William Shatner | Club Random with Bill Maher

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It just wrote it the way it thinks I talk. And I don't talk that way.
No, not at all. Size of Texas.
Out there. It was.
It got bigger. Now it's the size of Alaska.
So is Texas. Bill?

You in your normal seat over there? Hello, Billy. It's becoming a habit, I'm glad to say.
I'm so glad to see you. We're like co-hosts.
I've been watching your show as much as I can. As much as you can? What's preventing you? What happens during the week when you can't? Like making a living.
Oh, right. You travel.
I travel so much. Right.
You have your Netflix show. I have The Unexplained.
You know what it reminds me of? I mean, you're perfect for that and many things, but remember Peter Graves had that show where he kind of did a...

Yeah.

Everybody's done one over the years.

Well, it takes a certain gravitas to do a show, to be the host of a show like that.

And you have to be...

I've discovered the way of narrating it.

Because they give me...

I do a cold read, really.

I don't want to see it until it's time to record it.

And then I'll do a cold read really. I don't want to see it until it's time to record it.
And then I'll do a cold read and enjoy the story like you would enjoy, hopefully you would enjoy seeing it. So I'll do it twice.
But the first one is the one I bank on. What do you think when you see like Schatner impressionists who do the, you know, I mean, it's like.
I've got to tell you the funniest thing about that that I've ever had. I mean, yeah, I'd say to my wife, is that me? So, chat box, okay? So, you could tell chat box.
Write me a story in the way of that guy, Alambo, and whatever it is. Sure.
And it says on a dank morning with a cloud overhang. Right.
And it gives you what's what. So I said to it, write me the story of having an interview with Bill Maher.
Write me the story in a Shatner way. And this story comes out on the day morning on the foot it didn't write it like the way i write it just wrote it the way it thinks i talk and i don't talk that way no not at all but it's you know why that is fell down you know what happens with famous people like you and impressionists is that somebody does, like the first guy who does an impression.

Like, do you remember Will Jordan's Ed Sullivan?

Did everybody.

He did everybody.

Yeah, but he did Ed Sullivan first.

Right.

And then everybody did Will Jordan's Ed Sullivan.

Oh, right.

So, like, it becomes an impression. The way of doing it.
It becomes an impression of an impression. Of an impression.
Right. And I haven't thought of that.
Yeah. But at home, you don't actually, like, during sex, you don't be like, honey, I'm coming now.
I mean, that's not... No.
That wouldn't sound like you during sex, would it? Well, if I was excited.

I don't remember.

Scratch my balls.

You know, that's not... Really?

I should have said that.

Well, it's good to have you back.

Well, it's a delight to be here.

And this night of all nights, the day after. A post-election, yeah.
You know, I feel like it's, for some people, it's very reminiscent of 2016. I certainly was much more apoplectic then.
Perhaps I should be again. Did you see it coming? No, I picked her.
I stuck with my prediction right to the end. I thought she was going to win.
I thought America generally moves forward and that they had enough of Trump, you know, just drama. And I mean, I won't go into, first of all, Bill, it's depressing to me mostly because I don't want to do it again because I'm bored.
The worst thing you can do to me is bore me. I've done all the jokes.
I did all them first. I did Trump the con man editorial.
I did Trump the mafia boss. I did it all before anybody.
I'm the one who said he wasn't going to concede when nobody was on that page. I've been there, done that.

I don't want this series. I've seen this series.
I want a new show with new characters. So that bugs me the most is that there's nothing left to say.
You know, I've said it all. You can't get me to think more than I already do that Trump shouldn't be president.
Well, what we now have to think about is how to mitigate what some of us think are the worst things. Well, I think first off, first is congratulations.
You not only won, you won big. He won big.
Everybody should get props just for success, despite the vulgarities. Maybe because of vulgarities.
Maybe because. But also, my mantra, losers look in the mirror.
Well, I think that's what everybody has to do. The thing that worries me the most is global warming.
You can, you know, the wrong financial advice, get rid of whatever government agencies you want to get rid of. You can always put them back in four years later.
But you can't lose four years of global warming.

I mean, we're seeing these storms hit now.

And once in a thousand years, storms are now hitting every other year, every year.

And it's not like you could say, well, it's going to get better.

It's not.

It's very funny that you mention that because, you know,

the hardest thing to write on the week of an election, because I have to start it on Monday for the show on Friday and the election is Tuesday. I can't write Monday night who won the election.
So I said this week what I want to do and what I'm going do Friday night, is a piece about global warming, about the oceans.

Because the only time the floating garbage patch in the middle of the ocean was raised was by the insult comic when he made the joke about it and said it was like Puerto Rico and everybody flipped out about that.

And my thing is, yeah, ha-ha, but it's really a sad commentary that neither party mentions this giant problem. Size of Texas out there.
It was. It's got bigger.
Now it's the size of Alaska. So is Texas.
Yeah. And everyone.
All those people moving there. Everyone in it.
Yeah. But you love all the states.
You're beloved everywhere, right? I mean, you're beyond politics. Am I? Don't you think? Well, I hope so.
I'll take your word for it. I don't think people see you as...
A political person? Yeah. Well, as someone who, you know, they may imagine, okay, he lives and works in Hollywood and Canadian and, you know, probably a liberal.
But, you know, I don't feel like most people in this country hate, especially the conservatives, quite frankly, are much more tolerant of people they don't like. It's the liberals who are purists, especially the ones in this town.
They're the ones who, like, if you don't agree with me one million percent, I don't even want to know you. That's one of the reasons they lost.
They have a bad attitude. I can't, I don't know why the Democrats lost.
I don't understand why the Democrats lost. Well, people will be writing books about it for years, many reasons.
Part of it was, you know,

just Biden

should not have stayed on so long.

That I understand.

But

inflation,

prices have come down,

the economy is

good. I mean, I don't know

why they

voted against her.

Against the party.

Oh, well, I certainly could go

Thank you. I mean, I don't know why they voted against her, against the party.
Oh, well, I certainly could go on and on about that. But basically, you know, people, she was not a great candidate, let's be honest.
When she said, when they asked. Why isn't she a great candidate? She combined several trends of thought here.

Black... She said when they asked— Why isn't she a great candidate? She combined several trends of thought here, black, woman.
That's not a candidate. Those are—you know, that's identity politics.
That's one of the Democrats'— Those are elements. Those are—but nobody elects—I mean, yeah, people are tribal.
There are some people who will vote just for the person who looks like them or is like them. But obviously, I think this proves you've got to go a lot further than that.
You can't just be woman, black person. I mean, Trump got a quarter of black men.
That's 25%. I know.
You know, he didn't do much better in generally because the women are very much against him, but he killed it with Latinos. If there's any great irony in this election, is it the guy who came down the escalator 10 years ago talking about the rapists? They keep giving him more of their votes.
And again, I understand this. Why? Tell me what you understand.
I will. Democrats don't understand their own constituencies.
If you're a Mexican-American, who do you fear taking your job? The guy who just came in through the border. Of course they like the guy who says, I'm going to keep everybody out.
But he didn't say, I'm keeping everybody out. I'm going to send everybody out.
Okay, but the Democrats could have won this election in a walk, I think. Not a walk, but I think they could have won it.
If Biden got out earlier, they had a true primary season to find the best candidate, not just one whose turn was it, who, by the way, before they anointed her, nobody was sort of on the page that she was very good at being a candidate. She failed the first time.
Okay. So they had done that.
And then the pointless reversing of Trump's border policy, which was remain in Mexico and not everything counts as asylum. The Democrats' fatal flaw is they always have to look like the good people.
So they reversed that and let in too many people. Not that we shouldn't be a nation of immigrants, but it just was a lawless shit show for years.
And people noticed, and then they started to send them, you know,

so many, the Democrats' hypocrisy was called out because the people in the northern cities who were like, we welcome everybody. And then the governors on the border states were like, okay, well, here they are.
Enjoy this busload. What hasn't been talked about the extent i i will be is the unrest given global warming of millions of people wanting to get somewhere else and somewhere else is like the united states they there are millions of people that will in the near future yeah want to leave their country because they can't live in it.
Yes.

And look, I mean, it's going to happen here too.

We could lose Florida.

Well, we will.

And if anybody knows about losing Florida, it's Democrats.

By the way, Florida, which used to be a swing state,

is now just bright red. And you know why it is? Him? No.
The governor? The influx of Latinos. Oh.
So, again, the irony of the Republicans accusing the Democrats, I don't think the Democrats are doing this, of purposely letting in all these Latin people to vote for Democrats.

And then, you know, in Florida, it worked out the other way.

They voted for the Republicans.

Well, the best laid plans everywhere, anytime, anywhere.

What did he say?

You have a plan to get hit in the face?

That's Mike Tyson.

Oh, yeah, he's fighting Jake Paul. Let's go.
I bet you you could get to it. You want to go? Yeah, where is it? Is it like Vegas? I believe it's Vegas.
You want to go to that fight? It's like, oh. But we have to go.
I can't. It's the night before my last show of the season.
Oh, no, not the last show. It's the night before a show.
It's the 15th of this month.

Oh, it is.

On the 16th, yeah.

You know where you should go with me?

I'm going to the Antarctic Christmas week.

Oh.

Let me start packing now, Bill.

Yeah, that will happen never.

You're never going to go to the Antarctic and see what you can't see anywhere else.

I don't go east of La Brea.

Yes, you do.

You fly all over the country.

I'm kidding.

But no, no, I definitely don't go to rough places like this.

The fact that you do is just astounding.

And you look the same as when you were here before.

You don't seem to aid so much.

Well, it's happening. It's all internal.
Well, yeah. Oh, man.
Did you watch that movie, The Substance? No. Have you heard of it with Demi Moore? I've heard about her in it, yeah.
I mean, it's that kind of performance where the critics, which, first of all, she is fantastic, but they do love it in Hollywood and love to call you brave when you're known as a beautiful woman, which she is, and then you get ugly on camera. or have the balls to show yourself as you really are without makeup.

And the movie is about this

woman who is in her early 60s, and she's got an exercise show. And they're replacing her because, you know, come on, you're 61 now.
We need someone younger. We can get to why that's It's kind of hypocritical in ways.

But so she hears about this substance that you can take, and you inject yourself, and what happens is another you, like your back opens up and another you comes out, who's her like at 22. Who plays that? Margaret Qualley.
Oh, I see. It is an actual actress.
Yes. And then in the movie, you get like one week.
You're not two different people. You're the same person.
You're sharing this substance that you shoot each other up with. What's happened to the original body? It lies dormant for a week while the other one goes out in the world.
then they switch and it has to you have to do it this way and of course what happens is that it breaks down and they do see each other as rivals and they do start hurting each other in different ways and she's using a boy and she's doing that so let me tell you your enunciation of that story And now I'm in the position of a producer. I've got money.
I'm going to make a film. And you tell me that story, and I say to you, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
It would never go. It's just impossible to do, and I don't think it'll go.
And I'm not touching that. And given the milieu of what's happened in Hollywood now, where things are like very trepidation, nobody's spending money, nobody's buying anything.
Very few people are making content because they had bought so much prior that there's a real dearth of work going on here. that story told to me in this day and age, I would have said, if they said to me, me, Shatner, I would have said, that's crazy.
You'll never sell that story. Why? I think it's kind of, I think it's, first of all, it's supposed to be a commentary on how.
On the striving for you. Well, yes, exactly.
And how much we worship youth, which I don't think is exactly blowing the cover off a big secret that people like good-looking young people, certainly for that dimension. What I find a little hypocritical is you can't kind of have it both ways.
Like, the young people are always saying about my generation, the boomers, move over, you guys are hanging on too long. We want to, you know, you're blocking the way for us.
And then this movie is about, well, they're doing that. They're moving out the 61-year-old.
No, boo, that's bad. How dare you throw her out to the— Oh, I see.
You can't have it both ways. You know, they're brewing precisely what they ask.
It's the young hot one now. But, I mean, the director obviously wanted this movie to be tough to watch.
I mean, there's just a lot of, like, close-ups of decaying flesh and stuff like that. Obviously, it was intentional.
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It's interesting. It's good.
I think that they, you know, to do a movie about something anymore, even if I don't agree with everything, that's an attempt. That's much more 70s-type thinking, moviemaking, than what usually goes on today.
I flipped through the television. Movie channels? Well, I'm looking at, what do I feel like looking at tonight? Right.
What do you feel like looking at tonight right what do you feel like looking at tonight and the days especially this whole last several months with all that was on television was politics and dire things are happening well no no if you not if you flip through the movie channels you'd see 50 movies no so what my, what do you feel like seeing? You've got to weigh from all the things that are, because you've got to stay abreast of the news. You're part of the life, so you have to watch what's happening in the life.
Well, I certainly do for my living. Well, of course.
And I do for my... You're a citizen.
Exactly. Well, yes.
Not of this country. But in looking for something to escape that, the last thing I want to see is that ugliness.
So I find myself looking at these stupid five heroes saving the world. But there's a million things in between.
Yes. Cooking.
Cooking shows. You don't have to go all the way to cooking shows to get away from the news.
Just watch, I mean, any movie that's ever been made, any television show that's ever been made. I mean, this is like everything that's ever been made can be seen.
So why do you have to watch a cooking show? Well, because some of those cooking, I wondered that myself. Because it soothes you.
It's soothing, but also. Well, you're a foodie.
But it's of interest. What's going into, how is it being made? What is it being done? Or redoing a house.
Remember at dinner you were mad at me because I ordered the same thing as you? And you were like, what are you doing? We need variety. You know, like, I think you wanted to eat off my plate so you could have another type of food to sample.
I was like, you idiot. Well, you know, multiple sensations.
It's important. Well, but not at the same time.
I mean, you don't want to mix food and sex. That's always a big mistake, don't you think? I've never understood that.
Have you? No, it's stupid. Have you ever? We all do everything.
No, no, no. Not everybody puts syrup on their genitals or cake.
Well, you know, if it's on your genitals, you're not the one licking it off. So, you know, it doesn't bother me that much.
Well, it does be. But I don't remember ever having syrup on my genitals.
Did you ever have fruit? I do remember the song by Victor Moan, Syrup on My Genitals. What a crooner.
He did it. Oh, my God.
It was a syrupy way. And I think Mel Torme also did it in later years in the Velvet Fog.
Yes, he was. Syrup on my balls.
Are we the only ones who would remember Mel Torme? And Vic Damone. And Vic Damone.
And elections. Do you know that, like, one of the most popular, maybe the most, I think, yesterday Google searches was, who is running in the United States election? Like, tons of people didn't know Biden had dropped out.
Yeah, that's the country you're living in. I hate to think of it that way.
But Bill, you can just search, no search, just like pick a, like if you go to any of the streaming services that have movies and you go to search, just put in like any letter, like B and then B, A, and then all the movies will start coming up that begin with that. And you'll go, oh, balls for the holidays.
I remember that one. I mean, it's just so easy to find something that's a little more satisfying than just.
The black and whites, you know, the whodunits, they were good. But I just, I need a movie tailored to my mood.
and that's difficult to do. Right.

Yeah, I also like movies with pretty people in them.

I'm not going to lie.

If I'm going to stare at the screen, you know, because not all the TV I consume am I looking directly at the screen.

I have a TV in the kitchen, and I'm making food, and I love that.

That's no way to see a movie.

Well, it depends on the movie. It depends on how much I want to see it.
Well, there you are. Or if I've seen it before.
Like, I got The Revenant on in the kitchen now. Do you look at a movie with a technical attitude as well? No.
That's a good shot. I wonder how they got that.
Sometimes. I mean, I made my living as an actor mostly in the 80s and certainly did enough television and movies to understand it and remember it and glad I'm not still doing it.
But I don't want to. I did have a long discussion with Quentin Tarantino here once about the movie.
I was here with him when he was here. Yeah, the movie 1917, the World War I movie.
I loved that movie. I did too.
How did they do that movie? See, this was my point to Quentin. He felt I was overly impressed with it, and maybe I was, because he's a cinematic genius.
So to him, it was no big trick. To us, it was...
It's a big trick. I think so, too.
Of course. No, he allowed that, but he just thought I was a little overly impressed with the one-shot thing.
And I got where they changed the magazine when he goes in and turns to black. I get it.
Hitchcock did the same thing with... Absolutely, Hitchcock did it all the time.
Not all the time. He did it in rope.
And I'll tell you who else. Rope.
In rope. That's the move.
He'd go into a trunk. Yes.
Dully into a trunk. He'd go right behind Jimmy Stewart's back.
Right. Pull back.
I mean, but that's the technology. The magazine doesn't last more than like 40 minutes.
11 minutes on a magazine. But now that isn't a problem.
No. Electrical.
But just the, I mean, to give the audience that point of view where there's never a cut, it just brings you so much more into the story like, wow, I'm really here. Because it's continuous as our life is.
Orson Welles did a lot of it, too. One shot? Where he, yeah.

Like what? Not Citizen Kane. Not Citizen Kane, but what was the other one that he, the Magnificent Amberson? Magnificent Amberson.
His one shot? And also some of the gangster movies. our friend director

gangster

Clint Eastwood some of the gangster movies. Our friend, director, gangster.

Clint Eastwood.

Gangster.

Ice Cube.

Edward G. Robinson.

Jimmy Cagney.

No, no, the director of...

Martin Scorsese?

Martin Scorsese.

Okay, I feel like...

Did a long shot. I feel like we're a married couple that just lost the newlywed game.
But, I mean, it's just an amazing movie. And some of the shots, remember the one where he sees a plane, they're on the ground, and you see it having a dogfight in the distance, and without, again, without cutting, the plane has a dogfight up in the sky, and then crashes right where these actors were looking at it, pointing at it in the sky, and then it continues as they drag the guy out of the plane, and then he kills it.
How did they, well, they must have superimposed they did it. And this is, don't get me started on award shows, but this is, you know, just to me, evidence number 392 that they're full of shit.
Because a movie like that and The Revenant, which I've always thought should have won Best Picture, because they took the art of filmmaking to another level. That has to be better than just, it's the kind of movie that made us feel good about ourselves.
I absolutely agree with you, but especially there are awards for that. It's taking the technology that everybody knows, I mean, it's advanced, but superimposition and special effects.
But taking it to such a, like that scene of a dogfight going on while the characters, it's like, that's not important. What's important is down here.
No, that's not important. Oh, my God, it's important.
It's so an intelligent use of existing technology. All I could think of after I watched that was the very first movie that won the Academy Award was Wings.
Right. Howard Hughes.
Right. Scorsese made the movie about Howard Hughes.
And that's the whole first act. No, I've forgotten that.
Long time. Yes, the aviator.
Yeah. DiCaprio.
Yeah. And he's playing Howard Hughes, and Howard Hughes is making a movie and spending more money than anyone has ever made on a movie.
The year is like 1928. And they shoot it.
It costs like a million dollars, which was like a trillion dollars back then. And then it's bad.
He doesn't like it. And he reshoots it because they needed clouds to give a sense of movement of the planes.
Otherwise, it didn't look like it was real. Like, you have to see perspective.
So they reshot it with clouds. But to think that that was the first movie about a World War I plane in a dog fight.

And then we move over to 1917 and it's like, wow, the progress. Oh.
That, you know, we do not acknowledge progress in this country well in any way. I'm a living.
Yes, that's it. You're living.
That's not getting greedy. I worked with cameras that were the size of bears with heat coming out of them from tubes and fans inside the cameras to dissipate the heat.
So when a camera came in for a close-up, it was like a breathing monster. People wilted when a television camera came in for a close-up.
Now, they're tiny cameras with long lenses, and you don't know they're there. And marks you had to hit.
Now you don't have to. It's lit in such a way.
I mean, it's just the difference between the technology of 20, 30, 40 years is the technology of— I did not know that about the Bayer camera. Oh, my Lord.
They were gigantic. It was as big as a chair, bigger than that.
And they emitted heat? They had tubes that had, remember, radios. So this is like when you did, what's the one with the Twilight Zone? Oh, that was long before Twilight Zone.
Before Twilight Zone? Oh, I was active in Canada when television came in. We didn't know what it was.
Canada has television? They won, Canada won all the awards for radio in those early, in the 50s, in the early years.

And then one day, about a year or two after it came into the States, Canada said, we must have television.

They kind of rearranged a radio studio to have some lights and a camera in it.

And I was a part of it.

And I wrote for it as well.

I met my first wife on a show that I wrote.

I cast her as the actress.

Lousy show.

Not a great marriage.

Cast her.

Married her.

That sounds a little Puff Daddy-ish.

Doesn't it?

Yeah.

But the technology, which I'm a witness to, is mind-boggling. It is.
In every dimension of life. Cancer.
Yes. Well, not as, yeah.
I mean, progress, but not, you would have thought back in 1970, when Richard Nixon declared a war on cancer, you would have thought, 54 years later, probably a little bit, you know. I mean, I don't think any of us will be satisfied until we can walk into a doctor's office and have him say, oh, you have cancer, but we know what caused it and we know exactly what to do.
They're close. You think? Yeah.
Wow. With chemicals and...
I'm going to start drinking again. At these prices, I can't afford not to get cancer.
Have you had cancer? What a question. Well, no.
If I had, I wouldn't tell you. Really? Yeah.
Why? I'm very private about that kind of stuff. I have never missed a show except the two they made me miss because I had Wink Wink.
Cancer. COVID.
Oh. I mean, it was their choice.
But I've never missed a show in 31 years. Never missed a stand-up performance except when the plane couldn't get in.
Never because of sickness. I believe the show must go on.
And I believe we don't talk about your personal problems. I've never burdened the audience.
Some people do, and it's fine. I'm not knocking you.
But it's not a burden. For example, and I too.
Well, that's how I see it. I've never missed a performance.
I've never missed. Is that right? I've never missed a performance.
Some people wish you did. Right.
And I don't miss those people either. But enough about Mr.
Spock. Who's the one you're feuding with? The driver? I don't feud with anybody.
Sulu. Don't you feud with him still? There are sick people in this world that if you fight with them, it's a losing battle.
I mean, the illness has taken over. He seems like such a nice guy, but I just always want to say, come on, you just drove.
That was somebody's bit about the Star Trek. He drove.
What was the big deal? But have you been ill and gone on? Of course. Well, what kind of illness? You know, back in the day.
What's that mean? Whose fucking day is it that you're talking about? Gener's generically, it can mean anything. And people also say, that was a minute.
You know, I haven't seen you in a minute. Right.
You know, these are just, you know. No, but what does back in the day mean? Back in the day, well, you know, it could, it's, kids are not exactly what you call up on history.
So it's good for them because they can say back in the day. And it just means generally before now, which is all I know about history.
They don't know, you know, whether the Middle Ages came before the Renaissance or the other way around. So back in the day is just generic and suits them very well.
I think that's where it came from. Well, where does your back in the day exist? Okay, but when I say back in the day in that instance, it would mean like when I was younger.
Like when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s, I got way sicker than I do now. I got flu, cold a few times a year because I lived so much less healthy.
Because I learned how to live healthier. And, of course, I have to because when you're older, you're on a short leash.
You know, you seem to be able to do whatever you want i don't have that luxury i have to live i i eat very uh you know this is like i allow myself a drink or two only on wednesday night is that right yeah this is it because you you play with the reputation of being a uh a pothead oh i am a pot. Yeah, but that's bad for your lungs.

I wouldn't say it's good ever to put smoke in your lungs.

No, no, that's just a negative way of putting it.

It's bad for your lungs.

I wouldn't say it's good.

What you mean is it's bad for your lungs.

Yes, counselor.

Yes, counselor.

You've evaded that reality.

I have not evaded it.

I'm aware of it, and it's a tradeoff that I discuss with myself many times. Who wins the argument? Well, obviously the pot.
Well, obviously I do. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not sure. Of course, there are people who smoke from the minute they wake up to the end of the day.
I am so far from them. Very few.
Not, yeah, well. Well, they're living in another reality.
You can certainly name a number of celebrities who have done that. Who smoked from morning till night? Snoop Dogg.
Who? Snoop Dogg. Willie Nelson.
Snoop Dogg does? Snoop Dogg, yes. Still? Well, he did back in the day.
He seems very alert now. He did back in the day.
No. Is or is? No, I think he probably, I don't know if he still does, but he certainly did.
A lot of those rappers do. You know, Snoop Dogg is an interesting character.
Oh, he's great. I love him.
But I've always thought of him as being like exotic. But on this show he's on, he's so there, he's so funny.
What do you mean exotic? Well, I mean, removed from my reality. Right.
No, he's just a dude from Long Beach. Who's got a quick mind? Of course.
I mean, look at the way he parlayed a career that started out, you know, way in the, you know, serious gangster rap phase, where if you quoted some of the lyrics today, you would not win the now Man of the Year Award. Rap in that day was very misogynistic.
It was just how that was. And some of these guys, LL Cool J also, they started from there, and now it's a brilliant thing to do.
They mainstreamed it. That's what you have to do.
That's what singing stars do. I mean, Lady Gaga started out very counterculture and was wearing meat dresses and stuff.
But now she's whatever she is, 40 or 38 or something. And so she's much more of just like oh now i'm a movie star and you know i can sing with tony bennett and that's true you've got to do you've got to grow with your audience but as they age dog has done a metamorphosis i mean that's from the the dreadlocks or whatever it was the long pigtails, and the rap.
And almost... I used to have him on Politically Incorrect in the 90s.
He's the same guy. Is he? Yeah.
I mean, you know, they would come and the hallway would just be filled with the smell of smoke. I mean, there'd be...

And I would just so admire that.

Let me ask you...

The balls to just say, fuck it, you know what?

Arrest me for this stupid crime.

Let me ask you a question about smoking a pot.

When I did, and I haven't done it in a while for, I don't know...

The night is young.

Well, I'm afraid of losing control of my imagination. I've had some bad trips.
Really? Yeah. But, you know, you don't really trip on pop.
Well, you can. Well, it depends on the individual.
You trip. Yeah.

I mean, you lose reality.

Well, I sure don't.

I mean, I'd love to.

What do you mean?

I've been smoking for 50 years, Bill.

I mean, I do not lose reality.

It'd be awesome, but I don't.

But the reality changes.

It has to.

Why else would you smoke it?

Oh, please.

That's not the reality.

That's just your mood.

That's just your mood.

But your mood conditions your reality, man.

To a degree.

No, man. To a degree.
No, we're talking about you feel bad. You're looking around.
I'm going to commit suicide. You feel good.
Let's go party. Right.
And those are the extremes which I'm telling you this doesn't bring me to in either way. Of course not.
I mean, come on. What world are you living in? There are drugs that do that to you.
I mean, there are tragic stories sometimes where somebody young dies. It just happened with a pop star.
You don't find your driving affected? Well, I don't drive. I don't drive.
You don't drive with your car. No.
Why not? Because it affects your reality. No, because if I get caught, they'll punish me for it.
That's why. I can drive perfectly well stoned.
I wouldn't do it anymore, but back in the day, I remember one time in band camp. No, one time I was driving, I must be in my early 30s, and I didn't care back then, apparently.
And I remember driving to this place and having zero memory of driving there because your brain, you have the two halves of your brain. Right.
And the half of my brain that did things like saw red lights and stopped, that was working fine. Yeah.
And the other half of my brain was thinking about a thousand other things and had no recollection of the actual roads. But you could do that without smoking.
You could drive a distance there. God, yes.
How the hell did I get here? But you're talking about altering the reality to one degree or another. And if you're in it, do you know the degree with which you've altered reality?

You just said it, one degree.

If you alter something one degree, it's not that much. And you probably are always altered by one to ten degrees in any given day

based on how much sleep you got.

Yeah, but that's such a rationale for smoking as much as you do. It's not good for your lungs i don't smoke that much oh really no i'm that's what i'm telling you there are people like snoop uh and woody i think i think for years paul mccartney was that person who just they you know they when they traveled with pot they travel with bags of it you know they go through like a bag a day.
I go through a bag a year, you know. The way you talk, it sounds like you smoke it all the time, and you don't.
You're hearing that. No, from your mouth.
No, no. What you hear is I do pot jokes.
It's a funny thing. People like to have things about them.
And, of course, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't true. I am a longtime tribune for the cause of marijuana legalization, and I think it's a great drug if it is for you.
It's not for everybody, and that's true with any drug. It really depends on how it agrees with your body chemistry.
But certainly I hope you're libertarian enough to say if it agrees with mine, then... I'm glad it's...

Yeah, and that's all it is.

It's legal because it's a natural thing.

And it's like those leaves that are popular in Africa where they...

Kat.

Yeah.

Kat.

Kat.

K-H-A-T.

Yeah.

Katya.

Yes.

They're doing the same thing, aren't they?

That's like cocaine.

It is cocaine.

We know that cocaine here in America is not cocaine.

The best you'd ever get was about 50% cocaine.

When they chew it, as they have for millennia in the jungle, it's not the same.

It's not that speedy asshole high that we get from cocaine. That's probably what the fuck they mix it with and some of the cocaine.
But the natives who I've been told this by people who would know, like when they just chew it, it's like, it's a much mellower high. Yeah, no, it's reasonable given the conditions in Africa that they sometimes live under.
Especially if they're living in the bush, it's tough. Did you ever do coke? Yeah, but what I found was that it didn't, it froze my nose, and then things would drip, and you weren't aware that you had a

lot of moisture coming up

and it was not leading

man right

excuse me you got snot

is that cot no snot

yeah

yeah

yeah

but you certainly were

you know riding high high Primo on the, I think. Back in the day? Back in the day when Coke was much more acceptable.
I mean, it was much more acceptable in the 60s, 70s. You mean it's not acceptable now? It is not acceptable now.
Really? People literally would offer it in business meetings. I don't think you'd find that today.
Even in Hollywood, I don't So they probably didn't know about it. Yes, and then people started to die.
There was a famous basketball player who was going to be a great Celtic and he died young. I got invited to a party with some frequency.
An actor friend would every Saturday night have a party and have a Coke and marijuana. And I'd go to the parties and sniff and snort and drink.
And they'd say, you know, I read in the news about some Thai fishermen way out at sea, and a wave came and swamped the boat, and they fell out of the boat in the middle of the ocean. They're in the middle of the ocean, and they're trying to swim.
And suddenly they feel solid something under their feet. A submarine.
Huh? A submarine. No.
Oh. Porpoises.
Oh, porpoises. And the porpoises took them to the land.
And we started to laugh. What would it be like to be, you know, you're striving and suddenly in the middle of the ocean, you're riding a porpoise.
You're like, it's crazy. And we'd laugh and laugh and laugh and then go home.
And the next week, somebody would say, you know, I heard about these Thai fishermen. And they'd tell the same story.
And week after week after week, it seemed like a new story. We would laugh about having heard it for the first time except, didn't we do this last week? And there would be that laughter about that.
I mean, drugs can make you laugh. I mean, mushrooms are the ultimate laughter.
They did mushrooms. I don't know.
People have different experiences, like I say, with different drugs. To me, it's the only drug that didn't make me horny that made me think, sex? What the fuck? Why would I put something of mine in you mine in you that's ridiculous uh but but the laughter i mean i remember the maybe the second time i did it out here maybe it was the third time but um we were also drinking beer not a lot but and we're of course this drug just makes you laugh hysterically for no reason for great times on end.
And you're on the floor. You just want to get low.
And every time we would laugh hysterically for two minutes, I would say, man, this Budweiser is fantastic. Which was funny the first time.
Right. But on mushrooms, it was funny a hundred times.

I mean,

you can't buy that. I went to Amsterdam

with my wife

just for the purposes

of seeing what the drug

situation was like.

We were in London.

What year are we talking about?

Ten years ago.

Ten years ago.

And we flew to Amsterdam.

It was in the winter

and so they're selling it

on the street

so we smoked a little and we got some mushrooms that we took back to the room, and we ate them. And then I was sure there was a head of a lizard coming out of the wall.
That's no way to talk about your wife. She got off the wall that's funny that's a funny thing you've ever said and i'm not stoned so she she is speculated on world peace and i was transfixed by these monsters coming out of the wall.

So it scared me to death.

I never want to do it again.

Yeah.

I mean, funny, I wanted that experience on mushrooms.

I never got it.

It never made me hallucinate.

I did acid or whatever.

Acid, you know.

There hasn't been acid since the 60s. They make something and they sell it as acid because it's unregulated, but it's not acid.
But something I did once, and I did hallucinate a little. I did see somebody was playing a guitar, and suddenly their fingers were, like, comically elongated.
Oh, in your sight. Yeah, right.
And I was like, oh, here it is.

Yeah, right.

And I thought, you know, I was waiting for Yellow Submarine

to come on, the full-length movie.

But it was just long fingers.

And that was it.

Yeah.

Because my mind, that makes sense to me.

They can't hypnotize me, although I would love to have that happen.

Some minds just are locked in some places, for better or worse.

Bill, I was hypnotized. Thank you.
No, I'm going to hypnotize you. Now? Right now.
Oh, come on. Okay, no, no.
Oh, if I'm up here walking around like a chicken. No, no, no, no.
It's going to be the most pleasant experience you've ever had. And I'll do it the way they did it to me, okay? All right.
Now, really, seriously, close your eyes. Stop laughing.
Stop laughing. stop laughing stop laughing stop laughing i'm taking it very seriously okay take it very seriously close your eyes okay i want you to count backwards from three stop laughing it's a short journey my okay three two one no slowly dwell on each number Dwell on each number.
Dwell. Dwell on each number.
Three is for the number of tits a Martian chick has. Relax your brain.
Relax. Two.
Two. One.
Okay, open your eyes. Open your eyes.
Kill Shatner. No, no, no.
Kill Shatner. No, you were hypnotized.
Shatner, I must kill Shatner. Do you understand? You were out for about five minutes.
You were out for about five minutes. Yeah.
And that's what they did to me, and I thought, was I? Yeah. And they brought witnesses in.
No, you were out. Okay.
That's what they did. Is this your party trick? Is this what you play on everybody? Right.
That's my party. Right.
Oh, it's so much fun. Everybody laughs.
But I would love to get, I would pay a year's salary to just have a video of that party that you talked about walking into. That's probably not enough money.
I know, but just if I could see, I could hear the 60s or 70s, da-na-na-na, da-na-na-na. That's the party I can know.
I want him to be there.

He would order this giant cake the size of this table,

and people would, you know, grab the cake.

As they smoked, they would grab a piece of cake and eat the cake,

and it became like a frenzy of eating something sweet and tasting it going down. It was novel and new and interesting.

It was like a Diddy party but with cake instead of cock. And they invited all the fat people in Hollywood.
Did you ever go to one of those? I'm flattered that you think that the question is even reasonable. Well, that's exactly who.
Why wouldn't you invite you? Bill, I love you for that. No, I was, you know, it's funny.
But you'd have gone, right? That, it's so funny. I used to run into Puffy, you know, here and there, events.
I remember he was at the Oscars. I remember talking to him a lot the night Chris Rock slapped, got slapped by Will Smith.
And, you know, he's one of those guys, maybe it's Trump. Well, how does that relate with Puffy? I'm talking about Puffy.
Oh, I see. I'm talking about Puffy.
I thought maybe you were wandering. No, no.
I would run into him then at events and stuff. Who? Puffy.
Okay. I thought we were talking about Chris Rock.
No. I said I saw Puffy that night at the Oscar party the night that Chris Rock got.
He actually didn't mention that, but go ahead. Yeah, because I was out for five minutes again.
Okay, so I would see him. And he's one of those guys who, like, you could see why he's so successful.
I mean, he had smart instincts in the business, but also just, like, could give you that, you know, two minutes of undivided attention that made you feel like you're the most important person in the world. There are people who just have that skill, you know.
Trump was that guy, they said. Yeah, I remember meeting Donald Trump well before he was president.
And yeah, he kind of had that thing. Like, he would just, you know, engage you for a couple of minutes.
And Puffy would always be like, you know, you want to hear my number? I really want you to call me. And you'd call it.
And it was never would return the call. I knew he would do that.
So I didn't even't even want to but i was like oh but if i don't call then am i the asshole right okay so but that's that's that's just who he was he was just a personable guy but i don't think i was on the list for the freak offs now that's and uh what you've got what i've got yes and in that era i i mean, we're talking about the early part of the century. That era and that area.
I was out at places that were like that, that all the people there would have loved to have been at the free coffee party, but we weren't, so we were at Club Shitty. Right.
But that's been no different. You have to take your clothes off and screw as much as you can.
Obviously, Bill, what went on in those parties was just way beyond what even... What went on? What do they say went on? Oh, okay.
Well... Imagine.
Tell me. I think you should save this one for your Netflix series, but okay, we'll talk about it.
Let me introduce it. But you might want to do a deep dive, because everyone at that party.
Let your minds go. Right.
No, I mean, first of all, you have to understand, like, music culture, already very different. And you know this from singing Rocket Man.
I got an album that I'm working on. The music world is so sexual to begin with.
It is? Yeah. Are you kidding? Are you fucking with me? No, I'm not.
The music industry, music, it's just more sexualized than even, like, acting is to a degree. You know, you're doing the love scenes and stuff.
And people are attractive when they're on the set and you're away from home. It's conducive.
Music industry, beyond conducive. Wow.
Because, first of all, music is sex. It's sex in the eardrums, but it makes people sexual.
I mean, a lot of the songs are about love and sex. People fuck to it.
They go to a club, they take drugs, they dance, you're rubbing and you're dancing. It's just sexual.
And women get pussy boners for music and people who make music

more than any other, you know, profession by far.

I had no idea.

Yes, you did.

Rock stars don't get laid is a revelation?

No, but a rock star with all the nymphs yelling and screaming

and wanting to touch them.

That I can understand.

But the music industry is an industry.

Okay, rap culture.

Now we're taking it to an even further level.

I mean, I don't think I'm telling tales out of school that rap videos, like where they would shoot the video,

especially, I'm talking about back in the day.

Those were beautiful women back in the day.

Yeah, I'm sure they still are.

Yeah, but not all day. Now man of the year okay so annoyed will be uh but like the rat you shoot the video right you're shooting and the videos are very sexual they were back in the day it's a lot of today ass in the face and ass in my face right So now what would happen? Right.
So then there's an after party. I mean, was it directly rape? It's rape adjacent.
It's very like the after party turns into a, the video turns into an after party, turns into kind of an orgy. I mean, can you get out of there?

Probably.

But you kind of know you won't be invited back, and you're just not a good sport.

And it's just like it's a sexualized industry.

I'm telling you, whatever Me Too uncovered so far,

they say somehow the angel of death mostly flew over the house of music,

but that's where most of the bodies are buried. It's like crazy how much all that kind of shit.
Did you ever go to one of those music videos? No. Why not? Because I was at a freak-off party at Puffy's house.
I didn't have time, for Christ's sake. This was back in the day.
No.

No, but I know people who have done them.

I know people, I know women who have been in the music industry.

Really?

And their tales are, I mean, I guess it'll all come out.

This is sort of the beginning of breaking that seal, I think.

But, you know, Russell Simmons, I think, went into exile. That's another mogul who, you know, multiple accusations.
And, you know, and there's Marilyn Manson. I mean, there's just a lot of people who, you know, again, because it's so sexualized to begin with, we're talking about women who throw themselves at guys in the most overt way.
And when I say overt, I mean, grab your dick, which is like, whatever that happens. There's a certain intention there.
Where am I when all this is happening? Hey, you know, if they grab your dick it's is it what does that mean grab your dick yeah i mean are they trying to send you a signal i'm not bad i'm bad at picking up cues okay you know like i know when a girl does this with her hair it kind of means she wants to fuck but like the dick so you know that's the world that we're starting with and then when when you get to the parties, so what went on to answer that question? I don't know specifically. But a lot of stuff that women probably did not want to do but felt they had to do because if they didn't, they were not a good sport who wasn't playing with the people who have power and connections.
I'm going to tell you something you may not believe, and that is I've been an actor since I was six years old, okay, all over the world. That explains that camera.
And I've never seen that behavior. I've never.
Well, again, this is the music industry. Well, I've made several albums, and I've got one going now, for example, with Brad Paisley.
Love him. Love him.
He's a great artist. He was here, and he's such a great guy to talk to.
Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I'd always had a bit of a thing about country music, and I admit was a prejudice i even emailed this and i said you know i feel silly because your music is so good and i probably didn't listen to it just because i kind of like had that thought of and and this kind of i and and my partner robert cherno who's a lyricist, have written another album, Lyrics, and Brad is going to do the music.
Oh, wow. And we've got a great album.
And the concept of the album is love, but love of different kinds. I love music.
I love my body. I love my health.
I love art. I love, and, but I love my health because it allows me to love you more is like the gist of the song.
So we're going to do that. We've put the date somewhere in January to record, but I sent up a scratch track of my, my, what I think is going on the other day.
It's really good. That's, that's where I'm at.
That's the music industry I'm in. I don't see what you're talking about.
I've never seen what you're talking about. I've never seen people take drugs.
I'm wandering around in an innocent cloud. Yeah, you...
I mean, I'm blind. You are.
This is coming back to me from the first time you were here. Did I say that? No, but it's triggering a memory of me thinking, wow, this guy kind of lives in his own world.
Do my work, go home and learn my words, come back and do my work. Right.
Well, I mean, I hate to be the one to burst the bubble, but yeah. What did I miss, man? The music industry is full of pimps.
Oh, my God. But, you know, and the kind of devotion, and I don't know what to call it, but it's beyond, it's a preterhuman level of adoration that goes on with music stars.
I mean, Taylor Swift, I mean, the Beatles, I have Sinatra, Elvis, I mean, anybody. Kanye.
You know, people just, it just goes, like I always say, comedy, if you want to, you know, score with comedy with women, it's got to go through the brain.

Music, it doesn't have to.

You could have no brain at all.

It goes with the beat.

It goes right to the P-U-S-S-Y.

And guys, I mean, I couldn't live without music.

One of the numbers I wrote is I love music.

Yeah.

And enumerate the music, classical music, love song, rock, all the way music affects you. You can love it.
So inspirational, I've got to say, the way you, what are you now, 94? 93. Three.
Oh, man. That's the worst thing you can do to a 93-year-old.
Is to say you're 94. Well, step on his oxygen hose.
But after that, that's it. 92 would have been really nice.
But to see that, first of all, you look fine. And also that, like, it's always about tomorrow with you.
And that's the secret. It's always about tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'm doing something with Brad Paisley. You know, it's like you've got shit on your calendar coming up.
You have some time to get sick or die. That's exactly right.
You've got shit to do. I feel the same way.
I'm taking a plane at 10.30 Friday night, flying to New York overnight, doing a performance in the morning, entertaining in the morning, and getting on a plane in the afternoon coming back. Wow.
I don't want to be away from home any more than I have to. Really? Why? What's at home? Just that dragon? The dragon.
A fence.

A fence?

I got a nice-sized property, a fence, my dogs, my wife, the house, my bed.

The bed.

The bed.

Sweetheart, I'm getting off the road next year.

I mean, I've been on as a stand.

So you know what I mean when you say the bed. Yes.
The bed's uncovered, the pillows, the sheets, the noise. I was in a hotel this last weekend for three days where they didn't have any heat.
And it was saying, okay, thank you, Jesus. I was just saying to a number of people asking me about, are you sure you get off the road, you'll be okay.

Get off the road. I will miss it.
But I said, they are making it so easy for me to not miss it.

And one of the main reasons is, I don't know what happened. Hotels have been going down

slowly. And in the last, I would say, year or two, a precipitous plunge.

They turn off the heat at night.

Heat. I've had TVs that didn't work in multiple hotels.
You can't get the TV to work. I was a couple of weeks ago someplace, and I got to the room after the show, and I like it cold at night.
It was cold. I guess they had turned it to that.
I was like, okay, this is cool. Great.
Sometimes I have to get it cold. Woke up in the morning, it's cold.
Okay, now I'll put the heat on. No, no, didn't go, no heat.
And they said, okay, so I'll just turn it off. No, wouldn't turn off either.
So I just had to live with cold. And to people who are like, oh, look at these two rich assholes complaining about, fuck you.
First of all, we earned it. We're old.
We paid our dues. And we're not asking for the world.

TVs that work and heat. I've also had the arena I worked in was a hockey rink.
So they had

boards over the ice. And, you know, I hate to be the one piling on to the younger generations,

but a lot of it is. I'm sorry.
Apropos of the cliche, Gen Z has shitty fucking work ethics. They don't care.
They're either stoned or disaffected or both or whatever. A lot of them have no work ethic.
No work ethic. Like shit just doesn't get done.
Simple stuff. They just have this attitude like, gosh, I'm in a job that I'm too good for, so why should I do it? You know, it's just nothing gets...
No, I'm really, that's really, that and global warming are two things to worry about. That's what needs to be corrected.
We need schools that teach them not only ABC, but work. Work is important.
Well, not to make everything about the Trump election, but the general feeling among people, and we know people, they don't follow the issues exactly closely, as you said. And I said myself on the end of our show last week, the economy is actually good.
If that really is your big complaint, you just don't know the facts. No, it's more of a feeling they have about the left.
And a lot of it is like, it's kind of Gen Z dominated. What's Gen Z? What era is that? Gen Z, I think the oldest of them are like 25 now.
I see. They came along about 2015.
They were the successors to the millennials. And Jonathan Haidt, the great author who follows this stuff closer than anybody, he marks that when Gen Z came of age as a generation around 2015 to be the beginning of wokeness out of control.
And I think he's right. And that's a lot of what this was the determinative in this election.
A lot of the country, certainly enough of it, will elect crazy Donald Trump because they think in a crazy race, he's the less crazy. Really.
The Democrats lost a crazy race to a crazy man.

A truly crazy man beat them.

And I know who's crazier.

I heard an Israeli politician say, the people who attacked us are crazy.

What they didn't realize is that we're crazier than they are.

And they will learn it. I heard that before the whole thing blew up.
Totally. And there's truth to that.
Israelis are not crazy at all. They just would love to live in peace.
They didn't want the whole thing. They were willing to take half a loaf.
They gave Gaza back. You know? I give you all that, but when it came to war, there was no, what they meant was, there's no stopping us.
If we should decide to do this. There is, wars are either, you know, the policy of this country is, let's get a, you know, A tr peace, a truce.
That's not my policy or Israel's, which is let's win the war. And by the way, when we're in a war, that's our policy.
It's only when you're looking from the outside. The best time to ever call for a truce is the day after Israel gets attacked.
They got attacked. Truce! It's like, I'm sorry, but if you attack me, I'm going to attack you back.
And you made a bad tactical error because I actually am stronger than you, and I will get it done. And I'm crazier than you.
Israelis are not crazy at all. Well, definition of crazy.
But what I mean is they know the situation. They know that if they don't finish what they need to finish, it'll happen again in a very short period of time.
Because the truth of the matter is they've made more these 10-year-olds and 5-year-olds in the next 10, 20 years will remember. And they've made.
But there's, yeah, there's only the least bad answer in any geopolitical decision. But we are talking about people who also have strapped suicide vests on 10-year-olds.
Yeah. No, no.
We know that. To me, the ultimate sign of whether you're hypocritical on this or not is, okay, you're all for the Palestinians, and I certainly am for Palestinian civilians and people to be able to live peacefully and healthfully again.
It's not like I don't see the misery and feel for it. But if you're taking sides in this, now my view, you're not seeing who the real bad guy is.
Where would you live? Would you live in Tel Aviv or would you rather live in Gaza? not gaza under the attack of israel just gaza under hamas as it was before october 7th that's why the two-state thing is okay only reasonable explanation get real you would not live in that society these are not your values that women are second-class citizens and should be covered and don't really have rights and gay people, that may be a death penalty thing. And these are not close to your rights.
No elections, no freedom of religion, certainly. No, you'd want to live in Tel Aviv, which looks like where you live now.
That looks like where you live now.

People do what they want. The women wear a sundress when it's nice outside.
And we don't have to be Jews. A lot of Jews are very non-Jewy.
I mean, they're culturally, but it's not a religious thing. And then there's others who are cuckoo religious.
But where would you live?

Exactly.

That is where the rubber meets the road for me. Well, there's the madness of religion there.
And there's always been, why would you kill somebody over the fact that they don't believe the way you believe. Because if you believe something as important as who created the universe and all that he

did, then it's kind of important that...

Yeah, but if I hold an alternative point of view, I'm not infringing on your belief.

Yes, it is.

It's too existential to think that you have to convince yourself, first of all, since there's no actual evidence that there's this supernatural being and you're part of his cult. You have to believe that there's no other possibility.
That's where that comes in. Well, that I don't understand because it's like...
No, it's stupid. It's like I don't eat whatever.
I don't eat meat. I do.
But somebody who's a vegetarian, why would they want to kill me? Because I want a steak. Go eat your vegetables.
I'll eat my steak, and I'll see you at the movies. I mean, some of that is my PETA friends, you know, and God love them.
We're close, and I said this before, but, you know, I'm not a vegetarian. They accept that in me.
So I don't think those people are that dictatorial about it. But I know what you're saying.
Some people would say, you know, like what people say about abortion, it's murder. If you think we shouldn't kill animals, then it's like, hey.
You know, that abortion thing, it's a convenience to think that it isn't murder. It's a convenience.
I agree. I say the same thing.
I say it is murder. I'm just OK with it, which is my position.

This is my actual position.

Right.

It's like until a person is out, I mean, especially at the early stages, yes, it's undeniably becoming a life.

I'm squishy on it.

Some liberals think I'm too squishy on it.

So am I.

Because I was not supposed to be born. What do you mean? My mother had my sister four years, three and a half years before me, and it was very difficult.
And she had subsequently a number of what in those days, this is the early 1950s, they called exploratory operations. They just opened you up because they're like what the fuck we don't know what i mean that's she was in you know had a lot of and they said you should not have another child and so i understand what it could have been to be on the cutting room floor so wait a minute well you you so you your mother conceived again deliberately? Deliberately? I, you know, don't ask those questions or I didn't.
I wish I did. Oh, I have to tell you, you're kind of a Jew, right? I'm a kind of a Jew.
Okay. You'll love this story.
So I'm recently going through, I had occasion to go through old papers, old family papers that I just threw

in a file and never looked.

I said, someday, and someday never came.

I had reason to do it.

And my father saved letters.

These are from like the late 40s.

What's his first name?

Bill.

Like us.

He saved letters from three friends from right after World War II.

Two of them were people he was in the war with.

Thank you. he saved letters from three friends that from right after World War II, two of them were people he was in the war with, all the way through the early 60s.
I mean, a long-distance phone call cost like 25 cents. A stamp was three.
So I'm going through all these letters. It's fascinating.
And again, I only have half the story because I don't have his letters to them. They're gone.
Right. And probably those people are dead.
But I have the letters they sent back to him. My father, who married my mother in 1951, up until about three months before they got married, was engaged to another woman.
Holy cats. Yeah.
Now, my father and mother met in World War II, like overseas. Very romantic.
That's 1940. Met the other woman? No.
Met your mother. My mother and my father.
Overseas? Yes. What country? Probably France in 1944 or Germany.
Was she French? She was a nurse. What? She was an army nurse.
Oh. And he was in Patton's army.
Right. So he knew her from 1944 to 1951.
I don't know during that time, were they seeing other people? Was he cheating? I have no idea. But I do know from the letters, he was about to marry this other woman.
I'm talking about months before he married my mother. And then breaks it off.
And I mean, he could have used the same hall that he rented. It was only like three months later.
Oh, my Lord. And I think what happened was Catholic Bill Maher, Irish Catholic.
Catholic boys just did not marry Jewish girls in 1951. And I think at the last minute, he was like, fuck it.
You know what? That's the one I love. Wow.
And I'm going to marry her. Wow.
But up until then, I think he was going to marry this other girl. Now, that's not exactly in the letters.
Right. But that's the story you've got.
It makes sense. Yeah.
I mean, a Jewish Catholic union was way more outrageous than black-white is today. I know.
So your mother gets pregnant, but you don't know whether it was deliberate or not. No.
What am I going to say? Hey. She wanted to have a baby with your father.
I wish I knew, you know, I mean, I wish I knew the answer to these questions. You've pondered that question.
No. Actually, I never did.
Wow. Never did.
So she has you. Does she have you with great difficulty? No.
My sister with difficulty. Yeah.
And then they told her, don't have another one. And then you come along.
I was were fine yeah yeah and and back then she smoked during pregnancy as women did she you know was in world war ii she wasn't the french doctors by the way uh we were in france and the doctor comes in with She also had her scotch at 5 o'clock.

I like it, okay.

No, really.

I mean, you know, we make too much of, look. What? Too much of what? Well, I have seen people in a restaurant berate a stranger, a woman who's pregnant, because they were drinking a glass of wine.
Wait a minute.

They didn't want her to be pregnant?

She was, what they're saying, they were shaming her for drinking while she was pregnant.

I see.

Well, there's a certain amount of truth to that.

I know.

But a woman, a pregnant woman could have one fucking drink without the kid coming out to

be Tom Sizemore.

Well, you don't know. That might have been his problem.
That's why his name is Sizemore. Oh, my dear.
How's everything else? Good? Everything is good. Yeah? Yeah.
You look good. Working hard.
You know, I really want to go back for a moment to this strange Antarctic trip aboard a liner, a real luxury thing, that's going to do 10 days with Neil deGrasse Tyson, part of it. He's on our show in two weeks.
Talk to him about it because we're both going to be on it. So take me through it, though, step by step.
You leave here and fly to Buenos Aires. I was going to say, Buenos Aires.
Then the charter plane to Buenos Aires to the very tip of South America. Patagonia? Well, I believe it's Patagonia, but Osh even...
Oshuaia, I think, is the name of the town. But I, you know...
Then you board the ship, and the ship goes to the Antarctic. Okay, so the tip, if you can picture, and I can, because I love geography, the very tip of South America...
Is the town of Oshuaia. It's like a little rat tail.
Right. A little curl back there.
Well, as the islands get smaller and smaller. Yes, yes.
So you're at the very tip. So now you're at the very tip.
You've got 600 miles of the most active ocean. You've got to onboard the ship 600 miles to Antarctica? 600 miles takes a day and a half.
I once went to Catalina. I threw up three times.
I'm not kidding. Well, Catalina on a windy day.
Oh, my God. Yeah, but what kind of a boat did you have? This is a big liners.
It was a nice boat. Well, what do you mean a nice boat? It's a little cabin.
We bought a boat. Oh, you had a boat? Yeah, I have a boat.
I've been on it once. I don't like boats.
Why did you buy it? My friend and I, who lives here and takes care of important matters, he thinks it'd be a good idea if the earthquake hits to have a boat. But it's going to be a tsunami.
Get out of Dodge. You're going to be swamped.
Well, we're not going to leave. A tsunami? Well, it's a tsunami if the earthquake happens in the ocean.
That's not where the fault line is. The fault line is in California.
Well, so you think it's going to, no, no, we're not going to shake over there.

We're going to shake over here.

You know, shake is a shake.

Yeah, but at some point the shake is over and then the people are refugees.

Oh, well, getting out of Dodge.

But now you're going to get from here to the Dodge. But everybody would be going the other way.

Well, yes and no.

Some people would be jumping aboard your boat.

That could happen.

You mean that could happen? That's possible. You're right.
But they don't have the keys. They can't make it start.
No, but they can get up and paddle. They can get out onto the water and get away.
You know, there's a seal who sleeps on it. A seal? A seal, yes.
Does it have a seal of approval? No. Not a Navy.
An actual seal that shits on the boat. So there's a seal that's made in its boat? I'm hoping the seal will drive other people away as a gratitude to us for letting him sleep and shit on the boat all these years.
Does he shit on the boat? Yes. So you've got seal shit.
He could sleep there. I'd be happy with the sleeping if it wasn't for the shitting.
But it's so hard to talk to a seal. They pretend they don't speak English.
But so, you know, anyway, what was the point? The point was the shake and the other way. We were talking about the space between us all.
That's a song. You know what song that is? The space between the song? No, well, the Within You, Without You, the song on Sgt.
Pepper. George Harrison.
Yes. You know Sgt.
Pepper. Yes, of course.
Well, side two starts with Within You, Without You, which doesn't really fit not only on that album, but on any Western album, because George got into Indian music. Right.
It's a fusion song. There is Western influence.
Well, they did. They got involved in the whole Eastern thing.
It was very. All of them, huh? Well, they all went for vacation there in February of 1968.
Ringo left very soon. He didn't like the food.
He didn't take to it. And I would be the same way.
Paul and John stayed. How do you know all this? The same way I know basic things about...
I don't know. That's a very esoteric knowledge.
It's not. Of course it is.
No, five people know about that. Lots of people my age know about the Beatles.
Yeah, but not such intimate. Yes, yes.
This is not arcane knowledge that they went to India. The Maharishi.
No, I know they went to India. There you go.
All right. But to know that he wrote the song, and they were influenced.
They had a lot of Indian influence in their music.

Not a lot, but they did use the sitar to great effect in Norwegian wood.

It's great on there.

It's perfect because it's like new, and it's guitar-like,

but it was a totally different sound.

Yes.

They did that first. Everything in music they did first.

Is there a coincidence that it has a guitar sound and is known as a sitar?

That's a great question.

I don't know the answer to that.

Right.

Guitar, sitar.

Of course, if Elvis sang sitar man, it would not have really taken care of.

A sitar man would not work?

I don't think so.

That's what they sing in India.

Sitar man. Yeah, he was sincere about the Indian thing.
And some of the Indian music was, you know, he westerned it up a little. There's another one called The Inner Light.
I mean, the lyrics are heavily influenced. I'm surprised you don't like the food.
Indian food? I love it. Oh, I thought just you didn't like it.
No, no, the food's great. No, it's great food.
No, it's the gods I can't stand. Gods? Well, I mean, you know, they have...
They're religious. No, it's...
Yeah. Look, it's Indian, like Eastern religions, which the people who follow them very often like to downplay as religions.
I mean, Buddhists get a little insulted when you say it's a religion because it's like, oh, religion, that's for the fucking, you know. I didn't know that.
I think it's a beautiful thing. That it is a religion? Well, that it is, you know, your definition of religion is precepts you live by, and they certainly live by Buddhist precepts.
I think there are deeper things about religion than that. Well, but that's when you call it, off the top of my head, that's when you call it a religion.
If you're saying, no, that's not... I mean, the precepts you live by is part of religions for sure, but the basic part of it, I think, is giving people an answer to the questions that they can't answer, where you need to make up a story about it.
Where did I come from? What happens when I die? Those questions make people nervous. Religion's main function is to ease your mind about those questions.
Then they overlay. Sometimes they- I have a great fear of dying.
The leaving, leaving my home and all the leaving you, by that I mean- Yeah, yeah. By friends and- Yeah, yeah.
And people you want to be with. Yeah.
I want to see the playoffs. Right.
The playoffs, exactly. Yeah.
I'm going to know who wins if I'm dead. I'm able in times of some intelligence, excuse me, to rationalize the adventure.

I'm thinking of life as an adventure each day.

This experience with talking with you and jumping from subject to subject

and listening to your laugh and me cough. But I'm thinking of it as an adventure.
My life has become an adventure. And so the most mundane things, taking my dog's head and saying, I love you.
It's just that moment is the adventure. Children, the political thing.
It's all part of our adventure in life. We're writing our book as we go.
I mean, younger people will not understand this at all. But as you get older and the years get more precious, you even prize mundane things.
Absolutely. I remember about, I don't know, five years ago, I was cutting my toenails.
And for some reason, this thought popped into my head. This is hysterical.
I'm just telling you what happened. This thought popped into my head that, oh, you know, I cut my toenails only about like once every maybe three months.
My fingernails I cut like weekly, but toenails, maybe you don't notice, but I think they don't grow as fast. They don't grow as fast.
Okay, so. But they grow thicker.
Yeah. So, but like every, you know, so like every, so four times a year, and it just popped into my head, wow, there's like a finite number of times that I will be cutting my toenail.
Do you read the ads for the nail clippers for old people? But if it's four times a year, and even if I live to 100, there'll be another 30 years, that's only like... 120.
Nail clippings. so now every time i'm cutting my it's too bad you don't count the love making times that you have left oh who cares about that but But the toenails just rocks my world.
They have

ads for toenail

clippers for older people.

What is different about a

clipper for older people? Because your

nails thicken and

a fingernail clipper

doesn't work really well on your toenails.

You need a ween whacker.

Exactly.

Jesus Christ.

And then you cut your socks

Thank you. It doesn't work really well on your toenails.
You need a wean whacker. Exactly.
Jesus Christ.

And then you cut your socks.

And they make those too, by the way.

It's a fucking hole.

It's a file.

It's a little round thing that is a file. And it goes, yeah, and you go to, yeah.
It's true. You're toenails.
I could do that all night. Yeah.
At least you can bend over. I can't get over that far anymore.
Look what I found on the floor. What is it? My appearances.
I hope that's not a sign. What is it? I'm at the Beacon Theater.
Oh my gosh, the Beacon in November 16th coming right up. Are you advertising? Who are you going to be? Aren't you sold out all the time? The theater, I guess.
Aren't you? I don't know. It's a great question.
The theater at MGM Grand Las Vegas. No, I'm not in Las Vegas.
November 17th, Las Vegas. Whoever wrote this is what I was talking about.
Gen Z. Is fired.
November 17th, I happen to know I'm in Washington, D.C. What are you going to do there? Actually, it's in Maryland, but it's the Washington area.
I just can't remember the name of it. It's cold and damp.

Oh, my God.

And then things I don't even want.

Plug.

And here's my shopping list for next week.

Thick socks.

Well, I hope we can.

There's a certain finality in Will I.

With what?

There's a certain finality to Will I like to call this to a close. I'll have another drink if you're up for it.
No, no, I'm done. You're done? Well, I mean, if you're done, I've got to be done.
It's a mutual. It's just a fuck off.
Freak off. It's our kind of freak off.
Yeah, I've got to go back to work. I have so much work this week because, again, election week, it's not like any other week.
What are you going to do? Well, we're going to have, you know, I mean, look, everybody in America will be basically having the same conversation for the next quite a long time on news shows, which is, you know, what happened to the Democrats? What do they do to fix it? That's all the topic is. Or we won and there's lousy Democrats.
Yes. What did we do that made it great? You're right.
Yeah. Well, I mean, they get— There'll be more of those shows than the others.
They get chance to you know like when you it's one thing to win it's another thing to win big i mean he won big what's your opinion of van given the possibility since two attempts have been made what do you you think of Vance? Oh, J.D. Vance.
Well, you know, he looks like, did you see the debate with Walls? I mean, it was like a debate that you'd see in Canada. Oh, it was so polite.
So polite. Yeah, yeah, I saw that.
You know, I'm hoping that guy comes out.

But he's obviously shown himself to be a guy who obviously will turn on a dime.

He said Trump could be America's Hitler, and then he's his vice president.

So, you know, how much hope can I have for integrity?

That's what bothers me.

Yeah.

No, it's a worrisome time.

But I will say it again. The thing I most dread is boredom.
I've done it. Well, here's what I think we should do, Billy.
Treat it as an adventure. We're off on January 6th.
You're so right. We're on 20th.
20th. We're on an adventure.
What's going to happen? How do we modulate it? How do we live with it? How do we agree with it? How do we take this new element in our lives and receive it and work with it? If I may, speaking of January 6th, as long as you did say that date, let's not forget about this election we just had. Okay, it's over.
But the only reason it's over is he won. If he had lost, we would be in all sorts of shit right now because he would never say, I lost.
So let's not have any more of this bullshit. That's a really interesting point.
It's, let's not have any more of this bullshit. That's a really interesting point.
Let's not have any more of this bullshit about, here's a video of Democrats saying the president's illegitimate. Yes, Democrats grumble about Republican presidents and how they got there.
That's a whole different kettle of fish than, okay, you won, which is what they do and the Republicans

don't.

Well, this has been...

Among other depressing topics, I thought I'd end with...

What a grief.

And AI is going to kill us all.

Bye.

I love getting to be better friends with you every time.

It's great, Bill.

And we'll do it next year.

Yeah.

We'll make it an annual since you were our first.

Until I die.

Well, that's not going to happen, Bill.

That's the good side of AI.

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