Overtime – Episode #602: Eric Holder, Michael Shellenberger, Douglas Murray

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Okay.

Eric Calder is back with us on our return.

This is for you.

Why isn't Biden pushing for federal legalization of marijuana?

I think it's probably something we ought to do, given the fact that it is something that would have a great political benefit and also deals with the reality.

You You know, people are using marijuana, it's being legalized.

I've heard that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've heard that you've heard that, you know.

And what's it like?

Is it good?

I only inhaled.

No, it's something that I think we need to catch up.

Our drug policy needs to catch up with what the reality is.

Marijuana is still a Scheduled I drug.

It's ridiculous.

It is ridiculous.

And

Republicans are going to steal the history.

I think eventually.

I mean, like John Boehner works for a marijuana company now.

I mean, it could be one of those freedom issues.

And of course, Republicans smoke lots of pot, too.

There was, I think.

Not enough.

Not enough.

They need to mellow out just a little more, just a little more.

But there was something that was passed in the the House, but the Republicans are against it because they said it has too much stuff about equity in there.

Now, I understand the impetus to want to, like, for example, if you're going to have new businesses that are legal in the marijuana field, yeah, they probably should go to the people who suffered the most during the drug war.

Republicans, of course, are saying this is a deal breaker.

What do you want, half a loaf?

If they said, okay, no equity, is it better to have the law passed or changed, or is it better to hold out for equity?

It's better to have the law changed.

And as I said, deal with the societal reality that we have

and

try to make it as equitable as you possibly can.

But I wouldn't want to stop the movement that I think makes sense

for the sake of equity.

Okay.

Panel, what are your thoughts on Elon Musk mandating his workers?

Oh, yes, it said the workers have to go back to the office.

I love this.

Has this become a dated concept for companies now?

Yeah, it's

I'm delighted to see that because, I mean, everybody knows offices where, or workers who, particularly younger ones who are saying things like, they say to their boss,

the working from home thing, it really helps the productivity.

And if I do have to come in, could I come in like maybe Tuesdays and Wednesdays?

Like,

flip the working week so we have a couple of days of work and then five days of weekend.

I think people are on to that.

And look, it is true.

There are some jobs that you can do better from home, but a lot of it, you know, people have to get back into the office.

People have to stop this pretense that they're scared to go into work for health reasons.

It's bullshit.

It's bullshit.

They're pulling a fast one.

There's no reason at this stage that they shouldn't be in the office, you know, other than they don't want to be, in which case do something else.

It's good to see people coming back into cities.

I mean, we need our cities.

10, 20 years ago, people talked about walkable, livable cities, but we've let our cities deteriorate.

This was a progressive idea of livable cities, and now we've allowed them to be turned over to open-air drug scenes, homeless encampments.

Cities are the lifeblood of innovation, of civilization.

We've got to bring them back.

And the way we do that.

But, you know, I think we really need to ask ourselves the question.

It is entirely possible that people can be more productive at home in certain sectors.

In certain sectors.

I mean my law firm, we're doing a lot of work from home and we've had record-breaking years the last couple of years not spending nearly as much on travel as we once did.

On the other hand, we don't mentor our young lawyers in a way that we did and that we suffer in that way.

But it does wind up looking elitist, does it not?

Because the people who

are

like what I always thought it was bullshit during the pandemic when they were like, we're all in it together.

No, we're not.

Some people are at home in their pajamas, getting food delivered to them, and other people are delivering the food.

And the jobs that tend to be where you can't stay home.

You can't be a plumber from home.

Yeah, beep beep

all the time.

No.

You gotta go to where the sink is.

Or to auto-construction work, you know.

All right, a lot of musk.

You gotta have people in the factory floor.

I always noticed that the people who had gardens liked working from home.

And that like

20-somethings who were paying thousands of dollars a month for a bed sit and were stuck in it tended to want to get back into the office.

You know?

Right.

Fancy that.

Okay.

What do you make of the Heard versus Depp verdict?

Oh, okay.

Well, you brought this up.

Does this trial mark the end of the Me Too era?

No.

It just marks, I think, a restoration of, you know.

sanity.

Like sometimes the jury doesn't believe somebody.

And we, by the way, you never know.

You never know what goes on in a marriage.

You never know what went on between those two people.

I don't have 100% assurance because a jury said Johnny Depp is innocent, that he's innocent.

I don't know.

But that's the best we can do.

We're just humans.

We try.

This is the worst system except for all the others.

The only thing that might suggest it is the end of the METO era is, do you remember the beginning of it?

In 2017, 2018, clearly there was a correction that needed to happen.

Yes.

There were some powerful men who got away with too much and bad things for a long time.

They're not just powerful men.

Those are just the ones we heard about.

Sure.

It was also ones, you know, at the same time.

But the point is that there was a correction that was needed, and it very swiftly ran past the point of correction.

I mean, there were those things like shitty media men, there was a list where people just lost their jobs for a crowd-sourced Google spreadsheet.

There were, you know,

the comic Ansari, he basically got done over for a bad date.

Yes.

And there was a period where we had these completely deranging claims that are typical of our era, where people said things like, believe all women.

and really no

that's as mad as saying yeah believe all men right why it's right of course believe people listen to people listen to their arguments and their experience don't just come out with these things so the thing with the heard trial the heard depth trial is interesting is the jury did hear they did hear her contradicting her own evidence on the stand.

And as Mr.

Holder knows, juries really don't like that.

They really don't like it when they can see somebody has lied.

And they could see that she'd lied, like she pretended she'd given the seven million from the divorce to charity, and then it turned out that it was a

pledge she'd made.

She said, Well, I think a pledge and a donation are the same thing.

And you go, No, they're not.

And so they didn't like that.

So maybe

just after this, we can remind ourselves, as you say, Bill, like marriages are tricky, people are tricky, it's always more complex than we know, but it's certainly more complex than these fucking hashtags, you know?

It's more complicated than the hashtags, but let's also understand that for too long, women were not heard.

Sure,

and they need to be heard, and we need to take seriously the claims that they raise, and we should not have a presumption that because it's coming from a woman, it is something that's made up in the same way that you are.

We all agree on that.

Well,

there's a danger sometimes if we think that we've over-corrected, that we in fact don't go far enough.

That's what I'm just saying.

Also, here's an idea: if you want to try to completely reformulate or rebrand or reframe sexual etiquette between the sexes, don't base it on Hollywood.

Like, no, that's true.

Like,

don't do it.

Don't do it in a very weird industry which actually came up with the term casting couch, where people actually advance for their looks, for their sexual

wiles, and much more.

Like, start in some other business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish you said too, I mean, I think we've been talking about civilization.

I mean, one of the differences between civilization and not civilization is you have a system of justice rather than a system of revenge.

Right.

The systems of revenge are endless cycles of violence, and when you break free of that for a justice system, you're much more likely to be able to have that civil peace that we all want to have.

All right, let's go have some right now.

Thank you, folks.

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