Sam Harris | Club Random with Bill Maher

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This episode of Club Random was filmed prior to the devastating fires in Southern California.

Electrons worked. They are thinking so logically.

Sam, this is not how they think.

He won everything. He ran the table.

Club Random.

Don't put that on the poster. I can put up with any two hours of Sam Harris raves.
You all tucked away? Sam? You here? What happened to Bill Maher? What did you expect at Bill Maher's house? How are you? Good to see you. Oh, look, we're wearing the same thing.
Are we? That's embarrassing. Was your maid in China? Why? I don't know.
Is it ever why isn't everything yeah it's uh i'm amazed at the brands that do not take the step to to make their clothing in america when they're when they're charging many hundreds of dollars for something that costs 14 in china why why would you if your margin could be yeah larger matter what what it was? I would think it would make consumers feel good, at least in America. Well, I mean, the whole fashion industry is the most made-up industry in the world.
I mean, all you have to do is walk into any department store or clothing store, and it says 80% off from the number you made up to begin with. Yes, which you've never seen, yeah.
We made up a number. We said it cost $2,000 and now we're selling it for $250.
What do you think about that? And people have all for it. I mean, just if everyone was- This podcast is 80% off.
Yeah, I wish. if everyone really was as altruistic and good a person as they say, the whole industry would go away.
I mean, every penny we spend on fashion would really, in a more altruistic world, if we're just going to be completely elemuthinary about everything, would just go to the poor, who have, don't, can't afford to change styles every year. Like, the collars get big, the collars get small.
You know, all they do is, like, there's only so many variations on clothes. Even when you see movies that make place in the year 10,000 on another planet, they're basically wearing the same thing.

Yeah.

They're just slight variations in the cut.

Although there are periods in history.

I mean, if you look back on photos of yourself.

There were decades where it's just what the hell was happening.

There was some brain virus that translated into bad style from the hair on down. The Aids especially.
It's incredible. It's just what the hell was happening.
It was like some brain virus that translated into bad style from the hair on down. The Aedians especially.
It's incredible. It's really.
And also I would say that the cut of things from previous centuries, so much more impressive often than today. Right.
not necessarily the fops of the

court of king louis wearing a powdered wig is where i draw the line the wig and anytime they uh somehow uh etoliate their faith you know like somehow that geisha girls this extreme whiteness I don'titeness. I never got that.

But the cut on the jackets is fantastic in some of this. With the Nazis, too.

The Nazis.

Nazis were very sharp dressers.

Yeah.

I mean, was that Hugo Boss?

Or is that just a meme in my head?

No.

A meme in my head, yeah.

It was Hugo Boss.

He was the Volkswagen of clothing. Actually, we need a list of the brands that went all in on the Third Reich.
Because, I mean, there's some great brands like Mercedes. Volkswagen.
Yeah, and Brown. Oh, and also the.
I think Krups. I mean, like all these German brands were.
And who was the Luftwaffe? Messerschmitt was the name of the German fighter plane. But I think that was also a company or somebody.
It's amazing the way it was a deal breaker for the company to go away. I mean, there were, did you ever see the documentary Shoah, the nine-hour Holocaust documentary? I did not, but I certainly was aware of it.
You've got nine hours left in the day, in your day, after this podcast. I seem to remember there being a joke in my act about it.
Well, it is. It's been some years since I've watched it, but it is well worth watching.
One one of the amazing documents they unveil in this documentary, first of all, it's all modern footage. It's all shot in the 80s.
There's no night and fog, actual Holocaust footage. It's all footage from when the documentary was shot interviewing survivors and SS guards who would saw on camera.
It's not archival footage? No. There's no bodies in pits or crematoria or any of that.
It's just shot in the 80s. They find the competitive bids for the gassing vans that were designed to gas.
Before there was the concentration camps and the crematoria, they had the bright idea of creating vans where the exhaust system doesn't exit but enters the cargo space of the van. And they got competitive bids from, forgive me if you get a lawsuit, but I think Mercedes was one of these companies where, and they have these euphemisms just in the bid.

It's like, we understand. forgive me if you get a lawsuit, but I think Mercedes was one of these companies where, and they have these euphemisms

just in the bid.

It's like, we understand that the cargo

has a tendency to rush to the back.

When the doors close,

it has a tendency to rush to the back of the van, right?

It was just, yeah, and these brands still exist.

It's quite amazing.

What's amazing is humans. Yeah.
And just how awful they are. Are you familiar with the Wannsee Conference? Oh, yeah.
So have you seen, it's Conspiracy, the Kenneth Branagh film? I don't think it's called that, but it may be. I know what you're talking about, and I saw it years ago.
It was an HBO movie. It's great.
It's based on the actual transcript. Yes.
It's a conference, for people who don't know, that took place in Wannsee, which is a suburb of Berlin, on my birthday, although I wasn't born yet, January 20th, 1942. And it's just, it's the banality of evil.
Yeah. And with a little topspin, it's not just banality.
I mean, it's like, Heydrich was like legitimately evil. I mean, they were all evil, but the way they perfunctorily talk about, I mean, this thing you mentioned about the cargo has a tendency to rush, you know, that the ability for humans to forget that the other guy is also a human is just unbelievable to me.
Yeah, yeah. That, you know, you're just two feet away from a guy who you could be suffering like that, but there's zero empathy.
It's just not, I mean, some humans, of course, do have it, thank God. But many just do not.
or they even enjoy, obviously, sadistically, other people suffering in a way that they can't even imagine themselves doing it. It's just amazing, humans.
It is amazing that there are— I mean, so I think there is—I think evil is a word we should still use, right? It's not all banal, right? I mean, there's like, there's real sadism. There's real pleasure taken at the suffering of others.
But then there's just, then the people who are imagining that they're doing something good, they're not actually even thinking about the suffering they're causing, and yet they're part of the machinery that produces the evil. Well, I mean, the people, for example, not to pick on any particular...
Any of our friends? Any of our fellow podcasters? Who already hate us. No, no, I'm talking about the people who flew planes into the buildings on 9-11, for example.
Right. You know, you've talked about it.
Yeah. I have also.
I'm sure not as eloquently, but they certainly thought they were doing the right thing. I seem to remember you thought they were courageous.
Right? That's right. I walked into that one, didn't I? Which they were.
Who were the, was it the good people at ABC who didn't like that? Yeah, the good people of America thought it was a little too early to make that point. If hitting the wall at 400 miles an hour doesn't entail some courage, I'm not sure what does.
Yeah, the only thing that slightly undercuts that is I've heard, I don't know if it's true, somebody I'm sure will be out there vetting it, that three of the four did not know they were on a suicide mission that they thought they were just hijacking a plane and then when the lead dude was like all right comrades take off your clothes because you know you have to die naked or some shit like that and they were like okay i'm sorry it's a it's a what kind of mission my agent a what mission agent? A what mission did you say? I'm sorry. This is a, I can see Woody Allen.
There's been a mistake of some sort. I don't mean to be facetious or didactic, but I need to land.
And my baggage went to a different. I'm actually better at landing the plane.
But yeah, that's you know they think they're actually doing good that's the scary part that i think we both see in religion is that people do evil things and are encouraged to do evil things and do them in great numbers that there's nothing else that really is the same kind of motivator

that we've ever seen in human history, right?

Well, the thing that people are just simply not tracking is that once you get, once you

absorb that worldview and that is the lens through which you're looking at life on Earth,

basically everything changes.

I mean, there are – it's true to say that you can have people who, I mean, obviously there's some prototypically evil people, a part of, you know, any jihadist movement and they're sociopaths and they're bad guys, but there are also people who are absolutely convinced that this is the appropriate use of their genuine compassion. It's like they feel, they're feeling real compassion, that what we would recognize as compassion.
And they just think that the most important difference of outcomes hangs in the balance. I mean, there's paradise on the one hand and there's hell on the other.
And they have the right answer for how to navigate toward one and avoid the other. And nothing else matters, right? And literally under that framing, you can't kill the wrong people because anyone you kill who is destined for paradise is just going to thank you, right? They're just, you know, you blow up, you know, a bunch of noncombatants.

And if there are good Muslims among them,

there's no, they're just waiting in the bottle room

with you and really in 72 versions.

No downside.

Yeah, I blame misinformation.

Which I know you do a lot.

Yes, you did.

That was a joke.

You know, so there were scare quotes around that word.

So you don't like the idea of misinformation.

Obviously, sometimes it's true.

Yes.

But sometimes it's just, you know, one day's misinformation is tomorrow's information.

Well, I mean, COVID could have started.

But not for everything.

No, but, you know, COVID could have started in a lab was misinformation. Yeah.
Although, I mean, honestly, I think there are people who could see even then that. I mean, so for instance, you and I are on opposite sides of a few of these questions, but that's not one of them.
From the first possible moment, I thought that's a totally valid hypothesis. Yeah.
And to call it racist was idiotic. Right.
And I still don't know what happened, but it's a coin toss. But I would venture to say that in 50 years, what people will be saying about this is, wait a second.
You're telling me that in 2020, there was this disease that started in the one city where the lab was. It was named after the disease.
That was studying it and doing gain of function research. And yet they debated whether it came out of there and even said it couldn't possibly have come out of there.
Really? That's what people were doing in 2020? That's what I think they would be saying, that it wasn't obvious to them that there's a connection here. Now, it could have been the bats in the wet market.
I mean, the problem is that there are still, it's been at least a year since I looked at this. I did a podcast on it, but I've now kind of ignored it.
But when I did that podcast, there were still credible scientific arguments to argue for the wet market origin thesis. There still are.
Yeah. But less and less so, it seems, over time.
But the crucial point is that it was never crazy to have worried about this. And the truth, I mean, we should still be worried about it.
I mean, lab leaks happen continuously. And it's just this is something, this could well kill us with something far more dangerous than COVID.
Well, also— And we're not, you know, we don't have it locked down the way we should. And again, you don't have to ascribe any sort of nefarious machinations to this.

It's very possible that sincere people thought the best way to deal with future viruses is to get ahead of it, study it in a lab. Isn't that what gain-of-function research is to see where it's the virus? So there are two steps here that are neither of which, in my view, make much sense, but it's sort of easy to see how they did make sense to people early on.

Happily, I think we've pulled the brakes on much of this. Have we? Yeah.
Oh, good. Yeah, USAID was—so you had this notion of virus hunting, where you would send out your virologists into bat caves and in search of possible pandemic pathogens.
So there's an uncountable number of viruses out there to be discovered. I think they outnumber any other species of life, like 10 to 1.
So it's like, yeah, I mean, just millions upon millions of uncharacterized viruses. Yeah, no doubt.
In this room, I don't doubt it. It's on the furniture.
Yeah, when I go home, it's like, you saw Silkwood, right? I've got a stage when I enter my house where I just get showered. Sam, I made you healthier tonight is what I did.
You're lucky. You boosted my immune system.
I did. Well, I like to know the names of the women who have helped in that effort.
I must tell you, I was watching the news last night. I hadn't done that in a while.
And there's Lester Holtz. And he's talking about bird flu.
And it's like a three-minute package. And the whole time I'm going, oh, fuck.
We're all going to die. It's just meant to make you shit your pants.
You know, pictures of chickens. And they get to the end of it.
And I'm like, oh, this is death. This is another one.
It's going to be worse. And then they bring on the expert, and there's a question to her.
And the very last thing she says, after three minutes of shitting your pants is, and the only way you can get it is if you fuck a duck on top of a cow. I mean, you'd have to practically fuck a chicken.
Like Larry Flint says he'd lost it. I think raw milk is suspect, specifically for bird flu.
And the cows got it in California. Oh, I see.
And at least theoretically, I think there's some cases that they think are attributable to raw milk. What about raw goat yogurt? Raw anything is probably, on the dairy aisle, I think is probably just not worth the risk.
Well, I've been eating raw goat yogurt for 20 years and never got sick from it. So what would you say to that? Well, the birds are flying over the goats and now shitting on them.
And the goats might get bird flu. I mean, the cows are.
Well, maybe it'd be a good time to take a break from it. Yeah, exactly.
No, but seriously, I'm not unreasonable about anything, I don't think. That makes sense to me.
But in general, I mean, obviously you understand the reasoning why people don't do it just for shits and giggles. Eat raw.
They do it because they want the probiotics in there that pasteurization and homogenization kills. It kills just like in our body with antibiotics.
I think if you lick any of the surfaces in this room, you'll get a lot of probiotics. There's a remote control that I got from a Best Western that I would like you to...
First of all, I've calmed down a lot. Yeah.
Okay, so let's... Okay, good.
Well, that's... But not complete.
Everything has a season. Not complete.
Well, I don't know about that. Like...
This is Ecclesiastes. That's why I never got married is because I was like, I like this season.
Why can't I keep this season going? You know. This calmer season or the Motley Crue season of yesteryear? Yeah, where I was snorting a column of ants off the floor.
That's right, Dan. That's what I was doing, snorting ants and eating your heads off of bats.
No, the season of, you know how people look back and they kind of look back fondly on that, that, you know, falling in love era. I'm like, well, if you're looking fondly back on it, why don't you do it? Is it a law that you have to stop it? That was always.
But,, you know, I understand that I'm also, you can't have kids and, you know, lots of stuff. Yeah, there are trade-offs.
There are trade-offs. That's life's all of trade-offs.
One of the obvious things I feel like the younger generation doesn't understand. I feel like besides not teaching them, like, how to do math anymore or write or read, I think I heard you say that your kids don't even cursive.
They can't read cursive. It's a hieroglyphic? I knew they couldn't write cursive, right? So I knew that that skill was atrophying and it was just not being taught.
And they were taught it in a completely perfunctory way, and they spent like two weeks on it and they never got it. And so obviously it wasn't happening.
Why is it important? It's not. But then I didn't realize, idiot that I am, I didn't realize that that would translate into them not reading it.
And so literally they're handed a birthday card from their grandmother, and it's like the fucking Rosetta Stone. I mean, they cannot decode anything.
Which oddly is the name of their grandmother, Rosetta Stone. They cannot, I mean, they can't decode a single word, right? It's not like, I mean, and this is pretty counterintuitive because, you know, I don't write, I spend no time writing cursive, but obviously I can read it.
It seems strange that that's going to add to it. I do sometimes use it because it's faster.
Right. It's not faster for me.
I'm just behind you enough to have... If you're signing a lot of books or something.
Well, signing, having a signature is one thing, but actually writing in cursive. But signature is always in cursive.
Yeah. Who prints their signature? Frankenstein? Yes.
Just X? Morons. Morons print their signature.
But if they can't read cursive how can they read a person's

autograph they can't no they they know really they just have to take your word that it says frank stallone yes but i they should not become famous because neither of my daughters have autographs yeah they can they they will so they will struggle but i must say among the things we've lost

I cry the least

for this one

yes

right

yes I'm not gonna

I'll

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I'll They will struggle. But I must say, among the things we've lost, I cry the least for this one.
Yes. Right? Yes.
I'm not going to lay awake at night. I mean, cursive, that one can go.
You know what else could go? Daylight savings. Yes.
I'm with you there. That's just a hassle.
And President Trump says he is fully behind getting rid of it. It's part of the MAGA agenda.
Yeah. I've said that I am not going to pre-hate anything.
Yeah, so you and I are taking a similar line there. What I've been saying is that I'm not going to react to anything that hasn't already happened.
So all my whinging about Trump and Trumpism relates to stuff that's already happened. And I'm not talking about hypotheticals.
And I'm also not going to react to if he talks about Arnold Palmer's dick or some other silly thing. No factor.
He's a talker, okay?

He just talks. He's one of those people who talks a lot.
And he kind of like just... Have you ever met him? Of course.
Yeah? And so what was your... There's actually a photo.
Yeah, he showed me a photo of you and him at one point. Oh, that was at the Emmys.
I forgot about that time. Yeah, that's a classic photo.
Do you have any different experience of him in person versus his public persona? Of course. I have the same experience every single person who's ever met him has, which is, oh, my God.
Not only is he not a monster in person, but he actually was very nice and charming. You know, he's one of those guys who's always looking to make connections and network and maybe someday this guy i don't know but i'm gonna like flatter him and give him like two minutes of my attention and make him feel like an important person that's a skill that a salesman like him and a con man like him has to have and he does have it i met I met him twice, once was at the Playboy Mansion.

Yeah, well, you're meeting on an area of common interest.

It was the Midsummer Night's Dream Party.

Are you familiar?

I can imagine.

No, I wasn't there.

You never heard of it?

No.

I think I've heard of it, but I don't.

It's iconic. It's famous.
Is it a costume? I mean, does everyone show up in costume? No, it was a party. It was in the middle of the summer, so it was hot out.
And you had to wear bedware. Of course, it's an excuse to get the women to wear lingerie.
But do you show up in pajamas too? Yes, you'd either show up in, you know, guys had different, you know, muscle guys would just like have pajama bottoms and no shirt. You know, or you'd have a classy smoking jacket I thought was a good look.
You know, but it was just to get the women in them. Right.
But so everyone is in their pajama wear and he's walking around the party. He did a lap in his, just what he always wears.
In his magazine. His power suit with the red tie red tie right and i remember he just went around the party and i talked to him there and yes he was quite charming and um attentive and then i saw him at a club in new york in the 90s we were both at a club again i know common interest i think it was called moomba it was uh It was one of those places at that era in my life I would be at.
And I think he talked about it on Howard Stern once. And they asked him about it.
Yeah, he's with a girl. She was, not bad.
I got the approval from Donald Trump. She wasn't a seven.
But I've matured and he hasn't. That's the difference between how you get to be president and why you're sitting here in this lickable furniture world.
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Well, there's one thing I am skeptical about. I haven't said anything about this.
I'll give it to you. I actually just, I mean, this just could be based on a faulty intuition about ballistics, but I would be, I'm surprised that a rifle round making any degree of contact with an ear wouldn't do more damage.
I think a shattered piece of shrapnel from a teleprompter is far more likely to have done that to his ear than a rifle round. That's so silly.

Have you seen what rifle rounds do to human bodies? I know, but like if it just hit it by the slightest possible degree, it just, you know, it makes much more sense. The guy behind him.
Well, no, but I do, no, there's no question there are rifle rounds flying. I mean, someone was killed.
I'm not debating that at all. But just to, if in fact a teleprompter was hit by the rifle round and we know there was shattered glass, that makes more sense to me.
Oh, he didn't get hit at all. It was the teleprompter.
He got hit by flying glass as opposed to a rifle round. But that doesn't change the basic narration.
No, no, no. Zero change.
No, I completely agree that it could be that McLovin just missed him completely. McLovin? That's what I call it.
And shot the other guy. And he got hit by the, but you know.
Yes. No, no.
It does not take anything away from him having survived a legit assassination attack. Right.
I'm not disputing that. And by the way, thank God he did.
Not just because even people we don't like, we should not wish their death, but it's a bad place for your mind to be, I think. But also because the country would just have gone nuts.
Yeah. I mean, we would be in the middle of a civil war now.
Well, so I think we sort of nodded toward this truth, but I'll just make it explicit. I do think that one of the silver linings of him having won this election and having won it decisively is that it has discharged all of that pent-up rage and conspiracy thinking.
I mean, like, so in Trumpistan... Is it? Well, they've gotten everything, right? So now they've got four years to just...
They believe in elections again. Yeah, yeah.
So, like, our election system works, right, apparently, and the elites couldn't keep the man down. But again...
And there's no conspiracy. The Jews didn't do the thing that they were worried about.
But, you know, again, and I don't think you're going to disagree with this, we didn't cure the cancer. We just pushed it further into tissue.
Well, but I think it's different. But the counterfactual is scary.
I mean, so a Harris administration with all of these right-wing QAnon-addled nutcases thinking that the fix was in and the elections don't mean anything. And all of that's bad from my point of view.
So the fact that half of the electorate is that crazy is, I do think they've been mollified. And then now they get to see what it's like to govern with all of the tech bros they love and we'll see what happens.
Well, I don't know what will happen with that. I do know what will happen with the next election, which is why as much as we're living in a wonderful time now where America's great again, whatever the next election is, if the Democrat wins it, they're just going to be ever more suspicious.
And it's just going to be... We're putting off this day where something has to give with the people who don't believe in elections unless we win them.
That's intolerable. Why would you say that if this time we, the mustache-twirling plutocrats, couldn't fix the election? You're thinking too.
Elections work. You're thinking so logically.
That's Sam. He won everything.
He ran the table. Yes, because there was no cheating.
But if he had lost, there would have been cheating. You have it backwards.
Absolutely. But we've proven that you could have a fair election in the year 2024.
You're living in the world where you're encountering people like you. Right.
And that's not the world we live in. Well, I'm a bad judge of character.
You are. That is not going to happen.
What's going to happen is the next time a Democrat wins, there's going to be a fucking shitstorm. And I don't know how that ends.
And it depends also on who is in positions of power that are being put there now. I mean, I did an editorial once about power begets power.
The more power you have, the more power you get. So now they have- What are you worried about and what are you agnostic about and what are you hopeful about? I'm worried about that now that they have a lot of power controlling all the levers, they do what all countries do where the people who want to stay in power forever put the people in place who are just total loyalists.
That's the courts. But are you worried that we're not going to have a valid 2028 election because he's going to run for a third term or something insane? I mean, he could, and that would be awful.
I don't know. It's a very sort of Prince Charles situation, you know, like where Don Jr.
is like, Mom, would you please die, Queen Elizabeth? So, I mean, how old was Prince Charles when he finally got it? And Don Jr. is kind of going to be chomping at the bit.
But we are heading toward that where, like North Korea and the Assad regime and many other places in the world, that they have elections, wink, wink, but really it's just the scion of the ruling family that takes over. And of course their fans love this.
So, you know, I think J.D. Vance is just a placeholder for Don Jr.
I think the fact that they look alike makes it easier. They just put Don Jr.
in there and they tell them it's the same guy. So you think Trumpism continues without Trump? Absolutely.
I think Trump. I have no intuitions about that.
Very often with a person named Trump. Right.
Yeah. So yeah, I would.
Don, Barron baron i could see doing this he's eight feet tall so yeah so was george washington for his day yeah you know um i yes but even without them trumpism to me is a response to something we both talk a lot about which is the insanity of the left As long as one half of the country feels that even if they don't like Trump so much, we just can't let these crazy people take over, the people who don't know what a woman is. Right.
You know, that kind of stuff, the people who think we are living in this racist, patriarchal nightmare of a country, which we're not. We have issues.
We have problems. Do you think the pendulum is swinging back on that now? You know, we've heard this for the last few years, and there are bits of evidence that it is.
But in the aftermath of the loss, do you think this, the... Well, here's...
Reconciliation is happening. We've actually had a test case that that can answer this question although we don't have the full answer yet but seth moulton you're familiar yeah congressman okay he said after the election something which you and i and any reasonable person in america would find not only benign but completely uncontroversial he said i don't want my, my, I think, 12-year-old.
My daughter being run over by a man. Yes, I don't want my 12-year-old daughter who played, whether it was field hockey or soccer or some girl's sport in school, to be on the field with a biological male who couldn't do a lot of damage.
It's true. And immediately, I think it was his press secretary or maybe campaign manager or maybe both resigned.
Right. Yeah.
And there's where we are. That is the picture.
But he's still okay, right? So he hasn't been canceled, right? No. But I don't, maybe I missed it because I'm on vacation, but I don't hear him saying, good, let the door hit you in the ass.
You are what lost this last election. And I'm glad you're going.
And you're what's taking down this party. And you're nuts.
And I'm here to say Democrats are not nuts. Have you seen Richie Torres speak?

Yes, I've had him on the show.

Oh, okay.

So I missed that.

Yeah, yeah.

He seems great to me.

And he seems like he's kryptonite

to the far left.

I've seen him be great on some issues.

Frankly, on the one-on-one,

we had him once and I liked him a lot.

Then he was on-

This is on real time or on the podcast? Yeah, real time. And then he was on the panel and I thought he was, he looked green, young, way too careful.
But, you know, he's very young. But I like him and any Democrat who stands up for Israel, that takes guts.
And he did it and does. And, yeah, I think he's got a big future.
I think he's really smart. I mean, he's black, Latino, gay, and wants nothing to do with identity politics, which is— Well, it's easy to say when you're all that.
That's right. Yeah.
But, I mean, that's like having the 20-sided dice. It's like the the rich guy who says money really doesn't matter.
Yeah, because you have it. Yeah.
Well, that's one of the Democrats biggest problems in electoral politics is that one side doesn't give a shit at all about diversity. And one side is way too beholden to it and has to check boxes before they even think about who's going to be on the ticket.
I mean, I said this, I think it was Eric Holder, but I said, can you even imagine a Democratic ticket without a person of color? He said, no. Now, maybe that's a good thing, but it is limiting.
Yeah. It is very, very limiting.
It means you are pulling from half the pool of talent and maybe not the pool. Well, not even half.
Right. It depends what you mean by color in that case.
I see. You're talking about black, you're 14% of the pool of talent.
Right. I see what you're saying, yeah.
But in politics, probably a little more is that number but uh just in general um

you're you're limiting yourself and the other team just doesn't care i mean look at trump he just

although he did a one one of his people is gay who is it these um some important is it the

treasury secretary i think oh it was a very un-trump like pick he wasn't necessarily a loyalist

Thank you. What was it? Some important.
Is it the Treasury Secretary, I think? It was a very un-Trump-like pick.

He wasn't necessarily a loyalist, gay, and a former George Soros contributor.

Right, right.

That surprised me.

But I think he's Treasury.

Yeah, yeah.

And I've got to imagine there are conspiracy theorists getting a hold of that.

I mean, because Soros is enemy number one over in Trump.

He is.

But I don't think in the Trump administration, I Soros is enemy number one over in Trumpistan

but I don't think

in the Trump administration

I don't think

enemy number one

or enemy at all

is gay

not gay

but

I don't think

I don't think it's black

I just don't

they don't kowtow

and maybe they should

a little

because we do

need remedial

steps still

we do have to

take account of our horrible past we just need to live in the air we're living in, is what I always say, as opposed to pretending that we need to be doing what we were doing in 1960 or something. Now, Trump's people, maybe they go a little too far.
I mean, I don't think there's any, maybe there's one person of color that he picked, but it's just not the way he thinks.

And, you know, I don't know.

One side is too far one way.

He's too far the other way.

But generally, Merritt does need to make a comeback.

Not that the people he picked have anything to do with Merritt.

It's really not.

I mean, he's a bad. To a degree that is fairly...
Did I say bad example? Oh, God. I mean, Pete Hegsmith.
Hegseth, yeah. Hegseth, whatever.
Well, I mean, it's like, can we get more rapists in here? I mean, like, how is it that you... Okay, well, that's a very strong word.
That's true. You know.
Well, we'll find out. We'll find out what this person...
No, I don't think this person will come forward because... Oh, the Pete Hanks woman, yeah.
I think he's given the woman freedom to come forward. Would I be shocked? I would not.
But I also think in these instances, since Bill Clinton has been credibly accused of doing the same thing as Trump has done, I mean, past just being handsy. Right.
That since the Democrats never really seem to care about that, you've already lost the high ground on this issue. You know, you apparently only care.
There's a lesson in that. Don't lose the fucking high ground.
I mean, like, like actually have integrity area you know you apparently only care there's a lesson in that don't lose the

fucking high ground i mean like like actually have integrity you know i mean it just seems like you know i mean where you start the clock is is a judgment call but like okay from this moment forward whatever your part you know like if we're going to reboot the democratic party, let's practice sane politics. And sane politics is not reverse racism, right? It's not just, you know, hating Whitey all the time, right? That's the key.
At a certain point, you have to stop apologizing for how fucked up the past was and just find the people who are capable of moving forward with real integrity. That's the key.
I mean, race is the original sin of this country. And, you know, it's still with us in a big way, in every way.
It's with us, but I think we can solve the problem without focusing on race. So, for instance, I think there really is profound inequalities that are highly correlated with race in America, like wealth inequality, health outcomes.
Mostly money. Mostly money.
I mean, everything that comes with money, right? Because for years they couldn't have any money and we've had generations of wealth. Yeah.
So, I think it is still true to say that it's something like an eightfold difference in the average amount of familial wealth between white and black in America, right? So, that's serious, right? So So if you were going to focus on class, if you're going to focus on wealth inequality and all of its entailments, you know, education, health, et cetera, then you would be disproportionately benefiting people of color without ever focusing on race as the variable. Right.
And there's some things that the people who just want to make headlines don't acknowledge about this argument. One is, this cannot be, an eight to one disparity in wealth cannot be addressed in a short period of time.
Yeah. It's going to take a century.
Well, you're not, yeah, you're not going to cut a check. It's going to take a century.
Some things just do. I'm sorry about the past.
I personally didn't do it. And you're not going to get white people to, and it would bankrupt the economy.
If you actually gave what black people in general deserve, yes. But again, the people- But also it's unworkable in all kinds of other ways.
And the people alive today- Aren't the people. Very often get conflated.
They're not the culpable people. The woke like to conflate the past with the present.
The past was despicable. And the present has parts of it that are still needing remedial work.
But it's not despicable. We have racists in this country.
I don't think we're a racist country in general. I said it in my last editorial that the Democrats appeal to the voters as if they don't actually live here, as if they don't actually go out in the day.
Yeah, you don't go to a CVS and have to get your shaving kit under lock and key. A jailer comes by to get you some razor blades.
Yeah, that too, but I mean, racially, they seem to think Americans live in this country where they go out in the day and they're seeing racism. Right.
Like cross burnings in front of. The Starbucks is saying, we don't serve your kind to people.
You know, it's just like, we have issues to work out, but basically we're a fairly successful multiracial society. And the- Well, here's a, I mean, maybe this won't be provocative to you, but it's in, in Wokistan, this is provocative.
I think if we could just magically remove every racist from our society, virtually nothing would change of substance. It's like, there'd still be the same number of murders in Chicago this weekend.
There'd still be the same wealth inequality. There'd still be educational disparities.
We still have lots of problems to solve. And we would recognize that for virtually nothing was the problem, that there was a racist standing in the way anchoring that problem.
Yes. And, of course, there are people listening to this now saying, how dare two white men talk about it, even talk about it, let alone say— To that I can say, go fuck yourself.
Me too. Because we're speaking the truth.

Yeah.

You know, and of course, the people who know this better than anybody are black people. Like, I've heard.
Who voted in record numbers for Trump because. Still not a lot.
No, but. Just record numbers, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, he got half of the male Latino vote.
Yeah. But no, I mean, I've heard woke people say things like, you know, black people are hunted when they leave their house.
Somebody has to stand up to that kind of thing. Like the implication being by racists, as you're talking about, or the police.
Racist cops. Racist cops.
And it's true. There are some black people who are hunted when they leave their house.
They're gang members.

Hunted by other gang members. Who are being hunted by other gang members because they insulted their sneakers or something.
You know, that's, or they're on their drug territory. We could make so much progress in this racial area if we would just do three things.
John McWater talks about them, and the drug war.

Better schools and teachers. if we would just do three things, John McWater talks about them, end the drug war, better schools, and actually teaching kids something, especially in shitty schools where a lot of black kids go, and more daddies.
Yeah. Family.
That's also completely incendiary, you know, Candace Owens level point.

What did she say? I mean, just putting the onus on single-parent households. I mean, I think it's something like 70% of the births in the black community are to single moms, right? And she's? She's just like, that's your fucking problem, fellas.
Oh, I see. But that – well, Candace is black, obviously, so she doesn't quite have the problems that you and I are now going to inherit as a result of this conversation.
But it's obviously so, right? It's just not— And it wasn't always so. It wasn't always so.
In the black community. So something did change change yeah um i think some people think that it was always thus or that maybe it's even uh gotten better but no uh that number was not nearly that high that did get worse yeah and then so maybe we should just look at that but i think that's kind of anathema to the left because it implicates like the great society and— My feeling now is that as a heuristic, I just think that any mention of race in virtually any context is almost always, these are all these modifiers, counterproductive.
And paradoxically, they want to make everything about race. Right.
Everything's about race, but don't mention it. There's no one who cares as much about race as progressives in American society.
If you migrate right to look for your colleague in this racial fixation, you have to go all the way to the Ku Klux Klan, all the way to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. Those are the people who care about race as much as the woke progressives.
It's a little like how much Republicans care about gay. You know, some of them think about gayness a lot.
You almost have to be a gay man to think about it as much. It's kind of the same.
Although I think that's probably not so much the case. I feel like we did win that battle, and that's not getting walked back, but who knows? I mean, there are theocrats who are still waiting to win that argument.
But what's amazing is that for you and me, what is amazing is that we have not had the bandwidth to even think about Christian fundamentalism and theocracy in the last decade, given all of the political mishigas that Trump has brought in. I mean, like he has empowered the theocrats and there's been this kind of quiet, you know.
QAnon is a quasi.

Oh, yeah.

There's all kinds of.

The theocrats are getting what they want, but we're not talking about them or even thinking about them in most cases. But I worry that when he's gone, they're still there.
Oh, yeah. And they like, he gets a pass.
He got a hall pass from the theocrats. He's not even remotely plausibly a Christian, and yet he's their instrument.
Excuse me, Sam. Have you read your Bible? He's a Cyrus figure.
Yes, right. Do you know who Cyrus is? Yeah.
Who? Yeah. Mr.
Smarty Pants. Cyrus the Great? Yes, Cyrus the Great.
Yeah. What did he do? He freed the Jews.
He wasn't a good person himself, but he did a good thing. He was a vessel of God.
Instrument of the Lord, yeah. He was an instrument of the Lord.
So we don't care that he wasn't even a Jew. I think I told you, I asked Ralph Reed about this the first time around, like this is like 2016.
I was at a conference. I ran into Ralph.
Yeah, I've had him on the show. As people remember, he was in good standing among evangelicals, evangelical thought leader.
Oh, yes. Thought leader.
So this was at the moment where they had completely gone all in for Trump. And I said, Ralph, you know, I mean, he had just stood up there and said, you know, Corinthians 2.
And it was asked for his favorite book of the Bible. And he said, oh, I wouldn't want to say, I wouldn't want to offend anyone.
Like it was clearly he didn't know any of the books of the Bible. And so I asked Ralph, like, Ralph, you know, he doesn't know anything about Christianity.
He's not thought about this at all. He's not a Christian.
He's like, how are you supporting him? And he just went immediately to, you know, I don't know what's in another man's heart. You know, it's just, they rationalized it.
You know, they knew they had cut a deal with him. You're such a cynic.
First of all, Trump was the 45th president of the United States.

You know what passage King Cyrus is?

King's 45.

Oh, I didn't know that.

You can't argue with science, Sam.

Exactly, yeah.

Damn, well, I stand corrected.

It's all going according to plan.

How much do you remember about the Babylonian captivity? Personally? No, from history. What year? I'm going to put that at 600 BC.
586 BC. Pretty good.
That was close. And the king was? Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzarnezzar I'm going to name my dog that that was diaspora number one and then we had diaspora number two about 600 years later what do you think about all the Jew hunting that's going on in the world I see in Amsterdam they're now calling it Jew hunting, which has faint echoes of the worst.

Is it not?

Am I wrong?

Am I reading into that between the lines?

Jew hunting?

I can't.

I mean, this is one of these situations, analogous to what I just said about race, I do feel like we can get virtually everything we want, not focusing on anti-Semitism and focusing on a defense of Western values.

It's like, so again, the analogy is, so with race in America, I think if you focus on wealth inequality, I think that tide lifts all boats or the boats you want to lift. I think with antisemitism, I mean, this is perhaps, there's some serious caveats here, perhaps.
But generally speaking, everything that's wrong with anti-Semitism is a symptom of this larger problem where everyone left of center can't figure out how to defend Western values from. I couldn't agree more.
Absolutely. It all springs from that.
That somehow Western values themselves are tainted again because, you know, to me the root of this is the kids don't know anything because they don't teach anything in school. So if you don't know anything, what's the one thing you can know? Black and white.
Literally black and white. That's as deep as they get.
So in that world where there's black and white, white bad, black good, one's the oppressor, one's the oppressed. Everything has to fit into that.
And Israel, rich, white, even though like half of them are not white. Literally the only black people are Ethiopian Jews fighting for the IDF in that context.

That's true.

But, I mean, Jews that are Sephardic are— Yeah, no, I mean, they're indistinguishable from the Arabs. Right, indistinguishable.
Yeah, and half the Mizrahi Jews have cut.

I mean, you're talking about Jews who were kicked out of all the neighboring countries, Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and Morocco. I mean, like you've got, that's probably half the population of Israel.
Right. And no one's worried about their right of return.
Again, my thesis, black and white, that's all you know. In that worldview, we're white, bad.
Where they don't sometimes teach.

They don't teach a lot of stuff that they used to teach because it was written by white people. Even though maybe it would be worth reading Thomas Locke.
Yeah. Maybe he did write something.
Or John Locke, whatever. John Locke, yeah.
Okay. Thomas Hobbes.
Thomas Hobbes, yeah.

I'm sure there are other people.

Rousseau.

Thomas Kuhn. You know, yes, people whose ideas became the enlightenment ideas,

which are the actual ideas that make marginalized people's lives better,

like equality and protection of minorities and democracy

and scientific inquiry and individual liberty.

You know, sorry that white people thought of some of this stuff. But in that world, where you don't even teach that, of course, they're not going to defend Western values.
Because values is a concept. You have to think a little above the immediate black and white.
So that's what we're dealing with.

We're working on not what used to be considered such a lofty level, the level of concepts, as opposed to just identity. Anyone can see the identity.
But really, that's why I don't think they value Western concepts anymore and Western values, and they don't defend them. They just defend the people who are oppressed, even if the oppression is coming from those people.
Who is more oppressive in this world, as long as we're going to get in trouble anyway? The theocrats and Muslims. Well, Muslim men in general, like in their personal lives, with their relations with women.
Well, that's's the thing that's so crazy. Not all Muslim men, I'm not saying, and certainly not the ones in America, but that's why people come to America.
Yeah, no. But around the world, you know, women are not considered equal.
Well, I mean, the thing that's so crazy making about it is that it's not, it doesn't, it that it's not like it's logical within its context, and therefore it's easy to see how people are so confused. It's completely illogical even within its own context.
If what you care about are the rights of women, you want women to be treated as equals to men. Like that's your starting, like the women's march, right? Let's get a million women to march on DC and you want equality, right? Totally understandable.
I'm with you, sisters. How is it that you imagine that having one of the three people who are anchoring this, this march, you have a, a, a veiled woman who's this theocratic bully and anti-Semite and friend of Louis Farrakhan, right? And you imagine that the veil is a symbol of female empowerment, right? Yes.
It should be worn with the Queers for Palestine t-shirt. Exactly, yeah.
Just as a visual of like how ass backwards these people's thinking, how confused they are. But of course, they're just going to hate us for saying that and not really see what we're saying.
They more likely will not even hear us saying it. Yeah.
Yeah. Do you ever worry about that, that you're just preaching to the converted or do you feel like you are converting? I feel like I'm converting some.
I feel it. Yeah.
Do you ever worry about that, that you're just preaching to the converted, or do you feel like you are converting? I feel like I'm converting some. I mean, the ideas certainly spread.
I mean, I think the time course of their spread is smeared out over time. I mean, you don't know when people are going to stumble upon the thing you said five years ago.
But it doesn't, I mean, you know, I wouldn't, if it felt pointless, I wouldn't do it. But it certainly doesn't feel pointless.
I constantly meet the people who's thinking it has changed. Yeah, me too.
It's valuable. And I also think that if I would analogize the media to politics, there's often a call for a third party in politics.
Which I have never felt anything but skepticism about. It just seems like too heavy a lift.
But here's where I'm going with this. In politics, it doesn't really work.
Not in this country, the way it's set up. If we were a parliamentary democracy, it would be different.
You could have multiple parties. In this system we have, one of them is always, a third party, if it becomes successful, will then be co-opted by one of the two parties.
It always happens. Your ideas are popular, we'll just steal them.
And it just doesn't work. But media-wise, yes, the two parties, the MSNBCs over here, and the Fox News over there with all their other New York Times on that side and, you know, Sinclair or whatever on that side.
They both have huge bastions and lots of people who just want to hear what they have to say because they just want their preconceived ideas confirmed. they want everything to be chewed for them and then spit back in their mouth in a way that they can just swallow.
Okay. But there is like a third party in media, and that's you and me and Barry Weiss and Andrew Sullivan and, you know, I could name other people.
It's really just the four of us. No, it isn't.
Don't say that. There's more, right? I hope, yeah.
Come on. Douglas Murray.
Well, Douglas is fantastic on his issues, but he's hated by everyone left of center. So are we.
No, no. Well, not as much.
Pointlessly. We're not hated as much as Douglas.
But pointlessly, and that's the thing. The great thing about Douglas is he doesn't care.
He's never cared. He has no reason to care because he's on the right.
Either do we. Well, no, but he never experienced this whiplash of like, wait a minute.
These people who understand everything that I understand and also subscribe to the New York Times now hate me. Right.
He never had any of that. Yeah, same.
And Jordan Peterson, I would add to that list. I don't feel like he...
Jordan's got some user interface issues. What is that? I like Jordan a lot as a person.
I mean, but Jordan is definitely out there in not quite Trumpistan, but he's definitely Trump-adjacent and messaging into the...

He's in conspiristan.

He's talking to the...

He's out there with Russell Brand

and people who are talking

to the contrarian audience all the time.

Well, what's something he says

that I would object to?

No, I know.

I had him here for the book.

It's been a while since I...

what we're doing. and well what's something he says that i would object to um no i know i had him here for the book it's been a while since i watched his stuff but i mean well first of all he's he's he's genuinely well he's he's religious in a way that's hard to know i had him here we talked about the bible for two hours because that's what his book is about.
Right. So we don't agree on that.

And if he'd voted for Trump, we don't agree on that.

Yeah, I don't.

Well, he's actually said some critical things about Trump, as has Douglas. So they're not all in on that front.

But no, I mean, so what I've noticed with a lot of people, I would not put Douglas in this category, but I think I would put Jordan there, is there's this phenomenon of audience capture, which is a phrase, I don't know if it's in your brain, but it's a – Eric Weinstein came up with this phrase that now everyone uses because it's so useful. But it just names this phenomenon of people who, especially in alternative media, who detect a signal in their audience.
Like the person who starts talking about, you know, did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself? And they, all of a sudden they've done 40 podcasts on that topic because that's what their audience wants. And they've monetized that idea and and and you see it happen that happen you see that happen to people yeah absolutely and you see it also in broadcast people like nicole wallace who i like right but she was a pretty hard right bush republican and then she went over to msnbc and it you know at first it's just like well, we all hate Trump.
There are good Republicans who hate Trump, and we love them for it. Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, okay, blah, blah, blah, Chris Christie.
We've done the list. But then it slowly becomes every issue.
And you're like, okay, maybe it's a sincere conversion. or maybe it's like I see who signs my paycheck every week.
So your opinion about guns and climate change, all those dials got turned. So suddenly she's like, brown people, brown people.
When did you ever care about brown people? I mean, I'm not picking on her. There are other examples of that where you just feel like, wow, you know, I get it.
Whoever's signing your paycheck, we all got to eat. You know, man's got to make a living.
But I don't know. Now, I'm lucky.
I've had a very generous employer for a long time. And you're lucky because, you know, you don't have sponsors.
You talk about it all the time at the beginning of your show. I do this.
I'm asking, you know, for money to do this because it gives me the freedom. And you're right.
You are beholden to nobody. And that's a rare thing these days in broadcasting, beholden to nobody.
No, I mean, I felt it. This may sound like an invidious thing to say about that.
But did you see my debate with Ben Shapiro for Barry on Honestly? I did not. Okay, so this is pre-election.
Oh, maybe I did. Maybe I read it.
Was there a transcript? Okay, I read it. Yes, I read it.
So anyway, we did a debate, but I realized, and I'm sure Ben would disagree with this, but I think he would be wrong, that there was a freedom I had in having this debate with him. And I like Ben, and it was a totally open-hearted debate.

There was nothing wrong there. But I realized I was free.
Like, whenever he made a good point against Kamala Harris, I was free to agree with it. Right.
It's like, I got no, I mean, you know, I know, I'm beholden to no one, not even my audience on some level. Me neither.
And it's just like –

Right.

Priceless.

He knows his audience is Trumpistan.

He knows he can't actually say – he can't wake up tomorrow morning and realize, okay, all this stuff has gone too far.

Trump is a fucking Nazi, and I don't – like, I want no part of this.

His business is predicated.

Tomorrow's business is predicated on him not doing that.

He can't have that epiphany.

And I can.

It's an amazing freedom.

I'm even luckier because I can with an employer.

Right.

I mean, that's unusual.

That's very unusual.

And if I don't say it enough, I appreciate it from HBO because they don't have to be that way. And, I mean, it could end tomorrow.
But, I mean, they've never told me what to say, what to think, where to come down on an issue. That's rare.
So I am extremely fortunate. When Elon buys them next week, then the regime might change.

I think Elon and I get it. You're the one who has serious beef with Elon.
Don't inherit my problem with Elon. If I felt that way, I would because I always say what I think.
I don't feel that way. I feel like he is a genius and has done a lot.
We seem to forget about this short list of amazing things he's done that make the world better. And I want to see.
He hasn't been there. I don't think he's in it for the money.
I would agree. Right.
I think he's sincere. He likes to fix things.
And, okay, how do we have an we have an electric car i'm gonna fix that and then how do we get to mars i'm gonna fix that and how do we have the internet everywhere i'm gonna fix that and how do we get people who are paralyzed to pick up a pen from across the room i'm gonna fix that and oh yeah twitter i'm gonna fix that that's fucked up what is fucked up? Honey, bring in the short list of fucked up things. Oh yeah, US government, super fucked up.
I'm going to fix that. I think that's what gets his juices flowing.
You know. But the caveat to that is he's actually behaving in a way that is reckless and unethical and fucking identifiable people over massively, and he doesn't care.
So he's a very Trumpian character. Give me specifics on that.
Well, I mean, he'll tweet. He'll put an identifiable civilian on blast in front of 200 million people knowing that that's going to completely fuck over their lives like who like yo l roth like the head of trust and safety for twitter who he called a pedophile based on no fucking evidence and the guy had to like flee his house because he was getting so many death threats and from kids yeah yeah so he's so i mean but he he'll do that and he'll do that again and again.
And he knows the consequences.

He's not dumb.

He knows what, you're talking to 200 million people, 1% of whom are crazy. Right.
And, and he, he insists on playing this game. He doesn't have to do it.
He's addicted to Twitter and he's deranging his personality and it's undermining his ethics. And he will even fuck over a former friend who was just trying to be a friend, helping him when he was starting to use these tools.
Is he trying to attack you? Oh, yeah. No, I speak as one who knows.
Oh, yeah. On that level? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Like by sicking who on you? Well, no, just attacking me on Twitter.
I mean, it's not compared to what happened to Yael Roth. It's not bad.
But he will, a Pizzagate lunatic, like literally one of the people who gave us Pizzagate. You know, I'm not going to name them because they would be happy to be named in this context.
But there's a couple of guys who gave us Pizzagate. You remember what Pizzagate was, the detail track.
That Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. Out of the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn't have a basement.
In their defense, the pizza was fantastic. Right.
So the people who gave us that are people who are in very good standing with Elon, who Elon will talk to them in Twitter spaces and give them the mic and boost them and just high-five them. And he knows, I've pointed out how crazy these people are to him.
These people will send him a clip from my podcast or some other podcast, maybe this podcast, maybe we'll do it here, right? Making it seem, like I've said, the opposite of I said in context. Like they sent him one where I seem to be saying that I didn't care about the chaos at the border, whereas I have exactly Elon's view of the border.
And in context, you could hear that, but they'll send me, send the opposite and Elon will react to that. He doesn't have time to listen to the podcast, obviously.
So he'll just react to the clip saying, you know, Sam Harris is a total moron, right? Like it was something like that. But amplify this to millions of people.
And I will email him and say, Elon, you're being gamed by right-wing trolls who gave us Pizzagate. This is not what I said in context, right? And he will tell me to go fuck myself.
And he knows. So he knows.
But he read the email. Oh, yeah.
He will respond to the email. Go fuck yourself.
He does not care if he's defaming someone in public who used to be a friend. So, I mean, it was.
And this is why we're no longer friends. So, I mean, he's, listen, the guy is snorting ketamine and on Twitter all day long.
I mean, it's dysregulated. There is no defending that, and I wouldn't try.
Yeah. But, you know.
So, and that's not to dispute anything you said about it. I mean, he's the greatest entrepreneur of his generation.
I think that's not disputable. But there's no reason to ignore the downside of his personality and the way he's treating people about it.
But also to take advantage of the upside, I guess. You know, that's the complication of human life.
I mean, do we listen to R. Kelly and Michael Jackson? I say yes, even though we know that they did things in their private life that are very not admirable.
So is that not a convincing analogy, Sam, the R. Kelly? I'm not sure it's as exculpatory as Elon fans would want.
Yes. I guess what I'm saying is sometimes you're peeing on a teenage girl and sometimes you're figuring out.
Sometimes it's a rocket. How to get satellites into space and recatch a rocket.
I loved it when Trump went, did the Chinese do it? When the rocket came down, they hugged it like a baby. Can the Russians do it? It's like, you know what? I'm not really against that.
America is pretty great in a lot of ways. Talk.
We've had so many years of shitting on this country, and this is part of the problem with not getting behind Western values, is that America know, irredeemably racist, horrible place, and we're obsessed with what happened 400 years ago. And, you know, it's, if you read the paper every day and you see what's going on in the rest of the world, man, I just saw this movie.
It's fantastic. It should get an Oscar nomination, but I won't because they don't have the money to promote it.
But it's about how in the early 90s, kids in Cuba were purposely giving themselves AIDS because it was the one place in Cuba you could go because they were very afraid of AIDS breaking out. And it was like you got good food, ice cream what do you mean? What was the one place? Like the hospital was the one place? It was like a sanitarium, but it was outside.
So life was so unremittingly awful in Cuba. Tell Michael Moore.
In one of his documentaries, didn't he basically just show us how good life was in Cuba? The medical care was so great. This is part and parcel of that.
Because they were a socialist heaven, they took, yes, health care very seriously. The people were miserable and emaciated, but their health was quite good because, you know, it's usually obesity that does problem.
No, I remember when Katrina happened and they were very late in getting the aid there. Do you remember when Fidel Castro had that press conference with a bunch of doctors? He was flanked by like eight guys in white suits.
And he was like, some president in this hemisphere must do something about this situation. I'm going to step in, Fidel.
But the idea that it would be preferable to give yourself AIDS, to get to a place where you could live freely. The police didn't come because they were afraid of them because they had AIDS.
And they wanted them to be happy. I hadn't heard that story.
Oh, yeah, I hadn't heard it either. I'll send you the movie.
It's fantastic. But, I mean, or just read about what went on in Syria the last 10, 15 years.
That is an unfolding story that is quite astonishing. We're so fortunate, fortunate you know well this is so i'm ringing the bell of our of how fortunate we are i think the um other people have noticed this but we've got this 250th anniversary of the country coming up in in 2026 one landmark i want to put on the calendar is that the Democrats have to get their shit together by July 4th, 2026 to not just be whinging about Trump.
It can't be a MAGA birthday party. It's got to be the Democrats have to find their patriotism gear by 2026.
It's going to be tough since the other party's in power. Yeah, but we have to figure out how to be the attractive party with people you want to listen to talking about how good this country is.
And the we love the country we're asking to rule. Yeah.
That little thing. We like the place where I did it.
As opposed to you're all racist assholes. Yes.
Now vote for us. Yeah.

I shot a video once that somebody had sent me, did a whole editorial on it. This woman who was actually running for office or had run for office.
And she was asking people, I guess on TikTok where you do everything nowadays, if they knew a place they could go in the world because they had to get out of this place. Yeah.
You know, these people who think, I guess because they don't read or watch anything, that there's some, first of all, they don't want you. Where are you going to go? Canada doesn't want you unless you can do something for them.
They have stricter immigration laws than we do. Where are you going? Finland or Denmark or Sweden or whatever you think is the paradise that isn't here, the grass that's so green.
What language are you going to learn, American? I mean, there are plenty of places in the world that are, I'm sure, very pleasant to live. But they're not home, and you won't feel like you're home.
Except you do have the odd billionaire who's preparing the compound in New Zealand and trying to figure out how to hire bodyguards who will not, you know, kill him and take all of his wealth in the aftermath of the apocalypse.

Right.

Yeah.

That's the bodyguard you always have to watch out for.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean.

How do you incentivize the bodyguard, you know, post-apocalypse to just protect you? I mean, Indira. Money is worthless.
Indira Gandhi killed by the bodyguards. Yeah.
Anwar Sadat. Was that the bodyguards? Sadat? I don't remember.
Totally. Huh.
Well, it was inside the, I mean, he was at a parade. Right.
Which did not go well. No.
Yes. First of all, two of the floats.
The of the last parade yes two of the floats didn't and then yes he was in the reviewing stand in his own military turned on him and i thought it huh i forgot the details i thought it was just jihadists who had infiltrated but no it was it was the people in uniform they were in his guard i mean yeah it was No, but there's other version. In Pakistan, this has happened.
Ideas spread. You can't keep the ideas out.
It's like you convince the bodyguard of something, and all of a sudden, you've hired your own assassin. Well, on that happy note.
Happily, we have no bodyguards. We don't need bodyguards here.
Is everything good in your personal life? Sam Harris, we're all on subjects that are important, but I care about you, the person. No, no.
Ironically or happily, this is just a great time of life. I mean, the things I'm worried about in the world, but I feel immensely fortunate.
It is a weird cognitive dissonance, is it not? That like you can be so worried and the world can seem to be falling apart. But then you look around and you go, yeah, but our life is pretty good.
And I understand that half the country, as you point out, are going to get pitchforks because, and they are, and we should do something about that. But I don't know what.

But for a lot of people, when you just drive around, you know, people are just living their best life.

Well, the difference between online and in the real world is so enormous.

Again, it's not true.

It used to be that people could just say, you know, Twitter's not obviously revolutions can start on Twitter. Things that happen online are real in some important sense.
But it's just also true that in real life, people are very different than they are online. And online, you reliably just see the worst face of normal people, and it's pretty ugly.
Yeah. In real life, people are better.
And so it's good to recalibrate and recognize just what people are like face-to-face. And more connected.
Yeah. I read in the paper the other day, I think this comes from a Pew survey, that it's almost two to one, the number of young men versus young women under 30 who are in a relationship.
Like 64, completely single. Like 64% of males under 30, completely single.
Only 34% of women. Right.
So all these women under 30 are hooking up with older guys. That's what's happening.
I still hope so. Yes.
That's what the math suggests yeah or they're gay well but i mean this was a article about you only fans which the level of patheticness i can't even fathom that you are so lonely and i'm not saying this in any snarky way i'm really sincerely feeling for these people because I remember when I was that lonely, like in college.

But to be so lonely and desperate that you would have this fake girlfriend who you must know is fake.

And you're paying her by the minute to text or talk to you.

And you think this is some kind of a relationship or this is like there's not a better solution than this and yet this is millions of people and i think they quoted one only fans model who was quite popular and she said yeah when i when i am recognized on the street it's usually by somebody like younger chubby that was her words you know and yeah it looks like everyone's getting laid in this country in the media but like this this is not going to end well this like young generation that grew up on the phone and therefore does not know how to talk to a girl you know because girls not changed that much. I know some people think they can rewrite anatomy and history and just reality, but they're basically probably the same as they were when we were kids.
They're communicative creatures who need to be talked to and wooed and like these incels who can't get laid, and blame the women and they wonder why and it's because you you can't even go up to a girl and just talk to her and i i feel like this is going to be an army of frustrated angry yeah i mean the technology has not helped in so many ways i mean so just remote work is i mean good as it has been for so many, I mean, like, for my business, it's fantastic.

I've got a team of, I don't know, now it's like maybe 15 people, but, like, everyone's remote.

But young people need to go into the office to meet people.

I mean, like, to be siloed, you know, in a different state from everyone you work with for your entire career, it's like, I don't see how that's good. They go out to a bar, and then they're on their phone in the bar.
Right. The virtualization of everything, again, it's like if you're at the right point on the wave and you've got your friends, if you've got all your friends from high school, and in my case, if you're happily married and you've got a great life, well, then the virtualization of everything is just perfect.
But if you're trying to start your life and you're isolated and you don't know how to meet people and everything is a fucking video on your phone. I feel like the singularity that Ray Kurzweil talks about when we meld with the – I feel like it's already here.

Did you watch the Taylor Swift Errors movie? I know you. I went to the concert with my daughter.
You did? It was fucking awesome. It was fucking awesome? Well, I mean, just to take your – you've got to put on some parent goggles here.
You take your two daughters who are into taylor swift right to a to the temple of taylor swift with 75 000 other girls like i mean i mean the ratio of guys to girls there was crime it was just right like you could get you just it was a vision of like what the what the girls are doing it was amazing it was so fun yeah and it was it was but the music listen i'm i can i can put up with anything for two hours yeah don't put that on the poster i can put everything for two hours it's not my favorite music but i i literally took it took us an hour to park and in in the in the in the hour it took to park i had been i went to school on her whole catalog with my daughter's you in Spotify. And then we went in and it was honestly, it was a fantastic experience.
Well, my point was I watched the thing because Nikki Glaser made me. Right.
Nikki's great, by the way. I love Nikki.
And everyone is watching the whole thing through their phones. I mean, when you see the shots of the crowd, it's only, it's no faces.
And it's like, wow, not only is that completely stupid because they're making a movie of this anyway, so you don't need to have it. And they never go back and watch it.
You'll never go back and watch it. Also, everyone else is doing it.
And it's like they really want to experience this secondhand through the phone. That is a fundamental difference, it seems to me.
The way more disturbing case for me is all of these moments of public violence where everyone's, rather than the impulse is to actually solve the problem and actually help somebody. No, what you want to do is take out your phone and record this innocent person being beaten within an inch of their life by some lunatic.
You're so right. It happened just recently in Beverly Hills in broad daylight.
A gang just attacked some old guy and trying to rip the shopping bags out of his hand, and he wouldn't let go. And so they beat him to the ground.
And yeah, everyone is just either honking their horn in the cars that go by, like that's going to stop anyway, or filming it. Let's record this, yeah.
I mean, to be totally charitable, you can imagine someone who feels otherwise totally powerless to intervene thinks they might be doing something good by just documenting the crime and like, oh, this is like, I'm going to help catch these guys. But there's so many cases where it's just so obvious that these are people who could help and they're just not doing it because they have virtualized everything.
Everything is a reality TV show, and now they're a part of the crew. All right, Sam, I see that your mood ring is telling you that you're getting annoyed.
When it turns black, what does that mean? This is the aura ring that tracks your sleep, and all it does is tell me that my sleep is shitty. Really? You wear that? I do.
I occasionally look at the data and I respond to it. Yes.
How can you see it on that little thing? What was that? How can you see it on that little thing? No, this reports to the phone.

All right.

Thank you.

Yes.

I appreciate it. Always great to talk to you.

So much fun.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

Hey, man.

We'll take a...

Always fun.

Yeah.

What are these?

Oh, these are great.

Look at those.

Oh, those are...

Yeah, right. Criminals.
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