#442 — More From Sam： Public Speaking, Nuclear War, & Christian Nationalism
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Summary
In this episode of the Making Sense Podcast, host Sam Harris sits down with author and speaker J.D. Vance to talk about how he overcame his fear of public speaking, and how he uses it as a tool to improve his life and career.
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
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hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing
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the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
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Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore
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it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're
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doing here, please consider becoming one. Welcome back to another episode of More From
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Sam, where we get more from Sam. Hi, Sam. Hey, good to see you. Good to see you too. I have
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to start the show off by telling the audience about the new shows we've just announced for
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next year. But first, I have a quick reminder that we have some tickets still available for
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Chicago on November 19th. So if anybody wants to come out to that, come see us. But for
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2026, here are the shows we have not announced yet. I mean, we have via newsletter and maybe
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some socials, but have not done it on the show yet. January 21st, 2026 in Los Angeles, February
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4th in Dallas, February 5th in Austin, March 11th in Portland, March 12th in Vancouver, April
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23rd in Palm Beach, Florida, May 12th in Toronto, May 13th in Washington, DC, and finishing off
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the tour with New York City on May 14th. So hopefully we'll see lots of people out there
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next year. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. As you know, I'm continuing to evolve
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the talk. So it's kind of fun. I've never done it like this, where I've got a tour that's
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stretched out that far in the future. So I just know the talk is going to keep changing
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from event to event. So, yeah. Okay. On to our first topic. I did not know this,
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or at least I didn't remember it, but you used to have a fear of public speaking and
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now you're on tour and seem very comfortable on stage. Can you talk about your journey from
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stage fright to where you are now? Well, so yeah, that blog post that got resurfaced,
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I think on Reddit that I hadn't, I'd kind of forgotten about. I think I wrote it 12 years
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ago, 15 years ago, something like that. And I think it's, I think the title is The Silent
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Crowd. I think that's what it is on my blog. Maybe I should repost it on Substack because
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people found it useful, I think. Well, obviously it's a very common fear. And I just had, you
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know, in this blog post, I give some people fairly concrete advice about how to deal with
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it. Ironically, I mean, though I think mindfulness is actually quite helpful, I don't think it's
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sufficient to deal with it for most people. I think it's this, the crucial bit is to actually
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just do the thing you're afraid of and get used to it and cease to catastrophize about
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it and to have some better or even just benign outcomes after doing it, right? You know,
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to give a talk and to have it not be a catastrophe and then to let your nervous system learn across
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those occasions. I think that's better than simply hoping that you're going to meditate
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or do talk therapy or anything else in the absence of just doing more of that thing you're
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afraid of. So something like cognitive behavioral therapy is probably still the gold standard for
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for this, where you have strategies for reframing the experience itself and approaching the experience
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itself. And yeah, no, it was something that I always was very anxious about. I mean, it wasn't
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a huge variable in my life, but I was avoiding it. You know, as a student, I was avoiding it.
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I was the valedictorian of my high school. And as the valedictorian, you have to give a talk at
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graduation. And so I declined the honor of being a valedictorian. I just said, no, I'm not doing that.
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And there were several instances like that where I just passed up the opportunity to speak
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because I was, I didn't want to have to pass through this wall of anxiety on the way to the
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event. And it wasn't until I was in graduate school, which was a good long while because I
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went to graduate school late. So I was in my early thirties. I just, I realized I had to get over this.
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And with, especially with the release of my first book, I had to get over it, right? This is no way to
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be a successful author, except for the extreme case of just becoming a man of mystery somehow
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that people still want to read. You know, somebody like J.D. Salinger or Trevanian or
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Thomas Pynchon. But most authors need to get out there in front of crowds and talk about the fact
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that they just wrote a book and most publishers would demand that of them. So I knew that was coming
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with my first book. And so I just had to get behind myself and push and very quickly got over it.
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And I had some very high stakes appearances out of the gate. I mean, like I, you know, I, the truth
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is I still haven't done that much public speaking. I mean, you know, this is the first tour I've done
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in like six years, as you know, but you know, in my first couple events, you know, so I was very
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quickly, I was in situations where I was, it was going to be like a televised debate, you know, so
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the stakes kind of ramped up pretty quickly, but in the end it was fine. And now, as you know,
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I simply complain about the fact that the auditorium isn't full. My concern is that I just
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get more people in the seats. So things have flipped nicely, but it's, uh, there are not that
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many tangible experiences of self-overcoming where the thing you are most avoidant of is the thing that
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you actually sort of like doing now. I mean, that, that, to be able to flip one of those
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is notable and, uh, psychologically empowering. And this is one that's pretty easy to do. And
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anyway, in that blog post, I get into some more concrete recommendations for people.
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And is it gone now? Does it ever, you know, come back? Any, any sort of pre-show jitters?
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I, you know, I think I, I have like physiological arousal that is sort of akin to anxiety before
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an event, but it's, I just perceive it as energy now. I mean, this is kind of a, just a reframing
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of, of anxiety that is available to anyone. You can notice that anxiety is fairly indistinguishable
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physiologically from excitement and apart from your thoughts about it, about what you, the thoughts
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you're using to frame it. And you can just kind of grab the reins of your mind and reframe it. You
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can just decide to think about the fact that you actually just care to how this event goes. You want
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to do a good job. You want you to, you know, in this case, people paid for tickets. They took a
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night out of their lives to come and see me. I, I care that they have a good time or find it
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valuable. So if I feel any energy, you know, any energy that, that's like anxiety, it really feels
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that I actually just care, you know, and that I'm, that, that I will, you know, I have a stake in
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this, but no, it's really, it's the experience has been flipped for me. It's really, it's pretty
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nice to have flipped it that way. I used to, before I'd go on stage, I would imagine that
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I had just gotten off stage and was very disappointed in my performance. And now I
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get a chance to go back up there and how would I do that now? That's a nice reframing. Yeah.
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That's a very, I mean, that could apply to many situations. Yeah. Right. So whatever it was,
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now a manager. So it didn't work out too well for me. All right. Uh, I saw that there's a movie
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on Netflix directed by Catherine Bigelow and written by Noah Oppenheim. And I mentioned the
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writer here specifically because he has credited the making sense podcast with the title of the
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film. So of course I had to watch it and scared the shit out of me. How about you?
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Oh, I thought it was very effective. It was like the world's most effective PSA, right? It's just a
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very, I mean, it is, it's a film, you know, with great actors, but it really plays like a PSA
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because it is just exposing how morally insane and psychologically, uh, implausible our nuclear
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status quo is right. I mean, just say it just for people who haven't seen it, I'm not giving
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anything away. It depicts, uh, a, um, an America that is now on the receiving end of a single
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missile, uh, incoming missile presumed to be a nuclear first strike. The source of which can't
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be identified because I think that the satellite that would track that was jammed. And now we've
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got whatever, 20 minutes to decide whether to return fire. And so our, our doctrine is to launch
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if there's, you know, incoming missile, especially in the case where you have more than one incoming
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missile and there's this prospect of having our launch capacity destroyed by a first strike. If we
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see a bunch of missiles coming our way, the doctrine suggests that there's some version of our
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are retaliating before anything has landed, before we know absolutely for certain that
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this isn't some kind of radar error, error, et cetera. So, but the, when, when you actually look
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at how this unfolds psychologically and socially among all the participants, and this is not the
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first document to depict this, but in film form, this is the, the only one I know that's done it
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this, this effectively and has shown all these beats. It just, it's completely insane, right? I mean,
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this is something that has, you can read about this at greater length in Eric Schlosser's book,
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Command and Control, which shows our whole continuity of government plan and how we've
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trained for it. And there are these scenes in that book that, and there's similar moments in this film
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that show just how impractical and in some sense morally unconscionable the expected behavior is. So
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the, the, the drilled behavior is, you know, certain key people need to be spirited away before the
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missiles hit. They need to be taken to some underground lair where they can ensure the
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continuity of government and, you know, in Dr. Strangelove style, repopulate the earth. And so
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one of these drills, like a, an army helicopter lands on the, you know, the soccer field to grab,
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I think it was the secretary of state or someone like that, who's at his daughter's soccer game.
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And he's expected to leave at that moment without his, his family to go underground,
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you know, to, to, to continue the American project in the face of a presumed nuclear attack.
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And he's like, well, what are you kidding? I'm not getting on that helicopter, right? I'm not
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leaving my family here to die, right? And he knew it was a drill, but it was just like,
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this is the plan and it's insane, right? And what's especially insane is the, is the doctrine that has
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to be, that falls under the judgment of one person, the president of the United States,
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who has to decide with the clock ticking in a, in mere minutes, in some cases, like six minutes,
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whether or not to annihilate tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people as perhaps his
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last act on earth, right? And, and usher in, in, in, in the extreme case, usher in a nuclear winter
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that more or less destroys everyone, right? I mean, and so who's going to do that? Who's going to think
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it's sane to do that? How is our deterrence against our enemies predicated on their assumption
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that our president will do that? The whole thing is bonkers. And anyway, the, the film gives you a
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glimpse of how bonkers it is. Yeah. The film is really well done. And I encourage everyone to go
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check it out because it really is, as you said, a great PSA, but I just wanted to stay here for a
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second on, you've talked about this before. I mean, you know, the mutually assured destruction,
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mad concept does seem insane. I mean, you know, if the president, whoever he or she is at that time
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fires back, you know, you said they'll go down as, you know, potentially the, one of the greatest
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killers of humankind in history. Yeah. Well, not, not even potentially. I mean,
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just emphatically. So in addition to that, whoever sent the, the, the, the incoming missiles in the
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first place. Yeah. Right. And so if they don't do anything and we lose 200 million Americans,
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but yet they spare the rest of the world, perhaps that's the better position. Yeah. I just don't see
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how the, the expectation of retaliation is at all credible or plausible. I think it's important.
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I mean, mutually assured destruction is predicated on the bluff and the acceptance of that bluff that we
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will respond, but I don't think it is compatible with anyone's sanity to think that we really will
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respond. I mean, I just, I, I think it's, it's morally insane to think that, okay, we're going to
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all die here. Basically we're going to be reduced to, you know, radioactive ruins and, you know,
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whoever's left alive is going to be like the people on the, you know, the perimeter of Hiroshima
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Nagasaki, uh, moments after the blast, because now, I mean, that, this is not the, what a house
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of dynamite depicts, but the, the, the, again, that was such a single missile, but in the true
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nuclear first strike concern against, you know, with Russia or now China, it really is a picture
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of, okay, we've got all these ICBMs incoming. There's nothing we're going to be able to do to
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stop them until we get some magical golden dome technology, which presumably we're now working
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on. But even there, there are reasons to believe that that's not something we're going to be able
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to rely on. But in the current case, we know we can't knock these missiles down. And if hundreds
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are coming in and they're all aimed at major cities and population centers, uh, we're all
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going to die. So what exactly is achieved by now killing hundreds of millions of people on the other
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side of the world? Well, exactly nothing. And the thing that, the only thing that what could have
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been achieved was the credible threat of doing that, that would have stopped the incoming missiles in
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the first place, but that hasn't happened, right? For whatever reason, our deterrence has failed.
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And, uh, now the missiles are incoming. I just, honestly, I just don't see anyone in that position
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deciding to kill hundreds of millions of people. I just, it just seems it, it doesn't serve any
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purpose at that moment. The purpose that was served was the bluff that was called. And now,
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now the bluff was no longer operative. Yeah, that makes sense to me. And related to that,
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it seems that Trump wants to resume nuclear testing because apparently Russia is doing it. And I guess,
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well, we have to as well. I think that's almost a direct quote.
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Yeah. I don't know what that means. I mean, I don't know what testing actually means. If you,
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if we're talking about, you know, above ground tests where you see the gigantic mushroom cloud.
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No, I think it's below ground. I think they're doing, they're wanting to do it.
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Right. Well, I mean, I, I mean, maybe there's ways of testing parts of weapons. I mean,
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clearly the, we can't have an arsenal that is decades old and we don't know whether or not it works,
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right? So there's gotta be some way of maintaining our credible deterrence. Again,
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rumors about the status of our technology are fairly alarming, right? I mean, the, the kinds
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of computers that are governing the launch of ICBMs, et cetera. I mean, this is not modern equipment
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all on floppy disks. I mean, I guess there's a, there's an irony that it's probably less hackable
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as a result of being so antiquated too. So it, there might be a layer of safety built into its
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obsolescence as well, but I mean, still, it's just the idea that we can just sit on all this tech
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year after year and not reinvest in it. Doesn't seem tenable to me, but clearly the world has to
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figure out how to walk back from this particular brink and denuclearize. I mean, I don't, I don't see how
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the end game is for us to just keep this world rigged to explode the way it is. I mean, the,
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the thing that's so scary above and beyond the malicious use of these weapons, the thing that's
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truly terrifying is the, the inadvertent, the possibility of an inadvertent use of these weapons
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or, or a launch based on misinformation or, you know, cyber attack, or, I mean, there've been so
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many accidents and near accidents and it's just, we're continuing to, to roll these invisible dice
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and eventually if we roll them enough, they're going to come up to our peril. Yeah. So I think
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it's worth continuing to revisit this topic. I mean, that's what, what's so valuable about this
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film is that it's gotten people talking about nuclear weapons. We, we have a generation of
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people that have more or less forgotten that this was a thing. One review of this movie was
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completely insane that it seemed to suggest it was kind of an anti-American libtard document that
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just was made it seem like the nuclear status quo was somehow a bad thing. Well, well, it is quite
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obviously a bad thing, right? I mean, it's just the idea that, that we're in some ideal circumstance
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here where having brought the world to this capacity of, of mutual annihilation, it's bonkers.
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I mean, the, the only argument in its favor is that a world of true mutually assured destruction with
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two, only two superpowers, which we've, you know, that is a world we're now quickly losing. That
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deterrence, nuclear deterrence, the, the, the specter of a world, of a war escalating, a conventional war
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escalating into a nuclear one may have mitigated the risk of conventional war between superpowers.
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And that may be, in fact, be true. I mean, maybe we would have fought a war with Russia
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in the absence of nuclear weapons already, but I mean, we're, we're just seeing the unraveling of
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the status quo and the, and the, the urge toward proliferation. I mean, the game theory of all of this
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just looks awful. What are your thoughts about the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Charles Murray, and other
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people right of center suddenly finding Jesus after considering themselves atheists or secular and moving
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into Christianity while claiming it as the bedrock of Western values? Hmm. Well, I've avoided
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commenting on this, uh, specifically, uh, in many contexts. And I think your Substack fans know this, which is why
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they've asked this again and again. Well, I mean, so first, I never want to say anything about Ayaan that is
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derogatory. I mean, I, I, I, if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe
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