Overtime – Episode #384 (Originally aired 04/15/16)

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.

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

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

Here we are answering questions that people have sent in.

Amy, has the mainstream media covered this election fairly?

Absolutely not.

Let's have a season without polls, okay?

Instead of the media pouring millions of dollars into these polls that turn out to be wrong, I mean, there's a poll every week or every two weeks.

What is it?

It's a primary or a caucus.

And then, yes, find out who voted, who didn't vote, and of course the vast majority of people don't vote.

But pour that energy and those millions of dollars, pour those investigations into what these candidates really represent, what their records are.

Instead of they spend all their times doing the false polls that they themselves admit, how did we get it so wrong?

And then they spend that time from poll to poll saying, how did we get it so wrong?

Instead, we need to know what these people represent.

I think we know.

I'm sick of what they represent.

I'm telling you, I could do their act for them.

I completely agree with Amy.

I mean, just look at the way they've covered Donald Trump.

They've given him kind of unlimited coverage.

They allowed him to phone in even on the Sunday morning shows.

And, you know, you had Bob Woodward, supposedly this journalistic icon, interview him for 90 minutes and not ask him once about his being a birther, about his wanting to ban an entire religion, about his inciting violence, nothing.

Well, and if we had no polls, what would Donald Trump talk about?

And I mean, look at...

So he doesn't do any polls himself.

Look at one day, March 15th.

I think they called it Super Tuesday 3.

Five primaries.

You had Ohio, Kasich won his first.

You had Florida, Marco Rubio pulled out.

You had North Carolina, Illinois, and Missouri.

Okay.

Marco Rubio won Florida?

Marco lost and pulled out.

Kasich won Ohio.

Okay.

So every candidate, all the networks covered the election that night, the primaries that night, and you heard from Cruz, you heard from Kasich, you heard from from Rubio, you heard from Hillary, and then they waited and waited and waited for Trump.

They said he was going to hold a news conference.

They showed the empty podium, fine, and then they play his whole thing.

We all agree.

We hate Trump.

Wait, wait, wait.

Where, wait, wait, wait, Trump.

No one here likes Trump.

Where was

Bernie Sanders?

Where was Bernie Sanders that night?

Did he go to sleep?

I mean, Ariana might have been happy then, but what did he do?

He was speaking to thousands of people in Phoenix.

They never played even two minutes of a speech.

They never even mentioned where is Bernie tonight?

They suck.

We all agree.

Okay.

Susan, on the 25th anniversary of Telman Louise, what are your thoughts looking back on the iconic film?

Stands up, holds up that movie, boy.

I saw it recently.

Was it really 25 years?

Wow, that's my thought.

Same year as Anita Hill.

Oh, wow.

Oh, that's interesting.

Bearing.

Wow.

Well, I mean, I think that the interesting thing about Thumb and Louise, well, that was interesting.

That was significant.

It wasn't his first movie, but it was the first movie where we got to see so much of that.

I'd never seen him before, though.

Oh, yeah, he did some TV and stuff.

Every woman in this audience knew exactly which scene you were talking about.

Yeah.

And some of the men.

I think what was interesting was that we had no idea people were going to be so offended.

It was in the,

you know, it was like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, except with women.

And it got, and cars or trucks, and it just made people.

Oh, did the reviews people because we were condoning suicide?

It just made people so upset.

And I think what it was was that women had the option of violence.

And that we, I don't know what it was exactly, but that's how we got it on the cover of Time magazine and everything else because there was such, you forget that there was a backlash against it, but it was huge.

And we didn't see that coming.

I did forget, yeah, yeah, no.

Iconic.

No, no, no, no, no.

They got really

upset.

And we were like, whoa, I didn't know we backed into this territory held by white heterosexual men of a certain age.

Wow.

Yeah, it was a big.

Ariana, do sleeping pills work?

Actually, sleeping pills are a major disaster.

$58 billion are spent around the world on sleeping aids.

Wow.

Like lunas.

Like Lunas, like Ambien.

And what is amazing is that people think if they can't sleep, this is their only alternative instead of all the natural alternatives.

Pot, that's natural.

Or cognitive behavior.

She had one too.

Pot keeps me up.

You're not smoking the right kind.

You're on sativa.

You should go to the other side.

You think I don't know.

I mean, well, so why are you smoking up?

But the kids.

Don't tell Paganini how to play the violin, okay?

New Zealand and our country are the only two countries allowing sleeping pill advertising.

Right.

So you have all these.

Any kind of prescription.

Yeah, you have all these beautiful pictures of happy people on sleeping pills, and then 92 warning signals of what can happen to you.

Well, I mean,

here's my thing about drugs.

All drugs wear off over time, except for pot and liquor.

Pot and liquor always work.

They may have some diminishing returns, not that I have have to tell you, Rick.

But pot.

Rick looks like Satan.

And I don't mean that in a bad way, because Satan was a very good-looking man.

But I just think when I see Satan,

I go, oh, that's Satan.

And again, not as a bad thing.

But you know, there aren't many drugs that actually

make it possible for you to wake up in the middle of the night, have absolutely no memory, get in a car, drive and kill kill people.

That's ambient, okay.

But that's pretty serious.

But yes, no, it is absolutely,

but you don't know who it's going to hit that person.

Here was what I was going to say about drugs.

Most of them, the more you do them, the less they work.

And the worst example of that is sleeping pills.

Yes, it'll work the first time.

And then six months later, you'll need to take twice as much.

And then you're Elvis.

I mean, the amount...

The amount of sleeping pills that Elvis Presley was taking at the time of his death would kill an elephant elephant if an elephant took it the very first time.

Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson really had a propathol.

Right.

He was like, hook me up, I'm taking a nap.

That was heavy.

That was crazy.

Crazy.

It is always a, that is truly a slippery slope once you start with sleeping pills, because you will always need more.

And now they have this connection between sleeping pills and Alzheimer's.

Sleeping pills are practically every disease if you take them over six months, which a lot of us do, not me.

All right.

Having just marked another equal pay day this week, are we getting any closer to closing the wage gap between men and women?

No, you never will.

It's always going to be a political issue because they want it to be a political issue.

Who wants it?

Well, you can also ask the White House to pay their people the same and they'll just campaign to pay their women the same.

So there.

Next topic.

It's not a real issue.

Some of it is a reality.

Well, my mother will tell you it's a real issue, and it wasn't a real issue.

I remember my mother, you know, when I was growing up, she taught herself, she didn't have any skills, she taught herself the 10 key to type, and she single mother, and she worked her way, she eventually got her MBA.

A remarkable story.

Wow.

But it is the law.

I mean,

equal play is the law.

So we can make another law, I suppose, and we'll have another law on the law.

And then 10 years from now,

five years from now.

But why do women make less than for the same job?

Well, here's the thing.

The 77 cents, which is what everyone used, 77 or 78 cents on the dollar.

Even Obama's economic advisors, when pushed, have had to say on Equal Pay Day a couple years ago, yeah, that stat is actually not the one that really works.

And when the White House is pushed on, well, according to this stat, you guys are not paying women the same amount, and they go, well, we're close.

I mean, it's not a good measure for whether this is a problem.

And there are plenty of other things, there are plenty of things about the pay structure that are a problem, but women prioritize different things, and it's just more complicated than the 77 cents argument.

I'm for it.

Women should get equal pay.

Right.

But don't make it, but it's been a political issue.

Is that why Ted Cruz fired you?

No.

No, I was making it too much.

Yeah, well, I didn't want to bring the balance out.

Yeah, he had to balance it out.

No, he needed a sacrificial lamb, right?

That's what it was.

Do I look like a lamb to you?

No, you look like Satan.

I look like Satan, and I look like a lamb.

You have a lot of range.

I mean that as accomplishments.

This is happening.

I'm telling you, look at this man.

Is this not what Satan looked like?

It is.

I'm not saying that.

Okay.

It's fine, but not for Satan.

Ariana.

But Satan, you needed like a black bear.

Like this one.

Like this tie.

Yes.

Maybe they can switch.

Yeah.

Ariana, what can you tell us about your partnership with Uber to combat drowsy driving?

Well, what is so interesting is that after the designated driver campaign in the 80s, drunk driving deaths and crashes have been halved.

But drowsy driving deaths are going up.

And last year, we had 8,000 deaths and 1.2 million crashes.

And so we've partnered with Uber to highlight the problem.

We have a pledge on change.org that people can take, that they're not going to let their friends drive while drowsy, they want themselves to drive without drowsy.

And I've been doing ride-alongs with Uber drivers.

Really?

Yes, people can actually request me on the Uber app to give them.

That is amazing.

In San Francisco, Travis, the founder of Uber and I did it together.

And we got this woman

from Houston and we explained to her about the dangers of drowsy driving.

And we gave her a bag of a lot of goodies to get dressed in the middle.

She's not driving.

No, but the point is that a lot of people who take Uber sometimes also drive.

And the whole idea is to raise awareness about the fact there are no ride-sharing technologies, there are different.

She was from the Uber, so she wasn't driving.

How do you explain?

The point is, you get Ariana in your Uber.

How do you explain that she looks the same as she did when she made Temlin Louise, and she doesn't sleep.

Did she make a deal with Satan?

No.

Neither.

She gives up.

She gives up.

Really?

I mean, she does not look like Satan.

You know what you sound like?

The tobacco scientists.

I'm just asking.

No, no, no.

In the 1950s, you know, when you would say tobacco is bad for you, and there would be these tobacco signs that came under it.

But there is this 95-year-old woman who's been smoking all her life.

Right.

No, no.

She's the exception.

A little bit under that.

Susan is the exception to the rule.

She looks magnificent.

Her skin is perfect and she doesn't sleep.

But

for the rest of humanity, it doesn't work.

I'm on your page because, believe me, you know me.

I care a lot about health.

I read everything I can.

And if you don't sleep right, it throws off everything else.

By the way, not to be be gross, but if you don't sleep right, you don't poop right.

Right.

And if you don't poop right, everything turns to be a fancy.

And what about you?

And what about...

I'm not saying you don't poop fine.

Oh, I would never say that.

Ariana, I have a four-month-old and a toddler.

Is there hope for me?

Absolutely.

First of all, they will grow up.

And

I promise.

So 10 years from now.

But also, you need a little tribe.

You need a support system.

We need to all rally around you.

What What do you think about the fact that everybody on the panel felt the need to have their phones right on?

I mean, I remember when I used

this show and people, you know,

they just wouldn't bring a phone.

Why do you need them on television?

You just can't.

Satan is never without his phone.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, panel.

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

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