Real Time with Bill Maher - Overtime – Episode #703: Thomas Chatterton Williams, Molly Jong-Fast, Walter Kirn

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Bill Maher and his guests answer viewer questions after the show. (Originally aired 8/15/25) 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. Okay, here we are in overtime with a staff writer at Atlantic, an author of Summer of Our Discontents, for Thomas Chatterson Williams, and also another at log of County Highway newspaper, Walter Kern, and she's a podcast host an author of How to Lose Her Mother, Molly Jong-Fast. Okay, here are the questions from the people. This is the people's choice. What does the panel think about China hosting the world's first humanoid robot?

games. Is this the future of sports? I mean, I mean, why would this be interesting to watch? I saw the picture of it. It's a robot. I had this toy when I was a kid. Remember Rock'em, what was it? Rocksock him robot. Something like that. It'd suck then. I think it'll suck now, but maybe you have a different take. Thomas is a sport fan.

What do you think, man? I mean, I don't watch Google Alpha, whatever, play stockfish in chess, and I don't want to watch robots compete in sports. You know, they might even surpass us, but what's interesting is the human fallibility, right, and the quest for excellence. Are you a sports fan? I'm a big sports fan. How you are?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like what sports? Well, I mean, in adulthood, the sport that I love that I can't play myself is tennis. So I'm a Nidal guy, die-hard Nidal fan, and it killed me when Jokovic passed him. Okay. No, I mean, I do like tennis. I don't watch it that much, but... No, I mean, I'll watch, like, the finals of Wormiton and something.

Tennis is awesome. Sure. Yeah. Sports. I don't watch ESPN much because it's like they cover too many sports. I only really watch the big three, you know, baseball, football, basketball, and only the pros. But who wants to watch robots play? Because when they lose, they aren't sorry.

It's a good point. I had this incredible... stupid question. Robots. Here are things I hate. Sports robots. Okay. Then let's go to a different one.

Does Obama calling New York City mayor candidate Zeran Mondami normalize his socialist politics? Yes, we don't know what Obama said to him, but Obama does this a lot. You know, he kind of like puts his thumb on the scale behind the scenes. He, you know,

Remember he tried to get Ruth Bader Ginsburg to quit? That didn't work that. I think he kind of like put his thumb on the scale of Hillary getting the nomination in 2016 when Biden thought maybe it was his turn. He's a cagey behind the scenes player. So apparently, I mean, what it looks like to me reading between the lines is Obama, a centrist sees this, you know, to say the least, socialist. I mean, some people would say communist, you know, because he says capitalism is theft.

That is kind of what communists say. It says, this guy is going to be the face of the Democratic Party, and every Democrat across the country is going to have to get the question. Mondami did this. Mondami said this. Do you agree? And then what the Democrats are going to do? So is that how you read Obama in New York? Just a little color on the Mondami, because I live in New York, where this is all anyone talks about.

is he is doing a ton of these meetings with real estate people, with the people really own the city, the real estate people, and the, you know, the sort of the New Yorkie business leaders, and he's talking to people. And he's made some, you know, he says that he's going to keep a lot of people on. And, you know, again, the question with these liberal mayors is, do you have the infrastructure? Because remember, the city is, it's a job.

that's largely a management job and not an ideological job. So will you have the managers? He certainly doesn't see it that way. But will you have the managers to make the city work? And I think that's going to be the question. What does Mom Doni do for a living? Good question, but not a question that you couldn't ask for a lot of people running for office. True.

Most of them are lawyers, though. Yeah, no, he was a city councilman. Yeah. He's doing the normal thing that you go to the mayor's position from another position in city government. I mean, that's what Cuomo is making a big stink about the fact that he has a rent-free, not a rent-free, but a rent-controlled department.

And he's... Restabilized. Rent-stabilized. Which is, I mean, I like Andrew, but what a bullshit issue. I mean, he's going... And he's saying, you know, well, you know, your parents are rich. Okay, who says, yeah, my parents are going to pay my rent? He's 33 years old.

The parents have nothing to do with it. His parent could be Bill Gates. Well, also, Cuomo hasn't lived in New York. He just recently moved back into the city. Right, but he's a New Yorker. He's living in the country. I mean... Okay, but he was the governor.

They'd give them a mansion in Albany. I mean, I don't think he's unqualified to run the city of New York. I think he's rather familiar with New York. Eric Adams is living in New Jersey. Yeah, well, he was living in New Jersey. He was, yeah. He never gave up a bed of him. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't.

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Costco is now stopping selling Methephtra Stone. Thank you. This is the birth control pill? It's actually an abortion pill.

Abortion pill. Yeah. And they said lack of demand that's why they're not going to sell it anymore. Now Costco,

isn't that where you buy things in bulk? That's the first thing that struck me. Who needs the abortion bill in bulk? How big of a hoe do you have to be to buy your abortion pills at Costco? Making the sad feminist face.

Okay, so two things about Methapristown. Yes. It is also used for a bunch of other things that aren't necessarily abortions. There are I could go into it, but it's too gross right, but there's lots of uterine things that involve metapristone and there's a it's a two it's a two drug series the other thing is like with birth control a lot of birth control pills a lot of these things were covered by insurance and aren't anymore or are being phased out under the new sort of you know because they seem woke. The thing I would say about birth control is there are a lot of people who are on

birth control and they're not on it for birth control they're on it to you know all sorts of really you know, to control their symptoms of other stuff, right, of hormones. And so I do think that these drugs are, they're about metapristone, but they're also about larger issues. You know, people use them for others. Just don't take it in the bathroom at Costco. Really, I would want a little more... I was terrible.

I would want a little more privacy if I was buying an abortion drug than in the line at Costco. I'm sorry. All right. Let me broaden this out a little bit. We are surprised that the abortion issue, which many of us thought was going to be the one that put the Democrats over the top, was not the issue that they thought it was going to be. Neither was democracy, by the way.

Right, yes, that turned out to be it. Those were two issues that they were counting on people to care about more than they did. What do you make of that? I mean, I think there was a larger problem, which was a structural problem, which is the mainstream media in 2016 was much more. bigger than it was in 2024. It was so much smaller, and they had so much trouble

breaking through about anything. You know, I mean, Joe Rogan, if you go on Joe Rogan, I think it's like, you know, 10, it's like 60, 70, 80 million people saw Trump on Joe Rogan, right? But if you give an interview to the Washington Post,

it's not the same level of, you know, breaking through. Well, then maybe Kamala for it went on Joe Rogan. Oh, she absolutely should have. Yeah. I mean, this is my point. And I think you have, the point that Democrats should go everywhere is 100% right. You cannot, there is no world in which an elected can win if they don't go on Joe Rogan and the Milk Boys and you and everything else.

If you're afraid of the people who voted for you, you're just afraid he can't. I mean, you're just ridiculous. And if you don't go everywhere, then you're not anything. And that's it. Yeah, that's right. They made it a state issue. It's no longer a federal issue. Right, but people live in states.

Well, they do, but they can fight it state by state, and that's the way they're doing it. I mean, that was the sea change in our politics when Trump and the Supreme Court brought abortion off the national stage and onto the... Well, I'm pregnant. I've got nine months to get the legislator to change the law. I mean, that's not how people think. recent surveys found that 79% of Gen Z say they have dating app

burnout and one in six American women are celibate by choice what's to blame for this depressing trend? I don't think it's a depressing trend that they're getting rid of their dating apps I think that's a fantastic trend not that it affects me either way I mean I think anything

anytime you get people off screens it's good that's a healthy trend people should be meeting in person This is a terrible movement our society is made towards everything being virtual and also the way that people are able, like the top achievers on those apps are able to kill. And so, you know, people are unable to deal with the complexity

of human relations now because if you're on the apps and everybody's on the apps, as soon as there's a little bit of friction, you just say, I can't deal with this. I'm just swiping again and you get another. You just keep replacing the initial stage of a relationship than you never grow. Yeah, it's better just to meet people involved.

When you're both really drunk. When you're both really drunk. Yeah, I think that's bad. It actually is. I got an ad on my phone just today for an AI girlfriend. I mean, at least they were using dating apps to find real human beings. Now there are people, and I've seen stories about it in just the last few weeks, who are getting virtual girlfriends through AI.

But why did they ask you, what did you previously like? It's a reasonable question. It's like Amazon book recommendations. They know what you want before you know. But I would say the kids should take a hint from the summit there in Alaska if I can wrap up the show in one deep vote tonight. But like Putin and Trump, they did decide that. We need to look each other in the eye because, you know, it just is different.

And it actually is the same with any kind of relationship. You just cannot get a feel for a human being over the phone. First of all, you don't smell their femurones, right? That's literally a part of it. You don't see facial expressions. All of this is stuff that even if it's not conscious that you're taking into account when you meet somebody. And so, you know, kids, take a from Vladimir Putin.

All right. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate it. 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.