Making Sense - Sam Harris - #442 — More From Sam： Public Speaking, Nuclear War, & Christian Nationalism

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're

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00:00:30.200 doing here, please consider becoming one. Welcome back to another episode of More From

00:00:38.340 Sam, where we get more from Sam. Hi, Sam. Hey, good to see you. Good to see you too. I have

00:00:44.300 to start the show off by telling the audience about the new shows we've just announced for

00:00:48.700 next year. But first, I have a quick reminder that we have some tickets still available for

00:00:53.140 Chicago on November 19th. So if anybody wants to come out to that, come see us. But for

00:00:58.200 2026, here are the shows we have not announced yet. I mean, we have via newsletter and maybe

00:01:03.420 some socials, but have not done it on the show yet. January 21st, 2026 in Los Angeles, February

00:01:09.160 4th in Dallas, February 5th in Austin, March 11th in Portland, March 12th in Vancouver, April

00:01:17.140 23rd in Palm Beach, Florida, May 12th in Toronto, May 13th in Washington, DC, and finishing off

00:01:23.820 the tour with New York City on May 14th. So hopefully we'll see lots of people out there

00:01:29.100 next year. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. As you know, I'm continuing to evolve

00:01:32.900 the talk. So it's kind of fun. I've never done it like this, where I've got a tour that's

00:01:36.900 stretched out that far in the future. So I just know the talk is going to keep changing

00:01:41.780 from event to event. So, yeah. Okay. On to our first topic. I did not know this,

00:01:46.660 or at least I didn't remember it, but you used to have a fear of public speaking and

00:01:50.800 now you're on tour and seem very comfortable on stage. Can you talk about your journey from

00:01:55.040 stage fright to where you are now? Well, so yeah, that blog post that got resurfaced,

00:01:59.640 I think on Reddit that I hadn't, I'd kind of forgotten about. I think I wrote it 12 years

00:02:04.440 ago, 15 years ago, something like that. And I think it's, I think the title is The Silent

00:02:08.420 Crowd. I think that's what it is on my blog. Maybe I should repost it on Substack because

00:02:12.700 people found it useful, I think. Well, obviously it's a very common fear. And I just had, you

00:02:18.460 know, in this blog post, I give some people fairly concrete advice about how to deal with

00:02:22.900 it. Ironically, I mean, though I think mindfulness is actually quite helpful, I don't think it's

00:02:28.620 sufficient to deal with it for most people. I think it's this, the crucial bit is to actually

00:02:33.140 just do the thing you're afraid of and get used to it and cease to catastrophize about

00:02:37.980 it and to have some better or even just benign outcomes after doing it, right? You know,

00:02:44.820 to give a talk and to have it not be a catastrophe and then to let your nervous system learn across

00:02:50.040 those occasions. I think that's better than simply hoping that you're going to meditate

00:02:55.980 or do talk therapy or anything else in the absence of just doing more of that thing you're

00:03:01.180 afraid of. So something like cognitive behavioral therapy is probably still the gold standard for

00:03:06.040 for this, where you have strategies for reframing the experience itself and approaching the experience

00:03:11.380 itself. And yeah, no, it was something that I always was very anxious about. I mean, it wasn't

00:03:17.080 a huge variable in my life, but I was avoiding it. You know, as a student, I was avoiding it.

00:03:23.460 I was the valedictorian of my high school. And as the valedictorian, you have to give a talk at

00:03:28.800 graduation. And so I declined the honor of being a valedictorian. I just said, no, I'm not doing that.

00:03:33.580 And there were several instances like that where I just passed up the opportunity to speak

00:03:38.060 because I was, I didn't want to have to pass through this wall of anxiety on the way to the

00:03:43.780 event. And it wasn't until I was in graduate school, which was a good long while because I

00:03:48.560 went to graduate school late. So I was in my early thirties. I just, I realized I had to get over this.

00:03:53.960 And with, especially with the release of my first book, I had to get over it, right? This is no way to

00:03:58.520 be a successful author, except for the extreme case of just becoming a man of mystery somehow

00:04:04.440 that people still want to read. You know, somebody like J.D. Salinger or Trevanian or

00:04:09.640 Thomas Pynchon. But most authors need to get out there in front of crowds and talk about the fact

00:04:16.420 that they just wrote a book and most publishers would demand that of them. So I knew that was coming

00:04:20.780 with my first book. And so I just had to get behind myself and push and very quickly got over it.

00:04:27.660 And I had some very high stakes appearances out of the gate. I mean, like I, you know, I, the truth

00:04:33.520 is I still haven't done that much public speaking. I mean, you know, this is the first tour I've done

00:04:36.740 in like six years, as you know, but you know, in my first couple events, you know, so I was very

00:04:42.840 quickly, I was in situations where I was, it was going to be like a televised debate, you know, so

00:04:46.940 the stakes kind of ramped up pretty quickly, but in the end it was fine. And now, as you know,

00:04:52.560 I simply complain about the fact that the auditorium isn't full. My concern is that I just

00:05:00.020 get more people in the seats. So things have flipped nicely, but it's, uh, there are not that

00:05:05.160 many tangible experiences of self-overcoming where the thing you are most avoidant of is the thing that

00:05:13.360 you actually sort of like doing now. I mean, that, that, to be able to flip one of those

00:05:17.360 is notable and, uh, psychologically empowering. And this is one that's pretty easy to do. And

00:05:23.800 anyway, in that blog post, I get into some more concrete recommendations for people.

00:05:28.560 And is it gone now? Does it ever, you know, come back? Any, any sort of pre-show jitters?

00:05:34.560 I, you know, I think I, I have like physiological arousal that is sort of akin to anxiety before

00:05:41.380 an event, but it's, I just perceive it as energy now. I mean, this is kind of a, just a reframing

00:05:49.280 of, of anxiety that is available to anyone. You can notice that anxiety is fairly indistinguishable

00:05:54.440 physiologically from excitement and apart from your thoughts about it, about what you, the thoughts

00:05:59.420 you're using to frame it. And you can just kind of grab the reins of your mind and reframe it. You

00:06:06.140 can just decide to think about the fact that you actually just care to how this event goes. You want

00:06:10.440 to do a good job. You want you to, you know, in this case, people paid for tickets. They took a

00:06:15.020 night out of their lives to come and see me. I, I care that they have a good time or find it

00:06:19.660 valuable. So if I feel any energy, you know, any energy that, that's like anxiety, it really feels

00:06:27.040 that I actually just care, you know, and that I'm, that, that I will, you know, I have a stake in

00:06:32.000 this, but no, it's really, it's the experience has been flipped for me. It's really, it's pretty

00:06:37.380 nice to have flipped it that way. I used to, before I'd go on stage, I would imagine that

00:06:42.120 I had just gotten off stage and was very disappointed in my performance. And now I

00:06:47.720 get a chance to go back up there and how would I do that now? That's a nice reframing. Yeah.

00:06:53.280 That's a very, I mean, that could apply to many situations. Yeah. Right. So whatever it was,

00:06:59.540 now a manager. So it didn't work out too well for me. All right. Uh, I saw that there's a movie

00:07:06.220 on Netflix directed by Catherine Bigelow and written by Noah Oppenheim. And I mentioned the

00:07:10.080 writer here specifically because he has credited the making sense podcast with the title of the

00:07:15.040 film. So of course I had to watch it and scared the shit out of me. How about you?

00:07:19.960 Oh, I thought it was very effective. It was like the world's most effective PSA, right? It's just a

00:07:24.700 very, I mean, it is, it's a film, you know, with great actors, but it really plays like a PSA

00:07:31.600 because it is just exposing how morally insane and psychologically, uh, implausible our nuclear

00:07:40.980 status quo is right. I mean, just say it just for people who haven't seen it, I'm not giving

00:07:46.200 anything away. It depicts, uh, a, um, an America that is now on the receiving end of a single

00:07:53.840 missile, uh, incoming missile presumed to be a nuclear first strike. The source of which can't

00:07:59.580 be identified because I think that the satellite that would track that was jammed. And now we've

00:08:04.820 got whatever, 20 minutes to decide whether to return fire. And so our, our doctrine is to launch

00:08:12.220 if there's, you know, incoming missile, especially in the case where you have more than one incoming

00:08:17.500 missile and there's this prospect of having our launch capacity destroyed by a first strike. If we

00:08:23.200 see a bunch of missiles coming our way, the doctrine suggests that there's some version of our

00:08:27.540 are retaliating before anything has landed, before we know absolutely for certain that

00:08:32.540 this isn't some kind of radar error, error, et cetera. So, but the, when, when you actually look

00:08:38.020 at how this unfolds psychologically and socially among all the participants, and this is not the

00:08:42.700 first document to depict this, but in film form, this is the, the only one I know that's done it

00:08:47.680 this, this effectively and has shown all these beats. It just, it's completely insane, right? I mean,

00:08:53.560 this is something that has, you can read about this at greater length in Eric Schlosser's book,

00:08:57.940 Command and Control, which shows our whole continuity of government plan and how we've

00:09:02.740 trained for it. And there are these scenes in that book that, and there's similar moments in this film

00:09:08.260 that show just how impractical and in some sense morally unconscionable the expected behavior is. So

00:09:16.100 the, the, the drilled behavior is, you know, certain key people need to be spirited away before the

00:09:21.880 missiles hit. They need to be taken to some underground lair where they can ensure the

00:09:26.700 continuity of government and, you know, in Dr. Strangelove style, repopulate the earth. And so

00:09:32.760 one of these drills, like a, an army helicopter lands on the, you know, the soccer field to grab,

00:09:39.120 I think it was the secretary of state or someone like that, who's at his daughter's soccer game.

00:09:43.380 And he's expected to leave at that moment without his, his family to go underground,

00:09:49.180 you know, to, to, to continue the American project in the face of a presumed nuclear attack.

00:09:55.300 And he's like, well, what are you kidding? I'm not getting on that helicopter, right? I'm not

00:10:00.380 leaving my family here to die, right? And he knew it was a drill, but it was just like,

00:10:04.520 this is the plan and it's insane, right? And what's especially insane is the, is the doctrine that has

00:10:10.280 to be, that falls under the judgment of one person, the president of the United States,

00:10:14.620 who has to decide with the clock ticking in a, in mere minutes, in some cases, like six minutes,

00:10:20.820 whether or not to annihilate tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people as perhaps his 0.64

00:10:26.620 last act on earth, right? And, and usher in, in, in, in the extreme case, usher in a nuclear winter

00:10:32.700 that more or less destroys everyone, right? I mean, and so who's going to do that? Who's going to think

00:10:37.580 it's sane to do that? How is our deterrence against our enemies predicated on their assumption

00:10:43.120 that our president will do that? The whole thing is bonkers. And anyway, the, the film gives you a

00:10:48.600 glimpse of how bonkers it is. Yeah. The film is really well done. And I encourage everyone to go

00:10:53.440 check it out because it really is, as you said, a great PSA, but I just wanted to stay here for a

00:10:59.060 second on, you've talked about this before. I mean, you know, the mutually assured destruction,

00:11:04.580 mad concept does seem insane. I mean, you know, if the president, whoever he or she is at that time

00:11:11.080 fires back, you know, you said they'll go down as, you know, potentially the, one of the greatest

00:11:15.380 killers of humankind in history. Yeah. Well, not, not even potentially. I mean,

00:11:20.680 just emphatically. So in addition to that, whoever sent the, the, the, the incoming missiles in the

00:11:25.040 first place. Yeah. Right. And so if they don't do anything and we lose 200 million Americans,

00:11:29.200 but yet they spare the rest of the world, perhaps that's the better position. Yeah. I just don't see

00:11:34.860 how the, the expectation of retaliation is at all credible or plausible. I think it's important.

00:11:43.480 I mean, mutually assured destruction is predicated on the bluff and the acceptance of that bluff that we

00:11:52.600 will respond, but I don't think it is compatible with anyone's sanity to think that we really will

00:12:00.500 respond. I mean, I just, I, I think it's, it's morally insane to think that, okay, we're going to

00:12:06.040 all die here. Basically we're going to be reduced to, you know, radioactive ruins and, you know,

00:12:12.140 whoever's left alive is going to be like the people on the, you know, the perimeter of Hiroshima 0.98

00:12:17.060 Nagasaki, uh, moments after the blast, because now, I mean, that, this is not the, what a house

00:12:22.720 of dynamite depicts, but the, the, the, again, that was such a single missile, but in the true

00:12:26.700 nuclear first strike concern against, you know, with Russia or now China, it really is a picture

00:12:32.140 of, okay, we've got all these ICBMs incoming. There's nothing we're going to be able to do to

00:12:36.440 stop them until we get some magical golden dome technology, which presumably we're now working

00:12:41.200 on. But even there, there are reasons to believe that that's not something we're going to be able

00:12:45.120 to rely on. But in the current case, we know we can't knock these missiles down. And if hundreds

00:12:52.040 are coming in and they're all aimed at major cities and population centers, uh, we're all

00:12:56.880 going to die. So what exactly is achieved by now killing hundreds of millions of people on the other

00:13:04.160 side of the world? Well, exactly nothing. And the thing that, the only thing that what could have

00:13:09.500 been achieved was the credible threat of doing that, that would have stopped the incoming missiles in

00:13:14.580 the first place, but that hasn't happened, right? For whatever reason, our deterrence has failed.

00:13:18.260 And, uh, now the missiles are incoming. I just, honestly, I just don't see anyone in that position

00:13:22.840 deciding to kill hundreds of millions of people. I just, it just seems it, it doesn't serve any

00:13:27.920 purpose at that moment. The purpose that was served was the bluff that was called. And now,

00:13:33.680 now the bluff was no longer operative. Yeah, that makes sense to me. And related to that,

00:13:38.440 it seems that Trump wants to resume nuclear testing because apparently Russia is doing it. And I guess,

00:13:44.580 well, we have to as well. I think that's almost a direct quote.

00:13:47.760 Yeah. I don't know what that means. I mean, I don't know what testing actually means. If you,

00:13:52.120 if we're talking about, you know, above ground tests where you see the gigantic mushroom cloud.

00:13:57.440 No, I think it's below ground. I think they're doing, they're wanting to do it.

00:13:59.800 Right. Well, I mean, I, I mean, maybe there's ways of testing parts of weapons. I mean,

00:14:03.600 clearly the, we can't have an arsenal that is decades old and we don't know whether or not it works,

00:14:10.100 right? So there's gotta be some way of maintaining our credible deterrence. Again,

00:14:15.240 rumors about the status of our technology are fairly alarming, right? I mean, the, the kinds

00:14:21.440 of computers that are governing the launch of ICBMs, et cetera. I mean, this is not modern equipment

00:14:26.860 as far as I know. And so, um,

00:14:29.100 all on floppy disks. I mean, I guess there's a, there's an irony that it's probably less hackable

00:14:34.280 as a result of being so antiquated too. So it, there might be a layer of safety built into its

00:14:38.920 obsolescence as well, but I mean, still, it's just the idea that we can just sit on all this tech

00:14:44.700 year after year and not reinvest in it. Doesn't seem tenable to me, but clearly the world has to

00:14:51.220 figure out how to walk back from this particular brink and denuclearize. I mean, I don't, I don't see how

00:14:57.320 the end game is for us to just keep this world rigged to explode the way it is. I mean, the,

00:15:02.660 the thing that's so scary above and beyond the malicious use of these weapons, the thing that's

00:15:08.520 truly terrifying is the, the inadvertent, the possibility of an inadvertent use of these weapons

00:15:13.000 or, or a launch based on misinformation or, you know, cyber attack, or, I mean, there've been so

00:15:19.120 many accidents and near accidents and it's just, we're continuing to, to roll these invisible dice

00:15:25.920 and eventually if we roll them enough, they're going to come up to our peril. Yeah. So I think

00:15:31.140 it's worth continuing to revisit this topic. I mean, that's what, what's so valuable about this

00:15:35.760 film is that it's gotten people talking about nuclear weapons. We, we have a generation of

00:15:40.800 people that have more or less forgotten that this was a thing. One review of this movie was

00:15:45.900 completely insane that it seemed to suggest it was kind of an anti-American libtard document that 0.62

00:15:52.100 just was made it seem like the nuclear status quo was somehow a bad thing. Well, well, it is quite

00:15:56.940 obviously a bad thing, right? I mean, it's just the idea that, that we're in some ideal circumstance

00:16:01.620 here where having brought the world to this capacity of, of mutual annihilation, it's bonkers.

00:16:08.580 I mean, the, the only argument in its favor is that a world of true mutually assured destruction with

00:16:14.820 two, only two superpowers, which we've, you know, that is a world we're now quickly losing. That

00:16:21.160 deterrence, nuclear deterrence, the, the, the specter of a world, of a war escalating, a conventional war

00:16:25.820 escalating into a nuclear one may have mitigated the risk of conventional war between superpowers.

00:16:31.860 And that may be, in fact, be true. I mean, maybe we would have fought a war with Russia 0.99

00:16:35.280 in the absence of nuclear weapons already, but I mean, we're, we're just seeing the unraveling of

00:16:42.700 the status quo and the, and the, the urge toward proliferation. I mean, the game theory of all of this

00:16:48.620 just looks awful. What are your thoughts about the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Charles Murray, and other

00:16:54.080 people right of center suddenly finding Jesus after considering themselves atheists or secular and moving

00:16:59.780 into Christianity while claiming it as the bedrock of Western values? Hmm. Well, I've avoided 0.96

00:17:05.860 commenting on this, uh, specifically, uh, in many contexts. And I think your Substack fans know this, which is why

00:17:11.480 they've asked this again and again. Well, I mean, so first, I never want to say anything about Ayaan that is

00:17:17.560 derogatory. I mean, I, I, I, if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe

00:17:23.700 at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full length episodes of the Making Sense

00:17:29.260 podcast. The Making Sense podcast is ad free and relies entirely on listener support. And you can

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 03, 2025

#442 — More From Sam： Public Speaking, Nuclear War, & Christian Nationalism

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