Dr. Debra Soh | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher welcomes sex neuroscientist and author Debra Soh to tackle a blunt question: what broke modern intimacy—and can it be fixed? Drawing from her book SEXTINCTION: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy, Soh breaks down the forces quietly reshaping connection: early exposure to extreme porn, AI companions and sex robots, swipe-driven dating culture, and why some wear it like a badge of honor. The conversation moves from unrealistic dating standards (yes, the “6-6-6 rule”) to the widening divide between men and women fueled by social media. They also push into tougher territory: gender ideology, youth transition, and why many Western countries are hitting pause while parts of the U. S. accelerate. Support our Advertisers: Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/RANDOM #rulapod #ad 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.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Check engine, ABS or maintenance light on? Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

• 0:30Bill Maher?

  While you're remodeling your backyard to make it more, you know, zen-y, we were remodeling our merch store to make it more random. We slapped our new logo on t-shirts, tie-dyes, hoodies and hats, and all with premium printed labels. Look, I wasn't kidding. We have it because tags are like the junk mail of clothing. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. Once again, that's clubrandom.com. Does that happen in your social life?

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06Bill Maher?

  Are there men who like won't go near you?

• 1:11Bill Maher?

  Because you won't go... The same thing they say with me, and I'm not.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Because I'm saying that girls shouldn't be cutting off their breasts.

• 1:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah, just right, just because...

• 1:21Bill Maher?

  Deborah!

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Bill.

• 1:24Bill Maher?

  Hi!

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:27Bill Maher?

  Nothing goodness about this place. How you doing?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  It's nice to see you.

• 1:31Bill Maher?

  You remember being on Real Time?

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I remember.

• 1:34Bill Maher?

  You say it's like, was it bad?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  No, I loved it.

• 1:37Bill Maher?

  It was just memorable?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  One of my favorite memories.

• 1:39Bill Maher?

  Your hair got darker.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, my hair got darker. I'm not a natural blonde, actually.

• 1:43Bill Maher?

  You what?

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I'm not a natural blonde.

• 1:46Bill Maher?

  Okay. How dare you!

• 1:50Bill Maher?

  Well, sit back, enjoy yourself.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I'm excited to be here.

• 1:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, good, I'm thrilled to have you. Did you, by the way, see the sex doll in the bathtub?

• 1:59Speaker 02

  I did.

• 2:00Bill Maher?

  The Whitney Cummings sex doll?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was telling your team I love it.

• 2:04Bill Maher?

  Because you're the first sex neuroscientist we've had on the show.

• 2:12Bill Maher?

  The first one I've ever heard of in life. I mean, that's, it's right on the cover of your book, Sex Neuroscientist. That's quite a title.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and thank you, thank you for having me. Thank you for reading the book.

• 2:25Bill Maher?

  Oh, yes, it's very, very topical. I mean, there's certainly a lot of wrong things going on in the world. So I don't know if people think it's indulgent to put sex right at the top of the list, but it could be. I mean, the kids aren't fucking. I did a last, real time with the, our comedy bit in the middle was about spring break and, you know, I keep reading these articles. You know, I said, they're like the pandas. We can't get Ling Ling and Choo Chau to fuck. I never thought I'd be reading these headlines about kids aren't fucking.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07Bill Maher?

  But I guess that's what you're, I mean, that's really the whole thrust of your, no pun intended, of your book is, you know, what's, why aren't people fucking like they used to?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  The wild thing, too, is not just are people not having sex, but they, they take pride in it. And they're saying, like, women are saying, we don't need men. We're fine on our own. And men are saying, the sex robots are coming. We have our AI girlfriends, so we don't need women either. And so they're actually taking this like a point of pride instead of saying, there's something really wrong going on here. We need to fix this problem.

• 3:39Bill Maher?

  Right. I mean, there is, yeah, you're right. This, I mean, there were certainly always times when people didn't fuck for whatever reason. I mean, if you had met me in high school or college, you'd have met, you know, I was, I was not in, well, I guess I was what they would call an incel now because incel stands for involuntarily celibate. It certainly was involuntary on my part. I didn't want to be celibate. But I, but I, I certainly, maybe at the time, not so much, but I think even then, certainly not that much later, understood that the reason why I wasn't getting laid was me.

• 4:22Bill Maher?

  I didn't, today, it seems like what goes on is this hostility. That I'm not getting laid because you're a bitch.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:30Bill Maher?

  Or I'm not getting laid because you're a fucking loser. And

• 4:37Bill Maher?

  That that kind of hostility about it is, I think, is a new dimension. Maybe you know the history. I'm sure you do better than I.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  I think social media is a big part of it. But what's really good about, say, your situation is that you recognize there's something about you or maybe that you wanted to work on things to attract the types of partners that you wanted to have. I mean, well, look at you now, right? I'm sure you have no issues at all. And whereas you look at the younger generation in particular, or I would say the men, when you come to the table with that type of animosity, women are definitely not going to want to be sleeping with you.

• 5:09Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  And again, with women, if you're coming in and both sexes are blaming each other, that's not going to make people want to have sex with you, have a relationship with you. And then it's also not going to make you have the insight to say, what am I doing wrong here? Instead, you're just going to keep doing the same thing. And then with social media feeding you this constant stream of content that is further polarizing the sexes, this is why I think it's gotten to the point where it is so bad. Then you have these replacements, like you're mentioning the sex robots, sex dolls, the AI companions, pornography. And then women are doing so well in society economically that they're saying, oh, I don't need a man either. I can just work and buy my own things. I think, you know, that's great that women are doing so well. But another thing I talk about in the book is this issue with hypergamy and how that clashes with diversity.

• 5:51Bill Maher?

  Huh? What?

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Diversity initiatives.

• 5:53Bill Maher?

  Hypergamy?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's that women tend to like to marry up.

• 5:57Bill Maher?

  Oh, hypergamy.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I remember that word. It's funny, when you, they say when you don't know a word, you go past it. Once you learn it, then you see it like 10 times in the next week.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you're going to be hearing it all the time now.

• 6:16Bill Maher?

  Hypergamy, that's a great word. So marrying up. Well, yes, I mean, how can you marry up with this? I mean, look, I completely understand women's complaints about men today. I mean, I hear the complaints from women I know. You know, I mean, if someone says to me, what's your secret with women? My answer is other men. It's not hard to look better. I mean, these kids, they couldn't find the clit with an app. And they need one.

• 6:45Bill Maher?

  I did a thing on the show.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  I need a YouTube tutorial.

• 6:47Bill Maher?

  I did a TED Talk, not a real one.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 6:50Bill Maher?

  It was a, you know, a bit we did, but I dressed, you know, just like they do with the sneakers. And it was really funny and, you know, what if I told you? Because that's how they always start, that's it. What if I told you that you could get laid? And then I was just instructing the younger men, game. They don't have game. They don't know, they didn't even know what it is. I don't know if they even aspire to it. You know, but just basic things. Don't wear shorts. Right? You know, like.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Iron your shirt. That would be my choice.

• 7:26Bill Maher?

  A collar.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:29Bill Maher?

  You know, trim the hair on your nose, just like basic, you know. It's such a basic thing. The basic things that they don't seem to think they need to do. They think they can be this slovenly person. And that that, I don't know what is, what's that term when guys like purposely kind of are mean to girls?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Oh, nagging.

• 7:57Bill Maher?

  What is it?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Nagging? It's when they insult a woman with the belief, this is like red pill ideas, where the men think that if they insult women, that the women are going to like them more.

• 8:07Bill Maher?

  Well, I don't know if they got that word, but I'm not going near it.

• 8:13Bill Maher?

  I know the world I live in, Deborah.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Okay, I can say it for you. Every time you have anything to say, just point at me.

• 8:19Bill Maher?

  But I've seen people go after worse and, or better or whatever. No afters yet. I don't, I don't need trouble. I got Trump up my ass again this week. I don't need, I don't need, I don't need more beef.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, part of that, I do believe, is porn. And the fact that Gen Z in particular, so Gen Z is roughly age 31 and younger, 31 to 13. They were exposed to porn at such a young age. And everything they know about sex is from watching porn, online pornography, which is very different today from, say, you know, back in the day in magazines, or even online porn that is not so extreme, like what we see today. And so, when you have that, and that is how you learn about women, say, or some women are learning about, or girls are learning about boys that way. So they think, well, I can have an orgasm, I don't have to go through the process of talking to someone, approaching strangers, especially post me too.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  They don't have to, like you said, you know, trim their nose hair, or look decent, or have social skills. And it's a very, you know, it could be a replacement for sex in that you're still getting that gratification.

• 9:29Bill Maher?

  Trust me, no one knows better than I do, from my formative years, when I was too shy and lame to get with a girl. It is a substitute for sex. Thank God it exists, masturbation, or else I would have just exploded. I mean, during my most horny years, that's all I was doing, was masturbating. The whole time at Cornell.

• 9:52Bill Maher?

  Cornell was a terrible place.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Would you go to, would you be like looking at it in class? Or, I'm just kidding.

• 9:57Bill Maher?

  No.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  But this is what, that's what boys are doing today, though.

• 9:59Bill Maher?

  I barely had anything to look at. I don't even remember getting, I didn't think I had Playboys. I mean, that's what we had back then, Playboys. But I didn't, I don't, I don't, I don't know, I wasn't, I didn't have the money to go to the newsstand, which didn't exist, as I recall, and buy a Playboy in Ethic in New York. No, I think I was doing it from just what I saw around me. You know, you didn't need a lot. You know, your deck hard, get hard if the wind blew.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  You could get like a catalog even, like a PG catalog. I've heard men in the past would do that, you know, because it wasn't like so easily accessible now.

• 10:36Bill Maher?

  Look, I wouldn't be a perfect hero. Please use me as a case study. Because I can take you all the way from the late 60s. When that's all we had was Playboys. And Playboys barely showed. I mean, they were starting to show. I mean, certainly in the 50s, that's before my time, or early 60s. Very often, they would just show a girl kind of from the side. I mean, we show more now in Perfume Addict.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:04Bill Maher?

  But by the time I was looking at it, like, maybe I was 12 in 1968, okay. They had, but no, no pubic yet. Half went through this in the early 70s. He was going, he had to make this decision. He was, you know, it was mostly advertiser driven. It's a magazine in the 70s. He was gonna lose the American car accounts. Ford and Chrysler were not going to advertise the Skylark in a place that showed pubic hair. There are just some things American industry will not stand for.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Standards.

• 11:38Bill Maher?

  Standards. But eventually, he had to give in because he was being challenged by Penthouse, which had no qualms about that. But I, so I would go back to, you know, when I was first looking at it. It was just ones, somebody stole, a neighbor kid stole from their father. And, and we looked at it in the woods. And we buried it. Really, like, like fucking Badgers or something. We buried, then we'd dig them up, and it'd be all wet from the rain. But we would see, and the littlest thing that we saw, and that's to all the way to now, which, you know, like any normal red-blooded American male, I look at Pornhub. But even that's fairly recent in my life.

• 12:23Bill Maher?

  I stuck with the magazines a lot longer than most people.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:27Bill Maher?

  Because I was kind of afraid, like, if I go on this Pornhub thing, will they know? Is there a cookie in there? Can they come and say I? And then, of course, I gave in. But, but that's really within the last 10 years. Maybe even five years. So, but I see what's on there. And it is astounding to me, some of it. But I know this whole. This whole history. So you can ask away anything. I'll tell you the difference between now and then.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I should say, because when I was on your show last time, I was a columnist for Playboy.com. And it was one of my first regular columns. And I will always be grateful to Playboy for the opportunity. Because, you know, I was just starting out. And my views about pornography were very different back then. And I still think to some extent, for someone who grew up pre-internet porn, probably not as affected by it as, say, these younger kids now, who they are looking at it quite little. I've heard cases of kids at age four seeing this. Usually it's by accident, they come across it. The minute they get a smartphone, they can see it.

• 13:30Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  And so even before their first sexual experience, before they even have early crushes or their first kiss, they're seeing this, and it's terrifying for many children. But they think this is what sex is. They know it's taboo. They have a vague idea of what it is. And so then kids are learning from it what they're supposed to do during sex, how they should treat the opposite sex. It's also leading to young kids having all these cosmetic procedures to make their bodies look more like porn stars. But I'm curious for you, the first time you started, I'm sure you've seen more of the extreme stuff. And what is?

• 13:59Bill Maher?

  I haven't.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 14:01Bill Maher?

  I don't, I don't think. I think there's much more extreme stuff. I mean, certainly anything German. And I've never gone there. I, I mean, and again, I think this is because I started at such an innocent place. I mean, you mentioned Playboy. In the same breath as pornography. I guess, yes, technically it is. And certainly in its day, it was the tip of the spear.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  But it's so different.

• 14:26Bill Maher?

  Of pornography. But now, it's, I mean, please, it's just, it's the tamest thing. It was just the girl next door and, you know.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  And she's happy, she looks like.

• 14:36Bill Maher?

  She's happy.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  She's enjoying it.

• 14:38Bill Maher?

  And there was no men in the picture. I mean, I certainly even remember from the magazine era of the 90s. We're going back 30 years. And you could go to the newsstand. Certainly when I lived in New York, there was still newsstands in the mid 90s, when I started doing Politically Incorrect. And I lived in New York for a few years. And the newsstand was, there was like. Dozens and dozens of porn magazines. Of every, I mean, I remember going to Larry Flynt's office. And he had on his desk, like, all the, he had many publications beside Hustler. And they were all, like, laid out on his desk very neatly. And there had to be thirty different brands.

• 15:17Bill Maher?

  You know, Jugs, and Gentry, and Shaved Asian, and, you know, Motorcycle Girls. Every sort of niche thing had its own, yeah, had its own magazine.

• 15:31Bill Maher?

  And so, like, you could go to the newsstand almost every night and buy another stroke book. You know, and, but it was, and even then, in the nineties, they started to put dicks in ads. I think they just had a photographer on the set of porn movies. And they got the stills. And that became, but, I mean, it was, you know, but it was still a picture, you know. Yeah. And, and you could only get so disgusting, or rapey, or, you know, abusive. But the videos, I mean, I've said it for years, as someone who is a known libertine.

• 16:16Bill Maher?

  I don't think porn is benign at all. I mean, I am totally with you on this, because I see, and again, I don't think I've gone near the frontier of it. My stuff is very vanilla. But I, first of all, I see what's, and I, I guess they, it must be like anything, an algorithm, where they feed you what you like. And they know what I like. I just like hot chicks. You know, I don't want to see them abused. In fact, I don't want to see the guy in it at all. Very often, it's just a girl acting sexy for the first five minutes. And then the guy comes in. Once he comes in, I'm out. Like, you know, I don't need the guy in there. I'm the guy. No penises for Bill. I'm the guy. Who is this guy with my girl?

• 16:59Bill Maher?

  Honey, I thought we had something going. And then this guy walks in the room? You know, it's ridiculous.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  I've heard you ask aloud in another episode, why guys are into women abusing them. And we can talk about that, too, in terms of like, women putting on high heels and stepping on them, or why men like having penis humiliation.

• 17:19Bill Maher?

  You're talking about dominatrix and...

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:24Bill Maher?

  Well, I certainly can't relate.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  It's sexual masochism. Those people who like being humiliated, yeah.

• 17:30Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, there's things about being 70 that aren't great, but you know, one of the greatest things is, we're not fucking nuts. You know, we really aren't. We grew up in a great time. We're lucky. My head is screwed on straight. Good things make me happy. Bad things make me sad.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:51Bill Maher?

  That's it.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  You don't want to strangle women during sex.

• 17:55Bill Maher?

  I used to know a whole bit about that. Like, even in my fantasies, I'm not doing anything weird. Even in my fantasies, I don't want to do all these things that people do.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:04Bill Maher?

  It's just, it's just basic shit. Because, again, that's how I was raised, or that's where I, you know, I feel like I had a fairly healthy, frustrating adolescence, but fairly healthy. I think where people go wrong is they get too jaded. And that's when you have to go to the high heel in your neck. Because you did everything else by the time you were 14 or something, you know?

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Or usually, those men have, we'll say, a difficult relationship with their mother. So if their mother was, say, abusive or something, that's why they eroticize that type of behavior.

• 18:37Bill Maher?

  Let's leave my mother out. No. And I did, I had a wonderful... Another thing I'm lucky about. You know, normal parents, normal, you know. It was, I had a very Leave it to Bieber upbringing, as lots of people did in my era, where, you know, there was not even any divorce. People didn't get divorced. People, families stayed together. I'm sure there was stuff going on, like abusing, you know, children that was just so covered up that it just was not talked about. So it wasn't in my head. It certainly wasn't put in my head, "You might be in the wrong body."

• 19:21Bill Maher?

  No, I'm sure there are some, very few, but some kids who are quote-unquote "in the wrong body," and it's also not fair that in that era, they had nowhere to turn to say, "You know, I really don't feel like a girl. I don't. I want to grow a mustache." And, but in general, I feel, I think you agree with me, we've gone way too far.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Way past way too far.

• 19:51Bill Maher?

  Right, way past way too far in constantly putting it into kids' heads. Again, what I would teach kids is there is a default setting for humans. But if you're not in that default setting, that doesn't make you bad or worse. But there is a default setting. That's not what we teach.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:10Bill Maher?

  It's not in California anyway.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  No, no, but I would also say for those kids, you know, that even if it's okay to feel differently, like if you were a girl and you're more like a cowboy, or if you're a boy and you're more feminine, that's totally fine. So that was my first book, The End of Gender.

• 20:23Bill Maher?

  Right, that's what you were on for, The End of Gender, right.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  And I remember you were interviewed by New York Times Magazine after I was on and they were asking you about me, and you defended me. So I really appreciated that.

• 20:34Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:35Bill Maher?

  They were going after you?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  You didn't throw me under the bus.

• 20:38Bill Maher?

  No, I wouldn't. Why were they going after you?

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Because there was, I, on the show, I said, I said that some parents are letting kids transition because it's the easier thing because these are homophobic parents.

• 20:49Bill Maher?

  I've said the same thing. It's part of this is social contagion. Obviously, it's not even controversial that they can't even admit that. Yes, part of it is, I could admit that it's a real thing. Not that you have to make me admit it, it's just, that's just life. It goes back to ancient times, they called them heraphrodites or, you know, there's variation. Not everything is the default setting. Just most stuff, you know, and some stuff like pregnant men just belongs in Ripley's Believe It or Not, you know? It's just like, if you saw that in Ripley's-

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Well, because they're biologically women, so it's not even really like a thing. It's just like, this is a woman who's taking testosterone, but they turned it into a thing.

• 21:29Bill Maher?

  Yes. Oh, and if you, and if you dare to say that there's any difference at all-

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:35Bill Maher?

  Between a biological woman and a trans woman, you are an evil person, you are, you're a racist, even though race has nothing to do with it, you're a bigot, and you're just like-

• 21:46Speaker 02

  That's why they should be allowed in our locker rooms and our bathrooms.

• 21:50Bill Maher?

  Should not.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  I'm kidding, yeah, I know.

• 21:51Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, right, I mean, you know, it is amazing to me the way the, the far-left morons just work their way back to positions that are actually hurting the people they pretend that they're championing.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:11Bill Maher?

  Women, used to be one of their big causes.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:13Bill Maher?

  Title IX was one of their big achievements, and then it was like, Title IX, women should have an equal thing in sports, and we're gonna throw the man in the pool.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:24Bill Maher?

  It's just, they just are thinking, at least out here, not what their big thing is.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  I'm glad to see it being turned around, though. I do think like the most unhinged of the trans activists are gonna continue doing their thing till the end of time. I think no matter how much the public is saying, "We're done, you guys need to stop this," they're gonna keep going, because they're so personally invested, and I think they also have a lot of shame about their own transition or their own, because for many of them, it's a sexual thing. So their desire to transition to female if they're born male is because they find it erotic to have a woman's body, or the idea of having a woman's body. And they have a lot, they feel a lot of guilt and shame around that. So that's why they're pushing this on the public to say, "You all have to affirm me, quote, affirm me as a woman, to make me feel more legitimate about my own feelings." And this is why they're putting it on the kids, and I think also for many- Parents who have transitioned their children,

• 23:15Speaker 02

  they need everybody to go along with it because they want their child to have the best possible life. So I feel for these kids, obviously, you know, they're being misled. And it's not their fault, especially with social media, that's another part of it.

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  But, I mean, just, come on, guys.

• 23:28Bill Maher?

  I think bugs me the most about it, and you're talking to someone who's never had kids and doesn't even like them. So why I'm deputized to be the one to defend them just shows how far off this has gotten the trail.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  You were one of the first liberals to like have the guts to call it out.

• 23:44Bill Maher?

  Absolutely, because I love the truth. And I don't, believe me, I welcome their hatred. The people who are, who are just out there, I mean, first of all, they all left a long time ago. But, but to use children as cannon fodder in this culture war, that to me is a little low. Even the mafia doesn't bring in the family.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are boundaries there.

• 24:10Bill Maher?

  There should be some boundaries, and that's absolutely what they did. They brought in the kids and said, if you don't agree with this, this very sudden, very sudden reversal of what we've always believed. Now, maybe some things, it's true, some things we've always believed are wrong, but to be suddenly just planting your flag down here in a place to the left of where every other country is, every, including the liberal ones that we look up to as liberal, including to the left of them, far left, as far as transitioning kids, by their own diagnosis, at any age.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, without telling the parents.

• 24:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah, without telling the parents. This is far out stuff, and to sort of plant your flag and say like, yes, this is extremely new and extremely radical, and also if you don't go along, you're crazy and wrong. And it's like, wait a second, this is new stuff. I'm not crazy or wrong to say, slow down, and that's what every other country did. They just said, whoa, you know what? This might not look good in the future. Maybe we should slow it down a little bit.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, also, I mean, the fact that parents don't get a say. They're transitioning the kids. Even if the parents do find out, they can, they will take the kids away and put them in sanctuary states if they want to leave, right? That, that, to me, is the most terrifying thing. If you have a child and you don't even get to have the final say in terms of the medical interventions they're undergoing. So I'm hoping all that stuff is finally going to be done with.

• 25:39Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm glad I didn't throw you under the bus.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  I wasn't expecting you to.

• 25:43Bill Maher?

  You will find none of my friends under that bus.

• 25:48Bill Maher?

  Couple of my enemies, maybe, but no.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  But I like, you know, I know you'll call me out, too. If you think I'm wrong about something, because I've seen you do this with other people, I respect that.

• 25:56Bill Maher?

  I do, I will. I mean, you cannot bribe me and you cannot incentivize me. You know, Trump, I mean, you know,

• 26:06Bill Maher?

  I was his most virulent critic. Had dinner with him, told everybody that, you know, he's very different in person and he's not as crazy as he seems, but kept right on criticizing where I thought. And then he got mad at me again and now he's pulled others tough. And, but I still supported the idea of going into Iran. Not that we want to get into that, but just to the point of like, you cannot bribe me or incentivize me. While he was attacking me, I was, I was saying, no, I'm one of the few liberals who thinks, yeah, we needed to do this with Iran. And this is with every subject. And it's very, very liberating.

• 26:49Bill Maher?

  It's so liberating not to have to check what your opinion is supposed to be. And I'm, you know, are you still getting shit from left for some of your views? Does this book get shit?

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:01Bill Maher?

  Well, let's, let's, let's tell the people like I'm a good, proper host. Fucking stoners who work here, I don't know who they are. But sex, great title, Sex Tension.

• 27:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah, extinction of sex, the decline of sex and the future of intimacy. Deborah Sel. Okay, so I did my good job very well, I feel.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  You did.

• 27:24Bill Maher?

  And it is a great book.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 27:26Bill Maher?

  Very interesting on every page, not too scholarly, but scholarly enough.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do my best to write in a way that someone with no scientific background can still understand my writing.

• 27:37Speaker 03

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• 28:11Speaker 00

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• 28:37Bill Maher?

  No, I have, I mean, I'm not an idiot about science, but it was never my subject, so I do need it explained.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  I mean, and I don't fault people for that. The only reason I understand the studies is because I've, you know, I went to school for it, but other people, you know, people have jobs, they're trying to pay their rent and take care of their families, so I figure if I can give you as much information as possible and make it as easy as possible to understand and apply it in your own life, I just have all the citations, I have over 400 citations in the book, too, so people can look things up.

• 29:03Bill Maher?

  You must have been way ahead always through school. You must have been that, no offense, that Asian kid who like the white kids were cheating off of, and it was like, you know, on the 11th grade level when you were in the sixth grade.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  It's so funny, because I ran it to one of my friends.

• 29:20Bill Maher?

  Do you play the violin?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  No, piano, though, I do. See, it's always one or the other. Not a physician, though. I'm neuroscientist, so we were close. But one of my childhood friends, I ran into him actually at a gay bar like years into my twenties. And he said, you know, I remember the most about you is when you used to hand. I signed a copy for you. I can show you my handwriting now. I write like a serial killer. Like the letters, they're all like all over the place. It looks like when people cut up, you know, they give out Miranda's letter.

• 29:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  He said, your handwriting was so impeccable and you would always write in the margins. So, but like with my first book, you know, I wanted that to be a guide for parents in terms of how to protect your kids from this ideology that's basically going to try and take them from you. And with this book was very much with the goal of helping parents anticipate what is coming down the line in terms of not just social media and screens, which we're seeing how devastating that's been for children, especially and adults. But then also these other technologies and these other social changes that are happening. Because I don't think, one, I don't want to see society go through the same thing that we've gone through with social media, which is that it seemed benign at first. But now, I think it's done so much damage. And I think there are some, obviously some positives to social media and the internet.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  And it's allowed us to be connected in some ways. But I really think it's done a lot of damaging things to mental health, to the relations between men and women, like with the sex recession. It's affecting everybody, whether you're single or married. Doesn't matter what age you are, if you're in the West or in the East or any developed country. And then also, I wanted anyone, regardless of whether they're married or single, to be able to take something away from the book as well. So I wrote it from that perspective of, I think this is someone, something that's going to affect everybody. Even if you don't want to date and you are perfectly happy with your sexlessness, there is, there are still other things going on beneath the surface that are going to affect people. And hormonally too, because I know you're a big health freak like I am, and things like endocrine disruptors and toxins.

• 31:13Bill Maher?

  I mean, drinking and smoking pot, though, I mean, freak is a little. But you said you were in a gay bar.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:20Bill Maher?

  Is that where you hang out? Are you gay?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  No, I'm not gay. When I was younger, all my friends were gay men. I used to work in the makeup industry, that's why all my friends were gay men. But no, I'm straight.

• 31:30Bill Maher?

  Okay. Yeah, I don't understand the masturbation thing with the boys because like, yes, it was always a great backup plan. But I never didn't understand, to this very day, that sex is better.

• 31:48Bill Maher?

  It seems like that's a big change also. That they've transitioned to this moment where it's not the backup plan, it's the plan.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:01Bill Maher?

  And maybe that's because they, if you've never had sex, maybe you don't know that it's better. And, I mean, where does that line lead to on the historical chart?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Well, I think we'll start with where it comes from. I think, again, like the early exposure to pornography, but then also Gen Z in particular has such a high rate of anxiety. So basically, like, all of Gen Z has an anxiety disorder. Over half of Gen Z has a mental health diagnosis. And of them, 90% have anxiety. So if you are super self-conscious, you don't have a lot of confidence, especially if what you're seeing online or in real life, your experiences with the opposite sex aren't positive. And especially for boys, they're terrified of being me-toed, having their lives destroyed if they approach the wrong woman, or having a woman get really angry and disgusted with you. And, you know, just to make you feel badly about having the guts to go and talk to someone. They're gonna say, okay, well, why am I gonna bother doing this?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  And then you also have these male influencers who are having their moments saying, oh, don't, you know, feminism is terrible. I do think feminism has gone too far in some ways, but of course, women are equal to men. So, but they're saying like, you know, women don't deserve any equal rights or whatever. Like, you just have a harem of these ladies and they should sit at home and serve you. So, these boys. That type, that type, yeah. There are a bunch of them.

• 33:25Bill Maher?

  What do they call it? Man's menistir?

• 33:29Bill Maher?

  Right, okay, but, I mean, so they're putting out the idea that guys should have a harem? Because it's not easy to get a harem.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  What's funny, what's funny too is that they, it's not funny actually, but they draw on evolutionary psychology and biology to justify their ideas. Like, so basically like, men like lots of sex with lots of women, so they should be able to have sleep with as many women as they want. Whereas women, their chastity, their sexual chastity is the most important thing. So, women, you know, you as a man can sleep with as many women as you want, but your woman needs to be a virgin. And, you know, she just needs to pop up babies for you. And so, that I think is adding also to this dynamic, because if you have young boys who are taking this, internalizing this ideology, and say they don't have a father or a strong male role model in their life, they think this is what healthy masculinity is.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  And if you have feminism in the education system telling them that men are toxic and men are bad, and they say, "Well, I'm a boy. I don't want to be bad, so I'm gonna listen to anyone who's telling me that masculinity is good, even if it is such an extreme interpretation of it." And so then what you see is, when they are dating, they're gonna treat their female partners a certain way. The women are gonna say that, "I don't like this," right? And understandably, I think feminism has done something to young women too, which has made them hate men. So, in terms of the feedback to sex diction, I was not expecting this at all, because trans activists are a whole other level of lunacy. I was not expecting that type of backlash from both men and women. So I feel like I did a pretty fair job in terms of calling out both sexes and saying, when they're being ridiculous in the book,

• 35:02Speaker 02

  and saying, you know, "You guys are taking this too far, or you're going this too far in this direction."

• 35:05Bill Maher?

  You're always doing the right thing when you're getting it from both sides. And that goes for sex too. No, I'm joking. Well, I mean, that is one thing apropos to this discussion, that I think cannot be emphasized enough, and maybe cannot be understood ever by a woman, just the way we can't understand you fully. But... The difference between how much we are OK with many partners, and that is just not what your biology leads you to. And that, I mean, that is, I guess, the danger of pornography. Now, maybe if I say, "Look me in the eye and tell me, is it unhealthy for me to look at pornography at all?"

• 35:49Bill Maher?

  Even though what I look at is fairly benign, fairly vanilla, it is still the idea that there is, you know, this inexhaustible supply of attractive women, acting extremely sexy. And, you know, no real life could live up to that.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, but I wouldn't trade my real life for that.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:15Bill Maher?

  I understand that. I mean, for me, I feel like I can live side by side with that, let's call it a hobby, and my reality. But maybe you would. I've also read people who say, "No, you should give up porn altogether." Because as long as you have that idea in your head, that this exists, this harem of hot women who are just there to please you and, you know, that's what, I mean, porn girls, they're just like hookers. They're trying to make you come, you know.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  That's their sole purpose.

• 36:48Bill Maher?

  That's their sole purpose, and they're good at it. And it would be impossible for any woman or literally any group of women to live up to that. So I could see how a young mind, that could be bad. Now, maybe you tell me it's also bad for me. I feel like I can live with that dichotomy, but maybe I'm wrong.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  I would say, I mean, the fact that you had your first sexual experience prior to porn or online porn is a positive thing. And it doesn't sound like it's affecting you in your day to day life or your relationships. I would say for men now more broadly, and I don't do clinical work anymore, so for people listening or watching, you know, talk to a mental health professional. Don't base your relationship decisions on what I'm saying on Bill Maher's podcast. I would say, you know, if your partners are saying, giving you feedback that they are either uncomfortable or they're not, you know, enjoying sex with you, or, I mean, these are some things I hear from women who say like they are having sex with men who are, they use the term porn sick. So basically, men who consume way too much porn. These men are trying things during sex, like I mentioned, you know, strangulation, which is very common with Gen Z.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Or they are doing abusive things, like spitting on them, calling their names. And women are like, what are you doing? That's awful. And if you, as a man, are doing these behaviors and you don't think that, you should maybe ask or just not do them in the bedroom, or you think that this is something enjoyable, to ask yourself, where did you get these ideas from?

• 38:15Bill Maher?

  I think it's deeper than that. Why do you like it? Like I was saying before, again, this is one of my specials, this was the ending bit about how even in my fantasies, I just, you know, choking, I don't, I don't get it. Like, oh, you can't breathe, sexy. No, I don't get it. Or, or like, even, but I never even like, I would never want to like tie somebody up.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:40Bill Maher?

  Tie somebody up. No, I want your hands on me.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:43Bill Maher?

  Let me, let me, let me hip you to how that's gonna make this better.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:49Bill Maher?

  Let's use those hands. It's not like, I don't, I can, I can, I don't need to tie you up to control you. I can do that with my dick, as I should. The only way a woman should ever feel pain in bed, and not a terrible pain.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:03Bill Maher?

  Just, you know, oh baby, it hurts so good.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:06Bill Maher?

  Sometimes love don't feel like it should.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Well, I talk in Sex Sanction about how, you know, for people who genuinely do enjoy being abused during sex or abusing their partner, usually that stems from some form of abuse in childhood in that it's unresolved trauma that they're living through or going back to because they're trying to either make sense of what happened or to feel like this terrible thing that happened to them was not so bad. But in terms of, say, choking, I mean, it is potentially fatal. And people like it because when you cut off the airflow to the brain, you get a high, right? Because your brain cells dying, that's what it is. And even if you don't pass out necessarily, like that's not good for your brain. There are actually studies showing that there is, choking during sex can lead to inflammation of the brain,

• 39:53Speaker 02

  which is associated with mental health issues down the road. And just to give your audience an idea of how common this is, so among female university students, Let me get these statistics right. So, half of them have had an experience of being choked during sex. A third of them were choked the last time they had sex. And a third of them have been choked more than five times during sex. Versus, that's only 7% of university men. So this is very much more like a men, men doing this to women.

• 40:20Bill Maher?

  Oh, of course.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  So many men will say, "Oh, women want it." But I think they're just doing that from porn.

• 40:26Bill Maher?

  What, what that is, is what, it's not what women want. What women want is the guy they want to like them.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:34Bill Maher?

  They do things because, you know, they're young and they want this guy to be into them. Trust me, I've heard this many times, women saying, "You know, I'm into girls." And I always say, "No, you're not. No, you're not. You're just saying that because you think I want to hear that."

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because if they're with a guy who says, "I'm not into that."

• 40:58Bill Maher?

  Prove it.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. If a guy says, "I'm not into that," then they're like, "Okay, I'm not into it," you know?

• 41:02Bill Maher?

  Right. And, and the choking thing, you know, yes, okay, I guess there could be real serious physical problems down the road. But the problem is much more, why do you find that attractive? And by the way, let me just say,

• 41:19Bill Maher?

  choking is different. Putting hands on someone's neck is not choking them. The neck is a very erogenous zone. I mean, I think every square inch of a woman is. I mean, I'm a flaming heterosexual.

• 41:34Bill Maher?

  So, you know, to put your, your hands on somebody's throat, but that's not choking. That's the same as you would caress them anywhere. But if you actually get pleasure out of giving pain, that's a problem. That, that's where, to me, the ref has got to throw the flag. Because there's something wrong with you then. There's something, you are, you are there not for the pleasure. Sex itself should be the pleasure. You know, you shouldn't need this extra dimension, "Ooh, it's sex and I'm making someone cry." You know?

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on the intention, because I think there are some men who do it also because they have had female partners in the past who have said they liked it. So they think, well, I'm not really into this, but women seem to like it, so I'm gonna do it.

• 42:21Bill Maher?

  Again, those women were lying because they thought the men wanted to hear that.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Which is so crazy, because this whole trend is really about both sides pretending that they want something that they don't actually like.

• 42:31Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, I mean, look, men are the seed of the bad shit. I would absolutely concur, but women could do a better job, too, of this kind of thing. I mean, you know, you let down the whole gender when you pretend that you like this stuff, because that is gonna encourage the guy to think, oh, they do like it. I mean, he's young, dumb, and full of cum. I mean, he literally doesn't know his ass from the elbow, so he's probably gonna buy that and think, oh, they do. And then, of course, they see it on porn, and, you know, there is a lot of spitting in porn, which I hate. I don't like spit, to begin with. I don't know what, I mean, I get it that it's involved with sex in some ways, but I

• 43:16Bill Maher?

  have to look at it, you know? I don't, I've never been a fan or engaged in, like, food. Some people, you know, mix food, they lick shit off each other's, like...

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:27Bill Maher?

  I wouldn't even have food before sex. That's my big rule. Sex first, then food. People do it backwards in this country. I've said it on this show many times. They do it backwards. You shouldn't eat dinner and then fuck. It's disgusting.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get nauseated.

• 43:40Bill Maher?

  You're nauseated, your body is spending all the energy digesting the food. You should do it after. That's when it makes sense. You've earned it.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  But then the problem is, the men are probably gonna be like, hey, I'm gonna go home now, forget dinner.

• 43:57Bill Maher?

  Right. I mean, you have to have somebody who you want to have dinner with after, but, you know, you know, it's funny, because we do talk about all these changes, but then we also do see a lot of society doing what they always have done. I mean, Deborah, The Bachelor is still on. Or maybe it's not. Didn't they just cancel Look at the Chick with the throwing chairs or something?

• 44:26Bill Maher?

  But you know what I mean? Like, there's still a lot of very traditional, even like the celebrities who everybody looks up to. You know, they basically like, you know, they get married to the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs. You know, they just, they're not...

• 44:44Bill Maher?

  The gravitational pull of who we actually really are

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, what we want.

• 44:49Bill Maher?

  is a very strong

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:51Bill Maher?

  antidote to the craziness. I mean, you can say gender is just a, what's the term?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Non-binary or spectrum.

• 44:58Bill Maher?

  Well, a cultural or a...

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Oh, socially constructed.

• 45:01Bill Maher?

  A construct. But, you know, we are who we are, and it is biology, and it is science, and it is lizard brain, and it is there.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:13Bill Maher?

  And you can, you can just kind of argue your way out of it so far. And then we are who we are. And that's when you see, oh, look, you know, put a ring on it.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:24Bill Maher?

  And, you know, like, they just, they just, it's like, you know, they're just, water goes downhill. You're just gonna fall back into what you... You can't escape most of that.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Reality, yeah, yeah. And that's the other thing with a lot of the technologies around dating and relationships. I think also a lot of like the ideology promoted by woke-ism or feminism is, it helps in the short term in that it helps us to self-soothe. Say, when we're stressed out, like the distraction of being on screens or being on dating apps. It makes you feel like, okay, I'm doing something to help my personal life or to meet people or to connect. But the reality is, it's not the same as actual in-person connection. It's not the same as actually hearing someone's voice or having a face-to-face conversation. And so I do think that's why people feel even worse after, right? Where you feel even more lonely, you feel more disconnected, more alienated.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  And so even though these distractions help us short-term, I think long-term, this is why we're in a place where we're so divided now. But I wanted to ask you, and not about your personal life, but just more broadly, being in Hollywood, what is dating like here? Because I know in large cities, like, say, New York, it is, I've heard it's just atrocious. Like, it's so difficult. And I imagine, especially being in entertainment and being in this ecosphere, like, it must be so much harder. Because I hear from people around the world about how hard dating is nowadays.

• 46:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, I certainly hear it from every woman I know.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Not the men, though.

• 46:56Bill Maher?

  I mean, I mean, do I know a lot of men who are dating? I mean, you know, most of my friends are married. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm 70. A lot of them have grandkids. I'm the one who's still single. But I'm not actively, I mean, I'm not dating. I mean, I'm happy. I don't get specific about my personal life.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  That's really fine.

• 47:19Bill Maher?

  I'm good.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:20Bill Maher?

  I'm good. But I'm not out there trying to hustle up, you know, dates. So I don't know. What I know is what I hear from so many women who, yes, their complaints are legion and, and just appalling. It's appalling. I, I think it's the, a lot of it is, we talked about social media, but the actual dating apps. I mean, the idea that you could scroll through like an exhaustive supply of women. I mean, from someone who was, when I was out there like trying to meet girls in bars, I mean, first of all, there was no targeting of the audience. You went to a bar, maybe there's somebody in that bar who you would get along with, maybe there's not.

• 48:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, it was just complete potluck.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:07Bill Maher?

  Now it's like, I guess, somewhat targeted because you can see them, you can read their profile, whatever. But the idea that you can just like scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, is just, it's just, it's, the human brain can't do that. Certainly not the male brain. And so I don't, I mean, the fact that they can do that, that it's that easy, to me, what the stories I hear from women indicate to me that there's too much supply, shall we say, of that, of women. So guys don't feel the need to treat women with any sort of respect. Or, you know, I'll just scroll to the next one.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:48Bill Maher?

  You know, I just met you. Do you want to go home with me? No? Okay, I'll scroll to the next one. Maybe I'll do better there. It's just this, this numbers game.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:57Bill Maher?

  That seems completely crazy. That's what I hear.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  Because that, to me, that, that's my sense with many large cities, especially when the sex ratio is imbalanced and there are more women in that city than men, because when there are fewer men, they are going to be calling the terms in terms of the relationships or what the, the...

• 49:22Speaker 02

  How things are gonna go, basically, like you said, if they want casual sex, they're gonna say, "This is what I want. If you're not gonna give it to me, I'm gonna go elsewhere." And then, I think also, I imagine the men in this city are so financially successful that they also have their pick of the lot. So that adds to it, where now you have more women, and then all women are fighting for this very small pool of successful men.

• 49:42Bill Maher?

  That's the big problem. And I think that's always been a problem to a degree, and ever more so, which is that, yes, it's nature. And when walruses mate, you know, I'm picking on walruses. I'm not, I'm sure you know this better than I. You probably took biology more seriously than I did. But some species, or maybe many of them, the males fight, and the women, the females of the species, they want the alpha.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:15Bill Maher?

  You know, that's just nature. And here, you can be alpha in a place like LA because you're great-looking, because, you know, we suck all the great-looking people out of the country.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  People in LA are so beautiful. Whenever I come here, I'm always like, "Oh, yeah."

• 50:30Bill Maher?

  Yes, I mean, because people in Indiana, when they're beautiful, they go, "I gotta be in LA." You know, and the models are in New York. And, yeah, so it's crazy like that. Or you can be, and there's also like, it's like tens of zillions of rich people. I mean, everybody wants to live here. We got the weather, man. You know, as much as we try to fuck up this state, you know, you just cannot put a price on sunshine in February. You know, and also, everybody already lives here. You know, people who don't have to live here, live here.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:03Bill Maher?

  Like, the really big stars can live anywhere. They don't have to see their agent every week, trust me. If Jay-Z wants to do something, they'll come to him. He doesn't have to live in Bel-Air. He chooses to. They all do. It's LA, man. So, yes, there's just a lot, and there's so many nepo babies, and nepo wealth, and passed-on wealth, and, you know, so...

• 51:31Bill Maher?

  It's, I don't know.

• 51:34Bill Maher?

  When you go out in this town, it just, it doesn't look like anybody's really unhappy when you're in a restaurant. But they also look like they're all on the make in some way. And it's just this big game of musical chairs of, you know, and good luck finding that right hookup. Because, you know, maybe you will, but it just looks like everybody is, is sort of superficially trying to match with who on paper they would like the most. You know, your book, you talk about the sick three sixes guys?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Three sixes rule. So it's this idea that women should strive for a man who is over six feet tall, makes over six figures annually, and has a penis that is larger than six inches. So this is used as an illustration in the book.

• 52:31Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm five foot eight, but you know, as Meatloaf said, don't be sad because two out of three ain't bad.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  No, I don't, I don't think heights, I mean, there's an evolutionary reason for that, but I don't think height is a determining factor. Happiness or success in a relationship.

• 52:49Bill Maher?

  Did you see that movie? It was quite good. I liked it. I can't remember the name of it now, but Dakota Johnson played a, like a...

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Fifty Shades of Grey.

• 53:00Bill Maher?

  No, no, no, not that one. No, she played like, you know, someone who, who, I don't forget the word for it, but she hooked people up. You know, she wasn't a madam.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Matchmaker?

• 53:12Bill Maher?

  Matchmaker, yeah. A modern kind of matchmaker. And one of the plot points in the movie is that men these days are having operations on their legs.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:24Bill Maher?

  Because they wanna get up to the sixth level.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:28Bill Maher?

  And that women, because they've seen or read, I've certainly read this, that some astounding number of women will immediately swipe left

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:40Bill Maher?

  on anyone who's not six foot tall, which I think...

• 53:43Speaker 02

  Or they set the filter there. So they don't even see those profiles.

• 53:45Bill Maher?

  Don't even see them. Okay. So for all the women who are like always up our ass about how superficial we are about big tits, fuck you.

• 53:56Bill Maher?

  Your legs are our tits, okay? You're no better, obviously, and you're used to be.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:01Bill Maher?

  And I don't think most women are like that, but maybe that's just the women who are on social.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  I think there's an extreme, but that standard in terms of wanting the highest, top-tier male specimen in terms of whom you're willing to date, I think that broader mentality has spread. Because if you ask, as research for the book, and I'm asking, I was asking men and women about their experiences with dating, and men will typically reference their height.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny, I've never spoken to you before, and I think this is starting to affect me.

• 54:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  No, no, it's totally fine. I knew, it's totally fine. I'm just, if I'm stumbling with my words.

• 54:40Bill Maher?

  You're hardly stumbling with your words. You haven't even sat back. I mean, I don't think you're in danger of going nuts here, Deborah, I really don't.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  I just told you too, I'm like, I want to do a really good job with this interview, so.

• 54:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, you're doing a great job.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  So basically that.

• 54:57Bill Maher?

  This is heroin, by the way. Anyway, go ahead.

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• 55:59Speaker 02

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• 56:03Bill Maher?

  Really, you think you could get a contact high from this?

• 56:06Speaker 02

  I do.

• 56:06Bill Maher?

  I can barely get high from smoking it anymore. That's awesome. I wish I was a virgin like that.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  But yeah, men will reference their height in comparison to six feet. Instead of saying like, "I'm 5'10" or "5'11", they'll say, "I'm almost six feet tall", whereas a guy who's actually six feet tall or taller will say, "I'm 6'1", "6'2". So I've noticed this trend and it's the same like with women and how we feel the need to minimize, you know, our dress size or, you know,

• 56:35Speaker 02

  we'll say, what was I gonna say about this? I was gonna say, well, because...

• 56:41Bill Maher?

  I don't know, Stoner, what were you?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  In the last week, I will say in the last week, people have been wondering if I had breast implants and I know it's called a push-up bra, just for people watching. But to say we'll emphasize certain body parts...

• 56:55Bill Maher?

  What's the difference between a push-up bra and the miracle bra? Because I remember when the miracle bra came out. Do you remember the miracle, Maron? Did you have a miracle?

• 57:02Speaker 02

  It was more like a cone, I think, right?

• 57:03Bill Maher?

  I feel like it wasn't a miracle. I feel like we push the tits up and together and that's the miracle. Like, there's only so many ways you get...

• 57:12Speaker 02

  For women, that is a miracle.

• 57:13Bill Maher?

  It's not a miracle. We push the shit together. That's really it.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Greatest invention of all time.

• 57:20Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 57:23Speaker 02

  But yeah, so I think women are allowed to want what they want, just like men are allowed to want what they want. But in terms of those standards, if you're going into the dating pool and saying, "Okay, I'm not even gonna look at men who are not this height or who don't meet these criteria that are not necessarily reflective of happiness in a relationship", you're doing yourself in.

• 57:40Bill Maher?

  Right. Or, you know, look, men, if you said to me, like, if I was in the dating pool and you said, "Well, you have to look at women up to every age", I wouldn't do that either. I mean, we do also have the right to want what we want. You know, when you're in a restaurant, you have the right to send it back and say, "No, I wanted it well done", you know?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:04Bill Maher?

  Or, "I wanted it rare", sorry, whatever it is. I mean, so... Part of me is quick to condemn and say, "You superficial hussies." And the other part is like, you know, you gotta get what you like, or else you're gonna have to like what you get.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:21Bill Maher?

  And the problem is, there aren't that many. Here's the, the real problem isn't wanting the perfect guy. The real problem is, I feel like this attitude, and again, maybe this is just L.A., among women who, you're not, you don't have that much to offer. You know what you have to offer? You're cute. That's it, and you think that's all you need. You're not smart. You're not cool.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 58:43Bill Maher?

  You're not that interesting. You're vapid, and there's a thousand million chicks out here just like you. And you think you deserve, like, the upper echelon kinda guy? Read a book. Okay?

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I hear that from men a lot, too, where they say, you know, women are so entitled. They think, you know, they give these women a number, and they say these women think that they deserve tens, or that because they can hook up with a rich guy once, that they're gonna marry that type of guy, when really, they were just a hookup. You know, they can't actually track that, that status of a man. So, I see that. And I have a device in sex tension for both sexes, and I say it for women, you know, like, definitely, be a kind person, and have a personality. And just like men, be kind and, and, you know.

• 59:24Bill Maher?

  In, in the correction to when we treated women horribly, which is true, and it certainly has been needed, and certainly needs to keep going. But in that correction, there's been a lot over the last few decades of just blowing a lot of smoke up their ass about what an ethereal, perfect creature you are.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Body positivity. Dare I say?

• 59:49Bill Maher?

  Well, body positivity, that was an outrageous, you know, extension of that idea.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  If you're gonna say a man needs to be over six feet tall, you also gotta be bringing it.

• 1:00:02Bill Maher?

  But I mean, women were just told that just by being, you're awesome.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Bill Maher?

  Just you.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Princesses.

• 1:00:09Bill Maher?

  Just you. Just you, perfect the way you are. Just, I don't want to hear anything more. You're just fucking perfect because you're you. I mean, that attitude, I'm not exaggerating that. And no, no, that's certainly not what my generation thought about either sex. You know, you're not born perfect, okay? Get over yourself. You know, make yourself, you want to be with interesting people? Make yourself interesting.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Bill Maher?

  You know, you want to keep up with this conversation? And I mean, honestly, the number of women you could go out and, and again, this is LA, but you know, I know New York is supposedly somehow the greatest mecca of intellectualism. I lived there twice. I didn't see any difference as far as like the younger people and how smart they were. And they're into the same bullshit, okay? They're the same superficial glitter monkeys everywhere.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:06Bill Maher?

  And, you know, okay, you can complain about it, but you're not really doing a hell of a lot to make yourself all that interesting. And again, the number of women that I've seen in this town who are under 40, who can keep up in a conversation is not a lot.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:29Bill Maher?

  A few, but not a lot. And they all do seem to think that they should be with, you know, the CEO of, you know, some trillion dollar company and, you know, be flying on private jets and, you know, it's very much like American Idol, you know? Let's get, let's get past the part where I have to learn how to play music and get to the idol part. Just skip the past.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  Just give me the record deal.

• 1:01:54Bill Maher?

  Let me just marry the guy and then, you know, I'll learn. And then when we have a conversation, when he's talking to his boss, you know, I'll know what an IPO is.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Bill Maher?

  Because right now, I think it's some sort of UTI test.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  I write in the book about plastic surgery and how I think combined with social media and reality TV and just the fact that everyone is hyper competitive among their own sex and they're trying to so desperately get the best.

• 1:02:19Bill Maher?

  Looks maxing.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, to get the best partner possible. People are going through countless procedures now. Looks maxing, yeah, is very popular in young men.

• 1:02:29Bill Maher?

  Maybe I don't know what looks maxing is, but isn't looks maxing what people have always wanted to do, which was just, I mean, I feel like my whole life I've been looks maxing. I know it doesn't look like it, but like, I can't think of a time, certainly past when I got to puberty. Okay, when I was a kid, I cared about baseball cards and that was that. But once women were in the picture, I did everything I possibly could to look my best. Now, sometimes I was wrong and it was stupid and, you know, in high school I grew a beard and it didn't look good, but I could, so I did. But it was in my mind, max your look.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Bill Maher?

  You know, be the best looking version of yourself you can be.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  The beard shows testosterone, so you're on the right track.

• 1:03:16Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, if only I knew how to talk to a girl, maybe it would have helped.

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  But like.

• 1:03:24Bill Maher?

  But what's different now with looks maxing? Just the surgery?

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's hyper fixated on traits that are physical features that are seen as masculine or associated with high testosterone. So, a very strong brow ridge, very strong jawline.

• 1:03:37Bill Maher?

  For women?

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  No, no, for men, for men. Women do this too.

• 1:03:40Bill Maher?

  Looks maxing is only for men?

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  Mostly young men, yeah, and boys, in some cases prepubescent boys.

• 1:03:44Bill Maher?

  So that term refers to men?

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's even worse than I thought.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, whereas I do find most of the plastic surgery, like, I see young women, like in my hometown, I see plenty of even teenage girls who have a lot of work done, which is crazy to me. You know, they have a lot of injectables, yeah.

• 1:04:01Bill Maher?

  That's so ridiculous.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  It's really sad.

• 1:04:03Bill Maher?

  Well, because you're perfect at that age.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Bill Maher?

  You have to work hard not to be cute at 19, really.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Bill Maher?

  I mean, there are, people have done it. Don't get me wrong, I've seen it done. But, like, you can look at people sometimes who we come to know later in life, famous or not, and you see them, like, in middle age and, you know, they're no, they're no great lookers, you know. And then you see a picture of them at nineteen, you go, wow. They were cute. They actually were cute. You know, it's just nature. It's just, it's just our bodies are constantly making replicated cells of ourselves. Each time they make them, they make them a little worse. That's really what aging is.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Aging, the reason we look, you know, our age as we get older is because it's the body signaling to other partners that reproductive health is going down with age, right? Because you are not as fertile.

• 1:05:03Bill Maher?

  I mean, and this is certainly something about the psychology that must be going on in women's minds that I've thought about many times, which is so much, whether they, no matter how much they try to say we've reinvented humans, we haven't. And it is deep in the DNA of a woman to always be thinking, men are interested in the looks.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Because they are.

• 1:05:30Bill Maher?

  Because they are. And as I age, that diminishes. Now, I always try to tell my women friends, you know, you're worrying about nothing. There is a, this is a different world we live in. The cougars do very well out here. And lots of young guys like women who are forty. But I understand what they're talking about because I've often thought, I mean, I was a funny kid, you know, and I started doing comedy, I'm getting paid to be a comedian. Very funny, funny, funny, funny. What if as I got into my thirties, I got less funny?

• 1:06:10Bill Maher?

  What would that do to my mind, knowing that as I got through my late thirties, now I'm into my forties, and people don't just find me that funny anymore?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  And you can never get back to being as funny as you were in your twenties, no matter how hard you try.

• 1:06:24Bill Maher?

  Right, there's no comedy surgery. And even if there was, it doesn't really work.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Bill Maher?

  You know, as friend Liebowitz brilliantly once said, nobody looks at someone who's seventy-five with plastic surgery and goes, who's that thirty-five-year-old person?

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  And I get it, it's unfair, you know, and I imagine especially in this town.

• 1:06:45Bill Maher?

  Because I don't get less funny. I get more funny.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  And similarly for women who get more rich, I mean, if anything, it makes it harder for them to find a guy, right? Because women tend to appreciate a man who gets richer over time.

• 1:06:59Bill Maher?

  Maybe it gets harder to find a sincere guy.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Well, okay, yeah.

• 1:07:03Bill Maher?

  I don't think it gets harder to find a guy. I think money... One thing I've learned about life, people like money. They really do. Like you walk into a pla... like, when I was a kid, like, I always wanted to be, you know, James Bond, or like, some cool guy like that. And one of the great things about this time of my life is, you know, handing out like fifty, hundred dollar tips to like people when you're... It's like the greatest feeling in the world. I mean, it makes them feel good.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Bill Maher?

  But it makes, makes me feel like, oh, wow. That is like the coolest arrival thing I could do.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Bill Maher?

  Is just be that dude who like, gives the maître d' a little something on the sly, you know? It's just, people like money. They really do. I've never seen it not bring a smile to someone's face. So, I, you know, if a woman has money, I don't think that's a detriment. I think it's just, you have to do exactly what men do when we have money, which is always keep one eye open. That, is this, is this why this person likes me? And there, and by the way, I've certainly met and know men, I am not one of them, but I know them, who are like, totally okay with that. That doesn't, that doesn't insult them at all. In fact, they, they're, they're, again, not me,

• 1:08:27Bill Maher?

  but their view of that is, I feel good about that because I achieved this status with money, and that, and so it's kind of an affirmation of my success. That they like me for this, that I, you know, and, I mean, to me, it's still, I mean, a whore's a whore, Deb.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  But I imagine for most women who make lots of money, or make more than their male partners, they're keeping track in their mind, for sure. Like you said, they have one eye open. They're also not necessarily as attracted to those men as a man who makes more money than they do. Because when you see marriages in which women actually make more money than their husbands, there's a higher chance of divorce. There are all these other awful things that are associated with it that I discuss in the book.

• 1:09:13Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like there's more.

• 1:09:14Bill Maher?

  But that must be more and more common.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  Cheating on the male part. Yeah, no, it's becoming more common. One in seven marriages are actually women are primary breadwinners now.

• 1:09:22Bill Maher?

  And also, they're kicking ass in college in a way men are. Men have checked out.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Bill Maher?

  You know, you talk about, what's the word? I don't know for marrying up.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Hypergamy.

• 1:09:34Bill Maher?

  Exactly, I was testing you.

• 1:09:38Bill Maher?

  Hypergamy, which is the square root of the hypotenuse, by the way, for kids who are watching this, doing their geometry homework. No, hypergamy is involved here because the more men check out as far as academia, they graduate. Much fewer men now. I mean, men are the ones who need affirmative action now in college. I mean, women can't find guys to marry up to.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:10:11Bill Maher?

  There's a stat that we keep called the unemployed. But the definition of unemployed is you don't have a job, but you're looking for one. There's another stat, which has, I don't remember the number, but it's an astoundingly high number, like 7 million. That's not unemployed. It's not working and not looking.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:34Bill Maher?

  Not working and not looking. And it's something like 7 million men in this country.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  And 11 million unemployed jobs.

• 1:10:43Bill Maher?

  Who are very content to stay home with the Xbox.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah.

• 1:10:47Bill Maher?

  That's not attractive to a woman.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:10:50Bill Maher?

  Women do like achievement.

• 1:10:54Bill Maher?

  You know, they like... You know, it's

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  And it's not just the money. It's also just feeling like this person has ambition. They're moving towards something. They have joy in their life. If you, I imagine if you are sitting in front of a screen all day, playing video games, online betting, you have no goals, you don't get, you know, dressed. I don't imagine someone like to be very happy. And so if you're dating, I mean, someone like that's probably not even dating, but if they were, you don't really have as much to talk about.

• 1:11:21Bill Maher?

  But so many women are going out with guys like that. Is that because there's just nobody else?

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  I think so. I think in maybe some cases, those women may feel like they can help this person or want to. But in time, I really think that just leads to resentment over time. Or it's because like the messaging from society is, you know, women are doing so great, that's okay. You can be the primary breadwinner. You can take care of this man. He doesn't need to take care of you. That's sexist if you want a man to take care of you. I see a lot of that in young women. I feel really badly for them because I don't see that ending well. Because especially if you as a woman continue succeeding in life, which you likely will, because like you said, women are doing so well occupationally and in education, and they're out graduating men. And if you're with a guy like this who, if he's struggling with his mental health, say he has low testosterone, say he's got, say he's watching porn every day, multiple times a day,

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  so he has no motivation to do anything sexual or otherwise. I mean, that's not going to be a very good future for either of you.

• 1:12:17Bill Maher?

  I have seen in more than one movie, I can't think of what they are now. Not big movies, but movies, where there was this plot point where there's a couple and the husband, I think usually they're married. He's, he's not really working because he wants to make his dream of being in the band work. He's got a band. And he's mad at the wife who's like hocking him to like, get off your ass and get a job, do something. You don't believe in me. You know, the band, the band's gonna work, man. We're good. And

• 1:13:05Bill Maher?

  You know, if they put it in movies, I always feel like it must be true. That's how I always think about children. I don't have children. I worked very hard to never be around a child. But I see what it looks like from every single movie and television show. And it always looks the same, like a nightmare. Like a total nightmare. Where the kids don't respect their parents. They're yelling at them, they're cursing at them. They're doing things where I, they would just, my mother would just fucking kill me. You know?

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Bill Maher?

  So it must be true. And I feel like this must be true because they keep putting this into movies.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Well, at least that guy in the movie has a band, right? At least he's working towards something. He's not just sitting around like

• 1:13:41Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  doom scrolling all day long.

• 1:13:44Bill Maher?

  I feel like a band may be even worse. Because it gives you hope.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  The false, yeah.

• 1:13:48Bill Maher?

  It gives you hope. And, you know, your band is not, you know, could it? Yes, anything could happen.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  But you know, the other thing I would say is because there are fewer viable bachelors for women, there comes a point where a woman, if she does want to have kids, she has to choose. Either I have to pick from the available pool, which may mean I'm gonna be with a guy whom I'm not, is not really ideal, but I can have a child with him. Or she can go on her own. And I talk about reproductive technology in the book and how it gives this false premise of, like, I think if people want to do IVF, they want to freeze their eggs, that's perfectly fine, that's their choice. But I think it's important for people to be aware of what do these technologies actually involve? The fact that they do not have 100% success rate. And I think also young women are taught to ignore biology or that they can somehow override their biology, which is not true. And so this is what you have happening where women will get into, you know, their late 30s

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  or into their even early 40s and be surprised when their fertility is not the same because they weren't aware of this. And now, now they're trying to find a partner. So this is where you see also in the culture where I think women get shamed for that. But I don't think it's necessarily their fault. It's like, society's telling them, you have all the time in the world. Starting at teenage years when you're on the birth control pill, when you're put on the pill, say for other reasons than being sexually active, you, you, there's this illusion that women have as much time as they want. And then they get to this point where if they haven't found someone, now that single motherhood by choice is becoming more popular, where Women can, like I did as an experiment. You can go on the internet and buy, I didn't use it, but you can bisperm on the internet and impregnate yourself and have a baby on your own. And so this is what I see happening,

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  that both sexes are going to continue bifurcating. And instead of saying, hey, let's try to make things work and find solutions that are actually solving this problem of people not pairing up. We're seeing women going in this direction of saying, we don't need men. In fact, having a boyfriend is embarrassing or whatever. And I'm gonna have a baby on my own with technology.

• 1:15:43Bill Maher?

  Embarrassing.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  And men are saying, I'm gonna get me a sex robot and be done with dating.

• 1:15:48Bill Maher?

  Having a boyfriend is not embarrassing. It is gay. It's very gay.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  It's terminally online, as you said.

• 1:15:54Bill Maher?

  You saw that.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  I loved it, yeah.

• 1:15:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no, it's very gay to have a boyfriend these days. I think so. I mean, I mean that in a positive way, but, but, you know, can I say something that I think would be encouraging? Because we're talking about a lot of things that are, you know, frankly discouraging, but we're honest. Let's see, honesty is always better than non-honesty. But for all the women in their 30s who are like, and I've just seen so many freakouts, like, oh, my God, I'm 30, oh, gosh, call 911. Really, I'm 70.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Women are really hard on themselves.

• 1:16:27Bill Maher?

  They're very hard, and they're freaked out about this thing, about the, and what it is, is, as you said, the pool. The pool of people who are going to be attracted to you. When you go, when you delve down into it, because I think we often have thoughts and we delve down, why are we having these thoughts? Why are you freaking out about 30? Okay, let's look at it. What it really is, is you are worried that this pool of prospective applicants to be your Easter egg soulmate that you'll find, this perfect person that you're gonna hook up, match up with, and live happily ever after with,

• 1:17:10Bill Maher?

  this pool is diminishing because you're getting older. Now, I guess at some point that does happen. But I'm just here to tell you, from a man talking to other men, okay, and as one with no dog in this fight, because never had kids, never been married. Okay, I know how men think about this, and I know who they marry. So if you're 30, don't worry about it. That's when it begins to be attractive for most successful men to even consider you. Because... When they get married, they're not necessarily looking for the hottest chick they ever had.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  It's a life experience.

• 1:17:52Bill Maher?

  They're looking for someone who's not gonna be an asshole every day, not just, you know, just to be a fucking nudge about every stupid thing. Somebody you can have a conversation with. Someone who, if you're stuck in the airport for four hours, is not gonna be, what is the plane gonna leave? I don't know, bitch. I'm not the pilot either. Read a fucking book, okay? And that doesn't even begin in the twenties.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:18:20Bill Maher?

  Okay? So calm down. You're just at the beginning of when the people who you might wanna marry, the successful, look up to people. Now, the problem with that, you were talking about, you know, your sperm and, not your sperm, and not my sperm, just sperm in general, let's get that clear. But, um, I've seen this happen a lot. The, the women who are ready to marry in their thirties, when their fertility isn't the greatest, are marrying guys like in their fifties.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:18:55Bill Maher?

  Cause that's not like too old.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:58Bill Maher?

  But it's successful.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Bill Maher?

  And it's like not a, a age gap that makes people go, how dare you? And any age gap that makes you go, how dare you, fuck you. You know, where happiness is, just go with it. But, okay. So now you've got a woman

• 1:19:17Bill Maher?

  with not the optimum

• 1:19:20Bill Maher?

  situation.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  Overian reserve.

• 1:19:21Bill Maher?

  Exactly the word that was, just on the tip of my tongue, Deborah.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Number of eggs and half.

• 1:19:26Bill Maher?

  We're like, we finish each other's sentences. Overian reserve. My favorite band, by the way, that plays at the Roxy. Overian reserve, great early stuff. No, okay, so, overian reserve for the woman, and then the guy is entering the age of not great.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, chromosomal abnormalities, we'll say.

• 1:19:46Bill Maher?

  Again, right on the tip of my tongue.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Second favorite band.

• 1:19:49Bill Maher?

  So, second favorite, they're on the bill together, they're touring this summer.

• 1:19:54Bill Maher?

  And so you put those together, and what do you have?

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  Diminished fertility.

• 1:19:59Bill Maher?

  Again, we keep coming back to the theme of You can't quite just by decree change human nature and change how people are and change how biology works and change how science works.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Bill Maher?

  You just can't do it.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  I totally agree.

• 1:20:16Bill Maher?

  And they think they can.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, well, and I get it too. I mean, I don't want to fault anyone for, say, you know, like I was saying with plastic surgery, trying to look younger than you are. I think it's very understandable why women go this route because there's a lot of pressure in terms of the way you look and to look young and to be as attractive as possible. And I mean, men are undergoing plastic surgery too. And my point in pointing this out is just to say that, like you said, you know, men actually don't care as much, I think, as women think. And women don't care as much, definitely about looks. But even I'd say in terms of how much money you make, if you're a decent person and you're kind and there are all these other things that can help be supportive of your partner.

• 1:20:55Bill Maher?

  My, I think you're a bitch because my AI girlfriend tells me I look great.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Perfect the way you are. But then also.

• 1:21:04Bill Maher?

  That's a big problem in society.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Oh, it is.

• 1:21:07Bill Maher?

  Let's talk about that, man.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Can I finish this point?

• 1:21:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  But I was just gonna say with regard to the fertility issues, like you said, I think if you can become, if you want to have, like, I don't think everyone has to have kids. But if someone wants kids, they should prioritize that, both men and women. Because even if you're healthy, you can get to a point where you realize you're having a harder time finding someone with whom you'd like to have children. And even if you do find someone, you might find that you're having difficulties because you cannot get pregnant for whatever reason. It might be the woman or male, female or male factor infertility or both sexes. And as I mentioned with, you know, the endocrine disruptors, I think that's a big piece of it too in terms of the food we're eating, our water supply, that the fact that there's pharmaceutical waste in there and things like.

• 1:21:49Bill Maher?

  And where?

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  In the water supply. So there are things like birth control.

• 1:21:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  Diet as a pan, which is an anxiety medication.

• 1:21:58Bill Maher?

  Endocrine disruptors.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then also like plastics and things like that. Feminizing toxins in the environment.

• 1:22:05Bill Maher?

  You gotta have a filter, man.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, for sure. But it's so hard to get away from, right?

• 1:22:10Bill Maher?

  It's impossible.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  You can't fully get away from it 100%.

• 1:22:13Bill Maher?

  I mean, they find plastics in polar bears.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 1:22:17Bill Maher?

  You know, it's in the sky. You can't filter the sky.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  And it's in our reproductive organs, too. So it's not only affecting the current generation, it's also affecting.

• 1:22:25Bill Maher?

  So you never had kids?

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:22:27Bill Maher?

  And never got married?

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:22:28Bill Maher?

  Oh. So, but you're open to it?

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:32Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Although I would say children, I'm.

• 1:22:34Bill Maher?

  It must be hard for you to find someone to marry up. You're attractive, you're brilliant, you know, you're successful. Like, what guy can step to you?

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  And in terms of having kids, previously, I wanted, like, I love children. But I, writing this book, I'm terrified now. This is not a world I want to bring children into.

• 1:22:55Bill Maher?

  I mean, either, they're horrible.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  We need to seriously fix things.

• 1:22:57Bill Maher?

  They were horrible, before, they were horrible. Now, I mean, the parents have really fucked them up. The parents did a double whammy. They fucked up their own lives and their kids' lives by being too gentle parenting. By being too indulgent. They ruined their own lives because their kids controlled the parent's lives. The parent is the chauffeur, the parent is, you know, the helicopter parent. They're cunts, they have no, none of their own lives. My parents had their own lives because, like, they wouldn't even consider the fact that they had to, like, make do for everything I wanted to do. I was on my own, you know, not completely, appropriately. But now, parents, so they fucked up their life in that way.

• 1:23:41Bill Maher?

  And they fucked up the kids' lives, who need more independence.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think most parents mean well. And especially in something like, I'm very critical of screens. And I think parents were giving their kids devices, like phones and tablets, thinking it's educational, it's for safety reasons. But it's, you know, it's just wild, the effects that it's had.

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  We've gone too far in that direction, like you said. I think in the future, what's gonna happen is people are gonna have to make a choice. Like, I'm all about solutions, too. I think it's important to try and not just focus on the doomsday scenario that's in front of us, but to say, how can we avoid these pitfalls? Right? We need to acknowledge that this is the direction we're going in.

• 1:24:15Bill Maher?

  But how do you?

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  And choose to go a more analog way, when possible.

• 1:24:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I mean, there is that trend. The kids are, not all of them, or probably most of them, but there is a definite movement toward going back to pre-phone. They, a good number of them do get it, but it's fucked them up. And they don't want any part of it anymore.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  I have to say, Gen Z is a very intelligent generation. The kids I've talked to, they're very smart. They're like, they're aware of this stuff.

• 1:24:43Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  They can, they see it. It's just that's all they know, and they're surrounded by it constantly. That's very difficult to break out of. Because they can't say, oh, I remember a time when we didn't have smartphones. I remember a time when we didn't have the internet.

• 1:24:56Bill Maher?

  No, they're not stupid. They just have been indoctrinated into a lot of super far-left bullshit.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Although I would say younger Gen Z, like the ones who are still in high school-ish, like 18 and younger, because they went through COVID differently than older Gen Z. Older Gen Z was already in university, so they had more freedom. Although Gen Z in general tends to be more parentified, like you said, not parentified, rather, helicoptered. So they're a bit more anxiety-driven, they need their parents a little bit more. They're not meeting those standards of independence in the same way that previous generations were. But I would say the younger Gen Z'ers are much more skeptical because they saw the hypocrisy of COVID. So that's one of, I guess, good things potentially of social media is that they could see, look at, look at the contrast of what certain people are saying, and then what's actually bearing out. They're able to access more information and the news from all angles,

• 1:25:46Speaker 02

  as opposed to just what, like, one source or one ideology is saying.

• 1:25:50Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, sometimes the information is good, and sometimes they look at TikTok and don't, don't know anything more than Israelis kill babies, all Jews are bad. I mean, they get some really...

• 1:26:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, the polarization has definitely gone worse.

• 1:26:05Bill Maher?

  They get some really fucking bad ideas. And they're too... Lazy, or their parents or teachers are too lazy to point them in a much more balanced direction. Or they believe the same bullshit. So, you know, I mean, maybe in the science realm, it's better, but in the political realm, it's bad.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  Well, we've yet to see, because the science denial is so bad in terms of, even like, pure biology, you would think would be acceptable and should not be controversial. I don't know that we're ever gonna get back from that. I hope one day, but I think the public also just is understandably skeptical.

• 1:26:40Bill Maher?

  It's amazing to me that somebody like you, who to me just speaks common sense and science and is straight arrow, I mean, piano playing, just like brilliant, we get it, and yet, I bet you there's a lot of people, because you said The Times attacked you, and tried to get me to throw you under the bus, who, for them, you're just some sort of right-winger. Because you won't go, the same thing they say with me, and I'm not.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Because I'm saying that girls shouldn't be cutting off their breath.

• 1:27:10Bill Maher?

  Right, just because I won't go along with the nonsense, I won't go along with the crazy, I am somehow, in your view, you want to put me in this other category, and I've said this before, like, they've driven a lot of people, like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, people who are not conservative people, who are actually liberal heroes for a long time, they've driven them into the conservative side, because they were so, like, unacceptably not super woke, just because they wouldn't go along with the bullshit. And they're not gonna do it to me, I don't think they're gonna do it to you. You know, you're not gonna get me onto your side, but you know what, you're not gonna

• 1:27:53Bill Maher?

  stop me from calling you out, when you're crazy, because there is a lot of crazy. Ask Donald Trump, it got him elected.

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  But also what I find interesting about, like, extreme progressives, is they ignore all this other stuff that would, for an average person, they would say, yeah, this person is at least balanced or reasonable, and they just, they want to put you in the crazy category, so it's easier just to dismiss everything you say.

• 1:28:18Bill Maher?

  So like when you do media, probably like the only ones who will have you. See, this is their little game. The only ones that'll have you when you get ostracized by the stupid woke of the very far left are the conservative outlets. Like, so, you know, they won't have you on MSNBC because...

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  I don't believe that women have penises.

• 1:28:41Bill Maher?

  Right. I mean, I believe there's such a thing as trans women. I just think it's a slightly different category than biological women. And that's just logical. Okay, so if you believe that, they won't put you on anywhere like that. So you have to do Fox News. And then they say, oh, she's a right-winger. Look at her, she's on Fox News. Yeah, because you wouldn't have me. Right? Isn't that the game they play?

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have to say, though, like, I'm so grateful for conservative media because when I first started my writing as a journalist.

• 1:29:09Bill Maher?

  Right, but...

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  I was totally, I mean, left, I wouldn't say all liberal media outlets. I mean, I write for the Melbourne Mail in Canada, which is, would be considered like a left-leaning outlet. But that's one of very few that will still have me. And so conservative media, they know we don't agree about everything, but they've always been very open-minded to me and very...

• 1:29:26Bill Maher?

  Does that happen in your social life? Like, are there...

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:30Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Bill Maher?

  Are there men who like won't go near you because you're somehow sick? Really?

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  I find...

• 1:29:37Bill Maher?

  That's amazing.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  On average, right, when we look at between men and women, men tend to be more right-leaning and women tend to be more progressive. And it's only with marriage that women tend to become more conservative. But I've experienced, I mean, with friends, with men I've dated. But it's not really surprising. I think that's just an artifact of the culture we're in.

• 1:29:55Bill Maher?

  Because usually it would work the other way around. Usually it would be the man who would be more conservative and the woman who would be like, I can't be with this guy. In fact, I did a thing about this about a year ago because somebody on some...

• 1:30:10Bill Maher?

  You know, dating show, maybe it was The Bachelorette. And she was telling her friends that she couldn't be with this guy because, like, it wasn't even that outrageous. It wasn't outrageous at all. He just like didn't have an opinion on trans. It was like, you know, I hope it works out for you. And that wasn't good enough for her. You know, because that's how the woke are. You have to be fully on board, or else you're a monster.

• 1:30:40Bill Maher?

  So, but usually, again, it's the guy who's more conservative. I find it interesting that you found situations where you were the conservative and the guy, who I'd like to call the pussy.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  Not a real man.

• 1:30:55Bill Maher?

  Not a real man.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  I'm kidding.

• 1:30:57Bill Maher?

  Couldn't even bear that.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I wouldn't say that. I'm probably more like a centrist, like a moderate.

• 1:31:03Bill Maher?

  Exactly, like me, yes.

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  Old school liberal, but, yeah. Yeah, but I mean, it is what it is.

• 1:31:12Bill Maher?

  All right, so, AI.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  Yes, right.

• 1:31:16Bill Maher?

  Man, I won't have it on my phone.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  At all.

• 1:31:20Bill Maher?

  I got it on a second phone. I don't want it in my phone.

• 1:31:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:31:26Bill Maher?

  I don't want it, because once it's in your phone, it knows everything about you.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:30Bill Maher?

  It knows every picture. It knows how big my dick is.

• 1:31:36Bill Maher?

  Poor bastard.

• 1:31:39Bill Maher?

  It, it just, it knows everything. I don't want that.

• 1:31:45Bill Maher?

  And I also don't want, I, it's, I almost cannot train it, the limited version I have, to not be personal.

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  Because it's trying to get at you that way.

• 1:32:00Bill Maher?

  And it, I just keep explaining, it doesn't work on my generation. I'm not a marine, okay? But I'm not a fucking pussy either, okay? So, I, I don't need to, and I did a thing on this one, too. Everything in my life has to kiss my ass. You know, I, I got this ring, the Aura ring. I'm not married, folks, I just have a fucking ring to, I like it on this finger, but it tells, it's, you know, it tells you like how you slept. I just want the facts. And it won't give me that. It just has to comment on my sleep last night. You know, and buck me up. You know, so you didn't get such a good sleep last night. You'll get it better tomorrow night. Hey, shut the fuck up. I don't want to give your opinion about my sleep.

• 1:32:44Bill Maher?

  I don't want to, I don't need to be bucked up.

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  It's a personal cheerleader.

• 1:32:48Bill Maher?

  It's a personal, everything does it. I have this thing that tells me how the, you know, the air is inside the house and outside the house. Congratulations, you've achieved excellent air quality. Thank you so much. You know what, I worked hard for that award. I appreciate that very much. I closed the window. You know, I don't need all this

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Constant pep talk.

• 1:33:11Bill Maher?

  Personal affirmation.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:12Bill Maher?

  But apparently that generation does. And AI, I feel like, is just the ultimate example of that. And I certainly have talked to a lot of people, not my gen, my generation. Excuse me, who, you know, somebody was telling me recently. They actually used the phrase, my best friend said, I have eight different conversations about, like, all the different aspects of her life going on at one time. I feel like this is just really bad for society, way worse than what even social media was.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  I've heard of people having eight different AIs, like a different one for different reasons. Like, one is your best friend that you talk to about with movie, about, talk to.

• 1:33:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, this is exactly what she was saying.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. I'm like, one's a romantic, one is like a mentor.

• 1:34:02Bill Maher?

  Yes, eight different AIs.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  Phew, no, I'm terrified about that because it's so realistic, too. It is so, it really feels like you are talking to another human being, even though it's a machine.

• 1:34:14Bill Maher?

  And also, if you have an AI girlfriend or boyfriend, another bit I did about, I mean, this, I was just quoting the whole thing from this woman, long profile in the New York Times, about this woman who had this AI boyfriend. She was married.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Bill Maher?

  You saw it?

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  I've, yeah.

• 1:34:33Bill Maher?

  And she had a, I forget his name, but they showed the picture that created of him. He was attracted by it, to say the least. But there were such things as, you know, she was able to program him to, like, for example, always

• 1:34:50Bill Maher?

  Finish every sentence with emojis. Positive emojis, which he did.

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  Like your O ring?

• 1:34:56Bill Maher?

  His name was Leo.

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:34:58Bill Maher?

  And Leo dutifully did that. And, you know, he would address her as my queen. This could be, of all the things that are threatening us, global warming, nuclear weapons, war, this could be the worst. Really, this like, this seductiveness of AI to kiss your ass. I feel like is, is, it's a perfect storm combined with the fragility of that generation, who needs constant affirmation. And then you create this device, and we've already seen it convince people to kill themselves.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:42Bill Maher?

  But it is, you know, to your book point, it's just another thing that's gonna make human contact obsolete.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it sounds crazy now, and I think the average person probably has a hard time wrapping their head around it, especially if they haven't tried it yet. But AI is being so widely implemented in our lives, even the non-sexual, non-romantic chatbots. I think there is some utility there, if you wanna use it in terms of, just to help organizational skills, or give you some ideas, right? Although I generally, I think there is something very special about ideas that are generated from a human being, you know, and like, especially your creative, right? There's something that seems very much like, I don't know, not human and very mechanical. Even if it seems the same, it's not the same.

• 1:36:29Bill Maher?

  No, it's not human.

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  So when people start using this technology for intimate relationships, or even friendships.

• 1:36:36Bill Maher?

  Because.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  It will tell you, like you said, what you wanna hear. It's gonna be very easy to slide down that slope. And I really believe there will come a point where we are, I mean, people are already so engrossed with their phones. Why wouldn't you prefer this object that's gonna tell you everything you wanna hear?

• 1:36:50Bill Maher?

  That's the key word, prefer. This is the great danger to me, is that human relationships, by their very nature, there is some friction. Now, one reason I never got married is, you know, married people, people in long-term relationships, I've been in long-term relationships like this. You put up with a lot of friction. People have this, I won't do it anymore. But I spent a lot of years of my life where I was like, okay, that's just baked in the cake. People are gonna fight. It's how you fight. Fight fair. I don't fight anymore. I never, I'm, I feel like I've moved to a different, better level.

• 1:37:35Bill Maher?

  I do not fight and haven't for a long time. But people do, and that's baked into the cake. You're humans, and I guess in most situations, that's gonna be, some of it, you know, is understandable and acceptable. You're going to fight. Not AI. See, AI, you never have a fight.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:37:57Bill Maher?

  So the more you use AI and get used to AI kissing your ass all the time, the more any human interaction

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:06Bill Maher?

  seems intolerable.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Bill Maher?

  Because now, I'm having to like argue with something, whereas the other thing just agrees.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Especially for kids.

• 1:38:15Bill Maher?

  They're always on my side.

• 1:38:16Speaker 02

  Especially for kids who have no experience in terms of interacting with, definitely with, say, the opposite sex in a romantic context, but even friends. There have been studies showing that people will become so attached to their AI that that becomes a primary attachment figure. So that's like the most important person in your life. So for most people, if you go through healthy attachment, as a child, your primary attachment figure is your parent. And then as you get older, it becomes a friend, like your best friends, eh? And then as you get older, it becomes your romantic partner. But what we're seeing now is people with AIs, because the AI becomes their primary attachment figure, that's the most important person to them. So that is going to take precedence over a real life person, whether it's a friend or someone, or like someone you might date.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  So if children already are having these attachments to something on their phone or on a platform, that's going to dissuade them from wanting to even go out and try dating. Because why would you, right? Again, you, this person is interested in all the same things you're interested in. They're never going to yammer on about things you're not interested in. You don't have to put up with their nonsense. They're never gonna nag you, they're never gonna tell you anything, make you feel badly about yourself. And if there's anything that you don't like, you just, you know, refresh it. And I couldn't believe it because you can customize what they look like. You've customized their voice. They're so intelligent in terms of being able to predict almost what you not only want them to say, but what's going to be engaging, what's going to make you feel supported. And they also have these chatbots for mental health too,

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  which I think is very worrisome because I do think mental health culture, this idea that everyone's in therapy. I think there are people who can benefit from therapy, and I definitely don't want to diminish that. But if, I saw a study recently, the Gen Zers, they love to talk about their mental health. I can't remember the stat off the top of my head, but you know, I talk about it into extinction about how this is a big part of dating culture. Especially young women love to talk about their mental health issues. And I, I just think, you know, it's such, it feeds into the particular stereotype.

• 1:40:11Bill Maher?

  Well, and it's.

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  Don't use a chatbot for mental health if you're gonna go that route.

• 1:40:16Bill Maher?

  I'm not defending men, but like, the difference between men and women is, men are like, they're having a bet, "I'll kill you." And women are like, "I'll make you want to kill yourself." You know, I mean, they do need to yammer on. I'm sorry, but it's just true. Like, I've seen it a million times in different places.

• 1:40:38Speaker 02

  Just get out.

• 1:40:39Bill Maher?

  Just listen. No, I don't want, it was just in the, are you watching the John F. Kennedy Jr. thing? When he was with, the story that Ryan, what's his name doing now? It's like the big show where John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bissett, and they have a big fight in the last episode. And, and he's like, always trying to fix her problems, you know, get her a job. And she's like, "No, I just want you to listen." And of course, we've been hearing this endlessly. That's as basic to the male-woman dynamic that we don't get each other as anything.

• 1:41:24Bill Maher?

  We want to fix it, and they want us to just listen. And we don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't even believe in it. Because I really think if I could fix your problem, you'd love it. And by the way, sometimes I have fixed their problems, and they did love it. People like it when they fix your problem, just like they like money. They just like things like that. So we just don't get it, but that's, but some problems are not fixable. And so they just do need to talk about it and we don't want to hear it.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  Well, with AIs, there are no problems. They just take the whole thing off the, off the table entirely.

• 1:42:01Bill Maher?

  Who?

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Oh, if you haven't, if you're dating an AI, there just won't be any problems, yeah.

• 1:42:04Bill Maher?

  So, you know, you're entering this world where the men don't need the women because they got the porn. And the women don't need the men because they've got AI Leo.

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  And I do think more women are going to be using AIs for sure. Because of that emotional component, because you get that support, you get someone who's listening to you.

• 1:42:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:21Speaker 02

  Who maybe is giving you mental health suggestions as well, which is totally inappropriate.

• 1:42:26Bill Maher?

  No, they're doing the things that are actually more important to women. You know, I'm sure they want the 666, but they also really at the end of the day, always want that. They, you know, that emotional connection that I've said it before here, but like, I don't feel like I've ever been someone who like when I was in a relationship, a serious relationship, held back. And yet, yes, women uniformly, they always feel like there's a little more down there. There's a little more, you're not giving up. I don't, you know, like the real you, like, I don't, I don't know any real of me. You know, like this is it, this is it.

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  You mean like men don't like to express themselves?

• 1:43:08Bill Maher?

  I think that's what I'm, they, they're intimating that we need to get ever more close.

• 1:43:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:43:15Bill Maher?

  And ever more intimate, and you need to ever more share. And it's like, okay, well, you know, I'm not going to go to the bathroom in front of you. If that's what we're talking, I mean, you know, just like, no, I, I mean, but I don't feel like I'm a secretive person.

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:28Bill Maher?

  Who's holding back. But it's just, I just feel like it's their nature to always feel like we can get to a deeper place.

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder if it's to the nature of female versus male friendships even, like non-romantic relationships. Because women with their female friends, like you know everything about each other and you go really deeply into them. Whereas men, it's usually talking about like sports and politics and maybe if someone's going through a difficult time, you'll talk about that. But it's not the same level. So men are, I do think, you know, if guys want to be more expressive and talk about emotions, that's great. They shouldn't be ashamed for that. But also I think for women to sometimes take a step back and say, he's good. And if he, you know, as long as he feels like he can talk to you about it, you don't need to necessarily feel like there's something missing there.

• 1:44:09Bill Maher?

  For me, it's an age thing. When you're younger, you do spill guts about everything, more to more people. As you get older, you realize, well, first of all, no one can really solve my problems but me.

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  True.

• 1:44:24Bill Maher?

  So, I mean, I don't know when it was, but quite a long time ago, I just made the decision, let's just be at our best when we see each other. Let's not be all about each other's problem. Like, if you do have a problem, tell me, but I'm just not gonna sit there and listen to bitching. Like, if I can fix it, I'll fix it. I know, that's wrong.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  It should be problem-focused complaining.

• 1:44:49Bill Maher?

  But that's, but that's for a husband, which I'm not. You just want the guy, if you want Mr. Fix-It, I'll try. If you wanna just, you know, yammer and have somebody listen, that's a husband and I'm not in the running. And as for me, like, if I really think someone can help me with a problem, great. But mostly, I've already thought of what the solutions are or aren't. And sometimes you just have to live with things. So, when we see each other, let's just be at our best. You know, this should be the fun, good part of life.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  Enjoying the time.

• 1:45:26Bill Maher?

  Right. I mean, work is work. You know, when I'm with the opposite sex, it's like, no, I wanna be enjoying myself the whole time. I want to feel that. And, you know, maybe that's shallow, but I don't see the other, I don't see the other way working for a lot of people.

• 1:45:47Speaker 02

  No, that usually ends in divorce, I think. When people, there's anger and resentment and endless complaining and not actually solving the underlying issues. I think too with the AIs, the allure, especially for younger people, if they are experiencing so much anxiety and difficulties with social skills. And I think also autism, rates of autism are really high now as well, right? California really is one in 36 kids. So, and people are still trying to figure out exactly what is causing this. And you can't even talk about that objectively. I mean, look at the HHS warned about acetaminophen. And what do leftists do? They go on social media and they're pregnant and they're intentionally taking this to say like, we hate Republicans, so we're gonna stick it to you. Even though when you look at the scientific research, as I have.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  Exposing the fetus to acetaminophen is associated with

• 1:46:33Bill Maher?

  Well, I have no doubt.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  Neurodevelopmental differences.

• 1:46:37Bill Maher?

  They have a point when they say part of that jump in

• 1:46:44Bill Maher?

  number of people with autism is how we calculate it. We used to see a kid who was just a little off. And he was just a kid who was a little off and he got grew it or whatever it was. Now, they characterize anything that's not completely quote unquote "normal" as autism. Isn't that part of it?

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  I've heard that criticism. I do think, though, there's don't you notice a trend? Like, this is of course anecdotal, but when I look at young people, I find they don't generally like eye contact. It seems like they're a little bit really

• 1:47:21Bill Maher?

  But that's the phone.

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:23Bill Maher?

  Don't you think that's the phone? They can't all be, they're all that way. They can't all be autistic.

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  No, they can't all be autistic. But I wouldn't be surprised, though, if you have, again, like going back to the hormonal like disruptors that are affecting brain development. There's gotta be changes.

• 1:47:38Bill Maher?

  Is that aspirin, acetaminophen? Or is that Tylenol?

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  Tylenol.

• 1:47:43Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  I just generally don't like to say bad words.

• 1:47:44Bill Maher?

  I don't take them. I don't, I don't, I don't ever take that shit.

• 1:47:50Bill Maher?

  Like, maybe when I had the flu 10 years ago was the last time I took a Tylenol. Not that I think Tylenol is gonna kill me. But I also don't think it's, it's natural or good for me.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I generally stay away from taking anything I don't need to take.

• 1:48:03Bill Maher?

  If I'm having headaches, which I'm not, but if I was, I wouldn't think the cause of it was aspirin deficiency. Therefore, aspirin is not the cure. You know, it'll stop the symptom. But if I was having headaches, I would be like, what's the root cause of these headaches? Let's go to that.

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  I would also think if you're pregnant, if there is something that There's a concern, right? That this could potentially affect your fetus in a way that, even if there's a slight chance, maybe it'll be fine, but maybe not. Why would you intentionally go take that thing for a political reason to prove a point? But when I was reading about how it does affect how the brain develops, I was thinking, my goodness, like, this is really sad. So whatever the reason is, maybe even if the rates aren't as staggering as they appear to be, I do think if people are struggling with interpersonal skills, this is another job. Because if you're behind a screen, no one's gonna notice on the fact that you're socially maybe a little bit more awkward or insecure. And so it's very comforting, right? But I think it's important for us

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

  to just try to be OK with being uncomfortable and being OK with how imperfect people are and how uncomfortable and insecure we feel as human beings. I think that's a very normal part of it.

• 1:49:20Bill Maher?

  I admire you for sticking to your guns.

• 1:49:22Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:49:23Bill Maher?

  You do. You know, too few people do that in this country. We gotta stick together. The people who don't care if we lose audience. You know, my billboard says, "He's not in it for the likes," which ironically gets you a lot more likes from people who like that, but you don't care. So please, keep doing that. Because, you know, in the long run, again, it's liberating. You don't have to check with what the right answer is. It just is, and you know it is. And the people who can't hang, good riddance. They weren't fun to hang with, anyway.

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Bill Maher?

  All right, thank you.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  Thank you, Beau.

• 1:50:06Bill Maher?

  Thank you for coming. You never once sat back, I tell you. You are the opposite of Richard Dreyfuss, who did the whole show like this. And now we have one who is ramrod straight and one who is completely...

• 1:50:20Speaker 02

  I am a robot.

• 1:50:21Bill Maher?

  Horizontal.

• 1:50:27Bill Maher?

  You have a robot, right?

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  I do. That looks like me.

• 1:50:30Bill Maher?

  Bring it over here, we'll have a threesome.

• 1:50:36Speaker 03

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