Overtime – Episode #620: Matthew Perry, Laura Coates, Jonathan Haidt

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah, aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

All right, we're back on.

Okay, Matthew, what was it like working on Almost Heroes with Chris Farley?

Oh, well, working with Chris was amazing.

He's probably the funniest person I've ever met.

Really?

Yeah, he was funny.

Yeah, he was really, really funny.

And he would do the strangest things.

We were the leads in this movie.

I remember it, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you're you're the only one that saw it.

With the hot Indian girl.

Yes, yes.

And whenever he would have to make an entrance in a scene, we would, you know, rehearse it and then do the scene.

And then whenever he would do an entrance, I would open the door and he'd be completely naked.

Which was funny to me.

I found it very funny, but the 65-year-old script supervisor was like, oh, no, no, no.

I mean, you couldn't even do that today.

No.

I mean, they would immediately cancel.

The movie would be over.

They would shut down the set.

He'd be arrested.

You'd be canceled just for seeing it.

I mean, it would just.

Laura, what is your take on the World Cup being hosted in Gutter?

Is that how am I pronouncing that?

I've heard it different.

Qatar, Gutter.

I'm calling it, well, any place that has had all the people who spent time building it, up to a thousand people dying, even building it just to be able to sponsor the event.

Gutter might be right.

A thousand people have died.

I don't know.

I hear the reports, like hundreds of people up to a thousand, and the numbers are shaky because I don't know how many people were involved in the building.

And the idea of people being forced in some respect to be in this sweltering heat to build this stadium for profit.

I mean, there is something we fundamentally have to do better.

I know there are avid sports fans.

I know

slash soccer fans among the most avid in the world.

But there should be a middle ground that people can safely participate in the building of it.

Well, look, I'm not, first of all,

I hate soccer as much as I hate Bitcoin.

So, I mean, I'm not going to defend soccer.

I've always been clear to I would they call me an Islamophobe, but you know, come on.

There's some bad things that go on in countries like this that we should talk about.

So I have no dog in this fight.

But when you build something, people do die.

I mean the Panama Canal.

No, the Panama Canal was not a soccer stadium.

You don't need soccer.

And I do need to get sweatpants a day earlier.

Or whatever I get from the Panama Canal.

But I'm just saying, even, you know, Mount Rushmore, completely unnecessary.

We built it.

I'm sure somebody fell off Lincoln's nose and

died, right?

I mean, no, I mean, they couldn't have been up on that fucking mountain for like 12 years with dynamiting into his eyebrow and nobody got hurt.

Okay, people.

It really depends on what was hanging out of his his nose.

The phrase is, if you build it, they will come, not if you build it, they will die.

Right.

That's supposed to be.

But

I hear Qatar is a lovely place for other reasons.

It probably would not be a lovely place for any woman.

who wasn't wearing the appropriate dress and wasn't

paying attention to Sharia law and maybe, you know, leave the house without the permission of a guardian,

okay, that's the shit that goes on in places like gutter that we need to talk about.

And somehow the world doesn't because that's Islamophobia, which is bullshit.

It's violation of every liberal principle.

Women are equal.

So that's what I have against Gutter.

Okay.

John, do you think Americans will ever share another collective experience that engenders a shared understanding?

No, I don't.

Right.

Right.

We don't even know who.

We don't have the same stars anymore.

Like, like, people don't.

Yeah.

I think 9-11 was the last one.

And I think COVID, you know, the first weeks of COVID actually may be qualified, but the fact that we so quickly split, and obviously President Trump has a lead role in that and with his statements about Liberate Virginia and all, but I think there's no possibility for a shared understanding of what's happening anymore.

There used to be journalism with gatekeepers and say what you want about it, at least having a democracy in which people have some shared sense of what's happening makes it possible to have the kind of debates and discussions that we need.

So I do think, well, look, if Twitter collapses, actually, maybe.

It's not just Twitter.

I mean,

you know, I mean, I mentioned, I'm giving a shout out to my friend, you love Jay Leno too.

We all love Jay Leno.

I mean, lots of people, 20, don't know who that is.

And we don't know who the stars that they're watching watching are on TikTok.

They're a TikTok star.

I've seen it happen in a restaurant where, like, these eight kids come in and they play, ha, ha, and I'm like, who the fuck is that?

You know, like, we're TikTok stars.

So, actually, I think a key word here, we talk a lot about polarization, but I think the word I'm moving more to is fragmentation.

That everything gets fragmented.

And it's not just left, right, and within the left, there are all kinds of fights.

You know, within the right, well, less so perhaps, but

it's big on the right now.

Well, now it is, yes, now it is.

Civil War on the right.

Trump and DeSantis?

Oh, I can't wait to see.

I just cannot wait for this.

That's why I would love to see Trump back on Twitter, because all he'll do is attack DeSantis.

And then we'll see what he does.

But it'll be fun.

Yeah, but we'll all get collectively stupider from having to watch it.

Well, we're going to get stupider anyway.

I just don't see it.

I don't see America really coming back until we have that scene at the end of Planet of the Apes where the Statue of Liberty's arm is

like, you know, where they

remember that, you damn dirty ape,

you rooked it all.

I mean, we've got to hit bottom before we let's just enjoy the ride down.

Matthew,

your mother worked.

Let's just enjoy the road down.

Matthew.

Your mother worked as a press secretary for then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Justin Trudeau's father.

How does that association inform your view of politics?

Well, at first

when I was a young kid, I mean, my mother basically was what Allison Janney

was on the West Wing.

That's the way it was.

The White House Press Secretary.

Yeah.

For Justin Trudeau's father, who was the Prime Minister.

That's right.

For years and years.

Right.

Dapper guy.

Very dapper guy.

And went out with some amazing women.

Yes.

Not that that's what makes sense.

Did I say makeout with?

I meant dated.

No, I understand.

I understand.

I totally understand.

My feeling about that was that she was working very hard, so I didn't get to see her as much as I wanted to see her.

That was basically it.

So now there's a big rumor going around that I beat up Justin Trudeau when we were kids.

I saw that, yeah.

Yeah.

And I don't really believe that I did that,

but he picked up on it, and he tweeted me back, and he said, I hit him back because who wouldn't want to hit Chandler in the face?

And so I tweeted him back.

Now that you have your own army, I'm not fighting you anymore.

Good luck with all your endeavors.

And that was it.

Canada has an army?

Canada has an army.

It does.

Yeah.

It doesn't do much.

No.

They don't wear the red, do they?

The mounty thing?

Yeah,

not the army.

And the big head thing.

Oh, my God.

Are they on horseback?

Well,

they're not the army.

They're just people for show.

Do they still have that mounties?

Canadian mountains?

They do.

Wow.

And they faint all the time because it's so hot?

Okay.

8 billion people we passed on the planet this

week.

I don't know how they know that, but I guess they, you know, it's a rough rough estimate.

We don't know who the guy is.

Nick Cannon.

Nick is Nick Cannon.

We just know Nick Cannon's the father.

I hear people talking all the time about how we need more people.

We need less people.

Am I crazy about this?

Elon Musk wants more people.

There's lots of people saying this, like, oh, we got to keep having babies.

No, $8 billion is already way too much.

Right?

All agree?

I mean, I had two kids.

I'm done.

Right.

Yeah.

Two?

Done.

Thanks.

Okay, that was just during the show.

We still got it, I'm telling you.

It's true.

So we're still counting votes in some places.

We just found out, I mean, when was the,

it was 10 days days ago?

Why can Brazil do it in three hours?

And we, and the votes keep trickling in.

What what is it about

they do it in banks?

They count things effectively.

Casinos.

You know, when money's on the line, except for SBF,

they seem to like be totally cool with it.

But we c what is that?

We got to fix it.

I imagine other countries have a much more centralized uniform system.

And I believe it's the case that each state makes all of its laws.

So that's part of it.

But yeah, you'd think that if we can put a man on the moon, we could count the votes in 10 days.

We can't put a man on the moon.

We have to stop saying that.

We have to subcontract that.

We don't put any.

That's a very anachronistic saying, John.

When was the last time we put a man on the moon?

1972?

Yeah.

I think 1969.

No, 69 was the first, but not the last.

So, you know, we can't put a man on the moon.

But REM had the song in the 90s, right?

What?

R.E.M.

had the song song in the 90s, so that counts.

That was about Andy Kaufman.

Well, fine, sue me.

Remember that song?

Andy Kaufman's the reason that there shouldn't be 8 million people on the planet.

I also read this week about sperm.

Great.

I'm glad you read the two things.

No, that sperm counts are dropping.

You read this?

Yep.

First of all, good because of the 8 billion thing.

Doesn't bother me at all.

But, I mean, isn't this a bit of a canary in the coal mine?

I seem to remember a movie where we couldn't propagate and they had to keep the one lady alive who was going to have a baby.

Remember that movie?

Okay, so like, what's going on with sperm counts dropping?

I've been looking into this because I'm trying to understand both what's going wrong for girls and what's going wrong for boys.

And if you look both at circulating testosterone levels and at sperm counts, both are dropping.

And there seems to be a bit more of a steep drop-off in the early 2000s.

And so I have no idea whether this is because boys suddenly started playing a lot more video games or because

new plastics and

how would that affect sperm?

Well, just,

you know, I don't know.

It's just let's.

You just, but it's a correlation because.

Yeah, just

something psychological can.

I mean, I've heard that people, don't people, kids reach puberty earlier than they used to?

I mean, when I was a kid, it was 12.

11, 12 was the earliest.

And now I think it's much earlier, and they've had, and they don't know exactly why that is.

One theory for girls especially is greater body mass index.

It is the case that if you're heavier, for hormonal reasons, you reach puberty earlier.

So part of the drop is thought to be because everyone was getting fatter, and that's leveled off now.

But I think the other leading theory is plastics and chemicals.

And we're now consuming so much.

I mean, there's now plastics in the rain.

That's right.

And aren't they endocrine disruptors?

Yes, that's right.

So I think hormonal explanations are probably where we should be looking here.

Matthew Perry, your theories about sperm.

Aren't you glad you did this show?

Yeah.

All right.

That's it.

Congratulations.

That's chapter 11.

You should know.

Thank you very much.

We were a great audio.

I appreciate it.

We'll see you next year.

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