Making Sense - Sam Harris - May 07, 2026


#474 — More From Sam： Hasan Piker, Islamism, Making Sense Community, and More

#473 — Money, Power, and Moral Failure #475 — The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

184.92

Word count

3,135

Sentence count

170

People

Also mentioned:
Hassan Piker Kamala Harris Zoran Mamdani Donald Trump Ben Shapiro Lloyd Blankfein Rabbi David Wolpe Francis Fukuyama Andrew Sullivan Michael Pollan Tucker Carlson Jonathan Swan Vinod Khosla George Floyd Nick Fuentes Sam Harris Susan Cain Noah Smith Ezra Klein Houthis and 2 more

Harmful content

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Making Sense with Sam Harris, the writer and podcaster joins host Emily Edwards ( ) to discuss a variety of topics, including: What s going on with the alt-right in the wake of the Shapiro/Fukuyama/Shapiro controversy, How to deal with the Trump administration, and Should we be worried about how much damage Trump is doing to our standing as Jews?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You're listening to Making Sense with Sam Harris.
00:00:04.320 This is the free version of the podcast, so you'll only hear the first part of today's
00:00:08.000 conversation.
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00:00:24.260 Welcome back to another episode of More from Sam.
00:00:26.700 Once again, we're taping this live in front of subscribers.
00:00:29.300 I'll be asking Sam many of the questions that you subscribers have submitted.
00:00:33.380 We'll be fielding reactions in real time so that Sam can address those.
00:00:37.300 Before we get to our first topic, I just want to quickly mention that Sam has shows in Toronto,
00:00:41.340 which is sold out next week, DC and New York City.
00:00:44.080 There are still tickets for DC and New York.
00:00:46.500 And then the following week on May 20th and 21st, you'll be in Dallas and Austin.
00:00:51.420 Also, you have some great podcast guests coming up in the next month or so.
00:00:54.820 Michael Pollan will be released next week.
00:00:56.720 Susan Cain, Alain DeBaton, who's just like an incredible human, or seems to me I haven't met
00:01:01.960 him, Vinod Khosla, Noah Smith, Jonathan Swan, and others. Okay, I want to get to our first topic.
00:01:08.440 Actually, this is also a bit of an announcement, but since we're going to discuss it, I think it
00:01:12.340 counts. We have launched a new community, and for those who haven't heard about it yet, why don't
00:01:17.020 you tell us what your intentions are with it? Yeah, this is really, I guess, I mean, in my mind,
00:01:22.540 something like a replacement for reddit not no offense to all the redditors out there but
00:01:27.440 i just think we need a situation where there's less noise and more signal and and more civility
00:01:33.220 and so um we've created something here which we're it's going to be web-based for the first
00:01:38.220 month but there's an app in development and um anyone who subscribe now or subscribes before
00:01:45.820 june 1st will have access to the community for free i mean it comes with the subscription but
00:01:51.440 after June 1st, we're breaking them apart, I believe, should this thing work. We're going to
00:01:56.700 go on a month-to-month basis. If the whole thing catches fire, we're going to yank it and realize
00:02:01.980 that social media of any sort is impossible. But we're going to take a stab at building a community
00:02:06.380 that is not selecting for any of the usual variables of engagement and weirdness and
00:02:12.400 division, but just actually a place where you want to have a conversation with people.
00:02:16.060 Right. I think the goal for this community, for it to work, it should feel like we've just widened our friend circles. And so some of the experiences we have in WhatsApp or the communication we have in Slack, you should feel that comfortable. And everyone there will be using their real names. So that's also going to change things.
00:02:32.840 That's one innovation, which hopefully will mean something. Yeah. So it's an experiment. I'm looking forward to it. I think it'll be fun.
00:02:40.020 Me too. You've had some great conversations this past month,
00:02:43.440 Rahm Emanuel, Francis Fukuyama, Ben Shapiro, Lloyd Blankvein, and others. I'm curious if
00:02:47.400 you have any post-mortem thoughts on any of those, especially something you may have enjoyed or wish
00:02:52.700 you'd have done differently. I think I got some criticism for the Shapiro conversation that it
00:02:59.560 wasn't as much of a debate as some people wanted, or I didn't hold his feet to the fire on Trump's
00:03:06.020 record as much as I could have. I think that's probably true. Actually, yeah, Rabbi David Wolpe
00:03:11.020 wrote a very nice email on that topic, criticizing me for not having pointed out some specifics about
00:03:17.860 how much damage Trump has done to our standing. At one point, Ben compared the president, really
00:03:24.780 any president, to a plumber. He's not looking to him for inspiration. He just needs to unblock
00:03:30.060 the toilet. And I sort of let him get away with that facile analogy. It's just not true. He's not
00:03:35.580 a plumber. He's somebody whose character affects everything. I think I said something about,
00:03:40.440 you know, the effect on culture and our politics, but he's also affected our standing in the world
00:03:45.180 by alienating all of our allies and giving comfort to many of our actual enemies. So,
00:03:52.160 I mean, the thing I found with Ben, which was interesting, I guess I could have anticipated
00:03:55.660 it, is that he's such a, calling him a single issue voter is probably not fair, but he's like,
00:04:00.200 he was like a two issue voter. You know, it was Israel and the Jews being one issue and, you know,
00:04:05.580 wokeness being another and wokeness in large part is a problem for how it affects that first issue.
00:04:11.140 And if you think that it enforced choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, if you think
00:04:16.280 Kamala Harris is likely to be sufficiently bad on those two issues, there's really nothing Trump
00:04:21.600 can do that you're going to regret unless it crosses the line into something so awful that
00:04:26.260 it's worse than your worst imaginings about what Kamala Harris was going to be like on those two
00:04:30.740 issues. So every time I pushed him on what was wrong with Trump and Trumpism, he more or less
00:04:36.380 agreed. And yet he said explicitly or implicitly that none of that's as bad. I mean, Trump grifting
00:04:42.740 billions of dollars for his family and friends is awful, corrupt, embarrassing, et cetera,
00:04:47.940 but still not as bad as what Kamala Harris could have done or would have done on those two issues.
00:04:55.000 And it's a counterfactual. I can't really, really adjudicate. No one can. I mean, I disagree with him, obviously. And I think I weight those issues differently than he does. But, you know, it's not really, there's not really much to debate there. He just, he hasn't seen the thing that Trump has done that is sufficiently awful for him to feel any regret over his choice. So that's where we kind of left it.
00:05:16.080 Yeah. I thought that email he wrote would have been great for new community. So hopefully he'll join us over there.
00:05:22.180 Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm hoping for.
00:05:24.020 Yeah. One thing Ben Shapiro mentioned that felt right to me was the line about the sleight of hand that seems to be happening around anti-Semitism where all the Jews and anti-Semites know exactly what's going on, but it feels as though everyone else isn't seeing that. 0.76
00:05:38.200 Yeah, I mean, again, I think that's a good way to describe what's happening. I think we'll get to people like Mamdani and Hassan Piker, and that's part of the problem there. People just don't see what's happening there. But I don't view it as so much a matter of Jews and anti-Semites. I view it as a matter of Islamism and the values of open societies, right?
00:06:00.580 So it's like, that's what I'm tracking.
00:06:02.460 I mean, I'm also tracking antisemitism, unfortunately now, but antisemitism was not something I
00:06:08.800 was been focused on for the last quarter century.
00:06:11.800 Islamism is so, and it overlaps with the problem of antisemitism, but they're not quite the
00:06:17.600 same problem.
00:06:18.840 Yeah.
00:06:19.060 We'll get to those two guys shortly.
00:06:21.000 I thought the Lloyd Blankfein conversation was great too.
00:06:23.680 He seems like a very thoughtful guy.
00:06:26.300 I liked him.
00:06:26.640 He seems like somebody who would make for a great politician, the right kind that you'd want. He's just a great communicator and a great thinker. Speaking of politicians, this is just my intuition, but about Rahm, I know he's looking at perhaps running for president, but my sense is I don't think he thinks he has the best shot at winning, but I think that's probably one of the best platforms for him to influence others with his ideas.
00:06:51.660 And I think, you know, if the Democrats win in 2028, he'll, he'll use that as an opportunity
00:06:56.020 to play a big role in the next administration.
00:06:59.580 What do you think about that?
00:07:00.800 Well, I'm happy he he'll be, if he is actually in the race for the duration, I I'm happy
00:07:05.500 he'll be there because I think he'll push the Democrats to have something like a sister
00:07:11.280 soldier moment around the lingering shades of wokeness, which are all too lingering.
00:07:17.240 I mean, from what I can tell, we're really poised to pitch back into some sort of George
00:07:22.880 Floyd hysteria.
00:07:24.280 I mean, you know, we'll get to Hassan Piker.
00:07:26.900 I think the fact that the New York Times is burnishing Hassan Piker as though he were
00:07:31.660 the future of progressive politics in America is a very bad sign.
00:07:36.880 I think it's done immense brand damage, in my mind, to the Times, as though that hasn't
00:07:42.540 been happening for years and years.
00:07:43.800 I mean, it's just such a colossal moral and political error, but it makes me worry that
00:07:49.800 I'm just, you know, wish casting all of this and that the Democratic Party is unrecoverable
00:07:55.540 now.
00:07:56.520 I mean, I just, I just think the fact that the people at the New York Times think that
00:08:00.660 Hassan Piker is worth signal boosting, I mean, it tells me something that, it tells
00:08:05.980 me that I'm out of, either they're out of touch or I'm out of touch with the culture
00:08:10.020 left of center, because he's basically our Nick Fuentes. You know, I mean, that exaggerates it by
00:08:16.380 10%, but I mean, it's totally irredeemable character. I mean, I'm just launching into
00:08:22.920 Hassan Piker now because it's time. Keep going since you're on him.
00:08:27.020 I mean, he's someone who, he's on record saying that America deserved 9-11. He supports Hamas, 0.98
00:08:34.080 he supports Hezbollah, he supports the Houthis. Needless to say, he thinks that Israel is an
00:08:39.520 apartheid state that is guilty of genocide in Gaza. I'm sure we'll get to the genocide charge
00:08:44.040 in other contexts. And just remember what the New York Times has done. They gave him a very
00:08:49.420 favorable style section profile. They gave him his own op-ed. Ezra Klein idiotically embraced him in
00:08:57.600 an op-ed titled Hassan Piker is not the enemy. There was more, he was on at least two New York
00:09:02.800 Times podcasts, one of which he was there celebrating micro-looting against corporations
00:09:08.160 that you just think kept too much money.
00:09:09.960 I mean, this is just not anything like sanity
00:09:12.220 for the Democrats, right?
00:09:13.220 This is suicide in 2028.
00:09:16.180 So, I mean, we can talk,
00:09:17.760 I mean, obviously wealth inequality is a huge problem.
00:09:20.120 Can we play a clip for a second?
00:09:21.400 I'd love to play a clip from,
00:09:22.760 I think it's Potsy of America.
00:09:23.860 Yeah, that's his. 1.00
00:09:25.120 Hamas is a thousand times better 0.84
00:09:26.460 than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state. 1.00
00:09:29.280 I stand by that. 0.52
00:09:30.040 Do you actually mean that?
00:09:32.020 Or is that a rhetorical move
00:09:33.920 or like a solidarity signal?
00:09:35.980 Like what?
00:09:36.720 I mean, it's all of the above.
00:09:38.160 I do mean it. I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot of people. I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter. I'm a lesser evil voter. And therefore, I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time because I'm looking at the situation as as as a paramilitary organization that has like a political party as well.
00:09:56.480 Politburo as well, that is entirely comprised, not as an alien force, but of orphaned children 0.83
00:10:03.160 that have, you know, had their parents killed by an apartheid state that has been dominating
00:10:08.560 the lives of Palestinians for 80 years at this point. And they've done a genocide at this point
00:10:16.260 as well. But like it started off with the Nakba and has only evolved as technology has gotten 0.88
00:10:22.400 better, to become more heinous. And Gaza is this hermetically sealed area that many people 0.94
00:10:29.620 correctly point to as the world's largest open air prison before October 7. So my perspective on
00:10:36.980 this has always been that I think that Hamas's tactics, which I oppose at times, right, or it's
00:10:45.860 like internal governance issues are, are secondary to this conversation because they're, it's, it's
00:10:54.080 like, uh, placing a lot of emphasis on the Nat Turner, uh, rebellion or, or, uh, instead of
00:11:00.640 talking about the, the much larger, much more consequential, much, uh, bigger harm that, you 0.98
00:11:06.600 know, chattel slavery was, uh, to, to black people, to like sell black people and to, to rape them. 0.97
00:11:12.580 and uh okay i think i think i got enough of this clip right that's the end of it anyway yeah yeah 0.94
00:11:17.600 so i didn't see that podcast and i don't know how favreau dealt with that you know vomitous confusion
00:11:23.900 but the fact that he was talking to the guy in the first place makes me worry that again the
00:11:28.860 democrats are lost here right so if you want president jd vance or tucker carlson or i guess
00:11:37.200 in the best case marco rubio well then by all means you know signal boost hassan piker for the
00:11:42.200 next two years but it's a disaster yeah so i don't know i you know it's very hard for me to know
00:11:47.840 what's going on in the democratic party really i mean we have 77 of democrats who think that israel
00:11:54.040 committed genocide in gaza those are hassan piker's people 77 is a big number that attests
00:12:00.740 to some serious moral and political confusion on that issue alone i mean i can for anyone who's
00:12:07.040 confused about that. I mean, the word genocide means something. It meant something yesterday
00:12:11.880 or the day before that. It means the effort to eradicate a people in whole or in part as such, 0.99
00:12:18.840 right? It's like, you know, the Nazis killed Jews, tried to kill every last Jew they could 0.97
00:12:23.200 get their hands on because they were Jews. The Hutus tried to kill all the Tutsis with machetes 0.99
00:12:28.520 over the course of 100 days in 1994. Those are genocides, and we need that word. If we're going 0.99
00:12:33.640 to redefine genocide to mean, you know, simply a war we don't like or a war that has too much
00:12:39.280 collateral damage, well, then we're just going to need to invent a new word to signify actual
00:12:44.420 genocides, which are, again, efforts to eradicate people simply because they belong to a specific
00:12:50.600 group. And by that measure, Hamas is explicitly and has always been a genocidal organization. 0.67
00:12:57.800 This group of paramilitary fighters who are exclusively orphans whose, what, internal 0.67
00:13:03.980 procedures Hassan Piker can quibble with, but they have a polypuro. 1.00
00:13:08.460 I mean, this guy is such a colossal moron. 0.99
00:13:10.860 It's a genocidal organization that aspires to genocide directly in his charter. 1.00
00:13:15.160 And since October 7th has said it would repeat October 7th again and again and again ad
00:13:20.220 infinitum. 1.00
00:13:21.120 If it had the ability, it would kill every Jew in Israel. 1.00
00:13:23.820 We know that. 1.00
00:13:24.640 All the Palestinians know that. 0.83
00:13:25.860 Hassan Piker knows that.
00:13:27.620 There's a lot of people on the left who apparently are confused about that or don't care, either
00:13:32.360 because they're so anti-Semitic or they're so deranged by the PSYOP that's been worked
00:13:36.180 on them over Gaza.
00:13:37.500 But there has been no genocide in Gaza, right?
00:13:40.300 It doesn't matter how many people were killed, it's still not a genocide, as witnessed by
00:13:44.060 the fact that Israel could commit genocide anytime it wants and hasn't.
00:13:49.280 No country attempting genocide sends millions of text messages and cell phone calls and
00:13:55.060 drops leaflets trying to get people to evacuate buildings before they bomb them. No country
00:14:00.620 trying to commit genocide opens humanitarian corridors in the middle of its war. No country
00:14:06.960 trying to commit genocide sends its own sons and daughters at great peril to clear booby-trapped
00:14:13.120 buildings rather than just obliterating them from the sky at no risk of themselves, right?
00:14:18.300 None of this makes any sense. So the use of this word genocide is nothing short of a blood libel.
00:14:23.280 And it's intended as such by people who know what they're talking about, but it seems to
00:14:27.200 be confusing 77% of Democrats.
00:14:30.780 And the New York Times is now participating in this confusion.
00:14:33.580 And Pod Save America, one of the biggest liberal podcasts, is participating in this confusion.
00:14:37.940 It's just not, I mean, it's deeply immoral, but it's also just not functional politically.
00:14:42.660 I mean, all of this is going to come back to make whoever we put forward under these
00:14:48.280 forces in 2028 unelectable if he or she has to pay lip service to this shibboleth that
00:14:54.780 Israel is now a genocidal apartheid state. And we all know that, you know, the war in Gaza was
00:15:00.620 totally unjust. So we're getting pushback from the audience saying it doesn't matter how many
00:15:04.840 people were killed. It couldn't be a genocide is not an accurate statement. Okay. So we dropped
00:15:12.220 two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, right? You might quibble with that. You might
00:15:17.880 think that was a war crime. You might think that was a horrific evil. It wasn't a genocide, and no
00:15:24.300 one calls it a genocide. We vaporized 100,000 people instantaneously, and then we killed another
00:15:30.380 100,000 slowly by radiation poisoning and fire and infection. No one calls that a genocide. No
00:15:37.540 serious person calls that a genocide, and no human rights organization calls that a genocide. Amnesty
00:15:42.760 international does not call that a genocide. But do you know what they call the war in Gaza?
00:15:47.620 A genocide, right? So that's the moral confusion. We know our dropping atomic bombs on Japan wasn't
00:15:54.380 a genocide because what did we do after Japan surrendered? We went in there and we occupied 0.93
00:16:00.160 them and we rebuilt their society. And by 1952, when we left, they had ceased to be our enemies.
00:16:06.440 they were our allies, right? At no point did anyone think that our goal was to eradicate
00:16:12.440 the world of Japanese people, right? So that's what a genocide is, the eradication project. 1.00
00:16:18.720 And the fact that people are confused about what this word means is culturally appalling.
00:16:25.140 But this confusion has been engineered by people who know what they're doing. This is my problem
00:16:30.940 with the Hassan Pikers of the world and the people who influence him. And it's a problem 1.00
00:16:34.900 with the Zoran Mamdani's of the world, which I'm sure we'll get to. These people know what 1.00
00:16:39.680 genocide means, right? And they're lying about it. So before we get to Mamdani, how do you think
00:16:45.540 that explains Andrew Sullivan's position? What is he getting wrong here? Members can hear the full
00:16:50.200 conversation by subscribing at samharris.org. Subscribers get a private RSS feed you can use
00:16:55.680 with your favorite podcast player.