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

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

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 Large of County Highway Newspaper World Service of Podcast Host and author of How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jungfast.

Okay, here are the questions from the people.

This is the people's choice.

What does the panel think about China hosting the world's first humanoid robot games?

Is this the future of sports?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, this.

Why would this be interesting to watch?

I saw the picture of it.

It's a robot.

I had this toy when I was a kid.

Remember Rockham Roche.

Was it the Rock'em Roxes Rock Sock'em Robots?

Something like that.

It sucked then.

I think it'll suck now.

But

maybe you have a different sense.

Thomas is a sports fan.

What do you think, man?

I mean, I don't watch Google, Alpha, whatever play stockfish in chess, and I don't want to watch robots compete in sports.

They might even surpass us, but

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

Are you a sports fan?

I'm a big sports fan.

Tell you what.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, good.

Like what sports?

Well, I mean, in adulthood, the sport that I love that I can't play myself is tennis.

So I'm a Nadal guy, a die-hard Nadal fan, and it killed me when Jokovich passed him.

Okay.

No, I mean, I do like tennis.

I don't watch it that much, but no, I mean,

I watch, like, the finals of Will Mitsun and South.

Tennis is awesome.

Sure.

Yeah.

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

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

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

That's a good point.

I get this

incredibly stupid question.

Robots, sports robots.

Here are things I hate, sports robots.

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

Does Obama calling New York City City mayor candidate Zoran Mandami normalize his socialist politics?

Yes,

well, 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.

You know, remember he tried to get Ruth Bader Ginsburg to quit.

That didn't work that time.

I think

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

He's a cagey behind the scenes player.

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

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

That is kind of what communists say.

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

And then what are the Democrats going to do?

So is that how you read Obama?

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

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

the New York-y business leaders, and he's talking to people.

And he's made some, you know, he says that he's going to keep a lot of people on.

And, you know, again, the question with these liberal mayors is: do you have the infrastructure?

Because remember, the city is

a job that's largely a management job and not an ideological job.

So will you have the managers?

He certainly doesn't see it that way.

But will you have the managers to make the city work?

And I think that's going to be the question.

What does Mom Dani do for a living?

Good question, but not a question that you couldn't ask for a lot of people running for office.

That's true.

Most of them are lawyers, though.

Yeah, no, he was a city councilman.

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

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

Yeah.

Rent stabilized.

Rent stabilized.

Which is, I mean, I like Andrew, but what a bullshit issue.

I mean, he's going, and he's saying, you know, well, you know, your parents are rich.

Okay,

who says, yeah, my parents are going to pay my rent?

He's 33 years old.

The parents have nothing to do with it.

His parent could be Bill Gates.

Well, also, Cuomo hasn't lived in New York.

He just recently moved back into the city.

Right, but he's a New Yorker.

He's living in the country.

Okay, but he was the governor.

They give them a mansion in Albany.

I mean,

I don't think he's unqualified to run the city of of New York.

I think he's rather familiar with New York and with Albany.

Eric Adams is living in New Jersey.

Yeah, well, he was living in New Jersey.

He wasn't that.

He never gave up that apartment.

Yeah.

Yeah, he didn't.

That's weird.

That's another thing.

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

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Okay, oh, I read this today.

Costco

is now stopping selling methepristone.

Methopristone.

Thank you.

This is the birth control pill?

It's actually an abortion pill.

Abortion pill.

Yeah.

And they said lack of demand.

That's why they're not going to sell it anymore.

Now, Costco, isn't that where you buy things in bulk?

That's the first thing that struck me.

It's like, who needs the abortion pills?

Boat?

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

Making the sad feminist face.

But, okay, so two things about methopristone.

Yes.

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

I could go into it, but it's too gross.

Right.

But there's lots of uterine things that involve methopristone, and

it's a two-drug series.

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

The thing I would say about birth control is there are a lot of people who are on birth control and they're not on it for birth control.

They're on it to, you know, all sorts of really,

you know, to control their symptoms of other stuff, right?

Of hormones.

And so I do think that

these drugs are, they're about methopristome, but they're also about larger issues.

You know, people use them for other stuff.

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

Really, I would want a little more.

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

I'm sorry.

All right.

Let me broaden this out a little bit.

We are surprised that the abortion issue, which many of us thought was was going to be the one that put the Democrats over the top,

was not the issue that they thought it was going to be.

Neither was democracy, by the way.

Because that turned out to be a...

Those were two issues that they were counting on people to care about more than they did.

What do you make of that?

I mean, I think there was a larger problem, which was a structural problem, which is the mainstream media in 2016 was much bigger than it was in 2024.

It was so much smaller, and

they had so much trouble breaking through about anything.

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

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

Well, then maybe Kamala went on Joe Rogan.

That's a good question.

She asked for a show.

Or this show.

Yeah, I mean,

my point.

And I think the point that Democrats should go everywhere is 100% hundred percent right you cannot there is no world in which an elected can win if they don't go on joe rogan and the milk boys and you and everything

if you if you're afraid of the people who voted for you you're just afraid he can't i mean you just can't win

and if you don't go if you don't go everywhere then you're not anywhere and that's it that's right you made it a state issue it's no longer a federal issue right but people live in states.

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

I mean,

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

Well, I'm pregnant.

I've got nine months to get the legislator to change the law.

I mean,

that's not how people think.

Recent surveys found that 79% of Gen Z say they have dating app burnout, and one in six American women are celibate by choice.

What's to blame for this depressing trend?

I don't think it's a depressing trend that they're getting rid of their dating apps.

I think that's a fantastic trend.

Not that it affects me anyway, but I mean

it doesn't.

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

That's a healthy trend.

People should be meeting in person.

This is a terrible movement our society has made towards everything being virtual.

And also the way that people are able, like the

achievers on those apps are able to kill.

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

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

Yeah, it's better just to meet people in bars.

when you're both really drunk.

When you're both really drunk.

Yeah, I think that's better.

But I think they have to go.

It actually is.

I got an ad on my phone just just today for an AI girlfriend.

I mean, you know, at least they were using dating apps to find real human beings.

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

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

No, I'm not.

It's a reasonable question.

It's like Amazon book recommendations.

You know what you want before you know it.

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

But like Putin and Trump, they did decide that we need to look each other in the eye.

Because, you know, it just is different.

And it actually is the same with any kind of relationship.

You just cannot get a feel for a human being over the phone.

First of all, you don't smell their ephemerons, right?

That's literally a part of it.

You don't see facial expressions.

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.

And so, you know, kids, take a take a from Vladimir.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

I appreciate it.

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