The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - William Shatner

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

An icon in the flesh, after seventy years in the spotlight, Williams Shatner continues to live long and prosper. William shares over 90 years worth of wisdom, drawn together from a life of incredible experiences— from exploring the final frontier on camera, to real-life space travel. He and Dan explore the beauty of our planet, cosmic joke of our brief existence on it, and the unifying grief all humans share. They also look back on the enduring legacy of Star Trek, the way it forever revolutionized fan culture, and how it continues to change his life and countless others for generations. For an unforgettable experience to see this icon live on stage and a screening of the classic, "Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan," go to WilliamShatnerTour.com for dates and tickets. For all the latest projects and appearances, visit WiliamShatner.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Draft Kings Network. smiling through this because this is a legitimate delight, not just because this man, a piece of my childhood is sitting in front of me. We've got an icon from this planet and beyond. William Shatner, big fan, my wife's a big fan, and the reason we're big fans, beyond the work, is your general zest for life. So it is great to, you came from around the corner here, you've been living. You know, the word zest, if you do lemon zest, for example, you scrape the top off, like the peel. So is that what I'm doing about life? I'm scraping the zest off of life. Maybe that's what I am doing, not consciously.

You're still touring. That's crazy. No. It's yes and no. I mean, it's difficult. And airplanes are difficult. So if I'm doing cities, I try to book the cities two, three, hundred miles apart so I can be driven from one location to the other.

So if the curtain comes down at 11.30, off we go in a car to a venue that's a couple hundred miles away, ideally. This next tour that I'm going to be doing or when this is broadcast I've already done, in the middle of the tour, there's a jump of about 1,000 miles, so we've got to get on an airplane.

These days, getting on an airplane is a, absolute nightmare of anxiety. Just as you and I are speaking, two airplanes had difficulty. One was almost hit by another airplane, and the second airplane landed and everybody jumped out on the sliding thing because of some fear of some kind. I, as we are talking in this broadcast. The day before yesterday was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and they announced there's a fire in the airport, a bank, get out of the airport, get out, get out now. And everybody's running around getting out. I've got roll-on luggage. And when I'd come into the airport, the escalator wasn't working. So I took the elevator up to the second floor.

where you board the airplanes. Now they're saying get out, and now I've got to get, and don't use the elevators, they said. Now I'm thinking, I've got this heavy roll-on bag and I'm going to carry it downstairs. I can't move.

So I sat there, immobile, not knowing quite what to do. In my immobility, it was the wisest thing I could have done because suddenly, okay, it's a false, it's no, it's not a fire, you can come back,

and everybody starts pouring in, grumbling about having to run outside, and I hadn't moved. And that's the problem with flying these days. It's so overloaded that it's a chore. It's not pleasant. And I tried to avoid it. So I tried driving from one venue to... What are you doing? What are you doing at 94 years old at 3 a.m. in the Midwest,

hurtling to another hotel because you're touring because you must perform. And that hurtling is H-U-R-T, not D. H-U-R-T-E-R-L-E-R-L-E-R-L-E-R-L-I'm hurtling, but the hurtling. I was taught to drive fast cars for a number of reasons. One is for the movies, but also I started to really enjoy going fast around curves. So I did all these celebrity races. They teach you fast-in slow-out, slow-in fast. or I didn't win, slow in, fast out, along the limits of adhesion.

So I would drive the car, and I'm going to be somewhat discriminatory right now, an American car because they're built for comfort and not for going fast around curves, even national highways, which the curves are, have a radiation. There's a limit to how much of a curve a national road can do. But at 100 miles an hour in an American car with the limits of adhesion, you can feel the car just beginning to creep up. You doesn't go any faster. And so I would be going 100 miles an hour driving the car. But in the middle of the night, at 2 in the morning, there's nobody around.

You don't pass anybody. And the occasional car coming at you is on the other side of the road, so you don't pay any attention to that. I had forgotten, if I'd ever remembered, that cops can make. measure your speed, if they're coming the upper direction, they can measure your speed going against them. Apparently, that's what they did. And so I'm going along on 100 miles an hour. Suddenly I see a cherry light flashing.

I pull over, and the cop says, you're going at 100 miles an hour, and I know is I'm going to get the, he says, come into my car. And I, okay, he taught my license. I opened the door of the cop car and the passenger side and as the light hits me he looks up and he says no shit Shatner

and he lets me go that happens three times on that trip no shit Shatner you've got carte blanche you have carte blanche to drive as fast as you like through 40 field marijuana

unmas and I was a felony man you know I thought he was going to cut me off to jail and I'll miss my engagement and it's going to be very expensive. He never did that. That is the zest for life, though, that we speak of. Well, I played a cop for five years, so I know a policeman, and I admire policemen. I think they see that, and they've been very easy on me.

I'd like this to be biographical, and I want to go through even your childhood. But when you think of the status that you have now that endures, I'm assuming from the way television grabbed people 50 years ago is where it is that it started, when you think of the connection that you have from that television show, could you have imagined any of that in your wildest dreams? Nobody imagines. I mean, sick people imagine. I'm going to be loved by, you know, I'm going to be a success. I'm going to work and I'm going to, I'm a little amateur actor in Montreal. And I started the age of six. And actually, I've never done anything else.

I've never driven a cab or waited or on people. I've waited on people, but that was because they were late. But I never delivered a drink. All I've done is perform or write or direct or something related to entertainment. I've never done anything else. So I'm blundering around. My whole life has been a blunder. But a blessed blunder, I guess you could say.

because I just fell into things. People, would you like to play a policeman? So I played a policeman for five years. And so policemen think he must be a policeman or he must know. And I did go to the academy here in Los Angeles and did a lot of background work, made a lot of friends with patrolmen and uniformed policeman as well as detectives.

So a policeman's work is both hugely dangerous and very boring. And I recognize that. And I think they see that I recognize that. And so I'm a fan. But when you've traveled through what you've traveled through, what is the need in your 90s to be driving across Midwest America to perform on tour the way that you performed your life story in 2012

in a one act, a one-man play? You have the need to tell everyone. I'm not telling anybody. I'm working. And you know, the aging, the aging brain, you hear that phrase and people talk about what happens to your head when you're, but everything they say is if you're active, if you're involved in life in the, in the, the, you're involved in the. in the dirt of life, if you're mucking around in the mud, trying to live like you did when you were 20, your brain grows. It's a muscle.

Well, it's neurons, but it's strengthened by exercise, by giving yourself problems. And these are problems. I just had an experience that was unlike anything. I've ever done a month or two ago. I had been to the South Pole, and I had been hired to do what you and I are doing right now, to talk and expand on whatever I might know. And they had also asked Neil deGrasse Tyson to do the same thing.

And so we were on board ship for a couple of weeks together, and we combined forces, and we started doing shows together. Now, he's a very erudite guy. He's an, he's a, he's a expert, a source of information about space and about about what stars are doing. A modern-day representative for the science of the stars and space, our most famous advocate, not unlike what you were on television in 1966. I wish I had said that. That's exactly what he is. He's a bright, affable, lovely man, and I got to know him.

So when we came home, when I came home to Los Angeles, and he lives in New York, I thought, what an adventure that was. And I had boned up a little bit on the three explorers who made it their business to try and get to the South Pole. and only one between Amundsen, Scott, and shackled it. The only one who made it was Amundsen, the Norwegian. And so I knew their life story, and I knew some of the philosophy. I knew why one had made it and two hadn't. And then I began to think,

why would somebody want to go to the South Pole, which is a desert? It's arid. It's a snowbank. Why would you want to go from one snowbank to another? There's nothing there. There's no wildlife. Oh, look, there's a wildlife there.

There's something going on two, three miles beneath your feet, but it's all ice. There's nothing there. Why would you want to go? Now I've said that with passion. Now do it academically. Why would you want to go to the South Pole? Why don't you want to go up to the Everest, Mount Everest, or discover a new mountain or go under the, I mean, there's so much, so many places you could explore, why the South Pole?

I began to write about that. I'm thinking, my God, what's the reason for exploration? Why do we explore? Why did that guy come off the tree and say, oh, it's better here on the ground? Why? I began to write about that. Then I contacted Neil. I said, you know, this subject of exploration, why don't we, and I think I'm remembering correctly,

I may be pausing in giving credit to Neil and the producer Daniel Fox, but in any case, what evolved was, why explore, let's do exploration spiritually, medically, and geographically. Let's talk about that. And my first question would be, why the hell are we going to Mars? Okay? And it's an academic question. Why are we going to Mars? Why are we?

But there's a valid, why are we going to Mars? Why if we send people, are we risking? And it's a huge risk because of meteorite. When they unfurled the, I'm talking a lot here. Are you going with that? Well, but you just said that, no, but I'm following you and I want to, I'll, I'll tether you to something here because you said in the middle of this, you said, give yourself problems. You say, give your mind problems, challenges. Okay, so you've got it. So I'm giving

myself the problem of discovering why we're discovery. I mean, my curiosity is why would these people, these sophisticated explorers, choose to go to the South Pole? Or why are, why, I mean, Really? Why are we going to Mars? One-sixth. The gravity dust storms that last months. There's no water. There's nothing there. You're not going to transport a billion people to go farm. Mars? There's no reason to go to Mars except discovery. Except putting your name like Magellan did on the Magellan Straits and suddenly you're immortal.

So you're saying the secret to life, because I know a lot of people ask you this, that you have some secrets. It's discovery. Keep yourself so curious. Exactly. Keep yourself so curious that you want to live forever because you never want to stop learning. There's so much what I have fallen, not this month, but several years ago, fallen in love with learning, fallen in love with discovering discovery. It's, it's, it's, do you read, I'm sure, novels and stuff and, as do I? And there's nothing more adventurous of and entertaining and miraculous as history, as

mankind's story, as the unity of nature, of the interlaping, um, lives of everything on earth. I mean, just the story of Earth is so entertaining to discover that you can be fascinated for the rest of your years on Earth. Just discover. Find yourself in daily awe once you get to the point of awe and wonder of Earth and its interconnectedness.

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I was introduced, I thought, to another side of you when I read a quote of yours from space, having returned from space. I know it had a poignancy that reached a lot of people for whatever the reason was. Your in space is a symbol for American television in space. You're going as the oldest person to have ever gone into space. And what comes over you is a profound sadness that you articulated with great eloquent. can you take me through what you were expecting and what happened there well the original thought was what an adventure i i had gone up to uh to uh to uh Seattle to visit with Bezos to talk about my being in the first launch and they thought it was a good idea then COVID did and the next

thing I read, Jeff himself is going up with his brother, a lady astronaut who never did get into space in a kid. Some kid, I should really find out who that was because I never have. So he went first, and then they invited me to come up in the next launch. And I thought about it, you know, there was publicity about the first thing, but then I thought just the experience to going up there. because there's no question the second launch is now boring

who cares and even Bezos's trip didn't attract that much attention so I agreed to go and the story of my going you know they got me there a day early and I said what am I doing

here? There's nobody here and they said oh no I said let's go to the let's go to the gantry they suggested let's go let's go to the gantry where they was 20 miles away so we hopped in a car and went to the gantry There's the gantry. The Blue Origins launch pad is a mile in the air, about 4,000 feet in the air.

Then they had a gantry. There's 11 flights up. Now, let's walk up the gantry. So now I'm at 4,000 feet walking up 11 flights of stairs. Now, finally I get to the top. I'm out of breath. And, okay, we're here at the top of the garr. Well, let's look over the gantry.

And I look over that, see that, look at that room that's got 12 inches of concrete around it. And what's that? Well, that's in case something goes wrong. What? What could go wrong? So the next day, everybody comes, and we try and rehearse a little bit about what we're going to face. And then we get to the spaceship a couple of days later. And it's venting what looks like steam, but it's gas.

It's hydrogen. I said, what's that? He said, it's hydrogen. I said, hydrogen. well anybody over 12 remembers the documentaries about the Hindenberg burning and that guy who was the announcer's name nobody remembers but he was screaming oh the humanity of it and people are dying and running away from I mean there's a real newsworthy experience going on in front of your eyes a a an event for an event for the ages is taking place on camera. And there's a guy ad-libbing trying to have the words to be the equal of the event in front of him. Can you imagine this spaceship, this lighter-than-air ship, is burning, consumed by hydrogen gas.

Are you admiring his commitment to the broadcast right now? Well, I'm thinking, what would you do? You're a broadcaster. And I would be in a position. How do you add lip? My God. And all he could come up with us, the humanity of it. Yeah.

But that word humanity meant the world is coming to an end in front of him. And he comes out with the humanity of it. And in his voice, the torture. But you haven't even taken flight yet. You're just standing. I'm looking at the venting thinking, my God. The humanity of it all. And then I get in the spaceship.

And on the countdown, the guy says, there's an anomaly. It's an anomaly. No. No, I'm the only one who knows what the word anomaly means. What's anomaly? Anomily means it shouldn't be, though. Oh, I see.

There's an anomaly. Wait, you're not during the countdown? There's an anomaly? Yeah, the guy says, T minus 17, T minus 60. Oh. There's an anomaly. He didn't make that sound. You're making that up.

You didn't make that sound. No, he didn't make that sound. No, that's true. He didn't go up. He went, oh, there's an anomaly. Holy cats, what's an anomaly? What's going on? You mean that vending?

Maybe it's caught fire. No, no. It's okay. The anomaly's gone. T-minus 14 minutes 30. Now he gets to about T-minus 10, and this is what he says, and this is the God's true. word for word.

All right. We're removing the gantry. Anybody who wants to get off should get off now. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being an astronaut and you're sitting with your back to the ground? You know, you're looking up at the sky. You know that this thunderous engine is going to take you to Mars.

And the geysers, if you want to get off, you get off now. Ten seconds. Ten seconds. Last ten second. Last time. It's right. Don't envy you. If you want to get up, man, I would get off if I were you. But you're expecting what? You're like roller coaster adventure. I want to live big. I don't know. They say weightlessness, and we've learned how to deal with weightlessness by anchoring ourselves to a five-point harness. And but no, 600 people apparently, maybe a few more now, have been weightless. There's no word for weightless in our language.

There's no comparable experience here in the swimming pool. underwater. That doesn't even, you know, you're still part of gravity. Do not have gravity? And when I undid the five-point harness, and when they said, you're okay, and I floated out of the seat, can you imagine? So, obviously we went, we got up. The Carmen line is. Let me stop you here, though, searching for what? Before you get up, you're searching for what? It's not just the adrenaline rush. There's discovery. What do you, so far the experience is about what you wanted to be, even with the dark comic humor of interrupting with an anomaly. And weightlessness is an amorphous term. You can't describe weightless. You can't say it's like because

there's nothing it's like. There are no words. You know, there are, scientists who look back, who do digs, what do you call them? Archaeological. There are archaeologists who dig into the ground and discover the history of man, history of the earth by digging down over the coating of dirt, dust that have happened over the millions of years that Earth's been around. So the digger, the further down you dig, the more you read the, the, levels of things that volcanic ash and the age of things, how to measure the age of the

how to measure the age of the earth and thus the age of civilization. Okay. Archaeologists. Another way of doing it is by language. When words entered the language is about the time that thing existed. So the word for horse came into our language. It wasn't English, but the antecedents of English, about 10,000 years ago. So, archaeologists have found bones to, to, what's the word I'm looking for? To validate the fact that horses came in about 10,000 years ago. But it's also part of the language.

A word called horse entered the language, and we then, well, the horse runs, the horse, we eat the horse together, get on the horse. and it became a fact. There are no words for weightlessness yet because nobody's, 600 people have experienced it. There will come a time when Agadoodoo is weightless, okay? Oh my God, Agadoodoo happened in, in 2025.

You say all of this with the purpose, though, of someone who did a spoken word album. You're saying there are words for everything. Here, I'm offering you. I've gone to a place only 600. people have been to and there are no word. That's right. Because that sensation, when I loosened, the word, there was somebody, Audrey, I don't remember Audrey's last name, who's a member of a Blue Origin, was on the trip. And Audrey says, we're above the carbon and I can get out now. And I did my harness. I floated out of the seat. And we were warned

that would happen and there was a little ledge on the floor to hook our toes in to keep ourselves in the seat. I floated out of my seat. So when Bezos did it, and there's obviously numerous cameras around the interior of the spaceship, Bezos can be seen floating on his tummy with his legs akimbo, spread out, and the camera's looking at his feet. He's like facing a window and the camera's waiting. And the kid is throwing candies at his rear end. He's having fun. I saw that. I thought, that's not what I'm going to do. I don't care about weightlessness. I want to see outside the window. So I ignored, I floated to the window, held on to the whatever I could at the window and peered out at the blackness of space.

I have been fascinated, as I'm sure, every human being to one degree or another, about what's going on in the universe, the incredible amount of energy, the mystical, unknowable forces at work in the universe that fascinate anybody who thinks about it, and the more you know about it and the more I began to acquire knowledge through my association with Neil Tyson, the more incomprehensible, the more awe of not just the forces on Earth, but the incomprehensible forces in the universe. So what you're saying is you fly by where it is that Bezos and his child were playing

because you want a view of of space. Of everything that very few people have ever had and to see if they're unsettled space. You're not just in the desert, what's the desert? The academic, the very dry desert in Brazil or Argentina. The, uh, forgive me.

It's not, uh, it's, I could, uh, anyway, that death. Famous desert. Famous desert where all the telescopes are, because it's dirt free, it's dust free. I am, I'm got a view far superior to that desert. I'm looking out at, at, at the clearest view of space that anybody can have, and there's nothing there. There's no moon. There's no stars. It's just black. It's palpable black. It's black. Have you ever been in a cave when they close the door and the cave is now black?

Have you ever been in one of those? Yeah, where you're so alone. You can't see anything. You can't, you know, they talk about your hand in front of your face. You can't see anything. And you kind of lose your balance because you have nothing to identify with. That black, that, the only word that comes to mind is palpable black. You can almost touch it. You can almost feel it pressing against your face. It's so black.

That's how black it was. And there was no shining star. There was no mystical star to focus on. It was just plain black, like black as a black as a blackboard. Then I turned back to where we had been. And I could see the wake of the spaceship through air. I never heard anybody talk about that. Like a submarine going through the water leaves awake,

and you can see if you've got a film, if you've got a camera on it, the water is disturbed by the body of the submarine going through it. That's what this spaceship was doing, to the air. It was leaving awake. I looked back at that mind. Nobody's ever talked about that. Then I saw the blue orb that, what's his name, talked about it, and the beige of the Texas desert and the white clouds. And I'm a private pilot, was, I'm not current now, but I know it 12,500 feet, two miles, really. The oxygen gives out, you need oxygen above two miles. We're 70 miles above that, and the first two miles have oxygen, and after that there's no oxygen.

And I'm looking at the desert of Texas, and I know that volcanic activity five billion years ago began and in that five billion years the erosion of the volcanic the molten rock became dirt fertile enough to grow stings on but really you've got a handful you got six inches 12 inches of arable earth arable earth and then you've got the water in the ocean so you've got the air the water and the earth, the miracle of those three things on this rock. It began as a rock and coagulated with other rocks and became the earth. And then something brushed up alongside it and knocked off a chunk and it became the moon. Why sad? Why profound sadness between that black and between? Because that miracle that is the earth,

That is all those colors, all that fertility of the earth, all that clarity in the water is gone. Our bodies are swimming in plastic. We've got bits of plastic floating in our blood, everybody, everything alive. When plastic was invented a hundred years ago, I don't remember who did it. You were there. You were there when it was happened. On my birth, they held a plastic cup to get the... I was pretty much close to the tree.

I mean, it's not bad for. That's right. It is. You were born right after the Great Depression. Actually, within the Great Depression. I can recall my father coming home, Harry is best in any case. What I'm going to say is that I've done a lot. lot of, I've been an ecologist for a long time and preaching the global warming and what we're

doing to the, but I never saw it with such clarity as I did in that moment. And every time I talk about it, I well up because I'm so conscious of the miracle of our earth and our life. The fact that you and I are speaking English and communicating, communicating a thought, I'm telling you a deep, deep thought in my head, a existential thought in my head, and I'm communicating it to you, and I see you're receiving it, I see your eyes, and you're receiving it, hopefully people listening to me in their ears, the miracle of your cochlear implant, and the miracle of hearing is allowing this thought, the miracle of the thought that your brain has accepted. There's a miracle. Broadcasting is a miracle. Everything is a miracle of life. This miracle is being

jeopardized by our inability to recognize the miracle. And that's what I thought, and I had this overwhelming grief. And when I landed, I got out, I found myself not just tears, uncontrollable weeping. What's the matter with me? With all these cameras on me, you know, I had to go sit down and think, what? And then because in my life, like everybody else, grief has entered into my life, I recognized what I was feeling. And what am I feeling? I'm in mourning. for this miraculous thing we call Earth. Beyond that, it would seem that you're also in mourning because, if you're examining at all in any way your own mortality,

you're shaking your fists almost literally from on high with huge gratitude for every step. How could you be so ungrateful? How, with all you've learned now in your life, How you human beings can you be so ungrateful? You've seen that with great insight, and I thank you for that, because that's what I was doing. That's what I tell my kids. When I speak to people like yourself and I get a chance to broadcast, if I'm asked about it, I try to remind people the interconnectedness of life.

Everything is related. Everything is related. there is an overlap of the miracle of life in everything, even I'm beginning to think in inanimate objects. Early on, I think it's less popular now, animism, but the early functions of religion, the miracle of life occurring to primitive man, they didn't know, they looked up at the sky

and, you know, the Greeks thought it was like a blanket, had the pinholes in it and all. Nobody knew what they were looking at, but they were mystified, early man. So they said everything has a spirit to it, and that's animism. There's another name for it, but animism. Everything had a life force, and they worship. They drew pictures of the animals. They were going to kill because they worshipped the spirit that was in the animal. I think that was right. I think as we graduated to monotheism and Abraham and Zoroestra, whoever were the founders of the idea of there aren't many gods, just one God. It's an interesting idea.

It's a good idea. You seem to live in a way that would suggest that you're realizing that you, as you age, you know more than you ever have, and that makes you know that you know less than you ever have. I know nothing. try insatiably to try to figure out more and more and you live a vibrant life that goes through pop culture and space, but still tours in his 90s, looking for problems, looking to stimulate, looking to have the work represent him because for, you said since you were six, there were no second options. Are you good at anything else? Anything else? I'm a great lover.

All right, so two great, great things. You are exceptional since six years old at performing. Yes. And you love it, and you're not going to do anything else. No, I was thinking of another ambition. No, there's nothing. It's too late. No, I love talking to you.

I love the idea of expressing ideas. I've got nothing in return because this is an interview and you're interviewing me. but at the same token, I've done talk shows in which I've interviewed people. I had a talk show called I don't understand, and I was just talking to people, I don't understand, because I don't understand anything. I don't understand anything. Name a thing. Name my fingers. I'm looking at my fingers. I don't understand the blood, the nerve ends, the dynamics of touch, the sense of touch.

Can you imagine that I put my fingers on this table here, that impression goes to my brain and I read it as a little rough. It's incredible. It's a miracle. But we take it for granted. We shouldn't be taking this for granted. We should recognize that everything about us and about life is a miracle and to worship in the sense that it is a miracle. That's how I feel about it. Does that make you happier today than you've ever been because you carry yourself with this daily appreciation, or is there another time in your life that you would say... It smooths the sandpaper of existence.

It gives an overlay of, yes, this hurt, the death, the wounding, the sickness, the thing, whatever it was that is sad. there is still this other aspect to life. Life is comprised of both. There is this, and it's not negative. Pain and sadness and loss and are all things that we all suffer. But the fact that whatever died,

the miracle of their existence to begin with, and where they exist now, whether it's an amorphous bundle of electrons that now reenter the universe or whether there's a spirit and a soul. I mean, obviously nobody knows. But their existence was a miracle, as was their death. And if you could think of it in that way, the sadness is not alleviated but is mixed.

it is the sadness can be a mixture of joy of the life if it was life or the sickness I mean we get under difficulty there but anyway you get you grasp the meaning of what I'm trying to say that's a nuanced way of saying no it's impossible to be the happiest I've ever been right now when I'm carrying this much grief this

when I carry this many scars for things that I've lost It's impossible for me to say to you, this is the happiest I've ever been, but it's the most perspective I've ever had, perhaps. That's exactly right. That all the losses and pains that have been part of all our lives, the joy of interviewing for me is that I now know that every individual carries with them story, whether it's buried in their existence and they just, it's nine to five or in some cases 24 hours of labor, sleep. I mean, we read about the poverty and the hunger and the pain of living in so much of the

world. And yet, each one of those people has buried to one degree or another a precious story that is the story of their loves, likes, hates, that if only you could get to, you could see the miracle of life. For example, two examples of late. So what I do a fair amount of is I go to, what I'm free, I go to Comic-Conn's and meet, have an audience, I talked the audience for an hour or so.

You're a god there. I am a god. And not really. There are a lot of gods. There's a whole panoply of gods there. You're the OG in God. You're one of the originators for whatever Comic-Con would become. Actually, I was.

I was at the first Comic-Con in New York all those years ago. But what I'm going to say to you is this, that a kid maybe 18, 19, in a wheelchair, came up to the line where I was signing some autographs and said, I've got, and I've forgotten what autoimmune disease he had. But I lost my ability to talk, and I struggled to learn to talk. I struggled to find how to pronounce words again, and finally I was able to do it. And you know what the first word was out of my mouth? He said, I said, what is it?

He said, Kirk. Wow. What a extraordinary story. The second story is this past week, a guy of about 25 or 30 in a wheelchair, wheels up and says, I'd like to tell you that. I was a performer, a dancer, a singer, or rap, rapper, till 10 years ago, and I was in an accident. And now I'm paraplegic. I'm in this wheelchair. But I know I'm going to get out of the wheelchair. I know I'm going to walk. And you, Shatner, have inspired me to have that ambition.

I am going to walk and I am going to dance again. And I said, yes you are. I feel. You're going to dance. I promise you. And the audience went, you know, I mean, we were all crying. And I had that experience this past week. And when you ask me, why do I go? That moment made me alive. In that both those people's lives, I contribute some small thing. You've described in some ways what it is that I like about interviewing when you talk about the kernel of who someone is in the miracle of communication. There's understanding, and I guess I could stop there, just there's understanding when you speak of what it is your journey is, and I can ask the questions that perhaps you're so perceptive

and you're right into, you're listening and you have an insight of what I'm saying, it's a joy to talk to you because you manifest an understanding of what I'm feeble. trying to express. No, you do it very well, but you also have an appreciation for words. And what I'd like to understand is how you go from an iconic character that between 66 and 69 produces three seasons of televisions. It was only three seasons, but they were very long seasons, almost 80 episodes. You become a television star. And then after that, you are largely broke. you lose your home you are not

whatever it is people would imagine television success would have been from there what happened take us through the journey how you saw it how you lived in the final analysis while I was doing Star Trek I got a divorce

and in essence with all the expenses and alimony and stuff I was broke and there are no residuals. A year or two later, the Union, the Screen Actors Guild, struggled for payment.

Every time you played a film that I was on or that any actor was on, they got some kind of residual payment. That didn't happen for me. You are one of the most famous people in America at the time or that show doesn't have the popularity then than it does now? It didn't have the popularity, but it also wasn't part of the vernacular. Residual, the word, what do you want to get paid? Because we're playing

it again. No. And that went on until two, three, four years after my Star Trek was over. Then residuals began. So I never got another payment for all the, for all the usage of the Star Trek that I was on. I've never been paid for that exposure. Oh, wow. Yeah. It isn't oh well, because it would have been many millions of dollars. Not that I'm suffering, but it's just a fact. Well, you were suffering after Star Trek. You went from start. You were the star of that TV show. And I was living in a cab on a truck because I'd put together a summer show. And we went to the Cape Cod to do 13 weeks of.

the play that I put together with actors, and I made some money to pay for the truck, living in a trailer, living in a trailer, in a cab over a truck. It wasn't even a trailer. So that's that, and the reason for that was my personal life had fallen apart. And then it took me quite a, not quite a while, whatever that definition is, to come back and get another show and make some money enough to pay for all the debts to put through three children through life. I'm not actually interested in the hardship as much as I am in whatever it was the humbling that went from you being Thespian, self-serious actor who would get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1982. and what you've been since that star went on that walk of fame,

which seems to be someone in public who's almost self-deprecating to a fault, always in on the joke of, yeah, I meant to be an important huge thespian, but I then learned about life and then learned not to take myself that seriously. Well, the whole thing about life is it's a joke, really, isn't it? I mean, you're born in pain and the struggle and the mother screaming and you're coming up, you're there, you cry a little bit and then you suckle a bit and then you're going to school and in my case get beaten up for, you know, for the primary school. And then you go through loneliness and being alone and wondering what's going to happen and all the bewilderment of young life. And then you're into your 20s and you're wondering what's going to become of me

and you struggle through that. And then you die. So in reality, you could look at life as a joke. The forces of whatever there are have played an enormous joke on you. You think your life is important? I was driving being driven in Vermont on my way to Taekondoroga to perform upstate New York. And I'm looking at graveyards on the roadside.

So on a little hillock, as the road goes through it, you're going through an old graveyard that's hundreds of years old because human beings, the Europeans have been there. for 300 years, 400 years. And the gravestones closest to the road are the biggest. So somebody said, okay, I'm dying. Put my gravestone.

So there's a two foot as against a one foot we're further back, gravestone. The vanity of somebody who's dying, saying, make my gravestone bigger than the other guys. The vanity

of human life is still there even though you're dying. Instead of saying, I'm dying, I hope I contribute it, and you know, and for me, I'm going to die with a tree over me because I want my body to nourish something and not take up the space for people who are living. But everywhere you look, there are graveyards occupying very valuable land that could grow things for the people who are alive to live. Instead, we've got gravestones. And so I'm supposed to remember the guy I lived at 1829. Who's that guy? 1829. What did he do? You know, everybody who knew him is gone. They're looking, you know, I'm going to make my Greystone bigger than his. I mean,

the vanity of life is a joke. Oh shit, Shatner's pretty good as a tombstone. I don't know what you want. It's funny. I don't know what you want your legacy to be. I don't know what it is that you want. There's no legacy. You know what legacy is? I'll tell you what legacy is. I'll tell you what legacy is. It's not a name on a building. It's not a statue. It's not a hit show which people forget about six months. A year later, they said, what was that? Who's that actor in that show? The legacy of life is good deeds. Do something good for somebody else. That'll reverberate. Nothing else remains alive. I mean, you know, you take the name Trump off a building. And another name goes on after, you know, six months.

You wouldn't be so cynical as to say, though, that the work doesn't endure because your connection, at least here, we can be cynical about the history of it 200 years from now. The word endures, define endures. Is that six months or is that 10 years? Or is that 100 years? If everything is fleeting, then nothing endured. Exactly. Nothing endures. concrete finally erodes. What doesn't erode is I help an old lady across the street. That old lady

will babysit because of an act of kindness that she felt one day crossing the street. That endures. That is a ripple effect. And if everybody thought that way, think how much easier life would be. People get across the street a lot more safely. I feel like you're screaming at me right now. You're just screaming at me because you see through me as the interviewer that you are filled with your curiosities that you've had me rattled since you said you were a great

lover. I haven't been the same interviewer since then. I couldn't do anything with... You know, great lover. He thinks he's the great lover. I'll tell you who's the great lover. Dick, over there is a great lover. Before we turned everything on here, you said

you've just come off doing what you thought was the bravest thing you've ever done. And I didn't know what you were talking. All right. So come home from the South Pole and I've gotten an O'Neill, the wonderful man, Neil deGrasse Tyson and a wonderful guy named Daniel Fox and his wife, Kristen, who put the South Pole adventure together. And I start writing about curiosity and that I contact those guys.

I'm doing curiosity and then I think it was Daniel might have said let's do that as a show and DLC I would do a show what's the show well we'll talk about curiosity well what do you mean who's going to write it no no we add lib

we add lib for two hours in front of 3,000 people what are you kidding me I'm an actor what words do I have to learn or write or what's the prep What's the prep? What's the prep? How do I make it look natural for you? We're not ad-libbing here.

What's the prep? What did we do? No, no, no, no. We just talk. What do you mean? We're going to amuse 3,000 people for two hours, just talking, yes. How's that possible? So I went to work and learned about quantum physics and the many,

The mystery of quantum physics is incredible. Do you know anything about quantum? No, please. You're not going to take us down this. My brother would take me down some of these rabbit holes. Well, I tell you, the rabbit hole quantum is existence, because quantum explains existence. And then you have the Deutonian physics, which looks at the big picture, but the little picture of all the... The point is that in the prep for the show, you insisted on prep, and if your prep was going to be learning,

you were going to take kiosities. I spent weeks drilling. Learning quantum physics. Quantum physics and the mysticism of quantum physics and the I'm trying to think of the word the interconnectiveness. This is you taking

your craft seriously and also following all of your curiosities. I'm going to be on stage with a giant intellect. What am I going to say? Well, what do you mean? You know, I've got a pure So I studied the explorers. I did background work on Scott.

You over-prepared. All they needed was for you to be you, but you over-prepared because you are you. Right. And then it got on stage, and the two of us ad-libbed two hours. And were great. And I'm sure. Got a standing ovation. I'm saying that if the producers knew enough to put two people who like to talk and entertain with each other,

who will prepare, they will be great. together and you can loosen up in the performance because it doesn't have to be strangled. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. And so as an actor who says, you want me to move down six inches downstage a little to that detail, to somebody who says, what's the story you want me to? I'll talk about this and then you talk about that. It's crazy. But I want to talk to you about freedom and the freedom of that. I was asking you about how and where, not that there would be a land post that would say this was the date that I went from self-serious actor to person who can make fun of himself a little bit. Maybe you've always been that. I think

so. I didn't, I got the impression that early on in your career that you were aspiring to something that might have. I was in Canada for five years after I graduated university doing theater, doing professional theater. I think the one theater, the Canadian Repertory Theater in Ottawa, might have been the only professional theater in Canada at the time. And I was a member of the company. And I went from there to Toronto, and I went there for three years to Stratford, Ontario, and did classics. So I was a theater actor for five years. Well, I was a theater actor since the age of six, but five years after I graduated. And it finally ended up in New York in a show that in a Marlow theater thing

that the that Stratford took for a limited run on Broadway. And was that limited run on Broadway that brought me to the attention of the live television people. Because at that time, live television was very much like the theater. You had to learn your lines, you had to hit your marks, and when the camera light went on, you had to perform. When that curtain goes up,

Whether it was a red light or a curtain going up, you had to perform. I didn't care. I don't care if you had a headache. I don't care if you have cancer. You've got to perform. And that's what I learned to do. But never self-serious? Never.

So I was the light comedian. I was light comedy all through that five-year period. Broadway shows that were written with one set. There's a girl in my soup is the first one that comes to me. My Broadway shows were written by wonderfully funny authors with one set. You didn't have to go to the expense of changing the set. It all happened in that room. And that was a perfect show to tour with because you didn't have to carry sets with you.

So I would have imagined if I was going to the Broadway actor, that person, whoever it is you were in your early 20s. You might see me being funny. And, okay, so I'd see you being funny, but would I have been able to see, this is going to be somebody who's going to be really good at game shows. That is going to be somebody who's going to be really good at television commercials. You wouldn't have known that. This is going to be somebody who's really good at song and is going to really want to be someone who performs.

This is going to be somebody who knows poetry also and is going to want to meld all of that stuff so that people can see a complete human being. The music of the English language. I've got a new album coming out with Brad Paisley. Robert Shorno and I wrote the lyrics and Brad and Goldsmith have guitar virtuosos

it's going to be I think it'll be called what I have loved and all the things that I have loved that have nothing to do with women has to do with your health has to do with music, has to do with art that if you love art I love you

if I love my health I can I can love you it's a remarkable album them. And it's all about loves that have nothing to do with carnal love. it's funny that you should say there's not a word for weightless because i'm not sure there's a word for someone who would inspire someone who can't speak to say the word kirk and also find comedy in the fact that your gravitas your weight is something that you're lightning by virtue of being funny around it who who's the comp to you who do you look throughout entertainment and say that person reminds me of me and what it is because you say these things things aren't enduring, and yet I'd argue, perhaps not, but for someone who admired you as a child, for someone who's part of a childhood that's now gone, but whose wife respects that that man lives life correctly, that man lives life in the blue zone. That man knows how to keep life

living because he's on the road in Wichita because he's got to perform because he appreciates that anyone will give him an audience, because he's a, he's still that small town actor from from Canada who believed all the while who's grateful that anyone would listen to him sing a song

or no you're verging on the truth there of how I feel the fact that I can appear in front of an audience and have an extraordinary time for an hour in front of an audience

ad-libbing like finding out why did you ask that question what is it in you the person who asked me a question and find their story so entertaining and interesting that five, six, seven hundred people are sharing the same. What a funny thing, though. It sounds like for, I don't know how long you've been touring

exactly this way, but it sounds like you're touring as yourself, not as yourself through the work, but just as yourself. Yes. But having the courage to do so through experience, both on stage and knowing and handle it and off stage with enough life experience to tell stories that might be entertaining for an hour or two. So the bravest thing, when you look at it from the perspective of you're now 94 years old

and you just feel like you did the bravest thing you did a few weeks ago. Why is it the bravest thing? Because there was no net. There was no... I didn't have a... fallback position, which I would like talking to you here. I mean, I, getting a cue from you from a question and it gives me an answer and I think, and if I should not think of an answer,

you'll come up. There's a safety net here in front of you. But in front of 3,000 people, I'm on my own with Neil and, and who's ever had lived a show for two hours in that guys? I mean, stand-up comics do 55 minutes. My guess is you could probably do four hours just based on accrued wisdom and entertainments combined with the personality that both of you like to be seen and heard and know some of what you don't know as well. So if you stumble around, people will give you the grace of, oh, that didn't have to be Aaron Sorkin perfect. It didn't have to be, every note didn't have to be perfect.

He's just a human being. Even though I view him as a God, as many people do. Many people do. You know this. People behave the, I don't know what is the greatest compliment. You gave us a couple of stories. I don't know what the most meaningful compliment you get is, but it is from

it's not price line, it tends to be from Star Trek, correct? For whatever the reasons. Well, people talk about, you know, they're cops now, their firemen, their engineers, the science thing. It spans a pretty broad

it comes a surprise every time I hear it. I am like astounded. I am now, I am a doctor because of, and no kidding. I affected that person's life. So the trajectory of their life was fashioned by something I did. That's astounding to me.

So forgive me. I have it wrong. It's not from Star Trek that the most meaningful compliment. Well, I think so. I think Star Trek. But there are all these other things, you know, that they talk about that it's just like, I'm still astonished. Do you have a work that you're a prouder of? and all the others, that you allow yourself to feel of a product.

I don't think in those terms, when I'm done the job as best I can, talking to you is everything to me right now. I'm doing the best I can, being as entertaining as I can and informative so that your listeners are glued. I want you glued to that whatever this is. Wherever this is, wherever you are, whatever you are, don't move, you've got a state of the end. Whatever, whatever YouTube podcast, Facebook, shit this is.

That's what we're doing right now. Don't move. That is. Or you'll be electrocuted. There's great wisdom, though. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is about just what you've learned. I love that Esquire would reduce people's lives to a single page of what I've learned. But you have real wisdom to give.

So when I ask you, not an entertainment, but when I ask you, what wisdom would you want imparting here? You know what the wisdom? I've discovered the wisdom. And I touched on it briefly. Every human being has their story, whether they're squatting beside a polluted stream drinking the water, or whether they're head of government. They've got their personal story which is so meaningful, so touching, because it means everything to them, that if everybody could recognize whether they hear the story or they hear the story or or not, but know that that holy, H-O-L-Y, holy human being has that precious story within them that makes them a valuable human being, no matter what their circumstances are.

If one human being can recognize that about every other human being, what a difference that would make in the world. And that's piece of information, whether it's wisdom or not, has affected me. and I see people differently now. I look at them and wonder what their story is and whether I could, in any language, discover it. A step beyond that is the simplicity of be kind, that's it. Well, you'd be kind because you'd recognize

that their stories as precious to them as yours is to you. Their humanity, right? And when that man said, oh, the humanity of it all, I think he meant all of what I've just said. what a dark note to end on right there look at this a career entertainer you finished on the hindenberg that's what you did that's william shatner dot com is where you go he is still touring the united states he's an inspiration thank you sir i appreciate the kindness the vulnerability and the wisdom and the career by the way we didn't even talk that much about star trek i i think uh i think the audience is going to be disappointed

that I didn't ask you more about that. I don't think so. I think, I'd like to think, that the newness of these impressions, these thoughts, because it's new to me, it's occurring to me. Even as I speak to, I'm able to put it into words. It's new to me. Hopefully it's new to the audience. And it's more entertaining than, oh, yeah.

They were glued. They were glued. I'm not saying this was disappointing to them. I'm saying, I suspect, they would have liked for me to ask you more questions about. about Star Trek. We'll do it again in the future. You're promising, you're promising me this? All right.

Thank you, sir. You've got to bring your father along. This is what they always say. It's always, there's always something in. They throw at the end of the deal, and also I want to meet your father. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Oh, that was delightful.

You know what I failed to ask you, though, that I meant to ask you? There was one question I meant to ask you, and hopefully we'll just keep airing, and they'll throw this in there. because you were so great at the game shows, I want to hear the story of what happened on the $10,000 pyramid that ended with you. Throwing the chairs?

Did you? You seen that? I have not seen the video, but I wanted to ask you because I wanted to pair the video with you break it down. So I'm not like, there was a time in my life when you could do five game shows. You were a great game show contest.

I was. I mean, I had the same joy of the 20,000 question thing. So you had a partner. So that partner became like. $10,000 pyramid. I made you a contestant, even though you, in this particular instance, you're a contestant, but you're also just someone who's great at being on game shows, whether you're partnering with somebody or not. Right.

Taking it seriously. And you guys got to. Taking it seriously, because I want to make the money for them. But you got disqualify. Well, you got your, you got your partner disqualifying it. If I remember correctly, what happened was you got the questions and the answers on a screen. So I'm me and you're the contestant. You can't say a word.

There are certain words you're not allowed to say. Exactly. And I say the word inadvertently disqualify that person from getting, and I'm so mad at myself, I take that shirt, I throw that shirt, I take that shirt, and I thought. I pitch a fit, half in fun. Half and fun my ass. How many chairs did you throw? A five.

Four and fun and one. Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. All right, listen, I got some bad news. on the hour's summer. Sad to say, but the good thing that is summer doesn't last very long each year. We're going to have to make the most of what we have left before fall comes. So let's have a party, an anniversary party, no less. A celebration of half a century of Miller Light. Whether it's a

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