Ep. #465: Colion Noir, Michael Pollan

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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be.

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

Start the clock.

Thank you very much.

That's the real part, wasn't it?

No, I know why you're happy.

It's summer.

And you know, it's summer when kids become just like the president.

They have no class.

Really?

You had to think about that one?

But this is the week when we found out, I guess this is good news comparatively, that there is a place that most Republicans will not follow this precedent: kidnapping children.

So,

molesting them in Alabama was okay, but you know, you have to draw the line somewhere, ladies and gentlemen.

So, some, I said some Republicans, because 55% of Republicans still support the separating the family policy because of their family values.

Life begins at conception and ends at the Rio Grande.

That's what they believe.

Zero tolerance.

That's what Trump keeps saying.

That's what this crowd wants.

Zero tolerance for immigration and also zero tolerance for knowing what the hell they're doing.

Because they don't.

I can't remember all the lies that they told just from the beginning of this week.

This guy moved so fast from...

Only I can fix it.

To only Congress can fix it.

Mike.

To here's an executive order.

I fixed it.

That's right.

He signed an executive order that revoked the policy that he started.

You see,

he's the

arsonist fireman.

He's the guy who congratulates himself for saving the toddler in the pool that he pushed in.

Have you ever seen a president who more creates his own?

crises?

I'm going to call him President Hold My Beer.

That's really what...

Nobody would be stupid enough, sir,

to put babies in prisons.

Hold my beer.

This is...

And, you know, for the right-wingers, not an easy policy to defend, but boy, that is one thing they followed light.

Laura Ingram said these camps or jails or cages, the kids, were, quote, essentially summer camp.

Yes, summer camp.

They're doing arts and crafts.

That's what what they're doing.

Well, they're stitching Ivanka's handbags, but it looks like arts and crafts.

Cages, tents, a summer camp?

I guess Anne Frank was on a staycation.

It was really too far when Steve Doocy on Fox and Friends went over to the piano and started playing, hello, Mada.

Hello, Fada.

here I am in Camp Testada.

I mean,

oh yeah.

But there is an uprising.

There's a new lawsuit on behalf of the migrant children that says that some of the kids were drugged to control their behavior.

So just like our public schools.

But really, there is a little bit of an uprising.

People are realizing they can fight back in different ways.

The airlines, a lot of the airlines have said they're not going to transport children that were separated from their families.

American Airlines said this is against our corporate values, and also your crying children are drowning out our regular customers' crying children.

Now, you saw Melania went to visit the detention center.

Well,

they had a camera in there, and all you heard was, please help, I want to go home.

And finally, one of the kids said, Put yourself together, lady.

No, so Melania, you know this, this is what everyone's talking about.

Melania went to visit the kids who were separated from their families on a mission of mercy with a jacket that had big letters on the back that said, I really don't care, do you?

I really don't care, do you?

Isn't it great when our first ladies go through their angsty teenage phase?

And of course people said the optics of this when you're on a mission of caring to wear that jacket.

But in fairness, come on, when has Melania ever known what's going on behind her back?

Honestly,

always.

Well, you know, the right-wing media said this was fake news.

because she only wore the jacket on the plane getting on and off, not around the kids.

The coat was for us.

With the kids, she totally pretended to care.

And trust me, this is not the first feeling she has faked.

Okay, we got a great show near attendant.

Josh Burrow and Michael Srikanish are here at a little layer, speaking with author Michael Pollan.

But first up, he's an attorney and the provocative gun rights enthusiast who hosts NRA TV's Noir.

Colleen Noir, right over here.

Sir?

How are you?

Great to see you.

Absolutely.

Pleasure's all mine.

I have seen your videos many times.

You're very good at what you do.

Thank you.

I am not a gun lover.

Now, if I say the term gun nut, I hope you realize that is not an insult.

I don't take it as well.

Good.

Because I don't mean nut like you're crazy.

I mean like something you really love to do.

Yeah, I'm incredibly passionate about it.

Right.

I'm a drug nut.

So you said.

Yeah, I mean a pot nut.

Not all drugs.

Just the ones I can get my hands on.

Okay.

Jesus.

So, but when I watch your videos, you know, very often, you know, at the end, you kind of have a smirk like, I laid it out.

And you know what?

You kind of earn your smirk.

Because people like me who don't really like guns, we don't know much about guns.

And the theme with you, really, I think, is like, it's annoying, isn't it, that people who talk about guns and don't know about guns

are

not restrained by their lack of knowledge.

What are the misconceptions that bother you the most?

Well, there are two dynamics, right?

There's the actual physical component of the gun and then the individuals, as we've termed, gun nuts, right?

So there's that aspect of, say, for instance, semi-automatic, right?

Yeah.

Tell me about that.

The vast majority of your guns, almost all of them are semi-automatic.

Almost all guns.

Right, I heard you say that.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

And so that's stuff you would learn after you follow the rabbit down the hole, so to speak.

And semi-autic meaning you have to pull the trigger every time.

Pull the trigger once, you get one bullet.

Right.

And that's almost all gun nuts.

Pretty much, yes.

Not just.

they seem to be obsessed with the AR-15.

Yes, so the AR does not stand for assault rifle.

That's a common misconception.

Right.

The AR stands for armalite rifle, which is the name of the actual rifle.

And it's a semi-automatic rifle in the sense that you pull the trigger once,

you get one round.

So

why do people think

liberals, let's be honest, why did they think that getting rid of the AR-15 would go so far to solving this problem?

And tell me why it wouldn't.

You know, as the saying goes, optics is everything, right?

There's a certain theatrics that comes with guns in general, right?

Especially when you start talking about things like the AR-15.

With the AR-15, you see it is big.

You usually, most people who aren't too familiar with guns, they usually know about them by way of movies.

So you see the movies with all the bad guys spraying and praying, doing all these crazy things with the firearms, and then you see that in reality and you're like, oh my God, I don't want those anywhere near me or on the streets.

And so what ends up happening is they take that and then they see it and it's like, well, they don't know much.

The knowledge base is not very high.

So what they end up doing is they start feeling, right?

Because it evokes a feeling.

There's the theatrics behind it.

They're loud.

There's a muzzle flash.

You know, all of those things.

And it can be scary.

And there are some movies we like.

Exactly.

There is a lot of hypocrisy there.

If guns weren't so popular, why do they dominate movies as much as they do?

Because there's a fascination there.

Yeah.

It's kind of like going to an amusement park, right?

So, and that's why I say it to gun nuts.

Like, just be honest and admit that you love guns, and it's sort of a vice in that, like, you know, gambling, alcohol, drugs, these are all things that have some collateral damage that I am willing to live with because you can't tell me that I can't smoke pot because some people will be hurt by it.

You know, you can't organize society around what some people might do or be hurt by it

completely.

So you would admit that.

You just like guns.

You like holding them.

You want to have sex with them.

Well, smoke faces.

No, you don't like it.

It's multifaceted, right?

So there's an element of recreation there.

There's an element of sport there.

There's an element of protection there, right?

And then there's an element of philosophy with regard to what this country was founded on.

So it's incredibly multifaceted.

So what ends up happening is a lot of people who don't really know much about firearms have a very myopic view of them.

And the only lens that they see them through is

the bad things that are done by bad people.

I feel like it's self-reliance a lot too.

Absolutely.

Isn't that what you feel?

I get that from your videos.

Well, it's self-reliance based on reality.

Right, that you don't trust the cops to show up.

It's not that I don't trust them.

And if they do, they might shoot you.

There's always a possibility for everything, right?

Right.

But that's not my main concern.

My main concern is that in the moment, right, whenever something arises where I may have to defend my life, I want to be in a position to do absolutely anything possible I can to make it out of their life, along with the people I love and anybody else who seems to be around that I care about.

Right.

But I had Killer Mike here about a month ago, who was on your show and got in a lot of trouble for talking about guns.

No, he got a lot of trouble for just just being on my show.

Just for just being on the show.

Right.

But you guys made some interesting points about how it's very easy for people who live in safe neighborhoods to talk about gun control.

It's a whole different story for some other folks who don't have that luxury.

Yeah.

I think one of the things that ends up happening when we start talking about some of the gun control measures that people are pushing is how they disproportionately affect people who are in lower economic.

environments and in environments that have a higher level of violence, right?

And so like you stated before, I could live in a a gated community, have a security guard outside.

I'm going to feel relatively safe.

Even then, something could still happen.

But if say for instance, I'm a single-parent mother and I live in an inner city somewhere and I'm working two jobs and I can't afford a car and I have to walk late at night and when I get off work at night and walk back home.

Or if I'm at home with my kids in an environment where there are home invasions, right?

I, as a woman,

in that particular situation and just anyone, I don't want me protecting my life to be a competition.

I want it to be as lopsided as possible because I'm not the one threatening someone's life.

I'm going about my life, and someone's trying to interfere with that.

And so I want to be in the best position possible to guard against that.

Right.

And I am sympathetic to the argument that if you're in a horrible situation, it would be a good thing if a good guy had a gun.

Absolutely.

And we've seen many times, and I know you think that they don't report it.

I don't think they report it enough in comparison to.

Right.

But my question is: where does that lead?

We can't go back to the old west where we're all strapped all the time.

But we are.

Well, I'm not.

I'm sure there are guns somewhere around here.

I hope so.

You're right.

Yeah.

But not everybody.

Because everybody can't do it.

I mean, you don't really want teachers themselves to have guns, do you?

I honestly don't have a problem with arming teachers.

But teachers aren't.

There's a contingency.

There's a contingency there.

This is where the NRA loses me.

I mean, they lose me.

That They lose me in a lot of places.

But a place like that, that does seem unreasonable.

I can understand a guard at a school, and I think if the Parkland guard, who didn't do his job, had done his job, we would be having a different debate.

Absolutely.

But not teachers.

But see, here's the thing about that.

With respect to this conversation, one of the biggest issues that I've seen is that we've all kind of separated into our separate corners and kind of just lob attacks at each other.

We all agree that we want to find a solution to these issues.

We all agree with that.

We just differ about how we go about it.

So, I can respect your position in not wanting to arm teachers.

The way I look at it is when I look at some of these mass shootings that have happened in the past, a lot of these teachers had to sacrifice themselves to protect their students.

And so, my mind goes, well, why not put them in the best position to fight back against the evil person that comes into their class?

So, instead of making them, instead of being sacrificial lambs, they're fighters now.

And they're willing to die for these students.

So, why not put them in a position to fight for them?

Because they're teachers.

They don't want to have that job.

Any more than

any more than the guard wants to teach physics.

You're absolutely right.

But the moment somebody walks into that classroom with a gun and starts shooting at kids, they don't have an option.

So the only options they have is either sacrifice themselves or fight.

What about background checks?

Now, 20% of the people in this country get their guns without having to pass any sort of criminal check.

And when you say that, give me some basis behind that.

You're talking about private sales?

Yeah, I mean, they get them from a relative, gives it to them, or, you know, it gets passed down, or a gun show, or something like that.

And the NRI used to be for closing all those loopholes.

Yeah, Wayne Lapierre.

Loopholes.

Loopholes.

Well, when you say loopholes, what do you mean?

Well, here's what Wayne, I'm going to ask you about this because it's funny because when most people think of an NRI spokesman, they don't think of you.

Okay, fair enough.

They think of Wayne Lapierre.

Okay.

And I like to fuck with people's minds.

Wayne Lop here in 1999.

We think it's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show, no loopholes anywhere for anyone.

What changed?

Yeah, but when you go to a gun show and you purchase a firearm.

Is it really a show?

What would it be?

I don't know, because I've never been.

Tactical masturbation?

I would not, no.

I'm good with regular masturbation.

But a show, it sounds like Annie Oakley.

It sounds like, you know.

Still a show nonetheless.

But it's really a sale, right?

Isn't that what a gun show is?

I mean, yeah.

You can go there and you can buy guns.

But why do they call it a show?

Well, because when I first went to a gun show, I treated it as such.

Really?

You went there?

Because what it is, is an aggregation of a bunch of guns that you normally have.

But wouldn't it be good if we had 100%

of people who got a background check?

Wouldn't that be good?

Sure, but how do you go about doing that from a private sales standpoint?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I know you're against any sort of registry because you think that leads to confiscation.

Well, it has before, though.

In America?

No, in America.

That's what we're trying to prevent.

But it has happened in places where people use as examples of shining beacons of what we should do gun control-wise here in America.

I can't imagine a country that loves its guns as much as this country.

I mean, we have almost half the guns in the world with 4% of the population.

I can't imagine anyone ever trying to take away people's guns.

And if the people who were taking away the guns were doing it, they're usually the people who like guns.

They're law enforcement.

You can't argue with that.

Yeah.

Look, I'm a little more

gun reasonable these days now that Trump is the president.

But I still think if people came after me to get, even if I fired back, then they could come back with always superior firepress.

The government is always going to outgun you.

Okay, so

why fear?

Well, so if the Second Amendment, if you understand the Second Amendment was written, right, to protect us and be in a position to fight off a tyrannical government.

So then why not provide us with the same weapons if the guns that I have now are not going to to be enough?

Actually, Gary Wills has

the Second Amendment, listen to this, I want to get your reaction

shows us just how far the poison of slavery pervaded the Constitution.

He says the Second Amendment was not meant to let individuals prevent federal tyranny.

How could it?

By training our rifles or handguns on the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

It was meant to guarantee militia to handle the state's internal problems, especially the problems of a large slave population.

That's a big reason why we have the Second Amendment.

Here's the irony.

We need it to keep the slaves.

Here's the irony behind that.

We actually used the concept of the Second Amendment to revolt against a country that was oppressing us.

Right.

Right?

And then, in the same breath, because of the purity of the language of that Second Amendment, I now sit before you as a gun advocate with the ability to carry a gun.

I don't want to make you mad.

No, you're great at talking about this.

I appreciate you coming up and giving us your behind you.

Early on noir.

Thank you very much.

All right, let's lead our panel.

Hi, everybody.

Okay, he is the host of the Michael Smirkanish program on Serious XM Radio and author of Clowns and Left of Me, Joker to the Right, American Life in Columns, Michael Smirkanish.

How are you doing, Michael?

He is the senior editor and business insider and host of KCRW's All the President's Lawyers and Left, Right, and Center podcast, Josh Barrow.

Barrow.

Barrow.

Would you please change your first name to Weal?

Yes.

Then I would remember.

Weal Barrow.

She's the president and CEO of the nonprofit organization, Center for American Progress.

Niratandon is back with us.

Great to see you.

And don't forget to send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Okay, so I want to ask about Republicans tonight after the week we've had because you know for many years I've tried not to make them mad when they say look we all want to solve problems we just have different policy methods and it stops me from saying wait it just sounds like you don't have as much compassion as we do.

And then this week comes along and you know Donald Trump said today we can't be swayed by phony stories of sadness and grief

and he uses kidnapping kids as a negotiating strategy.

And the Homeland Security person after this week, during this week, goes to a Mexican restaurant for dinner.

Corey Lewandowski is hearing about one of the saddest cases of one of these kids on the border and goes, wah, wah.

And Melania with her jacket, I don't know what that was all about.

But it doesn't add up to to make me think, oh, right, we just have policy differences.

It does make me think, you don't have as much empathy as as we do.

So there I say it.

This is how Trump won the nomination.

He was awful in various ways that shocked the other people up on those stages and debates with him in the primary, you know, saying that, you know, he likes war heroes who don't get captured,

effectively calling Ted Cruz's wife ugly, doing a wide variety of these things that were just like...

That play well.

Yeah, well, yeah, or well enough with a large enough fraction of the Republican base.

And, you know, you look at this child separation policy, and it polls terribly, and it polls only okay with Republicans.

I mean, you said 55%, but 55% is low for a policy that a Republican president is doing among Republican voters.

So a substantial chunk of the Republican Party did not want this sort of cruelty, but a lot of them did, which is how he won the nomination.

And then a lot more of them decided, you know, well, I will put up with that if the alternative is Hillary Clinton.

And he's decided that this is what shows toughness.

He talks about how important it is.

to be tough.

And I think voters have like sort of a wide variety of conflicting ideas about immigration.

They want toughness.

they want enforcement, they also want empathy.

And sometimes those ideas come into conflict.

And I think Donald Trump appeals to one side of that.

I think he's gone much too far this week and has put off a lot of people who even things like the Muslim ban polled a lot better with a lot of people.

I mean we can have a policy debate, but what's really happening in America right now, I mean, as we speak, is children do not know where their parents are.

Right.

As they're going to bed tonight at the hands of the government, deciding our government has perpetrated a policy that is basically designed to terrorize these children and their parents.

They do that in all of our names.

I think Donald Trump had a strategy to take those kids hostage, to get his wall, or to do other things about immigration policy, but the country has risen up in utter disgust.

Parents around this country

are opposed, and that's why

that's why he's done these belly flaps or whatever it is on Wednesday.

He's stopping the policy.

Today, he's attacking Democrats and immigrants.

But where will it be in November?

Where will it be?

I think the issue that needs to be said, and I would never defend the breakup of these families the way that it's taking place, but we do have a problem at the border, and it was not of his creation.

We've got a problem with porous borders that caused 20,000 apprehensions to jump to 50,000 just within the past year.

And I think it's important that people not allow their hostility, their antipathy toward the president, and the pro-publica sounds of those crying kids to overmask the problem that we really have.

What drives, though, Bill, I want to say this, what

drives the lack of empathy that you're referring to is demographics.

I think it's concern in certain quarters about their diminishing role in our society.

The truth is that American kids, the youngest kids today, don't look like American elders.

And by 2045, whites will comprise less than 50% of the population.

And I think a lot of the bad behavior that you're referring to is preying on people's anxiety about those numbers.

I just say it's absolutely the case.

It's absolutely the case that Donald Trump has sown racial fears.

He attacks different groups.

The fact that he used infestation to

describe immigrants, that's essentially what authoritarian dictators have done about other minority groups.

I hear that.

I just think, look,

the vast majority of Americans propose this policy because children should not suffer by the hands of the U.S.

government.

But can I get at the

what I think was the

for me the elephant in the room this week because this meeting really just covered this one story and they never mentioned the drug war.

And the drug war is at the heart of this.

The reason why people, even when they know they're going to be facing horrors like Donald Trump at the border, are still willing to make that trek is because their own countries are just unlivable.

It's pretty amazing that El Salvador, I think, is the most violent country in the world, and Honduras is second of the whole world.

So they're out doing Afghanistan and Syria and Venezuela and some other really nasty places.

Darfur, are you kidding me?

Our interdiction in Mexico and Colombia has caused the rerouting of the drugs through Central America.

It's created this horrific environment.

I know where you're headed because you've been on this for a long, long time.

I think the nation is getting ready for the kind of conversation that you want to have because of the scourge of opioids and heroin in all countries.

I couldn't help notice that our neighbor to the north legalized pot this week.

Right.

Oh,

America.

But, you know, Donald Trump said, Mexico's doing nothing for us except taking our money and sending us drugs.

Well, there's an answer to that.

Stop buying their drugs and sending them the money because it winds up in the hands of these gangs who take over the country as a narco-state and make life unlivable.

And of course, people will do anything to get away from that.

Anything.

Until you deal with the drug problem, you're not going to solve the border problem.

But we're not ready for the conversation that you're trying to have here.

We're ready to have the conversation on marijuana, but

that's a small fraction of the overall business drug cartels.

But if you were to legalize cocaine and heroin and methamphetamine, which you would really have to do to completely end the need for this interdiction stuff, you'd need a system that would be very different from the way we deal now with legal alcohol, that we can deal with legal marijuana, because the price would fall so much in a fully legalized supply chain, and nowhere else in the world has done this.

You have places where it's legal to own and possess drugs and to use them, but to actually legalize the whole supply chain, you'd have to do something like you could have a government monopoly for it.

There are things you'd have to do to prop up the price and to control problem use, because if you legalize these drugs, I mean, there's 17 million people with problems with alcohol in the U.S.

Do we think that cocaine and heroin are either less fun or less addictive than alcohol?

You could have an enormous increase in the case.

I think heroin is less, so, yes.

I don't think a lot of people just, if you legalized it, if we legalize heroin tomorrow, how many people would start shooting up and sticking a spike in your arm?

There's been an immense increase in the market.

There's some nice, honest people applauding there.

I'm not saying we're ready for legalization.

I say we're ready for the conversation, and what has changed it is the opioid epidemic and heroin is something

that you used to see on television.

Now everybody's within one degree of separation separation from having a person who's at risk.

Well, okay, but.

I mean, I think the actual, I agree with that point, which is essentially the opioid issue is one in which we're decriminalizing.

Now, I think it's really weird that

we have something that affects white people and it's decriminalized, and you think of it as a public health crisis.

But maybe after that, we will apply it more broadly.

But I mean, that is a big challenge.

Everything seems weird until you do it.

You know, hey, let's all be amateur cab drivers sounded weird a couple of years ago.

You know, let's hate Canada and love North Korea sounded weird.

You know, it's so weird.

It's to be recorded.

But, you know, zero tolerance is what Trump keeps saying.

And zero tolerance, of course, was also the policy with drugs for so many years in this country.

And I just want to say zero tolerance is always a stupid idea.

It's just another way of saying zero thinking.

The left is guilty of it too.

They have their own zero tolerance pets.

You know, they have their own.

Yeah.

No, I'm just saying, zero tolerance never really works out, I don't think.

You're right, but it's a good sound bite and nobody wants to be the candidate running against it.

It's a zero tolerance.

Boom.

And it pulls well because people don't think about trade-offs.

It pulls well at the same time that various compassionate measures like a path to citizenship and amnesty for illegal immigrants, they also pull well.

You ask people about things on both sides of the questions and they'll say yes, basically do everything without thinking about

what the costs are, like what it it would be like if we had zero tolerance for speeding or anything else but think about this past week I mean basically what we've experienced this disaster is is a product of a zero tolerance policy which they basically thought hey we're gonna you know rip these families apart and it'll deter people that didn't work we're gonna rip these families apart and use it as a bargaining chip for a wall in a legislative negotiation that's been rejected i think the challenge with zero tolerance policies as they are with drugs or crime et cetera, three strikes is when you see the consequences, it's a disaster.

And that's what we have to recognize.

And also, let's

remember that

Republicans basically don't want to do policy.

There's only one party that does policy.

Like the wall.

You're right.

The wall.

It's just like a great idea.

They do better when the Democrats are in power because then they can have their stupid ideas and pretend that they're not being enacted because the Democrats are blocking it.

Repeal and replace.

When they never replace it.

All of it.

You know, this nonsense this week.

They don't do policy.

They don't know how and they don't care.

And this is where Trump's incompetence ends up interacting with his malevolence.

Basically, you know,

Michael is right that there's a real problem at the border and there are real trade-offs to be had there.

A lot of the people seeking asylum will not end up qualifying for it.

You're going to have to make tough choices in a lot of cases.

But the infrastructure that you would have to build around doing these things, if you want to process the asylum cases faster, so we don't have to let a lot of people into the U.S.

for north of a year waiting for a hearing, you'd need to hire more judges.

The president says he doesn't want to do that.

He says he doesn't understand why we need judges.

It would be a logistically complicated policy thing to do.

He doesn't have an interest in doing that, and so that actually ends up worsening the effects of this sort of nasty thing he does.

Right.

And if we legalize drugs, by the way, on that score, we would have, obviously, it would take place under a different administration.

Here's what Jeff Sessions said about the opioid problem.

We think a lot of this is starting with marijuana.

Wrong.

We think doctors are just prescribing too many opioids.

Sometimes you just need to take two bufferins and go to bed.

There's where we are on drinks.

Okay, so everyone is talking about this jacket that Melania wore and it said, I really don't care, do you?

There it is.

There she's wearing it and there is it in the catalog.

And I think in her defense, she has a lot of racist sweaters that were in the wash that she could have wore.

But she didn't.

But honestly, I don't know if you've been in Melania's closet, I have.

And

there are some worst things that she could, she picked out, actually, one of the best.

Like, here are some of the things she could have wore.

She could have wore, I'm sorry, you must have me confused with the Slovenian catalog model who gives a shit.

That was another,

she could have picked that one.

And she didn't.

My other coat is made of 101 Dalmatians.

Would have been a terrible choice.

My pockets are loaded with Perel.

Oh, that's.

Think you're living in a cage?

Try being me.

Oh.

She could have picked this one.

That's Mrs.

Hitler to you.

Don't blame me.

I'm feckless.

Don't talk to me before I have my blood.

If you read this you're too close.

Yeah, that would have been nasty.

And I like this one the best.

I voted for Hillary.

Okay

I did that for you.

Who's the author of How to Change Your Mind What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness Dying Addiction Depression and Transcendence?

Michael Polland.

Michael Pollin's here.

Perfect.

Perfect guest for this discussion.

If you're looking to convince someone someone to do more drugs, you have come to the right place.

And we were talking about drugs, and your book is about drugs.

People know you as a food guide.

Now, why'd it change?

Did you just pick the wrong mushroom one day?

I thought there were chanterelles I was putting in that omelet.

You have to be careful, right?

You do.

Oh, picking mushrooms.

Yeah, absolutely.

I remember doing it once.

They grow in cow shit.

They do.

That's right.

Those are the safer ones to pick.

There are other ones that you can really kill yourself if you don't do it yourself.

So, no, I've always been interested in our engagement with the natural world, how nature changes us, the things we take into our bodies, how it affects our health.

And so, for me, it seems more

continuous.

It's part of the spectrum, right?

And one of the really interesting things all of us use plants for, and fungi, is to change consciousness, right?

Whether it's coffee or mushrooms.

Fungi is mushrooms.

Right, right.

Or chocolate.

I mean, and this is a universal human desire that I've always been curious about.

Well, I wouldn't say chocolate changes our consciousness.

It does in subtle ways.

Oh, shock.

Yeah.

No, it's got, well, it has caffeine in it, and it has another thing that kind of gives you a little lift.

You know, POT's legal now, right?

Yeah.

They've got some shit that's really.

Yeah.

No.

So, but psychedelics, obviously, are a much more radical form of consciousness.

Talk about LSD.

LSD and psilocybin, DMT, ayahuasca.

See, I feel like they're so different.

I never did Hiawatha, but I did.

I did, I've certainly done, well, I don't know if I did acid.

You know what?

I did something that somebody sold to me and said was acid.

That's the problem.

That is the problem.

If you have prohibition, you can't regulate.

Yeah.

Timothy Leary once said to me,

of course, before he died, not from the grave, he said it to me.

He still speaks.

Tim, are you there?

Hello.

He said there really hasn't been acid since Owsley, the original maker.

Yeah.

Well, at a certain point, the mob moved in on acid in the hate.

The mob.

The mob, yeah.

There were four hippies selling acid in San Francisco in 1967 and one was killed horribly, hung up from a tree.

A second was killed.

The other two realized bad business.

Right.

They left.

The mob got in and the acid was never the same.

Right.

And I don't think it was acid because they can tell you it's anything.

Right.

But it was something.

I mean it was a it wasn't good.

As good as it should have been.

But you're saying real acid, which they experimented with in the 30s and 40s, really helps a lot of people with stuff like PTSD, right, and anxiety and alcoholism.

Alcoholism.

How does it do it?

So what I was surprised to learn, I thought psychedelics began in the 60s, but there was a very rich history of research in the 50s, late 40s, using LSD, psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms, to help people deal with serious problems.

We don't know exactly how it works, but it seems to lead, when it works, there is a profound experience of ego dissolution, sometimes called a mystical experience.

People's sense of their ego or self dissolves temporarily.

And when this happens, you're freed of various patterns of thought.

The brain kind of reboots.

And when,

and this single experience, and it's important to understand that the way these drugs are being used in therapeutic settings is very different than the way you use them, or

I don't know about you guys, but

Ira.

By the way,

we put something in your water tonight that is going to make the second half of the show a little more ugly water.

Yeah.

So

it's a very different thing.

It's a guided experience.

You're with a therapist the whole time.

They prepare you for

carefully.

Talk about a buzzkill for a trip.

You're with a therapist the whole time.

Thanks, Dad.

No, thanks.

They tell you what to do if you get into trouble.

Basically, they encourage you to surrender, because when you feel your ego dissolving, it can be really scary.

It's a death.

And so they tell you to go with it, relax your mind and float downstream, as John Lennon advised.

And then during the experience, which you're lying down, you're wearing eyeshades, so it's a very internal voyage.

You're listening to music on headphones.

And they're there with you the whole time in case you...

get nervous or freak out in some way.

And then afterwards, you come back the next day and they help you integrate the experience, figure out what it means and apply it to your lives.

People come up with these radical new perspectives on their own lives that allows them to change.

You know, it happened to you?

Yeah, oh yeah, I did.

And what was what changed?

What was the perspective?

How were you different before?

How was your life actually different?

It's really hard to articulate, but I did have on a high-dose psilocybin trip guided.

I had an experience of complete ego dissolution.

I looked out and I saw myself painted over the landscape.

I was was just like butter or paint out there.

But I wasn't troubled by this at all.

There was another I that suddenly manifests that was very kind of fine with whatever happened.

And it made me realize for the first time that I'm not identical to my ego, that there's another ground on which you can stand.

And that become, that turns out to be a very powerful idea.

Most of us are slaves of our egos.

See, I didn't have that experience with mushrooms.

And I did mushrooms.

You didn't take enough.

Oh, I've definitely.

I've taken mushrooms I've done many times.

It's a laughing drug to me.

You don't find yourself just laughing uncontrollably?

No, it's about context.

Because, I mean, again,

I was having this inner trip.

I wasn't like, the senses were not coming in.

It was dark.

And I'm just on the floor.

Yeah.

Just really, no, like literally on the floor.

And like, everything's funny because like everything that is normal in your life when you think of is hysterical because it doesn't make sense.

Like most drugs make me horny.

But

like not mushrooms.

It's sex seems like, why would I do that?

Why would I make my penis get bigger and put it inside of a person?

It's really, that's what mushroom, like,

like

with everything.

It makes me, it makes me

deconstruct everything.

That's one of the new perspectives I was talking about.

Right.

Your sex addiction has been cured.

It's not an addiction.

It don't need no curing.

All right.

My last thing is micro-dosing.

A lot of people these days are talking about micro-dosing, which is a little bit of LSD.

Right, that they take the normal dosing.

And they take it during the day.

I mean,

yeah, they're not the lizard king, they're just out doing their normal thing.

What do you know about that?

Is that something you recommend?

So, no, we don't know.

Well, thanks for coming.

All right.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that it helps people, makes them more creative, makes them less depressed.

But I looked into it.

There's no research at all.

We've never done a study, a controlled study.

It's getting underway in the next year or two, so we may learn more.

It strikes me as a funny thing that we've taken this drug that is so transformative and disruptive, and we've turned it into, with micro-dosing, just another productivity drug.

Make you a better cog in the machine.

Right.

It's like coffee.

It's like, what would capitalism do with psychedelics?

Micro-dosing.

That's why they love coffee.

Yeah, back to work.

And tobacco.

Yeah.

Right.

Okay, before I run out of time on this panel, I want to talk about Steve Schmidt.

Steve Schmidt's a frequent guest.

Last week on this show,

on this very show last week, I was saying, times are so...

desperate right now that you can't be that kind of Republican who just says, I'm not voting for the Republican,

I'm writing in my wife, or Betsy Ross, or, you know, Ronald Reagan or Donald Duck.

And Steve Schmidt, I don't know if he heard me but he stepped up renounced the Republican Party this week he said

he said this independent voter will be aligned with the only party left in America that stands for what is right and decent and remains fidelist to our republic objective truth the role of law and our allies that party is the Democratic Party now this is the guy who was

yeah

This is John McCain's campaign chairman.

This is this guy who's been bleeding Republican for decades.

And

why aren't the others seeing it that way?

I don't know, former Republican.

I did it eight years ago.

I mean, in 2010.

You did that years ago.

In 2010, after 30 years of loyal service to the GOP, I got out.

And I served in a low-level capacity for President Bush, the father.

So, I mean, I was hardcore and involved and became one of the 45% of this country, according to Gallup, who are I's, who are not Ds, who are not Rs.

And I'd like to see more people go that route.

I found it very interesting that he said that he now has this loyalty to the Democratic Party, but his registration is that of an independent.

What needs to happen in this country are fewer closed primaries, a place on that debate stage for an independent candidate for president, and break the log jam of the two-party system.

See, I disagree with that.

So I left the Republican Party in 2016, which I was in it for far too long, but part of of why I stayed in the party is I don't really believe in being an independent.

I think political parties are key vehicles through which policy is made.

You don't have to agree with everything a party does to want to be a member of it.

You go, you join, you try to get them to move in your direction.

So I didn't leave until I was ready to become a Democrat.

And so I think people do need to choose, and I think Donald Trump is an excellent reason to leave the Republican Party if you haven't already.

But on some level,

I sympathize with these people who, because I'm a political moderate, and so I could sort of live equally well in either party.

A lot of these people, they're conservatives.

They don't want the things that the Democratic Party is going to do to be done except for not do all the incredibly stupid things Donald Trump is doing.

So that's not a super appealing reason to be a member of a party.

So I sympathize with them, but ultimately elections pose us with binary choices.

And Donald Trump is...

In this country.

In this country, we really only have the two choices.

We've tried many times to change it.

And if we were a parliamentary democracy, it would be different.

But third parties just wind up making the better party lose too many times.

So

I mean, I don't buy that.

I mean,

I have radio listeners who hold me singly accountable for the election of Donald Trump because I admitted on the air that I didn't vote for him and I didn't vote for her either.

I voted for the Libertarian ticket, and I'm still proud of that vote.

And I say, take it up with the 102 million who were eligible and didn't go out and exercise the franchise.

Every single person can say that.

I guess we're, I think what I really respected about Steve Schmidt is he looked at this week and said

babies in cages is too much for me in this party.

Right?

And it was, and I think the reality is, as we head to November, it is a binary choice.

Either you're voting for a Republican Party who has no check on Donald Trump, or you're voting for the Democratic Party, which is a check on Donald Trump.

That is

the choice people have.

And if you vote,

if you write in Mickey Mouse or you write in Jill Stein or whatever.

No, no, no, I hear you.

I hear you, but I'm just saying.

But the effect is the same.

Then you're actually, you just take it, you're basically supporting the Republicans.

And Michael Bloomberg said he's giving 80 million, which is great, to stop Donald Trump.

The Koch brothers are giving 400 million.

Where are the billionaire liberals?

Because Sheldon Adelson and that crowd, they give in the tens and hundreds of billions.

The Koch brothers,

here's our side.

Bill Gates, worth $91 billion.

Jeff Bezos worth $141 billion.

Zuckerberg, who should feel guilty

for helping Russia

slide Trump into the White House.

He's worth $73 billion.

Their contributions in 2016 were under a million.

What?

You know,

cheap fucks.

You know what?

These

the liberals

I went through this in 2012 when I made that million dollar donation to Obama to let people know you have to get in on this.

The game is being played on the million-dollar level.

It won't do when you're worth $141 billion to write a check for $250,000, you cheap fuck.

And I think it's...

I actually think...

I think the money is going to be a lot worse recycled because Republicans passed a tax cut, which gave a lot of people money, and now they want the return on investment.

That's right.

You know, they're basically,

I'm sure there's been a lot hand-wringing or arm twisting or whatever to say, now you have to give us money to keep us in office.

The whole thing is a scam.

So the company is a good idea.

This is not the solution.

The solution is not to say, I see you're Edelson and I raise you Zuckerberg because it all ends up in these 501c4s, dark money, it's hidden.

We vote.

We have no idea who has paid to influence the vote that we're about to cast.

And that's got to end.

And you end up with a politics that's more driven by the preferences of billionaires.

And I'm happy about what Bloomberg is doing because I think he's a politically smart guy.

I think he has a smart plan about how to spend this money.

But a lot of these billionaires, they spend the money on vanity projects.

We see what Tom Steyer is doing with these nonsense ads about impeach the president.

It's spending all this money to get Tom Steyer's face on television.

And then on the Republican side, they spend a ton of money.

A lot of it, I think, is not spent very smartly.

I would rather see Bill Gates spend his money doing the excellent work that his foundation is doing on public health.

He can do both.

He got $90 billion.

I don't want the Democratic Party that goes out there and figures out, like the Republicans do with Sheldon Adelson.

I I got him right their agenda.

The only good thing I would say really quickly about this is just that our votes are counting against the money.

People are voting.

Democrats are voting.

Progressives are voting at higher levels.

Money matters.

Let's not fuck around.

Okay, so I have one minute.

What's the deal with the jacket?

What was she doing?

The jacket's from Zara.

There is no way that Melania Trump shops at Zara.

Right.

So this isn't just.

I think it's honesty.

I think she was literally saying the White House doesn't care about these kids.

No.

The Don Don Drone doesn't care about the kids.

He doesn't care about the kids.

She was saying she doesn't care about the kids.

But that's what the jacket said.

She didn't wear it to the kids.

She caught a raft of shit when she wore the stilettos to go to the flood circle.

But this extra stilettos is a message.

This was a message.

This is the signal to the media to say, how to be me.

Well, you don't know.

Okay, but you don't know that for a fact.

That's your guess.

It was a message to

me.

She said, I don't care.

They don't care about these kids, obviously.

I think it's truth-telling.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, Patmont.

Time for new roles.

Okay, New Roll, the woman who got her head stuck in a truck tailpipe at a country music festival and this guy who got his head stuck in his mailbox must start dating.

I want you two to get married just for those mornings when he says, I'll get the mail and she says, I'll start the truck.

New Roll, someone someone has to tell the South Korean soccer coach who switched his players' numbers and training to fool a Swedish scout because he says Westerners can't really tell Asians apart.

Hey, that's racist man.

You don't think we can tell Lijiang from Oban Suk?

New rules, if you're the guy in the next stall, don't strike up a conversation.

You may consider this a social situation and a chance to make new friends.

I'm just looking for a quiet place to sit until someone at the table pays the check.

New rule, now that Uber wants to use artificial intelligence to determine how drunk potential passengers might be, They have to answer this question.

What are you, my mom?

I got an easier way for you to tell if your passenger is drunk.

They ordered an Uber.

Nouverul, if you work in the Trump administration and you're responsible for separating kids from their parents at the border, maybe don't eat at a Mexican restaurant for a while.

Even if you didn't get heckled out of the place, are you really going to enjoy those enchiladas?

Because trust me, that's not crema.

And finally, new rule: anyone who went apeshit the last two weeks because I said going through a recession would be worth it if it undermined Trump's popularity has to enroll in college and take a course in perspective.

A recession is a survivable event.

What Trump is doing to this country is not.

Democracy is about to go the way of the dinosaurs because we've been taken over by a dodo bird.

So let me repeat: recessions are survivable events.

We survive one every time a Republican is in the White House.

It's true.

Every Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt has presided over a recession.

Four Republican presidents had two of them and Eisenhower had three.

The United States has survived 47 recessions at all.

And since the Great Depression, we've never gone more than 10 years without one.

Another recession is coming.

Not because I'm rooting for it, because someone

Someone passed a giant tax giveaway to the rich that added trillions to the debt and started a trade war for no reason and deliberately sabotaged the Affordable Care Act and rolled back the rules for banks so they can once again gamble with our money.

Those are actual policies from men with real power as opposed to me who just made a wish.

I just made a wish.

What am I a genie?

I just...

But you would never know that from the right-wing nuttosphere where

this made me a bigger threat to our national security than Canada.

Laura Ingram said he wants an economic collapse to get rid of Trump.

But I didn't say economic collapse.

I said recession.

For the record, I'm against reducing us to the point where we're foraging for food and trading blowjobs for candles.

Yes.

I am.

I'm against that.

Alex Jones tweeted, Bill Maher is worth $100 million, but he says we should crash the U.S.

economy to stop Trump.

And when has he ever strayed from the facts?

And then everyone on the right said, I had $100 million.

And all I have to say about that is, I do?

That's awesome.

I'm out of here.

No, I wouldn't leave you.

Sarah Palin tweeted to her follower

that I was out of touch.

And Wayne Allen Root said, he doesn't care if your kids starve.

Mike Cernovich said, suicides increase during recessions.

Bill Moore wants people to die.

Yes, specifically Mike Cernovich.

I want him to put his head in the oven so starving kids confuse it for food.

No, I don't want that.

I don't know who the fuck you are, Mike Cernovich, but

I want you to live a long, healthy life and get the help you so desperately need.

But this accusing me of wanting people to starve and die is pretty rich coming from the party that has never been shy about actually enacting policies that starve and kill people.

Taking away health care.

cutting Medicaid and food stamps and the children's health insurance program, forcing government shutdowns.

This month's journal of the American Medical Association says the Trump environmental agenda is likely to cost the lives of over 80,000 Americans.

So there's that.

And I guess those claiming that I would come out unscathed in a recession must have missed the episode with Elizabeth Warren from the last recession.

You know, before the crash,

I had most of my savings in Lehman Brothers.

Oh.

I don't have a question.

I just want you to hold me.

It's okay, because some things are more important than money, and one of them is living in a country that reasonably resembles the one that existed from 1776 to 2016.

In a situation this grave, it is not crazy to use economic manipulation.

That's what sanctions are.

We pinch countries in the pocketbook so they'll act better.

Just think of this as sanctions against ourselves.

Although, again, I can't really make a recession happen, even with my hundred million.

Recessions happen, and we always recover, but fallen republics don't.

Rome fell, and they still haven't fixed that stadium.

I'm not rooting for a disaster.

The disaster is already here.

If a recession is what it takes to make Donald Trump not so cute anymore, then bring it on.

Because

seriously, one of the problems with a roaring economy is it tends to make people put up with a bad president.

It's like great sex in a bad relationship.

When the sex is good, all the annoying things your partner does are forgiven.

That's what we're in right now, the good sex economy.

I just want America to say about Donald Trump what everybody in a relationship says when the hot sex wears off.

What the fuck am I doing with this person?

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Wind Star World continuum back in Oklahoma, July 6th.

At the Brady Theater in Tulsa, July 7th, that's my HBO special.

And at the Mirage in Vegas, July 20th and 21st.

I want to thank Michael Swercantis, Josh Barrow, Barrow, Near Attendant, and Michael Follin, and Koleon Noir.

I'll get it one of these times.

Join us now for Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

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.