3:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:13 Bill Maher? Usually, not all of them. Letterman worked there. He certainly was a dry monologist.
3:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:19 Bill Maher? Leno, but, but I felt like when I was there, and I go there now just for fun every once in a while. I think it's great to go.
3:26 Speaker 02 I actually heard you were there on quite the magical night, laying low, you were sitting back. And it just so happened, I don't even know if you know this story.
3:35 Bill Maher? I don't.
3:35 Speaker 02 It just so happened to be the night that the new, brand spanking new, that day, talent coordinator took over, which is a big deal. I think the last time they had a new booker slash talent coordinator there was eight or 10 or something years ago. And, actually it was five years ago. And so it happened and somehow, coincidentally, on that night, a comedian or whoever was supposed to go up wasn't there. And there was a young lady who we all know, Nicole Buchanan, sitting in the back of the room, who wasn't a paid regular. And the new talent coordinator, who everybody's loved forever, but she was just a bartender
4:16 Speaker 02 and she worked her way up to being the booker, the trusted tastemaker of the store. Got Nicole Buchanan to go onstage and you watched, I don't even know if you know this, you watched a young lady that was so funny that everybody knows and loves become a paid regular right in front of you that night.
4:33 Bill Maher? I certainly remember, I don't remember the names.
4:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:36 Bill Maher? But I do remember this highlight of the night was a woman comic.
4:41 Speaker 02 Yep.
4:41 Bill Maher? I mean, it often is, by the way, when I go there.
4:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:45 Bill Maher? I'm not that the guys aren't funny too, but you know, I don't know, I just think they, this person was a scream.
4:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:54 Bill Maher? And I did not know that story.
4:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's great and I've known her forever. She came up in the little roast battle world.
5:02 Bill Maher? It's the one I'm thinking of.
5:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is.
5:04 Bill Maher? And that's funny, you said that, a talent coordinator. When I started in New York, the emcee was the talent coordinator. There was no talent coordinator. They, you know, basically deputized one of the comedians. It was the plum job because then you weren't fighting City Hall. Otherwise, you were fighting City, you could either fight City Hall or be City Hall. If you were the emcee, also got paid fifty dollars. The comics got cab fare. Fifty dollars a night, wow. So, yeah, that was it. And that's the person who like made all the decisions. You go on then, you go on after him, you know,
5:45 Bill Maher? it was a, you know, you could, I don't remember anybody being corrupt about it. But it was certainly someone's personal taste, but then again, of course, it always is.
5:56 Speaker 02 Right.
5:57 Bill Maher? You know?
5:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:58 Bill Maher? I mean, is that your, your memory of the, of starting out at the Comedy Store, you thought it was fair or you thought it was like?
6:06 Speaker 02 When I got to the Comedy Store, it was a very interesting time because obviously Mitzi Shore was really sick. She had already had Parkinson's for fifteen or twenty years or something.
6:19 Bill Maher? Oh, really?
6:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, but she would come in and watch showcases and most importantly, she would call all the time. And I took on the job of being the phones guy at the Comedy Store when I got there. So I would work from, you know, like 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. answering the phones, which back then, because the Comedy Store didn't have a website until very recently.
6:46 Speaker 02 That's how they sold tickets before people would come in. They'd call and they'd go, "Is there a show going on there? What do you guys sell, props or something?" Like, people didn't know what a Comedy Store was, a lot of people.
6:57 Bill Maher? Right.
6:57 Speaker 02 And so I would answer the phone and tell them, "Oh yeah, it's a great show." I was often lying about how great the shows were back then. Because it was kind of a dark time in 2007. But then, all of a sudden, you know, the phone would ring, just like it would for a normal human calling to plan their trip a week out. And it would be, "Aw, hey, is Tommy there? What are you doing? Is there a lot of calls coming in?" It's just this... And as a store guy, I mean, ooh, your heart would flutter. And it was just because famously, she would fire people if she didn't like your tone, your voice, anything. She was famous for firing people on the spot.
7:34 Bill Maher? I mean, some people are hearing this and are, "Who the fuck are they talking about?" But certainly, within the comic community, she's legendary. The way, like Sue Mengers, not everybody knows who that is, but she got, she was the first powerful woman agent.
7:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:51 Bill Maher? And famous enough that they did a Broadway show about her. Bette Midler played her.
7:55 Speaker 02 Ah.
7:56 Bill Maher? Um, do you know? Oh, yeah, it was called, I don't remember what it was called, like Come to Lunch or something. I used to go over to her house all the time. I mean, I was lucky. She just was a fan and invited me. She'd have the most amazing dinner parties with like, like whoever, she could just summon whoever it was. So it was like Summer the New Guard, you know? It'd be like, you know, Daniel Craig, fresh from the latest James Bond with Sidney Poitier and, you know, Joan Collins, you know? But, so Mitzi, I feel like, is similar in the comic world. And somebody should do a movie about her. It sounds like she's more of a, almost better as a character.
8:35 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, that's something we've always, Comedy Store guys have always dreamed of. And it's, it's a hell of a, I mean, the actual truth of her story is more amazing than...
8:49 Bill Maher? And she's Paulie Shore's mother.
8:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:51 Bill Maher? Right, people know Paulie Shore.
8:52 Speaker 02 Exactly, which is interesting, because most people start with that. They goes, that's Paulie Shore's mom. And it's like, yeah, but it's funny.
8:59 Bill Maher? And her husband was Sammy Shore, who was also a comic.
9:02 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:03 Bill Maher? Not like a big comic, but not a failure, right? I mean, club comic.
9:07 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:08 Bill Maher? Um, I think respected among his peers.
9:11 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:11 Bill Maher? You know, one of those types who isn't that too much of a Morty Gunty, you know, the not really household names, but the comics know them and some people know them. You know, I don't know if Shecky Green, you know, I don't think is as famous as Buddy Hackett.
9:27 Speaker 02 Right.
9:27 Bill Maher? But I, as a comic, I don't see a huge difference.
9:30 Speaker 02 Right, exactly.
9:30 Bill Maher? Since they're both dead.
9:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:32 Bill Maher? I can, I can speak freely.
9:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:34 Bill Maher? Uh, you know, so, yeah. So he had, so Paulie grew up, you know, in the, in the cavernous attics of the Comedy Store, the haunted, but it's haunted, right, the Comedy Store?
9:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, that's what they say.
9:50 Bill Maher? Have you ever seen Cher's move?
9:51 Speaker 02 I hate, I hate that I have, but I did see a little something one time. It was the craziest, I hate that I saw it because it makes you sound crazy.
10:01 Bill Maher? You know what, just always tell the truth.
10:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:03 Bill Maher? That's my thing. I always just, you know, they got mad at me for telling the truth about the Trump dinner. It was like, we just could tell the truth and people were, so just tell the truth. You know, I understand your apprehension because it's like, well, then people say, I'm this moron who believes in ghosts.
10:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:18 Bill Maher? Look, I ain't a moron and no one thinks I am. And I'm the first to say, I don't know if I believe in ghosts, but I know so many people who are not crazy people, they're not religious and they weren't drunk, they swear to me, and they saw something that is just, for lack of a better word, some sort of ghost or spirit. So what, what is your story?
10:41 Speaker 02 I had been there.
10:41 Bill Maher? I have not.
10:42 Speaker 02 I, yeah, I hadn't either. Like I said, it's one of those wacky things where you're like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. And it hits you differently than you think it would when it happens. And I don't even know, maybe it wasn't, it could have been anything, but. It's funny because everybody, especially when you work there, especially when you work there all day and all night, like I was when I got there at 22 years old. The whole first year or so, I was looking for one and hoping to see one, you know, I'm not stoned every night, looking around the corners, feeling creeped out. I'd be the one that shut off the lights in the rooms and you'd be looking and you didn't see anything. And then one day, middle of the damn day, sun blazing, it's like 1, 2, 3 PM, somewhere in there.
11:27 Speaker 02 And I took a break from the phones to go smoke a cigarette. So you have to walk like down a hall and through the dark belly room because all those lights are off during the day. And when I broke the pathway into the belly room, there was just a weird feeling that happened. And then this human height looking jellyfish, like vibrating, kind of see-through, but like, it's kind of, I don't even know how to describe, kind of jellyfish-esque, just this weird blob.
11:56 Bill Maher? A ghost.
11:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. It certainly seemed like it.
12:00 Bill Maher? Stop beating around the bush.
12:01 Speaker 02 I know. I know, it drives me crazy.
12:05 Bill Maher? If it happened to happen to Costello, I believe it. If it happened to the Bowery Boys, it could happen to anybody.
12:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. Here's the crazy part of the story, is I didn't tell anybody. You ready for this? This is where shit gets weird. I didn't tell anybody at all, because I didn't want anybody thinking, oh, Tony's high or nuts or almost passed out or whatever. No, no, not at that time.
12:26 Bill Maher? Even if you were, I gotta say, and this wouldn't hold up in court, but you know, the truth is different than what holds up in court. The truth is, I don't know, yes, I guess when I was 19 and I got high for the first few months and it was just almost an out of body experience, but I've been smoking for 50 years, I could be high.
12:45 Speaker 02 Exactly.
12:46 Bill Maher? And I still don't see ghosts.
12:47 Speaker 02 Yep.
12:48 Bill Maher? And I'm not close, I wish I could get that high.
12:51 Speaker 02 Yep, same. I'm at 22 years of smoking pot every day.
12:54 Bill Maher? If you, if, so if you say... Even if you were high, I still don't think it would make you see a ghost. I mean, it's not, it doesn't make us hallucinate.
13:04 Speaker 02 Exactly, exactly.
13:06 Bill Maher? So, so how long, how long were you there in the room with the ghost?
13:10 Speaker 02 Oh, I'd say probably five, five to 10 seconds.
13:14 Bill Maher? You froze or you?
13:16 Speaker 02 Froze and then I walked away. You would think you would run.
13:20 Bill Maher? Right.
13:20 Speaker 02 But you don't feel, you don't feel like running.
13:24 Bill Maher? Stay there the whole time? Yeah. It didn't, it didn't go first?
13:27 Speaker 02 It didn't go first.
13:30 Bill Maher? Well, that's, I think that says something about the ghost.
13:32 Speaker 02 It looked like it was, there wasn't like a face to it or anything.
13:36 Bill Maher? Right.
13:37 Speaker 02 But it looked like, the way it moved, it seemed like it was surprised to see me as I was to see it.
13:44 Bill Maher? I'm sure, well, yeah, I'm sure it was. I mean, no, it's not gonna have a face. It's not Robert Downey. It's not, it's not a rom-com. It's a ghost. But the Belly Room, which you referenced there, by the way, that's for people who don't know the Comedy Store. It has three rooms, but the main room, which is like the big room. And then the original room, which is a smaller room, but also, you know, the same comics play it. It's all good comedy. And then the upstairs, the Belly Room, which was the room for women comics.
14:16 Speaker 02 Yep.
14:17 Bill Maher? So what's the ghost doing hanging out in the women's locker room?
14:23 Speaker 02 Exactly. So I walk away and I don't tell anybody. This is where shit gets crazy. Is later that night, uh, the house piano player of 35 years or whatever, Jeff Scott. Is, we always had a tradition where right before we opened the doors, because I would switch from being a phone guy to the front door guy. At 7:30 or whatever, we'd set up the chairs. He would set up his piano, his keyboard and everything and get the room right. Then we'd have the room right and then we'd go smoke a bowl. We'd come back to the original room and open the doors. And I'd see people and he'd be playing the fucking ragtime on the piano.
15:03 Speaker 02 So this is where things get interesting. The exact same day that I saw whatever the hell I saw. We're going to smoke. He's walking ahead of me. He walks through the bar. We're going to the back to Sacred Ground, that little alleyway. He's, he gets ahead of me because I'm saying hi to a waitress in the bar area. And then by the time I'm almost to that door, he's walking by me now this direction, like he had seen a ghost. And I go, Jeff, what, where are you going? We're, we're smoking. He goes, whoa, and he snaps out of it and he goes, dude, I just saw something crazy. I go, what did you see?
15:43 Speaker 02 And I'm fucking tripping in my head because I literally am going, please don't fucking say a white, kind of blobby jellyfish looking thing.
15:55 Bill Maher? Well, actually it's better if it's just one.
15:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:58 Bill Maher? Ghost.
15:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
15:59 Bill Maher? Was it?
16:00 Speaker 02 It was.
16:01 Bill Maher? So it was the same ghost?
16:02 Speaker 02 Same exact thing, except this time it was outside and it moved how he said that my thing moved was kind of like, yeah.
16:10 Bill Maher? Yeah, I mean, look, the other thing it could be, um, is an alien.
16:18 Bill Maher? I mean, again, I, I get the inclination to go, oh, please, that people might be thinking or that we might be thinking about ourselves, but I'm sorry. Like I say, I've just heard this for too many times from people and there's just nothing wrong with saying, I don't fucking know. Um, and the alien theory, also there's nothing unscientific about the possibility that there is other life in the universe, or that such life has been monitoring us, or that such life is already among us. I always say everything that happens in movies, that happens in real life. You know, the premise of one, what's the big one where they're, Will Smith and?
17:02 Speaker 02 Nah.
17:03 Bill Maher? Men in Black.
17:04 Speaker 02 Independ, yes.
17:05 Bill Maher? Men in Black, yeah. Um, you know, it's not like that, but.
17:12 Bill Maher? Could it be? Yes. Why wouldn't it be?
17:18 Bill Maher? And it's the problem with talking about this stuff is that especially with someone like you who is, I don't know if, you should tell me, I'm very curious. Your, your reputation now is a right, is as a right winger because
17:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:31 Bill Maher? you did the, the Trump rally and told the Puerto Rico joke, which is a great joke. You know, yeah.
17:38 Speaker 02 It was in the mix. It's a whole fucking conundrum. You would love, you would love to know the story because you would really understand it from a comedian's perspective. Like I'm going there to kind of, you know, to, to, to do this thing about how, you know, free speech this and that and make those kinds of jokes, but I had a whole thing written and planned, you know, to go into the teleprompter. And,
18:08 Speaker 02 and that Puerto Rico joke was actually a joke that I had done a bunch in my standup and it's part of a bigger joke with more front end and a longer back end. And,
18:21 Bill Maher? Like what? I'm curious.
18:22 Speaker 02 Well, it was, um, it, you know, basically, basically at the end of the normal joke, I go, I'm talking about the problems in the world.
18:30 Bill Maher? Right.
18:31 Speaker 02 And I go, and I don't know if you guys know this, but there's a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah, I think it's called Puerto Rico.
18:41 Bill Maher? Yeah.
18:41 Speaker 02 And the point of the joke is that people picture, obviously, in my mind, obviously, the great Pacific garbage patch.
18:49 Bill Maher? Of course. It's, it's the classic misdirection.
18:51 Speaker 02 Yes, which I'm obsessed with, by the way. I can't believe nobody ever talks about the fact that there's an island of plastic as big as Texas.
18:58 Bill Maher? Oh, I do.
18:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:59 Bill Maher? On my show.
19:00 Speaker 02 It's wild, right?
19:01 Bill Maher? Oh, I did a whole fucking thing.
19:03 Speaker 02 And the fucking, it's in the fish, it's in our sushi, which means it's in us.
19:07 Bill Maher? I've said it here also, if there's anything that's gonna get us, they could possibly. Fix a lot of the air pollution because there are new strategies and technologies that are coming online. I can't describe them to you, but basically ways to clean up, you know. But the ocean, no, they don't have that at all. And they don't have a way apparently to get off plastic um that you can sell to the people. I think they they die before they gave it up. And they don't have a way to get it out of us really. That one worries me more than air pollution, more than anything is plastic.
19:44 Speaker 02 Yep.
19:44 Bill Maher? But no, there's no doubt it's insulting to Puerto Ricans. But you know, I I have been over the same territory. I mean, I I don't think I would do exactly that joke, but I certainly have done many that have been objected to. And my thing was always, you know what? Everybody has to accept in the framework of comedy insults. We just, you know, and they're never fair.
20:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:09 Bill Maher? When we do a joke about the French surrendering.
20:13 Bill Maher? They did surrender, you know, to the Nazis. They it's not like they are really more cowardly than anybody else. They planned badly and they built something called the Maginot Line um to keep out the Nazis after World War One. But they forgot to build it all the way to the ocean. So the Nazis just went around it. It was it wasn't cowardly cowardice, it was stupidity.
20:36 Speaker 02 Right.
20:36 Bill Maher? Polish people are not especially dumber than anybody else.
20:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:41 Bill Maher? But they got that.
20:42 Speaker 02 Right.
20:42 Bill Maher? Supermodels don't always throw up.
20:45 Speaker 02 Right.
20:46 Bill Maher? But you know, we and that's the thing is like the jokes, are they fair? They're not.
20:51 Speaker 02 Right.
20:51 Bill Maher? And we all just kind of have to suck it up for the sake of comedy. That that would be my defense.
20:56 Speaker 02 I totally agree. Luckily, the Puerto Ricans, and I knew this going into it, and I knew it at the last second when I was doing it at two thirty in the afternoon, which was another terrible problem. If there's one thing I was upset about.
21:10 Bill Maher? In the afternoon, that rally?
21:11 Speaker 02 Well, it was supposed it started in the afternoon and it was supposed to go to the evening. When I got there, I go, when am I going up in this thing? And they go, you're up first. Can you imagine?
21:21 Bill Maher? Oh, you. You opened for the Trump rally.
21:24 Speaker 02 I went up after the goddamn National Anthem.
21:27 Bill Maher? But did you do it because you're a supporter of Trump? Or just because it's an opportunity and a paycheck? Was it a paycheck?
21:33 Speaker 02 No, it wasn't a paycheck. I did it literally to hopefully, you know, get some, hopefully, if only 10,000, not to mention 100,000, maybe 200, if we're lucky, actual people to vote for him.
21:47 Bill Maher? Oh, so you did want people to vote for Trump?
21:49 Speaker 02 Yes, without a doubt.
21:50 Bill Maher? Okay.
21:51 Speaker 02 I think he gets a weird, weird, weird rap in this world, man. And, you know.
21:56 Bill Maher? We're gonna have to break off on that point.
22:00 Speaker 00 Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding.
22:44 Speaker 00 Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
23:00 Bill Maher? No, no, you know, you know, my thing, I talk to everybody.
23:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:04 Bill Maher? And it's okay that we disagree on that. I just didn't really know until this moment that that's... I thought maybe you just were doing it for a gig and because you believe in free speech, but you're not really a Trumper. But, you know, I mean, I always say you can be against Trump and not hate half the people in the country who like him. And I mean, you can't write them off. This is the controversy I just went through.
23:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:28 Bill Maher? When I had dinner with them and to some, you know, very kind of woke people who always hated me for, because they're so woke. And, you know, I just have no patience for those people.
23:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:38 Bill Maher? And...
23:40 Bill Maher? You know, I do think I won that one because, you know, I mean, people understand. Especially since I went right back to my job of doing what I've always done, which is criticizing him as much as I did before. It's not like, it's not like I was taken in by him. But I was gonna be honest, and also I think it's great to have an open dialogue. No matter who it is. And it's just so pointlessly illogical to think, as the Democrats, some of them do, that if you have no power, which they have, you lost everything. You fucking lost everything. And now you're also not gonna talk to the people who have the power. And Trump is the kind of guy, I knew this even before I went there, but it certainly was confirmed.
24:22 Bill Maher? He's the kind of guy who, everything is personal relationships. You know, much more than, say, a guy like Obama, who was very logical and all business and like, I don't think anybody felt like they were really close to Obama personally. Maybe like Valerie Giarridis and people around him, but like, not other politicians. He wanted to be friendly with everybody, but that's not like, this guy's different. He comes from real estate and he comes from business in New York. So, the idea that you think you're gonna do better by screaming, running out of the room, "I'm not talking to you," is just so bizarre to me.
25:05 Speaker 02 Yeah. Who did he do that to?
25:07 Bill Maher? What?
25:08 Speaker 02 I didn't see that. Who did he do that to?
25:09 Bill Maher? Do what to?
25:10 Speaker 02 Run out of the room saying, "I'm not gonna talk to you."
25:12 Bill Maher? They're saying that to him, about him. The people who are criticizing me.
25:17 Speaker 02 You're exactly right. And I find that to be a very...
25:20 Bill Maher? How could he have gone to the dinner? Gone to the dinner? It's dinner. At the White House. How could you not?
25:28 Speaker 02 Exactly.
25:28 Bill Maher? It's, again, it would be different if I came out wearing the red hat.
25:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:33 Bill Maher? It's like, okay, somehow this succubus, you know, put his snake tongue down my throat and now I'm...
25:41 Bill Maher? But that's not what happened.
25:42 Speaker 02 Right.
25:43 Bill Maher? And they just can't quite give it up, some of them.
25:45 Speaker 02 Oh, I think that is a quality that is across the boards to the far left. They are absolutists in the way of, if you show any, any respect to the President of the United States, and, let's not forget, he's also a former President of the United States. So it was a guy that like... You know, when I was going in to do that, that rally, the goal, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't just to swing a few, you know, thousand votes, hopefully, of whatever, whoever listens to my podcast or whoever liked my silly performance on the Tom Brady roast or whatever. It was also to fucking have the president go, that was cool.
26:26 Speaker 02 Thanks, man. That, that's awesome. I liked your, I liked your set. You got the crowd going. Which, by the way, I did. Of course, that room isn't mic'd for a comedy show. No, he didn't.
26:38 Speaker 02 I didn't get to talk to him that day.
26:42 Bill Maher? Tony, you must feel so bad about that. You go and you, you're, you're for him and you're working for him and you like him and you, and me, nothing but vitriol for 10 years and I get the invite.
26:54 Speaker 02 Isn't it wild?
26:56 Bill Maher? But I said this in, when I did the piece on it, when I go back, the, the best moment to me was when he's, I brought in a list of 56 different insults he has said about me. I had it printed on a piece of paper and he signed it and it's on my wall.
27:11 Speaker 02 So cool.
27:11 Bill Maher? And it will, it'll always be one of the coolest artifacts in the, and it's, uh, it's just, you know, it's, but here's my question that I'm fascinated about because like certain, I don't, I don't, I want to know if the comic community is different than the actorly community because the actorly community, the actors in this town, I won't mention any names and there are certain, I'm sure there are people who deviate, but generally, it is the epicenter of wokeness. And, you know, I love show people, but I always say, I'm in show business. I'm not really of it. There is a difference.
27:50 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
27:50 Bill Maher? And, um, they just, you know, they're
27:55 Bill Maher? Full on in, let's say.
27:57 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
27:58 Bill Maher? On everything. So if you deviate from there, it's hard to find your place, a place at a dinner. You know, no one would invite you out. I mean, you know, the right wing types, even the Clint Eastwood, who's a Republican, but not that far right. I mean, because he's Clint Eastwood, you know, I'm sure people would still have him over. But this just, I mean, they are just very clubby about the politics.
28:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:23 Bill Maher? What I want to know is, does that pertain in the comedy world? Like, because you're a Trumper, I'm sure most of the comics are not. Is it, do they, do they treat you differently? Do they, is, are you in any way ostracized because of that?
28:40 Speaker 02 So here's what happened is I moved to Texas during the pandemic when they closed, when they triple closed everything in California. And there was no indoor shows. And I went and did a show outdoors at the Magic Castle, performing to people in cars, where the cars had to be six feet apart from one another.
29:03 Bill Maher? The car.
29:04 Speaker 02 I swear to fucking.
29:04 Bill Maher? The cars are gonna give it to each other.
29:06 Speaker 02 I swear to fucking god.
29:07 Bill Maher? That was a terrible disease.
29:08 Speaker 02 Oh, Bill, and they gave people these clapper things, these little New Year's Eve noisemaker shaky thing.
29:15 Bill Maher? Oh, I thought you honk your horn when you like it.
29:18 Speaker 02 I'm surprised they actually didn't think of that. But they gave people these noisemakers and they would hold them out their windows and it would go clack, clack, clack, clack.
29:26 Bill Maher? Your car has a noisemaker built into it that sounds like a horn. It's called the horn.
29:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's crazy.
29:34 Bill Maher? But even still, I mean, funny, I, for six months, when the horrible forever flu happened, I did the monologue right over there.
29:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:44 Bill Maher? We had, this room was all, the pool table was gone, everything. This was the studio where I did that. Then I did the editorial out there, sitting on the lawn. I mean, we did the show here for, for six months.
29:59 Bill Maher? You know, some ways it made you more creative and, but it was to do a monologue here. I wanted to keep the show as close to what it really was. I put on a suit and tie like I always had. And we had funny, you know, cutaways to old audiences laughing, which was, people loved that bit. And we had a laugh track, you know, I would do the joke here and then they would play.
30:24 Bill Maher? And I got through it, but I used to just walk out of after the taping. And of course, I live, you know, next door. So I'd walk home and be like, I was so depressed.
30:36 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
30:36 Bill Maher? Like, like, because usually after the show, there's a little party and blah, blah. And then I was just like in the silence of my house. And oh, yes, we can't go out. And all, and it was just like, and look, there, there are diseases in the world who, that I think might merit that, that are that dangerous. I just never thought it was that one.
30:56 Speaker 02 Exactly. A hundred percent with you. So not only was I doing these stupid outdoor shows, but just like you were saying, I have a, I'm the only person I think that I know that has a weekly live show in front of a live audience for 12 years, every single week.
31:15 Bill Maher? Right.
31:16 Speaker 02 So what we had to do, because we do, I do a show where I pull a comedian's name out of the bucket. They do a minute of stand up and then I interview them.
31:23 Bill Maher? I see it.
31:24 Speaker 02 So we ended up, oh, you want to talk about fucking depressing. We ended up having people send in their minute sets. They're in their living room trying to do stand up comedy. We had no laugh track, no recorded audience sound. So we're watching people do their sets and then we would zoom with them for the interview part. So how's it going? Well, not much, anything happening. Just been in my house playing video. Every interview was the same. Everything was the same for six, eight, whatever months during this thing. We had no live audiences whatsoever, especially uh, when you're used to that every single week, like I'm sure you were. It's just, you go through the craziest withdrawals. So when I went and visited Texas
32:08 Speaker 02 and they fucking have them indoors and the place is packed and there's no separation. I'm like, what the hell? And I, my day-
32:16 Bill Maher? I had the same experience going to Florida.
32:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:18 Bill Maher? The first set I did when they let us. And it was like, oh my God. This is, I remember what freedom felt like.
32:23 Speaker 02 Exactly. And the day, I joke you not, and this is the thing, because I would argue that we're more center than left or right. I think you'd probably be shocked to know how I, at least from my perception, centrist we are. I've been watching you for, for my whole life, by the way. My mom always made sure we had HBO, even though I was raised poor. So I, I kinda- Get you and I it's crazy that I'm considered a right winger or and or that Rogan is or that Elon is.
32:59 Bill Maher? Well, anybody, I'm sorry, but anybody who is a Trumper. Is just it's a different it's a it's a different mindset that you know you he'd have to be extremely different to me to get me over there.
33:15 Speaker 02 Right.
33:15 Bill Maher? And he knows that. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just way too insane and too far out there. And again, talking about a third term, this stuff is just intolerable.
33:25 Speaker 02 I think he's goofing around when he talks. He's I think he knows how to joke a little bit.
33:30 Bill Maher? That was my editorial two weeks ago. Like, once it starts out as a joke. And it's not a joke at a certain point.
33:36 Speaker 02 He's not gonna go for a third term.
33:38 Bill Maher? Well, he now he finally said he's he's not going to, but.
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34:13 Bill Maher? I mean, he even we the night I was there, he was talking about it with me. He was he said to me, well, you know, I know you feel about it. So, you know, we don't we don't have to argue, but the ways you could do it. And I said, no, there there are not.
34:29 Bill Maher? And, you know, that's what they got mad at me, but I was honest about the fact that he just. You can have a conversation with them like that, and it doesn't explode into like he he is some kind of Jekyll and Hyde. Because if you did that during a press conference, he'd go, you're a disgusting person.
34:45 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, I can.
34:46 Bill Maher? And he would just go into that other guy.
34:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:49 Bill Maher? And that guy just, you know, and they're so mad at me for like pointing this out like. I'm just pointing it out. You do without what you will.
34:58 Speaker 02 Right.
34:58 Bill Maher? I'm just pointing it out. I'm not I'm not saying it. I'm not even giving an opinion on it, really. I'm just saying that that's what I my line was. I went into the went down into the mine. This is what I found down there. Now you make your judgment, what you want to do with it.
35:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah, I find it all so interesting. It's it's it's wild. You said Doge was a disaster. What do you mean by that?
35:25 Bill Maher? He said we're gonna save two trillion dollars. By their best accounting, it's it's a minuscule percentage of the budget. Like a hundred and fifty billion and and it didn't even work. The budget, the deficit, it's all worse than ever. There's at some point gonna have to deal with that. The the what we pay on interest on the debt now is the second highest thing we we spend money on.
35:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:54 Bill Maher? All there's the only other thing we spend more money on is social security. It's more than Medicare, it's more than defense. It's a trillion dollars just to service the debt, just to give banks money for loaning us money. And how long can that last? And they're not making it better. He's not fixing that. Look.
36:14 Speaker 02 It's a wild situation.
36:15 Bill Maher? His superpower is that he can turn on a dime and change his policy on anything. And because it's a cult, they will just follow him. So he tomorrow, he could change any of these policies.
36:35 Bill Maher? And he's done it a million times with people, throws them out, invites them back in. You're the I love you, you're the greatest, you're the worst terrible person. And, you know, so do I love that kind of unpredictability? No, but the possibility that uh even if it's a slim one, that he could uh, you know, say, you know what, Republicans need to tax the rich.
37:02 Bill Maher? I ran on helping the common man and I'm gonna do it. I don't think he's gonna do it, because they never do do it. But he could do it. I mean, this is a guy who just last week said, kids, you don't need thirty dolls.
37:17 Bill Maher? I'm Donnie, two dolls. Two fucking dolls. By the way, what kid even plays with dolls anymore? And then he says pencils, pencils. I can't remember the last decade I had a, I even owned a pencil. A pencil? For what?
37:34 Bill Maher? Um, but like, you don't need thirty pencils. You need five. You need two dolls and five pencils. I mean, and I cannot imagine another political leader being able to get away with, with telling people, fuck you. You think you're middle class? You're the working poor with a house full of crap. That's what you are. And you don't need all that crap.
38:00 Bill Maher? But you know, when you got the cult leader status, boy, I mean, it is amazing what you can get away with.
38:08 Speaker 02 Yeah. I think a lot of people look at it as a tactic, kind of. For example, you know, when he came in the first time and, uh, you know, guns ablazin', tough on immigration, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, and people don't wanna come in. This time he's flying people back to places and, and all this. I think the, I think he, I think he knows that he's publicly doing things to kind of lower the bar of, uh, of people that are willing to illegally immigrate. Things like that, for an example. Like, he knows what he's kind of publicly doing to play.
38:47 Bill Maher? Well, what he's doing is working.
38:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:49 Bill Maher? As far as stopping people from coming in.
38:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:52 Bill Maher? If you ask me, it's not worth the price. It's not worth the price of suspending the Constitution of the United States, which says you can't just take people off the street and put them in a foreign prison. That is just insane. But if the message is, you know what? You always had a free ride. If you, if you thought you could come here, the worst that was gonna happen is, oh, all bets are off, go back. Nope, you didn't make it. That's the worst that could happen. Probably you're just gonna stay here.
39:31 Bill Maher? His message is, well, no. If you come here and we catch you, it might be worse for you. And, you know, that is a deterrent.
39:45 Speaker 02 It is.
39:45 Bill Maher? And it is working. The number of people, you know.
39:47 Speaker 02 I think, yeah.
39:48 Bill Maher? Every action has a reaction. Like Biden went so fucking stupidly far.
39:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:54 Bill Maher? Toward a pretty much come one, come all. Just walk right in policy.
39:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:00 Bill Maher? And they have to own that to a degree. Again, I do not support what Trump is doing, but I get where it comes from.
40:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:07 Bill Maher? Action, reaction. If you go that far, almost to your point, you were asking me a minute ago about who's more right or left.
40:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:15 Bill Maher? Like, if you go that far left, what do you expect? You are gonna get people who come in and go that far right.
40:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:25 Bill Maher? So in a way, and if you don't win the election, that's what's gonna happen.
40:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:30 Bill Maher? So Democrats have a lot of looking in the mirror to do.
40:33 Speaker 02 No doubt. I find it all very interesting and move it, like I was saying, oh, so let's just go back to the question.
40:40 Bill Maher? But nobody shuns you.
40:42 Speaker 02 I was just gonna get to that, which is, you know, since I moved to Texas.
40:46 Bill Maher? Oh, because you're not in LA.
40:48 Speaker 02 Exactly.
40:48 Bill Maher? But you're in LA sometimes.
40:50 Speaker 02 Sometimes. But what I've learned is that, especially after the rally election debacle and everything.
40:58 Bill Maher? Right.
40:59 Speaker 02 Is that the farther left, even though they don't make it their identity, or maybe talk about it on stage or whatever, the farther left people, comedians really, you know, they'll just talk shit on a podcast or they'll pretend like, you know, me and Rogan and everybody in Austin's a bunch of Nazis and all. You just have to agree with everything they say, or you're not part of the club and all this crap. Meanwhile, again, you know. It's like we're all pot-smoking, pro-choice. If you're gonna call us far-right, crazy people, you have to realize we're all formerly-registered Democrat voters.
41:44 Speaker 02 And so is Rogan, and so is Elon, and so is Trump. All these people are famously old Democrats.
41:52 Bill Maher? Okay, but that's not where we are now. They're not Democrats now. And I understand why the Democratic Party gives them the heebie-jeebies. That's different than being all-in on Trump, which they are. But what, but see, I have to believe that the comic community
42:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:09 Bill Maher? is just better than the actorly community.
42:11 Speaker 02 Oh, without a doubt.
42:12 Bill Maher? Because our business is calling out bullshit.
42:15 Speaker 02 Yes.
42:16 Bill Maher? And so it's just harder to be so doctrinaire about your politics. It just is. I'm not saying that we didn't, that we didn't, most of us comics didn't vote the Democratic Party. Yes, but, but there's just more of a, if you're gonna really do what we do, and we do what we do best, and call shit out and keep it real, which is what gets the good laughs.
42:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:40 Bill Maher? The good nutritious laughs, not the cheap laughs.
42:42 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
42:43 Bill Maher? You're going to be, you're going to be having to call out some stuff on the left, even if it's not, you know, specifically political.
42:53 Speaker 02 Right.
42:54 Bill Maher? It's just the leftist kind of thinking and that kind of stuff. Because they are as crazy in their own way. They're just not as dangerous.
43:01 Speaker 02 Right. You mean the left isn't as dangerous?
43:04 Bill Maher? The left is not as dangerous. Because they still believe-
43:06 Speaker 02 I would say that they are. That's an interesting one. Because it seems like the right-wingers are the ones with the guns and this and that. We'll take, it feels that way. But, I mean, all of a sudden, the last couple few years, I'm looking at who the mass shooters are and this and that, and it is creepily-
43:22 Bill Maher? I'm talking about our way of life,
43:24 Speaker 02 Right.
43:24 Bill Maher? which is, which is governed by the type of government we have.
43:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:29 Bill Maher? And they are still constitutionalist and institutionalist. Now, have they nibbled at the edges? Yes. Have they invited, as always, like we were saying with the other thing? There's always an invited backlash when you go too far. So, you know, did Joe Biden do things that were imperial presidency things? Yes, of course he did. He said in his own words, something like, you know, "Well, the Supreme Court said I couldn't give student loans, but I'll find a way." You know, okay. That's not nearly what Trump is doing, but it invites that kind of argument uh from the right, which says, you know what, they all do it. And by, yeah, you know what, that's the problem.
44:14 Bill Maher? If you move a little bit here, Trump's gonna go, oh, well, I'll but king me, I'll just jump over you and go 10 steps further and worse. And, and so that's where we are, but yeah. I don't think they are equally dangerous because one side really would like an autocracy. They really don't want to have to deal with the left wing at all. They think the left wing is such an existential threat to our way of life. That it would actually be better to be an autocracy than to be a democracy where they might win. And I, I would be very surprised if the next election is one that will just go smoothly.
44:59 Bill Maher? It only goes smoothly like the last one, when they win. When they win, it goes smoothly. When they lose, it's a shit show. Because they don't accept election results. Nothing is more important to me than that. You have to accept election results. That's the basis of everything.
45:19 Speaker 02 Right.
45:20 Bill Maher? And they're not there.
45:21 Speaker 02 Yeah. You give no, you have no thoughts about the fact that perhaps because, you know, it was a lockdown and everything that uh and, you know, extra reviewers, you know, like from the, from both sides could be in the voting areas and stuff, you know.
45:40 Bill Maher? You're, you're still saying the 2020 election was not fair? Because even his own security team said it was fair.
45:48 Speaker 02 I get it.
45:49 Bill Maher? A lot of Republicans have, I mean,
45:50 Speaker 02 Right.
45:50 Bill Maher? that's a, that's a dead horse that you gotta stop.
45:53 Speaker 02 No, I, I'm, I'm not saying that. I'm not, I'm not saying that I think that, but there were a lot of votes that, that didn't vote this year. And those votes were for the, for the left.
46:06 Bill Maher? Well, he lost, he, he ran three times. He lost one and won two. That's pretty good. And you just gotta be, you know. Just be cool about it. I used to do a bit in my act about, you know, you ever watch the end of a football game?
46:21 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
46:22 Bill Maher? Okay, what happens? These coaches, these coaches whose whole life is football. They have no life except for Bill Belichick, who's fucking a 24 year old. He changed it up completely and I give him all the props in the world. But otherwise, coaches have no life. So when they lose the game, it's like the worst thing in the world, but what do they do? They put on a face.
46:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:43 Bill Maher? And they walk across the field. And they stick out their hand and they said, "Good game, Andy. Good luck next week against the pack."
46:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:52 Bill Maher? That's what a man does.
46:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:54 Bill Maher? That's, you don't say, "I never lost, I could never lose." And, you know, until they get their head wrapped around that. But it doesn't even matter. I'm much more concerned about what's gonna happen in 2028.
47:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:07 Bill Maher? And, you know, look, it could very well be, he does step aside. And that he lets Vance and Rubio fight it out, because it looks like he's setting them up to be the two heirs.
47:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:18 Bill Maher? And then they run against Pete Buttigieg or whoever. And lots of things could happen there.
47:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:26 Bill Maher? And Vance, whoever could be the next, and absolutely could happen.
47:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:31 Bill Maher? Or what could happen is that Buttigieg wins. And they just don't accept it. And that I can't accept.
47:39 Speaker 02 I think it's a very Trump-esque thing, specifically him, to not want to acknowledge or admit a loss.
47:49 Bill Maher? Okay.
47:49 Speaker 02 I wouldn't say that's a-
47:50 Bill Maher? That's possible?
47:50 Speaker 02 I wouldn't say that's-
47:51 Bill Maher? That is possible.
47:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, I wouldn't say that that's a trait of-
47:54 Bill Maher? Possible, and it's also possible that Trump-ism, that's part of it. And his crowd wouldn't accept. I mean, look, Mike Pence-
48:06 Bill Maher? It's like persona non grata in the Republican Party.
48:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:09 Bill Maher? Because he did the right thing.
48:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's a doofus, though. I mean, I agree with whatever.
48:14 Bill Maher? He did the right thing.
48:15 Speaker 02 Did do the right thing by admitting that, you know, the election results were the election results.
48:20 Bill Maher? They were.
48:21 Speaker 02 Right. But Pence is a doofus maximus.
48:24 Bill Maher? Oh, of course.
48:25 Speaker 02 My point is, is whoever.
48:27 Bill Maher? You think I like Mike Pence?
48:27 Speaker 02 Right, of course.
48:28 Bill Maher? No, but, but like.
48:30 Speaker 02 J D Vance.
48:30 Bill Maher? But I do like Mike Pence. I mean, even though he's like the last guy I would have over here to club random. To like have a good, a good time.
48:38 Speaker 02 Random. You'd have to go all caps on random of Mike Pence's fucking dance.
48:42 Bill Maher? I would love to sit here and smoke and blow pot smoke in Mike Pence's face. That would be awesome. But, you know, you know that he won't, uh, he's so religious that he won't. What is it that he won't do? He won't be in a room with a woman who isn't his wife. Unless the wife is there too.
49:02 Speaker 02 Oh, oh, that's a psycho. Oh, that's a guy that can't control himself. That's wild.
49:09 Bill Maher? Well, as if he needs, you know, the security of his wife there or otherwise. I mean, these chicks would be up on Mike Pence's jock, you know, they'd be like blowing him on the dance floor. Are you kidding?
49:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:23 Bill Maher? No. Um, yeah. I mean, that's who Mike Pence is. Mike Pence, he's, he's a Christian super duper. I mean, that was always what he was. He was the governor of Indiana and, you know, very conservative state, conservative guy, white hair.
49:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:38 Bill Maher? I always said he looks like the, he looks like the pilot in the airline video they show.
49:45 Speaker 02 Have you gotten to meet J D Vance?
49:47 Bill Maher? No, never met J D.
49:50 Speaker 02 I gotta tell you, all that I know about him is that this guy's a badass because when my stuff was going down that week. Trump wasn't, uh, he was kinda off rallies. He was off, he was just laying low for a bit. And J D Vance was taking the questions. He was out there kinda doing little rallies and taking questions from the people. And every single day, and trust me, I was watching like a hawk and we'd get sent the clips or whatever, whatever just happened. Um, they would ask him, what do you think about the racist, uh, comments from, uh, the comment from the speaker? They
50:33 Speaker 02 were calling me everything but a comedian. They could not say the word comedian, which, which I think really, I think it really backfired.
50:41 Bill Maher? That, that, that would piss me off.
50:43 Speaker 02 And when I was at the inauguration and everything, trust me, they were all high fiving me and kissing my ass.
50:52 Bill Maher? Of course, at the inauguration.
50:53 Speaker 02 But they look at it like it was a massive part. Uh, them, they look at me doing what I did and accidentally, right? It couldn't have been planned. Accidentally being the news for nine goddamn days during an election week.
51:10 Bill Maher? Oh, stop pretending you don't love it. It put you on a different level.
51:13 Speaker 02 It definitely did.
51:15 Bill Maher? So don't try to sell me that this, you're suffering from this.
51:19 Speaker 02 But during the, not at all, but during the time, it was very stressful.
51:22 Bill Maher? Yes, of course. Just like my thing with the dinner was, it was stressful. But you know what? I didn't mind it because it was like, you know what? First of all, most of the people I'm hearing from are like, thank God for you and what you're doing. Even the liberals, you know, it's like they got it. Um, and also, it's, you know, it just, I'd rather, you know, I'd rather live on, when is this? Die standing than live on my knees.
51:50 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
51:51 Bill Maher? Just like, you know, it's what, one of the great compensating things about being a comedian is that that's what we do get to do is to speak our mind. And very few people. Have that luxury. I mean, God, talk to a publicist for any star. You know, they can't, they don't want them to say anything, anything.
52:14 Speaker 02 Right.
52:15 Bill Maher? Because anything is potentially, I mean, Justin Timberlake once apologized for uh, complimenting a black singer. I can't remember who it was. It was a cultural appropriation. It's like, I'm so sorry, I'll do, do better. What are you, what's the problem? You say you like Otis Redding, whatever the fuck it was. It was so ridiculous.
52:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:36 Bill Maher? So publishers like, just don't speak.
52:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:39 Bill Maher? Just don't speak. And you see it on talk shows, you know, like they play games with them. Like, uh, let's play tiddlywinks and if you lose, I throw water in your face. Great. I don't know if they're saying what I think about Gaza.
52:51 Speaker 02 Right.
52:52 Bill Maher? You know, and we do.
52:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:54 Bill Maher? And you know, there is somewhat of a price to pay sometimes and you could fall off the ledge, you know?
53:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
53:00 Bill Maher? Um, but I don't know. The, the ability to speak your mind, priceless.
53:06 Speaker 02 Absolutely, absolutely. And I rode that wave, but uh, my point is, is J D Vance that entire week. He was, he was taking these questions from the press like that. What are your thoughts about the racist comments? And he would nail it every time, day after day.
53:24 Bill Maher? What'd he say?
53:24 Speaker 02 First of all, it's a comedian. I don't know why you're calling him a speaker. He was a comedian, defending free speech and where has our sense of humor gone?
53:34 Bill Maher? Right.
53:34 Speaker 02 How do you not know that was a joke? That's a clearly a joke. Maybe it wasn't the right time or place. Maybe. I'm not even saying, like, he was just taking the questions. Like he was a comedian, like he understood the perspective of the mission and uh,
53:52 Bill Maher? So if you ever,
53:54 Speaker 02 Again, common sense.
53:55 Bill Maher? If you ever get a gig where you're playing to a left-wing crowd, I have a way. You could do this joke and slightly change it and it would still work. But they give some island where like only like rich white people go. So, you know, there's an floating island of garbage. It's called the Bahamas.
54:14 Bill Maher? It's called Cayman Islands.
54:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:17 Bill Maher? You will be
54:18 Speaker 02 Perfect.
54:19 Bill Maher? lifted out on their shoulders.
54:21 Speaker 02 I am actually doing a left, an entirely left wing audience tonight.
54:27 Bill Maher? What?
54:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, because I'm performing at the Comedy Store here in LA.
54:31 Bill Maher? Oh. And will you be greeted by any, uh, sort of backlashy, sort of like, oh, he's on tonight, or will they be like, he's a comic and that trumps Trump?
54:47 Speaker 02 They won't know until I'm up there because I'm a secret unannounced, uh, pop in, but I will feel it from 20% of the room. Assuredly, the, the, the
54:59 Bill Maher? Good people?
54:59 Speaker 02 The girlfriends of the excited, the excited boyfriend is gonna be like that. And there's, there's always a few just angry.
55:07 Bill Maher? Right.
55:08 Speaker 02 They can't wait to show me.
55:09 Bill Maher? That's funny.
55:10 Speaker 02 Cause they can't hide there.
55:11 Bill Maher? I, when I, I stopped doing the road last year, but like, I, for so many years, I would see somebody in the front row and it was in there who was like this, arms folded like stone face, and it was just invariably the husband of a woman who loved me. You know, liberal woman loved me and dragged the husband.
55:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:36 Bill Maher? And I, like, I let it go for as long as I could in the show. And then I would just
55:41 Speaker 02 Yep.
55:42 Bill Maher? talk to the guy and I would just point out, I know, you're the big tough guy. You're the conservative, you're the tough people, and yet you let your wife drag you to a show you didn't want to go to.
55:57 Speaker 02 I do the exact same thing and reverse it and I go, and I go, and here you are stuck watching me because you were too insecure to let your man go out tonight without you because you think he'll fuck somebody else and one day he will.
56:14 Bill Maher? No, I got a better way to make him feel worse.
56:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:18 Bill Maher? You're so worried your man is gonna go out and fuck somebody else. Nobody wants to fuck your mans. You can stop worrying, sweetheart. This is not an issue that's gonna come up. Oh, he'll flirt, but no one will take him up on you. So let him go. Let him fly. Free bird.
56:38 Speaker 02 It's fun when you see those people out there. It makes me, when I'm performing and I'll see it and I'll ignore it and I'll see it and I'll ignore it and I'll keep going. And the whole time I'll glance back, right? And I bet you would too when it happens to you. And you're trying to break them, right? You're trying to see maybe this one will get them, right? The angry face person to break. And we don't find, if you get them to break, which happens a lot.
57:05 Bill Maher? Yes.
57:05 Speaker 02 You know, because eventually they can't help themselves, right?
57:08 Bill Maher? That's the great thing about comedy.
57:09 Speaker 02 And even now, right? I'm kind of leaning into this whole, you think I'm a racist thing, but I'm just obsessed with different cultures. I love stereotypes. This is kind of the theme of currently the stuff that I'm working on is I'm actually leaning farther into this type of thing where I'm saying what I love about America is that we can all laugh at each other. Like, black people do this and Asians are bad at this. And so now I'm really going for it. And it's so funny because they all hold strong on the things that affect them.
57:41 Bill Maher? Of course.
57:41 Speaker 02 But then all of a sudden, you're into something that doesn't affect them or they don't have an Asian friend or they don't have a black friend or they don't have a this. And you find the thing that they agree with and they crack. And they do. People that try to have a bad time, people that try to not get comedy or find something, purposefully find something unfunny. Those are the most rewarding ones to get that laugh from.
58:10 Bill Maher? Well, I got great advice when I started when I was complaining about a shitty crowd once. And a great comedian said to me, that's why they're here.
58:22 Bill Maher? Because they're not in a good mood. They came here for the medicine of laughter. And you're the doctor saying, "What the fuck are you doing in my office when you're sick?"
58:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's interesting.
58:36 Bill Maher? Yeah, that's why I'm in your office. Because I'm sick. And I need what you can heal me with. So why are you mad at me?
58:45 Speaker 02 Wow. Do you remember who told you that?
58:47 Bill Maher? Yeah, I didn't want to say because it sounds like name dropping.
58:50 Speaker 02 Okay. Who was it?
58:52 Bill Maher? Abraham Lincoln.
59:04 Bill Maher? So tonight, you're going on the Comedy Store?
59:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm gonna do some secret pop-ins tonight and tomorrow.
59:09 Bill Maher? Wow.
59:10 Speaker 02 Doing an arena in Anaheim on Friday.
59:13 Bill Maher? You've got a big thing going on.
59:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:15 Bill Maher? It's fun, right?
59:16 Speaker 02 It really is. It's a blast, man. Eighteen, or actually seventeen years ago, I was sleeping in the backseat of my car behind the Comedy Store. I used to park up on the hill, work my shifts that I was telling you about, and then you'd walk up the hill because I didn't even have the right to park in that little parking lot yet. So I'd walk up the hill, go get my car, pull it down, and then pull it all the way behind the Comedy Store, get in the backseat, sleep in the fetal position, wake up at seven, eight a.m. or whatever, go shower in the main room, green room.
59:48 Bill Maher? Wow.
59:48 Speaker 02 And then go work the phones again. Trying to write jokes.
59:53 Bill Maher? You're so lucky.
59:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:54 Bill Maher? That you had that experience.
59:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:56 Bill Maher? Because everything that comes after is you're able to enjoy it because it wasn't handed to you. If it's handed to you, you can't ever really enjoy. I'm so glad I'm not a nepo baby.
1:00:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:10 Bill Maher? I mean, I know nepo babies, they're not any worse than us. They're not. But they're also not, you know, it's just, stop telling, it's like trans women and biological women. Stop telling me with the same thing.
1:00:24 Speaker 02 Right.
1:00:25 Bill Maher? It's not a bad thing, but just tell me we're the exact same thing. Because it just is easier to be a nepo baby in this business. This business, first of all, if you're a internet outlet, a magazine, any place, anything with publicity, what do you want to cover more? Joe Schmo or Big Star's Child? Which is a better story?
1:00:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:52 Bill Maher? How's Johnny Depp's kid doing?
1:00:54 Speaker 02 Right.
1:00:55 Bill Maher? How's Bob Schmo Hawk's kid doing?
1:00:58 Speaker 02 Right.
1:00:58 Bill Maher? You know, and I'm not picking on her, and she's a fine actress, and they're all good, and blah, blah. Very often, they're very good because it is in their blood. Just the way athletes, which is completely different because you actually have to be good.
1:01:11 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:01:11 Bill Maher? Um, but a lot of kids who were, fathers were pro players are good because they hung around the stadium. So by the time they get to the stadium, it's not like, oh, my God, I'm in the stadium. It's like, yeah, I grew up here.
1:01:27 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:01:28 Bill Maher? What's the big deal?
1:01:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:29 Bill Maher? Yeah, and Dad taught me how to hit.
1:01:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:32 Bill Maher? And Dad was Ron Carew.
1:01:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:35 Bill Maher? Or whoever, you know?
1:01:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, when I, where I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, very, very, at the time, dangerous.
1:01:43 Bill Maher? But the most dangerous neighborhood in America is Appalachia.
1:01:48 Speaker 02 Where's that, what do you mean? The city or the place?
1:01:50 Bill Maher? It's not a city.
1:01:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, like in the mountains? What do you mean?
1:01:54 Bill Maher? Jesus, didn't you go to high school?
1:01:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:57 Bill Maher? Appalachia is a region of the country. I think it stretches across eight different states.
1:02:03 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:02:03 Bill Maher? It's where the hillbillies live. It's, you ever see Winter's Bone?
1:02:07 Speaker 02 Mm-mm.
1:02:08 Bill Maher? No? You should.
1:02:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:10 Bill Maher? You'll love it, being a hillbilly.
1:02:13 Speaker 02 Check it out.
1:02:14 Bill Maher? It's Jennifer Lawrence's first movie. It's an indie movie, but it's about, um...
1:02:22 Bill Maher? Appalachia, which is, I mean, it goes through Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky.
1:02:30 Bill Maher? Coal miner's daughter, have you ever heard of that?
1:02:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:33 Bill Maher? Reddell Lynn, butcher's holler, a holler, what's a holler? It's a place where people live, like, it's like a ghetto for fucking rednecks. Okay.
1:02:44 Bill Maher? That's the most dangerous place.
1:02:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:46 Bill Maher? Because, you know, like, they don't take to revenuers in there and government people and, like, they got their own law and their own shit going on in there. And like, really, law enforcement does not want to fucking mess with these people. I mean, they mess much more with the inner city than they mess with Appalachia.
1:03:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:04 Bill Maher? You know? And, uh, like, Winter's Bone, just an amazing movie, does not have a false note in it. And I say that as someone who would not know what a false note was.
1:03:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:14 Bill Maher? Because I'm very far from Appalachia.
1:03:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:17 Bill Maher? And yet I somehow know it doesn't.
1:03:19 Speaker 02 You're, where, you, so you're originally from New Jersey and then you came straight here?
1:03:23 Bill Maher? Not straight here, I mean, I went to college in upstate New York and then went, after college, went to New York City, which is where the comedy clubs were. You know, the Comedy Store was certainly out here, but I wasn't ready for out here, because that's where you went after you
1:03:37 Speaker 02 Right.
1:03:37 Bill Maher? were ready to do Johnny Carson.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:40 Bill Maher? So, you know, there were three clubs, the three big clubs, were the Improv, Catch a Rising Star, and the Comedy Store. There was also then the Comedy Cellar, which I know is still thriving. So, you know, you did as many sets as you could every night. Um, on the weekends, you could do six. You could do three in the early show and three in the late show. You were always running
1:04:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:02 Bill Maher? to a cab to get you downtown, so you could go run in right off the street sweating to do your show at the Comedy Cellar. It was crazy.
1:04:11 Speaker 02 That's how Austin is now.
1:04:14 Bill Maher? What?
1:04:14 Speaker 02 There's
1:04:15 Bill Maher? Austin has that much of a comedy scene?
1:04:17 Speaker 02 Dude, there's eight comedy clubs within like, a few blocks of each other. So it's not even cabs and rushing, you can literally walk it, you can tell the person there, I got this.
1:04:26 Bill Maher? So Rogan has one, that must be
1:04:28 Speaker 02 Rogan has
1:04:29 Bill Maher? granddaddy club, right?
1:04:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it has two rooms.
1:04:33 Bill Maher? Oh.
1:04:33 Speaker 02 With two shows a night, so that's, you could do four shows at that one club alone.
1:04:38 Bill Maher? Holy shit.
1:04:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:40 Bill Maher? And you do?
1:04:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:42 Bill Maher? Really, still?
1:04:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:04:43 Bill Maher? Oh, geez.
1:04:44 Speaker 02 If I have, even, even if it's only just one joke or one line that I'm really excited about, I'll do the whole set just to be able to figure out where to slide that in.
1:04:54 Bill Maher? I feel like, really, when I really felt like I was good, was when I made the decree to my agent or whoever's doing this, I will never do more than one show a night.
1:05:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:07 Bill Maher? You know, because sometimes they offer that, like, oh, we can sell two shows.
1:05:10 Speaker 02 Right.
1:05:11 Bill Maher? Sorry, I always hated the second show.
1:05:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:14 Bill Maher? When you're, when you're doing the same jokes.
1:05:16 Speaker 02 Right.
1:05:16 Bill Maher? I get, I got bored of my act just doing one show a night, if I, even just over the weekend.
1:05:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:23 Bill Maher? I, one reason I, one, well, I'm saying it's a reason I stopped doing it, but one thing I will not miss about the road is I would basically go every other weekend out. And I would, it was such an easy thing. I'd take up my own plane.
1:05:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:38 Bill Maher? I'd go to fucking Cincinnati or wherever, do a show Friday night, stay over in that city, fly to the next city the next day, do the show and fly right home. I was only out of my bed one night. It was the cushiest way to do a show.
1:05:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:51 Bill Maher? I still really didn't like the fact that on the first night, my act wasn't enough in my head. So I wasn't saying it as good as I possibly could.
1:06:02 Speaker 02 Totally.
1:06:03 Bill Maher? And the second night, I was bored with it.
1:06:05 Speaker 02 Right.
1:06:06 Bill Maher? There was like no middle.
1:06:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. No, you're spot on. That's exactly, exactly how I feel. And yeah, they tried to, they, I, I'm at an, I'm at an interesting place now because it was always, forever, it was comedy clubs, two shows on Friday, two shows on Saturday, and it was.
1:06:28 Bill Maher? Did you ever repeat the same joke in the?
1:06:30 Speaker 02 Oh, of course. Oh, are you kidding me? Oh, you mean, oh, you mean in the second set, thinking that you do not remember.
1:06:38 Bill Maher? Thinking you hadn't done it in that show.
1:06:40 Speaker 02 Honestly, and I can't believe I haven't. This is an unbelievable fun fact is that I haven't. There has been two, three, four times all time, and I'm talking about hundreds of road sets in which I've gone, I didn't already do that, did I? Or have I, or in the setup, have I?
1:06:58 Bill Maher? You said that out loud?
1:06:59 Speaker 02 Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:01 Bill Maher? Well, you would know, because they would not laugh the second time.
1:07:04 Speaker 02 Right, exactly.
1:07:05 Bill Maher? And then they would look at you like you fucking fraud.
1:07:07 Speaker 02 But then again, I also.
1:07:08 Bill Maher? You fucking phony.
1:07:09 Speaker 02 There's also a part of me when I'm on the setup and they're kind of giggling and I'm wondering if I already did it.
1:07:14 Bill Maher? That's the worst. It's like, because like, it's like the two orbs of your brain. The one half is saying, no, this is the logical half. I know I didn't do this joke because we're going by this order.
1:07:26 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:07:27 Bill Maher? This is why we're doing it in this order.
1:07:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:07:29 Bill Maher? And the other half of your brain is going, ah, I think we did this in the show.
1:07:34 Speaker 02 And, and you're wondering, I'm wondering if they're laughing because I did it and they think I'm doing it again, like, in order to just be funny, right?
1:07:44 Bill Maher? No, I did it once, they don't laugh.
1:07:45 Speaker 02 Right.
1:07:46 Bill Maher? They look at you like you're an asshole, which you are.
1:07:49 Speaker 02 And again, I smoke a lot of marijuana, and so you just don't know.
1:07:54 Bill Maher? Well, that's why, you know, when you do more than one show.
1:07:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:07:57 Bill Maher? You have to have a specific order. You can't, you can't, you don't have the freedom.
1:08:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:02 Bill Maher? To fuck around.
1:08:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:03 Bill Maher? Like, I love the idea, I always loved in stand-up, the idea of, I have a structure, but I can, like, go away from it.
1:08:11 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:08:12 Bill Maher? But then I always come back to it, you know? It's like being out in space on one of those spacewalks. And it's great out here in space. And, but, because they're gonna pull you in unless a space storm happens like it does in every movie where they do it. They get marooned out there.
1:08:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:29 Bill Maher? But then Sandra Bullock somehow winds up back on Earth.
1:08:32 Speaker 02 Right.
1:08:32 Bill Maher? I mean, that was amazing, right?
1:08:34 Speaker 02 Terrible ending.
1:08:35 Bill Maher? Really?
1:08:36 Speaker 02 No.
1:08:36 Bill Maher? Oh, because.
1:08:39 Speaker 02 But it's funny you mention that because literally I had my weekly, bi-weekly talk with my agents today. And they're like, and yeah, we'll be doing these shows before you get ready for your special taping in a few months. So here's what we're gonna do, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And if these sell good, we'll add another show. And I go, no, no, no, no, no.
1:08:58 Bill Maher? Good for you.
1:08:59 Speaker 02 We're not doing another show. I go, I know you guys want me to do another show, getting 10%.
1:09:04 Bill Maher? Right.
1:09:05 Speaker 02 Sitting on your same ass that you would back at home, looking at the ocean waves.
1:09:10 Bill Maher? Right.
1:09:10 Speaker 02 But I'm the one that has to do the goddamn show. There's no chance.
1:09:13 Bill Maher? Oh, right.
1:09:14 Speaker 02 And so, and I literally, what's funny is I literally, this was only two hours ago. I literally said, I think I burnt out all my stem cells in my body doing all those grinding shows when I was younger. Because I just find it so exhausting. And I, it's also, there's just more energy. I don't think there's been a scientific study on what we do at all, really. But I think the higher the expectations of the crowd, right? That watches you every week, that's going, I don't ever go out, but I bought a ticket for this. I worked, I worked an extra shift this week to be able to get this ticket.
1:09:48 Bill Maher? Right.
1:09:49 Speaker 02 And you feel that, you feel that. It's not, it's not the old days.
1:09:54 Bill Maher? I love that.
1:09:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:55 Bill Maher? I mean, I love, if I had to summarize what I loved the most about doing stand-up on the road. It's, they want me to do something that they feel only I can do for them.
1:10:09 Speaker 02 Right.
1:10:10 Bill Maher? And then I do it for them.
1:10:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:12 Bill Maher? That's it.
1:10:13 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:10:14 Bill Maher? Because there's so many choices. I'm not, I'm not saying they never buy a ticket to another comedian. But there are, you know, a limited number of, you know, most people don't go to a lot of comedy shows in a year.
1:10:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:28 Bill Maher? So you probably, you're one of their one or two or three favorite comics. So like, you obviously do something that tickles them in a way that others don't.
1:10:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:39 Bill Maher? And they want to get that from you. And I, and I love being the hero.
1:10:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:44 Bill Maher? I love delivering.
1:10:45 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:10:46 Bill Maher? And that's, I think, what I miss most about the road.
1:10:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:51 Bill Maher? But I was very surprised this year, being home all the time, I don't miss it. Like, because.
1:10:58 Bill Maher? People don't understand, it's such a maintenance factor to have an act. I mean, I had my show. I don't even count this podcast because I do zero preparation for this, obviously. I just show up and get high, which is great, which is a whole different thing. But an act, you need to maintain.
1:11:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:19 Bill Maher? I compare it to playing the cello. You can't just pick it up three weeks after you didn't play it. It's an everyday kind of, it's a mistress.
1:11:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:28 Bill Maher? And you gotta feed her. And, you know, if you're Bill Belichick, give her all the deeds to your property.
1:11:37 Speaker 02 I've been defending Bill Belichick in the green room of the mothership.
1:11:42 Bill Maher? Sweetheart, I am Bill Belichick.
1:11:46 Bill Maher? I'm Bill Belichick without the nine Super Bowl rings.
1:11:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, people in the green room have been talking shit about him going, this girl's running his whole everything. I go, what are you guys, what, what, what, first of all, you don't know what you're talking about. Second of all, it's proof that they were in the right, that the camera was pointed at her strangely during this interview.
1:12:10 Bill Maher? Strangely.
1:12:10 Speaker 02 Right?
1:12:11 Bill Maher? Right.
1:12:11 Speaker 02 They knew what the fuck they were doing. I go, we're here in Texas. We hate the mainstream media and meanwhile, we're going, oh, man, CBS exposed the fact that Belichick's being controlled. When have we ever agreed? When have we ever not thought they were up to something shady? And then I said, what was up with that reverse camera shot right on her? And then they started to like, oh, okay. But it's so true, man. It's like everyone wants to see, I call it my Game of Thrones theory. When Game of Thrones came out and became the biggest show in the world back in the day, I think people started a thing in their heads where they wanted to see kings fall. Because they were.
1:12:56 Speaker 02 Once every couple few weeks or months or whatever on that show, you were watching a new person gain the Iron Throne or this or that, and we want to build them up.
1:13:04 Bill Maher? Really, that's what happened on that show?
1:13:06 Speaker 02 You didn't watch it?
1:13:09 Bill Maher? It's I should have, I'm sure. I watched the first season.
1:13:12 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:13:13 Bill Maher? And then I watched the last season.
1:13:15 Speaker 02 Oh, that's an interesting little sandwich.
1:13:18 Bill Maher? You know what? My problem is dragons. I'm not a fantasy guy. Like, I'm a, I'm a, I was a history major.
1:13:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:13:27 Bill Maher? So the history part of it, the part that looked like an actual medieval kingdom, I loved.
1:13:32 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:13:33 Bill Maher? And I could tell you about medieval kingdoms till you fell asleep.
1:13:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:13:38 Bill Maher? I really couldn't.
1:13:38 Speaker 02 Wouldn't take long.
1:13:39 Bill Maher? I know. Um, so that I like, but like, once you bring in the dragons, I'm kind of like, I can't, I just can't hang with dragons.
1:13:48 Speaker 02 I'm with you a hundred percent. Only they have been able to do it correctly for me.
1:13:52 Bill Maher? Yeah, I, I like, I liked the last season. I mean, it was, uh, and I especially appreciated the last episode, which was a tribute to Shakespeare, lost on the critics, I must say.
1:14:03 Speaker 02 A hundred percent. That's another thing I get in arguments about all the time. I defend that last season of Game of Thrones to the tooth and nail.
1:14:11 Bill Maher? Well, you know, it was a two brute. I mean, you know, you have to kill tyrants is what Shakespeare was saying in Julius Caesar. And, um, it was very bad. And I just don't think the modern audience gave a shit about any of that. It was like, does the handsome guy get to fuck the blonde English chick? You know, I mean, uh, I don't know. But it was, uh, look, I'm always thrilled when HBO has a huge hit because it only helps me.
1:14:41 Speaker 02 Totally.
1:14:42 Bill Maher? You know, I mean, the show ends and it's so, and don't forget this week on Real Time.
1:14:47 Speaker 02 A hundred percent.
1:14:48 Bill Maher? Bill Maher is some fucking, fucking egghead that, that like.
1:14:52 Speaker 02 I'll say it again. I was raised super poor, but somehow my mom always made sure, I think it's because my dad used to visit once in a while to watch boxing matches because Boom Boom Mancini, a famous old boxer.
1:15:07 Bill Maher? A member, yeah, sure.
1:15:08 Speaker 02 From Youngstown. And so.
1:15:10 Bill Maher? Oh, he was from Youngstown?
1:15:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:12 Bill Maher? Okay.
1:15:12 Speaker 02 So I think she only did it so that he would hang out sometimes, once in a great while.
1:15:17 Bill Maher? But when you say very poor, what, what are you talking about? What, were you eating Cheez-Its from the dog bowl?
1:15:23 Speaker 02 Uh, not, not that poor. That would, I, I mean, first of all, Cheez-Its aren't the cheapest thing. I know you might not know. You've been making it for a while.
1:15:31 Bill Maher? No, I was poor. I was very poor. I was very poor from 18 to 27, like college. I mean, I didn't think of it as poor because we were at college, but like I look back like, are you kidding? I lived in fucking slums. They were slums. Ithaca, New York was like Appalachia, by the way. Appalachia, even though it's not officially part of Appalachia, yeah, Ithaca, New York, if you take away Cornell University, it's Appalachia. It's like fucking hillbillies. Very rural, very out in the country, very Trump country.
1:16:05 Bill Maher? I'm not equating the two necessarily. Okay, but like-
1:16:09 Speaker 02 You know, being a Trumper isn't, what you're calling a Trumper, isn't that crazy? I mean, he did win the popular vote.
1:16:16 Bill Maher? That doesn't mean it's not crazy. That doesn't, there are, those two things are not, okay.
1:16:22 Speaker 02 Right.
1:16:23 Bill Maher? That's fine. Look, you've been talking to me for what, an hour and a half? Do I seem like a guy who hates you because you're-
1:16:29 Speaker 02 No, and I'm the same way.
1:16:31 Bill Maher? And I never will be.
1:16:31 Speaker 02 That's why I think you're, believe it or not, a centrist.
1:16:35 Bill Maher? Whatever you're gonna say, I am.
1:16:36 Speaker 02 I think you're-
1:16:37 Bill Maher? Oh, I am?
1:16:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:16:38 Bill Maher? I am, I'm center-left.
1:16:40 Speaker 02 And I think I am too, believe it or not.
1:16:41 Bill Maher? I am, well, I am center-left. To me, a Trumper is far right. There are, there are old school Republicans, they are hiding right now, but they do exist. That's center-right. Trump is different. But we already went over that.
1:16:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:16:59 Bill Maher? What were you just talking about? It was so interesting to me.
1:17:01 Speaker 02 Damn it. What was it? Oh, uh, I had HBO when I was younger.
1:17:05 Bill Maher? Oh, yeah. So you were poor. Like, tell me, tell me what you, what constitutes poor for you? And then I'm gonna tell you what constitutes poor for me, because I am poor when I was in Ithaca. Poor when I moved to New York City, really poor.
1:17:19 Bill Maher? It wasn't till I moved here where I had the cheapest apartment you can get, because, but because it was California, your standard of living was so much higher. There was a bird outside your window instead of a bus.
1:17:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:17:36 Bill Maher? Mic drop.
1:17:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:38 Bill Maher? California.
1:17:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, mine, mine was, uh, mine was a different, I was a different kind of poor when I first moved here, which was fucking looking for goddamn nickels and quarters on the ground and picking up every job I could. And there was even a period.
1:17:54 Bill Maher? How often do you find a nickel on the ground?
1:17:57 Speaker 02 Back then, it was more often because they actually used coins back then.
1:18:01 Bill Maher? Like pencils.
1:18:02 Speaker 02 I know, exactly.
1:18:04 Bill Maher? Pencils, nickels.
1:18:05 Speaker 02 But yeah, I was raised pretty poor. My mom made sure that I went to, believe it or not, it's impossible to sound poor while saying that you went to the private school in town. But I did go to the private school in town. She forced my dad, who was, they were never married. They were in separate things. It's a whole crazy ass story. But, uh, but she made sure that my dad contributed enough by getting her work, running numbers, being a bookie in town.
1:18:34 Bill Maher? Really?
1:18:34 Speaker 02 Yeah. So that she was able to put me through a private school, make sure that I always had a decent pair of shoes and HBO. So it's the wildest thing.
1:18:43 Bill Maher? It's all you need.
1:18:43 Speaker 02 That's all.
1:18:45 Bill Maher? Shoes and HBO.
1:18:46 Speaker 02 I swear to God, those were the two things I had that all my buddies had.
1:18:51 Bill Maher? It's not TV, it's footwear.
1:18:52 Speaker 02 That's right. But man, it was a game changer for me. The comedy specials absolutely 100% contributed.
1:19:00 Bill Maher? The best. Have you seen my last one?
1:19:03 Speaker 02 No.
1:19:04 Bill Maher? Oh, I'm not gonna watch yours till you watch mine.
1:19:06 Speaker 02 Okay, deal.
1:19:07 Bill Maher? Why didn't you watch my last one?
1:19:09 Speaker 02 I don't watch anybody's specials on TV. I like seeing them live.
1:19:12 Bill Maher? I can relate to that.
1:19:13 Speaker 02 I see enough people live to where I like, I like waiting.
1:19:16 Bill Maher? But you would like my last one.
1:19:17 Speaker 02 I'm positive I would. I've been, again, I've been, I'm not kissing your ass. I've been a fan forever. I mean, you know, all my initial politics and everything of anything about politics was through you.
1:19:31 Bill Maher? I don't wanna like pat myself on the back and say, no one else could do this. But I do wanna ask the question, why can't anyone else do this? I just don't see that many, I would say that many people. Like just talking to somebody else, who yes, may be a Trumper, and just not seeing them as this monster who you can't talk to.
1:19:53 Speaker 02 Right.
1:19:54 Bill Maher? I mean, and I'm not gonna convince you, and you're not gonna convince me.
1:19:59 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
1:19:59 Bill Maher? And we just accept that.
1:20:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:20:03 Bill Maher? And I, I know what their answer is, which is like, how can you? These people are doing A, B, and C. And I'm like, you know what, I can't disagree with that. I don't agree with A, B, and C, especially if A is disappearing people, and B is, you know, not listening to judges and blah, blah, blah. But, okay, we tried the, we're superior to you, you're deplorable. We're not talking to you. In fact, we can't have dinner with you.
1:20:34 Speaker 02 Right.
1:20:34 Bill Maher? Because you're so deplorable. We tried that method. We tried the, I'm in the Oval Office, but I'm putting the folders in front of my face.
1:20:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:20:44 Bill Maher? Because I can't be seen with this person, I can't. And I'm like, they'll never guess where we are.
1:20:50 Speaker 02 Right, crazy.
1:20:52 Bill Maher? The gold won't give it away.
1:20:53 Speaker 02 Crazy.
1:20:54 Bill Maher? Uh, we tried that.
1:20:56 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:20:56 Bill Maher? And maybe that has
1:21:01 Bill Maher? very little success. My method has a very little success, but, but that one has zero.
1:21:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, no doubt about it.
1:21:07 Bill Maher? That one has zero chance of success. And again, like these people, I feel like your people, they feel very slighted. They feel like they were called deplorables, you don't wanna even have dinner with us.
1:21:20 Speaker 02 I mean, there's no question about it. The, the mainstream media, which was, you know, obviously very defensive of the left, really did it to themselves. I mean, calling
1:21:34 Speaker 02 People Nazis, people calling me a speaker when you know damn well.
1:21:40 Bill Maher? I'm a Nazi. Larry David said I'm a Nazi.
1:21:42 Speaker 02 He did?
1:21:43 Bill Maher? Well, he said I had dinner with Hitler.
1:21:45 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, how, and by the way, and I think literally when we say we do it to themselves, how dare anyone call Trump Hitler? That is a, that is such an insult to the Jewish people.
1:22:02 Bill Maher? That's exactly what I said when I did an interview about it, that it's like, among other things, first of all, when you, as soon as you play the Hitler card, you've kind of lost the argument unless you're really dealing with Hitler, which, yes, we're not. But agreed, like, it is quite insulting to the ones that Hitler, I mean Hitler, I keep calling him the goat of evil. He's the goat.
1:22:26 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:22:27 Bill Maher? You know, you can't, don't try to, you know, don't enter that conversation like who was better than Michael Jordan, okay? It's Hitler, all right? Hitler's Michael Jordan of evil.
1:22:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:22:39 Bill Maher? All right? LeBron's great. It's different.
1:22:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:22:43 Bill Maher? Six rings.
1:22:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:22:46 Bill Maher? Six million people dead, and you know, it's just like, stop it.
1:22:51 Speaker 02 Yep. There's different eras of it. Genghis Khan was the Wilt Chamberlain.
1:22:55 Bill Maher? Genghis Khan. I don't think people give Genghis Khan enough credit for as much of a mass murderer as he was. And also, a mass spreader of semen. They estimate that something like 11% of people may have, like in Eurasia, may have Genghis Khan blood. Yes, absolutely. He made up for all the people he mercilessly killed by fucking endlessly and impregnating so many people. So, you know, I mean, you got to balance the good with the bad. I mean, either the sperm sample cup is half full or it's half empty, and I like to think it's half full.
1:23:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. That guy did a lot of, a lot of.
1:23:38 Bill Maher? Well, that's medieval history. I loved the, I mean, would you like to hear about Genghis Khan and the?
1:23:43 Speaker 02 You know more?
1:23:44 Bill Maher? Oh, of course.
1:23:45 Speaker 02 Tell us more.
1:23:46 Bill Maher? Well, I mean.
1:23:47 Speaker 02 You have any more pot?
1:23:49 Bill Maher? Yes. Oh, you want pot?
1:23:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:50 Bill Maher? Why don't you say so?
1:23:52 Speaker 02 I'm sorry, bro.
1:23:54 Bill Maher? Are you smoking cigarettes? I thought that was your jam.
1:23:57 Speaker 02 I do, I do both.
1:23:58 Bill Maher? Okay.
1:23:59 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:24:00 Bill Maher? Yeah.
1:24:00 Speaker 02 I got a lighter. Oh, okay.
1:24:02 Bill Maher? So.
1:24:04 Bill Maher? Well, Genghis Khan from Mongolia conquered both east and west. He got all the way to a city that, I can't remember the name, but it's currently Beijing. And then went all the way, almost to the Roman Empire, but stopped. I mean, they conquered Baghdad. I mean, wherever they conquered, they were very tolerant of different ways of being and different religions. What they were not tolerant of was any sort of objection to being subjected to Mongol rule. Then they would just fucking kill everybody.
1:24:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:24:45 Bill Maher? But if you were like, okay, we're part of the Mongol Empire. They were actually very tolerant.
1:24:51 Speaker 02 Huh.
1:24:52 Bill Maher? But nobody was more merciless or more successful for a long time. The reason they were stopped is because their warriors, which were the fiercest in history, they were raised on the grass steps of Central Asia and horses, horseback. They ran out of grass for the horses in their conquering swath. And once they couldn't get enough grass for their horses to feed, they couldn't fight. And once they couldn't fight, they couldn't keep conquering.
1:25:25 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:25:26 Bill Maher? Yeah, so they never like got to Rome.
1:25:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:30 Bill Maher? If they did, the conclave that was going on right now would be very different.
1:25:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. You know what I always found interesting? Oh, that's good. About Genghis Khan was, you know, when they buried him, I'm sure you know about this because it's so fascinating. When they buried him, the people that buried him got killed by people, right? And the people that killed those people got killed by people.
1:25:59 Bill Maher? Yes.
1:26:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:01 Bill Maher? Yes, that's exactly what they did.
1:26:02 Speaker 02 So they wouldn't know where he was buried.
1:26:03 Bill Maher? Right. This is the part of the podcast where people are going, I guess the pot kicked in.
1:26:10 Bill Maher? Wait, they're talking about Genghis Khan now? What happened to the Comedy Store? And Trump? Now we're on to Genghis Khan's killing everybody?
1:26:21 Speaker 02 It is kicking in, yeah.
1:26:22 Bill Maher? But you know, what people will say, because we were talking about ghosts, honestly, is that, I guarantee this is already writing, they're already writing this, and it hasn't aired yet. They're, wow, see? He's a Trumper. Believes in conspiracy theorist, theories. Okay, so they're gonna, they're gonna compare this to like Hillary ran a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor. Now, Tony, you don't really believe Hillary did run a, okay, good. Because a lot of Trumpers do. See, this is why people have some reason to be suspicious.
1:27:01 Speaker 02 That's the farthest extreme of the.
1:27:03 Bill Maher? It's not a.
1:27:04 Speaker 02 Of the Trump side of things.
1:27:05 Bill Maher? Really, what percentage of people who voted for Donald Trump? Or, or in the, let's put it this way, what percentage of people in the administration? You don't think people like Pete Hegseth and Lyndon McMahon and I don't know, some of these people, Pam Bondi, you don't think they believe in things like that? I mean Bobby Kennedy came out for chemtrails the other day. Did you see that?
1:27:28 Speaker 02 No, I didn't see that.
1:27:30 Bill Maher? And I like Bobby Kennedy, and he sat right there.
1:27:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:33 Bill Maher? But chemtrails?
1:27:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's an, it's, it's, it's an interesting one, you know, the.
1:27:39 Bill Maher? Not hard for you.
1:27:40 Speaker 02 Well.
1:27:41 Bill Maher? Hard for me.
1:27:43 Speaker 02 I just don't, you know, how the story was told was so interesting.
1:27:47 Bill Maher? You, you, I can't believe they, by the way, I can handle this with, well, really, any number of phone calls right now. But since you're so true blue, you should definitely get the.
1:28:02 Bill Maher? Like White House treatment and he'll show you the whole fucking White House. Let me tell you.
1:28:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:06 Bill Maher? He likes showing off the White House and I don't blame him.
1:28:10 Speaker 02 Of course.
1:28:10 Bill Maher? I don't blame him for a second.
1:28:12 Speaker 02 I saw Kid Rock's White House a few weeks ago. Have you heard of this?
1:28:15 Bill Maher? What's that?
1:28:16 Speaker 02 Oh my God, he's got the Southern White House. He mimicked his house. It's literally a Southern version of the White House. You ever visit Nashville?
1:28:26 Bill Maher? Of course.
1:28:27 Speaker 02 Well.
1:28:28 Bill Maher? I played it.
1:28:29 Speaker 02 Next time you go, if you if you happen to.
1:28:31 Bill Maher? The Ryman.
1:28:31 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:28:32 Bill Maher? Don't you play them Ryman?
1:28:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:34 Bill Maher? One of always was one of my favorite stops.
1:28:36 Speaker 02 Oh my God, it's it's it's one of the very few perfect venues in the world, I think.
1:28:41 Bill Maher? A great venue.
1:28:42 Speaker 02 But I just did the um this a few weeks ago, I did my podcast in the Bridgestone Arena two nights in a row. And Kid Rock was a guest on one of them with another comedian and.
1:28:54 Bill Maher? On the show?
1:28:54 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it was a lot of fun and we ended up going back to his place. Actually, we were there that a couple nights before. Anyway, he modeled his house after the White House, like it's built like the White House with secret doors and chambers and elevators and all this diabolical shit and it is so fucking cool. He waited years. He lived in a trailer on the property for years, just scoping it out, seeing which way the water flowed and all of these different things. He's such an interesting classy, somehow classy fucking guy.
1:29:30 Bill Maher? I love him. You know, we we became friends and like I know.
1:29:33 Speaker 02 So much fun.
1:29:35 Bill Maher? I love know the left wing hates that and you go fuck yourself. I will walk into a room with the devil if I want to. You go.
1:29:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:29:42 Bill Maher? But and and again, he's another perfect example of a guy who like we don't agree, but you know, that's okay. And it's funny that people have said to me recently, like, are you mad at Kid Rock because he took it? I said, mad at him? No, I'm thankful that he extended the invitation. I'd do it again. Not again, again, because I did it once. I don't make it happen here, okay?
1:30:09 Bill Maher? But uh no, mad at the only thing I'm mad at him about is that he convinced me to get that shitty Bobby Darin album I got.
1:30:19 Speaker 02 Oh, you did?
1:30:20 Bill Maher? Oh my God, it's so terrible. And he convinced me it was like the greatest thing in the world.
1:30:26 Speaker 02 Damn.
1:30:26 Bill Maher? Took, and you had to like, order it on, I mean, it wasn't like on iTunes. You had to like, actually get the physical CD.
1:30:32 Speaker 02 The CD?
1:30:33 Bill Maher? Yeah.
1:30:34 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:30:34 Bill Maher? Some record Bobby Darin made, like, like he was trying to be a hippie. Like after his "Splish splash, I was taking a bath."
1:30:43 Speaker 02 Yeah. That's interesting.
1:30:46 Bill Maher? I don't know why you like, but no, I mean, you, you gotta, uh, you gotta accept.
1:30:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:30:53 Bill Maher? You know, that's, that's one of the things I've really come to appreciate about these last couple of decades in my life that I didn't get when I was younger. Acceptance. It's everything, everything is acceptance.
1:31:08 Speaker 02 I would almost argue that it is a quality of, and again, I'm not a very political guy. I consider myself a centrist, but I would almost argue that it's becoming acceptance and that type of invitational, let's break bread energy somehow is becoming slightly a more quality of the right. And, and, and that's why them being called a racist, that's where they're, that's where everybody really fucked up. Because sure, Appalachia, I get it, correct. But I live in the middle, smack dab middle of Texas, granted in the more liberal part
1:31:50 Speaker 02 of Austin, Texas, but I get out a lot and I golf out 45 minutes that way or that way or that way and I, and I'll, and I'll, you know, go hunting that way and that way. There's all these different parts. And those people, if a black person walked up to their goddamn door, they would be, in my opinion, a lot of them, a thousand times nicer than a suspicious, wacky liberal that's not used to welcoming people in or being a good neighbor.
1:32:23 Bill Maher? But that's near Austin.
1:32:25 Speaker 02 Sure. I'm also just talking about the road. I'm still out there.
1:32:28 Bill Maher? Honestly, both things exist in America. And I would say, first of all, when I say accepting, I mean, accepting of someone's personality. I don't mean accepting of their political policies. So don't ever, don't anybody write in and say, Bill Maher said he should accept Trump. No, I don't accept Trump's bad policies. I accept humans. On the other thing, there was a story, maybe a couple of years ago, of some
1:32:56 Bill Maher? Black person walking up to some white guy's door for a very innocent reason and the guy just shot him, some old fuck. And my answer to this is always, these people do exist in America, but they're my age. And it's, it's, it's not a, it's not a growth industry, racism. It's just not.
1:33:17 Speaker 02 Right.
1:33:17 Bill Maher? Those people, they do exist, they do still exist in America. Or the, just the person, I know people of color who've said, you know, I, I went into this store in, you know, fucking the Panhandle in Florida and I just got a harsh, that happens. A harsh look from someone just because your skin is browner. It, that absolutely does exist. But I also have been more on the page of trying to get my mostly liberal audience to understand, you're not doing yourself any favors by pretending that America isn't a very, very different place than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago, 50. It's, it's night and day different than 50 years ago.
1:34:00 Speaker 02 Exactly. I had someone tell me once that it's never been worse. I'm like, what do you mean it's never been worse?
1:34:05 Bill Maher? I brought that up in an editorial.
1:34:07 Speaker 02 Slavery used to exist.
1:34:08 Bill Maher? I, I said that in an editorial quoting Kevin Hart, who said something about never been worse. And then he, you know, I said, worse than like 100 years ago when we had that, when they bombed the shit out of, what was that city in Oklahoma where they had this, they just destroyed the entire city?
1:34:31 Speaker 02 Tulsa?
1:34:31 Bill Maher? Yeah, Tulsa, the Tulsa race bombing. Uh, worse than when Diana Ross and, uh, you know, Willie Mays couldn't stay at the same hotel. And he fired back about like, oh, we should be thankful that we're in the, no, I'm not saying you should be thankful.
1:34:49 Speaker 02 Right.
1:34:49 Bill Maher? That's not the point and you know it's not the point.
1:34:51 Speaker 02 Right.
1:34:52 Bill Maher? I'm saying things are different and to say everything that things are worse than ever is just delusional.
1:34:59 Speaker 02 And it's not good. Irresponsibility of, you know, and I love Kevin Hart, but that's a fucking, just when people say things like that to where it's.
1:35:11 Speaker 02 Absolute, right? Things have never been worse. That's dangerous. With great power comes great responsibility. LeBron James put out an Instagram post that went super fucking ballistic. The week of my shit. And the video started with me. And it edited out a whole, the beginning, the, the part of the setup. And basically the end.
1:35:35 Bill Maher? Yeah. Of course, we all have. But I mean, it's just, I really hate that. That, that, that kind of thing is what makes me say to that wing of the party.
1:35:44 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:35:45 Bill Maher? I'm an ally until you lie.
1:35:47 Speaker 02 Right.
1:35:48 Bill Maher? When you lie.
1:35:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:35:50 Bill Maher? Then I can't be your ally.
1:35:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:35:52 Bill Maher? And I just fucking hate a lie. Just tell me what you think or what's the truth. Just don't fucking lie to me.
1:35:59 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:36:00 Bill Maher? I'm just like a, like an abused woman. He's been lying to me. So much lying, if you just don't lie to me. But it really is true. Like women, it's like, if people want to know like the main thing to do. To not piss off a woman, just don't lie.
1:36:18 Speaker 02 Right.
1:36:20 Bill Maher? It's, it's almost always the lying that'll get you.
1:36:23 Speaker 02 Totally. I learned that early on.
1:36:25 Bill Maher? Are you married?
1:36:25 Speaker 02 No.
1:36:26 Bill Maher? Never been married?
1:36:27 Speaker 02 No. Well, I was married for a short period of time.
1:36:30 Bill Maher? What do you mean?
1:36:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:36:31 Bill Maher? It's like, oh yeah, that's right.
1:36:33 Speaker 02 No, I'm, I'm a high as shit, but I was married for a couple of years.
1:36:37 Bill Maher? High as shit and I forgot marriage? I'm not sure about.
1:36:40 Speaker 02 I'm not married now.
1:36:40 Bill Maher? Now I'm not sure about the ghost.
1:36:42 Speaker 02 Again.
1:36:42 Bill Maher? All right.
1:36:43 Speaker 02 No, no.
1:36:43 Bill Maher? Now the ghost is very much in suspicion.
1:36:46 Speaker 02 No, I've been married. I'm not married.
1:36:48 Bill Maher? You were married?
1:36:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, just for a couple of years. It was fun. It was a good little run. Met a girl who I, we were, we couldn't fucking separate at all for a week or two. We were having so much damn fun. She, uh, is from, originally from Australia. And so she goes, my visa's up in a, in a little bit, so. And I'm literally like, let's, it wasn't even like,
1:37:09 Bill Maher? Damn.
1:37:09 Speaker 02 I have no regrets. We're still extremely like best friends to this day. I'm the godfather to her fucking stunning little son.
1:37:17 Bill Maher? Oh.
1:37:18 Speaker 02 And we're happy. She, actually, she'll be coming up.
1:37:20 Bill Maher? So you don't think she used you to get?
1:37:22 Speaker 02 Not at all. It was literally my idea. I know what it looks like. I mean, it was, and we had a, you know, it was a blast.
1:37:28 Bill Maher? Looks like we should send her to prison in El Salvador. That's what it looks like to me.
1:37:32 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:37:33 Bill Maher? An immigrant who took advantage of an American and we should probably deport without trial. That's what it looks like to me, my friend.
1:37:42 Speaker 02 She's an American now, thank God.
1:37:44 Bill Maher? Yeah, because of you. Right?
1:37:46 Speaker 02 Well, I mean.
1:37:47 Bill Maher? Once you marry them, they're, they're, they're good to go, right?
1:37:50 Speaker 02 It was.
1:37:51 Bill Maher? Even if they get divorced, it's not like they divorce the country.
1:37:53 Speaker 02 I don't even know the rules. I just know that they weren't gonna.
1:37:57 Bill Maher? So what, why did it peter out?
1:38:00 Speaker 02 Um, well, at the time, uh.
1:38:05 Bill Maher? You got tired of the sexual intercourse?
1:38:07 Speaker 02 No, no, it wasn't that. It was just, uh, it just kind of, um.
1:38:11 Bill Maher? Usually it's that.
1:38:12 Speaker 02 She, uh, you know, there was some, there was some addiction issues.
1:38:17 Bill Maher? Sexual intercourse?
1:38:18 Speaker 02 No.
1:38:18 Bill Maher? Oh.
1:38:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, I mean, she was, sex was fine. Everything was good in that department, but.
1:38:24 Bill Maher? It was fine. No, it's gotta be better than fine.
1:38:28 Speaker 02 It was great. It was 10 years ago. It was great. Yeah.
1:38:32 Bill Maher? That was great.
1:38:33 Speaker 02 But I mean.
1:38:33 Bill Maher? A minute ago, a minute ago, it'd be stupendous.
1:38:36 Speaker 02 Ex-wife. Have you ever been married?
1:38:38 Bill Maher? Um, let's see, I'm very high, so I don't, I'm not, I'm gonna wait and think about it. No, I've never been married. No, I, I, I have one of the proudest achievements in my life.
1:38:50 Speaker 02 Anyone.
1:38:51 Bill Maher? Not because I think marriage is bad, just because I think it would have been bad for me.
1:38:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:38:55 Bill Maher? So the fact that I was able to stick to my guns.
1:38:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:38:58 Bill Maher? Um, and not, you know, walk down the aisle.
1:39:03 Bill Maher? And, and of course, the more you listen to people who are married or were married. I mean, God, I just read that Michelle Obama, Michelle Obama, this is, said that she.
1:39:16 Bill Maher? Hated, I hated my husband for ten years when the kids were little. Who says that? I just don't understand that.
1:39:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:25 Bill Maher? Um, and, and then she said, but you know, we've been together thirty, so you know, ten bad ones. I think that's pretty good. I don't. Like, I'm not on that page that, oh, oh, one decade of misery.
1:39:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:41 Bill Maher? I could do that standing on my head, you know, they're like a mobster going on.
1:39:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:45 Bill Maher? Ten, I can do ten, please.
1:39:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:48 Bill Maher? Uh, it's cray, right?
1:39:50 Speaker 02 I would never do it again.
1:39:52 Bill Maher? Oh, you would never do it again?
1:39:53 Speaker 02 It was a one time thing, yeah. I know myself well now.
1:39:57 Bill Maher? And what did you learn?
1:39:59 Speaker 02 Well, um, well, now things have just changed, you know? It was, then it was a best friendship kind of, you know, while obviously hooking up. And now I'm just kind of, as corny as it sounds, I just like my independence. And I really, really have found a way to be super comfortable, you know, by myself.
1:40:25 Bill Maher? Doesn't sound corny to me.
1:40:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. Some people lose their minds, they go, but don't you wanna, but don't you wanna? And it's like, don't you wanna, like?
1:40:35 Bill Maher? Don't you wanna?
1:40:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, don't you wanna do what I, let's take a look at our nights.
1:40:40 Bill Maher? That should definitely be a song.
1:40:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:40:43 Bill Maher? Don't you wanna?
1:40:44 Speaker 02 Should be on that Bobby Darren album.
1:40:46 Bill Maher? No, it should be on Dua Lipa's album. Or Charlie C X to the Z.
1:40:54 Bill Maher? I mean, don't you wanna? Because that, you're so right, that like so sums up like what the argument is to people like us. From the usual, don't you wanna? And then my answer was always, no, not, I don't, not really. Love means. Not what, how do you make me feel? It's like, what's right for you? You know, if I, if I love you being happy more than I love whatever you're giving to me, that's when you pass into the actual love stage as opposed to just, I mean, when I was younger, it was just like, I love you. No, I love what you do for me.
1:41:37 Bill Maher? You know, I love how you make me feel, but that's about me. That's not love. And that's okay, but it's just not. It's something different. So. All right, now that we've established that, I'm going to go to the end of the show.
1:41:55 Speaker 02 I hope I was good. I always get high on these things and don't know whether.
1:41:58 Bill Maher? No.
1:42:06 Speaker 03 This December, the magic of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol returns to Virginia Repertory Theater in downtown Richmond. Experience the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge as he's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, and rediscovers the joy and true meaning of the holiday season. Performances run November 18th through December 27th. Tickets on sale now at virginia rep dot org or by calling 804-282-2620.
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