Overtime with Bill Maher: Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, Josh Barro (HBO)

What this episode is about

The discussion features prominent figures Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, and Josh Barro addressing contemporary societal issues such as the implications of "safetyism," the economic rationale behind discontinuing the penny, and innovative suggestions for currency reform. The conversation also touches on the coping mechanisms of young men in social contexts, emphasizing both the cultural impacts of challenges faced today and the historical precedents set by past government initiatives.

Key takeaways

• Sweeping changes often lag behind; the penny's demise exposes government inertia over currency functionality.
• Health care's roots lie in wartime wage freezes, showcasing how chaotic circumstances shape lasting policies.
• Daylight Saving Time debate reveals our tendency to complain, regardless of substantive impacts on our daily lives.
• Sports gambling scandals highlight society's vulnerabilities, with instincts clashing against modern, profit-driven temptations.
• As nostalgia for pennies fades, let's debate: should we also retire the dime or embrace a coin rebirth?

Who speaks in this episode?

• Bill Maher (Host) · 6 min speaking
• Scott Galloway (Guest) · 5 min speaking
• Fareed Zakaria (Guest) · 3 min speaking
• Josh Barro (Guest) · 2 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Scott Galloway, Josh Barrow, Notes on Being a Man, Mohare subsidies
2. 3:00 – 6:00: daylight savings time, Josh Barrow, Scott Galloway, Spotify
3. 12:00 – 15:00: Scott Galloway

Notable quotes from "Overtime with Bill Maher: Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, Josh Barro (HBO)"

• Nobody tells me what's going on. All right. He's a marketing professor and author of the bestselling book Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway.

  about Scott Galloway · at 0:29

• Mohab subsidies, whatever you co some CO stuff, you it just But you remember the Mohare subsidies is an amazing one because it was started in World War II because Mohare is what you used for army uniforms. I think it finally got.

  about Mohare subsidies · at 2:20

• So what is Spotify going to use to pay recording artists now?

  about Spotify · at 3:16

• Is available in the day. And the reason, we fight over this all the time. The Nixon administration did this.

  about daylight savings time · at 4:08

• They're betting on things like will the next pitch be faster than 97 mph? Right?

  about Josh Barrow · at 7:11

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Scott Galloway — Person · Panelist / main speaker (guest) · 3 mentions · first at 0:34
  Introduced as a marketing professor and author; he answers multiple audience questions and presents a framework about happiness across life stages and commentary on gambling and media accountability.
• Josh Barrow — Person · Panelist (guest) · 3 mentions · first at 0:46
  Introduced as a New York Times contributing opinion writer and podcast host; he contributes analysis on daylight saving time and sports gambling mechanics (prop bets) and enforcement dynamics.
• Fared Zakaria — Person · Referenced media host / panelist (guest) · 1 mention · first at 0:37
  Introduced as a CNN host and author; serves as a credentialed public-affairs voice on the panel, though he speaks less in the provided excerpt.
  He hosts Far Zakaria TPS on CNN and is author of Age of Revolutions for Reed Zakaria.

Books & papers

• Notes on Being a Man — Book · Primary recommendation · 1 mention · first at 0:32
  Highlighted as a bestselling book by Scott Galloway, discussed in the context of life advice.
  Nobody tells me what's going on. All right. He's a marketing professor and author of the bestselling book Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway.
• Age of Revolutions — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 0:40
  Mentioned as one of the books authored by Reed Zakaria.
  He hosts Far Zakaria TPS on CNN and is author of Age of Revolutions for Reed Zakaria.

Companies & orgs

• Spotify — Company · Incidental mention · 1 mention · first at 3:21
  Mentioned in a humorous context about paying recording artists.

Concepts & topics

• daylight savings time — Concept · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at 3:30
  Discussed extensively as a debated policy with historical context and public opinion analysis.
• Mohare subsidies — Concept · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 2:26
  Used as an example of outdated government programs that persist beyond their original purpose.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 Wait wait wait wait. Is any Thank you, St. Nice to meet you. Are we ready to introduce these people now? Nobody tells me what's going on. All right. He's a marketing professor and author of the bestselling book Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway. He hosts Far Zakaria TPS on CNN and is author of Age of Revolutions for Reed Zakaria. And he's a contributing opinion writer for New York Times and host the podcast Central Air Josh Barrow. Okay, if you missed the show itself, Scott is trading on my applauding him for telling young men to drink. Uh, not to excess, just so you could talk to a girl. Okay. It It does help get your courage up. I mean, it absolutely does.

1:12 Yeah. Okay. Well, we were talking about safetyism before and all the ways that it's hurt things when they think they're doing a good job with making everything foolproof, childproof for the world and nobody ever dies. But, you know, there are other always some other side to it. All right, let's get to the people's questions. This week, the US Mint pressed its final pennies. Wasn't this long overdue? Yes.

1:37 Yes. Yeah. I mean, it costs them more to make a penny than a penny is worth. It's amazing it took this long.

1:42 Yeah. I liked John Love's proposal that he wants to have 10, 20, and 50 cent coins. Then we can get rid of the whole second decimal place. Prices will just be in a tenth of a dollar instead of a hundredth.

1:51 John Love it from Saturday Night Live. No, John Love it from like Pod. Maybe they should team up.

2:00 Why are we quoting as the famous philosopher? Yeah. And what does Keratop say about it? Uh yeah. Uh yes, of course. I mean, it's amazing that I used to do this as an example of how the government once a program starts, no matter what it is, Mohab subsidies, whatever you co some some CO stuff, you it just

2:26 But you you remember the Mohare subsidies is an amazing one because it was started in World War II because Mohare is what you used for army uniforms. I think it finally got repealed in 2010.

2:37 Oh, it did? Yeah. Yeah, World War II ended 1945 as I recall. But I mean our speaking of that, I mean our health care system is really based on World War II era thinking about healthcare. Remember they couldn't pay people for some reason and so they paid them in healthcare. That's how we got this employerbased system. That's it. It doesn't have to be that way. Yeah.

2:58 Um it wasn't even really thinking. It was that they set wage controls to try to get to stop inflation from getting out of control during the war. And so companies to get around them started giving people health insurance as a benefit because they couldn't actually raise their wages. So it was it was like a cludge.

3:11 So good. And then it evolved into our whole system. Good riddens to the pen. So

3:21 what what is Spotify going to use to pay recording artists now? That is that's good. That's a good one.

3:28 Oh yeah. Uh oh, here's another one. Should we eliminate daylight savings time? That that's a perfect follow-up question because it's another thing based on

3:40 people love to complain about this, but they're really just mad that there's less daylight in the winter. Like

3:46 that's why we're mad, right? But the but the government they can't change the axial tilt of the earth. What daylight savings time does

3:51 No, no, but we couldn't but we we make it worse. No, no, we make it better because if you don't change the clocks, then you waste a bunch of time. Like the sun will rise at 4:30 in the morning in the summer and people are asleep. They don't get to enjoy the daylight. This way, most people get to wake up approximately a little bit after the sun comes up and then they can enjoy as much daylight as is available in the day. And the reason, you know, we fight over this all the time. The Nixon administration did this. They got rid of daylight saving time.

4:14 And what they found was that people were really angry because they were waking up. They they they kept they they kept it on daylight saving time. So, it was like in the winter the sunrise was really late and people were really mad. They were like, "Oh, my kid has to walk to school in the dark now." And there they it was supposed to be a two-year experiment. They ended it early because people got so mad. They brought it back to the system that we have. It's, you know, people people will just complain about anything. They're always mad that it's dark in the winter, but they'll complain even more if you actually if you actually

4:38 So, I get we all get paid to have opinions on everything. I have no opinion on this.

4:48 I do. But the the daylight savings experts in America, they can have it out. I'll I'll accept whatever the

4:56 I guess I'm pissed off because I don't live on this schedule. That's why. Right. When do you wake up?

5:03 Closer to noon than dawn. Yeah. And I'm up here. All right. Uh, this is for you, Scott. Does the sports gambling scandal reflect a larger societal problem? I guess they mean that both in basketball now and in baseball, we've had two scandals where the players were in on it. That that that hasn't happened in a while. Uh, does this reflect a larger societal problem? Yeah, you could argue that the most profitable companies in the world tap into a flaw in our instincts. And since we came off the Savannah, absence of salty, sugary, fatty foods, absence of mating opportunities, and absence of free play and gaming. So, we become addicted to trans fats, addicted to porn, addicted to gambling apps because we're not used to the institutional production. Our instincts haven't caught up to the institutional production. Gambling is probably a real unfortunately another thing that's tapping into a pretty

5:56 immature male brain that wants more dopa hits. One out of two college age males bet on the Super Bowl. And you're going to see probably the biggest IPOs of next year will be calcium poly market because now they're trying to pretend that it's not gambling if you're betting on a mayoral race. The reality is when you legalize gambling in a state, you see bankruptcies go up 30%. And this is not investing. It's essentially again putting Vegas in people's pockets and it's going to have really negative externalities. I'm not entirely sure what you do about it because you don't need to want to infantilize people, but you need to you need to educate young men to be clear. You're not investing, you're gambling. And the only reason these companies are going to have the biggest IPOs the next year is because over the medium and long term, it's impossible to lose. So have a good time.

6:42 Have at it. I love Vegas, but be clear, you're going to lose all your money. You know, they they say that uh they say that these um these GLPs actually decrease your desire for gambling. Have you found that you you're less

6:57 GLP? That's emphatic and wag. I have not I mean I'm I'm I'm not a huge gambler. I'll go to Vegas. I'll play some craps. I'll play poker. It it hasn't changed my my desires around that. But I think that you know the crazy thing with these scandals is they're not even betting on the games. They're betting on things like will the next pitch be faster than 97 mph? Right?

7:15 So, you can bet on every pitch. And that means that if you're a pitcher, you can just all you have to do is flub one pitch. You don't have to have to conspire with the rest of your team to lose the game. So, I don't I I think legalizing sports gambling has not gone great. I would be happy to see us go back to the old system. But one other thing they could do is they could prohibit some of these proposition bets that are especially vulnerable to these kinds of scandals and then also go to this kind of degenerate behavior. It's like why do you why do you have to bid on bet on every individual pitch? Can't you watch the baseball game and maybe just bet on who's going to win the game?

7:47 just enjoy the game. Yeah. But but I but I wonder I mean of course I agree with you. I wonder once technology has been unleashed and you can do all this um you know people if you ban it in America won't they just set it up in the Cayman Islands and then you you do it through there.

8:02 Well I mean I think the other thing we're seeing is it's pretty easy to catch the people who do these schemes. a lot of these pro athletes are not that bright and like if there's like a whole bunch of huge bets on random actions of some not especially famous player like it's it's it's like like it's easy if like you know if you get a leaked copy of the earnings report and you buy a ton of options 3 hours before it comes out the SEC will catch you sort of similar stuff here where like some people will just go to

8:24 unless you're a congressman uh what is the panel's reaction to the turmo turmoil at the BBC over how they edited Trump's January 6th comments. Well, they did do him dirty. There's no doubt about it. They they purposely put together something to make it look like he didn't say what he said. Uh the other

8:51 the tragedy is what he said was bad enough. Why did you have to doctor him? I mean, I don't understand it. It was Well, you know, be because it that one to me was never a smoking gun. Now, do I think he should have handled January 6 differently? Very much so. I do. But it was always but there you can pull out the thing where he says peaceful protests. He uses the word peaceful. It was always murky. To me, the crime was always simply never conceding the election

9:19 and calling up the Georgia Secretary of State and saying, "Find me 11,000 votes."

9:23 But that wasn't that day. And waiting for like three hours to try to call the mob off.

9:28 Right. But I'm talking from the whole time the election was over till this very moment, he still hasn't done it. When you don't concede elections, yes, there

9:38 my point is there's plenty of stuff that he's done that you just have to list as you just did. You don't need to make stuff up. You don't need AI for this. You know,

9:53 traditional media does a better job of factor. Don't we hold them to an entirely different standard? Fox News knows that they're spreading misinformation about voting mach machines being weaponized by Ugo Chavez. They knew it was a lie. They continue to promote that misinformation. They get fined threequarters of a billion dollars. What happened on Fox was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud that happens every 3 minutes on social media. Twothirds of Americans get their news from social media and yet they are held to absolutely no standards. And when the BBC up, we are hairs on fire. Why on earth are we not applying anything resembling the same standards for algorithmically elevated content to these quote unquote nent platforms? I get that the BBC screwed up, but by that standard where we're getting twothirds of our news screws up about a million times a second. There's there's a double

10:40 standard here. We need to make big tech and where we people get their news a fraction as accountable as we want to hold the BBC or CNN or Time Warner. A double standard. It needs to end. Um, here's one for you. What is the arc of happiness in life? Oh, that's in your book.

11:05 It's very straightforward. Why why are the ages of 20? You said, and again, I'm not the typical one, I guess, because I don't get up when people get up. And this is this is exactly the opposite of my thing, but I remember reading it in your book. And what you say is the arc of happiness is people tend to be pretty happy until about 25 and then from 25 to 45 are the difficult years and then you get a little happier again later. I I mean uh I hated up until 25

11:33 and and then it got good. That's unusual. So hold on. Hold on. I don't think it's that unus Well, okay. across ethnicities, income groups, and cultures. The research is really clean. If you across an age spectrum, happiness is a smile. 0 to 25 is prom, Star Wars, making out. It's pretty good. Generally speaking, it's pretty good.

12:01 I didn't go to prom. I wasn't making out. 25 to 45 is what I call the gets real part of your life. And that is regardless of what university your parents told you, you're not going to be a senator or have a fragrance named after you.

12:16 You having kids is difficult. Economic strain. Someone you love a great deal and loves you gets sick and dies. gets good.

12:26 But then gets good era. Then something wonderful happens. No kids. About the time you hit your 50s earlier. If you're soulful, you recognize the finite nature of life. You have friends, maybe a little bit economic security, and you start finding joy in unusual places. You start finding like I find bugan via fascinating now. I just would have never thought that. And so the lesson is the following.

12:50 That's a very weird assignment. Weird. The lesson, are you sure I didn't do it right?

12:57 The lesson is straightforward. If you're 30 years old and you're struggling and your relationships are stressful and you have some economic stress and you think, "This is just harder than I thought." That's exactly where you should be. And what I would say is keep on keeping on. Happiness waits for you.

13:10 To me, the bottom line I think I have I have your next your next book, Bill. Your next book is going to be How I Broke all of Scott Galloway's rules, and I'm rich and happy as hell.

13:24 Well, I got to say, I mean, what you're really saying, bottom line, is that the unhappy years are the years when you have kids. But it's true and wait I I know that but and I've said this before like I have never had kids so I can't speak first person but unless there's a giant conspiracy going on in this country where every TV show every movie every person who talks about it on talk shows talk presents it as a total nightmare. Unless this is some giant conspir I heard some lady on some show the other day talking about I just I have never she says I never have one moment of peace to myself. I I I wish I could have just one hour where I wasn't packing lunches or doing this or doing that. And I just want to say to her you par you did this to yourselves.

14:16 Mike, you did because my parents did not feel this obligation to be on me all the time and to make every moment of my life their concern.

14:28 Look, to to to be fair, there is some research showing that people are actually less happy who have kids than those that don't. Yeah.

14:35 What I would say though, what I would what I would say though is that one, I find with my kids, they're getting less awful every day. And and two,

14:48 that's a vote of confidence. Yeah, they are. Well, hold on. Are they going to watch this?

14:51 But if we're going to get if we're going to get spiritual about this, there are moments where I think that you feel most purposeful and think maybe I'm here for a reason when you're in the company of your kids. And

15:02 I'm sure that's true that that you feel like the opportunity to raise patriotic, loving, you know, men or women with someone else. I do think that checks an instinctual box that at least I've had a difficult time replicating anywhere. When I was in your shoes, it was always more. I want more money. I want more relevance. I want more dates. I want more amazing experiences. I was never sated. The only time I ever

15:27 The only sounds awful. The only time I ever feel sad is occasionally when I'm in the company of my kids and I feel like they're safe. So, anyways, as I've said before on the show, have kids. It's the best thing you'll ever do to ruin your life.

15:40 Amen. All right. Thank you very much everybody.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Overtime with Bill Maher: Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, Josh Barro (HBO)"?

Bill Maher (Host), Scott Galloway (Guest), Fareed Zakaria (Guest), Josh Barro (Guest).

What is "Overtime with Bill Maher: Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, Josh Barro (HBO)" about?

The discussion features prominent figures Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, and Josh Barro addressing contemporary societal issues such as the implications of "safetyism," the economic rationale behind discontinuing the penny, and innovative suggestions for currency reform. The conversation also touches on the coping mechanisms of young men in social contexts, emphasizing both the cultural impacts…

What is mentioned in this Real Time with Bill Maher episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Scott Galloway, daylight savings time, Josh Barrow, Notes on Being a Man, Mohare subsidies, Fared Zakaria. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Overtime with Bill Maher: Scott Galloway, Fareed Zakaria, Josh Barro (HBO)"?

The episode runs 16 min; the transcript is about 3,007 words in 51 timestamped sections.

More from Real Time with Bill Maher

• All analyzed episodes
• Books mentioned on Real Time with Bill Maher
• People mentioned on Real Time with Bill Maher
• Topics mentioned on Real Time with Bill Maher