Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #632: Esther Perel, Glenn Loury, and Daniel Bessner

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

Overtime – Episode #632: Esther Perel, Glenn Loury, and Douglas Murray 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 Maher. Okay, welcome to, oh, my prize, looking. Hi, CNN, I know I'm dressed a little strange, but we were doing a sketch at the end of our show. You'll have to watch it. Okay, we have psychotherapist and bestselling author Astaire Perel is over here. We have Brown University of the host of Glenn Show podcast, Glenn Lowry, and we have the co-host of the Foreign Affairs Podcast, American Prestige, Daniel Bustner. Okay.

What does the panel make of SCOTUS's? That's a Supreme Court ruling today, preserving access to birth control pills. Yes, that happened just before we went on the air. So that's the birth control pill that that one judge in Texas, I don't know how that works. I don't think I ever will, said, okay, I'm a judge in Texas. The whole country can't have birth control pills. And I went to the Supreme Court, and I guess they threw it back to the lower court.

understand Clarence Thomas and Alito dissented, okay, and said, no, no birth controls for you. What are your thoughts? Well, they made the right call. So Clarence Thomas made the wrong call. I'd have to say so in this case. I'm not privy to the opinions, but I think a single judge overruling national regulation in that way is not the way you want to run a railroad. What are your thoughts as a sex therapist on the pill that people take to not have a baby?

I think it is problematic to bring politics into a conversation that should happen between a woman and her physician of which politicians know nothing about. Okay. All right. For that answer, you've earned a bonus question. This is for answer.

Is there such a thing as a soulmate? So the interesting thing about soulmate is that for all of history, it meant God, the one and only. Today people would like their... That's even sillier. But go ahead. Some people that had a great meaning. But to turn our partner into a soulmate, to demand from our partner the very things that we used to expect from religion, transcendence, meaning, ecstasy, wholeness, that is a whole new order. that has never been part of what committed or marriage,

committed relationships or marriage ever was about. Interesting. Boys? Boys? Makes a lot of sense to me, yeah. Okay. Should we consider the Space X rocket launch a success or a failure? What does it say about the state of American innovation? I think it's a success.

The fact that it failed is part of the process. The fact that there was nobody on board Yeah, I mean, you've got to break some rockets to make an omelet. You know, it's never going to work the first time. I mean, to me, if we're trying to get space travel, why are we relying solely on private corporations to do so? I think historically speaking, this nation has made its greatest advancements in technology when we pooled resources together,

and there's some form of central planning. I think if this is something that we truly decide democratically that we want, then that's how we should do. Should we want it? I don't see the reason necessarily. I don't either. I mean, I'm a Musk fan generally, although he sometimes makes it hard.

Big time. It's a private company. If they can't make a go of it, they'll go bankrupt. If they can't make a go of it and make money from it, then they'll make money from it. I mean, you know.

Yeah, I just, I don't, I mean, he's being a guest on our show next week, by the way, Elon. Yeah, I'm very excited. And I want to talk to him. I've never been on that page. of why we should go to Mars. I mean, however bad we

ruin the Earth, it cannot be worse than a place that has no air is 200 degrees below zero and a long way away and has six-month dust storms. And you have to live underground and there's radiation. Isn't the ambition of wanting to do something as audacious and

remarkable is that an expression of the human spirit? Why shouldn't we celebrate that? From another perspective, though, you might see it as a rejection of humanity. Even I'm no big fan of robber barons, but at least they would do things like pay for operas, pay for museums. It seems like this generation

of oligarchs just wants to escape Earth or live forever, which I think is a pretty grim a pretty grim take on for us. He would say he wants to escape Earth for a very good reason that is altruistic, because he thinks this planet is probably going to be

I can't say the word, but rat screwed. CNN, I clean it up, you see. And we need this other planet to go to. But I feel like if it gets that bad on Earth, I mean... Yeah, I think it's done then. Right. But one thing I do agree with Elon on is...

I hope we'll talk about it next week. Also is AI being a threat. I mean, he and a thousand scientists and important people signed a letter a couple of weeks ago that said, we should put a pause on AI. And this week I see there's a collaboration between Drake, and the weekend that is not real. AI did it, and it looks like you can put the complete music business out of business

because you don't need them anymore. So anyone who thinks, I think, that this AI thing isn't moving way too fast for us to deal with, I think it's kidding themselves, and I think he's right. We should put a pause on it. But in this situation, who is the we, who would be able to make that determination? I feel like you'd have to get some sort of... Wait, you were for the government all night. No, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah. I think you need to... Something you don't want the government to get involved. It was a government, government... No, I think it's exactly what needs to happen. I joke about it in class. I tell my students, I know you're writing your papers with Chad GPT. Guess what?

I'm grading them with Jets. That's hysterical. Okay. Is the future of democracy truly at stake in the U.S., as some contend? Is there really an emerging fascist movement. Well, yeah. Don't you watch the news? Come on. You're watching CNN. Yes, there is. No?

All right, next question. I would disagree about identifying it specifically as fascist, even though there is a far-right authoritarian movement. I don't think it meaningfully mirrors the fascist movements of Italy or Germany in the 20s and the 30s. And I don't think it's a particularly mobilizing thing to do, but I appreciate the tenor of the question, and I agree with it. I mean, fascism was fascism. We shouldn't throw words around casually. Exactly.

There are threats to American democracy. People do throw that word around very casually. And there's never any specific definition of it that I know of. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I think that if you're going to go back to compared Italy-Germany, they were, it took one year for it to go from an authoritarian situation to a more fascistic situation. And you know it when you start to experience a society.

in which there is a constant polarization, no complex issues can actually hold their polarities, and it becomes either or you or me, right or wrong, black and white. That system of culture reads this. Preach, sister. Okay. What does the panel think of the video of the Dalai Lama

asking a young boy to suck his tongue? Let me ask the sex expert about that. I mean, I was surprised that more criticism didn't come the Dali's way, or the Lama's way. Whatever it was. Imagine if the Pope did that. What if the Pope said, suck my tongue, kid?

I mean, we'd immediately be saying, well, this guy has been in this pedophilia situation that the church, of course, has paid billions of dollars, big as they were, and he just forgot he wasn't inside anymore, and that's how bad it is. He said it in public. I mean, what do you make of that,

the Dali Lama saying that? I don't make. I listen. I listen, I try to look at situations in context, I keep my mouth shut and don't just jump and with judgment. Suck my tongue, kid? I judge that. I'm judging that. You have no idea what starts before.

You have no idea. Start before. What situation is it okay for a strange 80-year-old man, say to a six-year-old, suck my tongue? None. None. None, but I don't know. I don't, I, you ask me, all I can say is,

I will not speak out on situations like this. None of them. Before I have an idea of what happened here, what happened there? I've seen enough. Look, I work with couples. Describe what happened here that would make this okay. Like you're saying, something I don't know could have led up to the Suckbaton comment. No, that's not the point.

The point is that... Well, it seems like your point. No, I think that before you jump, just to me, before I jump, I take another couple of minutes to get a bigger sense of what else is going on here. That's all I'm saying. Is there any cultural... Yes, that's the first what I'm thinking about. Do we know what it means?

I mean, was it sexual? We don't know. That is the question I have, but I don't have the answer for it. What's the cultural context here? That we are weak to jump off. It's ridiculous. Like, we wouldn't have heard of that by now. Oh, yes, in Buddhism, they suck the kid's tongues.

It's crazy. I'll throw it back to you, see you, CNN. 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.