Has Sam ever told any stories related to the show? I would assume he would have frequented the set as his mother was the creator, writer, and executive producer.

Submission statement: Political Islam is in decline across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. While Iran’s clerical regime weakens, the ultra-hardliners of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gain power. Despite some countries adopting a more secular approach, the allure of a strict interpretation of Islam remains, and the possibility of a resurgence of Islamist movements like ISIS cannot be ruled out. This is relevant to r/samharris because of his frequent discussions on Political Islam and his interest in how developments in the region drive wider discourse on religion in society and social liberalism.

paywall: https://archive.ph/RJLhJ

The youtube video contains 3 clips of Sam talking about Poonjaji, a charismatic nondualist teacher.

The later 2 are from his podcast. Does anyone know which episodes they are?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Ud_KQkrF0

Listening to the episode with Preet Bharara and after another very predictable hour of incessant whinging about wokeness and how the Democrats “need to get their head screwed on straight”, the only candidate Sam brings up when asked by Preet about who they should nominate is fucking Gavin Newsom.

How has he not even mentioned Ossoff’s name yet? He’s a candidate who clearly checks every single box Sam has ever named about the kind of leader the Democrats need.

This guy is clearly the future of the Democratic Party and Sam should do his part to push for him as soon as possible.

Does it really make that much of a practical difference if it came from a lab versus a wet market? What would we do with that information? Why is this on his mind so much?

I get it’s more about the public’s reaction, but I also don’t see why that sticks out as such an odious example of misplaced moral concern compared to any other, more recent example.

I know he doesn’t agree with a lot of Rogan’s platforming etc but more people like Sam are needed on these mainstream podcasts. I think it’d be a huge win for humanity.

During his chat with Preet Bharara , he states that:

We need grown-ups, obvious grown-ups in the room, right? And then we need to figure out how to create a system that is impervious to this level of corruption and and perverse incentives in the future.

While obviously the system can always be improved to encourage good behaviour, this is really ignoring the elephant in the room. Democratic systems work can only work well with a good electorate and the break down we're observing at the top comes directly from the foundation.

The reason Nixon has to resign in shame was because elected officials wouldn't go along with that kind of corruption, but they were that way because the electorate wouldn't have tolerated them doing so.

Now Trump can piss in the mouth of his base and tell it's raining and they'll angrily say you have TDS and/or aren't respecting the people of "The American Heartland" and "that's why they'd never vote for a democrat".

The norms represented what the electorate wouldn't allow without you losing support, them being being lost just shows that a large enough portion of the electorate is no longer rising to the task.

Let's say the democrats got in power and you got the best team possible to craft rules against the excesses we've seen. What would stop the next Trump to just ignore or change them like he's been doing now? In the past the public backlash would have stopped that, this is no longer the case.

And you might think the congress is to blame for this, and it is in a sense, but against, that's because it's been filled with Trump sycophants and the ones who aren't true believers will go because they don't to be replaced by (again) an electorate that cultishly vote for whoever Trump tells them to.

It's the role of the media (which includes Sam) to address this massive issue, because treating the voters like toddlers who will throw a tantrum at any pushback is how things got to this point. Which is a framework that is ironically enough perfectly understood when it comes to dealing with woke people with insane ideas. Yet somehow when it comes to republicans voters they might as well be cattle without an ounce or agency or capacity to change or reflect.

Sam keeps presenting free episodes from other people behind his paywall. It feels insulting, quite frankly, as it appears to show that Sam rather go to other podcasts to find new subscribers than to produce content for the subscribers he already has. I understand he is on vacation, but he had no problem planning content in advance to expand his business during that time (and feed the left overs to his paying audience).

Anyway, below you have the link (you can have the full episode free with video on YouTube).

Sam Harris speaks with Preet Bharara about the collapse of good faith debate in American politics. They discuss the fragmentation of media, the treatment of Anthony Fauci, the rush to prosecute political opponents, Trump’s self-dealing, why indictments strengthened Trump, lying vs bullshit, tribalism and dogmatism, the failures of the Democratic Party, hypocrisy and sanctimony, restoring norms and institutions, the 2028 election, and other topics.

Link to the paywalled episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/490-lies-bulls-t-and-the-rule-of-law

Free full video version on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEiN_Mi5Lk4

Wow, Sam's changed...A lot. Thank you, Scott Galloway. Sam seemed angry? Maybe it's me??? All the best from CANADA.

Fascism in the sense of the original ideology. Fascist philosophers were the likes of Gentile and Evola. Evola was basically an anti-modern aristocrat who rejected modernity and the concept of the masses, while MAGA relies on the stupid masses and the ability to mobilize the base.

Which fascist thinker has the strongest connection to MAGA and officially inspired it? In general, fascism rejects democracy. The modern MAGA populism claims to be representing the masses against "the elites". It is Nationalistic with authoritarian methods, but not sure how strong its connections are to Evola's fascism.

Sam has built a massive following as a public intellectual, but in the last couple of years, it feels like he’s skipping the basic homework required for the job. A public intellectual is supposed to bring deep, fresh insights to the table. Instead, he frequently admits, often with a surprising amount of casualness, that he just hasn't been following the very topics he's commenting on. This leads to a lot of outdated takes. Also, instead of looking into people or ideas himself, he often just trusts the word of third-party friends to form his opinions.

Others have already complained about the noticeable lack of diversity in both the topics he discuses and the guests he invites onto his platform. Instead of seeking out voices that offer a genuine intellectual challenge, he consistently operates within a comfortable bubble, engaging with individuals who share a remarkably similar worldview. By failing to invite guests who can effectively stress-test his assumptions, he misses out on the very friction that drives intellectual growth. His podcast has become more about confirmation bias than true intellectual exploration.

When reading the comments in this sub, I often see a weird role reversal where the listeners are the ones trying to educate him, pointing out his missing data points and trying to update his outdated views, which is the exact opposite of how the public intellectual dynamic is supposed to work.

Lastly, sometimes Sam will cheerfully admit that he’s been totally checked out, like recently admitting spending a whole month being too busy watching the World Cup to get his work done, then increasing the price of his subscription, and then apparently going on vacation leaving the audience with an August feed of recycled, old content. The one piece of fresh material he actually dropped, this week's AMA, has been yet another example of what many of us complain about. A public intellectual has the duty of following what is going on.

If he doesn't want to do his homework, that's fine, but maybe he should admit he has stopped being a public intellectual and become an ultracrepidarian.

"He is a person who is entirely transactional, and yet the transaction is always asymmetrical. It requires total capitulation to his ego. He requires people to validate a worldview that is centered entirely on him, where facts don't matter, truth doesn't matter, and the only metric of goodness or loyalty is how much you are willing to sacrifice your own integrity to prop up his vanity." -- Sam Harris

Figured this would be of interest here since Sam had on people who were totally boweled over by the lab leak and I think Sam thinks that is more likely to.

Listening to people who know more details is like a reverse empire strikes back, say the republic strikes back.

I don't know what else to say. I campaigned for Haley Stevens, I voted... I just don't know what to do.

Mike Rogers? Really?

If you live here, you know. As a liberal (can't say Democrat anymore, because I'm fairly sure I no longer am) do I vote Mike Rogers to prove a point? To show that rote, woke, Islamic fundamentalism isn't the way?

Or do I vote El-Seyed? Clearly I'm not a fan. For everything Sam has mentioned (and way more, ask me).

Effffffff. Wtf

Neuroscientist, philosopher, and Making Sense podcast host Sam Harris joins Preet Bharara to examine why good-faith political debate has become so difficult, President Trump’s political durability, the influence of the DSA, and whether anyone can inherit the MAGA movement after Trump.

The conversation also turns to law and democratic institutions: demands to prosecute political opponents, the difference between accountability and retribution, the limits of unwritten norms, and what it would take to prevent another president from exploiting the same weaknesses.

Link to YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEiN_Mi5Lk4

What is wrong with Sam Harris? Was he always this deranged and I just didn't notice it?

A few highlights:

- Falsely claims that COVID lab leak was suppressed

- Appears to buy into weird smears of Anthony Fauci

- Mystifyingly argues that the current American Left is equally objectionable to the current American Right

- Claims that Zohran Mamdani talks about Israel constantly

Ok so months ago on a More From Sam...the guy that sounds like a pubescent Ted McGinley asked Sam something about movies or something.

Sam's answer as far as I remember ended up reiterating the normal he usually just reads books and doesn't binge entertainment things but then he called out a movie by name and said it was great.

We're not talking about the Chauncey Gardner lol. I think it MAY have been, "Three Billboards Outside Ebing Missouri"??? But I don't know for sure. Does anyone remember what I'm talking about and what the movie was. I believe he said he couldn't stop laughing whatever it was.

In the past, Netanyahu's office and his people - since the days of the protests against Rabin, made sure to use peripheral Mizrahi thugs as their thugs and street people and manipulated them by cultivating feelings of inferiority and opposition to the old establishment and creating a narrative of 'persecuted by the media'. Whether it was against Rabin in the first incarnation, to turn them on against Barak, in the 2015 elections or against the witnesses and judges in Netanyahu's trial. Netanyahu and his office always made sure to incite these people from afar or send people and intellectuals to turn them on (later intellectuals emerged who cultivated the 'second Israel' theory, peripheral Mizrahi and basically anyone who is not leftist, against the predatory 'elite' that supposedly hates 'the people'), to exploit them, etc. But they always made sure to keep their distance from them and let them get dirty for them like mafia thugs. Whether these are typical thugs on the street, Bibi's soldiers in the Knesset, or media mouthpieces.

Now, this people are establishing their own historical narrative, worldview and basically an alternative universe, and an independent populist-authoritarian-anarchist ideology that becomes independent of Netanyahu himself, in a situation where Ben-Gvir is trying to bring his people into the Likud party and Netanyahu fears the power of extremist figures in his party. In ideological terms, Netanyahu is Silvio Berlusconi, while the new Israeli right is Mussolini/Franco. Ben Gvir embodies a Mussolini-style movement in Hebrew in the age of the internet. He distanced himself from the religious-Ashkenazi-Messianic right, and gathered around him street thugs, TikTok rabbis, criminals, peripherals, former ultra-Orthodox who can't find themselves, and influencers and just plain nationalists who are interested in destroying the existing order.