William Shatner! Brad Paisley! Part 1!

0:02 Well, hi, this is Phil and David, and we're doing an after-hours intro because William Shatner left, and it's late. I was not here, and so I was in Nashville with Brad Paisley for this episode, and Phil was here in the studio with who? William Shatner! Okay, now tell me, first of all, how much of a fan of William Shatner have you been most of your life? Never cared for him. No, of course. If you grew up, you know, in the 60s and 70s, he was Captain Kirk. He's your guy. And then he sang Rocket Man and got a lot of laughs with that. And then he was, you know, he's done a lot of stuff. He did a great travel show with Henry Winkler and George Foreman. Amazing. And he's 95. And he just made one of the albums of the year with our friend Brad Paisley. And I'll be with Brad in this episode in the studio where they made it in one day.

1:00 It's amazing. So we are talking to Brad and David. You're going to see William Shatner and me here. But David and Brad are in the studio in Nashville. And I got reports getting we were actually in the meeting and I'm looking down at my phone and it says William Shatner just showed up 45 minutes early. Yes, that was me frantic because I had just gotten out of the shower. I wasn't even dressed. And William Shatner's at the door. What's that like? He's very nice. He's very, you know, charismatic and great. And he's in amazing shape for any age, let alone 95. It's crazy. And as you'll hear, I went out with him a week earlier and we stayed out for hours eating and drinking. And it's like, who lives like this? Who can pull this off? William Shatner. Yeah. But he also, the food order was sort of intense because we didn't get his order until.

1:53 You know, I want to make sure that our guests eat well. It's very important to me. And I kept asking him, what does he want? What does he want? And you weren't getting an answer. I wasn't getting an answer. And then I think 10 minutes before he showed up, I'd like a steak, medium rare, and a salad and something else. And I'm like, wait a minute. We were going to order from the diner. We don't have, you know, fancy steaks and salads. I have a burger. I have, you know, there's chili. There's other meat products, but we don't have a steak. So I think after he showed up, I think we got the order. He'll take a burger, medium rare, and fries. And he boldly ate that burger. He liked it very much, I believe. Went where no burger has gone before. I think he liked it. I think it was a little overdone for him, but he was very polite.

2:45 uh it's william shatner everybody and um i had to kill 45 minutes with him before you guys were uh ready you know at 95 you don't want to have to waste too many minutes no but you're gonna see he's fantastic so stay tuned he's amazing uh the album's amazing and the berber was amazing tell him the name of the album the album is called love and other mysteries and we solve That mystery, love, the environment, and a few others along the way. And space. Let's spill the beans, chew the fat. Food for thought, jokes on tap. Talking with our mouths full, having fun. Piece of cake and humble pie. Serving up a slice of life. Leave the dressing on the side. It's naked lunch. Clothing optional. Well, uh...

3:51 We've actually started, but. Let's not put any of that in. The lead, which is that we have William Shatner sitting right here. No, no. Yay. And we're in the room. We're in the actual space where William Shatner, with some help from Brad Paisley, made one of the best albums in recent memory, Love and Other Mysteries. Let's just take. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to get that wrong. We are in the exact room where you made Love and Other Mysteries, right? Don't say I made Love and Other Mysteries. Are you in that house? Are you in that house? You keep talking about Bill and I making Love and Other Mysteries. Well, it was mysterious, but delightful. Yeah, he was in, Bill, your little closet you sang in is right over to my right. No kidding. We had the best time. I had the best time with that album. Oh, my gosh. It's fantastic.

4:48 It's so original and unique and beautiful. You're the Rex Harrison of today. I am the Rex Harrison of today. You are. I admired him. But it worked so well. And I want everyone listening or watching to go on YouTube and look at a clip from the Jimmy Kimmel show from a couple of weeks ago because you did the song. What was the song? Masks. Beautiful. It's like beautiful poetry set to spectacular music. The whole album is that way. Yes. And it contains some of the best guitar stuff from Brad and Taylor Goldsmith. Yeah. Earl Taylor. They are virtuoso musicians. Yeah. They are brilliant on the guitar. Yeah. And both of them, in effect, you ad lib, did you not? We completely did. And not only that, but then there's the piano parts from Gordon Mote. How about him? There's this band, which is filled with superb musicians, including one gentleman on the piano who is a genius. Yeah, Gordon. Gordon Mote, he is one of the most talented musicians on earth. And he's blind from birth. And he basically, you know how in the comics, Daredevil has all his heightened senses due to the fact that he can't see.

6:06 I mean, musically, I don't know what Gordon would be if he could see. I don't, who knows if there'd be a difference, but he is just on, he's like a quantum computer versus a Timex watch like the rest of us. Example I use frequently for somebody, an artist on some kind of. menu, some kind of mode. You have a painting here, which I spotted. Well, who painted it again? Carl Reiner's son, Lucas Reiner. So there's a painting in this studio that is so three-dimensional that I had to almost touch it to be sure that it wasn't built up. They didn't have material. So this pianist has the arms, the fingers that are extended. You know how there are pianists, great jazz pianists, who don't look at the keyboard. They're like playing in their head and their hands are separate from their body. That's what, what's his name again? The pianist? Gordon Mote. That's what this guy's like, except it's for real because he can't see. Yeah. The miracle of those hands and those fingers tracing themselves up and down the keyboard. Yeah.

7:24 making beautiful sound that he can't see, but he can hear. And his hearing, because it's heightened, because he was sightless since birth, it's genius. It's an expose of our five senses reduced to four and how the body compensates for it. But you could say the same about Brad's guitar playing because he's a genius. Well, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That he and Goldsmith are not looking at the instruments. That's right. to some thing in their head that is instantaneously keying their fingers. Right. So there isn't like, you know how in quantum, if you agitate a particle over here and the particle 10,000 miles away is related, it instantly vibrates. Yes. The instant you vibrate that one, it's called...

8:30 Not cohesive. There's a name for it. I'll think of it in a second. Oh, they call it entanglement. It's entanglement. Anyway, they're entangled. His brain and his fingers are entangled. Right. Well, a lot of the time. It's unbelievable. Yeah. He keeps making knots with his fingers. He's always agitating quantum. On his guitar. Yeah. Brad's guitar is. It's an extension of his body, and his brain is guiding the guitar as against his fingers. Well, I think what was really fun about the whole thing, too, and speaking of these guys like Taylor and Gordon and I and people that are, you know, sort of have this sixth sense about music and their instrument after Planet Forever, is the music and the lyrics went hand in hand with what Bill had written in that he would present one of these lyrics in the songs that he was writing.

9:29 And then we would look at each other and say, OK, this feels like one that Gordon should take the lead on. And it should be very orchestral pianist playing, you know, almost a way grander thing. And then there's things like Masks where I kind of took the lead on that, which was me just going, you know what? I feel like this needs to be this needs to be a almost a rock and, you know. Rolling Stones groove, or however you would put it, and Tom Petty or something like that. And then Taylor was, there were these beautiful ballads that he came up with these parts. What's the song we did on that Grammy Zoom we did, Bill, that ballad that we sang? Oh, I forget. I forget everything but you. Everything but you. I love songs to my wife. That was all Taylor's genius on the guitar. I forget everything.

10:23 yeah so we we worked really well together trying to bring these to life because this this is a memoir on an album this is him yeah don't you think bill it's autobiographical and uh and so much so that robert cherno who uh wrote a lot of this um gathered five albums that we he and i have done together the lyrics to which are all poetical and And about me, autobiographical. So we took things in my life, a thought I might have had, an experience I might have had, and we wrote songs. And those songs are in five albums, some 60 songs. He put them all together and there's a book coming out. No, I forgot the title. It's coming out soon. All the lyrics from those 60 songs. So since the songs are autobiographical, the book itself is autobiographical, done in poetry. The same excellence of poetism that the songs are, those are the lyrics, and that's what the book is. So the book is unique in that it is lyrics to songs that are so beautiful, and...

11:43 If you wish, you could buy an album and hear them performed in music. So it's really quite a remarkable moment. I think it's one of the most remarkable albums I've heard in a long time. And it reminds me, the only thing I can even compare it to is Sinatra in the sort of late 60s. I think he did like a record called A Man Alone with Rod McEwen wrote lyrics. Where he spoke. But it's much better written than Rod McEwen ever. It's so powerful. And the more I hear Sinatra, and because he's gone, I'm focused on him because he was an artist and whose voice is now silenced, the more I realized how he balanced on a word. He would, as an actor, would take a word in a sentence and use it. And, of course, he was singing musically with it. It was beautiful.

12:39 and such an example of how to sing a song. Speaking of songs, lunch is here. That's important, too. That's perfect. So I heard you ordered a steak, Bill. I ordered a steak, medium rare, and a green salad. We told him we're going to the diner. A cheeseburger. Of course. That's a metaphor for life. You order the steak, but you accept the cheeseburger. No, no. What do you mean, life? You order a cheeseburger, you order... Bill and I are friends now, so I'm going to take him for a real steak. But today he's having a burger. That's delicious. Oh, you'll like it. Brad, I'd love to share this with you. Yeah, this isn't right. I'm watching this happen from afar. I feel like I'm watching a cooking show right now. You have not been here yet. Now, this is Max and Helens, right? Who got a club? You? Is that Max and Helens? I've been to Max and Helens. I went. You got a what? I've been to Max and Helens. And what about a club? Oh, that's me. Okay.

13:38 And there's a tuna melt here if anybody wants a tuna melt. Well, Phil, while you settle, let me just say that when you talk about how great Mr. Shatner was with Brad on Jimmy Kimmel, that night I was there and we went from there. This man... William Shatner, did he go home to rest after killing on the panel and giving this great performance? No, we went to dinner at Genghis Cohen and had the greatest feast of Peking duck that Mr. Shatner selected. I threw in a shrimp dish. The chicken stuff, the general chicken stuff they made that was sort of spicy. Everything there was killer. General Chow's chicken? Have you been to Genghis Cohen, Phil? Oh, yeah. Genghis Khan? Yeah. New York style Chinese. You don't understand. No, no, no, Bill. I said Phil. Oh, Phil. I know you have. You got a list anyway, you know. This is what I put up with. Do you insult him when you're working? Days of this. He gets so many compliments that to- Yes, good to take him down a bag. Take him down 100%. Take me down. That's fine. That's fine. And if anybody can do it, it's that man right there. He can insult me anytime.

14:52 By the way, the mashup of you two guys. So wait, did you get this from Max and Helens? Yes. I've been there, you know, Phil. I went there. I didn't know you were there. Yeah, I went for lunch. Your son-in-law and daughter were nice enough to get me in, and David joined me. We went. It was the best thing in the world. Oh, thank you. I forget what I got. Remember what I got? Yes, we split like- I got a patty melt. A patty melt, which is delicious. Yeah. I think the turkey sandwich- I got a side of eggs. Oh, and a waffle. You did- And a waffle. We got a waffle. You know, it's it. We did the whole experience. But William Shatner wants a steak. I got to get him a steak. I'm going to take him somewhere. Where would you take him in LA, Phil, if you were going to take him and get the best steak? Kispaka. Kispaka. Kispaka is from this same chef, Nancy Silverton.

15:37 She is the chef at Mozza. By the way, this is delicious. I'm glad you like it. She has an Italian steakhouse also at Highland and Melrose. An Italian steakhouse? Yeah, so like you ever been to Florence and had a Bistecca Fiorentina? Oh, yeah. No, but I've driven from Rome to Switzerland, the spine of Italy. That's great. Along the major highway. I rented a car with my wife. And on either side of the road are the greenest, most beautiful pastures. We never saw a cow on that whole drive. What is it? 500 miles or something? Took two days. Never saw an animal in those green pastures. Where do their steaks come from? They're all on the plate, the cows. They're all dead. I guess they eat them quick. Yeah. But, you know.

16:30 The steak in Tuscany has to be by law three and a quarter inches thick to be called Bistecca Fiorentina. How would they draw that law up? What would they say in that law? Because it's a national dish, Bistecca Fiorentina. It's the pride of that region. And they said, if you want to be called this, Bistecca Fiorentina, these are the requirements. So there's other great steak here too, but that one is like here in Italy. Have you had that, Brad? I haven't been there. So when you guys do this, can you make sure I'm around? Yes, of course. We'll all go. Speaking of steak, I remember, Brad, after we had dinner with you, Mr. Shatner, the next day we spoke and you said something about no one has ever sucked more marrow out of life than William Shatner. And we would like...

17:38 Any wisdom on how you have learned to live life better than anyone in history? Well, I don't live life better. But because I'm interested in, like, when I was asked to do a heavy metal album, I said, what the F is heavy metal? And that's the title of the album that will come out in the winter. What is heavy metal? What is heavy metal? Let me amplify this discussion. Brad, what is country music? Well, that's a complicated question, and if we figure it out today, we'll have it all. You've got a complicated mind. But it really, I think that it comes down to, as much as anything, a choice of instrumentation, the topic. Anything can make something country, in the sense that if the topic or instruments used...

18:39 Or persons singing it. All of those things can make something country. Like you don't need all of them at the same time. What do you call that guitar that you play with both hands and it's like lying flat? Steel guitar. If I don't have a steel guitar, and I'm not talking like this, can I do country music? Yes, you still can, depending. You did, actually. There is a country music song. I did. Well, there is, but there's still guitar on it, so. But you know how you did the song. What's the song that does the country shuffle on here? There's a couple that really do feel like country songs. You wrote me a country song for my one-man show. You know what it is? It's I Love Tomorrow. I Love Tomorrow. That one is a country song, and really what became country about it...

19:40 In our case, you know, you're not necessarily, although you are a cowboy, so that kind of counts. Space cowboy. He's a space cowboy for sure. But I mean, you know, you're a certified cowboy. And we basically chose instrumentation that's that exact thing. My steel guitar player, Randall, my fiddle player, Justin, they all played. very country parts underneath of that. It's a shuffle a la something Hank Williams would have done. We chose that style immediately feeling like that's what the song was about. So a song that comes to mind that I did, a Sinatra song, My Way. Yeah. Can you make a country western song out of My Way? I could, yeah. I mean, it might not be better. Some things wind up really cool.

20:33 when they're done that way as a variation. For instance, Ray Stevens, the classic sort of, he's known for funny songs in country music. The streak. The streak, things like that. But he did a version of Misty. Beautiful. that's unbelievable it's a bluegrass you know you know the old one is look at me i'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree he's right on tune you notice look at me hit a sour note it's real fast like bluegrass and i don't know i know my right side from a left my hat from my glove i'm just misty falling in love and it's like done it works It feels like a great country song immediately. Coming from your golden throat, that sounded like a country song. Yes, exactly. And it was when Ray did it. And so you can always, to me, it's always just about, it's kind of like a mindset. You know how, I'll give you this example, Bill. If you think in a certain direction while you're riding a horse, will the horse not go there? Absolutely. Because inadvertently,

21:47 Your ass muscles, if you turn your head to the left, your left cheek, you know, the horse senses that. I don't think it's mystical. I think unbeknowing to us, because a well-trained horse, all you have to do is like a quarter of an inch. Yeah, but imagine it's the same exact thing with if you start thinking country, in terms of if I think that way, in terms of... One of the songs on your project, I'm like, this one feels like it could lean that way. The minute I start leaning that way, here we go. And the same applies to a helicopter. Do you know that? Yeah, you're probably right. I didn't know that. I've been taking, I stopped a while ago. I want to go back. Helicopter lessons. Wow. That, I forgot what they call it.

22:41 the thing that guides the airplane, the helicopter. If you move it a quarter of an inch, it's so sensitive that it heals over. And that's perhaps the most enormous thing you need to learn in guiding a helicopter is if you turn to the left, it moves to the left. Now you've got to correct. Now you move. And suddenly you're swaying and you can't control. It's difficult to control. Only an experienced pilot can stop the oscillating of the vehicle. Please be careful. And that's why student pilots need an instructor, especially in a helicopter, because you can get into trouble, that oscillation. I'm not doing it. I'm not either. One of us actually went into space in recent memory, so we should listen to him.

23:37 A country album from someone not country, the famous Ray Charles record. And it is an exemplary country album. It's an amazing country album. Do you know that album? No, I'm musically ignorant. Don't you understand? Wait, we got to get him that, right? Oh, Ray? He doesn't have that? He doesn't know. No, I don't know. Ray Charles famously did a country album. is it called modern sounds and country and that's it and it included music that's right included uh i can't stop loving you which i'm sure i'm so glad you're such an expert on albums and stuff and for you to praise our album he's annoying i mean it's it's such a compliment no well and and no but i mean i really want to tell you like i completely agree with you that as a as fan of brad's

24:25 You know, despite being his friend, his playing is great. Every musician is great. But what really makes this record is the performance level. The lyricism, and I know you credited your co-writer, but there is just such... We had Bernie Taupin on the podcast recently, and he doesn't want to be called a poet. This is great poetry. He does want to be called a poet? No, he doesn't. He says, I'm a lyricist, I'm not a poet. I wonder what the difference is in his mind. He's constructing a song. Yeah, but... Something to be sung. But poems and lyrics are distilled. You don't have any time to, you don't have words to waste on a lyric. You got to get to the, I mean, the music is, and the beat is forcing you on. Your words are limited. And so you need to choose the exact word and the exact meaning. That's what poetry is. It is a type of poetry, but he would argue, I'm sure Brad.

25:24 you can explain this better than me, but he's constructing verse-verse chorus, right? And so the words are designed to be in that structure, aren't they? Yeah, but that doesn't matter. He did a lot of that. Some of these songs are a little more atypical, you know, like Endless Night, things like that. But when you look at a thing like I Love Tomorrow, the one we were talking about that's very country, is written like a classic country shuffle. You know, like his chorus is, I love tomorrow, live for today, is the way the chorus always starts. What about the song you wrote for my one-man show? So, okay, so for your one-man show, which was off of his first album, Has Been, I wrote this song called Real. And that's a really fun collaboration. That's a different thing than this album. This album is entirely his spoken voice. In mine...

26:19 and the song that i did with him on that project i sing the chorus so it's it's done a little more traditional like this is something rap does very well where you have a singer guest on the record who sings the chorus and the verses are his vocal talking about and it's called real and the song is really about encountering a fan And I wrote it sort of from my perspective of what I thought he would say, because I am one of the biggest fans. You know, he realized that too late. I was already his friend. But like the idea that he's so much larger than life and the end of the chorus that I sing is, sorry to disappoint you, but I'm real. And it talks about like some of the lines in the verses are about...

27:10 You know, basically, listen, the next time there's an asteroid or a natural disaster, I'm flattered that you thought of me, but I'm not the one to call. And the chorus is, and there's a part of me in that guy you see up there on that screen, but I'm so much more. So I'm singing that part. He, you see how brilliant he is? Not only did he write a great song where he writes, all his songs are so great. But the one he wrote for that show is fabulous. He not only sang it well, beautifully, but he remembers years later, the words are embedded in his brain. I can barely remember to say hello. Well, hello. And what did you say? Well, you know, and Brad, you have been a lifelong fan way before you got him. Phil, you've been a lifelong fan. And I think both of you started with Star Trek. I will tell you, I feel I'm a total Twilight Zone William Shatner fan. Yes, I remember that. Those were the first TV shows running at 11 o'clock at night. My dad said I used to sneak out to the living room to try to put on Twilight Zone. And no joke, your two episodes were the two.

28:26 that just blew my mind as a young man. They've been popular. Brad, do you have a photographic memory? I think so. I mean, I definitely can remember a lot of things. My wife doesn't think I do. It's an amazing thing, the arguments we've had over me saying, that's not what happened. Or that's not what it looked like. I would trust you more. But I believe I do. I would take your assessment of the facts more readily. Yeah. But I definitely can remember. It's weird. The lyrics stick with me. And there are weird lapses, though. Memory is a weird thing. Like in concert, I do these shows in Las Vegas. I've got a couple coming up where it's me and a guitar for 90 minutes. And I don't use a set list. And I always figure it's so much fun, this interaction with the audience, because...

29:21 I'm able to sort of like, being that it's me and a guitar, I'm not bound by any rules. And when somebody yells out a song, it's like, okay, fine, I'll do it. There's another factor involved, which I just learned about. So I did a concert at Riot Fest, a heavy metal concert at Riot Fest. I learned what a set was, 30 seconds, 30 minutes. So I did 30 minutes at Riot Fest. So the guy prior to the booking, He said, so this is what you get paid, and, of course, you'll pay the five guys in the band. I said, well, wait a minute. You mean I'm producing? Oh, yeah, you're the producer. I'm not producing. I don't have time for the detail of the booking of the thing and make sure there's no brown M&Ms on the thing. I don't have time for that.

30:13 You've got to produce it, I said to the agent. And then there was all this conversation about the headliner paying all the expenses. Is that what you do, Brad? Um, well. Um, doesn't make it, man. I think so, basically, probably. Yeah. But that's not producing. They're just taking a cut out of your... Pay. Yeah, no, but you're signing the check. Exactly. And how does that check go? What do you want to deduct for income tax? And then you pay for the room and you pay for the transportation. All that's coming out of your fee. I didn't know that. The jobs I do, I take the check. Thank you very much. You take care of the camera or the stage or whatever. He, when he takes his whole band, somebody in his hire is paying that.

31:06 But I don't have that kind of staff. I never had to. So when they said, you got to pay for it, I said, what? William Shatner on why no one should go into show business. Well, that's why you could take a guitar and sit down on a stool and be alone. You don't have anybody to pay. By the way, he's still got people to pay. He still has plenty of people to pay. And you could fly tourist instead of first class. Who's doing that? No kidding, right? No, it really is a bit of that kind of thing where you're learning about the music business, though, Bill, in a great way because he really is. He's done some gigs now this way. The one-man show that you did, I got to set in. That's the first time and only time I believe I've ever played on Broadway was going up and setting in and playing that song with you because you were using a recording. But I got to go up and do real on Broadway. So he was in the audience and invited them up. Oh, great. So he did it live. That's fair.

32:00 That's fantastic. That's one of my favorite memories. There's something so special, too, because you were ending with that anyway. And so to be able to be there on one of those nights and do it for real. And I'm still blown away. You did that for how many weeks? Several months. Unbelievable. And it was an incredible... show then and you've lived a lifetime since then you've been to outer space you've made probably seven more albums yeah can we talk about outer space for a second because this how many years ago was that your trip into outer four i think and i remember reading uh five it was it was 2021 but i remember reading at the time it wasn't this magical thing for you you didn't come back full of hope and love for the world you you had a different

32:52 feeling that I'd never heard before from any astronaut. Can you, do you still feel this way? It's like, are you afraid to die? You know, of course you are because it's unknown. Yeah. So I did, I went up into space and observed and the thing I wanted to do most of all, although there's something really weird and mystical about weightlessness. I mean, when you lose gravity, There are no words to describe it. It's like Rosemary's baby floating up. That's what you're doing. So the sensation is totally unique and indescribable, really. You can say, I floated, but what does that mean? It's not the same as being in a swimming pool. So I floated, but I floated over to a window because I was consumed with curiosity as what...

33:46 What do you see out there? So the first thing I saw was the blackness of space and nothing like stars and moon and giving it a life. It was palpable blackness. It was death. I turned back to where we were coming from and I saw the wake. You never hear that discussed. I saw the wake of the spaceship through the air. I saw the air burbling behind the spaceship like it was water. I've never heard anybody describe that before. Yeah. And then I saw the beige of the Texas desert, the blue sky and the white clouds and the beginning of the curvature of the earth and how tiny. The earth is and how magical all those colors which represent life in its various forms. Refraction of the air for the blue and the beige is the desert where it once was lush, it's now dry, but it'll be lush once again. The dynamics of the earth, the drama of the earth changing all the time as is everything changing. And I saw all that and I had been

34:58 to many of the hot spots on another show called The Voyage of the Planet, in which I went to all the terrible places on Earth, like the foothills of Mount Everest, which lies in a garbage dump. Because thousands of people have been going to the, trying to climb Mount Everest and dump all their garbage, whether it's defecation or canned goods or empty bottles. It's all lying there in this pristine atmosphere. That's what human beings do. Whether we try to clean it up and dump it in the ocean, or we don't try and clean it up and bury it in the earth, or we blow it up and send it into the air, we're poisoning. We have poisoned. The earth. And I looked at it, and I've been this ecologist for 60 years. I read Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, so many years ago. And I believed what she said. And now what she said is even more truthful. We are on the verge of extinction because of what we're doing to the earth. And it's so simple. I talk to people.

36:23 Engineers, we could, with a little rush job, take the carbon dioxide out of the air. We have the bugs, the bacteria that will eat the plastic that's in the water. We have the solutions at hand. All it takes is money and impetus to say clean the earth. We did it with a bay. on the east coast of New York, where the Native Americans had fed themselves for thousands of years, this lush, I can't remember the name of the bay. And we came along, Europeans came along and poisoned it within a couple hundred years so that you couldn't, it was forbidden to take the food out. So it was blocked off for 20 years. It re-enamored itself. Regenerated, yeah. It regenerated itself within 20 years. And now we're feeding off it again. That's the future of the world if we just cleaned it up. And I was thinking all that. And I was bawling my eyes out on national television wondering, what the heck is the matter with me? Why am I crying like this? And I went into a corner and I thought, oh my God, I'm in grief.

37:40 I'm crying like when my father died. I'm crying for the death of our... This incredible, precious, mystical, magical planet is dying because of us. And it's so little to bring it back to life. And we're not doing it. We're doing the opposite. We're continuing to continue. And I wept in grief for the planet. That's what I was feeling. Well, I'm going to go jump off the roof now. Well, you don't have to. I'm doing a podcast, No Time But Now, with my daughter. We both had cancer at the same time and was cured at the same time. And we're doing a podcast, No Time But Now. Now! It's the time to live your life because you don't know how limited it is. And now is the time to save the planet. It can be done. I talk to scientists and say, we're on the verge. Give us a year or two, we can take the carbon dioxide out of the air. We can clean the planet. But we need the funds, we need the impetus, we need the people. And that's all it takes is will and we don't have the will. And that absolutely drove me into a... I get it.

38:59 Well, the people in charge, they have an interest in not doing it. They have an interest in not having efficient medication for ills that requires to buy their medicine, and there exists cures. I always thought that was an exaggeration. I now know that's not so. I talk to a lot of scientists, and they say, if you have a cure for cancer, if you have a cure for diabetes... That's billions upon billions of lost revenue to major industries. So they'll find something else to do and cure and be. That's just a tragedy all the way around. It's an obscenity, yes. I think it's so powerful what you're saying. And it's so true. And it's like, if we could only learn to stop fighting, I don't know, like Canada and instead fight pollution. Yes. I'm with you about Canada. I'm Canadian. Oh, I know.

39:59 was in Canada. Canada, the McCarthy hearings, watching what went on and how it looked like, my God, the states, the communists, and it turned out not to be so. And at long last, have you no shame. I think he said, and that was the end of McCarthy. And I watched it from, I watched the whole drama and I fell in love with the American people because the American people, when they get the bit to use a horse simile or metaphor. Yeah. When they get the bit in their mouth, like in World War II, we need help. We need tanks. And out of this gargantuan country that's able to do anything came the technology to win World War II and to go to the moon and to do all that. So whatever ills that America is in now, however you describe whatever ills, the American people can take care of it. Is it about to happen?

40:59 It's possible. I don't want to get political. I don't know you guys. I don't know the emotions here. I don't want to disturb anybody's fear. I speak for David and Brad and me. We're all on the wrong side of history. Well, mankind has the ability to do all this. One of Phil's heroes, in doing a little research, realized you worked with or appeared, with one of Phil's heroes. Do you have any stories of your time being around Walter Matthau? Oh, my favorite. Walter Matthau. Julie Harris. Does that mean anything to you guys? Yeah, of course. All right, so Julie Harris was the star on Broadway several years ago, and they hired me to do a comedy with her, a Broadway show, and we had not forgotten his name, but he was like...

42:13 the light comedian of Broadway, and he was in the show. So the three of us starred on Broadway in this play. And so we opened in New Haven as a tryout for Broadway. And while we were running in New Haven, the gentleman, the actor, didn't turn up. For rehearsals that afternoon, they went in search of him. He was dead. Between the twin beds, he had had a heart attack. He had disappeared between the two. Now, we didn't have an actor. They called Walter Matthau. And Walter came up, learned his lines immediately, and was so funny. And the two of us were on Broadway for that year in a play with Julie Harris. I got to love him. And time and time again, I had to. stifle my bowels because he was so funny he made me laugh and I and there were times when we both went silent and I would break out into a sweat trying to control my laughter and the audience would see me from having powdered

43:25 my face to come on stage to having this shiny sweat-stained face because I was trying, will myself not to laugh. And that invoked a laugh because they could see it happening as the sweat began to pour off my face because he was so funny. So funny. I learned to love him. Oh, I loved him too. Great. Great. One more person. I either... Great, because of the Star Trek fanatics here, and in my case, Twilight Zone. Do you have any stories about either Gene Roddenberry, a favorite story, or Rod Serling? Just a story that makes you remember them. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is Rod Serling. And the two shows I did, which became very popular. And one was taking... You put a coin in the box and your fate comes out and your fate is written in such general terms that anything can be true. Like when you leave where you are, be very careful. Something terrible might happen. In other words, the wife.

44:36 Yeah, well, anything. A car hits you or you get a good hamburger, a good cheeseburger. Yeah, yeah. The word may is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that. So that truth, and the other one was, the other one was, that was the forecast, and the other one was. Oh, the other one was on the airplane. The one on the wing. thought we should be flying, we'd have wings, that statement. So there's this Czechoslovakian acrobat in a furry suit looking at me through a window. I mean, it was hysterical. Who would believe that? Who would discard a sense of reality and go with the unreality of a furry-suited Czechoslovakian acrobat on the wing of a plane? I thought, we're dead. This is the worst thing I've ever done. This is going to be, you know, people are going to laugh me off. I'll never work again. And of course, if everybody who flies, if they're ever into a storm of any kind, your immediate reaction is, get me on the ground. You know, I hope these masks don't drop out of the ceiling. And so these truths that were dramatized allowed you to forget reality and go with the,

46:02 the drama of the show. Perfect short stories, allegories. And that's something I had to learn. Just great. Just great. Ironic that you would go from the guy who's terrified of being on the plane to driving the Enterprise. Yeah. That's just a few years later. Yeah. So it was even more powerful when you came back with those revelations about having really been in space. It was almost like... I've never heard anybody express that. I would imagine a lot of astronauts felt that. But they don't want to say that. But they don't want to say that. Bad for business. I also think it was such a brilliant thing having Bill do this in that sense. Because, you know, while, you know, there's some, obviously some negativity around celebrities getting the privilege and all of that to do things like this. Bill's a great example of, I think nobody.

47:01 i don't think anybody was like oh he shouldn't have done that like everybody was like that's exactly what needs to happen is a guy with his ability to verbalize what he saw and also having fictitiously represented us all throughout the galaxy forever it's only right that's you know within your lifetime i don't think anyone was questioning the decision no one was and and that's that's what's so cool it's interesting an addendum to what you've just said was a friend of mine is a producer he said when they were talking about Blue Origin and getting ready to go into space, my friend said, you know, you should be on that first voyage. I said, you know, I'm going to call. So I called and said, Shatner and Thing, and they said, oh, it's a great idea. Come on up to Seattle, to Amazon, where they had their office, Blue Origin had their offices. So I met Jeff Bezos and talked about he was a fan. He has the...

48:00 model of the enterprise in the lobby under a glass dome in Amazon. And we stood there and we talked about it and we went and sat around at a table. That's a great idea. Maybe you should be on the... We'll call you. And within a few weeks, COVID hit. We never heard from them. And then a year later, I read in the newspaper, he, Jeff, and his brother... a female astronaut who never got up into space, and a young man, an adolescent. We're going to be the first four up there. And I said to my friend who had original idea, I said, well, I guess that's it. So they went up and there was some fanfare, but not a great deal. Then they called and said, how would you like to go second? And I pretend like I go second, I don't go second. But in fact, I say, yeah, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go.

48:48 And I went up there and I had that experience. Not afraid. Oh, very much afraid. I would be scared. Well, as you pass by the rocket, which is off-gassing. Yeah. It's off-gassing hydrogen. And I, like most of us, have seen in innumerable times the documentary on the Hindenburg, which was bags of hydrogen. And oh, the humanity of it all! That guy? Hey, remember him? Yes. I couldn't hear his voice. That's what you're hearing. As this gas is wafting by my face. And then when we're up, I get in the spaceship. And now the countdown is 17, 16, 15. Hold on. There's an anomaly. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. What's an anomaly? Anomaly is something that shouldn't be there. What shouldn't be there? Okay, no, we're okay. Countdown, countdown. And then this is the God's truth. The guy on the announcement says, all right, everybody, we're going to remove the gantry. Anybody who wants to get off, should get off now. Oh, like it's a ride at Disneyland.

50:02 Oh, my God. Look what happened to the ride. The guy took a ride and fell down. Yeah. Fell out of the spaceship there. Oh, geez. And I thought, I'm going to go. No, I'm not going to go. I'm Captain Kirk. I can't go. Coming soon on part two of William Shatner on Naked Lunch. Talk about Rocketman. So there's a Star Trek cruise, and they say, come on board, Bill. Well, all we want you to do is do Rocketman. You pay me well, and you pay me to do Rocketman. So there's seven musicians. So I look at the Rocketman lyrics again, and I think, wait a minute, there's a lot there about alone. I say to the musicians, listen, my thought of Rocketman is a guy that's afraid of going out there, going to be out there alone.

50:51 It's a guy that's afraid to be alone. And we work on that with the music and the thing and my interpretation. I'm going to be out there alone, alone. You know, I'm ready now. And I do it in front of 2,000. The arena only held 2,000 people. I got to do it twice. So rehearse as much as I can, get in front of 2,000 people. I do it that way. And they all stand up and applaud. And they're applauding. I'm trying to get off the stage. They're applauding. Oh, my God, what happened? I touched a nerve. I thought, I got to do it again in half an hour. I wonder what will happen. They stood up and applauded. Because I had touched a nerve in the song that I'm a rocket man. But I'm a rocket man. Flying up, whatever the lyrics are, flying up to the sky. Alone. Alone. And all of a sudden, they see my feeling about the song. I don't know what Burton Taubin thought, but.

51:51 This is totally different than what I recorded before. And it's lost, unless somebody recorded, it's lost on a ship somewhere. But that's the secret of acting, isn't it? It has to touch yours. Everything disappears. It's the same as performance. He performs in front of an arena, and the last note is sounded. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. And it's gone. Yep. Naked Lunch is a podcast by Phil Rosenthal and David Wilde. Theme song and music by Brad Paisley. Produced by Will Sterling and Ryan Tillotson. With engineering by Xavier Thomas. Video editing by Daniel Ferreira. And motion graphics by Ali Ahmed. And executive produced by Phil Rosenthal and David Wilde. And don't forget to check out the show week to week on Sirius XM Stars, Channel 138.