Overtime – Episode #632: Esther Perel, Glenn Loury, and Daniel Bessner

This is Marshawn Lynch.

But on prize picks, being right can get you paid.

So I'm here to make sure you don't miss any of the action this football season.

With prize picks, it's good to be right.

With millions of members and billions of dollars awarded and winnings, Prize Picks is the best place to put your takes to the test.

The app is really simple to use and available in 40 plus states, including California, Texas, and Georgia.

Just pick two or more players across any sport.

Pick more or less on their projections.

And if you're right, you can cash in.

With simple stats and fan-friendly policies, PrizePicks is the best place to make your picks.

Most importantly, they don't play about your paper.

All transactions on the apps are fast, safe, and secure.

Download the PrizePicks app today and use code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

That's code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

PrizePicks, it's good to be right.

Must be present in certain states.

Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds.

Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.

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

Okay, welcome

to,

oh my gosh, Fricky.

Hi, CNN.

I know I'm dressed a little strange, but we were doing a sketch at the end of our show.

You'll have to watch it.

Okay, we have psychotherapist and best-selling author Astair Perel is over here.

We have Brown University professor and host the Glenn Scholl podcast, Glenn Lowry, and we have a co-host of the Foreign Affairs podcast, American Prestige, Daniel Gustner.

Okay.

What does the panel make of SCOTUS's?

That's the Supreme Court ruling today preserving access to birth control pills.

Yes, that happened just before we went on the air.

So that's the birth control pill that that one judge in Texas, I don't know how that works.

I don't think I ever will.

Said, okay, I'm a judge in Texas.

The whole country can't have birth control pills.

And it went to the Supreme Court, and I guess they threw it back to the lower court.

I understand Clarence Thomas and Alito dissented,

okay, and said, no, no birth controls for you.

What are your thoughts?

Well, they made the right call.

So Clarence Thomas made the wrong call.

I'd have to say so in this case.

I'm not privy to the opinions, but

I think a single judge overruling national regulation in that way is not the way you want to run a railroad.

What are your thoughts as a sex therapist on the pill that people take to not have a baby?

I think it is problematic to bring politics into a conversation that should happen between a woman and her physician, of which politicians know nothing about it.

All right.

For that answer, you've earned a bonus question.

This is for Editor.

Is there such a thing as a soulmate?

So the interesting thing about soulmate is that for all of history, it meant God, the one and only.

Today people want that.

That's even sillier.

Go ahead.

To some people, that had a great meaning.

But to turn our partner into a soulmate, to demand from our partner the very things that we used to expect from religion, transcendence, meaning, ecstasy, wholeness, that is a whole new order that has never been part of what committed to marriage, committed relationships or marriage ever was about.

Interesting.

Boys?

Boys?

Makes a lot of sense to me, yeah.

Okay, should we consider the SpaceX rocket launch a success or a failure?

What does it say about the state of American innovation?

I think it's a success.

The fact that it failed is part of the process.

The fact that there was nobody on board,

yeah.

I mean, you've got to break some rockets to make an omelet.

You know, it's never going to work the first time.

I mean, to me, if we're trying to get space travel, why are we relying solely on private corporations to do so?

I think

historically speaking,

this nation has made its

greatest advancements in technology when we pooled resources together and there's some form of central planning.

I think if this is is something that we truly decide democratically that we want, then that's how we should do it.

Should we want it?

I mean...

I don't see the reason necessarily.

I don't either.

I mean, I'm a Musk fan generally, although he sometimes makes it hard.

Big time.

If it's a private company, if they can't make a go of it, they'll go bankrupt.

If they can make a go of it and make money from it, then they'll make money from it.

I mean, you know.

Yeah, I just, I don't, I mean, he's being a guest on our show next week, by the way, Elon.

Yeah, I'm very excited.

And I want to talk to him.

I've never been on that page of why we should go to Mars.

I mean, however bad we ruin the Earth, it cannot be worse than a place that has no air, is 200 degrees below zero, and a long way away, and has six-month dust storms.

And you have to live underground and there's radiation.

Is there any ambition of wanting to do something as audacious and remarkable as that, an expression of the human spirit?

Why shouldn't we celebrate that?

From another perspective, though, you might see it as a rejection of humanity.

Even I'm no big fan of robber barons, but at least they would do things like pay for operas, pay for museums.

It seems like this generation of oligarchs just wants to escape Earth or live forever, which I think is a pretty grim,

a pretty grim take on.

Well, I mean,

he would say he wants to escape Earth for a very good reason that is altruistic, because he thinks this planet is probably going to be, I can't say the word, but rat screwed.

CNN, CNN, I clean it up, you see.

And we need this other planet to go to.

But I feel like if it gets that bad on Earth, I mean...

Yeah, I think it's done then.

Right.

But one thing I do agree with Elon on is

I hope we'll talk about it next week, also, is AI being a threat.

I mean, he and a thousand scientists and

important people signed a letter a couple of weeks ago that said we should put a pause on AI.

And this week I see there's a collaboration between Drake and The Weekend that is not real.

AI did it and it looks like you can put the complete music business out of business because you don't need them anymore.

So anyone who thinks, I think, that this AI thing isn't moving way too fast for us to deal with, I think is kidding themselves.

And I think he's right.

We should put a pause on it.

But in this situation, who is the we who would be able to make that determination?

I feel like you'd have to get some.

Wait, you were for the government all night.

No, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

I think we need to.

I don't think you don't want the government to get involved.

There was a government, government, yeah.

No, I think

it's going to happen.

I joke about it in class.

I tell my students, I know you're writing your papers with Chad GPT.

Guess what?

I'm grading them with JATGT.

That's hysterical.

Okay.

Is the future of democracy truly at stake in the U.S., as some contend?

Is there really an emerging fascist movement?

Well, yeah.

Don't you watch the news?

Come on, you're watching CNN.

Yes, there is.

No?

All right, next question.

I would disagree about identifying it specifically as fascist, even though there is a far-right authoritarian movement.

I don't think it meaningfully mirrors the fascist movements of Italy or Germany in the 20s and the 30s.

And I don't think it's a particularly mobilizing thing to do, but I appreciate the tenor of the question, and I agree with it.

I mean, fascism was fascism.

I mean, we shouldn't throw words around casually.

Exactly.

That is a word that beats democracy.

People do throw that word around very casually.

And there's never any specific definition of it that I know of.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, I think that if you're going to go back to compared Italy, Germany,

it took one year for it to go from an authoritarian situation to a more fascistic situation.

And you know it when you start to experience a society in which there is a constant polarization, no complex issues can actually hold their polarities, and it becomes an either or, you or me, right or wrong, black and white.

That system of culture breeds this.

Great, sister.

Okay.

What does the panel think of the video of the Dalai Lama asking a young boy to suck his tongue?

Let me ask the sex expert about that.

I mean, I was surprised that more criticism didn't come the Dalai's way, or the Lama's way.

Whatever it was.

Asking a young...

Imagine if the Pope did that.

What if the Pope said, suck my tongue, kid?

I mean, we'd immediately be saying, well, this guy has been in this pedophilia situation that the church, of course, has paid billions of dollars because they were, and he just forgot he wasn't inside anymore and and that's how bad it is he said it in public I mean what do you make of that the Dalai Lama saying that I don't make I listen

I listen I try to look at situations in context I keep my mouth shut and don't just jump and with judgment and

suck my tongue kid you know I judge that

I'm judging that idea what starts before you have no idea what starts before what what situation is it okay for a strange 80-year-old man say to a six-year-old, suck my tongue?

None.

None.

None, but I don't know.

I don't, I, you ask me, all I can say is I will not speak out on situations like this.

None of them, before I have an idea of what happened here, what happened there.

I've seen enough.

Look, I work with companies.

Describe what happened here that would make this okay.

Like you're saying something I don't know could have led up to the suck the tongue comment and that's that's not the point the point is that

no i think that

before you jump just to to me before i jump i take another couple of minutes to get a bigger sense of what else is going on here that's all i'm saying

is there any cultural

yes that's of course what i'm thinking i mean do we know what it means i mean was it sexual was it we don't know i i that is the question i have but i don't have the answer for it what's the cultural context here that we are

quick to jump on it's It's ridiculous.

Like, we wouldn't have heard of that by now.

Oh, yes, in Buddhism, they suck the kids' tongues.

It's crazy.

I'll throw it back to you, CNN.

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.