When Bill Maher performed his last standup show in December 2024, he knew it would be a while before he returned to the stage. The comedian had grown weary of the travel that came with touring and was struggling with the dissonance that came with watching the new generation of comedy fill arenas, he said on the latest episode of his podcast Club Random .

He was admittedly “tired of being twice as funny as people who were selling twice as many tickets as me,” but there was another layer to his quiet retirement from standup that didn’t reveal itself until after he’d decided to stop. “I feel like it was a great choice because I don’t want to be out there in this country in this political atmosphere,” Maher said. “I could get I could get shot by the left or the right. I mean, it’s just a

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