To begin the last Real Time With Bill Maher of 2024, its host struck a balance between gallows humor and absurdism. “We will be back…I mean, if America gets picked up for another season,” Maher said in his opening monologue. Later in the same segment, he also addressed the elephant in the room — namely, that politics is becoming increasingly satirical on its own.
“Linda McMahon of the [World] Wrestling Federation — she’s going to be the Education Secretary,” Maher said, and then paused to laugh. “Do I really have to write jokes for this?”
If there was an overall theme for the evening, it was one of relative comfort. All three guests — Neil deGrasse Tyson, Andrew Sullivan and Donna Brazile — have made multiple appearances on the show over the years, and there was a familiarity to it.
“The universe is in good shape,” Tyson said early in his interview with Maher. “It’s Earth that’s messed up.”He went on to strike an optimistic note about space travel — that, for instance, astronauts being stuck in space meant that they were on a space station, not a capsule — and that there were multiple options for the rescue. We’re a far cry from the days of Apollo 13.
Tyson was on the show in part to discuss a revised version of his debut book, Merlin’s Tour of the Universe, which he described as having been written “to hone all the ways I can teach science to people.” That prompted some back-and-forth between him and Maher about the ideal audience for the book, and led Tyson to cite the importance of cultivating “adult curiosity.”
Tyson was even optimistic about an ominous-sounding message from Gemini AI that cropped up in the news recently. “We should be thankful that the AI doesn’t have the power to kill us,” Tyson said — and, on a more serious note, spoke of the importance of “guardrails” when working with AI.
There was another advantage to having some familiar faces on this week’s Real Time — namely, that the guests felt a little more comfortable pushing back against some of their host’s comments. That included Tyson memorably commenting, “Bill, every 20 minutes on your platform, you come up with another reason why the Democrats lost” during one politically-charged exchange.
Brazile, too, didn’t seem convinced by Maher’s arguments about wokeness and the 2024 election. “I’m not going to get into this, ‘The people are too damn woke.’ That wasn’t an issue,” she said. Later, she spoke of the importance of building large coalitions, not alienating constituents: “Politics is about addition, not subtraction.”
Maher also seemed skeptical of some of the rhetoric coming from the incoming administration. “Let’s see what happens to the disruptors when the corn lobby weighs in,” Maher said. And by episode’s end, he suggested that his audience not let political conflicts destroy their ability to feel happiness. “Don’t let Trump live in your brain like RFK’s worm,” he said. It’s an odd message to close out the season; then again, it’s also been an odd year.
Some other notable moments from the episode:
- There were not one but two “Future Headlines” about Elon Musk this week.
- Unexpected pop culture references this episode: the 1990s SNL cartoon X-Presidents.
- Sullivan: “TikTok is not a verb!” Brazile: “When’d you get so damn smart?”
- Maher on the Tyson/Paul fight: “I’ve seen livelier fights over who was next at the deli.”
- Maher’s next comedy special will air on January 10, 2025; one week later, a new season of Real Time will begin.
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