Real Time with Bill Maher - Ep. #620: Matthew Perry, Laura Coates, Jonathan Haidt

Episode Date: November 19, 2022

Bill’s guests are Matthew Perry, Laura Coates, and Jonathan Haidt (Originally aired 11/18/22) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series, Real Time with Bill Maugh. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

I know it's our last show of the season. I'm going to miss you a lot, but I feel like we are leaving on a high note because, hey, democracy survived, Trump is humiliated, Putin is getting his ass kicked in the Ukraine. I feel like I'm the star of a hallmark holiday movie called The Christmas Surprise. No, we almost, and also good news,

we were going to have World War III and now we're not. So that's good. Because, yeah, no, interesting. No, a missile from the Ukrainian war landed in Poland. which is a NATO country, and everybody was like, oh, my God, is this going to escalate into World War III? Fortunately, Biden got on the phone with both parties, settled it down. Nothing's going to happen now.

And that is tonight's episode of, thank God Trump isn't president. But that's not going to stop him from trying again. He made his big announcement. Well, not that big. Did you see that? He announced he's running for president. Mara, like a very low-key, very low-energy. sad, I thought. I mean, really. Did you see him? He looked like a jiggleau on his 10th call of the day.

He was tired. I mean, there was six American flags behind him. He didn't hump any of them. It was no juzh there. I mean, what, I mean, it was, he's so 2000 late, this guy, you know. It's so yesterday's news. Like, it was like watching AT&T announce a new landline. They don't own us anymore, right? All right, we'll get away. And of course, had to go through his greatest hits about American

carnage. He said, literally, quote, our cities are rotting, he said. They're cessfuls of blood. And half of Africa was like, what? And were the shithole countries? So the election, they're still counting some places, but basically the Democrats kept the

Senate, the Republicans won the House of Representatives. There will be a new speaker. Nancy Pelosi is stepping aside. Of course, she has to. Kevin McCarthy, from right here in California, will be the new speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy. A couple of years ago, he said, I want you to watch when Nancy Pelosi hands me the gavel.

It'll be hard not to hit her with it. He said that. I mean, come on, it's just a joke. Nobody thinks someone would really go to a Pelosi family member and hit them with a hammer. But that's politics. That's not what America cares. All America cares about is they can't get Taylor Swift tickets.

And Twitter is in chaos, and crypto is tanking, which I think is fantastic. I have never been a crypto fan. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we're going to talk about it. Millions of people have lost millions of dollars on crypto, and a lot of them are blaming the celebrities who hyped it. Yeah, now when married people are having sex, they're both thinking about getting screwed by Matt Damon. It's interesting.

And Twitter, oh, my God, Twitter's in a Twitter. I tell you, you know, Elon Musk took over. First of all, he fired like half the people. He was like, get out of your nap pods and go home, you fucking, I love it. And then the people who are remaining,

he said, either resign or I want you to give an exceptional performance, exceptional. This is very confusing, the millennials. They're like, my parents told me exceptional meant existing. What the, fuck is this? And the media, of course, which is all

on to, they're panicking. They're like, well, it's falling apart. Twitter is falling. And how could it fall apart? It's a website, not a condo in Miami. And by the way, yes, three quarters of the people are gone. It's still up and running. I checked

in an hour ago. There were five people telling me to kill myself. It's fine. It's the same as it ever was. But maybe the biggest story in tech slash billionaire news Jeff Bezos, big announcement this week, much bigger than Trump. He said he's going to give away

most of his fortune during his lifetime. Yeah, come on. It's not clear whether that's a charity thing or whether he's planning to marry and divorce again. All right. Got a great show. We have Laura Coates and Jonathan. And Hight. The first off, he is an actor, playwright,

and now author of The New York Times bestseller, Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing. Matthew Perry is on the end. Good to see you, Bally. It's been a while. Okay, well, and still love you, as they should. First of all, congratulations. I heard you broke Amazon.

Your book sold so many copies that they couldn't handle it. You're like the Taylor Swift of writing. It seems like I am. I'm ahead of her book. That's... The amazing thing is, The first thing I want to say was the amazing part is,

I beat Bono in Ireland. Yeah. That's kind of weird. Well, I mean, it's a compelling book. I mean, I could not put it down. I feel like one of the big takeaways from the book is you like drugs. I got that. I think that's clear to say, yeah.

And I just want to say before. That doesn't mean you read the whole book. Well, I notice it as a theme. Before we get too far, I just want to say, first of all, you look fantastic. Thank you. So it's amazing to me.

First of all, I'm so glad you're here. Plugging a book, because a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people did have you in the Deadpool. Yeah. Maybe you. Yeah. You know, I had a horrible accident about seven years ago. I was given a 2% chance to survive the night.

They didn't tell me that, obviously, because I wasn't really there, but they told my family. And I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which, you having read the book, you would know what that is. Yes. No, I did.

I took notes. I underlined it. Oh, no, I believe you. But they call that a Hail Mary. That's what they do when they put you on an ECMO machine when it's a Hail Mary. And five people were on ECMO that night, and the other four died, and I somehow made it.

Well, what, God is a fan. Yeah, I mean, I know you're feeling about that. I know that... I'm a fan. Maybe I'm God. Okay. I know that once you've referred to it as a force, and, you know, I believe that. I believe that a higher power.

There is higher power. Right. believe a very close relationship with him that's helped me a lot. Somebody's on your son. Yeah. Everybody's on yourself. Everybody's glad you're here. Yeah.

And I must say, the human body, reading that book, and I did, it's amazing to me the paradox that it's so fragile, and also so resilient. It's so easy to die. And also, it's kind of hard. which you approved. It's kind of hard to die. It can be, yeah. You tried?

No. Well, that's the thing. I never tried. But I did so many drugs at certain times that I knew that it could kill me, but I would do it. But I never wanted to die. But the real thing for me and the troubles that I've had is that reality is an acquired taste. That's what I believe. It's a great line.

And I have had a great deal of time, a great deal of problems acquiring it. Right. And it wasn't until I became really safe. I felt really safe in my sobriety and really strong in my sobriety. And to tell you the truth, I am resilient and I am strong. Oh, my God. And you look healthy. You look healthy.

It's amazing. No, I feel very lucky that I'm someone. who could do drugs and still does drugs. You don't have any on you, do you? No. And it doesn't affect me that way, but, I mean, your stats, I mean, unbelievable. 6,000 AA meetings took 55 vodka-ins a day. This is like Joe DiMaggio with the 56-game hitting streak.

I mean, no one's going to come up with these stats. No one's going to beat you on some of this stuff. Yeah, and some of the things that I went through to get that many years. pills a day. My whole life was math. I mean, you know the story about... The open house? Can we talk about this?

Sure, yeah. This is a... Because I remember the David Bowie song, like, Waiting for the Man. Right. It was where I was a teenager. First learned the concept of what addiction was, I think,

from that song. Like, this is this big rock star. But he's waiting for the man. Yeah. Heath Richards just said this and, doesn't matter how big you are, how famous you are. The drug dealer, you are his bitch.

Yeah. You're waiting for the man. But you didn't wait for the man. You went to open houses and stole drugs from people's medicine cabinets. Such a better plan. Right? I would look in the paper and look at open houses on Sundays. And I would go and I would go upstairs to the medicine room.

And if it was an elderly couple, I knew I'd hit it home. And then you look at the dates, you know? And if the dates are old and there's still a lot of pills, you can take. a lot of them. And I'm telling it's a horror story, and I'm telling it in kind of a funny way, but as I drove off, I was like, nobody's

going to say, Chandler just stole drugs out of my medicine card me? And what kind of drugs were you looking for that they would have in these houses? I was an opiate guy, so any kind of opiates were what I wanted. I quit drinking. People would be

surprised, I haven't had a drink since 2005. Right. Yeah. And that's because it just stopped working. I couldn't get drunk anymore. Right. So I turned it up and went to something that I can feel.

But you do say that after your colon problem, I mean, your colon exploded, right? And you were in the hospital for five months. Yeah. Even after that, you wanted. Yeah. I mean, to come out of an experience like that, If anyone doesn't understand how strong addiction is, I think that says it all,

that you would spend five months in the hospital, lose your colon, and still, first thing out of the hospital is, hey, let's get hired. Out of the hospital. It happened in the hospital. I was told that opiates had done this to me, and I literally said, I'd like some opiates to solve this problem, please. And, you know, and got them, and then got home, and was on a certain amount of opiates

because I was lying about how much pain I was in. Right. And then it didn't become enough. And they said, no, you can't have anymore. The drug dealer said yes. And I happened to live on the 40th floor of a building. So I had to go down 40 floors, meet the guy on the street, come back up.

And I had a nurse, a sober companion. And they caught me every time I did this. Literally every time. They were like, give us the drugs that you just got. And I had to go to a rehab then. The thing is, when you have something like a heart attack, and I've spoke to many people about this, you have a heart attack or you have some horrible death-defying accident that I have,

you would think you'd be filled with gratitude. But that's not, you're pissed, you're angry, and at the things that you have to do in the future to get back to where you normally were. You're not filled with gratitude. You're like, wait a minute, I've got to be here for five months. you can't, the things inside my stomach are so broken up that you can't do surgery for a year and a half

and you're going to have to have a colossomy bag which is, you know, I'll leave you with a couple if you want. Do you have one now? No, no, you know, so you had it, but you've got. I had it, but you've got it. I had it removed and that was a wonderful. So your colon's working again. Yes. All right. Well, we've talked about your ass. Let's talk about your dick. Sure.

No, I... I bring this up because you say you started in high school drinking heavily. Yeah. And you couldn't, like you thought you were imputed in high school. I couldn't keep it down in high school. Right. Well, that's kind of me now. I'm sorry.

Well, again, human body's resilient. Yeah. You know, you lost the colon, you got that back. I'm sure the dick's on the way. Yeah. Thanks. I'm not sure if you're hitting. on me? I don't know what's happening.

I'm not hitting on you, but I am going to make a prediction about you. I think you are about to enter a very very productive period of your acting career. Because, I mean, we know you from the past. Okay, we love that. It's still on.

It's the biggest hit still on television, friends. But like, now you're the mature guy. You're at that age when, like, actors get really great, I think, because they've had all this experience, and you've had all this pain, which is bad in life, but good in art. And I just see people using you in the next 20 years in a lot of really great roles. And I think you're going to do some amazing work.

Do you see that? Before you, sir? Thank you. Yes. A couple of good friends of mine have said, your best work is to come. I do. I really believe that because you have all this experience that you're going to use. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's not going to be Chandler. It's not going to be But it's going to be better stuff and more mature stuff and great movies. I found that in just the talk show tour I've been on has been much more adult. And I used to come on these things and write jokes and they're like, it's got to have a moment of silence and I'm so awkward. Right. And this hasn't been that.

I've been quieter. I've waited to really think about what I want to say. And it's all different. You know, I mean, you're telling us everything. I mean, you're telling us more than most people. know about other people. Yeah. And you're doing it in a way that, you know, hopefully we'll help some other people,

and I think it has. Yeah, and it's helped me. Yeah. You know, getting to a point where I was safe to, because you can't give away what you don't have. So if I'm afraid that I'm going to use in three weeks, I can't start helping people, you know, but now I feel. And you still feel, you still feel the urge?

No, I really don't. Oh, good. Yeah. All right. Well, then don't come to the party. All right. Matthew Perry. Great to see you, Kyle.

Add your hand with us. All right, let's... Please do. Let's meet our panel. Okay. She is the CNN anchor and host of Sirius XM's The Laura Coacha. Laura Coach is with us. Back with us.

And he's a social psychologist at NYU's Stern School of Business and co-author of the coddling of the American Mind, how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation portfolio. Jonathan Haidtt. Great to see you again, sir. Thank you. All right, before I get into the news, I want to get well-wish to my friend Jay Leno,

had a little accident this week, but he's Iron Jay, and I know he'll be okay. I just wanted to say, pal, we're thinking about you, and we'll see you soon. Okay, as they say in cable news, we have breaking news. Breaking news, very exciting. Happened a lot on our last show of the year. I don't know why it is, but Friday afternoon. Okay, Merrick Garland, I guess he did this on a Friday because he was maybe afraid. I don't know.

He spent two years thinking about whether he should appoint a special counsel or what he should do about Donald Trump being a criminal. And now he has made up his mind. He's going to give it to somebody else to do. He's going to appoint a special counsel to look into the two crimes would be overturning or trying to overturn the 2020 election, that little thing that Trump did, and then bringing the classified documents down to Mar-a-Lago

and putting him in the shed with the croquet equipment. So this guy, Jack Smith, he is the chief prosecutor. He was the chief prosecutor at the Hague. That's the world court. He's going to be now the prosecutor here. He's going to be the special prosecutor. He's investigated war crimes in Kosovo. So he's a serious guy with a serious job.

But it doesn't matter who. It doesn't matter how. It doesn't matter when. The right is just going to say it's political. So what's going to happen? Why do it? I think they should do it. I mean, well, he is known as Teflon D-Dine.

You're correct. But, you know, there is a need in some respects for the DOJ to counter what you know is coming. Donald Trump is going to say this is a political witch hunt. They're only going to go after me because he said it. He said it and he'll say it again and he'll say it another time. But now he's declared that he's going to run again. So now he is because Biden has said he's intending to run again. They are political rivals.

So there is this moment of a time when the U.S. does not necessarily trust our institutions, our Supreme Court, our court systems more broadly, and they're saying, look, I'm going to head this off. Having said that, I was a prosecutor. We were expected to be perfect. We never had time to be. I never had the time that Merrick Garland in the team have right now

to be able to take all the time to investigate and look at issues. But the stakes are really high. And so if you can do one little thing to undercut the argument that this is all politics, why not try? You got him. You can't let a guy get away with it.

That's a bigger president. I know there's a bad side to doing it. Do you agree with that? Well, I would just add that we are kind of in a new era. That is, we all have intuitions about what's proper and how things should work, and those are based on us living in the 20th century when things weren't completely nuts. But since about... Yeah.

At some point in the 2010s, everything got completely nuts. And I've been arguing that it's because social media rewired the way we share information. There's no possibility of sort of a shared understanding of what happened or who we are. So I think it's just difficult to second guess or game things. I hope that Merrick Garland was at least thinking about how this prosecution could actually work come to a proper conclusion and not blow up the country. I mean, the problem is everyone thinks that he's reactive. And he might very well be, right? The idea of he's having a special counsel who's going to have the data,

operations of everything. It's not going to be Merrick Garland, who was going to look at everything every day and decide what's going on. And so now you'll have the appearance of not having impropriety. The problem is, the American people are justified in many respects and thinking, are you just now getting to it, whatever it might be? Are you just, were you waiting for him to announce to then have this special counsel be in place? Because if that's the case, that's not going to cut it in terms of people being more confident. And you're right. Bill, people are having that Mueller effect. There's a long...

He was a special counsel. He was a special counsel, and time means nothing with the pandemic. So everyone thinks this is Mueller part two. And in reality, there is a delineation. So you think it would have been different, and I think you're probably right. If they had... Right after January 6th, they had moved. Because I kept saying on this show, like,

what the fuck is going on? If only we had some sort of department of justice who could do so. Some sort of justice department. All right. I want to ask about... So there's a new asshole on the block. Move over...

This name is Sam Bankman-Feed. Move over, Martin Screlli. This is... I don't know if you... Have you seen this story this week? This is one of these guys... There he is. Okay, they're calling him the millennial made-off.

This is the crypto guy. It's amazing to me, the things you don't know that are going on in this world until they explode. this guy ran a crypto. I'm not in crypto because I think it's a Ponzi scheme and I'm rooting for its failure.

He ran a crypto exchange where you can, I guess, buy and sell crypto, called FTX. He's known as SBF, and he ran FTX. And I say WTF. But, okay, unlike banks, which have the FDIC, which ensures you, so if there can't be a run on them,

There's nothing here in the crypto world. It's the Wild West. I mean, every month billions are stolen. North Korea does a lot of it. Okay, so this thing now collapsed. Like it was like a bank run in the metaverse. Like $32 billion. And it turns out he's a crook and a con artist.

Hence the name, Millennial Madoff. So now they've a point... That's what they're calling him on Twitter, which is, you know, no more. And yet I read it there an hour ago. So now they've appointed this guy who was... John Ray III was appointed after... Remember Enron collapsed?

Okay, what was that? 2001? Bush was president. It was 2000, I guess. Before 9-11. Okay. They lost $74 billion in Enron. So they appointed this guy, John Ray, back then, to, I guess, take over the company,

clean it up. Now they're bringing them back. Now he's going to run F-TX. He said, I've never seen such a job. a complete failure of corporate control. And again, he ran Enron. He said, really?

He said, this situation is unprecedented. He said, the FTX group did not keep appropriate books or records and security controls. It was so disorganized. They were unable to prepare a complete list of who worked there. At least

Elon knows who he's firing. I mean, these... And the plot thickens because this guy, SBF, this Sam Bankman-F, this millennial made-off, the second biggest donor to the Democratic Party after George Soros.

They loved his ass. He was always with Clinton and those types. He was at Davos, you know, and it just sort of, to your point about we're in our silos. It's like everything now is, as long as you're on our team, we don't care, we don't look at.

It has a very Epstein feel, you know, Jeffrey Epstein. This kind of smells of that. He's one of us. He's on our side. He donates to our causes. We don't need to look too hard into the fact that he's a con man. I mean, his picture looks so, you know, trustworthy. I don't know why you wouldn't give him billions. I don't know. I just feel like it'd be a part of it. I mean, it's called, I don't understand crypto. It's the name crypto. No one does. Not supposed to understand it. No one does. That's part of it, right? It's cryptic, right?

And that's part of the word. But the idea that, you know, I think money just feels, many, a part of the part of the social media world, it just feels, it's not tangible to people. It feels like monopoly money. You think this idea of that phrase, you know, fortune, you know,

favors the bold or brave, whatever it might be, obviously I don't have the fortune because I didn't get the quote right. But the idea of thinking about it, people think about that that must be me. They're startups. I can do that. I can drop out of college. I can do this. I can rub elbows. I can have a Miami, you know, stadium and arena after these letters. And I think people live in this delusional world where you don't actually have to

show anything besides bravado. And that gets you in every door. That's right. And people have been always falling for get-rich-quick schemes. And that's why we have government agencies is to sort of put a lid on areas where lots and lots of people get hurt. And I understand the need for innovation in different spaces, but especially when you have ordinary people investing their money, investing their fortune, investing their retirement, I think this is kind of showing us there is a need for regulation, for institutions. Part of what, so much of what concerns me now about where we are as a country is that liberal democracy and the free market system that we have are kind of unnatural and unstable, and they only work because over decades and centuries we built up institutions that

allow us to, in a sense, live like way above what we're designed for. And now that everything is speeding up so fast, change can happen. We don't understand what's happening. And all around us, people are losing faith in our institutions, in part because our institutions are behaving badly. And so we have to get a grip on this. We have to understand what's happening to us. And then I'm hopeful that this collapse will sort of bring us back to our senses and our reality about, you know, social media is sort of making a mess of our social lives. how about if we bring that into our economy and our banking system?

Is that a good idea? Probably not. What I find so disturbing about it is it seems like they knew it was a scam. He did. You know, when you read the, he just did an interview with Box, and he's kind of admitting that, yeah, I know. And he had a girlfriend who wound up with about, I think, a billion dollars of the money because there was so much of it washing around. That's better than flowers, Bill.

She said, here's her quote. I didn't get into this crypto as a true believer. It's mostly scams and memes when you get down to it. And like, this is what they're saying out loud. You know, this is not just thoughts in your head. So I also think there's an interesting connection here with academia because I was reading about his mother, SBF's mother. First of all, a lot of the money came through this group called

Effective Altruism, who was a social movement. Listen to this. I love this, the younger jubes. generation when they think they've discovered something new. A social movement dedicated to using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible. Yes. Why didn't we think of that?

Using evidence of... Oh. Effective altruism. So on to something. Okay. So it turns out both his parents. We're professors at Stanford. I'm bringing this up because you're into this area.

And the mother wrote an essay in 2013 beyond blame. She said the philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy. It's time to move past blame. Yeah. Is it really time? Personal responsibility is bad and blame that's a thing of the past? No wonder this guy's a fucking crook.

You were raised wrong. You were raised wrong, asshole. So I study moral psychology. I know you do. And there's some really interesting studies done by a philosopher named Eric Schwitzkebel who looked at, are philosophers who study ethics more ethical? And he looked at what books get taken from the library and never returned. Ethics books are more likely to never be returned.

No. Is that right? He did all kinds of surveys like, you know, who calls their mother on Mother's Day? You know, philosophers and moral philosophers a little bit less likely to. So at very least, there's no sign that thinking and reasoning and studying ethics makes you more ethical.

And one thing it does is it makes you very, very good at post hoc justifications of whatever the hell you want to do. Kind of what religion is also. When you think God is on your side, you can do anything. I mean, the people who attacked on 9-11 thought they were doing God's work. You know, it was a faith-based initiative.

Well, that's right. Genocides, most of the, if you've got large-scale violence, if you're mobilizing people to do something, most likely they feel that there's a strong moral justification behind it. And so we've got to watch those, especially in a liberal democracy, where there's a new research of paper just came out a couple months ago, showing that in the countries that are backsliding the most,

the countries that are getting, becoming less stable democracies, those are precisely the countries where political, polarization is rising. In other words, the more you hate the other side, the more you can justify anything, because they're an existential threat to the country. And if we have to invade the capital to turn over the election, we'll do that, or whatever. But you see it on both sides. And so I think one of the central things we've got to keep our eye on is the polarization. The more we hate each other, the more we're going to do crazy things that are going to make it

not sustainable, I think, to have a liberal democracy. Well, you know, I'm going to say, what I find, maybe it's a prosecutor in me, but I have to call BS on statement. I mean, the idea that we have moved past blame or that blame is the problem. I mean, it's kind of like the cousin of the 16th place ribbon in a class of 16, where, you know, there is right and wrong. There is the idea of punishment. There is idea of actual gain. And there's the idea of if somebody has done the wrong thing, you don't have to look everywhere else to assign blame. Sometimes the person who did the deed should be blamed and ought to be held accountable for. I mean, we talk about people not being above the law and what that means to us societally, is the idea that

it's deflection on society, that it's society's problem that you see what I've done as wrong as opposed to what I've done as wrong. And to think about that, and it was written years ago before her son, obviously it was involved in all that he's doing right now. But if that gives me any insight into how she feels her son ought to be treated from here out, then that is really telling about a deficiency. And then that's why I brought it up, because I really think, look, we are, I think when historians look back at our time, they will not divide us into red and blue and Republican Democrat. They're like the things that were wrong with us.

We're wrong with both sides in different ways. I do think they manifest in a more dangerous way on the right. But on the left, there is a rot, and it comes from academia. And it filters down. Am I wrong about that? That's where it's all coming from. I just think this is an epitome of it. This is what the mother says, and then the kid,

your money. Yeah. So I think part of what's happening here is that we have certain institutions in our society that you can call them epistemic institutions, which just means knowledge generating. And the academy is the premier one, the medical establishment, the courts are another. And these only work if you have viewpoint diversity. They only work if I say something and then people are going to challenge me. Right.

And the academy has always leaned left. And it's not necessarily a problem. the police lean right. It's not necessarily a problem. It's just people choose different careers. What's happened, and I've been collecting data on this, I started an organization called Heterodox Academy in 2015, and we've been arguing that maybe we should have some viewpoint diversity

and not be Orthodox Academy. Because when everyone's on the same side, someone says something crazy, like, how about if we stop punishing people? And other people are afraid to object because that would seem to put you against a certain political sensibility. That's right. Group think.

And when that happens, what we get is what I think we can call structural, stupidity. Right. That is, you get... Yes. You see it all the time. You get really smart people, but you put them together, and they can't think straight, and they say stupid things from the left that just play really well on lives of TikTok and give the

right thing lots of ammunition. And you get onion headlines as policy. That's right. Exactly. That's it. All right. So, speaking of headlines, this is our last show before our winter break. We will be back on January 20th.

I forget what day that is, but it's an important. one in my life for some reason. Oh, yeah, it's inauguration, that's what it is. Anyway, but anyway, always before we go, we do a future headline for the people who get their news from this show. We will actually provide, because we love you, the audience, we will provide for you the headlines that will be there

when we're gone so you're not behind. These are the future headlines you will see. A chemical in My Pillow Stuffing found to Make People Stupid. guarantee you'll see that. Bitcoin now worth less than coin coin. Hersha Walker, inked seven-figure deal to read book. Paris Hilton ends marriage

after catching husband with another mannequin. Ted Cruz, to open museum of all the things thrown at him. AARP, BLM, and Magicians Union all call for boycott of that old black magic. And IRS questions Trump tax deductions. for giving away Tiffany. So I saw you on 60 minutes last Sunday, and I want to get into that because it was so fascinating.

And, you know, I remember 20 years ago people were talking about paint chips and the fact that, you know, when kids ate paint chips back in the day, it fucked their brains up. And they thought that when we got the lead out of the paint, it actually affected crime 20 years later because people who had paint chips in their brain were like committing crimes when they grew up.

I mean, it's probably true. true. So, okay, we got rid of the paint chips, but now we have TikTok brain. Really? Really. And porn, when you're 8 years old on your phone, and smartphones which make people

stupid, and all this stuff, which is really fucking up kids' brains. There's no other way to say it. I mean, I guess there is another way to say it. Probably you couldn't say it that way on CNN. But on this show, that's how we're saying it. It's fucking up kids' brains. And nobody seems to care

Are we doing anything about it? We should be doing something massive, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can say it in a different way because I'm writing a book on what the hell happened to Gen Z. Why is it that when you look at the mental health stats, if you look at rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide, they're pretty flat in the early 2000s. And then right at 2012 for girls, it goes way, way up. It goes up for boys, too, but not as much.

Something happened right around 2012. Well, let's see. the first front-facing camera comes out the iPhone 4 in 2010. Instagram is founded. Everyone goes on Instagram in 2012. So at least social media fits the bill. But what I think people really need to understand is it's not just kids going on social media.

It's the complete rewiring of childhood so that kids used to be out having experiences. That's what you need to grow up. It's what you need to wire your brain up. And then they hit puberty, which is actually a period of heightened brain plasticity. Our brains are really open to a experience. experience when we're zero to two, and then it's a little less.

And then right around age 11 or 12, the brain is almost looking for more input from the environment. And that's exactly the age at which we say to girls, here you go, once you hook your brain up to a fire hose of garbage, and then we'll see how you are on the other side. So, yes, we're really, what was your word, fucked up? Fucked up. Fucking the kid's brains up. Are your kids on?

I don't let my kids go on social media. I have an 8-year-old and a soon-to-be-10-year-old. And when I think about what I hand them, I mean, I have a little watch. I can contact them. I can reach them. But the idea of handing over to my kids a machine that tells them, compare yourself to everyone else. I mean, I'm not somebody who even likes to go on social media

because it's kind of like walking out your front door and saying, hey, anyone think I'm cute today? Like, anyone want to criticize me? Come on, I'm here for you. Just go ahead, start. And so with my kids, when they're trying to think about and figure themselves out, I mean, I cannot imagine going through puberty, going through insecurities, going through life, and not just having whatever bullying, whatever insecurity is just in your own little circle,

but it's there forever. And it feels like everyone's seeing it. And it goes from point A to point Z in a matter of seconds. I mean, you have people feeling insecure into their adulthood. Now, you should see, we're talking about on air, you know, someone will make a comment as a pundit, and the commercial break, they go, anyone like it? Did anyone like it? Anyone like it? What do they say? What were they saying? Accomplish people have done that too?

Exactly. These are people who are grownups who have lived a life before social media. Imagine those who have never. Like, you see kids now, and you wonder the two-year-olds who have seen people in masks for most of their lives at this point. How does that shape their view of now seeing a mouth one day? Imagine now seeing a real mirror, not a filter. It's always like a fun house. And I just, I try to stay away from my kids. But don't your kids complain to you that the other kids, kids have this? We don't. I mean, isn't it hard as a parent to do that when all the other kids have it? For me, no. You can add it to the bill for your therapy in 20 years.

Right. Mommy did so many, you had a bed. You had a house. All poor, you. You didn't have a phone. Can I give you an air fist bump on that one? I thank you. So your kids are what, eight and nine? Eight and nine. Yeah. Okay. So they're still in elementary school. Yeah. When they go to middle school, my kids go to in New York City public schools. As soon as they hit sixth grade, they say, Dad, everybody is on Instagram. Can I have an Instagram account?

We're all faced with this trap. No parent wants their kids on Instagram. But we're all faced with this trap because the other kids are on. We don't want our kids to be excluded because that is where things are happening. So this is what's called in social science is a collective action problem.

Each one of us might even be even worse off if we take our kid off and everyone else is on, but we'd all be better off if everything was off. So what we need to do as a starting move, and this is something we can all do, get the phones and social media the hell out of middle school. Let's just protect middle school. So if you're watching this at home,

talk to the principal of your parents' middle school and say, can you help us? Because believe me, I've spoken at middle schools, they hate this too. So as a starting move, just have the norm be, no phones in school. When you come to school, put him in a phone locker or a yonder pouch.

The kids must not have access to their phones. in school, usually the policy is, well, you know, we don't let them take them out. Like, yeah, you know, tell heroin addicts. You can just, just leave in your pocket. Don't shoot up. Just leave in your pocket all day. So we have to get it out of middle school, and we also have to keep the kids off of social media until at least high school.

I think the age needs to be 16 after the brain is mostly developed, but we've got to get it out of middle school. But the parents don't want it, right? I mean, some of the, if you add it up, some of the middle school kids, their parents remember the introduction of Instagram, and they love it. I mean, look at the average middle school picture with selfie with a mother and daughter or a father and son. I mean, they both got the duck lips going. They're both doing them together.

I mean, they're doing it because they like it. And you have the... And so I hear you, and I agree. But part of the collective action, I think, has to include the buy-in from a group of people who love the keeping up with the Joneses. And until we saw those people, Instagram flourishes. Right. And you mentioned the girls. You said that's a more...

Yes. Yeah. So what I can say, I've dug into all of the published studies. I've got a Google Doc with hundreds and hundreds of studies. And what I can show is that the correlations between time on social media and mental health problems are... They're not huge, but they're pretty solid for girls. For boys, it's not so much. Boys, because what happened around 2012, when all the kids got smartphones right around then,

the boys mostly went for YouTube and video games. and those are not particularly harmful because what boys need to grow up is they need to be part of a pack competing with or hunting and killing other groups of boys. And that's not harmful at all. That's not harmful or not.

When it's playful, it's not. If it's playful, it's not. That's what sports is. But the killing. But I feel like women will be the ones to maybe lead us out of this because I feel like social media is hated by women

because it takes away the things that they need the most from men. One, you don't have to have the balls, to go up to a girl, which they want. They want you to demonstrate that. I'm willing to risk rejection. And you don't have to do that over the phone. And also, they want to be talked to.

Women like talking. Boy, do they. They like... They do. They like you talking to them and them talking to you. They're communicative preachers. Men can get a by without that, but women cannot. And the phone is robbing.

So I think if anybody's going to lead us out of this wilderness, it's going to be women who are fed up, women cannot really like Tinder. That is not something that conformed with their biological imperative. It's perfect for a man. Oh, what's up? My dick.

That's right. Yeah. Nobody's Well, I mean, except for the same reasons you don't want necessarily to have to demonstrate, because it takes away some of the insecurity, the idea of having to deal with the man who would say, what's up, my dick, and just swiping left or right, a better

alternative. There's a distancing of that as well. But I do think that, to the larger points, you're absolutely correct. Women can do everything better, and will lead us out of everything. So that's good. Okay. We'll end the season on that note. It's time for

New Rules. Thank you guys. Okay, New Rule, if they can make cars that drive themselves, park themselves, monitor blind spots, sense rain, keep you in your lane. Tell when you're tired or you're drunk and see you at night. They can make one that changes its own damn clock.

Daylight savings time When your smart car gets stupid again New Rule, someone has to make a movie Where a Super Glue Fights Crazy Glue And then they realize they should be friends And beat the shit out of gorilla glue And then 25 sequels

From a new movie studio That's all about the adhesive cinematic universe Hey, it's not stupid than four movies about Lego Neuro Yusuf Shah The 11-year-old British Kid With an IQ higher than Einstein Has to explain the fascination

with Rubik's cubes. For us, normal people, they're the most boring toy ever made. But for the Mensa crowd, they're endlessly fascinating. Look, I can solve it in three seconds. Nobody cares, genius. Go to your room and solve global warming.

New Rolls since Heinz ketchup just reported that the design for their bottle's squeeze cap involved 185,000 hours of product development over nine years and went through 45 iterations. Someone has to ask them if all that time and all that tinkering

included perfecting the fart noise. New Rule, if you don't want Americans to think you're calling us fat cows, you can't call your Asian noodle company, Momo, fuck you. The meal that says, hey, wait a minute. Don't get cute with Asian food. Just give us a simple name that tells us what's in it. Like Panda Express. And finally, new rules, since this is our last show of the season and our Thanksgiving show,

I'd like to start tonight by giving thanks this year to Donald Trump and all the loons, Karens, Kool-Aid drinkers, delist celebrities, and unqualified weirdos he put up for office who scared some sense into America on Election Day. This holiday season, so much brighter for me and millions of other Americans. Thank you, Republican Dushbags, Class of 22. Thank you, Doug Mastriano. and Tudor Dixon and Carrie Lake and Blake Masters and all the other election deniers who ran for Secretary of State

and Governor in swing states and lost, which was almost all of them. And thanks to decent Republicans like Brad Rapsenberger who defied Trump and won. Yes, in 2022 against everybody's predictions, except Michael Moore. The deniers lost and the defiers won. And America showed the world that the reports of our death were slightly exaggerated.

We went from God damn America to God damn America. Maybe we're not quite as crazy as we look. Republicans showed they could dump their baggage, and independents showed they could actually be independent. Usually they're just closet Republicans, but this year they did what they never do in midterms. They came out in droves for the party in power and told the party that ran on a platform

of fuck elections, go fuck yourselves. Sometimes this country surprises you with its ability to revert back to sane. We saw it when we elected the first black president, we saw it with the acceptance of gay marriage, and with the end of disco. We saw it when we ended prohibition and segregation and stopped allowing doctors to smoke during surgery.

One day we may even stop making comic book movies. Sure, we're a country that chose to dolemen. deliberately eat tide pods, but how about some credit for when we eventually stopped? But this year, this year was something special. Our better angels haven't put up a win like that

in a long time. Turns out we're not guilty by reason of insanity, and right now, I feel like we're having a not as crazy as we thought moment. Let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. Let's rally

the normies, which we now realize are still most of us, and bully the bullies on the extreme ends who are such a tiny part of us and yet thanks to social media and partisan politics, are able to hog the microphone and make everything suck. A friend Jonathan here noted on

60 minutes that the extremists are only about 7 to 8% on both sides, and yet they get 90% of the media attention. 92% of all tweets in this country come from 10% of the users. Why are we letting 15% of the population

make us all miserable? It's like we're letting the crying baby fly the plane. All the normal Republicans who stepped up last week? Great beginning. Let's keep it going. Don't stay silent about insanity just because it's coming

from your team. Call out this conspiracy stuff. Marginalize the people who believe in crisis actors and lizard people. and who think Democrats eat babies or run pedophile rings. Jewish space lasers? I don't even know what a Jewish space laser is,

but I know even Kyrie Irving doesn't believe in it. We all need to call out the people of bad faith on both sides who pretend things they know are not true. Like voter fraud? It's been studied a million times. It doesn't exist. There just aren't hordes of people showing up in gray-haired wigs pretending to be dead people

and risking prison to vote for Patrick Leahy. Voting twice, it's hard enough to vote once. Okay, you admit that, and liberals will admit that getting a picture ID is not a Herculian burden that minorities can't manage, like everybody else, and which most don't even object to. We need more grand bargains like that.

Everyone's always talking about how they're tired of the extremists, and how they long for compromise, then do it. Make deals. Stop flirting with authoritarianism and we'll stop flirting with communism. Stop saying Democrats eat babies.

And we'll stop saying men can have them. Stop denying the ice caps are melting and we'll stop asking to disband ice. Stop saying there's a war on Christmas and we'll admit Kwanza is completely made up. Keep a lid on the proud boys and we'll see what we can do

about Kanye. All right. Let's all agree to form a less psycho union. All right, that's our show. We're off until January 20th. You can see me at the Mirage in Vegas, November 25 and 26th, the Maui Cultural Center, December 30th, and the Waikiki Shell on New Year's Eve. I want to thank my guest, Laura Coates, Jonathan Haid, Matthew Perry. Wait a second. I also want to say thank you to my brilliant staff and their brilliant insights and incredible competence that they lend me all year long

and HBO 20 years together. Thank you for that. We'll see you next year. Go to YouTube now and join us on overtime. Thank you. Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch them anytime on HBO on demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.