Overtime – Episode #703: Thomas Chatterton Williams, Molly Jong-Fast, Walter Kirn

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Speaker 5 Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Speaker 7 Okay, here we are in Overtime with a staff writer at the Atlantic, an author of Summer of Our Discontent, Sir Thomas Jatterson Williams, an author and editor at Log of County Highway Newspaper World's Accurate, and she's a podcast host and author of How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jungfast.

Speaker 7 Okay, here are the questions from the people.

Speaker 8 This is the people's choice. What does the panel think about China hosting the world's first humanoid humanoid robot games? Is this the future of sports? Oh yeah yeah.

Speaker 9 I mean this

Speaker 8 why would this be interesting to watch? I saw the picture of it. It's robot.

Speaker 8 I had this toy when I was a kid. Remember Rock'em Rob, what was it? The Rock'em Rob Rock Sock'em robot, something like that.
It sucked then. I think it'll suck now, but maybe

Speaker 4 you have a different.

Speaker 10 Thomas is a sports fan. What do you think, man?

Speaker 11 I mean, I don't watch Google, Alpha, whatever play stockfish in chess, and I don't want to watch robots compete in sports. You know, they might even surpass us, but

Speaker 11 what's interesting is the human fallibility, right, and the quest for excellence.

Speaker 8 Are you a sports fan?

Speaker 11 I'm a big sports fan.

Speaker 6 Oh, you are. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 8 Oh, good. Like what sports?

Speaker 11 Well, I mean, in adulthood, the sport that I love that I can't play myself is tennis. So I'm a Nadal guy, a die-hard Nadal fan, and it killed me when Djokovic passed him.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 9 No, I mean, I do like tennis. I don't watch it that much, but no, I mean

Speaker 8 I watch like the finals of Willemitson and some

Speaker 6 tennis is awesome. Sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I don't watch ESPN much because it's like they cover too many sports.

Speaker 8 I only really watch the big three, you know, baseball, football, basketball, and only the pros.

Speaker 10 But who wants to watch robots? play because when they lose, they aren't sorry.

Speaker 12 That's a good point.

Speaker 6 I had this

Speaker 12 incredibly stupid question.

Speaker 6 Really, sports robots, sports robots.

Speaker 12 Here are things I hate, sports robots.

Speaker 8 Okay, then let's go to a different one.

Speaker 8 Does Obama calling New York City mayor candidate Zoran Mandami normalize his socialist politics? Yes,

Speaker 8 we don't know what Obama said to him, but Obama does this a lot. You know, he kind of like puts his thumb on the scale behind the scenes.

Speaker 8 You know, remember he tried to get Ruth Bader Ginsburg to quit? That didn't work that time.

Speaker 8 I think

Speaker 8 he kind of like put his thumb on the scale of Hillary getting the nomination in 2016 when Biden thought maybe it was his turn.

Speaker 8 He's a cagey behind the scenes player. And so apparently,

Speaker 8 I mean, what it looks like to me reading between the lines is Obama, a centrist, sees this, you know, to say the least, socialist.

Speaker 8 I mean, some people would say communist, you know, because he says capitalism is theft.

Speaker 4 That is kind of what communists say.

Speaker 8 Says, this guy is going to be the face of the Democratic Party, and every Democrat across the country is going to have to get the question, Mondami did this. Mondami said this.
Do you agree?

Speaker 8 And then what are the Democrats going to do? So is that how you read Obama?

Speaker 12 Just a little color on the Mondami, because I live in New York where this is all anyone talks about,

Speaker 12 is he is doing a ton of these meetings with real estate people, with the people who really own the city, the real estate people, and the, you know, the sort of

Speaker 12 the New York-y

Speaker 12 business leaders, and he's talking to people. And he's made some, you know, he says that he's going to keep a lot of people on.

Speaker 12 And, you know, again, the question with these liberal mayors is, do you have the infrastructure? Because remember, the city is, it's a job that's largely a management job and not an ideological job.

Speaker 12 So will you have the managers?

Speaker 8 He certainly doesn't see it that way.

Speaker 12 But will you have the managers to make the city work? And I think that's going to be the question.

Speaker 10 What does Momdani do for a living?

Speaker 8 Good question, but not a question that you couldn't ask for a lot of people running for office. That's true.

Speaker 8 Most of them are lawyers, though. Yeah, no, he was a city councilman.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you know, he's still a city council.

Speaker 8 He's doing the normal thing that you go to the mayor's position from another position in city government.

Speaker 8 I mean, that's what Cuomo is making a big stink about the fact that he has a rent-free, not a rent-free, but a rent-controlled apartment.

Speaker 6 Rent stabilized.

Speaker 8 Rent stabilized.

Speaker 8 Which is, I mean,

Speaker 8 I like Andrew, but what a bullshit.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 8 and he's saying, you know, well, you know, your parents are rich. Okay,

Speaker 9 who says, yeah, my parents are going to pay my rent? He's 33 years old.

Speaker 8 The parents have nothing to do with it.

Speaker 9 His parent could be Bill Gates.

Speaker 12 Well, also, Cuomo hasn't lived in New York. He just recently moved back into the city.

Speaker 8 Right, but he's a New Yorker.

Speaker 12 He's living in the country.

Speaker 8 Okay, but he was the governor. They give them a mansion in Albany.
I mean,

Speaker 8 I don't think he's unqualified to run the city of New York. I think he's rather familiar with New York and Cuomo.

Speaker 11 Eric Adams is living in New Jersey.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, he was living in New Jersey right now. He never gave up at a person.
He gave him a mansion.

Speaker 13 Gosh, he didn't. That's weird.
That's another thing.

Speaker 8 That's, wow, that's worse than the turkey.

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Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 Oh, I read this today. Costco is now stopping selling methepristone.

Speaker 12 Methopristone.

Speaker 8 Thank you. This is the birth control pill?

Speaker 12 It's actually an abortion pill.

Speaker 8 Abortion pill. Yeah.
And they said lack of demand.

Speaker 8 That's why they're not going to sell it anymore. Now, Costco, isn't that where you buy things in bulk?

Speaker 8 That's the first thing that struck me.

Speaker 6 It's like, who needs the abortion pills in bulk?

Speaker 13 How big of a hoe do you have to be to buy your abortion pills at Costco?

Speaker 12 Making the sad feminist face.

Speaker 12 But, okay, so two things about methopristone. Yes.

Speaker 12 It is also used for a bunch of other things that aren't necessarily abortions.

Speaker 12 I could go into it, but it's too gross. Right.
But there's lots of uterine things that involve methopristone, and

Speaker 12 it's a two-drug series.

Speaker 12 The other thing is, like with birth control, a lot of birth control pills, a lot of these things were covered by insurance and aren't anymore or are being phased out under the new sort of, you know, because they seem woke.

Speaker 12 The thing I would say about birth control is there are a lot of people who are on birth control and they're not on it for birth control. They're on it to, you know, all sorts of really,

Speaker 12 you know, to control their symptoms of other stuff, right, of hormones. And so I do think that

Speaker 12 these drugs are, they're about methopristome, but they're also about larger issues. You know, people use them for other stuff.

Speaker 8 Just don't take it in the bathroom at Costco.

Speaker 9 Really, I would want a little more.

Speaker 10 I would want a little more privacy if I was buying an abortion drug than in the line at Costco. I'm sorry.

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 8 Let me broaden this out a little bit. We are surprised that the abortion issue, which many of us thought was going to be the one that put the Democrats over the top,

Speaker 8 was not the issue that they thought it was going to be. Neither was democracy, by the way.

Speaker 6 Because that turned out to be it.

Speaker 8 Those were two issues that they were counting on people to care about more than they did. What do you make of that?

Speaker 12 I mean, I think there was a larger problem, which was a structural problem, which is the mainstream media in 2016 was much bigger than it was in 2024. It was so much smaller, and

Speaker 12 they had so much trouble breaking through about anything.

Speaker 12 You know, I mean, Joe Rogan, if you go on Joe Rogan, I think it's like, you know, 10, it's like 60, 70, 80 million people saw Trump on Joe Rogan, right?

Speaker 12 But if you give an interview to the Washington Post, it's not the same level of, you know, breaking through.

Speaker 8 Well, then maybe Kamala, if I went on Joe Rogan.

Speaker 13 That's what I'm saying. She asked me.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 6 my point.

Speaker 12 And I think the point that Democrats should go everywhere is 100% right.

Speaker 12 You cannot, there is no world in which an elected can win if they don't go on Joe Rogan and the Milk Boys and you and everything.

Speaker 8 If you're afraid of the people who voted for you, you're just afraid he can't.

Speaker 6 Well, you just can't win.

Speaker 7 You're just

Speaker 7 ridiculous.

Speaker 6 And if you don't.

Speaker 6 And if

Speaker 12 you don't go everywhere, then you're not anywhere. And that's it.

Speaker 8 That's right.

Speaker 10 You made it a state issue. It's no longer a federal issue.

Speaker 8 Right, but people live in states.

Speaker 10 Well, they do, but they can fight it state by state, and that's the way they're doing it. I mean,

Speaker 10 that was the sea change in our politics when Trump and the Supreme Court brought abortion off the national stage and onto the state.

Speaker 9 Well, I'm pregnant.

Speaker 8 I've got nine months to get the legislator to change the law. I mean,

Speaker 8 that's not how people think.

Speaker 8 Recent surveys found that 79% of Gen Z say they have dating app burnout, and one in six American women are celibate by choice. What's to blame for this depressing trend?

Speaker 8 I don't think it's a depressing trend that they're getting rid of their dating apps. I think that's a fantastic trend.
Not that it affects me anyway, but I mean,

Speaker 6 no, it doesn't.

Speaker 8 But I mean, I think anything, anytime you get people off screens, it's good.

Speaker 11 That's a healthy trend. People should be meeting in person.

Speaker 11 This is a terrible movement our society has made towards everything being virtual, and also the way that people are able, like the top achievers on those apps are able to kill.

Speaker 11 And so, you know, people are unable to deal with the complexity of human relations now because if you're on the apps and everybody's on the apps,

Speaker 11 as soon as there's a little bit of friction, you just say, I can't deal with this, I'm just swiping again, and you get another, you know, you just keep replacing the initial stage of a relationship and you never grow.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's better just to meet people in bars. when you're both really drunk.

Speaker 6 When you're both really drunk. Yeah, I think that's better.
But I think it's got life to go.

Speaker 8 It actually is.

Speaker 10 I got an ad on my phone just today for an AI girlfriend. I mean, you know, at least they were using dating apps to find real human beings.

Speaker 10 Now there are people, and I've seen stories about it in just the last few weeks, who are getting virtual girlfriends through AI.

Speaker 8 But why did they ask you, what did you previously like?

Speaker 6 No, I'm not.

Speaker 7 It's a reasonable question.

Speaker 10 It's like Amazon book recommendations. They

Speaker 6 want before he knows.

Speaker 8 But I would say the kids should take a hint from the summit there in Alaska if I could wrap up the show and one deep vote tonight.

Speaker 8 But like Putin and Trump, they did decide that we need to look each other in the eye. Because, you know, it just is different.
And it actually is the same with any kind of relationship.

Speaker 8 You just cannot get a feel for a human being over the phone. First of all, you don't smell their ephemerons, right? That's literally a part of it.
You don't see facial expressions.

Speaker 8 You don't, all of this is stuff that, even if it's not conscious, that you're taking into account when you meet somebody.

Speaker 8 And so, you know, kids, take a take a from Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 9 Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 8 I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.