Pod Insights Making Sense with Sam Harris #477 — More From Sam: Iran's Unraveling, The Gaza Information War, AI-Generated Music, and More About this episode Warning: This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence against civilians during the October 7 attacks (33:49 - 34:35). Listener discretion is advised.
In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss the Trump administration's bungled Iran campaign, the information war surrounding Gaza and October 7, Nicholas Kristof's disputed New York Times report on Israeli prisoner abuse, Sam's controversial take on AI-generated music, OpenAI solving a decades-old math problem, the ethics of concealing GLP-1 use, and other topics.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Speaker 00 You're listening to Making Sense with Sam Harris. This is the free version of the podcast, so you'll only hear the first part of today's conversation. If you want the full episode and every episode, you can subscribe at samharris.org. There are no ads on this show. It runs entirely on subscriber support. If you enjoy what we're doing here and find it valuable, please consider subscribing today.
0:25 Speaker 00 Welcome back to another episode of More from Sam. Once again, we are taping this live in front of subscribers. We've taken questions in advance and have invited everyone in the live recording to submit follow-ups in real time. Hopefully, you guys are ready to be doing that today. Before we get on to our first topic, you finished up some tour dates in Toronto, DC, New York, Dallas, and Austin this past week, and we're done now, or are we?
0:47 Sam Harris? Yeah, I think we are. I'll know, we recorded two dates. We recorded New York and Austin. And yeah, it'll just, you know, we'll see what that recording looks like and see what we intend to do with it. But yeah, it feels like we're done with this talk.
1:02 Speaker 00 Well, done with this talk, but I don't know about touring in general. I feel like you had more fun than-
1:06 Sam Harris? I mean, for life? No, I don't think I'm done for life. But touring this talk, I mean, this talk, we've been touring for, what was it, 10 months, 11 months, something like that?
1:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:16 Sam Harris? And it's evolved month by month, and then maybe by 10% or so. And yeah, I think I'm done repeating myself on this particular set of topics.
1:27 Speaker 00 But the good news is, we might do something else in the future, and we'll let everybody know when-
1:31 Sam Harris? Yeah.
1:32 Speaker 00 -we have that figured out.
1:32 Sam Harris? We won't be shy about that.
1:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. No need to list all the celebrities and public figures that came out to see you, but I did think it was adorable watching you fangirl over one in particular, the comic Jordan Jensen.
1:41 Sam Harris? Yeah, oh my gosh.
1:42 Speaker 00 That was great.
1:43 Sam Harris? Yeah, that was hilarious. Yeah. Well, she's, you haven't discovered her, Jordan Jensen is just a massive talent. And she has a Netflix special, but the thing that really got me into her was just seeing her crowd work clips on YouTube. I mean, she's just so good in that zone. So yeah, she came out to the Beacon in New York. And yeah, I mean, I was, you know, I don't tend to get starstruck, but you know, I fangirled on her to a degree that just, I think, probably astonished her. Her mom was there too, so it was kind of adorable.
2:16 Speaker 00 It was great. I had that Neil Brennan came out to the show as well, because I think everyone should listen to his, the podcast episode he did with you.
2:22 Sam Harris? Yeah, he's a very funny man, too. You should see his specials on Netflix.
2:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, he just seemed to turn the right dials and get great stuff out of you in ways that others haven't, including me. So I, you know, if anyone wants to really hear more from you, that's a great episode to do it. And just a reminder, the community, our new community, your new community has been private, has been in private beta for a couple of weeks now. We've gradually been inviting members in every day. And it's been a place with lots of engagement, including plenty of disagreement with others and you, but it's been very respectful and enjoyable. We even have a few Trumpers in there now. And everyone's been cordial for the most part. We've only had to toss a couple of people thus far, but it's been very clear that many in the community have also been wanting something like this to exist for quite some time. And I just want to add a little that, a little
3:08 Speaker 00 housekeeping on this, that anyone who's subscribed to the podcast before June 1st will have free access to community for as long as they maintain an active subscription. After June 1st, or thereabouts, you will need a separate subscription to join community. So if you want to check it out and engage with some fellow bright, mindful people, you can subscribe at samharris.org and get access to community for free now.
3:30 Sam Harris? I think we should also add that we, that this is totally web-based now, but there's an app coming. I don't know when that's coming, next month or, but yeah. So I think, I think people are frustrated that it's not app-based, but that's, that will be remedied.
3:44 Speaker 00 I've actually seen some people say the opposite, say that they kind of like having to sit down and get their thoughts together so that they're not just on the fly ripping comments without.
3:53 Sam Harris? Yeah, it actually might be, yeah, it might degrade the quality of the conversation once we get an app. We'll see.
3:58 Speaker 00 We'll see. Anyway, how are you feeling about Iran? Are we going to get a good deal over there or what?
4:04 Sam Harris? Uh, well, I guess we're having this conversation on Memorial Day. You know, we should always stipulate that we have no idea what's going to happen 15 minutes from now because we're being ruled by maniacs. It certainly seems at this point that we almost have the worst of all worlds. I mean, I guess, I guess the worst possible scenario is that we, we hurl all of our military resources into this war and still fail, right? So like a boots on the ground quagmire, I guess that's the worst. Case scenario. So we're that doesn't appear to be in the cards, but we seem to have found the second worst scenario, which is Trump and his incompetent friends, Pete Hegseth,
4:48 Sam Harris? in particular, have bragged and boasted and bluffed and then blinked and then blinked and then blinked again. All our bluffs were called. They've showcased American weakness and incompetence to a degree that I think no one could have rationally feared. I mean, even to the point where I'd be like, like the last bit of optimism I think anyone had here was that the military itself is still the sort of military that befits a superpower. But, you know, in the clear light of day, even that seems not to be true. I mean, maybe we're not a paper tiger, but we're, we're something close. We just don't have the right. We've almost run out of armaments, apparently. We're not very good at minesweeping or defending
5:30 Sam Harris? drones, or like, we're not, we don't appear to be cutting edge in the ways that we needed to be for this. And we just seem to have blown through our stockpiles of armaments, right? So we're rationing arms in addition to everything else we're doing. So it's a, it's terrible. It's a terrible outcome because Iran seemed for what all that we've done to degrade their capacity and their regime, and we've killed a lot of people, apparently. They're more powerful than they were at the beginning of this war. We've taught them and taught the world that they can hold the 20% of the energy economy globally hostage, and we can't do anything about it. I mean, Trump is just, you know, he's a corrupt
6:11 Sam Harris? weakling, and he's made our country look like that. I mean, that's really the, the net result so far. Now, again, 15 minutes from now, we could start bombing everything, and the regime could collapse, and we could see democracy emerge in the streets. I mean, you know, I guess that's not a outside the realm of possibility. It's probably below a 1% possibility at this point, or even a one tenth of 1% possibility. But, I mean, I've always held out hope that despite our incompetence and despite Trump and Hegseth's insane bellicosity and stupidity, and our, you know, having made every effort to alienate all of our allies, et cetera, that we might still produce something that was better than
6:54 Sam Harris? the, the status quo here. But that doesn't seem to have happened.
6:57 Speaker 00 So are you saying that boots on the ground now is your worst case scenario? Because I think in the past you had said that allowing them to-
7:04 Sam Harris? A failed attempt in that, like if we had put more resources in and still failed, that would be the worst case scenario, right? So like to lose the war with boots on the ground would be worse than the war where we seem to be in the process of losing. And it's, I mean, it's interesting to consider what it actually means to lose or win a war of this sort. You know, obviously, we haven't had many Americans die, although I think the destruction and, you know, of our bases and planes and all of that has been somewhat concealed from us. And I think the Iranians did more damage to us and our allies than, than has been made clear. There's been a lot of lying, I think, as you might expect from the Trump administration. But, you know, we haven't, it's weird to think of this as a defeat, you know, if you're
7:48 Sam Harris? just looking at numbers of dead and the material destruction. But the optics here really matter. And we have revealed to all of our enemies that there's, we're only willing to sacrifice, you know, the stock market ticker for a few short minutes before we're, we're going to get very nervous and pivot. And again, Trump is, his messaging about this has been the worst case scenario because it's been pure bluster and bluff. And all of our bluffs got called. It is just the weakest possible presentation of our role in the world. So-
8:27 Speaker 00 Ending the war at the time of our choosing and the way we would do it, whatever Hegseth said, it does not seem to be the case.
8:33 Sam Harris? Yeah, and complete surrender, unconditional surrender was the, the standard initially. And I mean, if anyone has surrendered, we have surrendered, right? And, and so it would just think of the conversation I had with Ben Shapiro a few weeks ago, or whatever, whatever that was, a month ago or so. You know, he was quite confident even then that Trump was never going to settle for an outcome that would be worse than the JCPOA deal that he's endlessly derided. Never step away from Israel's, you know, our joint interests with Israel. He's just a- This staunch defender of Western civilization and your basic sanity in the Middle East.
9:15 Sam Harris? And, you know, I've always, again, I have been very hawkish on jihadism in general and the jihadist regime in Iran in particular in recent months. But I've always said that this war could well be a disaster, given kind of the unprincipled nature and the just obvious incompetence of our administration. Again, I'll just remind people, we put a game show host in charge of the world's only superpower. We put a Fox and Friends host in charge of our military. What did we expect was going to happen? So that has always been the fear.
9:55 Sam Harris? Again, it has, given the fact that the Iranian people seem poised to revolt and take some considerable risk, though we came quite late to their defense after some tens of thousands were killed by the regime. I mean, there was always this hope that we were going to kind of uncork a new world in Iran, given that the population is so tired of theocracy. But that certainly doesn't seem to be happening. It might happen six months from now after we leave the place. I mean, that's totally possible. But again, it looks bad.
10:27 Speaker 00 So this is coming in from one of the subscribers. What would you consider to be a victory now?
10:32 Sam Harris? Regime change. Well, I mean, there's no, this is what I've, I think I've been very clear about from the beginning. There's no end to this short of regime change that we could consider a victory. Of course, we're going to lie about considering even this humiliating outcome a victory. But no, I mean, regime change was the only thing to hope for, and it had to have been the real purpose of this whole exercise. Whatever we're going to say about it now, regime change is the only thing that guarantees that Iran could not be a nuclear armed enemy in the future. I mean, that's just not, they're going to, whatever they say, they're going to sprint toward a bomb, and there's going to be no enforcement of anything. We have less power than we have.
11:17 Sam Harris? In the beginning, I mean, it's again, it's somewhat paradoxical that we got here this way because we somehow got less power by creating a lot of, you know, harm to our enemy in this case. But our enemy is is stronger in some very specific ways and we are weaker in some very specific ways. And crucially, all of this has been advertised to everyone. Right. So, I mean, no one thinks we would defend Taiwan now. I mean, you couldn't possibly think that.
11:45 Speaker 00 So did you see where Robert Kagan said that giving Iran control of the strait is more power than they would have had they been able to build a nuclear weapon? You saw that clip?
11:53 Sam Harris? No, I didn't see that, but I read his piece in the Atlantic and I mean, Kagan is somewhat, obviously, he he's extremely well informed. He has taken the darkest view of not just this misadventure, but really just the erosion of American power under Trump. That I'm aware of him. He's really been a Cassandra here and that doesn't mean he's wrong. I think he's you could discount what he says by 50% and still be very depressed at where we are in the world.
12:24 Speaker 00 I want to move on to, for those who haven't been following this next story, the Trumps sued the IRS and the judge said something in the effect of, hey, wait a minute, don't you oversee the IRS? Which of course makes the case not adversarial. So the Trumps dropped their lawsuit and settled out of court. A deal that includes
12:43 Sam Harris? Settled with themselves. Yeah.
12:44 Speaker 00 Correct. Yeah, that's right. A deal that includes barring the IRS from ever going after the Trumps for anything that they may have done in the past.
12:51 Sam Harris? Forever in all caps. Yeah. You just as a clue to who wrote the actual judgment, right? I mean, it's just the fact that it's written like one of his Truth Social posts is just, again, all of this is mortifying to us as a country. It's like just half of America doesn't appear to care about how the rest of the world views us, but I mean, beyond our military power, which again now is in question in a way that should astonish everyone. Our soft power is the thing that Trump has just set on fire, right? We just are not in a role of anything like leadership. Now, because we stand for nothing. I mean, we have the most corrupt administration anyone has ever seen.
13:34 Sam Harris? It's a kleptocracy and he has just been trading away, you know, our policies and institutional power and reputation abroad as though it was his personal property just to exact tribute from whatever former friends or foes will can be forced to pay that tribute. And it's, I don't even have a theory of mind about, you know, a fellow American who understands what's happened here and doesn't care about it. I mean, it's just, this is the greatest act of vandalism in our lifetime.
14:06 Speaker 00 I think you've said that 100 times on this podcast now. You have to keep saying it again and again.
14:12 Sam Harris? I just can't understand how people don't see what's at stake here or seeing it, don't care about it. It's just like, where does this, I mean, maybe on some level, this is kind of like the fall of empire, right? But this is the intentional, you know, self-defense frustration of the world's only superpower. And it is just bizarre that we can't even keep the details in view because there are so many of them. Right? I mean, it's just, I mean, just this deal alone, this slush fund that he's stolen from our, it's our tax dollars are nearly $2 billion with all that we can't pay for are going to go to, to the a slush fund, which at his discretion, and he can appoint all the people overseeing this fund,
14:56 Sam Harris? will pay his loyalist goons, you know, from January 6th rioters onward. I mean, this is, we're a banana republic. This is so far from normal. And if this were the one thing he did, I'd be, again, this is just, there are only so many moves you can make here just so to try to illuminate the grotesque novelty of all of this. But it's just imagine Obama or, or any other normal president doing any one of these things. And it's unthinkable. And the reaction from the other side would have been, it just would have been a tsunami of resistance. And yet we're just, we're, we seem incapable of marshaling the appropriate response because on some level, there's just so much to respond to.
15:37 Speaker 00 Well, making that deal with oneself really is tennis without the net. So. That's very hard for anyone to miss there. I know this is a couple of weeks old now, or 10 days or whatever it was, but many people would like to get your reaction on the Nicholas Kristof piece in the New York Times.
15:52 Sam Harris? Oh, that's a very complicated reaction. You know, you know, who's who did this at length, who I think I basically agree with everything he said, and maybe he might have said more in the meantime, but Noam Dvormen over on his podcast.
16:04 Speaker 00 I love that guy.
16:05 Sam Harris? I mean, Noam is just very, very smart. And he spent a lot of time on this. And I think, you know, he has my proxy on all of it. I mean, I'll briefly summarize what he said, but it's, it's, I mean, just a few points to keep in mind. One is, we should expect the mistreatment of prisoners at some level in every prison system. We should really expect it in a time of war. We should really expect it when the prisoners are, don't stand a chance of being innocent people whose rights everyone should really worry about. But they're committed terrorists who are eager to die for their cause, right? I mean, just imagine what it's
16:47 Sam Harris? like to be incarcerating these people. And imagine what it's like to be a prison guard in the presence of these people who you, I mean, there's again, there's no pretensive innocence here, right? These are committed jihadists who raped and murdered and burned families alive on October 7. And now it's your job to keep them from, you know, biting you or throwing their shit at you. I mean, just think of the most awful job in the world, and this is probably it. And also the most morally taxing one, right? So the idea that there's going to be some level of abuse in a circumstance like this, I mean, that's just, that is guaranteed. We would have, it would be a miracle if it didn't happen. So we should, of course, assume that reports of it happening are plausible, right? So like,
17:31 Sam Harris? when I hear reports of this awful stuff happening that shouldn't happen, my default setting is, oh, yeah, it probably happened, right? And I add to that, the humiliation associated with some of these acts, right? You know, sexual abuse and raped by dogs being the most extreme allegation, right? So what would it take for a Muslim man to allege that that had been done to him, right? You know, the incentives are not in the direction of lying. So again, it all seems on its face plausible to me.
18:05 Sam Harris? That said, Nicholas Kristof is obviously a useful idiot, right? Who did not do the work of a proper journalist to in reporting this story. And many people have gone kind of deep on that and analyzed it and, you know, shown the distance between what he did and what a properly reported story on this front would look like. So I'm not going to connect all those dots here, but he's just, I've known him to be a useful idiot for decades, right? He's on this specific topic, you know, just how to fight the war on terror, you know, what is jihadism, you know, whether Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a feminist icon or a, or an Islamophobe. He gets all of this wrong all the time, right? He's just somebody who's easily manipulated by Islamists and their apologists.
18:47 Sam Harris? And part of my, you know, people remember my collision with Ben Affleck on, on real time. Well, what you couldn't see out of frame is that basically I was focusing much of my attention on Nicholas Kristof, because he was the one on that panel who really should have known which end was up and he doesn't. And it's quite, I mean, it's quite shameful really, given that his, he purports to be so focused on the rights of women throughout the developing world, right? I mean, it's just, there's no more egregious violator of the rights of women throughout the developing world than Islam and its extremities. So the first line of defense that many people took here, I think even Haviv Retegur took this line, which I don't happen to agree with. And this is, this is a point that Noam also made on his podcast, which is, these charges
19:29 Sam Harris? are absurd on their face because obviously you couldn't train a dog to rape a person. I just, that does not ring true to me. I think you can train a dog to play the piano and do much else that is complicated. So I mean, the idea, I mean, there've been reports of dog rape from other regimes, you know, like Egypt and others for many, many years. So who knows what actually happened here? Again, so I'm not, I'm not dismissing even the worst allegations here as being obviously untrue. And Nicholas Kristof was totally irresponsible and produced a willingly produced a blood libel here, right? So the, I think you need to be able to hold those two things in your head. And again, as many people pointed out, this was released on a day where this very, very searching report on
20:15 Sam Harris? Hamas's crimes on October 7th came out 300 pages of detail there. And, you know, the detail is as awful as you could fear. And that seemed, you know, I think the New York Times has said that that's just an accident. I don't think anyone should believe them at this point. The paper has shown itself to be ideologically bamboozled on this front. So just ending this, I don't know what's true in Kristof's allegations, all of that. You know, if true, all of it should be prosecuted. It's all awful. It's all illegal. It's all also understandable that it would happen at some rate, given the nature of the situation. And it'd be a miracle if nothing like that ever happened in analogous situations. So, yeah, it's all a mess.
20:57 Sam Harris? And yet we have to keep our eye on the real issue, which is Hamas would do this again and again and again, until the end of the world. Israel is a society that will prosecute its rapists and torturers and et cetera, at a rate analogous to America or any other Western society. It's not to say there's no corruption. It's not to say there are no evil people. It's not to say that someone's not going to try to hide facts until they can no longer be hidden. That's all true, but there's a difference between us and our enemies. And the difference is the most important difference morally to keep in view in our lifetime.
21:35 Speaker 00 Why do you think people like Nicholas Kristof continue to get it wrong with regard to women's rights when it comes to Islam? What would he say to them?
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