Episode #361 (Originally aired 8/21/15)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you.

Please try.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

You're terrific.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

But

thank you very much.

But I have to ask, how many are here only because you're on AshleyMadison.com?

And

you just can't go home.

It says says

AshleyMadison.com, the online dating site for married people who want to cheat, like I have to tell my audience,

got hacked and they released it all, like 37 million accounts.

And the data, I love this, it includes a description of what the members are looking for.

Things like a little anonymous fun, someone to cure my boredom, looking to kill time when my wife runs for president.

I don't know who that is.

And one of the people they caught was Josh Duggar.

You know Josh Duggar from the 19 and Counting Duggar family, the Super Christian family.

He had two accounts.

He was cheating on his wife and he was cheating on the woman he was cheating with.

And in May, remember this?

In May, he had to admit that he had been molesting his sisters when he was a teenager.

I say forget building the wall around Mexico.

Build one around Josh Duggar.

This guy.

But on the Brightside subway, he found a new spokesman.

Oh, Jared, come on, trying to get with kids.

And his wife divorced him already.

She took those giant pants and threw them right on on the front lawn.

First, Josh, Jarrett, where are all my heroes?

Bill Cosby, two more women came out today.

Now the list is over 50.

There are more Cosby accusers than Shades of Gray.

And what is going on with Bill Cosby's wife?

Even Tammy Wynette is, come on.

Doesn't anyone just fuck anymore?

I mean I'm a libertarian on sex issues, but tonight I'm just saying everybody here needs to go home and have vanilla missionary position, Mitt Romney style sex

with the lights off and call each other

schnookums.

Because, and here's the thing I love about the Ashley-Madison dump, the most adulterous state in America, Alabama.

By far, it killed every other state, Alabama.

And you know what?

Can't say they didn't warn us.

They said, when gay people get the right to marry, the Christians are going to go, oh, fuck it.

All bets are off now.

Yeah, it must be.

Must be so great to be an evangelical Christian.

You know, because

Jesus always forgives.

Battery, what you do.

I asked Jesus forgive me.

up, there it is again.

He said yes.

You know?

Yes, I was in the ladies' room of a middle school banging a chicken.

It was a moment of weakness, something, something, Satan.

Let's move on.

And this is Josh Duggar's second apology in three months, and he made a statement today.

This is what he said.

This is not my words.

He said, I am the biggest hypocrite ever because I espouse family values and I'm a total pervert and that's why tonight I would like to announce my candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

Oh I did.

Oh the Republicans are tearing their hair out.

First,

well this week, first off, looks like the Iran deal, Obama's Iran deal is going to go through.

So rough here, Iran deal, gay marriage, Obamacare confirmed by the Supreme Court, and now doctors say the Trump that has been growing inside them is inoperable.

Yes, Donald Trump, America's great orange hope,

unveiled his immigration plan this week, and it is huge.

It's a three-point plan called Cinco Goodbye.

And here are the planks repeal the 14th Amendment, seize the wages of illegal immigrants who are working here, use that money to build a wall, and then deport all 11 million of them.

Is any of this possible?

No, but it gave millions of Fox News viewers their first erection in years.

And you know,

nobody sort of brings this up up about Donald Trump, who is always on about how we cannot have foreigners coming into this country.

His first wife is from Czechoslovakia.

His current wife is from Slovenia.

So if you think that crawling under a wall is the most disgusting way to become an American.

Somewhere there is a panamanium woman hiding in a truck full of chickens with 10 pounds of heroin-filled condoms in her stomach who's thinking, Well, at least I didn't have to blow Donald Trump.

All right, we got a great show.

Mark Marin

is here, Representative Donna Edwards and Charles Cook.

And a little I'll be speaking with longevity specialist Dan Buetner.

But first, she is the senior senator from Missouri and author of Plenty Ladylike, a memoir, Senator Claire McCaskill.

Hey, Senator,

how are you doing?

Great to meet you.

Thank you.

Well,

I'll have to forgive me.

I'm afraid that monologue was not very ladylike.

No comment.

I know.

But it is an honor to plug your book.

Thanks.

It really is.

It's a book with a lot of fun in it, but you are a very serious person, very serious senator.

So let me ask a serious question.

You talk a lot about in your book having to get money to run for campaigns.

And I always say, there's a couple of litmus tests I have for someone running for office.

One is, what are you going to do about climate change?

And the other is, what are you going to do about money in politics?

How can we get the money out of politics?

We're going to have to amend the Constitution.

Right.

We are.

That's the right answer.

We have to amend the Constitution.

I think Citizens United is the most corrosive thing that has occurred to our democracy in the history of our democracy.

Because it affects every issue.

Every issue.

See, these guys, there's about 100 people in the country right now that, and by the way, when you run for president right now, all these guys, you wonder why you don't see Rand Paul as much, he's still shopping for his billionaire.

He's like the only one who hasn't found a billionaire to fund his super PAC.

So they all have gone out and found billionaires.

And this is a whole new era of really sleazy stuff that we don't really see going on.

And these guys are putting big money.

We've got to get it out.

We've got to figure out a way to do this better and we can.

We can.

We can amend the Constitution and make it better.

And this amendment, I think it should probably say,

because the root of the problem is that money is not speech.

That seems to be the problem and also the argument that the other side always uses that somehow money is speech and I've never really understood how that could be.

Well and there's a balancing test, Bill, because the balancing test is what about the right of the people in this country to feel like they have a voice in their government?

What about the right?

That is something that if you look at it from a Supreme Court balancing test, that is also an important part of our democracy.

That if we keep doing this, pretty soon everybody's just going to stay home or it will become reality TV.

Oh, wait, maybe it is reality TV this time.

I forgot.

Very good.

Yes.

Sorry.

Got a little carried away there.

So one other thing you talk about a lot in the book, which I like, is the military-industrial complex, another issue I'm always up on here on this show.

I think that's something we have to tame.

Obviously, this has been an issue since Eisenhower left office, because that was his big speech when he left office.

He said, and he was, of course, a great general who won a big war for us, so it had a lot of credibility when he said, the one thing we have to look out for is this military-industrial complex.

It was a new saying back then in 1960.

Right.

But what do you think we should do to tame the military-industrial complex?

Well, I've been at it.

I mean,

obviously, one of my heroes, I sit in his seat in the U.S.

Senate is Harry Truman,

who made his chops by, in fact, going out and ferreting out war profiteering in World War II.

He is turning in his grave over what I found when I came to the Senate and really looked at contracting in Iraq.

And we have now made a lot of reforms.

I'm not telling you it's better because this is really like shooting fish in a barrel in terms of all of the waste and abuse that you find in military contracting.

But we have made some progress.

We now have an independent inspector general in every contingency that is over there finding nonsense.

The one in Afghanistan just found a building that we built that we didn't need, and we're now holding the generals accountable that approved of this building.

We got a lot of stuff we built in Afghanistan.

No program ever goes away.

The sequester.

Remember the sequester?

Knocked out some military programs, but they went right back in.

Oh, no, we've gotten rid of a lot of, first of all, when we wiped out the Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund, the infrastructure fund, it's gone.

We work very hard to get rid of it.

Why does the Pentagon budget just go up every year, no matter who the president is, Democrat, Republican?

I understand something like that makes people think they're all alike.

Right.

Because they all think the Pentagon deserves a blank check, infinity, whatever you need, because I think they don't examine what goes into that blank check.

You're right.

We've stalled out in terms of increases in the Pentagon as we've tried to spend less money.

But when I came to Washington, I told people, imagine if your kids ask you for something and every time they ask you said yes.

What would they end up asking for?

And that's kind of what it got to at the Pentagon.

They were doing crazy stuff because nobody ever told them no from 9-11 forward.

Now we're beginning to cut back.

It's not as bad, but there's still an awful lot of work to do.

But you must get crap from people who say you're anti-American, you're anti-you're not patriotic if you don't support every

dollar that people want to go to the Pentagon.

How do you fight that?

You know, really,

for one thing, I spend a lot of time worrying about what we should be worrying about, and that's the veterans that aren't getting the care and the services they need.

So

that helps.

All right, so you're from Missouri, which has been one of the ultimate bellwether states.

I think from 1904 to 2004, you got every, you voted for every president except one.

And then, starting in 2008, missed it by a mile.

Not in 2008.

Closest election in the country.

But you didn't go for Obama.

We didn't, but barely.

In fact, I think if we recounted, he might have won Missouri, but that would have been kind of bad form since he'd been elected president.

But it was a tiny sliver.

He almost won in 2008, but did lose by like 12 points in 2012.

What is it about him that was different?

Well,

I can't imagine.

I can never put my finger on it.

Yeah, I mean, we're a conflicted state.

It's a hard state.

It's not a blue place.

I like to tease my colleagues who give me trouble about some of my centrist votes.

Sure.

You know, come with me to Missouri, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein.

Let me show you what it's like in Missouri.

It's a lot different in Missouri than it is in California.

And how's the Senate these days?

Has the sexism got better?

I know you write a lot about that in the book, and some of it's kind of funny.

Well, it was terrible terrible when I was young.

Now, it's not that it really I.

Terrible in the sense that they would actually make comments.

Oh, yeah.

In my book, I talk about the Speaker of the House, when I was a freshman legislator in Jefferson City, I asked him how I could get my bill out of committee.

I was up in the dais in the House of Representatives, and he looked at me and he said, well, did you bring your knee pads?

And so

that's in the book.

That's in the book.

What did you say back?

I kind of laughed, and I talk about maybe I didn't handle it right, because I was young, and this was in 1983.

Right.

I didn't handle it.

It is amazing what men were able to get away with.

You know, maybe the pendulum has swung so far now that, you know, you can't even say to a woman in the office, you look nice without worrying about the money.

Oh, no, we just had another intern sex scandal in the Missouri legislature six months ago as my book was in print.

You know, so we haven't gotten there yet.

I will say, I've never been disrespected or marginalized in the United States Senate by my colleagues.

I think they realize the women that get to the United States Senate don't mess with them.

I mean, we're pretty tough cookies.

You're a tough cookie, and I really appreciate you doing this.

Great luck with the book.

It's a really good book.

Blair McCaskill, everybody.

Let's meet our panel.

Thank you, Seven.

Hello.

Hi, everybody.

All right, here's the panel.

He is a comedian who just interviewed President Obama.

Wow, on his bi-weekly bodcast, WTF, with with Mark Maron.

Mark Maron's over here.

He's a writer for Nastrovia and author of the Conservatarian Manifesto, one of our favorite conservatives on the show.

Charles Cook is back with us.

Charles, how are you doing?

And she's the U.S.

Representative from Maryland's 4th District and a candidate, wow, for the U.S.

Senate, Representative Donna Edwards.

Good luck with that, Captain Cook.

Okay.

All right, now, Charles, I said you are one of our favorites.

You are, but I was reading your book.

Well, actually, I was reading the part about me.

And you were complaining, as all, by the way, all the conservatives complain about this, about me and most liberals, that we're dismissive of conservatives, the rednecks, the Tea Party,

we think they're stupid and racist.

And I say they're stupid and racist.

But then, okay, so just tell me what I should do in a week like this, where the

unparalleled leader of the party, now Donald Trump, unveiled a plan that is so stupid and racist,

and it is not even addressing a problem that really exists, because there is not a real immigration problem in America.

Net immigration has been close to zero for the last seven or eight years, and if his plan went into effect, lettuce would cost $25 a head.

So when the party is embracing him and that plan, what does a person like me who's tempted to say it's stupid and racist do?

To not make you mad.

I think you should gloat to an extent.

I'll say this.

I don't think he'll be the nominee.

I don't think he'll win a single primary.

I do think it's worrying.

Well, they keep saying that.

Right, they do.

They keep saying, oh, he's not going anywhere, and then he goes further.

Look, it's worth,

that's true, but it's worth saying he's not liked by 75% of the party.

And the Republicans have to decide, are they going to be a party full of classical liberals in the old sense of the word who believe in freedom for everybody, who believe in opportunity for everybody, or are they going to be the party of sort of white identity politics?

And Donald Trump, unfortunately, is tapping far more into the latter.

Why I think it's almost less worrying than you made out.

There's two reasons.

Firstly, there was a good piece in The Atlantic by Connor Friedersdorf.

He said, why are you voting for Donald Trump?

And the reasons, they're very, very broad and they're rather incoherent.

And so so is he I mean he today in Alabama he just held a

he just held a huge rally in Alabama that was just not I mean he was on an LSD trip essentially

there's no coherent but the other candidates are now imitating him they're trying to out Trump Trump Ben Carson says he would use drones on the Mexican border I'm not kidding.

He's going to incinerate the motherfuckers from the sky.

That's just shy of somebody saying, well, well, what about camps?

Maybe we could have camps.

There was a guy on the radio who said that the other day.

We should, if they stay

and we try to send them back and they don't go, we should make them slaves.

The problem that the Republicans have is that it's bad rhetoric, it's divisive, and he's their guy.

He must have been molested by a gardener or something.

I don't know where this.

I mean, I.

but

isn't he sort of like just like he's like one of the great American assholes.

And I think that guys like him are very empowering to broke hateful assholes.

And it's nice to know that that number and who they are, just how much of this country is filled with broke, angry assholes who are willing to do, you know, follow a guy like that.

Except you don't know where they're going because he's insulted women and immigrants and Hispanics and blacks.

Who do the Republicans have left who are going to vote for them?

Well, again, I would say I do think it's premature to say he's the face of the Republican Party.

He's got about 25% support.

He's got very high on favor.

Way more than anybody else.

Yeah, but that's because they have 9,000 candidates running.

I mean, to be fair,

you have some people in the party who are pandering to him, which you think is bad, and then you have a lot of people who are not.

But is it fair to say that the Republican Party in general gets involved in these fantasies about things that will never happen?

Because none of what he's proposing will ever happen.

We're not going to deport 11 million people.

The CBO says it would cost $300 billion,

take 40 years, and send us into a horrible recession.

There'd be people outside of Home Depot looking for work, but they'd be white.

And it seems like you're always dealing with things that aren't actual problems that affect Americans, Benghazi.

The latest is the email scandal.

I mean, is this a scandal?

I keep trying to be fair about it, trying to find some reason I should be upset with Hillary for using her, what, work server when it should have been her home server or vice versa.

And I just can't find a there.

But I will admit that it has worked.

Her numbers are down because people don't pay attention to details and the media creates a lot of smoke about it.

Well, here's where we will disagree.

I actually think you're wrong there, and I think the details support

the skepticism toward her.

If you look at both USC 18793 and USC 181924, these are federal laws.

She's clearly violating.

No, look, that's the detail you just mentioned.

I think pretty much the American public is not going to go to U.S.C.

Well, hold on a minute.

I think what are those numbers?

What are those numbers?

They're part of the U.S.

Code.

I think that's the case.

This so reminds me of the blowjob.

You know, yes, yes,

he lied under oath, technically.

Just to let me think, I do think it matters for two reasons.

Firstly, I think it's possible that the FBI will recommend charges.

Secondly, I think the fact that we all roll our eyes at this...

What could charges be?

I mean, so

she carried a device.

She used one server.

She did not transfer classified emails despite what all of the folks on the other side

say.

She also had an AOL email address, which is embarrassing.

Well, you know,

I have to admit, I have an AOL email address.

Fox has spent more time on this scandal than they did on all the screw-ups in Iraq, where so many people died and we spent trillions of dollars and where even all the Republican candidates admit it was a bad idea to go in to begin with.

It just seems really out of

people love hating Clintons.

They love hating Clintons.

And if they didn't have this, they would find somewhere else.

There is no there.

Okay, but even if it's something, even if it's everything you say, is it as important as climate change?

Okay, here's why

I think it's important.

To spend all this energy on it.

Here's why I think it's important is that we talk a lot at the moment, and quite rightly about judicial inequality, about privilege.

Now, Barack Obama has prosecuted more people than any other president for classified information violations, for national security violations, three times actually than any other president.

And a lot of those people were lower-level, powerless peons within the system.

And somehow we think it's ridiculous that Hillary Clinton might be prosecuted when she's clearly, she's clearly violated federal law.

That matters.

But what is, unless the, what is on the email?

She hasn't been.

She's trading kitty porn with Jared Nuttle.

No.

And she hasn't transferred classified information.

You all have to stop saying that because she did not.

No, she transferred information that maybe later might have been classified, which happens all the time.

And that's not what the LIG said about

the screen gun that I'm going to pick up and blow my brains out because I am so tired of being

okay.

Let me move on to something you'll like.

Because,

you know, conservatives certainly don't have a monopoly on, I think, being unhelpful.

in the national debate.

Good example this week, okay, for the second week in a row, a Democrat, last week it it was Bernie Sanders, this week it was Hillary Clinton, got a bit of an earful from the Black Lives Matter folks.

We talked about it last week with our guest, Talib Kawil.

Okay, so

now I didn't say this last week, but I'll say it this week.

There are people who say the phrase should be all lives matter.

I disagree.

That implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they're not.

Black Lives Matter is the right.

But,

you know,

I want to read what Hillary Clinton said in response when she was being asked about this.

She said, what am I supposed to do about it?

In politics, if you can't explain it and you can't sell it, it stays on the shelf.

I don't believe you change hearts.

I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate.

This is a fundamental difference between a lot of fuzzy-headed liberals who just don't get it and people like Barney Frank, you perhaps,

yes, not perhaps,

who understand, because you're in there, you understand you have to actually change laws.

You can't just change how people think.

Right, there's a difference between like a hashtag and actual legislation.

I think that's true.

I think that, except that as progressives, and I describe myself as a progressive, but it's not good enough for me to be progressive in my rhetoric, but not to have that acted out in my policy.

And so, for example, for a Bernie Sanders to talk about Black Lives Matter and have a conversation about income inequality, you also have to recognize that it was banks that foreclosed on black people's homes in a different way than they did other people and incorporate that into our rhetoric.

And I think that that's the challenge that progressives are having and that, frankly, white progressives are having where they see a disconnect between the Black Lives Matter movement and it is a social movement.

It isn't just an activity.

But Occupy Wall Street was a movement too and nothing got done because they don't know how to take it to the level where shit does get done and changes.

I think they changed the conversation.

Occupy Wall Street changed the entire conversation around income inequality, around what we're doing

with banks and foreclosure and credit.

They changed the conversation.

No, Barney Frank changed things because he was the guy who actually wrote Dodd-Frank.

But Barney Frank took that and

changed laws.

That's what our job is as lawmakers.

But it's okay for people out there to be pushing us to do that.

They have one role, we have another.

So

you know why.

Well,

one of the

I'm with you on this, and one of the reasons that I was disappointed was that the activists that met with Hillary Clinton started the meeting by laying out very well what the problem is.

They mentioned the 1994 crime bill and that that's effect, especially with the drug war, has had a massively deleterious effect on African Americans.

And then sort of Hillary Clinton seemed to say, okay, I accept that, Mayor Culper, I'm interested in taking this forward.

At which point they said, don't tell us what to do.

And she said, I'm not, I'm trying to listen.

And then they said, well, if you listen, we don't know what to do.

And even if we did, nothing will change.

And I thought that was odd because they laid out very well what they wanted to be done, and then they went into this defensive position and said, Well, we don't know anyway.

Essentially, they said to her, You have to acknowledge this original sin, and there's no chance at redemption.

And she was the one trying to put forward a platform.

I don't know quite what they wanted by the end of it.

I know, it's so sad to blame the people who are raising the issue and the problem for the existence of the problem.

I mean, I don't think

it's harmful,

I don't think it's harmful for a group of people to acknowledge that

young black men die at 20 times the rate at the hands of police than their white counterparts.

And to ask lawmakers

to change this system.

But why are we starting with Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton?

I mean, these are people who are sympathetic to this, who have worked their whole lives to change this system.

Why don't they go at it with one of the, as you say, thousand Republican candidates?

I don't understand this.

Well, I think they should do that too.

Yeah.

It's an odd choice.

I think they should do that too.

Now, I don't have to tell this panel that politics is rough in America.

And you know, we here at Real Time are always looking for examples of the zeitgeist.

And we found one

this week.

There's a small town called Dorset, Minnesota, and it's a very small town.

It's so small they don't really have a mayor.

What they do is at their vegetable festival, they sell a raffle for a dollar, and that's how you elect the mayor, whoever has the most raffle.

And so, the mayor for the last few years has been Bobby Tufts.

He's six years old.

So, now his brother, Jimmy Tufts, is running to replace him.

And

Bobby ran an attack ad against Jimmy that I just think shows how rough politics has gotten.

Would you show that ad, please?

Jimmy Tufts says he has what it takes to be mayor of Dorset.

But what do we really know about Jimmy Tufts?

There's no record of him before 2012.

He promises new ideas.

Yet, every time we play hide and seek, he hides in the shower.

Every time.

Jimmy says he'll be tough on crime, but he's afraid of the vacuum cleaner.

And where were all his toys made?

China.

Jimmy Tufts, just another career politician.

Call your mommy and tell her that Jimmy can run, but he can't hide.

Well, except in the shower.

Don't let Jimmy Tuffs do to our town what he did to his diaper.

Oh, politics is rough.

Here's the author of the Blue Zone Solution, Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People.

Please welcome Dan Buetner.

Hey, Dan.

How are you, sir?

You're very healthy.

104.

Yes, how old are you, Dan?

104.

No, you're not.

It's working.

Okay, yes.

Now, I wanted to meet you for a while because I'm very aware of blue zones in your book.

This is your second book on this.

You wrote one, I think, about five, six years ago.

Right.

Now, this is a follow-up.

And blue zones, for people who don't know, are those areas in the world where people live well into old age, and I mean old, like 90s and into the second century.

About a decade longer than the rest of us, and then as many as 10 times more centenarians than we have here in America.

Right.

And you wanted to find out why is this?

So you went to five places.

I think one of them is in Greece, right?

Icaria.

Icaria.

One of them is in Costa Rica.

Sardinia.

Right.

Sardinia, Italy.

Okinawa, Japan.

Okinawa.

And the one that was surprising to me, Loma Linda, California.

70 miles from here, right off the San Bernardino Freeway.

Let me start with that.

I mean, I'm so surprised that somewhere in America is a blues on.

What are they doing in Loma Linda?

Well, they're Seventh-day Adventists.

Yeah, I know, I'm sorry.

A lot off the good start here.

That's the secret, huh?

I hate to say it, though.

Oh, this is my last show, ladies.

I'm obviously

not lost in this world.

But they live about a decade longer than the average American.

And

they eat a biblical diet, sorry to say, but mostly.

A biblical diet and what is that well they take it right well no they take it right out of Genesis chapter 1 verse 29 God talks about any every plant that bears seeds and every tree that bears fruit and then one stance later plants so they're mostly vegetarian or vegan seeds are good and

seeds are good yes there we go you eat your nuts eat your nuts right and they tend to

and beans you said beans is a key yes every place you went where the people live long they eat a lot of beans Right.

So in Blue Zone Solution we distilled 100 years of dietary research in all five of these places and on average they're eating about a cup of beans a day.

And if you're eating a cup of beans a day, it's probably adding three or four years to your life expectancy.

Maybe because...

But you have less friends.

Yeah.

And you stay warmer at night, yes.

Sure, because it does something in your gut, right?

Isn't that what beans do?

I mean, why the farting is because they're actually

doing something beneficial.

They sort of make a mulch for the good bacteria, which is anti-inflammatory instead of meaty bacteria.

So let's go through some of the other,

you say there are nine principles

that are common to all these places where people live so long, like move naturally.

They don't have gyms, they don't pump iron.

Their lifestyles involve always getting them to move.

They don't have conveniences in the home and stuff, right?

Yeah, when you think of it, exercise has been largely a public health failure in America here.

And when you look in blue zones, they're moving about every 20 minutes.

They have gardens, their houses are deconvenienced, they live in walkable communities.

They get way more physical activity, burn way more calories over the course of a week than we ever would thinking we're going to show up three times a week in a gym.

And if you live in a walkable community, you're probably 30% more active than you would be if you live in a suburb somewhere.

Okay, and less stress.

They have ways to get rid of the stress.

Yes, time-honored practices.

Okinawans have ancestor veneration.

The Icarians and the Costa Ricans just take a nap.

If you're taking a nap, it lowers your chance of heart disease by about 30%.

And they're doing happy hour, which is kind of a choice.

I like people.

Well, that's another one is moderate drinking, you say,

is a secret to that.

Yeah, well, we know that drinkers on a whole outlive non-drinkers, which isn't to say that if you're not drinking drinking now, you should necessarily start.

It's good news for most of us.

Two, we see sometimes three drinks a day, and you can't save up all week long and have 21 on the weekend.

And meat, not a lot of meat.

No, no.

On average, we're seeing people

in Blue Zones eating meat about five times a month maximum.

Right.

And we don't know if they're living a long time

because they're eating meat five times a month or despite the fact they're eating eating five times a month.

It's a little like the way my advisor, Walter Willits, says a little bit like radiation.

Eating a little probably isn't going to hurt you, but we don't know the safe level.

I think your advisor could find a much better analogy than breeding the teacher.

That's a terrible analogy.

Okay.

And I want to bring this one up because, again, this has to do with Loma Linda.

You say almost all of the people are faith-based.

Not the same faith, but everybody has some sort of faith.

And look, I am not faith-based, but I get that.

You probably, when you put your head on the pillow at night thinking if you die, it's going to all be good.

We heard Jimmy Carter say it yesterday, I'm completely at ease with whatever happens.

I can understand why that is a peace of mind that I do not possess.

Yeah.

People blind to faith may have a better social network or they may be less likely to engage in risky behavior.

They do live a little bit longer.

But the real, the big idea here, what we distilled out of 10 years of research, is in none of these blue zones

did these spry centenarians ever try to live a long time.

They never said at age 50, well, go darn it, I'm going to get on that paleo diet and live another 50 years

or buy a treadmill or call on

it.

It's organic to their way of life.

Yes, they lived in environments that made the healthy choice not only easy but unfortunately.

So you think you can bring this to America?

That is a tall order, my friend.

We brought it to 27 American cities, including Fort Worth, Texas, the state of Hawaii, and it's actually working right here in California.

Fort Worth gave up meat for beans?

Well,

not completely, but Betsy Price there, that's the fantastic mayor and the city manager, superintendent of schools, they've taken the ideas, the environmental components of Blue Zones, and they're putting them to work in Fort Worth.

And the idea here is if you unleash a healthy swarm of nudges and defaults, you're going to get a lot more done than you are trying to clobber people with behavioral change or guilt them into getting off the couch.

Well, here's a good question for everybody here.

What happens if people live to be 100 with Social Security?

Now,

we're having a lot of problem keeping this thing solvent with the baby boomers living longer than people have lived before.

If they lived to that age, it would really be a problem.

And I noticed the Democrats,

I think you included, want to expand Social Security.

Is that really possible?

I mean, the disability fund is going broke, and in 20 years, the thing itself is not going to have enough money.

Absolutely, we can expand Social Security.

We can lift the cap on contributions into the Social Security Trust Fund.

There's not a single reason.

No, but there's not, look, there's not a single reason that I make $174,000 a year because that's our salary in Congress, but I only pay into the Social Security Trust Fund up to $118,500.

So $56,000 effectively doesn't get, I don't pay into the Social Security Trust Fund.

If we actually did that,

even if you set a different threshold, we would keep Social Security solvent for years.

It would be there for our children and their children and their children, and we'd be able to expand benefits.

Well, but it seems like both parties

have a stake in doing this.

I mean, Chris Christie raises this issue.

He said it at at the debate.

He said 71%

of our budget goes to entitlements and service on the debt.

That's what we should be talking about.

That's a big man with a big idea.

He has to live in a blue zone.

Well,

he is not going to make it to Audrey.

I could almost guarantee this man is.

But I'd actually like to pan out on this idea of Social Security.

In these blue zones, in Okinawa, home to the longest-lived women, they don't even have a word for retirement, this kind of false punctuation between your productive life and your life of repose.

Instead, iki guy,

your sense of purpose kind of imbues their entire adult life.

Who?

Ikigai.

Yeah, not yet.

What's that?

It means the reason for which you wake up in the morning.

Oh, we were just supposed to know that?

You dropped that into conversation like I'm the asshole.

Ikigai.

The point is, they celebrate it.

They look at older people not as a financial burden, but actually something they celebrate.

They harness their wisdom.

They continue to use it.

And I think when we think about Social Security, we shouldn't be framing it as a debt, but we should be framing it as we invest in older people and we harness their experience and their wisdom and we put it to work for good.

Okay.

Well.

I have bad news about all this.

Nobody's going to live to 100 because the planet is dying.

I know we talk about climate change a lot on this show, perhaps too much, but I'm sorry.

The planet's dying, and I'm just going to keep talking about it.

This is just what I read just this week.

The air in China kills 1.6 million people a year.

The sequoia trees, the oldest living things on Earth, over 3,000 years old, some of them, and the biggest, and they've never really been in trouble trouble through all that time.

Now they are.

The Forest Service used to spend 16% of their budget fighting forest fires.

Now it's over half.

There are now 29,000 forest fighters fighting over 100 fires.

I mean, the state of California is literally sinking because the water has been tapped out of the ground so much.

We're not so much of a state as a fire pit at this point.

2014, the hottest year on record.

2015, looking to be hotter.

The heat index in Iran reached 165

a couple of weeks ago.

I just wish there was someone on the left, a sane person on the left, who had what Donald Trump has: the ability to tough it out and say something like, we just need a carbon tax, because obviously we need a carbon tax.

And we don't have that person on the left.

Well,

because of the drought, I've almost entirely stopped masturbating in the shower.

And they say there are no more heroes in America.

Thank you, Mark Marr.

You're welcome.

Carbon tax?

It's hard to know what to do with that.

Yeah.

Well, you're going to be a senator.

You should ignore it.

Look, I think.

Carbon tax.

Please, someone say carbon tax.

Carbon tax.

Carbon tax.

You're for it?

Carbon tax.

I mean,

when I first came into the Congress, we were trying to push forward

what I thought would have been a much more progressive way to approach climate change, and that was part of the conversation.

It's not.

now.

But we have a whole bunch of people in the Congress right now, especially in my side of the House on the so-called science committee, who just deny that there is any such thing as climate change.

Well, here's Donald Trump.

You know what Donald Trump's position on climate change is?

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S.

manufacturing non-competitive.

Since he's not going to be the nominee, we should not pay any attention to that, right?

Well,

he's not the only one, but you know,

come on, Don.

You know, you keep saying you're smart.

I'm the smart guy.

I'm really, really smart.

It can't be both.

You cannot have this position and be a smart guy.

And it's just...

I didn't, you know, the one thing I do love about him is his ability to just tough it out, to say what he thinks, never back away from it.

And wouldn't it be great if somebody, maybe him at some point,

got to that on.

All you have to do is wait until tomorrow and he'll probably come out for a carbon tax, which is how he's been behaving from the beginning to the end.

Well do you think, I mean Bill, do you think that

conservatives

actually

part of their vision is

the deregulating and the privatization of apocalypse management?

That maybe they actually see this as a business opportunity?

Well, but that's the point, is that it's actually costing us more.

Yes, a carbon tax would cost money.

You know, it would cost more not having a carbon tax.

That, I think, is where the debate is, because there's a lot of things that the science can tell us.

The science can tell us, for example, that the climate is changing, it can tell us that man's having an impact, it can tell us that the drought in California, which would have happened anyway, is much worse, is what the Times says.

Correct, yes.

What it can't tell us is what to do about it.

Those are economic questions, they're political questions.

Now, if you take a view, say, that Carly Fiorina did, which is that the way to get out of this is innovation, you'll be slammed by progressives who say, no, no, no, no, no.

It's not that if America does something on its own, which is what she said, that there will be no change.

Instead, there will be a 0.018%,

that was the number today on Vox.com, change over 100 years.

Well, that's not even within the IPCC's margin of error.

You know what we could do tomorrow, and I'm a consistent.

You're big on the numbers, but.

Well, yeah, but I read them before I came here, but the point I'm trying to make here.

It's your ability to memorize.

It's impressive.

The point I'm trying to make before I finish is that Obama actually, I think, is right when it comes to the forest fire question in that he said, look, let's change the way the Forest Fire Service works.

They have a stupid plan at the moment, which is that if they spend more of their budget than they intended to, half, I think you said, then they don't do any preventative measures for next year.

They don't clear brush, which means there are more forest fires.

So we could double that budget from $1 billion to two.

Likewise, we could try and stop those.

I don't think that's necessarily stupid.

I think it's probably more cost-effective.

No one would argue with that, but it's not addressing the real issue.

Well, no, it doesn't mean that.

It means that if if you look at actually doing something to prevent climate change, it's often a lot more exciting.

I got one more question because of all the news about Ashley Madison this week.

There are 60 million married couples in America, and apparently about half of them are boning someone else.

What does this say about the sanctity of marriage?

What does this say about America, which persecutes adulterers horribly in a way no other country does?

I mean, France, those kind of countries laugh at us when we impeached Bill Clinton.

We're really,

we're like France.

We're having the same amount of extramarital sex.

We just won't admit it, right?

I can tell you it's good for longevity.

What's good for longevity?

Adultery?

Well, no, if you're having sex at least twice, if you're over 50 and you're having sex at least twice a week,

you're only about half as likely to die in any given year than somebody not getting it at all.

So

that may be a good idea.

How strenuous is the sex?

That will require further research.

No comment from the panel on

this?

All right.

Suddenly, you have no statistics on this, I noticed.

Suddenly there are no numbers, there's no

You didn't bone up on this one at all, did you?

Well, the great thing about the internet, it's created a world full of sex addicts.

It's just the ability to engage and facilitate any number of devious or non-devious sexual behaviors right at your fingertips for hours on end if you want.

Josh Duggar blamed his problem on porn.

And I don't think that's unrealistic.

I think porn has changed men's minds.

Yeah, you get porn brain.

Absolutely.

Yeah, if you watch enough porn, you go outside and in your mind, everyone's fucking.

And then you're unable to function with a a real

partner.

It's not a problem I have.

I just know a lot about it.

It's not something the Senate can do anything about.

You're right.

You can.

Let's end this before we ruin two Senate careers.

Thank you, panel.

But it's time for new rules, everybody.

New rules.

Okay.

New rules, someone must warn Jessica Hayes, the Indiana woman who participated in a rare Catholic wedding ceremony where she married Jesus,

not to expect too much from the honeymoon.

I don't know what you said, or the delusion that Jesus would even want to marry you,

or all those wasted hours striking a seductive pose on the bed, waiting for him to come out of the bathroom.

New rules, now that Idaho has had to replace their highway's mile 420 markers

with ones that read mile 419.9 because potheads predictably kept stealing the signs that say 420,

they have to turn it into a math problem.

If a carload of stoners starts out traveling at 19 miles an hour in the fast lane

and stops stops to giggle at the mile 69.

How long before they realize they're headed in the wrong direction?

New rules, red pandas have to admit that they're actually plush toys.

Nothing could possibly be this cute.

Somewhere there are a couple of baby seals thinking, well, we had a pretty good run, didn't we?

New ruler, Hillary Clinton has to stop always looking like she's doing stand-up.

Hey, what's the deal with Benghazi?

Why do they always call about terrorist attacks right when you get in the shower?

Although Jerry Seinfeld would be jealous of the email scandal, it really is a show about nothing.

New rule, somebody needs to tell Hardys and Carls Jr.

that they're not fooling anybody.

Come on, guys, it's 2015, and you guys have been together for 20 years now.

We can handle the truth, so

let's stop pretending that you have two different places.

Come out into the daylight and proudly celebrate your union by

calling yourself Hard Carls.

And finally, new rule, if the Olson twins can charge $55,000 for this handbag, they can't make their interns work for free.

That's right, the Olsons, whose company is worth a billion dollars, sell this bag made from the hides of other less successful child stars

for 55 grand while they're being sued by 40 unpaid interns who are just trying to get minimum wage.

Well, they'd also like their brother Hansel to be released from the fattening cage in the house made of candy

because they look like witches.

Anyway, so

I'm sorry, Olsons, but if you sell obscenely overpriced crap to status-obsessed suckers and stiff the children who help you, you're not America's little sweethearts anymore.

You're Apple.

Now, I don't want to pick on the Olsons, but if these two aren't guilty of something, why do they always look like raccoons when you turn on the porch light?

Of course, the Olsons are really just a reflection of our post-greed is good world, where outrageous income inequality is simply accepted, even by most of the people getting fucked by it.

People who should be in the streets or in unions or at least in the voting booth, but are not.

As usual, Americans just find it easier to adapt.

And that's how we got what economists now call the sharing economy.

We used to have stores that provided jobs, then commerce went online.

Now we just have apps.

I know we're supposed to think that's cool to drive an Uber from your Airbnb to the assignment you found on Task Rabbit

selling your ovaries, but

isn't the sharing economy really the desperate economy?

Airbnb?

You really think anybody really wants to have total strangers living in their apartment for a week?

Oh, look, someone else's cubes on my soap.

I'm living the dream.

There are apps now that connect you with people who will buy your groceries or park your car, and on Etsy, you can sell your handmade crafts without the middleman of a store.

How liberating!

You're basically this guy on Venice Beach now.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not planning on wearing these pants tomorrow.

So, if anyone needs pants but can't afford the long-term investment, head over to TrowserDeal.com.

Trouser Deal, where you can rent my pants for just $5.95 a day.

So

how did America spend 60 years fighting communism and end up in a barter economy on Craigslist?

It's like being afraid of gluten and ending up eating cats and dogs.

The Trumps of the world would like to blame it all on Mexico and China, but actually the soulless workers coming to take your job aren't being smuggled across the Rio Grande.

They're being built in Palo Alto.

And that's not counting the next big thing, driverless cars.

Oh, I know, we already have that.

It's called texting behind the wheel.

No, I mean real driverless cars.

But robots and cars didn't do this.

We did it to ourselves, as usual.

by worshiping greed.

From replacing people with robots to exploiting interns, from the slave labor we use overseas to the music everybody steals at home.

We've all become so good at scheming, cheating, inventing, raiding, gouging, and just plain fucking each other that we woke up one day with this sharing economy where the one thing we're not sharing are the profits.

Somehow they forgot to create an app for that.

Hillary Clinton has a detailed plan for higher education, but what is the point if there are no jobs when you get out?

What's the point of going to school, joining the frat, and learning the racist songs

if

all that's waiting for you is your parents' basement?

Even Jeb Bush says we're moving to a world where it's harder for people in poverty to move up.

And his solution, don't raise the minimum wage.

Remember, when we say he's smart, we mean smart for a bush.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Bergland in Roanoke, Virginia, tomorrow night, Saturday, Pacific and Fargo, North Dakota, September 20th, and at Shays in Buffalo on September 26th.

I want to thank Mark Marin, Charles Cook, Donna Edwards, Dan Buetner, and Senator Claire McCaskill.

Join us now for overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher Maher every Friday night at 11, or watch him anytime on HBO on Demand.

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