#1804 - Bill Maher

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Bill Maher (0:15)

No, I'm in a better place.

Joe Rogan (0:17)

So, what was the decision to jump into the podcasting arena? Not enough podcasts in the world?

Bill Maher (0:21)

Well, that was certainly one. It is the law. No, you know, it was a bunch of things.

First of all, if you had said to me, when did you start, 2009?

Joe Rogan (0:35)

Yeah.

Bill Maher (0:35)

And what year did you become the king of podcasting?

Joe Rogan (0:39)

Five years ago, probably.

Bill Maher (0:40)

Five years ago, okay. So, if you said to me 10 years ago, podcasting is gonna be huge.

It's gonna be where media moves. It's where people are, it's gonna be bigger than radio at its height. I'd say, are you crazy?

But, you know, partly because of you, it did. And so, it's sort of undeniable now. And I also was out to dinner too many times with people who said, you know, you're so interesting to talk to when it's not about politics. You know, you should do a podcast that's not about politics. And I was always saying, well, first of all, my network would never let me do that. They own my ass. They pay me very well for exclusivity. But I found out that actually, you know what? I can, if I ask nicely, and they were nice about it, and do it in a very different way, which is what we did, I could do a podcast and have it not be about politics. And it's a whole new audience because there's just a lot of people who are turned off to politics and don't want to talk about politics and don't want to hear about it. And sometimes I'm that guy. Sometimes I don't want to hear about it. And there's too many people who are divorced from, shall we say, knowing things.

You know, I had this-

Joe Rogan (2:02)

Divorced from knowing things is a great way to put it.

Bill Maher (2:05)

I mean, I'm not saying they're dumb, not at all. They're just- I had this guy on. We hadn't dropped yet.

And I said to him, he asked me sort of the same question, why are you doing this podcast? And I was going through this very similar explanation. I said, for example, on Real Time last week, the two topics we talked about were the ACLU and NATO. And he's 30 and he said, yeah, I don't know what either one of those are.

I said, exactly. This is the problem. Or the solution is that we can have this nice conversation you're a bright guy, but I can't, you would not be that interested in Real Time because even though it's a comedy show and there's a lot of funny stuff that, anybody could laugh at. Yeah, when it comes to the panel discussion, it was mostly about NATO and the ACLU.

Whereas this show, the podcast, it's just about anything. It's just much more personal. And I can be like dressed like this. I'm not the guy in the suit and the tie and the white shirt with perfect hair. And I can just, you know, and also I can, like we're doing here, be much more free would be the word I would say before we had to dance around the fact that, no, we can get baked. We can drink and we can smoke, which is what we would do normally.

And I felt like, you know, there's not a lot of podcasts that have a nighttime feel. And I had a place in my house that was like perfect for that. And we kind of made it into a club. We called it Club Random. And I said, you know, I get high with people here anyway, like one night a week, just having fun. If I just turned the cameras on, we'd have a fucking show.

Joe Rogan (3:54)

Yeah, that's awesome. It's great that HBO is wise enough to let you do that too, because I think it would only enhance your show.

It's not gonna take away from it.

Bill Maher (4:02)

We already have from the commentary, from when people write in to YouTube and so forth, saying, oh, I'm gonna take a look at Real Time now. And that was part of my argument, was like, if you wanna get anyone under 40 who don't follow politics that well, you're gonna have to fish somewhere else than where you've been fishing.

And when you do fish in this new pond, you will get people who will come over to your pond.

Joe Rogan (4:29)

Well, I think one of the things that opened up a lot of people to your show during the pandemic, especially, was these clips that you guys were putting up. And I think that having those kind of clips, those kind of viral clips of some of your monologues and some of your rants, I think those opened up a lot of younger people to it as well.