In this episode of Making Sense With Sam Harris, the podcast host and comedian Sam Harris joins us live in front of a live audience to discuss a variety of topics, including his recent tour of the U.S. in support of his new Netflix show, and what it was like to be on stage with some of the funniest people in the world.
00:00:51.460We recorded New York and Austin, and yeah, we'll see what that recording looks like and
00:00:57.120see uh what we intend to do with it but yeah it feels like we're done with this talk we're done
00:01:02.660with this talk but i don't know about touring in general i feel like you had uh more fun than i
00:01:06.900mean for life no i don't think i'm done for life but touring this talk i mean this talk i've we've
00:01:11.540been touring for uh was it 10 months 11 11 months something like that yeah and it's evolved month
00:01:17.760by month and then you know maybe by you know 10 or so and uh yeah i think i'm i'm done repeating
00:01:24.260myself on this particular set of topics but the good news is we might do something else in the
00:01:29.100future and we'll let everybody know when yeah we have that figured out we won't be shy about that
00:01:33.920yeah no need to list all the celebrities and public figures that came out to see you but i
00:01:37.500did think it was adorable watching you fangirl over one in particular the comic jordan jensen
00:01:41.680yeah oh my god that was great yeah that was hilarious yeah well she's if you haven't
00:01:47.080discovered her jordan jensen is just a massive talent and um she has a netflix special but the
00:01:53.400thing that really got me into her was just seeing her crowd work clips on youtube i mean she's just
00:01:58.200so good in that zone so yeah she came out to um the beacon in new york and yeah i mean i was you
00:02:06.360know i don't tend to get starstruck but you know i fangirled on uh her to a degree that just i think
00:02:12.680probably astonished her uh her mom was there too so it was kind of adorable it was great i'll add
00:02:17.080that neil brennan came out to the show as well because i think everyone should listen to his uh
00:02:20.200the podcast episode he did with you. Yeah, he's a very funny man too. You should see his
00:02:24.200specials on Netflix. Yeah, he just seemed to turn the right dials and get great stuff out of you in
00:02:29.640ways that others haven't, including me. So if anyone wants to really hear more from you,
00:02:34.900that's a great episode to do it. And just a reminder, the community, our new community,
00:02:40.280your new community has been in private beta for a couple of weeks now. We've gradually been
00:02:44.440inviting members in every day. And it's been a place with lots of engagement, including plenty
00:02:48.880of disagreement with others and you, but it's been very respectful and enjoyable. We even have a few
00:02:53.820Trumpers in there now, and everyone's been cordial for the most part. We've only had to toss a couple
00:02:59.340people thus far, but it's been very clear that many in the community have also been wanting
00:03:04.060something like this to exist for quite some time. And I just want to add a little housekeeping on
00:03:09.720this, that anyone who's subscribed to the podcast before June 1st will have free access to community
00:03:14.360for as long as they maintain an active subscription after june 1st or thereabouts you will need a
00:03:20.220separate subscription to join community so if you want to check it out and engage with some fellow
00:03:24.500bright mindful people you can subscribe at samharris.org and get access to community for free
00:03:30.240now i think we should also add that we that this is totally web-based now but there's an app coming
00:03:35.940i don't know when that's coming next month or but yeah so soon i think i think people are frustrated
00:03:41.220that it's not app-based, but that's, that will be remedied. I've actually seen some people say
00:03:45.320the opposite, say that they kind of like having to sit down and get their thoughts together so
00:03:49.980that they're not just on the fly ripping comments, uh, without. Yeah, it actually might be, yeah,
00:03:55.500it might, it might degrade the quality of the conversation once we get an app. We'll see.
00:03:58.820We'll see. Anyway, how are you feeling about Iran? Are we going to get a good deal over there or
00:04:03.700what? Uh, well, I guess we're having this conversation on Memorial day. You know,
00:04:09.480we should always stipulate that we have no idea what's going to happen 15 minutes from now because
00:04:14.200we're being ruled by maniacs. It certainly seems at this point that we almost have the worst of
00:04:21.480all worlds. I guess the worst possible scenario is that we hurl all of our military resources
00:04:29.300into this war and still fail, right? So like a boots on the ground quagmire, I guess that's the
00:04:35.680worst case scenario. So we're, that doesn't appear to be in the cards, but we seem to have found the
00:04:40.640second worst scenario, which is Trump and his, uh, uh, incompetent friends, Pete Hegseth, uh,
00:04:47.980in particular have bragged and boasted and bluffed and then blinked and then blinked and then blinked
00:04:53.940again. All our bluffs were called. They've showcased American weakness and incompetence
00:04:59.600to a degree that I think no one could have rationally feared. I mean, even to the point
00:05:05.100where i'd be like like the last bit of optimism i think anyone had here was that the military
00:05:09.700itself is still the sort of military that befits a superpower but it you know in the clear light
00:05:16.820of day even that seems not to be true i mean maybe we're not a paper tiger but we're we're
00:05:22.460something close we just don't have the we've almost run out of armaments apparently we're not
00:05:28.280very good at mind sweeping or defending drones or i mean like we're not we don't appear to be
00:05:33.140cutting edge in the ways that we needed to be for this. And, um, we just seem to have blown
00:05:38.300through our stockpiles of armaments, right? So we're, we're rationing arms in addition to
00:05:43.080everything else we're doing. So it's a, it's terrible. It's a terrible outcome because Iran
00:05:48.260seemed for what all that we've done to degrade their capacity and their regime. And, you know,1.00
00:05:53.460we've killed a lot of people. Apparently they're more powerful than they were at the beginning of
00:05:57.320this war. We've taught them and taught the world that they can hold the 20% of the energy economy
00:06:04.120globally hostage and we can't do anything about it. I mean, Trump is just, you know,
00:06:09.760he's a corrupt weakling and he's made our country look like that. I mean, that's really the net1.00
00:06:18.460result so far. Now, again, 15 minutes from now, we could start bombing everything and the regime
00:06:23.240could collapse and we could see democracy emerge in the streets. I mean, you know, I guess that's
00:06:28.200not a outside the realm of possibility is probably below a 1% possibility at this point, or even a
00:06:34.200one-tenth of 1% possibility. But I mean, I've always held out hope that despite our incompetence
00:06:40.400and despite Trump and Hegseth's insane bellicosity and stupidity and our, you know, having made every0.99
00:06:48.380effort to alienate all of our allies, et cetera, that we might still produce something that was1.00
00:06:53.780better than the status quo here. But that doesn't seem to have happened.
00:06:57.620So are you saying that boots on the ground now is your worst case scenario? Because I think in
00:07:01.580the past you had said that allowing them to- A failed attempt in that. If we had put more
00:07:06.160resources in and still failed, that would be the worst case scenario. So to lose the war
00:07:11.680with boots on the ground would be worse than the war where we seem to be in the process of losing.
00:07:15.940And it's interesting to consider what it actually means to lose or win a war of this sort. Obviously, we haven't had many Americans die, although I think the destruction of our bases and planes and all that has been somewhat concealed from us.
00:07:33.840I mean, I think the Iranians did more damage to us and our allies than has been made clear.0.61
00:07:40.680There's been a lot of lying, I think, as you might expect from the Trump administration.
00:07:44.720But, you know, we haven't, it's weird to think of this as a defeat, you know, if you're just
00:07:49.200looking at numbers of dead and the material destruction, but the optics here really matter.
00:07:55.040I mean, we have revealed to all of our enemies that we're only willing to sacrifice, you
00:08:02.680the stock market ticker for a few short minutes before we're going to get very nervous and pivot.
00:08:10.960And again, Trump, his messaging about this has been the worst case scenario because it's been
00:08:15.380pure bluster and bluff and all of our bluffs got called. It is just the weakest possible
00:08:22.480presentation of our role in the world. Ending the war at the time of our choosing and the way we
00:08:30.340would do it, whatever Hegseth said. That does not seem to be the case. Yeah, and complete surrender,
00:08:34.860unconditional surrender was the standard initially. And I mean, if anyone has surrendered,
00:08:40.380we have surrendered. And so just think of the conversation I had with Ben Shapiro a few weeks
00:08:46.160ago, or whatever that was, a month ago or so. He was quite confident even then that Trump was never
00:08:53.580going to settle for an outcome that would be worse than the JCPOA deal that he's endlessly
00:09:01.660derided. Never step away from Israel's, you know, our joint interests with Israel. I mean, he's just
00:09:06.920this staunch defender of Western civilization and, you know, basic, you know, sanity in the Middle0.66
00:09:14.640least. And, um, you know, I've always, I, again, I've, I have been very hawkish on jihadism in0.96
00:09:22.060general and the jihadist regime in, in Iran in particular in recent months. But I've always said
00:09:29.080that this war could well be a disaster given kind of the unprincipled nature and the, and the just
00:09:35.280obvious incompetence of our administration. I mean, we, again, I'll just remind people we,
00:09:41.120we put a game show host in charge of the world's only superpower. We put a Fox and Friends host
00:09:48.400in charge of our military. What did we expect was going to happen? So that has always been
00:09:55.020the fear. Again, given the fact that the Iranian people seem poised to revolt and take some1.00
00:10:02.480considerable risk, though we came quite late to their defense after some tens of thousands were
00:10:08.260killed by the regime. I mean, there was always this hope that we were going to kind of uncork
00:10:13.620a new world in Iran, given that the population is so tired of theocracy. But that certainly0.84
00:10:20.960doesn't seem to be happening. I mean, it might happen six months from now after we leave the
00:10:24.480place. I mean, that's totally possible. But again, it looks bad. So this is coming in from one of
00:10:29.240the subscribers. What would you consider to be a victory now? Regime change. Well, I mean,
00:10:34.320there's no, this is what I've, I think I've been very clear about from the beginning.
00:10:38.360There's no end to this shorter regime change that we could consider a victory. Of course,
00:10:44.120we're going to lie about considering even this humiliating outcome, a victory, but no,
00:10:49.840I mean, regime change was the only thing to hope for. And it had to have been the real purpose of
00:10:56.860this whole exercise or whatever we're going to say about it. Now, regime change is the only thing
00:11:02.020that guarantees that iran could not be a um a nuclear armed enemy in the future i mean that's
00:11:09.860just not they're going to whatever they say they're going to sprint toward a bomb and there's
00:11:13.960going to be no enforcement of anything we have less power than we had in the beginning i mean
00:11:18.160it's again it's somewhat paradoxical that we got here this way because we somehow got less power
00:11:22.920by creating a lot of uh you know harm to our enemy in this case but our enemy is is stronger
00:11:31.060in some very specific ways and we are weaker in some very specific ways and and crucially all of
00:11:37.600this has been advertised to everyone right so i mean no one thinks we would defend taiwan now i
00:11:43.460mean you couldn't possibly think that so did you see where robert kagan said that giving iran
00:11:48.040control the strait is more power than they would have had they been able to build a nuclear weapon
00:11:52.840you saw that clip no i didn't see that but i i read his piece in the atlantic and i mean kagan
00:11:57.400is somewhat obviously he he's uh extremely well informed he has taken the darkest view of not just
00:12:06.160this misadventure but really just the erosion of american power under trump that i'm aware of him
00:12:12.380he's really been a cassandra here and that doesn't mean he's wrong i i think he's you could
00:12:17.820discount what he says by 50 and still be very depressed at where we are in the world i want
00:12:24.900to move on to uh for those who haven't been following this next story the the trumps sued
00:12:29.220the irs and and the judge said uh something in the effect of uh hey wait a minute don't you
00:12:34.620oversee the irs which of course makes the case not adversarial so the trumps dropped their lawsuit
00:12:40.680and settled out of court a deal that includes settled with themselves yeah correct yeah that's
00:12:46.360right a deal that includes barring the irs from ever going after the trumps for anything that
00:12:49.940they may have done in the past uh forever in all caps yeah yeah you just as a clue to who wrote the
00:12:55.800actual uh judgment right i mean it's just the fact that it's written like one of his truth social
00:13:02.040posts is this just again all of this is mortifying to us as a country it's like just half of america
00:13:09.100doesn't appear to care about how the rest of the world views us but i mean beyond our military
00:13:14.760power, which again now is in question in a way that should astonish everyone. Our soft power is
00:13:19.920the thing that Trump has just set on fire, right? I mean, we just are not in a role of anything like
00:13:26.760leadership now because we stand for nothing. I mean, we have the most corrupt administration
00:13:33.240anyone has ever seen. It's a kleptocracy and he has just been trading away, you know, our policies
00:13:41.560and institutional power and reputation abroad
00:13:44.920as though it was his personal property
00:13:46.960just to exact tribute from whatever former friends
00:13:50.380or foes can be forced to pay that tribute.
00:13:53.380And it's, I don't even have a theory of mind
00:13:55.980about a fellow American who understands
00:13:59.760what's happened here and doesn't care about it.
00:14:02.720I mean, it's just, this is the greatest act