Sean Penn | Club Random

Summary

Podcast Summary: Club Random with Bill Maher featuring Sean Penn
Release Date: June 15, 2025

In this engaging episode of Club Random, Bill Maher sits down for an in-depth conversation with acclaimed actor and activist Sean Penn. Hosted in the unconventional setting of Club Random, their dialogue spans a wide range of topics, from personal experiences to global political tensions. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions from their hour-long conversation.

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1. Fatherhood and Dedication

Timestamp: [01:09]

Sean Penn opens the discussion by reflecting on his role as a father. He emphasizes the importance of dedication, describing it as a daily commitment to nurturing his children’s growth and ensuring they become good people.

Sean Penn: "I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a job. That's dedication." ([01:09])

2. Personal Life and Domestic Challenges

Timestamp: [02:04] - [02:37]

The conversation shifts to Penn’s personal life, highlighting everyday domestic challenges. Bill Maher humorously touches on the dynamics of domestic partnerships, sparking a light-hearted exchange about expectations and relationships.

3. Views on Same-Sex Relationships

Timestamp: [02:37] - [03:10]

Penn shares his personal discomfort with men eating off his plate, tying it to broader themes of personal boundaries and societal expectations. This leads to a brief exploration of the evolving perceptions of masculinity and relationships.

Sean Penn: "I'm pretty much done with the meal. I can't, I can't touch it." ([02:48])

4. Military and War: Ukraine and Russia

Timestamp: [03:10] - [09:01]

A substantial portion of the conversation delves into the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Penn expresses unwavering confidence in Ukraine's eventual victory over Russian aggression, comparing it to historical conflicts where underestimation of the opponent led to prolonged struggles.

Sean Penn: "The Ukraine will prevail in this war. There's no question in my mind." ([06:07])

Bill Maher counters by questioning the inevitability of Russia's defeat, discussing the strategic use of drones and unconventional warfare tactics employed by Russia.

5. Private Military Contractors (Blackwater and Others)

Timestamp: [09:01] - [10:12]

Penn and Maher discuss the role of private military contractors like Blackwater in modern conflicts. They explore the implications of outsourcing military operations, the ethical considerations, and the impact on traditional military structures.

Sean Penn: "There are Colombian contractors working in the fight on behalf of Ukraine. They're people from all over." ([45:54])

6. Reflections on History and Leadership

Timestamp: [11:05] - [17:35]

The dialogue shifts to historical perspectives on leadership, particularly focusing on Putin's motivations rooted in his KGB background and the legacy of the Soviet Union. Penn draws parallels between historical and contemporary leadership challenges, emphasizing the cyclical nature of political power struggles.

Sean Penn: "We are bound to repeat it. And then we can process what we repeated by looking back." ([60:50])

7. Climate Change and Environmental Concerns

Timestamp: [26:16] - [28:49]

Both hosts express concerns over environmental degradation, discussing the urgency of climate action. Maher advocates for nuclear energy as a practical solution, while Penn highlights the challenges of public perception and the dangers associated with nuclear power.

Bill Maher: "Nuclear energy is a lot like marriage. When it goes bad, it really goes bad." ([27:30])

8. Artificial Intelligence and Technology

Timestamp: [30:06] - [32:18]

The conversation touches on advancements in artificial intelligence, with Maher expressing skepticism over the current state of AI safety. They debate the implications of AI behaviors mimicking human flaws and the potential threats posed by autonomous technologies.

Bill Maher: "It's bad enough the way the world is now, but I've seen people send me things." ([30:19])

9. Acting, Filmmaking, and Personal Projects

Timestamp: [34:06] - [38:51]

Penn shares insights into his filmmaking experiences, including his documentary work in Ukraine and Iraq. He discusses the challenges of capturing authentic stories and the importance of truthful storytelling without the constraints of traditional memoirs.

Sean Penn: "If you let the practical get involved in a lot of things that people would call socialist, I am practical enough to know that I believe we are not past the moment where we need to manufacture weapons." ([63:59])

10. Life, Mortality, and Philosophical Musings

Timestamp: [74:21] - [75:37]

In a heartfelt exchange, Maher and Penn contemplate mortality and the legacy one leaves behind. They discuss the bittersweet nature of accumulating wisdom over a lifetime and the inevitability of death, pondering what lies beyond and the value of living a meaningful life.

Bill Maher: "What I think is the great tragedy of dying. You spend all this time, like, making your brain better." ([73:16])

11. Closing Thoughts and Reflections

Timestamp: [75:37] - [77:00]

As the episode nears its end, Penn reflects on the importance of proactive engagement in societal issues, advocating for balancing practical concerns with idealistic aspirations. Maher and Penn share mutual respect and admiration, underscoring the value of open dialogue in navigating complex global challenges.

---

Notable Quotes:

1. Sean Penn on Fatherhood:
   “I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a job. That's dedication.”
   — [01:09]

2. Sean Penn on the Ukraine War:
   “The Ukraine will prevail in this war. There's no question in my mind.”
   — [06:07]

3. Bill Maher on Nuclear Energy:
   “Nuclear energy is a lot like marriage. When it goes bad, it really goes bad.”
   — [27:30]

4. Sean Penn on Historical Repetition:
   “We are bound to repeat it. And then we can process what we repeated by looking back.”
   — [60:50]

5. Bill Maher on Mortality:
   “What I think is the great tragedy of dying. You spend all this time, like, making your brain better.”
   — [73:16]

---

Conclusion

This episode of Club Random offers a rich tapestry of conversation between Bill Maher and Sean Penn, blending personal anecdotes with incisive discussions on global affairs. Penn's perspectives on fatherhood, warfare, and societal challenges provide listeners with a deep understanding of his worldview, while Maher's probing questions and insights foster a dynamic and thought-provoking dialogue. Whether delving into the complexities of international conflict or reflecting on life's bigger questions, this episode stands out as a compelling listen for those seeking meaningful discourse beyond the realms of politics.

Transcript

[Bill Maher]

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[Unknown]

What is dadication?

[Sean Penn]

The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariona. We call him day date for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a job. That's dedication.

[Bill Maher]

Find out [e-mail] brought to you by.

[Sean Penn]

The U.S. department of Health and Human.

[Bill Maher]

Services and the Ad Council.

[Sean Penn]

Timothy Hutton.

[Bill Maher]

Timothy Hutton.

[Sean Penn]

George C. Scott.

[Bill Maher]

George C. Scott. Wow, that's really going back.

[Sean Penn]

He kept me from ever golfing. Fool myself that there was any I was going to get anywhere with him. I know that I wouldn't. I know that I would.

[Bill Maher]

You don't know that. You don't know anything. Sean. Ready? I am. Oh, I'm just pouring a drink. Oh, thank God.

[Sean Penn]

Can I pour you one?

[Bill Maher]

Honey, I'm home. I hope you have my. Please, I. Look what I did to myself.

[Sean Penn]

I won't hurt you.

[Bill Maher]

Give me a hug. How are you? How are you? I need a. Do you have my martini ready when I walk in? Is that so much to ask of a domestic partner? Imagine if you and I were two gay men living together and well, you.

[Sean Penn]

Know, maybe we were imaginating everything else and that's what's actually been happening.

[Bill Maher]

That has not been happening.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, I don't know. Let's not turn around this odd feeling that I'm in a different place than I think I am.

[Bill Maher]

When you did milk, how'd you feel about the kissing men?

[Sean Penn]

You know, it's funny thing is.

[Bill Maher]

I.

[Sean Penn]

Don'T like, not I don't like. I am disgusted by eating off of. Even if it was a relative, when I'm. When anyone, but particularly men eat off my plate, I'm pretty much done with the meal. I can't, I can't touch it.

[Bill Maher]

Why would a man be eating off your plate?

[Sean Penn]

Oh, you know, your dad's sitting there and he goes, oh, what's a bite of that? Or whatever. I just didn't like the whole idea of men's spit. And so for me, it was a bit of a. It was like, like in, you know, in some law, like international law enforcement, narcotics law enforcement, they've got hazard pay that they pay people who go into some of the. So I sort of saw it as like hazard pay without any additional pay or like a stunt, like a big stunt. But my, My son was upset at the time. He was young and I guess, you know, things that were said in school. He was upset that his father had kissed James Franco and my daughter was upset that James Franco had kissed me and not her.

[Bill Maher]

Right. Wow, that's amazing. Things have certainly changed a lot.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Maher]

I mean, now you really wouldn't even be able to play the part because you're not actually gay.

[Sean Penn]

I wouldn't be permitted. That's right.

[Bill Maher]

Because you have to be what you are.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

You know, sort of the antithesis of acting though.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

So you must be over the moon about the Ukrainian attack. I don't know when we're dropping this. Probably very soon, but a few days ago they did. I mean, it's cooler than Mission Impossible. The drones, I mean, to, to pack them into these trucks, surreptitiously get them near the airfields to. So that they could then independently remotely fly out of the trucks and bomb the planes that are bombing Ukraine. I mean, that, that took the Israeli beeper attack on Hezbollah and a big.

[Sean Penn]

Chunk of the planes that have been a threat against every other country, including our own all these years. He made a.

[Bill Maher]

It's about long range nuclear bombers. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, that just blows my mind.

[Sean Penn]

Well, I, I had been in Ukraine again a few. Well, whatever it is. A month ago, let's say Easter, the week of Easter, and the war had in the last year plus, year plus, so dramatically changed. It was clear that it was almost entirely drones and artillery.

[Bill Maher]

So where does this put the war? I mean, like we had been kind of moving toward, honestly, the Trump view, which always was kind of, look, Russia's gonna win anyway. What are we killing all these people? You know, it's kind of like the old John Kerry thing. How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

[Sean Penn]

I've said from the very beginning, and I've felt every single day since, that this, this war is going to. The Ukraine will prevail in this war. There's no. No question in my mind.

[Bill Maher]

You mean, get back all their territory?

[Sean Penn]

Absolutely. The territory pre. 22-2-24 of 2-24-22nd.

[Bill Maher]

You're talking about the beginning of the war in 2022. Okay, well, that's all the territory. Well, you might not. Crimea.

[Sean Penn]

Dealing with Crimea is a difficult subject for everybody.

[Bill Maher]

Right.

[Sean Penn]

But I, I think, yes, there will be no compromise on this territory.

[Bill Maher]

That's not a common opinion, but I.

[Sean Penn]

I understand it's not a common opinion. It wasn't a common opinion that the Vietnam were going to kick our ass throughout the Vietnam War either.

[Bill Maher]

And you were saying that then whenever you were 10.

[Sean Penn]

Well, I, I was processing it through my adulthood and seeing, you know, what is it? What is that hunger that's going to fight like that? And so here, the, you know, that doesn't mean it's not going to come without a lot of horrible loss and destruction and already has. And, you know, one of the big parts of the story that is not discussed enough are the 30,000 children that they stole when they occupied those new territories and now kidnapped children. Everybody in the United States screams and cries about how children are treated. You know, and yet they somehow have let the political tone of this blind them to the necessity of the US Being more supportive.

[Bill Maher]

Well, you know, that's not going to happen. That's not what I mean. Trump's going to be there for another.

[Sean Penn]

They can do it without us.

[Bill Maher]

Three and a half years or maybe ever. So I can't imagine in three and a half years this war won't have resolved itself somehow. It's going to have to do it without America's help. I hope you're not counting on that.

[Sean Penn]

I'm not counting on it, sir, because that's just not where it's. I think, you know, one of the things is, you know, this could create a war in Europe, in a sense, and Europe is definitely showing signs of really coming up to the game.

[Bill Maher]

You mean defending? I mean, Trump always says NATO was too reliant on America. We paid too much into it. They should be defending themselves more. That's not all wrong.

[Sean Penn]

Well, I'm not saying that that's all wrong.

[Bill Maher]

No, I'm just.

[Sean Penn]

What I'm saying is that because they're being forced into a pinch this way, because it's not. They're clearly not just defending Ukraine on a principle. They understand the ramifications of a Russian victory there and the way that that would inevitably spread through Europe.

[Bill Maher]

I don't think that's true. It would not inevitably spread through Europe. Russia is not strong like that. The idea that Russia is going to. I know. I understand his desire. I mean, Putin would like to reconstitute the Soviet Union for sure, because they're.

[Sean Penn]

Not strong like that, that it happens. What Putin needs to do is this kind of an action every time he's going down politically. And that's the way he manipulates the.

[Bill Maher]

He doesn't have enough. He doesn't have enough soldiers. He doesn't have enough money. He doesn't have enough. I mean, yeah, I guess it could be a drone war, but they have. Drones are cheap drones like you. You. It's so. It just. It really puts the lie to the new budget we have, which of course, just is the one thing that both parties could always agree on, which is shoveling more money to the Pentagon, which they call defense, but really as defense contractors, that we. To make shit that obviously in this age of drones are already obsolete. It's just about providing jobs back home. You're looking and making shit that even the Pentagon sometimes says we don't want.

[Sean Penn]

But you're looking at the conventional war notion. What I'm saying is, yes, he has enough to do to be a real threat again in this way. But in the meantime, you look at what's happening in Georgia now you look at what had been happening in Ukraine, what he aims to have happen in Ukraine, where whether or not they. Before the invasion, the pressure was to have a proxy, to have a puppet in leadership. And so it's not always an army coming across this war. Putin has already declared that this war is against the United States. He's said it on numerous occasions when he says this is about. This is saying Ukraine was a proxy of the US and the war on the US has been a cyber war, but it has affected literally lives and certainly livelihoods.

[Bill Maher]

There's no doubt that he never lost his KGB bona fides. He's a guy who was raised in a system where it was the Soviet Union and the United States was an existential enemy. I get it. He never lost that. Now there are people who would argue that we are the ones who made the mistake. When we didn't disband NATO when the Soviet Union disbanded because NATO was formed to confront the Soviet Union.

[Sean Penn]

Or had we invited the former Soviet Union into NATO, perhaps then we would have had more responsibility to help build their institutions, to be able to.

[Bill Maher]

But that makes no sense. NATO was an organization strictly formed to fight the Soviet Union. How can you then invite. It's like, it's like the Yankees are playing the.

[Sean Penn]

Well, no, you have other great enemies, let's say. Right. China for one. And so building a coalition, we all.

[Bill Maher]

Gang up against China. Well, yeah, that could work.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And it was discussed. It was discussed at the time, but.

[Bill Maher]

China wasn't a power then. The Soviet Union rolled up in 91. China wasn't some threat. I mean, it was the country they talked about as, ooh, watch out. They could be the rising power of the next century, which they turned out to be.

[Sean Penn]

Well, but they were economically exploding and they were one of the biggest providers, along with the Russians, of weapons to the Vietnamese. We don't have to go back in time, the entire balance of it. But the bottom line was that Russia, while we were dancing perestroika and Gorbachev and Reagan and the walls come down, they never got a chance to dance there. The bread lines were longer and oligarchy and gangsterism took over where the communist power void left off.

[Bill Maher]

And so, yeah, the middle class also did expand once you got rid of state owned industry there. I mean, Moscow, I know I've never been, but I've certainly know people who've been before and after. And they say Moscow is a very alive city with a lot of, a lot of people who are doing well. I mean, you go out at night in Moscow, you can have a good time.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, Moscow was a picture city. It is still today.

[Bill Maher]

What does that mean?

[Sean Penn]

I mean, that's the advertisement for Russia. It's the ad. Yeah, yeah, you get, listen, I went.

[Bill Maher]

And did a, like the paradise ghetto.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. For a movie thing. I did a little bit of training at Star City, which is about 40 kilometers outside of Moscow. That's their NASA that gives you a little inside view of the gas station with nuclear weapons. That they are in so many ways nothing but chip paint on broken walls.

[Bill Maher]

Right. Which is why I say I'm not worried that Putin's gonna get his piece of Ukraine. I hope he doesn't. But if he does that, then he's going to roll into Poland. I just Don't.

[Sean Penn]

Okay, here's what I would suggest on that. I remember there was a great story about somebody. I'll leave it unnamed because. But they were diplomat, American diplomat, talking with a Middle Eastern leader and telling him why the US policy in a third country was going to change in the way that it was. After they talked very sternly and strongly about how it was going to go and why the Middle Eastern leader said, well, you know, I do know the neighborhood. And I would say that if you go and you talk to the people in the neighborhood, whether it's in Moldova or Georgia or Poland, Romania, that there is every reason to believe that it would. There'd be a pause, it's not going to roll from one to another. But this is the trend he has. And when he has to summon up a military assault, he always does make that threat. I don't know why our president hasn't pre announced a red line. And I don't mean a taco line, I mean a red line on, you know, because he don't even talk about nuclear weapons.

[Bill Maher]

On his mind, dolls. Do you know how many dolls people need, Sean?

[Sean Penn]

How many?

[Bill Maher]

Maybe four, maybe five. They don't need 250 dolls.

[Sean Penn]

He said this thing about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Maher]

He's got bigger issues on his mind. And pencils, how many pencils do you have? Do you need that many? I don't think so.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, he's a problem child.

[Bill Maher]

Okay, so let me offer this. And I know you know more about Ukraine than anybody I know and probably have done more. And you're linked to it. I mean, culturally, morally, socially, you are all in on Ukraine. Well, you do know that it is special to Putin because it is the sort of the cradle of Russian civilization. The first capital was Kyiv. Right. You know that they consider that. So he sees Ukraine as a very different place than Poland or Romania.

[Sean Penn]

Well, he would say that. He sees it as a very different place. He would say that. He would say that precious. And I think that that's akin to the great, great, great, great grandson of King George still angsting about the Declaration of Independence. The bottom line is Ukraine is a separate sovereign country, as we are.

[Bill Maher]

I agree with that, but it's a lot. But that's a bad analogy because that's a long way back.

[Sean Penn]

Much more cynically than that, I think that this is where he's got troubles at home. Listen, there's 25 Russias, right? You've got between the Muslim population, the various breakoffs of what it is to be Russia.

[Bill Maher]

You know, you just said it. It's sort of self contradictory. You said. You know, I think it was McCain who first called Russia a gas station with nuclear weapons. Okay, well, gas stations don't take over the world again. I don't put anything past this guy. He push. He pushes people out of fucking windows. And by the way, your boyfriend Oliver Stone was here once. Well, I love the movie you made. I love you, sir.

[Sean Penn]

Listen, Oliver is a fascinating person. I think he's left the farm a long time ago.

[Bill Maher]

He certainly has. On the subject of Putin, because no matter how many times I was just mocking him unmercifully in a charming way, of course, but he just, you know, he would just. Oh, Bill, you don't really believe that propaganda about Putin being a bad guy. And like, what is it that that makes a person's mind? I mean, look, we all have places where we disagree with each other vehemently and we're like, how can this person who's such a great person and we love him in so many ways, how can, how can they believe this thing?

[Sean Penn]

I think iconoclasm is a drug for him.

[Bill Maher]

That's a great quote. Yeah.

[Sean Penn]

So, but when legit, the gas station reference, when I say that I'm talking about. This is what most Russians experience is basically a gas station. Now, for him to have a military, in other words, bodies he's ready to have killed, which is so much of what they've been doing. And by the way, there's two genocides being attempted, one on the Ukrainians and the other on his undesirables. So what's at the front lines is you're gonna find the bodies of homosexuals prisoners that created crimes that conflict with the crimes that Putin would otherwise champion. These are the. This is. And you know, just scraping the barrel of those people. So he's purging his country of the things that he doesn't like.

[Bill Maher]

You're saying he's killing homosexuals? Yeah, I hadn't read it, but I don't doubt it. Yeah.

[Sean Penn]

Killing them, prioritizing them for to be in the meat grinder on the front line.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, by sending them to Ukraine.

[Sean Penn]

Correct.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, yeah. That sounds like something he'd do. Yeah, yeah. And he's, I mean, one of his big gripes about the west is wokeness, which, by the way, I could show you a quote from him about that. And I could show you a quote from Macron, from France. Not exactly the same kind of country, saying almost the same thing, which is what we don't want your American wokeness here.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, well, that's fine.

[Bill Maher]

Isn't that interesting?

[Sean Penn]

We don't want your Russian hatred here.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, I understand. I'm not defending them. I'm just saying, isn't that interesting that both. France, the most sophisticated place.

[Sean Penn]

I don't want our American wokeness here either. Exactly.

[Bill Maher]

I'm just saying, like, it's something that for the people who are, like, woke and are mad at this conversation. Just think about that. Both France and Russia came to the same conclusion about this. Now, of course, they did it for somewhat different reasons. And by the way, sorry, France, but you could use a little wokeness. I mean, they just got around to putting. Who's the fat ass? Gerard Depardieu.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Maher]

Away for stuff that, you know. You know, not to like, hey, America, we're the greatest. But stuff that we were putting people away. I mean, he's the Harvey Weinstein or the Cosby or whatever. Yeah, they're like a decade.

[Sean Penn]

It's been building pretty intensely over the last couple of years in France, but.

[Bill Maher]

They are like a decade behind us on that.

[Sean Penn]

Well, not a. I wouldn't say a full decade, but yes.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, close.

[Sean Penn]

They're right there now.

[Bill Maher]

I mean, we kind of take our victory for a weekend, John. Yeah, I mean, you know, America, I always think we're gonna come out on top at the end, but I don't know.

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[Bill Maher]

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[Sean Penn]

My father, when I remember one time having a talk with him about the blacklist period.

[Bill Maher]

Oh yeah.

[Sean Penn]

I mean in depth and walking down a beach.

[Bill Maher]

And was he blacklisted?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, five years.

[Bill Maher]

He was.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. So he. For the country. He flew 37 low altitude bombing missions at night, shot down twice, came back with a chest full flying out of London, Germany to Germany, over Germany. Yeah. And then couldn't work in the country. He fought for and I was always admired in him. Something that I still can't imagine that I would have been able to process this way. He said, you know, it's a growing pain of a great country. What is the blacklist. It was, it's growing pains.

[Bill Maher]

Wow.

[Sean Penn]

There was never a bitterness.

[Bill Maher]

That's charitable.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. But it makes me, you know, encouraged to think that, you know, we can, I'm not saying we will. We can get ourselves out of this and into something better than we've had before. And you know, as part of the physics of this stuff. I don't like it. You don't like it. We see through the people that are sort of fundamentalist on this stuff and hypocritically so in so many provable ways with this woke stuff. But we are so self destructive the species in some ways that to get to constructive we have to recognize there's going to be some destructive and. Yeah, and it sort of does find its own balance at a certain point. I some, I thought lately sometimes that, you know, I mean I've been certainly a big mouth and often too strident of one. You are a sensational mouth on most subjects. Thanks.

[Bill Maher]

And important, I won't spit in your food.

[Sean Penn]

But I also sometimes think lately, why don't we just shut up and stay out of this way because these guys have plenty of rope to hang themselves with. Don't remind the base that we're here. We don't have anything to do with your fight. Yeah. I wonder sometimes if sometimes there should be a pause.

[Bill Maher]

And do you think being our age makes it easier for us to not freak out? Because I feel like the kids are more Freaked out. Now, that may just be because that generation is just, you know, angsty about everything.

[Sean Penn]

Well, the ones who are engaged are. Right. And that I can only imagine this extremely hard, particularly younger. My kids are in their 30s and.

[Bill Maher]

Where'S their head on, like where the country is? Are they despondent or. What I'm saying is like, we remember Nixon. Now, he wasn't. He certainly didn't go where Trump went, but we thought he was like the end of the world and he turned out he wasn't. Is that going to be the case with Trump?

[Sean Penn]

He's already been the end of hundreds of thousands of worlds, people. I'm talking about usaid. Yeah, yeah, that. That's negligent homicide. In. In a sober world, that's negligent homicide. But since it's not sober, I'll have another sip.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, but I mean, even bigger picture than that. Just. Well, the fundamental essence of America being the peaceful transfer of power, which is, you know, always the number one peaceful transfer of power.

[Sean Penn]

And at what temperature is the globe running when he hands it over?

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm certainly a person who believes as much as you do, or any person who can read scientific literature, even for the layman, that we are doing horrible things environmentally and it's obviously going to get us at some point. I don't know that one side has really done a lot more than the other. I mean, you can read some very depressing stats like coal use after all these years and all this money spent on clean energy. And it's like almost the exact percentage as it was. I don't know, whatever the stat with 1990 or something.

[Sean Penn]

You're a pro nuclear power guy.

[Bill Maher]

Yes, me too. I'd like to build one right here. Yeah, you can use my yard.

[Sean Penn]

France makes money on theirs.

[Bill Maher]

Totally.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

Now, I always say nuclear energy is a lot like marriage. When it goes bad, it really goes bad. Not that I have to tell you, but average is going bad. I'm sorry, but it is that kind of thing. Like, you just have to make sure you marry the right person or you make the plant safe because when it melts down, it's so destructive. And that's what people are afraid of, nuclear power for three reasons. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Those three words. And those are three powerful words.

[Sean Penn]

Yes, well, they're powerful. First of all, we know we're just talking about the climate, the result. At the end of all this stuff, we have to assume that we are in some denial. We absorb the information, let's say we believe in this school of thought that's coming from the scientific community. Yes. The world's heating up. This is. Those same scientists are saying, you know, this is like, guys, this is urgent. We don't really want to process that. That's part of it. It's not just that they're not communicating it in ways that are successful.

[Bill Maher]

I would agree with that.

[Sean Penn]

And that's the same. So, for example, you know, the normalization of these 30,000 children that have been kidnapped by the Russians. We're finding ways for that not to be what we know it is to us, Right. These are just defense mechanisms. And finally, trying to be a little braver about this stuff and get a clear, clear thought. It does seem to me that the science that I've come to trust, not claiming any kind of expertise, but I pay attention, I care, and I don't think I'm alarmist, has me extremely worried. We were talking about, like, my kids. So they're, you know, they would have come up during the time of MySpace and all of this, the social media was there.

[Bill Maher]

I think having kids makes this a very different. Because, like, I feel like I've had my fun with the Earth. I have the same worries that you do, but I'm like, okay, I'm 70. Like, probably it'll be around for about the number of years I will also be around. But if I had a kid 30, yes. I would be much more in that headspace. Because now you gotta project 50 years.

[Sean Penn]

But don't get too comfortable, because with the AI, you might be finding the fountain of youth and you're gonna live a long, long time in the nuclear holocaust.

[Bill Maher]

Did you see what AI has been up to lately?

[Sean Penn]

Which part of it? Tell me.

[Bill Maher]

Robots that are refusing to shut themselves off. I mean, this has gone from only two years ago, whenever. When I first saw what chat GPT was that people.

[Sean Penn]

So that one was programmed by Elon Musk.

[Bill Maher]

Well, could have been to, like, the robots physically fighting back. You saw that video, right?

[Sean Penn]

I've seen some of that.

[Bill Maher]

Okay. We had the story last week also of a robot who blackmailed its user because it didn't like something it was doing. I mean, I've seen. I don't have it because I won't put it in my phone because they'll know everything about me. It's bad enough the way the world is now, but I've seen people send me things. Like there were conversations with the thing about something, and it's a fucking prickly little bitch. It's not like it's Mr. Spock. It's not. You know, it gets mad, it falls in love, it hallucinates. It's worse than a robot. A robot's supposed to be smart and logical and not fuck things up like a human. This isn't like that. They need to, like, fucking shut it down and go back to the drawing board and make one that isn't based on the worst characteristics of humans. Of course, they got it from the Internet. What is the Internet? A bunch of fucking assholes that they built this thing about around, and that's why it's acting like this.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. They may argue that they're not sentient beings, but it doesn't matter. They behave like them.

[Bill Maher]

Listen, I heard the scariest thing today, and I'm sure it's true, because the person who said it to me would be fired if it was a lie. North Korea, you know what goes on in their phones now? They take a. It automatically takes a picture of you every five minutes and sends it to the Great One every five minutes to the home office. Can you imagine living under that sort of Damoclean?

[Sean Penn]

I was there this last year. I mean, not there in Korea, but at the closest point. And I was sitting on a little rock wall.

[Bill Maher]

You didn't swim over, Sean. That would be so you swimmable.

[Sean Penn]

It's short swimming.

[Bill Maher]

Why didn't you do it? No, please. You need a capper on the resume. Swimming into North Korea. That is so you.

[Sean Penn]

That doesn't get me tickled, that one.

[Bill Maher]

Really. But I couldn't have been worse than the El Chapo thing in the trunk. Come on, man.

[Sean Penn]

I could see this farmer across the.

[Bill Maher]

Water in North Korea.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And you just get transfixed because it's. I mean, in some way, it's just so such a sort of sad state of human.

[Bill Maher]

The saddest restriction. The saddest.

[Sean Penn]

And there's that. The Sisyphus myth, you know, what he did is just made the rock his whole world. And it was in that that he was able to, you know, carry out his punishment. Pushing the rock up the hill.

[Bill Maher]

That's in the myth.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, that. No, this is. No, this was the Camus.

[Bill Maher]

I think it was someone's interpreter. Yeah. I mean, the myth is just, you know, if people don't remember their mythology, he's. I forget what he did to piss off the gods, but his punishment was to roll this rock up the hill. But it never gets there. And it goes back, and he's just always rolling a rock up the hill.

[Sean Penn]

It Reminds me a little bit of those guys who voluntarily. Maybe the most moving documentary I've ever seen was that one, the rescue about the. Those hobby divers, cave divers who went and got the kids in Thailand.

[Bill Maher]

Chili, wasn't it?

[Sean Penn]

It's like cold.

[Bill Maher]

No, the country.

[Sean Penn]

Wasn't that in Chile? No, in Thailand. Chile. I think you might be talking about one of the mines.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, that was the cave dudes.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

What's this one?

[Sean Penn]

These guys are cave divers.

[Bill Maher]

Oh. And so they were Underwater, I think.

[Sean Penn]

14 kids, something like that, that were on a hike up in this cave in the monsoon rains came early.

[Bill Maher]

Always hate that.

[Sean Penn]

They even the American SEAL team, the SEAL teams from Thailand, nobody trains in what these guys do because there's no real cost benefit on it. So you have these sort of middle aged guys who meet up. There may be 10 of them in the world that do it on this level and they do these dives in. So, you know, you got a mile of stone above you. You got this much space. It's black, you can't see anything. Cold water. And that's what they like exploring. They're down under the earth doing that. So they came in and rescued those kids in the most extraordinary way. Ron Howard, I believe, made a feature about it. But certainly for an order of things to watch that first. Why was I thinking of that, though?

[Bill Maher]

I don't know. But like, why don't you make movies like that? Why don't you mean you have so many experiences and like, you know, stories about stuff that's dramatic.

[Sean Penn]

You know, I almost never took a camera anywhere with me until of course, I made this documentary in Ukraine.

[Bill Maher]

Yes, but my plugs. I forget. I'm so sorry. No, you blame the pot.

[Sean Penn]

It's been on YouTube for a long time now.

[Bill Maher]

Yes, but tell them the title.

[Sean Penn]

It's called Superpower.

[Bill Maher]

Superpower.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And. And it was a Paramount plus thing here and.

[Bill Maher]

They were.

[Sean Penn]

Susan Zyransky was really helpful with that because she helped to get it. So we all wanted it to be more accessible. And so they. They were willing to put it on YouTube in the United States. But so my first trip to Iraq during the war was in 2023 and I took a camera because I was.

[Bill Maher]

Iraq? You mean Ukraine?

[Sean Penn]

No, Iraq. Now I'm talking about Iraq because you say about. You should make documentaries like this. I'm answering that. I got.

[Bill Maher]

What year are you in Iraq?

[Sean Penn]

This is 2003.

[Bill Maher]

Three. Okay. The beginning of the war.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And I got the greatest pictures. I brought this Nikon with a lens like this. I mean, I got the greatest pictures and I came home and none of them developed. I'm terrible with this text and. And that was the only other time because I sort of like dark sunglasses. I don't have the same situational awareness when I'm doing that. And if I'm looking for a picture versus just being there, then I miss it. I miss everything. So I'm. Usually I. I just. Yeah, I'm more interested in just making.

[Bill Maher]

Like, a movie, you know, like, with a script. It's not completely, like. Not like a. Not a documentary. Like, you know, sit in a room with writers and. And be like. You tell them the experiences and then they weave it into a story. I mean, it isn't happen. I mean, didn't you. I don't know if your girl friend is still Ukrainian?

[Sean Penn]

No, Moldovan.

[Bill Maher]

Moldovan. Were you formerly with someone?

[Sean Penn]

Yes.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. Yeah. You're doing well in the area.

[Sean Penn]

I like borscht.

[Bill Maher]

So, like, you've already got a love interest. I mean, you've got drama, you've got war. War is always good for, you know, like, why not make a movie out of it, like a movie movie, you know, I mean, there's plenty of movies like that that are, you know, historically based.

[Sean Penn]

I mean, I can steal from, you know, a lot of things that I witnessed or took part in, you know, in. In any kind of a movie, in little ways and things. I mean, you're not talking about making a movie about.

[Bill Maher]

I'm talking about you, like. Like getting in a room with people, telling them your experiences, working on the script with them, and then directing. You've been. Why don't you direct anymore? Why don't you direct this?

[Sean Penn]

Well, I am. I've just written.

[Bill Maher]

Like I said, you're directing now.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, I've just written something that I'm going to direct coming up, and it has a lot of currency in terms of what it's about.

[Bill Maher]

What's it about?

[Sean Penn]

Well, you know, I'll tell you offline, because I don't want to get ahead of anything, but I'll tell you offline.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, I see. Offline. Okay. Well, you just reminded me. I see. I designed this so well that I forget myself that I'm online again. I blame the pot, but that's right, we're online. So, like, the people. The people want to know about you, Sean. Not just the politics. You're a beloved American icon movie star. They want to know how you are. You happy?

[Sean Penn]

You can generalize the people.

[Bill Maher]

The people.

[Sean Penn]

That includes people who are either disinterested. Or loathing. Yes.

[Bill Maher]

Many people hate you as many people hate me.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

But you know, to your credit, I mean, you would, you're not afraid to go anywhere. I mean, like, you, like, you know where you should go? Cpac.

[Sean Penn]

I would if I had a reason to go. You know, the, was making documentary.

[Bill Maher]

If they invited you.

[Sean Penn]

Well, I would, I think the first question I would ask is why am, why am I being invited?

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, that's reasonable. You know, if people don't know. CPAC is the, Every year, the big, big giant. It's conservative, right, right wing, very right wing convention. They have like, you know, everybody who speaks there. Trump has spoken there. Of course, he's usually the, the headliner. But, you know, it's Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's, it's Cash Patel, it's Dan Bongino. It's a, it's a Woodstock of the mentally impaired every year. And they go through the social conservative agenda and then break down into smaller groups for gay sex, as I recall. But if, like, somebody like, I would just love to see you and you know, you could make a speech about some things that they would cheer because you're not doctrinaire and there are people. Lindsey Graham is the leader, I think, of that wing of the Republican Party that definitely wants to sanction Russia and wants to go back to. No, we're the Republicans. We hate Russia. Remember, that wing exists. They're just cowed. They're just afraid because Trump will kill them.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And it's, but it is hard to understand how so many of them are so cowardly. Yeah. That there's no sense. I, I almost wonder sometimes if they aren't kind of like rapturous. Who just really feel that the world's going to end and they're going to.

[Bill Maher]

Well, they are.

[Sean Penn]

And there won't be a legacy.

[Bill Maher]

Well, yeah, there's a lot of worry about. Well, a lot of them are super duper Christians. We know that. And that's exactly what Christians believe. That they will be raptured. Yeah, that's a part of it.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And so if, if they see their kids are going to go up in flames anyway, then what difference does their reputation.

[Bill Maher]

You don't go up in flames when you're raptured right up to heaven.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, yeah. The world up in flames and you go. Yeah. The special ones get to go to. Yeah. Right.

[Bill Maher]

Well, don't, don't say it like that. People will think we're skeptical of it.

[Sean Penn]

Well, I mean, you know, they, they, they put certain scientists forward to debunk the climate change. I, I, I, I'd like them to, you know, put some scientists forward on heaven and just give me a shred of evidence.

[Bill Maher]

Did your family, when you were a kid, make you do anything religious?

[Sean Penn]

My parents. So my grandmother said to my mother and father when they married, my father was Jewish and my mother Catholic. And she said, all of them, walter, don't mix. And then they were together very happily for 41 years until my father passed.

[Bill Maher]

You know what? But they, my parents were together 41 years, and my parents also are Jewish and Catholic, just in reverse.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, really?

[Bill Maher]

41 years. Exactly.

[Sean Penn]

So people stuck with it back then as kids. We weren't. My parents decided, first of all, my father was agnostic, atheist, somewhere in there.

[Bill Maher]

And he told you that?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, he told his parents that. I mean, my.

[Bill Maher]

But I mean, like, when the kids asked questions, what did you say? He didn't sugarcoat it.

[Sean Penn]

No. And his grandfather, both grandfathers were rabbis. You know, he was an only child, and his parents were very tolerant of his exploring other ways of thinking. And I just always felt like, look, you know, if you say there's a God, it's a punchline. You say there's not a God, it's a punchline. I'm okay with the mystery. I am loving this place. I said, I love life and eat it up and, you know, it's a black abyss. Or it's, you know, I'd rather it not be, you know, some of the worst things that one can imagine. I prefer that not be the case. But, but all the more reason to have a good time now.

[Bill Maher]

How's Haiti doing, by the way?

[Sean Penn]

Oh, boy.

[Bill Maher]

Speaking of places that are trouble, it's, it is.

[Sean Penn]

I.

[Bill Maher]

You spend so much time, I still.

[Sean Penn]

Believe these Haitian people are going to pull themselves out of it.

[Bill Maher]

Did you see, you know who's going over there to kick ass and take names?

[Sean Penn]

Okay.

[Bill Maher]

No. Eric Prince.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, yes.

[Bill Maher]

What is it? What is it?

[Sean Penn]

Blackwater. Well, formerly Blackwater.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. Blackwater always sounded to me like a Credence Clearwater. Yeah.

[Sean Penn]

I mean, they're trying to get contracts, and I. Look, whatever the Haitians decide they want to do, they do in some way.

[Bill Maher]

What do you think of that? Black. Blackwater was in Iraq, got in trouble for some shit that they did. Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. Right. Blackwater, which is, we're talking about private mercenaries, which itself is an interesting concept that we, I don't think people realize in Iraq and Afghanistan especially, we outsourced. Oh, yeah. A Lot of huge.

[Sean Penn]

Part of the Pentagon budget was on private contractors.

[Bill Maher]

Private contractors. And sometimes they got. I remember they strung one up on the bridge in Fallujah.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, a couple of them.

[Bill Maher]

And I think that prompted the battle for Fallujah. Yeah, but that was a private contractor that wasn't a military guy.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. And a lot of. A lot of private contractors were involved in Abu Ghraib also in the interrogations.

[Bill Maher]

Absolutely. Because the CIA didn't want to have their hands dirty.

[Sean Penn]

But I wouldn't use the term mercenary. Well, it depends on how one. But there are within the ranks of any of these organizations people that were extraordinary soldiers and American soldiers. Sometime now particular. And because Blackwater is principally American, but I've seen it with South African groups and South American groups. Also there are Colombian contractors working in the fight on behalf of Ukraine. They're people from all over. And God knows Wagner is all over Africa now.

[Bill Maher]

Really? Still.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Maher]

Even after the plane thing.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, yeah, he's gone. But it exists in full.

[Bill Maher]

Well, they used to call it the Foreign Legion. Isn't that the same idea?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, well, the French had the Foreign Legion and then the International Legions.

[Bill Maher]

Do want to shoot some people Legally.

[Sean Penn]

Those were.

[Bill Maher]

Come join us.

[Sean Penn]

Those were government organizations. So these are now fully, you know, private companies. Well, as is running our prison system.

[Bill Maher]

They are private companies with. With tentacles very deep into the government. You think they're all among those military.

[Sean Penn]

They are among those who are hired, for example, in.

[Bill Maher]

Who's in Blackwater.

[Sean Penn]

I was military, slept on the floor next to 40 Blackwater guys during Katrina because somebody from the tobacco industry, someone who was actually a lawyer fighting the tobacco industry, had contracted Blackwater to come in and protect his neighborhood and his office that he thought tobacco was going to break into. So, in fact, Chris Kyle was on that floor.

[Bill Maher]

Wow.

[Sean Penn]

And, you know, like I say, you have these guys. They've. They've. They've done their service. They have many of them with very high skill sets. And now you're getting offered $100,000 a year with no taxes, which beats anything anybody in the military was making.

[Bill Maher]

Right, right. So.

[Sean Penn]

And there is an application for some of this stuff. Sometimes I think I might have been one of the first people writing about them was a Dyn Corp in Iraq because this whole idea of this term contractors. And I asked one of them what they build and I said. He said elections or whatever the client is asking now, are there bad actors in that? I can't speak for what Erik Prince is. He's, you know, I know, he's a former SEAL himself. I don't really know enough about Blackwater.

[Bill Maher]

But I can't either. But I think his sister is Betsy DeVos.

[Sean Penn]

Yes, that's right. Former secretary.

[Bill Maher]

You know, this is what I hate about America. Like, all the people on the left are like, oh, my God, you just said two names that are, like, on the list of people we hate forever, Betsy. And like, I don't know these people. Maybe they are. I'm sure I don't agree with them on a lot of things, but I don't know. And I don't fucking hate anybody because you say I'm supposed to hate them. I'd like to talk to Betsy DeVos. I have a lot of problems with the Education Department and education in general in this stupid fucking country. And Prince, you know, if you say he's a Navy seal, well, he probably did a lot more for this country than a lot of people have ever done, including me. I don't know. Is he also a hard right winger? I'm sure he is. I think that's who they are.

[Sean Penn]

I think he's an entrepreneur. From what I can tell, he comes from money himself.

[Bill Maher]

Really?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. In fact, that was something. He was, as I understand it, maybe a little shy about the guy's knowing. And when he was going, well, maybe.

[Bill Maher]

That speaks better for him because it says, you know, he could be snorting coke off some hooker's ass in Monte Carlo, but he's instead shooting an Iraqi kid in there.

[Sean Penn]

No, but I think that's. We gotta be careful, like, with the mercenary thing. Some of these coke and Monte Carlo guys are okay, I agree.

[Bill Maher]

No, I mean. But it is interesting that they're going into Haiti because, I mean, let's be honest, I'm sure the Haitians are the most lovely people in the world, but they, for whatever reason, cannot get their shit together about having a stable country where the gangs don't rule. And sending in Eric Prince and his Blackwater Creedence tribute ban to fuck with them might be just what the doctor ordered. Is that wrong?

[Sean Penn]

It depends on the client and how much voice the client has, and if the. And the client ought to be the sovereign government, or rather, in that case, because you don't have a trusted government. But to have some consensus from civil society, from farming co ops, from people across Haiti, a kind of convention to come up with what the rules of engagement would be. Because these are principally, you know, special operators who. There's no question, but they can get it done, the job done, and with very Few people.

[Bill Maher]

There's no question that they could rid Haiti of gangs.

[Sean Penn]

There's no question about that.

[Bill Maher]

But why. That seems like a very hard job.

[Sean Penn]

No, look at El Salvador. Look what he did. He's got an army of 40,000.

[Bill Maher]

Well, he did it, not Blackwater.

[Sean Penn]

No, I understand. Haiti is not the same. Haiti doesn't have a.

[Bill Maher]

But you're saying as long as you. As long as you suspend basic democratic norms, which is what you kind of have to do, that's what they do.

[Sean Penn]

That's why there's got to be some kind of consensus among Haitians about how it's going to be achieved also.

[Bill Maher]

Well, you're going to.

[Sean Penn]

These neighborhoods are packed. It's, you know.

[Bill Maher]

Right.

[Sean Penn]

It's Gaza.

[Bill Maher]

Right.

[Sean Penn]

And how. What's the. How long a period of time? But I do think that there are versions of a kind of a surgical shock and awe. If the Haitians wanted it to happen, that the. That the gangs would back down. And there's a history that almost forgot to remind you about the other people backing down, which is the Russians in Afghanistan. They did run away from Afghanistan.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, they did. And that could, that they. That could happen in Ukraine, too. They could decide that this is bleeding us too much. Too much. And we. And you know.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, he's just got to find a face.

[Bill Maher]

Saving out right now. That absolutely could be the end of this, which I. I would not have guessed even two weeks ago.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

And man, I know they've got a.

[Sean Penn]

Lot more sting coming. From what I understand, this is a lot of interesting, really innovative war gaming going on.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, really? More Mission Impossible stuff?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, I think this is.

[Bill Maher]

We're going to.

[Sean Penn]

We're going to witness something that's going to. Let's say that all the experts are going to have to be replaced with experts.

[Bill Maher]

Have you seen Mission Impossible?

[Sean Penn]

I haven't seen the new.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. No, but you want to.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, I do.

[Bill Maher]

Me too.

[Sean Penn]

He produces an excellent picture.

[Bill Maher]

I love that. You said that. Yeah, exactly. We're not snobs.

[Sean Penn]

Oh, no, we're.

[Bill Maher]

We're.

[Sean Penn]

Tom Cruise in Mission or Maverick. Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

Or anything.

[Sean Penn]

He's a very good actor. He's a very professional actor. Yes.

[Bill Maher]

He's underrated as an actor.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. He's always too handsome for.

[Bill Maher]

Well, it's not that he's too handsome, it's that he wants to do popcorn movies.

[Sean Penn]

And he does a lot. He does a lot of that, but he does it better than anybody else does.

[Bill Maher]

He does, exactly. And the fact that he can be doing it in his 60s is so inspirational to us.

[Sean Penn]

It's weird because I. I knew Tom well when we were young. We did our first movie of note together. Oh, yeah, Taps.

[Bill Maher]

What is it?

[Sean Penn]

Taps.

[Bill Maher]

Taps.

[Sean Penn]

And we were roommates.

[Bill Maher]

Who else was in that? And who else was.

[Sean Penn]

I said, Timothy Hutton.

[Bill Maher]

Timothy Hutton.

[Sean Penn]

George C. Scott.

[Bill Maher]

George C. Scott. Wow, that's really going back.

[Sean Penn]

He kept me from ever golfing because he had a line in the movie. He says, I don't want to die knocking the out of a little white ball with an alligator on my tit. And he was so compelling the way he said, I always thought, if I golf George, he's gonna see me.

[Bill Maher]

I always hated golf, too. It was just like, I don't know, I always felt like it was giving up. Like if I play, if I started to play golf, it was a way of saying, I give up. I had Barry Diller on my show Friday night and like, he has a memoir and it's great. And I read Streisand's memoir and I read Woody Allen's memoir. They're both awesome. But all I could think of was, I am not going to write a memoir ever. Because when you write the memoir, you're psychologically saying it's over. Yeah, I'm not going to write part two from 80 to 160. You know, part one is the interesting part. So tell me you're with me on that. Oh, yeah, don't write a memoir because it always has to be about tomorrow. Right.

[Sean Penn]

Well, you remember when I wrote that book, the. That came because I was getting offers to write a memoir and I considered them and they give you pretty good upfront money. Thought, I'll get some of this stuff on the record, sort of archive for my kids, as it were. And then I was sitting in Haiti and there was some books laying around this little hotel, and one of them was by someone I knew, and it was a memoir. And I started reading it and I realized that, I mean, maybe if you're 85 or something like that, you just give up the whole goat. You're really willing to, you know, drop all the bullshit. Maybe. But when people are creating a narrative to make themselves look however they want to look, which includes, you know, romantically putting in some self flagellation and things like that, but doing it just such a way to set up the next heroic deed, it just, I. I thought, I don't want to catch myself ever.

[Bill Maher]

Okay, but put, put some meat on the bones of self flagellate. I know. What, what are you talking about?

[Sean Penn]

You know they'll get. They'll immunize themselves against that. This is just self glorification. If they, you know, say if they were weak in this way, they humble. But it didn't really matter because look what I did, you know, And.

[Bill Maher]

And you're saying they humble. Brag.

[Sean Penn]

It's. Yeah, it's a. It's a trap, of course.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Penn]

But the Irish are good. Like the. The McCourt book, you know, the. The Irish can do it. Bono's book. And he. He picks himself up pretty for real in it, and then all.

[Bill Maher]

But he's willing to.

[Sean Penn]

But then says, so what? Because at the end, it doesn't matter what I say. It matters, you know, what I do. And you look at it. It'll be what it is, you know?

[Bill Maher]

I love him.

[Sean Penn]

Me too.

[Bill Maher]

I was at the Polo Lounge once with Michael Moore, and he was at another table, and I didn't even know he was there. And the waiter came over and gave us this. Like, he had done a drawing of us and wrote on it, you know, like two great storytellers or something. And it's one of the. I treasure it. You know, I said I'd give it to Mike and never did.

[Sean Penn]

He's incredibly generous, but he's.

[Bill Maher]

What I always loved about him was that he wasn't afraid to be a clown. Like I remember him saying when ISIS was on the rise. You know, I know people like me who mention things like a caliphate were crazy, and then they actually tried to have a caliphate. Okay, there's that, but. And he said, you know, we should send comedians over there. Of course. You know, I said, well, let's send rock stars first. Why do I ride away with the comedians? Why do we always have to open for you? You go see how it goes with isis, because I think they're gonna love you. And, you know, he said that in front of Congress at a testimony, and they pressed him on and he said, I'm not kidding, you know, and. Yeah, and I kind of felt like he knew as he was saying it it was stupid. But he's like, I'm a musician. I can get away with stupid. I just can. And I'm gonna make a bigger point. And he must have known that Charlie Chaplin made a movie about Hitler where he played Hitler, the great dictator, right? 1940.

[Sean Penn]

One of the greatest speeches ever made by. Certainly by a fictional politician. Probably one of the great speeches ever made by a politician.

[Bill Maher]

I know what you're talking about. If people don't remember the movie because it's 1940, Hitler was on the rise, but the war hadn't brought us in yet. It was starting in Europe. I mean, it came out in 1940. So the war started in September of 39. Maybe when they shot this movie. Interesting question. Was World War II started?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

I don't know. Oh, yeah. In fact, because Hitler was certainly famous enough to be.

[Sean Penn]

And you know that the original bone that Charlie Chaplin had to pick with.

[Bill Maher]

Hitler, they were born the same year.

[Sean Penn]

Hitler stole his mustache.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. Yep. And ruined it for the rest of.

[Sean Penn]

Us because he was a fan.

[Bill Maher]

Is that true?

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, he was a fan of Chaplin and then Chaplin. What a beautiful. What an incredible speech.

[Bill Maher]

Now I know what. Okay, so this is interesting you mentioned that, because you and I don't have exactly the same politics. People should watch this speech. It is amazing. But anyway, most of the movie Chaplin is.

[Sean Penn]

Especially now, AI, the robot men, all of what he. I mean, it's as if.

[Bill Maher]

Well, it's a socialist. Okay, No, I don't remember.

[Sean Penn]

No, it's a humanist cry. It's not a socialist cry.

[Bill Maher]

You know what? I haven't seen it in years. Let me tell people what it is. Most of the movie he plays Hitler, basically. I mean, it's funny. The Great Dictator, the great scene where he's lying on his back and he's kicking a ball, which is the globe of the world, but it's a balloon up in the air. And I mean, he's that much in charge. But he also plays this other part where he's the guy who makes the speech at the end and it's like a 10 minute pay on to the world that could be. If we were all. If the workers would unite and all that kind of stuff. Now, again, I haven't seen it in years. My memory of it is that it was a little too socialist for my taste, but it was.

[Sean Penn]

See it again and text me.

[Bill Maher]

I will. I absolutely will.

[Sean Penn]

But everybody should see that.

[Bill Maher]

And you should see it just for.

[Sean Penn]

The purely humanist and so precious.

[Bill Maher]

I mean, maybe it is.

[Sean Penn]

It's so.

[Bill Maher]

Maybe right now, maybe that is exactly what it is. But it's. It's certainly ideal.

[Sean Penn]

They can just YouTube the speech. It's.

[Bill Maher]

Yes, it's famous, available. It's certainly idealistic though, right? I mean, it's utopian.

[Sean Penn]

Yes, but not sort of. Not unlike Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, where if only. You know. And I agree with you there in the sense that, you know, Jose Pepe Mujica, the president, former president for Uruguay, who was the most compelling head of state, the most incredible man.

[Bill Maher]

Uruguay. Never heard of this dude.

[Sean Penn]

There's a thing called When. So he died a few weeks ago, but he was. I got to know him through working on behalf of Haiti in partnership with him.

[Bill Maher]

You have every South American leader on speed dial. I know you do.

[Sean Penn]

But what he said, I don't know.

[Bill Maher]

Why you do that.

[Sean Penn]

One of the things he says in this, the Human Project is portraits of different people from different walks of life. In his case, a former head of state or president at the time. And he is interviewed for about 20 minutes. And these are great. It's a great show, the Human Project. And Mujica is talking at one point about this idea that we, you know, we. We have it drummed into us worldwide that if we don't study history, it's bound to repeat itself. And he doesn't believe that because. And, and he really put the. Are words to something that I've always felt. He says that. He says in the first person. I don't idealize human beings like this. We are the. We are. We will stub our toe on the same pebble 30 times. We will. We only ultimately learn anything from our own experience. And we are bound to repeat it. And then we can process what we repeated by looking back. That's the value of history. And I think that that's true. And so we will repeat it. And this is what's sort of frightening and what that denial thing in us, even friends of ours, there were moments I've had like this where, you know, you just feel that this moment is the, you know, thing, screaming that this is the. The moment. Other times you. You say it's going to heal, it's going to be okay. And somewhere in between is. We don't know.

[Bill Maher]

But we.

[Sean Penn]

We have to be proactive about it. Right. Whether it's climate or it's. And Mujica really talks about it with such great articulation. He was a poet of political thought. And so is it too socialist, the Charlie Chaplin speech? Or is it at the heart of something that is an ideal that we should not necessarily associate ourselves with, other than to admire and work towards it? Not one that we have.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah.

[Sean Penn]

And yes. So if you let the practical get involved in a lot of things that people would call socialist and things like that. I am practical. I am practical enough to know that I believe we are not past the moment where we need to manufacture weapons. Well, that's not idealistic.

[Bill Maher]

You're right.

[Sean Penn]

Right. And. And we need militaries and we need strong Militaries. That's not idealistic.

[Bill Maher]

No, that's practical. That's good.

[Sean Penn]

But should we not do a little bit, each generation, to move towards the possibility of, you know, one day evolving to the point where we can embrace it?

[Bill Maher]

I'm not going to argue with you about that at all. What I am going to ask you about, though, is, I mean, Uruguay. I feel like that one slipped off my radar. And I feel like among most people you're going to talk to, I do have a knowledge of what's going on around the world. But that one, Uruguay, I gotta say, they need a better publicist. They have a low profile. We're talking about the country wedged between the giants of Argentina and Brazil. Montevideo, I believe, is.

[Sean Penn]

And they've got that beautiful resort beach that all the wealthy Argentinians. I'm sure they do.

[Bill Maher]

And I'm sure you had a girlfriend there.

[Sean Penn]

I was never there. It was only in Montevideo. Only in the city.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, okay. All right. Well, I'm sure you will have a girlfriend there.

[Sean Penn]

No, no, no.

[Bill Maher]

Oh, yeah. Moldova. Moldova. The last country on earth Joanna had my girlfriend from. That's why she's the last one. Because Moldova is literally the last. After that, it's just like the Vaana.

[Sean Penn]

Wine, very famous for.

[Bill Maher]

It's just an island in the Pacific that's disappearing.

[Sean Penn]

What it's very famous for. Wine drinkers.

[Bill Maher]

Moldova.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. It has a huge catacomb.

[Bill Maher]

Isn't Moldova really Romania?

[Sean Penn]

No, Moldova is Moldova. But they speak Romanian.

[Bill Maher]

Okay, but like, it's just sort of like the eastern sliver of Romania, is it not, if it's a Romanian people and they speak Romanian? I mean, it's like if California was its own country and many people think it.

[Sean Penn]

Or if Canada was ours.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, you didn't see that coming. You got to admit that, did you?

[Sean Penn]

With Trump only. And I said, and I still do say to myself aloud every day, you know, whatever. You don't expect, it's happening.

[Bill Maher]

But you do, I hope, think I did the right thing to have dinner with him.

[Sean Penn]

I think having dinner with him was absolutely. You're so smart. You go there and look, this is the President of the United States. Whether we like it or not doesn't matter. And I think there's a lot of reasons. I was speculating that would be good for you to do that. I think that when you talked about it on the show, that I would have preferred that I saw his mission or his will to have the dinner. I wish I would have seen it as less successful because you're so smart.

[Bill Maher]

On, well, it was less successful because I never stopped saying all the things I've always said about him. It would have been successful if he had somehow seduced me into supporting him. Well. And so it wasn't maybe.

[Sean Penn]

Maybe more brevity. He, you know what? He treated me fine. That's that. And now on. Maybe more. Maybe I would have done some editing, but I, I absolutely. Listen, I, I. The only reason I wouldn't. I have not been invited. The only reason I would not accept an invitation is because. I see. I see. No. So it's a long flight. I see. No, really.

[Bill Maher]

You meet with, I don't think Castro and Chugashavez, but not the President of the United States.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, I, I saw good results come out of some of those things in terms of. I had. I don't think that there's anything that. That I would. I just, Just personally wouldn't trust anything that was said in the room, including the personality.

[Bill Maher]

It's not a. It's not a matter of trusting it. It's a matter of seeing it better. Of experiencing better. Knowing it.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

More know, it's like saying, I don't want this medical test because I, you know, I don't want to know. I want to know.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah. I want to.

[Bill Maher]

Okay, fair enough. So, yeah, I mean, I have some.

[Sean Penn]

Good friends that, you know, are.

[Bill Maher]

I said this many times within the piece when I did it that, like, it's up to. I'm just giving you the report. It's up to you to make the decision. Who do you think is the real guy? I'm telling you, there's a very different guy behind closed doors in a different.

[Sean Penn]

Setting now or capable of performatively seeing that.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah, well, one of the. Either. Well, you know, my friends who believe in astrology would say he's a Gemini. Of course, there's two of them. Okay. That's one way to look at it. Other people will say, well, you know, the real guy is the guy you met, and he's playing this clown on tv. And other people will say the reverse. You know, he said, well, I mean, it seems harder to do the reverse. I mean, can you really pretend to be sane? You can pretend to be insane. I think it's harder to pretend to be sane, to be measured and like all the things I said, which is just what happened. So, again, there's three parts of this. Would you go to the dinner? I think you're crazy not to. Not to want to see up close the person who's this important in everybody's lives for the last decade. 2. Are you going to lie about it? I'm sorry, I'm not a liar. I don't lie. So I told the truth. And then three, Do I go back to doing what I always did? Yes, I did.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, but you could have told more truth or you could have told less truth.

[Bill Maher]

I told a lot of truth. I told everything.

[Sean Penn]

I would have enjoyed a little more brevity on that, but I absolutely understand that.

[Bill Maher]

But that's just emotional. You were just triggered.

[Sean Penn]

It's possible, it's possible. I, I, it's true that, but I word some reason this, this particular president triggers me rather often.

[Bill Maher]

Exactly. He makes people crazy, but he's not making me crazy.

[Sean Penn]

But.

[Bill Maher]

So you really wouldn't go?

[Sean Penn]

No, I don't, I'm not saying I think I wouldn't because let me put it this way, what I know I would not do expansion. He's very, I would not go, let's say. So, for example, when we talk about this very different president of Uruguay, you know, there were things that Uruguay had models of in development that could be very helpful to Haiti and I went to see if we could get some training from them and so on and so forth, which we did. And whereas if I were, let's say, representing a cause celeb, say it was Ukraine, say it was whatever it was, I would not fool myself that there was any. I was going to get anywhere with him. I know that I wouldn't. I know that I would have no influence, bad attitude.

[Bill Maher]

You don't know that. You don't know anything. He's a guy who frequently seems to go by what the last thing he heard was. He's very. Everything went. I'll tell you this about Donald Trump and you don't know it because you don't go to dinners. It's all about.

[Sean Penn]

I didn't go to dinner with President Trump.

[Bill Maher]

That's true. You should. It's all about personal relationships.

[Sean Penn]

I've not been invited.

[Bill Maher]

Okay, I will get you an invite. He's a star fucker in a way. I bet you he would like to meet you and you would have a.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, he'll see the show. He said if I see him, they're gonna call me a star.

[Bill Maher]

I don't think he watches the podcast. He does watch the show. He was, he's very, he's a faithful. He's a faithful.

[Sean Penn]

He's got people that do his, I mean, you know, Dan Borgino be knocking on your door if you didn't go to dinner.

[Bill Maher]

That's not why I did it. And it could work out the other way. You don't know. He's very unpredictable. And, you know, talking about, you know, health and well being and what we were talking about before, we're like the. You realize that we're kind of a pioneer generation as far as the first people around our age who actually have it in our head. Wait, they could solve the mortality thing before we get there. That's not something that even existed in my father or mother's mind. They just knew they were going to die. And nobody even suggested that it wasn't. There was no out. Right. But you know that you and I are thinking.

[Sean Penn]

I'm.

[Bill Maher]

Come on.

[Sean Penn]

No, come on, guys. I do think it would be great. No, you're not thinking that if. If I don't have to pay the price for smoking all my life because we come up with something great that way. But the idea of not passing and getting out of the way is not a good one to me. I think that I want to live and have a great life and as long as I can. But, you know, a natural. I don't want it to go outside of what. What I am familiar with in terms of a natural lifetime.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah. But I don't agree with that because.

[Sean Penn]

It seems, you don't know how interesting it might be on the other side.

[Bill Maher]

The other side? Yeah. I mean, okay, the other side. What do you think's on the other side?

[Sean Penn]

Not a clue. Could be a black abyss. Could be.

[Bill Maher]

Right? Could be. That's my issue. Black abyss. I mean. Yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna see Black Abyss tomorrow night at the Roxy. Would you like to come? But. Okay, here's what I think is the great tragedy of dying. You spend all this time, like, making your brain better. Yeah. Like, we laugh at kids or young adults who make fun of us because we're older. And really, I mean, it's just. It's such a silly flick when they do that, because if they only knew. And when they get to our age, they'll feel the same way that, you know, okay, we're not as cute as we used to be, but we just know so much more than you do because we spent so much more days learning. You learn something every day. And so we get to this point where our brain is just way more evolved than it was at 30. I know yours is. Well, I know yours is.

[Sean Penn]

My kids are gonna. My kids jokes growing up, you know, I'm still. I lost all credibility.

[Bill Maher]

You Accumulated all this wisdom, and then it dies. That's this tragedy, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm dying at the top of my game mentally.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

Not the top of my game physically, probably. I guess I get that.

[Sean Penn]

Well, but also. But I don't know if you've experienced it this way, but also, why did I wait to have a sense of general. And I'm not talking about. Without a clear eye for the anguish in the world, but on the micro, a peace. Like I wake up every day in this beautiful gift we've been given.

[Bill Maher]

Exactly.

[Sean Penn]

And I thought, why did I wait so long for that? Fuck it, let's go. We'll just do it.

[Bill Maher]

And that's what I mean. That brain is the one that should be preserved. Like, if you killed me at 30, no big loss. You're just. You're just taking out an idiot.

[Sean Penn]

It's fine. Going back to Mujica, he said, you know, on his last day, Mojica, he says when he goes out. When he goes out, he wants to be like that guy who comes into a bar, says to the bartender, this one's on me.

[Bill Maher]

Ah, that Mohica on the Navajo thing. I have played many Indian casinos, including the Mohegan Sun.

[Sean Penn]

I thought you were gonna say, I went back to, like, gun smoke and I saw you playing an Indian in my head, and you said, I'm playing Indian casino. I think I couldn't do that today.

[Bill Maher]

Why don't you do a Western? It'd be great to do a Western.

[Sean Penn]

Great to do a Western.

[Bill Maher]

It would be.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

Westerns are great.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

I mean, I just watched Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah.

[Bill Maher]

You know it.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, of course.

[Bill Maher]

What a. What a work.

[Sean Penn]

Well, he was a slamming director. I mean, he was so inventive and, you know, even. And the people that he like, who wrote for me with the most score.

[Bill Maher]

Yeah.

[Sean Penn]

And he did it in such an eccentric way that had never been done in a Western before. And all of those things were revolutionary. Moroni wrote the. There's a piece of Gabriel's Elbow that brought him that. But it's, I think, the most beautiful piece of music.

[Bill Maher]

The score for Once Upon a Time in America. His other one.

[Sean Penn]

Yeah, he's. He was great.

[Bill Maher]

All right. Thank you for coming.

[Sean Penn]

You bet. And thank you.

[Bill Maher]

You're wearing a patched up sneaker. Clean. Got three.

[Sean Penn]

These are out of the way, wash. But all my stuff from. I do a lot of woodwork and.

[Bill Maher]

Epoxy work, like three Oscars. It's so un.

[Sean Penn]

Am I helping you down? Are you helping?

[Bill Maher]

No, no. McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag. Dip it in your mclurry. Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's hi, I'm Richard.

[Unknown]

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[Bill Maher]

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