On this episode Bill hangs out with author-podcaster Lewis Howes for a free-wheeling chat about life choices and staying sane. They swap stories on moving to L.A., falling in (and out of) love, and how childhood baggage can push you toward self-improvement—or self-destruction. Bill explains why he’s happily child-free and “married to the job,” while Lewis talks about healing old trauma without drugs or alcohol. They poke at big questions—meds vs. mind-body fixes, meat vs. veggies, woke kids vs. baffled parents—and laugh over a possible 98-year-old tortoise adoption, and Bill’s headline-grabbing dinner with Trump. Mostly, it’s two guys comparing notes on how to stay curious, healthy-ish, and kind of normal in a crazy world. Save time hiring with ZipIntro at https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random Get 15% off OneSkin with the code RANDOM at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod #ad Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://www.trueclassic.com/random ! #trueclassicpod #ad Go to https://www.ffrf.us/freedom or text "CLUB" to 511511 and become a member today Go to https://OmahaSteaks.com and order the Built for the Grill Pack with 16 FREE smash burgers. Minimum purchase may apply. See site for details. A big thanks to our advertiser, Omaha Steaks! Follow Club Random on IG: @ClubRandomPodcast Follow Bill on IG: @BillMaher Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Watch Club Random on YouTube: https://bit.ly/ClubRandomYouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What does Lewis Howes think about moving to L.A.?
How are you, man? Thanks for having me. How are you? It's an awesome spot. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Nice to meet you. Great to meet you.
Well, that's a great space. It is a great space. I tell you, I thought about five years ago during the, we had fires, horrible fires here, and it blocked out the sun for a week. And I actually thought about moving to Miami. Hmm. And then I stopped being super high, and I realized, first of all, I'm just too dug in, too old to move.
If I moved anywhere, I'd always feel like, when am I going to go home? And California, I'm going down with the ship. You know what I mean? It's got its bad shit, but you're right. It's a great spot, and I'm never going to find a place where I'm more comfortable or This particular place has such a vibe to it. I'd never find a place like that. Where do you live? In Studio City.
Have you always been out here? 13 years ago I moved out here. Yeah, from Ohio.
Yeah. And why did you come to LA? Why do you need to be here? Well, I originally came for a girl I was dating that didn't work out. And then I ended up staying and it worked out. Yeah. I didn't want to be in LA. I never wanted to live in LA. I moved to New York for like a year and a half after college days. And I loved the energy in New York for whatever reason.
Maybe it was because I was in my late 20s. But then the first year here, I thought it was kind of more superficial and less real. But then I met my people and I met, you know, the communities I was involved in. And I was like, oh, this is awesome.
New York is, I always used to say, you know, at least we're honest about being phony. New York, you know, please. I mean, yes. You lived there, right? Twice. Yeah. And I'm from the area. You know, I lived across the river. We were New York-centric. My father worked at the center of Manhattan every day. We were just, you know, some New York teams, New York attitude.
That's why I get along well with East Coast people.
Mm-hmm.
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Chapter 2: How does childhood impact adult relationships?
You've got to be kidding.
Yeah. Yeah, she's great. Well, I'm sure you married her. That's awesome. So two months, and they said it wouldn't last. You know, two months.
It's still going.
It's still going strong.
Cheers to that, right? Unbelievable.
There you go. Well, did you always want to get married, or did you just meet somebody?
I was terrified of marriage for a long time, probably because I grew up with my parents We're always, you know, it felt like they were always fighting and they were stressed out and I was the youngest of four and it just felt like there wasn't a good model of marriage love. It was like, seemed like stress and chaos. It's one of the reasons why I left home at 13. What did they fight about?
Money, stress, who knows? I was also young, so no one would tell me what was going on.
They've studied this. And the number one thing people fight about, and there's not a close second, is money. Yeah. You'd think it would be, you know, fucking, you know, you don't fuck.
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Chapter 3: What are the major issues people argue about in relationships?
Right.
Because, again, you are accessing. You're hallucinating. Yeah. You're accessing a kind of delirium. Uh-huh. I ain't going to do that. I remember coming down from taking speed in college and you couldn't get to sleep for at least, it was just terrible. But drugs, Aldous Huxley wrote a book called The Doors of Perception. That's where the rock group The Doors got their name.
And that was his metaphor for it. This is a door to perception that you can't otherwise get. I mean, I'm not trying to, well, it sounds like I am trying to convince you to do this, but I'm really not. But I'm just interested if you're never curious about seeing that part of your head.
I've never had a desire. I mean, maybe I thought about what would that look like, but I... You think you know everything? No, I don't know everything. And I think that's why I keep learning and keep trying to grow. But I feel like... When I was eight years old, my brother went to prison for selling drugs to an undercover cop. And I read that you got by in college by selling pot. Pot, yeah.
Well, we had whatever our dealer had.
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Chapter 4: How can we improve emotional intelligence?
Exactly.
Let's put it that way.
And it's kind of helped you get by.
Also, my first couple of years living in New York in comedy, I was a pot dealer.
There you go. And he got in a sting with an undercover cop, and it sent him six to 25 years in prison. So I was an eight year old. I was the youngest of four. He was 11 years older than me. He was 18, 19 when he went in. He got out in four and a half years on good behavior, but it was the war against drugs in the nineties. It was the whole thing. And it was devastating for our family.
It was like crippling for our family. And it's what caused a lot of pain, a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, just, you know, it was a lot. And that led to, you know, I saw that early on what drugs can do with the destruction of a family. But-
I mean, you could say I saw a fire and saw what that destruction can do. And so I'm never going to use fire. And of course you want to use fire for certain things.
I also think that, you know, for me, I've just learned that drugs or an alcohol are a toxin or are a poison. And it's like, as an athlete growing up, my whole vision was sports because school was, I was horrible in. And I was like, oh, guys are getting drunk on the weekend. And then on Monday practice, they're slower. This is an edge.
So it wasn't like I wasn't exploring, like maybe I'd go do this or maybe check this out. But I was like, oh, this is going to slow me down or hurt me with my skill set. Maybe with you as a creative writer or a comedian or, you know, it's like opening and expanding your capabilities. But I was like, this is going to hurt me. Well, there's also performance enhancing drugs. which I've never done.
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Chapter 5: What is the role of drugs and alcohol in self-discovery?
And I was just like, I couldn't live with myself knowing if I would have done it, like illegally, based on society's terms and based on where sports was at. I was just like, I can't do it. You dodged a bullet, man.
Because if you had played in the NFL, you'd be broken now. Your body would be hit by a train.
I played arena football for one year and I broke my wrist and had to have surgery. It's just like so physically demanding.
Demanding is a kind word for it. It's just punishing.
It's a train wreck every day.
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Chapter 6: How does fasting affect mental clarity?
Destroying you, yeah.
It was a blessing. It ended after a year, but I got to live a dream and pursue that.
experience it but but you must feel a tremendous responsibility to people who like can't afford to shrink or you know they know i'm a best friend and they're like what should i do i was like well what would jesus do and then you right after jesus or you know well i don't think of myself as that
Well, you're very successful in the industry of telling people what the fuck to do that, you know, you'd think it would just... The responsibility would be high.
Well, for me, the reason I started my show, it's been every week for 12 years. It's called The School of Greatness. The reason I started it, I didn't call it The Lewis Howe Show because I knew I was getting into a world of expertise around personal development, growth, health, wellness, mindset, therapy. money, all these topics. And I was like, I don't know any of this.
I know a little bit of a lot, but I really am not the expert at anything. Let me go find these experts and elevate those voices. So that's been, but by doing it over 12 years, you pick it up, you learn, you grow, you know.
Yeah, you immerse yourself. It's the old 10,000 hours thing, you know. You've spent 10,000 hours or whatever the number is with the experts and the people. And so-
And then I've made a ton of mistakes and I've implemented how to overcome it.
What do you do when the experts disagree with each other?
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Chapter 7: What can we learn from the dinner with Trump?
Because it's not about this bullshit. The first four commandments in the Bible are all about God's ego. Atheists don't give a shit about this. We don't care about praying to other gods and this nonsense. And, oh, God, don't let them hear you praying in the other room. Hey, you got another god in there? Bitch. Fucking. Okay. Okay. you know,
But why be ethical if you're an atheist?
Because if you're absent all the bullshit and the spiritual shit and the nonsense where you're really invested in who is the God and how we worship him and your wisdom comes from books that were written 2,000 years ago that don't even condemn slavery, if that's where your wisdom comes from, yes, your morality is going to be fucked up. Mine isn't because it doesn't come from books like that.
It just comes from logic.
Where do you get logic from if it doesn't come from wisdom of the past? No, just say wisdom of the past in general.
It's a priori. It's just from living life. It's just from what makes logical sense.
But why live an integrous life at all? Why not just, I'm going to do what I want to do and say what I want to say and live my life and I don't care what people think?
Well, I mean, you can, first of all. you can likely get arrested for doing the things that that would lead you to do. I mean, not always. You could get away with being a serial killer. They have. Usually they find them after a while. Now they never really have them anymore because the forensics are so great. That's pretty good. That they really have, it's a shame.
Please, give to the Serial Killer Foundation. Give whatever you can, because there are so many serial killers who'd like to be doing it, but they just can't do it anymore.
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Chapter 8: How do we balance ethics without religious belief?
Yeah. Well, Obama, who is my basically favorite president, but he was not very helpful as far as like he never did my show when he did every other show. Why not? Well, I had to go on the air and beg him on my 60th birthday. in his eighth year in office and shame him into it, basically. He did. And he finally did. But, you know, it was at the White House. It was in the interview room.
It wasn't fun. It wasn't a real... Yeah, it wasn't in front of an audience. I mean, it could have been fun and funny if he came and did my show in the studio like he did many other shows. But he must have had someone around him saying, you know, I'm a very dangerous person, Lewis. That's the thing. I'm a dangerous person who nobody can trust.
Because I might tell the truth about something or ask a hard question. So they avoided me for all that time. So you're right. And I said that in the piece when I did it about, and I know liberals, again, they don't like the truth, but that's the truth. It's like, as far as just feeling free to just speak exactly how I feel, yes, I felt freer to do that with Trump than Obama or Clinton.
And that's emblematic of the way, the two parties have kind of switched as far as which one has the stick up their ass. Now, this doesn't say that the Democrats don't have better policy ideas. They do. But just on that level, and people vote on this level all the time, like it used to be when I started in the 90s on that show, Politically Incorrect, it was always the Pat Robertsons and the
And the Reagans and these kind of people who had to stick up their ass, the moral majority and the Jerry Falwells. And then it switched. And the people with the stick up their ass became the left. They were the ones who were the police on language and the police on how dare you not. And so- And you're all not free speech.
Trump is a kind of, I'm sorry, but in person, he's definitely the kind of guy You know, you just feel like you can say anything and you don't have to, like, censor it. And I didn't. I didn't. Would he let you interview him here or on another show? He definitely wouldn't here because I smoke pot. And he's just like you. He had a brother. He's never been drunk, right?
He's never had a drink because also a brother.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Also a brother. The brother died of alcoholism.
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