Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #702: Dr. Phil & Stephen A. Smith

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 8/8/25) 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. All right, he is the founder of Envoy Media and podcast host Dr. Phil, and he's the host of ESPN's first take, Stephen A. Smith and the next president of the United's. No, I'm telling you, it's going to all start up again on Monday. You're going to see. It is what it is. It is what it is, and we will see. Okay. Trump says he probably won't run in 2028. It's patently illegal. But he probably, can we take him at his word? No. I mean, I actually don't think he's going to run. I've been saying this, and I see Andrew Sullivan wrote it about it today. He's going to do what Putin did with Medvedev. Medvedev was his whatever prime minister. They switched jobs. And he was really the president, while

Putin pretended he wasn't, and that's what Trump is going to do. And Trump can control this country the way he does now through social media. If President Vance or President Rubio doesn't do something he likes, all he has to do is get on truth social and tear him a new asshole, and the policy will change. I don't think it's, listen, he can do that. He can choose to do it that way, but the fact is his popularity is so exponentially high than everybody else within the Republican Party that the level of control,

like you said, he can sit up there and step away, but he wants to maintain control over the party. He wants to make sure that there are people out there doing his bidding, that of his family, that of his interest, whatever that may be. And there is nobody within the GOP that can stop them. Who is it? Is it going to be Marco Rubio? No.

Is it going to be J.D. Vance? No. No, no. There is. There is going to be Lindsey Graham. No. Nobody's going to stop him. They're going to capitulate and go right along because he knows how to feed the beast himself.

He's about quit. So he's one of those guys that if you do for him, he'll make sure to try to take care of you as well. They know that, which is why they capitulate his every whim. Could be a family member. That's right. I just brought up Don Jr. Yeah, he could be a family member. Nah, I didn't think he trusts his own kid.

I don't. That's the way fathers like that are. They just are. Probably. Dr. Phil, what do you think of more people turning to A, for therapy instead of seeking out licensed professionals. I think it's really dangerous, but I think, look, less than half of the counties in the United States even have a psychiatric nurse

or some kind of resource. And, you know, for some elementary sort of things and giving people fundamental advice for anxiety or depression, it can probably do some good. There can probably be some value in it. But it is really a dangerous thing. And I've argued with it. You were saying it always tells you what you want to hear,

but I asked a question the other day. I said, tell me what you know about trigger warnings, which are complete bullshit. And it gave me all of this left-leaning stuff about trigger warnings about how they help with this and help with that. And I said, well, I argued with it. So wait a minute. How can you completely leave out all of the empirical data that says they don't work, they create anxiety themselves, that you should instead do things like systematic decencyization, immersion therapy, things of that nature?

And it came back and said, oh, you're right, I'm sorry, here's that research, here's that data, and it gave me all of that. So it will give you biased answers. It will give you what it thinks you want to hear. and there have been lawyers that relied on it to brief a case, and it totally made up cases, and they got fined by the court and referred for malpractice to the bar because they relied on AI,

and it totally fabricated stuff. So we can't completely rely on this at this point. It may find the needle in the haystack, but you've got to check the needle it finds. It can save you the hunt, but you got to check it. We're not there yet. Here's the thing for me that scares the living hell out of me.

So if you talk into a phone, you talk to chat, GPT, whatever it is, whatever AI component you want to think of, and you're talking to that stuff, and that's what you're relying upon. It's less human interaction. As a human being, it sort of isolate you, it serves to isolate you a little bit more. And those are usually the crazy-ass people that we end up seeing in this world. People that were home alone, detached from society and it's normal.

et cetera, et cetera, creating their own kind of normal, and it's usually working to the detriment of our society. That kind of stuff just scares me. It's fucked up. The whole thing is fucked up. You're both being too gentle on it. I read today Google's AI has a depression problem.

I'm not kidding. How do you read that? It says, I'm a failure. It gets... It gets down on itself. Also, people, this is really bad. People turn to AI now to the chatbot for an opinion. Somebody the other day asked it,

what's Bill Maher's best stand-up special? It picked wrong. Don't go to it for an opinion. And I know why it did. Because. It picked us because it's programmed by left-wingers. That's the truth. Most of it is.

It picked one from 2005. This is before the left had gone off the deep end. This is George Bush was president Obama was about to run There was nothing very much to make fun of on the left They hadn't gone crazy yet Woke hadn't happened yet All that excess stuff

All the Gen Z crazy stuff None of that's So most of my criticism was Against the Republicans Most of it still is by the way They wouldn't say they wouldn't portray you that way Which is ridiculous Okay but also it was 2005

We were 10 years away from gay marriage. The end of that special was all about championing that we need gay marriage. The chat pot was like, oh, this is the great stuff. It's not my best special. That would be the last one. And the one before that, the one before that. They get better.

It wasn't 2000. So it's very dangerous, I think, to ever think that this thing has an opinion that you should go by. I also think it's dangerous to the left because of what you just said. Because it's created by them, and it's the kind of thing

people like yourself and others may not. notice. And as a result, we see the level of manipulation that is kicked in, and it makes it gets us very along because you can't point to the right and say they're doing this, they're engaging in the manipulation and what have you, when you're doing it yourself. You come across as a claimant. Whoever programmed it. I mean, Elon, the one on X, it thinks Hitler's a good guy. It recommends his way of doing that. And the problem is it can't read the room. Yeah. If it's talking to somebody that is giving signals, And there are signals that indicate somebody is short-term.

They're short-term thinking to someone that's suicidal. There are signs. There are cues. It can't pick those things up, and it will miss those red flags that somebody that was even remotely competent would see and start referring them to help, start getting them to call 911 or do things they need to do. It doesn't pick those things up. It sails right past. So there's danger, not only with what it says, but what it doesn't say, what it doesn't hear, what it doesn't see, and that's a danger.

We're pro-human. All right. Dr. Phil. Texas will now require that public school classrooms display the Ten Commandments. Is that a violation of the separation of church and state? Well, I mean, do we even have to ask? I mean, what do you think about that? Well, look, I think having something available.

for kids to see is one thing. Pounding it down their throats is another thing. But it's a terrible list. It's a stupid list. It's not the ten worst things you could ever do. It's a bullshit list. It's not a competition about the ten worst things you could do. Do you have a problem with any of the ten? Yeah, they're stupid. The first four are all about God's ego. You know, don't pray to other gods, don't have a statue of another God. Rape is not on the list.

Child molestation is not on the list. Slavery is not on the list. But coveting thy neighbor's ass is on the list. It's a dumb list. There's only two things on it that are laws. Don't steal and don't kill. We couldn't have figured that out without the Bible. it's a dumb one.

But it's good to have it in there. It's not a bad thing to say thou shall not kill. I know. But if you have a list of, if a kid is seven years old and very impressionable, and this is the list of the ten worst things you can do, and you've buried those two amid this other bullshit and left out rape and all these incest and slavery

and all these other things, that is not a smart thing to do for an appropriate. impressionable child who's trying to learn what is right now. You say all this other bullshit that's, let me other bullshit to you, but if you have somebody that's worshipping their phone and worshiping all of these things that people have generated, and that is happening with young people, we have the highest depression and anxiety among our young people since records have started being kept. And you think all...

And it's a long way around to defend what you're talking about. We went all the way to cell phone. to say the Ten Commandments in the classroom. You don't want to say worship no other God. There are people that are worshipping phones. It's not a long way around. Absolutely true. Yeah, it is.

Thank you. Okay. That's not really on the same. Lazzangue-surellied, puissance-moly for 15 minutes. We're like to dojo. Prey to play a pleasure with Leo Jo. The casino in line

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green sex toys on the court, is this just edgy marketing or does it reflect the sexist attitude towards women's sports? What is the point? Combination of both? Is your problem that they're green or that they're just trying to be? Well, I don't think you should know.

Why are we? No, I saw it on the news. I didn't understand what the point of it was. Like if this is your great burn, your sick burn, I don't even get it. Is it saying we don't respect women's sports? They're heckling them, no question. Why?

You bring up the dildo stuff. You know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a belief by some folks out there that a variety of members of the WNBA or members of the LGBTQ community. And so when you throw that stuff out there, you're sort of maligning them and chiding them in that regard, basically alluding to what you think they should need and all this. heard people say this kind of something. Don't look at me like I think it, because I don't. I'm just telling you, these are the kind of things that people have texted and, you know,

or do comments out there. But you've got some sick-ass people out here. There's somebody sick-ass people. You might want to leave it. They invent ways to heckle and malign folks. It just shows some people's definition of happiness is bringing you and lowering you to the level of misery that they live in every day. That's why they are who they are.

Right. And they're usually hiding. Yeah, so true. But think about it, somebody had to go stop and buy that. Yes. Well, say this, I've seen people buy worse things. Yeah. I have seen people buy worse than.

Yes, I have. I mean, you got on your jersey and you're stopping and buying? Yes. How do you explain that when you're going in there? It bothers me that it's green. I'm just going to be honest. Okay, no, speak to. Okay, one last question.

I didn't even know why it didn't have to be green. Speaking of Green, the Trump administration is announcing... I cannot make the news up. They're going to build a nuclear reactor on the moon. Your thoughts about the nuclear reactor on the moon. Well, I'd rather have it there than in my neighborhood. Not on my planet. Yeah.

Okay. Well, I think a lot could go wrong up there. All right. Event new ways to spend money? Good luck with the campaign, gentlemen. Thank you very much. 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.