welcome I’m Lee Cowen and this is Here Comes the Sun a closer look at some of the people places and things we bring
you every weekend on Sunday morning on this special edition we feature interviews and exclusive excerpts from
our sitd Downs with three celebr ated talk show hosts we begin with Bill
Bill Maher
Maher Bill Maher he says he aims to keep it real on his long-running HBO show and
he’s okay if that offends people in the process Chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa spoke with
bar about booking his sometimes controversial guests can you make an
audience laugh and think at the same time totally of course I don’t
understand there’s no cameras at the Supreme Court I don’t get this you can film everything in America you can barely go to the washroom on a plane
without it being filmed the great thing about laughter is that it’s
involuntary so if you laugh at something something in you tells you that’s true
that must be true I laughed at it maybe I wasn’t supposed to a study of eight developed countries found that us
students were dead last in math skills but number one in confidence in math
skills even though they suck at it yes we’re number one in thinking
we’re number one if you catch yourself laughing at something Bill Mah has said
lately on HBO’s real time his Friday night perge for the past 21 years just
be careful next time the joke could be on you how long you’ve been you’ve been
doing this for so long this interview it does seem it does seem like it nobody is spared Bill Mars humor political TV is
full of groans and eye rolls and or as he sees it his truth telling not on the
right if you’re going to turn over your party to a foreign power at least pick the right one Russia are you kidding
it’s like the Republicans looked over all the companies they could merge with and pick
Sears nor on the left you call yourself the resistance then fight Behind Enemy
Lines that’s what a resistance does that’s the difference between blowing up a tank and tweeting about it get out of
your Echo chamber and infiltrate theirs what is the through line through
everything you write and everything you say uh keep it real you know don’t be
tribal don’t say something just because that’s going to make the audience of on
side applaud or boo practical Solutions as opposed to
too ideological and uh don’t pull a punch we
have a great show the 68-year-old Mah has been swinging at Targets high and low his entire career taking his own
share of knocks along the way but he’s still gladly courts controversy the
right response to speech you don’t like is more speech not the lazy cowardly response of canceling people that
attitude explains the title of his book it’s compiled from years of Mars commentary on real time I wanted to see
if the world had changed or I had changed more I was Excavating reading over all these editorials from years and
years and years and I wanted to find that answer I speak for the normies you know I I speak for that I think vast
middle that is tired of the partisanship um I don’t want to hate
half the country and I don’t hate half the country you write a lot of throughout this book that the left
irritates you frustrates you at stimes but the right often alarms you yes they’re very alarming they’re
extremely alarming more alarming what do you say to your critics though who say
then you should just focus on them Bill if they’re more alarming to you than the left then why not Shine the spotlight on
them only the truth isn’t one-sided like that the Democrats constantly are U
running against Trump with the idea you people out there couldn’t
possibly vote for for this guy and and people are saying watch me hold my beer
watch me to vote for him again instead of just saying oh he’s Li we know he’s a liar
he’s Donald Trump he can’t help himself he’s crazy I mean I think literally
crazy I think there’s a a kind of a level of malignant narcissism which is
not just a personality Quirk it’s diagnosable and he suffers from it Trump
has made over 8,000 false or misleading statements as president nothing like
this has ever happened before if you had him on real time what would you ask him would you please go away have you
asked him to come on of course we’ve asked everybody I mean of that stature
um he knows he has an open invitation to come on but I don’t think he really
hates me because I think he this the amount of times that he goes
after me he watches the show accidentally it’s always accidentally he
watches it accidentally every week it’s amazing in fact conservatives don’t shy away from real time he is the former
Attorney General wow under President George HW Bush and Donald Trump Bill bar is over
here when Bill bar came on your show what did some of your Democratic friends say yeah this is exactly what I hate
about this country how dare you how dare you platform form sum the way I see it
we we are moving becoming a much more secular society just 55 but that’s by
able they should be able so you’re going to have to talk to
people and maybe you’ll find out that they’re not the monsters you think they are I mean do I apologize for Bill Bar’s
um I thought horrible behavior when the when the Muer report came out and he
basically uh lied about it I don’t but
look this is what I call a good as it gets Republican he came out and said Trump
lost the election that’s the main thing in the Republican party right now do you
believe elections count only if you win as good as it gets could well be Mar’s
motto for politics I certainly my quarrels with the left and for life to
me these are probably the good old days it could get a lot worse not wishing for what could be but recognizing what he
sees is real and taking you on if you’re not you say you’re cynical about
politics don’t flatter yourself cynical comes when you know too much you on the
other hand haven’t bothered to learn anything [Applause]
and now here’s an exclusive extended interview from Robert Costa’s chat with Bill Mah something you can only see
right here on here comes the sun you’re not just a comedian I mean whole culture kind of looks to people on TV two Comics
four political guidance it’s almost how the whole country seems to function now I feel like most of the other ones
they’re playing to just a amen choir that’s already there there’s saying
something to make the people go yes absolutely that’s not what I’m doing I’m saying things that very often upset
people or just at least make them think just consider the other side consider
this um sometimes these editorials start out one way and some of the people be
like yeah that’s and then halfway through it’s like oh wait what’s he saying now yeah because I’m I’m
presenting the other side it’s one thing I hate about the media these days is I never feel like I get the full story
from anybody you’re always just presenting the things that you want me to hear to make you be on your side in
this issue it’s always about the narrative never about the truth I have to read things from all over the
Spectrum to get the full story well I’m trying to Buck that Trend
Biden allies they keep saying this election is about democracy you buy that argument yes well who was the one who
kept saying Trump is never going to leave and everyone was laughing at that would be me for years and so many
Republicans I could play the tapes who were on the show and I would present that with them and they bill you smoked
too much pot no apparently I smoked just the right amount of pot because I had that right so um just because it didn’t
happen in 2020 uh doesn’t mean it won’t happen in 2024 I mean very often there’s a dress
rehearsal for something horrific and Trump learned from 2020 he thought he
could rely on certain Republicans just because they were Republicans that’s the phone call to Georgia can you find me
11,000 votes and what we found out is that there are a lot of Republicans who
are Patriots and they’re not trumpers I mean there’s too many who are and who don’t
understand what democracy is anymore uh and will back Trump no matter what he says or does and that’s a cult but
there’s also ones like that rasenberger guy in Georgia who did the right thing and said look I voted for you Mr
President I wanted you to win but we can count here in Georgia we did it you lost
be a man get over it you say in the book people shouldn’t go to college these days I was way ahead on that one
Democrats have this idea that college solves everything that if it could just get everybody to be
more sitting in a classroom looking at a Blackboard and taking notes things would just be better in this country and it’s
not true it wasn’t true and it’s ever less true the more crazy colleges become
instead of trying to get everybody to go into college which is just a big scam with the loans and the money uh just
make College less necessary which it is for almost every job it’s just not that
necessary do you have to go to medical school yes of course law school but for most things it’s just a it’s a scam it’s
a tick get to the middle class if you look at the statistics the people have a college degree they just make a lot more
money what do you make of the generational divide in this country a lot of older people might hear what you say not along younger people go you just
don’t get it well some of the some of the younger Democrats yeah I mean that to me that’s
one of the funniest chapters that I enjoyed putting together the most was the one on Generations Generations is
just a funny subject it always has been for comedians I mean of course everybody
gets older and they think the young people are crazy it’s a one of again one of those things you have to examine look
hard at yourself do I look at this thing and not like it because I’m older and
it’s just newer or is it actually stupid sometimes new is better and sometimes
new is just new for the sake of being new you know whoopy Goldberg from well
Whoopi Goldberg
just about everywhere the co-host of ABC’s The View for the last 16 years sat
down with our Seth Dome to discuss her career and a recent
Memoir whoopy Goldberg has been in the spotlight for four decades who give us
that smile ah yeah this is here we go this is this is it this is it this is
everything what she craves today is this quiet spot in the sun lots of people
just need someplace they can go and just she’s found a vacation home and
Tranquility on the Italian island of Sardinia the more I wrote about my mom I
thought I would have loved to have given this to her same with my brother she’s
been thinking a lot about her mother Emma and brother Clyde who both passed away their subjects of her new Memoir
which is out this week in the book you paint your child Hood as pretty idic
here and it was I was very lucky before taking the name whoopy
Goldberg she was Karen Johnson growing up in this housing project in New York
City’s Chelsea neighborhood for me it was a great time and to be able to have
the freedom with a mother who really just said listen you’re going
to have to figure some of this out for yourself I can’t give you all the answ
her mom was a teacher here and when the young Karen Johnson dropped out of school she made a PCT with her mom to
use the city’s museums and libraries to keep learning you know a lot of folks
had two parents I only had one and that parent acted like 900 people you know
she never made it about what we didn’t have she made it about what we did have
and how to celebrate that like they said like what’s the problem whoopy Goldberg started acting on stage got to Broadway
and I’m like whoa and landed an Oscar nomination for her first major film
role until you do right by me everything you think about is going to
CR for a period it said she became the highest paid actress in
Hollywood ANC why you don’t have any rhythm
she’d also see her mom had a talent for acting like when Marlon Brando stopped
by my mother would turn into uh the other Emma
she came in and I and I got up specifically to say as she’s coming towards us don’t be freaked out that is
M and brandle sitting on the couch but I could so all I could say was hey Ma come
meet Marlon Brando who came to visit isn’t us and
she just went like this Mr Brando it was just like wait wait who are
you after making more than 100 films here there are lots of places to sit
come even in Italy Hollywood is never far Patrick suy wanted you yeah in ghost
ghost yeah it’s funny this particular part of the peninsula reminds
me of him Molly you’re in danger now you can’t just blurt it out like that and quit moving around will you cuz starting
to make me dizzy I just tell her in my own way Molly you endanger girl Goldberg won an
Oscar for the supporting role she played as a psychic in ghost he knows where he
lives write it down he wants you to write it down you write it down I ain’t no damn secretary just do it add to that
two Emy gold a Grammy and a Tony making her one
of just about 20 people with egot status her book Chronicles the start of her
career and does not hold back detailing problems with drugs going on welfare and
learning marriage is not for her after three tries are you still in love with the
idea of being in love or that’s just gone I think other people seem to
Sparkle when they’re in love and I like to see that but for me it’s like I
Sparkle when I’m not in love which is kind of okay you know and the older I
get the happier I am and so just in case and I’m directing this to folks who may
want to write me on the internet here’s the deal I know how cute I am so you don’t
have to tell me I’m not attractive enough to have a boyfriend because shockingly
many are you always as confident as you seem you know I’m I’m very
confident but I’m also confident in the fact that I make gigantic mistakes and
step in lots of poo along the way on the talk show she’s co-hosted for
16 years well as it turns out there are a lot of major issues happening Goldberg
made a remark about the Holocaust which she says was misunderstood she
apologized but ABC suspended her for 2 weeks in 2022 when you look back at that pooca
comment on The View the one that you were suspended for do you regret
that I’m in a quandry at how to answer that
because people are waiting for me to say something I said what I had to say they
suspended me I respected what they said I respected everybody’s opinion um and if anyone’s ever really
interested in it in its entirety they can look it up but I I
will not uh put myself in that position again
she’s been a longtime Advocate on a range of issues often using the show as
a platform the whole idea of some man deciding what happens with my body is so
uphor to me yeah you can see now you’re on a peninsula there’s water on that side there’s water on this around it
here in Sardinia she can detach from the world she Motors through audio books has
about 9,000 of them and sometimes just sits my gosh how do you ever leave very
reluctantly she dreams of finding a way to spend six months a year in
Sardinia I’m ready to not be scrutinized quite as as tightly as I am
and I think the further away I get from from opinion television easier it
might be for a while at 68 years old she’s a great grandmother whoopy
Goldberg’s trailblazing Journey has been one of reinvention and determination I’m
a singular kind of person I think she says she was well equipped starting with
those lessons from her mom in that two-bedroom apartment in New York it makes her perch here all the
more impressive it’s the end of a of a
peninsula I mean I come from the projects I got a peninsula this is a
long way from Chelsea this is a long way from
chelse here’s an exclusive excerpt from Seth Do’s conversation with whoopy
Goldberg why did you want to write this book I think I feel like I had to I I
feel like I needed [Music] to connect to my family cuz
really it was the three of us and with them being gone I wasn’t really sure of
who I was in my place in my skin anymore because it was always been the three of
us I’ve never KN never knew life without the two of them it’s part Memoir it’s
part Love Letter to them yeah it’s part actually as as ketchy as I get about the
public it’s also a love letter to the public because I people want to know I never understood why they wanted to know
things and I just thought okay so here’s here’s what I can tell you and I can tell you now because my mom mom’s not
here and my brother’s not here and this is who we were and this is how I got to be me and you know if you’re not happy
with it it’s put the book down you know in New York you told us I needed people
to know more than they did about me yeah and people have made up their minds about what they think they know yeah
what do you mean by that well people you know we were in Chelsea people always say oh you know you grew up poor and
what it’s like well no Chelsea wasn’t a ghetto was never a ghetto people assume
because you’re black you come from this area or this was your experience and it
wasn’t my experience my experience was lots of love and you know figure it out
only about 19 people in the world have achieved this egot status it shows
Mastery in a in a craft and also real range well I
think you know we from the beginning of my career I’ve always done stuff that I
wanted to do so I got my grammy for uh
my show I think the the recording of my Broadway show the uh Tony we got Tom and
I got uh because we were two of the producers of Thoroughly Modern Millie
the Emmy the Emmy for for the had McDaniel documentary I did and for the
view and then the Oscar well ghost yes when you you’ve done something like 150
films do you have any idea maybe probably that’s a lot it’s well it’s not when you look at really when you look at
the breadth of a career as as it turns out I’ve been here for a while you know
it doesn’t feel like it it still feels like I’m kind of fresh and new and figuring it out do you beat yourself up
very rarely but I do I do about what types of things just if I’ve been
thoughtless or or you know I I’ve not kept myself on the on the path that I
want to be on like I I try to remember well the path is treat people the way you want to be
treated try to be nice to the people that you’re not sure you like just try to be
better Ken Jennings you’ve living a quiet Life as a computer programmer husband and father when he took the test
“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings
that would change his life the Jeopardy contestant test the rest as they say
it’s history Luke Burbank L A Q&A about how Jennings went from just an average
guy in Utah to Jeopardy champion and
host the category is famous Jennings after being expelled from Jamaica in
1716 this Privateer became the unofficial governor of the pirate Republic of NASA
oh I don’t know this it’s one of my pirate forefathers named Jennings Ken Jennings might not know his
trivia quite like he used to this is the ravages of time we’re witnessing this is like watching me turn to dust and blow
away in a chill wind Ken Jennings you are the champion for me the
greatest for of all time but that’s okay if he’s little rusty because these days
Jennings gets to see all the answers long before he heads out on stage as the now host of his favorite TV show ever
it’s kind of the plot of Charlie in the Chocolate Factory I guess a retiring leader of a franchise takes you know
five little boys and girls to see which one of them really loves his chocolate the most and I was the one that didn’t
get sucked up the pipe or whatever Alex T his Wonka longtime and legendary host
Alex tbec who guided the show for decades Jeopardy a show that turns 60
this year as a young Mormon kid living in Korea Jennings says watching Armed
Forces television was his favorite way to pass the time and his favorite thing to watch game shows of course I think it
was actually the gameplay itself it was a version of the world with well-defined rules where you could watch a few of
them and understand the format and as a kid dealing with a confusing World on
game shows game shows are different you know questions get answered almost immediately you know for a right answer there’s a nice little ping for a wrong
answer there’s an immediate Buzz it’s not like life which is messy game shows are are neat and fun and easy
in college instead of following his dreams of writing he opted to become what he calls a bad computer programmer
figuring it was the safe Choice he married his sweetheart Mindy started a
family and thought that’s how his life would go hi everyone I’m Alex tbec and welcome to the Jeopardy contestant exam
when on a whim he took the Jeopardy contestant exam when I got the call A year later saying hey we’d like to have
you on in 3 weeks I freaked out I started watching the show very intensely standing up behind my lazy boy at home
pretending it was a Podium mashing my thumb up and down on a like a Fisher Price plastic toy i’ had stolen from our
18-month-old um just pretending it was a buzzer my wife would keep score and tell me how I was doing it was kind of a
Rocky training montage a software engineer from Salt Lake City Utah Ken
Jennings to this day Jennings says nothing compares to the nerves he felt
under the lights and on camera that first time he stepped on stage as a contestant but then something amazing
happened in that first game I found that like years of listening to the clipped rhythms of Alex dreck really did help
like watching the show standing up with my fake buzzer helped I I kind of had the timing right away Julia what is New
Zealand good in that first game the score was close and it all came down
final and I remember Alex accepting my response it was about the Sydney Olympics who is
Marian Jones and I had just written down who is Jones and Alex pauses for a second like o is that enough is he just
guessing a last name and so Alex looks to the judges and he gets the high sign and he says that’s correct and I realize
I’m going to be a Jeopardy champion for the rest of my life and it was just an immediate rush of euphoria that’s hard
to explain like as good as the birth of my kids I I can say that now that they’re you know teens and out of the
house it was just an amazing moment Alex would just wait and if they didn’t know it he would be like nope that microsc
decision led to 74 straight victories $2.5 million game show immortality and
eventually and improbably the job of Jeopardy most so I am standing at you
might even say an altar of sorts that many of us trivia nerds have thought about a lot this is the the light pen
the telestrator where you can write down your your name and your final Jeopardy response why does it seem that so many
highly intelligent people have such questionable handwriting on this show is it something to do with the device the
pen got better this is much nicer than the version I was trying to write with which I think had a chord back in 2004
it’s funny I’m getting flashback just by being here it’s almost like there are two Jeopardy sets for me you know there
there was this one back here and there’s like just a Chasm between you and Alex Jennings will admit to one possible
Advantage he might have in the job his empathy for players because he’s been
there himself still Alex tbec looms large if I was ever at Sea I would just
think what would Alex do here and often it was to do less he had this amazing
minimal kind of light touch where he never wanted the focus to be on himself which is such an unusual beautiful thing
in Show Business I kind of feel like even now I I want to be Alex tbec when I grow up because nobody’s ever going to
do that job as well as he did it which brings us back to our game and
a mistake I made earlier which the judges caught at the top of our story I said they give Jennings the answers
before the game but of course that’s incorrect they give him the questions so
where is exactly did that come from well from Jeopardy Creator MV Griffin’s then
wife julan The Story Goes yes so mvin julan on a plane coming back from vacation and he’s trying to come up with
game show ideas and she says well just do one of those like quiz shows like they used to have and he said honey we
can’t do those anymore those were all crooked they were they were giving the players the answers and she thinks about it and she says well that’s what you
should do you should just give them the answer and they’ll come up with the question and he says what do you mean and she says you know
5,280 ft and he says what is a mile and that’s the birth of Jeopardy right there
the birth of a TV quiz show but more importantly says Jennings the birth of
something that in a small way has helped hold us Americans together at least for
30 minutes a night and there’s nothing trivial about that the Great and the odd
thing about Jeopardy is it’s kind of universally popular old people like Jeopardy young people like Jeopardy red
States blue States it’s bizarrely Universal America still agrees that there’s like a half hour every day where
facts do matter and we are allowed to adjudicate things as right or wrong actually based on science and history
and I do think that’s an important bwork again an extended talk between
Luke Burbank and Ken Jennings something you can only see right here on here comes the sun how big of a part of your
life now as the host of Jeopardy is people coming up to you and asking you
you know giving you answers in the form of a question is that a constant thing for you now people do enjoy that I feel
like as a contestant on the show I would get people coming up to me on the street with very hard trivia questions you know
so there’d always be some young gunfighter that wanted to stump me but now it’s much more uh nitpicking it’s
kind of letters to the editor about Jeopardy you know dear Ken uh you need to look more into the the actual
Canadian pronunciation of this or why do you always say that’s him instead of that’s he my second grade teacher so
this is now my life being being corrected by millions of Jeopardy viewers and it’s it’s such a pleasure yeah how have you figured out how to
sort of appease people who have thoughts and comments and requests like that I
mean you just have to understand what Jeopardy means to its audience it’s really a very flattering thing you know there’s not a lot of shows that get that
kind of attention because it’s not even a quiz show anymore it’s it’s a cultural institution you know it’s Jeopardy it’s
almost like it’s a public utility you know your house has to be hooked up to water and gas and Jeopardy every night
at 7 o’clock or you know mom’s going to freak out and We Know It Means A Lot in
the lives of our viewers it’s part of the rhythm of their day and we want to
honor the legacy of the show and also kind of the sense of familiarity and ritual that they get out of it who are
the kinds of folks that come up to you in the airport or walking down the street like who’s a typical Jeopardy
viewer there’s really no stereotype uh it’ll be yesterday on my
flight you know the flight attendant kind of shyly at the end is like I’m a big fan of Jeopardy my mom loves you you
know but I’ll also be just walking across the street in New York and somebody will be like hey Jeopardy you
know you realize that it’s uh it’s one of the last things in our culture that’s
monolithic that everybody watches you know before things got divided into these little little niches and silos
it’s still a cultural reference we all have when you’re on a flight now is it much more likely that you will get recognized as the host of Jeopardy than
you would have as the guy who’s really good at Jeopardy there’s been a real uptick the thing I noticed that I thought would never change is people
have actually started saying stuff like I’ll take dumb political moves for $500
Ken because I thought that would be I’ll take dumb political moves for $500 Alex
for the rest of our lives and it usually is but occasionally I’ll hear you know
Ken Jennings and I’ll I’ll think that’s really weird to go from being you know
just kind of a fun part of Jeopardy a little onlooker a single Lego in in the Jeopardy Universe um to suddenly
becoming uh the face of it it’s uh I mean it’s a it’s a shock and it’s an
adjustment but it’s such a pleasant one because the show always meant so much to me is there a a real
intentional kind of behind the scenes effort to make sure that the show stays essentially apolitical
yeah uh in particular that meant a lot to Alex tbec I think the idea that you know one of the reasons why he was kind
of a bit of a cipher for many years is because he enjoyed the fact that he was not associated with any particular
ideology he was the face of Jeopardy the face of these faintly old-fashioned Virtues Of of knowledge and Cultural
Literacy and fair play and uh and nobody was troubled with how he voted or which
cable channel he watched and that’s just hard to recapture today that was what made Alex one of the many things that
made him hard to replace is uh you know we now know what people think about the country how do you like practice for for
host your first time out hosting did they run you through a bunch of kind of mock games and stuff there actually was
some dress rehearsal they had they had the writers of the show pretend to be contestants and they would start out
being well-mannered contestants so that I could just kind of get into the rhythm of it uh and then they would start to
push the envelope a little and do subtle wrong things to try to see if I would do
the right thing because the host of Jeopardy has to wear a lot of hats at once you know you are you’re trying to
be a perfect narrator for the show and a genial face of it but you’re also a referee adjudicating the game you’re
trying to shape the pace of it a bit like a Orchestra conductor you’re trying to frame it the the story of the game
the accounts of the game for a home audience as if you’re a play-by-play announcer you know you’re trying to do all these things at once and Alex made
it look easy so I kind of assumed yeah you know you just have to do do what
Alex did but it turns out he was just incredibly able and smooth and graceful at a very hard job does it uh still feel
kind of unreal to you at times almost every day like I I never want it to become old hat because I still remember
that sense of awe of walking on that stage for the first time and thinking this is this is jeopardy I’ve been
watching this at home for 20 years and now I get to I get to be part of it for a minute and you know when I hear Johnny
say my name that’s that’s hallucinatory by the way to hear to hear Johnny Gilbert uh you still expect to hear Alex
tbec every day I expect to hear him say the host of Jeopardy Alex tbec but but he says my name and I have to walk out
there and I guess largely it’s an honor you know because the history of the show means a lot to me and I know firsthand
from talking to viewers how much it means to them I really I I can’t just be a Jeopardy kibitzer on the sidelines you
know I’m I really want the show to succeed and I really wanted to have the same profile it had during Alex’s years
and I take that very seriously I’m Lee Owen thanks for joining us we’ll see you right here next
time and Here Comes the Sun
