WATCH: Immortality-Obsessed Tech Billionaire Squirms as Bill Maher Lights Up During Interview

Bill Maher, Bryan Johnson illustration
YouTube/Club Random

The billionaire former tech executive going to extreme lengths to stay young forever had an awkward run-in with an unexpected foe: Bill Maher’s marijuana smoke.

During an appearance Sunday on Maher’s Club Random podcast, 47-year-old Bryan Johnson—star of the Netflix documentary Don’t Die, which follows his risky gene therapy and vampiric blood transfusions—was first incredulous and then visibly uncomfortable as Maher lit a joint, as he does with all his guests.

It all started with Maher making himself a tequila-based cocktail. Johnson—who was sipping lemon and ginger tea—asked him, “Can I softly try to persuade you not to do that?”

“Drink?” Maher asked.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Is that alcohol?” Johnson persisted.

“Yeah,” Maher said, before continuing, “Oh, Bryan, I’m 69, give me a break. You don’t think I’ve weighed the pros and cons? Yeah, I know it’s poison. There used to be a skull and crossbones on the bottle.”

As Johnson squirmed, Maher’s crew laughed. Then Maher took a joint out of a cigarette case and put it in his mouth. The comedian and host of HBO’s Real Time famously smokes weed during his podcast interviews.

“No, you’re not,” Johnson said, laughing.

“What?” Maher asked.

“You’re gonna? What is that?” Johnson asked.

The face of a man trying to turn back the hands of time who just realized he's stuck hotboxing with Bill Maher. / Screenshot/Club Random/YouTube
The face of a man trying to turn back the hands of time who just realized he's stuck hotboxing with Bill Maher. / Screenshot/Club Random/YouTube

“Have you never seen this show?” Maher said.

“Uh yeah, but I didn’t realize with me,” Johnson said, suddenly looking serious. “What do you have in there?”

“It’s heroin and fentanyl,” Maher joked. “No, it’s f---ing pot, what do you think? You’re not going to die from being in the room with it.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“Okay,” Johnson said.

“Does it really bother you?” Maher asked.

“No it’s fine. It’s fine,” his guest insisted.

“I mean what are we gonna lose? Like 10 minutes off your life? So you don’t live to 1,000,” Maher added.

It’s not the first time Maher has gotten pushback from a guest for smoking during an interview. In April, Jackass star Steve-O revealed he’d been invited on Maher’s show, but that the comedian refused to not smoke during the interview even though Steve-O was 16 years sober at the time.

Steve-O ultimately turned down the invite, saying that of all the “prolific potheads” he’d known, Maher was the only one who’d refused to accommodate him. Johnson apparently had no idea about any of this before he agreed to appear on the podcast.

As he held his joint, Maher asked Johnson, “How old do you think you can live to? What’s your goal? 150?”

ADVERTISEMENT

Instead of giving an age, Johnson began laying out a thought experiment involving time travel, primitive humans and axes while Maher found a lighter that worked.

Several minutes later, as Maher was happily puffing away, Johnson gave him “full permission” to do a segment on him if he got hit by a bus and died young despite his longevity experiments.

“I know I’m going to die by the most ridiculous thing possible,” he said. “Irony always wins.”

“You know what also wins? Not being able to figure out what you think you might have figured out. Life has that kind of way, whatever you think,” Maher said. “So that’s why I keep smoking pot.”