#457 — More From Sam: The Epstein Files, The Newsom Factor, Don Lemon's Arrest, AI Market Disruption, and More

In this latest episode of the More From Sam series, Sam and Jaron talk about current events. They discuss Sam's unexpected appearance in the Epstein files, the revolting behavior of various public figures named, the political viability of Gavin Newsom in 2028, the wisdom of celebrity political statements, the societal implications of AI-driven job displacement, what makes Sam and his family laugh, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe http://samharris.org/subscribe.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Sam Harris?

  Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Okay, we're back so soon again with another episode of More From Sam. Hello, Sam.

• 0:40Sam Harris?

  Hey, good to see you.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, good to see you as well. Before we begin, I just want to run through a little housekeeping. I want to apologize to all those in Dallas and Austin this week for having to postpone our shows due to a family medical emergency. We have rescheduled those shows for May 20th in Dallas and May 21st in Austin. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused, but in time, I'm sure Sam will share more. I don't know, Sam, if you want to say anything quickly now, or if we should just move on?

• 1:06Sam Harris?

  Yeah, it's, um, this is the thing, as you know, that I really hate about live events. They're like the one thing that if life goes haywire, it's really difficult to cancel or reschedule. I've been to events, you know, my own events where people have come up and said, I mean, I think I was, was one in Vancouver or Toronto, and a couple came up and said they had traveled from Australia for the event. And obviously, that's just amazing to hear and wonderful. But I think of those people on that rare occasion that an event has to be rescheduled or canceled, because I know there are people who are just coming out of a hotel expecting to go to an event in Dallas, and they're getting their email or not seeing their email that it was, it was rescheduled. So that just gives me

• 1:49Sam Harris?

  serious brain damage, and it was not lightly that we canceled this. But yeah, where I've got a family member who had to go in the hospital yesterday, and I don't want to get into private details, but it's a big deal, and it's, you know, it's stable at the moment, but it's very good that I'm in town, so.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that. We are still coming to Portland and Vancouver in March, and then- Toronto DC and New York City as well in May. If you want to get tickets, you can find all that information at samharris.org. Also, we talked about the waking up app last week, getting featured in the Apple Store. Things continue to heat up there again. Thanks in part from that Apple promotion, but I, you know, I make this joke often. I think this podcast and media in general makes everyone crazy. And then we sell the app that offers the cure. We're kind of like the mafia over here. But seriously, if you're listening to this podcast and you feel unsettled anyway, you'd like to learn how to fix that. Go to the App Store and you can download the waking up app. And if you can't afford it, you can get a free account. If you can pay, please do that. But if you can't, don't worry about it. You can take it free.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  And also, while I'm just talking about that, we don't offer free accounts over here in the podcast anymore, but we still offer steep discounts. So if you can't afford to pay the subscription price, there is a button on the right side of the subscription page, just under Sam's picture that reads for more pricing options. Click here. So click there if you need a scholarship. I think there are a few additional pricing options. Okay, with all that out of the way, we've been saying the Epstein files were going to be a nothing burger. And it appears we may have gotten that wrong. Where do you want to start, Sam?

• 3:19Sam Harris?

  Turns out that I'm in them, which I was not anticipating. So we should talk about that.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Well, you don't need to start there. We can come back to that unless you want to start there.

• 3:27Sam Harris?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I guess, well, you know, we're going to make light of this because it's kind of funny the way I'm in them. But I don't want there to be any confusion around, you know, how I perceive the larger issue here. I mean, I'm not, obviously, nothing I'm about to say is going to make light of what a monster Epstein was and how good it is that. I mean, in my view, at least that the files are coming out and, you know, obviously, anyone who participated with his, in his actual crimes deserves to be prosecuted and all of that. And then, and I think we're probably going to differentiate the degrees of culpability that we perceive insofar as we've seen what has been released in this recent tranche. Because I think there's a fair amount of confusion around just how implicated people are.

• 4:12Sam Harris?

  But yeah, obviously, the man himself was awful and he did awful things and there are people who enable. Those things who or participated in the abuse and trafficking of of young girls. And it's just, you know, we want nothing but justice for those people, etc. And I also don't mean to make light of the people who are like me in these files in a way that is peripheral to one or another degree, and it may be properly fucking up their lives and reputations because people are not disposed to differentiate the degrees of culpability, etc. So, you know, I know, I'm sure I know many, many people who are mentioned in these files because now I see how, you know, how the network is kind of strung together based on these email chains.

• 4:53Sam Harris?

  And, you know, some of them are might really be sweating it out for no real reason, except they have institutions that are may want to fire them as a result of, you know, some weird implication that may be meaningless, etc. So I don't mean to make light of any of that, but I'm going to make light of my own situation because I got a big laugh out of it last night. So.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, let's do you want to start there? Do we want to kind of talk about how there are gradations here?

• 5:22Sam Harris?

  I'll start wherever you want.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I just think we should go back to the idea that there's a spectrum here and how this is very similar to me, too, at a moment when, you know, someone like Matt Damon had early on said that there are there are gradations to this. There's a difference between slapping a girl in the ass and raping somebody, and he just got killed for that. I mean, obviously, early on, everybody wants to lump everybody together. And, you know, here Epstein is the Harvey Weinstein, and we really need to put everybody on a spectrum and be clear eyed about this. And I didn't know if you wanted to set that up, what that might look like to you.

• 5:54Sam Harris?

  Well, I guess, again, I don't consider myself a deep student of what has been released or the reporting that's been done on Epstein and his victims and the specifics of all his crimes. So, I mean, this is kind of like a high level reaction to what I've seen, which is typical of scandals like this, though, which is to say, people don't tend to want to differentiate gradations of guilt. Well, first, I think you forget the words you use. I think you differentiated, you know, criminals from pigs, from jerks, from.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Or people with poor judgment. Right. Yeah.

• 6:26Sam Harris?

  And I think there's all of that. So, yeah, I mean, I do think it's. It's a little too soon to vindicate the proper conspiracy theorists, you know, the pizza gators, the QAnon lunatics, who really are lunatics. I mean, when you look at the rest of what they have claimed is true, I mean, even if the worst allegations about Epstein or the worst assumptions about Epstein and his network are true, this does not redeem pizza gate or QAnon. I mean, those people are just mad. But I think we should be slow to imagine that there are a ton of guys out there who want to have sex with 13 year olds. From what I've seen, I mean, and I don't even imagine that of President

• 7:09Sam Harris?

  Trump as much as I'm capable of imagining the worst about him. I mean, I think he is just a genuinely awful person and a psychopath. You know, I would be surprised, again, this I think there are yet 3 million more documents that have not been released, and presumably those are being held back for some reason, some strategic reason on the administration's part. So perhaps there's worse to come for Trump. But I would find it difficult to believe or to assume that he's the sort of guy that if you put him on an island and handed him a 13, 14 year old girl, that's the kind of situation he wants to be in sexually. I just, I mean, I don't think that. I think that's a pretty rare person who shared Epstein's

• 7:52Sam Harris?

  proclivities, right? So my assumption about all of this is still, you have a bunch of guys who are eager to cheat on their wives or to sleep with young, beautiful women who they don't necessarily want to be seen with in public, but these young, beautiful women are not underage for the most part, right? So you have these, I mean, and we can be very judgmental about all this behavior, sure, but it still strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely that there are many people who are guilty the way Epstein was of, you know, targeting underage girls, knowingly targeting underage girls. I just think that's, that would be a surprise. And, you know, obviously awful and worth, and because how it's so

• 8:32Sam Harris?

  awful, it is worth investigating to the last line of these emails. And by all means,

• 8:40Sam Harris?

  Find all these people, but I just, I will be surprised if we find a lot of those people. What will not surprise me is to discover that people like, you know, Donald Trump and Bill Gates and all the other people who are named are happy to find themselves on airplanes or islands or anywhere else with, you know, 20-year-old Russian models who are eager to sleep with them because they're basically functioning like prostitutes and these guys are pigs. That would not surprise me. So that's why I'm certainly expecting we're going to find evidence of. And that, in many cases, that's probably embarrassing enough, especially given that many of these guys had relationships with Epstein that were deep enough and long enough such that you can't believe they didn't know what he was into.

• 9:20Sam Harris?

  And I, I don't believe that Trump was ignorant of Epstein's actual appetites and behavior. Because I mean, because he, we have it from his own mouth where he said, um, you know, he, some say he loves beautiful women as much as I do. And they're, and you know, his are on the young side or something like what, what? The only thing that could mean is that Trump was aware of, uh, cause he had Trump's conquests were surely young enough so that when he's talking about the young side, he's talking about what Epstein was actually into. So I think Trump is, can probably be hung based on his, the extent of his friendship with Epstein. You know, I trust that could all be forthcoming, but again, I would be surprised if Trump is the sort of guy who wants to sleep with a 13-year-old. That would surprise me.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Right. I think you're right. The awareness factor when people knew and what they knew will come into play.

• 10:10Sam Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  But there is, there is a difference between what Epstein was doing and piggish behavior.

• 10:17Sam Harris?

  Yeah, a huge difference. I mean, again, it's not to say that the piggish behavior isn't going to be enough to destroy some reputations because you, you have guys who are cheating on their wives, et cetera, and.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  But that's not what this is all about. I mean, that's not.

• 10:29Sam Harris?

  But no, but the, the thing that it's about, in addition to Epstein's crimes and anyone else who, who's participating at that level, what it's about is a network of very rich, uh, very connected, in many cases, very smart people, many of whom you have to assume knew about his crimes and tolerated.

• 10:50Sam Harris?

  Enduring association with him, you know, under the shadow of that knowledge. Uh, and that seems like a, you know, a kind of culpability that a lot of people are getting hammered for now.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  You don't think it's possible that he had two operations going and one that was more secretive for himself?

• 11:05Sam Harris?

  At the beginning, I suggested that, but I do, I just think that, I think a lot of people knew that they knew about his earlier conviction. They certainly knew when the, the big story broke in 2018 and they maintained a friendship with him. And they hung out with him enough to know that, you know, he was into, you know, 14 year olds or whatever he was into. I mean, so.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  You really, you really think they knew that it was some sort of rumor around there and they hadn't seen it? And they just kind of looked the other way because there was convenience there and, you know.

• 11:32Sam Harris?

  Again, I do not consider myself especially well informed about, I mean, I've not gone down this rabbit hole. Uh, to know just how many allegations there are and what they're like and just how plausible it is that it could all have been hidden. I mean, you're talking about people who, you know, some, in many cases who went to his island, who went to his ranch and in New Mexico, went to his house many times, were on his plane. If you're imagining that he kept two sets of books sexually so carefully that he just, you know, he always knew to be with a, with a, with a girl 18 or above in the presence of, of normies. And then, you know, let his, his pedophile freak flag fly, uh, in the presence of other freaks.

• 12:14Sam Harris?

  And he kept all that straight. Uh, that seems a little far fetched to me. I'm sure, again, I think Trump's statement about he likes him on the young side.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:23Sam Harris?

  Is absolutely damning.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Right. But just because Trump knew doesn't mean, you know, someone like Bill Gates knew. I mean, I think it's entirely possible that, uh, people on these trips and they didn't see anything. And, I mean, just the explanation to me makes more sense that someone like a Bill Gates just maybe heard rumors or, uh, it just, it makes sense that he'd be willing to look the other way, um, and just shrug it off to some rumor. I don't think he would have seen it or witnessed it. I just have a hard time believing that he would continue to.

• 12:52Sam Harris?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Put himself in this guy's presence if he saw that, if he really knew.

• 12:56Sam Harris?

  I have a hard time believing that in many, many cases. I don't have a hard time believing that in Trump's case, given

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Right, what he said.

• 13:04Sam Harris?

  What a pig he is. But um, yeah, I, and this is, so I mean, like, just perhaps just jump to my case now, which I've spoken about on the podcast before, which is I met this man exactly once, as far as I know. Uh, it's totally possible I was at, at some kind of, you know, party or dinner party, you know, at a TED conference, very likely, where he was also in the room. But the only time I'm aware of having met him was at a lunch at TED that had maybe 12 people at it. And I described the immediate impression I got, which was that he's a, he was a colossal douchebag, because he had a, um, you know, very attractive young Asian woman on his knee, kind of bouncing along on his knee, that, you know, the, the whole, during the whole lunch. And it was pretty clear they weren't newlyweds, or were, or newly engaged, or people who just,

• 13:49Sam Harris?

  you know, who were gonna spend the rest of their lives together and just couldn't be apart for 10 seconds. Uh, I guess there's some perhaps romantic version of this is not invidious. But the scene I saw was of a guy who was with a woman who was at least 30 years younger than him. Uh, again, zero implication that she was underage. I mean, she seemed like she was probably in her early twenties. But um, just very young for him. And also, he was, the way he was relating to her, he was as a kind of, you know, accessory, you know, it was just a weird sugar daddy vibe, where he thought he was coming off like, you know, Cary Grant. And he was, you know, he was coming off like a total sleaze bag. So that was the impression I formed of him. And as far as I knew, that was my only

• 14:31Sam Harris?

  interaction with him ever. And now we discover that he um, had sent me an email inviting me. I mean, do you, do you want to take it now? Do you want to read that email?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's start with this. So this is what was discovered. Epstein to you, Sam, we met with John Brockman at the TED event. I thought you might enjoy a dinner with Woody Allen, Chomsky and me. It should be fun. What do you write? By the way, this is May of 2015. What do you write back? Oh my God, you could have been killed for this. You said, only if we film it, smiley face. Oh my God, how bad this could have been.

• 15:03Sam Harris?

  Oh my God.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Only if we film it. Meanwhile, this guy's head must have been like, he must have been like, how does he know? Does he want in on the cabal? So he writes back, "Are you ever in New York?" You write back, "No plans at the moment." I guess then maybe the final one, which this really, I mean, you could have been in trouble had he not exonerated you with this. He said, "I just finished your reading, reading your Chomsky email exchange in arts, I guess, letters. I now understand your film it comment. I spent quite a lot of time." I mean, do you want me to read the whole thing?

• 15:36Sam Harris?

  I mean, you can. I mean, this is so.

• 15:40Sam Harris?

  If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support, and you can subscribe now at samharris.org.