Overtime – Episode #625: Christoph Waltz, Ari Melber, Sarah Isgur

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Okay, here we are on CNN. Wow, I'm still so excited about this.

And our panel tonight, we had Academy Award winning actor Christoph Waltz was on this show, MSNBC host Irene Melbourne, and ABC News I host Sarah Isguer. Okay.

First of all, you just said to me when you sat down, I mean, the last piece I was doing was about people in show business who hate each other. Have you been on sets like that? Well, of course.

I've been in sandboxes when I was five playing with kids that I hated. It was about playing together, not about hating someone.

But my point was, you know, you can hate each other and still make something great. And they've made many movies like that and government should do it too.
Okay.

Speaking of movies, what does the panel think of the climate activists who glued themselves to the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival? Have you been to the Berlin Film Festival?

Not when someone was glued to the red carpet.

Are these stunts effective or just an annoying disruption?

Better that than throwing soup at priceless works of art. I'll take the glue on the red carpet.
Nobody cares.

Was it natural glue?

Vegan.

It's about sniffing glue.

YouTube star Mr. Beast is receiving backlash for.
Are you familiar with Mr. Beast?

Everyone familiar? I'm not. Okay.
Mr. No?

He's super popular. He's a super popular.

He is very big. I have heard of Mr.
Beast. I've never been to Cracker Barrel, but I've heard of Mr.
Beast.

He started

for funding cataract surgery. Oh, I did read this story.
For a thousand people.

He funded, yeah, a thousand people needed cataract surgery, and this guy's making a fortune as a YouTube star. I mean, how can you not?

If you can make money and do good for other people, isn't, okay, I don't know what that question is. He got a lot of criticism

because he used it for ratings. And it's like, I think the people who got the cataract surgery aren't too pissed about it.
No, that's not what a lot of the tweets were about. And these are from some,

somebody in the Washington Post said this, somebody I think at BuzzFeed said this. They were criticizing him because their point is that

you should not try to correct

yourself if you're blind or deaf or something. That's like ableism.
Like it's not, it's not worse to be blind. It's just different.
And I would say if that was me, please help me. Yes.

These also weren't involuntary surgeries. But really, I mean, that's...

Does the same thing go for literacy?

Ah.

Great question.

Nikki Haley has called for politicians over 75 years old to, oh, yes, to be required to take a mental health competency test.

I wonder who that's aimed at.

Both of them, right?

I think it's both. I think she's trolling.
It allows her to draw attention to Biden. She's in the Republican primary, but it's a subtle hit on Trump.
They're both older politicians.

They have every right to run. The competency test is a really long campaign, and people will assess how they seem.
But shouldn't we do that for everybody? Why just over 75? Because

I mean

over here in my 35-year-old House of Representatives. Right.
Well, I mean, there's only one age requirement.

The Constitution has a minimum age, and that was because they were so worried about people passing things on to their famous sons at the time.

There's no maximum age, but we have that for pilots and other things. But again, I think it's hard.
If you've covered these things, you know how it is. It's hard to run for president.

We're going to see how they do. And then you're going to decide at the debates and other forums whether they seem like they got it.

Well, and as Don Lemon told us on CNN, women actually can't run for president because he said we're past our prime once we get to our 40s.

But since you have to be 35 to run, it's like this really tight window between 35 and 40.

But it presupposes that's the only way you can be mentally incompetent. I mean, I would take a guy who's 90 and forgets a few things, but he's seen a lot in his life and has the experience.

And of course,

if you have Alzheimer's and you're not there and you don't remember who your wife is, obviously that's a different story. But as opposed to somebody who's 40 and doesn't have a lot of experience,

yeah, see. So I think you're right.
What's funny is I think ageism is real. We see it in a lot of industries.
Oh. And we see it on a sexist basis as well, as I think you mentioned,

which is fair. I just think that what's funny is the one place that you see less ageism in our public life would be politics.
When you look at Pelosi, McConnell,

the current president, the last president who's running for re-election. So while I do think it's a problem, I think we should be less ageist.
We were talking about civil rights earlier.

That's one of the things people discriminate on. Having said that, for whatever reason, incumbency, fame, other things, donor class.
And the voters are older.

The voters keep going back to some of the choices that are upper in the age bag. There's a movement in Europe going on right now,

started by an older gentleman who had to deal with his bank. And the movement's called I'm Old, Not Stupid.

I subscribed to that. What was he dealing with?

With his bank, because of the

bank had changed some online, you know, and he said, but this can't be understood. And then they treated him like an idiot, and he said, no, no, no, I'm old, not stupid.

Well, there is a lot of making you try to feel like you're stupid when you're older. I mean, they purposely do things, you know, why do I need to, what's that thing when you take a picture of the...

The QR code? Thank you.

I do do it.

I find that for menus to be the most annoying thing in the world. I do it to get my car out of valet.

I'm not kidding. A cracker barrel.

How about when you have to go to fill something out and it says like, pick the photos with the pickup trucks and so it's like you have to prove to this robot that you're human

Think about it

New census data shows that California and New York saw a mass exodus well mass I don't know

Yeah, well 500,000 wow of people with their populations dropping by around 500,000 people and it doesn't say over is that in a year?

Maybe it is or the last couple of years can anything bring cost of living down in desirable places? Oh,

I've heard our discussion. Florida, Tennessee, no state income tax.
Right. Nice weather, and something else.

There's something else about those states. Is this a referendum on the way we govern here in California and New York? I mean, obviously, this looks like a blue state, red state thing.

I mean, a lot of it is big offices in big cities. Like, I live in Brooklyn.

A lot of those big Manhattan towers haven't filled back up with people, but also that was an urban plan built a long time ago, and maybe it's evolving. I totally get it.

I mean, in all fairness, I think it's fine.

If people don't want to be in these super expensive cities and go somewhere else, especially if they don't have to commute to one of those skyscrapers that often, then fine.

But I think in New York, like I don't, from what we can see anecdotally, I don't think all those buildings are going to fill back up. They're not.
And that's okay. Yeah.

You know, I think one of the good things that happened with the pandemic was when time stopped, we got a chance to sort of like reassess.

And we were saying to ourselves, why do we need to go to work five days?

And we don't. Not from, you know, you probably should work five days, but maybe you can get your work done in four days.

They found when people work 80% of the time, if they get paid the same, they do the same amount of work. Because most people, in an eight-hour day, they work three hours.

So why not? And, you know, save all that commuter time. I love, we come to the office once a week now.
Well, obviously today to do the show. But

other than that, yeah.

You're welcome. It was a pleasure.

But other than that, once a week, and that's, I feel that's perfect. We could do the rest of it at home.
I don't need to see my lovely staff. I love them.
But like, once a week is perfect.

Here's the problem.

And I mean that in the totally agree, but we are losing something. I work from home, so like take this criticism for what it's worth.
But like our generation, we already got mentored.

We already got trained. I think about like lawyers, like law firm partners aren't going in anymore, and those associates aren't learning how to do a trial.

God knows we don't learn learn it in law school.

So, like, we don't quite know what's going to be lost when we have an entire generation who doesn't have anyone actually telling them how to do their jobs because we're all home in our PJs. Yeah,

I think both things are true.

PJs.

I think both things are true. Like, I remember the very beginning of COVID with the lockdowns, people were like, What the hell? Like, I can't stay home.
Like, I need to go out.

And then, by the end of COVID, everyone's like, what the hell? I can't go out to work. I need to stay home.
And you're sort of like, like, this is human nature.

But I think you're the next thing.

Well, you have to go out to the set to make a movie. So you're going to be out and we're going to go to the movies together, right?

Not at the same time. Okay.
Thank you very much. We'll see you next week.

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