Ep. #588: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Katherine Mangu-Ward, Johann Hari

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 going to 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.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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

Thank you.

How are you?

Thank you very much.

Look at this.

Still with the masks.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, we get such a good crowd now.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

You're obvious.

I appreciate that very much

you

are in a crazy good mood

I think I know why it's probably because NASCAR is here

what it's new to in LA this weekend we have NASCAR just something we've never seen before traffic moving

about

oh

oh and did you and we have the Super Bowl That's pretty exciting.

And we're, and LA is in the Supra Ball.

The team is, did you see the big game where LA and San Francisco and all the politicians in the state were there and

not wearing masks?

They got a picture of them.

Well, they said they just took the mask off for the picture.

Mayor Garcetti said, he literally said this.

He said, I held my breath the whole time.

Wow.

He he said that.

At least when Bill Clinton said he didn't inhale, he was getting high, you know.

Held his breath.

Come on.

But

our president had a better week,

more job creation in his first year than ever.

That's not a bad thing.

And just

even with Omicron, in January, we added 500,000 new jobs.

Now, a a lot of those jobs were Fox News guests talking about how bad the economy is.

But still, they're jobs.

Oh, did you see?

Now, President Biden,

I love this every year, the prayer breakfast.

How many go?

No?

It's fantastic.

The national prayer breakfast.

And he took a moment out to single Mitch McConnell out and said, Mitch, thank you for being a great friend.

And

that reporter that Joe insulted last week, he stood up and said, wait, and I'm the stupid son of a bitch?

Oh, I can.

But listen to this.

That's perspective, always my theme here.

The Republican National Committee has now censured.

Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger, the two Republicans who are honest about what happened with the election.

This is the difference.

I mean, I call out the left, as you know I do, and they are way off track, but the Republicans are a party that is just about having a creepy fealty to one man.

They're not really Republicans anymore.

They're like BTS fans.

And if you tweet out, K-pop sucks, they go mental.

You know, I mean, this whole,

everybody is just canceling everybody else.

Nobody talks.

They just want to kill their, I mean, Spotify.

Have you seen this thing that's going on with Spotify?

Because the musicians don't like Joe Rogan.

So Crosby, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

have, it's true, have all pulled themselves off Spotify.

You know, it's getting to the point where they're no fun anymore.

Oh, two people remember that song.

I think that says a lot.

But yeah.

And that's not why it's a big threat.

But it's Crosby Stills, Nash, Young, Johnny Mitchell, the head of Spotify, the CEO, said he feels terrible about this.

But not as bad as it was 1972.

Anyway,

the other person person who was in the barrel this week, of course, Whoopee Goldberg.

You saw what happened there.

Whoopee had some comments on her show.

She said, you know, there's the Nazis, a lot of bad things you can say about them, but you can't call them racist.

Which

was

not something I agree with a lot of people, so she was suspended.

Well, she wasn't suspended right away.

It took them a day to find the person who was going to take over the job of yelling at me.

But

it's an interesting country, you know, where kids can never do anything wrong, but the adults get a timeout.

But let's be positive.

The Olympics have started

in China.

Oh, when we all come together to celebrate the human spirit under quarantine in a police state.

It's a beautiful thing.

Oh, and they are

China does not want COVID to be a problem.

They have brought back, I am not kidding about this, the

anal swab testing.

Talk about a super spreader event.

But you know, I mean,

apparently also now, because you know, China always, when they have the electron, they clean everything up in their view, like it's hard to find a grinder now anymore in China.

You took that personally, did you, sir?

Okay.

But

they're very hostile to the gay people there in China now.

And like, who do you think choreographed that opening ceremony?

You know, I mean,

I mean, they are,

they can be a little,

China can be a little tone deaf with the optics.

You know,

did you see the ceremony?

Oh, it was beautiful.

But, you know, to symbolize peace, they released hundreds of bats.

That's not the.

But it was beautiful.

Come on, the pageantry.

Did you see the flowers?

Children, so many children.

Somewhere in an iPhone assembly line, they were going, where is everybody?

All right, we got a great show.

We have Catherine Mangle Ward and Johan Harry.

But first up, he is a congressman representing California Silicon Valley who worked for President Obama and is the author of the new book, Dignity in a Digital Age, Making Tech Work for All of Us.

Representative RoConna

Congressman,

we're about to shake hands.

I always think the

Usually the Republicans will shake my hand.

The Democrats are still like this.

I'm shaking your hand.

Oh, no, I'm glad.

I'm glad.

I'm glad to see you.

I thought we should.

Part of civility, talking to everybody, shaking everyone's hand.

Right, but the Democrats are the party were more afraid of COVID, so they don't do shit like that.

You know, that's why the Republicans shake your hand.

That doesn't matter.

I'm going to get to that later.

I have so many things to talk about with you.

Yes.

So let me just start with the big broad one.

One year of Joe Biden and the Democrats in charge.

How do you assess that first year?

Thank you for actually talking about the facts of the job creation.

I mean, that's a change for most people in the media.

I mean, look at what we have done.

First, $20 billion into Ohio.

Intel is investing, 3,000 manufacturing jobs, 7,000 construction jobs.

If this had happened with Donald Trump, the whole country would know.

I mean, this is the economic revival of the Midwest.

You've had job creation.

You have had a strong economy.

We've got to tell the story.

So you're saying that's the most important thing, the economy.

I'm just asking.

It's the economy.

He's ended a war for 20 years.

We've had bipartisan success on income.

I mean, he didn't exactly stick the landing on that one, but

I agree it was the right move.

It was 20 years, right?

And he had guts.

20 years and then a very bad month at the end.

He had guts.

And you know, by the way, all the Democrats who had supported, some of them who had supported,

they ran away.

The progressives actually said, look, he had guts.

But, okay, I mean, I think the economy is important.

We all like money.

But, like, when Republicans say to me, you know, like, why don't you be a Republican?

I'm like, are you crazy?

You guys don't believe in climate change and the emergency there, and you don't believe in American democracy.

Right.

So that's not on the table.

Yeah.

And I would join your nutty party.

You're not a Republican.

I'm not.

I'm just someone who's honest about the Democrats who have a lot of raggedy shit.

Well, you believe, look, you believe in free speech.

I go on Fox News, right?

I go on Fox News, and I get criticized from the left.

I get criticized all the time.

Why are you going to do it?

Don't you go on Fox News?

I go on Fox News.

I'm not sure.

I've been telling Democrats they got it.

And I get attacked for going on Fox News.

And I say, are we really in this country not able to have a conversation?

Have some confidence in your ideas.

But we're really not.

And absolutely, I think, but look, you got to call out the Republicans, too.

I do.

What is this stuff about canceling Mouse and canceling Tony Morrison, one of the greatest authors.

You know, what about that canceling?

Anyway, my point being, the Republic, you say the economy most important, it is very important.

To me, those are the two bigger important issues.

And the democracy one, kind of on the tip of my mind.

You guys have like 12 months left before, I'm sorry, but you're going to get your ass kicked in the midterms.

You have like 12 months left.

What are you doing?

to make sure that what Trump is going to try to do, what he tried to do last time, is not going to happen again.

We're passing the Electoral Count Act.

I mean, it's actually a Klobuchar bill so that if you actually lose Arizona, for example, you can't just have the state legislature say you won Arizona.

You say we're passing it.

Well, the Senate's going to pass this,

60 votes.

I mean, they're working on this to pass the actual legislation.

The Republicans will vote for it.

The Republicans will vote for it.

I mean, unless you believe that someone can lose a state election and have the state legislature send a slate.

I mean, it's not.

That is what they believe.

That's my issue.

That's the problem, is that they don't believe in elections anymore.

Well, at least 60 senators, I think, will go behind this.

Yes, this will be a significant thing.

But you know one thing, Bill?

There's so much doomerism in this country.

Oh, you know, the country's falling apart.

I mean, give me a break.

You look at people who fought in World War II.

You look at John Lewis, who was my colleague, who was beaten on the Edmund Pettis Bridge.

I'll tell you something.

We're going to become the first multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy.

Donald Trump doesn't define America.

We're going to be strong.

And here's what the Democratic Party needs to do.

Instead of saying, oh, woe is me, America is going down authoritarianism, say, no, that's not America.

We're strong.

We're going to lead this country to becoming the first multiracial, multi-democracy that no other nation in the world has done.

Well, multiracial and multi-ethnic, yes.

Democracy, I don't know.

I think that's a very cheerful way to look at the future.

Unless Donald Trump disappears from the scene for whatever reason, he's going to try to do what he did last time.

And he's putting in place people right now to say yes when he asks for them to find more votes next time.

So I'm glad you're optimistic.

I'm not.

We'll move on.

And again, I don't know what you guys are doing in the, you know, again, we got a year left.

The clock is ticking.

Now's the time to make democracy well this is.

I agree with you.

And we've got to pass this bill.

The Republicans have got to get on board with saying the person who wins the votes should be president.

I mean, that is the most important thing, this electoral count act.

And getting, you know, I never thought, Bill, you know, I'm 45 years old, and I never thought growing up that I would have to fight the same fights that were fought in the 1960s.

Like, are we really fighting to say there should be equal amount of ballot boxes in black communities as white communities?

How sad that in 2021, 2022, we're having to have those fights.

I mean, come on.

Well, let's win them.

That's it.

I'm not surprised that we're still having them because I think we'll have them for a very long time, but we do have to win them.

Okay, so you mentioned the economics up front in Ohio.

A lot of your book is about Appalachia, which I find very interesting.

I don't know if people really understand.

They know the term, but it goes through about eight or nine states, right?

I mean, it's that area, mostly it's the south.

If you ever saw the movie Winter's Bone,

made Jennifer Lawrence a star, that is about Appalachia.

It's a brilliant movie.

And, you know, it's where people know that area of the country.

West Virginia, I mean, it's rough if you go in there and you're a revenueer.

You know, I mean, it's the Beverly Hillbillies, you know, and sometimes authority, state, local, federal, is not recognized.

And you're saying that we could make that into, I mean, you're from Silicon Valley.

You could say that you could make that into a tech center.

That's not just what I'm saying.

That's what the Republican congressman from that area, Hal Rogers, is saying.

He calls it Silicon Holler.

And the interesting, he does, Hal Rogers, it's his kind of.

It's kind of like Butcher Holler.

It's Silicon Holler.

And there's a story of Alex Hughes, who is unemployed, and he goes and he gets this job, and he's making refrigerators, and he's making laundry machines.

But there's smart laundry machines and smart refrigerators.

Look, Bill, there are going to be 25 million digital jobs in this country.

That's more than manufacturing and construction combined.

$11 trillion a year.

How many?

$25 million by 2025.

Digital jobs.

Digital jobs.

What is a digital job?

Anything that has a tech component.

You want to make a car, it's got a tech component.

You want to make a refrigerator?

It's got a tech component.

My car is all tech component.

There you go.

But should those, is it, can this country really prosper if all of those tech component jobs are in Silicon Valley, New York, or Austin?

Right.

No.

$11 trillion of market value in my district.

We've got to bring these jobs to places so people can live.

Hillary Clinton kind of tried to sell this.

No.

Well, she's...

She said to them, move.

She said, move.

No, she said, we will replace your coal mining jobs, the worst job in the world, and we'll retrain you.

And they said, you're from the government, we don't believe you.

That's a nice idea, but we actually have a job in the mine.

What are you going to do differently so that they don't have that reaction?

Well, first of all, the coal mining jobs, as they know, a lot of them have been automated.

There's been a decline of those jobs.

The question is, what are the new jobs going to be for the kids?

And we've got to get out of this idea that we're going to make a coal miner a coder.

These aren't coding jobs.

The reality is, a lot of the new manufacturing jobs, a lot of the retail jobs, a lot of the electronic semiconductor jobs, all of these jobs are going to require a technical component.

My message is those jobs shouldn't just be for the kids in my district and you shouldn't have to leave your hometown to have those jobs.

25 million of them.

And you know what?

You know what is patronizing to these communities to kind of go there and think that they don't get it?

Of course they get it.

They know where the wealth is being made.

And for 40 years, they've been ignored.

For 40 years, their jobs have gone offshore.

There's been deindustrialization.

And they're upset.

And they've been told, go move or go get trained, and the jobs haven't come.

And they're upset.

They're rightfully upset.

Democrats have the right messaging on the economy in general with...

They seem to be the party of handouts instead of work.

Even people in those areas who use handouts.

I think West Virginia gets more federal money than any state.

Well, we need to have an economic aspiration message.

And let me say this.

Look, I'm for taxing the billionaires in my district, and I'm for giving everyone health care and a a free college, but that's not enough.

And I'll tell you why it's not enough.

Cleveland used to be the Silicon Valley in the 20th century.

Americans were a proud people.

We want to build wealth, we want to create things, and the Democrats have to have a message of how we're going to give opportunity to people to create things and build things in their hometown.

And we have to have a message of patriotism.

This is a great country.

And also, it seems like the Democrats,

their reputation anyway, is anti-wealth.

And yet, you know, most young people are Democrat or lean that way.

And you look on their Instagram, all they do is pretend they're wealthy.

They want wealth more than anybody.

They're always pretending they're in a private check.

Why don't you become the party of let's all get rich?

I'm all for creation of wealth, building wealth.

One of the reasons that Donald Trump did better with young African-American voters, he sold them a totally bogus platinum plan.

But people have aspiration to make money, to be wealthy.

And

they ought to have a path to doing that.

So yes, the Democrats ought to have an aspirational economic message.

We ought not to demonize wealth, but we can say if you've done well, you can pay more so everyone has the same shot.

Look, the shot you and I had.

You probably had a decent education.

You probably had health care.

You probably had nutrition.

You probably grew up in a safe community.

Fine.

Let's give everyone that shot, and then let's give them an opportunity to create wealth.

And that's what we're doing.

All right, shake my hand again.

I'm Congressman Rokin.

Great to see you.

All right.

Let's meet our panel.

Hello.

Hi, Bill.

Hi, guys.

All right, here they are.

She is editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine and co-host of the Reason Roundtable podcast, Catherine Mango Ward.

Good to see you back here.

Is your hair more purple?

It's always purpler.

Oh, Oh, it's always purpler.

All right.

I missed so much.

He's the author of the new book, Stolen Focus.

We're going to talk about this.

Why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again.

Johan Hari is over here.

Yes, please come.

Let's start with that because it's sort of a theme show.

Because it's funny, that's what I was working on this week, that idea.

And it's going to be the end of our show, a little teaser, about losing focus.

And your book is all about that.

It fascinates me because here's a great line I read in the book.

Some doctor said, it is not possible to have a normal brain today.

You know, we can't concentrate on anything.

What is that?

What are the main reasons why we can't have a normal brain and concentrate on anything?

This was really personal for me because I noticed that with each year that passed, my ability to

just pay deep attention to things like reading a book

was getting more and more like running up a down escalator.

Do you know what I mean?

I'm sorry, say that again.

I wasn't listening.

And

when I started looking into it, I realized this isn't just me.

One study, for example, found that the average American college student now can't focus for more than a couple of minutes when they're trying to study.

The average American office worker now focuses for only three minutes on any given task on average.

So I was trying to figure out what's happening to us.

So I went all over the world and interviewed over 200 of the leading experts on focus and attention.

And I learned that there's scientific evidence for 12 factors that can make your attention better or can make it worse.

And loads of the factors that are making our attention worse have been hugely increasing in recent years.

The phone.

So one factor is the tech we use.

I mean, it ranges really,

it's interesting.

When I started doing the research, I thought tech would be the single biggest factor.

Actually, of the 12 factors, there are components of the tech we use that are specifically designed to invade and hack our attention.

That's what the people who design them admit.

But that's one factor we've got to to deal with.

That's one factor among many.

Food.

Yeah, the way we eat is hugely damaging our ability to focus and pay attention.

Right.

Can I explain one of the ways?

Sleep.

Yeah, exactly.

You go down my list, Bill.

Well, I mean.

Yes, I read your book.

Of course, I kept dozing off.

Well, you know, you know, this is so important because I'd just say to anyone watching, right?

Think about anything you've ever achieved in your life that you're proud of, whether it's starting a business, being a good parent, learning to play the guitar, whatever that thing you're proud of is, it took a huge amount of sustained focus and attention.

And when focus and attention break down, as I believe they are breaking down now, I think the science is pretty clear, your ability to solve your problems and your ability to achieve your goals begins to break down.

And that's true at a personal level and at a collective social level.

So how does this reverse itself ever?

Does it, you think?

I mean...

Yeah, so I think there's two levels of which you've got to switch.

Do you want to

remind?

Sorry.

Yeah,

I can answer that.

So I actually think, you know, due respect to the expert here, that there's maybe another way to look at this, and it's that we are in a changing world.

And so when we say normal brain, we mean maybe a brain that was built for a world that's gone now.

You know, I think a lot of my success has been due to the fact that I can toggle very quickly between tasks.

And one thing that enables that is the same tech you're worried about.

It makes us way more productive.

So this notion that somehow we can only do meaningful things if we do them slowly.

I don't know about that.

I think that's, I've read that this,

was it in your book that I read?

Okay.

That

the idea people think that they can multitask, but they're not really multitasking.

Am I right that they think they're doing three things at once and they're really doing no things at once because they're fucking them all up because they're not concentrating on anything.

That's 100% right.

So I used to say what you said, Catherine, until I started to look at the science of this.

It's pretty sobering.

I went to interview Professor Earl Miller, who's one of the leading neuroscientists.

Oh, he's quite.

And he said to me, MIT, and he said to me, there's one thing about the human brain you need to understand more than anything else.

You can only consciously think about one or two things at a time.

That's it.

It's a fundamental limit of the human brain.

But what's happened, the average American teenager now believes they can follow six or seven things at the same time.

So what happens is when scientists get them into labs, and they get them to think they're doing more than one thing at a time, what you discover is they're juggling.

And that comes with a really big cost.

It's called the switch cost effect.

When you try and do more than one thing at a time, it turns out even the people who believe they're good at it, you do all the things you're trying to do much less competently.

You make more mistakes, you remember less of what you learned, you're much less creative.

This is why Professor Miller and many other scientists said to me that we're living in what he called a perfect storm of cognitive degradation at the moment.

But the most important thing to understand.

So again, how do we reverse it?

I asked you to get it.

It can't always be the apocalypse, right?

It can't be that we are always struggling with the end times, that the technology is killing us all.

And I think that in this case, the answer to how do we reverse it is actually the bits of your book that I thought were the best, which were the things where you just make different decisions.

And of course, there are cultural and societal limits on our choices, but there's good advice in the book.

People can choose to follow it.

I think that's the emphasis that we should put, not that somehow, you know, Congress needs to make Facebook be less good so we don't look at it so much, which is a real temptation.

Sibero.

You're totally right, though.

A huge number of things that are much better now than in the past.

But I do think the evidence that attention is getting worse is really clear.

And I think there's two ways we need to respond to this.

I think of them as defense and offense.

There's dozens of things I go through in Stolen Focus, the book, about how we need to defend ourselves and our children as individuals.

Obviously, a big part of the book is about what's happening to our kids, which are particularly bad.

And I know that's the part you're sympathetic to.

But I want to be honest with people,

that will only get us so far.

At the moment, it's like someone is pouring itching powder over us all day,

and we're responding by going, then that person leans forward and goes, you might want to learn how to meditate, then you wouldn't scratch something.

It's not going to get better.

I hate to, I'm going to turn over all the cards.

I'm sorry.

It's just not.

I hate it.

We're just not going to get better.

We're either going to go on the path and somehow find a way.

I think humans are incredibly adaptable.

I think that technology has changed radically over the course of human history.

And it seems, broadly, that things are actually getting better and better.

I think we're totally fucked.

I do think that it's...

I do.

I mean, it's going to be, you know, it's a, you don't think we've been on a downward slant for many, many years.

I get it, that the world is, you know, changing and maybe for

people who are used to,

of course, always changing.

What's that?

We don't have a shift in consciousness about it.

What did you say?

I said maybe people who are used to an older way of life look at the new world and see

that it looks alarming and different.

But

that's, first of all, that's a cheap shot.

Yep, it was.

It's a cheap shot.

It's like, how could you know you're older?

And you're not 25.

I think that's true.

I think the opposite point here, though, is that things changing cause transition costs, right?

There's always going to be people who are going to struggle in the shift, but that there are also people who will thrive.

And that to look for those people is a valuable exercise.

But a society where people are focusing on average for only three minutes at work is not a society where we've adapted or where we're going in a good direction.

You're totally right.

But where I disagree with you, Bill, is although I understand where you're coming from, is there absolutely things we can do to start to put this right.

We could.

Or things we could do.

We don't.

You know, like not use the phone as much.

It's not going to happen.

No, but there's big.

And I'm going to say that there are social changes that we can fight for as well.

So we've got to have that level of defense.

I can't do that either.

But I've been to places.

That's why I don't go.

I'll give you an example from history where they did this right.

Well, you're going to remember this, Bill.

I remember it.

You'll remember it, Catherine.

Sure, because we're old.

It used to be.

And that's the thing, we remember stuff.

Tell me, me, are you the older?

You know, it could be because we're older, we're actually smarter, like every other country would believe.

But go ahead.

It used to be, it used to be, we all remember this, that people used to put lead and gasoline in their cars.

And it was discovered that that profoundly damaged children's ability to focus and pay attention.

Exposure to lead is really bad for you.

And there were people at the time who said people just adapt, people just change.

Turned out they couldn't.

It really damaged people's brains.

So what happened?

Ordinary moms banded together and said, we can't tolerate this.

We need need to ban.

And importantly, they didn't say, let's ban all gasoline.

They said, let's ban the lead in the gasoline.

We banned it.

That threat to our attention has been dealt with.

For these other threats, I think we've got to have a shift in our psychology, right?

Well, we are not medieval peasants.

Government did that.

Government.

Ordinary citizens.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

Right.

Democrats in government passed that law.

100%.

That's when government was different.

That's when Republicans were different.

George Bush I was the one who was.

Unfortunately, nobody in government is passing much of anything these days.

And

the environment did not used to be something that the Republicans were against.

No, I completely agree, but we've got to reclaim our minds.

And we think about we are all the beneficiaries of movements that banded together and fought for things that seemed impossible, whether it's women's rights, I'm gay, gay rights.

I argue in Stone Focus, we've got to have an attention movement to reclaim our minds.

And I think we've got to change our psychology about this.

We are not medieval peasants living at the court of King Zuckerberg, begging for a few little crumbs of attention from his table.

We are the free citizens of democracies and we can reclaim our own minds of forces to get stolen if we want to.

I'm glad everybody is so optimistic.

We've got to fight for it, General.

He's up to it.

If we don't fight for it,

but this is like why I don't believe, or let me put it this way, I'm very skeptical of the Build Back Better plan, because even if we spent it, now Joe mentioned this week said it's dead, and it has been dead for a while,

but

even if we could, if we spent that kind of money, like, do I have any confidence that that money would go where it's supposed to go?

That we I mean, I was reading this, the New York City subway, Second Avenue subway, cost $2.6 billion per mile.

They did it in Paris for $160 million.

That's 6.15%.

That's one reason why we can't get anything done.

I will join you in despair here.

I do think that we are in a pretty catastrophic situation in terms of just the very basic doing of stuff in this country.

And I think Congress is a big part of that.

Unfortunately, I think that the infrastructure bill is going to be probably about it for what they do.

Certainly, Build Back Better is mostly doomed.

But when we ask, okay, so we spent this $1.2 trillion on infrastructure.

First of all, we can't actually even spend that money because Congress hasn't properly appropriated it.

It needs a continuing resolution.

Anyway, it's super boring.

But

even if that money was ready to be spent in this country, we cannot turn dollars into infrastructure.

It is super, super.

We don't have enough workers for the coffee shop.

But the actual record is not.

So when you look at, that's true.

We don't have to do that.

We can't even get a latte, so like building a highway is hard.

I just don't see it.

The inputs about the physical inputs and also the labor inputs are actually a smaller part of the problem.

The biggest part of the problem with not being able to get stuff built is the not in my backyard, kind of NIMBYism.

People get a veto on what can be built, environmental review, other regulations, and of course, corruption and all manner of lobbying to put this money places into.

Everybody has their hand out.

Why does it cost Paris $160 million

and us $2.15 billion for the same thing?

Well,

the CP is awash in lobbyists right now who are trying to grab a little bit of that footage,

but this is so important, this infrastructure bill, because there are two kinds of foundation that are collapsing.

There's the physical foundations of the country.

I drive all over the country researching my books.

The infrastructure in this country is going to shit, right?

The roads, the bridges, the broadband, we have got to fix them.

If we don't fix them, we don't have a country, right?

But also the political infrastructure, if we think about something horrific, you've documented this so well, Bill, is happening.

People are losing their faith in democracy.

And Bernie Sanders is absolutely right when he says the best way to restore faith in democracy is to show that the system can deliver something for ordinary people.

And you know, we've been getting pessimistic here, and there's lots of reasons to be pessimistic where I would agree with both of you.

But let's think about a great thing the government did.

The government did a child, excuse me, a child tax credit, $300 all through the pandemic.

It has more than halved child poverty.

Handing out money, you're right.

They can do that.

That's the easy one.

Can I write a check and put it in the mail?

That's not doing a lot.

That's passing out money that we don't have.

But Bill, but Bill.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have done it, but it's not building something.

It's doing a huge thing.

It's not building something.

It's doing a huge thing.

It's taking really hungry children.

Joining us giving them food.

I understand that.

That's one of the biggest achievements of the American government, I would argue, in that case.

That's really, though, I think, a fundamentally different issue than what Bill is raising here, which is

how do we get to the next thing?

How do we, it's not just writing a check, it's how do we build the infrastructure we need, how do we get the innovations that we need to move to the next level.

And I think, you know, I at this point have basically given up on the idea that the state is going to get itself sorted out and build this stuff.

I am ready to figure out how to get a jetpack and a Hyperloop and just skip the whole mess.

All right, so let me put me more volumes or something because it's sort of apropos of what we're talking about with losing focus.

I'm reading in Scientific American this week.

I never miss an issue.

That people are not fucking anymore.

Not as much as they.

Why are we applauding that?

And just before Valentine's Day, what's terrible news to get.

But this is what they said.

Because in Crete, why?

And especially the young who traditionally bone the most.

I'm just quoting from Scientific America.

Because of increased social media use, increased video game use, and also too much porn.

The kids are watching kids.

You are watching too much porn, and it's sapping your natural desires.

So we thought as a service, Roy's doing a service here at this show.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We thought we would put out an app to tell you

how you know to tell if you're watching too much porn.

Would you like to see some of the things in our app?

I thought, this is how you meet.

I don't think any of you know.

You need to see a doctor for your tennis elbow, and you don't play tennis.

That is, that's very.

You refer to any woman over 21 as a MILF.

When asked if your house is on fire, what would you say first you answered the Kleenex?

You look for the on switch on cucumbers

on your dating profile.

You list your type as dead-eyed, malnourished, and Eastern European.

You only own one cup.

You can't get hard without a German shepherd and a little person in the room.

You believe in traditional marriage between a man and his stepsister?

And you're a guy.

All right.

So.

Can I ask about the Olympics?

I read the paper today.

70% of Americans don't think China should be hosting the Olympics.

And, you know, It's funny, I was mentioning can't get grinder anymore in China.

They're putting Uyghurs into camps.

It's a 1984 surveillance state.

It's just so much wrong with China.

And yet it's an issue that really confuses the woke

because Chinese are Asians

and Asians are not white.

So if you criticize them, it's racism.

Logic checks out.

I mean, that's really where we are with the level of thinking with a lot of people in the country.

Yeah, I think there's so much to criticize China about.

I mean, the Uyghur situation

Reason Magazine has covered it extensively, and it's not only troubling on its own merits, it's also troubling because it's basically a test case for an open-air surveillance state.

They have created a situation for this minority population where they are watched 24-7, forced to marry people chosen for them by the state,

you know, starved, beaten, taken to re-education camps.

It's shocking.

I think it's right for the U.S.

to speak up against that.

I do wonder why it is that suddenly it's the Olympics and we should solve it today.

Like, that should be an always problem.

Like, maybe something should be not political.

Maybe, maybe we could find, do the diplomatic boycott.

I, frankly, love to go to events that politicians refused to come to.

That sounds perfect.

It sounds like way more fun.

There's definitely better drugs at those.

And

performance-enhancing drugs or otherwise, I guess.

But I think there's at least a case to be made that for the Olympics, just set the politics aside, let the athletes compete, and then everybody gets to brag about how many medals they got.

And we can do our best.

Well, I mean, we're doing that.

We're going.

Yeah, my worry is that I think if you pull back from the kind of current debate, In the long run of history, this might look like the 1936 Olympics, right?

As you say, China is currently engaged in, according to some human rights groups, a genocide against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.

President Xi is building a monstrous, you're totally right, monstrous surveillance state.

There's a great book about this called We Have Been Harmonized by a Dutch journalist.

I mean, if we don't stand up to this,

a state committing genocide, a state building the most sophisticated form of totalitarian surveillance in human history, what will we stand up to?

I think you're right, though.

I wouldn't want to go against the Olympic athletes.

I think a boycott is not, that's not the place to pressure.

It's not fair on the athletes who've built up for this for so many years.

People we should go after are the International Olympic Committee, who are one of the most disgusting and corrupt organizations in the world.

They should never have put this there.

They shouldn't have done the thing sochi last time.

They're a repulsive organization that should be disbanded and started again.

Well, there we go.

Always, always cancelling somebody.

Everybody has to go.

I don't like it.

You gotta go.

Whoopi Gober, you gotta go.

No, no, we're gonna go.

What is the reason?

Well, I want to talk about Whoopi Gober because I got so many texts this week because she attacked me the week before.

So she was, everybody was like, oh, Bill, I get you're enjoying the karma.

First of all, I'm going to talk about this at the end of my show next week, teaser.

But there is no fucking thing as karma, okay?

Get over that.

Whoopi

attacks me on a regular basis.

She says stupid shit on a regular basis.

It just happened to coincide.

But can I just say this?

I had on last week Ira Glasser, former longtime head of the ACLU, talking about free speech.

Well, Pete Goldberg, who, by the way, I hope is still a friend, we can disagree with each other, should not be canceled or put off her show as much as I totally disagree with her crazy statement.

Free speech, she should be there.

She shouldn't get a timeout.

Not every single thing has to be for everybody.

Right.

We can have platforms that have stuff on them that not everyone everyone on that platform or who consumes stuff on that platform enjoys.

And the view is a particularly weird place to do a cancellation.

It's called The View.

It's called The View.

It's not called The Facts.

Yeah, but it's.

But isn't it interesting that it's called, it's, I mean, I don't think they meant this when Barbara Walters invented it a long time ago, but it's the view.

Well, that's the problem in America.

There is one view.

That's a true opinion, and everybody else can go sit in the corner.

That's correct.

I I think that's not actually, you're right, the name raises questions, and certainly there's been some

much covered internal politics on that show.

But I do think that, you know, there is space.

Even that show does have space.

When Whoopi said what she said, there was quick pushback from other panelists.

They were like, oh, I don't know.

Actually, I think that might not be right.

That's it.

Mission accomplished.

We talked about it.

Can we just understand that part of our sorry racial history in this country is that the point of view from a black person is often going to be very different and sometimes shocking to a white person.

I pulled the quote from when Whoopi defended Michael Vick.

Remember Michael Vick was the football player who was electrocuting dogs?

And I'm a lifelong PETA board member.

You know?

Okay.

Also.

Also someone who believes the Nazis were very racist.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

But

here's what she said about Michael Vick.

He's from the South.

This is part of his cultural upbringing.

For a lot of people, dogs are sport.

Instead of just saying he's a beast and he's a monster, this is a kid who comes from a culture where this is not questioned.

Okay?

You see the point here?

Again, I don't agree with her on Michael Vick, but we grew up in two different worlds.

which the white people imposed upon the black people.

They are going to sometimes have a very different opinion.

And the answer is not to make them sit in a corner for two weeks.

That is insulting.

It's so insulting to make a 65-year-old, I mean that the person at ABC News said, I've asked you to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments, reflect.

How insulting for someone of her age, who's a sophisticated person, and the impact of her comment.

There is no impact.

There aren't neo-Nazis waiting for the green light from the lady on the view

to go out and do a new crystal knot.

The whole point of free speech is we don't need free speech when we're right, when everyone agrees right.

We need free speech when we're wrong.

We need free speech to make mistakes, we need free speech to say really unpopular things.

And

one of the reasons I'm always proud to come on this show, and I suspect you feel the same way, Catherine, is this is the only space left on television where people can speak freely and not be terrified, right?

And you've got.

And I just want to say that, you know, I'm conscious that you've got the scars on your back for fighting to keep me there from 9-11 right now.

Sure, I'll get them tonight.

And it's hugely to your credit that you've fought to do that.

Finish your thought.

No, let him talk.

So let me bring up somebody else this week who was in the barrel, who I don't understand why he's in the barrel.

And this is somebody in my industry, I guess, in my

corporate tent, Jeff Zucker, right?

Aren't we in the same corporate tent?

Okay, I don't think I've ever met Jeff Zucker.

If I did, I'm sorry, Jeff, I forgot.

I have no dog in this fight.

I don't want to be on CNN.

He can't do anything for me.

I can't do anything for him.

But Jeff Zucker, powerful guy, head of CNN, resigned because he's 56

and not married.

Not that, you know, that's a personal thing, but okay, divorced.

Was having a relationship with a 49-year-old.

I think that's age-appropriate, so we got that check for him.

Also, executive at the company, and he had to resign over that.

I don't understand this why a 56-year-old and a 49-year-old people can't have a consensual relationship.

I mean, they had been friends for 20 years.

She said, I acknowledge the

oh, he said, I acknowledge the relationship evolved in recent years.

It was COVID.

She's boning Jeff because of COVID.

I would be totally delighted to never know anything about the sex lives of CNN C-suite.

It's in my contract that I can't know what Jeff's talking about.

To not know about that.

And I think, you know, we've made it our business.

We're sort of busy bodies.

We've made it our business to get into everyone else's business.

I will say, I am very much team never Cuomo.

And so to the extent that,

oh,

never Cuomo too.

To the extent that

this was a complicating factor in CNN choosing not to aggressively and truthfully cover Andrew Cuomo by letting Chris Cuomo do some of that coverage, you know, it's

every layer of the onion is just like dumber and makes you cry more, but if it is true,

if it is true that the desire to keep this affair secret led to CNN dropping the ball on covering truly a scandal in American government, then okay, okay, let's look into it.

But I'm not worried about what he's doing with his bits, my God.

It's weird, because there are moments, aren't there?

It's funny, as you can tell, I'm an outsider, I'm from Downton Abbey, and there are weird moments when

you sort of see

the Puritan history of the United States come through, right?

Americans spend all their time at work.

They're going to fuck each other, right?

This is perfectly normal.

This is a healthy, consensual thing.

Well, we don't anymore, but

we used to fuck and we used to go to work.

And this is completely different to sexual harassment.

Actually, to be honest, it sounds like quite a touching love story, Peter.

It does, exactly.

And by the way, in the old days, this was called discretion.

I'm not going to tell everybody who I'm fucking.

Now I didn't tell everybody who I'm fucking, and I'm the bad guy.

No, no, no, no, no, no, it's a fucking crazy thing.

We gotta go, we gotta go.

It's time for new rules, everybody.

Good.

Okay.

New rules.

Someone has to break it to the MAGA faithful that the whole let's go Brandon thing really isn't that clever.

I know you think it's the funniest thing since the Police Academy movies, but

think of all the ridiculous and embarrassing material liberals have given you lately to work with, and all you can come up with is a code word for fuck.

All right.

Start up slow and build, I agree.

Neural, now that the Los Angeles Times has posed the question, the governor's mansion is empty, should we let homeless people move in?

Let me take a shot at this one.

No.

Neural, someone needs to explain why it is that in all TV series and movies set in ancient Rome, the commoners talk with cockney British accents and the rich people talk like Queen Elizabeth.

They were Italians.

They talked with their hands.

New rules, someone more awoke than I am has to help me out with the story of Ollie London, a transracial social media influencer who was born white and British but identifies as Korean

and is now about to have penis reduction surgery to make himself look even more Korean.

So

tell me,

am I supposed to celebrate him for living his truth or hate him for cultural appropriation?

I don't know the exact definition of identity crisis, but pretty close has got to be when you're lying on an operating table with your dick out saying, just take a little off the top.

New ruled websites, websites I visit, have to stop asking me if I want to allow cookies.

I'm not entirely sure what cookies are, and I sure as hell wouldn't even be on your stupid Dogs in Funny hats website if it wasn't for brownies.

And finally, new rules, someone needs to explain to me why is bombing the only thing America can do with precision?

We can send a laser-guided missile down an ISIS tunnel from a drone at 25,000 feet.

We can put one through a window without even rustling the curtains.

When it comes to killing machines, we're an atomic clock.

For everything else, we're a sundial in the fog.

After 9-11, we could have done what Israel would have done.

hunted down the people actually involved and reinforced the cockpit doors on planes.

Precision, done.

Who wants ice cream?

But no, we spent trillions attacking the wrong country and creating a giant homeland security bureaucracy.

We've now spent decades in airport lines taking off our shoes while TSA agents pat down babies and grandmas.

They say, if you see something, say something.

I see us afraid to identify threats by likelihood.

and bleeding ourselves dry just like bin Laden wanted us to.

When people ask me, why are you so skeptical of what the medical establishment tells us, I say, because I've seen them react to a virus before.

By 1987, CDC officials pretty much knew how HIV was spreading and who was in danger.

Now, of course, there's no moral dimension to this, despite what Pat Robertson used to say.

Gay sex is just as loving, natural, and salutary as the other kind, but science can be arbitrary.

And instead of being precise and focusing on who should be protected, we launched a fear campaign about how AIDS was going to explode into the heterosexual community.

Oprah Winfrey summed up what people were hearing when she said, research studies now project one in five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS by 1990.

But that didn't happen.

And the upshot of bad information was that in the late 1980s, low-risk Americans were swamping testing facilities and diverting our attention and energy away from the truly at-risk.

New York in 2020 learned the hard way how much better precision would have been in prioritizing protecting the nursing homes.

Contrary to popular lore, COVID is not Russian roulette.

Of course, any virus, anything, can kill anyone at any time.

But we know who COVID kills.

75% of COVID deaths are people 65 and older.

98 to 99% are unvaccinated.

78% who've died or been hospitalized were overweight.

If you're obese and unvaccinated, or 85 and still crowdsurfing at music festivals,

yes, this will likely go badly for you.

But at some point...

But at some point, that has to stop being my responsibility.

Doesn't it make more sense to focus on helping the vulnerable stay safe and let the rest of us go back to living normal lives?

There's always going to be another variant.

We can't go on forever in permanent hair on fire, cancel Christmas, hand jobs through a hazmat suit,

freak the fuck out mode.

I haven't been to my office in two years.

That ficus needs water.

President Biden's handling of the pandemic started off polling pretty well, but now a majority disapprove.

It's time to do what a growing list of countries have done and announce we're going back to something more like normal, beginning with recognizing that what we're doing to kids is unnecessary and horrible, and I don't even like kids.

But making kids who have a COVID survivability rate of 99.98%

mask up like bandits?

Unfortunately, the thing that's getting stolen is their education, their sanity, and their social skills.

A study this week from a professor at Johns Hopkins concluded that the lockdowns we all suffered through had little impact in reducing COVID deaths.

Okay, that's kind of a big one to get wrong.

Last July, President Biden said, you're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

Well, I already knew that was wrong then, and now we all do.

The former director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, believes COVID originated in a lab, and now our intelligence agencies agree it might have.

But for months on social media, it was banned to even discuss it.

Look, I'm not saying the medical establishment isn't trying to figure shit out or that they're corrupt, although there is some of that.

But

how about just wrong?

Wrong a lot.

Wrong about HIV, wrong about lockdowns, wrong about kids, wrong about how you couldn't get it if you were vaccinated.

Remember, washing our packages?

And there's never been any research showing that outdoor transmission is likely or common, yet LA County says we're still supposed to mask up for big outdoor events like we'll be at the Super Bowl.

Well,

supposed to.

It's all theater, watching athletes mix it up on the court and then mask on the sideline.

not being able to touch a menu, but watching them touch my food.

Maskless at dinner while sitting but not standing.

And by the way, if Applebees really cared about our health, they would make us cover our mouths after the food arrived.

I'm just asking, how much wrong do you get to be?

while still holding the default setting for people who represent the science.

Eat eggs, then don't, then do.

Take aspirin, then don't, then do.

The food pyramid, really?

Bread and milk every day?

Okay, you do you.

15 years ago, they were recommending trans fats.

Now they're illegal.

Just like almost 100 prescription drugs, which were once called safe and effective and then yanked off the market because they were not.

It reminds me of how the Republicans are constantly doing traitorous things like trying to steal elections and inviting the Russians into the Oval Office and somehow are still known as the party of patriotism.

We've had this problem in medicine for a long time.

The same people who in private care always say, get a second opinion, want to allow only one in the public debate.

But plainly, the medical-industrial complex has not earned the right to claim monopoly status on information about this virus or medicine in general.

Yes, free speech has allowed people to hear misinformation sometimes, and a lot of it was yours.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Mirage in Vegas, February 18th and 19th, the fill more in Miami Beach, March 4th and 5th, and at the MGM National Harbor in Washington, D.C., May 1st.

I want to thank Catherine Manga Ward, Johan Hurry, Rokana, and I'll be on YouTube with these people in overtime.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.