Tim Pool | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher sits down with Tim Pool host of The Culture War Podcast for a conversation on health, aging and the bizarre wellness trends sweeping the culture to the impact of media polarization, the manipulation of public perception, generational divides in politics, the rise of wokeness, and the cultural shifts defining Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the challenges of marriage and masculinity in a rapidly changing world, the decline of skateboarding in America, and the fragmentation of entertainment in the digital age. Go to https://www.ffrf.us/freedom or text "CLUB" to 511511 and become a member today Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at ⁠https://www.rula.com/random⁠ #rulapod #ad Go to https://www. RadioactiveMedia.com or text RANDOM at 511511 to save up to 50%, today! Save time hiring with ZipIntro at ⁠⁠https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random Get 20% off your first pair of Skechers Hands Free Slip-ins at ⁠https://www.skechers.com/clubrandom⁠ or use code Club Random Follow Club Random on IG: @ClubRandomPodcast Follow Bill on IG: @BillMaher Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch Club Random on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandomYouTube 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

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:04Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13. Now streaming on Paramount+.

• 0:18Speaker 03

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for that.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  He's back.

• 0:27Speaker 03

  I'm older, I'm wiser.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  And sharper than ever.

• 0:32Speaker 03

  Things are gonna get messy, but if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Dexter Resurrection, new season now streaming on the Paramount+ Premium Plan.

• 0:46Speaker 04

  Glimmer, the new eau de parfum by Estee Lauder. An amber floral fragrance with a gourmand twist with notes of Macaron rose accord, amber embrace accord, and shimmering patchouli. A glimmer is a small, unexpected moment of joy that shifts your energy and how you feel. A scent to be felt, remembered, and shared. Discover more at estee lauder.com. What makes you glimmer?

• 1:15Bill Maher?

  You do? You're gonna get out of the game?

• 1:17Speaker 06

  So...

• 1:18Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, last October.

• 1:21Bill Maher?

  Scoop!

• 1:24Bill Maher?

  So how long were you an atheist and what did we do wrong not to keep you?

• 1:28Speaker 06

  Uh, I went to Catholic school and...

• 1:31Bill Maher?

  Oh, well.

• 1:35Speaker 06

  Vilmar.

• 1:35Bill Maher?

  Hey, man.

• 1:36Speaker 06

  It is an honor and a privilege.

• 1:37Bill Maher?

  Aw, thank you for saying that. I know you flew in.

• 1:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41Bill Maher?

  On your own dime. I can't tell you what a compliment that is and I appreciate it.

• 1:47Speaker 06

  Oh, I appreciate you having me. I'm excited.

• 1:51Bill Maher?

  They told me, not that they ever tell me much, and I like it that way, but that you don't drink, so.

• 1:56Speaker 06

  No, but I'll, I'll have a shot or two with you.

• 1:59Bill Maher?

  I can't tell you how often this happens. I said it last week, I think, like, somebody was here, and it's like, you know, the handlers are always like, "Well, you know, he's, uh, he's recovering, and he doesn't wanna be around smoke, and he doesn't drink, and then they're like, "Hey, bro, why aren't you passing the joint, or could I have a drink, or..."

• 2:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm not like, uh, I just don't really drink, cause it doesn't, you know.

• 2:23Bill Maher?

  It's smart. It's the worst thing for you.

• 2:25Speaker 06

  I'm kind of, I'm kind of a health terrified, you know?

• 2:28Bill Maher?

  What's that mean?

• 2:29Speaker 06

  I, I try to, uh, you know, every, every, every day I have a pretty intense schedule. I do a morning show, then I skate, and I'm filming skating with my crew, and so I'm trying to make sure that every day, I'm gonna be at a hundred percent.

• 2:43Bill Maher?

  You're like Brian Johnson without a perfect penis.

• 2:46Speaker 06

  Oh, alright.

• 2:47Bill Maher?

  You know who he is?

• 2:48Speaker 06

  Are you referring to the, uh, the guy who did steroids, or the guy who's doing the weird medical treatments to, uh?

• 2:53Bill Maher?

  The guy who wants to live forever?

• 2:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 06

  But you know about Liver King too, right?

• 2:57Bill Maher?

  But he, who, who?

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Liver King.

• 2:59Bill Maher?

  I've heard that. Who is that? What is that?

• 3:01Speaker 06

  Just super ripped guy, and his name is also, I think his name is Brian Johnson as well.

• 3:05Bill Maher?

  Whoa.

• 3:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:06Bill Maher?

  Maybe that's the secret.

• 3:08Speaker 06

  Doing steroids?

• 3:09Bill Maher?

  But what does the Liver King do? He does something with his liver to make him live forever?

• 3:13Speaker 06

  Eats it.

• 3:14Bill Maher?

  He eats liver?

• 3:15Speaker 06

  I think that's what his thing was. I didn't really follow him.

• 3:18Bill Maher?

  Not his own, you're saying?

• 3:19Speaker 06

  No.

• 3:19Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 3:20Speaker 06

  Well, but I think his whole shtick was, he eats like raw meat, and claimed that would make you ripped and manly, but he was doing steroids, so.

• 3:27Bill Maher?

  Well, oh, he was.

• 3:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, that's, I don't know, man.

• 3:31Bill Maher?

  Well, that'll make you ripped and not manly, because it makes your, your arms bigger and shrinks your balls.

• 3:39Speaker 06

  So I hear.

• 3:40Bill Maher?

  I mean, like, I, I never understood that kind of a trade-off. You know, like, okay, I wanna excel at this, I assume, so I can get checks. But then when I get them, my dick. Yeah, I've got a mushroom dick, you know.

• 3:55Speaker 06

  Yeah. There's so much weird stuff now, like I've had guys talking about like peptide things they take and HGH. And I'm just like, I don't know, man, I'll get old. That's what I'll do.

• 4:08Bill Maher?

  I agree.

• 4:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, I had this actual discussion with Joe Rogan on his show and, you know, he does the exogenous creams and stuff and testosterone. I think he's pretty upfront about that. And it's legal. I mean, it's not, we're not talking about steroids. We're talking about.

• 4:26Speaker 06

  Testosterone cream.

• 4:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I mean, testosterone does decrease as you get older. That's a fact. And of course, that makes you, especially if you're a male, only if you're a male, I guess, with testosterone, less healthy. Just ask Joe Biden. Oh, no, too soon. Sorry. We wish you well, Joe. But, so, you know, I said, yeah, that stuff is scary to me because when you. Anything you do that the body isn't doing naturally always has the possibility of some bad repercussions. And like, if you had like cancer cells in your body, and we all have some.

• 5:09Bill Maher?

  You know, sometimes you do something to make you healthier and it all soups up the thing that's not healthy. And he had a good answer, though. I said, you know, I'm afraid that this will make me unhealthy enough. And he said something like, well, I do it because I'm afraid to be unhealthy, which is, I understand what he's saying. Without the proper amount of testosterone, your health does suffer.

• 5:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:34Bill Maher?

  So he's putting it back in. You know, we don't know. That's the thing about medicine. We don't know.

• 5:39Speaker 06

  I think it's also bad for your heart, though, isn't it? Testosterone.

• 5:42Bill Maher?

  I'm sure it's bad for a lot of things. It's, look, if it's bad for your balls, it's gotta be bad throughout the. I mean, I'd just go by that test, wouldn't you? I mean, it's just, that's. I feel like sometimes the people who know the most have the least common sense.

• 5:59Speaker 06

  Perhaps.

• 6:00Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 6:01Speaker 06

  You know, you know, uh, one thing that, uh, I, I've been dying to tell you, given the chances, uh, you know, I do this, I do this talk show, I do this news show.

• 6:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know.

• 6:11Speaker 06

  Twen- well, well, it's your fault. Uh, 20 years ago. Every Friday, me and my friends are hanging out at, uh, shout out to Roger and my, my, my boy Brandon, who works with me now.

• 6:20Bill Maher?

  Where is this?

• 6:21Speaker 06

  Chicago.

• 6:21Bill Maher?

  Chicago.

• 6:22Speaker 06

  And they were stoned off their asses, passing the joint, blowing, blowing pot smoke into an iguana's face while we watched Real Time with Bill Maher.

• 6:28Bill Maher?

  Hmm.

• 6:29Speaker 06

  And, uh, that's, I was eight, I don't know, 18 or 19 years old and that's what we did every Friday.

• 6:34Bill Maher?

  So cool.

• 6:34Speaker 06

  Watching your show.

• 6:35Bill Maher?

  I love it that they were blowing the pot smoke.

• 6:37Speaker 06

  And the iguana loved it.

• 6:39Bill Maher?

  Who did?

• 6:40Speaker 06

  The, the iguana. It loved getting stoned.

• 6:43Bill Maher?

  Oh, the, a real iguana.

• 6:44Speaker 06

  Uh, literally, there was an iguana. And then one day, I guess, the iguana got out and started eating their pot. So it was like, this is not a good thing, but also kind of funny.

• 6:55Bill Maher?

  Animals do. I mean, I remember with my dogs, not that I would do it on purpose.

• 7:01Bill Maher?

  But, you know, I would not blow smoke in their face. I'm a PETA board member, for Christ's sake. So, but like if I was smoking and not thinking about it and, and the dog was sitting next to me, I would see him like trying to like bite the air. So that told me something about.

• 7:16Speaker 06

  Something about it, huh?

• 7:17Bill Maher?

  Unlike testosterone, I use the common sense, uh, yardstick and it told me that the pot is not bad for you if the dog is trying to eat it out of the air.

• 7:26Speaker 06

  Did you mix your tequila? I don't wanna.

• 7:27Bill Maher?

  Yes. Did you, I think you said shot. Did you want it?

• 7:30Speaker 06

  Oh, I'll just sip a little bit and then wash it.

• 7:33Bill Maher?

  Okay, okay.

• 7:35Speaker 06

  Oh, that's good.

• 7:37Bill Maher?

  What is it, do you think, that is making people so mad at you?

• 7:42Speaker 06

  Fake news.

• 7:44Bill Maher?

  Well, that's very general, Tim.

• 7:46Speaker 06

  It is, but.

• 7:46Bill Maher?

  Fake news. What do you, what do you, what do you mean it? I mean, I saw a thing, somebody sent me, I don't know why they send me these things, like, the other day, uh, it said, I mean, I'm not even on any of these sites, Facebook, nothing, Instagram, wouldn't know how to get on it. Uh, it was Bill Maher's old girlfriends. And it was like, just like a, a cavalcade. Some of which were my old girlfriends and some of which were just completely pulled right out of their ass. So like fake news, what my point I'm making is it it covers a lot of territory.

• 8:20Speaker 06

  For sure, for sure. It's um, there's a hyperpolarization happening among the younger generation that's substantially more pronounced than the older generation. And the younger generation is substantially more considering violence than the older generation did. So when you look at the polls, it's it's it's really interesting how the polarization expands.

• 8:40Bill Maher?

  I can see that.

• 8:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, you know, I I would say like the bulk of our viewers are probably in their thirties. So we have eighteen year olds too, but they're a smaller percentage, but basically twenty five to fifty fours who watches us.

• 8:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 8:52Speaker 06

  Got a lot of people in their thirties. And what ends up happening is, and this is true for people on the left, the red, doesn't matter who you are, someone's gonna take something you said. It's gonna be pulled out of context.

• 9:02Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 9:03Speaker 06

  And then it makes people go nuts. So, you know, I I there's there's so many of these things that are absolutely wild for me to say, I don't I don't I don't have the worst of it. There's other people in media that have it substantially worse than I do. Their Wikipedia pages are just rife with weird fake nonsense that's made up.

• 9:18Bill Maher?

  I mean, I I just don't feel like anybody uh in this country can even presume that what people think about them is anywhere near the truth. And if you do think that, um, you're you're very naive. And people are just gonna wanna believe. Somebody told me just the other day uh that uh speaking of girlfriends. This one is funny, this one wasn't in that list, but they could have put it there, but somebody they were said they were out to dinner with a few people. And this person said that I used to date Ann Coulter.

• 9:53Speaker 06

  I've heard that.

• 9:54Bill Maher?

  Which.

• 9:55Speaker 06

  I have heard it.

• 9:56Bill Maher?

  Okay, well, it's but it's not true. And both of us would say that. Now, are my friends with her? Yes. And anyone who doesn't like that can go fuck themselves. I'll be friends with whoever I want. Uh, I think I proved that over and over again, including with Donald Trump. You know, I I believe in talking to people.

• 10:14Speaker 06

  Are you?

• 10:15Bill Maher?

  And but I but it's not like I ever to either one of them given an inch on what my beliefs are. It's not like I'm taken in. I just think we need to talk to each other. And and anyone who doesn't wanna do that, but you know, this idea that the the the uh.

• 10:34Bill Maher?

  Image that people have of you is anywhere near what you really are. Yes, that got way worse in the internet age, but I think it was almost always thus.

• 10:45Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 10:46Bill Maher?

  It just, it just.

• 10:47Speaker 06

  It goes both ways too. The, the, my fans think they know me based on seeing my face for, you know. Well, to be honest, I do like five hours of recording a day. But those that watch, they watch several hours a day and they think this shows them everything about me.

• 11:01Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 11:01Speaker 06

  And, um, to be honest, the people who watch me are much better informed as to who I am than the people who don't. But they still have this.

• 11:09Bill Maher?

  Sure.

• 11:10Speaker 06

  Probably, you know, rose colored glasses view of who I am and what I represent and stuff.

• 11:15Bill Maher?

  So better, you say rose colored.

• 11:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're fans and so they.

• 11:19Bill Maher?

  But sometimes fans, I mean, about a month ago during my monologue, this had never happened in over 600 tapings of Real Time. But during my monologue, I see a guy in the audience with his phone out, taking a, picking a picture and taking. And I stopped the monologue. I mean, I just went, I, I walked over and I said, what the fuck are you doing? There's no taking pictures here. And then, you know, the audience left and I said, it's so disappointing when even your own fans are assholes. You know, cause like it takes a lot to get tickets to Real Time. People write in and.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  Wow, really?

• 11:53Bill Maher?

  And he was a fan. And it's just, but like people can be assholes even when, even your own, you can't ever be so purist as to think. Well, you know, the people, the good people. I mean, that's one of our big problems, I think politically is like this idea that we're the good people. We know what the, we know what's good. And anyone who doesn't agree with that, well, they're an existential threat to America. And that's happens on both sides.

• 12:18Speaker 06

  I agree, but you know, my, I, I, it is a weird position for me to be in. I was, uh, I was talking to some friends before the show and I was saying like, I think that if you and I discussed policy solutions for the country. I'd probably be to the left of you.

• 12:34Bill Maher?

  But in some ways, yeah.

• 12:35Speaker 06

  Probably most ways.

• 12:36Bill Maher?

  You like Bernie.

• 12:37Speaker 06

  I did.

• 12:37Bill Maher?

  I like Bernie, but I don't want socialism in America.

• 12:40Speaker 06

  You know?

• 12:40Bill Maher?

  More than what we have, we already have plenty.

• 12:43Speaker 06

  But the the issue is, today, I feel like what defines someone politically is not, uh, it's not the policies they want, but it's what they believe to be true.

• 12:51Bill Maher?

  Correct, exactly. Yeah, Matt Taibbi writes about this.

• 12:55Speaker 06

  I'm a big fan, he's amazing.

• 12:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 06

  And and they call him far right now.

• 12:58Bill Maher?

  I sure don't, well, I sure don't agree with everything he says. I mean, he's, I think he's wrong about Russiagate and a lot of other stuff. But, uh, first of all, he's just funny. He can say things that make me LOL. That's, I cannot say that about many writers, just that the the choice, like, description of something in one or two words is just very often just priceless. But, uh, what were you talking about? Why did I bring up Matt Taibbi? What did he say?

• 13:27Speaker 06

  What makes someone liberal or conservative is what they think is true.

• 13:30Bill Maher?

  He writes so well about this and about how, um, the, the modus operandi of news organizations used to be informing the public, and then it became audience stroking. What, how can we interpret this thing that just happened in such a way that our audience will give us likes?

• 13:53Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 13:53Bill Maher?

  I like that. I like you said it that way. I like your point of view because that's what I already think and that's, and I hate them and so I like.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  He's right.

• 14:02Bill Maher?

  He's right.

• 14:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:03Bill Maher?

  No, and it's just, it's just.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  I, uh, I worked for, uh, ABC started a, uh, ABC and Univision did a joint venture in 2014 called Fusion. And I was at Vice, and I moved over there. And then they told me that the new trend was going to be called mission-driven storytelling. And I said, what does that mean? And they said, there's no such thing as objectivity. Everyone is subjective, so we're going to tell the stories that our audience wants to hear. I had a meeting with the president, and he was talking to me about this, and I said, does that mean if there is a news story that is true and important, we would choose not to report it because it might upset our audience? And he said, yeah, I think that's fair. The company went bankrupt, they fired everybody, but this wasn't unique to them.

• 14:48Speaker 06

  They were chasing the trend. One of their marketing guys told me explicitly, we want to maximize shares because we have to maximize views. We have to maximize views because we've already sold a set amount to the advertisers. One company bought 500,000 views from us. We don't complete that contract until those views are delivered. How do we deliver them? Angering moms. Middle aged women who are angry share more than anyone else, so we're going to write stories that do that. Actually, what he told me. So it was social justice, it was racism.

• 15:18Bill Maher?

  I just pictured my writers all guffawing just because, you know, I'm always in a, I'm in for, I've had like a writer's room since 1993, Politically Incorrect, that show went on there, so.

• 15:30Speaker 06

  I was a little kid.

• 15:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm sure. And, and it's, you know, the joy of my life, one of the great joys is having a writer's room. I've said this before, but like Paul McCartney once said, I'd rather have a band than a Rolls Royce, and I'd rather have a writer's room. But a writer's room has always been me, The Bachelor, and then like 10 guys who are married and are always making, like, just in the room, this is not going to be on the show, but like always just making jokes about marriage and how they don't get laid and they don't get blown. You know, it's like it just never.

• 16:09Speaker 06

  Telling you don't get married.

• 16:10Bill Maher?

  Well, they're just, it's, everybody does it. I watch TMZ every night. The, the guys, the people in the, you know, the gallery that Harvey talks to, they're just same thing. They're just endless jokes that are made about how much marriage sucks, but if you say a bad word against it, they're like, you're the crazy one. You're a newlywed, right?

• 16:33Speaker 06

  I am, yeah. But, you know, I think.

• 16:36Bill Maher?

  Awkward.

• 16:37Speaker 06

  No, but, but I agree. I think, you know, I'm 39 and I just had my first child and it's amazing and I just got married. And I do think for the millennial generation largely. I, I, every, every TV show, we didn't have these wholesome family shows. Everything was like Marriage is Scary in Bed and Mocking Marriage.

• 16:55Bill Maher?

  Like, well, like which ones?

• 16:56Speaker 06

  Married with Children.

• 16:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I was on it.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  Oh, wow.

• 17:00Bill Maher?

  I was a guest star. Played a game show host on Married with Children.

• 17:03Speaker 06

  I mean, it was a funny show.

• 17:04Bill Maher?

  On YouTube.

• 17:05Speaker 06

  I'll take a look.

• 17:06Bill Maher?

  You should. It's pretty funny.

• 17:08Speaker 06

  But the, I, I, I understand that there were those moments where they loved each other. But it very much was this slog of like, oh no, I'm married. It's a bag. Oh geez. What do you, so what, what do you think happens when these millennials grow up and they get these red pill dating guys? Saying everything they, they grew up hearing is true, but not comedy serious. And then they end up believing it.

• 17:28Bill Maher?

  Okay, but Tim, the reason why those jokes work is because that's how people do feel about marriage.

• 17:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:36Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 17:36Speaker 06

  I'm lucky, I guess.

• 17:37Bill Maher?

  Well, you're a newlywed is what you are. You know.

• 17:40Speaker 06

  We've known each other for almost 20 years.

• 17:42Bill Maher?

  20 years?

• 17:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:44Bill Maher?

  So you married your high school sweetheart?

• 17:46Speaker 06

  Ah, I guess technically we, we, yeah, we, we.

• 17:51Bill Maher?

  That's like something Dick Cheney does.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  It's, I, it's pure luck. I am lucky. I am lucky, which can't wait to look at.

• 18:00Bill Maher?

  Just look at me.

• 18:01Speaker 06

  I, it's, we, we, we're both from Chicago. We both like the same music. We have very similar views. We're both lapsed Catholics and it's like, you're lucky, I got lucky. And I know.

• 18:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm a lapsed Catholic. We could have a throuple.

• 18:13Speaker 06

  Pass.

• 18:16Speaker 06

  No, I am lucky and you know, it's weird how. I see all these stories and people talk about marriage and I'm like, it sounds like you got married to someone you don't really know. Cause Alison and I know each other very well and we get along very well and we're both very rational, reasonable people. I, I.

• 18:33Bill Maher?

  That's, that's a great thing to find in a woman.

• 18:35Speaker 06

  I know.

• 18:35Bill Maher?

  And I don't mean that, like I'm not saying women are crazy. Um, they're not. Men are also, or let's put it this way, we're both crazy.

• 18:43Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 18:44Bill Maher?

  And it's not like men aren't emotional and blah, blah, blah. But I don't really care about that aspect in men because I don't date men. What I care about is the opposite sex and if you can find a woman who's sexy and also rational. That's great because they, they sometimes, let's just put it this way, they sometimes don't go hand in hand.

• 19:06Speaker 06

  That's true. You know, it was funny that I was talking-

• 19:08Bill Maher?

  I'm saying my piece.

• 19:09Speaker 06

  I was talking to my wife and I made a joke, you know, I said, "Bitches be crazy, yo", which is a line from that movie-

• 19:14Bill Maher?

  Of course, it's nothing.

• 19:15Speaker 06

  And then she goes, "Are you kidding?" She's like, "I've watched you guys out there at the skate park. You guys are nuts." And I look out the window and one of our, one of our team riders is like trying to jump off a building. And I was like, "She's right. Men are crazy in different ways."

• 19:28Bill Maher?

  Different ways, of course, absolutely.

• 19:31Speaker 06

  So we bought these things called Grabos, okay? They are handles with vacuums that you can stick to a wall. And I bought them because they were funny.

• 19:39Bill Maher?

  Handles with vacuums?

• 19:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's okay. So it's this oval and it's got a handle on it. You take it, you press a button, put it on the wall and-

• 19:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, it's like what Tom Cruise uses to climb down a 130-story building- Doing his own stunt in Mission Impossible?

• 19:53Speaker 06

  And, uh-

• 19:53Bill Maher?

  And they say Scientology doesn't make you crazy.

• 19:56Speaker 06

  Well, so, uh, one of our skateboarder team riders, Mike Nagle, decided he was going to jump up on his board against the wall, grab them, and then flip himself upside down. And then he fell on his head and he had to go to the hospital.

• 20:10Speaker 06

  And so I said, "You know, my wife is right. Men are crazy in different ways."

• 20:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Again, no doubt about that. It just doesn't matter to me. Because I don't have relationships with men that involve, you know-

• 20:25Speaker 06

  Agreed.

• 20:25Bill Maher?

  You know, once in a while, uh, there have been guys, and guys I like and have, uh, I'm not gonna mention anybody specifically, but, uh, they will get a little girl-like and I will have to say to them, "Bro, I don't have this kind of shit with women. You think I'm gonna have it with you? Like, I'll call you back when I'll call you back, okay? No nagging. If I want to be nagged, I'd have gotten married. Again, I wouldn't do this for a woman. So just don't be so clingy."

• 21:24Speaker 03

  I'm not ready for this.

• 21:25Speaker 07

  He's back.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  I'm older, I'm wiser.

• 21:30Speaker 07

  And sharper than ever.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 21:39Speaker 07

  Dexter Resurrection, new season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.

• 21:44Bill Maher?

  So, so how's your wife like West Virginia?

• 21:47Speaker 06

  Um, I think she likes it. You know, I think-

• 21:51Bill Maher?

  Does she like Green Acres? She wishes, ew.

• 21:53Speaker 06

  She wants-

• 21:54Bill Maher?

  Out of her.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  She wants to be in Montana.

• 21:57Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 21:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:58Bill Maher?

  Where in Montana?

• 22:00Speaker 06

  Anywhere. Um, she, actually, probably Wyoming. And I don't, she loves skiing and, uh, I would, I would love to go there as well. In fact, we looked there before coming to Western Maryland. But it's impractical to try and do an in-person news show from Wyoming or Montana. So-

• 22:17Bill Maher?

  Well, why is it any more impractical than West Virginia?

• 22:19Speaker 06

  Because we're an hour from DC. So, we, yeah. You land at Dulles and you're an hour, hour and a half and you're in the studio, ready to go.

• 22:27Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 22:28Speaker 06

  Yup. I looked at Maine, too. You know, because we were, we were like, far away, middle of nowhere.

• 22:32Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 22:32Speaker 06

  Safer, more secure, and, uh, we need the internet. So, east coast is best. Um, half the country lives on the east coast.

• 22:41Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 22:42Speaker 06

  So, if we could, we would have done Wyoming. And then, you know, been skiing and farming and whatnot.

• 22:49Bill Maher?

  Well, this, this goes to what I always say about politics, I think, which is that it's an outgrowth of personality. Obviously, your personality is, you, you want to be remote. You're, you're not a city guy, even though you're from Chicago. That's not your personality. You're, I mean, you're a guy, West Virginia was not, uh, remote enough for you. You wanted someplace with an even bigger sky. Montana, Wyoming.

• 23:18Speaker 06

  I think, I think eventually, I think, you know, for us, it's um.

• 23:21Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm a suburban guy. Like, I grew up in the suburbs. I never liked living in New York City. I know it's a great city and I enjoy going there uh, a few times a year in the spring and the fall when the weather's nice and I know a lot of people and it's, of course, it's the greatest, but I never enjoyed being there. I like the suburbs. That's what's just my personality.

• 23:43Speaker 06

  I, I know, I agree.

• 23:43Bill Maher?

  Maybe that's why I'm sort of like, somebody who both sides can talk to, because I'm not exactly a city dweller, but I'm also, don't want to live in the middle of bumfuck.

• 23:55Speaker 06

  You know, you know what's fascinating is my neighborhood from Chicago tur- uh, turned red. And uh, I, I, so my audience, the biggest demographic is, location wise, is Chicago. And it's, it's a weird position to be in because in, to see, Chicago's liberal. My neighborhood was by the Midway Airport and it's a lot of firefighters and cops.

• 24:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 06

  And it's um, largely like Polish immigrant and then like white working class and Hispanic. And it turned, uh, it flipped for Trump in Chicago. And I think.

• 24:26Bill Maher?

  Some parts of the Bronx, too.

• 24:27Speaker 06

  Oh, wow. I, I think my, my, my politics are like, if you were, you know, I'm like a Chicago liberal, but the way things have gone, especially with like the woke stuff, is where I, I end up in this position and so does my neighborhood. I think it's interesting to see my neighborhood reflective of my politics and vice versa.

• 24:46Bill Maher?

  I think the phrase I was using last year was aggressively non-common sense or uncommon sense. It'll be, and it's like, I, I accent aggressively. I don't think um, the woke people who are, have the vast amount of energy, really in the Democratic Party, understand why the people um, vote against them. And it's like, because if you add up like, how much, how many people are really affected by some of the aggressively uncommon sense things, it's probably not that many.

• 25:20Speaker 06

  You had a great bit on that.

• 25:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 06

  Why are you pandering to 400 people?

• 25:24Bill Maher?

  Of course. Okay. But. When you add up these things, and you know, men competing in women's sports and like just too much indoctrination of children with sexual ideas that they're too young to understand. Like when you add up all these things that get in the media a lot, it paints a picture, not a wrong picture, in the mind of the average voter that, yeah, maybe policy-wise, I would do better under the Democrats or Bernie Sanders. But these other people just seem fucking crazy. They seem like, like committed to just going to absurd lengths just for shits and giggles,

• 26:06Bill Maher?

  just for the fuck of it, just the, the, this bizarre attachment to things that's, that are just ridiculous.

• 26:14Speaker 06

  I, I think it's to hate the other side.

• 26:17Bill Maher?

  It is. And that, and that's certainly the other, what the other side does, they call it making you cry your liberal tears.

• 26:24Speaker 06

  Right, yeah.

• 26:24Bill Maher?

  The, the right, the entire policy, uh, well, not always now. Uh, there are some things that have different motivations. Um, you know, I know you're involved with the tariff debate.

• 26:38Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:38Bill Maher?

  Because, you know, that works both ways. Sometimes free trade does hurt people. And that's why there are tariffs. Trump is not the first person to advocate tariffs. He's just the first person to do it in this kind of crazy, haphazard way.

• 26:53Speaker 06

  Right, I agree. I think that, you know, when, when he, when he announced selective tariffs, I was like, alright, let's go. Then when he announced universal tariffs, I was like, I don't know if that makes sense. I don't, what is he doing? And I'm, you know, but I, but I'm not in, I, I think one of the problems that we've seen over the past several years with Trump is the immediate assumption that there's not, that he's, he's a crazy person all the time. And so the only thing I can say is, well, you know, I vote for the guy. I think this is probably, doesn't make sense to me, but I'll see what happens and we'll see if it makes sense. Selective tariffs, I think, do make sense. But I do think that the way the Democratic Party has handled opposition has guaranteed that the kind of Trumpian politics.

• 27:31Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm sure you've heard about my little trip to the White House.

• 27:34Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 27:35Bill Maher?

  And, um,

• 27:36Speaker 06

  Very impressive.

• 27:37Bill Maher?

  Thank you. And the thing that upset the far left so much, these same people who believe in the crazy things I was just mentioning, um, and the ones who really hate me, they really found a new reason to hate me because when I came back and gave my report about it, You know, among the things I said to your point about everything, is he crazy? Was, I think, word for word, a crazy person doesn't live in the White House. A person who plays a crazy person on TV lives in the White House.

• 28:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 28:10Bill Maher?

  And they found that very triggering. But again, as I said many times during that piece, I'm just going to tell you the truth. I'm not gonna, I'm not, I didn't vote for him. I think we all know that. I went right back to being as tough on him as I ever had been. So I wasn't like seduced, but that was my estimation. Again, to your point about, is he just crazy? When you meet him in person and spend that kind of time and he's not on his like, his attack mode thing, um, he does not strike you as a crazy person. Or a person who doesn't listen or can't hear things.

• 28:53Bill Maher?

  Again, they were very mad at me for saying this, but that's what happened. And I am not a liar. That's my main bond with the audience. So even if I offended some people by telling the truth, in the long run, that's what I do. And they, yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 06

  What, what, what I saw in 20, so in 2020, I was not going to vote for Trump, I'll never vote for Trump, I don't like Trump. And I was, I donated the max to Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. And I, my, my position, my whole thought process was the Democrats are going crazy and we need the moderate sane Democrats to maintain control of this party and stop the insanity.

• 29:32Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  And they lost.

• 29:34Bill Maher?

  And they lost.

• 29:35Speaker 06

  And so then Trump put out his statement in around August saying, we're going to ban DEI in government contracting, we're going to do these things, blah, blah. No new wars was big for me. I am a very, you know, anti-interventionist for a lot of reasons. And so I said, I guess I'm voting for Trump. Instantly it was like, the liberals, even YouTube, they all said, we're going to move your name over to this list. I kid you not. There's representatives at YouTube, they told me straight up that the liberal rep was no longer representing me and they were switching me to a conservative rep. It was the weirdest thing. Yeah. And I'm like, it's not that I like who Trump is or that I'm like, thinking that conservatives have a good policy. I'm pro-choice. The issue was that. You can look at it right now.

• 30:19Speaker 06

  There's no charismatic leaders. There's no frontrunners. There's no policy position. It seems like the only thing they ever had is they have is the right is bad, Trump is bad. And so I'm asking like, what are our plans?

• 30:33Bill Maher?

  No, they have, Democrats have policy positions on everything. And many of them are, I think preferable to Republican policy positions. Number one being they concede elections. That's kind of a big one with me. They listen to what courts say.

• 30:51Speaker 06

  I don't know about that.

• 30:53Bill Maher?

  You don't think they listen to what courts say?

• 30:55Speaker 06

  So Joe Biden ignored the court rulings twice on forgiving student loans and then tried to decree the Equal Rights Amendment.

• 31:03Bill Maher?

  That's true. That's true.

• 31:05Speaker 06

  But I'm not saying defend Trump. I'm just saying like.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this.

• 31:34Speaker 07

  He's back.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  I'm older. I'm wiser.

• 31:39Speaker 07

  And sharper than ever.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 31:48Speaker 07

  Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.

• 32:22Bill Maher?

  There are, there are arguments, of course, that the Republicans, that just works for them because there are issues like what you mentioned, which is not untrue, where it's so easy for them to go, "Well, they did this, so we're gonna do it five times worse." And then they do. But there are some like that. But there's one that has no fuzz on it, and that's elections. When Democrats lose elections, it's over the next day. Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton.

• 32:54Speaker 06

  Not Hillary Clinton.

• 32:54Bill Maher?

  Just.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  Not Al Gore.

• 32:56Bill Maher?

  It, they ju- well, Al Gore, when was, that was not Al Gore doing that. That election was, obviously, decided by 537 votes. There was an absolute, when it's that close, there should be a recount. And whether that recount went the right way, we'll never know, because that state was run by Catherine Harris and Jeb Bush.

• 33:19Speaker 06

  There's, there's a, sorry to interrupt, but there's a really good, I guess, I don't know if you'd call it a philosophical point, that I've noticed that I think you're experiencing right now is, uh, I'm 39, so you lived through a lot of these administrations and these political cycles.

• 33:32Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 06

  And you have experiences that I don't even know they exist.

• 33:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you know what, I didn't live through Lincoln, but I know about it.

• 33:38Speaker 06

  Sure. My, my point is, my experience in politics has been the Democrats have challenged more than Republicans. To be fair, Trump-

• 33:46Bill Maher?

  Have challenged the court?

• 33:48Speaker 06

  Challenged the elections more than the Republicans have, in extreme ways.

• 33:51Bill Maher?

  That's ridiculous.

• 33:52Speaker 06

  So, but, but perhaps because you're older than me and you've seen more than I have.

• 33:55Bill Maher?

  We, again, there are history books, there's newspapers.

• 33:58Speaker 06

  I know, I know.

• 33:59Bill Maher?

  You only, you don't know something only because you lived through it. I know about the French Revolution also.

• 34:03Speaker 06

  My point is-

• 34:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, you could know about this.

• 34:06Speaker 06

  Indeed.

• 34:07Bill Maher?

  If you, I mean, this is something that people your age say all the time, and I've made fun of it before. Like, it's this, like, if I wasn't alive for it, it didn't happen, I don't have to know about it?

• 34:17Speaker 06

  But, that's not what I'm saying.

• 34:18Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, okay, but-

• 34:19Speaker 06

  I'm saying that in 2016, I didn't vote for either Trump or Hillary, and then I got three years of Trump is working for the Russians.

• 34:27Bill Maher?

  He was not working for the Russians.

• 34:29Speaker 06

  Jonathan Chait went on MSNBC and said he may have been a Soviet asset since the 80s.

• 34:33Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  And so for me, I'm like, I'm out. This is crazy. And so, like, understand, and I'm not saying you're wrong about history. I'm saying that experiencing a political cycle over years is different from reading the condensed history books, which of course I do. So to live through four years of a president, their term every single moment, the history books gloss over most of those experiences that we don't have as young people. So I have people on my show who are 25. And one of the people who works for us says, "Nothing ever happens." She's 24. And this is like a Gen Z thing, "Nothing ever happens." And I said, "Are you kidding? The past 10 years have been nothing but happenings."

• 35:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  Here's the issue. When she was 14, she wasn't paying attention to politics. When she was around 20 years old and started, this was the natural state of politics in her experience. So this is basic. This is normal. And for me, it's crazy. And I think for you, it's crazy. But they grew up in this and they've normalized it. So my view is this, not to say that you're wrong, obviously. My point is, when I watched the Democrats accuse Trump and Manafort and Carter Page and all of these things, especially when they fabricated evidence against Carter Page, I'm just like, "Wow, I can't believe the Democrats are going to this length to deny an election."

• 35:47Bill Maher?

  You're watching a little too much Fox News or somebody who's slanting this a certain way. I mean, Paul Manafort was sharing polling information with a GRU agent.

• 35:59Speaker 06

  And do you know they found out about that?

• 36:01Bill Maher?

  How did they find out about that?

• 36:03Speaker 06

  Ukrainian government officials shared it with the Democratic Party. Politico reported that. So you have this Ukrainian interference in our election as reported by Politico. And I look at that and I go, "Wow, the Ukrainian government sent incriminating evidence to the Democrats? Crazy story." Then they claimed Donald-

• 36:21Bill Maher?

  But it was true.

• 36:22Speaker 06

  Indeed. And the issue is, why wasn't that a scandal? That the Ukrainians were interfering in the election?

• 36:27Bill Maher?

  Let's not get, because this is a friendly thing. Let's not get into the weeds on like the Russia thing. First of all, it's like five years old, so people are bored with it. Okay. But I'll just say this in general. It'd be hard to argue with it, I think, but I'll just say it and maybe we can just move on. Whatever it was, I don't think Trump was a Russian asset. Uh, Don Jr. At one point said, or maybe it was Eric, we do get a lion's share of our contrib-, you know, to the company from the Russians. So there was obviously a lot of involvement with the Russians. Trump was asked at his first press conference, and he said, I have no dealings with the Russians.

• 37:12Bill Maher?

  It's a total, complete lie. They had li-, nothing, it's not illegal, it's not, but it's just a, just to, it just looks suspicious to say, I don't know anything about the Russia, I have no deal, and then like, I don't know anybody who's talking to the Russians. Everybody in the administration, Michael Flynn was prosecuted for it, was talking to the Russians. He said on TV, Russia, if you're listening, I want your help with something. Okay, whether you think that's good or bad, it was completely unprecedented. So, like, the idea that, that he should not have been investigated for, is there, there's a lot of smoke here with Trump and Russia.

• 37:53Bill Maher?

  To me, okay, they, I'm sure they overdid it, as everybody overdoes everything, but, but there was a lot of smoke, enough to investigate, and he wa-, and what he was asking another country to do in our elections publicly was unprecedented. We always had one rule in this country, we're gonna go against each other, yes, Republican, Democrat, we'll do whatever it takes, but we don't bring in ringers from another, from outside.

• 38:22Speaker 06

  Ukraine?

• 38:23Bill Maher?

  What, what, they brought that in, in the same election, you're saying?

• 38:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, I forgot the name of the woman. This is on Politico, you can just read their story, it was, um, I can't remember the guy's name who reported it.

• 38:32Bill Maher?

  No, it's possible that, again, there's always some version of it on the other side, it's just not as egregious, I think.

• 38:39Speaker 06

  You know, they're, they're accusing me of working for the Russians now, and this is-

• 38:44Speaker 06

  Or they tried. And so here's the story. I get contacted by a conservative personality. I've got three shows that I host, several that I have staff that hosts. One of them is called The Culture War.

• 38:56Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  We produced it for two years, Friday mornings, similar to this, sometimes debates. And I was reached out by like three different companies who said, "We want to license something you're doing." And I said, "We do our own internal ad sales. We don't need the license." Some offers were made. Some of them were really good. And I said, "I'm not really interested because the ad sales I can generate exceed your licensing." So I get reached out by this company in Tennessee from a well-known, prominent conservative personality who works for one of the big companies and said, "We've secured an investor. We want to license the show. We negotiated terms. Lawyer negotiated terms market rate. Non-exclusive license for distribution. They could sell the ads on the show. I get the money, the licensing fee, which basically, you know, I can choose to grow the show for two years or just license it now and take the money."

• 39:42Bill Maher?

  You sound like you're a naturally savvy businessman.

• 39:45Speaker 06

  Maybe. Well, this didn't work out too well for me because what happened was, at the end of last year, the DOJ indicted some random, I say random because they're not personalities, some Russians, who are apparently in some Eastern European country, claiming that they were funneling money illicitly into this conservative company in Nashville to then promote Russian propaganda or something. The narrative now is, Tim Poole was prosecuted for working for the Russians. The real story is, the DOJ launched an indictment and dropped it almost immediately with no evidence, accusing a conservative personality of illicitly taking money from the Russians without evidence, destroyed the company, destroyed their lives, and then impugned the honor of anybody who

• 40:30Speaker 06

  had done any license agreements with a Nashville-based company.

• 40:32Bill Maher?

  Boy, you really hit people's nerves.

• 40:35Speaker 06

  But I didn't do anything.

• 40:37Bill Maher?

  I tell you what I'm not gonna do, is show up unannounced at your door in the middle of the night, "Hey, tip-off!" It'll be like Sonny on the causeway, you know? It'll be the end of Bonnie and Clyde. I'll just be like riddled with, "Yeah, boy."

• 40:51Speaker 06

  It's a crazy story.

• 40:52Bill Maher?

  You gotta take it as kind of a compliment. People care.

• 40:55Speaker 06

  That's true. You know, I don't know. I-

• 40:58Bill Maher?

  But does it make your wife nervous? Does she hate it? Is she like, "Get out of the game, man."

• 41:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 41:05Bill Maher?

  "Get out of the game."

• 41:06Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 41:08Bill Maher?

  And what do you say when she says, "Get out of the game"?

• 41:11Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 41:12Bill Maher?

  You do? You're gonna get out of the game?

• 41:14Speaker 06

  So...

• 41:15Bill Maher?

  No.

• 41:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, last October.

• 41:17Bill Maher?

  Scoop!

• 41:19Speaker 06

  I, I, I, I, I basically was just fed up.

• 41:22Bill Maher?

  With the game?

• 41:23Speaker 06

  With politics.

• 41:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, the game?

• 41:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Um, and I, I said, you know, before I started doing my night leash, I, I, I do, I work sixteen hours a day plus.

• 41:35Bill Maher?

  I was gonna say, you, you've got so much going on, maybe just cut back, you know?

• 41:40Speaker 06

  I'm an addict.

• 41:41Bill Maher?

  Less hours, more guns.

• 41:43Speaker 06

  Maybe. Here's the problem, and I, I know that you can relate to this, uh, I've got employees, I got staff.

• 41:48Bill Maher?

  Do you know you can have a harpoon legally in some states in this country?

• 41:52Speaker 06

  I liked it.

• 41:54Bill Maher?

  In case you're attacked by a whale.

• 41:57Speaker 06

  But if, if I stop, then I gotta fire everybody.

• 42:00Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, I mean, that's a noble thing, and I've heard it before from people, and I always think it's bullshit. It's like, you're hiding behind that, you really wanna keep working, 'cause you know why? Like, you achieved a big thing, you know, you're a big success. Um, no one saw it coming, including you, right?

• 42:22Speaker 06

  I'm really arrogant.

• 42:23Bill Maher?

  Did you think you were gonna be this when you were fifteen?

• 42:27Speaker 06

  In some form, yeah.

• 42:28Bill Maher?

  Oh, really? Okay.

• 42:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm a cocky piece of shit.

• 42:32Bill Maher?

  But, but doing this exact thing?

• 42:34Speaker 06

  Uh...

• 42:36Bill Maher?

  Or close to it?

• 42:37Speaker 06

  Close to it.

• 42:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm the same way. I knew I was gonna be a comedian when I was, uh, before I was ten.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:43Bill Maher?

  And then I imagined, I mean, in my day, it was Johnny Carson, so I imagined being that, but, but it morphed into more, no, I think a political talk show, but also a gregarious, charming host would be, you know, a great combination.

• 43:01Speaker 06

  I think, I, I, I, I think people who claim otherwise are lying. Not always. But come on, you didn't try your hardest and, and grind your fingers to the bone to get here thinking you weren't gonna do it, you know?

• 43:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, exactly.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  You did it every day.

• 43:13Bill Maher?

  Like, I'm sure you're doing this, uh, and to keep your staff employed, but really, you, you wanna do it because, and why wouldn't you? You're thirty-nine. If you quit now, uh, man, you're, first of all, you're gonna regret it because, you know, once you quit, can you get it back? Yeah, but audiences move on quickly.

• 43:33Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 43:33Bill Maher?

  Quickly.

• 43:34Speaker 06

  They do now, too.

• 43:36Bill Maher?

  No, I'm saying, they always have.

• 43:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:39Bill Maher?

  Um, like, when you go, you think you're so indispensable, and this is anybody, and you're not, because there's always people willing to, wanting to take your place. You know, I mean, you can-

• 43:50Speaker 06

  And it happens no matter what.

• 43:51Bill Maher?

  You could be at the top of the heap, you know, you're be, uh, would not-

• 43:55Speaker 06

  I mean, I, I, just, me sitting here right now, you know, with you, you know, you, you have, like, I, I, I would, I would say that real time, from my circle, I can't, I don't know, but I, I feel like it's the most consequential political show.

• 44:09Bill Maher?

  I appreciate that, because it is, even though the, you know, the problem is that the, the most of the most influential media is controlled by that far left that hates me.

• 44:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:22Bill Maher?

  So they will never give it up to me.

• 44:23Speaker 06

  But thi- this is-

• 44:24Bill Maher?

  They will never, like, write about it, say that, nobody ever covers it, you know, it's just like, their thing is like, even though the audience is always there, and, and almost always in much bigger numbers than the things they do cover.

• 44:38Speaker 06

  One, one of the biggest videos we have, I think, is us talking about what you said. But, but here's, it's, it's-

• 44:46Bill Maher?

  I said, that, it means so much to me, because like-

• 44:48Speaker 06

  It's not always good things we're saying.

• 44:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I, yeah, but at least you're watching.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 44:53Bill Maher?

  And you're, and you're allowed to be wrong.

• 44:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, um, I, I say similarly, but, you know, my point is like, there are people that I bring on my show, who are like in their twenties, and like, man, I've been watching you for years.

• 45:04Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 06

  And I'm like, one day you will be sitting where I am, and I'll be retired, and that's the way life goes.

• 45:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, I don't even care if everybody agrees all the time, it's just that, it's about, and I think you would say the same for your show, it's about taking you seriously. It's about having the credibility to have them listen to whatever you're saying. And then you can say your thing, but usually they know, well, maybe he's not completely wrong about that.

• 45:32Speaker 06

  You know what I'm really interested in, is, uh, Real Clear, Real Clear Politics put out this aggregate polling by, by, uh, decade age, I don't want to say demographic, because it was like, eighteen to twenty-nine, and it was like thirty to thirty-nine.

• 45:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 06

  And only one bracket was anti-Trump, and it was seventy-plus. And then I think

• 45:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 45:51Speaker 06

  Gen X was a tie. And then there's a, you know, I really want to talk to you about this too. They're saying that Gen Z is becoming more Christian.

• 45:59Bill Maher?

  Yep, I heard that too. Heard that too.

• 46:01Speaker 06

  I'm wondering what's gonna happen in ten years. The boomers are gonna be moving on, passing on. I'm not trying to be crass, but it's true. Or retiring.

• 46:11Bill Maher?

  You could say dead.

• 46:13Speaker 06

  They'll be dead.

• 46:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 06

  And what happens to politics in this country?

• 46:16Bill Maher?

  Not me haters.

• 46:19Speaker 06

  Bill's gonna live forever.

• 46:20Bill Maher?

  Fucking haters and clickbaiters.

• 46:21Speaker 06

  The pot and the booze gonna make you young.

• 46:24Bill Maher?

  I mean, do I look like I'm a death star?

• 46:26Speaker 06

  No, you look pretty good.

• 46:27Bill Maher?

  I mean, do I act like it? I've never missed a show. Except the two they forced me to miss when I had Covid, wink, wink. They forced me because of course I could have contaminated and the entire city could have died.

• 46:41Speaker 06

  I think I would have died, to be honest.

• 46:43Bill Maher?

  You what?

• 46:44Speaker 06

  I got real sick.

• 46:46Bill Maher?

  Pussy.

• 46:47Speaker 06

  Yep, yep. And then Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan saved my life.

• 46:51Bill Maher?

  How? So, are we making?

• 46:53Speaker 06

  No, well, technically. So I had called the hospital because my temperature was low. And I was shaking really bad. And I was, I was like, really bad pain. I wouldn't say the worst pain I've ever had.

• 47:03Bill Maher?

  Okay, why are you in such bad health to begin with? Because unless you're, unless you're in bad health to begin-

• 47:07Speaker 06

  I was fat. I was fatter.

• 47:08Bill Maher?

  That's it. I always said that about Covid. Who does it kill? Fat people and very old people. I'm sorry, but that's just the truth. That's just the truth. No, obviously it could kill anybody and blah, blah, blah, and we should protect. And we should, you know, the most vulnerable. But that's who it killed. That's what bugged me about it. Like, all of our medical profiles are unique. That's why I don't like one size fits all diagnoses.

• 47:33Speaker 06

  They were, they were, they were banning people off social media. Shutting down anybody who brought it up. It was a weird, weird time. And it still is weird. And there's-

• 47:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 47:47Bill Maher?

  So what are you gonna do if you if you quit the game? What are you gonna do? Be a farmer? Be a rancher?

• 47:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, maybe. Well, so I'm not. I mean, it's it's not just about that. There's people who, you know, they have livelihoods here. They've moved to the area of Maryland, DC area. But it's, you know, the conversation I've had with Allison is I could stop doing The Knightly Show, which currently is, it's typically the second biggest live live stream news. It's the biggest live stream news podcast. But Steven Crowder is bigger than us. But he's comedy news. If we want to lump it all together, we're number two. And it feels, we feel, we both feel guilty about saying, stop doing this show with a massive audience that, so that we can go and have, like, we're rich. We can go do whatever we want. We can just go skiing whenever we want. We can fly to South America and go skiing any time of the year.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  We feel guilty about that. We both kind of agree on it.

• 48:40Bill Maher?

  I am so fucked up. Why you feel guilty?

• 48:43Speaker 06

  I don't know. I I think it's like, we were afforded this luxury and comfort.

• 48:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, for fuck's sake, get over it. Just be, just enjoy it. You know, Christ, you could be fucking in the-

• 48:56Speaker 06

  We're different.

• 48:57Bill Maher?

  You could be in the hospital with leukemia or some shit. You're lucky. You're lucky in some ways. You also worked for it. And this is your fate and you have it. And trust me, you're not going anywhere. You know, you can go through these permutations in your mind. But at the end of the day, um, you're, something on your shoulder is gonna say, you know what? Let's make hay while the sun shines and then we can go skiing in South America. Because like, you don't know how long it's gonna last, popularity. You know, I mean, you know, the more you get, the more you have in the bank, it's good. I mean, if you really skyrocket to ultimate sort of fame, people never forget you. I mean, look at Britney Spears. She hasn't put out a record in 20 years.

• 49:40Speaker 06

  They won't let it go.

• 49:41Bill Maher?

  And people are still very interested. But-

• 49:44Speaker 06

  I I think that's going away. You know, like, looking at everything you have and you're talking about the Mets and all this stuff. I think because of the, there's two phenomena that I think are gonna break this. One is the decentralization of media through the internet, but also the lack of new.

• 49:57Bill Maher?

  Wait, break what?

• 49:59Speaker 06

  Everybody wants to know what you think about things.

• 50:01Bill Maher?

  Good, thank you.

• 50:02Speaker 06

  I don't, but it is true. You know, I go to like, uh, some of these media reporting websites and entertainment websites. And it's not just that Trump did something, it's how you thought about it.

• 50:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, good.

• 50:12Speaker 06

  It's you and Coulter and Joe Rogan, almost always.

• 50:14Bill Maher?

  Interesting.

• 50:16Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't know that we have that in 10 or 20 years. So I'll, I'll break it down entertainment wise.

• 50:21Bill Maher?

  Really? You don't think there'll always be people who, uh, other humans, what?

• 50:27Speaker 06

  Not the, not the way you guys are.

• 50:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Speaker 06

  So, Tim Cast IRL, we do maybe like 700 to 800,000 viewers per night. Which is nothing compared to where Anderson Cooper was 20 years ago. It's decentralizing, it's changing. And.

• 50:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 50:48Speaker 06

  So we have a big audience. People talk like, wow, you've got this really big show. And I'm like, yes, but there's 50 other shows now that are comparable.

• 50:57Bill Maher?

  And also, just to put it, um, okay, how many adults are there in America? About 280 million?

• 51:03Speaker 06

  And Gen Alphas.

• 51:05Bill Maher?

  Okay, but I'm just saying, of all the adults who could be doing something, if it's 280 million and 700 to 800,000 are doing something. Yeah, that's compared to how many it could be, to your point.

• 51:23Speaker 06

  Right.

• 51:23Bill Maher?

  You know, like, I mean.

• 51:25Speaker 06

  Here's, here's the other factor.

• 51:27Bill Maher?

  TV shows used to get like, a share, which is like the percentage of, there's a, a rating and a share.

• 51:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:34Bill Maher?

  One is like the percentage of people who are doing anything. They could be watching TV, they could be masturbating, they could be playing tennis or ping pong. And the other is just a percentage of the people who are actually watching TV.

• 51:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:46Bill Maher?

  So, a share is a, is a, is a smaller number. Uh, because, again, it's only, I mean, it's among the people who could be doing anything. And like, TV shows sometimes used to get like a 40 share. 40. Like 40% of the country.

• 52:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 52:04Bill Maher?

  Who could have been doing anything were watching the Wild Wild West. I mean, that is to your, again, this is your point.

• 52:11Speaker 06

  I do know, exactly.

• 52:11Bill Maher?

  It's just, it's so much more bifurcated now.

• 52:15Speaker 06

  So, I'll give you an example. Uh, I was at a bar. And I went to the jukebox and I put on Bohemian Rhapsody. And what happened? Everyone in the bar started singing. Lit 100%.

• 52:26Bill Maher?

  Everybody knows that one.

• 52:27Speaker 06

  The next song that came on, I didn't even know what it was, it was hip hop R and B. Everybody broke apart. And so, back when we had very few radio stations and very few television channels, they had to be very selective about what they promoted, but they promoted to, you know, like you said, like 40 million people, who knows? So you had that time period. Now for us, I think that combined with the lack of new people. So Gen Alpha is about 40 million. And they're expecting that if we, if we-

• 52:54Bill Maher?

  What, what age are we talking about?

• 52:55Speaker 06

  This is zero to, I think, 13 years old.

• 52:59Bill Maher?

  So the one coming up?

• 53:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, so Gen Z just finished. Or Gen Z finished a while ago, I think it was like 2010 or something.

• 53:06Bill Maher?

  No.

• 53:07Speaker 06

  2012, I think Gen Z ended.

• 53:09Bill Maher?

  Gen Z just began.

• 53:11Speaker 06

  Gen Z is like 97 to 2012, I think. Yeah, Gen Alpha is, is 2013 to 2025.

• 53:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, okay, right. So we're going from when they're born.

• 53:23Speaker 06

  Right.

• 53:23Bill Maher?

  Yeah, right. So we don't really count what they're thinking until they're at least-

• 53:27Speaker 06

  Right.

• 53:27Bill Maher?

  A teenager.

• 53:28Speaker 06

  So, Gen Alpha is 40 million. It's expected to be between 42 and 48.

• 53:32Bill Maher?

  So millennials ended at the end, they're like from 1980 to the-

• 53:36Speaker 06

  1996, I think.

• 53:37Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 53:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, 81 to 96, it depends on which chart you use.

• 53:39Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 53:40Speaker 06

  But there were 80 million millennials and there were, actually, no, I'm sorry.

• 53:45Bill Maher?

  And that's you?

• 53:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, 72 million millennials right now, 69 million Gen Z, 40 million Gen Alpha. So, talking about share, if in 20 years, we're looking at Gen Alpha and Gen Z, the dominant generations, there's substantially, substantially less of them to buy products, to buy tickets, to know who you are. And there's an increasing competition from decentralization of media. So I don't know how we end up with another Ann Coulter, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan personality. You know, and like the Bohemian Rhapsody song. If I go to, if I go to anybody in my town where I grew up with, they all watched your show. It's a liberal Chicago and everybody would put on Real Time and Jon Stewart and things like that.

• 54:30Speaker 06

  If I asked anybody who was on Daily Show right now, they'd say, I don't know. Jon Stewart, like one night a week, I think. And then who are the other people? No idea. I think Jordan Klepper is one of them. Don't know the rest. To be fair, they have more than one host now. But I think everybody is choosing media that represents them like you brought up earlier. And it's easier than ever to get into. Then there's going to be less people. You're talking about, you know, owning a piece of the Mets and I'm like, you know, I might have a big show, but I don't think I'll ever be able to afford owning a piece of the Mets or anything like that.

• 55:01Bill Maher?

  Well, I doubt if they're going to sell it again. I mean, it was a rare thing. It doesn't happen often in sports when a team sells a chunk of themselves. The Mets were in very bad shape in 2010 and they sold 40% of the team to a select group of investors. That doesn't happen. Billionaires sell the whole thing to each other. You know, they don't sell little pieces of it. But the Mets were so fucked up. And they were being sued by the Madoff survivors because they were very, the ownership of the Mets, and they were lovely people, but they were apparently very in with Bernie Madoff. And so they were, they were, and again, this is the New York franchise.

• 55:46Bill Maher?

  New York, this is baseball. There's nothing more Americana than that in New York. And, and yet they could not attract investors. I mean, when I got it, I was like, I can't believe that I got a piece of the Mets. Where are the, where are the like hundreds of people richer than me?

• 56:06Speaker 06

  What was, what, are you allowed to say like, what was the value that they had put on the Mets? Not what you.

• 56:11Bill Maher?

  Absolutely. It was so undervalued. At the time, it was seven hundred and fifty million.

• 56:20Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 56:20Bill Maher?

  Again, these aren't the Royals, no offense, Kansas City. This is the Mets, but that's how much they were shit on at the time. And it just shows the sheep mentality. Like, it got into people's heads, the Mets, there's a horrible, toxic stink on them. Don't go near them. And I was like, oh, I'll go near them. Oh, I'll happily go near them. And again, I mean, when they sold, it was for like, two and a half billion. But even that's way underpriced now. I mean, the Celtics, I think, just sold for six billion. I mean,

• 56:52Speaker 06

  You know?

• 56:52Bill Maher?

  I said to myself, if there's one thing that always goes up, it's sports franchises. That's just a no loser. And then the pandemic came along and made it slightly more, still a winner, but like, it could have been so much of a bigger winner without the fucking pandemic. So you don't think I suffered?

• 57:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 57:14Bill Maher?

  We both suffered from the pandemic. You almost died. I lost money.

• 57:18Speaker 06

  I don't know. I mean, I was sick, but with the age thing too. So I'm a skateboarder. I've been skateboarding my whole life.

• 57:24Bill Maher?

  I know you are.

• 57:25Speaker 06

  Yes. Tony Hawk's fault. He landed at nine hundred, and then every millennial had to get a skateboard.

• 57:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 06

  Now, there's no skateboarders anymore.

• 57:32Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 57:33Speaker 06

  Uh, no kids. Skateboarding, there's not enough young, there's not enough, so there's forty million Gen Alpha. To be fair, like, it really is that skateboarders are, let's say this, I'm saying this in a punk rock kind of way, degenerates. And so,

• 57:50Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 57:50Speaker 06

  when they found themselves in the late 2000s being millionaires, what did they do? Nothing. They bought big houses, they partied, and now more than half of skateboarders are over the age of thirty.

• 58:03Bill Maher?

  But that is the story of every generation as they get older.

• 58:07Speaker 06

  But you need an industry. So like Hollywood, music and entertainment had an industry, sure, the rock stars were nuts. The problem with skateboarding is the rock stars ran the business. So the core industries that made skateboarding big were also running the business, and

• 58:24Speaker 06

  Here we are, and uh-

• 58:26Bill Maher?

  But that is amazing to me.

• 58:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:27Bill Maher?

  That kids are not into it anymore.

• 58:29Speaker 06

  Scooting, scooters. You know, you know what I think, there, there's, so this is where we get into that tariff stuff.

• 58:35Bill Maher?

  There's none of that going down a flight of stairs.

• 58:39Speaker 06

  There is.

• 58:41Bill Maher?

  And wrecking your body on an unforgiving pavement.

• 58:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, you should not get paid for it anymore.

• 58:47Bill Maher?

  You just don't get-

• 58:47Speaker 06

  I think, uh, the top, the top earner in skateboarding off of the sport alone was like 400,000 for the year. And then, uh, it immediately curls down to the top 10, made about 100.

• 58:58Bill Maher?

  Don't you think a lot of it is just, every new generation has to shit on what the previous generation did? And not to do anything but that?

• 59:09Speaker 06

  Well, maybe. The, the older skateboarders think that skateboarding comes and goes in waves and there's nothing you can do about it. But I, I don't believe that's true. It's an Olympic sport. You've got, you're, you're gonna have China, uh, well, actually, I'll only put it this way. I, I, I believe tariffs, uh, I'm sorry, not tariffs, but free trade is one of the principal culprits for the decline in skateboarding. And the proof of that is that in Japan and China, skateboarding's never been bigger. So, one of the biggest skateboard brands, probably the biggest, the premier, it's called The Barracks, shut down in LA. And it shocked everybody. And they're reopening in Japan. Where we offshored all of our jobs in manufacturing and the industry to China. Now Southeast Asia has a massive booming skate culture.

• 59:53Speaker 06

  They even have a reality TV show, which is, it's like Ninja Warrior but for skateboards. In the United States, you got a bunch of 35-year-old men.

• 1:00:00Bill Maher?

  So how old do you think you'll be when you stop skateboarding?

• 1:00:03Speaker 06

  Never.

• 1:00:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's what I say about basketball. I mean, I always have, look at my finger, that's a basketball injury.

• 1:00:12Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:00:12Bill Maher?

  I don't give a shit. Yeah, rebounding, you know, when the ball hits there.

• 1:00:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:16Bill Maher?

  It's fine, it'll get better. Yeah, jams.

• 1:00:18Speaker 06

  That just happened?

• 1:00:19Bill Maher?

  Yeah, about a week ago.

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  Oh, wow. That's great.

• 1:00:22Bill Maher?

  It's great. It's fucking, it's totally worth it. I played last night.

• 1:00:25Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:25Bill Maher?

  You know, I gotta like, I do like, now when I play, like, I make sure I do like a good 40-minute stretch before. I mean, I don't get up, and then, you know, knee pads and, but all the things the pros wear shit on their ankles. You want all the support you can.

• 1:00:41Speaker 06

  I gotta stretch now too.

• 1:00:42Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:00:42Speaker 06

  I gotta stretch now too.

• 1:00:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's a, it's a, you know what? Trust me, bro. Forty is nothing. You're, you're, you're at a great point in your life. It's a great, it's great to be forty and look, you're, you're killing it. That, that's really great. And every, you know, apropos to your thing about feel guilty? Don't, that's stupid. If you live here with one piece of advice, don't do that. That's dumb. Don't give up.

• 1:01:05Speaker 06

  That's the liberal in you.

• 1:01:06Bill Maher?

  Don't give up. It's not the liberal in me, that's the smart guy in me. Uh, don't give up your fucking show, that's stupid too. Uh, keep doing, you know, at, at some point, they might put you out to pasture. Don't put yourself out to pasture. I can name some people who did that to themselves in this business. Who were like, oh, I'm gonna walk away from this. Yeah, good luck. And nobody ever invites you to walk back. When you have it, have it, take, you have a good piece of real estate, just take it. There was a, here, let me tell you about Generation. There's a movie that actually was Johnny Carson's production company made. It was a big movie in nineteen eighty-three called The Big Chill. And it was about how the hippies, the people who were like fucking hippie dippies in like the late sixties,

• 1:01:50Bill Maher?

  when they were like eighteen, nineteen, twenty, right? You know, that, that, the flower power and free love and Woodstock. Okay, you got the general impression, right? Uh, all you need is love. Okay, so.

• 1:02:04Speaker 06

  Boomers had it good, man.

• 1:02:05Bill Maher?

  Right, so like, then this movie takes place like in currently, which was at the time nineteen eighty-three. So now, these people who were hippies are like, you know, early thirties. And it takes place, it's about like these, it's a, it's a, it's a, um, some guys, he lives in the like, kind of, kind of remotely, just out like in the exurbs of, in, I think it's North Carolina. And like all the college friends are coming over. And so there's a lot of reunioning kind of thing. And we, when we were hippies, it was great. There's a scene where like, something happens and the cop, a cop car comes up to the house and, and the guy who's like owns the house and is having all his college friends over and he's just like,

• 1:02:48Bill Maher?

  oh, thanks, nothing, but whatever it was and you, Bob, and then goes, oh, thank you. And he goes back in the house and his college friend is like, man, you were so nice to the pigs. You know, and he's like, dude, I live here now. Okay.

• 1:03:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Bill Maher?

  It's not like we're in college. I'm dug in. I think that was his line. I'm dug in here, you know?

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Bill Maher?

  Like, I have a family. I want the cop to be my friend. They're not all pigs anymore. Okay? Grow the fuck up. And that's like the great conflict of the movie is like, are we still hippies with all that ideology? Some of which was good and some of which was stupid. Or are we just growing up? And you know what? That generation, who did they vote for in 1980? Ronald Reagan.

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  You know, but I hear from you, it sounds like a mix a little bit of the understanding, growing up and being responsible, but also the, you know, come on, do your thing. I guess my question is like, what? Do you have a preference for what the future of this country and world should be?

• 1:03:47Bill Maher?

  A preference? I mean, peace and prosperity and democracy?

• 1:03:51Speaker 06

  Because I feel like you, you, you're with, with politics. You're very in it. And there's a reason you, I, or anybody else wants to be involved in the goings on of the world is because

• 1:04:01Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:04:01Speaker 06

  we want things to be done better or right.

• 1:04:04Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:04:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. It, you know, so I wonder, when I say like things about being guilty, it's like if I have this platform that is influential and I can, you know, like you said, people will listen to me. And I can say, hey, like, I think this is a good way to do things and that can make the world that way. That's why I feel guilty of walking away from that opportunity. You know what I mean?

• 1:04:23Bill Maher?

  I mean, that's great, too. I mean, that's a great motivation. I mean, that's the best motivation. I mean,

• 1:04:30Bill Maher?

  I never try to fool myself to think that what I'm doing is so noble that it's not really because it's doing what I want to do. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it. I'm so glad that it does things for other people. And if you ask me, what is the great joy of my life? I would, I would sum it up by saying, there's this thing that I can do that.

• 1:04:56Bill Maher?

  Enough people feel like I'm the only one who can kinda do that for them. This, I'm the only one who can kind of scratch that itch. You know what I mean? And every week, I'm like, they want me to do this thing for them. And I love being able to give them that gift. Like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna interpret the news in a way that is just different than anybody else does. And it's, it, it, it does the thing for you. And I love that connection. Like, I give you this gift and, and you appreciate it. And that really is the, that's the relationship of my life.

• 1:05:31Speaker 06

  You're, you're obviously an atheist.

• 1:05:33Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:05:33Speaker 06

  Famously. Religiousist, I saw it when you put it out.

• 1:05:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, good, thank you.

• 1:05:37Speaker 06

  I, I, I know, I, I was, I was lapsed Catholic, briefly atheist. Now I can, now I, I'm not Christian. I don't like the word deist. But the future, we're, we're, we're seeing this massive push towards Christianity and like young people are adopting.

• 1:05:51Bill Maher?

  What do you make of that?

• 1:05:52Speaker 06

  Well, one thing I think is true is that conservatives had more kids in the 2000s. I know a lot of people wanna claim these ideological victories where they say like, we've read Bill Clinton. And I've pointed this out for years. No, just in the, in like 2003, there were a couple of studies that came out saying that liberals were having less kids than conservatives. Well, 20 years later, what do you expect to see? There's gonna be more conservative people than liberal people just because the parents had kids.

• 1:06:18Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:06:19Speaker 06

  I do think also that, um, one of the, one of the more interesting trends, however, is that among Gen Z, irrespective of that, there's been a rightward ideological shift among men. And I think this has to do with contemporary politics, movies, games, culture, et cetera.

• 1:06:36Bill Maher?

  And also, men feeling that they were targeted unfairly. There is a lot of toxicity in being maleness. Some of that we can't control. Some of that is just how we're born. We were, we were drawn that way. You know, boys are gonna be more rambunctious in school. They're gonna be harder to discipline. They're gonna have more excess energy. And we kind of made, met, we went, like we do with everything, went overboard.

• 1:07:06Bill Maher?

  And made made it seem sometimes like maleness itself was on trial.

• 1:07:11Speaker 06

  It was like a race to the bottom.

• 1:07:12Bill Maher?

  So it's not, what?

• 1:07:15Speaker 06

  It was it was a race to the bottom of all these different cultural elements trying to one up what was wrong with masculinity.

• 1:07:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah, kind of. And it's so it's not surprising that they would run to Trump.

• 1:07:28Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:07:28Bill Maher?

  They would run to the guy. I mean, it's kind of like, why do cops vote for Trump? Well, who, you know, the guy who's like out there saying they're not the enemy and they're not. I mean, there are things that obviously should be criticized about the police too, which Trump would never do. Because he's always all in on one way, but I can totally understand if you're a cop, you feel very misunderstood and you are. And you understand that you do something that the society needs and they don't seem very grateful about it.

• 1:08:02Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:03Bill Maher?

  And, yeah, it's so it's kind of similar to that.

• 1:08:07Speaker 06

  People, you know, man, there's a there's one prominent cop. I think this is Donut Operator. I could be wrong, so forgive me if I'm getting the guy wrong. But he was a cop and I know I could be getting the guy wrong, but the thing that these these cops deal with that people don't understand is they see these negative stories in the press all the time. And, you know, when there's a bad cop doing a bad thing, let's lock him up, let's put him in jail. But my dad was a firefighter and he told me when I was younger, he's like, never be a cop because of the things these guys deal with, you know.

• 1:08:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Speaker 06

  One day, like you're you're getting a phone call about a domestic violence incident. You show up and some guy screaming in your face, spitting on you, swinging at you. And then you go and see a mother holding her dead son who got hit by a car in one day. And then these people are just, they deal with this stuff all the time.

• 1:08:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 06

  And then what happens is they go to a store where there's some minor altercation and they're not having it. And these people are like, these cops are assholes, man. And it's like, that man just watched a child die and the mother scream and now you're bothering him over some like petty BS at a supermarket.

• 1:09:06Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:07Speaker 06

  You know, so it is pretty brutal. But then I do think, you know, I say this somewhat facetiously, ban the internet, get rid of social media. Because it it puts people in these these bubbles where they only see the bad thing. And I think it's making people go crazy. So we're talking about the younger generation, right? Here's one really interesting phenomenon in the political polarization. In the end of the 2000s on Facebook, the top content was police brutality. And there was one website that was one of the top global websites that only made articles about police brutality. Why? Hit all the algorithmic points. Shot content, justice, anger. And so imagine you're 10 years old in 2010 and you go on a Facebook, maybe you're not supposed to, but you do.

• 1:09:52Speaker 06

  What do you find? BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, mic.com, and they're blasting you with nothing but "black man killed, black man killed, unarmed black man killed." The reason they were doing this was, um, so Facebook found that after around 300 friends and/or likes, the chronological feed becomes incomprehensible. And they wanted to make sure that people stayed on the page longer, so they created the algorithm. That's why if you post "I'm getting married or having a baby," you will appear on the top of everyone's feeds. It's true, yeah, it works.

• 1:10:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  At the time, they didn't do this intentionally, but they created an algorithm that if it got shared more, it got promoted more. And so what happened was, first, these websites like Huffington Post found that an article that said something like racist thing happens would get more shares, so they made more of it. Eventually, a great example is mic.com, M-I-C. It started as a Ron Paul libertarian freedom website. It was trending on the internet in 2008. And then it turned into social justice, intersectional feminism, and police brutality, because that was generating most of the shares on Facebook. So these younger kids who are 10 or whatever are inundated with nothing but this. What happens? There's this famous video where a guy goes to Venice Beach and he asks people, "How many unarmed black men do you think were killed by police last year?"

• 1:11:07Speaker 06

  And they say, "1,000, 10,000." It was nine.

• 1:11:10Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 1:11:11Speaker 06

  And it's because the media, or I should say, social media was propping up select stories over and over and over again. And where it gets crazy is even the same story every week.

• 1:11:21Bill Maher?

  But yeah, but let's look at what's behind that. What's behind that? What it is, is white guilt. There's a certain segment of the left

• 1:11:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Bill Maher?

  that feels very bad about the horrible racist history of our country, which they themselves probably participated not at all in.

• 1:11:45Bill Maher?

  And they are just constantly doing things that they think are for someone else, but I think are for themselves.

• 1:11:55Speaker 06

  I completely agree.

• 1:11:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of self-flagellating themselves about this, the racial issue, which of course, the history is appalling, and the present has problems too racially in this country. But they make it worse. Let's put it just in general, they make it worse. And it's really about how, it's not about actually helping, making any black lives better. Actually, that doesn't really happen from all their hyperventilating. It makes them feel a certain way. It makes them, that's what people have to realize about that.

• 1:12:34Speaker 06

  Have you followed any of the Chicago stuff with Mayor?

• 1:12:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, Brandon Joseph.

• 1:12:38Speaker 06

  You want to know what's really fascinating about that?

• 1:12:40Bill Maher?

  He's worse than the last one.

• 1:12:41Speaker 06

  Oh, he's terrible. But you know how he won? White guilt.

• 1:12:44Bill Maher?

  Yes, yes, I understand.

• 1:12:46Speaker 06

  But wait, it's good. So I actually took the electoral map of vote breakdown by neighborhood, overlaid it with the racial breakdown per neighborhood, and what did we find? Every black neighborhood, their top three candidates were black. Even people who weren't front runners or polling anywhere near, didn't matter. The black neighborhoods did not vote for any white guy or Latinos. The Latino neighborhood, guess what? Latino guys. The white neighborhoods? White guys. Except for one. The college liberal area of Loyola.

• 1:13:15Bill Maher?

  Sure.

• 1:13:16Speaker 06

  They voted for Johnson.

• 1:13:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Speaker 06

  And so even though Johnson wasn't-

• 1:13:18Bill Maher?

  And that tipped the election?

• 1:13:19Speaker 06

  That tipped it. And so people thought there was this white dude that all of the suburbanites were going to vote for, not the suburbanites, but it's Chicago, so it's not suburban, but like the outskirts in the Northwest. And he did really well, but when Loyola, college liberals, was the one area where it was predominantly white that voted for the black candidate, put it over the edge, and this is what you get.

• 1:13:41Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Speaker 06

  Not at all, Madden.

• 1:13:43Bill Maher?

  The, the, living here in California, trust me, the, the concept of liberal in theory. This is something I say very often, people who are liberals in theory. And then you see how they live like terrible to the household help.

• 1:14:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Bill Maher?

  Um, like, consider their assistants, because everyone out here has to have an assistant. They can't do anything for themselves. I mean, I do too, but I never call my assistant on the weekend or after hours. Most people here consider their assistant a 24/7 slave. This is what I mean about liberal in theory. In theory, you're a liberal, but like, how do you actually live your life? And of course, like, very priviliege. And they absolutely hate privilege, but they, their whole life is sustained by the privilege of not being able, having to be practical or knowledgeable about a lot of things which they pontificate on and, and act like they're knowledgeable about.

• 1:14:44Bill Maher?

  And, and also just, you know, like, many homes, like, expensive vacations. I mean, it's not like they are, um, you know, if you really feel that bad about it, switch houses with someone in Compton. Let them live here in your house and you could live in their house and then you'll feel better.

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  This, this is a, a, a part of what I, I call, I call wokeness. Everybody's always trying to define it some way.

• 1:15:08Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:15:08Speaker 06

  But I, I define it specifically as, uh, cult-like adherence to the liberal orthodoxy. And the reason why I say that is because being in media and, and cultural spaces for the past, you know, 15 years, watching all of this, the conservatives like to say it's, it's DEI, it's race, but that doesn't explain support for certain institutions, support for war in Ukraine doesn't explain, uh, the Me Too movement, these are, these are all different things. It doesn't, it doesn't explain, uh, support for Islam particularly, which is the second biggest religion in the world. So it's not about critical theory or anything like that. It's about looking like you're virtuous. So these liberals who live the way you're describing it, want to make sure that as they're seen outwardly to other liberals, they are perfectly in line with what is virtuous and right.

• 1:15:52Speaker 06

  We call the virtue signaling, but it could ta, it can manifest into literally anything. Like, again, supporting the second largest religion in the world. While claiming that they're oppressed, but massive.

• 1:16:03Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, there's so much to get into here. One is the word liberal, very fraught for me because I still think I'm a liberal. I think woke is a different thing.

• 1:16:11Speaker 06

  I agree, yeah.

• 1:16:12Bill Maher?

  I mean, but your example about Islam is completely right. And it's one of the main reasons why the far left started to really hate me is because I call out Islam as what it is, extremely illiberal. That's what's so ironic about liberals being so supportive of Hamas is because you're liberals. And these are the people, I'm sorry, but this ideology, Islam, even in its more benign forms, yes, I agree, most, the vast majority of Muslims, not terrorists, of course, but Islamists, which is the word we use to describe people who are not terrorists, but kind of agree with the things terrorists are doing and are for, that's a much higher number.

• 1:16:56Bill Maher?

  That's many millions of people. And even the rank and file, I mean, most Muslim societies live under some form of Sharia law, which no Westerner who thinks that Hamas is so great could ever live under. Your fundamental rights that you take for granted here in America, you would not have. You know, I mean, all the protesters who are protesting in Gaza against Hamas, they've all been killed. They killed protesters, women. I mean, do I have to say anything more than just, just if it was just that issue, how women are treated? Are you fucking kidding me?

• 1:17:35Speaker 06

  And the narrative is, when I talk to some of these academics, like the anti-woke people, they're like, well, it's because they say that Gaza is oppressed. And I'm like, sure, but they're siding with the second biggest religion in the world, which is authoritarian, fundamentalist. And like, I don't care if you practice whatever religion you want to practice, it's fine. But it's strange to me to claim that Islam is oppressed in any meaningful way.

• 1:17:58Bill Maher?

  Well, I do care what you practice, and I'm fully defend to the death your right to practice whatever religion you want. Just don't lie to me and say all religions are alike. All religions are not alike, and what makes them different mostly is how fundamentalist they are. Fundamentalist means you actually believe what's in the holy book. I mean, there's the Quran, there's the Bible, and they're both full of nonsense. But we have learned to wink at the Bible in the West. Whereas Islam, to a much greater extent, takes it very seriously. I mean, we do not have things like madrassas here where they send kids to school and they just

• 1:18:42Bill Maher?

  learn that one book. That they are not studying anything else in a madrasa. That's, that's the meaning of it.

• 1:18:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Bill Maher?

  Uh, and of course, they're segregated completely sexually. So, I mean, what's gonna be the upshot of that?

• 1:18:56Speaker 06

  It's like a Handmaid's Tale, right?

• 1:18:57Bill Maher?

  It's worse.

• 1:18:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Bill Maher?

  I think.

• 1:19:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, and, and I'm, I'm not Christian and, uh, but I have a lot of friends who are and I don't care.

• 1:19:06Bill Maher?

  Um, but what are you? You said you were going on this before. You were like, I'm not a deist, I'm not a this.

• 1:19:12Speaker 06

  Well, that's the thing like.

• 1:19:12Bill Maher?

  But you're not an atheist anymore.

• 1:19:14Speaker 06

  No, I'm not an atheist.

• 1:19:15Bill Maher?

  What do you believe in?

• 1:19:16Speaker 06

  I don't think God, God exists, but I don't believe in any scriptures or anything like that. I think man is fallible and to write down books and then claim it's the word of God is silly.

• 1:19:23Bill Maher?

  So how long were you an atheist and what did we do wrong not to keep you?

• 1:19:26Speaker 06

  Uh, I went to Catholic school and.

• 1:19:29Bill Maher?

  Oh, well.

• 1:19:30Speaker 06

  There you go. Uh.

• 1:19:31Bill Maher?

  I went to catechism.

• 1:19:33Speaker 06

  Well, I didn't do that. I, at, at fifth grade I left and so what happened for me in Catholic school was they taught me nothing. They showed me a video of Adam writing a brontosaurus. I, I'm not joking.

• 1:19:41Bill Maher?

  I went to the museum in Religulous where they have the exhibit of Jesus on the brontosaurus.

• 1:19:48Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:19:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Speaker 06

  So they were trying to, so they told us that the dinosaurs were too big to fit on the ark and the unicorns were too rambunctious. Not kidding, showed unicorns were dancing and ran away from the ark and I, and I, and I'm like, so, so I remember this.

• 1:20:00Bill Maher?

  That's why they didn't survive.

• 1:20:02Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:20:02Bill Maher?

  I see.

• 1:20:03Speaker 06

  One formative moment was when I asked my fifth grade teacher.

• 1:20:06Bill Maher?

  Can't argue with logic.

• 1:20:07Speaker 06

  Right. So the big bang was, we were learning it, fifth grade science.

• 1:20:12Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:20:12Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Bill Maher?

  Good for, good for you.

• 1:20:13Speaker 06

  At Catholic school. And I asked my teacher, if the universe was in a single point and then expanded outward, is it possible that, I raised my hand and asked this, is it possible that at some point it stops and then comes back in? And she went, I don't know, uh, moving on. And I was furious.

• 1:20:31Bill Maher?

  Why? Who, who does know that, no but?

• 1:20:33Speaker 06

  It's called the big crunch theory and it was, uh, dismissed a hundred years ago. So what pissed me off was reflecting upon it, I genuinely wanted to know what they were trying to teach and they couldn't teach me anything. So what did I do? I went home and went on the internet and read to myself. And so immediately I'm like, fake.

• 1:20:53Speaker 06

  They don't know what they're talking about. The religion is BS. I'm done. And so it wasn't like I was five, I was in fifth grade, I was nine years old. But this is when I was like, when I was like, probably around 12 or 13 is when I was like, this is stupid. What are they even talking about? And like shellfish you can't eat, but they're eating it. These people don't follow this stuff.

• 1:21:13Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:21:14Speaker 06

  But that's scripture. That's, that's, that's not God. And so what happened was I, I read about negative entropy. And it discusses the, uh, I'm trying to simplify as much as I can. Everything tends towards entropy.

• 1:21:30Bill Maher?

  Entropy being randomness. Everything tends toward randomness.

• 1:21:34Speaker 06

  To a certain degree, but at some point it will become uniformity in the heat death of the universe.

• 1:21:38Bill Maher?

  The way it was described to me when I took physics for poets in Cornell University was like if after six months you don't reorganize your sock drawer, it's a mess. That's entropy. And that happens in the universe.

• 1:21:52Speaker 06

  On egg breaking?

• 1:21:53Bill Maher?

  Everything happens toward randomness, you know? And it's true, like you have to, in your own life, you have to constantly be retarding entropy, or else your life is a mess. And some people can live in a mess and clutter and they like it. But that desk, you know, that we've all seen, the, where the tuna fish sandwich is under like three piles of paper, you know, from two weeks ago, that, some people live in that. I can't. I have to always retard entropy.

• 1:22:18Speaker 06

  But so that is negative entropy, which can only exist.

• 1:22:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, what is, so what is negative entropy?

• 1:22:23Speaker 06

  Exactly what you described.

• 1:22:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, fixing it.

• 1:22:25Speaker 06

  Yeah. And, but that can only exist within a greater system of entropy. And so I'm reading this and I started reading about how matter coalesces, you know, hydrogen becomes helium, it fuses the greater elements and things like that. The elements become compounds, becomes, you know, chemical compounds becomes single cellular life, becomes multicellular organisms. I kind of view it like, on top of that, fire, we know it exists, we can make it. And what is fire? It's the releasing of energy from, you know, carbon and oxygen slam together and the energy gets released. And the energy was stored from solar energy, which we view as some type of fire. It's fusion, which we're watching in the sky, but it works similarly, right?

• 1:23:08Speaker 06

  And so then my thought was consciousness exists, at least I can say for myself because I experience it. But if consciousness is a component that exists within the universe mathematically, like in the code of the universe, same as fire, is there probability of a higher form of consciousness? Yes, completely, just like fire can be a forest fire, can be a star, or even a gigantic supermassive black hole. Consciousness exists in the universe as a component of the universe, thus the universe experiences consciousness. So I wonder if God then is not scripture-based, but that there is something beyond our singular consciousness. You get where I'm trying to go with it? I don't know, maybe it's-

• 1:23:50Bill Maher?

  I think it's really deep for a redneck. I really-

• 1:23:52Speaker 06

  I'm from Chicago, what can I say?

• 1:23:54Bill Maher?

  Just fucking with you.

• 1:23:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, it's like, I love the way everybody like takes their shot at talking themselves into what they just really want to believe.

• 1:24:03Speaker 06

  I don't really want to believe-

• 1:24:04Bill Maher?

  I totally respect that. No, I mean, it's a lot easier and probably healthier to have that in your back pocket, like to think, oh, and I just don't.

• 1:24:14Speaker 06

  But I'm not saying-

• 1:24:15Bill Maher?

  But I don't know, but I don't say it's not, you know what? That people have this thing that atheists are dogmatic. No, we're just saying, we don't know, and quite frankly, we don't really get, we don't really care, because we don't think we're ever gonna really know or be able to know. So we just kind of put it out of our heads, but we don't think it's obviously the myths that have come down to us from-

• 1:24:35Speaker 06

  I agree with that.

• 1:24:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:37Speaker 06

  But I'm not trying to say that there's like a being watching over us and dictating-

• 1:24:41Bill Maher?

  No, of course, it's not, it couldn't, I mean-

• 1:24:43Speaker 06

  It's more like the logic that is the universe, is the Einsteinian god, they call it, viewing, you know, our human experience and our emotions are unique to us.

• 1:24:54Bill Maher?

  I mean, I've said this before, but the idea that, and I'm sure the Big Bang Theory is correct, or I guess it is, I mean, again, talking about going on faith, I just, I just think Neil deGrasse Tyson seems smarter than my pastor when I was a kid, my priest. And so I guess I, but the idea that all of matter in the universe, which is just, I can't even go into how big it is, was just fitted to something like tiny, like, and just exploded, like, first of all, why do it that way? It just seems silly.

• 1:25:31Speaker 06

  I think it's wrong.

• 1:25:32Bill Maher?

  And you don't think, you don't believe in the Big Bang Theory?

• 1:25:34Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:25:34Bill Maher?

  What about the show?

• 1:25:36Speaker 06

  The show was terrible. If you take the laugh track out, it didn't work. But let me elaborate. Science is wrong all the time. And so I think the Big Bang is what we know so far.

• 1:25:48Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:25:49Speaker 06

  But there's already theories about the Big Bang may have been what's called a white hole. Are you familiar with that?

• 1:25:53Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  The other side of a black hole. And so string theory, unified M theory. I don't really follow the stuff as much as I was, you know, 20 years ago. But one idea is that the universe is a 12 dimensional structure. And basically what happened with our universe is someone took a piece of rubber, pinched it, and then blew. It's expanding as matter is pouring into it. But that's just one balloon of the universe being blown up in a much larger universe of multiple dimensions. I really don't know. You know?

• 1:26:29Bill Maher?

  I just got word from the Huffington Post. We need to capitalize black hole, but not white hole.

• 1:26:37Speaker 06

  Because one is socially acceptable.

• 1:26:39Bill Maher?

  All right. Well, I'm so glad I got to know you.

• 1:26:42Speaker 06

  I really do appreciate you having me.

• 1:26:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I hope you had a good time.

• 1:26:46Speaker 06

  I know everyone's gonna, they're gonna yell at me saying, why weren't you yelling at Bill Maher?

• 1:26:50Bill Maher?

  I was just gonna say, that's what I love about this show is like, yeah, there's some yelling because we're human. And of course, we're not gonna be there. But it doesn't get in the way of being pals.

• 1:27:04Speaker 06

  I appreciate you having me.

• 1:27:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Speaker 06

  You know, my friends are super excited.

• 1:27:08Bill Maher?

  I'm thrilled. I was thrilled you wanted to do it.

• 1:27:13Bill Maher?

  Enjoy a little of L.A. while you're here.

• 1:27:15Speaker 06

  I lived here for a little bit.

• 1:27:17Bill Maher?

  It's not bad.

• 1:27:17Speaker 06

  Actually, I lived in Westwood for a bit.

• 1:27:41Speaker 03

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this.

• 1:27:50Speaker 07

  He's back.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  I'm older, I'm wiser.

• 1:27:54Speaker 07

  And sharper than ever.

• 1:27:56Speaker 03

  Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything.

• 1:28:03Speaker 07

  Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.

• 1:28:10Speaker 04

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