Ana Kasparian | Club Random with Bill Maher

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Speaker 3 Oh, you're gonna get me in trouble. You can get me in trouble, Bill.

Speaker 1 You can get me in trouble. Why? There's no trouble for you.
Your life is trouble. Club randomly.
Take a little bit of

Speaker 1 TikTok for getting this information.

Speaker 3 No, it's not TikTok. I'm

Speaker 1 very well read on this.

Speaker 1 And that is here. Hello.

Speaker 1 Dan, I have everything I need. Hi.
Hi.

Speaker 1 So nice to meet you.

Speaker 1 Good for you. I dress up too.

Speaker 1 You look good. I do.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I'm not going to start a big fight about it.

Speaker 1 Well, as I always say, when people say that there should be a Chiron for your age,

Speaker 1 that's what I really, really mean.

Speaker 1 You know, if I was 35 and I walked in and be like, oh my God, were you in a fire?

Speaker 3 You actually look younger in person, to be honest.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 I think it's the setting. This room is very magical to me, and I feel, obviously, it's a very immature room.
I like it. Yeah, I'm glad you do.
Do you have a room like this in your house? I don't.

Speaker 1 Something that's like weird and just where nothing, where you put everything that didn't fit anywhere else?

Speaker 3 I mean, no. I'm actually pretty

Speaker 3 meticulous about how I design my place. It's very feminine, though, so you got to give my husband a lot of credit for handling it well.

Speaker 1 I have pictures of my house, which is next door.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't come here. I mean, I wouldn't live here.
I'd come here, but I wouldn't live here.

Speaker 1 And it was owned by a woman before. And oh my God, the difference.
It just speaks to, you know, men are from Mars, women are from being a member of that place. Very much so.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is true and also not true. I think we accent that so much that we forget that, no, like, there's a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 I certainly know that when I was younger, I would have done better with women if I wasn't just so, oh my God, they're girls and girls are sexy and great.

Speaker 1 And if I just was like, no, like, this is a human. Like,

Speaker 1 there's a commonality that

Speaker 1 you're so obsessed with the excitement that you miss.

Speaker 3 The big issue is men and women just communicate so differently, right? Like, it's pretty inherent. So

Speaker 3 we want event. Women want event.
We don't want want to hear your solutions to our problems, right?

Speaker 1 It's event, yeah.

Speaker 3 So yes, when we're like being vulnerable and opening up about something we're going through, the last thing we want to hear is unsolicited advice. We just want you to listen.

Speaker 3 So, but men are different. Men want to.

Speaker 1 Right. And that is one reason I've never gotten married.

Speaker 1 I could not do that. Yeah.
I just, I feel the, and by the way, not every woman feels that way. Like, if you really put it to a woman and and say,

Speaker 1 if I just fix this, would you be good with that?

Speaker 1 Because, like, certainly I couldn't when I was younger, but like, as I got older and more successful, it's like I've learned one important lesson in life.

Speaker 1 If you throw money at a problem, it usually goes away.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's pretty true.

Speaker 1 Usually. Usually, yeah.
Not emotional stuff, but like a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 3 Money does solve a lot of issues, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 If I just threw money at this problem and made it go away, would that be okay if I just fixed this?

Speaker 3 If you front load the, I'll pay for it, don't worry about it anymore. Well,

Speaker 1 but not just that. I mean, not just paying, but also, you know,

Speaker 1 manly stuff.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 of the thing you're talking about, I feel like the classic cliché is bitching about the boss.

Speaker 1 And I feel like if I could say to a woman, listen,

Speaker 1 you bitch about this every night.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to hire someone to kill him oh i like that

Speaker 1 exactly i'm just going to fix this uh and then i don't have to listen to you talk about it yeah and i'm gonna fix it i i it can be done i mean i i know good people

Speaker 1 reliable people people who are not gonna get carried away and just handle it yeah but what about you do you ever feel like you just want to like

Speaker 3 rage about something to someone you don't want any solutions you don't want any advice.

Speaker 1 Yes, I call that my audience. That's true.
That's true. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I mean, I don't, I don't want to rage.
I feel like I'm the anti-rager, even though I am very critical, obviously, of both sides and

Speaker 1 love my job and doing that.

Speaker 1 But rage, I'm trying to get the rage down and the mental part down. And, you know, I mean, it's Thanksgiving.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, my message last week on our last show show this season and every Thanksgiving really for the last five years has been

Speaker 1 I'm in the talk to them wing of the Democratic Party. I'm not in the cut your people off.

Speaker 1 Right. Don't cut them off.
And, you know, I have friends

Speaker 1 who, you know, are not on that side of it and didn't like what I said.

Speaker 3 Did they cut you off?

Speaker 1 Well, that's such an interesting issue.

Speaker 1 One relationship is that's in the balance. I mean, you know, it was.

Speaker 3 And that's not a real friend.

Speaker 1 Like, well, I mean, we weren't close. I mean, I'm talking like it was Jimmy Kimball.
I mean, I said it publicly, and I like Jimmy a lot.

Speaker 1 And his wife wrote that thing

Speaker 1 that said, you know, she did lose family members. She wrote them before the election and said, here's 10 reasons why you just can't vote for Trump.

Speaker 1 And then some of them, you know, just didn't follow that. And I was as kid gloved as I could.
And I see they're mad at me. And I'm sorry.
I mean, I was

Speaker 1 being,

Speaker 1 again, as respectful as I could,

Speaker 1 but I don't agree with that point of view. And since she went public with it, it wasn't out of school for me to go public with it.
I love Jimmy. I've always have.

Speaker 1 I don't know him that well, but he's a great guy. And we have a connection.
Like we were both fired by ABC

Speaker 1 and he took my, I had that time slot. So like, it's so interesting.
The same ABC, I mean, Disney executive, Candace, both. It's interesting the connections.

Speaker 1 And so, I hope we're friends forever, but I don't know. You know, these,

Speaker 1 the liberals and the woke, that's a schism. It just is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I would say that the time of my life where I was the most miserable was probably 2015 through 2019.

Speaker 3 Before the pandemic. It was before the pandemic.
I mean,

Speaker 3 the pandemic was better for you.

Speaker 1 It was a little bit better.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, actually, I hate to admit it, but things did get better for me during the pandemic.

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, I get to work from home.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm exhausted. I'm burnt out.

Speaker 1 That didn't put pressure on the marriage because lots of people. No, no.
Lots of people said that. People broke up because it's like, oh, I got to look at your ass all day.
I didn't bargain for that.

Speaker 3 That wasn't at all an issue with us.

Speaker 3 It did kind of start to be. So my husband was a bartender when the pandemic hit.
And so he obviously got laid off right away, which I was, you know, understanding about.

Speaker 3 I think what started to kind of get in between us, although not to the point where it became a problem, was where I felt like I was working all the time, even though I was working from home. And

Speaker 3 he was a bartender. So like he doesn't really have any other options other than making a career change.
Of Of course. So finally got to a point where I was like, you need to make a career change.

Speaker 3 And I'm glad I did that, even though it was difficult for me to do because like being the nagging wife is not my thing.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 But he

Speaker 3 was understanding about it. And he then pursued what I think he was always meant to do, which is

Speaker 3 he's the head baseball coach at a school. And he was a professional baseball player prior to that.

Speaker 3 When his baseball career ended, that was when he came out to LA and started kind of like working at restaurants and stuff to figure out what do I want to do next. And then he got comfortable.

Speaker 3 You know, I think that happens to a lot of people. So COVID was

Speaker 3 like a bit of a crisis that we took as an opportunity to move forward in life in certain ways, if that makes any sense.

Speaker 1 This sounds like the kind of thing.

Speaker 1 I never got married, but I've never been a person. I think people have this misconception that I'm anti-marriage.
I'm only anti-marriage for me.

Speaker 1 I get it because I see so many of my friends who are married. And of course, most marriages do fall apart in some way.

Speaker 1 But I also have known plenty of people who have great ones and would be really lost without their spouse. And like some people, they're just their nature is to

Speaker 1 be in a partnership. True.
You know, it's a two-man, it's a seesaw thing. That's not me.
Yeah. I'm a lone wolf.
Always have been.

Speaker 3 If you know yourself and that's what you like, then go for it.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 life is social. It's very social, but ultimately I'm a lone wolf.

Speaker 1 But this sounds to me like what a marriage should be like. He

Speaker 1 not nagging, but when you need that person

Speaker 1 to,

Speaker 1 you know, you're on this teeter-totter together to get things even and balanced. They're there to do that.
Totally. And that's great.
I mean, if you're of that personality, I think most people are.

Speaker 1 Most people are always looking for, you know, complete me, and some of that is cliche, but some of it is kind of true. I've seen people who like were incomplete.

Speaker 3 Definitely. I didn't realize I was incomplete until I met him.
And there are qualities of his that I think I've adapted for the better. So for instance,

Speaker 3 he's just such a kind-hearted person who sees the good in everyone. And so when I talk about the period of my life when I was the most miserable, I wasn't able to see the good in everyone, right?

Speaker 3 And so I was very much in the mindset of

Speaker 3 who you vote for demonstrates what your values are.

Speaker 1 And if I have determined that the person you voted for is a bad actor or immoral, that means you're bad and you're immoral.

Speaker 3 And it is a terrible place to be where you think half the country is awful.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what my theme was Friday. And,

Speaker 1 you know, so

Speaker 1 I was disappointed that,

Speaker 1 you know, I said about the thing, again, trying to be respectful, she had said I sent my relatives a letter with 10 reasons you should not vote for Trump. And I, first of all, said,

Speaker 1 10, I could think of 100.

Speaker 1 But, like, to me, a better exercise, I mean, this is someone who votes Democratic,

Speaker 1 a better exercise would be write a letter to yourself, 10 reasons why you might imagine those 77 million Americans could not vote.

Speaker 1 But I want to get back to this husband thing

Speaker 1 just for a second.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I'm very interested in this.

Speaker 1 It's just endlessly endlessly fascinating to me, like how different people do it, you know, and how they make it. Well, when we do it real well, I'll tell you that.

Speaker 1 Well, please,

Speaker 1 this is a family show. Oh, no, it's not.
It's club renting. What the fuck am I talking about? I'm drinking and taking drugs and swearing.
It's not a kid show at all.

Speaker 1 And kids, by the way, it would not be the worst message, kids, if you're going to fuck, do it well. Do it well.
Do it well. Remember the song? Give it your all.
Doing it, doing it. Doing it well.

Speaker 1 You do, remember that? Of course I I do.

Speaker 1 That is the single best sex song ever.

Speaker 3 It is pretty sexy.

Speaker 1 It's all called Jesus. Yes.

Speaker 3 It's actually, man, they don't make music like that anymore.

Speaker 1 They don't make that one anymore. They certainly don't.
Yep. And

Speaker 1 it was so sexy. And then when he got to the part when he says,

Speaker 1 I was raised out in Queen. She was from Brooklyn or it was made the other way.
I was like,

Speaker 1 what does that happen?

Speaker 1 It's so sexy. And then we have to talk about what borough we're from.
It just always cracked me up. I know.
Yeah, it's like the beat of that sort.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the woman who's like singing in a sultry way and moaning at the same time.

Speaker 1 So sexy. Oh, and the lyrics.
I mean, they're dirty without being like.

Speaker 1 He's got some that are like, trust me, would not win

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 now man of the year on it.

Speaker 3 No, definitely not. Definitely not.

Speaker 1 But this one doesn't tip over into that. Right.

Speaker 1 But, see, your dynamic sounds to me like Lifeguard.

Speaker 3 Oh, tell me more. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 Lifeguard the movie?

Speaker 3 I didn't see that.

Speaker 1 Of course you didn't. It was from 1976, and I saw it when I was 20.
Why you would have seen it, there's no reason. But there's a movie, and I did like it when I was 20.

Speaker 1 Sam Elliott, do you know who that is? The actor? No. No, Sam Elliott?

Speaker 3 I'm not great with movies and pop culture, which is hilarious because I started my career as an entertainment actor.

Speaker 1 Sam Elliott, you would recognize him.

Speaker 1 He's now on Landman. He plays Billy Bob Thornton's dad.
He looks like he's a million years old.

Speaker 1 But in 1976, he was young and hot and he played lifeguard. And the lifeguard was this guy.
He's a lifeguard.

Speaker 1 But now he's 33.

Speaker 1 And he goes to his 15-year high school reunion. And he meets up with Ann Archer, Scientologist.
We'll leave that out of it.

Speaker 1 Hottie of her day. And, you you know, kind of reconnects.
But she doesn't want him to be a lifeguard, which is kind of like a bartender, you know. But he's good at it.
And he saved lives.

Speaker 3 He was good at bar. He made a mean martini.
I will say that.

Speaker 1 Sometimes you do kind of save lives. I mean, you do talk to people.
And I mean,

Speaker 1 it's a great job.

Speaker 1 But she wants him to like grow up because, you know, 30, if we're going to be together, so he's got to decide, well, the chick wants me to be a Porsche dealer, put on a tie and like be with the man.

Speaker 1 But I like being out in the sun and just

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 all I could say is he went back to the lifeguarding thing, but you could be the Porsche dealer and that's fine too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, look, for me,

Speaker 3 like what I get out of my marriage is

Speaker 3 it's emotional, right? It's it's more than just, oh, what does he do for a living? And you got to get along with the person. You have to look forward to seeing them at the end of the day, right?

Speaker 3 And he's my best friend, at the end of the day, he's my best friend, you know? And when I'm at my lowest, he's the only person that can kind of like lift me back up, you know? He just gets me.

Speaker 3 And more importantly, I need a guy who, A, is not,

Speaker 3 I don't know, sensitive to the idea that his wife is successful in her career, right? Like there are people.

Speaker 1 And you're very successful now. I'm okay.
I'm doing well. Oh, you're doing very well.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 1 You're at Club Random. That's true.
No, you're everybody.

Speaker 1 everybody everybody wants you as a you know you're a podcast star thank you that's a good thing to be in in this day and age i mean i'm in podcasting but also obviously television and like is there even going to be television in three years

Speaker 3 i mean i mean not in the way that we traditionally think of it right and i think that's a good thing i think it's a right well uh i mean i did buy this house i mean

Speaker 3 i don't know if it's a good thing you made a smart move i mean i think you saw the writing on the wall and it's better to have, you know.

Speaker 1 Look, I'm,

Speaker 1 we are both what they call content.

Speaker 1 Let them, let the other people figure out where the content goes. It's not my job.
Okay.

Speaker 1 The content, I mean, where it goes. I'm the content.

Speaker 1 The other people will figure it out. There'll be a market for the content.
That I know.

Speaker 1 So you can put it on streaming, you can put it in your pants, you can put it in the theater, you could, whatever you're going to do, you could directly into their brain.

Speaker 1 AI could could just tell you what I'm thinking. I don't know what the fuck it is going to be.
But I don't think AI can do exactly what we do.

Speaker 3 I don't either. I mean, I am worried about AI when it comes to large swaths of the American population because their jobs will be replaced with AI.

Speaker 1 It seems like we're sailing toward this iceberg. Totally.

Speaker 1 And everyone is sort of pretending that's not what's going to happen, even though there are people in the industry itself who are saying, no, this is,

Speaker 1 you know, it can do 30 to 40% of the coding jobs right now.

Speaker 3 So like, I mean, already so many coders are losing their jobs in Silicon Valley, which is like the most ironic thing in the world.

Speaker 1 So ironic.

Speaker 3 Right? Like the first to go are the workers who helped kind of foster this new technology.

Speaker 1 And also the kind of pretenders of the left who are like, care about the people, the marginalized people as we should.

Speaker 1 But then it was like, but, you know, that's, I can say that because like my jobs are safe. You know, it's not going to to come from my job.
I'm like, I went to college. Okay, I have a degree.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I mean, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 3 That's such a great point.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit. It's my job.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 3 I mean, that's known as the professional managerial class, right?

Speaker 1 And so, yeah.

Speaker 3 And so they have,

Speaker 3 you know, thought that they've been safe.

Speaker 3 But meanwhile, in the background, you have new technology being developed that's going to make their positions totally antiquated, irrelevant, unnecessary.

Speaker 3 Which, you know, middle management, I don't,

Speaker 3 my heart doesn't necessarily break for them, but my heart does break for the country, right, overall. Because I think

Speaker 3 if we don't find solutions to this, middle management is not yeah, I don't think people are shedding tears for middle management.

Speaker 1 No offense to the middle management managers I do. Middle management does not pull on the hard streets.
Right, exactly. Ukrainian orphan or, you know,

Speaker 1 yeah, you're right. Or, you know,

Speaker 3 truck driver.

Speaker 3 Like, i worry about the drivers like they're gonna be out of a job soon so what's the plan and that's the thing that worries me because i look at the political landscape and i think you and i the one area where i think we have a lot of agreement is where we are willing to be critical of the democratic party i'm obviously also critical of the republican party

Speaker 3 neither party seems competent for the moment that we're in no and that's terrifying i agree yeah it's absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 It reminds me of the,

Speaker 1 I'm sure you watch the World Series every inning. Oh, definitely.
But there was one 18-inning game, which is very long.

Speaker 3 That was the Dodgers and...

Speaker 1 Yes, the Dodgers and the Blue Jays. Right.

Speaker 1 And that's twice as long. It's nine extra innings, a whole nother game.
And it's like, nobody scored in those extra innings.

Speaker 1 It was like, wow, this is there for the taking for one of you teams to win this game, which was tip the series to you, and nobody could do it.

Speaker 1 And I was like, that is exactly what the Republicans and the Democrats, I mean, the Republicans, when they came into office, they so had the wind at their back.

Speaker 1 All they had to do was not get drunk with power

Speaker 1 and fuck it up. And of course, that's exactly...

Speaker 1 And I... don't think his instincts about fixing this and this and this and this are wrong always.

Speaker 1 There is lots of shit that needs fixing and some he's fixed great in my view, like did better in the Middle East than anybody had done,

Speaker 1 got NATO to pay for shit,

Speaker 1 colleges out of control, yes. But of course, almost everything, the way he does it, it's just a disaster.

Speaker 1 I agree with you on NATO,

Speaker 1 and it's unnecessary, doge. You know, it's like

Speaker 1 just unnecessarily assholish to a problem that if you had just,

Speaker 1 you know, handled it in

Speaker 1 just a more humane, human,

Speaker 1 farsighted way, you'd have the people behind you, and now you're starting to lose them. Oh, starting.
Because of the economy. Yes.

Speaker 1 And even with immigration, even though they agreed with him, they don't like the

Speaker 3 They don't like watching day laborers at Home Depot parking lots get snatched up by masked men, right? Like they don't like seeing

Speaker 3 parents get snatched up by ICE agents as they're dropping their kids off to school. Like, I just,

Speaker 3 look, I think Biden really did mess up when it comes to immigration. 100%.

Speaker 3 So I actually really sympathize with people who were furious over what happened with immigration under the Biden administration.

Speaker 3 At the same time, I don't think most Americans who are who think of themselves as hardliners on immigration realize just how integrated

Speaker 3 undocumented immigrants are in our society, right? And I'm talking about people who have been here for literally decades, who do pay taxes, but don't get the benefits that come along with the

Speaker 3 various public programs that they're funding through their taxes. And there needs to be a better solution than swinging from one extreme to another on this topic.

Speaker 3 And the thing that I am the most furious about, honestly, is Congress. Congress is the most useless branch of our government at the moment.
I'm not saying it's unnecessary.

Speaker 3 I think it's an important part of our government. But over the last few decades, we both know Congress has ceded much of their power to the executive branch as it pertains to foreign policy.

Speaker 3 Big mistake.

Speaker 1 That's been going on for 70 years. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Congress is supposed to be the most important.

Speaker 1 branch of government. I mean, that's what the Constitution says.

Speaker 3 They're the ones who are supposed to write the bills and pass the bills.

Speaker 1 Power of the purse, power of declaring war. The president is

Speaker 1 just the guy who is supposed to carry it out. He executes it.
He's the top executive. But he's like, you know, you hire a CEO to run your company.

Speaker 1 But he's not the dude. He's carrying out what the guy who owns Starbucks is his vision.
Right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 That is, as you say, completely lost. And the only,

Speaker 1 I mean, I I did a piece a few weeks ago about the Supreme Court being the last line of defense here. We're going to see what they're going to say about tariffs, like whatever you think about tariffs.

Speaker 3 They have to strike it down.

Speaker 1 It's a congressional thing. Yes.
And so, like, these kind of basic things, if,

Speaker 1 and I'm not. completely pessimistic about how the court is going to rule.
The Supreme Court does have the ability to

Speaker 1 surprise you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And And sometimes they take a hip pill and get it right. Not always, and they have certainly gotten a lot more conservative over the years.
But

Speaker 1 I'm not going to like, well, with all Trump stuff, I said this time, I'm not going to do it like the first term. Like, when it happens,

Speaker 1 maybe I'll get upset if it's the thing. that is worth getting upset about and talking about and critiquing and I never pull a punch on that.
But,

Speaker 1 you know, I don't give a shit about the ballroom. And if you do, it's just an indication that Trump is much too part of your personality.
It doesn't matter. First of all, it doesn't cost you anything.

Speaker 1 That's the number one thing.

Speaker 3 That's the most important thing.

Speaker 1 Even if it did, it's a good thing. It's around it.
It's like two seconds of the interest we pay every day.

Speaker 3 But can we talk about like

Speaker 3 the feminine qualities of our president for a minute? Okay.

Speaker 1 Like everything is so gay.

Speaker 1 it is i mean the uh no offense barrooms and gold gold everything oh the the mill work on the walls and everything he's so proud of it it's it's a very butch administration and and heg seth with the you know we want uh no gays we just want well-shaved strapping young men in perfect happy

Speaker 1 the whole thing is is it's amazing it really is it's very gay ever watch one of those hallmark christmas movies and just think, how did this get made?

Speaker 1 But no matter how bad the movie is, it takes a team. And when it comes to building such a team, you need to hire the right people.
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Speaker 1 Love the night?

Speaker 2 Reach for Zinn After Dark, a limited cocktail-inspired series for those who get up when the sun goes down.

Speaker 2 Try Zinn's Mojito, spiced cider, and espresso martini nicotine pouches. Find them at select retailers.
Available while supplies last. Zinn After Dark.
Bring on the night.

Speaker 2 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 3 But, you know, so you have this going on on the federal level, which is bad enough.

Speaker 3 But as you and I both know as Californians, we get a double whammy of experiencing the incompetence of leadership in our state.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 I feel like I find myself in this really interesting position of

Speaker 3 experiencing what

Speaker 3 corrupt Democratic leadership looks like and how disastrous it is. And then on a federal level, I'm not

Speaker 3 loving a lot of what's been happening recently with the Trump administration. No.
And

Speaker 3 I just,

Speaker 3 I understand Americans who have just completely written off politics. They don't vote.
They don't engage. I think that's a mistake, but I understand where that's coming from.

Speaker 1 I feel the same.

Speaker 3 I just don't know how to fix it. I don't know if it's fixable.

Speaker 1 It's not as long as there's like smartphones, but

Speaker 1 because that just is making us ever stupider. And

Speaker 1 I mean, people don't know anything anyway. So, I mean, they've completely lost the thread with education.
But can I tell you, you're talking about California? Yep. I mean, you're from here, right?

Speaker 1 Yes, born and raised. Okay.
So here's a fire story.

Speaker 1 Like in January when the fire hit,

Speaker 1 Matt Gates was a scheduled guest. I think it was January 7th.
And he drove through the fire to get here to keep the booking. I mean, I've had people cancel bookings for nothing.

Speaker 1 And then we chatted here right up until the evacuation order came. No way.

Speaker 1 Good for him.

Speaker 3 That's actually really impressive.

Speaker 3 No, but seriously.

Speaker 1 Well, my catch line is always, everybody's a monster till you talk to them. Yeah.
And then there are certain things you're obviously going to still disagree about.

Speaker 1 I mean, Laura Trump was here like last show we did. And

Speaker 1 as all these shows with the Republicans,

Speaker 1 I mean, they take their beating like a man. They never ever like get upset when we go back.
And I mean, there must have been six to eight major things that I just pushed back on, you know,

Speaker 1 and two minutes later we're laughing. And

Speaker 1 there's a way to do it where you just cannot expect, you just can't have that attitude of you must come come around to my way of thinking or you're dead to me, unfriend you, cut you off, no thanksgiving for you.

Speaker 1 It just doesn't work. Even if it was the right thing to do, which it is not, because you are not God and you don't know what the answer is, and again, Imagine 10 reasons why they think differently.

Speaker 1 People are different. They grew up in different parts of the country.
They have a different thing that was put in their head as a child, different personalities. A lot of politics is your personality.

Speaker 1 People are sometimes just born square. You're a square.
What party are you going to be? You're going to be in the square party.

Speaker 1 You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's just, to hate them for that is just, it's cuckoo.

Speaker 3 I mean, I hate, I don't, there's very few people that I hate. I think I can maybe name one.

Speaker 3 But for me, it's about a person's actions and whether or not they are wittingly hurting others and totally okay with that. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 That's a good standard. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I love political debate. I really do.

Speaker 3 And I forget oftentimes when I'm engaged in a passionate, you know, political debate that not everyone thinks the way I do because I'm able to get as fiery as we need to as we're arguing.

Speaker 3 But once the debate's over, it's over, right? We just had a policy debate.

Speaker 3 Like it doesn't, just because we have different points of view doesn't mean that I'm going to write you off and I'm done with you.

Speaker 3 I've had fiery debates on the show I host and executive produce the Young Turks, you know, with

Speaker 3 the CEO of the company and founder, Jank Uger. We don't agree on everything, but we have this ability to sometimes get into shouting matches.

Speaker 3 And then once we're done with the shouting match, we're done. It's past us, you know?

Speaker 1 And that's good practice for marriage.

Speaker 3 Actually, yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 3 It is totally. Because at the end of the day, you're talking to a human being.
You're fighting and arguing with a human being. And to

Speaker 3 like distill them as one political viewpoint and nothing more, I think is unfair to them.

Speaker 3 And people change, by the way. I've changed, right?

Speaker 3 And going through that evolution has made me far more empathetic to people overall.

Speaker 1 Change is good.

Speaker 3 Change is excellent.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, there's nothing stupider in politics than people who say, well, he's changed his position. Yeah, he was 18.
Yeah, he totally. You know, he got new information came along.

Speaker 1 Flip-flop, flip-flip-flop. You know,

Speaker 1 if it's generated by logic, flip-flop is good. It means you grew.
You learned something new. Totally.
You went with the facts.

Speaker 1 You weren't stuck in, no, I believed it when I was 12 and I believe it now. Girls have cooties.
That's my position.

Speaker 3 It's ridiculous. I mean, also,

Speaker 3 it's okay to change your mind if...

Speaker 3 You won, the policies you want have been implemented, and it turns out the policies suck, and you don't like them. Right? I mean, it's okay to admit, oh, this didn't work out.
Let's recalibrate.

Speaker 3 And that was my big issue with Democrats and California in particular, where it's like, oh, we have done some of these criminal justice reforms, and they've been kind of disastrous.

Speaker 1 So much. I mean, if I just, I could list just the things

Speaker 1 that the left has done

Speaker 1 that they think are helping that are counter to their own goals. They're literally getting much your head is up your ass, you know, defunding the police.

Speaker 1 Which, you know, like didn't help African Americans who usually want more police, not corrupt police.

Speaker 3 It's even worse than that.

Speaker 1 But that's even worse. But they want more police.
It's so racist.

Speaker 1 They think they're being anti-racist, and actually it's being very racist to assume that black people, it's saying, well, aren't they the criminals? We can't have a lot of cops around them.

Speaker 1 No, they're not.

Speaker 3 So a really good friend of mine who does consulting for media, like would send me polls. And the polls were about, you know, black Americans and how they feel about policing and what they want.

Speaker 3 Do they want to defund policing? Do they want to keep the funding levels the same? Do they want to increase policing?

Speaker 3 And I was shocked. Poll after poll indicated, no, they don't want to cut funding for policing.

Speaker 3 In fact, the problem they have with policing is that they don't feel that the police force in their community is doing enough to keep them safe in their communities, which is very similar to what was happening in the 1990s.

Speaker 3 Like if you go back and watch local news reports out of LA, for instance, in the 1990s, one of the biggest complaints from, you know, people living in, at the time it was South Central, now it's considered South LA.

Speaker 3 One of the biggest complaints was, we don't see enough police keeping our communities safe. And so the data is the data.
You can't manipulate hard facts.

Speaker 3 And for me, when I signed on to criminal justice reform, what I thought I was signing on to was we're going to reform our prisons. Our prisons shouldn't be torturing people.

Speaker 3 Prison rape shouldn't just be accepted, right?

Speaker 3 I want this to be more than just punitive. I want to rehabilitate people.

Speaker 3 I want to have a situation in which they pay the price for their crime, but they're also being rehabilitated so that when they get out, they're able to be productive members of society.

Speaker 3 We didn't actually do much of that in California. There's one prison that's been reformed and it's actually showing really great results.
And I hope that that spreads.

Speaker 3 But the idea of, oh, we're just not going to punish anyone for pretty much anything is not what I thought I was signing up for. But that's pretty much what we've gotten.

Speaker 3 And preemptively shutting down, you know, four to five state prisons without really having a plan in place for what happens to oftentimes like violent inmates was a disastrous idea by Gavin Newsome, to be honest.

Speaker 1 I mean, the bizarre,

Speaker 1 just this bizarre obsession with putting women,

Speaker 1 putting rather men or at least people with penises.

Speaker 3 Oh, you're going to get me in trouble. You're going to get me in trouble, Bill.

Speaker 1 You can get me in trouble. Why? There's no trouble for you.
Because your life is trouble.

Speaker 3 I'm supposed to be totally okay.

Speaker 1 There's no supposed to be, first of all.

Speaker 3 Is it bad that I don't want to see a dick in the women's locker room?

Speaker 1 Is that bad? No.

Speaker 3 I just don't.

Speaker 1 I don't want to see a cock in the women's locker room. And you shouldn't, and no woman should.
I mean, this is basic 101. And this is, again, to my point about like...

Speaker 1 If I just list it and I could do it for a long time, the things that they do, because they're so tripped up by their own ultra-orthe

Speaker 1 ideology that they think that that makes them a better person to be so counterintuitive about all these issues like this, that this makes them the good people, that they're way out ahead on this issue, and you're not, and it's not what people want, and it goes against human nature, and it's not helping.

Speaker 1 You didn't, yeah, you want to champion women, and you didn't. You did the opposite.

Speaker 1 I know, because there's the hierarchy that made them uncomfortable

Speaker 1 in many ways.

Speaker 3 When you see everything as a hierarchy, literally everything's a hierarchy.

Speaker 3 Well, then inevitably, you're going to find yourself in a situation where the rights of one group kind of falls by the wayside.

Speaker 1 Right. It's a zero-sum game.

Speaker 3 Exactly. And I don't see it that way.
I actually

Speaker 3 respect transgender people. I do not want to treat them like the others.
I want them to have rights. I want them to be treated with dignity and respect.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 3 At the same time, I also know what it's like to be a woman living in a state where we've decided self-ID makes the most sense. Okay, well, self-ID doesn't make the most sense

Speaker 3 because obviously, as you and I both know, there are all sorts of predators out there who are going to take advantage of that situation. And that's already happened, right?

Speaker 3 So there was that big we spa story. And it turned out that the so-called transgender woman who was allowed into the women's locker room at a Korean spa in downtown LA

Speaker 3 was not actually a transgender person, was a

Speaker 3 person who had a long record of, you know, sexual exploitation and assault or whatever, pretended to be transgender, gets into the women's locker room.

Speaker 3 And I felt so bad because I bought the cover story when it was first reported, but I was wrong to buy it. I should have asked more questions.

Speaker 3 And that poor woman, she happened to be a black woman, who was complaining at the front desk of WeSpa,

Speaker 3 she was dragged through the the mud when in reality, she witnessed this person fondling themselves in the women's locker room. Now, this person is not transgender.

Speaker 3 This is not an indictment of transgender people. It's an indictment of a policy that was not thought through.

Speaker 3 And as a result, there are women who are going to suffer. And as a result, there are...

Speaker 3 transgender people who are going to suffer because people are going to make the mistake of thinking, oh, well, that guy was transgender and this is how they behave. No, this is not how they behave.

Speaker 3 We need to be smarter about these policies. It's that simple.

Speaker 1 So good to hear you say that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Really good. I did not expect that.
Really? Well, in general, you're a lot more reasonable than I thought you would. The fire breathers, you know, are always trying to.

Speaker 3 I mean, if we start talking about Gaza, I think you're going to disagree with me probably. That's probably where we have the most disagreement.
But in terms of the transgender issue.

Speaker 1 Maybe later.

Speaker 1 Maybe later.

Speaker 1 I mean, Because I will definitely carve you into little pieces on that one. I don't know about that, Bill.

Speaker 1 I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 But on this one,

Speaker 1 first of all, good for you for saying

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 I say it all the time.

Speaker 1 It's no shame to say, oh, I believe the cover story. Yeah, I do.
Because the cover story just means that everybody has their own narrative. Nobody pursues the truth on either side.

Speaker 1 You have to work really hard. Yes.
But since it's my job, I do, to get the full story.

Speaker 1 Nobody ever prints the whole, if you read the New York Times and the New York Post, it's like these two, which is, it's just funny to do it. Because it's like, oh, I see what you left out.

Speaker 1 Oh, I see what you left out. Totally, I see what I'm saying.
I see what you left out.

Speaker 1 It's not that either one of you, of course they both lie to a degree, and the New York Post is just sometimes just flat out funny in how they do it, but

Speaker 1 they just omit. Yes.

Speaker 1 But like you sound like, and I say this as a compliment, J.K. Rowling, because this is her thing.
And I don't know if you saw her take apart Emma Watson. No.

Speaker 1 Say, okay, see, there's something that was not reported in the New York Times that I saw. Like, we don't see that.
We don't notice this. This is not worthy of comment.
And it so fucking was.

Speaker 1 And of course, in the New York Post, they loved it. Mm-hmm.
Because J.K. Rowling, brilliant J.K.
Rowling. I mean, not that I've ever read Harry Potter.

Speaker 1 To me, it's a children's book, but maybe someday. Same, you know, okay, but a great one, I'm sure, got kids reading.

Speaker 1 But I just love her because, you know, she just says it, and she finally had enough of Emma Watson,

Speaker 1 who was, you know, super woke and one of the useful idiots, also on things like Gaza.

Speaker 1 And so, like, she, and so, you know, which tells you something that her views on Gaza were just as crazy, I think, as her views on, you know, on the women thing. And,

Speaker 1 you know, J.K. Rowling was just unmerciful.
She was like, well, you know, this is not an issue for you because when you go into a public bathroom, you have a bodyguard who stands outside the door.

Speaker 1 And she talked about how, you know, when I was your age, I didn't have all this privilege that you're always so hateful for. I was home working on the book that made you a star.

Speaker 1 You know, it was, she just wasn't having it anymore.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because you do get to a point where, and I think on a lot of issues, I'm at, I'm at that point, where

Speaker 3 you're just sick of the BS on both sides, right? And you want to cut through all of it. And look, honestly, you're never going to get to the truth if you're only

Speaker 3 relying on partisan media. And that's what I was doing.
I was very much in a bubble. I didn't realize I was in a bubble.
So now it's like,

Speaker 3 I have to do, I have to eat my vegetables.

Speaker 3 To me, eating vegetables as someone who works in media is reading and consuming content that you know is going to make you uncomfortable because it's going to challenge what your preconceived notions are.

Speaker 3 If you're listening to a podcast, the truth never makes me uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 It only exhilarates me. I mean, no matter where it's, you know, on whatever side it is.
Yeah. And what's the problem? You want to talk about a little bit of genocide.

Speaker 3 You want to get exhilarated, right?

Speaker 1 I can exhilarate. I know you're going to say genocide, and I'm going to say, well, you don't know what the word means.
And it's like, if you don't even know what the words mean.

Speaker 3 I'm Armenian. I know what the word means.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
Okay. It's when you try to wipe out an entire population of people, which they didn't come close to doing.

Speaker 1 I mean, they prosecuted a war in which they were attacked, which everybody gets to do.

Speaker 3 Which, by the way, let me just say

Speaker 3 if they were doing, if they were literally going after Hamas,

Speaker 1 that is legitimate.

Speaker 3 That's totally legitimate. But that's not what's happening.

Speaker 1 Hamas hides in tunnels underneath hospitals. You can't go after that.
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Hamas is the bad guy.
If you don't get that,

Speaker 1 you don't get much.

Speaker 3 What Hamas did on October 7th was disgusting.

Speaker 1 Killing.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't make it, I don't at all hold back on that.

Speaker 3 In fact,

Speaker 1 nobody disagrees.

Speaker 3 There are people who are.

Speaker 1 Nobody disagrees. There are people who disagree, actually.
Raping baby. Yes, there are.
There are people who think I'm wrong because Hamas,

Speaker 3 they're freedom fighters.

Speaker 1 What kind of freedom are we talking about here?

Speaker 1 The people see Hamas, the people who hate oppression so much are on the side of the people. And that's not just Hamas.

Speaker 1 If you social justice warriors, if you have any other issue besides gender apartheid in the world that is above that, you're just a joke. That,

Speaker 1 if you hate oppression,

Speaker 1 there is one issue which should be above all because it affects more people, hundreds of millions of women who have basically no freedom in the Muslim world.

Speaker 3 Right, so we should slaughter them instead.

Speaker 3 Which is what's been happening.

Speaker 1 Well, you should prosecute a war to the end.

Speaker 1 That does involve slaughter of every war.

Speaker 3 I think, listen, civilians get killed in wars. I think everyone knows that.
Everyone acknowledges that.

Speaker 1 Especially when you hide behind them.

Speaker 3 But when

Speaker 3 83%, according to the IDF's own data, And this is reported, by the way, I consume Israeli media on this. I don't consume American media on this.

Speaker 3 And Israeli media is super honest, way more honest than our media is. So when the IDF's own data indicates that 83% of the people that they've killed are civilians.

Speaker 1 Because they hide behind them.

Speaker 3 But Bill, do you understand that by killing so many civilians, they are essentially

Speaker 3 multiplying extremism?

Speaker 1 I do understand that. Do you understand that there's very often in the world two very bad choices? And you only have to- I mean, I'm an American American and I have to vote in presidential elections.

Speaker 1 Yes, I do know that.

Speaker 1 You don't have the good choice. You have the bad choice and the even worse choice.
Israel has been being attacked by Hamad. First of all, the entire Arab world rejected them for 75 years.

Speaker 1 They kept trying to make a deal. They kept saying, no, we want it all.
That's what from the river to the sea means. It means we want it all.
We don't want a compromise.

Speaker 1 They've never wanted a compromise. Israel gave Gaza back But did they

Speaker 1 gave it back? But Bill, in 2008.

Speaker 3 Let's say our country was occupied by Mexico, right? We have a bunch of people who are occupying our land, and then they decide

Speaker 1 to warn us. And they weren't occupied.

Speaker 3 Let me finish. Let's say Mexico decides: you know what? We're going to leave, but we're going to control their electricity.
What goes in? What comes out?

Speaker 1 Because they were attacking us.

Speaker 3 We're going to mow the lawn and just like randomly decide we're going to slaughter people because they allegedly threw rocks.

Speaker 3 They have literally nuclear weapons.

Speaker 1 Well, they didn't allegedly.

Speaker 3 I mean, Israel has nuclear weapons, Bill. They have nuclear weapons.
And they don't, and they have the world's military superpower backing them.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, they have nuclear weapons, which they don't use.
If Hamas... No, no, they don't use it, but to pretend.

Speaker 1 If Hamas had a nuclear weapon, how many seconds would it take before they used it on Israel?

Speaker 3 I have no idea.

Speaker 1 Three.

Speaker 1 Three is the answer. Three seconds.

Speaker 3 How do you know that, Bill? Come on.

Speaker 1 Because it's in their charges.

Speaker 3 If they used a nuclear nuclear weapon against Israel,

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure the very land that Hamas cares about would be done for. Okay, well, then they would be martyrs, and that would be a good thing, because that's their death cult view of the world.

Speaker 1 It's a good thing when you die. That's why they strap suicide vests sometimes on children.
The fact that you can't see the moral difference between these two sides always amazes me a moment.

Speaker 3 I actually don't see the moral difference when you have like Basil El Smotrich and Ben Gavir literally talking about exterminating the entire population of Gaza.

Speaker 1 Okay, they're not talking about exterminating.

Speaker 3 And these are not, they are, I mean, the statements are brazen. They're upfront.
They're honest. This is what they actually want to do.

Speaker 1 I mean, the West Bank is another example.

Speaker 3 The West Bank had nothing to do with what happened on October 7th, but they're annexing that land anyway. They're raining terror on innocent people, innocent Palestinians.

Speaker 3 They're driving them out of their homes. Like, listen.
I am willing to admit, because it's the truth, that what Hamas did on October 7th was a fucking atrocity. Oh, wow.
Killing innocent people.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't admit that.

Speaker 3 But you have a difficult time at least acknowledging the atrocities that have been committed against innocent civilians in Gaza.

Speaker 1 Well, it depends on what you call an atrocity. All wars are going to have atrocities.

Speaker 3 A double tap on a hospital?

Speaker 1 All war.

Speaker 3 A double tap on a hospital?

Speaker 1 So when the first responders show up? I don't know exactly what you're talking about. I vaguely remember the thing.
Right. Yeah, first of all, that's an old terrorist trick.

Speaker 1 That's what they do all the time.

Speaker 3 Okay, but are you at least going to acknowledge that the IDF doing that was wrong?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm sure they have committed what we would call war crimes as every army does in every war. Right, including our own, right?

Speaker 1 In every war, including the Civil War.

Speaker 1 I forget who it was who made the good point. Like,

Speaker 1 during the Civil War, a lot of people would say, especially in the South, that Sherman did not have to burn Atlanta quite as badly as he did. I mean, we were pretty brutal.

Speaker 1 But would you also then just say, well, we don't know who the good guys were in that war? No, I think it was the North. I think they committed the atrocity in Atlanta.
Yet, that's true.

Speaker 1 They burned when they shouldn't, and they were very rough on the South. They were still the good guys.
They were fighting against slavery as Israel is fighting to survive.

Speaker 1 And also, you know, they are the front line in the Western world.

Speaker 3 I totally disagree with you on this entirely.

Speaker 3 I think much of the problems we have in the Middle East is due to the enabling of this expansion. Look, it's an expansionist policy.

Speaker 3 If Israel wasn't trying to continue expanding in the Middle East,

Speaker 3 I don't think they would be dealing with the enmity, like the enemies that they're dealing with.

Speaker 1 They've never been trying to expand.

Speaker 3 They're trying to annex the West Bank right now, and Lebanon, southern Lebanon, and Syria, which they've succeeded in.

Speaker 1 These are all places that they were attacked from.

Speaker 1 When they became a country in 1947, they said, okay, we will accept half a loaf. They had as much right to that land as anybody.

Speaker 1 There was a continual presence there since 1000 BC when King David had to kill. I don't care about that at all.
Okay, but it's relevant. You can't.
It's relevant to people.

Speaker 3 It's relevant to... You can't wipe out innocent people because you used to live there.

Speaker 1 Calling them colonizers. They're not colonizers.

Speaker 3 They're expanding and they're annexing land.

Speaker 1 That's what colonizers do.

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Speaker 1 First of all, again, they were willing to take half a loaf. Then they were attacked in 19 Excuse me.

Speaker 3 Way more complicated than that, but it's okay.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know if you know the history.

Speaker 1 I do really well. Really? Yeah.
Tell me the war. So, for instance,

Speaker 1 when were they attacked?

Speaker 3 What were they doing? Okay, so in 1967, when

Speaker 1 that was the first time?

Speaker 3 No, that wasn't the first time.

Speaker 3 But when you say that they have offered land to the Palestinians, land that belonged to them in the first place,

Speaker 3 the whole point of this whole two-state solution was, okay, we'll give you this territory if you promise not to militarize. Without a military, you don't have a country.

Speaker 3 You don't have a country without a military. You don't have a country without borders, right? Without a military, you can't defend your borders.

Speaker 3 So if I were engaging in these negotiations with the Israelis, I would say, listen, I respect the territory that you're offering. However, we need to militarize.
We need to protect our borders.

Speaker 3 To me, that's a big thing.

Speaker 1 But that's not what they ever used it for. Again, they gave Gaza back in 2005.
They could have chosen.

Speaker 3 They didn't give Gaza back in 2005. They left Gaza, but didn't really leave Gaza when they have complete control over the territory.

Speaker 1 Because they kept being attacked.

Speaker 1 Excuse me. Just let me finish one second.

Speaker 1 They could have turned Gaza into a state that was much more like, I don't know, Dubai or something, if they wanted to. They didn't.
Hamas took over right away. They never had elections after that.

Speaker 1 You're right about that. You're right about the elections.
They're a terrorist mafia. Their own population is terrorized by them.
They don't like them.

Speaker 1 All they did was import weapons from Iran, build tunnels, and use it to prosecute this war against Israel. They never used it.
So of course Israel is going to be defensive.

Speaker 1 Their issue was they were not defensive enough, which is why October 7th happened.

Speaker 3 So you're making good points. I'm going to concede to some of them.
Not all of them. But

Speaker 1 I don't even know why you want to talk about this. I know, I know.

Speaker 3 I'll ask you one more question and move on.

Speaker 1 It's frustrating because the.

Speaker 3 My problem is, okay, even if I concede entirely to everything you're saying,

Speaker 3 how about a little bit of ire directed toward Benjamin Netanyahu, who's the guy who facilitated the funding and has

Speaker 3 totally admitted to facilitating the funding of Hamas. Why did he prop up Hamas? Because he wanted to essentially discredit the PLO.

Speaker 1 Okay, I mean, there's all kinds of whatabouts you can say.

Speaker 3 But it's not a whataboutism.

Speaker 1 The very man who propped up Hamas is now saying that he needs to fight them. I mean,

Speaker 1 and now he's also funding Abu Shabaab. Why are you funding Abu Shabaab?

Speaker 3 Who's also, who has ties to ISIS?

Speaker 1 These things are not wrong. It just looks like you're looking for something

Speaker 1 to make a false equivalency.

Speaker 1 This is what I want.

Speaker 3 I want Palestinians to live in their own territory. I want them to be able to govern themselves.
I want Israelis to live in peace and safety.

Speaker 1 Then stop attacking them.

Speaker 3 No, no, I'm going to attack them as long as they're doing what they're currently doing.

Speaker 1 They're doing in retaliation for being attacked. Of course it is.
They've been attacked. They were encircled.

Speaker 1 Lebanon. Why are they in Lebanon? Because Hezbollah was attacking from there.

Speaker 3 Right, in response to what they're doing in Gaza, yes.

Speaker 1 Well, before that, they've had four wars there.

Speaker 3 Was it when they were trying to annex land from southern Lebanon that they were attacking?

Speaker 1 They were not trying to annex land. They were trying to put a border between the country that was continually attacking them.

Speaker 1 If we were being attacked from Canada, I imagine we would want a little border between Maine and Canada. True.
I don't think you would have to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 But while building that border, we wouldn't

Speaker 1 take a little bit of southern Canada.

Speaker 1 No, it's not TikTok.

Speaker 3 Very well read on this.

Speaker 1 Very well read on this.

Speaker 3 I care about this issue a lot. I see.
I do.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let me ask you one question and then maybe we can get off it. Because otherwise, I just want to go.
I want to go have dinner. Yeah, yeah.
I'm not interested in this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not really what I started a podcast for.

Speaker 1 You seem to be itching to get to it. And

Speaker 1 now that you have, I'm not going to back down on it because

Speaker 1 I'm not Jewish, by the way. Oh, I didn't.

Speaker 3 accuse you of being Jewish and then it wouldn't matter if you were.

Speaker 1 No, but I'm saying

Speaker 1 I do this because I think it's the right thing and because I feel like I know the history and the politics of it. I respect your perspective.

Speaker 1 But if you had to live in the Middle East, so tomorrow, Anna, you got to go live in the Middle East, where would you live?

Speaker 1 You can pick one city, any city. You can, you know, as far away as, say, Pakistan, you could live in Karachi.
You could live in Cairo. You could live in Amman, Jordan.

Speaker 1 You seem to love Lebanon. I mean, Beirut's nice when the bombing's not happening and the assassinations have stopped.

Speaker 1 Or you could live in Syria. I hear that's wonderful in the summer.

Speaker 1 Well, we now have

Speaker 1 al-Qaeda terrorists leading Syria.

Speaker 1 The Houthis, I'm sure, would make room for you.

Speaker 1 Tel Aviv, or the West Bank,

Speaker 1 Ramallah, I think is wonderful for like a little,

Speaker 1 in the fall, it gets lovely.

Speaker 1 Where would you live? What city would you live in? And where do you think you'd be comfortable in that dress?

Speaker 3 I'm sure it would not be comfortable in this dress in any of the various Middle Eastern countries that have been destabilized by

Speaker 1 Whitey. Listen.
Are you? You're blaming Islam on Whitey?

Speaker 1 I'm not blaming Islam on Whitey. But what you're saying is we destabilized.
That's why you can't wear that taboo. Did we not? Did we not destabilize? Hold on a second.

Speaker 3 We were funding terrorist organizations in Syria during the Syrian civil war, starting under the Obama administration.

Speaker 3 Did that not destabilize Syria?

Speaker 1 No, what's destabilized?

Speaker 1 There's a literal Al-Qaeda terrorist or something. I'm talking about your dress.
Why? It looks good. I know it looks good.

Speaker 1 You're saying you can't wear that dress in Syria because of Whitey destabilizing? I didn't say that. Okay, that's what it's about.
Okay, great.

Speaker 3 But the United States did destabilize various Eastern countries.

Speaker 1 Are you going to deny that? I went to the dress, and you went right to destabilize. So is that why you couldn't wear that dress? Why couldn't you wear that dress?

Speaker 1 Why could you wear that?

Speaker 1 You want me to talk about jihadism and Islam, but like, why won't you? Listen. Why won't you? I mean,

Speaker 3 why? I don't believe in jihadism, which is why I'm furious.

Speaker 1 It's not just

Speaker 1 the United States just had freaking Al-Qaeda terrorists in the Bible. It's not just jihadism that is preventing you from wearing that dress.

Speaker 1 Are you saying every Muslim is a jihad? I don't think they are. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill.
Okay, let's focus on that. Why can't you wear that?

Speaker 1 Let's focus for a second. No, you won't.
You won't answer this question.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to defend that religion, like that extremist religion at all.

Speaker 1 Why can't you defend it?

Speaker 3 Because that's what this discussion is about.

Speaker 1 This discussion is a very important thing. No, no, it's very much what it's about.

Speaker 3 I'm not very innocent human beings that I don't want to be slaughtered, regardless of what their religion is.

Speaker 1 No one does. Then stop starting war.

Speaker 3 It's that simple.

Speaker 1 Stop attacking Israel. It'll stop.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 But the fact that you can't answer that question and you know that.

Speaker 3 I don't know what the question is. What's the question?

Speaker 3 You keep doing it.

Speaker 1 What's my question? What's your question? Because you don't really want to hear it.

Speaker 3 No, go ahead.

Speaker 1 I will give you space to speak. And you will let me.
Okay.

Speaker 1 The question is: if you could live anywhere

Speaker 1 from

Speaker 1 North Africa all the way to, we left out Uzbekistan, you could live there, Kazakhstan,

Speaker 1 Saudi Arabia, Riyadh. Oh,

Speaker 3 none of the above

Speaker 1 or Tel Aviv.

Speaker 3 None of them.

Speaker 1 Literally none of them. But if you had to choose one,

Speaker 1 you would, so to you, it's not.

Speaker 1 Do you Karachi Pakistan and Tel Aviv, same thing?

Speaker 3 I would figure something out, but I would say that.

Speaker 1 You're as powerful, not as smart as I know you are.

Speaker 1 come on. I have to say that

Speaker 1 you're going to get killed for that for good reason.

Speaker 3 No, I'm not kidding.

Speaker 1 Yes, you are. And for good reason.
Okay, Bill, I'm Armenian.

Speaker 3 I'm Armenian. I have literal family members who currently live in Iran.
I have no love for the Iranian regime. Let me be clear about that.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I left out Turan. Would you like to? Hold on, hold on.

Speaker 3 But let me just say something. Tel Aviv, Trump.
There is so much disinformation.

Speaker 3 Armenian Christians who are part of the Armenian diaspora as a result of the 1915 genocide against Armenians.

Speaker 1 I know it. They're living in Iran right now.
They're going to church.

Speaker 3 They are being left alone by the Ayatollah, as awful as the Ayatollah is. So look, I'm not saying I would want to live in Iran.
I don't want to live anywhere in the Middle East.

Speaker 3 I want to live here in the United States of America, the greatest freaking country in the world.

Speaker 1 You're like a politician. You're avoiding.
No, I'm being as super honest as I can.

Speaker 1 No, you're not.

Speaker 3 No, you're not. 100%.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to be able to do that. No, no.
No, no, no. Because the question is, if you had to pick a city and you're not answering that question, you're doing what people are saying.

Speaker 1 No, I'm no interesting. You're doing what politicians are doing and saying, I don't want to live in any of them.
I want to live in America. That's not the question.

Speaker 1 The question is, if you had to pick, would you rather live in Tel Aviv? Because I promise you, you wouldn't last a week in the other places and you could easily live in Tel Aviv.

Speaker 1 So if you don't think that speaks of a difference between cultures and civilizations, then okay,

Speaker 1 we'll leave it there. But I promise you it does.
And if you had to actually do that, I think you would agree with me.

Speaker 3 I think given my very harsh and vociferous criticisms of the Israeli government, I probably wouldn't feel so safe living in Tel Aviv right now.

Speaker 1 Under this government,

Speaker 1 under this government.

Speaker 1 First of all,

Speaker 1 they have free speech there, so it would not be an issue.

Speaker 1 But that is a side issue. We're not really talking about...

Speaker 1 We'll just say just a person, not you with your vociferous talking out. Just a regular, a woman of your age.

Speaker 3 I'm sure a woman of my age who grew up in the Western world would probably feel the most comfortable in Tel Aviv. I will concede that.

Speaker 1 Wow. Okay.

Speaker 3 But we're having a discussion about which culture we like, when in reality, I'm having a discussion about the value of human life

Speaker 1 and wanting innocent people to live, whether they're Israelis or whether they're

Speaker 3 Muslims in some other Muslim country.

Speaker 3 You know what?

Speaker 1 When I'm bored, I know the audience is bored. So I'm going to cut it there because we've been around that mulberry bush before.
Right. So I don't want to go around it again.
Okay.

Speaker 1 You want to talk about husbands again? Anything.

Speaker 1 Anything else.

Speaker 1 Listen, and

Speaker 3 I am able to sit with people I disagree with. Yeah.
And

Speaker 3 it is what it is. We disagree on this issue.

Speaker 3 I don't think that this issue alone is the makeup of who you are as a person. So I just want to be clear about that.

Speaker 3 I think that we need to be able to have these kinds of discussions as fiery as they are, because this is how we come to a solution or a conclusion. You need the tension.

Speaker 3 I think the tension is a good thing. At some point, this country lost the ability to sit with that tension because that's where we grow.
That's where we learn, right?

Speaker 3 And so, you know, you've brought up some thought-provoking things. I hope I've brought up some thought-provoking points.
I doubt that was the case, but

Speaker 1 I will say this show,

Speaker 1 show whatever the fuck this is.

Speaker 1 This happens,

Speaker 1 first of all, it's ironic because I started this because, I mean, I have a show about politics.

Speaker 1 I have a job.

Speaker 1 This is like, let's do something completely different where we don't have to talk about politics.

Speaker 1 But politics is that for you. Well, especially with someone who's political.
Right. But even people who are sometimes not, because, I mean,

Speaker 1 again, I said if I'm going to do a podcast, it's going to be completely different than real time. Real time, a lot of preparation, this, zero.
I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here.

Speaker 1 I'm high and I'm having fun and I'm enjoying. So like, it does get like this.
It got like this with Laura, not to this degree with Laura, but like it would always go back and forth.

Speaker 1 This one is the biggest challenge of like to get back into a good mood. Like I've never,

Speaker 1 you can do it. Yeah.
I'm having the first time ever I've had a little, I'm having a little troll. Oh, Bill.
It's okay.

Speaker 1 It's okay. It's just, it's just very frustrating.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about the transes again.

Speaker 1 The what?

Speaker 3 That's what the conservatives say, the transes. The left turned on me, the first thing that the left turned on on me over was

Speaker 3 I just kind of got sick of the

Speaker 3 lingo that was kind of being pushed on us and the way that lingo yeah like I don't have kids I don't want to have kids

Speaker 3 and I don't want to be called a birthing person I find it super insulting you know what I mean never will be And that doesn't mean I hate trans people or I want to take rights away from trans.

Speaker 3 It just means this is my preference. So

Speaker 3 AOC used birthing people or birthing person. Of course.
And it was in the context of women's reproductive rights being stripped away from them by the Supreme Court.

Speaker 3 So I'm already pretty furious about what had just happened in the Supreme Court and the reversal of rights that we've had for decades.

Speaker 3 And then on top of that, you have AOC referred to women as birthing people because she wants to be inclusive.

Speaker 3 And yeah, I, you know, had a little bit of a moment where I was just like, please don't call me on X, Twitter at the time. Please don't call me a birthing person.
I'm a woman.

Speaker 1 I want to be called a woman. So you fought with AOC on X?

Speaker 3 I mean, on Twitter? I mean, I just, I didn't even mention AOC. I was just making a point to the public.
Like, this is where I stand on this specific issue, right?

Speaker 3 The terminology that's being used to refer to women. One of my friends who works for a different media organization put out like five different videos condemning me about it.
And I'm just like,

Speaker 3 is this really, this is worth destroying your friendship over?

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 3 This is insane. And you know me.
You know me well. We are friends.
And you know that I'm not transphobic at all.

Speaker 3 I just think the feelings and the concerns and the worries of biological women matter too.

Speaker 3 And I guess it doesn't matter for at least some component of the left. I wouldn't say the entirety of the left, not even close.

Speaker 1 But, I mean, the phrase I've always used, one of my big complaints about the left, has been the one true opinion. There is the one true opinion.

Speaker 1 And when you deviate from that, it's so ironic that people who absolutely hate bullies so much are the biggest fucking bullies in the world. 100%.
And they just want to bully you back into the corral.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and you can't do that with me.

Speaker 1 Well, you definitely can't do it with me. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, I mean, they'll love some of what you said there because, you know, the useful idiots, this this is the thing that they love, and the people who are marching for the terrorists and stuff.

Speaker 3 Bill, you want to go back there?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I don't want to go back there. I don't want to go back there.
I don't want to live there.

Speaker 1 I could live in Tel Aviv

Speaker 1 or anywhere else. They're all the same.
What does it matter? I just want to live. I do love America.
Do you love America?

Speaker 3 I fucking love America.

Speaker 1 I do too.

Speaker 1 God,

Speaker 3 I love America so much, and it makes me so angry that it's not, that our people aren't being

Speaker 3 tended to.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 And I'm not saying that in the context of like, oh, God, we want government to take care of all of us at all. No, no, I'm just talking about,

Speaker 3 I just feel like our country is being looted right now. And it makes me so furious.
I feel like.

Speaker 1 I was reading that this really great article about, and I kind of got this, but he put the meat on the bones for it to me.

Speaker 1 It started out just talking about how the idea of the poverty line, it was based, I didn't realize this, like in the

Speaker 1 50s or something, based on like three times what a family paid for food.

Speaker 1 So because you paid, back then, about 33% went to food. But we're in a very different place now because we only really pay 5%.
Food is cheap,

Speaker 1 but rent,

Speaker 1 mortgage,

Speaker 1 childcare, like this, all these other things. And he just broke it down.
And of course, this is for families, people with kids, and who need child care, the two families, both people have to work.

Speaker 1 Right. But like,

Speaker 1 really,

Speaker 1 like 100, I think it was $140,000

Speaker 1 just gets you to like

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 3 getting by, basically.

Speaker 1 A little better, but yeah, but maybe not even like, you know, big vacation or just like...

Speaker 3 Not in LA.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. That's for sure.
It definitely depends on where you live. Right.
But like the numbers that, you know, we used to think

Speaker 1 $150,000, I read that stat recently that like a lot of people make a, I was like, wow, America's pretty rich. Not really.
Right.

Speaker 1 Not really, because $150,000 with that kind of a nut is not rich at all. It's true.

Speaker 1 It's okay. You're not.
It's okay. And actually,

Speaker 1 like if you make really low money,

Speaker 1 you get a lot of government benefits. But then when you make this kind of money, you lose them all.
So

Speaker 1 you wind up like as close to the bone almost.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 you don't even have to get to 150,000.

Speaker 3 I mean, the poverty line is considered so utterly low that people who are very obviously living in poverty, like they're not making enough income and should qualify for various, you know,

Speaker 1 programs to kind of get them on their feet they don't qualify for them right so i i explain to me the american economy because i don't i don't i never can quite get it why we they take so much of my money right yes it's not like yes talk about those taxes

Speaker 1 whenever i hear like rich people don't pay tax what i i can't remember the last year when i didn't give more than half and i'm not even bitching about it no no no no if it went listen there is now.

Speaker 1 More than half. That's a lot.
More than half?

Speaker 3 There should be a moratorium

Speaker 3 on the discussion.

Speaker 1 And yet still poor.

Speaker 3 But whether we increase taxes or whatever. And look, I actually think that there are some examples of corporations in particular who get like

Speaker 3 they get taxed. Amazon should not be getting a tax refund.
Right. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 That's the thing, is that we're like in the just the rich people that aren't really that rich who get hit hard.

Speaker 1 And when you make hundreds of billions, then you pay nothing.

Speaker 3 It's insane. It's insane.

Speaker 1 Partly because you have an army of lawyers and partly because it's in stocks and things and the tax code is not, you know, Reagan tried to make it simple. It's not simple.
And

Speaker 1 they game the system. That's true.
But like, you know, just don't tell me we don't pay a lot of tax. How can you tell, and I've seen the stats, the government

Speaker 1 confiscate a lot of money. And I'd be okay with it.
But yes, where is it going? Why is there still homeless? And why is there still not railroads built in California? Why? And it's

Speaker 1 just like stupidity and fucking bureaucrats and

Speaker 1 just everybody with their beak at the trough. Yep.
And just

Speaker 1 all this bullshit, and a lot of it does come from the left.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, what's happening in California, I think, is a really good example of what

Speaker 3 graft, waste, all of that looks like. So for instance, if you look at the state of California, people are paying their taxes.

Speaker 3 Okay, our state taxes are super high, municipal taxes, sales taxes, very high. It's very expensive to live in California.
Very.

Speaker 1 State tax alone is 13 or 10.

Speaker 3 It's insane because of what we get in return, which is squalor, homeless encampments.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 Story after story involving audits showing that various nonprofits nonprofits have just stolen the money, have decided to take the money, pad their pockets.

Speaker 3 It's

Speaker 1 safetyism. Yes.
Overregulation, red tape.

Speaker 3 Yes, in California, there is overregulation, especially as it pertains to real estate construction. We need to build more houses.

Speaker 1 I said this to Gavin last time he was on my show and like, oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 you know, like, yes, I'm going to look into the red tape thing. It's just, that is the one that I think is so hard to ever.
It's like they always say, I'm going to Washington.

Speaker 1 We're going to get rid of the waste and fraud. They never do.
No.

Speaker 1 Everybody has their plan, Doge or whatever, Al Gore had,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 we're going to get the lobbyists, we're going to fucking get rid of that. And they never do.
It's that smarmy,

Speaker 1 sleazy mud flow of consultants and like people who just make their living, not really making anything or doing doing anything or fixing anything.

Speaker 1 So just little, everyone has their little piece and it winds up. The people, we pay a lot of taxes and it doesn't quite get to the people or.

Speaker 3 No, it doesn't. That's the thing that drives me nuts.
In California, it's not like we're nickel and diming people. We have funded various programs to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Speaker 3 $24 billion

Speaker 3 in homeless funding.

Speaker 1 OctoMom alone. I mean, remember OctoMom?

Speaker 3 I do remember OctoMom. Is she in the news again?

Speaker 1 I'm just saying. Yeah.

Speaker 1 She got a lot of,

Speaker 1 I don't know what it would cost privately to birth eight children.

Speaker 3 You couldn't pay me to do that.

Speaker 1 There's no amount.

Speaker 1 Apparently we couldn't pay you to give one.

Speaker 1 Right? True, true, yeah. See, I totally understand that, but I'm a man, of course.
I get it, and I never wanted kids.

Speaker 1 There's one thing that's been steady in my life is when I was a kid, I didn't like kids, and I still don't. Like, it never really changes.

Speaker 1 I just don't, I don't want to be responsible for any of that.

Speaker 3 Although that for sure, I don't want. But, like, I don't want to be responsible for any of them.
And

Speaker 3 I,

Speaker 3 I've said this before. I'll say it again.
I don't know how parents avoid violence because, like, because when it comes to my, my family, when it comes to people like-that's true. That's true.

Speaker 3 But, like, I just think about, okay, I'll tell you a story because this resonates with who I probably would be as a parent. When I was in

Speaker 3 fourth grade, I remember waiting for my mom to pick me up. I was at the corner of the school.
And as she's turning the street to pick me up,

Speaker 3 a group of boys from my class pass by me and one of them slaps my ass and my mom sees it. My mom sees it.
I'm a fourth grader. So I'm like, what, eight, nine?

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 3 My mom's crazy. So she like literally stops her car in the middle of the intersection, in the middle, runs out with a rolling pin because she did have a rolling pin in the car.

Speaker 3 And she just starts chasing them because she wants to beat the shit out of them.

Speaker 1 A rolling pin.

Speaker 3 And that was the right thing to do. What year is this? This was...

Speaker 1 A rolling pin.

Speaker 3 This is in the 1990s, early 1990s.

Speaker 1 Why in the car?

Speaker 3 She would threaten us with it if we were acting up.

Speaker 1 Really? The old rolling pin? The rolling pin.

Speaker 3 When I was... that age, obviously, I thought my mom was crazy and I was like very, very embarrassed by it.
But now as an adult Oh, I totally get it like did she catch the kid?

Speaker 1 I Don't I think she like got one like swipe in but nothing crazy But you know luckily because she probably would have gotten a lot of trouble But but Anna if you were telling me this story and it came from the 1960s I would say that's how we did it Parents could absolutely hit another kids,

Speaker 1 another friend, parents, kids. It was great.
It was very much,

Speaker 1 it takes a village. Right.
You know? Yeah. But the 90s, I feel like.

Speaker 3 No, no, the 90s were so different, Bill.

Speaker 1 I feel like

Speaker 1 they would call the cops. Already we were into the call the cops phase.

Speaker 3 There were no cell phones. There was no like, oh, let me get my phone out.

Speaker 1 I know, but hitting another kid with a rolling pin, I feel like we're...

Speaker 3 Not in Receit of California.

Speaker 1 Wow, good for you.

Speaker 1 Well, it certainly isn't that way now.

Speaker 3 No, no, of course not. Are you kidding me? My mom would be in prison for the rest of her life, probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 3 She'd be. Even in California.

Speaker 1 For the rest of her life. Yeah.
Exactly. No, they used to, you know, swat, you know, just, you could swat a kid.
Like, if, and, and your father could be looking at this and be like, thank you, Bel.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that. You know,

Speaker 1 who was getting out of line.

Speaker 3 My mom at like open houses, when this is when I was in elementary school, I'll never forget it.

Speaker 3 She would literally tell the teacher, Listen, if my kids are acting up, I give you permission to spank them.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, mom, don't say that. Like, you're not supposed to say that.

Speaker 3 But she was very much of the mindset. And this was an old school mindset that doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 3 If the teacher says that you're misbehaving, you're in the wrong. Whereas now I feel like if the teacher says the kid is misbehaving, the parent fights the teacher, which I think is a mistake.

Speaker 1 I've always said that.

Speaker 1 There used to be an ironclad wall. You couldn't break the chain.
Your parents and your teacher. And now the parents take the side of the kid.
Yeah, that's where it all went. Oh, it's a total mistake.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But I mean,

Speaker 1 you seem like you're from such a traditional family. They must have been a lot of pressure to have a kid.
I mean,

Speaker 1 it sounds like you're from, you know, what I call villagers, people who have like, what?

Speaker 3 Don't say that to my dad, okay?

Speaker 1 Well, people have.

Speaker 1 Because in Armenian culture, calling someone a villager is like, I don't mean it as an Armenian.

Speaker 1 I don't mean it that way.

Speaker 1 I use it in terms, of sometimes with women like like women who like and I don't mean this as a bad way but like there are women who like like they mate for life mm-hmm you know

Speaker 1 I mean I'll mate for life but not to have kids right but I mean like and that's what I yes I call them villagers like most modern women like no they'll fuck around a little before they but some women are like no we only do it if we are like fucking super serious and that's great I mean not for me but I mean in general yeah it's great if that's your thing.

Speaker 1 But I call them villagers because it's like, not that they're

Speaker 1 living in a village, but you know, it's just the villagement, and that's not an insult. Just

Speaker 1 you're villagers, and I am not.

Speaker 1 I'm a city boy. Yep.
You know, I know what you mean. Yeah, totally.
But you must get a lot of that kind of pressure, or maybe they've stopped. Maybe they gave up.

Speaker 3 What happened with me was I remember...

Speaker 3 Being in high school or college, and

Speaker 3 I went out to sushi with my mom and my aunt and I got my mom

Speaker 3 warmed to the idea that I'm not gonna have kids very early on

Speaker 1 so I just remember having

Speaker 3 to the idea you have to like ease them into the notion that your daughter is not gonna give you grandchildren and that's okay that's okay because when you're sick and when you're battling cancer your daughter is gonna be by your bedside as I've been throughout this past year.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so I just, I don't know, You just know. You're a man, but I know that you probably went through the same thought process I did.
When you know, you know, I'm not really fit to be a parent.

Speaker 1 I don't want it.

Speaker 3 And to be a parent, you need to want it.

Speaker 1 That's so true. Right?

Speaker 1 You have to be willing to basically trade your life for theirs. Yes.
Not completely.

Speaker 3 And I don't want to do that. No, it is completely.
It is completely. Well, you know what?

Speaker 1 It's completely because the parents of the modern era fucked it up and made it completely.

Speaker 1 My parents did not. I don't know where I was yakking about this recently, but I saw this person on TV, a woman,

Speaker 1 it was TMZ,

Speaker 1 I can say it, and she was talking about, they got into some discussion about kids and she said, I wish I could have one hour a week.

Speaker 1 I can't look at it.

Speaker 1 It's just like everything, every day, I never have a minute to myself. I'm packing lunches and I'm doing this and I'm picking them up.
And I just thought, you guys did it to yourselves.

Speaker 1 My parents did not feel these kind of obligations to be around me all the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they and we were both happier for it. You did it to yourselves.

Speaker 1 And you do have to trade your life for your child, yes, if you're a decent person and if you're going to bring a child into the world, but not to the degree the parents of today do it.

Speaker 1 And they didn't make it better for you.

Speaker 1 They ruined two lives. Congratulations.
There's a fucking hat-trick for you and society.

Speaker 3 I agree. I mean, my most fond memories of growing up is when I'd be outside riding my bike and playing with my neighborhood friends for hours on end.

Speaker 3 You know, at some point, you know, my mom would demand that I come home. But for the most part, you know, when I was out playing with my friends, she just kind of let me do my thing.
Now,

Speaker 3 I will admit, like we kind of, even though I grew up in Resita, California, at the time, it was like a little bit of a suburban feel, you know, and it felt safe, even though it it was the 90s when crime was supposed to be much higher.

Speaker 1 But it is the suburbs, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, State of California. Sure.
It was just, you know, working class community. It wasn't like, when you think of suburbs, you think of like beautiful, like

Speaker 3 polished, you know, landscape and everything. We didn't have that.

Speaker 1 You just had a lawn.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. A lawn.
We had a front yard.

Speaker 1 I mean, I went back to my house. recently, like two years ago at that Thanksgiving, probably two years ago this week.
And I wanted to see the house I grew up in.

Speaker 1 And the neighbors who were still living

Speaker 1 there when I was a kid. Wow.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Who knows? That's impressive.
Next door neighbors. Oh, and their son is one of my best friends.
Still, you know,

Speaker 1 from like eight years old. So I said,

Speaker 1 can you ask the neighbors if I could see the house I grew up in?

Speaker 1 And it was completely unrecognizable. Yeah.
They had just, because it was very small. But the neighbor's house,

Speaker 1 which which was the same model.

Speaker 3 Really?

Speaker 1 When my parents bought the house, this is World War II generation people on the GI bill after the war in the 1950s.

Speaker 1 You didn't even see the house. You saw a model.
They built these neighborhoods. And it's like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 You got 24B. It's looked like every other house.

Speaker 3 Yes, yes. That's, yeah, that's the neighborhood I grew up in.

Speaker 3 Track homes built in the 1950s. Right.
You know, each one was like a tiny bit different, right? Like, so each other house, like one looked the same as the next one.

Speaker 3 Not the next one, but the one over, right? Like, so there was a little bit of variation, but not much.

Speaker 1 But the point is, why can't we do that now?

Speaker 3 Do what? Like, we desperately need more housing.

Speaker 1 Right. So why the fuck are we trying to

Speaker 3 reinvent the wheel? Why can't we do the same thing we did in the 1950s? We mass produced

Speaker 1 housing. Levitt Town was? Yes, of course.
I mean, that was the first suburb that it was like, again, they

Speaker 1 no variation in those houses.

Speaker 1 They just mass-produced a suburb. Right.

Speaker 3 Let's do that again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we could. Why aren't we?

Speaker 1 Because we can't even get the homeless.

Speaker 1 The homeless houses cost like

Speaker 1 a million dollars a piece. I know.

Speaker 3 I'm working on a piece right now, an investigative piece on Project Home Key.

Speaker 3 And it is in, so Project Home Key is the

Speaker 3 policy in the state of California to, it's like the housing first policy, right? Like we need to take every homeless person and put them in

Speaker 3 a hotel room that we have converted into an apartment, which fine. I respect that idea if it's done efficiently and properly, but that's not what's going on.

Speaker 1 Hotels.

Speaker 1 Who came up with that? Because the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, that was used for, I mean.

Speaker 3 I think the idea was we have a bunch of these motels and hotels that are like dilapidated. What if we buy them

Speaker 3 and just like convert them to apartment build apartment units, which sounds like it makes a lot of sense, except in practice, it's actually been a bit of a disaster.

Speaker 1 Well, they weren't building apartment. They just put them in the hotels.
I know how I acted on the road

Speaker 1 in hotels all my life. It's just a bad idea.
Hotels do not foster good behavior. They just don't.

Speaker 3 Well, it also just inherently, like the policy inherently minimizes the complexity of the issue in California, and I'm sure other states as well.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry, but if you take someone who is addicted to fentanyl off the street and you just park them in an apartment unit and pretend, as Karen Bass has pretended, we're going to offer them wraparound services, but they really don't, they're going to overdose in the apartment.

Speaker 3 And that's what's been happening. I'm sorry, but the homelessness issue isn't as simple as, okay, we'll give them a home.
No, homeless people, they fall into different categories.

Speaker 3 There are the homeless people who are not on the streets, right? We need to make a distinction between street homelessness and the people who are couch surfing or staying with family.

Speaker 3 The single mother with children who left her abusive husband, but she's staying with friends. It makes sense to help her out by putting her in one of these units.
No, it doesn't. You don't think so?

Speaker 1 No, I could tell you how to solve this, but there's probably laws or bureaucrats or whatever. Here's what you do.
First of all, citizens own the streets. You can't be on the street.

Speaker 1 You can't control this sidewalk. I am a citizen.
I pay taxes. The sidewalk is mine, not yours.
Sorry. No tense.

Speaker 1 We put you in a barracks. A nice barracks, but a barracks.
I'm sorry. You are where you are in life.

Speaker 1 We are going to help you. We are not going to judge you, but that's where you are.
You have have to be in a barracks. Now, they always say.

Speaker 3 What do you mean by a barracks?

Speaker 1 Like, I just want to understand. A barracks is a big room with a lot of beds.

Speaker 1 A shelter, you mean? A shelter, a barracks, whatever.

Speaker 1 But they say, well, they don't want to go there because they don't, they'd cry. Okay, pennies on the dollar.
Hire a fucking security guard for every row of beds and have them. So you're safe there.

Speaker 1 We guarantee you safe there.

Speaker 1 While you're there,

Speaker 1 we also have an adjacent barracks where there's counseling and there's drug addiction,

Speaker 1 people get off drugs and there's food and it's like do that.

Speaker 1 When we think you're ready to go back into society,

Speaker 1 then we'll have people who are trying to repatriate you back into society.

Speaker 1 Do that.

Speaker 1 putting them in hotels or pretending that being on the street is just a lifestyle, which is where they're going to be. No, no, I'm not buying that.
I know, but that's where they went with that.

Speaker 1 Again, another example of thinking you're helping and you're actually

Speaker 1 stupid. You're hurting the marginalized people you're supposed to help.

Speaker 3 Okay, let me just be clear about one thing that obviously it struck a nerve with you and it struck a nerve with me as well.

Speaker 3 I don't give a fuck about your lifestyle choices at all.

Speaker 1 I really don't. Good, I thought it was coming.

Speaker 3 You are not entitled to overtaking a public park.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 3 Because you want to live on the streets. And I know people, by the way, I was part of the group of people in this country who didn't think that even existed.

Speaker 3 Who the hell would want to live on the streets? That doesn't exist.

Speaker 3 No, it does. It exists.
Unfortunately, it does.

Speaker 1 Yeah, cuckoo.

Speaker 1 Most of them are mentally,

Speaker 1 something mentally is off. Right.

Speaker 3 I don't think that comes even close to representing like half the homeless population of California. It does not.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 A lot of people are like one paycheck away. Right.
I agree. You know, you go from,

Speaker 1 well, you go from, I'll have the rent next week, I promise, to, sorry, that's the third time you lied about it. And now you're in your car.
Yeah, totally. And then after your car comes the sidewalk.

Speaker 1 And those people can be helped. Yes, that's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1 Get you someplace warm. Yes.
Where there's soup, okay, and security. It's not that hard to do.

Speaker 1 Whatever fucking stupid laws are in the way of it, if only a politician could come along and just cut that Gordian knot, because it's not that hard to do.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't cost a million dollars per unit.

Speaker 3 So one of the policies that California actually got right and we've moved away from it, unfortunately, is drug courts.

Speaker 3 So the way drug courts worked in California was if you committed a crime, not just simply having possession of drugs or using drugs publicly, but if you committed a crime because of your drug addiction,

Speaker 3 The judge would give you an option. Okay, well,

Speaker 3 you robbed someone in their own home in order to feed your drug addiction. You have one of two options.
You can either go to prison or

Speaker 3 rehabilitation. We could put you in rehab and you can get clean.
You make your decision now.

Speaker 3 And a lot of people, understandably so, and this was the smart decision, would opt for rehab.

Speaker 3 Drug courts used to work. I mean, they worked in California.
Why did we move away from them?

Speaker 1 And I just... You had drug court?

Speaker 3 Yeah, we had drug courts.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, I did a lot of just about drugs. Just about drugs.
Because listen, I don't agree with throwing people, just willy-nilly throwing people with addiction in prison.

Speaker 3 Like that, that's not the right solution.

Speaker 3 But when you give someone who's in the throes of addiction the option, either you can go to prison or you can get clean, they're going to go for getting clean.

Speaker 1 I think I could do a show called Drug Court.

Speaker 3 I like it.

Speaker 1 I like it a lot. I think I have the credibility.
I have the drugs. I love that you do.
I have the drugs. Smoking a joint while we're talking about drug court.
I have the drugs right here.

Speaker 1 And I know a lot about the subject. And I think I'd be a very fair justice

Speaker 1 meeting out, you know, because look, I've never been somebody who thinks that drugs are all good. I don't believe my hippie friends who want to tell me that this is health food.
It's not.

Speaker 1 No, it's not. Yeah.
It's not, but it's not. It's more benign than the other drug I'm doing, which is liquor.

Speaker 3 By the way, I love pot.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Why didn't you say so?

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I wanted to kind of get a feel for you before I

Speaker 1 decided to partake.

Speaker 1 I think we've gotten both ends of it, baby. Yes, we did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I think we hit the gamut tonight. We did.
We did. And thank God we did.
Like, it is almost impossible to leave here not with good cheer. I just won't, you know, even that.

Speaker 1 That was the highest we ever went up, I feel like,

Speaker 1 almost into the Bezos area where you're actually technically in outer space and came down.

Speaker 1 But we still did it. We still did it.
We did it.

Speaker 1 We fucking did it.

Speaker 3 But I'm capable of it. And I knew you would be capable of it too.
Because you're an adult and you're able to.

Speaker 3 Like, let's joust a little bit. It's okay.
We can joust and we can come back from it.

Speaker 3 I like to joust. Don't you like to joust?

Speaker 1 You think you're the first Jew hater I talked to?

Speaker 1 I joke. I joke.
I joke. I joke.
See, I've joke. That's what happens out of you.
Comedians with the joking and then we're coming back, and we're drinking, and we're laughing, and we're funny.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 what do you do for fun when you're not.

Speaker 3 My husband.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look, I'm telling you, man. I like that, huh? Wow.

Speaker 1 And how long have you been together?

Speaker 3 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 We just celebrated our 10-year anniversary.

Speaker 1 How long have you been together? Married?

Speaker 3 So before that,

Speaker 3 first of all, I met him at a club.

Speaker 1 Is there nothing wrong with that?

Speaker 3 No, there's nothing. I mean, people are meeting each other online.
So meeting him at a club, I find that super romantic. I met him in person.

Speaker 1 That's incredible. Bigger hose than you out there.
Trust me.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. By the way, I mean, I thought, oh, like, I'm going to be.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to marry this guy. He's just a hot guy I met at the club.
So I'm going to like... Because I've always been a good girl.

Speaker 3 Like, I've always been in one super long monogamous relationship to another. You're a villager.

Speaker 1 I knew that. I'm a little bit of a villager, I guess.
But don't tell my dad. Don't tell my dad.
No shame in being a villager. There might be shame in not,

Speaker 1 they would say.

Speaker 1 That's what the villagers would say.

Speaker 1 They would say that. No shame in being a villager.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 but what can I mean?

Speaker 1 That's good for the guy. He doesn't want to feel like his girls, you know, dirty drugs

Speaker 3 all over town. No.
Definitely. He definitely,

Speaker 1 you know.

Speaker 3 Right. He told me after the fact, he's like,

Speaker 3 Yeah, I just knew you were a good girl, which, even though I was like doing my best to make him think think I was a naughty girl, you know, but no, he knew. He knew.
You could see right now.

Speaker 3 I'm not going to say anything that I wouldn't want my parents to know about.

Speaker 1 Take that as a non-denial denial. Exactly.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 But what was meant to be like, ooh, this is me being bad. Like, of course, I end up marrying him.

Speaker 1 I always felt, and this is sort of the pattern of my life, like.

Speaker 1 When the sex happened right away, it made everything easier and better. It's like, if we're attracted, like the rest is sort of bullshit, and then you're like sort of starting the thing on a lie.

Speaker 1 Every serious girlfriend I had, they never put me through like the agony of like, you know, guessing which date it was going to happen on. Right, right, right.
And I always like so appreciated that

Speaker 1 that it just, it's, you know, it just, it, it carried through the relationship.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a really good point.

Speaker 1 It wasn't like, oh, I think girls, some girls think like, oh, once he fucked me, then he'll have had me and leave i i guess if that was the only thing about you that was interesting i might the sex was super boring i mean if he was great he's a good type he's gonna come back no i'm just like no i'm like i'm like a raccoon who just tipped over the garbage i'm coming i'm coming back for more this was awesome in here in here tonight i'm coming back to this house

Speaker 3 yep i mean he loved it so much he wanted to do crossword puzzles with me after the fact and didn't want to leave you know so funny like uh if I was allegedly

Speaker 1 seeing somebody, I mean, we allegedly would be doing crossword puzzles together.

Speaker 1 And this is someone who like did not have a good education because nobody does of her age. They just stopped educating people.
But the crossword puzzle is something,

Speaker 1 and it's amazing. I was never able to do the New York Times Friday or Saturday.

Speaker 1 These are tough. They get harder as the week.
They do. They sure do.
Yeah. And I still can't.

Speaker 1 But when we do them together, we do it in 20 minutes because I know what happened with the Ottoman Empire and she knows Scooby-Doo.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 No, it's true. It's like complementary knowledge.
Oh, I love it. It's a beautiful thing.
Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 3 I didn't know that you were into the post-coital crossword puzzles like me and my husband are.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't say they were post-coital. Oh, okay.
But I mean, they could be. Are they pro-coidal?

Speaker 3 Is it turn you on?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, kind of gets things started.

Speaker 1 Are we always having to be coital? I mean, who can live under that pressure? I mean, like, I mean, coital, I love coital, but like,

Speaker 1 not every moment is coidal. You know,

Speaker 1 fair enough. Fair enough.

Speaker 1 So, like, you know, you got to give it a rest.

Speaker 1 I like to get my cardio in. Honey, my dick's tired.
That's a puzzle.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh. All right.
Well, I guess we got back to laughing.

Speaker 3 Look at that.

Speaker 1 I told you we were capable of it. We're totally capable of it.
So glad you came here to yell at me and laugh with me. Yes.
Thank you for having me. I would do it over at a minute.
Same.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I'm glad. Mostly I think we are on the same page with so much stuff that matters about talking to each other and not cutting off and accepting the differences.

Speaker 3 I love my country and I love the people within it. yes and that means loving everyone regardless of where they stand on politics

Speaker 3 once you see human beings as human beings and you don't boil them down to a political identity you live a life that's far more enriched and

Speaker 3 you actually show that you do love your country like you loving your country means loving the people within it you know what I mean I do know exactly what you mean I mean I've had whiskey so I'm starting to get a little bit you know lovey-dummy and whatever

Speaker 1 Very glad I got to know you. Your star is only rising, and I think that's good for the country because you're smart and

Speaker 1 you listen and you have,

Speaker 1 you know, a great voice. And yeah.

Speaker 1 So I think our trails will pass again. And thank you, Bill.

Speaker 3 And maybe next time we toke up together.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and next time you'll feel comfortable doing that, right? Yeah, for sure. All right.
Yeah. Having a baby, that's still off the table.
No, no, no, that's off the table.

Speaker 1 Good for you.

Speaker 1 We don't want any more babies. No, no, no.

Speaker 1 I never understand that whole Elon Musk thing, and he's not the only one. No, but like they're not.
Is that a good thing to have a bunch of kids from different women?

Speaker 1 But like, what happened to the population too big? We only have so much resources. Like, they just,

Speaker 1 among the things that they can just pretend, like the thing we were saying about AI taking all the jobs, it's like, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 And like, more people with only so many resources on Earth, we just like pretend that that's not a thing anymore.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I guess the narrative changed entirely.

Speaker 1 We're doing our part.