Russell Brand | Club Random with Bill Maher
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What have you got there? Cigars. Would you like one? No. Cigars is cigarette without any manners. An Englishman said that. Churchill? No, I don't know which one. I just assume it must have been. Of course it's an Englishman. Because it's witty and it's an... It's an erudite and swift. Exactly. What, do you think an American would come up with that? No. You'd be bludgeoned with it by an American. I believe the English race was created just to give us Americans something to quote from. I know.

That's our whole function is to give you a backstory. Yes, you're a lexicon with a nice green background.

Thank you very much. So you're cutting a cigar. Yeah. You can also use that for circumcision, you know. I actually botched one before I came in. I thought I'd trim the foreskin out of respect for your country. I know it's preferred here. Not that I imagined that our fallacies would necessarily be involved in the conversation, but I gave it a trim and it's not been a complete success. I'll level with you. Is that the correct plural of phallus?

Falli, you reckon? Well, I mean, when you say fallacies, it sounds like fallacies. So like, are you saying that your penis is a fraud? I guess you'd be saying that our penises are a fraud. It's certainly taken me in some peculiar directions. I bet you your penis has seen some things.

I mean, what is why are you wincing? It's something to be proud of that you're you're one of the few like rock star comedians. Did you see me that way? I still see you. Look at your dress, like how you look. You played a rock star twice in movies, I think. Right. That's right. And you married a rock star and you just and you're on heroin. I mean, you're a rock star, you know, and you have the look. You have the look.

When you say it like that- You can't buy that. It sounds fantastic. If you could buy it, I would have done it by now. The thing is, Bill, is that whilst that sounds like a tremendous set of experiences, I was, of course, there while they were happening. They were mostly rather bleak, in all honesty. I find that hard to believe. People say that all the time when they describe this life that the rest of us could only dream of. Yeah.

with the women, drugs and the consenadulation, the partying. And I'm like, why can't you people just enjoy this? I feel I certainly would. Possibly there's a difference between Epicureanism, Hedonism and Christianity.

what I think I have, which is addiction. And I suppose addiction means that you're trying to remedy a spiritual or possibly from a secular perspective, psychic condition through sort of external means. And rather than, oh, I'm a joyous, piratical sort of sex buccaneer. For me, I was just on like a kind of, I'm unhappy. By the way, sex buccaneer is the greatest name for a band.

Yeah. If you ever start one. And if you ever wanted to make a portmanteau out of those, fuckaneer seems so available. Right. Portmanteau, another great word. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry you didn't have a better time having a better time than the rest of us. Look, actually, I'm not seeking any sympathy from it. I'm just sort of remarking, Bill, that when I hear my life described, I think, oh, my God, that sounds so cool. And indeed was everything I aspired to.

as a young man trying, I think, to somehow mitigate feelings of unease and emptiness, probably in common with many comics and entertainers. And when I did it, it just did not work and has left me one of the few areas where I imagine we are somewhat at odds.

only with a kind of spirituality as my last remaining option. Why do we have to drag all this depressing psychological stuff into it when it just would be great to get a lot of drugs and pussy? I don't understand why we have to overthink it and complicate it. Is that really your position? It is. LAUGHTER

And I will stand by it. I'm a one issue candidate on drugs and pussy and not overthinking it. I mean, not not pussy, but like, you know, yes. I mean, just a rock star sex. I mean, is there a man alive who doesn't, you know, at some point in his youth aspire to that? There certainly wasn't when I was.

13 years old, what would you be if you could have anything? A rock star. The girls throw themselves at you. Just that, just girls throw themselves at you.

You had me. Absolutely. And certainly it's what I aspire to. But even in your description of it, it was an adolescent fantasy. And the problem with adolescent fantasy is that you grow up. I grew up and I found myself inhabiting something that didn't endure for me. You described me as an idealist and I am an idealist and I

I feel like what is idealism, I suppose, is the suggest that there's a telos, that there's an object that I'm moving towards. And for me, that's a sort of a I don't know, is it self-actualization? Is it redemption? Is it love? Is it to live a worthwhile life? I mean, what are all of the principles that we're discussing when we are having a conversation around politics? What's undergirding it if we don't have it?

any ideals. I mean, if it is just the sort of brutal pragmatism of who gets what, you know, I mean, I know those highly consequential conversations, but surely whether or not you believe in God or if you believe in America or whatever values you hold, we're sort of saying there's something we're aspiring to, there's some meaning. So to just wrap up what I feel about the hedonism is I now know that what I sought out

was the fantasy of a boy and it doesn't work. It didn't work. Not to say that they weren't... It didn't work for you. It worked splendidly for Rod Stewart. So, you know, let's not...

let's not lump. We're all different people. And from, again, I'm sort of being facetious about this, but the idea that because you went to this different model of marriage and children, whatever that is that people do, that means you grew up and I didn't. I must reject that because, again, I think you're projecting. It's not that I haven't grown up. Of course I've grown up and

I'm just as mature as some other immature people in lots of ways. But no, I don't feel like I'm immature because I never wanted to go into that model, which I have seen fail so much more than I have seen it work. And so do I feel the need to spawn, to be labeled a grown-up? I don't. I'm not suggesting that the only route to maturation is to...

have a family or to procreate or even enter into sort of social norms around matrimony. I'm not suggesting that at all. The distinction I'm making is that for me, when I lived hedonistically, it didn't work. And I recognize that is, I mean, I recognize I'm talking particularly as an addict. But can I ask you in percentage wise, like what percentage of it didn't work? Certainly there must've been a little percentage that was fun. Yeah.

And then there was like a hangover. It's like if you ask me after I've had too much to drink when I have a hangover, would you trade? No, I would love to trade. Yes, I would love to go back to last night and not be drinking. I would give that fun up because this is just too painful, but I didn't see it coming that bad. Is it like that? Or there was no joy in Mudville? There was no joy before the pain? No.

A common trope around addiction is it was fun, then it was fun with consequences, then it was consequences. No. For me, it was quite concentrated. Even now, I'm 20 years clean from substance misuse now, drinking drugs, and still now I can feel in me the palette of emotions and yearning that leads to addiction.

overuse, for example, of substances, it was so clear that what it was in me was a sort of a psychic or spiritual yearning, a sense that this is not enough, the world. And I'm talking now about the world I inhabited as a boy, as a child. This isn't going to fulfil me. I need something else. I need, what is it, values? Is it community? Is it connection? Is it meaning, purpose? What is it? And I feel denied that. One of the things that concerns me, I suppose, about...

the secular framing of the ideological sphere is that once you extract a sort of

a shared purpose that for me has to have a sort of, if not a sprinkling of the divine, it's actually a divine crucible. What is pleasure alluding to? That's what I'm saying, I suppose. Like when I'm like, sort of, if you're in love with someone or if you're making love with someone or if you're high, what is it that you're touching? What is this ulterior thing? So, I mean, who said art for art itself? Was it Oscar Wilde?

Isn't that the same thing as pleasure for pleasure self? Why does that allude to anything? It is the end. Sometimes the journey is over. Some people, I think, just like to stay on the road. I like to be home. And home is like if you are...

Not every day is happy, of course, but a day when you're feeling good, you have things to look forward to, you feel like you're doing something useful, and you also have pleasure in your life, excitement with other people and conversation, sex.

I don't want to go further. As long as I'm on Earth, now maybe, we don't know, maybe in the next world, if there is one, there is some other dimension. But on this Earth, I'm not going to get to that dimension. Or you say you can through meditation and just...

I think some people kind of cannot live without that dimension. I wonder, even taking something as broad yet particular as the opioid crisis in your country, that we can't allow it to be lost on us that there's a significant...

for a portion of the population that are in so much pain that they need to obliviate it somehow. What is the source of this pain? Now, when you say pleasure, you know, it needn't lead anywhere. From an evolutionary perspective, we are aware that it is entirely perfunctory. We're aware that eating food feels good in order to...

mandate that behaviour, that sex feels good in order to encourage that behaviour. So there is at least facility in him.

I wonder sometimes, I ponder the unanswerable. I wonder what is the function of pleasure. And as someone that has, I suppose, gotten myself into, I want to say, it's not worked for me very well. And that is a distinct, we're obviously different men. And one of the things I've been blessed with is I'm pretty nonjudgmental, actually, about the way other people live. It's not that I don't care, but I recognize I don't know very much. No, you're just passionate about what you believe. Yeah.

And we are different in the sense that you said it, like you ponder the unponderable. I go, well, that's not ponderable. I'm not going to ponder it. Why am I wasting my time pondering when I could be partying? This is wasteful pondering. No, I feel like, you know, was it Freud who said, you know, there's work and love. Those are the two things.

that we have. And I don't go much beyond that. Like that spiritual dimension, I don't, you know, I'm...

you mentioned Larry Charles before and Religious, and Religious is not a mean-spirited movie at all. That's why I think it did pretty good, because people didn't see it as an attack on religion. They just said, you know, here's the reality of this, and we're not hating on anybody. But it says, the message of the movie is, I say, I'm from the

Church of I don't know. I'm not definitive about there is not a God. Who the fuck knows? I can't answer the questions that are unanswerable. The difference to me between a religious person and a non-religious person is we both admit there's these questions. I don't make up stories.

to answer them because I know they're stories that are made up. So can I tell you how the universe began? I cannot, and neither can you. So when you give me your story, I'm just saying, I know people with a faith think that that makes them sound some sort of sublime, and all I'm thinking is, well, plainly you heard this story and now you're repeating it, and that's really all there is to it. And those things that are beyond us to know while we're on Earth, I just feel like, why...

Why masochistically torture yourself trying to figure something that you can't in this life? It's like I picture somebody who's there's a wall they're standing in front of and they feel like if I could just get a little higher, I could get there and look over the wall when they don't realize the wall is a million miles high.

They're not even close to doing that. And yet they're thinking, if I could just see a little more, you can't. So, you know, I think that makes it easy to be not a troubled soul because I don't have one. That's pretty great. I mean, I really admire that. And I certainly agree that...

When we contrast what is known with what is unknown, we have to accept that we are dealing with a negligible amount of data. Even with the wonders of cosmology and the quantum world, the little that we understand amounts to zero.

I suppose you need to allow something. Can I have that circumcision thing? Yeah, absolutely. I thought you'd never ask. Do you mean for your penis? No, for my cigar. They always put a big...

fucking thing on the end of it are these clove cigarettes is that what that is as a exactly it's a simple cigarette a simple man enjoying a clove cigarette i say it every week clubhouse i do not know what they're putting in these clubs because is it is it having a positive effect it's so fantastic yeah it's been 20 years for you huh mate

Yeah, 20 years. And you never, just one day out of the blue, you never just go, boy, it would be good to just smoke one joint and be hot. You know, just pot. I mean, you know, that's a pretty benign. You must have had some good times on pot before it all went sour. Well, I do actually remember feeling quite, I don't know where I put my suit. I'd like Mary Poppins, eh, rooting around in my little carpet bag.

For my circumcision device. You didn't leave it on your dick, did you? I lost my nerve halfway through. But you are circumcised, right? No, actually not. Like a lot of English people, I'm very unwilling to give up any part of that aspect. I'm clinging on to every millimeter. But it's so gross. I always said it looks like something that lives in the ocean.

So you didn't... Don't you enjoy... Well, the thing is you're denying yourself variety because when you retain the foreskin, there's times where it entirely retracts and retreats. There's other times where it pops out to say hello. You see like a glimpse of it. Yeah, it gives you... It's a surprise. Every time I look at my underpants, I don't know who I'm going to meet. Sorry about this. You're just messing with your... You've asked for it and I like to help people.

Yeah. I mean, we just... I love the opportunity to help. I live to help. It's hysterical. Sorry about this. No, no. I think it's a delightful version of this show. Not that this is really a show, but it's on a very special episode. Russell Brand searches endlessly for...

It's sort of a metaphor for what we were talking about. Right. You're a searcher. I'm a seeker. I won't stop seeking. Exactly. Isn't that interesting, the way that happened? Do you think that's some kind of cosmic? Yeah. You do? I do. I think that continually we're being granted. What kind of show do you think? You seem so confident, Bill. What kind of show do you think this is? All of the Epicureanism. This guy lives for pleasure. Oh, fuck it. I'm in.

Well, I've never had a guy blow me, but if I had to have one, I'd pick you. That's a really very lovely compliment, and I'm going to be watching out for your media appearances to see if you make good on this pledge that you'll forget and move on. How often do you come to it?

to come to america or if i was in a bar do you come to america often infrequently um no not frequently not no not these days i've not been for a while because i don't know if you noticed there was a there was a pandemic recently right slowed people down but you still like us don't you i love america i've got a green card as a matter of fact so oh really does that mean i am american

Do you know, it's bothered me. No, no, I love it that you, you know what? I always say when you're a sports fan. They have found it. Is it mule? I don't know. What's the, moil, moil. That's the name of the people that do circumcision in the Judaic faith. And you know something, want to hear something gross? Of course. That's why I came, Bill. I'm surprised I've heard anything else. Okay, so sometimes the moil

gives the baby herpes. Oh, that's not right, is it? That can't be. That's part of the ceremony. Sorry, they shouldn't do that. It's definitely not right. But because like, this has happened many times, like because they have herpes and then they bite, there's a part of it where they bite the penis or something where the penis goes in the mouth.

And, you know, I'm all for people doing whatever they want. I mean, again, when I preached against religion, it's I was certainly was never saying, well, you shouldn't be able to. No, of course you could think any crazy shit you want. But when it bleeds into bleeding and and child abuse, you know, you I mean, I would even say it's child abuse that, you

when they seek the Buddhists, you know, supposedly the "we're not religious, we're better than you, actual religious people, we're more spiritual." Okay, and yet when the Lama dies, they snatch a child

who they have divined to be the reincarnation of the recently dead Lama. And I've seen a documentary on this. And the mother is weeping, of course, because they're taking her two-year-old away. And the child is weeping because he's being separated from his mother.

And he has to go to some, you know, monastery where they, because he's the reincarnated Lama. And we're going to examine his poop or whatever they do to, you know. On what amounts to, let's face it, a hunch. Of a hunch. This is a Dalai Lama. A hunch at best. First of all, I mean, you have to believe in reincarnation. Now, maybe you do. Do you? I mean, what I feel like,

Once we start to frame the unknowable within the ordinary using quotidian language to describe the ephemeral, we're in danger of saying stuff that's kind of stupid. And yet we need ceremony and yet we need ritual. I just would say that if the ritual does involve ritual,

biting off a baby's dick or snatching a child from its mother, you'd be absolutely sure there's no other motive. You'd want to be sure about that. Yes, because, well, I mean, well said, because religion certainly is known as the biggest pussy thing

scam ever. I mean, everybody's got one. Cops will pull over a pretty girl and, you know, that's a big thing with cops and girl. I don't know any pretty girl that doesn't have a story about a cop who tried to fuck them, pull the, hey, you need a ride or, you know, you need an escort, whatever their shit is. Everybody's got a scam. And, but boy, religion is,

Their scam is a lot of it is I'm the prophet and God told me to fuck all the chicks in the compound. And the Catholics with the little boys. That's right. They're not particular about the genitalia. They're sort of equal opportunities.

You're right about that. Many a good cult has been ruined. I'm going to cut off my finger. Do you hold it there? Do you want me to help with this? Because I don't want to look over. Show me how you operate this thing. Yeah. What are we taking off? We're taking off the top end of that. It's like a guillotine. Vive la France.

Like that. Bloody aristocracy holding us back. Robespierre, that crew, just like that. And what is this thing called? I don't know. I guess isn't it still going to be called a cigar car? Like, you know, in your country, probably a cigar car. In mine. How about a mini-moil? A mini-moil? Don't mind if I do. Herpes not included. Or a portable moil. Yeah, a portable moil. I mean, it's a...

A mini-moil. I like that. Let's go to business. We brainstormed a few names. We've gone with mini-moil. I'm going to use this. It's called a scissors. I don't know what else. You've got a lot of paraphernalia. I always say, if you live long enough, you do everything. And now I can say, I used a mini-moil. And I have no desire to use it again. I'll stick with the scissors. ♪

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Did you know HBO Max had podcasts? Now go even deeper inside your favorite shows with audio companions to some of the most groundbreaking and award-winning shows on television. Succession is an original series from HBO, and it's back for a fourth season. Every week, you can join journalist and host Kara Swisher as she unpacks real-world events that echo the saga unfolding on screen. You can also watch the show's

Guests include top journalists, writers, psychologists, as well as some of the people involved in making the TV show. Stream Succession on HBO Max and check out HBO's Succession podcast on HBO Max and wherever you get your podcasts. Now, you were talking about reincarnation. You were talking about a lot of the sort of more Rococo aspects of Buddhism. I love that word. Rococo, yes. Yes.

But yeah, because it is quite austere and stringent and we're not saying that there's a God necessarily and all of this stuff, but we are following a flume of smoke, a flume of smoke to divine whether or not this child was a llama. And I wouldn't disparage anybody's religion. It's unbecoming. But I suppose, I suppose,

I suppose what my spiritual beliefs amount to is a kind of benign intent towards one another and the potential for an ulterior realm, i.e. that all apparent separateness emerged at some point from unity. And that is underwritten by the most rudimentary explanation of the Big Bang. All of the matter and phenomena was held within a subatomic. What do you think about the Big Bang?

as Terence McKenna says, give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest. What precedes this? I mean, it's glorious and obviously demonstrable as well as a movement of matter, but it doesn't solve a lot. It doesn't solve the problem of the Tuesday before the Big Bang is, of course. I mean, also, and I, look, people who I...

really think are way smarter than me, I know they are, about this subject, which I am very limited in astrophysics. Okay, that's just not my area. Let's get into this. I know the basics, but just the real basics. But, you know, I fully believe Neil deGrasse Tyson knows this stuff on a level that I cannot understand. So I really, my point is,

As someone who's not religious, I'm also just taking this on faith. Because when you go into what the Big Bang is, that everything in the universe fit into something that could fit into your mini-moil. That's right. We could snip that. Maybe that's what caused it. And let's go into what is fitting into something the size of a quarter. Okay.

Imagine the Earth being so compacted that it could fit into a quarter. Now, if I just said the whole Earth could fit in, you'd be like, that is so ridiculous. Okay, now let's add all the other planets and our sun and say they could fit in there. Oh, wow, now you're really stretching it. Okay, but it's not just our planets and our sun. It's all the planets and all the suns. So we're talking about trillions of stars, maybe trillions of galaxies, certainly hundreds of billions of galaxies.

all fitting in something that small. Now, that does sound as ridiculous as God said to his child, son, I'm going to send you down to earth, and I've knocked up this Palestinian woman. She's going to have you, and then you're going to die and come back to life. Now, I don't believe that happened. But the other one about the Big Bang...

is almost as silly unless you're an astrophysicist. Similarly, they require a curtailing of inquiry. At some point, you have to stop investigating or you go, well, that doesn't make sense. What all reality? What is the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness emerge from biochemical polymers?

processes why is Newtonian physics falling apart in the quantum realm everything that we understood to be right why is matter mostly space and what I'm saying is that in the end through brinkmanship you find yourself at the point of miracle and the reason that I

I embraced spirituality is because it suggests a sense of ethics. Not that I know many great atheists, both comics, like Ricky Gervais and Brian Cox and like, you know, my country and stuff. And, and,

We mostly agree, be moral, love one another, be of service, all of those things. So why focus on the points of distinction, really, when you agree on what appear to be the most fundamental aspects of it? But for me, the idea that what we are honouring is non-separateness, the glory of diversity and individuality, the kind of ever-expanding, fractal nature of our reality, all of this wonder, all of this awe, and somehow...

Is it relevant to the way we organize our systems of power or not? What are we going to do? Because once you extract the possibility of unity, once you extract the possibility that love has some value, some resonance and impacts and is important.

perhaps in fact the felt experience of oneness are you pouring that about knowing what it is i i i want to get no it doesn't matter continue i'm listening to what you're saying i want to hear it tell me finish this thought it's just yes i forgot that this was the soda i said all right then as long as you stopped i'd like to make this point about i feel like

When religion is ethical, it's coincidental. I'm not saying it's not, religion can't be, but it stumbles upon it like almost haphazardly. The Bible, I mean, the Ten Commandments, most of them have nothing to do with what we would call ethics or morality. The top four are just about God being jealous. Actually, well, here I would differ completely.

I've got an interesting perspective once on the Ten Commandments. If you consider them instead of edicts, and I know that the name commandment suggests this. I've just commanded that you do that. But if you ignore that, how I like to look at it is, if you consider when you are enlightened...

You will not steal. You will not kill. And as for the point of worship, no other gods than me, all of us engage in idolatry. What I believe the point that is being made is if you do not find God, if you do not find your own God, which could be love, which could be America, which could be nature, which could be abundant things.

and limitless things. If you do not find that, then everything is potentially God. Your lust suddenly is God. Your desire for entertainment is your God. Greed is your God. You shall worship no other gods than me. And this God is, see, sub,

Submission for me, Bill, is not just about supplication so that you can be organized into a lovely little flock. It's about if you it's the first system that you need to conquer is the self, the self. If I can't overcome my ego, then I will live. That is my God. That's how I take it. I get that. You're right. I do. It's quite complicated. What's that? Your new American character? This is my new American character.

But you're being very charitable to the author of the Ten Commandments who lived in the Bronze Age and did not have your flowery interpretation. It's nice that you can put that on it. I mean, yes, that's a lovely way to interpret it. It's not what he meant. What he meant is there's a man in the sky. Yeah.

It's difficult, isn't it, for us to discern as it went through Aramaic to Greek to King James Version. They just didn't think like that back then. They didn't know what germs or atoms were. They were scared. They believed in gods in a very real way. I've studied the Bible. I took a course on it at Cornell. The Bible, they definitely were not making them. This was not metaphorical. It was not. Yeah.

I think that if you look at that book as literal, then I feel that its value is limited and I think most articles of faith bear the inflection of the culture that they were produced by, necessarily and understandably. But

what I would say about my obviously limited understanding of hermeneutics is that people appear in the, in the desert faiths to be aspiring to some kind of unity. Now I know there's some stuff in there that's very, like there's somewhat odds with our, our,

modern take on reality. But I also would pull you up on, this is only a couple of thousand years ago, 10,000 years ago, we were basically the same pre-agriculturally. For hundreds of thousands of years, we lived in little tribal societies organized around manageable relationships. Our nearest ancestors, I mean, like the primates, when they hit communities of 70, 80, they split. And I feel there's so much to be learned

from the values that preceded civilization as we understood it, particularly in a time like this of fracture and nihilism. So I'm not dismissive of any of that documentation, not least because these, how do these myths survive? Who do they serve? Now you can make somewhat cynical arguments about like Protestantism succeeded in Northern Europe because it deified

the work ethic. So it was like a good way of getting people into the grind, useful for agriculture, useful even when the industrial revolution took place. But just because of utility, I don't feel that we can be dismissive of it. And also, Bill, the challenge that is left for me is once we exclude the spiritual path, we are left with post-enlightenment rationalism. And what that seems to lead to is the

reverence for the individual, celebration only of the primal urges and the primal desires and that which can be measured. Right. And believing excessively in spirituality and things beyond the realm of earth.

leads to flying planes into buildings and lots of other horrible things. - But don't you think there's a counter argument to all of that? That really those things are about dominion and territory. - Yes, but I'm just saying, once you let the balloon off the ground, once you take off those blocks and let your mind just go completely free up in the air with nothing to tether it, then it's very easy to go from, I love my God, to, you know, you have a different God, I really should kill you.

But is this not true in the post-Westphalian treaty age of nation? I love my nation, so therefore I don't like your nation. I mean, what is the distinction between a religious ideology and nationalistic ideology when it comes to the boots on the ground and the drones in the sky? You know, we're killing you rationally at a distance. Sorry about that wedding we bombed. You know, and this and that. You are going to bring in the Treaty of Westphalia. Right.

The treatment was failures on the table, Bill. I believe it was 1648. I believe it was that. And I believe it was 12 minutes before five. I believe it followed the defenstration of Prague, where they threw him out the window, where we get the word defenstration. Way out the window. Out you go. And that word has now come back into vogue. Not just because Putin does it literally, but it's a word that people use often.

when they're talking about someone being cancelled he was defenstrated which is great because it's from French the financial window so to throw someone out of it yeah but I want to know who is this guy Herman Nudix? laughter

No, that's old school, man. But I don't know that word. Hermeneutics means a literary set of books around a particular faith. The hermeneutics, the canon, the canon of a particular religious set of ideals. Like the Koran plus the... Islamic hermeneutics, Christian hermeneutics, the set of documents that underwrite a particular faith. Have you studied these in their original? I mean, you seem so learned on this. No.

You must read a lot. Well, I try. Yeah, I try to read. But this is... Well, that's what a third grader says. Of course you do. But all of the squiggles. How much do you say would you read a day? And do you read books, like actual books? Because that's gone out of style.

But I'm going to stick up for books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. I do. And I suppose what I have, like most autodidacts, is sort of shallow knowledge in a variety of areas. I've not been educated. Cocktail party knowledge, would you say? That's what I've got. Because that's what I feel like I have. Except for when I've had to...

legitimize my solipsism. There I have studied. Like, you know, when it comes to why am I like this? Why do I feel this way? What have other people felt like? And don't you think that

Politics is an extension usually just of a personality we're born with. I feel like being, I mean, you were arguing with John on the show and like it's so funny that people, they have a lot of trouble like, you know, following your politics because it doesn't follow the neatly cleaved principles.

divisions that we're in. Yeah. Like you'll, you'll go after MSNBC and it's, it's not because you're a fan of Fox news. No, no. I mean, it's, it's kind of like to the left of that. So, or it's not in anywhere that you could say, oh, that's left or right. It's just,

how you see it, I feel like I do the exact same thing. And people, they don't like it when someone doesn't have a team or a lot of people don't. The people who do like it, they like us a lot. But a lot of people just can't get there because we don't have a team and you can't predict

what our take on something is going to be. That's right. And that is, you know, I know it sounds like we're clapping ourselves on the back, but I mean, it's also just true. That is so lacking. I think it's been great what you've done, having the chats with the people on the conventional right.

if we're not going to have these conversations, what the hell's going to happen? These people are not self-deporting. It's half the country. You have to talk. You know what I mean? When you look at the internet and all that kind of shit, it's always this, we own them or we're going to own them. Or like somebody said, did something that they don't, is stupid or not up to par. Oh, they got,

oh, they got destroyed. It's like all this language that keys people up to think that they can, that the answer to the thing when you don't agree with somebody and I, you know, there's all these people I don't agree with, of course, is to destroy them. Yes. Especially when, you know, I'm 67 years old. Like their big thing is with, they don't like something I say. It's just, they don't attack the argument itself. It's just, you're old.

As if that's an argument. It's like, yeah, exactly. That's why I know some shit and you're making a dumb argument or not even finding an argument. I will say, even on this point, that when we're talking about anthropology and how societies might organize, how families and tribes might organize, the annihilation of the category of the elder is inevitable.

When you're chatting to Bernie Sanders on the show, I'm thinking these guys, they've been around longer than me. They know stuff I don't know. A vast array of things. And now maybe I will learn something if I shut up for a minute. Perhaps you noticed I talked a little less in that moment. And like, what? And I have regard and reverence for that. And we're both part of a...

because of my personal practice of how I might learn more and how I ought treat people, but also because in other areas where it might be easier to enter into conflagration and conflict, I feel that it's vital. Like I saw the other day after the release of the Capitol Hill Jan 6 stuff to Fox News and in particular Tucker Carlson in a British newspaper, The Guardian, like you said, like I'm just reading it. I can't imagine what led me to do it. And I regret that I did.

And it's said like, you know, they released documents, you know, Kevin McCarthy to the far right TV presenter. Far right. I mean, like, you know, it used to be like even in your country, like that, you know, you'd have people in your family that are Republican and libertarian and people that are lefties and we'd all just crack on and chat. Exactly. Not like.

Far right, I think if far right, that means that's a haircut, that's boots. You can't just be far right because you're a traditional conservative person. I don't know if you saw this, but when the Italian Prime Minister Maloney was elected, okay, so we never really got to it on our show. I wanted to, I guess we ran out of time, but the papers were like,

They were apoplectic. Fascism has come back to... Yeah. And they could not stand this. And, like, my position was, I don't follow Italian politics that much. I've read some of her statements. It doesn't sound like fascism to me. It sounds like things that we've heard people in this country on the right, you know, it's a lot about we need to...

like not forget our roots and traditional stuff like family. And, you know, I understand why there's a backlash to some of the shit that's going on. It wasn't particularly, it was like, I'm a mother and I'm proud to be a mother. Okay. It's not, it's not fighting words. So, and also I wanted to make the point because they kept saying, well, she, her party has fascist roots. So did the Democrats. They were the party of slavery. Okay. And Jim Crow, the Democrat.

Then they outgrew it. So to like to put that on her, that, you know, the roots. Yes, all our parties have roots. We all grow from corrupt places. And now I see she's invited to the White House. And again, I don't know who this broad is. I'm not defending her. I'm just saying the immediate roots

Like hair trigger, oh my God, the world has ended. Italy is elected a fascist. It's just the kind of thing that makes me go, I don't trust you in the media. I just don't trust you. There's some truth in that, but it's your narrative. I think they call it...

Something like, I don't know, some kind of journalism now where it's advocacy journalism, where it's like we're not even trying. We're not even proposing that we're neutral on this and just going to tell you what happened and give you the facts. We're going to inject our advocacy into the front page where we used to reserve it for the opinion page. Bill.

I feel that the terrifying truth might be that the liberal establishment has been co-opted by the very interest that in the Bush-Cheney era we understood to be Republican. It's been co-opted by military-industrial complex interests. It's been co-opted by pharmaceutical interests. It's been co-opted by financial interests. And they are simply unable to have the conversation about why there is not a political party that represents the interests of ordinary Americans. When Bernie Sanders was saying on your show yesterday

that it's like who is the affiliate party of ordinary working Americans now? Like more people would say to problems. A comparable thing has happened in our country. It seems that there's been a sort of a professionalization, if I dare offer such a term, of both the media class and punditry and politics more generally. And there's a kind of distaste for working people. I was trying to get out with the Brexit argument. They don't like ordinary people. And the only way to mask that is, I think, by...

Rightly honoring important issues around identity and excluded cultural groups. Those are conversations that need to be had. And I think they know that those conversations need to be had. But I think they're only willing to have those conversations because they recognize that you cannot bring to the table anymore an agenda that will affect the interests of the powerful. Like he said, like they said, they were blindsided.

bought out by the same financial interest that we'd conventionally associate with them. And we've seen it in the advocacy for war, that you can't talk about peace, you can't talk about diplomacy, that you have to vilify and reduce every narrative. Zelensky's a hero and Putin's a monster. That's not the world that I live in. Thank you. Wait a second. Zelensky is a hero and Putin is a monster.

Well, the Panama Papers suggested that Zelensky, like a lot of Ukrainian politicians, has some interesting business dealings. And that he rejected the Minsk agreement. And there was a peace deal on the table and the West lobbied Zelensky not to take that peace deal. So said the former Israeli prime minister. Because his country got invaded illegally. I mean, you know, I can't, I don't know why you're,

Well, I would say, Bill, because of the ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there's been encroachment on former Soviet territory. There was a NATO inspired coup in 2014 and there are significant profits being made. It's the same in a sense. Look, I would offer this. I'd feel a lot more comfortable about it. Who's coup in 2014? The 2014 coup in Ukraine that was backed by U.S. interests. Why would we back a coup that gave Crimea to Putin?

They lost Crimea in 2014, Ukraine. The ongoing... I think, Bill, to say that this is a humanitarian war as an inadvertent side effect...

all this opportunity for profit for the military industrial complex is as naive as suggesting that the pharmaceutical industry would keep good on their pledge to not profit from the pandemic. I'm not entering into the territory. Like geopolitics is bloody complicated. Putin is clearly a former KGB hardcore dictator.

dictator style politics but like i think that when we extract american you the american unipolar agenda the idea that there can be global hegemony that america do that want america want to destabilize russia like i think if you extract if you don't include that in the conversation that what you get is a limited conversation we don't want to destabilize russia

We were hoping after the Berlin Wall fell and then two years later, the Soviet Union fell, we were hoping Russia would become

you know, one of the nations of the world that joined the family of Western democracies. There was no reason why they couldn't have democracy. They sort of gave it a go, but it was, you know, obviously the past was so corrupted that the future was not going to be untainted either. And then we did make mistakes. I would agree with this, which you probably, I'm thinking of the direction you're going in. I don't think we should have

kept rolling Nate. Well, first of all, why NATO? If there's no Soviet union, like I'm not saying we should have necessarily disbanded NATO, but instead of getting more, Oh, strong NATO, more countries, it should have been like, okay, we were saying that the cold war is over. So why do we need an organization that's against you? Yeah. That was a terrible message to send. And I think that set things off. It, it,

may have gone to shit anyway. I mean, Russia is a tough place and the people, you know, have been brutalized by communism, which is horrible for the soul, not to mention the pocketbook. But, um,

Yeah, go ahead. Bill, can I give you a bunch of facts? Oh, boy. Then you can riff on them, because I'd love to see your take on these facts that come from our content on our show. Like, you know, our research gleaned from some great journalists, and it's mostly, okay, say, this kind of meta-journalism. We accumulate facts. We don't use anything that's not been endorsed in mainstream media. Let me hit you up with some of this stuff, because I genuinely want to hear your take. But let me give you the whole thing as an overview, and then you can, as...

Bill Maher, because let's face it, no one else can do this. - Knock yourself out. - Okay, so former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said recently a Russia-Ukraine peace deal was blocked by Western powers. We know that Boris Johnson visited Ukraine and counseled Zelensky against taking the peace deal that was on the table. That's just one thing, let me hit you with all this stuff. Zelensky has vowed to retake Crimea, but Russia said that's the red line that will spark nuclear war. We know that, all right?

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said in December 2022, the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests. And then I'll just widen this out a little. The Pentagon spent $14 trillion after 9-11. 55% of it went to for-profit defense contractors. The average American taxpayer contributed $2,000 to the military last year. More than 900 of that went to corporate military contractors.

At least 15 politicians who shape U.S. defense policy have investments in military contractors. Military contractors split their checks more or less evenly between Democrat and Republican candidates last year. And Biden appointed a former BlackRock MD to the cabinet in particular to sort out the post-Ukrainian reconstruction. Okay, stop.

These are good facts, Bill. These are facts. Possibly. I don't have a fact checker here. I don't doubt it. You're not going to need one. Wait, wait. But it's so far from the point. I mean, I feel like you're...

antenna for conspiracy theories. I mean, you have a good antenna and then sometimes it does not serve you well because like, even if all this stuff is true, it's just more complicated than that. Both things can be true. It can be something that is a worthy endeavor to stop Russia from invading another country. And, and,

It also could be the case. It is the case, of course. People in the defense industry are looking to keep having reasons to make weapons and so forth. There are people who absolutely have a vested interest in war. Those are what your facts are saying. It doesn't mean, even if all that is true, and I would agree, there are people of a vested interest in war. That doesn't mean, logically, it doesn't mean that every war is because of that.

I would also be for another reason. And then these people go on to that. That's called the shock doctrine. When you take advantage, when you take advantage of a crisis. Yes, it's going on. But it also could be the case that the war is a valiant endeavor. I'm not excluding that. Not till they bomb Ukraine to nothing. I mean, yeah, it's a very valid question now to ask. I'm shocked.

What I'm saying is, do you think it's a coincidence that the mainstream media only reports on one aspect of this conflict? It only gives you one narrative. I'm not like, I am obviously not in a, look at my glittery trousers. I'm not in an opinion position to offer a definitive opinion on this. But what I will say is sometimes when you talk about my antenna, right, this is what I think is like,

this war in Ukraine is motivated by a genuine and legitimate need to rightly and correctly support Ukrainian people who are under attack and suffering because of a war. Because when I've been looking at life, I notice how often humanitarianism is the motivation of the

industrial complex. So you're always like, who can we help now? Who can we help now? And wouldn't it be great if we had a system that's like, oh, just to make sure that there is no other motivation, there can be no profit extracted from this conflict. The aid offered will not end up in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE system. Wouldn't that be a beautiful system? So as long as that is one of the possible reasons, isn't it the most...

likely reason well again now I feel like I'm talking about complexity I feel like now we're just making like you've made your point and I've made mine and now I feel like we're repeating ourselves because like I'm just going to say again and I it sounds like you didn't hear me like both things can be true

No, but you said earlier that Putin is a monster and Zelensky is a hero. And I'm like, well, hang on. What about this shit? Because do you think, like, how long do you think Zelensky is going to get support if he's interested in converging with the MIC? Throwing your hands together like, oh, on the one hand, yeah, Putin is a...

a murderer who pushes people out of windows and starts wars and all these crimes against humanity. And this guy has some shady business dealings. He's Ukrainian. He was born with a shady business dealing. I mean, that's what the country was known for before this. But, okay, let's not...

We'll park it. What? We'll park that. Park it. We're actually going to do shots. I'm going to pour this. I just want to know, does that look like more than a shot? I would say that's a generous shot. But it's a shot glass, so why are they trying to get me drunk? I'm just going to have a little. But I suddenly realized, I was trying to think, it was in my mind, what is his accent like?

that it amuses me so much. Your accent is exactly the accent that Eric Idle uses in Money Python when he's playing the dumb guy. Boy! Which one? Like Reg. What did the Romans ever do?

Well, I mean, I love you, even though there's an insult in that. What I'll say is more like... No, it's a compliment because it's the contrast of how bright you are with that character who is not. But you sound alike. It's because I'm from Essex, which is the New Jersey of my country. This is the dirty little secret I've trekked across the Atlantic with. Do you know what I'm talking about? That voice that he does? Yeah, of course I do. But what I would say, I would offer you as a Monty Python aficionado and developer,

vote E, is it's more like Holy Grail, where it's like, oh, come and witness the oppression of the system with Michael Paley. Oh, look at how they're oppressing me. Who made you king? I didn't vote for you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist. That's so close to it. I mean, that movie, you could watch it every year like The Wizard of Oz. It's just, first of all, so funny. Like, just funny, funny. And then the points they were making

They're so prescient. There's one where he, remember, he wants to be a woman. I want to be known as Loretta, Reg. What's the point in fighting for your right to have babies when he can't have babies? Where's the beat? It's going to just like, you're going to keep it in a box. I mean, that's like something someone could have written for a sketch last year because of all that kind of stuff that's going on.

this is i suppose why my true ideology my true religion is comedy because this the ability to continually refer to isn't this bloody ridiculous none of us know anything we're all putting on a show for god's sake exactly try it's a bit of a mess my life's a mess i don't know how to cope with my own life i don't know how you're going to solve the conflict right ukraine i don't know what you're going to

do about the influence of corporations on American government? I don't know. The truth is, I don't know. And it's bloody ridiculous. And, you know, like having Rick Orster, and I think this is why we are seeing, do you agree, the emergence of comedic commentary in the political space? I suppose maybe it began with you, Jon Stewart, that kind of stuff. And maybe even before you, like Carlin, Kix. And what's different, yes. I mean, there was always some of that. What's different is that what I...

What was doing when we started was something that they said could never work, which is having the host also render an opinion. The other guys like Johnny Carson never did that. It was like, no, you'll alienate half the audience. And my theory was, no, they can like you if they don't agree with you.

in the 30 years since I started, that's almost completely switched. Yeah. Because now to survive like in a late night American talk show, you have to just be preaching to that liberal audience, which is, you know, mostly what I would agree with too. But it's like, it's so indoctrinated and it's so like,

We all have agreed that this is the premise, like Maloney's a fascist. That's a perfect example. We all read it in The New York Times. And now that's what we're or somebody read it for us and told us. And now the Italians are taken over by the fascists. And like no attempt to like look under the surface or from a differing point of view or just.

And so just stuff that will make people clap in the audience because this is what my team believes. This is, you know, ivermectin is horse medicine or whatever it is. You know, I think you brought that up today. And like that was a really good example. I mean, they absolutely did like it.

It's ivermectin, it's a drug, it's not a politician. How you could like, the way that in this country like can just knee-jerkingly take a very obstinate side of an issue that's just that, what are you talking about? Either it works or it doesn't. Doctors prescribe it to humans. Maybe it helps and maybe it doesn't. Maybe like some drugs, it helps some people and not others.

That to me is the most insane thing, that this becomes like you are a witch because you believe in it or you are...

you know, a genius. It's not that dramatic. The book that I found most helpful on this subject was written by a former CIA analyst called Martin Gury. He wrote a book called The Revolt of the Public. He had a apolitical role within the CIA. That's how he describes it as a data analyst. He says that in 2001, this is presumably a fact, as much information

information was published that year as in all human history up to that point. And in 2002, because of the advent of the internet, and then in 2002, the amount of information doubled again. And then every year since, the amount of information published has doubled. He said that when you looked at it on a

on a graph, it looked like a tidal wave and it had the kind of impact that a tidal wave will have. Information is being generated and created. You can't generate a central narrative and not have it challenged in the same way that you could 50 years ago. Now, a single journalist or individual with a phone can create content that can be seen by millions and millions of people. As soon as a narrative emerges, there's a counter-narrative. There's a counterpoint. You know, like our discussion there about Ukraine. Again, I'm not like

These are not nailed on facts for me. These are discussion points that ought to be included in the mix when you're talking about something as potentially in century as nuclear Armageddon. You want to make sure that you've considered all of the facts and that you have a media that isn't so beholden to centralized interests that it's not including all of the facts.

He said, Martin Goury, that what he, you know, he says, he goes, I believe in liberal democracy. That's what I believe in. This guy is not a radical. But what he's saying is, is that we said we saw it first with Napster, then the Arab Spring, then the Occupy movement, that the potential for disruption,

became so ravenous and potent that they had a choice to make. Either we're going to have to alter the way that power operates, except that there are numerous publics, numerous spheres, numerous perspectives that people hold very dearly, or we're going to have to double down

down on authoritarianism, how is it that the Democrat Party, the shrine of liberalism, social liberalism, open-mindedness investigation became the party of authoritarianism? The argument, and of course Bernie Sanders made all the economic arguments, but

he says more broadly and beyond these political distinctions between the two parties is you now have to double down. And even taking in your late night talk show thing is like, that's over now. They've got their audience. The Republican right have got their audience. The Democrat left have got their audience. Play to your audience. Count the money. The model's changed. For proper perspective, I hope you would concede that the greatest threat that's come out of America as far as falling into authoritarianism came from Trump

claiming that he did not lose an election he plainly lost and getting a giant chunk of his party to go along with that. That is the threat to authoritarianism. Other threats do exist, including some from the left. They are not nearly on that level. I may say, don't you think it's a greater threat that

whoever wins an election, the changes, as we discussed on your show, are not going to be significant enough for most people. But that's the real threat. The real threat is, you know, the reason that most of the lobbying money is split 50-50 is because they're perfectly fine with either party getting in. I've been hearing this for, I don't know, since I was a teenager. Right. No, I haven't told you yet. I've been hearing, let me tell you first.

Don't jump your cue. I've been hearing since I was a kid that, why don't people get in the streets? Things are so horrible. And it's like,

I finally realized because for like probably a majority, but certainly a great preponderance of people in America, life just isn't this unremitting nightmare. And so, yes, as a liberal, do I believe for the people who life is a nightmare, we should constantly be working harder to make it so it's not for them? Yes, I do. Am I willing to give a big chunk of my money? And I do.

to alleviate that misery, that we're all kind of in this together and it's just not cool if some people are really suffering. Yes, I do. But the reason why Bernie's don't get elected and there isn't people in the streets all the time is because most people are like,

On a very basic level, they get it that maybe America is actually still better than most places we could be. And I'm not really doing that bad. No one's actually starving. We have lots of problems and there are homeless on the streets and lots of shit. But, you know, I get up every day. I fucking do what I want. I have material goods. The toilets work.

Yes, it's a mess in a lot of ways, but you know, am I going in the streets? No, I've got a meeting tomorrow for something, for my business, because this is still a country where I can start a business and like I can reinvent myself. That's a lot of what people like about America.

Is that face you're giving me because of the smoke or because of what I'm saying? I guess it's what I'm saying. It's because it's not that. It's such a bad face you have. It was like a fart. I smell a fart face. It was just awful.

And especially that I'm so right. No, it's because I think it's because of despondency and despair and a kind of castration of the spirit. That's what I think is that people by and large don't believe. And I think that the phenomena of Trump could be regarded differently. I'm not talking about the contested elections because my personal perspective is it doesn't

actually matter who gets in for a significant number of people and I'm sure you're right when you're talking about the professional cars or coastal folk or most people that enjoy the affluence that I've been afforded over my lucky little life but I also believe that I read a

good book by a man called mark fisher god rest his soul though he was an atheist and won't thank me for saying that he wrote a book called capitalist realism he said that what had he said he believes that the great triumph of capitalism has been that we can no longer envisage a system beyond it he said famously it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism people aren't

even willing to imagine that there's a possibility of divorcing corporate and state interests. Because capitalism works for a great deal of people. That's why it's popular. It's working less and less though. The same way like stereo became popular. Like we could have stuck with mono, but we were like, you know what? This is actually better. It kind of works.

Does it lose something? I guess that's why they keep putting albums back out in mono. And I'm like, I don't know. Why don't you just put them back on 78 for fuck's sake? Why are we going backwards? Or the kids, they like vinyl. Like, you know, I have my old vinyl. It's like, please. Uh,

enjoy listening to shitty sounding records that are scratchy. I would say in a way people are on the streets. People have been on the streets, not in enormous numbers, protesting for an end to current conflicts. The Black Lives Matter protests and obviously the movements are

around Donald Trump and the movement around masks and the trucker protests and all of the agricultural protests in Germany and Sri Lanka and Holland, all around the world, people are protesting. Do you know a lot of people who have been at protests or in the streets? Because I don't know anybody.

I mean, it's just like people were sympathetic. Maybe it's because I'm older and people my age don't go out and do anything, let alone go to the fucking street. I don't go to a restaurant. Isn't that too much bother? It's amazing how ageist this country is. But what I mean to say is that there are significant protest movements. But I think what there is is a clear lack of a real vision that,

probably since Clinton and Blair onwards, no one is suggesting anything other than the management of decline, kind of intimate bureaucracies where we biometrically measure and manage our own health. No one's saying we could do something fantastic with America. Rhetorically, of course, great claims are made by

either side but no one's suggesting that we could reorganize society no one's anticipating what the ai revolution is about to behold the loss of jobs the despair the despondency and that that is likely to engender and we were sort of seeing a return to feudalism yeah in that beautiful film the house i live in uh the great writer of that show the wife said um

you know, when it comes to the opioid crisis and the addiction crisis in your country, he said, well, why don't we just admit that in a post-manufacturing America, we've got no need for 20% of the population. They're redundant now. They're defunct. We can lose them. And sometimes I think it comes down to simple demographics that this nation can carry a good many deeply dissatisfied and unhappy people. And by God, it looks like it is because it's,

This ain't nothing, all of this conflagration that's going on in this country, mostly it's seemingly housed around the culture war, where I think they're quite happy for people to quibble and quarrel and roar, because ultimately that doesn't affect the interests of the kind of elite establishment interests

I'm interested in addressing and that Bernie has tried to address. And I would offer you this because it seems as during the conversations that I have had with some of the former Democrat Party presidential candidates, that that party almost consciously, deliberately and explicitly decided they would rather have Trump win than win themselves with Bernie. I'd like to put that to you because for me, if that is true- Okay, I will answer that. But

I will answer it first in this way. Can I just take this conversation, same topic, but a little more toward the pedestrian diurnal? I mean, I know you intellectuals. You know-- ED HARRISON: I don't think you're intellectuals. I just told you I'm from the New Jersey of England. I may be sipping kombucha. MARK BLYTH: But you do think like an intellectual. I mean, it's-- because that's exactly what I'm saying.

Let's go to daily life and see if daily life matches with your theory of life. Because as you go through your day, now maybe I live in a charmed world. Of course you do.

Of course I do. I don't think I live in such a charmed world where I go to an office, you know, I see people who work. They're not all like making giant salaries. One person at that show is. I'm not going to say who. But HBO is very generous. It's a good job, but it's just a job. We all do it. I'm the same as them. Like, oh, there are days like, oh, God, I don't want to. I'm tired, but I got to keep working. And we work. We all do.

our best and and i don't think they're unhappy and then if i go out and get coffee somewhere and you know even a waiter or like even the guy who's like the valet guy they don't seem miserable like oh my god i'm gonna they like you know they're living their life like when i was in my 20s i was poor it was i got it like you know i'm working my way up and there is opportunity and there's stumbles along the way and there's lots of problems and we should keep working on them but

It's like, I don't know if it's going to get better by being massively rewriting human nature, which is impossible, or the way the world is constructed. I think people are selfish. I think you have to always factor that in. Anytime you're developing any kind of economic system, people are selfish.

And they will go toward what makes their life better. Hopefully not at the cost of somebody too much, but sometimes, you know. You believe in enlightened self-interest. But also, I don't figure you for a misanthrope. I don't feel that at the heart of your beliefs is people are bad.

Because at the core of my ideology is not even a begrudging, but an optimistic love of humanity. And my belief, Bill, is that if we enshrine, elevate, celebrate and possibly even legislate the high

principles about nature. Compassion, kindness, service, unity, a willingness to sacrifice. And this is where it does get personal because I have to ask myself, what are you willing to give up, Russell Brand, in order to live in a fairer world? And I'm not just talking about taxation because, by the way, affluent, like sort of being a millionaire entertainers ain't the issue. We're talking about

billionaire offshore corporations with unprecedented power that make the Carnegie's and the Rockefeller's look like sort of quaint little guys with Jackson dimes. But I feel, my guess is that you live a very nice life and my opinion of that is you should.

You're talented. You worked your way up. But you can't like enjoy it without having some, I think, inappropriate guilt or like it shouldn't be this way. The world is only what it is. We're always trying to better it. But, you know, just enjoy. And though you shouldn't trade places with someone who's like not doing well, we should lift that person up. That doesn't mean we have to like –

put ourselves down, lift up the people who need lifting. I agree with this entirely. Oh, good. I'm in absolute agreement there. Even the part where you're making yourself crazy for no reason? Maybe. Really? I'm open to that. I'm open to that. I'm open to the fact

Can I absolve you of that? Oh, God, please. There's no reason why you... It's okay? Am I doing all right? Absolutely. And your life hasn't been a picnic either. You've had some really trying times and all that addiction and, you know, bad press. The addiction and the bad press wasn't easy. I mean, just, you know, but...

You know, how old are you now? 47. 47. You're like, right, you're perfectly where you should be. I mean, and by the way, there's nothing you couldn't do in show business. I don't know. You must just not want, you must not want to, but you like doing what you're doing. I mean, you're a crusader. You don't have time to like get in spandex and do it. But you would be such an awesome person.

you know, you're perfect for like the Marvel universe. I mean, you could be the villain, you could be the erudite man, you could be like something. I have a calling and I'm, you know, like we discussed and joked about, remember, it seems like an eternity ago when I was rifling through my rucksack in search of the mini-moil that you mentioned that I am a seeker. And what

When you say something like we should lift people up, I feel that there is no chance of that happening with the kind of entrenched systemic interests that we have now. Because as they say in the circles I move in, it's not a bug, it's a feature. There is a requirement for endemic poverty. There is a requirement for an abandoned and suffering class of people. There is a requirement to distract us with conversations that, whilst important, will not alter the trajectory of ordinary people's life.

And do you know what? I agree with all that. I can't help it. I wish I could. I mean, I don't mean I can't help the situation. I'm sure I can make some small contribution. What I mean to say is that this appears to be the most organic expression of the drive that I've always felt. I mean, you know, you became like a, you're a,

ultimately with two stand-up comedians that have had breaks in various ways. And for me, the stand-up comedy, it seemed like, oh my God, this is the purest form. I can just get up there and I can say whatever I want. And like you, I'm sure, I did it for nothing in clubs for a long, long time. Open mic spots, unpaid gigs. I did it. I did it. I got bottled on stage. I got dragged off stage. I had tough, tough times. And I'm so glad. Isn't it?

Great that it's over. So great. When people ask me, you know, say, how do you do it, Stan? I always tell them, if you really want to know the truth, you know, you have this idea. There's so much pain. Sad clowns said there is a shitload of pain, but it's all like in the first few years.

then there's things that are not perfect, but it's that beginning where you're learning to be funny in front of people when you're not funny. I mean, you probably were a hit right away because you just have a natural gift of the gab that, and I mean, the fact that you don't like, um, I mean, I would love to see you live and you don't, you don't play in America. Yeah. I did a show. I do. I've not been here for a while, but like I do do, I do live gigs. I'm,

When I talk to Rogan, he says it's a duty to do the clubs and stuff. But Stanhope says, I worked hard to get that audience and now I'm going to play to them. I'm going to play to the people that love me, that come to see me because they want to hear what I've got to say rather than the agony of persuading these fuckers. That's so funny. I have the highest regard for Joe Rogan. I really do.

um i wish i could do a show more i did it last year yeah no i watched but um that is such a joe rogan thing to say about like he has that he's that kind of comic i've known that comic since i started there's a kind of comic who's like it's almost like we're in the army comics and they're just very uh you know they're just very and i get it i mean i love comedy too i just don't have that like you know

You know, you got to, when I started, there was a lot of rules. Like, well, you got to have six clean Tonight Show shots before you move to California. You know, we had this like template. Yeah. And then, yes, you get clean. So that's like 30 minutes of very clean material so you can do it on the Tonight Show. And then you'll get a sitcom. You know, that was the thing. We all wanted to be in a sitcom. Yeah, that was the pathway. That was the route for the elite achieving people.

I sometimes feel guilty again that I don't do that. I'm like, yeah, get out there and do them clubs. Suffer a little bit. Go out there and win them over and make sure that your opening five is good and is dutiful. I feel like Bill Burr, he would play anywhere and he would make it work. And Louis would play anywhere and make it work.

make it work, you know, like a Chappelle, like, you know, I adore those, you know, contemporary American comics at the top rock, all of them guys. But I suppose where, like for me, and I'd love to hear more about your contemporaries and how you came up and stuff.

I feel like, you know, for me, there's a bit of, there's shamanism in stand-up comedy. There's a real ability to create beautiful feeling in that room, to explode stuff, to explore incredible ideas. And I sort of, when I...

The reason I did movies and all that stuff is because it's just hard not to. If people offer you those things, you feel like, oh my God, I've got to do it. But for me, it's a world away from what I actually want to do. You're very lucky and, of course, diligent and fastidious to have carved out for yourself this position where you can operate in what seems to me to be your reality.

perfect environment. That's amazing. And it doesn't happen for very many comics. And of course, there are reasons that it's happened for you. I mean, HBO has been a great place. I mean, we survived for a while on ABC for six years even. But HBO really gets me.

And I do well for them, you know, so it's like that rare marriage where, and they're genuinely nice people, you know, they're like people you could deal with. They're not, they're not, yeah. I mean, they, they caught it. They sort of,

for a long time had it to themselves this mode of operation, which was to hire people to do shows and then completely leave them alone and be like, we trust you. Just do your thing and we don't interfere a lot. And for a long time, they had that to themselves. Other networks were too stupid to do that. They wanted their network executives to always make notes and just too much meddling. And finally, the other ones got the hint that the real talent is always going to migrate from

to the place where they can be free. And HBO has had some bombs because they let somebody they trust, we don't all hit 1,000, you know? We don't all get it. And that's okay. That's what art is. Sometimes it's failing. And when it's failing, it's, thank God, only failing for 13 weeks. You know?

Yeah, I had my shot at that. I did a show on FX where they gave me probably a little too much freedom. I misused it and misspent it. A little too much. But that's their loss.

Really? You should be on American TV every night. With the show I have now, I did this deal with Rumble. I did five shows. Exactly. It's amazing. TVs, like TVs, like kids don't even have TVs. No. It's an old medium. Moving towards obsolescence, presumably other than in some particular, some manageable spaces, I would assume. And the reality

what I have now doing a show five days a week, streaming live, uncensored, tackling the idea of appealing to an audience that I know are ultimately more open to sort of right-wing politics, but doing my best to, uh,

convey ideas beyond that. What is Rumble now? I'm some media stupid... It's essentially a competitor to YouTube, which has made its raison d'etre non-censorship that has been taken up initially by a lot of right-wing voices, but doesn't have...

any skin in the game with regard to like the kind of content that is put out except for that you continue to own your content and you know you can say what you want you can talk about what you want and like for me like freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of speech to condemn and criticize people it means freedom of speech to attack establishment and look for ways to bring people together i'm interested in i suppose a re-emergent populism and i feel like this like a left-wing

populism as it was initially intended to be. It was assumed there will be an accompaniment to the trade union movement, a true populare, the empowerment of people, as much democracy as possible, as much control over community as possible, a real ability to confront establishment power and even state power. The two heads of the hydra being an over-empowered state and an over-empowered corporate world. And now that we have those things essentially combined,

in absolute symbiosis. So is this Dave Rubin? Dave Rubin's on there. Yeah, I know Dave's been on. It's not his company though, right? Dave owned, I believe, Locals, which is the sort of membership aspect of Rumble, which is essentially like YouTube. He's been here. I love him. Yeah, he's a great guy. Yeah, and we don't agree politically. No. But we laugh about it. It's, yeah. And here's the problem with where we are now.

media-wise, especially free speech. You know, as comics, we adore free speech. It's my lifeblood. I couldn't be more grateful to the people who came before me who were martyrs for free speech in a way. I mean, Lenny Bruce had nine trials, I

I think, you know, trials, actual trials. Not like, oh, my trials. No, I mean, we're actually putting you on trial. But so free speech, I mean, when I was younger, I mean, there was no doubt in my mind who the champions of free speech were.

were and also the threat. And the threat was all on the right. Yeah. And the champions were on the left. And that's not how I feel now. So when people say like, oh, why are you harder on the left? Well, that's one of the big reasons, because I certainly appreciate the threat of free speed from the right. I mean, Trump said if anyone took him seriously, like he was a normal president where you didn't just hear Trump.

Something crazy again today and then write it off people would have been very alarmed because he would say things like you know The media is the enemy of the people. I mean this is like Hitler talk, you know, and We should look into the New York Times or MSN maybe they should lose their light, you know Just stuff that's really threatening so I get it There is threat on the right but the left is much more in my face much more constant much more a daily problem and

they just want to catch you and find people that can't. There's just a mean girl attitude to it and it just squatches, puts fear in people so people don't

speak their mind, when people are making cringy apologies, I always want to say, you know what, maybe the woke people should apologize to me and people like me for all the things they robbed us of never hearing. Jokes that were never told because someone was just too scared to say something. You know, letters, emails, things that were never written, thoughts that were never expressed, because it was just easier to go along. So

When I hear about a free speech platform, unfortunately, now that to a lot of people and including me, my antenna goes up like, is this actually a right wing platform? Because because the right it's funny because the right actually, I think, wants this kind of free speech. That's what I know. A lot of doctors who.

were reasonable people who should have been heard on COVID. But MSNBC wouldn't put them on. Oh, we should have brought that up today. Yeah. I was moving into it. So the only place they could go was Fox News. So then they get branded a conservative because they're on Fox News. And they're saying, I'm not. They're just the only ones who would put me on. There were people that invented vaccines that were being called

And he vaxes. The whole thing became hysterical. But I mean, that's the problem with... So when I hear about this... I'm like, is it really a bunch of just right-wingers or is it really free speech? So tell me. Well, I believe that those categories are starting to... Because you're certainly not just a right-winger. No, I'm not.

I mean, like, this is how I approach this. Like people should be able to believe politically what they want to believe. It seems to me that if you're on the libertarian right, that you would believe in people's right for freedom of expression, right on the, what is currently regarded as the far left, whether, you know, if you want to be left alone, you should be left alone to be who you want to be. And in fact, some kind of truce around traditionalism and progressivism seems to be the, the,

a necessary one at this point. Look, you be as progressive as you want to be. You be as traditional as you want to be. Let's leave each other alone. We're going to kill each other over this stuff. We've got bigger fish to fry. And so the way that Rumble is regarded, and I spoke to Rogan about this, is, you know, it's being portrayed as a right-wing space. And there's no doubt that there have been right-wing contributors that have accelerated its ascent as a platform. But the reason I'm there, I've got no interest in condemning people or criticizing

people because of their lifestyle choices, because of their culture. I do believe in freedom. I do believe in freedom. But I feel that you cannot have that freedom without an open dialogue and an open discourse around all of these subjects and the ability to make mistakes and the ability to be wrong and to resolve these issues collegiately and collectively in good faith, not be looking for ways to find...

easy to tag it back to Trump or to tag it to this and to me. There has to be some good faith arguments. Bill, I need to pee quite bad. And I'm younger than you. We have to wrap this up. I could talk to you all night. Is this the wrap up shuffle there? Yeah, yeah. But... Shall I shuffle forwards? Wait, can I just... Oh, you're shuffling forward to say something? Shuffle back. I was going to...

What were you just talking about? Yeah, you were quite high because my whole life's been a cigar. I'm completely in the same mood I was when I was on HBO. What were you just saying? I was saying that we need to... We've got bigger fish to fry and we have to have a truce between traditionalism and progressivism. You get the idea. It's the same stuff I'm always saying. Are you going to let me do a pee? Because I'm actually in some distress. It doesn't take me long. Right. No, let's just...

this was like uh we're gonna wrap it up on the page i think so because like i worked all day yeah i don't want to i feel like i'm taking advantage of you but oh i know what i was gonna say uh you know i admire you for for so much because you're so passionate about these things but i just because i just mentioned lenny bruce so i'm gonna say that that's a sign from the universe and by the way dave rubin's always trying to convince me about the universe which i find amusing but um

I'm going to pretend there's such a thing as the universe and say that Lenny Bruce, you know, he forgot to like be an entertainer because he was so passionate. Right. I don't want that to happen to you. I don't think it will. It never has. You prove that like not just here, but on real time today was just like, you know, you bring a man.

And just that's, you know, I don't know why I'm anointing myself as the person to give you advice you probably don't need. No, I want it. Please, you're just such a great entertainer. Please don't like just, you know, I know the world is falling apart and it's certainly mostly your fault. But you know that old saying, don't pity the martyr, he likes his job. Thank you. Clive.

We had a laugh, didn't we? I'm going to do it because I am quite desperate. I don't want to rush ahead because I bet you need to pee as well. No, I'm so sorry. Oh, God.