Sam Harris | Club Random with Bill Maher
01:28:04 Share

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big ROAS man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friend's still laughing me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn.com slash results.

LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. You are, in my view, the single most articulate person in the world. Really? I'm not going to accept that praise, but it is high praise. Don't argue. I appreciate the feeling. It's just like nobody, your superpower, besides clear thinking, is...

Your ability to choose words, you know, just the right one. Well, I have an advantage, which many people have noticed. I talk incredibly slowly. So the people who listen to my podcast on 2X and 3X. Impossible. No, it's not that bad. It's not that slow. But it's not a drawl.

You sound like you're a Booford pusser. Give me a few of these and then we'll see if I draw. But most people, if they had 10 years and started studying now, still couldn't come up with the word. You know, you come up with words that are like, not arcane, but just

Perfect. That other people don't come up with. I'm trying to think of an example, but I don't know. It's cracked me up. Not that they actually make me laugh. I don't think they'd make other people laugh. But you were saying, I mean, Richard was here, Richard Dawkins, and we were talking about he's canceled by the Muslims for Islamophobia. You've had the same problem. And you once described, and the word you used was combustible. Yeah.

The community is combustible. Well, that's like if some shit happens. Combustible religious maniacs. Like if a Koran gets burned or some shit happens. Like, okay, it's not cool, but, you know, nobody else is quite this combustible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just not a word I would, you know, immediately associate with that. And we're certainly not saying that all Muslims are combustible. This is...

I don't know that we have to issue any caveats or footnotes as we cover these topics, but it's amazing how confused people are. We're now talking in the immediate aftermath of the Kanye anti-Semitism eruption. Yes. And in criticizing that, I got so much blowback on social media.

more or less of the sort from the left saying, you're one to talk. You have said so many awful things about Islam. Oh, my God. As though, I mean, people cannot differentiate criticizing a system of ideas from hating people for indelible characteristics of birth. Did you call Ben Affleck back? I'm kidding. I love Ben. He used to own this very room. That's strange. He and I buried the hatchet. I know. There's no problem.

But it is one of those things that you and I will never shake completely because so many... It keeps coming back. Because of his stardom. Oh, specifically that episode, yeah. Yeah, because of his stardom.

And, you know, passion at the moment. Right. It was just one of those things that was seen by, like, masses that don't usually follow us. Right. Shall we say? Yeah, yeah. No, he was very famous in Indonesia right after that. Yeah.

He's the white knight who rode in on his horse and saved half of humanity from us. Not just Indonesia. Rosie O'Donnell liked it. That's right. Brooklyn and Indonesia and the entire west side of Los Angeles. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm glad that you guys talked.

And I remember you did, like after the show. Because he's a very bright, reasonable guy. Honestly, the green room was worse. Had you televised the green room conversation, that would have been amazing. After the show? Yeah. It was just me and him and Monica. Oh, I'm not aware that there was such a conversation. It was contentious? It was contentious. But again, we've totally buried the hatchet, so there's no...

No issue. And nobody came over to the other one's side a little bit, or it was just more of like, agree to disagree? It was more like, yeah, we just moved on. You know, I haven't seen him a ton since then, but you know, the few times I have is just that there's nothing, nothing wrong. Oh, good. Yeah. I'm a big fan of him as a person and a filmmaker. I think he's super talented, super talented. I mean, just as a,

I wish he would do more of his own movies. The ones he's directed are just on a really high level. Yeah, definitely. But he's got his demons. He can retire his scholarship of Islam. I think that's the gig. Leave that to the other guys.

Well, who's up your ass now? I mean, you live, I feel. Well, I feared that you were a few weeks ago. I don't know. Do we have to cross any I's or dot any T's with respect to the whole cancellation Hunter Biden moment? That you got into? Yeah, I got into something and I saw you reacted to it. And I thought you, because unfortunately the clip that was exported to all of humanity was,

kind of distorted my position. My recollection of it was, first of all, what you said was fairly benign, so I don't know why you took the bait. And I heard your whole podcast about it. And I enjoyed it immensely because, again, you choose words so well. I could just listen to you talk. But I kept thinking, wow, you're really caring more about this than I think maybe you need to. What I thought was interesting about it on my show

is that Rob Reiner and Amy Klobuchar were on that panel. Two very, very strong liberals. We usually try to have a balance, but a balance doesn't mean a balance within one day. It means a balance over the whole year. Some shows, yeah, there's going to be two liberals. And maybe some shows there'll be

you know, two conservatives or something. But that show happened to be two people who have no ideological difference between them. You couldn't find more MSNBC stalwart than Amy Klobuchar and Rob Reiner. And I'm very fond of them both. But when I brought up that story, they had not heard of it.

Right. And I even said, because, you know. Our information landscape is so partitioned at this point. It's amazing. Because, I mean, it was hitting the front page of the New York Post, but my liberal friends hadn't seen any of it. And I was getting inundated from Trumpistan on social media. I was trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons, but it was all right-wing lunacy. It was very weird because it was, in my world,

it was a complete non-issue. And with respect to my own, you know, the reputation I care about, it was a complete non-issue. Right. But it was amazing. I mean, the velocity of the hatred was something new. And again, if we lived in the same world, we wouldn't even be arguing over some of this, which I think if you could get the two reasonabler people of each party in the room would say, yes, there was...

what you'd have to call some sort of media suppression of Hunter Biden's computer right before the election. - Oh, no doubt, no doubt. - No doubt, okay, so-- - And the truth is I still don't know what I think about that. My default position is why should we be hostage to Rudy Giuliani's timetable? If Rudy Giuliani holds onto this thing until the 11th hour, 10 days before an election, and drops it as an October surprise,

Why should the New York Times and CNN and every other media organization be hostage to his goal of dropping this at a time when there's just going to be not enough time to parse it before the election? Dropping what? The Hunter Biden laptop story. Right. Okay.

But why are you saying Rudy Giuliani? Well, he, cause he, he was the one who had took delivery of the laptop and. Original. Yeah. Yeah. So like, so. The laptop gets left at a repair shop. It's bonkers. Right? The whole thing is bonkers. A repair shop? Yeah. A computer repair shop? I think in Delaware or, yeah. What year is this? What is it? Episode of Barney Miller? Fucking computer repair shop. Yeah. Okay. I use Acme.

by the way. And I recommend them highly. They're the first in the Yellow Pages, which I also use also on my rotary phone. Anyway, so... But it was completely plausible to worry that this was a fake story. It didn't... I mean, and...

There simply wasn't enough time to get to the bottom of it. Really? Well, then why did the outlets that did get to the bottom of it get to it? The New York Post had no problem getting to the bottom of it. Yeah, well, but still... But they wanted to believe it. They wanted to believe it, and yes, sometimes you're right by accident, and sometimes... Right. But, I mean, to actually parse everything in there and figure out just how dirty...

Biden senior is as a result of the information there. Can I go to step two of what the two reasonable people in the room would agree on? One, they'd agree it was kind of suppressed. Two, they'd agree that Hunter Biden being the son of the current vice president and being a complete ne'er-do-well douchebag was ripe to

to be used as a conduit to his father through which he was, but nothing really, it was common, it was kind of sort of everyday graft that's sleazy, but doesn't affect the world. Okay. We still, it's possible we still don't know, right? So I'll give some credence to the possibility that it's worse than I understand.

But the problem is 10 days is not enough to figure that out. And we knew that it was going to derail. But just on that issue, would you not agree with the statement that probably Hunter Biden sold his father's influence to get money, but Joe Biden himself would not give away our nuclear secrets to the Chinese? He has a soft spot for his son, his ne'er-do-well stupid son.

Yeah, I mean, you've heard his voicemails to Hunter. So like, Dad, I'm in a little bit of a jam. Could you just meet with the Chinese guy next week? It would mean a lot to me. And Joe would do it. And then Hunter would get the money for the meeting, and then he'd spend it on cocaine and hookers. I mean, it's an old story. And I would be willing to bet that whatever level of corruption and grift you find over there, it is tenfold worse in Trumpistan.

you know, with Trump and his kids. I mean, it's just, there's no question. So, so if you're going to play that game of, of, of comparing, you know, bad incentives and, uh,

the venality of these characters. But on your basic, your controversy was saying, yeah. My controversy was saying that there was nothing that you could learn about Hunter Biden at that point that I would have cared about, including the corpses of kids in his basement. So that was probably a flourish that I didn't need. Because the other choice was Trump being president for more.

Trump, who was a sitting president who was declining to support a peaceful transfer of power. But you can see why it's easy pickings for critics of people like you and me, because we're such free speech champions. So the idea that we are even thinking about, like toying with the idea of not releasing everything right away, complete transparency, makes us giant hypocrites.

Well, but not really. I mean, the problem is there are a couple of bright, shiny objects that have completely entranced people in what I would call the alternative media space. I mean, you're in both spaces now. We're now having this conversation in podcastistan, but you have your main show. You walk between those two worlds. Right.

Out here in podcast land, people have this notion that the worst possible evil is cancellation, that everything should be talked about at great length because we're just asking questions and there's no possibility of those conversations. The sunlight on everything at all times is...

always the best approach, even if you're dealing with a public health emergency or a threat of nuclear war or like, like everyone just has an opinion. They're entitled to their opinion. And we should be as a default distrustful of institutions, whether it's the government or the media or science or academia. And that's, and I'm not, I'm not saying that our institutions haven't

embarrassed themselves over the last few years. Of course they have, but the idea that the contrarian view is always or even mostly likely to be true is just not true. Dr. Dawkins and I just had a very long conversation about medicine. I think he understood me. I'm sure he had one well. What? It did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think he had a...

somewhat erroneous notion at the beginning. So I don't know if I want to have the same conversation now. I feel like that's where we're heading. Because when you say, it sounds like, to me, my antenna goes up because it sounds like you're asking the scientific community, and especially the medical scientific community, to stand by because we have the one true opinion and we should just get behind that. Stand back and stand by. Stand back and stand by. And that's just not where I'm at.

And it's far away from being an anti-vaxxer. I'm not any of that. But I am skeptical, as I think everybody should be, especially of medicine, because we just don't know that much. Was I worried about COVID? Never. Am I worried about cancer? Yes. And that's the thing. It's like...

That's what I don't want to get. I didn't think COVID would be terribly harmful to me. Right. Okay, well, I don't think we should go down that rabbit hole, but I would just say by way of closing the door, I think that there are many different time points in the last three years where a different response was warranted. And so what was appropriate in May of 2020 –

was slightly different than what was appropriate in December of 2020. And, you know, and we're in a different moment now. And, um,

What we're dealing with now is such distrust of institutions that I worry that we just can't effectively message anything of consequence without it just getting obliterated by conspiracy thinking and partisan politics. Okay, but I mentioned to Dr. Dawkins there's something called the Barrington Letter, which was signed by 16,000 doctors.

and scientists basically dissension from how we were handling COVID and putting their their

thoughts behind things that used to be fairly accepted, like natural immunity is superior to pharmaceutical immunity, things like that. Or at least should be, you know, like there are other many European countries who recognize natural. Stuff like that that is not part of the one true opinion. And what the CDC and what the government is telling you. And combined with the fact that they were wrong about key aspects of the vaccine, the vaccine was miraculous, yes. It saved many lives.

I'm not saying they're corrupt, but there's lots of corruption in medicine. We're suing the Sackler family, or did, for billions and billions. It's not like pharmaceutical companies can't be doing things just for profit.

Even with that, I'm not saying that. All that's true. Yeah, all that's true. And I'm not saying that that's what's going on there. Although Pfizer, I think, did just quadruple the price of the next vaccine. OK, they're in business. They have a right. And as Dr. Dawkins was saying, and I was concurring, it was a genius thing to come up with that new technology type of vaccine. And as I said to him, there are some pathogens I would fight you for the vaccine.

Yeah, I mean, we got unlucky in some ways because if COVID had been like monkeypox, where you just get covered in pustules, right? I think the attitude toward the vaccine would have been quite different, right? COVID was still an abstraction for many people. But I think there's a few things going on that are complicating this issue. One is

Science is messy, and non-scientists are bad consumers of science, right? So when we view changes of scientific opinion and scientific controversy and some kind of time course over which people are changing their minds and having debates and there's just basic uncertainty…

From the outside, that looks like a failure of science, right? The scientists don't know what the hell is going on. They don't. That's the point. No, but you have to... An emerging pandemic is the worst time to be doing... You're not doing science on a deadline. Okay, but this is the... We have to lie to people because they're too stupid to... No, no. There's another political layer to this, which was awful, which I'll totally grant you. You've got people saying...

epidemiologist by the thousands saying that Black Lives Matter protests are okay. Maybe we can put this to bed, just to see if you just agree with this. You can go, and I'm sure you see this on Twitter, social media, anywhere. You can see

And again, 16,000 doctors signed this thing. You could see so many doctors. You see their videos who are very much dissenting. They're not crazy people. Most of them, all of them, believe that we should have the vaccine and are thankful for it and other, their vaccine. They're not anti-vaxxers. But they are much more on where I've been on this kind of stuff. So like, you know, if it's like, like, I don't do likes, but if I did, it's like, yes, I'd be the, and there's thousands of them.

Why are these doctors more, and there's doctors, okay, we wouldn't even pretend. I think you don't have to be an MD to know as much. People can learn that. People have other, but okay, let's just pretend that's not true and it's just MDs who have the secret information of medicine. Why are this large group of MDs not

not as worthy as your group of MDs. That's all I'm saying. Right. Is that we should just have, there's too many doctors, serious doctors. They went to medical school and they're not on your page. They're more on my page. So let's just, well, I'm not sure you know what my page is. Let's just demonize them and say, that's just because maybe you have, you know, it's 60, 40 years or many of them, many doctors don't speak out because they're intimidated because, and that's not a good place for science to be right. No, no, no.

Definitely not. But the problem is there's several things going on. One is it is always possible to find a PhD on any topic who's a lunatic. This isn't any. This isn't any. No, no, no. So I'm just saying there's several things going on. Yes, right. So there's – on the one hand, you have the frank politicization of science where you have –

Again, I mean, the most egregious instance of this was when the epidemiologist by something like 1,000 or more signed a letter saying, okay, we just told you that all of these right-wing demonstrations were awful and dangerous and likely to get people killed.

But now that we have Black Lives Matter demonstrations, that's fine because racism is even a greater public health emergency than COVID, right? Yeah. Okay. That was absolutely discrediting of institutional science. Yes, it was. And just terrible. Agree. Okay. So you have that happening. But on the other hand, it's always possible to find an MD or a PhD –

who will say, who will say we didn't land on the moon. Right. I'm like, that's not who I'm talking. No, no, no. But there's some of that happening. I'm not saying you're not talking, you're talking about that, but there's some of that happening. And that was happening in the first month of the pandemic. Right. You have people who are saying that, that millions of people are dying from the vaccines. Right. So that like those claims got made by PhDs who, you know, go on, you know, Joe Rogan's podcast, for instance. Um,

So you have that happening. Then you have just the basic uncertainty about all of this, about the epidemiology, about the biology of COVID, about just how bad it is clinically, about whether people are actually dying from COVID or with COVID. You've got the bad incentives in the system where there's hospitals that are getting more money for- Some of this, just the way you're explaining it, is stuff that rings to the-

these kind of doctors, a little, I don't know, something goes off because when you say from COVID or with COVID, it's always a combination. That's what- Yeah, but how you score that- Exactly. It matters. But like long COVID, my guess is, they left in Western medicine to give everything a new name. I think long COVID is probably mostly viruses are opportunistic. If you have some-

something in about you that is taxing your body a lot you're going to be much more susceptible to something like the virus being able to retain some people just have terrific bad luck right is it they have got they have no confounding factor it's not like they're obese or they have anything else that's going on but it's contributing to it yes they just get very unlucky you know and that's for reasons we don't understand it's fairly rare

I think it's fairly rare. I think mostly you could tell who was going to be susceptible to long COVID because there's probably something

They might not know what it was. Meanwhile, I now remember we were at dinner and I made a big show of having tested myself for COVID and I'm COVID free. Meanwhile, I fucking had COVID and hugged two cancer patients at that dinner. Oh, literally hug. I mean, two cancer patients.

I made a great show of hugging them, COVID-free, because I had tested myself with these antigen tests. I took 19... I had COVID. I took 19 antigen tests, never tested positive. I tested positive by PCR and by the Q reader, right? And I definitely had COVID. I had all the symptoms of COVID. But meanwhile...

I mean, and then I go on Twitter just whinging about these antigen tests. And I'm tagging Michael Mina, like the guru of antigen tests. He's like the molecular biologist at Harvard who's been like, these antigen tests are God's gift to humanity. And I'm just saying, what the fuck is going on with these? So listen, it...

So much of the last three years have been a total shit show of trying to get to some ground truth of what's actually going on. Just don't tell me what the one true opinion is. No, no. Because there's not one true opinion. Okay, good. But it is... We are...

We're in a terrible situation when we can't trust institutions. I agree with that. We need to rebuild institutions and we need to rebuild trust. And part of that is not by dictating to people what to do about something that you were very wrong about, key aspects about, and which they...

can probably handle better. I always say, when Obama sold Obamacare by saying, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. That's what sold a lot of people. Now, I was already pre-sold on Obama, but that, I loved it. And that's what I'm going to say to you now.

I like my doctor and I'm going to keep my doctor. And my doctor doesn't agree with this. You know, these are general sides. But like humans always wind up into two tribes. When this country started, there was no political parties. And Washington, the most prescient thing ever, he foresaw what we're going through now. He foresaw that if we devolved into these two parties, because it was human nature, eventually we would just get to this part now where we hate each other.

So, like... Yeah, I mean, I am a little leery of admitting that it's a both sides equivalent situation. Because what's happening on the right... No, it's not. I'm not saying that. There's something fairly terrifying happening with QAnon and Trump. Oh, I couldn't agree more. Yes. And authoritarianism. It's bonkers. Oh, yes. No, it's much worse. I'm just making the point that humans always have to be...

break down into two groups. Like there is always an A and a B. It just, I don't know. But you, but you, well, but I don't think that's true of the two of us. I mean, so you know, but I'm just saying on this issue, it bugs me because I do, you know, but you love your mind. I don't, I don't think you understand my situation. Like, so like, I don't know. So I haven't gotten the bivalent booster because so I had, I had, I've had three shots and I've had COVID and

Yeah, I wouldn't get the booster. I'm not in a rush to get the booster, right? But the CDC is telling me to get the booster. But I see the CDC just rankly politicized and inflexible. Now you're speaking my language. But if we roll back the timeline a year and a half,

I wasn't necessarily tracking everything you were saying there, but we might have been on a very different page. When COVID was just kicking off, it made total sense to me

To lock it down and just treat this as a five-alarm fire, right? Until we understood what we were dealing with. Right. But as things evolved, it required a more flexible way of thinking about what was happening. Well, I'm flexible because I got the shot. Okay. I mean, I would say for selfish reasons more, like I just didn't want to give up my life. But I hate the way it's dividing people.

You know, like... But climate change divides people. Trump divides people. This one... Climate change never divided anybody, like, for real in my life. This is very... You know what I mean? Like, there are people who are very COVID paranoid. You know? I mean, Howard Stern and I, you know, for years, there was really...

And Amon Sidi, he, anyway, we got back together like two lost lovers. And we had just repaired this relationship. And we were like having this beautiful friendship. And now I think I'll never see him again. And I worry.

I still love him. I hope he still loves me. But we're like, he is, in my view, a germaphobe. I think he would admit. It's pretty obvious. And people have the right to be whatever level of scared they are of germs.

I can't live in that world. I don't want to. I can't live in your paranoid world. And I think that's part. Now, there are things that would make me paranoid, you know, if smallpox came back. Yeah, I mean, that's what worries me, that we're actually, so this was, in my view, this was a dress rehearsal for something much worse. Right. And we didn't learn anything from the dress rehearsal. And it was a completely failed dress rehearsal. We learned we're going to fuck up the real thing. We're going to completely fuck up the real thing.

We are brought to you by SignalWire. SignalWire powers the future of cloud communications. Built by the tech OGs, the original geeks of software-defined telecom, their mission is to make it simple for you to build whatever you can imagine using real-time voice, video, or text messaging. The OGs at SignalWire have spent decades solving the most complex and awkward problems in communications, including the problem of

The only thing they can't help you with is when at Thanksgiving Aunt Judy burns a dish she's cooking and Cousin Eddie says you ruined those yams like you ruined my life.

But for the computer-related communications problems, SignalWire has you covered. From broadcast quality video to ultra-low latency voice and messaging, SignalWire has the APIs and SDKs to create unique and intelligent communications experiences. From within existing applications or websites, or building a new app from scratch,

Join the millions of other customers like Amazon, Ring, and Home Depot who are using SignalWire technology to build the communications experiences of the future. And in the spirit of the holiday season, SignalWire wants to give you a gift. Visit SignalWire.com slash random and claim a free t-shirt when you sign up for a demo. Go to SignalWire.com slash random and claim your free t-shirt. Go to SignalWire.com slash random.

We are supported by Heat Holders. Nothing is worse than cold feet, unless you're getting married. But if you're looking for the best way to keep yourself and your feet warm this winter, remember two words: Heat Holders. Heat Holders makes the warmest thermal socks, keeping your feet seven times warmer than regular cotton socks. Heat Holders uses their proprietary three-stage process, keeping your feet warm, comfortable, and dry.

Discover the perfect comfort level for your family. Give heat holders to your loved ones this season. What's more, their socks come in three different warmth levels like a thermostat for your feet, so you can choose the right socks for you.

That's random and the number 25.

Plus, receive free shipping with any purchase of $25 or more. Don't freeze this winter. Heat holders will keep you warm. Remember to go to heatholders.com and use code RANDOM25 to save 25% off your order through Cyber Monday. Go to heatholders.com today.

I was saying that Richard was 81. He's amazing. Isn't he amazing? He's got good genes. He has better genes than I have. I can't rely on his genes. And he is so, like, always perfectly in character. You know what I mean? Like, he is the professor. Like, it's so funny. I was saying to him at one point about...

The academia, its reputation has gone downhill lately. People in ivory towers. And he went, I'd rather like living in an ivory tower. Yes. I love people who are so, what do you call it, authentically themselves. They can't help not be. George Will and I have become... Oh, yeah? Yeah.

I hope, I love him. Always did. Nice. I've never met him. But we met once on somebody else's show like 12 years ago and he was on a panel. I think he thought I was a crazy liberal and I thought he was a fire-breathing conservative. No, I didn't because I read his stuff and I loved it. I said to him the first time he was on my show, I said, your writing always kept my liberalism honest.

Nice. And he said, like... Yeah, no, I've appreciated his essays. And he said something that was... I loved it so much to the point of people being themselves. I don't remember word for word, but it was sort of like, who the fuck cares? You know, it totally took all the gravitas out of my compliment. And I thought, oh...

It's like a Sinatra story I've heard, where somebody was just praising, like, Mr. Sinatra, you've come, and he says, I think I know. And they're like, well, what are you drinking? Right. The other great one is Don Rickles used to tell the Sinatra story where the time Frank saved my life.

They were, really, what? Well, these three guys were beating me up. And Frank came over and said, that's enough. That's very funny. Do you ever go to Vegas?

You ought to come to Vegas with me. I have been to Vegas, but it's been a long time. You know I do Vegas like five or six times a year. Yeah, no, that would be fun. Jet. Yeah. Just like I'm Kylie Jenner. I'd hang with you. Bring your beautiful wife, of course. Show, you know, you could like,

The second I go see it. Do you do Vegas more than you do other places? Is that your most repeat? Because Vegas is, the crowd comes to you. That's why people have residencies in Vegas. Right. Because it's like touring, except that the cities come here. It's amazing.

I mean, that's why you can play it six times a year. Right, right. Or 50 times a year. How many times a year do you kind of play it? Six. Six, yeah. But there are people who are there every night for decades. Yeah, no, that's crazy. I think Penn and Teller. Yeah, Penn and Teller. Started during the Eisenhower administration. It's a very strange, you know.

It is amazing. I mean, it's a tribute to how popular they are, but also that there's a new stream of people. You couldn't do a date in Buffalo, New York every day. Or Manhattan. Just imagine trying to launch a residency in Manhattan. You'd last 11 days, and then people would move on.

You mean because there's a fickle? There's just so much else going on in Manhattan, and people aren't traveling for that kind of thing. It's the same kind of market. But did you ever go see a Vegas show? Yeah, like Cirque du Soleil. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really? It's not beneath you? But it's been a long time. It's not beneath you, Mr. Egghead? Not at all, but I mean, it's just, it's been, I think it's probably been

15, 20 years and have been to Vegas. Oh, you got to take the one. I need the Bill Maher initiation in Vegas. Absolutely. We're going to have a great time. Yeah, awesome. Annika is going to like, I mean, she's going to like lose. She may break up with me, but it's worth it. No, but she is going to lose the mortgage money like in that movie. Remember the Albert Brooks movie where they...

Where they lost in America. Right, yeah, yeah. Genius, where they have their nest egg. Right. And they're going to quit the rat race. It's like $300,000. They get an RV. They're going to go across country and just live off the interest. And the first night they're in Vegas and she loses the whole thing. Yeah. Do you gamble? No. No. That's probably good if you're going there six times a year. Right. No. Yeah.

People have problems with that. I can answer that question philosophically, do I gamble? Not with chips in Las Vegas. We all take certain gambles in life, right? No, no. But it's different when you're going to play poker until 6:00 in the morning and you're losing a ton of money. That holds no allure for me. Do you?

No. Like the idea that... I mean, I get it. I get the dopamine thing when you win something. People must be dopamine-wired differently than me because I get none. I'm just...

I mean, I can go to the black check table or whatever with $1,000 and go, okay, well, this is a little amusement that'll last an hour that costs $1,000. Where they slowly take my money. That's what it is. But I know that going, it doesn't bother me. It's like, okay, this ride costs $1,000. It's a very expensive ride. But when you're sitting with your friends and it's fine, okay. But

To actually be living sometimes right on the edge of what's going to go on in your life, like that's your kid's Christmas money, that kind of thing, it's like, why would you stress yourself out? That's so not on the line. But there's a whole spectrum. There are people who are living on the edge, but then there are people who are wealthy. I just read David Milch's memoir, and he had a massive gambling issue with racehorses, and he just, I mean, it's millions and millions of dollars.

He pissed away on racehorse. It's funny. Just for some people, it's what gives them a boner. It's all about what gives you a boner. And it's not sex for many people. I mean, for some people, it's like power.

I never quite understood that when I would, you know, say. I mean, it's interesting. There have been a bunch of books published recently on status. And status is not a variable I've thought about very much. But status encompasses all of this. It's like wealth, power, fame. These are all ingredients in status. And status is this ever-shifting object where

Depending on the context, you can have more or less status depending on the variables that are salient. So if there's you who are more famous...

than, let's say, some academic you're talking to. But if you're talking on a certain issue, well, then the academic has more status on that issue, and you might worry about being embarrassed by your not understanding the issue. Or you should worry that if you're not too stoned to worry about that. I'm totally not worried about that, but finish your thought. Yes, yes.

And then there's youth and beauty and many things happening that all redound to someone's status in certain situations. And then there are people who are winning the status game

on multiple variables, like the wealthiest and the most famous and the youngest and the most beautiful. But it's very interesting that once you think about status as what people are gravitating toward, however unconsciously, you start to see it in the world in a way that it is...

It's fascinating. It is kind of the grand attractor. But status itself, to me, seems like a conduit, not the destination.

Status gets you what what is it? Oh good question. Yeah, what does it get you? Well, I mean I for people like with a high libido, I think it gets you sex Yeah, you know there are some people who for that's why they want the status or with or the money or that just whatever Swaggy thing going on in their life that attracts the opposite sex, right? Okay. I mean women can do it too That

I get that. But status or power for itself, I'm not really sure why. What do you mean? What is power? Well, to me, power is making other people do what I want them to do.

That's a lot of life. If everyone really had that power, the human race would destroy itself in 24 hours. That's one of the pleasures of watching a show like The Sopranos. You can see the inner maniac comes out and he's like, when you look at Tony Soprano and you think, fuck, that's what I want to be able to do. There are several situations where

Well, I just want to be able to take the guy into a back room and beat him senselessly. Exactly. But status is a surrogate for that in polite society. So there are people who will do things for you because you're rich and famous. Your power is not the power of Vladimir Putin where you're saying, listen, you're going to do this thing or you're going to disappear. But you're asking someone to do something

It's a friction-free and suddenly a friction-free environment where they want to do that thing because you're you. You have the status that you have and they wouldn't want to do that thing for somebody else. Having been around enough musicians and talked to enough musicians,

No one can really, well maybe like movie star actors can, it's the same kind of thing. But very few people understand like what it's like. No wonder they all go nuts because there is this level of adulation that allows them to like live in this crazy bubble. I mean, I've certainly interviewed people from all walks of show business, politics, business, you name it, musicians.

Beyond all. That's what's happened to Kanye. That's Kanye's problem. He's a genius. He's been told he's a genius for so long by so many people that he just thinks he knows everything. Music gets to people in a certain way.

that dick jokes do not. I don't know what to tell you. Because there is this visceral love for the person who made that song that you love so much, and I'm sure you have songs like that, you just love so I do.

They confuse it with this person is fucking Jesus. And so the adulation is so great that it puts them in this world where anything they want, everyone tries to give them the best thing they have. They always have like the best drugs.

the best supermodels, you know, the best whatever. I love that song so much. Here's my liver. This is the best liver you're going to get in Miami. Oh, there are people who would give Cardi B their liver. There are. You'd have to have a contest to see who would give Cardi B. A wet t-shirt liver contest. Yeah.

Cardi, take my liver. It's better. Yeah, so... Although I think comedy probably...

It's correct. Hit some of those same buttons. I mean, so like what Dave Chappelle is doing in front of his audience has that kind of rock star thing happening. Yeah, comedians can rock star out for a while. It's still comedy and it'll always come down to earth is that. But yeah, they have like moments of that. But it's just, it's still different.

There's no bass, okay, Sam? There's no bass that's like throbbing in your balls. When people go to a concert, and also the lyrics, especially for women. Women, all their life, all they want is for the man in their life or any man or something with a penis to be communicative in the way they are.

Right. Because their big complaint about men is that we're kind of clammed up, you know, and we don't express ourselves and, you know, blah, blah, blah. You've been talking to Annika? What's going on? This must be my intervention. Finally. So what does music do for women? Yeah. That. There's a guy who's...

opening his heart and saying you're three times a lady or whatever the fucking bullshit they want to hear from us. I knew there was some reason why I didn't like John Mayer. Or is it Mayer?

Yes, Mayor. It's even better you mispronounce it. An extra dish. He's actually a lovely guy. No, really. He's a bright guy. And I like his music. I'm joking. I know you are. I do not dislike it. No, no. It was a perfect choice because he sort of got known as a douchebag. You know, he...

He was young and not, he was just, you know what he did? He made the cardinal sin of thinking, oh, the people in the press, they seem to like me. I can trust them. No, you can't, John. They're not rooting for you, John. The thing I've discovered is that

print media is a distinct situation with respect to the press. That you're not, like, the liability of just having a conversation for like a print profile is completely different than going on television or going on radio or, because the opportunity to distort what is said. Oh,

And to just give an impression of what was said. True that. It's crazy. I mean, it's not, and very few people appreciate it from the outside. So when I read these profiles of people that are uncharitable, I, you know, I sympathize. I take it with a grain of salt also. Right. I mean, the Times had an article this week about five years after the Me Too movement. Looks like things are slipping back.

And I read the article and was like, no, that's not really what it looks like at all.

The Me Too movement was, they just wanted to write an article that said that and that did not deter them that there was no evidence. I mean, a few little things. You can make any case for anything. A millennial who left Brandeis 14 days ago wanted to write that article. And you can find anything in anything, but Me Too was specifically about

men getting away with horrendous behavior to women, everything and including rape. And the Me Too movement said, it's, you know, you just can't, it's just not, you're all playing with five fowls from now on, you know, you just can't treat women like this. I mean, it was a real watershed. I don't feel like we've retreated from that.

We still have a way to go with it because like, yeah, did they make people nervous in the movie industry? Yes. How nervous they are at the Tyson food plant when you're sexually harassed on the line or somebody says at Taco Bell, would you like better hours? Suck my dick. You know,

Those things don't work. This is the worst Taco Bell commercial I've ever seen. Listen, I know you wanted them as a sponsor, but you just blew it.

That's right. That's a terrible take. Product placement is not all it's cracked up to be. You want better hours? Suck my dick. Taco Bell. Yeah, I mean, one thing that happened there is that, so you had the nuclear bomb of Harvey Weinstein, and then you had everyone who got wrapped up in the

He just got pulled into the centrifugal force of that story and then just got added to the sentence. You got Harvey Weinstein and you got Kevin Spacey and you got Louis C.K. And all of these, as the sentence got longer, the situations got less and less analogous to Harvey Weinstein.

So some people got very unlucky in that moment. And it's, I mean, we just, you have to be able to talk about gradations. But it did not deter the media from just throwing your picture up next to Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. What you did, it was you and Harvey Weinstein. I mean, there must have been some motherfuckers who were like, oh, for fuck's sake. Yes. Really? But again, you know, you can't trust them.

The thing you do about people of bad faith, you know? Yeah, well, it's... Your bad faith hunk. I love that. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, well, I mean, bad faith is... People who are making arguments that they know are not true, but they know they can get away with it because they know their fans will like it. Is that the definition? Well, it's the most interesting thing to not care about

people's actual intentions. I mean, so there are people who essentially have become human sacrifices where even the people who are hurling them from the rooftops know they're not actually guilty of the thing that they're accused of, whether it's racism or, you know, me too, or like pick your transphobia, pick your flavor. The, the,

it's just, you have to break some eggs to make this diversity omelet, this equity omelet. And so like, we're just going to, we're just going to destroy this person because it's all in a good cause. And that's, um, that's what, where it truly becomes toxic. Yeah. I mean, you're a brave dude, you know, because like your thing after, um, you know, I guess it was,

Right after. George Floyd. Yes. Where you just straight to camera, as we would say, but I guess straight to mic. Yeah. You know, no guest. And it was just, you know, that's what I strive to do too. I think we're very often, you know, cousins holding hands in this lily field we're walking through. Just try to be the voice that people go, yes, yes.

That sounds like what it really is. Right. I hear, I've been hearing this other shit from both sides. Okay, thank you. That sounds like what it probably really is. And, you know, you just went through the stats of like, yeah, there's definitely a problem of racism that persists. Certainly it's been the worst sin America ever committed up until now. Um,

Yes, there's problems with the police. I mean, I certainly have said things on television nobody ever said before about the police, and I'm surprised they didn't pull me over. But, you know, they're basically not a gang of racists.

And the stats, you know, what is it, like 1,000 people are killed by the police a year? Mm-hmm. Well, like when I heard, I don't think before I heard you say that, I don't know if I could have reeled off that stat, which is why a podcast like yours is so valuable to someone like me. And the first thing I thought was,

Okay, well, it's a country of 335 million people. A lot of them are armed and a lot of them are fucking not. Of that thousand, most of that thousand are in the process of trying to kill the police. These are not innocent people who are killed by police. There's a subset of a thousand who are unarmed and not resisting arrest. I got to stop you there because the phrase, in the process of trying to kill the police...

That's the problem because because the police interpret that now way too loosely in the process of trying to kill them means twitching moving The problem is okay. You don't understand how to get arrested like there's a massive ignorance The world was slightly different you would be a

the comedian and I would be you, right? Because your mother was a comedy writer, a great one. Yeah, yeah. She's my hero. Okay. So I see that it's in you, but you're hunk on that. Do that. Yeah. Well, I mean, it is like when you've actually trained with firearms and you can adopt something like the cop's eye view of these evolving situations. And

You realize that in a situation where they're in the presence of someone who's going to reach for a gun and shoot them in the face, they have a second to decide whether, in fact, they are in that situation. Right. And so everything depends on what you're doing with these, right? It's your hands. So...

If you suddenly say, oh, let me get my license, and you turn, all of a sudden, this is an emergency. When people don't comply, and they don't keep their hands on the steering wheel, and they go into their pockets, all of that is just chaos from the point of view of a cop having to decide whether to escalate. I still think they're going to the bullpen too quick on this.

A little too quick on the trigger finger there. Yes, I agree. Things happen quickly. Yeah. You can find videos that are awful where you're looking at someone who should never have been a cop or had no training. I think the mainstream cop view is if there's a chance I could get killed, just kill them first.

And I think that's got to change. Well, now the mainstream cop view is, I don't want to wind up on YouTube, so I'm not even going to go over there and police the situation. Right. Right. And so now we have this escalating crime problem. It's unbelievable. If the woke only knew, you know, like how much they're damaging their own supposedly liberal issues. Yeah. You know, I...

Yeah, well, there's a lot to figure out. These are problems that are not, they should be easy to solve, but they're really not. And the fact that we can't actually talk about them without getting defenestrated is a layer of the problem that I'm convinced we have to solve. It's great that you have, you know, the format you have with...

It was very smart to set it up that way, that nobody can tell you. You don't have advertisers. It's a great luxury at this point. It's a great thing. But, I mean, you establish it in the beginning. It was a wise choice because audiences would be probably upset if at some point you did that because, oh, I thought we were friends.

What am I, a whore now? Got to be paid. But this way, I feel like I have trust in this product because this product is not bought. Can't be bought and can't be deterred. I'm in a weird position because I don't know how many people can replicate this.

my business model. So I'd like, so people come to me and ask advice about, you know, what they should do with their podcast or, you know, their newsletter or whatever it is. And it's, it's hard to extract a generic message from what I've been able to do, but I feel incredibly grateful that it's working. You were talking on that one you did about the, the little controversy over Hunter Biden. Right. And you said, I don't have a team.

And you mentioned a few people, me, you mentioned who don't have a team. Yeah, yeah. Andrew Sullivan. Yeah, right. And that's

The team being, you've taken both sides, like you've offended the left and the right so much that when you say something that is perceived as radioactive, there are not many people who are, based on a tribalistic motive, just going to defend you blind. Right. Like they have to wait and see whether you've said something crazy. And also like the right-wing media prints and

reproduces what I said that is favorable to their point of view and ignores all the criticism and vice versa on the left. So no one is ever getting information. I feel like it's up to this little band of brothers and sisters, Barry Weiss, I would also throw in that, is doing it, and Nellie Bowles. I think this is not a great number of people, but stick with what we're doing because

I think it will just attract on its own because you can see that there is this amorphous dissatisfaction with the two sides, even when they're in them. People don't like it. Who would like always being at war, that we're in this cold civil war? Also, it's just insane that if I know your position on climate change,

I with great confidence know your position on gun control and abortion and Trump and it's like how who has a worldview that is so easily predicted based on all of these unrelated topics. You're saying people really are like that or they're really not? Many people in the country are like that and the polarization left and right has just captured people on all of these issues and

that never get sort of re-evaluated, right? Like, I mean, it's just like, yes, there is a, I agree with you, there's a massive cohort of people who are uncomfortable with that, but the center is a place that is hard to,

It functions by different dynamics. It's not tribal by definition. It's not... It can't be leveraged in the same way. What we have are 8% of woke social justice identitarian activists and 8% of Trumpist QAnon lunatics driving most of the conversation. Right. It's terrifying. It is. And completely dysfunctional. And that goes back to my...

thesis, the phone is the portal to evil. The phone is the portal to evil. It has broken our brains. So many people, I can't imagine ever reading a book again. Not because they're stupid, just because the phone, you know, just a book. You can't watch a TV show or a movie. It's amazing. What's happened to the attention span of

I read this article about, I forget what college it was, but the person was saying, used to be when you walked into like the lecture hall, there's 40, 50 kids in there, and it would be noisy. They're all talking, and then the professor walks in the room. Okay, settle down. You know, take a minute, because now you walk in dead silence. Yeah, they're all looking at their phones. Amazing. That's not going to a good place. Yeah. You know what my theory is? No.

I don't. Because I never said it. I never said it. Wait, I think I'm getting it. I'm just making it up now. But no, I thought of it actually yesterday. My theory is that the only people who can lead us out of this rabbit hole we're in with the iPhone technology are women because the phone is very conducive to the male wiring

Like if you said to me 50 years ago, yeah, you don't have to go up to a girl in a study hall anymore. We'll just give you this thing. You hold it in your hand. I know everything about it. And you can look at all pictures of girls. No, not just the ones who went to the high school, like all girls. And you'll find one who likes you too. And then you'll text her. You don't have to talk to her in person.

So, you know, if she turns you down so much, just text "What's up?" and then send a picture of your dick and the eggplant emoji. Or someone's dick. Right. Send her a picture of Ron Jeremy's dick.

If I sent a dick pic, I would send a picture of me holding the newspaper with the date on it. A current picture of my dick. Proof of life. But I wouldn't do that. Exactly. But...

Okay, so the fact that men can do that. But you really think women are less infatuated with the technology than men? Yes, because not, of course, women are on their phone too, but in general, women are much more communicative people.

They want to talk. Boy, do they, huh? Am I right, bros? Chicks can talk. And we love them for it because they're perfect ethereal beings. Please. That's always been my view.

Once in a while you get one who's a little pushy, but not often. Anyway, like this I think is key. It does not conform. Women have not changed. They still want to be talked to and talk this way.

Yeah, but they also want to text and they want to FaceTime. I've got two girls. I've got a teenage girl. Screen time is, you know, she is like one of the apes in 2001 with a fucking monolith. I mean, it is just. This is your own daughter you're talking about. Does she know you talk about her like this?

You know, it is the perfect attractor. You know, if I had a son, I can't imagine him wanting more screen time than my daughter wants. So it's...

It's not. I'm not noticing the gender difference. She's limited to how many? Oh, yeah. No, it's North Korea over in our house. Meaning you're the dictator. There's real limits on screen time. Oh, good for you. If I was the kind of person who reached across and shook hands, I'd do it now. But I'm not that kind of person. You're a germaphobe. What would that add? I'm not a germaphobe. You're a germaphobe. Howard Stern's a germaphobe. Howie Mandel's a germaphobe.

I'm not. Don't project your... I'm just germ-informed. I'm not a germophobe. Germ-informed? And I'm not? No, no, I think you and I probably have the same file on germs. I think we do. Although, you know, not to get back on this, but again, the point of humans always dividing into two groups, Republicans and Democrats, whatever it was. Terrain theory, you know,

Louis Pasteur in his deathbed recanted and said, yes, Beauchamp was right. It's the terrain. In other words, we're always being invaded by pathogens. It's the terrain they find. The analogy being the mosquito in the swamp. If there's not a swamp, it can't breed. But let's not get back on it. I'm a big fan of luck. Yeah, I mean, luck accounts for an immense amount. There are people who are incredibly fit, who

who eat all the right stuff, and who die of cancer far too early. Very few. It happens. Yes, genetics, Matt. Yeah, you can get a bad genetic. Genetics are half of every story, even psychologically. I think that's, see, I would not agree with that number, but I would agree with the basic idea that they're very important and they can absolutely rat for it. We're all in a vast lottery. I think we blame too much on genetics and germs.

They're both obviously very important, but I think that's where Western medicine is kind of mono-focused on, well, that would be dual-focused. There's not much to do about genetics currently, you know, personally. Right. You know, it's like you're not going to CRISPR yourself and re-engineer your genome.

I tell you, I got awfully excited when I read about CRISPR. Where are we with CRISPR? You wouldn't know that kind of stuff. I'm actually not that close to recent research on it, but I had Jennifer Dowden on my podcast a couple years ago. How many years were you in college plus all your graduate school before you were out in the world? I was a hard case. So I took...

11 years off between my sophomore and junior year of college. Is that right? 11 years. That is a gap. I reinvented the 60s for myself. I went to India and Nepal. Oh, that's right. I've heard you. I'm very into meditation. Okay, so that was that period. Yeah, yeah. So then I went back to school.

Now you're in your early 30s. Yeah, I was 30, 31. And then I finished at – I mean, it was relevant that it was at Stanford because Stanford was like a one school where you actually didn't have to reapply. You can't actually drop out of Stanford. Like Tiger Woods could go back tomorrow.

and the registrar wouldn't blink. He'd be in the computer. He'd just show up for classes. Whereas every other school, I think, you have to write a letter every year saying, listen, I'm still alive. I want to come back. I'm not at near-do-well. I'm not on crack. Don't cancel me. But Stanford's not like that. So I was able to go back with no impediment. So then I did a PhD in neuroscience, but

How long does that take? Well, if you're me, it takes nine years. Nine years. Because I was away for four years.

I was AWOL writing books because what happened, so I had finished my coursework, but then 9-11 happened. Oh. And I wrote my first book, The End of Faith, and then I got inducted into the pantheon of new atheists. One of my favorite books of all time. And I was, you know, I was off and running as an author, and then I went back. Oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that you finished after you wrote that book. Yeah, I wrote two books. I wrote Letter to a Christian Nation, too. Oh, another one of my faves.

So I was, you know, it was, I was, I was a hard case, but it was all useful. And I mean, I feel like I did everything backwards, but it was all. Okay. So nine years total. Yeah. But, but four years where I really, I just had a toe in, in the lab. So everything that you really needed to learn, honestly. Two years, there's like two years of coursework. And then there's, then, then there's your dissertation research.

But like really nine years? It should have been five years for me. Not three?

Well, I mean, no, I don't think I've heard of anyone doing a neuroscience PhD in three years, but like four years is possible. And what kind of stuff do you learn when you're in neuroscience class? Like, it's science. Everything related to the brain and nervous system. But it's a lot of biology and chemistry. I mean, it's the nuts and bolts of it that the average person doesn't have a clue about. Yeah. I mean, so you're learning. So there's like a core curriculum of courses you have to take, which...

I mean, it's everything from the molecular biology of the nervous system on up to just the systems and the neuropsychology of it and the anatomy of it. So you're doing everything from studying the eye of a fly to studying human beings and...

the kind of deficits they would have based on neurological injury, right? And so like all, all of that gets studied over maybe two years and then you decide what your specialization is. And for me, it was, I want, I knew I wanted, I mean, I wanted to neuroscience very much as a, as a neuro philosopher. Like I knew I was not going to be curing Alzheimer's. I was not going to open a lab and, and, and do biology. I wanted to study, um,

human mind and the nature of human subjectivity. And I've always been interested in how our evolving conversation about science is changing and should change the way we think about ourselves and what it means to live a good life and how we want to structure society. And so it's like, what do we understand about good and evil at the level of... But what we understand about the mind, that's really the bottom of the ocean. I mean...

So that's my interest. And so it's always been adjacent to philosophy for me. And so I just, I wanted to have the tools of neuroscience to have a conversation about the human mind. And so once...

What's something you know from all this book learning you did for nine years? Highfalutin book learning. What's something you know from all this highfalutin book learning about the chemistry and whatever of the human mind that would make me think, oh, if we're disagreeing about something,

You know something I don't that affects it, that affects it. Right, right. I love the way you hit affects it. Exactly. I feel you. Well, I mean, it depends on what the topic is. But, like, you know, there are topics. There are topics in that I think science...

should have decided long ago that people think are still, you know, kind of hot, hot topics of debate in, in, you know, the wider culture.

I mean, the one that I have hit pretty hard personally is the issue of free will. Many people think they have free will. I love you on free will. It's important to them that they have it, and it is the framework through which they view the moral economy and the moral universe. And it affects everything. It affects the justice system. Of course. It affects your intuitions about good and evil. Absolutely.

And free will makes no sense scientifically. Right. And people don't want to admit it because even some very smart people don't want to admit it because they feel they have it. Right. And it's a powerful illusion, which I would argue. You have it to a certain degree. Right. I mean, I can decide what to watch tonight when I get home and get into bed. Well, it feels that way. Yeah.

But I'm really being controlled by the great pumpkin? What do you mean? No, I mean. Well, no, it depends at what level you want to talk about it. But I'm not saying there's no difference between voluntary and involuntary actions. No, I think you're right. You know, to bring technology into this, I think to your point about free will, we always have been slaves to the technology. And the smartphone is only the latest example of it.

We have no control over what technology does to us. Example, the cotton gin. Cotton gin fucked me up.

No, but it did fuck some people up because slavery was on its way out. And then a device came along that made it a lot more profitable. And humans were like, slavery? Did we say we're getting rid of slavery? No, I'm saying I'm taking bids on slavery. You must have misheard me. No, no, no, we're not getting rid of slavery at all. I mean, that shows to me that people cannot resist technology.

And, you know, fire caught on. Fire? Are you pro or con on fire? Well, it's not that simple, Senator. Fire, I believe in a middle ground. House fires are bad. I believe in a middle ground on fire. Fire, good, yes. Fire, bad, yes, sometimes.

No, but fire, according to Yuval Harari, I know, he's been great on your show. I like him a lot. Oh, I know. He's on Real Time this week. Oh, nice. Yeah. That's right. So he, in Sapiens, makes the point that when we had fire, it allowed us to cook food, which killed the parasites and bacteria, which allowed the, we had giant intestines. We allowed us to evolve with less intestine and more brain power. Yeah.

I guess that's not really a good example of this particular, but I just wanted to get fire in there. But yes, I do think we cannot resist the technology. When it comes along, I mean, look at how it was front page in the paper today, like global warming steps have nothing's happened. Nothing's happened since like...

Like countries pledged like only 26 out of 170 countries have done anything with their whatever pledge they made. Here's where I think there's a important distinction between the system level view of human behavior and the individual level view. So what we want are systems that allow even kind of mediocre, selfish people to do the right thing.

You don't want a system where you have to be a moral hero to do the right thing. And that's what we have too much of the time where it's like to contribute meaningfully to the cessation of climate change.

You have to be someone who's like, okay, I'm going to inventory my carbon footprint, and I'm going to allocate all kinds of money to offset things, and I'm not going to fly too much, and I'm not going to eat these things. No, you want a system where good behavior is incentivized and the negative externalities of certain things are canceled and

You want absolute imbeciles to effectively behave like saints because it's good for them and they feel it because the incentives are all aligned appropriately. And we don't have that. And it's possible to have that. It's possible to tune the incentives. I know capitalism is evil and a legacy of colonialism and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But...

Capitalism does a marvelous job, even with its flaws, of harnessing selfishness to something. We want to harness it. We can't, in any kind of time horizon that matters, cancel selfishness. So we want to harness it. We want wise selfishness. One of the first issues we did on Politically Incorrect in 1993 was, marriage is like communism. Right.

It seems ridiculous now, but really, somebody on TV said that. But the point remains, it kind of is. If you don't conform institutions to human nature, they have a hard time succeeding. You know, people are selfish and horny. It's just very hard. So, like...

If you expect people to not do the thing that's going to make them richer and give them all the guilt... Well, status is also a relevant variable here. It's just once you attach... Once you make certain things transparent, there are all these experiments where if you know that...

If you know that your neighbors know how much water you're using, all of a sudden your relationship to how much water you're using changes. Right. There are all kinds of behavioral economics around all this, which we could leverage in intelligent ways. But

Actually, I do think on issues like climate change, I do think it's going to be technology to the rescue. It has to be. We're not going to guilt our way out of this. Exactly. And having an autistic teenager tell us that we're fucking monsters.

Thank you. Yes. That's not the solution. See? So often the case, boy, you're such a favorite of mine. You say the thing, or I hear the thing, and it's like, yes, okay, so I'm not crazy. When I read that in the paper today, and the New York Times, by the way, put the word doom. They're so funny over there. I don't know who's writing their headlines, but it's just... And of course, it's true, but there was no specific story, really, except...

Yeah. The people who have pledged to do something about climate aren't. No one is really stopping this. We've known this for a while. You're right. We are not going to, like, do the right thing our way out of this. We're just not. Well, individually we're not, but collectively we can. One thing I've changed my mind about –

I'm occasionally asked, what have you changed your mind about in recent years? Sign of a mature person. Yeah. And one thing that I just had just a 180 degree change on was nuclear energy.

If you had asked me 10 years ago or 20 years ago, I would have thought, okay, just everything in the NRDC or EDF says about nuclear energy has got to be gospel. Like it's evil. Well, things change. Facts change. We get different information. We absolutely need nuclear energy as a bridge. Events change. And yes, there are. And the technology changes. I mean, there's safer versions of it. It's not Three Mile Island now if you build a new nuclear plant. It's not your father's nuclear plant. Exactly. I'm telling you.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's the, you know, Sam, this is the kind of reasonableness. I don't know why. Why is it, why are we so, such outliers? It only took an ounce of marijuana and a quart of tequila to get down to ground truth. I mean, I like, I just, I know it sounds like a stupid thing to say, but why can't more people.

People think like us. We're not geniuses. We're just like regular guys. Maybe a little smarter than the average bear, but I certainly... You probably are. You've got all your nine years highfalutin degrees and stuff. But, I mean, I feel like I'm just a regular Joe. Listen, you are not a regular Joe, but that's fine. Okay. But... You've lost touch with regular Joe if you think you're a regular Joe. No, but I feel like...

Certainly in my generation anyway, I don't feel like common sense. I feel like the last generation that was the common sense was the Gen Zs. I mean, the Gen X. Definitely not the Gen Zs.

You're dating the Gen Zs. Are you a Gen X? I'm Gen X. Yes. See? Right. Are you a boomer? Of course. I'm a boomer. 1965, I think, is the cutoff between boomers and- And that's your year? I'm 67. Okay. Right. You, Ben Stiller. It's the same person. We never see them together. Sorry.

You know, I've been asked to sign autographs. I know what it's like to be Ben Stiller because I've been asked to sign autographs for Ben Stiller. And when I declined, I was in the presence of someone who was absolutely certain that they were in the presence of Ben Stiller who was pretending not to be Ben Stiller. Right. I've ruined his reputation with at least one person. That's hysterical. What a fucking asshole you are not to just sign an autograph, Ben Stiller. Right.

Right. No. But. Well, damn, I forgot. I derailed you. Or you derailed us with Ben Staley. It was something so important to me. There's not one episode of this show that doesn't have me going, what were we talking about? What the fuck was I thinking? Isn't it amazing when you think about the fact that when I was on Politically Incorrect, we couldn't even make a joke about pot.

Really? Without getting the censor. Yes. That was on ABC? Yes, Disney. We discussed it as an important issue. There had to be someone from the other side, you know, the antipod. We once wanted to do a sketch called Harry Pothead. Right. No. Too edgy?

Too edgy. Wow. We went from that to, I remember I smoked a joint, a real joint on the air on real time at the end, maybe like 10 years ago. And everyone was like, oh my God, they didn't arrest you? You sure you're not going to get arrested? To like I can do a podcast and openly. Yeah, no, it's amazing. I mean, I get it that people get frustrated with change and maybe the change, I mean, almost certainly the change is going in the wrong direction.

Well, not this change. No, no, I'm saying, but there is hope. Gay marriage was something that was turned down 35 times in a row on state ballots. And then three years later, it was the law of the land. Yeah, that was amazing. Things can kind of... I mean, is that going to happen with the things we're really worried about, the environment and the loss of democracy?

I wouldn't be surprised if things change very quickly. For the better? Yeah. Gay marriage is a great example because it was like we thought we had it and then we lost it. I think it was Proposition 8 or whatever. Well, that in California. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it was the law of the land. And that was – it was really fast. And so I – and the legalization of pot at the state level has been – has seemed really fast. And it's –

And psychedelic research now is reaching a tipping point? Oh, it's certainly going on in my hot tub. You got a grant from the NSF? But, I mean, don't you think that's the low-hanging fruit?

Those are the easy ones. I think we have to deal with it. We have a massive misinformation problem, like social media. Right. And we have to figure out how to talk about facts. First of all, you know what I would stop using? The term misinformation. Because it just gets the backup of people like me who say, yes, but a lot of your misinformation, whoever you are. You can price all of that in. No, I know. I know. I'm just saying that's like a trigger word.

It should be. Because a lot of it was like, again, did you purposely tell me that if you get this vaccine, you will not get the disease and that turned out to be true? No, it did not turn out to be true. I don't think you purposely did that, but it was misinformation. So let's not throw that term around like we have the monopoly on what is real with this. Okay. I'm just saying as a PR expert.

You're not. Yeah. I understand that that's your hobby horse, and I get it, and I share your – listen, I'm horrified at what the CDC and many scientific journals have done in recent years in terms of conflating politics with public health measures. We don't have to get back onto that, but that's not why you didn't share the joint, is it?

Because I'm going to give you a big sloppy wet kiss when we leave tonight and the joke will be on you when you go hunk a cancer patient. And somehow I'm the bad guy? No. That was bad. Really bad. So...

I'm going to have to wrap this up. I could do it all night. This is good. I lost track of time. This could have been one hour. This could have been two hours. It could have been three hours. I have no idea what happened. Great. That's what I want. That's great. I mean, this is like, I don't know if you and I would do this if there wasn't

That's what's so fun about having a podcast. Right. Like there is no constraint and you have a reason to just invite someone who you want to talk to anyway. Yes. Like you would do this for free. Exactly. And we would. And yet it's a business. It doesn't really speak great about us because it just says that we do it.

We're not really worth each other's time unless the cameras are rolling. That's not true. We're really the Kardashians. That's bullshit. I'm fucking with you. I don't want you to mislead your audience. Because we have...

We will also have dinner. We also have socialized many times. We see each other at Jimmy Vallely's backyard. I don't have to be paid too much to socialize with you. No, you don't. As long as there's some decent food. I would pay to socialize with you, actually. Only because I'm a bowler and I roll like that and I can buy what I want. Okay, bitches. And there's a stripper pole over there. And there's nothing that I...

would pay more for than your podcast, you know? Well, it's... Your podcast is my podcast. That's great. That's like my stories, you know? Like, used to be somebody had a soap opera that they watched on a daily basis. They called it my story. There are still those people. I feel like that's what... Yes. Yeah, but there's not as many soap operas. No, I think there's like two or three at this point. Yeah, it's a shame. It was a great training ground.

That's where I started. And then I became a ballerina. You and Ricky Martin. But Ben...

I hope Dodgeball 2 comes through because I just think you and Vince Vaughn, look, you're both looking a little older, it's true. It's true. It's a sports kind of movie. We have to be physical. Look, you spend two, three months in the gym before we start shooting. If you have a trainer to recommend, I will. Vince, maybe we start a little earlier, you know. But I think you guys together again...

also old school. - Let's make it happen. - No, that was Will Ferrell. - You get Ben here and then we can-- - You know what, I will. - You can see. - We've had some great people.