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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<\/em>. <\/a><\/p>\n He was admittedly \u201ctired of being twice as funny as people who were selling twice as many tickets as me,\u201d but there was another layer to his quiet retirement from standup that didn\u2019t reveal itself until after he\u2019d decided to stop. \u201cI feel like it was a great choice because I don\u2019t want to be out there in this country in this political atmosphere,\u201d Maher said. \u201cI could get I could get shot by the left or the right. I mean, it\u2019s just a good time to not be out there.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Maher discussed the current divide in politics in September, following the assassination of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot at the first stop of his campus debate tour. \u201cIt\u2019s a very ugly week in America with violence of all kinds: political violence, regular violence, a lot of people talking about a civil war,\u201d he said at the time<\/a>. \u201cThe only way this starts to get better is if both sides admit, \u2018OK, let\u2019s not have this debate about who started it. Let\u2019s not debate about who\u2019s worse because, plainly, both sides do it now.\u2019 And the right has done it too. A lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Maher told Club Random <\/em>guest Patton Oswald that while he hasn\u2019t struggled to sell out theaters on his tours, he isn\u2019t at an arena level and finds he has a wider \u2014 and apparently safer \u2014 reach from his series, Real Time<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m on TV every week. Not that I didn\u2019t sell a lot of tickets and do great theaters, but I didn\u2019t sell arenas and some people did who frankly are not that great,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, you know, when your audience is 35 to 45, they don\u2019t want to see somebody 70. I want to see my generation, right? Someone new, and it\u2019s okay. I still have my show.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2164947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[309127],"class_list":["post-2164946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bill-maher"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\u2018I-Could-Get-Shot-by-the-Left-or-the-Right.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164948,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164946\/revisions\/2164948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2164947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}