Scott Galloway | Club Random with Bill Maher

Scott Galloway joins Bill Maher for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of American men, modern dating, AI, and the economy. The bestselling author, host of The Prof G Pod, and co-host of Pivot argues that young men have more agency than they think, and that learning to handle rejection is part of moving forward. He and Bill get into porn, the incel movement, the manosphere, why humor and kindness still matter, and why men should pick up the check. Galloway tells the story of meeting his wife, debates Bill on the existential risks of AI, and weighs in on China’s growing AI advantage, tariffs, capitalism, the shrinking middle class, inherited wealth, and whether older generations have tilted the economy too far in their own favor.. Support our Advertisers: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code RANDOM at https://www.oneskin.co/RANDOM #oneskinpod Head to https://www. Superpower.com and use code RANDOM at checkout for $20 off your membership. #sponsored Visit https://www.hims.com slash clubrandom to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you. Download the Kalshi app and use code RANDOM to get $10 when you trade $10. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:53Speaker 02

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• 1:00Speaker 03

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• 1:23Speaker 03

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• 1:30Bill Maher?

  Breaking news, our merch just got a full revamp with all new designs and items. So if you want a little more random in your life, head over to clubrandom.com and check out the store. We've got premium hoodies, including our brand-new Quads hoodies, with the updated logo. Super soft t-shirts, super soft, for men and women, and even tie-dye shirts. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. While you're there, catch up on recent episodes and grab some swag and bring a little random home. Once again, that's clubrandom.com.

• 2:11Speaker 05

  My dad's not a very feeling guy. He said to me the year before he passed, he said, "I'm worried about you. They're gonna come for you." And it really shook me.

• 2:21Bill Maher?

  The number of times that's happened to me, as controversial as I am in the number of years I've been on, it's crazy.

• 2:30Speaker 05

  Good to see you, brother.

• 2:31Bill Maher?

  How are you?

• 2:31Speaker 05

  I'm doing great.

• 2:32Bill Maher?

  Happy to have been since the last time I saw you, five minutes ago, when I was on your podcast.

• 2:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is, uh, this is rough.

• 2:38Bill Maher?

  How many people do you think will watch both?

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Oh, Bill, I have dozens and dozens of fans.

• 2:45Bill Maher?

  You have a lot of fans.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:46Bill Maher?

  I gotta tell you, like, my impression was, like...

• 2:51Speaker 05

  I'm drunk already.

• 2:52Bill Maher?

  I, I'm going to loosen you up. Because you know you were a brilliant guy.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:57Bill Maher?

  What do you, what do you drink?

• 2:58Speaker 05

  I drink Maker's Mark and ginger ale, because it makes my voice deeper the next day, which means I'm more authoritative.

• 3:03Bill Maher?

  You said that you don't teach anymore.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Well, I teach. I do an online class, but I haven't taught since COVID, because, as we said in the last, I got so upset.

• 3:12Bill Maher?

  Then how do you meet coeds to cheat with?

• 3:16Speaker 05

  There we go. First spit take.

• 3:18Bill Maher?

  Put it in the spit take reel.

• 3:20Speaker 05

  That wasn't even planned.

• 3:20Bill Maher?

  We have a reel. We have a reel of spit takes.

• 3:23Speaker 05

  No, I have a, I have a healthy rule that anyone I work with or is in my class flies up unlocked. I just think that's a survival instinct.

• 3:29Bill Maher?

  What is?

• 3:30Speaker 05

  Not fucking your students for anyone you work with, Bill. I just think that's a good idea. Generally speaking, it's just a good idea. It's a good idea. By the way, one in three relationships...

• 3:42Bill Maher?

  I never did it either.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  One in three relationships begin at work. In my companies, I've had 12 weddings. 99% of them are consensual. If you don't know how to navigate office politics, to ask someone out for coffee and figure out if it's appropriate or not appropriate, you got bigger problems. I'm actually a... I think remote work has been terrible for young people in relationships.

• 4:02Bill Maher?

  I mean, you are associated among all America's intellectuals, and of course, we're talking about a small group of people, but you are certainly among them. Nobody is thought of as more, I would say, a voice and authority on this, on this kind of issue. I mean, as I always say...

• 4:16Speaker 05

  On my side. There are much more credible voices on the other side.

• 4:20Bill Maher?

  I don't know what the other side is, but I know that whenever you're on the show, I always do the same joke. Scott has been thinking a lot about little boys.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Are you talking about men? I thought you were gonna talk about, I mean, about, I think, young people should drink more.

• 4:32Bill Maher?

  No, no, but you talk a lot about lost boys. And man, and it is true. I mean, there is a crisis of masculinity in this country. I don't know anybody who's, who's limbed it more than you or seems to really understand it more.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Well, imagine yourself, we just talked in the last show when you were on my pod, about your profile at Cornell. Imagine if you had 24 by 7, lifelike porn, Netflix, thinking you could make money.

• 4:59Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  Constant, billion times a second, AI trying to keep you glued to your phone. Do you think you, how do you think you would have dealt with that at Cornell?

• 5:07Bill Maher?

  But since we're getting super real here.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:09Bill Maher?

  Okay. Like, the porn thing. I understand why porn is, is bad. Absolutely. I'm not blind to this at all. In fact, I said it long ago. I don't think a lot of people were saying it. I get it, because I see it. I don't see, like, the bad stuff, but I see them add, you know, that I could, I could click on that. It just, it's rapey, it's domineering. I grew up on, you know, Playboy magazine when it was very tame. So that's not where I go. But just what's there, the porn, Scott, it's so good. And I don't see the problem why I'm supposed to hate it. I get it that it fucks up young boys. I'm not a young boy.

• 5:53Bill Maher?

  And I can separate real sex from this sex. I'm not expecting real sex to be like this sex. They're two completely different categories. And I can make that distinction in my mind. I don't feel like it's a bad thing for me. I think it's just a different kind of pleasure.

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Look, the, we talked about this before, that the purists are kind of ruining everything. And what I would suggest is the following. And it's, it's, it's uncomfortable to say this as a guy my age. I consume porn. What I would tell young people is that you need to modulate it, because I think we need to stop demonizing young men's horniness. Because wanting to have a relationship and wanting to have sex with someone, it does the following. It turns you into a better man.

• 6:39Bill Maher?

  I think so.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  You start thinking about dressing, you start thinking about kindness practice, you start having a rap, you try to make people laugh, you take risks, you learn how to endure rejection. And something I just fucking hate is the insult movement. Guess what? 99% of us, for 99% of history, have been involuntarily celibate. Welcome to the fucking work world. It is hard.

• 6:57Bill Maher?

  No.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  And the notion that you get some sort of credibility or hall pass and just back up and say, "Oh, it's women, it's, women are being unfair or unreasonable." Women have been unfair and unreasonable for thousands of years, and that's why every subsequent generation is taller and smarter. They're choosier than we are. And young men today...

• 7:16Bill Maher?

  Wow, wait, wait, that's so interesting. Just say that again. I want to remember that. That's why we're taller and smarter. Because the chicks have been weeding out the loser.

• 7:26Speaker 05

  For thousands of years.

• 7:27Bill Maher?

  Right, isn't that what you're saying?

• 7:29Speaker 05

  The chocolate and peanut butter of evolutionary progress is men want to spread their seed to the four corners of the earth, and women deploy a finer filter screen to pick the smartest, tallest, fastest, and strongest seed. And that's why our kids are smarter, faster, stronger than the, the generation before.

• 7:43Bill Maher?

  Then how do we explain Ryan's secret? No, it's a joke. I'm not, Ryan, I love you.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  I've met him. He's a nice guy. But if you think, so only 40% of men have reproduced throughout history. 80% of women. In the West, it's 75% of men. So men have more agency now than they've ever had. And also, the bar's never been lower. If you're a dude who's reasonably in shape, has a job, works out, puts yourself in the agency of strangers, you put yourself in the top 20% of men, and if you stay in the top 20% long enough, you are going to find yourself being voluntarily incel-ebate, which is fucking awesome. I am so sick of young men complaining they don't have agency. They have more agency now than you or I had. They don't have the venues, they don't have as many places to meet, but it is so, the bar has never been lower in my view.

• 8:35Bill Maher?

  They have more, you kidding? They have a fucking menu on their phone that's interminable. I had, I do, who was in my homeroom class? That's what I had. They, they have thousands of choices. Am I wrong about that?

• 8:48Speaker 05

  Well, okay, there's some nuance, because unfortunately, while they have thousands of choices, 900 of, of those choices aren't interested in them. There is a winner-take-most environment online.

• 8:58Bill Maher?

  As there has always been in human nature.

• 9:00Speaker 05

  I agree. Look, look, the involuntarily celibate movement, the insult movement, is an excuse for guys like us where it was hard to give up. And the reality is, I was involuntarily celibate for the first 19 years of my life.

• 9:14Bill Maher?

  I've said the same...

• 9:15Speaker 05

  No one would participate in my plan.

• 9:17Bill Maher?

  I could not agree more. We just didn't brag about it. We tried to keep it quiet, because it was embarrassing. The last thing I wanted to do was trumpet that I can't get laid.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  No, 100%.

• 9:29Bill Maher?

  You're so right. That's so, it just shows the vast difference in generations. That's their approach to not being able to get laid. Join a club. Join a club with other losers. I was trying to meet guys who could get laid, and maybe I'd get a runoff.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Learn something.

• 9:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, yes, or, you know, something, or I would just, you know, plot. I plotted. Like, how can I be attractive to a woman? You know, that's all gone when you take pride in this club you're in. And by the way, they've taken it to levels, like, they think the government, some of them think the government should subsidize their inceldom by, by paying for prostitutes. That's been put forward as a real plan.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm a big fan of paying for your own prostitutes. I think it's much better when you earn it. Anyways, but the, look, the, the whole point...

• 10:25Speaker 05

  Typically, the rewarding thing and the hard thing are the same thing. And establishing, establishing a romantic relationship that leads to a sexual relationship is really hard, and that's why it's so amazing when it happens.

• 10:39Bill Maher?

  Hey, wanna know what doesn't make sense to me about skincare? We'll spend a fortune trying to fix the signs of aging after they show up. But when it comes to everything else in life, we're always told prevention is the smarter move. You maintain your car, you service your computer, you try and get some steps in every day, but your face, we wait until the writing's on the wall, or in this case, the lines on your forehead. And trust me, by the time you can read them, so can everyone else. That's what we like about OneSkin. OneSkin started by looking at how skin actually ages in the first place. It was founded by four PhD longevity scientists who studied skin at the cellular level and

• 11:21Bill Maher?

  created their own proprietary peptide, O S one, designed to target the cells that contribute to visible aging. Over time, the team noticed smoother, firmer-looking skin, a more even tone, and a healthier overall appearance. Turns out, when you deal with the writing before it's on the wall, there's nothing for anyone to read. It's backed by four peer-reviewed clinical studies, over 10,000 five-star reviews, and they've been recognized by Bloomberg and Fast Company as a leader in skin longevity. Born from over 10 years of longevity research, OneSkin is helping you unlock your healthiest skin now and as you age.

• 12:03Bill Maher?

  For a limited time, try OneSkin with 15% off using random at oneskin.co/random. That's 15% off, oneskin.co with random. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Again, go to oneskin.co/random and use random for 15% off. Yes, I've said this to women many times. You all think that all the other ones are complete whores who are giving it up all the time, and I'm here to tell you, they're not. Of course, you wanna think that, because then it's like, oh, why? I can't find a guy. It's because these other ones are all giving it away. No, they're not.

• 12:47Bill Maher?

  You're all basically wired the same. Yes, there are variations, variations up to the point where, you know, trans, and which is, you know, that happens to people. But generally, women, I always say this, there's a reason why The Bachelor is still on. They still basically want the same thing, the majority of them, which is to find a real connection with someone of the opposite sex.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  The tough that's

• 13:11Bill Maher?

  That's the default setting.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  The part that's hard, though, is if you talk to couples who've been together more than 30 years, there's research here, 70 to 80% say one was more interested in the other, and it was always the man that was more interested. Guys want someone cute, who's nice to get along with, and who they find attractive, which is 70% of the women a young man meets. Women have much finer filters, but what happens is, over time, the man was able to demonstrate excellence. I liked how he treated his parents at church. He was funny. I liked the way he danced. He was great at work.

• 13:41Bill Maher?

  Considerate. He listened. He looked in my eyes.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  The ultimate turn-on, he asks follow-up questions, right? Where do young men now demonstrate excellence? Remote work, remote school? 40% of the bars and pubs in London have closed. So, to be fair, it is harder to demonstrate excellence for a man. There aren't as many on-ramps into the middle class, so they're not as economically viable. But the thing I say when I talk about programs to advocate for leveling up young people and young men, you know who wants more economically and emotionally viable men? Women. I mean, how many times have we heard, "I know all these great women," and they can't find a man? No, they can't find a man they wanna date.

• 14:18Bill Maher?

  Exactly. Scott, we could make a lot of money with this. You know what? With your sort of like professorial, great, you know, credentials and your esteem in this area. I once did a really funny editorial at the end of the show. We did a fake TED Talk where I taught men game, G A M E, and went through all the things, you know, things as basic as wear a

• 14:40Speaker 05

  You got laid because you're funny.

• 14:41Bill Maher?

  Collared shirt.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  There are three, there's research here. The three things women find most attractive in terms of the mating market are, one, signaling resources, right? And we don't like to admit that, but the key word there is signal. If you don't order another bottle of alcohol at midnight and you go home because you got shit the next day, you're signaling resources. Women like a guy who's in shape, not because they like big muscles, but it signals discipline and commitment.

• 15:06Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 05

  If you're, if you're just good at what you do, they think at some point you will have resources. Number two is intellect. And the fastest way to communicate intellect, and this is how you and I lost our virginity, is humor. This is my imitation of a woman, or impression of a woman. I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked. If you can make a woman laugh, she will have coffee with you. I've always found that. That was the only game I had, was making women laugh. And the super, the secret weapon, the AI-guided, whatever the term is, missile that men don't appreciate, is kindness.

• 15:41Bill Maher?

  All right, I agree with all that, but man, when you have

• 15:44Speaker 05

  Here we go.

• 15:46Bill Maher?

  When you have to have coffee first, you're kind of a pussy.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  That's what the kids do now. They don't drink.

• 15:52Bill Maher?

  I know. They're pussies. I have never had coffee with a woman in my life, except after we had sex. That's, that's just, I'm not, I'm just not doing the coffee phase. I'm sorry, I'm not.

• 16:03Speaker 05

  I think a lot of

• 16:03Bill Maher?

  Coffee is day, it's not fun, it's just, ugh.

• 16:07Speaker 05

  Something else I think you'll agree with. I think men should always pay for everything.

• 16:11Bill Maher?

  They, I could not agree more, and I always do. And by the way, you're talking about signaling. I swear to God, I've never done this because I was signaling. I only did this because I was a lucky person, worked for a generous network, and as I said on your other podcast, I have no expensive hobbies or tastes, so I've accumulated enough money that I can tip really well.

• 16:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 16:36Bill Maher?

  You know, and when girls see you tip with 50s and hundreds to doormen and valets and waiters, it's very impressive. And I'm not trying to be impressive, it just is because exactly what you're saying

• 16:49Speaker 05

  It does show kindness. It shows a lot of things.

• 16:50Bill Maher?

  It's like a fucking mantous, you know, beating the other mantous. Is that an animal, a mantous?

• 16:58Speaker 05

  Every mammal has a courtship process, whether it's birds throwing their feathers or kangaroos hopping around to demonstrate excellence. A woman's fertility window is about 25 years, a man's is 55 years. Her time is more valuable. Also, it's not paying for her, it's compensating, because for her to walk in the door cost her 300 bucks between Sephora and waxing and the clothes she has to buy. In addition, the downside of sex, which most men are hoping is part of the dating process, is much greater for women than for men. Her time is more valuable, it costs her more to show up. I've said to my son, my 18-year-old son who's just started dating, he's like, "Dad, that's so boomer." I'm like, "You pay for everything when you're in the company of a woman." And he's like, "That's so boomer."

• 17:42Speaker 05

  I'm like, "Okay, just know this." I don't care what, we're gonna get shit for this. I don't care what any woman says, don't ever expect to kiss anyone who you let pay.

• 17:52Bill Maher?

  I could not agree more, and it should be that way. And I'll tell you why it should be that way. I'll tell you why that is actually intellectually defensible and appropriate. You should pay, because there's much higher chance that the person in this relationship who's going to be a rat is the man. The person in this relationship who's gonna be a scumbag, it could be the woman, but it's much more likely going to be the man. And that's why the men should pay.

• 18:22Speaker 05

  So you're apologizing upfront?

• 18:24Bill Maher?

  I'm not, I'm not apologizing, I'm just stating a fact that is absolutely a fact. When they had Ashley Madison, the cheater

• 18:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:32Bill Maher?

  website, it was like 12,000 women and 28 million men.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's called

• 18:37Bill Maher?

  And the 12,000 women were whores.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Right, right, right.

• 18:39Bill Maher?

  Trying to get, so it was, please. And just, you know, men do worse things to women than women do to men in the aggregate. They just do.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:50Bill Maher?

  So, I am not against the fact that men should pay, and again, it just is, it's human nature. Don't make a political mess out of everything. It just is, get on with the next thing.

• 19:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, and if a woman asks a man out, and you wanna pay, have at it. But I think generally speaking, it just makes sense to show some chivalry, demonstrate valor, and say, "I appreciate your time, I wanna pay for this."

• 19:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah. You wanna get laid or you don't. You know, I mean, pick up your mind, okay? That's it.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  I'm with you.

• 19:23Bill Maher?

  But I'm telling you, we could make a lot of money. Like, opening up a chain. I'm seeing a chain.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  I think you are making a lot of money.

• 19:31Bill Maher?

  Of how to get laid, like, just seminars or something in the strip mall where, you know, you and I, we have, all we gotta do is make one video, which we show, and then, once a year, we show up at all the local branches, and we give a pep talk, and I'm telling you, there is a need. How do people make money, Scott? You know, you're an economic whiz. When they see a need in the market, what more need in the market is there for instructing men to actually get women? Because they don't really want to be.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, but this is part of the grift of the manosphere. But, by the way, you say we should work together. If I had your hair, I'd be polling number four for the Democratic nomination for president right now. Seriously. We don't, we don't need to make more money. We need, we need to change the world.

• 20:16Bill Maher?

  You know, everybody says your health is the most important thing you've got. And how do we treat the most important thing we have? Ten minutes a year with a doctor who says, "Everything looks normal," and shows you the door. Try that with money. Imagine a financial advisor checking your retirement account once a year? Yeah, yeah, seems normal. He'd be fired by lunch. With money, we demand the full breakdown, but with our bodies? We take "seems fine" and drive home. Well, that's what I like about Superpower. The Club Random team has been checking it out, and it's built on a simple idea. Your health shouldn't be about waiting for something to go wrong.

• 20:58Bill Maher?

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• 21:41Bill Maher?

  Head over to superpower.com and use code RANDOM for $20 off your $199 Superpower membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about Superpower. Tell them Club Random sent you to show support for our show. Do you really think that's true? They always said that a bald man couldn't be elected president. Adlai Stevenson did not do well.

• 22:04Bill Maher?

  Dwight Eisenhower did not have a thick furry head of hair.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  I think Gavin Newsom is gonna be our president. I think we're a looks, sexist, racist country. And I think, uh, tall, I think the Democratic, the only thing I'm fairly confident about is the Democratic nominee will be a straight, white man, over six feet tall.

• 22:21Bill Maher?

  Do you think, in general, the country is racist and sexist? In 2026?

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:29Bill Maher?

  That characterizes us in a general way?

• 22:31Speaker 05

  Well, okay, I don't see any reason why Secretary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, other than sexism. I think if she'd had a dick, she'd be our president.

• 22:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm a fan. You know, I always thought Hillary would be good. She's one of the most, sort of, commonsensical persons, persons, people I've ever seen in politics.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  Confident, smart, centrist.

• 22:53Bill Maher?

  Smart, yes, centrist.

• 22:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Bill Maher?

  But I also see why she lost, why she rubs people the wrong way. If she had, I'll give you an example, because I remember covering it. She went into coal country. And she made a statement that was exactly what you, if you're a rational person, you would want someone to say about this issue, which is, "You coal miners, you know, you've done this country an incredible service. We needed coal to make our country grow and run and blah, blah, blah, heat our homes. But, you know, we found out it's bad for the environment, and now we want to move on, and we want to do that, and also help you..." Whatever it is, they took out, like, the one part that made it sound like she was throwing him under the bus, which she wasn't.

• 23:44Bill Maher?

  Who wants to be a fucking coal miner, first of all? The worst job in the world we're trying to save? Why, because you're not getting enough black lung? So, instead of going back there and saying, "Yeah, I said it and I meant it, and you assholes who are trying to twist it, that's not what I'm saying," and stopped, and she just backtracked and did what Democrats always do, and pussied out and said, whatever she said, it was like you lost already. Trump says a thousand things that are worse, but he never apologizes for any of them.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Just doubles down, but I would argue that's one of the terrible things about.

• 24:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it's terrible.

• 24:21Speaker 05

  Our society, I mean, the idea that you can't learn from a mistake and evolve and say, "I was wrong," being disqualifying. Also, I do think that Fox turns its sights on whoever they think is gonna be the Democratic nominee and devote 24 by 7 to just shitposting that person. I think they're doing it to Gavin now. They're starting to turn their sights on Ossoff, because they see he might be.

• 24:42Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 24:42Speaker 05

  A threat.

• 24:43Bill Maher?

  But this has always been thus. This is not new, that the Republican machine, and on the other side, I mean, that's what the game is. You know, I mean, they, they create ads that will make you hate the other person. If you ask me what I think the bottom-line problem is, it's hate. There's just, everyone is just so hateful of the other side.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:06Bill Maher?

  You can't, I, I know this as a stand-up, that if you make the crowd hate you, you can say the funniest thing in the world, they will not like it.

• 25:15Speaker 05

  Done, yeah.

• 25:16Bill Maher?

  And it's the same, I think, in politics. If they hate you, you could have the greatest plan, the greatest idea, the thing that's actually gonna make lives better, doesn't matter. "I hate you. I hate you, and so I'm going to oppose that, and try to sink it, and kill it, and kill you." That's where we're at. That's what we have to try to step back from, but I don't know how you step back from that. That's also the problem, like, in the Middle East. It's like, how do you get people who have been killing each other for 75 years to...

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that, like, we're gonna need a bigger boat. But I don't think people, I don't think people realize how much we've been manipulated by the social media algorithms that immediately want to identify us as far-left, far-right, and want to tickle our censors by convincing us.

• 26:07Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 26:07Speaker 05

  Our enemy isn't Russian soldiers pouring over the border in Ukraine, it's your neighbor who has the wrong political sign in his front yard.

• 26:14Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  And it's coarsening our discourse, it's treating us, I, I've had some friends who supported a mayoral candidate here that I was critical of, I was critical of all of them, and he was very upset with me, and I said, "Boss, you gotta separate your friends from your politics. Otherwise, you're gonna lose 50% of your friends." And going back to dating, do you remember the political leanings of anyone you dated in your 20s and 30s? We didn't talk about it. It's yet another reason why young people aren't hooking up.

• 26:40Bill Maher?

  You're right.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  I mean, it just didn't matter.

• 26:42Bill Maher?

  It just.

• 26:42Speaker 05

  It wasn't our ident, now it's, now it's become your politics, your identity, and if I disagree with your politics, then you're not wrong, you are wrong. You're, I may be parroting what you've said, but all of a sudden, it's like, we can't get along, because your identity is your politics, and I don't like your identity.

• 27:00Bill Maher?

  Oh, no, I say it all the time. And, and you're so right, I don't remember what anybody's politics were. And this is especially virulent now, because the politics of young men versus young women is so different. It's highly likely that the woman, and by the way, they're both ill-informed.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:23Bill Maher?

  Okay? So I'm not being sexist, nobody knows anything. I think men generally take a slightly bigger interest in politics, but they're morons, too. So, like, the woman is just gonna be like, the Republicans are, it's, it's like saying Hitler, you know? Trust me, I have people compare me.

• 27:46Bill Maher?

  So, they're like unthinkable. So if the guy voted for Trump, it's just, that's just not even, it's like, it's like he's a Nazi.

• 27:53Speaker 05

  It's a deal killer.

• 27:54Bill Maher?

  It's, yeah, it's like he's a cannibal, it's, it's just, and, and, you know, the guys, of course, being guys, are much less concerned about something like politics getting in the way of pussy. Like, I was like that when I was young.

• 28:09Speaker 05

  No, I would've changed my political party if I thought it would've got me later.

• 28:12Bill Maher?

  I would've said, and she could say I'm a Nazi.

• 28:14Speaker 05

  I had a Mondale poster in my fraternity room, it still didn't work. Yeah, like, but actually, young men have changed less politically than women. Women have gotten more progressive, I think a lot of it's because they see an attack on their bodily autonomy, which I think is, is justified. And I think, I think there's a trope or a myth of young men being, being these knuckle-dragging MAGA. Most young men believe in bodily autonomy, most young men believe in equal rights. I think the manosphere gives the general media and the public a false impression.

• 28:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that's true. Yeah, and some of them are far-left.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I mean, that's.

• 28:52Bill Maher?

  I mean, there's lots of young men who are wearing kafias on campus, and there's that, too.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:58Bill Maher?

  By the way, they sometimes are, are both so dumb that they agree. Like Hassan Piker, you know, he likes Stalin, and so does Nick Fuentes.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  Well, that's, you said this, that I think the biggest threat to America is not climate change, I don't even think it's incrementality, although that's right up there. I think it's extremists. And I think the algorithms are saying, there's no room in the middle, no one understands you, everyone will hate you, so pick your team, and you've gotta go dark red, or you've gotta go incandescent blue. And what's weird is when you know something is a really bad idea, is when these two come together. They come together on antisemitism.

• 29:36Bill Maher?

  They, I mean.

• 29:36Speaker 05

  They come together on isolationism.

• 29:38Bill Maher?

  Uh, this Chevalier, who's gonna be a congressman.

• 29:41Speaker 05

  She's about to be the biggest star the Republican Party has ever found.

• 29:45Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 29:45Speaker 05

  They're gonna run her ads over and over.

• 29:48Bill Maher?

  She's against race mixing, which puts her right with, you know.

• 29:53Speaker 05

  I hadn't heard that one.

• 29:54Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah. She's against race mixing. She doesn't like it when, uh, men of color get with privileged, white girls. So, not race mixing, that's.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  That's funny, that's my favorite porn.

• 30:09Bill Maher?

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• 30:53Bill Maher?

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• 31:38Bill Maher?

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• 32:11Speaker 05

  I've tried to modulate it because I think young men...

• 32:14Bill Maher?

  So how do you... I heard you heard my justification. I don't think it interferes with a regular sex life. It's super good now. I mean, I remember when it was really not that good and it was on VHS.

• 32:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's pretty good now.

• 32:27Bill Maher?

  So the fact that there's like... And by the way, I've said this on my show. It's sad to me. It says a lot about the educational system that I can endlessly scroll

• 32:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:38Bill Maher?

  through Pornhub. Here's the videos that are available. And it looks like every single girl in this country who didn't go to college is sucking dick for a living.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  Is on OnlyFans?

• 32:50Bill Maher?

  It's not... This is not OnlyFans. I mean, there's that too. I've never been on OnlyFans.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, either I.

• 32:55Bill Maher?

  This is just Pornhub. If you can scroll endlessly, and there's an endless amount of women who are, you know, 18 to 30 or whatever, 35, and how many women are doing... When I first watched porn, there was like six porn actresses.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  Well, there's some scary stats. In certain areas, lower-income cities, one out of three women under the age of 30 who would objectively identify as in the top quartile of being attractive are on OnlyFans. Basically, OnlyFans is a transfer of wealth from lonely men to women who don't have a lot of economic opportunities.

• 33:32Bill Maher?

  I call it the masturbation economy. This economy runs on masturbation.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  Also, there's a huge semi-pro economy, and that is women with real jobs, women who are living in cities where they can't afford to live because inflation is so out of control, and they have a dude in their life, usually an older man, who might be paying their rent, and it's become normalized. So the economics drive everything. But back to porn. What I would tell young guys... It's really difficult to tell a young guy not to engage in porn. I don't know if that's realistic. What I would say is modulate it, because being horny, having the mojo to endure rejection, is one of the keys to meeting somebody. It is hard to approach a stranger and develop those calluses. And the reason I went on campus every day...

• 34:16Bill Maher?

  Calluses, I get it.

• 34:17Speaker 05

  But the reason I went to college is to model from there. The reason I went on campus at UCLA was because I was hoping, in the back of my mind, I wanted to see my friends. And I thought, there's a decent chance, a small chance, but a decent chance, I'll meet someone, invite her on a date, and maybe someday have a relationship and sex. And that motivated me to go on campus.

• 34:35Bill Maher?

  So you quizzed me on your podcast.

• 34:38Speaker 05

  Let me finish. At the same time, I think if you're in a relationship, you need to modulate your consumption of porn because I think expressing desire, affection, and sexual desire to your partner is key to a healthy relationship. And if you're on porn too much, that mojo and that desire starts to diminish.

• 34:59Bill Maher?

  Just don't jerk off days you're gonna get laid.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Okay, fair enough.

• 35:03Bill Maher?

  You know? See, that's why we need to work together. You say it like the professor.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:08Bill Maher?

  And then the monkey...

• 35:08Speaker 05

  And you keep it real?

• 35:09Bill Maher?

  Monkey boy comes in.

• 35:10Speaker 05

  You keep it real? There we go. Sign up for our Crypto University. By the way, the Manosphere has been selling this shit, saying this is how you become a man. Unfortunately, it comes off the rails, and they start talking about dominance and a Lamborghini and being just a fucking creep.

• 35:26Bill Maher?

  Who says this? Who's talking about that?

• 35:27Speaker 05

  Oh, my God, the Manosphere. Everyone from the...

• 35:29Bill Maher?

  Oh, like Andrew Tate and all those guys? Oh, I know. I saw the documentary on it.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  There's a whole cohort of them.

• 35:34Bill Maher?

  What'd you think of that? Who did it?

• 35:36Speaker 05

  Justin, not Justin Theroux. Justin Theroux's cousin. Justin's a friend of mine.

• 35:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, you're right. Louis Theroux?

• 35:44Speaker 05

  Louis Theroux.

• 35:44Bill Maher?

  Okay, it was a good documentary. But, and no knock on Louis Theroux, but, you know, he goes around talking to these, you know, really sculpted, beautiful-looking Manosphere guys, and they're all assholes, but I can see why the chicks are fucking them and not Louis Theroux. So that could think of throughout the whole movie.

• 36:03Speaker 05

  So you get it? You watch the whole thing and think, does this make sense?

• 36:07Bill Maher?

  They go too far, but it's like if I was a chick. Come on, we are animals. It would be that douchebag and not Louis Theroux.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  I think a lot of women would like a filmmaker who liked Louis Theroux, actually.

• 36:18Bill Maher?

  Really? I guess we know different women.

• 36:20Speaker 05

  But the problem... The only thing that I thought was a little bit off about that, and I thought it was really well-done, was that the Manosphere, there are actually some positive attributes of it. It says, take care of yourself, be fit, be action-oriented, approach women, try and get an economic plan. It starts off fine. The problem is it then goes to dominance and weirdness.

• 36:42Bill Maher?

  And choking and like all this shit.

• 36:44Speaker 05

  And women is property. It becomes really unhealthy.

• 36:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 36:49Speaker 05

  Really fat.

• 36:50Bill Maher?

  You know what it sounds like?

• 36:51Speaker 05

  And most of it's a grift.

• 36:52Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and you know what it does sound like? The Taliban. That's what it sounds like.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  You think that's the ultimate Manosphere?

• 36:59Bill Maher?

  Well, isn't Andrew Tate Muslim?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  I think so, yeah.

• 37:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying...

• 37:05Speaker 05

  I don't think you can blame Islam for Andrew Tate. I think that's more capitalism than Islam.

• 37:10Bill Maher?

  I don't think you can blame them, but the ideas about women try to deny that they don't fit. They fit in some ways.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, I'm not... I admire what you've talked about in terms of the left has no... lacks a lot of credibility when they refuse to talk about the gender apartheid that is rampant in many of these nations that are theocracies. I think that's absolutely true. I think the Manosphere is a function of lonely young men looking for an answer, looking for someone to say, "I see you," and then the profit incentive and the ability to go online and say these incendiary things and say, blame women for the romantic problems, blame immigrants for their economic problems, and you'll solve all of these problems if you just sign up for my cheap, one-day-only $9.95 Crypto University

• 38:04Speaker 05

  on how to trade Bitcoin, right? And if you just listen to me, you're gonna get laid and you're gonna have a Lamborghini. It's basically a grift. It's economic. I would argue it's more capitalist than any religion, but it's...

• 38:16Bill Maher?

  But it's similar to how religion works and why it works. You know, people are living lives of quiet desperation in every generation in every possible way. They're susceptible to solutions.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:31Bill Maher?

  Very susceptible. I mean, I guess we've all done it. Can you think of an example when you were young and dumb that you fell for something?

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Oh gosh, what didn't I fall for?

• 38:44Bill Maher?

  Name six.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Well, see, you, what I admire, quite frankly, I would have liked to have done what you did. I wish, I didn't have the confidence to do what you did. I thought that being an investment banker would impress strange women and my mom, so I got a job in investment banking. I didn't even know what it was, but I thought that society would find me impressive if I got a job working at Morgan Stanley. And I quickly figured out, I was terrible at it, and they didn't like me, and I didn't like them. And so I went back to business school. Had I had more confidence at UCLA, I would have gone into the entertainment industry. But the thing that freaked me out about the entertainment industry, I was at ZBT, like, you know, ton of people went into the entertainment industry. And when they would come back, and I would see their success, it was entirely uncorrelated to their talent.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  And that is, and most of them were behind the camera, agents, writers, but at least for the 10 years, the people who I would have guessed would have been successful weren't always, and some other people hit it so big, so fast, and I'm like, that guy? Whereas, in something like investment banking, I knew, if, I thought, if I work hard enough, and I'm fairly smart, eventually I'll make money.

• 39:50Bill Maher?

  I mean, what you're saying about show business is true. Anybody can hit it. Staying power?

• 39:57Speaker 05

  Enduring.

• 39:58Bill Maher?

  On the top level?

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:00Bill Maher?

  It's generally, it's mostly the cream does rise to the top. But yes, there was a lot of shit in the middle, and anyone, anyone, if you really insist on being in show business, it will find a place for you. You know, you may lose your dignity, and you're naked and afraid, or you're, I don't know, on some reality show, or whatever you're doing, but, you know, you can get in front of a camera.

• 40:25Speaker 05

  I think, I think it's increasing, my understanding is, only 23%, uh, excuse me, 83% of SAG-AFTRA member, uh, union members didn't qualify for health insurance because they made less than $23,000.

• 40:41Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  My understanding is the, as the industry contracts, and it's more about creators, maybe we're, I'm not, I'm defining the industry too narrowly, but I've said this for a long time, economic prosperity is inversely related to how sexy an industry is.

• 40:53Bill Maher?

  Well, and show business are the worst odds in the world.

• 40:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:58Bill Maher?

  My example is always, look at any movie. Hey folks, let's be honest, the most exhausting part of losing weight isn't the exercise, it's the endless parade of people telling you they found the secret. Every six months, it's a new miracle and new rules. Eat this, don't eat that, count macros, count points, I feel like I need a spreadsheet and a decoder ring just to order lunch. Look, if weight loss has felt like a losing battle, this summer could be different. That's why I think it's interesting that Hims is doing. They now offer access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen.

• 41:41Bill Maher?

  The Wegovy pill is the first ever GLP-1 pill for weight loss, so there are no needles needed. It helps regulate your appetite, eat less, and keep the weight off, when combined with diet and exercise. Everything also happens online, which you know we're fans of, because who has time to sit in a doctor's office just to hear, yep, you could stand to lose a few? You connect with a licensed provider who decides if treatment is right for you, and if prescribed, it gets delivered right to your door. No insurance necessary, plus, you've got access to a care team and nutrition support, recipes, meal plans, you know, the things that actually help you stick with it. Ready to reach your goals?

• 42:24Bill Maher?

  Visit hims.com/clubrandom to get a personalized, affordable plan. That's H-I-M-S dot com slash clubrandom. Hims dot com slash clubrandom. Weight loss by Hims is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk A slash S. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information and restrictions, visit hims dot com. Go back 10 years to any time, and look at the credits at the end of the movie, and you'll recognize the first three names, and then there's 25 other names who were in that

• 43:05Bill Maher?

  movie from 1985, and they all thought they were gonna have a career in B stars, and none of them, you have no idea who they are. They're just, they got in a movie, it didn't go anywhere, they, that's, the percentage of people for who this business is good for is very low. But of course, they see all this, who do they read about in the tabloids and see on TV? It's the people who are, you know, it's Rihanna going to E-Baldy again tonight, and Entourage, and people taking pictures, and, you know, that's what, you know, and boy, you know, this country, it does adore fame. It just, it's the old, you know, thing that Warhol said about everybody will be famous

• 43:50Bill Maher?

  for 15 minutes. That was one of the more prescient things anybody ever said, because with social media, you know, anybody can have some level of followers. It's not like there's this stark demarcation between the famous and the not famous. It's like, there's just crazy amounts of people have some level of fame. If you have a million followers, I mean, that's somewhat famous. It's one reason why we have so much trouble with community, because we don't all follow the same people. We, I don't know who the, the people who are 22, who they're getting their news from, it's probably not me.

• 44:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, the long tail's pretty, pretty long. My, I mean, it's, it's interesting when surveys, young people would rather be, given the choice of being famous and rich, now, a decent number, even sometimes the majority of young people would rather be famous.

• 44:43Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 44:44Speaker 05

  And my father said something to me right before he passed. By the way, I think the reason I'm so nervous when I go on your show, I'm very nervous, is I think my dad's watching. My dad will only watch two things, he'll watch the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he'll watch your show, so whenever I go on your show, I think my dad's watching me.

• 44:58Bill Maher?

  Thank you.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Anyways, but, he said to me the year before he passed, he said, I'm worried about you. My dad's not a very feeling guy. And I'm like, what's up? And he said, the key to happiness in America is to be rich and anonymous, and you're losing your anonymity, and it's a threat. They're gonna come for you. And it really shook me, because I think that I've gotten caught up in a little bit of fame, and I have just the right amount of fame. People are nice to me, people recognize me.

• 45:24Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 45:25Speaker 05

  And the thing I can't get over, and the reason why I would really-

• 45:26Bill Maher?

  I would say the same about me.

• 45:28Speaker 05

  The reason I would really like mandatory national service, is I can't get over how awful people are online, and I equally am in just as much disbelief around how lovely they are in person. People say the nicest things.

• 45:42Bill Maher?

  So true.

• 45:43Speaker 05

  Introduce you to their kids.

• 45:44Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 45:45Speaker 05

  Want a picture.

• 45:46Bill Maher?

  And it's not like when you walk into a room, there aren't people in that room, at least in my case, probably yours, who don't like you. They just don't come up to you. They exist.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, they keep it to themselves.

• 45:57Bill Maher?

  They keep it to themselves. The number of times that's happened to me, as controversial as I am, in the number of years I've been on, it's crazy how few times that's ever happened. Like, less than two hands worth. You're right, the people who come up to you are the people who like you. And for me, I mean, this was my Mark Twain speech, was all about the fans, is like, you know, I never had the media. I never had the show business establishment. What I had was the fans. They got me. And the things they say to me are like, oh, okay, that told me, yes, people are understanding what I'm doing here, not the media.

• 46:37Speaker 05

  We're on, I'm curious if you get this, because I don't have nearly the footprint you have, but we're both sort of similar on the political centrum, and that is, I think of myself as a raging moderate, now, on 0 to 100, I like to think I'm at 50. And do you get this? I get constantly, people come up to me and say, while I don't always agree with everything you say.

• 46:55Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  I appreciate, you make me think.

• 46:58Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  And I'm like, I don't always agree with what I say. 10 minutes after I say some shit, I go, God, that was fucking stupid, what was I thinking?

• 47:06Bill Maher?

  Um, yeah, people really do appreciate the person who is willing to be in the middle, and willing to adjudicate every issue that comes along by-

• 47:17Speaker 05

  By the issue.

• 47:18Bill Maher?

  By the issue.

• 47:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree.

• 47:20Bill Maher?

  I always say this to the younger people, like, get off the lawn person, and you're boomers, like, that's not an argument. That's actually a prejudice.

• 47:28Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:29Bill Maher?

  That's a prejudice, that's not an argument. Engage with the idea. Is the idea of what I'm saying wrong? If it is, tell me why. We can have that discussion, but don't just say, you can't talk because you're old, or, yeah, imagine, you can't talk because you're black, or a woman, or gay. It's ridiculous.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  Uh, but, the place we differ a little bit, I'm an ageist. And I think also biology is ageist. And I think a lot of the world's problems can be reverse engineered to a system that rewards incumbency. And we end up with people with their finger on the button, who are in a hospital somewhere and clearly can't speak or operate. And that people just won't leave the stage.

• 48:08Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but the the price of that is that you throw out with the bathwater, people who are absolutely smarter and better because they still have their marbles and they've seen it all. There's no substitute for having seen things before. You see patterns. That's that's why being older is the great saving grace, wisdom. And wisdom is just comes down to that. Oh, yeah, I saw that when I was 22 and it fucked me hard. I saw it again when I was 30. I still quite hadn't got through my head. Oh, but now I'm 40. Uh-uh, you're not going to fool me on that again. And that in

• 48:49Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 48:50Bill Maher?

  As a president is a great quality.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Okay, a 65 year old has seen enough and seen a lot. An 80 year old needs to see their grandkids more and have their driver's license taken from them.

• 49:00Bill Maher?

  Obama, he's probably 66 now, 65. Okay, so he's certainly got all his marbles. My favorite president, really, in a long like, I don't know, Lincoln or somebody who did some great shit. I thought he was a true centrist, you know? I thought the biggest mistake the Republicans ever made was trying to, you know, portray him as a leftist because he wasn't. And it just made you look like racist, which some of you are. Okay, so say he's 10 years from now and he's no different because he's not obese.

• 49:38Speaker 05

  He's not going to be the same person in 10 years, Bill. Our our brain shrinks 1% a year from 45.

• 49:43Bill Maher?

  You know what, it's okay, maybe some people had so much extra. So you say I'm 70. You're saying in five years, I'm done, I'm cooked.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  No, you're not done, but you should. I don't think you should be able to run for president.

• 49:54Bill Maher?

  I'm not going to, so you don't have to worry about it.

• 49:55Speaker 05

  I think if if if people want to tune in for a show and listen to you and read you fine. But if you can't be a pilot at 65.

• 50:02Bill Maher?

  That's arbitrary.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  If every world leader

• 50:05Bill Maher?

  We're going by what the FAA

• 50:06Speaker 05

  If every world leader over the age of 75 decided to leave the stage, would the world be a better or worse place?

• 50:11Bill Maher?

  I don't know. It's a case by case basis. I am a believer in the individual. I think it's a terrible idea to tell people at a certain, specific age, an arbitrary age, that they are unqualified. They may very well be the most qualified.

• 50:27Speaker 05

  Should we have tests? Should we have cognitive tests, physical tests?

• 50:31Bill Maher?

  Yes, sure.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  Should Mitch McConnell be able to hide away?

• 50:33Bill Maher?

  Sure, tests.

• 50:34Speaker 05

  Should Senator Feinstein stuck around and fuck women? Should Ruth Bader Ginsburg have stuck around?

• 50:38Bill Maher?

  You got your answer. Tests, there's the there's the right compromise. Yes, tests. If if they don't pass the test.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 50:46Bill Maher?

  If you take the test and you can't put the square hole in the square peg, great, we'll throw you out.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  I mean, this is the problem. This is where the D in democracy is working too well. Because old people vote. And they keep voting them voting more old people into office who keep voting themselves more money. Young people don't vote. The average age of an American is 38. The average age of an elected representative in Congress is 62. They don't understand new technologies as well. They don't bring the creativity and dynamism. And quite frankly, I'm not sure they're as worried about the debt as a young person is. And also, can they really relate to the struggles of a single mother in her 20s? Our electorate is a cross between the land of the dead and the golden girls. It is way too goddamn old.

• 51:28Bill Maher?

  And yeah, I mean, that's true, too. I mean, you know, do I pine for Steny Hoyer to stay on the job forever? No.

• 51:38Speaker 05

  It's Charles Grassley. What is he, 94?

• 51:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah, Charles Grassley. I mean, but again, these are not people to mourn. But that's not the example that I thought was pertinent, which would be Obama. You know, I used to be part owner of the New York Mets. So on Kalshi, I did something I never thought I'd do. I looked up what it pays if we don't make the playoffs. Folks, it's called hedging. That is why Kalshi is so interesting. It is America's number one prediction market platform. Whether you want to hedge your own team or trade on the rest of the league, Kalshi has markets for all of it. Right now, in the pro baseball worst record market, the Los Angeles Angels are trading at a 46% probability of finish with the worst record in baseball.

• 52:24Bill Maher?

  Congratulations. That means a $100 trade payout, $217 if they lock it in. Or if you think another team is going to suck even worse, you take the other side. That way, even if baseball breaks your heart, at least you walk away with a win on the board. On Kalshi, you're trading against peers in a live market, meaning there's no house. Ah, and as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. Download the Kalshi app right now and use code RANDOM to get $10 when you trade $10. That is K-A-L-S-H-I. Kalshi, trade on anything. 18 plus only.

• 53:08Bill Maher?

  Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Even contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Kalshi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see kalshi.com/regulatory. Say in 10 years.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:30Bill Maher?

  Um, we've changed the law because we seem to be in moving in that direction. And Trump changes. He says, okay, third term and the Republicans, because they go along with anything, but how unconstitutional? Okay, so you can have a third term. So this takes 10 years to work through. And there we are, in 10 years, Obama's 75 and he is offered the, you know, he can now run as the Democratic candidate. Given the test, if I heard him speak, if he sounded like the old Obama, I would go for that.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  Okay, so should we lower the age limit? You have to be 35. Why have we decided a 34 year old can't run for president, but an 80 year old can?

• 54:12Bill Maher?

  Because kids are idiots, Scott.

• 54:14Speaker 05

  Are 34 year olds idiots?

• 54:15Bill Maher?

  No, they don't have to. It doesn't have to be 34, that's true. But I mean, you know, considering they did that in the age when you live to be 38, I think it was a pretty ballsy thing to do. And I think it was, it spoke of their common sense wisdom that it takes a minute to mature, especially since it was only men running.

• 54:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, but does it take centuries?

• 54:37Bill Maher?

  You know, you know what I think actually would be appropriate?

• 54:40Speaker 05

  What's that?

• 54:40Bill Maher?

  Women can run at 25 because they do mature faster and men should wait till 35. I really believe that's true.

• 54:46Speaker 05

  That's an interesting thought.

• 54:47Bill Maher?

  I mean, it'd be hard to pass the legislature, but I do think that that reflects.

• 54:51Speaker 05

  Actually, men can supposedly men's prefrontal cortex catches up at 25. But basically, a senior in high school, a senior girl is applying to college against a senior boy is competing against a 10th grade girl.

• 55:03Bill Maher?

  I'm an expert on women in their 20s. You may know the book, Learning Scott, but I'm telling you, I know this shit. And like, women, they go through a certain period of like wildness and experimentation. It's usually the college years.

• 55:17Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 55:18Bill Maher?

  By the time they're 25, they're over it. They're not like guys. They don't want to have wild ways. You know, it's like, girls just, girls just want to have fun. And you know.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  Where you really see it, Bill, and you don't see this because you don't have kids. My 15 year old will have his class over. The boys are dopes. They're they're fine, but they're dopes. They don't look you in the eye. They're just kind of there. There are some 15 year old girls in my my son's class that could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania. How are you, Mr. Galloway? First off, they look 15 going on 30. They're incredibly mature, incredibly articulate. The weird thing, actually, they don't know if it's pesticides or hormones, but the gap in maturity between boys and girls is actually broadening. Boys' testicles are descending later, girls are menstruating earlier. The the maturity gap is actually widening. Anyways, I don't mean, I'm an ageist. I think on balance, if we're going to test doctors,

• 56:14Speaker 05

  if we're going to test pilots, let's test our politicians.

• 56:17Bill Maher?

  So I told you my, you asked me, what, so you're married?

• 56:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:21Bill Maher?

  The same woman the whole life?

• 56:23Speaker 05

  Uh, not my whole life, but we've been together 22 years.

• 56:26Bill Maher?

  Were you were married before?

• 56:27Speaker 05

  When I was very young, yeah.

• 56:28Bill Maher?

  I see, so this is second marriage?

• 56:29Speaker 05

  This is number two.

• 56:30Bill Maher?

  But 22 years?

• 56:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:32Bill Maher?

  So we're going back to the beginning of the century?

• 56:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:35Bill Maher?

  So did you know each other on 9/11 or right after that?

• 56:38Speaker 05

  After 9/11. You'll like this. I met her at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach. And I, this is a true story, I met way. My wife, when she was wearing nothing but a thong, and I promised myself, it was the middle of the day, without the benefit of alcohol, I said, before I leave, I'm going to approach her and say hi to her. And by the way, I wasn't hoping to have lower rates on auto insurance by approaching her. I wasn't thinking it someday I'd like to have kids. I was thinking I really physically desire this woman. And there's nothing wrong with that.

• 57:07Bill Maher?

  Wait, so a thong, it was out by the pool?

• 57:09Speaker 05

  It was Miami in the aughts.

• 57:10Bill Maher?

  Okay, okay.

• 57:11Speaker 05

  No one who are anything.

• 57:12Bill Maher?

  So this is a hotel pool?

• 57:14Speaker 05

  The Hotel Raleigh.

• 57:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but why a thong? It was a pool?

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Okay, women sometimes wear thongs at pools in settings where there's water and nothing else in Miami.

• 57:22Bill Maher?

  I'm asking, this is by the pool?

• 57:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's all right. Anyway, so I go out to get my car.

• 57:27Bill Maher?

  Dick.

• 57:28Speaker 05

  And I've heard that before. I go out to get my car. And it was just, I couldn't figure out the way to reproach her. I didn't have any alcohol. It was the midday sun. There was a DJ, she was with another guy, another girl.

• 57:41Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 57:41Speaker 05

  And I and I went out to get my car and I gave the valet my ticket. And I thought, fuck, and I got, I promised myself. And I ran back in and I rolled up to her and I said, where are you guys from? And 18 months later, our first son is born and his middle name is Raleigh. And the point here is not only to make make me seem like a baller, but nothing wonderful is going to happen to you unless you take an uncomfortable risk.

• 58:03Bill Maher?

  That that is quite a story. And I can relate to it because I told you I was a very shy kid. So the idea of just doing that, of screwing up your courage is something I couldn't get myself to do in adolescence, which made me a very unhappy person. So my hat's off to you, but I got to know, what did you say?

• 58:22Speaker 05

  Where are you guys from?

• 58:24Bill Maher?

  Where you guys from? And then what was their?

• 58:26Speaker 05

  Three of them.

• 58:26Bill Maher?

  What was their reaction?

• 58:27Speaker 05

  They told me where they were from.

• 58:29Bill Maher?

  So they didn't act like it was weird that a strange guy was coming up to them?

• 58:33Speaker 05

  Okay, six out of seven times, here's the key to success, I think. Rejection. I ran for 10th grade president, I lost. 11th grade president, I lost. 12th grade, lost. And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president, where I went on to wait for it, lose. But I've never been afraid of public failure. I applied to nine colleges. I got rejected by all nine and got off the waiting list at UCLA. Can't tell you how many jobs I've applied for. Can't tell you the amount of rejection I've endured from women. And it's why I live and lead an amazing life right now. If you want to punch above your weight class, there's only one thing you need, and that's a big fucking spoon to eat shit.

• 59:09Bill Maher?

  So how?

• 59:11Bill Maher?

  So that's your opener. Where are you guys from? I like that because like this is part of my TED Talk that we're gonna make a lot of money on to.

• 59:19Speaker 05

  You know, I've done TED Talks, right?

• 59:20Bill Maher?

  I know, but about game.

• 59:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, but yours will be better.

• 59:22Bill Maher?

  Mine, mine's about game.

• 59:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:23Bill Maher?

  One thing is like, don't be fancy. Just hello. Hello, you know, how are you?

• 59:30Speaker 05

  Where are you from?

• 59:31Bill Maher?

  My name is.

• 59:32Speaker 05

  Come here often?

• 59:33Bill Maher?

  My name is.

• 59:33Speaker 05

  Or I think the secret weapon is notice something unique about a dress and compliment her on her shoes or a cool dress or something.

• 59:39Bill Maher?

  That's even corny. That's funny.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  You think that's too fancy?

• 59:41Bill Maher?

  That's too fancy, way too fancy, corny. They see through it. Just hi, hello. Where are you guys from? Perfect. Okay. But how did you, okay, so we're there. How did you get around to, can I have your number? And how did you connect?

• 59:56Speaker 05

  So we talked for a while. The three of them were in town. It was a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Unfortunately, my future wife was the odd, the third wheel.

• 1:00:05Bill Maher?

  No, good for you.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  Good for me.

• 1:00:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, good for me. And I had an apartment in South Beach because I was an optimizer to the Bill Maher lifestyle back then. And I said, you guys want to come back for dinner? And they agreed. So I called my roommate and his girlfriend and said, can you come home and make dinner? I had no ability to make dinner. And then you'll like this. I think things are going really well, really well. And I, I sequester and get her alone and I'm talking to her and I say, you know, I just gotta be straight with you. I really feel something nice here. Do you, do you feel something?

• 1:00:34Bill Maher?

  Nice line.

• 1:00:35Speaker 05

  And she paused and went, no. And it was the pause that killed me.

• 1:00:41Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:00:42Speaker 05

  Cause she wanted to be considered about it.

• 1:00:44Bill Maher?

  Whoa.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  But anyways, I hung in there and we spent a bunch of time together. And like I said, 18 months later, we had our first son. I didn't.

• 1:00:51Bill Maher?

  So she didn't feel it that night. Why did she spend more time with you?

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  Because women fall slowly.

• 1:00:57Bill Maher?

  I know, but like, yeah, but usually if they think there's no future in it and they don't feel anything, they also don't want to throw good money after bed. Why, I mean, she must have, there must have been something.

• 1:01:08Speaker 05

  I made her laugh. I demonstrated excellence. I had the apartment. I was a nice guy.

• 1:01:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Speaker 05

  I had, you know, I took her to St. Bart's. I mean, I laid it on thick.

• 1:01:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  I tried really hard and.

• 1:01:20Bill Maher?

  There you go. That's how you do it.

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  I was like you. I didn't want a wife. I didn't want kids. I had been burned in my first marriage.

• 1:01:26Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:01:27Speaker 05

  And I thought, I just wanna, just, I don't want to say be indulgent, but I want to live my life as a single dude, focus on my career, enjoy myself, have great friends.

• 1:01:37Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:01:38Speaker 05

  Occasionally have a relationship. If it works, it doesn't work.

• 1:01:41Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:01:41Speaker 05

  And I was so in love with this moment. Yeah, right? You're in. Ding, check that box. But I was so in love with her and she said, I want to have kids. And I said, well, I'm not getting married. And she called my bluff and said, we don't have to be married to have kids. And I said, fine, let's have kids. And I basically looked at her and she got pregnant. And then we got married, uh, by justice of the peace when she was literally, when her like, her water was about to break. But where, where I got it wrong was I now think that marriage and kids are incredible. I really have gotten so much unexpected reward out of it. I just didn't think I would enjoy being a dad and I didn't in the beginning.

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  It wasn't, it wasn't bright lights and angels singing when my kids came marching out of my, my, my girlfriend at the time. I felt fear and shame because I wasn't making enough money. I was just really anxious and scared.

• 1:02:37Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  You want to feel anxiety. It was 08 and I'd gone broke for the second time. I've been rich three times, which means I've lost it twice. And I just lost it and my youngest son had the poor judgment to come marching out of my girlfriend just as I was broke. And instead of like a life insurance commercial, feeling like I'm so in love, I felt nauseous. I had to sit down. I was just, it was like not a nice moment for me. And people, I think dads are supposed to feel like, are supposed to like fall immediately in love. It wasn't like that for me. I fell in love. But as an older man now, I realize like I've invested so much in these kids. I, I really have found my purpose. I want to raise patriotic, loving men, and it's been just so shockingly rewarding.

• 1:03:18Bill Maher?

  This is why your podcasts do well.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  Oh, thanks, man.

• 1:03:21Bill Maher?

  Because, because it's just a level of honesty that, you know, people just don't. Yeah, people just don't naturally do it. People naturally lie or spin or want to create a certain image from the story they're telling. That, that, it's, it strikes me as real because I think I'd be the same way. Like I'd look at the baby coming out and go.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  Fuck.

• 1:03:45Bill Maher?

  Jesus Christ, this is.

• 1:03:47Speaker 05

  You know what I thought? I need to make more money. That was the romantic thought I had. I need to make more money.

• 1:03:51Bill Maher?

  I'd be, I need to get a time machine and go back nine months.

• 1:03:54Speaker 05

  And put on a condom?

• 1:03:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah, because, yeah, but, but I know, but certainly I, without having children of my own, of course, I recognize from just a zillion people in my life, not just the ones who've sat here, of course, who, when they have kids, it, they just describe an experience that I can only compare it to LSD, heroin, something where like if you don't have it, if you've not done the drug.

• 1:04:19Speaker 05

  You don't know it.

• 1:04:20Bill Maher?

  You just don't know.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  You don't know it.

• 1:04:21Bill Maher?

  And I'm okay with that, with heroin and kids.

• 1:04:24Speaker 05

  Not at the same time.

• 1:04:25Bill Maher?

  You know, so, but I get it. It's, it's great and, uh, I'm, I'm glad it makes, makes you happy. I, I think I know it would not make me happy.

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  You know, it's bullshit.

• 1:04:36Bill Maher?

  I, I think I found my, no, I found my lane of where my paternalism, and I do have a strong paternal streak. And, uh, but actual kids, ugh. I mean, they're just so dumb and they're so gross when they're little and it just takes forever. And then they're gonna be brats and then I have to deal with like how they're brought up in this society where it doesn't matter necessarily what you say because they hear what other parents are doing. You can't tell me this is not a big issue.

• 1:05:08Speaker 05

  It's always been that way. And I, I believe.

• 1:05:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but, but other parents weren't always crazy like parents are now.

• 1:05:16Speaker 05

  Arc, my kids are gonna have the best life of any generation in history until their kids come along. The, the arc of history is the following. Everything gets a little bit better every day. And also I have a question for you. Do you mentor any young men or like teen boys?

• 1:05:32Bill Maher?

  No, Scott, I'll leave that up to you.

• 1:05:34Speaker 05

  Club Randy?

• 1:05:37Bill Maher?

  That's great.

• 1:05:38Speaker 05

  No, I'm telling you, brother, I think you would get a lot of reward out of, out of, find a single, I want, I want you to do this for me. And you want to agree, but I'm putting the ask out there. Find a single mother in your ecosystem.

• 1:05:51Bill Maher?

  Done.

• 1:05:51Speaker 05

  And you're, you're volunteering at the home for single mothers right now.

• 1:05:57Bill Maher?

  There's a list now.

• 1:05:58Speaker 05

  And ask, if someone who has a son, a single mother, a son, would your kid like to hang out with me? Would your kid like to go to a game?

• 1:06:06Bill Maher?

  You know what? I have not actually dated a single mother in a long time, but I will tell you something funny about single mothers. There was a time, I would say it was like the late 90s into the first years of the new century, when I did date a lot of single mothers. I mean, they were very young, but they were single mothers. And the last thing they wanted was for me to meet the kid. They wanted a fun time with a fun guy.

• 1:06:31Speaker 05

  I'm not talking about someone your day.

• 1:06:33Bill Maher?

  And they did not want me to fucking meet the kid at all.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  Hold on, hold on.

• 1:06:36Bill Maher?

  And I didn't want to meet the kid. The, the pleasure in it was that I didn't want to meet the kid. I don't want, if I wanted to be a father, I'd actually be a father.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  The gap in our society in America, the biggest needed resource right now isn't wind power or it's not more empathy. It's, it's male mentorship.

• 1:06:57Bill Maher?

  You do it.

• 1:06:58Speaker 05

  There is, the moment a boy loses a male role model through death, divorce or abandonment. We have more single parent homes in any nation in the world. He becomes more likely at that moment to be incarcerated than graduate from college. I, I see the light in you, Padawan Bill. Find a single mother and offer just to hang out.

• 1:07:19Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:07:20Speaker 05

  You would be so good at it.

• 1:07:22Bill Maher?

  First of all, dude, this would bond me to the mother to a level I would not want to be.

• 1:07:28Speaker 05

  I'm not talking about a girlfriend. I'm talking, I'm talking about a friend. I'm talking about someone at your work that has a 15 year old or a 19 year old boy who's a little bit lost.

• 1:07:37Bill Maher?

  There's nobody like that.

• 1:07:38Speaker 05

  No bullshit. They're everywhere. They're everywhere, Bill. Ask around.

• 1:07:41Bill Maher?

  I wouldn't want to do it with someone at my work either. Talk about making that an awkward experience.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  They're, they are everywhere, everywhere. There are 700,000 boys waiting for a mentor who can't find a big brother. There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters as big brothers. You have resources, you're smart, you have, I, I, you, you talk a big game. I think you would get a ton of reward.

• 1:08:05Bill Maher?

  Talk a big game about what? What am I being hypocritical about?

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  About the fact that you don't want to, you don't want to have relationships or you don't want kids.

• 1:08:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, I didn't say I don't want to have relationships.

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  You would enjoy mentoring a, a teenage boy or a young man.

• 1:08:18Bill Maher?

  I have the best relationship in the world.

• 1:08:21Speaker 05

  Say more.

• 1:08:21Bill Maher?

  You would cry if you had my relationship of joy because there's never any problems, never any fights. So I am very much, uh, fine with relationships.

• 1:08:31Speaker 05

  Dude, it's the friction, it's the friction and the hard stuff that's rewarding.

• 1:08:34Bill Maher?

  I just don't want to have a child and never did. And like I'll, I'll, I'll think of another way to contribute. How about that? I'll get on fucking Greta's sailboat before I.

• 1:08:47Speaker 05

  It is so.

• 1:08:48Bill Maher?

  That's what's called a godfather.

• 1:08:49Speaker 05

  It is so easy to add value. It's the best, it's the best job in the world. This is a question I got last week. Can I survive on creatine and pineapple juice alone? Should I move to Alaska? It is so easy to add value to these young men.

• 1:09:02Bill Maher?

  Oh, these are the questions to ask you?

• 1:09:03Speaker 05

  That I get from young men who I'm trying to mentor.

• 1:09:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Speaker 05

  Anyway, I think you'd enjoy it, but I'm, I think, I think, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm barking at the wrong tree here. Except, except for Club Randy. Join us now. Learn, learn the lamest opening lines from men in their seventh and eighth decade.

• 1:09:22Bill Maher?

  Oh, no. We have no opening lines. Just, you, you had the best one. What are you, how are you guys doing?

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  Where are you from?

• 1:09:29Bill Maher?

  Where are you from? It's just like, be, be simple, you know?

• 1:09:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, but there's also a myth, though, that women, that you might get canceled, or that a woman is gonna call your work if you're indelicate.

• 1:09:42Bill Maher?

  It has not always been a myth, which is why it is scary to search.

• 1:09:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, but for the most part.

• 1:09:46Bill Maher?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:09:48Speaker 05

  You go up to a woman in a bar, you're respectful, you're friendly.

• 1:09:51Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:09:51Speaker 05

  You, you, you're smart enough to register, she's not interested, and you politely exit, you're both gonna be fine.

• 1:09:57Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:57Speaker 05

  You're both gonna be fine.

• 1:09:58Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  And what I don't like about this culture is men using every excuse that we could have used.

• 1:10:02Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  To just abdicate from how hard it is to have a relationship. And guess what? That's why it's so rewarding. That's what victory feels like. It is hard. I can't imagine how much shit you must have taken on stage at these comedy clubs. And that's why it feels good to be a successful comic and make a living at it.

• 1:10:19Bill Maher?

  I mean, most of the shit happens in the first couple of years when you're bad. After that, you're pretty safe, you know? I mean, yes, can you have a bad set? If you don't fuck it up yourself, um, if you don't make the crowd hate you, which is in your control, you know, you're pretty good for the rest of your life. I mean, people like to laugh. And if you perform that for them, you are doing a service, even if it's not the greatest. It's not, it's not a bad experience.

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  But the chocolate and peanut butter that you're able, and I'm gonna glaze you right now, to bring together. Humor, humor softens the beach.

• 1:10:57Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  And so, if you're funny and then give someone an alternative viewpoint, the likelihood they're actually gonna consider your alternative viewpoint is, it's literally softening the beach before the Marines of a different ideal land, right?

• 1:11:10Bill Maher?

  You're right.

• 1:11:11Speaker 05

  It's the reason why you're effective, it's the reason Jon Stewart is effective. If you look at the real societal, the people have really moved society, a lot of them have been comedians, right? And what's interesting is most of them have been progressives, right?

• 1:11:22Bill Maher?

  Mark Twain, Will Rogers.

• 1:11:24Speaker 05

  Bruce Carlin, right, Dave Chappelle.

• 1:11:26Bill Maher?

  George Carlin.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  What did I say?

• 1:11:27Bill Maher?

  Bruce.

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  Bruce Carlin? Jesus Christ. See, this is why I shouldn't be president. This is where we're too old.

• 1:11:32Bill Maher?

  But that's you.

• 1:11:32Speaker 05

  That's me, that's my test. I fail the cognitive test. Here on Club Randy.

• 1:11:37Speaker 05

  But, yeah, they, look, the, I, I think there's a, I think there's a, uh, uh, an enormous opportunity. Anyways.

• 1:11:46Bill Maher?

  Well, I, I certainly will give it a lot of thought.

• 1:11:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, I totally have convinced you.

• 1:11:52Bill Maher?

  If you could leave the pamphlets that you brought, I would, I know there's some literature on, a literature on this subject. I'm much more concerned about AI, honestly, than, I mean, I understand that, that men are in crisis and, you know, I mean, you could literally go down probably a hundred issues that could, uh, get you very worried. You know, we're running out of sand, literally, sand.

• 1:12:16Speaker 05

  I hadn't heard that one.

• 1:12:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah, sand, which, because they use it to make glass.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:12:21Bill Maher?

  And we're running out of sand. You know, I, I'm just saying, there's a lot of issues we could worry about. The one I worry about is AI. I feel like.

• 1:12:30Speaker 05

  Then why do you worry about it?

• 1:12:31Bill Maher?

  Because I think, uh, a short answer would be because people like Hinton and Musk, um, said years ago, it was a extinction level possibility of anywhere from like one to 10%, something that's way higher than we have allowed for any other extinction events. Nuclear would be one, I guess some pandemic could be. But, um, and also, the, the results are just not ever encouraging. It's always escaping its boundaries. I saw that in the press this week.

• 1:13:12Bill Maher?

  Outside of its containment, going rogue. I mean, it's very easy to catch it in a lie, and then it apologizes for the lie. But why did you lie in the first place? What is the point of this shit if you're not Mr. Spock? If you're not this perfect logical thing that's a machine that's just gonna give me the answer, but it's not. It's programmed by people and it, it does peopley things, including just lie or hallucinate or whatever else. And it's just getting too powerful and there's too much money in it. It's the thing that's propping up the economy. So, between that, the, the money incentive and the fact that

• 1:13:53Bill Maher?

  we have to compete with China or else we'll lose the war, and that, there's never gonna be any guardrails, I see. And, yes, I do worry that a thing that more often than humans chooses nuclear war as an option in war games is something that I worry about a lot.

• 1:14:12Speaker 05

  So, by the way, if my opinion differs from Hinton, which it will, defer to Hinton. I mean, there's just much, people much brighter on this topic who are suitably freaked out. I personally think the catastrophizing is totally overdone. I'm an AI optimist. And that is, let's go through each of the big risks. It's going to, um, go Skynet on us and decide we, you know, in a millisecond that we should all be extinct. I don't think these have a soul. I don't think they're sent in. I think there's always a kill switch. And people smarter than me disagree. It's gonna destroy the economy and jobs. If you didn't know AI was out there and you looked at the employment numbers right now, you wouldn't know AI is out there. It's, I believe it's gonna create more jobs. Supposedly automation was gonna gut the auto industry.

• 1:14:56Speaker 05

  And you had some job loss on the factory floor. And then, but we didn't, in, we didn't envision heated seats or car stereos, and now there's more people employed in the auto industry than there was pre-automation.

• 1:15:06Bill Maher?

  I concede all these points.

• 1:15:08Speaker 05

  You're going to have, last year, last year, we've had more new business applications than in history.

• 1:15:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Speaker 05

  So, I think it's gonna create a ton of opportunity, a ton of new jobs, a ton of productivity, ton of margin which we use to create new applications. Will it reshape the economy? Will there be some pain? Absolutely. But here's the thing, the catastrophizing, I think, is mostly a fundraising strategy. And that is, I'm such a fucking genius that I've invented something more powerful than nuclear weapons, and you should buy my secondary stock or invest in my company before I piece out to the Cote d'Azur with a bunch of Russian whores. It is not helpful to have all of these AI guys claiming that they're Dr. Frankenstein and they've lost control of Frank.

• 1:15:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:15:48Speaker 05

  And now you deal with it. That's not helpful. Why is it going to be an extinction level event? And if it can be used, if AI can be used for offensive measures, why can't we use AI for defensive measures? If we've been able to control nuclear weapons for the better part of a century, why can't we control this?

• 1:16:05Bill Maher?

  Because, because humans controlled whether the weapons would go up or not. That's the worry, as you well know. Is that, you know, this is what, Amodi, Amodi, right?

• 1:16:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, Dario.

• 1:16:18Bill Maher?

  Dario Amodi, okay. He seems like the one guy who's putting his hand up and saying, "I am not gonna sell you my shit unless there's a human in the kill chain."

• 1:16:28Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:16:29Bill Maher?

  A human in the kill chain. And I, so far, he's gotten his way. I could easily see that going away. That's the worry. There will not be a human in the kill, kill chain. I, I, it seems like it's just marching toward that inevitably. And, but, you know, all these points you make are absolutely, it's a 60/40. You know, you're on the 40, I'm on the 60, but we don't know.

• 1:16:53Speaker 05

  But to acknowledge, right now, AI, if you trust the founders who think this is more, more powerful than nuclear weapons, and the question is, would we have let Oppenheimer create an LLC and start selling nuclear bombs to Volvo and into Mexico, right?

• 1:17:08Bill Maher?

  Right, great analogy.

• 1:17:10Speaker 05

  So, if that's, if that's, if it's really as dangerous as they think, why is it in the hands of shareholders and private companies?

• 1:17:15Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:17:16Speaker 05

  It should be regulated, no doubt about it. At a minimum, have a 60-day holding period for every new model or LLM, and you get a blue ribbon panel of people, technologists, economists, ethicists, to bang the shit out of the thing and say, "Okay, this is ready for primetime." Or, "No, we asked it to create a bioweapon and it got way too comfortable finding stuff in your kitchen counter to figure this out." Right now, there's nothing. And to your point, 77% of earnings growth in the S and P and 93% of growth in the GDP is from the capex from these companies. So, the administration doesn't wanna let, do anything. They don't wanna put a saddle on our thoroughbreds right now. So, I agree that we should regulate it, and there needs to be something.

• 1:17:59Speaker 05

  But I think a lot of the catastrophizing is techno-narcissism, that I'm a genius and I've invented something that will change everything to the extent that it's gonna ruin the world. I also think it's a bit of a fundraising strategy, that this technology is so powerful and so immense, but why not make money? This is like nothing we've ever seen before, so, so justify my trillion-dollar valuation.

• 1:18:20Bill Maher?

  But I've also read, like, it was in the paper this week, that it said even China has not figured out how to monetize it yet. Like, how do you actually make the kind of money that it's costing? I mean, these data centers, they're building one that costs 500 billion for one data center?

• 1:18:39Speaker 05

  I hadn't heard that one. I hadn't heard 500 billion for one data center. Look, the, the, the conversation and the narrative has changed dramatically just in the last 30 days from not, what can AI do, but how does it pay? And you referenced what I think is the biggest story in business right now that's not being talked about, and that is, in January of 2025, 8% of token usage, which is a metric for how much AI is being used, inference how much compute is actually being used, 8% came from Chinese LLMs. As of today, it's around 58%. The Chinese are winning the AI race. Now, it's a, it's a different market, though. What the Japanese and the Koreans did with Honda, Toyota, and Kia to Detroit over 20 years,

• 1:19:20Speaker 05

  China's doing it about 20 weeks to us. They're engaging in what they tried to do in the 80s with steel. They're, they're engaging in AI dumping. They're coming up with these open weight models that cost 1/35th of the American Frontier models, and people are adopting those models, because CFOs have started saying, "What's the ROI on all this money we're spending on Anthropic and OpenAI?" So, I think Xi is going to crash our economy. This is what I would do if I were Xi. In fact, we, we've had it with this idiot who's changed tariff policy on us 17 times in the last 14 months. I'm gonna subsidize our open weight models, which are like Old Navy. They're 80% of the gap for 10% of the price. I'm gonna flood the US market with open weight LLMs. I'm going to crash their AI and their S and P.

• 1:20:04Speaker 05

  That's what I would do, and I think he's in about the third or fourth inning of that right now, and it's not being talked about.

• 1:20:10Bill Maher?

  But won't if if we crash, doesn't it help crash China? Wasn't that always the reason why? Because our economies were so intertwined? Or has that changed and they're not as dependent on us anymore?

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  We were 24% of their exports, we're down to 12 or 13. They do more business now with Europe and

• 1:20:27Bill Maher?

  See, that's the

• 1:20:28Speaker 05

  Association of Southeast Asians. China, China has been divesting away from the US for the last, for the last decade.

• 1:20:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah, which Trump brought a lot out on himself. Because, you know, he was so bellicose toward Xi. And, you know, then he went to meet him and they'd have a big picture of him in the square so he'd be friendly. But yeah, basically, he drove away these people to find other routes. By the way, in the Middle East, they say that they're going to have pipelines very quickly.

• 1:20:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Bill Maher?

  Generally, you know,

• 1:20:58Speaker 05

  To Farage or whatever.

• 1:20:59Bill Maher?

  Well, that go across Saudi Arabia.

• 1:21:02Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:21:02Bill Maher?

  Because the Strait of Hormuz, so, you know, in a way, kind of the way the Ukrainian war showed that drones could win a war.

• 1:21:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Bill Maher?

  And changed warfare, basically. I think closing the Strait of Hormuz is going to have the ultimate effect of the, the oil having other outlets. And not, and the Strait of Hormuz won't be a strategic.

• 1:21:26Speaker 05

  It's the best thing that's happened to renewables in a long time. Because not only is there an economic reason to invest in renewables, there's a security reason, and the big winner is China. 80% of windmills, 70% of battery power, 70% of EVs produced in China. So this has ceded an enormous amount of advantage to, uh, to China. But I, I, we have become, the biggest risk of AI is we've decided to go all in on AI economically. And 40% of our S and P is attached to the prospects of a small number of companies that are all in on AI.

• 1:22:02Bill Maher?

  Have you been to China?

• 1:22:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, several times.

• 1:22:04Bill Maher?

  Why? Because on business? Because they want you, you were speaking?

• 1:22:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:08Bill Maher?

  Really? So they know of you there and they want to hear what you say?

• 1:22:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I don't want to sound that important. I was talking about strategy. I've, I've started strategy firms my whole life. I basically made my living until I started in media 10 years ago, renting my brain to old white guys who are CEOs. That's what I've done my whole life, right? You know, whether it was writing their power.

• 1:22:29Bill Maher?

  Now you're the old white guy.

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  Now I'm the guy. Yeah, renting my brain to myself and just hearing myself talk. I just went to a friend's 60th, who I was in a fraternity with, and they, they came in front of me and they said, Galloway gets paid all this money to do what he did in college, and back then, we just called it annoying.

• 1:22:46Speaker 05

  Which I thought was really interesting. But they're, they're, they're advanced manufacturing, they're focused on renewables. They're, they're now globally, more people trust China to be a force of good than the US. I, I don't think Trump could have figured out a more elegant way to reduce our prosperity than, than tariffs.

• 1:23:04Bill Maher?

  And hadn't they already sort of built all the infrastructure in the third world, the Silk Road? Incentive, what do they call it?

• 1:23:12Speaker 05

  Belt and, Belt and

• 1:23:13Bill Maher?

  The belt, whatever it was.

• 1:23:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Bill Maher?

  Belt, it was basically the old Silk Road and lots of other roads, but they built all the ports, the electric, hydro, hydroelectric plants in Africa, and lots of other, south and all around the world. You know, when you, something breaks in the infrastructure pipeline, it's got a Chinese name on it. And you're gonna need the Chinese manual to fix it.

• 1:23:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, they, yeah.

• 1:23:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be their century, it's just a question of when. That's what I would say about China.

• 1:23:44Speaker 05

  I would say the market's bifurcating. I think US products are like, or AI, USAI is going to be like German cars. Higher price, higher margin, more expensive. US AI companies will still have the biggest revenue. And Chinese AI will be Toyota and Hyundai. And I would argue that whoever puts more AI, we, we fall into the, under the illusion that whoever has the best model wins. No, it's whoever puts the most AI in the most people's hands, and China's already doing that right now.

• 1:24:12Bill Maher?

  Well, I don't know if you agree, it'll be their century at some point, and maybe it won't be till 27, 2075 or something, but it won't be a good thing, because it is a dictatorship.

• 1:24:23Speaker 05

  No, I'm still rooting for us.

• 1:24:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, good.

• 1:24:25Speaker 05

  And Europe, I think the West.

• 1:24:27Bill Maher?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:24:28Speaker 05

  But you want to talk about

• 1:24:29Bill Maher?

  That's the, that's the basic point that the useful idiots of the youth do not understand. They, they are against Western civilization.

• 1:24:37Speaker 05

  We're the worst except for everybody else.

• 1:24:39Bill Maher?

  They're, they're progressives who don't understand that every civilization throughout history was a shit show of bad morals. But the West was the only one that actually then self-corrected and got rid of monarchy and put in democracy and put in scientific inquiry and put in human rights and put in

• 1:24:57Speaker 05

  And ended slavery.

• 1:24:58Bill Maher?

  Eventually, yes, ended slavery, gay rights.

• 1:25:01Speaker 05

  Women's rights in the workplace, bodily autonomies.

• 1:25:04Bill Maher?

  The West did that.

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  Jury trials, academic research, no cruel and unusual punishment, no child labor.

• 1:25:09Bill Maher?

  I think we're gonna have to open another chain

• 1:25:11Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 1:25:12Bill Maher?

  Of civics teaching.

• 1:25:14Speaker 05

  But, but the dumbest move, I mean, and this is a high bar, I think the Trump administration has made is we used to be the operating system for two thirds of the world's economy, basically the West. They, they traded with our currency, our dollar, our navy-protected, open navigation, our military, our, basically our rules and laws. We were the big Kahuna at the trading table. If there's been any asymmetry in global trade, we've benefited more than our trading partners. When we ship an iPhone into Canada and they ship us timber, a hundred dollars of the timber does not create that much shareholder value. A hundred dollars of iPhones creates a lot of shareholder value. If anyone's been on the good side of that trade, it's been us. And they thought, they'd never be stupid enough to do away with this, and so they fucked up.

• 1:25:59Speaker 05

  It's like that Animal House movie where he says, when the guy borrows his, his parent lets his, lends out his parents' car and they trash it, and Otter says, you fucked up, you trusted us? That's how Canada feels right now.

• 1:26:10Bill Maher?

  What do you, I know fools err on to try to get into Trump's head, but he seems obsessed with a few things in particular, and they've been going on for his entire career on the public stage, not just since he was president, and one of them is tariffs. I mean, what, what is it that gets into a man's head early on in his life? Like, I can understand, you know, if you have a, a thing. Like, are you, were you raped by a tariff? I mean, what, what happened that?

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  No, I was a, I was a graduate student instructor in, in micro macroeconomics. And we used to talk about Smoot-Hawley and tariffs as if, and the tone we used in the 90s when I was in graduate school is, could you believe how stupid they were to do this?

• 1:26:56Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  I mean, it's pretty simple. You reduce the market for the goods we produce, and you make their products more expensive for American consumers. I think he has this feeling that he's negotiating against himself, and that if he puts on a tariff, they'll absorb all of the costs. 90% of costs have been absorbed by consumers. And if you look at 4% inflation, which doesn't sound like a lot, that means if you have a baby now, in 18 years, everything is going to be double the price. One point of that inflation, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. The other point, tariffs. So our inflation would actually be at its target rate if it weren't for these own goals. What is he thinking? I have absolutely no idea. There are few ways that are a more elegant way to reduce prosperity than tariffs.

• 1:27:42Bill Maher?

  It is amazing, the strength of capitalism. Like, despite all these unforced errors, these body blows, it still chugs on.

• 1:27:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, the, the American economy is amazing.

• 1:27:58Bill Maher?

  What's economy is self, what's amazing is selfishness, is the desire to do better. I read in the paper last week, they'd set a new record since they've been keeping records of new businesses opened last year. Like 5.7 million people put in an application to open a new business. Now, some of them will fail, of course, but it just shows you, America, you, you idiots who think this is the worst place in the world, of course, this is the place people still want to come or if they're living here. Because you can get an idea, like the chain of Club Randy's,

• 1:28:38Bill Maher?

  and you can get it out, 5.7 million people last year, that's what America is. It's not marching for the Intifada. It, it's not this nonsense, that's what it is. And so even with all this stupid stuff, where it could be better, it goes on. Because people, that's what it is, that energy, that energy that's driven by selfishness, which is the basic thing in human nature, that'll, that's, that's what our big Ace hole, ace in the hole card is with China. They're gonna beat us in everything else, but they don't have that. Because that, that, that society is a top-down dictatorship and it's too regimented. And I don't know if people, you can get ahead, but it's harder.

• 1:29:22Speaker 05

  So I want to acknowledge uranium is self-interest and we enrich it and make it more powerful with capitalism. Capitalism is the best construct to leverage self-interest. It only works if it rests on a bed of empathy and you redistribute and come back to the middle class. Because that's your core market for innovation and capitalism and labor. The, the, the fine the ointment about what you're saying is the following. On many levels, China is more capitalist than we are right now. When you have the president taking an ownership interest in US Steel and Intel and picking winners and losers. That's its own form of socialism. And when you embrace that socialism, you end up with a warehouse full of unsold DeLoreans in Air France.

• 1:30:01Bill Maher?

  They hated it when Obama did it, when he was, remember Solyndra? He's picking winners. It's like, that's why I hate everything in this country. It's everything is like, everything is terrible unless we do it. Then it's always perfectly okay.

• 1:30:15Speaker 05

  There's a lot of, you know, people in defense, when people try to defend socialism, they talk about Northern Europe. Northern Europe is more capitalist right now than we are. They're letting companies go out of business. You watch, you watch what's about to happen. OpenAI and Anthropic are about to come up with an excuse to get government-backed debt for their CapEx, which I don't think their revenues will support, and we'll call it an investment.

• 1:30:41Bill Maher?

  They were always billionaires in those countries. Ask anyone who ever got a Lego cut in their foot, you know? Wasn't Lego, it's not a.

• 1:30:50Speaker 05

  The most successful company in Denmark?

• 1:30:52Bill Maher?

  And also Spotify and.

• 1:30:54Speaker 05

  Oh, they have a bunch. They have, they have a bunch of great companies.

• 1:30:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and very, and they're rich people. They just also have a more generous welfare system. That's true.

• 1:31:04Speaker 05

  They have, look, they have their own problems. I think one of the things that ails Democrats ails Europe. And that is they would rather be more equal even as, even if as a whole, they're less well off. The wonderful thing about America is we made a conscious decision to have winners and losers and say, we're gonna have more inequality as long as we're all better off.

• 1:31:23Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:31:23Speaker 05

  And where we're making the mistake, I think, is demonizing success and constantly talking about inequality. When it gets to the point it's at now, where it starts to shrink in the middle class, we've gone way too far.

• 1:31:34Bill Maher?

  I feel like the most under-reported story of the last year that I found out was that, yes, the middle class has shrunk to a degree. And the reason is, the upper middle class.

• 1:31:47Speaker 05

  Has grown so much.

• 1:31:48Bill Maher?

  Has grown so much.

• 1:31:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Bill Maher?

  Like 30%. These are the assholes with the McMansions.

• 1:31:55Speaker 05

  But the problem is, as a species, your happiness and satisfaction with the government is not what you have. It's the delta between your expectations and what you have. And we're a memetic species and 110 times a day, young people are vomiting other people's wealth porn. And their expectations, their expectations are become just totally unreasonable.

• 1:32:15Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:32:15Speaker 05

  You know, I, I took a vacation at 24. I went to this place called Club Med. I thought it was the most fucking amazing thing I'd ever been to in my life. You know why? Because I had never been to Saint-Tropez. I had never seen pictures of Saint Bart's. I didn't know what it was like to party at Saint Con Saint, seeing my friends there in Ibiza and Mykonos. My expectations were like, oh my God, you pay for drinks with beads? This is amazing. I thought it was incredible. Now, if you don't have a boyfriend with a six-pack and you're not making millions of dollars in crypto, you feel like a failure.

• 1:32:44Bill Maher?

  Well, if you made millions of dollars, you wouldn't be at a Club Med. It's so funny you mention this.

• 1:32:50Speaker 05

  I thought it was amazing. That's my point. I thought it was incredible. I bought a Volkswagen Rabbit and I thought I died and gone to heaven, a rabbit.

• 1:32:58Bill Maher?

  This is not recently.

• 1:32:59Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no. When I was in my twenties, in the eighties.

• 1:33:02Bill Maher?

  You said when, in 2024.

• 1:33:03Speaker 05

  No, no, I might have said that. See, I'm getting old. When I was 24, my first vacation was at Club Med and I thought it was incredible.

• 1:33:09Bill Maher?

  I gotta tell you this. In 1985, I did the movie called Club Med. And I had to stay at the Club Med.

• 1:33:17Speaker 05

  Which one?

• 1:33:18Bill Maher?

  Ixtapa. Zihuatnejo is the city near it in Mexico. And I'd stay there for a month.

• 1:33:26Speaker 05

  Had a great time. I thought it was incredible.

• 1:33:27Bill Maher?

  I thought it was a nightmare. I, I'm not, it's very low luxury. That's the point of.

• 1:33:35Speaker 05

  But when your only vacation before that was getting to spend the night at the Santa Clarita Holiday Inn, so you could go to Magic Mountain two days in a row, which was heaven for me.

• 1:33:43Bill Maher?

  Now, Club Med is for people who are just gonna enjoy the outdoors, which is what you want. It makes a lot of sense. It's a really smart idea. You go, there's no TV, there's no fan, there's, there's no air conditioning. It's just a cell, really. So if you're just going there to fuck and then go out and enjoy the sun and the surf, perfect. You don't need the frills. Yes, you don't even have money. You get fucking beads. This is not the way I do things. Anyway, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you go.

• 1:34:12Speaker 05

  My point is, young people's expectations.

• 1:34:14Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:34:15Speaker 05

  Is.

• 1:34:16Bill Maher?

  Too high.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  Outpaced, they're, they're facing huge challenges, but they have more agency than I think most previous generations have.

• 1:34:22Bill Maher?

  They also have more of daddy's money. There's so much money that is passed down from the previous generation. We're so horrible, but I notice you always take the money, right? I mean, there's just staying on your kids.

• 1:34:35Speaker 05

  That's a problem. We need to do away with the estate. Uh, we need to do away with the estate tax exemption because we're not meant to be a dynastic society.

• 1:34:44Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:34:45Speaker 05

  And if your kid inherits three million, not five million, he or she's not gonna be any less happy.

• 1:34:48Bill Maher?

  But a lot of it is the parents aren't dead. The kid is just still on their.

• 1:34:52Speaker 05

  Credit card.

• 1:34:53Bill Maher?

  Credit card and cell phone and healthcare until you're 26.

• 1:34:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Bill Maher?

  And they think they're somehow being on their own. No, you're not really being on your own.

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  But if you had kids, what you'll see is that your kid's a good kid. They're pursuing their dream of X, Y, and Z. And they're living in a city where inflation has gotten out of control because the government has let companies concentrate and prices and rents have gone up so far that I do feel for these kids. Now, does a Nepo baby need to lecture us about capitalism and socialism? No, but I, all my friends talk a big game about cutting their kids off after college. And this is what happens. Their kid's a good kid. He wants to go to nursing school in San Francisco. He's a nurse, he's making 80 or 90 grand a year, and he can't afford to live in San Francisco.

• 1:35:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Speaker 05

  And so you end up giving him money. And the reality is, the average person our age is 72% wealthier than we were 40 years ago. And the average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy, so.

• 1:35:47Bill Maher?

  If they, if they all didn't want to live in the same three cities, you know, cities are expensive like LA and San Francisco and New York, because that's where all the kids wanna be.

• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  But it's gotten a lot more expensive.

• 1:35:57Bill Maher?

  I'm sure it is. But you know, you could go to Chattanooga.

• 1:36:01Speaker 05

  I think it's gotten more expensive. The reality is the cost for a house and an education, the things that get young people ahead, have outpaced inflation for a long time. Because my generation is infected with this hoarding virus where we want to hoard housing permits. And our degrees, such as the value of our home, the value of our college degree goes up. And essentially, I think the transfer, or the war here, it's not Democrat versus Republican. It's not, you know, rich versus poor, it's incumbents versus entrants. And I think incumbents have unfairly weaponized government to ensure they stay incumbents. Whether it's government bailouts, transfers of wealth, social security. You and I should not be getting social security.

• 1:36:38Bill Maher?

  All right, let's go beat up some old people. What do you say?

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  Join us next week at Club Rando.

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  You haven't had enough scot in your life.

• 1:36:48Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 1:36:49Speaker 05

  Yeah. Let me lecture you more.

• 1:36:51Bill Maher?

  How can you ever have enough?

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