Penn Jillette | Club Random Classics with Bill Maher

On Club Random Classics this month, Bill Maher sits down with Penn Jillette, one half of the legendary magic duo Penn & Teller. Bill tries his best to get the magicians' secrets out of Penn, and they discuss the love of humans vs. animals, the magic trick "Blood from a Stone," libertarians and seat belts, Penn being in the "nut chair" on Politically Incorrect, Bill's opening joke on the Jerry Lewis Telethon that almost got him canceled, the problem with young people's brains, Penn hopping trains as a young man, when Bill was a nanny, and much, much more. This episode first aired on July 7, 2024. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:01Speaker 03

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• 2:16Bill Maher?

  Breaking news, our merch just got a full revamp with all new designs and items. So if you want a little more random in your life, head over to clubrandom.com and check out the store.

• 2:28Bill Maher?

  We've got premium hoodies, including our brand new quad hoodies with the updated logo, super soft t-shirts, super soft, for men and women, and even tie dye shirts. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. While you're there, catch up on recent episodes and grab some swag and bring a little random home. Once again, that's clubrandom.com. Well, this week's Club Random classic is with Penn Jillette. Yeah, the giant magician, that guy. But this isn't really about magic. It's about otherwise intelligent people believe ridiculous things.

• 3:08Bill Maher?

  Penn and I get into religion, psychics, free speech, comedy, politics, and the psychology of deception. We agree on a few things, disagree on a few, and as usual, that's when the conversation gets interesting. It's funny, provocative, and one of those episodes that feels even more relevant now than when we first recorded it. Check out this Club Random classic with Penn Jillette.

• 3:35Bill Maher?

  Oh, look at you, standing.

• 3:37Speaker 07

  Good to see you.

• 3:37Bill Maher?

  Wow, you look like you lost a lot of weight.

• 3:40Speaker 07

  Well, only about 120 pounds.

• 3:42Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 3:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 3:44Bill Maher?

  And I know it wasn't Ozempic.

• 3:46Speaker 07

  No, no, it wasn't.

• 3:47Bill Maher?

  Right?

• 3:47Speaker 07

  I'm not a big fan of that, but it's been now, I mean, I just haven't seen you often. It's been like, uh,

• 3:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 3:52Speaker 07

  nine years I've been down.

• 3:54Bill Maher?

  Yes, really?

• 3:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 3:56Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:56Speaker 07

  And also, that brought me around to, um, to a point of view of yours that I thought I would never share.

• 4:02Bill Maher?

  Oh, good.

• 4:03Speaker 07

  Which is, it brought me around to being, uh, I'm afraid I'm a pretty hardcore vegan now. Have been for nine years.

• 4:10Bill Maher?

  I'm not a vegan.

• 4:11Speaker 07

  I know, but here's what happened, you see, when you...

• 4:14Bill Maher?

  But I'm a, uh,

• 4:16Speaker 07

  Animal rights guy.

• 4:16Bill Maher?

  A medical skep-- well, animal rights, yes, but also a medical skeptic.

• 4:20Speaker 07

  Well,

• 4:20Bill Maher?

  In the broad sense.

• 4:21Speaker 07

  I started out, um, stopping animal products for my health, and it turns out...

• 4:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I don't know, I don't agree with that.

• 4:30Speaker 07

  You don't either?

• 4:31Bill Maher?

  I'm not su-- I think the science is completely out on that. Uh-huh. I mean, the science may very well be that people, or some people, need to be adoptive of health animal protein. That may be the case. I know that's not what PETA wants to hear, and I love my friends at PETA. But I'm sorry, the truth always comes first, and the science is out on that.

• 4:54Speaker 07

  Uh, yeah.

• 4:54Bill Maher?

  And I've heard many, many doctors say, uh, all my patients are vegetarians. They don't look good. I disagree with that because I know vegetarians who do look fine.

• 5:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 5:05Bill Maher?

  But.

• 5:06Speaker 07

  I'm not sure, I'm not sure you do, but I'll give you that the, it's a, but what I was saying was, what's really interesting is when you give up having to resolve your cognitive dissonance with factory farming and so on.

• 5:21Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 5:21Speaker 07

  Once you no longer have to do that.

• 5:23Bill Maher?

  Right. I agree.

• 5:25Speaker 07

  It's one of those things that I don't think you can, you can find a person that'll do anything. I don't think you can find reasonable people who would go into a factory farm and say, I feel good about this. This is the way we should be.

• 5:39Bill Maher?

  But there are definitely people who, even if they saw it, wouldn't care that much.

• 5:43Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 5:43Bill Maher?

  Because they're.

• 5:44Speaker 07

  But that's different.

• 5:45Bill Maher?

  It's different. I mean, there are some people, it's, it's, I always compare it to me and babies. Not that I would ever want to hurt a baby, but like, you can show me humans, in fact, but babies, you know, like in a movie, and bad things are happening to them. It won't actually make me cry, but an animal?

• 6:02Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 6:03Bill Maher?

  It's just some people are for people and.

• 6:05Speaker 07

  There's a, there's, there's, you know, that's, I believe that's a cultural thing. You know, how we, how we start to function that way. I'm not sure that would be built in, yeah.

• 6:15Bill Maher?

  Oh, I don't know about that. A cultural thing to, to like, just have a thing for animals?

• 6:20Speaker 07

  I think.

• 6:21Bill Maher?

  What culture?

• 6:21Speaker 07

  I think our culture is moving in that direction.

• 6:24Bill Maher?

  What culture hates animals?

• 6:26Speaker 07

  Well, you would say America.

• 6:29Bill Maher?

  America? Well, yeah, but not like, but only be, mostly because they're more like the, you're right about the fact that if most people saw it, they would be appalled. But they just want to do the out of sight, out of mind.

• 6:42Speaker 07

  It's one of the amazing things about freedom of speech in this country. You can't show the inside of a slaughterhouse.

• 6:49Bill Maher?

  Ag gag rules. Yes.

• 6:51Speaker 07

  How, how? How does that happen?

• 6:53Bill Maher?

  And you know what? This is all coming to, this is all going to come to the fore again. I tried to make it a case when COVID happened with, you know, I said, when you torture animals, it's gonna come back on humans. We kept, keep doing it.

• 7:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's not even, it's not the torture. It's putting a billion of these things in close quarters.

• 7:12Bill Maher?

  Well, that's torture. You're torturing them.

• 7:14Speaker 07

  But I'm saying it's a byproduct of the torture. It's not the purpose of it.

• 7:17Bill Maher?

  But the sickness that you're putting into the animals by torturing them comes back to make us sick. I'm not going to go into all the details of how that is. This is not a science show.

• 7:27Speaker 07

  Why bother? Because we agree.

• 7:29Bill Maher?

  Right. No, no, right. But just for people listening, but what this is-

• 7:34Speaker 07

  There's people listening?

• 7:35Bill Maher?

  No, not really.

• 7:36Speaker 07

  I thought this was the first honest conversation we'd ever had.

• 7:39Bill Maher?

  Well, it is, it is the most honest conversation you'll ever have anywhere in media. I'll guarantee you that. But what I was going to say is this is all going to come back in a much bigger way now with bird flu.

• 7:48Speaker 07

  Oh, yep, it's all bird flu. As a matter of fact, with COVID, we got really lucky. The first thing we get that's bird flu related, it's really bad. I mean, the, the, the, the coming plague, as the book said, or the epidemic that's coming is going to be really, really bad. And our hope is maybe we can be dead by then. That's what we're clutching on to.

• 8:13Bill Maher?

  Well, no, that, that could not be the, we gotta find a better way to look at it than that.

• 8:18Speaker 07

  Well, one thing, you know, is if you cut down animal products a lot, it would help things a lot.

• 8:25Bill Maher?

  But you, what was, I remember you and the potatoes.

• 8:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, that-

• 8:30Bill Maher?

  What is the potatoes?

• 8:31Speaker 07

  The potatoes was, I'm a glutton and I was completely on the SAD, which is, you know, standard American diet.

• 8:39Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 8:39Speaker 07

  And, um, and a friend of mine, uh, who's, uh, pretty pro-science, worked at NASA and all that shit, um, said to me, you know, you gotta knock yourself out of your head. So people tend to say it back in an oversimplified way.

• 8:56Bill Maher?

  That's why I'm asking.

• 8:56Speaker 07

  That you just started to eat potatoes. And the fact is, I did for two weeks.

• 9:00Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 9:01Speaker 07

  And what that did for me, I'm not saying for anybody else. What it did for me is it taught me what it felt like to be hungry, which I didn't know. You know, you've never been fat.

• 9:11Bill Maher?

  Um, no.

• 9:12Speaker 07

  But learning not-

• 9:14Bill Maher?

  Hot deer, but not fat.

• 9:15Speaker 07

  Learn, learning not to be a glutton and not to fall for all the social cues. You want to knock yourself out of it for a little while. And two weeks of eating nothing but potatoes, I was thinking differently. And I started to taste food differently and started to feel differently.

• 9:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, I've.

• 9:36Speaker 07

  It could have been anything. Potatoes weren't mad.

• 9:37Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 9:38Speaker 07

  It was just a mono diet for long enough to say,

• 9:41Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 07

  I'm not going to see those ads the same.

• 9:43Bill Maher?

  Well, just something to disrupt. I mean, when you think about most people who never do a fast, for example, I mean, you're just, you're, they would never really think, and I never really thought for year after year, anything other than I eat three meals a day.

• 9:58Speaker 07

  Right.

• 9:59Bill Maher?

  And, um, and I never skip a day because it's eating, for fuck's sake.

• 10:03Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 10:04Bill Maher?

  And then, you know, you get older and you have health issues. And then you're doing things like, I mean, I've, uh, I think for about five years now, a couple of times a year, I do that Prolon fast. It's like they call it the fasting mimicking diet.

• 10:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I've just, I've done.

• 10:20Bill Maher?

  Tiny bit of food, but it.

• 10:22Speaker 07

  I've done just water for two weeks.

• 10:24Bill Maher?

  Just wa- see, I can't do that. I tried the hardcore. I can't.

• 10:28Speaker 07

  But remember, I still have. I mean, for one time, I was down much lower than this and probably to where you are in terms of body fat, but I'm not there now. I could easily go three weeks and.

• 10:39Bill Maher?

  But it, but what the fast does, especially if you do it, you know, regularly, it does, again, retrain you to how much food you need. And, uh, you know, and it's, then you can go to what I did is two meals a day instead of three. Because compared to the fast, two meals a day is joyous.

• 10:57Speaker 07

  I do one.

• 10:58Bill Maher?

  One?

• 10:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 10:59Bill Maher?

  One, like a dog.

• 11:01Speaker 07

  I eat very, very, I eat very carefully and it's all, it's all vegan, but I take the supplements. The thing that I didn't really understand is that how much of, the way we live our lives is based around food.

• 11:17Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 11:17Speaker 07

  I can now talk to somebody without eating.

• 11:19Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 07

  It used to be that's all I did was eat when I.

• 11:21Bill Maher?

  Well, when I do the fast, I can't talk to anybody because it is social. So I have to stay home. I mean, some people can work through a fast. I'm amazed. I can't be social. I can't, I don't want to talk to you on the phone. I just have to be alone and that's okay for five days. It's actually a nice reset. Reading and certainly can't do any pot.

• 11:42Speaker 07

  When you come back from doing a fast and you go into Hollywood meetings and it's 10 o'clock and they have bagels and doughnuts and you say, who's hungry right now? Why are they having this food? Who came to the meeting going, wow, I'm wicked hungry?

• 11:58Bill Maher?

  Wait, you go to Hollywood meetings at 10 a.m.?

• 12:00Speaker 07

  I have, I have.

• 12:02Bill Maher?

  Recently?

• 12:02Speaker 07

  Even though they know, no, but I mean, a few years ago.

• 12:05Bill Maher?

  It's, I was just gonna say.

• 12:07Speaker 07

  I'm from Vegas, so I'm not really supposed to be up before noon.

• 12:11Bill Maher?

  Right. What time do you get up?

• 12:13Speaker 07

  I usually get up actually about 10, 9 or 10, because I go to sleep about 2.

• 12:18Bill Maher?

  So how many years have you been at the Rio?

• 12:20Speaker 07

  I should interject here because you might be interested. The longest running headliners in Vegas history. Fuck you, Sinatra.

• 12:29Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 12:30Speaker 07

  We have now gone, I only say that because he's dead. 23, 23 years we've been playing at the conveniently named Penn and Teller Theater.

• 12:40Bill Maher?

  Right. I've been to, I, do you remember that I did a trick with you guys?

• 12:44Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 12:44Bill Maher?

  What was that for? I had, I know, it's funny because, you know, I don't know what year this is. I'm guessing the 90s?

• 12:51Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 12:51Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 12:51Speaker 07

  We've been on Sin City Spectacular.

• 12:53Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 12:54Speaker 07

  And we called in a favor.

• 12:55Bill Maher?

  I remember, I was happy to do it. I was honored. The name of the trick was Blood From A Stone.

• 13:03Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, yeah, with the hand.

• 13:05Bill Maher?

  And I remember, what?

• 13:06Speaker 07

  With the, into the hand, the razor into the hand, yeah.

• 13:09Bill Maher?

  I, no, there was a stone.

• 13:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, but it turned into a faux expose that had people cutting their hand.

• 13:17Bill Maher?

  I don't specifically remember that. I don't remember much. Of course, it's the 90s, I'm a pothead, well. But what I do remember, I remember the name of the trick, Blood From A Stone. And I also remember afterwards thinking, oh, my God, that's so cheap when you get up to, close to it.

• 13:34Speaker 07

  Well, thank you.

• 13:37Bill Maher?

  Like, really? This is what's, fooling all these people? It was just like a, a, like a magic shop rock that.

• 13:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was the first part. There was a second part we paid off.

• 13:50Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 13:50Speaker 07

  You were the setup.

• 13:51Bill Maher?

  Oh, I was the setup?

• 13:52Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 13:53Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 13:53Speaker 07

  There was a payoff later. But yeah, it very, you know, we have, we do fool us. So we have to come up with 20 new tricks a year.

• 14:04Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 14:05Speaker 07

  And most magicians do 25 in their lives. So we are writing a lot of material. And it's really fun, you know, and I'm not.

• 14:12Bill Maher?

  I'll bet you that's fun because that's new.

• 14:15Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 14:15Bill Maher?

  What I can't wrap my mind around is the amount of shows you do. Like, I couldn't do that. Like.

• 14:23Speaker 07

  We do a lot of shows.

• 14:24Bill Maher?

  Do you do two a night?

• 14:25Speaker 07

  No, not anymore. We're doing, but we also go on the road.

• 14:28Bill Maher?

  How many weeks a year?

• 14:29Speaker 07

  Uh, well, 52 if you count on the road. Like, for instance, next year.

• 14:34Bill Maher?

  What? You never take a week off?

• 14:36Speaker 07

  No. Next year, we'll be doing.

• 14:38Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:39Speaker 07

  Australia and England. It's the 50th anniversary.

• 14:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, my.

• 14:43Speaker 07

  But I don't, I take a day or two off every two or three years. I, I just, I just love to work.

• 14:52Bill Maher?

  Humans are so different.

• 14:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 14:54Bill Maher?

  I mean, the thing, I mean, just the, you're not bored when you're doing the same act?

• 14:59Speaker 07

  I don't do the same act. We have.

• 15:01Bill Maher?

  No.

• 15:01Speaker 07

  We do different stuff on the road than we do in Vegas. We put different tricks in.

• 15:05Bill Maher?

  So from Thursday to Friday, it's a different show?

• 15:08Speaker 07

  This week, it will be way different, yeah, from Thursday to Friday. But you just happen to get lucky on that question. The best living magician is a man named Juan Temerife. He's from Spain. And we have a bit in the show called the Spaniel, which we wrote with a great Spanish magician named Hondro. And he's a, he's a student of Juan Temerife. So we were gonna pull that out of the show and a bunch of other stuff to put new stuff in. But Juan's coming from Madrid to see our show. So we're keeping in the stuff we want him to see. That may be unprofessional to say, tonight's show is for this guy.

• 15:46Bill Maher?

  And your partner feels the same way about all this work? Or are you dragging him? No, he's happy to do it too?

• 15:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, we, we intend to die in office. We have no, we have no plans of retiring. I mean, Teller is seven years older than me. So I am, you know, three score and nine. And he's, you know, he's 70, 76.

• 16:08Bill Maher?

  Three score. Now, for the kids out there, I can only explain this to you in terms of the Gettysburg Address. Kids, you remember fourscore and seven years ago? That's 87 years. That was the time from the American Revolution to the Gettysburg Address. Score means a period of 20 years. And only people who are three score or older would ever use it. And certainly not to get laid. But, uh, no. But you're married, right?

• 16:36Speaker 07

  But, yeah, I believe we're.

• 16:37Bill Maher?

  Well, you've been married.

• 16:38Speaker 07

  I've been married, uh, oh geez, I don't, uh, 20 years.

• 16:43Bill Maher?

  20, a score.

• 16:44Speaker 07

  We have two, we have two children. We have two children who are 19 and 18.

• 16:49Bill Maher?

  Do you like them?

• 16:50Speaker 07

  I do.

• 16:51Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 16:52Speaker 07

  I do, and that's, uh, that's fortunate. Although I will tell you that there isn't a study that will tell you that I'm happier than you because of having children.

• 17:02Bill Maher?

  Wait.

• 17:03Speaker 07

  They all say the opposite.

• 17:04Bill Maher?

  What do the studies say? That you're happier if you have children?

• 17:06Speaker 07

  No.

• 17:07Bill Maher?

  Oh, that if you don't?

• 17:08Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 17:09Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, it's so stupid. Because we're all individuals. What makes me happy isn't what makes you happy. So we're comparing apples with not even another type of fruit.

• 17:20Speaker 07

  What'd you call me?

• 17:23Bill Maher?

  Well, again, I've heard rumors.

• 17:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, they're all true.

• 17:26Bill Maher?

  Uh, right. What, were you like a gay when I'm drunk kind of guy?

• 17:30Speaker 07

  I've never been drunk. You know that.

• 17:32Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's right. So what was your excuse?

• 17:38Bill Maher?

  Full moon?

• 17:38Speaker 07

  You know, that's one of the things that these, uh, these two people have differently. I don't even drink caffeine.

• 17:46Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 17:46Speaker 07

  I, I've never had a puff of marijuana. I don't think that's true for you.

• 17:50Bill Maher?

  Well, you're gonna get one tonight.

• 17:55Speaker 07

  And, uh, you know, I don't drink alcohol. But I have had, um... You know, but what they referred to as medicinal drugs like morphine and stuff when I was wicked sick, and I gotta tell you, I really enjoyed it.

• 18:10Bill Maher?

  Morphine, of course.

• 18:11Speaker 07

  And a matter of fact.

• 18:12Bill Maher?

  It's opium.

• 18:13Speaker 07

  You know Trey Parker.

• 18:15Bill Maher?

  Well, no, I don't know him, but I know who he is.

• 18:18Speaker 07

  Well, Trey used to say, probably still does, I haven't talked to him in a while, that my biggest flaw was never being high.

• 18:28Bill Maher?

  You personally? Oh, I see.

• 18:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, so he said he wanted to be moving when I was high, so I had gone to the dentist and they had made a mistake and given me much more than they should have of like some powerful painkiller.

• 18:45Bill Maher?

  Good for them.

• 18:46Speaker 07

  So I said to my wife, I said, call Trey Parker.

• 18:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 18:52Speaker 07

  So he flew in and spent an evening talking to me and said, I was right, you're a lot better high.

• 19:00Bill Maher?

  Well, look, some people literally are better high. I think I am in some areas. I love to write high, stand up. I can do high and often have. Real time, no, that would be a disaster. That's not the kind of thing you want to be high for. There's too many elements going on, too many important people, gotta keep the clock, I'm, we're on a, you know, a big network. It's not the same thing. In this show, I can go, oh, what were we talking about? Or, you know, fuck you, or, you know, are you gay? Whatever it is, just, I'm not gonna, that's just a different kind of thing. High is right for something. I've never been an everyday smoker. I've said this many times, I'm a situational smoker. I, and that's how

• 19:43Bill Maher?

  I, I know it sounds counterintuitive to say, I'm not addicted to marijuana. I could have quit anytime in the last 45 years that I've been smoking it and I just didn't. But it's actually kind of true.

• 19:53Speaker 07

  I think it is true.

• 19:54Bill Maher?

  Like when I do the fast, I don't miss it. It's like, I know I'm not gonna smoke during a fast, or on a Tuesday night, or whatever night I'm not smoking, and my body doesn't go, come on, let's do this. When I was on cigarettes, my body was saying, come on, let's do this.

• 20:09Speaker 07

  There's no, there's. Very little evidence of addictive qualities of marijuana by almost any definition. You know, I'm not, I'm someone who doesn't smoke marijuana, who has been on the cover of High Times Magazine.

• 20:22Bill Maher?

  Well, that's

• 20:23Speaker 07

  I have been very, very pro legalization of everything. Because I just think that if you don't have the freedom to smoke dope, I don't really have the freedom not to.

• 20:36Bill Maher?

  I, right. And I, and I think if we'd be asked, most men on the street, woman on the street, whoever trans on the street, I don't want to leave anybody out.

• 20:45Speaker 07

  Whoever happens to be on the street.

• 20:46Bill Maher?

  Any, any life form on the street, pendulet, they would, first they would say magic, and of course, they know that. Second, I think they would say is libertarian.

• 20:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, which faded a little bit for me a lot.

• 21:00Bill Maher?

  I got that tag too. And look, you know, I'm, I think, we're probably similar on this, some things I am libertarian about.

• 21:07Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 21:08Bill Maher?

  Where it makes sense.

• 21:09Speaker 07

  You once said to me, I think, that libertarians were, you know, conservatives wanting to smoke dope.

• 21:20Bill Maher?

  Some of them are.

• 21:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 21:22Bill Maher?

  And, and the formal party

• 21:23Speaker 07

  That has come to be more true.

• 21:25Bill Maher?

  The formal party takes it too far, like the actual Libertarian Party.

• 21:29Speaker 07

  And also

• 21:30Bill Maher?

  They're the ones who I think of saying, you know, seat belts? No, they restrict my freedom and I want to soar like an eagle right through the windshield.

• 21:41Speaker 07

  The, the other thing is that, for me, a lot of what gets forgotten is the responsibility. Libertarianism only really works if people are taking more responsibility than many people want. And the fact that I seem to want responsibility.

• 22:05Speaker 07

  You know, it's that mistake that's made with the do on to others thing that we've been hitting again and again. I cannot treat you like I want to be treated because you want different things. You know, and that is the problem with extrapolating from your own desires that everybody else wants.

• 22:25Bill Maher?

  I don't understand that. Of course, you can treat me like, we're talking about things we have in common, like we treat each other like I'm polite to you.

• 22:34Speaker 07

  Of course, but, but we can't, I can't, I can't use the, the solipsism of thinking that you're, you have the same desires I have.

• 22:43Bill Maher?

  No.

• 22:44Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 22:44Bill Maher?

  And that's what makes the world go around.

• 22:46Speaker 07

  Well, no, what I'm saying, it's a good thing.

• 22:47Bill Maher?

  It is a good thing because we all, or else we'd all be competing more so for the same things. I mean, we are already competing for a lot, you know, people, I mean, this is a capitalist society, we're all trying to get ahead and get rich and, or die trying and, but at least we're not competing like on other levels, like for pot and liquor.

• 23:10Speaker 07

  And women. That's all you meant. That's all you meant.

• 23:14Bill Maher?

  Right. I mean, I think the marriage, not marriage thing is, to me, the clearest divide as to how people are just built differently.

• 23:22Speaker 07

  But you know.

• 23:23Bill Maher?

  And have different DNA and different needs and part of it is psychological, of course, part of it is physical, some people just have a very high libido, some.

• 23:33Speaker 07

  But I was very anti-marriage, as was my wife, which is an odd thing to say. And I did not think that the solution was gay marriage. I thought the solution was no marriage for anybody, make contracts. But I talked to, we talked to several lawyers and we couldn't get anybody to tell me a hundred percent that if we had children and my wife died, custody would go to me.

• 24:00Bill Maher?

  I see.

• 24:01Speaker 07

  And I, we tried to write up an elaborate contract that would do that and the lawyers finally said. Get married. Save yourself some money. Because we, I think that all the stuff that comes with marriage and saying that there's one way or a broad way that people interact with each other is madness. It's insane. But they've put up so many roadblocks because I would not want, and I trust my wife's family completely, but I don't want to be in the situation where she would have a car accident. Of course, this is now academic question because my children are over 18.

• 24:42Speaker 07

  But when they were 10, my wife has a car accident and someone in her family decides to take me to court over custody? I don't want that to happen. And when you're married, there's no doubt you're the father in sin.

• 24:57Bill Maher?

  Boy, you think about this more than Biden.

• 24:59Speaker 07

  But you know, I have, I should probably have confessed this to you earlier, probably before you invited me on the show.

• 25:07Speaker 03

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• 25:37Speaker 04

  Hear that? That's now crispy and McCrispy strips, meeting creamy Caesar sauce. Sounds extra crispy. Caesar sauce at McDonald's for a limited time. Ba da ma ba ba.

• 25:52Speaker 07

  About six weeks ago, I cracked. And I just said, I can't take in any more news. I can't read the Times anymore. I can't watch Bill's show. My closest friend, as you may know, is Lawrence O'Donnell. And I would watch his show.

• 26:11Bill Maher?

  I did not know that.

• 26:12Speaker 07

  And I, I wrote to Lawrence and I said, I gotta stop watching the news and that includes your show. And I said, make me one promise, Lawrence. If things change enough that I should vote for Trump. Send me a text. Other than that, I'm not watching the news. So I'm a little bit self-conscious because I used to have a pretty good idea what was going on.

• 26:35Bill Maher?

  But you should see the clip from Friday of Jiminy Glick on my show.

• 26:39Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 26:40Bill Maher?

  You will die. I'm just sitting there, I'm just the prop. But you know Jiminy Glick. I mean, he did it for me and it was just, I mean, I've never had reaction like that. It's really, I mean, he's just a genius.

• 26:52Speaker 07

  He is, absolutely is.

• 26:55Bill Maher?

  But you're not the only one. I mean, Sam Harris famously got off Twitter about a year ago.

• 27:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, so did I.

• 27:02Bill Maher?

  And talked about that and said like, he was so much more clear after that. Like, I mean, I don't get it because like, I want to say to these very smart people like you and him, why did you ever go down this stupid rabbit hole to begin with? I'm not a genius, but I saw from a mile away that this is a stupid thing to do. To engage with the whole world on everybody's complaints 24/7, really? You thought that was a-

• 27:28Speaker 07

  But also, there's this other thing that's happened. I believe, and maybe this is simply getting old, and I, that's a possibility. And if that's the answer, then that's the answer. But I believe that some people were talking about issues in our lifetime. And I believe that now it's become nothing but team sports.

• 27:50Bill Maher?

  Well, it is.

• 27:51Speaker 07

  And I would watch Lawrence O'Donnell and go, how's Trump doing? Is he gonna be okay? And I just can't do that.

• 27:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but to be fair, that's not what I'm doing. That is not what I'm doing.

• 28:02Speaker 07

  Right.

• 28:02Bill Maher?

  And the reason why my show and my career in general are doing better than ever, my book went to number one, is because I'm not doing that.

• 28:10Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:10Bill Maher?

  Because I am the, I'm not gonna say the one guy, I don't monitor everybody else, but people come up to me all the time and say it to me. You are the one guy who is not playing this partisan game. You are, I get that you're center-left, but you are not afraid to go after your-

• 28:27Speaker 07

  Right. You never have.

• 28:28Bill Maher?

  You are not afraid to go after the left.

• 28:30Speaker 07

  As the person who was on the first week and the last week of Politically Correct.

• 28:35Bill Maher?

  Is that right?

• 28:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 28:36Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 28:36Speaker 07

  I'm the one who was on both.

• 28:37Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:38Speaker 07

  You knew it at the time.

• 28:40Bill Maher?

  Did you get schmilkus when you saw the sign behind you there, when you walked in?

• 28:44Speaker 07

  I will tell you-

• 28:45Bill Maher?

  Isn't that a perfect spot?

• 28:47Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 28:49Bill Maher?

  And you had to put a stripper pole in front of it, didn't I?

• 28:50Speaker 07

  May I tell you my favorite Bill Maher story?

• 28:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, please, because I love him.

• 28:55Speaker 07

  I was on Politically Incorrect, and they were

• 29:00Bill Maher?

  What year?

• 29:00Speaker 07

  The seats there, I don't know.

• 29:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, 90s.

• 29:02Speaker 07

  Long time ago. And there was your seat. And for some reason, this didn't often happen, but it was just the two of us on the set. And I had the list of the people who were on with me. And I forgot who it was. It was some drug czar for Clinton and someone else and so on and so on.

• 29:20Bill Maher?

  Sounds right.

• 29:21Speaker 07

  You know, it was these people. And I said to you, and it was probably

• 29:25Bill Maher?

  Plus a sitcom actor.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was probably your kindest moment in your life. I looked at, I mean, I was sincere. I was not setting you up for a joke. I said, this is a weird list, Bill, because you always have one nut. You have one person in the nut chair, and you always know who the nut is. And you went, that's all you did. And I went, oh, it's me. And you went, well, you know, we have all different people on. And I said, I'm in the nut chair. And then you kind of looked at me like, you always are, Penn. You're always in the nut chair.

• 30:04Bill Maher?

  That's hysterical.

• 30:05Speaker 07

  But your look is a look that they've never seen Bill Maher give, which was the look of, I'm kind, I care for you, but there's a truth I have to tell you that might be a little tough.

• 30:18Bill Maher?

  Well, I was more fond of the nut chair. I didn't even know we had one, but yes. Yeah, now it's coming back to me, right. I mean, I wouldn't call it nut, but like somebody, of course, the nut chair was where you were probably going to get the lion's share of the good stuff that came out of the show, because the nut chair is somebody who is valuable and probably interesting with unpredictable ideas. And that's what I always wanted was, and that was the, you know, the, I always say about Politically Incorrect, it was a designed train wreck of different, four different people who have nothing in common, but we all get to vote, so we should all get to talk. And there were some people who were on that show, like musicians, a couple of them, I

• 31:02Bill Maher?

  won't say the names, I think I can remember at least one of them, who sat there for four segments and said nothing, like they just had a good seat for the show. They did. Like, the whole show went by and they did not make a word come out of their mouth.

• 31:17Speaker 07

  The only show, and I did your show a bunch of times. The only show that I shouldn't have done and I didn't enjoy was right after my mom died. And this is not your fault. I was on the show with a psychic who talked to the dead. And it was the one time I've been on your show that I couldn't mitigate my grief and my anger.

• 31:47Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 31:47Speaker 07

  And my outrage, I couldn't temper with any sort of comedy. And I remember after the show-

• 31:57Bill Maher?

  Because you thought he was a phony? No, I'm asking.

• 32:01Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 32:01Bill Maher?

  That's it, because you're the magician.

• 32:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, but also, but the point was that my mom had just died. So I had no, I should have called up and said, "My mom died two weeks ago. I shouldn't be on your comedy show."

• 32:14Bill Maher?

  Especially with that guy.

• 32:15Speaker 07

  "Talking about life after death." And afterwards, you just went, "Yeah, your mom just died."

• 32:20Bill Maher?

  I'm so glad we got onto this because, because you're the guy to ask about this. All acts who do like a psychic thing, they're all phonies. Is that what you're saying?

• 32:31Speaker 07

  I have-

• 32:32Bill Maher?

  Because sometimes, I don't, I-

• 32:35Speaker 07

  I have, I have looked very, very hard, sincerely, trying to find something that seems supernatural. And I haven't been able to.

• 32:46Bill Maher?

  Meaning?

• 32:46Speaker 07

  And that's as far as you're gonna get out of me. Every single person that I've experienced has been phony.

• 32:52Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 32:53Speaker 07

  And every single person-

• 32:54Bill Maher?

  I don't know, I don't, I don't remember the name of this guy, but, and I don't see this a lot because I don't seek it out, but-

• 33:00Speaker 07

  But I do seek it out.

• 33:01Bill Maher?

  Okay, that's why I'm asking you. Okay. Barbra Streisand. I don't know if she's-

• 33:07Speaker 07

  I think she exists.

• 33:08Bill Maher?

  Oh, yes, and is a very good friend of mine. And I love her dearly. And she may be right. I don't know, that's why-

• 33:15Speaker 07

  To love you?

• 33:16Bill Maher?

  Well, she's definitely right to love me. But she has someone who comes out in her act, or at least when I saw her the last time live. And this is going back, you know, not that long, but maybe eight years. And- It's somebody she presents in the middle of her show, who does a psychic act. And does things, you know, like, somebody in the audience and you can tell when someone is not a plant in the audience. No one is that good an actor.

• 33:48Speaker 07

  I agree with you on that.

• 33:49Bill Maher?

  Okay, so, I mean, and then, you know, writes on a whiteboard the name of their high school boyfriend, or whatever it is, that is like, it's like, no, I know I don't know how magic tricks work, so I'm saying maybe there is a way. But it is befuddling to me how someone could do that trick. What could possibly be the means by which you get into this person's head?

• 34:14Speaker 07

  You've just described a trick, you just happen to have. You described a trick that's trivial, that is easy. But there are other ones that are harder.

• 34:24Bill Maher?

  Easy? How do you do it?

• 34:25Speaker 07

  Well, I don't know. First of all, I wouldn't necessarily be right. And that's what makes me hesitant. I'm not protecting magic secrets. But whenever you postulate, this is how a trick was done, you could be wrong. Because I don't know all the details. But you can. It's pretty easy to get information off a whiteboard. It's pretty easy to get information off a chalkboard.

• 34:48Bill Maher?

  No, no.

• 34:48Speaker 07

  If you write something down, I know it.

• 34:52Bill Maher?

  No, but he's, I don't understand. He's writing it down.

• 34:55Speaker 07

  Oh, he's writing it down.

• 34:56Bill Maher?

  He's writing it down. He's saying, he's just talking to somebody in the audience who just, again, unless they're the most brilliant actor or actress in the world, I don't see acting. I see, no, I've never met you before. And, you know, and then I'm writing something down that is in your head that only you would know.

• 35:17Speaker 07

  I would imagine they're telling the truth on everything.

• 35:20Bill Maher?

  What's, who's telling this? What do you mean?

• 35:21Speaker 07

  I would imagine the person in the audience is telling the truth, as you said. I'm agreeing with you.

• 35:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 35:25Speaker 07

  So you have to, different body.

• 35:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah, the person is blown away.

• 35:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, they're destroyed.

• 35:30Bill Maher?

  Rob Schminkus was my, my, it's good. Or the guy got the name wrong by one letter or something. And it's like, it's like, come on. I just, I just, I can't explain it, but.

• 35:41Speaker 07

  I can.

• 35:43Bill Maher?

  Please.

• 35:43Speaker 07

  But it takes a long time. There's a thing called pre-show work, which is much more brilliant than you think it would be. And there's, uh, there's also something called dual reality, which is really, really important. If I'm doing a trick for you and the audience is watching, if I do a trick that will blow you away, and you're amazed, it may be a different trick than what the audience thinks.

• 36:13Bill Maher?

  I don't see this as a trick. A trick involves a prop, like blood from a stone.

• 36:18Speaker 07

  No, no.

• 36:19Bill Maher?

  This is just, um, mental telepathy.

• 36:22Speaker 07

  But you're making, you're making, uh, I think.

• 36:25Bill Maher?

  I don't know.

• 36:26Speaker 07

  You're, you're making a, um, uh, a mistake that, um, is pretty important.

• 36:34Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 36:35Speaker 07

  While you were going to college, while you were doing all the things you were doing, learning to be funny, uh, learning to write jokes, learning to deliver jokes, other people were working on other things. You know, I will bump into.

• 36:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I just don't get the infrastructure, that, uh, the college you go to, to learn how, how you could ever learn how to do that. I'm sorry, but maybe.

• 37:00Speaker 07

  I do know. If you want to learn to do that, I can point you where you need to go.

• 37:05Bill Maher?

  Just give me a little something to hang it on. Like, like, again, a person the guy has never met.

• 37:11Speaker 07

  What you're asking me to do, Bill, is you're asking to tell you in two and a half minutes, how to go out and do an hour stand-up show.

• 37:19Bill Maher?

  No.

• 37:19Speaker 07

  Yes, you, yes, it is exactly the same.

• 37:23Bill Maher?

  No, because I know how, because I know how my stand-up back got in my head. I want to know how, what's in that lady's head in the audience.

• 37:32Speaker 07

  If you can control the question, you don't have to worry about the answer. They're making.

• 37:38Bill Maher?

  If it's Rob Schminkes, if it's that specific.

• 37:41Speaker 07

  They're making you ask a different question, which is how they got in that head.

• 37:46Bill Maher?

  But.

• 37:46Speaker 07

  And that's, you've, they've already lost the bat. What I'm saying is, maybe.

• 37:52Speaker 07

  Maybe the only time this has ever happened, happened when you saw it with Barbra Streisand. I'm just saying I've seen that same effect and I've seen.

• 38:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, because it's another guy who has this. If if this is what it is.

• 38:07Speaker 07

  But it's not.

• 38:08Bill Maher?

  Well, you say it's not, but you're not giving me anything.

• 38:11Speaker 07

  You say it is and you're not giving me anything.

• 38:13Bill Maher?

  I'm not saying it is.

• 38:14Speaker 07

  OK, good.

• 38:14Bill Maher?

  I'm saying my mind is open, which I'm sure is some disappointed to some people who are like, well, Bill, you made religious. I thought you were like logical. I am logical. That means, and religious, by the way, I never, I don't say there is no God. I say I preach the gospel of I don't know. I don't think there is.

• 38:32Speaker 07

  The most important, the most important three words in science. I don't know.

• 38:35Bill Maher?

  I don't know. Exactly.

• 38:37Speaker 07

  And that is what makes science. Before science starts, I don't know is never said. Kings don't say, I don't know.

• 38:44Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 38:44Speaker 07

  Religious figures don't say, I don't know. I don't know are the three words of the key to everything.

• 38:49Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 38:50Speaker 07

  And that's the brilliant thing about you dealing with religion. And that is, by the way, what atheists say.

• 38:55Bill Maher?

  Right. But like, I don't know how this guy does this trick. And again, maybe are we, are we sure? Are we sure we're clear at what he's? Now, again, I'm remembering this from like eight years ago and very vaguely. But he is on stage with a whiteboard. He talks to someone in the audience. Hi, we never met. Absolutely not. I'm convinced of that. And you've been feeling whatever lately. OK, anybody could be. I'm getting a, I'm getting a, it's about a friend. Yes, it's a male. Yes, it's high school. Yes. And then he writes the name down. I mean, I don't know. I don't know where he's, where this trail begins for him. You're not helping me with that.

• 39:37Speaker 07

  The fact that you don't know how something happens does not make it supernatural.

• 39:43Bill Maher?

  I agree.

• 39:44Speaker 07

  Explain to me how a refrigerator works.

• 39:46Bill Maher?

  That I could, though. I absolutely couldn't study up.

• 39:51Speaker 07

  And you can study up and learn this too.

• 39:52Bill Maher?

  I took physics for poets my sophomore year in college. And by the end of the term, there was one great shining day when I could derive for you E was mc squared. It took the whole semester to get there, but I understood it as we did it.

• 40:09Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 40:09Bill Maher?

  I couldn't remember one thing about it now.

• 40:12Speaker 07

  Let me tell you something that that that might illuminate this that I do know. Because I wasn't there and I can't talk you through it. I don't know who it was. But I can tell you this, there was faith healers. They were doing a lot of faith healing. And there was one trick they were doing, and I will use that word. That amazing Randy, you know, my dear friend.

• 40:33Bill Maher?

  Yes, the great debunker.

• 40:34Speaker 07

  Could not figure it out. No idea how to figure it out. And that was the healing people in wheelchairs. Get people up on stage with wheelchairs. He would say, get up, dance.

• 40:44Bill Maher?

  That's the power of, I mean, like.

• 40:46Speaker 07

  No, I'm going to tell you the trick. I'm trying to explain it to you. When you arrive at the theater, they had

• 40:59Speaker 07

  50, 25, non-matching wheelchairs. And when someone came in who was limping or with a cane or their family was helping them, a very, very nice person said to them, would you like to sit in a wheelchair? Would that make it easier? And they wheeled them down toward the.

• 41:20Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 41:20Speaker 07

  And when it came time to heal, all the things you say about.

• 41:23Bill Maher?

  Okay, the world is full of charlatans, we agree. And many, much of this.

• 41:28Speaker 07

  But that works because nothing is lying, right? Have you ever danced like that before? Have you ever felt that? Throw that wheelchair away. Do you need that wheelchair? No, I don't.

• 41:38Bill Maher?

  I get, but that's, okay, but it's, I guess, a very different thing. Yes, that exists in the world. It's nothing to do with the thing I presented.

• 41:44Speaker 07

  Yes, it is. It's exactly the same.

• 41:46Bill Maher?

  No, it's not. It's not at all.

• 41:48Speaker 07

  Let me tell you.

• 41:49Bill Maher?

  It's not, that's a cheap trick that that is understandable. And the other thing is not understandable.

• 41:55Speaker 07

  To you.

• 41:56Bill Maher?

  And you can't.

• 41:56Speaker 07

  To you.

• 41:57Bill Maher?

  Well, if it is to you, again, you're giving zero.

• 42:01Speaker 07

  Okay, let me give you more.

• 42:01Bill Maher?

  And maybe that's because you're protecting the magic.

• 42:04Speaker 07

  You want more?

• 42:04Bill Maher?

  I don't think it's really a magic trick.

• 42:06Speaker 07

  Do you want, but it is, and I can tell you more.

• 42:09Bill Maher?

  Tell me how he.

• 42:10Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 42:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he does it.

• 42:11Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 42:14Speaker 07

  He has never met that person before.

• 42:16Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 42:17Speaker 07

  Ever. One way you could do that, that gives you the exact effect you're talking about, is for a nice usher to say to people, "You know that the psychic's gonna be performing tonight. What kinds of things are you concerned about?" And you're done. And it works. And they will never, ever admit that, because it's not part of their reality, because they have...

• 42:44Bill Maher?

  Down to the boyfriend's specific name...

• 42:46Speaker 07

  Yes, yes.

• 42:48Bill Maher?

  Okay, I feel like he would have gotten busted by that, like the lady would have... The magician, the psychic guy.

• 42:56Speaker 07

  Who's gonna bust him?

• 42:57Bill Maher?

  The girl who said...

• 42:59Speaker 07

  She believes it.

• 43:00Bill Maher?

  Okay, but she could... If it was me, I would have said after the show to somebody, "Oh, well, you know, I did tell that to the usher."

• 43:08Speaker 07

  And what is the forum you say that on?

• 43:12Bill Maher?

  I don't know, Penn. There's no place anyone could put out material these days. If we only had some sort of internet or some sort of social media.

• 43:21Speaker 07

  And it would be out there. And it is out there.

• 43:25Bill Maher?

  I've never seen...

• 43:26Speaker 07

  No, you haven't looked for it, Bill.

• 43:28Bill Maher?

  That's true, I haven't looked for it.

• 43:30Speaker 07

  You can find these people busted everywhere.

• 43:32Bill Maher?

  Maybe that's right.

• 43:32Speaker 07

  But I'm not saying that's how they did it, because there's a bunch of other ways.

• 43:38Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 43:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 43:39Bill Maher?

  So, but, okay, but at least you gave me something. What you're saying to me is, "He does need some confederate."

• 43:47Speaker 07

  Not necessarily, but in this particular story, yes.

• 43:51Bill Maher?

  I don't see how... Okay.

• 43:54Speaker 07

  You can also do, for instance, you can also do people filling out forms that they keep with them. That's a very common thing.

• 44:03Bill Maher?

  Filling out forms?

• 44:04Speaker 07

  You can just say to somebody, "To help focus your thoughts, write it down on this piece of paper. Don't let me see it. Cover it up. I'm never gonna look at that. Keep that in your pocket. Hold it close to your heart." And you're done.

• 44:19Bill Maher?

  What about... Okay, let's move on to ghosts.

• 44:22Speaker 07

  Ghosts? There's the fainting goats that I...

• 44:26Bill Maher?

  Now, I know many very intelligent people who are not religious.

• 44:32Speaker 07

  Why do you say intelligent in this at all? That doesn't mean anything.

• 44:34Bill Maher?

  Well, okay, well, because they are.

• 44:37Speaker 07

  But anybody can make a mistake.

• 44:39Bill Maher?

  Okay, I'm just, let me get to the question.

• 44:41Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 44:41Bill Maher?

  So, I mean, there are many, many people over the years who, again, not drunk, not stupid, say, have some sort of experience, like with what you would call a ghost. Like, they moved into a house and they just, you know, it would be an odor or a little rush of air would go past them. Certainly, there are places who, people who say they see furniture move across the room. You know, the Comedy Store is supposedly haunted and that. What's that?

• 45:19Speaker 07

  I have no idea.

• 45:23Speaker 07

  But why are you jumping?

• 45:26Bill Maher?

  I'm not jumping, I'm asking.

• 45:28Speaker 07

  But if you take, take ghost out of that and tell me that someone went into their home and their furniture moved,

• 45:35Speaker 07

  why are you giving an explanation? Why aren't you stopping and I don't know?

• 45:39Bill Maher?

  I am saying I don't know.

• 45:41Speaker 07

  Okay, then we're done, right? When you say people have seen ghosts, you're making this jump.

• 45:47Bill Maher?

  Well, they've seen, they have some sort of experience. It's not, sometimes it is visual, but I certainly have heard it more to be like something like a brief brush. I mean, I know someone who once said they moved into an apartment and they would feel this odd. And it wasn't, and very often, these presences don't seem to be particularly malevolent. They just live there and she said, one day she just went, "Get the fuck out of here." And she yelled at the ghost and she never felt it again. I don't know.

• 46:19Speaker 07

  But see, the problem is your question contains the assumption. If you say to me, someone was feeling something rubbing against their head, they felt when they moved in this apartment, they felt it over and over again, they yelled, "Get the fuck out of here", and you say, "Why did that happen?", and I say, "I don't know", you're the one who said that was a ghost thing.

• 46:43Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying, let's call it phenomenon.

• 46:46Speaker 07

  No, let's call it.

• 46:47Bill Maher?

  There's a phenomenon that the vernacular would be ghost, some sort of spirit, some sort of something. I personally have never experienced any.

• 46:56Speaker 07

  But you're also clumping those things together.

• 46:59Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying, it's odd to me that people who are otherwise, let's use that proviso for you, otherwise intelligent, and when, under cross-examination, we'll tell you, I was, I know I wasn't dreaming, I know I was, and I certainly wasn't drunk, and it's, was it, is it a hallucination?

• 47:20Speaker 07

  No, there's nothing.

• 47:21Bill Maher?

  We don't know.

• 47:22Speaker 07

  There's nothing you're saying that I disagree with, even slightly. And if you say, can you explain these, my answer is no. If you say, can anyone explain this, my answer is no.

• 47:35Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 47:35Speaker 07

  My only moment is when you say, well, then it was a ghost. How about you say, well, then, we don't know.

• 47:43Bill Maher?

  I don't want to be a ghost, that's all I know.

• 47:45Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 47:46Bill Maher?

  When I go, I don't know if I want to be cremated, because, you know, if they could keep your something around, they could maybe bring you back with AI in the future, you know? Not that, maybe that wouldn't be.

• 47:57Speaker 07

  Although, you're trivial on AI, they've got plenty of you talking recorded.

• 48:03Bill Maher?

  They've got what?

• 48:04Speaker 07

  They've got plenty recorded of you talking.

• 48:06Bill Maher?

  So they don't need me?

• 48:07Speaker 07

  They don't need you, they can do, they can do an AI Bill Maher like that. You know, we're doing an AI of Gilbert Gottfried, that we've been playing around with, it's pretty fast.

• 48:16Bill Maher?

  That's his painting there.

• 48:17Speaker 07

  I know, he's, you know, I miss him all the time.

• 48:20Bill Maher?

  That was Jerry, that was Scott Carter got that for me from the Jerry Lewis telethon, that was outside Jerry's door.

• 48:27Speaker 07

  Oh, it's great.

• 48:29Bill Maher?

  Isn't that awesome, Jerry?

• 48:31Speaker 07

  And it's certainly true.

• 48:32Bill Maher?

  It's so Jerry.

• 48:33Speaker 07

  He needed time to dress, think, and rest. There's just no doubt that he did. Even if it's more time.

• 48:40Bill Maher?

  It's so.

• 48:41Speaker 07

  To dress, think, and rest than.

• 48:42Bill Maher?

  It's so Vegas. Not that I don't, I was just there.

• 48:46Speaker 07

  Did you ever do the telephone?

• 48:48Bill Maher?

  Yes, and I have to tell you, I probably shouldn't even say this because I could probably get canceled. But, okay. My opening joke was that I parked in the handicap spot.

• 49:03Bill Maher?

  It could have all ended for me that night. I mean, it was like.

• 49:07Speaker 07

  Well, it has all ended for you three times and you still keep coming back.

• 49:10Bill Maher?

  I know, but talk about, I don't know, if you, charitably you would say balls. Uncharitably, you'd say, what a fucking idiot. I mean, talk about not reading the room.

• 49:21Speaker 07

  And it's also, those two things are often indistinguishable.

• 49:28Bill Maher?

  What? Balls? Oh, absolutely. Yes, yes. No, absolutely.

• 49:31Speaker 07

  It just depends who has to be talking at that moment.

• 49:33Bill Maher?

  That's, and how it's taken. Jerry, I mean, he could have been worse, but I just figured like everyone's always sort of tiptoeing around them.

• 49:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 49:44Bill Maher?

  You know, just, they probably want to laugh too.

• 49:47Speaker 07

  I was wrong about that.

• 49:50Speaker 07

  But that's what I figured. Sure, sure. That's the thinking.

• 49:53Bill Maher?

  That, that was the thinking that went into it. And then I saw a ghost. No.

• 50:00Speaker 07

  It's really interesting to feel evolutionary love. You know.

• 50:08Bill Maher?

  Such a great way to put it. I've never heard it that way, that really, I mean, I, again, not moving the needle on me, but, but I. It's such a great way to put it.

• 50:18Speaker 07

  There's no reason you need to.

• 50:19Bill Maher?

  Evolutionary love, right. You are.

• 50:21Speaker 07

  It's not a decision.

• 50:23Bill Maher?

  I get it.

• 50:24Speaker 07

  And that's fascinating.

• 50:26Bill Maher?

  You mean, you're compelled to do it. It's a calling.

• 50:28Speaker 07

  Yes. Well, no, it's just, it's like hunger. There's no control over it. You care about these beings a tremendous amount.

• 50:35Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 50:36Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 50:36Bill Maher?

  Well, because they're, they're, as you say, evolutionary. They're an extension of you in a way no other person can be.

• 50:43Speaker 07

  Right, and we would not have survived this far if our children were able to get us to kill them.

• 50:49Bill Maher?

  If what?

• 50:50Speaker 07

  If our children were able to get us to kill them, we would not be here.

• 50:54Bill Maher?

  Because they're so annoying?

• 50:55Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, they try, they try, and we have this love broken into us that we can't control.

• 51:03Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 51:03Speaker 07

  But believe me, if we could control it, it would be the end of the race.

• 51:08Bill Maher?

  Because they're that annoying?

• 51:09Speaker 07

  Sure.

• 51:10Bill Maher?

  Of course, I agree. That's why I don't have them. I just, my hat is off to any parent today, really, because I think it's never been harder because you're not allowed to boss them around the way you, you know, and you should be able to boss around children because they're, they're children, because they're just stupid like...

• 51:30Speaker 07

  Well, I'll just, I'll just tell you, if you want really clear advice on raising children,

• 51:35Bill Maher?

  I don't.

• 51:35Speaker 07

  You have to talk to someone who doesn't have children.

• 51:38Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 51:39Speaker 07

  You have to. Because anyone that has children...

• 51:41Bill Maher?

  Talk to me.

• 51:42Speaker 07

  That's what I'm saying. You were just giving advice, and I was commenting on that by saying, the fact that you have an understanding means you don't have children. People that have children go, ah, ah, ah.

• 51:53Bill Maher?

  Well, the polling always says, and it's kind of depressing, but it does say, what people say, at least Americans say, is, "I love my children, but if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't." Which, I feel, is kind of an indictment on your love of your children.

• 52:12Speaker 07

  It is, there's no doubt about it. It's, it's, it's a very, very

• 52:18Bill Maher?

  Well...

• 52:19Speaker 07

  complex situation.

• 52:20Bill Maher?

  It's, I think it's more of a comment on Americans, or, you know, we are such a successful civilization for all the problems we have and the complaining that goes on, and I understand a lot of it. But a lot of it is just a lack of historical perspective and how bad things could be, how bad, how much worse they were for almost everybody who ever lived.

• 52:42Speaker 07

  Well, you just fell into that trap when you said it's harder to raise children now. It was harder with polio.

• 52:48Bill Maher?

  It was, but harder in the sense that people just expected it to be hard.

• 52:53Speaker 07

  Also...

• 52:53Bill Maher?

  And now people have children, and they're like, "Oh, my God, I can't go to the club? I've got this, this mewling brat that I have to take care of?" I think a lot of it is that. Life got so cushy, and children interrupt that.

• 53:08Speaker 03

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• 54:23Speaker 07

  Children, children, children do interrupt that. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's interesting that you have this, um, complete love, and yet it's a, it's a

• 54:36Bill Maher?

  Love hate.

• 54:37Speaker 07

  Difficult task. It's a very difficult task.

• 54:40Bill Maher?

  It is.

• 54:40Speaker 07

  And you've, you've, you've, you've made the decision, for whatever reason, that you want to take on this task, and that responsibility is overwhelming and crushing. And I think that when you start to realize that, you're going to have moments, especially when the pollster is interrupting you, going, "Yeah, I wish I didn't have you."

• 55:01Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 55:02Speaker 07

  You know? Because there's a lot of parenting that has been going

• 55:07Bill Maher?

  Right, I'm sure there is.

• 55:08Speaker 07

  And, um, and that's okay. You know, we, we choose all the time to have life experiences that, um,

• 55:16Bill Maher?

  So you must feel awesome now because you're almost at the end of the

• 55:20Speaker 07

  Well, no, I have, I have friends who have children that are forty years old and it's still hard, you know?

• 55:26Bill Maher?

  Well, that's bad parenting then.

• 55:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, sure.

• 55:29Bill Maher?

  They should, you, you gotta prepare them.

• 55:31Speaker 07

  But here's the thing, Bill, that this was an argument.

• 55:34Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 55:35Speaker 07

  One of the things that Americans have done is turned having children into a narcissistic experience. Because you think, even when you said that's bad parenting, my responsibility for my children is keeping them alive, feeding them, and loving them. Beyond that, I have very little control. And this argument,

• 55:59Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 55:59Speaker 07

  it's poetic, it's not a deep intellectual argument. This argument changed my whole view on everything. If parents are so important to their children, why don't immigrants' children have accents?

• 56:13Bill Maher?

  Say that again.

• 56:15Speaker 07

  When someone comes over here, first generation American,

• 56:19Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 56:20Speaker 07

  their children are born, they have heavy accents, they don't speak English well, the children do not have accents.

• 56:26Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 56:27Speaker 07

  And yet they're learning the language from their parents, supposedly they're learning all the words from their parents, and yet it is not the parents.

• 56:33Bill Maher?

  But they're also in American society, they go to school.

• 56:36Speaker 07

  So the, the.

• 56:37Bill Maher?

  They get both, that's, they're bilingual.

• 56:39Speaker 07

  My point is, well, they're not all bilingual.

• 56:42Bill Maher?

  Most, and most second generation are, because again, as you say, they hear the old language.

• 56:47Speaker 07

  But they don't.

• 56:47Bill Maher?

  This is Italians, everybody in the home, from the parents.

• 56:51Speaker 07

  But they don't have the accents, and that really shows you how important society is. And so.

• 56:57Bill Maher?

  Okay, yes.

• 56:58Speaker 07

  You know, um, they did huge, uh, a lot of information on, um, on, uh, Dylan Fleaball, uh, Colorado.

• 57:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, the trench coat murders in the very Columbine, the very first, uh, school shooting.

• 57:16Speaker 07

  Uh, yeah, not, not actually, but yes, the one we know about, and, uh, what we talk about. And they've done a lot of research, and those parents were really good. They're really good.

• 57:28Bill Maher?

  Everything we heard about the Columbine school shooting was wrong at first. Like, they were not unpopular.

• 57:38Speaker 07

  Right.

• 57:39Bill Maher?

  You know, it was, it's much more of a befuddlement. Why they did that.

• 57:44Speaker 07

  Well, that's, the fact is, anyone that says anything about school shooters, we know is lying. Because we don't have enough data points. If you have 100 people out of a sample of 350 million, you can't know anything.

• 58:04Bill Maher?

  The brain is just not in a good place when you're that age. It's just, it's amazing more shit doesn't happen.

• 58:11Speaker 07

  Well, I'll tell you something.

• 58:12Bill Maher?

  You're so stupid. And that, I think that's just what that is. They just, you know, weren't really like thinking ahead.

• 58:24Speaker 07

  That's it.

• 58:24Bill Maher?

  Really, I mean, it is amazing. And women, of course, much better at this. Like, the difference between a woman of 19, 20, 21, and 25 is night and day. And believe me, I know. I've done extensive research on this. Whereas for a man, 20 to 25, almost the same idiot.

• 58:47Speaker 07

  Almost.

• 58:48Bill Maher?

  And even up to much higher years. I hate to admit, but truly.

• 58:53Speaker 07

  And we can also speak not only of statistics, but also personal experience.

• 58:57Bill Maher?

  Oh, I mean.

• 58:59Speaker 07

  I mean, I was, I still am, but I was quite a knucklehead.

• 59:04Bill Maher?

  Me, we all must, I certainly know I was. And for many years past, when you think, oh, you should be mature by then. I mean, I remember being, I was in a long, the longest relationship I've had in my mid 30s. And when I got out of it, I was 37. And I remember thinking, oh, gosh, I'm, I'm too old to date.

• 59:30Bill Maher?

  You know, it was like, no, you're just, you're not even ready to date. You're still such a dick. You know, not a dick, but like, just a, just doing stupid things. Just still not really getting how to be around women in the best way for, for them.

• 59:49Speaker 07

  But also you have, you know, as, as a friend of mine said, no matter how bad high school was for you, when you go through it the second time with your children, it's worse.

• 1:00:00Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:00:00Speaker 07

  Um, yeah, it's a really tough time. I mean, as much as you remember how tough seventeen and eighteen were.

• 1:00:07Bill Maher?

  It can't be anything like it when we were in high school because there was no social media, there was no phones.

• 1:00:12Speaker 07

  But that doesn't, I'm talking-

• 1:00:13Bill Maher?

  That has to change everything.

• 1:00:15Speaker 07

  Everything, but the, the-

• 1:00:18Bill Maher?

  Anxiety.

• 1:00:18Speaker 07

  Angst is, is, is, what's, what's causing it, what you think is causing it, changes. But it's, it's a tough time to be a human being.

• 1:00:28Bill Maher?

  Oh, I had so much more anxiety from, say, well, from birth to, you know, I don't know, mid twenties, just, but especially school. There was no day where I didn't go off to school without a nod in my stomach, I seem to remember. High school, grade school, you know, just, if you're not like one of the cool, you know-

• 1:00:57Speaker 07

  And yet we find out as we grow up, and when you talk to those cool ones, they weren't having a good time either.

• 1:01:03Bill Maher?

  I don't know about that. I think the cool kids in my school were having a great time because they were the cool kids. I mean, I don't know how they got there. I guess some of it was they were better looking or, I don't know, they're just richer-

• 1:01:15Speaker 07

  No one better looking than you, Bill.

• 1:01:17Bill Maher?

  Richer. What made, some sort of confidence that just human beings just sort of sense and they make that the alpha. Certainly I didn't have that. I had no confidence, super shy and like, just trying to survive, you know, and, and sometimes not. But the cool kids, I think they were eating it up. I mean, they should have been.

• 1:01:41Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 1:01:43Bill Maher?

  What were you in high school? Were you not the?

• 1:01:46Speaker 07

  I don't know.

• 1:01:47Bill Maher?

  What group were you in?

• 1:01:48Speaker 07

  When I was in high school, I was in, you know, I was quite an, I had the longest hair. I was the goofiest. And I was also the worst thing you could be in high school. I was a juggler.

• 1:02:02Bill Maher?

  You were in the nut chair.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, I was in the nut chair. I spent all my time.

• 1:02:07Bill Maher?

  I wasn't wrong.

• 1:02:08Speaker 07

  Yeah. I'm in the exact right chair.

• 1:02:10Bill Maher?

  Were you, had, were you popular with girls?

• 1:02:13Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Bill Maher?

  Yes, listen to that. Well, I wasn't. And if I, if some girl liked me, I was too shy to do anything about it.

• 1:02:22Speaker 07

  I was talking, I'm still friends with my high school girlfriend. We were talking about that and we were saying.

• 1:02:29Bill Maher?

  I wish I was.

• 1:02:30Speaker 07

  We were saying to each other, we were saying, why was everybody else having trouble getting laid?

• 1:02:33Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:02:34Speaker 07

  But we had each other, yeah.

• 1:02:36Bill Maher?

  Throughout all of high school?

• 1:02:38Speaker 07

  Well, no, there were different girlfriends, but you know.

• 1:02:40Bill Maher?

  Different girlfriends? Oh, my God. I had one and when she dumped me, I'm not to this day ever been sadder. To this day. So that's, that's why it's, you know, that brain that you have, it's just, your brain is so bad. And you have, you have access to adult things is the problem. So, I mean, I feel like I can't, I remember in.

• 1:03:09Speaker 07

  When you're pushing back adolescence, I mean, really, just 200 years ago, at 15 to be raising a family. I mean, that's the insane thing.

• 1:03:19Bill Maher?

  200 years ago?

• 1:03:21Speaker 07

  Yeah. We pushed adolescence back to.

• 1:03:23Bill Maher?

  Oh, I see, yes, yes. Oh, God, yes.

• 1:03:25Speaker 07

  I mean, we, we treat, we treat people, I mean, we're, we're now going to directly contradict what we were just saying before. The other problem is, one problem is that people stay children until they're 27. The other problem is we treat people like they're children until they're 27.

• 1:03:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:03:48Speaker 07

  So we, we're contradicting ourselves, but I think both are true.

• 1:03:51Bill Maher?

  No, I don't think so. We indulge it.

• 1:03:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, we really indulge it, yeah.

• 1:03:54Bill Maher?

  We indulge it and it's not good, it's funny because it's not good for anybody. It ruins the parent's life because now you got to worry about, and you should be free after 18 years. And it ruins the kid's life because they're not able to function on their own. Funny story. About, oh, I don't know, six, seven years ago, a young lady I was seeing once said to me, and it just made me laugh out of the chair. She said, we kind of got into a really serious discussion about our past. And she said, I ran away from home when I was 18.

• 1:04:33Bill Maher?

  So glad you appreciated how funny.

• 1:04:37Bill Maher?

  I said, honey, you cannot run away at 18. You're supposed to be gone by then. And that, I felt like said it all. And of course, she said it without irony. I mean, she really meant that.

• 1:04:48Speaker 07

  I believe I understood this story completely. I don't even need it annotated in the least.

• 1:04:55Bill Maher?

  You're so right.

• 1:04:56Speaker 07

  And the hint was how hard I laughed at the exact right time.

• 1:05:00Bill Maher?

  I know. You're right. But, I don't know. I'm glad you're happy. It seemed like you're very happy.

• 1:05:09Speaker 07

  Doing OK, doing all right. You know, I, I left, I graduated on a plea bargain from high school. Didn't really graduate.

• 1:05:22Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:05:22Speaker 07

  And right after that, I, I left hitchhiking. And I lived on the street, juggling, homeless for two years, and called my mom and dad every day. Called them, collect every day.

• 1:05:37Bill Maher?

  What do you mean, living on the street? You had no home?

• 1:05:40Speaker 07

  No, I could have gone home to my parents at any moment. Any moment I could have gone.

• 1:05:45Bill Maher?

  Now, that's the difference between our generation. I don't have quite nearly as dramatic a story as that. But I was miserable when I went off to college. Just wanted to put my tail between my legs and go home every day. I hadn't, I mean, I was ostracized in the dorm, you know, and so the, so the, whatever. It's so funny. I remember going off to college and you're thinking, again, in your stupid brain of 18, you're thinking, oh, I'm going to a completely new place where I can be a completely new person. I was loser in high school. I'm going to be James Bond in Ithaca, New York because.

• 1:06:29Bill Maher?

  And there was one kid who was going to Cornell from my high school. And I thought, I'm going to have to kill him. Because no one can be at Cornell who knows of my past. Because now I'm James Bond. And of course, you have left nothing. And I mean, I wasn't there a month and I was ostracized again, which happened in high school. So I was miserable and I so desperately wanted to get out of there. But I didn't because again, not to pat our generation on the back. But the pride of not going back home to the nest was even stronger than the misery.

• 1:07:06Speaker 07

  What was your relationship with your parents like?

• 1:07:08Bill Maher?

  Fine, and they would have been fine with me. I mean, I think they would have been disappointed. But I just, what I'm saying is, we had something in us that was a little sterner. Which is funny because when we were kids, it was like, oh, you kids are so soft.

• 1:07:23Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24Bill Maher?

  But compared to these kids today were the fucking Marines.

• 1:07:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, you know, I used to, it's, I don't even understand it because I was, you know, I was, you know, sleeping in alleys and I was juggling to make money and I was, I didn't have any place I lived. And yet I would call my mom, dad every day and say, I'm doing great. And they were okay with me doing it.

• 1:07:46Bill Maher?

  Where did you go to the bathroom?

• 1:07:48Speaker 07

  Public restrooms or behind trees.

• 1:07:51Bill Maher?

  Behind trees? Were you in the city?

• 1:07:54Speaker 07

  I was, I was all over this great country, Boris. I hopped trains. Here's the problem, Bill.

• 1:08:00Bill Maher?

  Like a hobo?

• 1:08:01Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 1:08:02Bill Maher?

  With a stick and a, like a bundle tied to the end of the stick?

• 1:08:07Speaker 07

  I had a backpack from LLB. But I hopped a train. See, here's the thing. I was a huge Bob Dylan fan. I read about Bob Dylan.

• 1:08:17Bill Maher?

  That's no excuse.

• 1:08:18Speaker 07

  I wanted to be like Bob Dylan. I didn't find out two years. I didn't find out for years later that Bob was lying. When Bob said he worked in the carnival, he was lying. I worked in the carnival. When Bob said he hopped trains, he was lying.

• 1:08:32Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:08:32Speaker 07

  I hopped trains, yeah. So the Bob Dylan, if you take that two years of Bob Dylan's life that talked about in the press releases when his stuff came out, I lived it, not Bob. Bob was from Indy, Minnesota.

• 1:08:47Bill Maher?

  I like to think of it as you lived it for Bob.

• 1:08:50Speaker 07

  For Bob, yeah. And then I also made Bob not lie because somebody did it.

• 1:08:56Bill Maher?

  Wow. So why did Bob lie?

• 1:08:59Speaker 07

  Because the story of I grew up in Hibbing from a dad who owned an appliance store. And then went to University of Minnesota and dropped out. And then went to New York and now I got famous in 15 minutes. You know, because it was instant that he got successful. Wasn't very interesting.

• 1:09:16Bill Maher?

  Well, also, I must say, and again, these are people, let's put this in perspective. I love Dylan, I'm sure you love Bob Dylan. We're not trashing him. I really love John Lennon. There's a picture of him somewhere around here. But he also had a embroidered history. He's the one who wrote like working class hero.

• 1:09:38Speaker 07

  He's a rich guy from Liverpool.

• 1:09:40Bill Maher?

  He's not rich.

• 1:09:41Speaker 07

  Well, he was from Liverpool, he was.

• 1:09:43Bill Maher?

  He was richer than the others.

• 1:09:45Speaker 07

  Yes, that's what rich means.

• 1:09:48Bill Maher?

  No, it doesn't. I don't think so. I think rich means rich. You're rich now. You were poor then. No, I mean, it was.

• 1:09:55Speaker 07

  He was well off.

• 1:09:56Bill Maher?

  The others were real working class, like the lowest sort of.

• 1:10:00Speaker 07

  Paul a little less. Ringo was the lowest.

• 1:10:03Bill Maher?

  Lowest kind of housing that you could have. And he had a much more middle class. They weren't rich. It was a little cottage house. But yes, it was more like in the suburbs. And he wasn't a working class hero.

• 1:10:15Speaker 07

  No.

• 1:10:17Bill Maher?

  There was, you know, Elvis Costello had the wicked line about him in.

• 1:10:21Speaker 07

  Right, was it a millionaire? Yeah.

• 1:10:24Bill Maher?

  Was it a millionaire?

• 1:10:24Speaker 07

  Oh, you know Imagine No Possessions?

• 1:10:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah, Imagine, wow, you know you're Elvis Costello.

• 1:10:29Speaker 07

  Well, I just, I knew where we were going.

• 1:10:31Bill Maher?

  You know the song?

• 1:10:32Speaker 07

  I do.

• 1:10:33Bill Maher?

  What song? What is it called? The Other Side of Summer.

• 1:10:37Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah, The Other Side of Summer?

• 1:10:38Bill Maher?

  The Other Side of Summer. Perfect for this time of year.

• 1:10:41Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Bill Maher?

  What a poet. This first line, "The sun struggles up." Another beautiful day. "The sun struggles up." Like, not all lyricists in rock and roll.

• 1:10:53Speaker 07

  You can write.

• 1:10:54Bill Maher?

  Are poets. You know, like, they don't write quite like poets. That's, yeah. Was it a millionaire who said Imagine No Possessions? A poor little schoolboy who said, "We don't need no lessons." That's a shot at Pink Floyd.

• 1:11:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, he certainly is.

• 1:11:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 07

  And we don't need no education. I beg to differ.

• 1:11:16Bill Maher?

  But so you were a corny and a bum? So interesting.

• 1:11:22Speaker 07

  I would go, I would get hungry and I would do shows to try to get money on the street by juggling.

• 1:11:28Bill Maher?

  And so the

• 1:11:29Speaker 07

  And I would do stand up in bars and anything I could do.

• 1:11:32Bill Maher?

  So the

• 1:11:33Speaker 07

  But all I needed to do was make, you know, five bucks a day. You can do that street juggling.

• 1:11:38Bill Maher?

  So hapless civilians who encountered you would

• 1:11:41Speaker 07

  Saw me.

• 1:11:41Bill Maher?

  Give you small change to make you go away?

• 1:11:44Speaker 07

  Well, I was actually did a pretty good juggling show. By the time I got to be 20, I had a really great street show.

• 1:11:51Bill Maher?

  I was just gonna say, don't street show guys like that make a lot of money?

• 1:11:56Speaker 07

  The amount that I made would knock you over.

• 1:11:58Bill Maher?

  Then why were you living in the alley?

• 1:12:00Speaker 07

  Because that was two years after when I learned to do that. Then I was living in a great place.

• 1:12:05Bill Maher?

  See, at least when I

• 1:12:07Speaker 07

  When I went, when I went, I was working streets in Philadelphia, down at the head house square, and I was juggling for money. And I was making a lot because I was doing three to $500 a show. And I was doing five shows a day and I was working Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So I went to an accountant, tax guy, and I said to him, it was, I said to him, you know, I, I'm making all this money and it's all in cash. Shouldn't I be paying taxes? And he said, how much money are you making? And I was, I kept notes and everything. Still have every, every dime I made in every street show was written down.

• 1:12:52Speaker 07

  I showed him all that. And he said, this is the amount of money you say you make juggling on the street? I said, yes, it is. He said, if you bring this to the IRS, they're going to think you're a drug dealer. And then he paused and said, I think you're a drug dealer.

• 1:13:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you need a stripper accountant.

• 1:13:14Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:13:17Bill Maher?

  They can tell you how to hide cash.

• 1:13:19Speaker 07

  I didn't, I just had, I had so much fucking cash. I mean, I was absolutely in the stripper market. I mean, we just had boxes of cash.

• 1:13:30Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God. I did not. I mean, my version of you were living on the

• 1:13:34Speaker 07

  Well, you were a drug dealer.

• 1:13:36Bill Maher?

  I was a drug, exactly. I was a drug dealer. Well, a pot dealer. In college, we sold whatever our dealer had, which was, quite frankly, everything except heroin. I never dealt heroin, and I'm proud of that. But when I got to New York, I mean, I also

• 1:13:53Speaker 07

  Me neither.

• 1:13:54Bill Maher?

  I also would have been on the street, except I got a rent-free situation, which was, you could find this in the back of The Village Voice, and you did something for somebody. The first two interviews I went on, I realized, after way too long, I was being interviewed by an old queen who wanted me to do something that I did not want to do. And I finally got a place on the Upper East Side, living with an ambassador. And I had to fucking be the basic au pair for his kids, and I fucking hate kids. It might have been better to be on the street, but that's what I did. I took the fucking kids to school.

• 1:14:39Speaker 07

  Who would hire you? Who the fuck, whoever this ambassador, I mean, put him in jail now?

• 1:14:47Bill Maher?

  I know. No, I was a good actor, I guess. I mean, I convinced them, and I was supposed to speak French to them, and I didn't really do that. But I brought them to school, I picked them up, I took them to their stupid activities. I was supposed to be, look, it didn't, nothing bad happened, but they were, I think, a little disappointed. They were expecting someone who was gonna be more engaged with the kids. But they wanted someone who was

• 1:15:13Speaker 07

  More engaged than you would be with the kids? I mean, let me take that in for a moment.

• 1:15:18Bill Maher?

  But they wanted a guy, because they wanted someone who could bodyguard them, you know? They didn't want

• 1:15:23Speaker 07

  When I think bodyguard, you're the top of the list. Weather, I'll tell you.

• 1:15:30Bill Maher?

  Hey, those kids were never kidnapped.

• 1:15:32Speaker 07

  I respect you.

• 1:15:33Bill Maher?

  And this was a controversial country.

• 1:15:35Speaker 07

  I respect you as much as anybody. But I would never hire you as bouncer, bodyguard, or au pair. Those are three jobs you will not get from Ben Gillette, okay? If you are completely destitute and you call up your buddy Penn, I might be able to give you some coin. I might be able to hire you. But those are not three jobs you will get, got it?

• 1:15:59Bill Maher?

  You're so right.

• 1:16:00Speaker 07

  Write it down.

• 1:16:01Bill Maher?

  You're so right. No, you're so right.

• 1:16:03Speaker 07

  I could add a few more, but we'll stay with those three.

• 1:16:06Bill Maher?

  I'm not a bodyguard and I wasn't an au pair. But they wanted, I guess, a man to, you know, take their kids and watch over them. And they were never once kidnapped or killed. I mean, and this is New York City. And I was always there. Even though it was very early in the morning and I had barely gotten to sleep yet, coming home from the clubs. But it was on the Upper East Side. I could walk to the comic strip and I could walk to Catch a Rising Star. And I did. And I was like the Lincoln of comedy. I always, I would walk miles to borrow a joke.

• 1:16:49Bill Maher?

  But, you know, I don't know. Would it be great to be young again? Yeah, but not to deal with that shit. To deal with the things we dealt with. You have to be young. I mean, then why do you think they put them in the army? You need someone who is able physically and mentally to put up with just really rough conditions. That we, I mean, we wouldn't survive at this time in our life.

• 1:17:16Speaker 07

  Are you telling me that you and I wouldn't do great in Marine boot camp? Is that what you're claiming?

• 1:17:23Bill Maher?

  Or sleeping in an alley or dealing with children.

• 1:17:27Speaker 07

  I couldn't get him to disagree with me too much on go. So I'll go this, we can go into boot camp thing. See if he'll disagree with me there.

• 1:17:35Bill Maher?

  So what do you think your 70s are gonna be like? Where do you think? Like you're sixty-nine. I, by the way, I'll be sixty-nine next year, so we're very close. And it's funny, this has come up a couple of times in conversation. Whenever you say sixty-nine, everybody has the same reaction, like, oh, you know, elbow in the ribs, as if anyone ever really did sixty-nine. It's the most overrated sex position. It's the fucking Betamax of fucking. Everybody tried it once, they didn't like it, it's impossible to do. I tried it, you know, and I couldn't do it.

• 1:18:14Speaker 07

  I could stick up for it a little bit. I've enjoyed it many times, yeah.

• 1:18:19Bill Maher?

  Well, once again, you have qualities I lack.

• 1:18:22Speaker 07

  I have enjoyed it. It's different for me because I'm taller than you.

• 1:18:29Bill Maher?

  Well, I wasn't suggesting we do it together.

• 1:18:31Speaker 07

  I'm just telling you, it would be different because I'm taller than you.

• 1:18:34Bill Maher?

  I mean, I remember asking some guest, some woman guest I had here, I can't remember who it was. I said, if a guy is doing the alphabet, can you tell? Like, can you tell what letter he's on?

• 1:18:45Speaker 07

  Kafka's in the penal colony, right? Kafka's short story in the penal colony.

• 1:18:49Bill Maher?

  I know the story.

• 1:18:49Speaker 07

  The prisoners don't know what crime they've committed till they etch it to their back. So you could-

• 1:18:54Bill Maher?

  Till they what?

• 1:18:55Speaker 07

  Till they etch it with needles in the prisoner's back. That's how they find out what they're guilty of, is being able to feel it in their back. So what you're saying is, this is the oral sex equivalent. You can do messages that way, probably more efficient than needles in the back.

• 1:19:13Bill Maher?

  Anybody who can make that analogy to Kafka does not belong in the nut chair. That's all I'm gonna say. I'm gonna change your chair.

• 1:19:21Speaker 07

  It's all you have now. You only have the nut chair. You have devolved.

• 1:19:27Bill Maher?

  Right. Who wants anything but the nut chair?

• 1:19:30Speaker 07

  I know, I know. But the whole story is not about the nut chair. It's about the kindness in your face.

• 1:19:38Bill Maher?

  But, I mean, one thing about you, you were always just interesting, like, well, that's an interesting guy. That's why we wanted you on the show. You know, like, there's a guy, there's a guy who's always thinking about stuff. I don't have to agree, but mostly I do. I mean, I feel like we really have come around to very similar ways. I mean, we're both atheists.

• 1:19:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, but when you come, when you're able, the idea that I would even entertain animal rights ten years ago was-

• 1:20:07Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:20:09Speaker 07

  Totally outside.

• 1:20:09Bill Maher?

  What'd you have against animals?

• 1:20:11Speaker 07

  Nothing against animals. I just thought, I mean, the very simple answer, if you'd asked me for a facile answer to that, I would say, first, have every child on earth fed, clothed, sheltered, and eating, and then we'll all work together on the mountain gorillas.

• 1:20:31Bill Maher?

  Oh, shut up.

• 1:20:32Speaker 07

  That's no long, no, don't say shut up. I did shut up. I just told you. I changed my mind from this point of view, and you just said, you should change your mind.

• 1:20:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, good. Okay.

• 1:20:43Speaker 07

  You've already won, Bill.

• 1:20:44Bill Maher?

  Sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 1:20:47Speaker 07

  Me too.

• 1:20:49Bill Maher?

  Me too. You never got me too, did you?

• 1:20:53Speaker 07

  Only, only by the grace of God, I didn't.

• 1:20:56Bill Maher?

  No, you're a nice guy. You never did bad shit with women.

• 1:21:00Speaker 07

  No, no.

• 1:21:01Bill Maher?

  I didn't, I didn't realize you were such a cathode in the pussy beaker when you were young.

• 1:21:07Speaker 07

  You know, I, I, I'll tell you, I will now give you the secret to getting laid in high school.

• 1:21:15Bill Maher?

  It's a little late, pal.

• 1:21:16Speaker 07

  I know, I know. Fuck smart girls.

• 1:21:22Bill Maher?

  I could have. I wish I could have had the courage, yes, to at least just react to the girls. There was a couple of girls who were sweet on me. Like, if I could, if I could have just reacted to it, I couldn't even do that.

• 1:21:37Speaker 07

  We are about the same age.

• 1:21:39Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:21:40Speaker 07

  It was the girl with the baggy, black sweater, and hair parted in the middle, carrying around Henry Miller. Believe me, under that sweater, everything was beautiful.

• 1:21:53Bill Maher?

  No, there was a girl, there was a girl, so long ago, in eighth, was it eighth grade, and there was a Sadie Hawkins dance, which you asked them, and, and she asked me out to this thing, and I still couldn't say yes.

• 1:22:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, that's, yeah, boy, that's sad. All I'm doing today is agreeing with you.

• 1:22:14Bill Maher?

  I made up for it, but, I mean, it is, I mean, youth is just so hard. I mean, it's, I understand, like, why. People in many cultures for most of human history and somewhat into today have many, many children because they anticipate that a fair number will not make it.

• 1:22:36Speaker 07

  But also.

• 1:22:36Bill Maher?

  Because they're just so fucking dumb.

• 1:22:38Speaker 07

  In agriculture, the more children you have, the better it is.

• 1:22:43Bill Maher?

  Because three of them are gonna get kicked by a horse.

• 1:22:45Speaker 07

  But also, they help around the farm. Once you get out of agriculture, children are just a liability.

• 1:22:51Bill Maher?

  Right. I've always had that. Children are just a liability.

• 1:22:57Speaker 07

  Because you're not a farmer, is that correct?

• 1:22:59Bill Maher?

  I am not a farmer.

• 1:23:00Speaker 07

  If you were a farmer, you might see it differently.

• 1:23:02Bill Maher?

  I've got one crop out there that I think qualifies. I'm not really the farmer around here, but it is growing well. But, yeah. So when you're like married with kids, I always hear about like date night. Is that a thing? Like when you harp out a specific?

• 1:23:25Speaker 07

  We try to do that a little bit, but the truth is, I am always working. We grab it every time we can.

• 1:23:37Bill Maher?

  My other question about marriage is always like, how do you know when to do it? Like if you can always do it. Like for me, sex always had to be an event. Like, I always had trouble with that. Like, how can it be an event if it's ever present? You know, like, how do you know when to throw down?

• 1:23:57Speaker 07

  I think we, we really, I was thinking about if I built a time machine, killing Hitler, buying Microsoft. Now I think it's going back and talking to you in eighth grade. I think that is what I would do. I think that from the future, Peb would appear and say, listen, Bill, let's talk about the Sadie Hawkins dance because this is gonna have repercussions for the rest of your motherfucking life.

• 1:24:24Bill Maher?

  Butterfly effect.

• 1:24:25Speaker 07

  Exactly. Possibly.

• 1:24:28Bill Maher?

  You get me laid in high school and I'm telling you.

• 1:24:30Speaker 07

  No problems in Gaza.

• 1:24:31Bill Maher?

  Bird flu has now wiped out the whole world.

• 1:24:36Bill Maher?

  Or no problems in Gaza.

• 1:24:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Bill Maher?

  It could have happened.

• 1:24:38Speaker 07

  We don't know. So that's, that's what I would do now. Let Hitler live. Go back and help Bill.

• 1:24:45Bill Maher?

  I did a joke in last week's monologue. I thought it was like such a, a combination of the old and what's the newest. Like, because I'm always doing Johnny Carson in my monologue. And I don't usually do, it's so hot, but it was the first day of summer. You know, so there was some funny one. So hot yesterday that Jew haters were protesting without the mask.

• 1:25:12Bill Maher?

  It was like a Johnny beginning and then an ending he would never do.

• 1:25:17Speaker 07

  You don't think Johnny would do that?

• 1:25:18Bill Maher?

  Jew haters know.

• 1:25:21Bill Maher?

  You did that show.

• 1:25:23Speaker 07

  Was it?

• 1:25:23Bill Maher?

  Tonight Show.

• 1:25:24Speaker 07

  I have, I have a story that's sadder, sadder than your story of eighth grade Sadie Hawkins.

• 1:25:30Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:25:31Speaker 07

  It's horrible.

• 1:25:32Bill Maher?

  Tonight Show story?

• 1:25:33Speaker 07

  What's that?

• 1:25:34Bill Maher?

  A Tonight Show story?

• 1:25:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's terrible.

• 1:25:37Speaker 07

  Johnny Carson asked us to go on the Tonight Show, or we were, you know, Fred, whatever, asked us to go on the Tonight Show. And we were gonna do the water tank, where I'm doing a card trick and Teller drowns in the water tank.

• 1:25:49Bill Maher?

  I think I've seen it.

• 1:25:50Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, we did it a million times.

• 1:25:51Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:25:52Speaker 07

  So it's a great trick. We did it first on Saturday Night Live, so we could do it on Carson. And to me, because I was an idiot, the most important part was leaving Teller dead. So I can't find the card, I can't find the card, it's a signed card. And then I, Teller drowns, I turn around his dead body, and then on his face is the signed card. Miracle. And he's still dead. So we said, I'm gonna say Johnny, but it wasn't a direct conversation with Johnny. I, we said to the Johnny people, we'll leave Teller dead and go to the break. And they got back to us and said, Johnny says he wants you to open the tank.

• 1:26:36Speaker 07

  Teller comes out, he waves, we go to commercial break. I said, "It's not funny if Teller isn't dead going to commercial break." And they said, "Johnny does not want to go to commercial break with Teller dead." I said, "Teller's not dead. It's a trick."

• 1:26:51Bill Maher?

  And he's a magician.

• 1:26:53Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:26:53Bill Maher?

  Johnny Carson's the most famous "I started as a magician" guy.

• 1:26:57Speaker 07

  He just said, "For this show, we don't want to go to commercial with a dead guy." So we said, "We don't..." He said, "This is my show." And we said, "This is our trick."

• 1:27:09Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:27:09Speaker 07

  So then they say, Johnny says he really wants you on the show. He really doesn't want that on his show. So here's what he said to do. Jay Leno is filling in hosting. Come on and do the trick exactly the way you want. So you have your integrity and I have mine.

• 1:27:32Bill Maher?

  Great.

• 1:27:32Speaker 07

  And we said, "Fabulous." And then we did it with Jay and changed the trick.

• 1:27:38Bill Maher?

  You changed the trick?

• 1:27:39Speaker 07

  We did a different trick because we couldn't ship the water tags. We did a whole different trick that would have been fine with Johnny. And Johnny, we became friends after he retired.

• 1:27:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he's a magician. He loves it.

• 1:27:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, and he's also, he was a skeptic. And although, I think it's safe to say now, you could say he was an atheist.

• 1:27:57Bill Maher?

  I don't know, but he seems like the type.

• 1:27:59Speaker 07

  He said it to me.

• 1:28:00Bill Maher?

  He did?

• 1:28:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, many times.

• 1:28:02Bill Maher?

  So you were friends with him?

• 1:28:04Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:28:04Bill Maher?

  That's awesome.

• 1:28:05Speaker 07

  I called him up and he called me up because he was a real fan of bullshit. He liked our show Bullshit.

• 1:28:11Bill Maher?

  I was too.

• 1:28:11Speaker 07

  And he called me up and he said, "I just want to tell you, I think Bullshit is the best show on television."

• 1:28:19Bill Maher?

  That's awesome.

• 1:28:21Speaker 07

  You know, Johnny, I don't know if you knew this, but The Tonight Show is also a television. And that was a better show. And from there, we became... I have another sad story that you can think about when you're lamenting the eighth grade. So we did the movie called The Aristocrats, which you...

• 1:28:37Bill Maher?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:28:38Speaker 07

  And Johnny Carson loved the joke and we were talking. And when we were working on the movie, I was calling Johnny and talking about the movie, which he would not be in because he was retired and I didn't even, I never even asked him.

• 1:28:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:49Speaker 07

  And Johnny said to me, would you do me a favor? You're gonna go to Sundance. When you're done at Sundance, do you have a couple of days? Can you fly down to LA? And can you and Paul of Prevenza? Can you show me The Aristocrats?

• 1:29:05Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:29:05Speaker 07

  In my home? And I said, Johnny, I can't think of a greater honor. And Paul and I were over the fucking moon. We're gonna do Sundance. We're gonna fly down and show it to Johnny. Man, how beautiful would that be? And we did Sundance. It was very well received. The next morning, Prevenza and I met at a Starbucks to have a hot chocolate to celebrate because he's working with a child, so we don't go out drinking like grownups should do. So we're having a hot chocolate and my phone rings. And I was gonna just ignore it. And it was Randy, Amazing Randy. And I said to Paul, uh, it's Amazing Randy. He doesn't call me often.

• 1:29:50Speaker 07

  This might be important. And I pick up the phone and Randy is sobbing, uncontrollably sobbing. And I said, Randy, what is it? And he said, Johnny.

• 1:30:03Bill Maher?

  Died.

• 1:30:04Speaker 07

  Johnny, Johnny's dead. And I said-

• 1:30:07Bill Maher?

  Fucked up your weekend.

• 1:30:08Speaker 07

  Fucked up my weekend. And I said, I said to Paul, Johnny Carson died. And Prevenza and I didn't say another word. He just went and added to the end of the movie for Johnny Carson.

• 1:30:19Bill Maher?

  You know, next time a starving homeless guy asks me for change, I'm gonna tell him that story.

• 1:30:26Bill Maher?

  I'm gonna say, buddy, we all have problems and yours are not the worst.

• 1:30:31Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Bill Maher?

  I bet you Johnny was such a fan because, you know, he was, he melded- Magic and comedy, which they not all do.

• 1:30:42Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:30:42Bill Maher?

  Which you guys probably did more than anything.

• 1:30:44Speaker 07

  I could, I could.

• 1:30:45Bill Maher?

  I mean, you were always, that, I mean, that's why you have these records in Las Vegas. It's like, because you did something, you put a dimension to it. And, you know, a wit to it.

• 1:30:56Speaker 07

  Well, thank you.

• 1:30:57Bill Maher?

  That, like, I don't know if you wanna, like, talk about other magicians. I mean, I play in the David Copperfield Theater.

• 1:31:04Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:31:05Bill Maher?

  When I play at the MGM Grand now.

• 1:31:07Speaker 07

  I play in the Penn and Teller Theater. Just, just, just, just so you know.

• 1:31:11Bill Maher?

  No, I understand.

• 1:31:12Speaker 07

  Just so you know.

• 1:31:13Bill Maher?

  No, I do understand, right.

• 1:31:16Speaker 07

  It's easier to find when your name is on it.

• 1:31:19Bill Maher?

  But I've heard some of these magicians really phone it in.

• 1:31:23Speaker 07

  Huh, have you?

• 1:31:29Bill Maher?

  And I'm sure, do you have a club, like, do you, no, like?

• 1:31:32Speaker 07

  Oh, we all get together.

• 1:31:34Bill Maher?

  You must, come on, because only you can kind of understand.

• 1:31:37Speaker 07

  Oh, sure.

• 1:31:38Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:31:39Speaker 07

  Like, like every night, you and Jon Stewart and Dennis Miller just get together.

• 1:31:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's, that's the three of them.

• 1:31:46Speaker 07

  Well, that's the three that you just suggested with me.

• 1:31:48Bill Maher?

  I understand, I know, I know, I know.

• 1:31:50Speaker 07

  And I even, I even could map those three, by the way.

• 1:31:53Bill Maher?

  What do you do, like, I could never live in Las Vegas. I love it for a weekend, um, I was just there.

• 1:31:59Speaker 07

  I don't gamble, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I go home and read. So it doesn't matter that I'm in.

• 1:32:05Bill Maher?

  Doesn't matter where you are.

• 1:32:06Speaker 07

  Doesn't matter, I care less about where I am than.

• 1:32:09Bill Maher?

  How far is your commute from?

• 1:32:11Speaker 07

  Twenty-two minutes.

• 1:32:12Bill Maher?

  Twenty-two minutes. So you, you live out in Henderson?

• 1:32:16Speaker 07

  I'll actually, the other side, it's Summerlin.

• 1:32:18Bill Maher?

  Whatever it is.

• 1:32:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:32:20Bill Maher?

  I could talk all night with you, but.

• 1:32:22Speaker 07

  It's been, why don't we do this again?

• 1:32:23Bill Maher?

  Too long and, it's been too long and it's also been never.

• 1:32:27Speaker 07

  I know.

• 1:32:28Bill Maher?

  Because I never really, that's one, one thing, one reason I love this thing. Is I get to talk to people and request people to come here so that I can get to know somebody. I just had Ray Romano here, same thing, somebody I should have been friendly.

• 1:32:42Speaker 07

  Yes, I said.

• 1:32:43Bill Maher?

  There just wasn't enough time.

• 1:32:44Speaker 07

  They said, you've known Bill for thirty-three years.

• 1:32:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:32:47Speaker 07

  Right?

• 1:32:48Bill Maher?

  No, I know.

• 1:32:49Speaker 07

  They said, how, how close are you to Bill? I said, I think we've talked, not on camera, forty-five minutes.

• 1:32:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah. And I say this also to many people who've been here recently. Jerry Seinfeld and I just said the same thing. But it's just the truth. Like, when do you talk to people? When you're working.

• 1:33:07Speaker 07

  That's all.

• 1:33:08Bill Maher?

  We have to. You just said it before. I work all the time. Like, what compels us? What motivates us? What gets us to be in this situation? Which we would love.

• 1:33:18Speaker 07

  To be working.

• 1:33:18Bill Maher?

  Which we would love anyway.

• 1:33:20Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:33:20Bill Maher?

  Is that there's a camera in the wall.

• 1:33:22Speaker 07

  And I'm gonna pee.

• 1:33:23Bill Maher?

  Okay. Great to see you.

• 1:33:26Speaker 07

  Good to see you, Bill.

• 1:33:31Bill Maher?

  You're out of the nut chair.

• 1:33:33Speaker 07

  Oh, good. I'm good. But I'll be back in at another time, I hope.

• 1:33:41Speaker 05

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• 1:34:11Bill Maher?

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• 1:34:45Bill Maher?

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