Making Sense with Sam Harris - #371 — What the Hell Is Happening?

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Sam Harris speaks to Bill Maher about the state of the world. They discuss the aftermath of October 7th, the cowardice and confusion of many celebrities, gender apartheid, the failures of the Biden campaign, Bill’s relationship to his audience, the differences between the left and right, Megyn Kelly, loss of confidence in the media, expectations for the 2024 election, the security concerns of old-school Republicans, the prospect of a second Trump term, totalitarian regimes, functioning under medical uncertainty, Bill’s plan to stop doing stand-up (maybe), looking back on his career, his experience of fame, Jerry Seinfeld, 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.   Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.  

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. There you'll also find our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts to anyone who can't afford one. 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. Today I'm speaking with my friend Bill Maher about the state of our world. Bill probably needs no introduction. He is the host of Real Time on HBO, and he has his own podcast, Club Random. Before Real Time, which he's hosted for the last 21 years, Bill created and hosted Politically Incorrect on ABC. And he's the author of a new book, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You,

which we discussed at the beginning of this conversation. Then we turn to the aftermath of October 7th, the cowardice and confusion of many celebrities, gender apartheid, the failures of the Biden campaign, Bill's relationship to his audience, the differences between the left and right politically, Megyn Kelly, loss of confidence in the media, our expectations for the 2024 election, the security concerns of some old-school Republicans, the prospect of a second Trump term, totalitarian regimes and how they fall, functioning under medical uncertainty, Bill's plan to stop doing stand-up, maybe, his experience of fame, Jerry Seinfeld, and other topics. Anyway, this was fun, and now I bring you Bill Maher.

this was fun and now i bring you bill maher all right let me let me just hit the ground running well well i can edit so so you can't you can't possibly i'm just getting soda but i just i just don't want you to have to hear that clatter on your beautiful podcast okay what are you drinking bill maher uh this is just a little roofie for you so things go well after the show no this is something it's like it replaces uh diet soda it's the healthiest version huh what is this poured into sparkling water it's some some chemist made it and he's convinced me it's real right and uh i think is it stevia or what's these there's a little in there yeah but i i was drinking stevia soda but he says there's a lot of chemicals still in there right right you know so he's playing the odds well you seem to be winning so far well

you know let's not even go there no we're gonna go there we gotta talk about well first i will remind i will have introduced you properly obviously in the housekeeping but i will remind people that you have a new book what this comedian said will shock you which um is really fantastic because so i'm listening to it as an audiobook and you read the audio and it's based on your you know 20 years of your end of show editorials which you you, it must've been fun to actually go back and look at how times have changed. No, it was grueling actually. Well, because I don't,

I'm not a person who does well watching myself. I never watched my own show. I should, it would be much more professional to look at yourself. But I figured, well, I've been on 31 years. Maybe it would make it worse. You know, maybe I would see something and get self-conscious. And it seems to be working.

But you didn't go back and watch. You must have just looked at the transcripts. Of course. And look, those are my babies. I mean, that's what I work hardest on in the show. It's what I love doing the most. I would give up anything else in show business before I gave up that. And look, they are good. I mean, but look, over 20 years, they're not all going to

be 100 out of 100. And some stuff ages badly, not terribly badly, not like I have very different political opinions. That was part of why I did this to see if I did. But just, they're stale. You know, they're making fun of John Boehner. It's not funny anymore. And half the country doesn't know who I'm talking about. So there was a lot of work bringing them up to date, but it was a labor of love. And people have been telling me for a very long time, I should do this. You know, this would make a good book. Well, you took the time to write them in the first place. So it's really, I mean, they're very well crafted little essays. Yeah. And they're funny. I mean, everyone who reads this says I'm LOL-ing on every page, which is rare for a book, I think. But as I read over the book itself, after I finished it,

I was like, yeah, people. And of course they were originally done as editorials on a television show where I was getting big LOLs. Yeah, I mean, that's something I noticed in listening to it as an audiobook because you're, you know, the original form was for you to read it in front of an audience. And I'm hearing where all the laughs would be and the, but there's no, obviously there's no audience in the audiobook. There's no laugh track in the audiobook, which, I mean, you could, you know, had you sweetened it, you would have had to put in endless pauses because the velocity of the laughs is like, it's like every four seconds, there's a button. And it's really, it's great.

And my prime directive in doing these, while there was a few, one was don't be earnest. I talk about that in the introduction. One was, don't be earnest. I talk about that in the introduction, don't be earnest, which to me is when commentators talk about a subject as if it's more important to them personally than the starving people in Sudan. You know what I'm talking about? And also, put in the laughs. It can't just be, and you, sir, are bad. You got to leaven it. And as long as the laughs are always in service of the point and they don't go too far away, then it works for me. And that's always what I've followed. And I think, yeah, I think you see it reflected in the book. So we're talking on the, I would call it a set. It's not quite a set. This is actually your

guest house. Bunker. But we're on your Club Random set. Thank you. Yes, thank you for coming over. I mean, what a guy. Yeah, no, it's great. Well, it's super easy to do it this way. As you know, I do all my podcasts remotely. It must be nice to have a little human contact.

It is good, yeah. Those of us like myself who listen to you religiously, everyone, we do see you kind of as the voice of God. And I know you do that in your meditation even more. But that voice, I must say, I'm very flattered to be here because, like I say, I listen every week and it's almost always some egghead like you with advanced college degrees. I feel like I'm really slumming up your podcast as a mere bachelor of arts degree and a comedian. As we have seen, the eggheads are being miseducated at this point. The new batch of eggheads are going to be quite something. Not the ones you have on, though. They're always good people. Except that Rory guy. Oh, that was interesting. Yeah. Well, he is an incredibly

impressive person, but he's quite miseducated on this particular point. Really? Yeah. It's really, well. Isn't that a conundrum in life that we all think about all the time? How can someone be so smart on one thing and not get it so much on another? And they're thinking about us the same way about certain issues. Yeah. Well, we should talk about this because a lot of this relates of late to what's happened post-October 7th. And just, we see this great fracturing of public opinion. But strangely, I've noticed that many people in your line of work, people in Hollywood, even some very famous people who agree with us about how the moral landscape looks, are terrified to say anything. And the

people on the other side are not terrified. There are A-list celebrities who are not terrified to be mistaken for Hamas supporters, but anyone defending Israel. But can you explain, how is it, if the Jews control Hollywood, how is it that it is so terrifying to state the obvious? There's a difference between a death cult and a group of people, however ineptly this attempting to defend itself against a death cult. Well, I will answer your question, but did I interrupt your introduction? Did we never get to like where you were? Did I cut you off for something? Well, no, I just, if people know, I'll do a separate housekeeping,

but if people notice that the acoustics are different different here we're in your house i'm not in my studio so yeah i see that's that's you're on the lamb from the people who love gaza okay well i mean there's so much to this answer as i think we both agree the mouth of the river is what i've always called it of the insanity that flows down from the left side of the river is what I've always called it, of the insanity that flows down from the left side of the spectrum is colleges, universities. Somehow they became huge asshole factories. And they teach, I guess, postmodernism. Have you ever read that book? Or maybe you had the authors on called Cyn yeah i know you're aware of it it's sort of lindsey and yes yeah do you have you read it you have an opinion of it it's

sort of if people don't know it's sort of a dissection of where this kind of crazy what we think of and i think we're you know old school liberals. But what we think of as the nuttiness on the left, the origins of it. And it's very detailed and arcane. I don't think we can reproduce it here. But it basically started in the 70s in France, ideas about postmodernism that found their way into American universities. And just the term postmodernism, I always felt was crazy because don't you want to be modern? What's after modern? Nothing. That's what's after modern.

How much better does it get after modern? But this sort of encapsulates the answer to your question is, how could the people who control Hollywood be on the side that's against the Jews? Because everything, once you go past modern, you're sort of back at your own ass again, with your head up it. Yeah. It's funny, you unwittingly, in mentioning that particular book, you have encapsulated really the totality of our problem at the moment, because one of the authors of that book, James Lindsay, kind of spiraled off into Trumpistan and conspiristan and got very, very weird. And James, I hear your pain, but he got very, very weird. Helen, his co-author, did not.

But it's not to say they're wrong about what they wrote in that book at all. It's just that once you get sufficiently entranced by the horror on the left or the horror on the right, you get sort of radicalized or self-radicalized or radicalized by your audience. And you just, very few of us have been able to keep both extremes in view and in proportion. I mean, they're not that, I mean, this is something you point out in your book. At equal extremes from reason, they're equally extreme. They're still very different. And we have to respond to them differently.

Yes. I did not know that about Mr. Lindsay. And again, this is the issue that I'm always dealing with. And I think quite a few of us are. How do you get your mind around that problem of this person seems so smart on these things and we can sit and talk for an hour and I will talk to anybody here I've talked to the far sides and always came away friendly with everybody because we were not dwelling on the politics and when it gets to that moment where it's a political I mean I had the who's the guy Dana White right you know he's far right he's a Trumper. We had a great time. You just have to. There's no

other way this country can heal. You have to get over that thing in your head that says, oh, well, four out of five of these compartments didn't flood, but the fifth one, that can't be enough to sink the ship. In the Titanic, there was nine compartments. The guy, Victor Garber, comes out and says, only four of them had flooded. We'd be fine. But the fifth one did, and now we're going down. And I feel like that's our minds. It's compartments. And a couple of them in almost everybody will be flooded. I feel like you and I and Andrew Sullivan and Barry Weiss and this. There is a group of us. But I do feel like we're sort of standing like this with our backs to each other because there's only so few of us.

And the hordes are coming from all around us from both sides. So we have to get into that phalanx of the Roman soldiers. Yeah, that's a good image. So back to Hollywood for a moment. Why is it that these celebrities are terrified, of the Roman soldiers. Yeah, it's a good image. Yeah. So back to Hollywood for a moment. Why is it that these celebrities are terrified to state the obvious in the aftermath of October 7th and so many are not terrified

to get on what is quite obviously the wrong side of it? I mean, to be clear, there are people who signed letters castigating Israel in the immediate aftermath of October 7th before Israel did anything in response. Like, how is it that that was moral high ground that they thought they could stake out?

And we literally have Jewish celebrities, who I won't name, who won't go on your podcast or my podcast or Rogan's podcast and talk about anything here because they're afraid they'll never work in this town again. Well, the short answer is celebrities are stupid. No, I exaggerate slightly. Well, actually, let me just add to this. No, you're not quite exaggerating because a Harris poll just came out, a Harvard Harris poll came out, and they're actually completely out of touch with public opinion in the country. 75% of Americans want the IDF to go into RAFA. 75%. Sam, let me say this in a nicer way. And I do mean this more sincerely than my

insulting comment. People in the arts perceive truth differently. They get at truth differently, poetically, metaphorically. They're not stupid in general. There are some, yes. But they just, it's not an information-based talent that they have. It's emotional. It's about feeling. That's why they're so big on your truth and, you know, your felt truth, whatever phrases they're using for just, this is what I want to believe, so I'm going to.

The world is not a completely rational place. I think you and I think we can get at truth better through rationality, but it's just not how the people in the arts, they're more emotionally linked. That's what works for them with the audience. It's just who they are. And for many reasons, that's why we love them more. I mean, we idolize them and adore them to the point of swelling their heads where they go crazy because they're so adored. That happens a lot in show business. We don't have that effect on people, you and I, but we're more, I think, sane about perceiving truth. So they don't know the history of the Middle East. All they know is, well, the kids are doing it, so it must be hip, so you don't want to lose the

young audience. So let's just get with them. They didn't do enough research to realize that it's not even most kids, but it's the ones who are on the news and it gets on their phone. And of course, there's also tremendous peer pressure out here. I mean, the people who are the far, far leftist, I mean, they really control the debate. You do not want to get on their wrong side. They control the media. They control the gossip. So you better be exact, like when we had the strike last year, you better be exactly on that page and not have any questions about the strike. And I had questions. Many people did, but very afraid to speak. It's not that different with political issues either, I think. You better get in line and believe that and parrot that, or else you are ostracized in this town. And that certainly has happened to actual conservatives,

and they complained about it. And I don't blame them for complaining about it. Bruce Willis complained about it. People who were just Republican just believed in smaller government and the old Republican stuff, which is not against the law and is sometimes correct. But it got to the point where it was people like you and me who aren't even Barry Weiss. I mean, we don't think of ourselves. I mean, we're not even, we're not, we don't think of ourselves as conservatives and we're not. We name almost any liberal issue and we're like, yes, of course we were there a long time ago. A long time ago, we were there on, you know, racism and gay rights and pot, whatever it is.

No, I'm left on every issue except I'm right of John Bolton on jihadism. That's the one thing. Me too. Well, that's the ultimate blind spot for them because, again, they don't know things. So it's really as simple as, well, the kids are doing it. And also, it's about brown people and white people because they think Israelis are all white, which they're of course not. But to them, it's the browner, poorer people and the whiter, richer people. And I think we know who the bad guy in this story is. You know, it's really that simple. They really can only perceive things simply

like black and white is the perfect metaphor for them. And that's why, you know, people of color all over the world can get away with anything. I mean's why, you know, people of color all over the world can get away with anything. I mean, North Korea starves its people. You know, China puts the Uyghurs in concentration camps. A couple of African countries talk openly these days about marching gays into stadiums and killing them for the crime of being gay. I mean, it's just comical, them for the crime of being gay. I mean, it's just comical, the lengths that they will go to to not see crimes if they're not committed by colonizers or the patriarchy. But it's even the UN. It's like Amal Clooney bringing an arrest warrant against Netanyahu

and Sinoir as though they're equivalent characters. Yes. I mean i i was on the view this week oh i didn't see that appearance so how about sam you missed the view that day well were you sick no i i actually in anticipation of this conversation i've been following a little bit of your press i watched you with megan kelly i watched i watched you in a few places yeah i saw you almost fight with her a little bit. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So what happened on The View? Well, you know, first of all, I was very glad to be there. I'd been there a long time. I'm friends, really good friends with Joy and Whoopi for years. The other ones I did not know. They were new to the show, but you know, it's a show that makes news and

it's well watched and well received and it's in the zeitgeist. So I really wanted to go there and reconnect with my friends and also, look, I'm not going to lie, they walked right into the feminist trap because they started in on, I forget how it's called, but Gaza. Again, you're right. You're always the bad guy if you're defending Israel because you're not upset about the women and children being killed. Yes, I am very upset about it. I don't think that's good either, women and children being killed anywhere in the world. My question to them is always, first, do you think Hamas should be destroyed?

And people almost always say yes. I don't know how much they really know about Hamas, but I think they kind of get that it is a... They get it as a trap. Well, I'm not to the trap part yet. Okay, so first I lay out the war thing, which is yes, it's a fascist dictatorship and it's a terrorist army. Both those things describe Hamas. And they are despised by their own people. And they have vowed to wipe out Israel many times and have tried many times and quite openly said they will keep trying to do that.

Does that group need to be destroyed? And they say, yes. Then we're just talking about how to do it. And you're saying you know better than... Look, I don't know if they're using too many bombs. And you don't either, whoever I'm talking to. You just don't. Right.

What I do know is that the history of Israel, I trust them more than any other nation to at least try to be humane. They've had remarkable patience. Well, just for, even if they were a nation of psychopaths, for pure self-interest, given what happens to them on the world stage every time they kill kids. It's in their interest to be more scrupulous than any other fighting force to minimize collateral damage. There's just no upside for them as a nation to be indiscriminate with their bombs. So the fact that, you know, it's this additional problem is that they're fighting a terrorist army that is using its own civilian population

as human shields. That has implications. I've heard you speak eloquently on that, the moral equivalence, ridiculous part of that scenario. Okay, so, but this wasn't my feminist trap was, all right, here you are defending, and I'm the bad guy because I'm for Israel and you're for the Palestinians. And then I just always say, here you are defending, and I'm the bad guy because I'm for Israel and you're for the Palestinians. And then I just always say, if you had to live in Gaza for even one day, and I don't mean during the war, of course, that's a nightmare, but just under normal Gaza, you would run screaming and begging to live in Tel Aviv, where people share the values that you prize. And if you're looking for a cause, how about women?

Because this is a show hosted by women, and mostly women are in the audience. So now you're in my feminist state, you can't argue with this. This is the final jujitsu move. And all you have to do is describe, like in most Muslim majority countries, including certainly Gaza, like what women go through. For these people who are so obsessed with this word apartheid and thinking that Israel is an apartheid state, which it is not, there's a real apartheid in the world, a gender apartheid. I mean, where one half of the population, not black and white, just male and female, is treated completely different with no equal rights in speech or how you can dress or reproductive rights or education opportunities, certainly freedom from sexual violence and sexual harassment. I mean, I could

go down the list. I guess I did to some degree. That isn't the issue of the day. That's going to be my next editorial. Yeah. Just throw, like, I know you're looking for a cause, kids, which is great. I think that's a great impulse. How about this one? Because it's really big. The moral confusion is so complete, however, because the hijab became the symbol of female empowerment for the Women's March. You have a shepherd fairy poster of a woman, a gorgeous woman in a hijab, just excluding the male gaze with this religious symbol,

which is in fact the mechanism of enshrining this gender apartheid in Muslim majority countries. And you have women who are struggling to get out from under that, and the moment they show their hair in Iran, they're thrown in prison and raped and tortured and killed sometimes. Again, the image I have of you sticking your head out so far thinking you're so progressive, but actually it being back around under your ass

is, again, another example. Yeah. All right. So back to you and what you're up to here. How do you think of your own audience at this point? I mean, you've got two very different gigs. You're just talking on both platforms, but you have your HBO show and you've got Club Random. I mean, obviously, they couldn't be more different in terms of just the execution. I mean, it's just, you must love doing this, right? I love them both. And that's why, I mean, this moment in my life is great because I feel like it is more complete with Club Random because now these are the two sides of me. I mean, suit and tie, and certainly not stodgy. I mean, I think people see real time as a pretty hip show that's pretty freewheeling. I was shocked when they let me put it on CNN. I mean, when they asked me to,

and I said, well, what about all the language? And they're, yeah, we don't care. So are they airing, I haven't actually watched it on CNN. Are they airing all full episodes? No, I know, but it's the exact same cut. No, they had to, we cut out one segment because they have to put in commercials. But they don't edit it, which I was shocked. That is shocking. Now you can say fuck on CNN and nobody cares. Is that one good thing that Trump did to the universe?

Yeah. But it is amazing the way that happens sometimes where you don't realize where the river has flowed to until something indicates. And then you go, oh, wow. You can say fuck on CNN and nobody cares. That's where the country is. That is different from even 10 years ago, certainly 20. And when I first did The Tonight Show, you couldn't say ass on TV.

So we've come a long way, baby. But I love this because it's exactly who I am when I'm off working and we're just sitting around and I'm always stoned for it. That makes a big difference. And there's no agenda. My show, I have an agenda. I look at that show real time as a show that catches people up on the news who don't have time to follow it every day. Or maybe they do, and they just like an analysis of it. There's both sides of that. But a lot of people watch it to get the news. It's like, oh, this is what happened this week. So I have a clear agenda, and I work many, many hours to make it just right. It's like football players versus baseball. Once a week, you really want to get it right. But this is just, you know, it can be anything. And most of the

people here are not political people. And that's great because I don't always want to talk about politics. It's a bit of a busman's holiday for me. Yeah. I think real time got better when you went to just two people on the panel totally it was too crowded too crowded could not agree more i forgot what forced that did it just happen by accident okay it was the pandemic pandemic did us a lot of good got us a better audience also because we had to uh socially distance and so the crowd was like only a third of the size and they were awesome and i was like only a third of the size, and they were awesome. And I was like, hmm, why don't we just keep, I'd rather have these people. And, you know, we just, for a while there was people who, I don't know why they persisted in coming to a show they must have known was going to be somewhat

upsetting to them or to me, because they were a very far left, woke crowd. and I've never been there but there was years when I was fighting with my own audience you know saying stuff that was like perceived in any way as not being towing the woke line and I was you know I have pictures on my wall of me doing this giving the finger to the crowd and I would be you know and a lot of people said they liked that. It was kind of interesting. And I could see how that is interesting. It's certainly not what you see in other talk shows, the talk show host saying, fuck you to your own audience. But they would just annoy me with their lack of open-mindedness. You have some of these great moments where you, sometimes you'll tell a joke and it won't land and you'll look with contempt

at your audience like okay i'll wait i'll wait for i'll wait for the laugh like you're gonna fucking laugh at that yeah but now uh the audience has been awesome and they they're my people there are people they they laugh at both sides and they don't hold it against you for they they definitely cheer stuff that's anti-Trump and stuff. I think they're where we are, basically, which is, you know, give us back old-school Republicans. Give us back a party that we might even consider voting for, not these nuts. And also get rid of the far woke nonsense on the left. By the way, on The View, they were saying I should not use the word woke.

And I was wondering, I was going to ask you about this. It is a word that triggers people. And it is a word that, like a lot of people, including a lot of African American people, I understand, it has a special meaning of its original meaning, which I think we all think was great to be alert to injustice. And then it migrated to a very different place, much the way the word violence, for example, has migrated. It used to mean, oh, I know what violence is. It's physical and it hurts. And now it's just like anything I don't like. Yeah, except for clitorectomies and suicide bombing.

That's not violence. That's just this voice of the oppressed. Right. But so I would love to find some other word and get people to use it. I don't know. Well, I'm sort of out of touch with the original roots of it. I mean, when I started hearing woke everywhere, it was already contaminated with a fair amount of moral confusion. No, it was an old school term from decades ago. And it was certainly understandable why black folks in this country would need to, for their own survival, stay woke. And it's a shame because it is a great word with a great history. But yeah, I mean, it was a hostile takeover. So in thinking about your audience, the point you're making about going against the audience

and that not being conventional, that's especially true out in my world. I mean, many of us talk about a phenomenon that we call audience capture, where if you have a podcast, and it's really all of alternative media, so podcasts or newsletters, it relates to what we talked about earlier, where people get radicalized by their own audience because they begin to cater to the fanatics, but also just less than scrupulous in how they call balls and strikes because they're just now they're on team whatever it is. Well, I think the best example of that is certain people have gone over to MSNBC. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, who were, well, like Nicole Wallace. And I like her very much.

Done my show and I see her. I think she's great. She's very pro and very smart. But she was hired, I think, as, I'm sure she was, she was a Bush spokesperson. She was hired as the conservative. But I think this is probably when Trump was well maybe it was before that but anyway it was like okay to have a conservative if they were like anti-trump i mean david not brooks brett stevens also said i think um or indicated to me once that you know he's invited

on that network but usually it's only limited to certain never trumpers yeah a certain area that is not going to upset the msnbc audience right you have a conservative on but he's agreeing with us on the doctrine that we've all agreed on yeah and a lot of that doctrine i agree with too it's just i just object to like forcing it but anyway so like i think somebody like that, they go over to MSNBC as a guest on the show a lot, and they do well. But again, they were a conservative. They were a Bush administration person. Then they get hired. Now you're there every day, the only people you talk to. And slowly, you go right from just a conservative but a never-Trumper to a full-on liberal. That's a little creepy to me.

Well, I've noticed this much more in the other direction. You have people just like us, or they used to be just like us, who began to react to the craziness on the left. And there's something that I think, you tell me if it's true for you, there's something more annoying about the extremism on the left than on the right. Correct. Viscerally, yes. The right is more intellectual. I know in my mind, the right is way more dangerous. But you're right. But it's not nearly as annoying. It's more obnoxious. First of all, it's embarrassing because it's sort of our team,

more than my team for sure, and I think yours. So it's like, you're embarrassing us on that, our team. Well, you're also destroying institutions that I really care about. I don't care about Liberty University. It was already destroyed. But the New York Times and Harvard, like I care about these institutions. Right, exactly. So do you think of your audience as just a unified population? I mean, the audience for Club Random is the same as the show? No, I mean, it's all over the map and stand up.

I mean, it's good in the sense that it's a very wide range. It's some younger, middle, I mean, Gen X, a lot of those, but millennials too. And the TV show gets a younger number, median number than the late night shows. And it's politically all over the map too. Not, of course, a lot of woke anymore. I think I lost that audience. I think they walked out the door and it's okay. The super far left, I'm not, the people who are giving purity tests, I am not the one to be passing a purity test and that's okay. I don't miss them. And I replaced them with, I think, many more people in the middle. And also I definitely, yes, it's true, hear from more conservatives, but never

really the hard right asshole conservatives. It's more like the guys on the golf course who used to think I was a huge liberal asshole and now think, oh, okay, at least he has the guts to call out where the left went crazy. And maybe they think, in their mind, maybe they think they saw the crazy on the left before I did. I would contend, and one reason I went through all those editorials is to find out if, actually, no, the left did get crazier. I don't think I missed something in 2012 under Obama. I think he was pretty sane.

And I don't think Gen Z had come along yet. And I don't think you could point to a lot of specific things that were not where they are today, including, of course, marching with terrorists, stuff like that. So I think you and I had a pretty similar experience over the last 10 years in purging our audience of the two extremes, discovering that the far left hated us suddenly because we weren't woke, and then also discovering that because we had made sense when aimed left, and certainly made sense on the collision between Western culture and jihadism, we had a lot of far right proto-Trumpist fans who suddenly were blindsided by the fact that we didn't

recognize Trump's brilliance. Exactly. I've had that, yes, I've had to face that disappointment in people's eyes also. And that's, again, what I mean about how can you think this, this, this, and not this? And we just have to, you know, get past that because I would love to know what your prediction is for, let's say, the month of January 2025. How do you see that month? I mean, I have a birthday that month, happens to be Inauguration Day. It could be a big month. We might be having your birthday in a bunker somewhere. Luckily, we have one. Yeah. I mean, it is amazing that we're here and that the Democratic Party had years to watch this slow-moving catastrophe. And they couldn't figure out how to put anyone else in position other than

Biden. I mean, who appears to be, this is, it's hard to know because you don't see that much of him, but it wouldn't be surprising if week by week, certainly month by month, he's just getting obviously worse as a candidate. That's happening now. Yeah, no, I know. I mean, like, I feel like, I mean, I'm hearing rumors that it's just, they're shielding him from the cameras cameras it's only going one way yeah no it's not there's no way he's going to get more pep in a step no it's a shame you know politically he's a disaster policy wise not a disaster at all you know although he's the way in which he's tried to split the difference on Israel has been quite

stupid politically. But it could have been worse. Yeah, it certainly could. In the beginning, he was great. And then he- Well, his biggest failure to me, when they look back on it, I think, is that he did not have the stamina, maybe it was strength, maybe that's an age thing, I don't know, to fight with his own far left. He needs a sister soldier moment. So does she, Kamala Harris. Yes. People are looking at her as the likely person to finish the term.

And they're not going to do it. And she needs to stiff arm the far left. She can barely manage the script as they write it, let alone have the guts to, you know, or whatever it takes to, she may really. You don't think she can just put on the old prosecutor hat and be kind of law and order in a way that would reassure the middle of the country?

For whatever reason, and I liked her, still like her as a person, but for whatever reason, it's almost like someone who does well in the comedy clubs and then they get on the big stage and they just don't do well on The Tonight Show and the career's over. Like she got on the big stage and for some reason just part of it is the perception and then maybe it fed on itself, but does not look confidence.

And I just think it's a mental block kind of a thing, because yes, that would be great if she could, with confidence, go out there. I mean, you know who could do it, because he's got that kind of confidence, is Gavin Newsom. I don't think he's going to do it, but he could switch on a dime, because he's just a great debater who's very confident in what he's saying, no matter what it is. And he knows his facts. Because he can tap dance that way, he does seem like he lacks a core of real conviction.

I mean, he's kind of a weathervane politically. I don't see it that way. I see him as way too far ideologically captured by the left. Well, yeah, that's where the wind has been blowing. He's just stuck. He's the governor of California. I mean, he was out front on a couple of those issues like gay marriage and stuff when very few people- Yeah, that was courageous. Yeah. So I think he's shown that. I'm not against a guy who's a great politician. I mean, Clinton.

Haven't you seen those bad ads, the political ads against Newsom that are just so easily cut by everyone on social media where they just show him walking and talking about the California way, intercut with just homelessness and tent cities? Sure. Whatever is true in California might be beside the point. The optics for the rest of the country is that California is a failed state that's just filled with fentanyl addicts and sex crimes, you know, and drag queen story hour. And you've got Gavin presiding over all of it. I don't know how he gets out from under that. Well, I mean, I thought he would be a great replacement for Biden, as many people did. And I still think he could pull it off, but the polling is very bad on him. Oh, I haven't seen that. Is it bad? Yes. Somebody sent it to me because I was saying that I think he'd be good. It doesn't surprise me. Yes. And it's basically, it's California. It's

what you're exactly talking about. He is tied to this image that we're a hippie commune who've lost our mind and you know portland oh that's oregon fuck that's close enough we we get tarred with that as well um yeah portland's even worse than san francisco as far as like going didn't they have the no police zone yeah that was a great idea who could have thought that crime might go up when you kick the cops out? And again, like, I know there are people, and you must know this, that are listening to this right now, like hate listening, because they're the two biggest smug assholes in the world are sitting there talking like they know what the fuck is up. And then people on both sides will be thinking that we're that guy.

Yeah. Well, we've got a lot to apologize for. Yeah. I mean, I think the middle, in part, what has happened is that with social media, we have built this hallucination machine where the extremes seem to take up much more of the real bandwidth of the world than in fact they do. And so they're to represent much more of a public opinion than they do. You've got like 8% on each tail that is just incredibly loud. And, you know, some of them have bought armies. Then we've got outside actors like China and Russia stoking that schism in our society. But the schism is there. But still, there's this vast middle of the country that understands that you don't want to be giving double mastectomies to 12-year-old girls and that a coup when you're trying to transfer power is not a good thing in America.

And they don't want either of those extremes. They don't want apologies for either of those extremes. How is it that in the Republican Party, the party line is January 6th was nothing? I understand that there's footage of cops, in many cases terrified cops, letting people into the building. Because on the other side of the building, people are getting stabbed in the face with flagpoles. claim that nothing was actually in jeopardy when you have a sitting president trying to ignore the results of an election, and the only bulwark against him really actually trying to hold onto power is Mike Pence and a few other people having their consciences still tethered to the Constitution rather than the personality cult. Well, I'm going to answer that by saying I was on Megyn Kelly also this week in New York.

And I was surprised. I like her. And they were friends, and I always stay friends. 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 podcast is available to everyone through our scholarship program, so if you can't afford a

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