The Bill Simmons Podcast - The NBA’s Next Generation With Wosny Lambre, Vaccine Hesitancy With Derek Thompson, and Sharon Stone’s First Appearance

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Wosny Lambre to discuss the new generation of NBA stars, fans of teams vs. fans of players, favorite and least favorite NBA players, and more (2:45). Then Bill talks with The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson about the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine rollout, American vaccine hesitancy, returning to pre-COVID-19 normalcy, the CDC, and more (51:00). Finally Bill talks with legendary actress-producer Sharon Stone about her new book, 'The Beauty of Living Twice'; some of her past films including 'Basic Instinct,' 'Total Recall,' 'The Specialist,' and 'Casino'; working with Hollywood royalty like Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martin Scorsese, and Michael Douglas; making documentary films; and more (1:26:00). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Sharon Stone, Wosny Lambre, Derek Thompson Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Must be legal drinking age. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com as well as The Ringer Podcast Network. New rewatchables went up. Lethal Weapon 2. New podcast launched this week. Shea Serrano and Jinx. Oh yeah.

Shea and Jinx, Brandon Jenkins. It's called No Skips. They're just breaking down some of the iconic hip hop albums one at a time. Download it now. Go to Spotify, download that baby, and you'll get everyone as soon as it's coming. I went on Sports Cards Nonsense with Gio and Jesse on Monday and we broke down all the NBA cards and the NBA playoffs and how they intersect and best bargains and all that stuff.

So you want to hear me talk about basketball cards for an hour. That's the place to do it. Sports Cards Nonsense, our sports cards podcast, which is excellent. Coming up, going to talk to Big Waz, Wazney Lambry, about a lot of basketball stuff. We're going to talk to Derek Thompson from the Atlantic about the vaccination slowdown, we'll call it. And then Sharon Stone, the GOAT, she's coming on too. What a podcast. That's all next. First, Pearl Jam. All right, Big Waz is here, Waz and Glambry. He joined the Ringer last week, and he is a Mets Jets fan,

which is near and dear to a couple people that we have here. But you're a basketball agnostic. This is interesting. This is like a generational thing. You've transcended teams. You root for excellence. You root for players. Explain yourself.

Well, what ends up happening is I'm a hoops fanatic from basically five years old, six years old. Right. And it's because of Michael Jordan and Nike and Gatorade and all of them propagandizing us to believing that this guy was a god, which he basically was on the basketball court. My first, you know, sports memory is the 93 finals. I was six years old and I remember my older brother and older sister being distraught. And I remember being confused, like, how could anybody root against Michael Jordan? And then I realized, well, they're miserable Knicks fans. So later on, I realized why they were so pissed off at Jordan. But yeah, I was so obsessed with hoops from an early age. And I

wanted to be excellent at hoops and Jordan defined excellence right um you know Ron Harper and and Greg Anthony didn't really inspire that in me as a you know a New York City aspiring point god right yeah yeah I was a Jordan guy I rooted for Jordan when Jordan retired I basically just started liking whatever I felt like was fun to watch. And that was it. But everybody in my life are huge Knicks fans. Well, that was an amazing decision. I mean, some would argue that's probably your smartest decision. Think about all the Knicks pain you avoided. Like it would have been the last 20 years of your life would have sucked.

Well, I compounded that problem by becoming a Mets and a Jets fan. Mike Piazza absolutely is responsible for me becoming a Mets fan because I started watching baseball the summer we got Mike Piazza and I was obsessed with Mike Piazza. So it's his fault that I'm a miserable Mets fan. Andy Chavez, salute to you. And the Jets, it was Keysha johnson uh when he dropped the book and he called wayne cribette the jets mascot i was like who is this dude i need to root for this guy and so i became a jets fan because of keishon johnson just give me the damn ball big tuna the whole thing um neil o'donnell it was like right right as we were getting out of neil o'donnell we bought vinnie testaverti's old ass in,

and he was killing... You know, Vinny Testaverde is partly responsible for why we have instant replay. He scored on a QB sneak against the Seahawks, and it was his helmet that went over the line, not the ball, and everybody was up in arms. But yeah, that was my... That's when I became a Jets fan,

was Keyshawn Johnson, that era. Well, this whole rooting for the player, not the team thing. I didn't really fully notice this. And I was writing about basketball through the 2000s. But when LeBron went to Miami and I went to the first Miami Celtics game in Boston, which it was either the first or second game, I can't remember. And there were just a ton of Miami Heat fans that were wearing LeBron jerseys. And I was like,

my dad and I were like, what the fuck is going on? Where did Miami Heat fans come from? They've been in the league for 20 years. There's no pot. And then we realized like they were basically LeBron fans that just followed into Miami. And I do feel like that is the biggest thing.

Like we talk about all the ramifications from the decision. That's kind of the underrated one. That was the first time fans just moved behind a player and followed that player to wherever he was going to go. And now I just feel like that's the leagues. If you love Durant, you're following him to Brooklyn. And I noticed it with my son. My son really likes LaMelo Ball. He probably likes LaMelo Ball more than the Celtics. I'm not going to get upset about it. He just gravitates toward the players. But you feel fuel that, right? It's not just NBA on NBC on Sundays

where you get to watch the guy once a week. You get to follow these dudes all year round and not just on the court, but social media, all of that stuff. Like I can speak for myself, right? In 2002, I would have been a sophomore in high school when ESPN started propagandizing me about LeBron James, this kid from Akron who as a junior could be the number one pick in the draft. And I myself was a high

school hooper. And like all the kids that was six, eight in high school could barely chew and walk, chew gum and walk at the same time, much less have handle, have hops, have court vision. Like it just, you never saw somebody like that. So as a high school whooper, I'm watching this guy. I'm like, it can't be possible that somebody can be this good and be a high school player. And that's when I sort of fell into the LeBron thing. Right. So like as a kid, I got propagandized into Jordan. And then as a teenager, ESPN just chosen one, all of that stuff. I just

fell right into it and just started following LeBron from then. Yeah. So we're going to talk some generational stuff, but I wonder if you're just a random seven-year-old right now, who would be the easiest player to gravitate toward? And that's one of the reasons we wanted to talk about the generation stuff. We're between generations right now. And you texted me. I was like, what do you want to talk about? And you were like, I want to talk about this new generation that's basically about to grab the league by the balls.

You can feel it potentially happen in this playoffs, but you think like, I wrote some names down, like the Jokic, uh, Luca, Jason Tatum. Uh, you're going down the line.

These are under Jason Tatum. Well, I, I like to, cause he's on my favorite team. I just, I just throw them in there. They had the conference finals last year,

but these 25 and under guys, they do feel like a distinctly different generation than the Curry generation. And whereas like the LeBron and Curry generation, they feel like two different ones, but there's a lot of overlap with the two things. But this for the first time, these playoffs, as we're about to head into them, and I think you and I both see this, this feels like the playoffs where that new generation might grab this season by the ball. So what fascinates you just about that concept?

Well, first of all, you mentioned a decision and I'm not going to be the first one to make this point, but that's kind of like the big bang of this era of the NBA, right? Like everything that

everything that we're doing right now follows after the decision, whether it be what KD did in Brooklyn by, you know, teaming up with Kyrie and getting James Harden over there, or just the sort of 24 hour cycle of NBA coverage. It like the NBA didn't become this 365 sport until the decision, right? I can remember myself being a sort of sports generalist. I was obsessed with college football. I was obsessed with college basketball. I was obsessed with MLB, NFL, et cetera, et cetera.

The decision happened. It was like, no, I'm not paying attention to anything else anymore, but the NBA. This is the only thing I can think about. I remember, you know, ESPN getting clowns for the heat index, but guess what? They made that for me. I was on that every day. I was reading Arnovitz, Windhorse, Michael Wallace, my man, Tom Haberstroh every single day. That happening basically informs everything that we're doing now. And so LeBron has been the focal point of all the drama, all the intrigue in the league, whether it be what he's doing in Miami with, you know, road games in Memphis where fans are like pissed off. And it's like, how are Memphis fans pissed at LeBron?

Like that story was so nuclear. It was it fueled everything. Right. And then he goes back to Cleveland, of course, and it becomes the coming home, blah, blah, blah. And Golden State whoops him in 15. And then in 16, Ian probably comes back and the prodigal son returns and all of this kind of stuff,

delivering for that. And then of course he goes to LA. But in the meantime, Golden State was that thing. They took it from him. And you could tell LeBron felt a way about Golden State becoming the center of the NBA universe. But at the same time-

And Curry, too. And Curry specifically. Curry specifically. Yeah. Curry specifically. But at the same time, Golden and curry became the golden boy yeah curry specifically but at the same time golden state and i know my warriors friends are gonna be mad at me for saying this they undercut themselves with the kd thing because the story became less compelling when it became the inevitability of the warriors right um and so like the story kind of got watered

down and not that people didn't still watch because the Bay Area is so big and the Warriors was still a story. It didn't have that juice that 2016 got. And I think we're recovering from that. The fact that even if whether we're true or not, because people will say, well, that Rocket Series could have went any other way. Perception wise, nobody ever thought the Warriors were going to lose. So it sucked kind of the intrigue out of everything happening in the league. And now that we're out of that, we're coming out of that and we're kind of in the

fog of like, what's the story now? And I think the story is whether Giannis and the rest of these guys are going to finally be able to tell Bron, KD, Steph, alright guys, step aside. We're the ones that are doing this now. Yeah, it's interesting because this probably happens last year if we don't

have the pandemic, right? It's LeBron holding onto the throne basically and the guys from his generation are a tiny bit later the new generation wasn't quite ready yet, but they were ready to at least make their appearance on the big stage but now you have some of these guys

you know, the Murray thing hurts Denver. I think from a big picture standpoint. Yep. Luka feels like he could beat anybody for one round. That's it. Giannis is the one, I guess, from... Giannis and Embiid from the new generation. If we're talking...

So, the generation thing's tough because it can go one of two ways. I tried to sketch it out, trying to figure out if it was just easy to do like 10-year chunks. But to me, like Kobe, Iverson, Garnett, Pierce, Duncan, T-Mac, Allen, Nash, Dirk, that's like a generation. That's like within four drafts, we have this new class of people. And then same thing with like LeBron, Wade, Carmelo, Yao, Howard, CP3. All within three drafts or three and a half

drafts of each other, including Yao. And they all kind of come in and it feels like, all right, the league's starting to change. We're starting to get away from those 90 guys. Then you have that Durant, Russ, Harden, Curry, Love, Derrick Rose, which I guess you could say could be part of the LeBron

generation. Or you could just say they're the own generation. I don't know how to score of the LeBron generation or you could just say they're the own generation like I don't know how to score that LeBron mucks this whole thing up by extending his freaking prime to 18 years right like he's supposed to be cooked he's supposed to be Carmelo coming off the bench if not D Wade sitting on somebody's inside the NBA set right now right but he mucks up the entire conversation by having this ridiculous extended prime, which, by the way, I don't think even LeBron knew he was going to still be able to be this good this late in his career. Because when he went back to Cleveland, the talk was, listen, I'm getting long in the tooth. I'm going to pass

it to Kyrie X, Y, and Z and z like it felt like he genuinely thought that but then he's like still killing people and winning finals MVPs you know two years after even signing with Cleveland and that changes the whole dynamic and of course you know signing with the perfect compliment to what he does in AD uh what also helps extend that prime but I think that's the problem with LeBron is that he defies sort of generations because he's been the focal point since 2007. So Kareem was like that because I had like the Kareem generation, which you could you could really call it an Alcindor generation, Kareem generation. The Alcindor generation comes in back when he was Lou Alcindor. And it's him, Earl Monroe, Wes Unseld,

Spencer Haywood, Tony Archibald, Elvin Hayes, like they're a distinct thing. But then the Kareem generation, when he's now Kareem, and all of a sudden it's Kareem, Doc, Cowans, Maravich, McAdoo, artist Gilmore McGinnis. And that kind of feels like a distinct thing.

And then like Julius has his group where it's like Julius, Moses, Thompson, Gervin, Walton, Westfall, Marcus Johnson. But you go down to where we are now and I do feel like Embiid, Booker, Mitchell, Luka, Simmons, Trae Young, Tate. Are we putting Simmons?

We putting Simmons in there? I'm throwing out the modern youngsters. Simmons, Trae Young, Tatum, Jokic. They feel like kind of a, for lack of a better word, an extended class. Of like, oh, this feels like now an era to me. And even though Embiid was drafted in 2014 and so was Jokic, they didn't really become

what they became until the latter half of the decade. And now it feels like that's the generation that's going to carry this league for better or worse after the previous guys start to get old. Yeah, 100%. And I think this season is the proof of that. When Jokic has been on the floor and Embiid has been on the floor, these have been legitimate MVP level seasons.

And, you know, I was on group chat earlier and I don't want to throw Derrick Rose under the bus, but Jokic's season is not Derek Rose in 2011. This is legitimate MVP level play. Like this guy is playing at a level of some of the greatest bigs in the game. And I think Embiid has actually even been better when he's been on the floor. He's just happened to miss a bunch of games. And so the proof is in the pudding. These guys are playing at dominant MVP level in, you know, Jokic. I think people are talking about, oh, I want to see it in the playoff. I'm sorry. I saw it in the playoffs last year. He put the Clippers up and down that damn court. Two years. He both played both post seasons. He's been awesome. He's like 26 and 14 in the

playoffs. So he's there, you know, Jokic is there. And you mentioned Murray. It's unfortunate what happened with the injury because you know once they traded for gordon and the way that thing was gelling i was like whoa yeah this is gonna be pretty freaking scary in the playoffs as in like they can legitimately beat the lakers and the clippers out west they can beat anybody they play in the finals now that murray got hurt a little bit of luster has been taken off because they don't have really have the perimeter one-on-one creation anymore. Because I don't think Porter Jr. is at that level of playoff one-on-one shot creation. But yeah, Jokic and Embiid are 100% just as good and dominant in the big spots as anybody else. And I think Giannis, even though he is 2013 draft, I think he kind of gets shoehorned with this generation.

Yeah. Versus like the, the generation before was, was Anthony Davis, Dame, Kyrie, Clay, Kawhi,

Paul George, Jimmy Butler, which is basically like in three drafts, you get all those guys. Giannis is in that draft. I don't feel like he's in that. I feel like he's like, I look at this and it's basically Embiid, Jokic, Luca and Giannis is in that draft. I don't feel like he's in that. I feel like he's like, I look at this and it's basically Embiid, Jokic, Luka and Giannis leading the way. And what are those four

guys have in common? Right? None of them are American players. Right. And they're all kind of unicorny in their own way. And the only guy missing is Porzingis who, you know, had bad luck with injuries, but he would have been in there too 100 and yannis why i think you gotta say you gotta extend him out he was playing in the ymca league in greece right like he had a long developmental curve even when he got drafted he was young and the level of competition just wasn't there but his rise you can see every single year he's adding adding adding getting better and better his body is getting more developed into where he is now, you know, a dominant player in the league.

But yeah, I would agree with you. I think Giannis, even though he got drafted at the same time as them, his developmental sort of clock, if you will, started a little bit later, which, you know, which is to be expected when he was playing against a bunch of mechanics in Greece. So I wonder, out of that group, who has the chance to kind of own that generation? So again, if we go Embiid and Giannis and Jokic and Luka

as kind of the highest level, and then you go next level would be the Booker, Mitchell, Tatum, all those dudes. Ultimately, we're going to remember the marquee, the best guys. We're going to remember LeBron and Kareem and Bill Russell. He owned his generation and going down the line. I wonder who would you bet on out of those four that we'll look back 10 years from now? Because my bet would be Luka just because I think he's the safest bet of the four.

Yeah. So for me, if we're not counting injury luck in all of this, because I think obviously injury sort of always looms very large over Joel Embiid's head, right? But I think that has to factor in the decision, though, because you're betting on who do I think 10 years from now

we're going to remember the most, and he's the least safe bet because I don't know how many games he's going to play. Right. But at the same time, he's the only one who I know can be dominant on both ends. Right. He's my one-man defense and one-man offense. He's the only one of that group who you can actually say that about. Right.

So I think if I wasn't counting the injuries, I'd definitely go with Embiid. Because I just think he makes you top five in defense by showing up and offensively you cannot cover him with one guy period and he's now made his game efficient at all three levels whether it be low post mid-range and out to three right so that like to me that combination is the most special of the of all of them because of what he does defensively. But that being said, Luka has the freaking ball in his hand all the time. And it's hard for me to not remember what he did to the Clippers last year in the playoffs, where it's like the two scariest wing defenders in the NBA on one team.

And Luka was like, give me the ball. They can't do shit with me. So I think Luka is going to be the one that ultimately stamps his name on the league in such a way. Because again, you can't stop him from scoring and playmaking. He's a generational playmaker. Yeah, it's funny. You know, he gets compared to a bunch of different guys from the past. And Bird is one of them because of his ability to score and do a playmake. I'll do things. I thought it was,

I thought it was the hair. Well, it might be that. From a personality standpoint, he's very young birdish first five years. Bird was not exactly a standup comedian. And I would say Luca is not either. The one who has the personality is Embiid.

Yeah. And he's the one that, um, you know, it's funny that he wasn't born here. Cause he feels like the most American of all these dudes and the way he uses social media and his interviews and the way he fucks with people, like really reminds me of Shaq. Like a lot of the stuff he does and his dismissiveness with rivals and the fact that there's certain people he just hates and he's like, I'm going to destroy Andre Drummond tonight. He just bothers me. I'm like, that's the kind of shit Shaq did.

So I think it would be the most fun if Embiid became the guy, but I just, I'm with you. I worry about the durability stuff. Yeah. And, you know, and Luka right now, I think one he doesn't feel as comfortable with english as mb clearly does right like mb understands american

english and american humor like he gets the tone of america it's really weird isn't it i don't understand it's insane because you know like my parents are immigrants right like they're immigrants from haiti so there's a certain haitian sense of humor and sensibility that I understand because I grew up in that. But I also, you know, in American pop culture that like that's what is more native to me. Right. But Joellen B. like completely understands American humor, American culture, how it is you're supposed to go at somebody in an online platform versus how you do it in front of a bunch of reporters in front of a crowd. Like he's just has a facility with how to communicate that, um, is just, you know, nobody else can compete. And I just think Luca, I don't think he feels comfortable in that role being the, the, the sort of holding court,

being the focal point of attention. I don't think he feels comfortable with his English yet, but I think he might get there. But like you said, Joel, he's got it all. Luka, Dirk was the same way. We didn't hear from Dirk for years. And then Dirk slowly became like this kind of stealth funny guy. That Jokic thing, that one, I don't know why the passing hasn't caught on in a more fun way, especially with the way social media works and just how brilliant he is as a passer. The, the, the amount of disrespect for the season he had, which you mentioned earlier, like I, it's been really weird to me. I don't understand why people don't, aren't like bowing at the altar of this crazy season he's having.

It's like they're suspicious of it. I have a theory. I got to bring it back to 2015, 2016, when Steph was getting all the praise, right? And I can tell you, as a black dude, and Steph is black, but the way in which the media was fawning over Steph, I don't know why, made me feel uncomfortable. It was there was just something like the amount of times I heard media members call Steph Curry relatable made me feel weird. Like white dudes just say the guy's just so relatable. He's just so relatable, Bill. I'm like, damn, Chris Paul wasn't relatable? You know, like, the dudes before wasn't relatable.

There was just something strange. It was something. It just gave people a weird feeling. And I think, unfortunately, the same thing is happening with Jokic. I think people are suspicious of this idea of like, oh, this big, doughy white guy who has all the fundamentals down pat and is a great passer and playmaker and all of that. I think people are suspicious of it. But, you know, and I can admit to my own suspicions of Jokic. I used to call him Jokic because I just refused to say his name right.

I was like, first of all, you better play some defense as a center before I start saying your name right. But, you know, I shed all of that once I watched him in the playoffs and you realize nobody can guard this guy one on one. You literally can't put a single guy on him. And once you send to he's picking you apart like this guy is the most unstoppable weapon. And like to me, in crunch time, specifically when the game is tight, he's the best crunch time player in the league, in my opinion. Like he can carve you up however you want. He can do it from the elbow. If you want to try to switch some little puny little guard on him, he's going to put him underneath the freaking basket.

He has pick and pop ability. He can, I've watched him ISO, where he just takes dudes off the dribble, does his little spin move, soundboard shuffle. I'm like, and then again, if you send help, he is going to pick your ass apart. This is the most lethal offensive weapon in the clutch that we have in today's game. I just think people honestly haven't watched it in the right spots.

Even against the Lakers, there was that game where AD guarded him down the stretch. And AD is to me when he's on the best defender in the league, right? And the best guy to guard Jokic, too. Right, because he's so long, he's so quick, he can bother him in so many ways. And Jokic was like, all right, I'm going to take my time. I'm going to freaking put my body on him to back him up,

and I'm going to get my little jump hook off, right? I just think people are skeptical of the way the praise happened for Jokic with all of the passing and all the beautiful game. And, you know, a certain amount of people start getting behind that and other people start lifting their eyebrows. Like, I think Steph is still suffering from that. I think why you see players don't gravitate towards giving Steph the love. I think he's getting it now, finally. But when it was happening in 2015, I think a lot of players felt like, oh, he's a family man.

Like this is the first family man, the first Christian. It's just like it was just so strange. The effusive praise that Steph got for being his parents come to the game. Right. Exactly. He's got parents like like there was nothing really that special about all the other stuff that wasn't how great he was on the court. But it kept coming up. And I think people responded to be like, man, this feels weird.

But he's getting his love now, so it was good. And I think Jokic will eventually, too. The Curry thing started out as a 100% genuine thing. And I agree, it probably went a little sideways. There might have been a little LeBron fatigue, too. People just trying to jump on who the next guy was, all that stuff. You made a good point with Jokic

about the crunch time stuff. I think I trust him more in crunch time than anyone with the possible exception of Durant and I'm going to judge it by this way. When he has the ball and they need a basket, I'm surprised when he doesn't get the basket.

If you're just measuring by that, who is the most surprising when they don't come through with 50 seconds left? He's number one for me, and I think Durant's number two if Durant's healthy. Yeah, and it's so crazy because he's their center. And we're not used to watching crunch time plays being called for centers.

But again, this guy can attack from 25 feet out. He's not going to do it in the traditional wing way. He'll just straight up back you down, start from out there. And again, if you try to send somebody, he's going to pick you apart. And I've watched him make so many clutch baskets over the last three seasons to the point where i'm just like this is just what he's going to do he's going to get big buckets in big moments every single time and so yeah and again in the playoffs i think you know he used to be a really really bad defender and now he's fine you know especially around the rim the rim. He's frisky. He tries. Exactly. He has quick hands.

All of that. So he's not a complete sieve but we'll see in the playoffs if the right teams target him and make it a problem for Denver. We're going to take a quick break and then I want to ask you about your least favorite players. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance.

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You've been known to give your opinion from time to time. Who rubs you the wrong way? Which out of the good players, like let's start. Rasella and I debated Westbrook on Sunday night. I almost feel like at this point, you have to be pro or anti-Russ. There's no in-between. There's no nuance anymore. Where do you sit on the Russ debate?

You're going to love this. I'm pro-Russ because he proved me right. I spent so many years fighting OKC fans about Russ and them just like the defense and all of this and Russ and Russ and Russ and Russ. The second he was gone, they were like. Nah, he was on some bullshit. So I'm pro Russ for finally vindicating all of us who were like, yo, this guy is making people lose games, man. I think the light bulb for me went off the last three games in 2016 against Golden State. He was just brutal. He was the hero of the Klay Thompson game over Klay Thompson.

He was brutal. And the light bulb went off for me because I was like, you know, going into the series, I was like, yo, you can't play Draymond at the five with a guy like Russ attacking the basket. And the Warriors said, yes, we can. We have no problem switching Draymond out onto him. Klay Thompson can guard him very adequately. Matter of fact, let Russ do what he wants to do. And in fact, when you talk to people around the team and the people who covered the team, the Warriors was to let Russ cook OKC and that's exactly what he did so I don't hate Russ for that reason because he proved

me right I think the guy that honestly rubs me the wrong the most is Rudy Gobert oh I like that okay there's never a lot of Rudy Gobert conversation on this podcast, so I'm excited. Bruh, when he cried about the damn All-Star game and blamed it on his mom, and I got it on good authority that he talks to jazz statisticians like, yo, that was a block. That was a this. He's that type of cat. I'm just like, I'm good off of Rudy, man. Like, that whole, I didn't make the all-star team, yet my team thought enough of

me to give me a max deal, yet I'm still out here crying, that just rubbed me the wrong way, man. I just don't, that mentality and attitude towards the game, and I don't want to sound like some freaking crotchety old man or whatever, but like, that just rubbed me the wrong way. His approach to all of it, just, I don't know. There's something about Rudy. I don't want to be like xenophobic and call it the French thing. I've done that in the past on this podcast. I just, yeah, Rudy is somebody that rubs me the wrong way. And, you know, I'm not going to be afraid to say the Kyrie stuff.

You know, the freaking, you know, theras and the and the freaking the the incense burning before the game and the the pseudo-intellectual quotes and i'm not talking to the media and it's i'm just like yo bruh don't you get tired of this don't you get tired of being like over the top and like trying your hardest to be some type of individual or whatever. I'm an artist and all of that. It's like, golly, that stuff wears on me. It might be because, you know, I'm from New York and I've been around that kind of stuff a lot.

Like there's a huge culture of incense burning type of people in New York, you know, but like Kyrie's act kind of wears me thin. I'm not going to lie. Obviously, he's a genius on the court. You know, my man, Amin, actually, Amin Elhassan, who's, you know, who's my close homie. He was like, yo, Kyrie might be the most skilled player in NBA history. When you talk about his shooting, his ball handling, his footwork, like skill work, there's never been anybody with more skill work than Kyrie as far as the craft is concerned. And he should be commended for that. But all of the stuff outside

of that just kills me, dude. I think he's, other than Jordan, who I think is the most coordinated human being ever. I think Kyrie's second. I've never seen a more coordinated basketball player other than Jordan. The fact that his left body can replicate

all the left side of his body, can replicate all the left side of his body, can do everything the right side of his body can do. He's like a fucking alien. I don't really understand it. The way he finishes at the cup while being 6'1 with no hops, getting his shot up over trees, he never gets blocked at the cup.

How? How is that? Ever. It's incredible what he's able to do on the court. Obviously? How is that? It's incredible what he's able to do on the court. Obviously he's a savant, but you know, all of that mumbo jumbo he's been spewing on the

gram and you know, I just, I can't do it. What's interesting is all of his teammates get Stockholm Syndrome with him. Because it happened with the Celtics. You know, he basically completely cratered in the Milwaukee series. It's really bad. You can go back and watch

the clips if you don't believe me, people out there. He didn't play well. His teammates see him and they couldn't be more excited to hug him, dap him up, the whole thing. It was like they had the greatest experience ever. I'm like, that team was miserable. It wasn't Kyrie's fault. It was other stuff going on. I was like, what other stuff?

You had this erratic superstar leader. At some point, we have to point to whoever the best player, the slash leader is. Then the stuff in Brooklyn this year. We had Joe Harris on CeCe's pod. And we ran the clip on social. He told this whole story about Kyrie, like what's it like to play with Kyrie. And he told this whole story, which I think was meant to signify it's great to play with Kyrie, but it's basically like, you know, we'll come down with strategy. And then sometimes Kyrie will be like, fuck that.

I'm just going to take my guy off the dribble. And we're like, yeah, you're right. You're the best. And I'm thinking like, that's your Kyrie story is he, you have a strategy and he's just going to audible do his own thing. But he's a great teammate. I think he's the wild card of this whole playoff. He could single-handedly submarine Brooklyn. Single-handedly. I think if James plays at a relatively healthy level, they'll be fine because he'll be the one manning the ship.

And I trust James Harden as far as a table setter to do that. And then Kyrie floats in and out. Exactly. Almost like a cat. His role in Cleveland with LeBron was perfect, right? You have no other responsibility but to get buckets. We don't ask you to do literally anything else but score when the ball is handed to you. And that's his ideal role. Now, why I think players love Kyrie, specifically like elite guys, is because what we mentioned before, he's so skilled.

They watch him and they say, I can't do that. And players respect nothing more than I can't do it. I'm one of the best people in the world at this thing. And this guy does 20 things that I could never dream of doing. And I think that's what the respect and the sort of goodwill that he engenders. It's just he's so freaking skilled that the most skilled players in the world look at him and say, wow. How can one person be able to do all of those things so effectively? Yeah, that's a good one. I'm trying to think of other.

I'm going to really have to work on my list of random players who annoy me. The Gobert thing was great. I don't know why he annoys me so much, but even like I was watching Utah Golden State last night and, you know, he won't come out past a certain point for the guy who's the defensive player of the league. Allegedly he'll only go like 22 feet away from the basket.

Right. And Curry ends up getting the go ahead basket and the game winning bucket because Draymond has the ball. They run a little half-step. He comes back and gets it, and Gobert is too far away from it. If Draymond buries Curry's guy with a devastating screen

and comes out... Yeah, you have to come out, Rudy. Sorry. This isn't going to look good for your Defensive Player of the Year resume, but you're going to have to come out and guard Curry. Yeah, I agree. I think he's probably annoying. I got to say, I love Chris Paul.

I'm pro Chris Paul. Me too. I think he's had an amazing career, but he's fucking annoying sometimes. When I would go to the Clipper games, the stomping around thing, the initiating, when he throws, he's dripping the ball, but he just lurches in the guys. Yeah, I respect it because he's trying to set the tone. But at the same time, he's a part of me wishes that he would tone that back by 10 percent. But he is who he is at this point. He's an old man. Yeah, I mean, you know, I respect Chris Paul and I love Chris Paul

and I'm a Chris Paul, a bit of a chris paul truther um in certain respects but i've also never had to work with the guy yeah so it's sort of one of those things where you know we get to see all of that stuff that he does is positive as far as like the task manager attention to detail all of that kind of stuff we think it's great because it's just like wow look at this guy who's so up on his job and his duties but when you're doing it on a day-to-day basis season to season basis um with him as a co-worker i could see how that might grate on some people um but oh you know griffin we didn't talk about griffin i'm i'm pro blake um griffin's back to he's back to the flailing like a fish and pretending he just got

impaled by an elbow when he didn't kind of totally he's back to all his old tricks I don't like it so Bill I had this thing that I used to call the Waz Cape All Stars where I would throw my cape on and start rooting for and cheering for guys who became like pariahs

on the internet and in the sports public. Like to name a few, Barry Bonds, A-Rod, Dwight. I tried with Dwight Howard. It doesn't work with Dwight. Like I tried to do the contrarian thing, but he is just so freaking annoying. Like it just didn't work. But Blake Griffin was somebody I had to throw the cape on because people kept calling him unskilled.

Oh, he doesn't work on his game. I'm like, yo, this dude adds something every single year, whether it be the handle, the jump shot that kept going out and went from 17 to 19 to three point range, the passing. I'm like, this dude is a very skilled player, but he got this rep specifically on the internet about being this unskilled athletic, you know, sort of brute. So I threw on the cape for Blake. So just because I still had the cape on for him way back in 14, 13, and 15, I'm still going to reserve the cape. Blake is still one of my guys. I'm not going to throw him out there like that.

All right. Who's your most annoying coach right now? Do you have one? Is there a coach that just bugs you? Probably Carlisle. Because he has no sense of humor. Like, he never, he's never laughing. Nothing's funny to this guy. Yeah, why are you so miserable, Rick Carlisle?

Like, seriously, bro. You went from coaching Dirk DeWitzke to Luka with no overlap at all. Why are you so unhappy? Have a sense of humor. He's so damn serious all the time. You know? And that is not for me.

The over seriousness, I can't do it. And the homie in Indiana who's causing a mutiny. They're worried about him? What's going on? He's coaching with a basketball team. Man, some of the articles about that guy were pretty nuts. How do you hire somebody just based on their offensive system without

trying to find out if they know how to interact with other human beings? I thought that was odd. You know, and what always gets misunderstood because i think so much of the discourse has been effectively the nerds have won and not to say that i'm not one of the nerds that i don't love the stats and the analytics and all of that and people think that being right is enough bill you're married you know that just because you're right doesn't mean you

get to walk your argument into your discussion with your wife like, but I'm right. No, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't go like that. It's a people business. There needs to be a level of effective communication. So you can have all the great systems and schemes and all of that if you want. If you can't effectively communicate to the guys on your team, none of it matters, right? Like, that's why I'm like, you got to look at what Monte Williams is doing in Phoenix and tip your cap to him. Because those guys play with the effort level. And as far as execution of what they're being asked scheme-wise

on a night-to-night basis so consistently, you got to give it up to Monty Williams he's effectively communicated to these guys what they need to do and they're doing it right like David Blatt that's the classic examples like nobody's saying David Blatt doesn't understand basketball but this guy came in with such an ego because he killed it in Israel it's like bro like it's not gonna work for you here in the. It's not going to work for you here in the NBA. To not have that emotional intelligence and

self-awareness, that's way bigger part of the job as an NBA coach than X's and O's are. It's been interesting watching Stevens struggle with this the past year. They've had the season from hell and now it's finally mercifully

probably headed toward two straight playing losses. But they never had their seven guys, their best seven together. I get all that stuff, but I think he's a really good coach. Watching him not figure out how to coach this team and get them to play hard in first quarters, which seems like the most simple job of a coach, right?

Hey guys, let's go out there and not be down by 20 at the end of this quarter. Can we, can we pull that off? And they fell behind by 20, 13 times already this year, which is impossible. And now I'm like, is anybody a good coach? Cause Monte Williams was, when he was in new Orleans, I was like, this guy's not a good coach. And I watched Monte Williams in Phoenix. I'm like, this guy's such a good coach. And it's like, wait, how do we even figure out who's a good coach other than Eric Spolstra? I think the Stevens thing is a little bit different in the sense that his best players have played in really big games. Like, I understand why they don't get up for every single regular season game, right?

They've played in games that matter. Like they're human beings. They know the difference between games that matter and games that don't. There's a sort of, you know, knowledge that they've accrued over the years from all of this time spent in the playoffs. And then, sorry, Danny Ainge, you put together a shit roster. Sorry.

The bench, the back end of this roster, outside of the stars, was horrific. Come on, Bill. You watch this team all season long. They're freaking terrible. So a lot of times, like, when you're watching the Lakers, for instance, early in the season, before LeBron and AD sort of went down, right?

They're not playing full tilt. But there's sections of the game where Dennis Schroeder can just take over the offense. Where Montrezl Harrell, you can run a bunch of pick and rolls for him and let him do what he does. LeBron can kind of not have to go one-on-one, just orchestrate and set guys up. And you're getting, eating up possessions without your best guys exerting themselves in, you know, ridiculous ways, right? In a regular season game. because the back end of your team makes sense and there are other guys that can step up when they have to. If you were watching the Lakers at all early on in the season, AD was not trying. They were still on a freaking 75%

winning percentage pace because the roster was built in such a way that it wasn't that AD has to come out and do what he did to Phoenix last night every single night. That's not the case for Boston. If they want to win, Tatum, Brown, Kemba have to be great every single day because the rest of these guys have done nothing. And who's that on? You know, I don't think that's on Brad Stevens. I think that's on, that comes from up top.

Well, when Aaron Neesmith becomes one of the most important players over the next two weeks, I'm going to be eating my words. Last question, then we got to go. Best media basketball player right now. I know you've played against a few of

them, right? The best media basketball player. There's a lot of Chris Haynes buzz for this question. There's I've never played against Haynes. I've never played against Haynes. I'll say this. Nate Duncan, when he's not injured, is up there because he's freaking six foot eight and actually understands what's happening on a basketball court. So he's huge. Give me the size of Nate Duncan. He's official. Give me the size of Nate Duncan. He's official and people are going to say I'm a homer for this,

but my buddy, Zach Harper still has range out to 30 feet. He will give you buckets on a basketball court. So I'm going to go with Nate Duncan for size and Zach Harper, cause he still has the stretch ability. He's still pulling up on fools. Interesting. So this is now Chris Haynes feud with you. I've never seen Chris Haynes play. It felt like a dismissal of Chris Haynes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

From what I understand, Chris Haynes was either D1 or D2. So if you played D1 or D2, you're a serious basketball player. So that's no disrespect to him. Okay. I heard Beckley Mason, even though he's not media no more. Beckley used to get busy in basketball.

I heard about Haynes. I heard about Haynes. I don't want no smoke because I know what's going to happen. I know what you're trying to do right now, Phil. I don't want any smoke with Chris Haynes. I took some shots at him there. Don't sleep on

Dave Jacoby. He's a little washed up now. He's past 40, but he in his 30s was really strong. I think there should be a big three media league and it should just be solved during one summer where it's just like a four-day elimination tournament. Everybody gets

their three-on-three. And we just go and we find out once and for all. It would be compelling television. So last thing on this, in like 2016, damn, I was still under 30 back then. At the Sloan conference, what was it? Attack Athletics? I forget the name of the company they held the media game where they put a bunch of like wearable technology on you yeah whatever during the game um and you'll be shocked to learn this bill but after the competition i was deemed the most

athletic wow look at you. Unbelievable. That happens. So, yeah, I'm patting myself on the chest. I don't think that I could earn that award at 34, but, yeah, back in 2016, I still had some oomph to me. All right. Well, we love having you at The Ringer.

We could be using you in all kinds of ways, podcasts, some locker room stuff, and you're going to be ready for the website a little bit of course and uh and it's great to have you finally good to see you hey bill it's an honor man you know i've been on you since page two oh over 20 years now you know i'm saying back when it was you ralph wiley and the rest of the cat oh my god my guy rest in peace to the legend um yeah and, Bill, I'm telling you, you was the first cat that had me dying on a consistent basis, just laughing. You were covering sports in a way that

wasn't like, do we have to treat this like the Pentagon Papers? It's freaking sports. And you know, that shit just resonated with me. And obviously, you've achieved so much success every single step of the way, but I think why obviously you're smart and you're funny and all that other shit,

but it's your passion, bro. It's the passion. That's what's resonating with the people. You love this shit for real, and I think people connect with that, man. I appreciate it. We'll say I still have the passion for basketball. I'm really excited for how this plays out next five days, all that.

Look forward to keep having you on and all that stuff, but really seriously glad you're aboard. Thanks for coming on. Yes, sir. All right. Derek Thompson is here from the Atlantic. He was on here a couple months ago and now he's back. We are now reached a cycle of the pandemic where a lot of people are vaccinated and a fair share of people just do not want to get vaccinated. And things basically peaked from a vaccine standpoint, basically end of March heading into April. And now we have stalled and the numbers are going down. You've been covering this in The Atlantic. What do we need to know?

Where are we right now as we head into the hotter months here? We head into mid-May. How does this play out? What happens? Well, first, the good news. The good news is we're vaccinating millions of people a day, tens of millions of people a month. We're making a lot of progress.

COVID cases are declining. COVID deaths are declining. You're seeing outdoor mask mandates being brought down. Life is getting back to normal. The downside is this. There is a block of vaccine hesitancy out there that's been really, really tough to crack. That block is disproportionately Republican. It's mostly conservatives who've been living the last 15 months often as if there wasn't much of a pandemic, or at least have been questioning the narratives that the pandemic was much of a thing to worry about.

But you have a lot of people who just aren't interested in being vaccinated. And that's an issue, not just because they could get sick and they could have serious health implications, but we live with each other in this chain of transmission. And if a handful of people don't want to get this shot, they don't want to get inoculated, there's always a risk that

they could verbal up a variant in those communities that could endanger the rest of us. Or they can get vulnerable or older, immunocompromised people sick. So it's really important, not just as a matter of individual health, but as a matter of social health, public health, that we get as many people vaccinated and we're just running up against that block right now. But it's not just a political thing, right? It also, we're talking about different ethnic groups and different classes, and there's a lot more going on. And there seems like, at least in some circles, a real distrust of, well, wait a second, in the past, it would take five years to approve a vaccine. It would take 10 years.

It would take 15 years. These vaccines got approved in four or five months. People go online. They Google this stuff. They go on the wrong conspiracy board. They become convinced Bill Gates is putting chips in their arms. And how do you combat that with the amount of disinformation that's out there to tell people?

And also, is there any truth in any of those conspiracy theories at all? I think the first thing to say is that vaccine hesitancy isn't like one thing. It's not like one ideology. It's a name that we give to a host of ideologies, to a host of reasons to delay or wait on this vaccine that differs depending on ethnicity or political ideology. So you have, you know, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans in this country that don't want the vaccine because they don't trust public health authorities. They look back into American history and even in recent American history and say, I don't trust what the government is selling right now. I'm going to wait and see how this shot works before I actually get the arm goo in my deltoid for those people. And then you have people who, you know, for the last 15

months have just been on the Trump side of this, the Republican side of this and said, I don't think this pandemic is as bad as the CDC and Anthony Fauci are telling me. I'm going to basically live a normal life. I'm going to go on vacation. I'm going to eat in restaurants. I'm going to hang out inside with friends. And as a result, they're making this calculation like, wait, if I basically survived the last 15 months, why do I need a pharmaceutical intervention to get me back to the normal life that I never stopped living in the first place? So the cost-benefit analysis for this group is really different than it is for someone like me who stayed inside, canceled my wedding, canceled my honeymoon, totally upturned my life in order to not get this virus and pass it along to someone who's more vulnerable. So I think it's really

important to start by just talking to people who are vaccine-hesitant. That's one of the things I did really recently. I posted on Twitter. I said, look, I don't want to write a takedown. I want to write like an ethnography. I want to write a piece that explains the ideology of the vaccine hesitant. And a bunch of people got in touch with me and I talked through like the deep story of their vaccine skepticism.

And I basically came down to this two sentence description of what's going on. Number one, they trust their cells more than they trust big pharma. They're like, I got this. My cells got this. I mean, that's semi-fair, right? Well, it's certainly, for someone who's in their 20s or 30s, it's certainly true that this disease isn't nearly as dangerous as it would be for someone who's immunocompromised during their 60s, 70s, 80s. The good news about this vaccine is that it's even better than your natural immune system. So I sometimes compare this to driving.

A lot of people accept the risk of driving every single day. But if I told you, all right, for free, I'm going to turn your Toyota Camry into a BMW SUV with a frontal collision system, with a souped up airbag system that totally protects you in the case of an accident, then you'd say, yeah, I'll take that souped up Beamer in exchange for my Toyota Camry. That's what these vaccines do. You turn your immune system from the Toyota Camry into the souped up BMW SUV, and it's free. So that's what I'm telling people to focus on. This is a better way to protect your immune system and a better way to protect the people around you. Yeah, obviously I got the vaccine as fast

as I possibly could, but I try to put myself in other people's shoes. And it's like, when they talk about the distrust of big pharma and all the different things that have gone on over the years, it's kind of tough to come up with like, like some good. Yeah. But other than, Hey, do you want to die from the pandemic? That's your alternative. So I don't know. It's, it's a tough one. Let me give you a yeah, but I think I think I have a really good yeah, but the yeah, but is Israel. So in January, you had a lot of vaccine skeptics saying, I'm not so sure that this vaccine is as successful as the pharmaceutical companies are telling us. Israel still hasn't seen any improvement and they're the world leader in vaccines. So on January 15th, though, daily COVID cases in Israel were averaging 90,000, right? 90,000

new COVID cases a day in Israel. This Monday, which is the latest day that we have data of as of this week, there weren't 9,000 cases. There weren't 1,000 cases. There were 48. 48 in the entire country. There was one death. Cases have declined in Israel, the world leader in vaccinations, by 99.5%. And the economy is basically open and normal, right? That is the outcome that we want.

That is the magic of the vaccines. They turn this pandemic from a terrible thing that is shutting down the world that we know and love and they turn it into something that is killing one person in Israel every single day. That's it. So I think that's the outcome that we're rooting for. It's the outcome that we have seen exists in the world if we accept, if we take the vaccines. It's not just Big Pharma that's giving us these Israel numbers. It's Israel. The numbers are real. The vaccines really, really work. And they are our best path to opening up the economy and getting back to a normal life. Well, speaking of normal life, so we're taping this on a Tuesday. Yesterday, I went and did a rewatch of us in our in our studio

at the ringer which i hadn't been in in 14 months with chris and sean who were both also vaccinated and um and our producer craig who's also vaccinated and cory who's did the video he was also vaccinated so it was great and it felt so normal and so good to be back and not on a zoom and just chopping it up and talking about a movie we loved and no mass the whole thing and then we went we got dinner after and it honestly feels like a weight being lifted as you start going back to some of the whether it's like going to my daughter's soccer game or my son's basketball game or just being able to do work in a way that's not uh you know from a technology standpoint so to do work in a way that's not, you know, from a technology standpoint.

So to me, that's the best case is not having this constant fear of I hope this isn't a day like like I inhale somebody's cough and didn't realize it or, you know, just shutting that down. I on the other hand, like the disinformation thing is such a big piece of this. And as always with this stuff, there's been the disinformation thing is such a big piece of this. As always with this stuff, there's been more disinformation than ever. What's the most alarming thing you've seen as you've researched this? Something that seems like something people are absolutely believing. Yeah, I'd say some of the worst that I've seen.

There's this guy, Alex Berenson. I don't know if you've confronted his work online. He's a huge COVID skeptic who puts out a lot of BS on Twitter. He gets invited on Fox News to downplay the vaccines. This is a guy who last month I emailed him. He seemed to me to be one of the more prominent vaccine skeptics. I emailed him and said, you know, give me your best case. Like, I want to do right by these claims. Give me your best case against the vaccines. And he gave me a bunch of, you know, falsifiable pieces of data about the vaccines. And I looked it up. And every single one of them was, in fact, false. Like, every single thing he said that could be fact-checked turned out false. He was quoting scientists who, you know, were doing research in Israel and Denmark and saying that their conclusions were one thing.

And then I would email them and say, oh, that's total horseshit. Like it was like in Annie Hall when Marshall McLuhan comes in and says, you know, nothing of my work. It was like experiencing that moment over and over and over. So, you know, just to take like one piece of misinformation that he spreads, he suggested in early January that countries like Israel were suffering from the early vaccine rollout. He said, you know, we're seeing deaths and hospitalizations among the vaccinated population of Israel really grow. People are dying of this vaccine.

Well, now fast forward four months, cases in Israel have declined by 99.5%. Daily deaths of COVID in Israel have declined to one. Like clearly this vaccine works. And again, Israel is not the data set of Moderna or Pfizer or J&J. If you don't like those companies, if you don't like the profits that they get, just put that aside. Just look at countries like Israel and the UK, the world leaders in vaccines. They're achieving exactly the results we should want, which tells me these vaccines work,

frankly, exactly as advertised. They're the anti-vax extremists. Are there pro-vax extremists? Because this is usually how it works. We usually go the furthest on each side. Who are those people and what are they up to? The pro-vax extremists. Maybe that's a new group we need. I'm not sure I came across yet that particular species. I'll keep an eye out for the pro-vax extremists. What I've seen, honestly, Beryl, and maybe this is just my own selection bias, I've seen

a lot of liberal people who live on the coast, I live in Washington, D.C., who are, to be quite honest, too afraid of the world that the vaccines give us. They still want to enforce outdoor mask mandates. They still want to keep indoor bars shut down. They still want to resist travel or tell us that we're going to have to wear masks around each other and maybe not have open-air weddings for months. I think you have a lot of people who have sort of wrapped up their social identity in following the rules. And it's been really clear for them in the last 15 months what those COVID rules were, and they're changing. They're changing because the vaccines change the rules, as they should. And what I see, frankly, isn't people who are overly pro-vax,

but people who took the vaccine but are still living as if it's September 2020 and not living as if it's May 2021. It's a new world that we should be getting out there and normalizing our lives. And frankly, advocating for people to normalize theirs, because if we play up the benefits of these vaccines, then whenever anyone's making a little cost-benefit analysis, they're going to say, okay, the shot's worth it. Do you think the fact that the CDC was so erratic in what they were telling us we should and shouldn't do those first nine months has played into a mentality with certain people like, well, you guys have changed your opinion over and over again. Why the fuck should I believe you now? So I talked to all these

vax-hesitant people last week and it was interesting. I said, you know, are you discouraged from taking the vaccines because of what people like Fauci are saying right now? And the answer they gave

was really interesting. They said, no, I don't care what Fauci says right now because I stopped listening to him six months ago. So that group has really tuned out the entire public health establishment. Their thought is basically, again, I got this. My cells got this. I don't need the pharma group. And my brain's got

this. I don't need to listen to liberal elites tell me what to think. I'm going to do my own research online on Twitter or whatever, right? That's their attitude. So the public health community lost them. Now, it's possible that there was no winning them. Maybe in a country that's like this, just sundered by political ideology and political polarization, and with Trump as president in 2020, there was just no chance that we were ever going to get to a sense of shared reality when it came to this virus. But the mistake that the CDC and other public health officials made, I think, is not to arrive at a clearer understanding of what this virus actually is. I've been a huge advocate of saying from the beginning, this is an indoor talking disease. It's an indoor talking disease. So avoid

the indoors, avoid the ventilated indoors, avoid talking because that's what produces those aerosolized particles that get people sick and other exerted breathing like in gyms. Avoid the indoors, avoid talking, and otherwise, live your life. If you want to go for a walk, do it. If you want to go to the beach, do it. If you want to play soccer or go on a bike ride, do it. Avoid indoor talking. And rather than take that message of, here's a simple message that contains a lot of nuance in it, indoor talking, rather than take that approach, they took this sort of scattershot approach where they seem to be all over the place at once. People got confused about masks. They got confused about, you know, does this virus spread on surfaces or not? By the way, it doesn't. They got confused about, does this virus spread on services or not? By the way, it doesn't.

They got confused about whether dining outdoor restaurants was good or bad. I think if we had arrived at this clearer explication of a disease earlier on, we would have allowed people to fill in the nuance themselves. And that would have been a clearer way to get people to really grok what the virus is and how it spreads. Well, it's also the virus and the pandemic played on the more neurotic of a person you were in whatever respect. It was going to make you a hundred times more neurotic. I mean, I have friends that still get packages and put them in the garage for three days before they touch the package and stuff like that. I, people, I know people who are still wiping down, you know, food delivery and all that stuff, that stuff's still happening.

Even though, I mean, you were writing about this when in January about this is not a hygiene disease. You're not in July. You're not, you're not touching a counter and getting COVID. This is not how you get it. You get it from being in a hotel conference room with 20 other people standing around spitting on each other for two hours. Basically this is not how you get it. You get it from being in a hotel conference room with 20 other people standing around, spitting on each other for two hours. Basically, this is how you get it. Those people, I just think are probably just going to be neurotic about a lot of different things, right? The pandemic plays into it, but. Yeah, right. Yeah.

The pandemic wasn't a way kind of like a steroid for our neuroses, right? Yeah, totally. However much neurosis you had, this pandemic was definitely going to juice it. Well, and also if you were online all the time looking for conspiracies and stuff, this is the perfect conspiracy story. It's got everything. It has big pharmacies. It has Bill Gates. It has pharmacies competing against each other to see who can get their thing to market. It has the whole thing. Yeah. You have China. You have the vaccines might've been ready

when Trump was president. We don't know, but they clearly all of a sudden he lost and then all of a sudden they were ready. Like they have 40 things they can grasp onto. And I don't think that's helped either. I think you're right. I think you're right. It was a neurosis steroid, but it was really kind of a societal steroid. Like whatever you were dealing with in January, 2020 was going to be accentuated by the end of that year. Whether it was neurosis, whether it was conspiracy theorizing,

whether it was some people's hatred of China or hatred of Trump, like everything was juiced, I think, by the stress of the pandemic. I think it's also fair to say on the issue of neurosis, I've been thinking a lot about how the CDC has messaged throughout this pandemic. And I think they've just consistently been slow. They suck.

They were slow to update on surface transmission of the disease, which is just, I think, bunk. They were slow to update on outdoor transmission of this disease, which, again, I think is incredibly rare. People are focused on wearing masks outside and wiping down packages. No, that's just not how this spreads. And the CDC has been really slow to update people on that. And the only thing that I would say in moderate fairness to the CDC, and it's not even that fair, is the CDC is always going to be over-precautious, if we're honest with ourselves. If you Google eggs, salmonella, CDC, you will find a webpage

on cdc.gov that discourages people from cooking eggs that have runny yolk, whether that's soft boiled eggs or sunny side up eggs, because it wants to keep people from getting salmonella. Now, most of the time, in a non-pandemic year, I don't go to CDC.gov in order to determine how I should cook my eggs. But the CDC is out there telling people, like, be careful how you cook your eggs. I think we're probably going to go back to a world where we aren't going to rely on the CDC to figure out how to live, whether we should go to restaurants, how we should breathe outside, and what we should wear on restaurants, how we should breathe outside, and what we should wear on our face. We're probably headed back to that world over this summer. And it might just be inevitable that a public health institution is going to be overly

precautious about how it orients its public through any crisis. And I think that, unfortunately, it's been slow to recognize its role in the pandemic, right? People are now going to CDC to determine how to live. And they're often getting advice that is, quite frankly, nine months or more behind the scientific consensus. You could feel it. What was it, last week or the week before when they were like, hey, if you're vaccinated, you don't need to wear a mask outdoors anymore. And it's like, no fucking kidding, CDC. Thanks. But for some people, that was a big deal. It's like, oh, cool. I don't have to wear a mask outdoors anymore. And it's like, no fucking kidding, CDC. Thanks. But for some people, that was a big deal. It's like, oh, cool. I don't have to wear a mask

outdoors. It's like, yeah, that was the whole point of getting the vaccine. I think we talked about this last time you were on. From a PSA standpoint, I think they botched it. But in their defense, if we're looking at them like they're a sports team, like they're like the Yankees, their funding got completely annihilated over the last four years with the last president. And this is the repercussions of that when you're cutting money from something that's basic and essential, like the CDC and the way we react to basically a pandemic, we're going to then react badly during a pandemic, which I think we did, unfortunately. Yeah, I think it's totally fair. I think it's fair to say that the CDC's failures

are downstream of political decisions, political decisions over the last few decades, but also political decisions under the Trump administration that probably muzzled many of the very good scientists at the CDC. I think that's a totally fair interpretation. The only thing I would complicate just a little bit is that other countries' public health institutions got it on the money really quickly. So you look at Japan. Japan, which has dealt with coronaviruses before. They dealt with SARS-1. They dealt with MERS, the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. They had this rule that they came out with in April called the three Cs, closed spaces, crowded places, close contact settings. They said, avoid the three Cs and otherwise kind of do you. That is a fantastic message. The three Cs were right. And they were right from the beginning. And so I think it's notable that, you know,

we're sort of running this randomized control experiment around the world. Who's doing better facing the same biological nemesis? And Japan just did a really fantastic job, I think, from the start with their public health officials getting on the horn and saying, here's what the disease is, here's how you fight it, and here's how otherwise you can live a relatively normal life. All right. So what would you say,

let's say I had a friend who, I don't know, 13-year-old daughter. And that daughter, as of this week, is now allowed to be vaccinated in California. And that person says, I'm not giving the vaccine to my daughter. I don't like some of the stuff I've read. I don't think she's in danger. Even if she got it, to her it would be a cold. I just, I don't really love the thought of vaccines. I don't think they've tested it enough.

I'm not going to get it for her. So what's your counter to that? Yeah, my counter to that is twofold. First, it's, all right, let's assess the risk to your daughter if she gets this vaccine. And then second, let's assess the benefits to the community if she gets this vaccine. So first, the risk to the daughter. I am aware of no evidence that children face any serious risk from getting this vaccine. That's one reason why the Pfizer vaccine was recently approved for young teenagers. Second, on the benefits, there was this really,

really interesting study, a CDC-published study that came out of Kentucky, I believe, a nursing home, where someone who wasn't vaccinated and was sick with COVID went into the nursing home and spread the disease throughout an otherwise vaccinated population of old people. Now, because the vaccine is about 90% effective, 90% of these older people in the nursing home facility were protected and were totally fine. But about 10% of these old people in the nursing homes that had been vaccinated got sick, and a handful of them, I believe, died. So what does this story tell us about the social benefits of the vaccine? It tells us that even if you're healthy yourself, you're like a 13-year-old girl that faces

a very minimal individual risk from this virus, if you get sick, you can still pass it on to a senior who's going to die of it. That's conceivable with a 90% effective vaccine because that senior could be the 10%. So the best way to protect society, the best way to protect your family, your grandparents, your grandparents' friends, strangers who are dining with you at the McDonald's or the shopping in the Trader Joe's, the best way to protect them is to get vaccinated. So that's the story that I would tell this friend. This vaccine is minimally risky to your daughter. There's basically no risk that she's gonna get hurt from it.

And the benefits to the community in which she lives and the family that is us and our family friends, our older family friends, the benefit there is large enough that I would encourage teenagers to get the vaccination. The whole risk thing is weird to me. And now granted, I'm a naturally risky person, so I'm not the greatest person to talk about this, but I don't know. Sushi's risky. Driving on the highway when it's a four-lane highway and you're

going 65 miles an hour, that's risky. Getting an airplane, that's risky. If you're going to just say risky, what's risky? It's like, yeah's risky. If you're going to just say risky, what's risky? It's like, yeah, there's a very small risk something bad could happen with basically anything you do in life. And if you're going nuts about that with the vaccine, then you kind of have to do that with every other risk that you would have, right? Is it a risk to plug something into the wall? Well, the socket might blow up in your hand. Like you could go crazy thinking about all the ramifications in this case. So they point to like the couple, well, the people got the Johnson Johnson and she was dead two days later. It's like, okay,

well, I was driving on the PCH this weekend and the, this is a horrible story, but a balcony in one of the houses collapsed and everything was shut down. And dozens of people got hurt or a dozen people, whatever. It's like, so should nobody ever go on a balcony of a beach house again? Where do we draw the line with this risk stuff? And have we lost our minds? Yeah. I think you're right that there's a way in which living through a health scare like this Forces you to confront the risks that you take every day, right? You walk outside you cross the road you get into a car you drive 60 miles an hour down the highway All of this is calculable risks the benefit of the vaccine I would tell people is

Yes, we accept all sorts of risks in order to live a happy and relatively carefree life. It's so rare in our life that we're offered the opportunity to bring our risk down essentially to zero, right? And that's really what the vaccine does. The vaccine waves a magic wand over, Bill, your SUV or your friend's shoes when they go running near a highway and says, as long as you're in this car, you'll never get injured and you'll never hurt another person on the highway. It waves a wand over their running gear and says, as long as you're wearing

this running gear, you will never get hit by a car. You will never get injured or nothing bad will happen to your knee or your ankle when you run. It's so rare in life that we confront the existence of a magic wand like this. And I'm not trying to be the overly pro-vaccine guy that you were referencing earlier, but the vaccines really are spectacularly effective at reducing, for most people, the already relatively low risk that they face from this virus. And if I had that magic wand in any other aspect of my life, I would take it. That's what these vaccines offer. So how do the next four months play out? Do we hit like kind of a stalemate or do you think, are there PSAs? Do more celebrities have to get involved?

Like, is there a way to get more people to change their minds? Yeah, I think one way to think about how the vaccine hesitant are thinking about the vaccine is that it's a cost-benefit analysis to them. They say the cost of the pandemic isn't particularly high. And so the benefits of the vaccine aren't particularly high either. And there's two ways to shift that calculation. You can raise the cost of the pandemic or you can raise the benefits of the vaccine. Raise the cost of the pandemic. What does that mean?

Well, you can tell people, look, this isn't just about you, 31-year-old sales executive. This isn't just about you, 23-year-old financier. This is about the older people in your community, where if you accidentally pass the disease to them, it can be really terrible for them, right? So that's raising the social costs of the pandemic. Raising the benefits, you know, you and I talked about this before, the list is as long as you want to draw it. Give people $100 to get the vaccine. Do vaccines in a bar and give them a free shot of whiskey. Do the vaccine, you know, different states, you could have like a laboratories of

democracy thing going on. Oregon could offer people a free pinot. California could offer people a free glass of cab. Vermont could offer them free, I don't know, maple syrup. You could have different states compete for different ways to, you know, incentivize this kind of thing. Washington state could offer, you know, free dogecoin or something. You could have different states compete for different ways to, you know, incentivize this kind of thing. Washington state could offer, you know, free Dogecoin or something. You could find different ways to incentivize people to get the shot. And that's just raising the benefit of getting it. I don't want to go. You raised this in your piece about, that was the first time I even thought of it, about paying people to get vaccinated, basically.

Yeah, paying people to get vaccinated. We're already seeing it. I believe West Virginia is trying it out. One other guy that I talked to said, I believe he's a Northeast Metro resident, but he has to be left anonymous. He said, I want DoorDash for vaccines. I don't really want to get this thing. I don't want to take time out of my day to get this shot. But if I knew that I could press a button like on Uber or DoorDash, and a couple people with the vial and the needle could come over to my house and sit me down in my chair and

boop, pop the needle into my arm, give me a vaccine shot, and then leave, DoorDash or vaccines, that brings me to yes. So I want to be really creative here. I think we should try everything. We're lucky that we have 50 states and one district of Columbia where we can try out a bunch of different strategies and then scale whatever it turns out works. But it's going to require something else to really punch into this block of vaccine hesitancy. Last question. What do you say the people who worry about the Orwellian piece of this whole thing of the contact tracing.

This person's vaccinated. This person isn't. So you wear like, I don't know, a ribbon on your left arm and just ways that this could go that remind people of an Orwell book on crazy. Yeah, I for people that have these Orwellian concerns, I tend not to share their politics, but I do share their concerns. I am not sure how good it is for a country, for some states to be essentially drawing a circle around various activities, like going to baseball parks and going to bars and saying no people without their vaccine card can enter, while other states probably, like let's say Texas and Florida, you know they're going to allow anybody into those bars, anyone in those stadiums.

So even from like a political perspective, I worry this is a losing strategy because people are just going to move to less restricted areas. And if you're New York and you think you're being clever about saying no one goes to a Yankees or Mets game unless they have the vaccine card, I think you're going to push a lot of people, even more people to Austin and Miami and Phoenix. And you're going to lose their intelligence. You're going to lose their tax revenue.

And you're going to lose all of the networks of creativity that come from them. So I would rather experiment with immediate rewards. Here's your shot of whiskey. Here's your $100. Here's your Doge rewards. Here's your shot of whiskey. Here's your $100. Here's your Dogecoin. Here's your Ethereum. I'd rather give people the immediate benefit

than start to create a network of vaccine passports that has all of the Orwellian implications that you're drawing out. Because even though I share the politics of people trying to put up those lines, I am worried about some of the implications. It is weird because part of me just wants to walk around like I'm this badass vaccinated guy and just walk into different rooms and whatever. But there's still that fear when people see somebody without a mask and there's a roof, you just get the stink eye, right? You're like, well,

where's your mask? And it's like, well, I don't need a mask. But I don't know how we kind of navigate that one over these next couple of months where we have more people probably vaccinated than not, especially in like where I live in LA, I'm sure that's the case. But yet there's enough non-vaccinated people that there's this little gentle tug of war going on. And just in general, like a distrust, it feels like,

you know? Yeah, I do feel that. And getting back to full normal, like getting back to a place where you walk into the CVS or the Rite Aid without your mask on and people don't look at you funny. I think in blue states, that might be a while. And my feeling is that's mostly okay. I don't think it's a huge imposition to have to wear a mask in CVS. Like, what do I want to smell in the CVS that I want to have, you know, naked? It's probably a benefit. Yeah, exactly.

But I do think that when it comes to things like restaurants, baseball parks, Disney World, we're getting to a point where normal's coming and people who are fighting it, I think, are, you know, risk losing a political battle. We should be trying to accelerate vaccinations as much as possible and connecting to that the promise of a fully normal economy. Israel's done it. Israel's shown you can do it while getting vaccine, while getting COVID cases down 99.5%. My feeling is, let's be Israel.

My idea for California is to tell everybody if we can get to 90% vaccinated, we'll legalize gambling. That's beautiful. Then you pray into everybody's gambling addictions, including my own. I would be out there like a Jehovah's Witness trying to turn people.

Please. Getting Bill Simmons to go door to door in his neighborhood. Yeah, let's go. Signing up people to his Vaccinate LA cult. I'm ready. Legalized gambling. Let's do it. Derek Thompson, pleasure as always. Continue to really enjoy reading

your stuff in The Atlantic and I've learned a lot from you. Thank you. Thanks, Bill. Alright, Sharon Stone is here. She has a book that's out. I read the book. I really enjoyed it. I've enjoyed your whole career. It's fascinating to hear you talk about yourself because the person I've known for the last 40 years from afar was this super confident, put out this air, was culminating in Basic Instinct, obviously, but in a couple of other parts too, where you're just like the most confident, I think, A-list actress who's been on the screen in 40 years.

And then the book, you're in your own head with so many different things. What made you want to write a book? And what made you want to let somebody like me into your world? Well, I've always been a writer. I went to college on a writing scholarship when I was 15. I've written a lot of short stories.

Some of them have been published. I was on a Marc Maron podcast and then i started getting offers to write a book write a memoir and um i decided to go for it uh then you know you start thinking like where am i going to begin i mean i've had such a big life and traveled all over the world and done so many interesting things. And then you start thinking about yourself and you think, I thought, do I really fully understand myself if I'm going to write a book? I thought I should really take a look at me and make an honest inventory before I start writing about my life. I should really be clear about myself.

So I did that. And, you know, I've been, I've done a couple of 12 step programs. I am, and I'm in Eskimo, it's called who brings it's when you bring people in from the cold, people who don't want to get sober. I'm not an addict myself, but I have had other issues that I've taken to the different kinds of programs. So I started doing this and I realized it was kind of like the four steps. So I started looking into Al-Anon and I sort of followed that look at what it means to really do an invested look at yourself to really deal with your own stuff. And to allow the other people in their lives to also deal with their own stuff and to take a separate accounting of your own life. And I thought I should do that. I thought that would be a helpful, you know, honest thing to do. Yeah. And so I did. The book is super honest. Did you have people in your life who,

like how much material did you have to be talked out of? Was there like 15% more that people in your life were just like, you can't tell that story. You can't do that one. That's got to come out. No, no. I mean, I had lawyers, of course, look at my book. Yeah. And there was very little that had to come out okay um maybe honestly half a dozen sentences um but only because i have uh a couple confidentiality

agreements in my life so i just didn't want to step on anybody's toes or do anything that would make anyone feel that I had done anything inappropriate. And so anything that I put in the book, we ran by everybody just to, you know, we sent everything out. We were clear that everything was already public information. We were very thoughtful about what I did. I don't want to be inappropriate with anyone. Well, I'm a child of the 80s. I just felt like you left a lot of 80s stuff off the table and I was upset. I wanted, you were in so many movies and I just wanted, I wanted like Action Jackson. A Reconcilable Differences.

I know you have Seagal stories, like you were in a movie with Seagal, but like I first, so A Reconcilable Differences, which there's no record of, it does not exist. It doesn't stream anywhere. It's not on cable. The only thing about Seagal is when he told me not to stand in his chi. What does that even mean? What's your chi? I mean, honestly, there really isn't anything else about him. He's not really interesting. You know, he's just kind of like, that's about all there is for him. Like, don't stand in my chi.

Like, dude, who wants to, you know, who wants to get that close to you? You know what I mean? Like stand in your own chi and thanks for letting me know. So that's about it. Nobody wants to stand in your chi. Thanks. It's so crazy that so many, everyone who's basically crossed paths with him has some terrible Seagal story. He really did seem like he was the worst for like 10 years there. That's about it.

I'm not standing in your tree. Yeah. Wait, so go backwards. So a reconcilable differences. Ryan O'Neill, Shelley Long, Drew Barrymore as their child.

They have such a bad marriage. She wants to be a man. She files for emancipation. It's a divorce movie. I was a child of divorce, so I loved it. But you're in that movie. You play this.

I haven't seen it in forever. I vaguely remember, but you're like this aspiring actress. Ryan Neal's the director. He falls for you. And that was when you splashed on the scene. And you were great in that movie. And so for the next, I don't know, six, seven years, I kind of had the Sharon Stone season tickets

kind of waiting for your moment. And then it finally happened. And it wasn't until 1991 when it really happened. You and me both. I mean, I had really hoped that someone would notice my comedic chops. But, you know, it's really taken a long time for people to think that I'm funny. Yeah, that movie was good. I really actually, I think it's weird that there must be some sort of studio, you know, anytime movies disappear,

I always assume studios are suing each other or somebody got left the movie and they can't, whatever. But yeah, so you- Somebody had a bug up their bum. Yeah, something like that. But from that point on, you're, you know, you're in the mix for in the 80s. You're popping up. You're always total recall, I think, was probably the the most efficient use of you in like a gigantic movie.

But you were there for nine years. I wasn't surprised when Basic Instinct happened was my point. I was trying. I was really trying, but you know, it's very hard to get through the door. It takes a lot of work to get through the door. You know, if you're, if you're really not from here, it takes time. Was there a movie that you thought this was going to be it and then it didn't happen? Was there one that you latched onto? This will be the one. This is it. After this, I'm set. No, no. I really felt that if I got Basic Instinct, that that would be it. So you didn't think until Basic Instinct this was going to happen? No. I mean, I really thought that Total Recall was going to give me a lift because, you know, it was such a cool script and Arnold was such a badass, and it was a great opportunity to work in a big movie.

And I did think that that was going to help me. And Arnold was such a great help to me. I mean, he really taught me how to do PR, and he was great at that. And I worked really, really hard. I put on 20 pounds of muscle, you know, I, you know, I worked on martial arts. I did everything I could do to be really good at it, to really understand what was happening. You know, I really tried to get it to understand, to be my best. And it really was the movie that broke me because it was the same director that

did Basic Instinct. So ultimately it really was the movie that launched me. I didn't realize until I read the book that you did this whole, you're basically like a baseball player coming back from the off season with 20 pounds of muscle. You're hitting home runs. What were you doing? Protein was it we're using creatine we're using how far did it go we steroids and hgh like where did you draw the line no i used protein power powder and i went to a gym and i was dead lifting and um i was uh i was i went to this gym called eaton's gym which is like was like a real muscle head gym. It wasn't a fancy gym at all. It had fans and fish tanks and old, you know, crank bikes, not like modern bikes.

And, you know, you couldn't talk in there. The guys would throw you out. It was like really an old fashioned setup. And then I did karate three days a week. I just really worked hard. I did it the old fashioned way, you know, where you work really hard and make it happen. And I was single arm curling 35 pounds by the time we shot, which was a lot of weight for me. And I was deadlifting and I was working with Arnold's stunt guy on the karate every single day. And we were in Mexico City. And, you know, it was the real work. Well, you're going,

you know, you're going to have a scene where you have to fight somebody who's the most imposing, biggest person in the world, basically, at that point. Exactly. And that's intimidating enough to get your butt to the gym and get you moving. I mean, when you know you're going to have to be filmed fighting with Schwarzenegger, you know, like there's a D-Day and it's coming and it's coming for you and you better get your ass in gear. Well, it's funny. I mean, Hollywood wasn't working this way in the late 80s. But if somebody even saw your performance in that, it was so obvious that if we had movies the way back then, the way we have now, you clearly just would have immediately been in some sort of superhero movie playing. I love superhero movies. Yeah, you would have been the female badass.

I don't know, Black Widow, whatever it would have been. I love superhero movies. Yeah, you would have been the female badass. I don't know, Black Widow, whatever it would have been. I love action movies. I still, I mean, my kids and I love action movies and I love martial arts movies. I can't watch enough Kung Fu movies. You missed your calling. Where were you living in LA as you're doing all these movies, TV shows?

Because you're popping on the TV show type stuff too. Where are you? Are you in Hollywood? Are you're doing all these movies, TV shows? Because you're popping on the TV show type stuff, too. Where are you? Are you in Hollywood? Are you just bouncing around? What are you doing? I had I first came here and I got, of course, because I'm from Pennsylvania, which is, you know, the snow and slush center of the world. Yeah. I came out here.

I didn't know anything about L.A. So I got an apartment in the Marina. I thought, well, there's water and there's, you know, boats and it's also great, but because I didn't really get the Marina at that time, I thought this is it, you know, and I didn't realize it was kind of like the Trans Am Capitol of LA and that you switched your fireplace on with a light switch. I didn't really, I didn't really quite at first, I didn't really get it. So it was January and I was on my, my little porch in my bathing suit and everybody was like, what is with her? Oh my God, it's 58. I can't believe it. I'm getting a tan, you know, I thought this was really living. Um, so at first I moved to the Marina,

um, and then I moved to South Beverly Hills, um, which was really sweet, very, very sweet. And, um, cause I could walk everywhere and I felt very safe there. Um, and, and it was really nice for me in those old, older kind of, you know, pre-war kind of lovely buildings. So were you in that vortex where it's like, this is going to happen for, it'll be interesting to see what role it is, but you couldn't see it, but other people could? Because I'm just living on the East Coast. And there was like a couple of people, There's you, there's Kelly Preston. There's a couple other ones where it was like, why aren't these people bigger stars?

I don't get it. Well, I didn't feel like anybody got it. I just kept trying and trying and trying and, you know, hoping and praying and, you know, wishing and wanting. And, you know, it was really hard. And I did, you know it was really hard and i did you know basic instinct was my i think 13th 18th movie like i mean i'd done so much stuff before this happened right and

uh god i'd done a ton of tv and you know i'd been modeling in New York. And when I came out here, there wasn't modeling, you know? So I was modeling for the May company. I was doing lingerie ads for the newspaper to pay my rent and eat. And, you know, there were a lot of weeks when, you know, I was living off a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs, you know? I ate a lot of scrambled eggs sandwiches, you know?

Yeah, you have in the mid eighties, a dozen eggs. You know, I ate a lot of scrambled eggs. You know? Yeah. You have in the mid eighties, you got like TJ hooker police Academy four, but then you have the classic action Jackson above the law back to back, which was, I think two movies that have still held up as, but as much as we've turned on Seagal, I think both of those are good ones,

but then totally total recall was going, all right, this is definitely going to happen. I remember liking year of the gun, but then all of a sudden 92 basic instinct. And it felt like you were like the biggest star in the world. Cause it had happened two years before with Julie Roberts, when she did pretty woman where it was like, this person went from, Oh, I've seen her in a couple of things too. Wow. That's all right. That's the biggest star in the world. And then it happens for you. The one part you didn't really have in your, I mean, you had some of it in your book, but like, when did you actually realize that

that was happening? Because you're in the middle of it. So it's kind of hard to like levitate above yourself and see like, oh shit, this is, I'm now an A plus lister. Basic came out on a Friday. And on a Tuesday, I was driving up Sunset Boulevard. And I stopped at a stop sign, a stoplight. And people climbed all over my car. Oh, my God. I couldn't see out. And the light changed and people started blowing the horn. And I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

Was I supposed to drive forward with people all over the outside of my car and my windshield? Was I supposed to scream and cry? Was I supposed to try to get out of my, you know, I just didn't know what I was supposed to do. And that's when I realized, oh, this thing is really gone bananas. And that's sort of when I started recognizing that, oh, this is really gone banana. Fame was different back then because I think we had less stuff. Now it's like everyone's spread

in a million different directions. Back then it was like movies, TV, music. If you hit, it hit in this way that was, you know, 30, 40 million people have felt like. Cell phones didn't take pictures. Yep. So there were just paparazzi and people chasing you down the street.

And that's it. Trying to get you in like Us Weekly or People Magazine or one of those spots. Um, did you know, as you were making the movie that it was going to be as big as it did as it, as it was? Cause I still feel like it's a classic. Um, I, I did, I really did. I, I auditioned for it for eight months. So I was pretty clear that they weren't messing around. We did a rewatchables on it. We have a podcast called The Rewatchables where we rewatch old movies. We do like break it down, do all these things, a little research on it, all that stuff.

And one of the big points I was making was like, it's one of those movies slash performances. It's hard to even imagine other people in it. You know, like I felt like Body Heat with Kathleen Turner was like this too, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. And by the way, you two could have flipped those movies at the points of your career and probably, you know, time machine,

you could have gone back in 91 and been body heat 1982 and vice versa. But it's just so hard to think of that many performances where it's like, I can't imagine anyone else in that out of the modern actresses. If you had to pick somebody, who would you pick out of the, out of the new breed? Or is there nobody that you could see? Because my go-to for this was always Scarlett Johansson for years, but now I don't know if there's like a slightly younger. I think Kate Winslet could have played this part.

100%. One of the greatest actresses alive. Yeah. I think I'm always hard to say her name. Sorcey. Oh, Sorcey Ronan. Yeah. I think she's just a genius and could, could probably do that. But there's, because it's a weird part. You have to have that sense of sort of, yeah, I think both of them could probably pull it off. Yeah, it's tough because I have to like you. I have to be afraid of you. I have to be attracted to you.

And there has to be that, the actress has to have that understanding of the psychological element. They have to have a certain kind of, the French call it sang-froid. It's cold-blooded, but there's this warmth to it. There's a weird warmth to it. Also, you have Douglas, who's at the peak of his powers at that point. He's on this incredible six six year run of every movie he's in is just a monster. Yeah. Well, he is just a monster performer. I mean, he is still killing it in, in the,

in the series he's doing right now, the Kaminsky method. I mean, he knows exactly what is right for him at each point in his life. But you, he initially, he didn't want you because they wanted somebody bigger. I don't think it was specific to me. I never took it personally. I just felt like he was, you know, literally putting his ass on the line and you know, that's a big, big move for a guy who's taking this kind of very new risk in cinema. Yeah. I, uh,

the real estate is unbelievable in that movie too. It's an underrated. If you're talking about the great real estate movies of all time, like some of the, the house that she lives in, the apartment that he has, like, it's like just very great Bay area,

old school, pretty so calm value stuff. So when you, when, I mean, you did this before the book, but you wrote about it in the book, but you talked about how the whole no underwear thing, you didn't, you didn't really know that's how it was going to play out. And it seemed like people were shocked to hear that because that had been this iconic moment of the movie, right? Where it was like, not only in the movie itself, but in the selling of the movie, because this was the pre-internet era where you

kind of heard rumors, oh, this is a piece of it. I remember The Crying Game was another one like that, where it's like, there's a secret, there's this reveal. You would hear this buzz about that, right? The guy in the crime game was amazing. Right. Amazing. And I was shocked that we haven't ever seen him in anything else. Jay Davidson. Didn't he?

He got nominated for an Oscar, too. Yeah. Yeah. But with yours, you revealed, like, yeah, I actually didn't know. Why did it take you so long to set the truth about how that played out? I don't think that it took me so long. It's just that this was the last and final time I was going to talk about it. That's it?

That's it. Well, you talked about it. I'm done. You laid it out. I got it. I got it out of my system. Well, so how are we supposed I'm done. You laid it out. I got it. I got it out of my system. Well, so how are we supposed to feel about the movie now if you didn't totally appreciate how that scene went down? I guess that's the complicated part of this.

Because I still think it's a classic movie, but now I feel bad because there's that moment that you weren't happy about. Life is complicated, Bill. Yeah, that's fair. You're just going to have to do you and I'm going to do me. Tell me, you didn't talk about Sliver in the book. That was after you have the giant movie.

Well, after you have the giant movie, there's always that next movie somebody can make when basically whatever they release, people are going to go see. Right. And so that was that. I actually think that movie would have been a better TV show. Oh, completely. It would have been a much better. It's like a good Netflix show, right? I think I would have watched season one of Sliver. Oh, exactly. A good Netflix show. It's so exactly a good Netflix show. And it could have been shot a little bit better to be that, you know, it could have been,

it could have moved in on different things. It could have been, it just, to me, it lacked a little bit of that kind of finesse, that kind of shooting it in the technological way that it was. It wasn't really shot in that demonstrative way that showed the technology of what they were trying to say. If you're doing it as a TV show, each episode would be about somebody's apartment, right? You would go into that apartment and you would be like voyeurs.

Or two or three apartments that had some kind of story and intrigue among themselves. You know, all the different things that people did. It's a great idea for a TV series. After Basic Instinct came out, were you single? No.

Because you told a story about how you met. You were on one of the, I think it was, maybe it wasn't the Sliver Set, it was one of those where you met the person you ended up with for the next couple of years, like the assistant director. Yes. Who you asked him out. Were people afraid to ask you out after Basic Instinct? about that, but we weren't in, in a position where it wouldn't have been appropriate. I don't think for him to ask me out because of the, you know, the, there's a system, there's this awful class system and it probably wouldn't have been okay for him to hit on me. But I'm just saying in general,

like when you ran into people, did you feel like there was a fear of almost like that movie, that character was so powerful that people were kind of like, I don't even know how to talk to her? Well, yeah. And the people that did had some weird ideas about how to talk to me. They thought you were the character. I think that people for a long time thought I was the character. I think that I carried a lot of baggage because of that part. I think that people for a long time thought that I was like, and who, who,

who in God's green earth is like that character? I mean, let's get real. This exists in somebody's imagination. And I hope to God, nobody is actually like that character. An ice pick novelist slash murderous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's hope that's not who you run into on your daily basis. Well, you, it wasn't really until Casino when I felt like you shed that, where people realized you were actually an actress.

No. It's weird to say it that way, but it's true. No, it really was. It was like, oh my God, Sharon Stone. Wow. It's weird to say it that way, but it's just true. No, it really was. It was like, oh my God, Sharon Stone. Wow. Like everybody was so surprised by it that you were playing like this real character. I know.

They just must have accidentally picked up like an ice pick wielding sociopath off the street. You had something in the book about De Niro. You were talking about all the nuances with how he gets involved with a character and just like what a psycho he is about every little tiny detail. That's why he's such a great actor.

What'd you pick up from him? That he's the most breathtakingly brilliant actor. And it's like watching, I don't know, Michelangelo Payne. I mean, he's just, I mean, I'm completely infatuated with him. I mean, I just think he's absolutely hung the moon. I think that watching him act is, I don't know, like watching Baryshnikov dance. I mean, they're just people who, and I have to say, speaking of Baryshnikov, just going completely off topic, when I got knighted in France, Baryshnikov picked me up at one point and set me up on the bar in this restaurant that had a very high bar. And being picked up by Baryshnikov was akin to acting with Bob.

Wow. That moment where it's not like any other thing. It's just so different that it's almost hard to put into words. It's just a skill set and a thing that's so different. It's just so different. I mean, acting with Bob is so different. It's so beautiful. It's so, it's so, it just makes you want to be so much better and so much. There's no time to be frantic about how's it going to go or am I okay or do I have it? You just want to throw yourself at being the very best you ever could be. It's like when Baryshnikov picked me up, I'm like, I am light as a feather. I am ballet. I am moving in this air. It's like there's just something that just the mere action of it makes you better.

The mere actually just being near him makes you better. He made me much better than I ever could imagine that I would be. But you knew you could hang with him though. I decided that yes I could yes I could yes I would and yes I was gonna yeah because you can't it's almost like sports if you don't feel like

you can match the other person you're gonna fail I believe I mean I went to Monaco at one point for the Princess Grace Foundation and we were doing like a whole, like a week of fundraising and all this stuff with a bunch of cool celebrities. And one of the things we were going to do one day was a baseball game. And Steve Garvey was there. And the night before,

we were all at a cocktail party. And I'm like, Steve, I want to go down to the baseball field right now. And I want you to teach me how to hit a baseball. And he's like, right now? I'm like, tell me that if you were in the room with Brando right now, you wouldn't be telling him, I want you to tell me something about acting. Yeah. I want to go down to the baseball field right now and I want you to teach me how to hit a ball so tomorrow I'm amazing. And he's like, let's go. And we went down to the field and we're working out. We're just warming up.

We're hitting some balls. And he taught me how to hit a ball. And we hit a few balls. And before it was over, I hit a ball right out of the park. Really? And yes, because he really talked to me. And I really understood exactly what he was saying. And he taught me about my breathing.

He taught me exactly how to hold the bat. And then the last thing he said is, I know this is going to sound stupid, but be the ball. And I was like, that doesn't sound stupid to me at all. I mean, I'm an actor. I understand exactly what you mean. And when he said, be the ball, man, I hit that ball. And the sound of that ball hitting that bat was the most extraordinary crack. I hit that ball and it went right out of the park. And I was like, I don't think I'm going to be able to do this without you standing next to me, but I really do get it.

And since then, I have loved nothing more than going to the batting cages. What? I get in there, and I start, you know, I can't hit the softballs anymore because like a wet bag of sand, I can't take it. But I get in there and I start at like 40 miles an hour and I work my way up 50, 60, 70. And I love hitting a baseball because he really got in there with me and explained it to me in a way that made sense to me. Yeah. And it is. it's like sports. And to me, when I was prepping for Basic Instinct, you know, Magic was still playing basketball and I

was an obsessive Magic Johnson, still am, fan. And his no-look pass was everything to me. Just understanding what that nature of that pass was, how it worked, how his team members worked with him, what he was actually doing. And so I based my whole performance in Basic Instinct on the no-look pass. And so all the time when we were just reading the script around the table, all the time when I was hanging out with Michael, I was just studying him and studying him and studying him because I was like, I'm going to do the no look pass with Michael. Everything I'm going to do with him is going to be the no look pass because I am like a stalker on him. And even when we did the scene where I was in the, I had a lie detector thing on. Yeah.

I was actually on that lie detector machine, which was a real thing. And he was in a separate room on the same stage, but they were watching me live on the lie detector test. But it didn't matter because I had studied him so hard by then that I knew exactly where he was in the other room and I knew exactly what he was doing. So I could do the lie detector test and watch him blind from the other room because I had worked so hard on my no-look pass to Michael that I literally could do the lie detector test and watch him simultaneously. And it was all by studying magic on the floor.

Did it freak him out? No. He loved it? I don't even know if he loved it because I was just in it. Yeah. I was in it to do it. And I'm sure he appreciated it because he was producing it, you know?

Yeah. And he wanted it to work. With Casino, the Scorsese, De Niro, you're entering this and those guys had made at least five movies together at that point. I can't remember the exact number, but they had this whole shorthand.

It's one of the great partnerships of all time. You have Pesci in there too, who has done a few things with them. And then you're kind of crashing the party. Yeah, well, you kind of have to be brought into that loop. But what was that Scorseseese De Niro thing like? I've always been fascinated because although even leading to the Irishman recently, those guys have such an amazing history together.

I had to elbow my way in, you know, at first they would set up scenes sort of without me. And then I was like, you know, I would just followed Marty around constantly, like Marty, Marty, Marty, Marty, Marty, Marty. Hey, Marty, Marty. And, Marty. Hey, Marty, Marty. And finally he was like, you're like a terrier on my pant leg. What do you want? What do you want? And then I was like, you know what I want? I want you to come into my trailer in the morning. Like you go see Bob and Joey. I want you to talk to me about the scenes. I want

you to tell me what you want. I want you to push me till I break. And he was like, that's what you want? I'm like, yeah, that's what I want. That's what I want, Marty. And he's like, all right, you got it. And that's what started to happen. But it really took me, you know, shoving my nose at him constantly to get him to realize that I wanted to be in it and that I had the guts to be, throw myself at it as hardcore as they did. And so my part went from five weeks to five months. It's a really good movie. It's interesting in the relationship of the whole Scorsese, De Niro catalog. It's such a fun thing that they did that then, five years after Goodfellas. And then you have the Irishman circling back all the way at the end. They are the greatest team that I've had the luxury of working with.

I don't get cast a lot in these type of things. I wish I did, but for me, it was the greatest thing that ever happened. I just couldn't, I couldn't believe my good fortune. I felt really blessed. I adore those guys. I felt really lucky. It was amazing. It was a wonderful experience for me. You also, you did a movie with Sly Stallone, The Specialist. Right. You did Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Steven Seagal. You had all three.

And Carl Weathers, I guess, too. Carl's great. Carl was great. And yeah, and Sly, we had an amazing time. You know, he is certainly as tough as they come. You know, when we did our, we did our own, all of our own stunts. Yeah. Everything. I mean, we really blew up that building. And we had 12 cameras around the building and we did all of the stuff when the building was blowing and we did everything running through the fire of that building.

And and so I was like, will you do this? Will you do this with me? And I said, I have one caveat. I have to be barefoot because I have to be able to feel the floor. I have to be able to feel where the blows and the fire and everything are coming, I don't want to be unsteady on my feet. And I want to be able to feel where the fire and the explosives are coming from. And he's like, okay, that makes sense. I get the rationale on that. No problem. And he's like, just hold my hand and I'm going to pull you through it. And I was like, okay, let's go. If you're going to do it, I'm going to do it. And they set the cameras and we ran through that explosives and that entire building blowing. And it was thrilling. I like that movie.

Yeah, I like it too. And we had a great time making it and we had the best cameraman and we had the best producer um our director pretty much stayed in his trailer um i don't think he could handle handle it yeah um so lucky for us we had the greatest cameraman who had shot so many astonishing movies and um Jerry, God, our producer, God rest his amazing soul, Jerry Weintraub. Oh, the legend. The ledge. We called him Uncle Jerry. And it was amazing to work with Jerry. You know, my heart is even breaking saying his name and talking about him because the loss of him is the greatest tragedy. Jerry, Jerry's the kind of guy that the day my dad died, he called me and said, honey, anything, anything, can I help you in any way? I mean, he's, there aren't very many and we're never,

in fact, I can't think of a single other person in this town that was as loving and good as Jerry. I liked his book, um, Stallone versus Arnold. This was, this was the defining, this was the defining argument. If you're talking about sports like Magic versus Bird, Stallone versus Arnold was going there for 12 years. So I'm making you pick. They're very different types of guys. Arnold is super level-headed, super feet on the ground. And even when, I mean, I really appreciated, you know, the way that he came back this year and made that really beautiful, eloquent speech and talk about where he came from and how he grew up and really explained himself so beautifully. I mean, I really respected that. He's a person that goes away, thinks,

talks when he has something to say. He's a very that goes away, thinks, talks when he has something to say. He's a very level-headed person. Sly is an extraordinary businessman, and he runs his franchise very intelligently. I don't think people really, I think they shortchange Sly. And I think that shortchanging hurts his feelings. Because he really has brought billions of dollars

to this industry. And I don't think people realize, like recognize him for that. I don't think that they stop. I think it was really good when he finally got nominated for an Oscar because I think that a little validation

would go a long way with Sly. Yeah, even a movie like First Blood, which turned into the Rambo series, that movie's really good. And he's really good in it. It's a really smart movie about Vietnam War veterans, but nobody eventually became this whole patriotic superhero thing. But the first movie, he doesn't get credit for it at all. Right. And I think that he's been kind of shortchanged in the credit department. And I think that's been a little bit rough for him because, I mean, he has given literally billions of dollars to this industry.

And I think a little bit of like, you know, some kind of like thank you from the industry might be nice. You bought Leo stock really early. Literally, you bought stock. You gave up some of your salary to cast him in one of your movies. So obviously, you weren't surprised that he became a star. But as Titanic's happening, what were you thinking? I really believe in Leo. I think he's not just a great

actor, but he is super intelligent. Leo, as a kid, I mean, we took him for his birthday go-kart riding. I mean, you know, it's how long I've known Leo, you know? Leo is extraordinarily intelligent. Like, wow, you know. And it was so clear that he had this very, just kind of classy demeanor because of his incredible intelligence and those kind of looks that he has. That he was going to be able to make this kind of career that had a, he was very leading man, very, and he had this kind of innate understanding of bringing his tenderness and vulnerability to screen. He just, you know, he just really had it, you know? And Russell, I always felt, was the Richard Burton of his generation. He had that kind of hyper-masculinity and that he would play, you know, big heroes.

I was not surprised at all when he started playing, you know, like ship captains and, you know, like that, because he's very he's got that, you know, and I could see that right off the bat. When I first saw him, I saw him in a movie called Romper Stomper where he played a skinhead. And how can you he just played a skinhead. What does that mean? And it's like, do you have any idea what it takes to pull off a part like that and and that is a really hard part to play like really hard yeah just come off like a like a like a just a you know like flat um you know he was complex and um well it seems like it seems like you have such good eye for

talent you were ahead of your time if you if it had been like everything happened for you 20 years later you immediately have a production company and you're you're handpicking people making all the using your power it just really wasn't like that in the early 90s. Sometimes studios would bring me into casting meetings to say like, who do you think we should cast? But they also, there were so many rigid boundaries that, you know, they couldn't cast anybody that was not completely straight. Right. And they couldn't cast anybody who was like this or wasn't that or, you know, their heritage or this or that. I mean, it was just so absurd. They're casting ideas. I just wasn't like I couldn't really think inside their box very well. But yes,

I think you're right. And I wanted to direct when I was hitting my success stride and they thought I was really ridiculous and told me so. But yes, I would have had a production company. I would have been directing and I would have picked a lot of different talent than what was being picked for sure. Yeah. Even if it's like 15 years later, you immediately have a production company. You're doing whatever you want. You're teaming with whatever directors, you're doing documentaries, all that stuff.

It was just, I did produce a bunch of documentaries. Yeah. Tiny bit. But I can't get them on the air. What was your favorite one? Well, I produced a short one, a 15 minute one about one of the youngest living Holocaust survivors. And it's one. Oh, my God. So many documentary film festivals. That is kind of crazy. And I just wanted to go on the air during like National Holocaust

month. But it's just very hard to get anybody to do anything when you're a woman, you know, look at your product. I mean, this year, finally, people are starting to allow women to work. But yeah, I mean, I have really good ones. I have like, you know, a dozen. Really, I have ones where we ask women from every walk of life all over the world the same 20 questions. Women that work in bordellos, women that are CEOs. We've asked women from every possible avenue of life the same 20 questions. And it's super interesting. Just all kinds of great ones. I don't want to step on some of the stuff you wrote about your health issues in the book because that's a big part of it. But how are you doing these days?

I'm awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Because you had obviously a brain tumor, but then you had some after effects from that. But now, because at one point you were having trouble speaking, but you seem 100% fine now. It was not a brain tumor. You have two arteries in the back. Yeah, the brain, I'm sorry. Right. And these two arteries control basically your ability to walk and talk and everything. Yeah, yeah. One of mine ruptured and I had a nine-day brain hemorrhage and a stroke. I'm great. I'm doing great. All systems functioning as far as I can tell. Of course, you never know. I think I'm doing good. I think I'm on top of it. And they had no idea why that ruptured? Was there any sort of reason? It's just totally random?

You know, it's really interesting. When I went to the hospital, nobody asked me and nobody gave me a full exam. It's really funny how women get treated. Part of the reason I hemorrhaged so long is because I didn't get a full exam. And when they gave me my first exam, all the blood had pooled on one side of my head, but that was because I had had breast tumors removed and I was still healing and bandaged from that and laying on one side. And because they didn't know that, they didn't know why the blood was on one side of my head. So it took them another week to figure out that maybe they should give me another angiogram. And before they sent me, they just wanted to send me home.

They thought I was faking it because most people fake brain hemorrhages. So they gave me another angiogram and realized what was happening. And I was nearly dead by that time. And so I had a seven-hour brain surgery. Well, that's a big part of the early part of the book. I didn't know a lot of that stuff. And it was pretty harrowing. You just, I was reading it, I'm like, Jesus.

Especially when you're getting misdiagnosed by doctors and some of the stuff that was going on with you. But you seem great now. Congrats on the book. What's the greatest part left for you to play that you haven't played yet? The one that is the greatest part I haven't played yet. You still know what it is yet. Can't you do like a season on Billions or something where you're just like this kick-ass... Dominations or something where you're just like this kick-ass...

Dominatrix or something? No, like a kick-ass billionaire who's just playing chess with everybody. I don't know. There's got to be something. You never made like a super sad Steel Magnolias type movie, did you? I have made some sad movies. I made a really great movie, a children's movie called Freak the Mighty, about a mom who had a kid who had a physical disorder who becomes good friends with another boy at school. It was made, Rob Reiner's daughter wrote this amazing children's book that won a lot of awards, and I produced this kid's movie, which was great, with Gina Rollins and Harry Dean Stanton, amazing children's book that won a lot of awards. And I produced this kid's movie,

which was great with Gina Rollins and Harry Dean Stanton and really nice. Somebody's got to write you one where it's like, you're the mom, somebody's getting married and it's a wedding weekend, but then all hell breaks loose and it gets super sad at one point. Something where you're like in control and there's a lot of people that you can kind of play with. That's my vote. That's my vote for the screenwriters out there. Okay. That's it. That would be my premise. That's all I have is just the premise. I'm a huge fan though. It's really awesome to have you on. I really have enjoyed a lot of the movies you've made and I really respect just kind of the presence you've had in a really weird place,

Hollywood, where a lot of people don't speak up. A lot of people aren't really completely 100% honest about stuff. And I just always appreciated how you navigated it. People in Hollywood aren't honest? No. But it's great to meet you. Good luck with everything and good luck with the book. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time.

All right. That's it for the BS podcast. Don't forget about the rewatchables lethal weapon too. Don't forget about me on sports card nonsense. If you want to hear me talk about basketball cards, don't forget about no skips with Shea Serrano and Brandon Jenkins, AKA Jinx. That launched first podcast launches on Thursday. Very excited for that one. And I'll see you on Thursday's pod. I feel the air twisting On the wayside On the first side of the river I'm saying

I don't have to I don't have to