Making Sense - Sam Harris - #197 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan

Caitlin Flanagan talks about her experience in a Pandemic-like situation in which she was unable to contact her family or friends for a week. She talks about how she managed to get back on the phone, and how she dealt with the situation. And she talks about what it was like to be in a quarantine, and what it taught her about how to deal with a real-world pandemic. This episode was produced and edited by Sam Harris and Alex Blumberg. It was edited by Annie-Rose Strasser. Our theme music was made by Micah Vellian and our ad music was written and performed by Mark Phillips. The show was mixed by Matthew Boll. Additional music was produced by Haley Shaw. Our theme song was written, performed, and produced by Robert Kraychuck. We were edited by Rachel Ward. Sam Harris mixed this episode. It was produced, edited, and mixed by Patrick Muldowney. Special thanks to John Rocha and Sam Harris. The original music for this episode was done by Mark Boll and Bobby Lord, with additional mixing and mastering by Kevin McLeod, and additional mixing by Patrick McElroy, and the help of Matthew Boll and Mark Boll, and a very special thanks to Matthew Boll, as well as a very good friend of the podcast, Alex Boll, who was kind enough to join us in the making sense team to help us with the mixing and editing and mastering of the episode. Thanks to our theme song by Jeff Perla. and our thanks to our sponsor, for producing the music for the intro and outrope, and our sound design and background music by . and and the sound design by , and by is by by a very talented and , by the excellent Jeff Perlan by our composer, by Bobby Lord. by Matthew McEllegan and his amazing sound engineer, in the mixing engineer, and the sound engineer in this episode's editor, and thanks to & thanks to the amazing by Brian McEllen at the excellent work of , the wonderful (and on this episode s , our editor and . Thank you, is a very cool and lovely by her excellent music is by our supercharge and editing by and her excellent sound engineer and in .

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:10.960 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:45.180 No questions asked.

00:00:48.440 I am here with Caitlin Flanagan.

00:00:50.520 Caitlin, thank you for joining me.

00:00:52.360 Thank you for having me.

00:00:53.620 If people only knew how difficult it was under pandemic conditions to get a valid connection

00:00:59.960 connection, this has been brutal, but you're inheriting my bad tech karma because I just

00:01:05.040 break technology wherever I go.

00:01:07.680 Oh, I assumed that you always had perfect connections at all times.

00:01:11.560 No, it's just bad luck, but it happens enough that I'm used to it.

00:01:15.440 But it's great to have you here.

00:01:17.760 And I actually, I did go out on Twitter when we first scheduled this, and we got some hundreds

00:01:23.980 of questions, and I have a few of those seated in here.

00:01:26.980 But let's just start with what's on your mind and what this experience of quarantine has been

00:01:32.380 like for you thus far.

00:01:33.480 Well, I first want to say, Sam, that I think you saved my life because I am a person that

00:01:39.700 has all these underlying conditions, and I was not taking this seriously as so many people

00:01:47.300 were not.

00:01:47.940 And I'd even been, you know, I have to go to the doctor a lot, and I'd even ask the

00:01:51.360 nurse, you know, what about this COVID or corona?

00:01:54.080 Is this a problem?

00:01:55.380 And she said, oh, it's not a problem.

00:01:57.160 It's a flu.

00:01:58.020 And you just take some, you know, you drink a lot of fluids and you take some Tylenol.

00:02:01.860 And it was so appealing to think that it was nothing.

00:02:05.840 You know, you want to believe the good news always.

00:02:09.600 And so I was going along thinking everyone was hysterical.

00:02:12.960 And then you just happened to send me an email, a short email about something else.

00:02:16.980 And at the bottom, you said, you know, be careful.

00:02:19.460 This is shaping up to be a really big deal.

00:02:21.800 And that caught me.

00:02:23.420 I thought, Sam is really smart.

00:02:25.740 And this is the kind of thing he would be really smart about.

00:02:29.280 And that kind of sat in my mind.

00:02:31.040 But I still had to go to a work lunch.

00:02:33.100 And as I was sitting in the work lunch, noticing the restaurant wasn't nearly as crowded as

00:02:37.500 usual, the guy I was interviewing and I, our phones kept going off with all these different

00:02:42.140 things being canceled.

00:02:43.600 And while he was sitting there, a job he had booked that was really important to his family

00:02:49.020 economically, financially, I should say, dropped out.

00:02:53.260 And so it was kind of just seeing someone in real time losing work and income.

00:02:58.720 And I walked out of there and I remember I never eat enough at a work lunch.

00:03:04.320 I'm very nervous in work lunches and I always, you know, don't eat.

00:03:07.660 And I stopped.

00:03:08.720 I was walking to the car and I stopped in a drugstore and I bought a candy bar and I sat

00:03:12.680 on the, it was a bench, you know, a bus bench, a bus stop bench on Ventura Boulevard.

00:03:18.580 And all of a sudden I just thought, I need to go home.

00:03:21.960 You know, Sam Harris said this, I'm seeing a lot of signs in it and I need to get home.

00:03:27.740 And so I really personally have to thank you because I would have been, and still may be,

00:03:33.140 in really serious, serious trouble if I get this.

00:03:36.520 Well, I'm glad to be of service.

00:03:39.540 There was this really uncanny part of this mass induction into reality where I was essentially

00:03:48.880 a week ahead of everyone in my life.

00:03:51.480 Yeah.

00:03:52.040 I began to feel like a character in a movie where it was just me and one other friend who

00:03:57.740 was even probably 24 hours ahead of me.

00:04:00.680 And it just was a bizarre experience, bizarre conversations with family members and friends.

00:04:08.280 And what was it, Sam?

00:04:09.640 I'm sure you've covered this before, but I'm so interested.

00:04:12.480 What was it that got your attention?

00:04:15.380 What was it that made you realize this was a really serious thing?

00:04:18.820 A few things.

00:04:19.400 One, I've been primed to think about this.

00:04:22.420 I've been waiting for a pandemic on some level.

00:04:25.120 I actually did a podcast maybe six months ago on this topic.

00:04:29.320 You know, I have a template for this sort of thing happening, although I'm fairly amazed

00:04:35.120 at how little detail was in the template and how strange this experience has been as it

00:04:40.020 has unfolded.

00:04:40.840 But the prospect of this happening wasn't foreign to me.

00:04:46.280 The dominoes started to fall pretty quickly.

00:04:48.860 Frankly, I feel pretty late on this.

00:04:51.260 It really wasn't until the end of February that I was paying attention.

00:04:54.360 And people who were really paying attention were a month earlier than I was.

00:04:59.160 For whatever reason, I was so distracted by other things.

00:05:02.040 I wasn't really noticing the reports from Wuhan.

00:05:06.680 But I also just happened, by sheer coincidence, I happened to know someone who got this very

00:05:13.280 early and who's still in an ICU.

00:05:15.780 Oh, God.

00:05:17.160 Who's not especially old.

00:05:18.940 He was, you know, 52.

00:05:20.380 And so the prospect of this was just like the flu seemed far-fetched, you know, albeit

00:05:25.780 for reasons that are not statistically sophisticated.

00:05:29.080 I could have happened to know someone who died from the flu, too, and had my intuitions move

00:05:34.240 there.

00:05:34.540 But it kind of anchored me to a sense that, no, people my age are going down from this.

00:05:40.740 And I don't know people dying from the flu or being intubated and spending more than a

00:05:47.440 month on a ventilator.

00:05:49.080 God, yeah.

00:05:49.540 So that just sort of woke me up.

00:05:52.500 And again, it's moved so quickly.

00:05:55.320 It's just been interesting to see how long a week is in COVID time.

00:05:59.760 A week is like a year.

00:06:00.700 Yeah, isn't it?

00:06:01.540 Isn't it?

00:06:02.140 And I think that's the emotional thing that everybody's, you know, everyone's had a personal

00:06:08.080 crisis.

00:06:09.420 And, you know, we all know what that's like and the feeling of shock and of panic and sort

00:06:16.240 of getting our vision very, very narrowed into what's, you know, when there's a crisis,

00:06:19.960 people get their priorities straight in about two minutes.

00:06:23.260 You know, most of the time we bumble around and we wonder, what am I supposed to be doing

00:06:27.000 with my life?

00:06:27.940 And is this the right direction?

00:06:29.760 And could I advance myself or my children in different ways?

00:06:33.740 And then there's a crisis and you get down to the material aspects of life and what really

00:06:39.340 matters.

00:06:40.200 And we're all sort of having this at the same time, this incredible feeling of dislocation,

00:06:47.260 of fear, of the intensity of love that we have for the people we love, that, you know,

00:06:53.420 you can't really think about that too much in regular conditions because it would just tear

00:06:57.380 you apart and you could never leave them for a minute.

00:06:59.900 So we're all in this very intense experience.

00:07:04.620 And I kind of think of it as when I was a kid, we were in Ireland a lot in Dublin and

00:07:11.500 in Dublin Bay, when the tide goes out, there's a certain strand and the tide will, you know,

00:07:17.320 when it's low tide, all of a sudden you see everything that was underneath the water for

00:07:21.720 the last 12 hours, you see the pebbles and the sea glass and the big dangerous rocks that

00:07:27.220 would have hurt you if you'd gone out.

00:07:28.780 And then it gets covered up again and you can't see any of it in that brown water.

00:07:33.060 And I think that's what it is now.

00:07:35.180 We're seeing the big rocks and we're trying desperately to avoid them in our personal

00:07:41.180 life, keep the people we love safe.

00:07:43.340 And we know that things, you know, everything here is beyond our control.

00:07:47.980 One thing that we can't lose sight of is how different, I mean, we're all in some kind

00:07:52.760 of common predicament, but there's so many different kinds of experiences to be having

00:07:59.320 now.

00:07:59.920 And it's easy for me to lose sight of that because I'm in touch with many people who

00:08:06.680 are having a pretty similar experience to the one I'm having and not so in touch with

00:08:11.380 people who are in some ways having the opposite experience.

00:08:15.600 Actually, that's not entirely true.

00:08:16.900 I'm in touch with a fair number of doctors who are working, you know, who are performing

00:08:21.500 surgeries and who are on the front lines of this.

00:08:24.640 But there are the people out in the world who are part of critical infrastructure who are

00:08:29.600 still working and exposing themselves to this and, you know, exposing others if they're

00:08:34.940 unaware that they're sick.

00:08:36.920 And then there are the people like ourselves who are sheltering in place.

00:08:40.340 And those are obviously very different experiences.

00:08:42.620 And then there are the people who are locked down as we are, but who have their lives totally

00:08:51.060 disrupted.

00:08:52.180 You know, they can't work because their work was synonymous with not being locked down.

00:08:58.120 It'll say they're running a restaurant or working in a store, both of which are closed.

00:09:02.260 And then there are people who either don't have families, now they're experiencing social

00:09:09.340 isolation of a sort that they may have never experienced or, you know, go for years and

00:09:14.140 years without touching.

00:09:15.740 And then there are the people like ourselves who, I mean, you and I haven't spoken about

00:09:19.240 this, but I can assume you're probably experiencing at least to some degree a silver lining effect

00:09:25.680 here because you're locked down with your family.

00:09:28.040 And there's been something really beautiful about discovering some of the things on the

00:09:34.680 beach that were truly precious that you were not necessarily seeing on an hour by hour basis.

00:09:39.840 Well, I think that we're really seeing this division between are you a laptop jockey or not?

00:09:47.200 You know, if your work is able to be done entirely in this immaterial space of, you know, data

00:09:54.960 that's transported back and forth between computers, then you're probably not taking a financial

00:10:00.860 hit.

00:10:01.660 Right.

00:10:02.060 And it's interesting, the New York Times, it will endlessly fascinate me until the day

00:10:07.680 I die, where they cover very well and very broadly the situation in all times, but now

00:10:15.480 in particular, of what it's like to be out of work or to be low income at this time or

00:10:22.540 to be sort of fragile in terms of your financial status and then have it all ripped away.

00:10:27.160 They cover it very well, but all of their social coverage is, you know, their cooking

00:10:33.820 recommendations are endless and they're watch this on Netflix and what a great time to reorganize

00:10:40.180 the pantry.

00:10:41.180 And you realize that if they're a product, they know their consumer very well.

00:10:47.000 And the consumer is probably a laptop jockey.

00:10:50.720 But even within that social class where we are lucky to live, I think it's even deeper

00:10:59.420 than, I mean, including the nature of love, but I think it's bumped us quite suddenly into

00:11:07.880 the material world and the realization of how far we have gotten away from it.

00:11:14.160 And I've been, the thing that amazes me, Sam, more than anything else, you know, the toilet

00:11:19.360 paper shortages, there'll be jokes and whatever about that.

00:11:22.420 And I'm sure books will be written.

00:11:23.920 I mean, all of this, it'll take a decade or more to understand this.

00:11:26.840 The thing that amazes me is that America is out of yeast and yeast doesn't mean cookies

00:11:32.320 and brownies.

00:11:33.280 Yeast means bread.

00:11:35.000 And Americans in a huge number, that's one of the most elemental human activities there is.

00:11:40.260 There is this calling to make bread.

00:11:43.220 There's no bread shortages.

00:11:44.500 We can get the same sliced bread that we always got.

00:11:48.000 But people are being drawn, I think, and, you know, I don't want to sound, I don't know,

00:11:54.160 too out of the reel to say this, but I noticed that our, you know, I've written about this a lot,

00:11:59.300 that our homes have become this weird place.

00:12:02.160 We don't have a deep, as much as we think we have a deep connection to our homes,

00:12:06.380 and as much as HGTV, the redecorating channel, as many fans as it has, even for those kind of

00:12:13.800 wealthy people remodeling homes, they're not deeply, they're not centers of production,

00:12:19.120 they're centers of consumption.

00:12:20.560 You know, lug in your chips and your sodas and watch the TV and then off you go to the

00:12:27.360 soccer game, to the job, to the vacation.

00:12:29.360 But all of a sudden now, our homes aren't places to display ourselves or our wealth, or

00:12:35.500 it's sort of, oh, thank God I have a stove and an oven, and thank God I've got this freezer.

00:12:40.960 And people are, we try to live a life, it's just sort of like mind, body, spirit, we try

00:12:46.580 to live a life that we can just, the way I grew up, you live totally in your head.

00:12:51.040 But then you get to a point you realize, no, you've got to live in your body, too.

00:12:54.620 And I think that we have gotten in that kind of feeling of just, our homes are these pit

00:13:00.620 stops, and they're these display areas.

00:13:03.640 And then anybody who's in that laptop jockey level of the economy, which is a very small

00:13:09.420 percentage, but with a huge influence on society, their homes are often much too big for them.

00:13:15.460 They can't hear their children in them.

00:13:18.080 They can't even find a really warm, close place to be together.

00:13:22.360 And I think that's just way down the line.

00:13:26.140 It's nothing to really think about or be concerned about now.

00:13:29.880 But I think when the water comes back in, and when we're well again, and this is over,

00:13:35.320 I think we'll be thinking about that.

00:13:37.680 You know, is there a way to live our lives where the things that were exposed to us that

00:13:42.840 are of high degree of worth, is there a way that we're willing to sacrifice other things

00:13:48.480 to keep that revelation?

00:13:51.320 And we don't know.

00:13:52.400 We're in a mystery right now.

00:13:54.260 Yeah, I think it will reorganize many things.

00:13:57.200 For all the people who are successfully working from home now, they'll be faced with a choice

00:14:02.400 about whether or not to return to the former pattern of being in an office building for their

00:14:08.560 job.

00:14:08.980 And I got to think many of the companies that successfully pivoted to a distributed

00:14:14.560 workforce may stay distributed just for quality of life reasons.

00:14:19.840 And what do you think it's going to do to education?

00:14:24.140 Oh, this is, this is, to me, having been a teacher and writing a lot about education,

00:14:29.760 this has been the most interesting thing to me.

00:14:33.280 Well, everything's interesting.

00:14:34.540 It's a time where everything's interesting, which is why we're all exhausted.

00:14:36.960 But, you know, America, in this incredible thing, you know, hat is off to the teachers

00:14:43.160 of America that in two weeks, they scrambled to get a distance learning program together

00:14:48.680 for basically every child.

00:14:50.100 It's not a good program.

00:14:51.480 It's not high quality.

00:14:52.480 How could it be two weeks to totally switch, you know, methods of teaching?

00:14:57.980 That's really, you know, obviously, it's not very practical.

00:15:02.400 But the thing that parents, I talk to a lot of them because I'm so interested, the thing

00:15:06.820 that parents complain about more than the quality and more than how harassing it is, all these

00:15:12.400 different systems and passwords and, you know, really little kids need a lot of help with

00:15:16.640 that.

00:15:17.300 The thing they complain about is how short it is that before they know it, that they

00:15:22.400 imagine that their children would have seven hours.

00:15:24.740 They'd have sort of seven hours of coverage the way they do when they drop a child at school.

00:15:28.920 But the actual instructional time in an American school for the core subjects that are the

00:15:37.860 make and break of a child, boy, that's 90 minutes.

00:15:42.100 That's 90 minutes.

00:15:43.400 Yeah.

00:15:43.420 That's been pretty startling to discover.

00:15:47.500 I struggled on how to take the temperature of this thing.

00:15:50.740 So what I've defaulted to is just asking my oldest daughter her perception of how much

00:15:56.660 she's learning at home now.

00:15:58.620 And her perception is that she's learning more.

00:16:02.780 And it's in a fraction of the time, which makes me feel like, OK, school, at least at

00:16:07.840 this age, is essentially daycare plus, you know, a play date with friends.

00:16:13.460 It's not really optimized for learning.

00:16:17.020 If she can learn as much in two hours as she does in a full day of school, what's going

00:16:22.940 on over there?

00:16:24.540 Right.

00:16:24.780 And I think in the wealthier communities or in the private schools, it doesn't add up

00:16:30.220 to a problem because a wealthy parent, they get a test score in, you know, a standardized

00:16:34.920 test.

00:16:35.520 And if it's low, a reading score, that's perceived as an emergency.

00:16:39.820 And tutors, sometimes very expensive tutors are brought in.

00:16:43.380 And, you know, unless there's a problem, you know, reading and math in particular, you

00:16:48.840 can remediate quickly and reading to an extent.

00:16:53.700 So and wealthier parents nowadays, they you hear people who run private schools talking

00:16:59.100 about this all the time.

00:17:00.580 Wealthier parents care tremendously about the experience of the school day.

00:17:04.700 They want their kids to be engaged every minute in a in a sort of delightful, you know, way.

00:17:13.920 And and so they're willing to have that happen.

00:17:16.940 But when you look at I mean, California's education, it's it is in crisis.

00:17:21.920 It is.

00:17:22.700 I mean, Sam, just do this when you get off with me or if you have some time, go online and

00:17:27.660 take the basic proficiency reading test that 60 percent of kids flunk can't pass that that

00:17:33.580 are in school at 12th grade level.

00:17:35.640 And you'll be shocked.

00:17:36.580 And these kids year after year after year, you know, you start you know, this is what

00:17:42.560 the Khan Academy is really stressed.

00:17:44.600 When you start falling behind in math, a year goes by, two years go by.

00:17:49.960 You're lost.

00:17:50.880 You're just lost and you can't catch up and you don't have the private tutor.

00:17:54.740 So what we're really doing, as you say, is we're covering the day for working parents.

00:18:01.660 We have a tremendous disparity because when it's the wealthy parents are going to remediate

00:18:07.160 the non-wealthy parents, you know, they're probably in a different address by the time

00:18:11.300 that test score comes in, you know, and the test score is the farthest thing from an emergency

00:18:16.380 to a low income person.

00:18:17.860 So and if anybody thoughtful was looking at it and said, gee, the number one thing that

00:18:23.660 holds these kids back is math and reading, then we would teach a lot of math and reading.

00:18:29.460 But in California, we have 180 day school year.

00:18:32.940 And that doesn't mean you're going to get 180 lessons in reading because you have assemblies

00:18:38.820 and special schedules and all sorts of things that block into it.

00:18:42.120 We're not required a number of hours in these essential subjects.

00:18:46.160 So I think we're all getting a look at things we don't want to think about.

00:18:49.900 We don't want to change.

00:18:51.200 We don't want to face facts about, you know, our lower income level of education.

00:18:56.720 We don't want to face facts about, gee, if my kid's really just having an experience at

00:19:02.400 school, is that the best kind of experience?

00:19:05.440 And you know who's having the last laugh now are the homeschoolers because it's all the 0.63

00:19:09.600 laptop jockeys are running around looking for a password and, you know, being so upset that

00:19:15.240 they've, like, 90 minutes later, everything's done.

00:19:18.240 Boy, the homeschoolers are on top of that, you know?

00:19:20.980 They know how to do this.

00:19:22.440 I spent about 30 seconds thinking about the irony here because the homeschooling movement,

00:19:27.560 at least my perception of it in the U.S., is that it's, I don't know what the actual

00:19:31.840 percentage is, but it seems like fundamentalist Christians are overrepresented in that movement.

00:19:37.080 You know, I've been hearing from them over the years for obvious reasons.

00:19:39.940 But just to recognize that these people have to be the absolute experts in what everyone's

00:19:45.640 facing right now.

00:19:46.620 But the other interesting thing, and I mean, this is back to our decadent life before we

00:19:51.860 all are in imminent threat of dying.

00:19:54.160 You know who's getting in on homeschooling?

00:19:55.900 The very wealthy because they realize that school is an interference to the thing that gets

00:20:01.460 you in the Ivy League.

00:20:02.520 You get in the Ivy League if you're from a wealthy family because you have such a developed

00:20:07.820 talent that is recognized usually on a national or even international level and that school

00:20:14.860 is a harassing block of time.

00:20:17.440 And so they hire people to get the kids through higher level curriculum for sure, but they want

00:20:23.840 to be free from school so that they can develop the thing that gets you into the Ivy League.

00:20:29.620 So it's just a really, I guess, you know, it is a, once again, with the haves and have

00:20:35.900 nots, you know, this squeezing out of a middle class entirely and this just entirely different

00:20:42.760 experience.

00:20:44.360 So how much of a reset do you think we're experiencing here?

00:20:47.420 How different do you think the world will look in a year or 18 months or after the epidemiological

00:20:55.620 and economic implications of all of this run their course?

00:21:01.160 Again, I don't know what the timeline actually is, but it's hard to see how whatever the new

00:21:05.580 normal is will seem anything like normal shorter than 12 months from now.

00:21:10.540 Well, you know, I have no idea that, you know, just in America, the notion that once again,

00:21:17.180 up against Donald Trump, we have the weakest Democratic candidate in my lifetime.

00:21:21.840 Oh, God.

00:21:22.520 Well, okay, so let's put a pin in the great Joe Biden for a moment because there's a lot

00:21:28.000 to talk about there.

00:21:28.900 But actually, let's race on to that.

00:21:30.900 But I just wanted to point one thing out here that there are at least two, if not paradoxes,

00:21:38.200 ironies that we're going to be slamming up against now.

00:21:42.460 The first is one that I pointed out on Twitter yesterday, as did several other people, which

00:21:48.280 is that if social distancing actually works as intended, which is to say, if, you know,

00:21:55.480 we flatten the curve, which it seems like we're doing in many places, such that the healthcare

00:22:01.140 system doesn't break, the level of contagion and morbidity and mortality is more flu-like

00:22:08.260 than smallpox-like, the people who have been resisting social distancing, the people who've

00:22:16.120 been crying hoax, you know, media hoax, and they will feel totally vindicated.

00:22:21.300 You know, I'm in touch with some of these people.

00:22:22.860 Right, right. 1.00

00:22:24.200 And they're absolute imbeciles. 1.00

00:22:27.220 They're smart people, many of them, but they've managed to craft for themselves a truly 1.00

00:22:31.880 unfalsifiable worldview.

00:22:34.520 Like, only bodies piled to the sky would convince them that they were wrong about this, and maybe

00:22:40.940 not even then.

00:22:42.360 And then there's just this very strange element to this confirmation bias, which is the cities,

00:22:49.560 the blue counties, were the first and hardest hit by this, right?

00:22:54.380 So in Trumpistan, the virus is only now arriving, right? 0.75

00:22:58.600 It's just that this was perfectly tailored for misinformation and conspiracy theory and

00:23:04.940 confirmation bias and just a complete failure of public health split along political lines.

00:23:13.340 Something like 97% of Americans are actually under lockdown orders now.

00:23:17.940 So you've got to think the social distancing is happening even in, you know, the reddest of 0.96

00:23:22.900 red counties to some degree.

00:23:24.140 But up until very recently, there were, you know, scenes of people, you know, impact churches

00:23:28.540 and, you know, how this is going to interact with our politics in the coming months.

00:23:33.440 I don't know, but it's been a pretty depressing spectacle to watch on social media.

00:23:38.640 Well, I'm always amazed by, well, first place, the thing to really know about America is we're

00:23:43.800 a really strange place.

00:23:45.500 We're a really weird place.

00:23:46.940 We put on a story that we all believe that has to do with us sort of all heading in the

00:23:54.000 right direction together.

00:23:56.840 But I remember one thing to my father who was, he was a freshman in college when Pearl

00:24:03.780 Harbor was bombed.

00:24:05.260 And he, you know, went off to the Pacific and did his thing and then finished college.

00:24:09.900 And, you know, I never thought about it at all.

00:24:12.220 And then Tom Brokaw came up with the notion of the greatest generation.

00:24:16.140 And I was like, oh, that's my gosh, you know, my own father, you know, lived childhood in

00:24:20.540 the depression and then, you know, going off to war.

00:24:24.820 And I said, dad, do you know you're the greatest generation?

00:24:27.520 And he looked up and said, if you had known one of the enlisted men on my ship, you would

00:24:32.460 never use that vowel phrase again.

00:24:35.000 And he just said the level of ignorance, of racism.

00:24:40.820 I'm not at all speaking to the troops of today for whom I have a great respect.

00:24:45.120 And obviously, we're talking about men who were raised in the 30s and mostly Southerners

00:24:49.260 on his ships.

00:24:50.520 But we're a strange country.

00:24:51.960 And I really realized it when there was a video of a woman. 0.99

00:24:55.900 I don't know where, but she was somewhere in Trumpistan.

00:24:57.860 And she was driving somewhere.

00:25:00.360 And I think a cop and a cameraman at the same time, camera person, were witnessing this moment

00:25:06.900 where the policeman was saying, you know, you have to go home.

00:25:09.520 This isn't safe.

00:25:10.720 And she said, I'm covered in Jesus's blood.

00:25:12.780 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:13.340 No, I tweeted that as the atheists have finally found their Super Bowl commercial. 1.00

00:25:19.280 Yeah.

00:25:19.480 But it's, but on the other hand, can you imagine to live in that life, she's much more at peace

00:25:30.400 with death than we are.

00:25:32.580 She really have that belief, which to us is, I mean, doesn't even sound like a good thing.

00:25:38.900 Like you're covered in Jesus's blood.

00:25:40.700 Like, is that good or bad?

00:25:42.820 I wish she had said blood of the lamb or something even more cultic and creepy.

00:25:46.840 But for some reason, I thought Jesus's blood was more, I don't know.

00:25:50.820 But to be covered in it, I'm sure this goes back.

00:25:53.900 I always say the people who are really understand their religions are the fundamentalists. 0.75

00:25:58.500 Like we all like, you know, say the worst things about them.

00:26:02.540 But I'm like, you know, you read the Quran and you're like, oh, it's a pretty bloodthirsty 1.00

00:26:05.540 book, you know, it's like, but we all come along and, you know, I'm, you know, Catholic

00:26:10.740 and I just sort of, we all pick and choose.

00:26:13.080 We use our birth control, whatever.

00:26:14.580 But then there are these people who really believe this stuff.

00:26:19.460 And, you know, there are snake handlers.

00:26:23.180 And, and why do we, I mean, not bringing you into this, obviously, but who do we go to

00:26:28.500 like St. John the Divine and then like have a nice brunch afterwards with Joan Didion or

00:26:32.840 whatever.

00:26:33.660 Why do we think that we are better than they are?

00:26:36.380 You know, they seem to really understand it.

00:26:39.000 I'll take the brunch with Joan Didion.

00:26:40.540 Can I meet you for brunch after church?

00:26:42.480 Yes, you may, during which I'll be praying for your soul.

00:26:46.720 Your reference to birth control reminded me of one of your recent delightful tweets.

00:26:52.080 This is right at the beginning of our quarantine where we're wiping off packages with Clorox.

00:26:58.420 And I think you wrote, I haven't been this nervous about getting something wrong since I got my

00:27:03.120 first diaphragm in 1983 or whatever it was.

00:27:06.220 Well, it was the same.

00:27:06.940 It was really, I mean, it was a joke, but it was true. 1.00

00:27:09.460 I remember being a young person and you think you're doing it right.

00:27:13.260 And with most things, if you're mostly doing it right, then you're mostly getting the benefit.

00:27:18.440 Right.

00:27:18.680 But I remember this thing like, if I get this wrong, it's going to be this incredible disaster.

00:27:22.960 Like, there's no a little bit or not.

00:27:25.800 It's all 100%.

00:27:27.720 Yeah.

00:27:28.500 But mentioning that, you know, you ask what's going to change.

00:27:31.580 I think we're going to see a very positive change in sexuality.

00:27:35.060 Because I have, you know, being my generation, which was, you know, after the sexual revolution,

00:27:43.540 before AIDS had really spilled into the heterosexual population or was even understood, sex was this

00:27:51.440 font of tremendous pleasure and tremendous closeness to the young man whom I dated or whom

00:28:01.400 I was in a relationship with, kind of serial monogamy as a dater.

00:28:05.480 And it was this just intensely exquisite thing that would keep you in relationships longer and

00:28:12.440 that would give you an illusion of more, you know, closeness of, you know, true minds on something.

00:28:19.460 And now I hear so many young people, especially young women, whom you would think, well, boy,

00:28:25.880 they have the keys to the kingdom.

00:28:27.360 There's nothing to hold them back. 0.99

00:28:29.660 And they're miserable.

00:28:31.400 And I think a little bit more discernment, a little bit higher stakes, a little bit more

00:28:39.200 sense that, okay, let's get to know each other.

00:28:42.400 Let's find out a lot about each other.

00:28:44.820 Let's find out our testing on this, not just the callous STD testing.

00:28:50.600 But I think this could really change this idea of ultimate randomness for, especially for

00:28:58.540 heterosexual youngish women.

00:29:00.220 The idea that that is a pleasurable thing for the majority is a, it's an error in thinking.

00:29:08.220 It's not accurate about women. 1.00

00:29:09.520 So I think that this may begin to change that porn driven culture, which has been so bad for most

00:29:18.520 young women.

00:29:20.500 Well, we're going to talk about women in a second because we're getting into politics. 1.00

00:29:24.000 I want to drop your Twitter handle here because I don't know where this is going to be paywalled,

00:29:29.860 but everyone should follow you on Twitter.

00:29:32.420 So what's your Twitter handle?

00:29:33.580 It's at Caitlin Pacific.

00:29:36.560 So yeah, so everyone should follow Caitlin.

00:29:38.960 Caitlin has figured out Twitter and it's delightful.

00:29:42.700 Thank you.

00:29:43.320 Okay.

00:29:43.660 So the election, my God, what have we done here?

00:29:47.560 Like we have a nation of 330 million people.

00:29:50.400 We couldn't find one who either doesn't have dementia or doesn't seem to have dementia.

00:29:57.820 It is, it is bewildering because we'd like to continue listening to this podcast,

00:30:10.500 you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org.

00:30:13.080 You'll get access to all full length episodes of the Making Sense podcast and to other subscriber

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 12, 2020

#197 — A Conversation with Caitlin Flanagan

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